“I know what you are thinking. I always know what you are thinking.
“Don’t shake your head, Clio. How else do you suppose I have been able to control you for so long? We are very alike in some ways. You are like a shadow of me, with a shadow of my power. But it lives inside both of us. I can feel it coursing through your blood. Your father’s blood.
“They call it evil, but that is only the name envy makes them speak. And who would not envy us? Who would not envy the power we can exercise over people’s lives? The way people look at us when they see what we really are?
“You cannot deny that you have felt its potency, Clio dear, felt its pull. That you have never known the urge to cause pain. To bite or hit or hurt. You may struggle against it, but it is within you, longing to come out. Of course, I suppose you cannot be blamed. You are not strong like I am. You do not have my capacity, my power.
“Really, it was quite audacious of you to think you might catch me, Clio. You would have been better off chasing chimeras. At least then you would have stood a chance of success. You did not understand that I was leading you the entire time. Like a stupid dog you devoured whatever bait I threw at you, without even stopping to sniff and see if it was rotten.
“When I began, I had not even thought of you. But then you foisted yourself onto the scene, and I immediately apprehended what you could be. My plan was so clever. Drug you, leave Flora in your bed. I wondered about fixing your ankle, but I never do anything by half measures. I used the water pitcher, lest you were curious. One sharp blow was all it required.
“It was perfect, a beautiful plan. A beautiful trap. It would buy me the precious time I needed and get you out of the way. And everything went just as I had intended. I was sitting outside in the apple tree when you found the body and I saw your face. The sheer, exquisite horror and self-loathing. I wish you could have seen it, too, I really did. You see, I am not ungenerous.
“Why did you dawdle so at the fair? I had expected better of you. You are known for your tenaciousness, yet there you were, wandering around, ignoring all my carefully placed hints. I was tempted to give you a push myself, but my patience worked. Finally you arrived at the cockfighting pit, and what happened was better than anything I could have dreamed.
“Even with the viscount interfering I knew I had you. There was nothing else for you to think, nothing else for you to believe, other than that you were the vampire. You were mine, your mind was mine. I had you.
“It was then that it unraveled. You did not go to the constables. You did not go to prison. You did not tell anyone what you were, what I had made you. You did nothing. You wasted all my efforts, all my work, all my waiting, you selfish, ungrateful bitch. You stopped being scared.
“But only temporarily. Indeed, in a way I am glad it went this way. I am glad I shall have the opportunity of watching the life drain from you slowly, watching the terror rise in your eyes as you watch the clock clicking off the final minutes of your existence. You know, I have never really seen you properly frightened. Even when you found Flora’s body, you were not afraid, not as I would have liked. You were scared for others, but not for yourself. You have not tasted real terror yet. But you will. You will see how sweet it can be.
“No, no, don’t struggle. You must stay alive awhile longer. But I promise the time will not hang heavy on your hands. I have so much to tell you.”
Clio pressed herself with apparent fear against the post to which her hands and feet were bound. “I do not want to hear what you have to say, Saunders. If that is even your real name.”
“It is. But I am not Sir Saunders Cotton. Since the death of my father four years ago, I have been Lord Mayhew.”
“Mayhew.” The name was familiar. “Then you are not from Devonshire.”
“No. But my stepmother was.”
“Serena Mayhew. The vampire’s third victim three years ago.” Clio stared at him. “Did you begin all this the first time just to kill your stepmother?”
“You may speak of the act as it deserves. It was brilliant. Everyone assumed she was merely another victim. When in fact, she was the victim. The one around whom the entire scheme was built.”
“Why?”
“She deserved it. They all deserved it. They were all bloodsuckers. She preyed on my father, stealing away his life, stealing away the fortune that was supposed to be mine. Mine. My blood rights. She sucked away my title, my property, my money, sucked them from my father. When she first came, she used to sing to me, sing me that song. She used it to lure me. I knew what she wanted to do to me, I could tell. I had seen her do it with my father. She would sing, to him afterward, and I knew she wanted to do it to me, too. But I would not let her. I would not be seduced by her wiles. She used her song and her body to steal everything from my father. When he died, she had everything. And I knew I would have revenge. I would make her sing her siren song. And then I would suck the blood back out, suck out what was mine, suck it out until she was dead. I would rid London, rid England of the bloodsuckers. I would make it safe.”
“And you did.”
“Yes. I was tremendous. No one suspected anything. And it was thrilling. When they understood what was happening, when they understood what I was doing to them, for them, you should have seen the expressions on their faces. They loved me. They pled with me. They begged me to release them. I was a god to them. A god.” He closed his fist in tribute to himself. He looked at her and saw terror, his victim’s terror, sparkling in her eyes. “You begin to understand, I see.”
“I understand that you are mad,” Clio replied with an unconcealed shudder.
Saunders shook his head. “They always say that when they do not comprehend. They always say that when they are overawed by your power. Mad? Mad am I? Because my brilliance is beyond your appreciation? Because my thinking leaves you awestruck? How can you be so ungrateful, Clio? After all I have done for you, all the attention I have lavished. No one has ever thought so much about you, about your well-being as I have. Use your petty words if you prefer. Retreat into them. But I am not mad. I shall triumph tonight.”
“You mean you did all of this to kill me?”
“No. Clio, Clio, Clio. What are you to me? Was it you I took to the cockfights? Was it you who loved to see the birds bloody one another so much that you fell and hurt your ankle? Was it you who captured my heart and showed me what it was to love? Who could have impersonated you so perfectly at the fair? Do you really think I would do all this for you?”
“You did this for Mariana,” Clio breathed, letting the mask of fear she had been struggling to wear drop for a moment as she grasped everything. “You did it to kill Miles.”
“Exactly. Mariana, my perfect angel, must be liberated from the prison of her betrothal. She must be uncaged, so her exalted spirit can fly free. And that bastard Dearbourn will have died in pursuit of the vampire. Just like Serena. Just another victim of the clever fiend.”
“Does Mariana know of your plan? Is she helping you?”
“My pure saintly Mariana? She knows nothing of all this.” He gestured about as if castles and land grants were scattered at his feet. “She knew only that we had to attend the fair in disguise so her reputation would not be sullied. She loved the idea of dressing up as you. She said she wanted to know what it felt like to look so ill.”
“How charming,” Clio murmured despite herself.
“Yes, she is. She was my helper. And my muse. Do you understand now?”
Yes, Clio nodded. She understood many things. She understood that the bonds on her wrists and ankles were insoluble. She understood that she was in the hands of a lunatic. She understood that Toast, hunkered in a corner, could never get past him to summon help. She understood that her only power was in convincing her captor of her fear while actually keeping it at bay. And she understood that unless the note she had dispatched from the inn where they changed horses made it into Miles’s hands soon, they were both going to die.
“None of you were following her?” Miles demanded, looking ferociously over the assembled inhabitants of Which House as if he suspected them of having broiled and eaten Clio.
“After the threats she gave about what would happen to anyone who dared endanger his life by following her when she heard about Inigo the other night?” Mr. Hakesly shook his head.
“Why weren’t any of you following her?” Mr. Williams asked, eyeing the Arboretti. “Strong men. Good for following. Look like you’d be willing to risk having your toes licked for ten hours straight by this puppy.”
“Is that what Clio threatened as punishment?” Sebastian inquired, barely repressing a smile.
“That, and drawing and quartering,” Mr. Pearl elaborated quietly.
“But you know she would never do anything like that,” Miles ranted. “You should have—”
“Miles,” Ian said, putting his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “You had two guards following her, remember, and she was still abducted. These men are not to blame, and your storming around is not getting us anywhere.”
The room fell silent but for the sound of men shifting uneasily in their leather boots. Then Miles said, “You are right.” He nodded to Snug, Inigo, and the Triumvirate. “I am sorry.”
He would have gone on, saying he knew not what, but a messenger in golden Dearbourn livery puffed into the study then like a bitter wind. “This just came,” he said, flapping a paper in front of Miles. “This just arrived at Dearbourn Hall.”
Miles snatched the grimy sheet from him.
My lord,
The vampire has me. This shall be my last chance to get a letter to you. I overheard at the coach stop that we are going to the Garden House near Hartwell Heath. Please, my lord, come as quickly as you can. I am terrified.
Your Lordship’s own, Clio.
Miles handed the sheet to Mr. Hakesly. “Is this Clio’s writing?”
“Looks like it,” Mr. Hakesly averred, showing it to Mr. Pearl.
“Yes.” Mr. Pearl confirmed.
“Hartwell Heath is close to my sheep pasture. It’s three hours hard riding away,” Crispin said hesitantly.
Miles looked at the clock. It was after six. Six hours until midnight, and a three hour ride in each direction. What if Clio was wrong about where the vampire was taking her?
“Saddle the horses,” he said grimly. “We had better get started.”
“You know,” Saunders confided, “the hardest part is not the waiting. The hardest part is the pretending.”
Clio would have liked to disagree. She was finding the waiting, the steady click of the clock in front of which she was tied, extremely tedious. Pretending to be afraid of Saunders was not a problem at all.
Her mouth was still dry and tasted bad from whatever he had used to make her sleep during the coach ride from the Painted Lady. He had shoved something warm and wet between her lips when she tried to scream, and it must have been coated with a sleeping drug. She remembered telling herself that it was crucial she stay awake, alert, crucial that she know where she was going and what was happening, but no matter how hard she struggled her eyes would not stay open. Her last clear thought was of seeing Lovely Jake napping at the strangest angle on the stairs, and she recollected thinking that if he did not clean it off soon, all the red wine on the front of his doublet would ruin it. It was only when she regained consciousness in the coach that she had realized Lovely Jake was dead, and she had wondered who would look after his pig.
Her first thought on waking in the lurching vehicle, however, had been one of relief, because Toast was nowhere to be found. He had gotten away. And perhaps he could lead help to her. But when, midway through their journey, they pulled up outside the inn where Saunders had forced her to write the note to Miles, she saw that Toast had been tied behind the coach with a sturdy chain, forced to grip its outer edges or run in order to avoid being dragged to his death. Exhausted, he now lay almost motionless in the far corner of the room.
The chamber had no furniture beside the post to which Clio was tied, if that could be considered furniture, and the large clock that stood directly in front of her. Saunders paced back and forth across the floor in bare feet, his quiet footsteps keeping exact time with the steady ticking of the timepiece.
“Yes, that was the worst part. Not being able to show people what I really am,” he was saying. “Not being able to reveal what I am really capable of. That was what made me suffer. You see, I learned long ago that they would not understand. That their jealousy would force them to call me names. As you did. But you won’t anymore, will you?” Saunders stopped pacing the room and turned to stare at Clio with burning eyes. She noticed that one side of his face had begun to twitch.
“No,” she said in what she hoped sounded like a meek voice. “I won’t.”
“Good. I am tired of being insulted by you, and people like you. How dare you have tried to fool me with that idiot impersonator in Newgate? A child could have seen through that.”
“You are right. We were fools.”
“No,” Saunders hissed, delight flashing in his eyes as Clio recoiled from him. “You are fools.”
Clio nodded. “But when we saw how ingeniously you disposed of the man, we knew we had been wrong. Where did you learn so much about poison?”
Saunders smiled. “From my stepmother, Serena. Her first husband had been an apothecary. She taught me everything I know.” He looked pensive for a time. “I certainly hope Miles will appreciate all I have done for him. Appreciate the lengths I have gone to orchestrate a hero’s death for him, even though he is my enemy. To lose one’s life in a final battle with the vampire—what a marvelous way to die. Serena did not understand the gift I was giving her. I kept trying to explain it to her, explain that I was making her part of something special, a part of history, but she fought me. She stood no chance of course. Like you.”
Clio shrank away from him, from the twitching lips. “Why do you need me if it is Dearbourn you want?”
“Because I want him to wait. I want him to feel each minute that passes. I want him entirely under my power. He must die in pursuit of the vampire, but first he will taste what it is like to be in someone else’s control. He must follow my timetable, be my creature. And you will make him that.”
“What do you mean?”
“He will come after you. He must. And then he will be mine. My puppet. My servant. Mine to command. For as soon as he attempts to enter this room, you will be shot.”
“Shot?”
“Yes. With that pistol.” Saunders gestured behind him and Clio saw that there was indeed a pistol there. It was secured on a stand bolted to the floor so that it was just above the level of her head, but it was pointed downward, at her heart. A thin cord ran from its handle to the top of the door, the only door in the room. “When that door opens, the cord will go taut and the trigger will be pulled. That way, Miles will know it is he and he alone who has killed you.”
“You cannot know the shot will hit me, much less be mortal,” Clio pointed out to him, her air of terror dissolving in the face of his madness.
“I rather hope it will not be fatal,” Saunders assured her kindly. “I would rather have you die slowly, in a puddle of your blood. The shot will hit you, some part of you, depending on how still you stand, and it will injure you too gravely to leave here. But that is not the important part. That is just the crossfire. What is important is that Miles will rush to you, run to bathe his hands in your blood, stand right here—” he moved and stood directly in front of her, “—to support you and hear your last, rattling breath. And he will stay that way, with you, until midnight.”
“What if he comes soon? It’s hours until midnight. Why would he stay here that long?”
“I have seen to that. There is no way he could get here for another four hours and by then…” He smiled secretly to himself.
Clio looked at the clock in front of her. Its hands showed a quarter of an hour shy of eight bells. “Why is midnight so important?” she pressed. “What happens at midnight?”
The tick in Saunders face disappeared and it grew smooth, almost beatific. “There will be no moon in the sky at all. And I shall be invincible.”
“You are not the vampire,” Clio told him, having entirely thrown off the mantle of fear. “You are just a man. The moon has no power over you.”
“Just a man,” he said with a strange smile and a sideways glance at the clock. “You shall see, Clio Thornton, if I am just a man. You shall see soon. Because it has begun. My plan is moving forward. Your viscount is on his way to Hartwell Heath. I can sense it.”
Please, Clio thought to herself, her eyes moving from the pistol to the door. Please let him be wrong.
“Whoever named this the Garden House must have had a wonderful sense of humor,” Sebastian murmured to Tristan as they rode around the perimeter of the old building. There was nothing near it for miles, not another house, certainly nothing that looked like a garden. It just sat, low and dark and glowering in the middle of the heath.
The group had split into two detachments, each of which was to take up a station near a different part of the house. They had made good time from London, arriving in under three hours, but they forced themselves to go slowly now. They had agreed on a plan of action, and on the fact that once in place around the house, they would not speak but only communicate by whistling, to minimize the chances of alerting the vampire to their presence.
Tristan, the group expert on breaking and entering, was to go in first, accompanied by Sebastian, and quiet any dogs that might be waiting to announce visitors. He had been hoping for an open window, or even just an open shutter, but he found none. As far as he could see, the house was completely dark, which meant that the vampire had to have Clio in an inside room, possibly on the upper floor.
He and Sebastian had just reached the backdoor when they heard a noise from inside, like the sound of a body hitting a wall.
A low whistle alerted the others, and they were all there by the time the lock yielded to Tristan’s expert touch. Once inside, they moved silently through the rooms, finding nothing. Somewhere in the distance they could make out the sound of footsteps, pacing, with the regularity of clockwork. Somewhere above them.
They found the main stairs and scaled them slowly, walking along the edges of the boards to keep from making them squeak. They were about halfway up the second set, growing closer to the pacing feet, when they heard it again, the sound of a person falling. This time it was accompanied by a piercing shriek.
They ran up the rest of the stairs, pursuing the noise, and traced it to a small door. It was louder here, a sound of terror unlike anything they had ever heard before. One of them reached for the handle and jerked the door open.
The ancient hinges gave a hideous wail and suddenly there was an enormous explosion. Black objects came hurtling toward them in a sea of inhuman screeching. The air pulsed with the force of a hundred wings flapping as the bats, disoriented, spun wildly through the hall, careening off the walls and each other. The men ducked beneath the black cloud and ran into the room.
There was no one there. Off to one side stood an enormous, ancient clock. The rhythmic tone of its timekeeping seemed, even this close, like the sound of footsteps. The hands on its face showed a little past nine. And below it, written on a long pieced together strip of parchment, large enough to be seen without a light, were the words, “Fooled you, Dearbourn. She dies at midnight.”
Clio’s breath caught in her throat.
“What?” Saunders demanded, turning around. “What is it?” His eyes followed hers to the pistol over the door.
“I just cannot stand to see that thing pointing at me,” Clio replied in a voice edged with panic.
Saunders studied her, as if he knew she was lying, then returned to his careful, quiet pacing.
Clio let her breath out, slowly this time. It was the only sign of her discovery she allowed herself.
It had taken two hours, but she had found it. She had forced herself to study the clock opposite her, in part because it kept her eyes off the pistol aimed at her, and in part because there was something about the way Saunders had looked at it and about his being barefoot that triggered her imagination. She watched each piece of it in turn, isolating what she could see of the mechanism through the clock face, forcing herself to look for something that might not belong there.
As if she would know that thing when she saw it. But she had. Finally, at last, she had. Because while she was not an expert on clocks, she was fairly sure that they did not usually contain an archer’s bow inside of them that was gradually being pulled more taut with each advancing hour, or, being pulled with it, an arrow.
Aimed exactly at her. Or at the spot where Miles would be standing if he was tending to her pistol wounds.
It did not require a mind like Saunders’s—which, as he made a point of telling her at regular ten-minute intervals, she did not possess—for her to guess that the arrow was poisoned, most likely with ourali, or that the probable time of release, the moment when the bow would be pulled as tightly as it would go, was midnight. That way he could kill without having to be present. It would be the ultimate display of his power—the power to take a life without moving a finger.
And it would happen in less than two hours.
There was nothing she could do about the pistol, yet, but perhaps there was something she could do about the clock. Flawless balance, she remembered Miles saying of the clockwork mechanism. As soon as the balance is upset, it stops working. All she had to do was upset the balance. Easy.
Or it would have been, if she had not been bound to a post. Not only was her range of motion severely limited, but any sort of unusual activity would undoubtedly draw Saunders’s attention to what she was doing. He might have been insane, but he was not stupid.
Suddenly, she narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you really think Mariana will marry you when this is over?” she asked.
He spun around and stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“Once she is free of her betrothal, she will have her pick of men. What makes you think she would want anything to do with you?”
“She loves me.”
“Of course,” Clio said with undisguised sarcasm. “How often has she told you that?”
“She has never said it. That would be dishonorable while she was betrothed to someone else. But I know. I know.”
“How?” Clio jeered.
Saunder’s eyes flashed. “You are just trying to upset me. But it will not work. I am in control here. I am in charge. What do you know of love anyway? No one has ever loved you in your life.”
Clio let the words sink in, soaking them up like a sponge. “I know that Mariana is incapable of loving anyone but herself,” she said quietly.
“You say that only because she did not love you. And why should she? You are nothing. Nothing at all. Like your wicked father. He was so wretched that your grandmother had to drive him away. She fabricated a spate of vampire killings in the village and framed him for them, so that he would be thrown in jail.”
It was working better than Clio had expected. “What are you talking about?” she demanded, truly confused.
“That is how I got the idea. Your grandmother, Lady Alecia, confessed it to me. She told me of how your father beat your mother, her dear daughter, and how in order to avenge her she made it look as though some of the cows and things had been killed by a bloodsucker. Your father had always been interested in such fiends, and it was only too easy to convince the local constabulary that he was responsible. They locked him up and he died by his own hand in prison.” Seeing that she was truly shocked, Saunders pressed on. “Once your mother had died, Lady Alecia wanted to do the same thing to you, make it look as though you had been killed by the vampire, but something stopped her.”
Clio got a faraway expression on her face. In her mind she was no longer in the tense, hot little room with the pacing madman and two death traps aimed at her heart. She was in a bed, like the beds she had found the girls on.
She is lying there, helpless as someone comes toward her, leaning over her, breathing hot breath on her face, someone is fumbling for her neck, struggling with one hand to pin her down and keep her from crying out, and with the other—
Then her assailant is being dragged away, yelling and screaming, arms flailing. She cannot see who is responsible for her salvation. But she can see the face of the person who had been leaning over her. Who had been trying to hold her down. A younger face, but still the face she knows, the face that has so often looked on her with hatred and contempt. Her grandmother’s face.
It had happened to her. That was why she had felt such horror when she saw the dead girls, why she had beheld the terror on their faces. It had almost happened to her. Her grandmother had tried to kill her when she was an infant.
Rage began to boil inside of her and her eyes refocused on Saunders.
“You should know,” he went on, grinning malevolently, “that your grandmother confided to me that she has always been sorry she did not go through with it.”
Clio was breathing shallowly. “I don’t believe you. You are a liar.”
Saunders’s eyes darkened. “You would dare to call me a liar? You, who are not even worthy of sharing a room with me? Not even worthy, really, of listening to me speak? You are nothing but a stupid idiot, Clio Thornton. You thought you could catch me? You thought you could investigate me? You? You are not even fit to go after a three-legged dog.” Saunders watched the color rise in her face, watched the anger take over, and was thrilled. “You see? I told you that it was inside you. I told you—”
“Stop it,” Clio hiccuped, interrupting him. Upset the balance.
“Have I grieved you, Clio?” Saunders asked with mild amusement. She hiccuped twice more. “Is it the truth you do not like to hear?” She hiccuped again. “Does it make you sad to know that you are a stupid fool?” he demanded, his voice meaner now.
“No,” Clio told him, hiccuping so hard her feet stomped. “It makes me,” she hiccuped, “angry. It makes me,” she hiccuped again, “feel violent.”
“Poor, poor angry Clio,” Saunders said, closing his eyes to laugh. “Furious because you cannot destroy my perfect plan.”
Clio stole a glance at the clock. The hands were quivering in one place, as if caught on the verge of motion.
“You poor unlovable fool.”
Nothing perfect can endure.
Clio hiccuped five times in quick succession, powerfully, hiccups that made her body strain against the post, her feet kick, and the clock hands freeze. Inside, she could see that the gears had ceased to turn. The clock was no longer going forward.
She had stopped it. She had stolen time. The hiccups had upset the balance enough to halt the clock. She knew that Saunders would discover the deception soon, but hopefully she would have thought of some way out by then. Now there was only the pistol left to deal with. She had just shifted her attention there, ignoring the taunts Saunders continued to heap upon her, when two things happened, scaring her hiccups away. With one eye she saw Toast sit up. And with the other, she saw the handle of the door begin to turn.