Griff fell silent, gripping Eluned’s shirt. No-one spoke. Below was shadow, stillness, and something on the dividing wall. Not crows or ravens, but a great mounded shape. A momentary gleam of gold had led Eluned’s eye to it, as if the night had blinked.
Fascinated, and also reluctant to risk drawing the thing’s attention, Eluned remained as still as possible. The line of open windows felt like an exposed throat.
“The Aunt.”
After a confused moment, Eluned again peered over the lip of the roof. One of the people who had gone inside was leading Aunt Arianne toward the circle. But then Aunt Arianne stopped short, head turning in the direction of that waiting bulk upon the wall, and she said something to send the other person back. Alone, without her hat and veil, she looked tiny and defenceless, and Eluned drew breath for a warning.
“No, don’t call out to her.” The older boy had moved to the central windows of the attic. “This place has a reputation for a reason.”
“People know not to trespass, sure.” Melly had caught up an old walking stick and held it at ready. “Still no reason to stand here and watch.”
She, too, drew her breath to shout, and then let it out in a gasp as the grove exploded into movement. Branches whipped and snapped, and there was a low rumbling noise, followed by a hard thud. Details were impossible to make out, but the intensity of violent battle was clear. Eluned put her arm around Griff as he pressed into her, and Eleri tucked in protectively on his far side as something bulky clawed upward to the roof and bounded away in a scattering of tile.
Smaller shapes appeared briefly on the very rim of the roof, then dropped back down into the grove, while a distant shout suggested the creature had leapt to the street on the far side of the warehouses.
“Grandama was coming to collect us!” one of the younger children cried, pelting off, and they all streamed after her down Forest House’s series of stairs, slowing only when they reached the landing on the first floor.
Dama Chelwith, obviously just arrived, turned to look up at them, and then held out her arms. The younger children rushed down, but Eleri and Eluned stopped with Nabah and Melly, staring. Aunt Arianne was walking back inside, followed by the boy in white.
“He jumped out the window!” Griff gasped, catching them up. “That’s Aunt’s vampire!”
EIGHT
Rian was too relieved that he’d shown up to be annoyed or frightened when the so-called Comfrey Makepeace dropped without warning from the sky. Two days contemplating vampirism had made stark many things she did not want to give up, sunlight being only the beginning.
“Do you always arrive from above?”
“Do you always have a trail of powerful creatures turning up in your orbit?” he asked, voice as languid and dreaming as it had been in Lord Msrah’s library. “What was it that your collection of children were talking about that comes in groups to sit on the wall?”
“Ravens.”
“Oh.” His tone turned dismissive. “That’ll be the Oak lot. They never shut up about who should have the role of Keeper here.”
“Lovely.” Rian frowned at the scene in the Hall, with excited children pelting down stairs, and a collection of neighbours clustering toward Dama Chelwith.
“Dem Comfrey!” Dama Chelwith, hands on the heads of two of the children, smiled warmly. “A most timely arrival.”
“Good to see you again, Reswen. Can you arrange those still here into groups, so they’re not alone when returning to their homes? And let the local constabulary know. I doubt this visitor is interested in passers-by, but there’s always the possibility of a chance encounter. I’ll look to see if it’s still in the area.”
He walked back into the grove, while Rian turned her attention to Griff, bright-faced from running, and urgently tugging her sleeve.
“He said Ma’at vampires can tell when people are lying!” Griff whispered, then added in a louder voice: “Did you see? What was out there?”
“Something between a bull and a bear,” Rian said, adding to Dama Chelwith: “Are attacks on the grove common?”
“I would say ‘no’,” Dama Chelwith replied, “but I’m afraid I have no real way of knowing whether there are many incidents such as this. The folies ably repel any who would enter by stealth or force.”
“Would be no roof tiles left if that happened very often,” Eleri said, trotting down the final set of stairs. “Maybe followed the vampire here.”
“Perhaps.” Rian smiled at the two girls trailing Eleri, ignoring their startled reaction to a close view of her unveiled face. “Thank you for all your help today. Hopefully it won’t be so dramatic in the future.”
“You didn’t run away,” said the girl she’d first seen coming out of the house opposite. “Weren’t you frightened?”
“A little. But I could see how many folies there were.” A dozen or more, for all that she’d been quite sure there’d been only one a short while earlier.
It took some time to clear the house, to send on their way people who wanted to speculate about monsters, and remark on the fact that she could see in the dark, and didn’t she look young? The practice with the multiple front doors appeared to be to leave the small outer access door open, with a lantern in the vestibule, and as Dama Chelwith led her grandchildren off, Griff helpfully tested a bellpull that seemed to sound in all parts of the house.
“Go wash up now,” Rian said, ushering him inside and closing the house door. “We’ll talk over dinner.”
“Do you think he’ll come back?” Griff asked, so worked up he began spinning around his sisters. “Did he do—what does he have to do to make you not become a vampire?”
“I have no idea. I never knew there was more to it than an exchange of blood and ka.”
“Hope he doesn’t get eaten by a bear before the next step,” Eleri observed.
“That would be awkward.”
Rian left them to clatter back up one floor, and headed for the kitchen. The benefits of electrical wiring had not yet reached Lamhythe, but Forest House had otherwise been well maintained and fitted with modern conveniences before its closure. Dama Chelwith had even managed to arrange for the gas line to be reconnected and the geyser carefully checked over before it was lit. There was a scattering of fulquus-powered lamps, but the fulgite was missing, a discovery that had caused considerable embarrassment among the crowds of volunteers, and had warned Rian that the house was not necessarily so well-defended as the grove.
All this eager generosity would require some form of reciprocal gesture Rian decided, surveying a kitchen table laden with covered dishes. She totted up the likely cost of afternoon tea for an entire neighbourhood, then turned sharply at a faint sound.
Her reflection scattered among panes of glass, but the gas light was not so bright she couldn’t see through to tree trunks. Nothing else. But her new awareness of blood made clear two tiny rivers in the branches above the windows. Having seen what they were capable of, Rian was not certain if she should find the folies’ presence comforting, and noted absently that her hands were shaking.
That was not due to the garden battle. Instead it was a third presence, directly above her now, with a heartbeat much slower than any other she had felt. A slight and ancient creature descending the stairs.
Rian was not by nature inclined to nerves, but her hands would not still, so she busied them clearing the table, uncovering such dishes best eaten immediately, and searching out plates and glasses. Pride and simple common sense told her to set fear aside, to overcome the memory of teeth. She had gone to Sheerside House to become a meal for a vampire, and the extreme she had encountered was as much a part of the stone blood’s existence as Lord Msrah’s scheduled domesticity.