incredible, intangible grasp on the minds of other men.
"Now, you can understand the need to be able to duplicate such powers at will. You've worked in Intelligence, James. Think what a corps of such men, dedicated to the good of England, could be in the war that we all know is coining! I tried hard to isolate that factor, to little avail. And then Dennis introduced me to Valentin Calvaire. He'd met Calvaire through a mutual friend..."
"Whom you later murdered."
"Oh, really, James!" Blaydon cried impatiently. "A woman of her class! And I'll take oath Albert Westmoreland's death could be traced back to her, for all his family bribed the doctor to certify it was the result of a carriage accident. Besides, by that rime we had run out of other clues. I needed her blood for further experimentation, and Dennis needed it just to stay alive."
"You knew Calvaire was a vampire, then?"
"Oh, yes. He made no secret of it-he seemed to revel in astonishing me, in making nothing of the most difficult tests I could set to him. He gloated in the powers that he held. And Dennis was fascinated-not, I swear, with Calvaire's evil, but with his powers. Calvaire was fasci-nated, too, though for reasons of his own, I dare say. He let me take samples, substantial samples, of his blood, to try and isolate the factors which enhanced the workings of the psychic centers of the brain and to separate them from those which caused the mutation of the cells them-selves into that photoreactive pseudoflesh and the physiological dependence on the blood of others. And I would have succeeded, perhaps even been able to alter Calvaire's condition. I know I would have..."
"You wouldn't have." Asher glanced across at the hulking, glowering shape by the door, guessing already what had happened. Pity and dis-gust mingled in him like the taste of the blood and brandy in his mouth. "According to the vampires themselves, those powers come from psychically drinking the deaths of their human victims. It's the psychic absorption of death that gives them psychic powers, and without it, they lose them."
"Nonsense," Blaydon said sharply. "That can't be true. There's no reason for it to be true. What do the vampires know of it, anyway? They aren't educated. Calvaire never said anything..."
"I'm sure Calvaire never ceased killing humans long enough to know whether it was true or not." The only way Ysidro could have known or the only way Anthea could have known, he thought, was to have tried it themselves, "Calvaire wanted power. He wasn't going to tell you any-thing more than he had to before he got it."
"I'm sure that isn't the case." Blaydon shook his head stubbornly, angry even at the suggestion that what he had done had been for noth-ing and that he had been, in fact, Calvaire's dupe. "There are physical causes for everything-unknown organisms, chemical changes in the brain fluid itself. In any case, I evolved a serum which showed great promise. I-I made the mistake of telling Dennis about it. He de-manded to test it, demanded to be the first of this corps of-of psychic heroes. I refused, naturally..."
"And naturally," Asher said dryly, "Dennis broke into your labora-tory and took matters into his own hands." It was, he reflected, exactly the sort of thing that Dennis would do. He was the perfect storybook hero, the perfect Sexton Blake, who could experimentally drain beakers of unknown potions and come off with, at most, prophetic hallucina-tions that coincidentally advanced the plot.
Poor Dennis. Poor, stupid Dennis.
Dennis' eyes narrowed viciously, as if, like Brother Anthony, he could see Asher's thoughts. "What would you have done?" he mum-bled, his voice deep and thick, as if his very vocal cords were loosening. "Snugged back in your nice comfy study and let another man take the risks, as you'll do when those damn sauerkraut eaters finally force us to fight? What did you tell her, Asher? What did you tell Lydia about me that made her choose a sly old man over someone who would love and protect her as I will? But you made her work for you, made her put herself in danger. I'd never have let her come here to London."
You'd have left her in ignorance of her danger at Oxford, wouldn't you? Asher thought, feeling strangely calm. You 'd have told her it wasn 't her affair. Knowing Lydia, that would have run her into danger three times quicker and without the knowledge of what she was dealing with.
Dennis stepped forward, holding up his hands. All around the edges of the bandages that covered the palms, Asher could see rims of green-black flesh, like a spreading stain, puffy, malodorous, foul against the ice-white skin. "I was fine until you did this," he said thickly. "I'll enjoy drinking you like a sucked orange."
And he was gone.
Rather shakily, Blaydon said, "He wasn't, you know. Fine, I mean. His-his condition was deteriorating, although the infection caused by the silver seems to have greatly advanced the process. I wasn't able to isolate that factor, it seems-as I said, the serum was far from perfect. And he needs the blood of vampires, as ordinary vampires need human blood. It seems to arrest the progression of the symptoms for a number of days. He killed Calvaire the first night this happened-I was quite angry at him, for Calvaire would have been a great help. But Dennis had a-a craving. And he was disoriented, maddened by the alteration in his senses; he still is, to a degree. I didn't even know until it was done..."
Asher wondered whether Calvaire had tried to control Dennis, up in his attic in Lambeth, as he'd controlled Bully Joe Davies.
Blaydon wet his lips again and threw another nervous glance over his shoulder toward the shut door. "After that, we searched Calvaire's room for notes to tell us where we could find other vampires. Dennis knew some of Lotta's haunts and followed her to the Hammersmith mansion in Half Moon Street and to the haunts of another vampire she knew. I went with him-I wanted desperately to take some of their blood, not only to perfect my serum, but to find a cure for Dennis' condition. More than anything else, I wanted a whole vampire, un-harmed, but it was impossible to get them away in the daylight hours, of course. So I-I had to destroy their bodies, lest the others take fright and hide. I had to be content with as much blood as I could take..."
"And Dennis got the rest?" With shaking fingers Asher took the brandy glass from Blaydon's hand and drained it. The gold heat of it reminded him that he hadn't eaten since a sandwich at the Charing Cross precinct house last night-he couldn't even recall what before that.
"He needed it," Blaydon insisted. A little testily, he added, "All those who were killed were murderers, those who had killed again and again, for hundreds of years, I dare say..."
"Those Chinese and 'young persons,' as the paper called them, as well?"
"He was fighting for his life! Yes, he shouldn't have taken humans. It got in the newspapers; the hunt will
be on for us if it happens again. I told him that after Manchester. And it doesn't really satisfy him, no matter how many he kills. But it helps a little..."
"I dare say." Asher drew himself up a little against the coffin, know-ing he was a fool to anger this man who was demonstrably balanced on the ragged edge of sanity and yet too furious himself at such hypocrisy and irresponsibility to care. "And I expect he'll 'do what he needs to' in order to 'make himself comfortable,' as I believe you phrased it..."
Blaydon lunged to his feet, his hands clenching into fists, though they shook as if with palsy. Color flooded unhealthily up under the flaccid skin. "I'm sorry you feel that way about it," he said stiffly, as if he had long ago memorized the phrase as the proper end to any interview. "In any case it won't be necessary, not any longer. I can keep Dennis alive and have enough vampire blood, from a true vampire, to experiment with until I can find an antivenin..."