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At least, Asher reflected with exasperated irony at so hours between six-thirty and ten, when he was finally released froe him with Chloe Winterdon&039;s athered the blonde girl&039;s body into his ar Asher to the tedious business of finding some story to tell the police-which they didn&039;t believe-being held for questioning, and getting

his broken hand splinted by the police surgeon They injected it with novocaine and warned hi, but Asher refused all offers of veronal or other sedatives He knew already it would be a long night

To questioning, he responded that he was a friend of Dr Grippen&039;s, that he had gone there on the off chance that a e with the doctor; she had beensome days No, he hadn&039;t reported it before-he had just returned froone No, he didn&039;t knohere Dr Grippen could be reached No, he had no idea why the burglars would have silver-tipped bullets in their gun They made no comments about the bite marks on his throat and wrists, which was just as well

It was raining when he stepped outside, a thin, dispiriting rain Wea-riness made him cold to the bones as he descended the station house steps, his brown ulster flapping cloakwise about hi folded up underneath Even with the novocaine, it hurt daht, and no nearer to finding Lydia than he had been that afternoon

There was a cab stand at the end of the street He started toward it, and a dark shape was suddenly at his side, seeht his elbow "You&039;re co with me"

It was Grippen

"Good," Asher said wearily "I want to talk to you" After the thing that had attacked hi for them in a four-wheeler a little ways down the street "You certainly took long enough," he ree to punch him as he slumped into the seat at his side

"I took a few hours out for dinner at the Cafe Royale and a nap," he retorted instead "If you&039;d put in an appearance earlier you could have joined me for coffee They have very handso softly on the wet pave "Lydia&039;s gone And I&039;ve seen the killer"

"Lydia?" Grippen said, puzzled

"My wife" Asher&039;s brown eyes narrowed as he looked across at the big va cloak, the blunt, square head shadowed by the briirl I asked you about, whose life is the price I&039;er still filled him at Ysidro, at Grippen, at all of the her into this

"Ah," the lance flicked to Ysidro "I wondered on that"

"She was in London all the tiation," Asher said, and Ysidro&039;s colorless eyebrows quirked

"I knew she had left Oxford, of course I did not think you would bring her here"

"It seeood idea at the tied to find most of your lairs and all of your aliases before she disappeared And if you didn&039;t take her," he added, looking across again at Grippen, whose red face had gone redder as rage added to whatever blood he&039;d i,

"then I suspect she found the killer as well Now tellon how I conduct this investigation Did you take her? And is she dead?"

"You waste your breath," the Master of London said slowly "No to both your questions is the answer that&039;ll keep you for us and not against us; I know that, and you know that, and I&039; you&039;ll not believe it an I say it, but it is so I&039;ve seen no red-headed ht my faith on&039;t"

Asher drew a deep breath He was shivering slightly all over, in nervous waves, reaction setting in on hier, exhaustion, and pain He&039;d lost his hat at sos, and his brown hair fell forward over his forehead, the thin face beneath hard and far less clerkish than it usually seeht, disinterested voice said, "Tell us about the killer"

Asher sighed, and some of the tension ebbed from his tall frame "It was- But beyond a doubt a vampire It was bleached, as you are, Ysidro, but its skin was leprous and peeling It was taller than I, taller than Grippen by an inch or so, and as broad or broader Fair hair, but notout, I think Blue eyes It had a hu down the stairs fro away frooes on killing ra seven or nine hu anywhere in a closed carriage with it"

"&039;It,&039; " Simon said softly

"It wasn&039;t human"

"Nor are we"

The cab pulled to a halt at the top of Savoy Walk Grippen paid off the driver, and the two va tunnel of shadows to the towering, baroque blackness of Ernchester House at the end Bands and slashes of Ma-deira-gold ht the thin rain in a shuddering haze: even as they mounted the soot-streaked marble of the steps, one panel of the carved doors opened to reveal the Farrens stand-ing, an arm-linked silhouette, just within

"I fear she is truly dead" Anthea led the way up the long stair, to a small roo or letter writing The dark red of her gown showed like old blood against the creamy whiteness of her bosoe whispered of solinted in the laht like ripe blackberries Her thick hair was piled in the ainst it, her face looked strained, weary, and frightened, as if her spirit were now fighting against all the pressures of those accu close at her side, looked infinitely worse "Decoun"

"That&039;s wrong," Grippen growled "Not cold as it is She should bare be stiff"

"Are you speaking from your experience with hu man&039;s black eyebrows pulled down over his nose in a frown "With a vay would be completely different"

Anthea had laid one of her velvet cloaks over the delicate Regency sofa in the little parlor Against the thick, cherry-black velvet, Chloe&039;s hair see down to brush the floor; Asher was re in the study laht Her eyes and e the horrible, sunken appearance of her flesh or the ghastly waxiness of her skin She had been, Asher remembered, abso-lutely beautiful, like a baroque pearl set in Renaissance gold Petrified, Lydia had said, every cell individually replaced with so that was not human flesh, and a mind replaced by that which was not a human mind

A second cloak covered her; over the years, Anthea ed It, too, was black, niched and beaded; beneath it, Chloe&039;s shell-pink dress shone like the slash of a fading sunset between banks of clouds With his left hand Asher reached forward and drew the cloak aside to look at the huge puncture wounds in the throat Then, thoughtfully, he shrugged off the reht of it drop to the floor around him He shook clear a few inches of wrist from the sleeve of his corduroy jacket and held it out to Anthea "Undo the cuff, would you, please?"

She did, gingerly avoiding the silver chain which still circled that wrist Even the fleeting grip the thing had taken on it had driven the links into the flesh with sufficient violence to leave a narroreath of bruises and the reddening ers

Just below the base of Asher&039;s thumb were two or three sets of punc-tures, scabbed over like the half dozen or so on his throat A souvenir, he thought ry gallows humor, of Paris He knelt beside Chloe&039;s body and compared the led white holes in the girl&039;s skin

"Its fangs were huge," he said quietly "Grotesquely so, like an aht have been funny if it weren&039;t so terri-fying They gren over the lip, cutting the flesh" His fingers sketched the place beneath the thick brush of his mustache, and Ysidro&039;s eyes narrowed sharply "It hadn&039;t callused, so it&039;s so that came over it fairly recently"

"Any clown had told you that," Grippen grumbled "We&039;d ha&039; known ere this, did any vampire walk that fed on other va up fro around the circle of white, unhuht, "that drinks the blood of other vampires?"

Grippen&039;s voice was harsh "Other vampires kill it"

"Why?"

"Why do men stone those who eat the corpses of the dead, force children, cut beasts up alive to hear &039;e? Because it&039;s abominable"

&039;There are so few of us," Anthea added softly, her strong fingers stroking the littered at her bo-som, "and our lives are lived so perilously on the shadowlands of death, no traitor to our midst can be tolerated, for fear that all shall die"

"And because," Ysidro&039;s light, disinterested voice whispered, "to drain the death of a vampire, to drink of a , and so thick with the overtints of all the lives it has taken, reatest intoxi-cation, of all"

There was silence-shocked, furious, and, Asher reflected gri of the rain pierced it faintly,brocades of thedrapes Then

Grippen snarled, "Buggering Spanish dog- you&039;d think so"

Seated on a chair near the head of the couch, his ankles crossed negligently but with his usual erectness of posture, Ysidro continued, unperturbed, "But the question was not of life and death, but ain physical nourish an anih we kill hiht, cool tone, one would never have guessed that he had fought to rescue Asher from that death in Paris, nor pro-tected him, at a certain amount of personal risk, afterward &039;To drink even a small quantity of another vampire&039;s blood is repellent, after our own flesh has undergone the change I am told that it often causes nausea"

"Then it&039;s been tried"

The va of his chair and folded sliht smile touched hishas been tried"

The others, still grouped around the couch where Chloe&039;s body lay, regarded him uneasily, save for Ernchester, who si down at his white, workless fingers, turning therowth he had suddenly found sprouting at the ends of his ar of another vampire&039;s blood, whether he killed hie?"

"It did not," Ysidro replied in the careful tone he had used at the beginning of the investigation to reveal those few frag to part, "in those that I have known" "And ere those?" Grippen derily "As they are dead now," the Spanish vampire responded, "it scarce matters"