CHAPTER 39
As a result of that conversation, I stood in the basement of a restaurant just off Clerkenwell Road at about ten o’clock that evening. I’d been there for more than ninety minutes. The priory of St. John was a block away and St. James’s church was about five blocks away. I’d walked past the clerk’s well for which the area was named, tucked behind its window in an office block, as I’d come down from Angel Tube station. I hadn’t wanted to run into any guards at Farringdon, even though the walk was a long one and it took me past enemy territory first; a calculated risk. Now deep in the earth, I thought I could hear the water gurgling somewhere nearby and wondered if the well’s source lay below St. John’s. The lines of the grid were a curiously placid blue with an unhealthy tinge of green from the contaminants in the aquifer. The room I was standing in, however, was charged with red and yellow energy that buzzed around the room like a swarm of bees and thick with the shades of medieval plague victims gasping and dying in forgotten corners, cast out from the clean confines of the priory. They didn’t make me feel any better about what I was about to do.
Between us, Marsden and I had concluded that the restaurant housed the nighttime office of Henry Glick, the Primate of the Red Brotherhood of St. John. My unannounced arrival had thrown the local bloodsuckers into a visible tizzy that had so far worked to my advantage. It was the same reason I’d crossed through St. James’s territory on the way: I’d hoped to breed a little confusion and chatter and keep the attention of any snooping vampires on me while Marsden and Michael scouted for the location of Will’s imprisonment. I doubted they’d be able to rescue him on their own, but they’d signal me when they found him and we’d carry on from there, depending on what happened with the Primate of St. John.
So I was standing in the dim cellar among the smells of damp wood and spilled beer, waiting for an audience. It didn’t feel like the first time I’d met with Edward at the After Dark club in Seattle. I’d been naive and lucky then, however scared and ballsy. This time I knew better and I was a lot more frightened. I hoped the delay wasn’t an indication of bad things and I camouflaged my fears in boredom and the discomfort of being in the same clothes I’d been wearing for two days. At least the shower and washer in the boat worked well enough, but I still missed my suitcase and figured I’d never see it again.
Idly staring around the room, I could detect the Grey outline of a door in the stone foundation wall, charmed to appear solid to most people. I pretended not to notice. I sat on a stack of beer kegs and rolled my eyes, yawning for the benefit of my single “escort,” a demi-vamp who seemed to be named Dez and who didn’t quite ignore me but didn’t say much, either. He boiled with unfocused anger and frustration that seemed to have nothing to do with me. Not all demi-vamps are thrilled about their station in life or addicted to the rush I’m told they get from whatever it is that keeps them hovering halfway between one state and the next. The unsure ones, like Dez, don’t survive very long.
The restless energy of the room shifted, steadied, and flushed a bloody crimson, reeking of carnage. The suffering ghosts moaned and flickered out, washed away by the influx. Dez stiffened and turned his attention toward the magic doorway as it sparkled and faded to let someone in.
The sound of shoes on stone stairs preceded the appearance of another male vampire. At least, I assumed he was a vampire, since he presented himself with authority, though he didn’t have the same aura or look as any vampire I’d met before—even the asetem. He had the strangest eyes I’d ever encountered: silver, pupilless discs that seemed to float in the sclera like coins on a sheen of oil. He was whippet thin and wore a long brick red coat over a dark suit that seemed to have come from some other time and place, though in the glimpse I had of it, I couldn’t tell where or when. He had a double aura I’d never seen before: one pure black, relieved by jagged sparks of red; the other a shifting maze of silver planes.
He glanced at me and then at Dez and pointed at me with a jabbing motion. “Search her. Then you come downstairs with us.” His was a strange accent with stretched vowels and soft consonants.
He made an ironic little bow to me and then stepped back into the darkness of the concealed doorway. But I could see his unearthly eyes gleaming in the shadow as Dez stepped close to me.
I raised my arms and let Dez pat me down. He was just short of overly familiar in his thoroughness and stiffened as his hand fell on the hard object I’d tucked into the back of my waistband. He yanked it out and brought it out in front of us.
“It’s my cell phone,” I stated, a bit snappish for effect.
Which it was. Closed and quiet, hardly a threat.
Dez held it toward the vampire in the doorway. I saw the dismissive flap of his hand in the dark. I rolled my eyes and took it back.
“Thanks so much,” I said, tucking the phone back into the place I normally holstered my pistol. It felt comfortable there and it was out of the way.
Dez finished the pat down, leaving my wallet and my father’s puzzle unmolested in my pockets, and then escorted me toward the concealed stairs. The eerie-eyed vampire preceded us down the steep stone steps. It felt like we were descending a tilted well. Once again I had a sense of water nearby that rose as we went down below its unseen surface, and the sounds I’d thought came from the clerk’s well swelled as we continued. We passed through layer on layer of ghosts, descending by centuries until even the Roman soldiers patrolling a phantom riverside were far above our heads. By the time we reached the bottom, the sound was much too loud to be another well, but there was no sign of real water other than some clinging moisture and moss on the walls.
We went down a twisted, arched passage and stepped out into a large, vaulted stone chamber that was lit entirely by candles as long and wide as my arm. I wondered if it was the same place where Barnaby had seen the broken amphorae. Energy seemed to lie at its edges like a live thing held leashed and ready. The room had the intense feel of a place meant for rituals that shouldn’t see the light of day.
The room, shrouded with the roiling stink of vampires and their restless red-and-black auras, was unevenly five-sided, and arched doorways cut the walls on all sides. We’d entered on the shortest wall, and directly opposite, in the apex of the crooked pentagon’s crown, was a low wooden platform. One of the other arches looked onto the back of the platform at one end. A handful of vampires, demi-vamps, and Red Guard assistants stood around the edges of the room, watching us with a coil of eldritch yellow light beneath their feet. Within the darkened arches, eyes gleamed orange like hellfire from pale smudges.
Two male vampires were waiting for us on the dais, one seated and smiling just a touch, the other standing back a little, his expression one of panic barely held in check. He was bowed down by something, and I could see a bend of yellow light around his body. I wondered who he was and why he seemed to be held prisoner there. I knew I’d interrupted the usual flow of business and I hoped the strange tableau indicated nothing sinister to my purpose, but I wouldn’t have bet on it.
The seated vampire stood up as we drew near. He looked more like someone you’d expect to be running the local stevedores’ union than a film vampire—stocky, heavy featured, scarred on face and hands, self-conscious in his tailored suit. My unsettling escort stopped at the edge of the platform and glared at Dez and then stepped aside while Dez faded back to the wall.
The husky one from the chair shot an uneasy glance at the silver-eyed vampire. Then he gave me a hollow smile and took half a step forward, closing the distance between us to a couple of feet. With the platform giving him added height, I was still tall enough to see the frightened vampire over his shoulder, but just barely.