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It was nearly three in the , and the s of Horace Blaydon&039;s tall brown-brick house on Queen Anne Street were dark
"Can you hear anything?" Asher whispered, from the shelter of the comer of Harley Street "Anyone within?"
Ysidro bowed his head, colorless hair falling down over his thin fea-tures in the glow of the street lamp, his heavy-lidded eyes shut The silence in this part of the West End was profound, sunk deep in the sleep of the well-to-do and self-justified who knew nothing of vampires be-yond the covers of yellow-backed penny dreadfuls and gave little thought to how their governot its information about the Ger-mans The rain had ceased In an alley, two cats swore at one another- lovers or rivals in love-and there was the smallest flicker of Ysidro&039;s head as he th he whispered, "It&039;s difficult to tell at this distance Cer-tainly there&039;s no one in the upper part of the house, though servants sometimes have rooms in the cellars"
"It has to be here," Asher breathed "His country place has been closed up for years and it&039;s a good thirty ist-he doesn&039;t have a consulting practice to worry about His wife died soo and his son&039;s in the Life Guards It wouldn&039;t be difficult to keep hiht"
"He would have to be intensely stupid," Ysidro murmured, "not to notice, if his father were forced into such an alliance as I forced you"
Asher flattened to the corner of the house and scanned the empty street "Set your mind at rest"
It was difficult to tell whether the soft sound in the darkness was a coh "You know this Blaydon," Ysidro then said softly
"Is it likely we could win him to our side-turn hin Office?"
"It depends on what his partner&039;s told hileautters If Ysidro, turning his head slightly for what even the cob-web nets of his far-flung awareness failed to bring hi, it stood to reason Asher wouldn&039;t, either But still, Asher&039;s every nerve strained to hear "I never knew Blaydon well-I went to fetch Lydia at some of his lectures and had been to the Peaks a few tihby fortune instead of letting his son do it, but I don&039;t think he held it against hteous old bigot, but he&039;s honest He was one of the few dons who stood up to Lydia&039;s father when he wanted her taken out of University-though, of course, at the ti her to stay
"In his place-the vaht the Lies were the work of the va"
"You think he&039;d believe that?"
"I think if Dennis were in danger-if the va Dennis&039; life as you&039;re threatening Lydia&039;s to win my compliance-he&039;d want to We did it in the Department all the time The old carrot-and-stick routine: on the one hand Dennis&039; life is in danger; on the other, Blaydon can do viral research hat blood he can take, and con-gratulate hi vampires at the same time He may not even know Lydia&039;s a prisoner or he may know there is a prisoner, but not that it&039;s Lydia It&039;s surprising how ignorant the right hand can be when it would really rather not knohat the left hand is doing,"
They left the shelter of the corner and glided back like specters through the wet blackness of deep night in October London "The mews is just past the next street," Ysidro murmured, barely audible even in the utter silence of the empty street "Do you plan to speak to this Blaydon, then?"
"If I can," Asher replied, as they slipped into the cobbled, horse-set Lydia out of this, and see how the land lies, if possible Like Lydia-like a lot of people in the medical profession-Horace has a little streak of saintmanqut in him, in his case one of the stiffer-backed Scots variety It could be the vaood deal to knoho it is" The va hiht filtered in frolistened on the puddles in the center of the lane, but left the sides in velvet shadow; the air ith the clean sency of well-tended horses, prosaic odors and co "I suspect Calvaire came to London to seek in hie that he would have heard of him at all when I had not, much less been able to locate him"
"Perhaps Brother Anthony told him whom to look for and where to look"
"Maybe" Ysidro&039;s voice was absolutely neutral, but Asher, as growing used to the tiniest nuances of his speech, had the is here which I do not under-stand, and a them is why Calvaire&039;s appearance on the scene should have triggered these er them, and all these matters are not simply a chance juxtaposition in tihten us, e find her, or Blaydon As I recall, Tulloch the Scot was big, though not so big as you describe Your height, but bulkier"
"No," Asher said "I looked up at him-he came over the top of me like a wave"
They u-lar cliff of houses visible beyond the stables and cottages All were dark; it was the ebb-tide hour of the soul He went on softly, "But conceivably this virus, this rowth It could"
The vahtened on his arlint of the luer, cautioning For a tiht he h his eyes did not relax
"Nothing" The as more within Asher&039;s head than without In a stable, a horse wickered and starown used to the idea that as va acts of violence, immortal, and to the idea that acts of violence are all we need fear Like Le to believe &039;ie&039; It is disconcerting to learn that there ain after all"
Asher felt aardly in the pockets of his ulster for the reassuring weight of Lydia&039;s revolver, which, like the one the police had confis-cated fro what one could purchase at hyperfashionable West End gunsht both silver knives and even the little hypodermic kit with its ampoules of silver nitrate He&039;d found bills from Lambert&039;s, for silver chains and at least one silver letter opener, stuffed into the one out completely unarmed His own silver chains lay slim and cold over the half-healed bites on his throat and left wrist-the right wasand splints and puffed up to twice its norunned
The briefest of investigations revealed a brougham and a trim bay hack with one white foot in Blaydon&039;s stables After a , Ysidro h soo" "He&039;d have turned off the servants," Asher breathed in return From the stable&039;s rear door, they could see the tall back of the house, past the few bare trees and the naked shrubs of a narron garden "You can&039;t hear whether someone&039;s in the cellar?"
Simon&039;s eyes neverall around hiht seemed to breathe with unseen presence, Asher&039;s hair prickled with the certainty that so listened, as Ysidro was listening, for his single breath and the beat of his solitary heart By mutual consent, they both backed out of the sain, where a sound, a co on the ed his arht it and lowered it to the baled hay piled just outside the stable door With his left hand, Asher fumbled the revolver and a silver knife from the pocket, transferred the revolver to his corduroy jacket; the knife-since he earing shoes rather than boots-slid conveniently into his sling "Can you watch my back?"
"Don&039;t be a fool" Simon slipped his black Inverness from his shoul-ders, laid it in a soft whisper of velvet-handed wool on the hay, and reached into Asher&039;s jacket pocket for the revolver He patted the cylin-der gingerly a few ti for heat inside Satisfied, he concealed it in his own jacket "If you had four hours&039; sleep on the boat froht, I should be surprised No, stay here-you should be fairly safe A cry fro in the mews, and this vam-pire one, in a momentary blink of distracted consciousness that uard
He are that the va on hiling with the aftereffects of his attack by the Paris vale at Grippen&039;s and the pain of his broken hand The novocaine was beginning to wear off, and his ar throbbed dah to disrupt the concentration that was still his only possible defense against the ancient vampire&039;s soundless approach
He was conscious, too, of what Ysidro was doing for hiy as Ysidro ever got- throughout the walk down the silent streets from Bruton Place to Queen Anne Street, had never see him Perhaps it was simply because he knew that Asher would neither abandon his search for Lydia, nor have the strength to defeat the killer alone, should he entle charm of his faded and cynical sered in hih-handed and be, as Lydia had blithely calculated, a murderer thousands of times over, but he would not abandon his responsibilities to his liege e man&039;s wife This was more than could be said of Grippen or the Farrens, who had inforrees of tact, that the location of new boltholes for themselves took absolute precedence over any possible fate of Lydia&039;s