Now I couldn't pick up his scent anymore at all, save from the envelope, which lay where he had thrown it down.
What on earth could all this mean He'd known exactly what I was, no doubt of it. Venice and Hong Kong had not been coincidence. His sudden fear, if nothing else, had made it plain. But I had to smile at his overall courage. Imagine, following such a creature as me.
Was he some crazed worshiper, come to pound on the temple door in the hopes I'd give him the Dark Blood simply out of pity or reward for his temerity It made me angry suddenly, and bitter, and then again I simply didn't care.
I picked up the envelope, and saw that it was blank and unsealed. Inside, I found, of all things, a printed short story clipped apparently from a paperback book.
It made a small thick wad of pulp pages, stapled together in the upper-left-hand corner. No personal note at all. The author of the story was a lovable creature I knew well, H. P. Lovecraft by name, a writer of the supernatural and the macabre. In fact, I knew the story, too, and could never forget its title: The Thing on the Doorstep. It had made me laugh.
The Thing on the Doorstep. I was smiling now. Yes, I remembered the story, that it was clever, that it had been fun.
But why would this strange mortal give such a story to me It was ludicrous. And suddenly I was angry again, or as angry as my sadness allowed me to be.
I shoved the packet in my coat pocket absently. I pondered. Yes, the fellow was definitely gone. Couldn't even pick up an image of him from anyone else.
Oh, if only he had come to tempt me on some other night, when my soul wasn't sick and weary, when I might have cared just a little-enough at least to have found out what it was all about.
But it seemed already that eons had passed since he had come and gone. The night was empty save for the grinding roar of the big city, and the dim crash of the sea. Even the clouds had thinned and disappeared. The sky seemed endless and harrowingly still.
I looked to the hard bright stars overhead, and let the low sound of the surf wrap me in silence. I gave one last grief-stricken look to the lights of Miami, this city I so loved.
Then I went up, simple as a thought to rise, so swift no mortal could have seen it, this figure ascending higher and higher through the deafening wind, until the great sprawling city was nothing but a distant galaxy fading sl
owly from view.
So cold it was, this high wind that knows no seasons. The blood inside me was swallowed up as if its sweet warmth had never existed, and soon my face and hands wore a sheathing of cold as if I'd frozen solid, and that sheathing moved underneath my fragile garments, covering all my skin.
But it caused no pain. Or let us say it did not cause enough pain.
Rather it simply dried up comfort. It was only dismal, dreary, the absence of what makes existence worth it-the blazing warmth of fires and caresses, of kisses and arguments, of love and longing and blood.
Ah, the Aztec gods must have been greedy vampires to convince those poor human souls that the universe would cease to exist if the blood didn't flow. Imagine presiding over such an altar, snapping your fingers for another and another and another, squeezing those fresh blood-soaked hearts to your lips like bunches of grapes.
I twisted and turned with the wind, dropped a few feet, then rose again, arms outstretched playfully, then falling at my sides. I lay on my back like a sure swimmer, staring again into the blind and indifferent stars.
By thought alone, I propelled myself eastward. The night still stretched over the city of London, though its clocks ticked out the small hours. London.
There was time to say farewell to David Talbot-my mortal friend.
It had been months since our last meeting in Amsterdam, and I had left him rudely, ashamed for that and for bothering him at all. I'd spied upon him since, but not troubled him. And I knew that I had to go to him now, whatever my state of mind.
There wasn't any doubt he would want me to come. It was the proper, decent thing to do.
For one moment I thought of my beloved Louis. No doubt he was in his crumbling little house in its deep swampy garden in New Orleans, reading by the light of the moon as he always did, or giving in to one shuddering candle should the night be cloudy and dark. But it was too late to say farewell to Louis . . . If there was any being among us who would understand, it was Louis. Or so I told myself. The opposite is probably closer to the truth . . .
On to London I went.
Chapter 2
TWO
THE Motherhouse of the Talamasca, outside London, silent in its great park of ancient oaks, its sloped rooftops and its vast lawns blanketed with deep clean snow.
A handsome four-storey edifice full of lead-mulhoned windows, and chimneys ever sending their winding plumes of smoke into the night.
A place of dark wood-paneled libraries and parlours, bedrooms with coffered ceilings, thick burgundy carpets, and dining rooms as quiet as those of a religious order, and members dedicated as priests and nuns, who can read your mind, see your aura, tell your future from the palm of your hand, and make an educated guess as to who you might have been in a past life.
Witches Well, some of them are, perhaps. But in the main they are simply scholars-those who have dedicated their lives to the study of the occult in all its manifestations. Some know more than others. Some believe more than others. For example, there are those members in this Motherhouse-and in other