The London Vampire by Lynn Shepherd

Author:Lynn Shepherd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hera
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

“The numbers refer to a date?” says Maddox, after a moment. Charles shrugs. “I don’t know. It might mean something. It might mean nothing at all. And yet even now I cannot shake my mind free of the conviction that I had discovered something—or was about to discover something. Something that might explain why the Baron was so intent to remove me—to silence me. And yet even that might be nothing more than the perverted logic of paranoia. In fact there was one officious little bureaucrat in Vienna who suggested that the whole damn episode might have been merely some macabrely laughable error by the Baron’s coachman—that he might have taken me to the asylum by mistake, when it was the hospital that was intended all along. He kept saying it was the only rational explanation.” He laughs, bitterly.

Maddox closes the book and hands it back to him. The pallor of his nephew’s cheeks and the shadows under his eyes explain themselves now. Maddox had encouraged the trip to Austria, thinking Charles needed distance and detachment after Molly’s death, and that lingering in this house, and this room, and speaking to no-one of what had happened, as Charles had been doing for the best part of two months, was no way to achieve it. And when he returned from Europe bearing, it seemed, an even greater burden, Maddox had considered breaching the young man’s silence but postponed the moment of it, and I will not be surprised if you conclude, as a result, that he and his great-nephew resemble each other in more ways than their mere appearance, and share not only an acute intelligence, but that same fearsome privacy of personal feeling that we have seen in Charles already.

Maddox shifts in his seat now, clearly hesitant. “When you spoke of the Baron just now—were you really implying—”

Charles laughs sardonically. “That he is a vampire? Now you are probably thinking I have gone insane! No, you need have no fear, dear Uncle. My wits are not so far wasted. But there was no question that the villagers near the castle lived in fear of him. One crossed himself at the mere mention of his name, and an old woman shrank from me in terror simply because she saw a tiny mark on my neck. I had not understood its full significance until yesterday, at the Library.”

Maddox studies him. “There is still something there. How odd. After all this time.”

Charles’s hand is at his throat. “It’s just a scratch. It’s nothing.” Maddox nods. “And yet, one can understand why an illiterate peasant woman might have drawn the conclusion she did.”

“The man has only himself to blame,” retorts Charles angrily. “If he did not behave in such an erratic and unaccountable fashion he would not invite such gossip. But however peculiar his conduct, you and I both know it must have some logical or medical cause, and all the rest is nothing but superstitious drivel.”

“You believe him to be ill?”

Charles nods. “I wondered more than once about lupus.

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