“May I call on you tomorrow. Lady Meleena?” Lord Roland asked at the close of the evening.
“Yes, m’lord. It will be my pleasure,” she replied then, consciously appreciating that just days before she had received her first stipend and taken more suitable quarters pending the arrival of her orphaned infant cousin.
“Just off the Street of Silks, you said?”
“Your lordship has a good memory. It is the house at the very end of Vertwall Close, just off the middle of that very street you named.”
“I shall call in the afternoon, then. Perhaps we can stroll the Gardens?”
“We shall see. Lord Roland, when the time comes.” She had overheard enough of such banter to know precisely how to reply.
Despite the damp chill of the night air, she insisted that the curtains of the litter be left open on her way home. Meleena needed the cold air to clear her head of wine and calm her dizzying state of excitement. Every time she thought hard about what had occurred this night, it made her head swim-and, at other times, it positively ached with sadness and sympathy when she thought of Ermantrude and the poor little waif she was soon to become foster mother to. It occurred to her, during one of these musings, that she had never been told the infant’s name. But as soon as she realized that, it ceased to concern her. No doubt Wanno, or someone he had designated to deliver the babe, would tell her what to call her newfound child. By the time the bearers had carried her up the Processional, along the Street of Silks, and to her own apartment in Vertwall Close, Meleena was cold to the bone and weary too, but still floating on a cloud of joy.
Lambent eyes watched Meleena as she climbed stiffly from the chair and entered her apartment.
They were slit-pupiled and red, the evil eyes of a monster not of this world. As the door closed behind her, the fiery orbs became disembodied and floated upward. Where they had been was empty space, and neither the porters nor the guardsman noticed anything as they trudged wearily away.
The attendants had not been gone many minutes before a pair of black-garbed figures entered the close. Silent, no more noticeable than shadows in the darkness, the two men took up stations a short distance from Meleena’s residence, and the evil eyes of the nether-plane watcher seemed to narrow in pleasure at the sight of the pair.
“Up, lazy wench,” Meleena said cheerily when she found the servant girl fast asleep before the embers of the fire. “You must help me undress, for I am utterly exhausted!”
Despite her sleepy state, the serving girl detected her mistress’ mood immediately. “You look radiant, m’lady, and your voice is filled with happiness.”
Meleena stopped and smiled at the thin girl. “Thank you. It was a nice evening. Now I must rest, for I am tired, and my head throbs so when I try to think that it makes me dizzy! Be a dear and hasten me to my bed.”
Clad in a warm nightdress and ready for sleep, Meleena was just about to dismiss the girl from her bedchamber when a sudden gust of wind shook the house. The shutters rattled, timbers creaked, and the wind howled and groaned and shrieked in chimney, eaves, and cracks. Both women were frightened by the onslaught. Then the wind suddenly entered the chamber in full force, and all the candles in the room were instantly snuffed out.
“My lady?” The servant girl’s voice was small and thin, but its tone was nearly hysterical.
“I’m fine, girl,” Meleena managed to quaver from where she sat nervously on the edge of the bed. “Light a candle, quickly now.” The wind had let up somewhat, the sounds had lessened in intensity, and through the darkness she thought she heard a baby crying.
“The shutters blew open, ma’m. I’ll close and latch them first, for if I don’t the wind is likely to come again and put out whatever I light.”
“Well, hurry then,” Meleena said urgently. She was beginning to feel terrible now. The gladness and exhilaration that had filled her was being replaced by an awful feeling of foreboding and a malaise that sickened her to the core. “I must lie down quickly.”
The girl trod carefully around the room, the sound of her passage occasionally punctuated by the banging of shutters-and then, finally, the scratch of steel on flint. A tiny flame blossomed into warm light as it climbed eagerly down the wick to consume the tallow below.
“Look!” The servant’s tone was one of amazement, with a tinge of happiness.
Meleena turned toward the sound, and saw what had prompted it. There, a few feet away from her on the floor, in a tangled bundle of wrappings and a sigil-embroidered shawl, was a tiny baby. Its little arms were waving helplessly, and its legs were kicking as it let out a wail of distress. “This can’t be,” Meleena managed to say weakly. She had expected an infant to arrive, but not like this…
More than shock was affecting her now. Waves of sickness and excruciating pain were sweeping over her body. Nevertheless, she tried to reach the infant and see what was wrong. The instinctive desire was not strong enough, and blackness claimed her just after she got to her feet, before she could accomplish more than a single small step. She collapsed back across her bed.
The two black-clad watchers outside had heard a keening wind but noticed nothing else, for they were staying at a safe distance to avoid being detected. They were uneasy but remained still, eyes upon the house. Above the steeply angled rooftop of the building, however, another sentinel reacted quite differently. The slit pupils of the thing’s eyes widened as the roaring gust of air came sweeping toward it. Whatever the thing was, it gathered in upon itself, lambent eyes turning into mere slivers as the wind howled past and down. Then the thing expanded and followed. As the rush of wind shot off into the night, the fiery-eyed creature floated slowly down to where light glimmered from the cracks in the shutters covering a window.
“There, there, little one,” the servant girl crooned as she picked up and held the infant that had so suddenly appeared in her mistress’ bedchamber. “I am here to protect you. It’s all right now.”
A splintering crash brought another wail from the baby. The shutters of the high window broke inward as if struck by a giant hammer. The servant girl’s eyes grew round with terror, for in the gaping space where the shutters had been a moment before she saw a terrible visage, a thing barely discernible, with shadowy fangs and burning orbs that fixed her evilly. Without thinking, the thin girl dropped the infant on the bed so that it lay next to her unconscious mistress. Then the girl stood so that she was between the tiny baby and the awful thing at the window.
A fiendish laugh issued from the near-invisible monster that hovered there, a sound both mocking and anticipatory. It was followed by a hissing sound, a billowing, and then the thing was inside the chamber, slowly taking shape-bloated, reddish-black, ugly, with a mouth larger than the span of the thin girl’s shoulders. As the monstrosity formed, the girl shrank back but did not panic. Instead, she reached inside the neck of her smock and drew forth a silver object that hung from a leather thong. Without hesitation, she tugged, and a portion of the object came free. From the cylinder she had extracted, she shook out a spray of liquid. The stuff splattered over the creature with the huge mouth and the burning eyes, and wherever it touched the thing, flesh steamed and hissed and became insubstantial once again.
The thing voiced a nearly inaudible scream when the tiny shower hit it. Its evil eyes shut tight, and its great maw snapped open and shut convulsively as it shrieked its pain and agony. There was but a small amount of the liquid, though, just the single splattering. The monster recovered and reshaped itself once more. Now its eyes were more wicked than before, and it relished the way this confrontation would end.