Those Who Hunt the Night

By Barbara Hambly

From a New York Times–bestselling author: A former spy is recruited to unmask a vampire hunter in this Locus Award Winner.
 
James Asher, a retired member of the Queen’s secret service in Edwardian England, has settled into quietude as an Oxford professor of philology with his physician wife, Lydia. But his peace is shattered when he’s confronted by a pale aristocratic Spaniard named Don Simon Ysidro, who makes an outlandish claim that someone is killing his fellow vampires of London, and he needs James’s help to ferret the culprit out. The request also comes with a threatening ultimatum: Should James fail, both he and his wife will die.
 
With James’s talent for espionage and Lydia’s scientific acumen and keen analytical mind, the couple begins an investigation that takes them from the crypts of London to the underworld circles of the unliving to the grisly depths of a charnel house in Paris. Now James and Lydia must believe in the unbelievable—if they’re to survive another night in the shadow of Don Simon Ysidro.
 
This first book in the James Asher series is “one of the more memorable vampire novels of recent years—smoothly written, suspenseful, awash in moral ambiguity, and rich in vampire lore . . . a must-read for vampire fans” (Kirkus Reviews). Barbara Hambly gives “Anne Rice a run for her money” (Publishers Weekly) and “Don Simon is unforgettable” (Charlaine Harris).

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Hambly, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from her personal collection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Mar 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781453216446

Barbara Hambly

Barbara Hambly was born in San Diego. Her interest in fantasy began with reading The Wizard of Oz at an early age and has continued ever since. She attended the University of California, Riverside, specialising in medieval history and then spent a year at the University at Bordeaux in Southern France as a teaching and research assistant. She now lives in Los Angeles.

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Those Who Hunt the Night

Barbara Hambly

For

 Adrian and Victoria

Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

A Biography of Barbara Hambly

ONE

LYDIA?

But even before the shadows of the stairwell swallowed the last echoes of his wife’s name, James Asher knew something was desperately wrong.

The house was silent, but it was not empty.

He stopped dead in the darkened front hall, listening. No sound came down the shadowy curve of the stairs from above. No plump Ellen hurried through the baize-covered door at the back of the hall to take her master’s Oxford uniform of dark academic robe and mortarboard, and, by the seeping chill of the autumn night that permeated the place, he could tell that no fires burned anywhere. He was usually not conscious of the muted clatter of Mrs. Grimes in the kitchen, but its absence was as loud to his ears as the clanging of a bell.

Six years ago, Asher’s response would have been absolutely unhesitating—two steps back and out the door, with a silent, deadly readiness that few of the other dons at New College would have associated with their unassuming colleague. But Asher had for years been a secret player in what was euphemistically termed the Great Game, innocuously collecting philological notes in British-occupied Pretoria or among the Boers on the veldt, in the Kaiser’s court in Berlin or the snowbound streets of St. Petersburg. And though he’d turned his back on that Game, he knew from experience that it would never completely turn its back on him.

Still, for a moment, he hesitated. For beyond a doubt, Lydia was somewhere in that house.

Then with barely a whisper of his billowing robe, Asher glided back over the threshold and into the raw fog that shrouded even the front step. There was danger in the house, though he did not consciously feel fear—only an ice-burn of anger that, whatever was going on, Lydia and the servants had been dragged into it.

If they’ve hurt her . . .

He didn’t even know who they were, but a seventeen-year term of secret servitude to Queen—now King—and Country had left him with an appalling plethora of possibilities.

Noiseless as the Isis mists that cloaked the town, he faded back across the cobbles of Holywell Street to the shadowy brown bulk of the College wall and waited, listening. They—whoever they were in the house—would have heard him. They would be waiting, too.

Lydia had once asked him—for she’d guessed, back in the days when she’d been a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl playing croquet with her uncle’s junior scholastic colleague on her father’s vast lawns—how he kept from being dropped upon in foreign parts: I mean, when the balloon goes up and they find the Secret Plans are gone or whatever, there you are.

He’d laughed and said, "Well, for one thing, no plans are ever gone—merely accurately copied. And as for the rest, my best defense is always simply being the sort of person who wouldn’t do that sort of thing."

You do that here. Those enormous, pansy-brown eyes had studied him from behind her steel-rimmed spectacles. Her thin, almost aggressive bookishness was at that time just beginning to melt into fragile sensuality. With the young men who were even then beginning to take an interest in her, she didn’t wear the spectacles—she was an expert at blind croquet and guessing what was on menus. But with him, it seemed, it was different. In her sensible cotton shirtwaist and blue-and-red school tie, the changeable wind tangling her long red hair, she’d looked like a leggy marsh-fey unsuccessfully trying to pass itself off as an English schoolgirl. Is it difficult to go from being one to being the other?

He’d thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. It’s a bit like wearing your Sunday best, he’d said, knowing even then that she’d understand what he meant. And she’d laughed, the sound bright with delight as the April sunlight. He’d kept that laugh—as he’d kept the damp lift of morning fog from the Cherwell meadows or the other-world sweetness of May morning voices drifting down from Magdalen Tower like the far-off singing of angels—in the corner of his heart where he stored precious things as if they were a boy’s shoe-box hoard, to be taken out and looked at in China or the veldt when things were bad. It had been some years before he’d realized that her laugh and the still sunlight shining like carnelian on her hair were precious to him, not as symbols of the peaceful life of study and teaching, where one played croquet with one’s Dean’s innocent niece, but because he was desperately in love with this girl. The knowledge had nearly broken his heart.

Now the years of scholarship, of rest, and of happiness fell off him like a shed University gown, and he moved down the narrow street, circling the row of its flat-fronted brick houses toward the labyrinthine tangle of the back lanes.

If anything had happened to her . . .

From the lane behind the houses he could see the gas burning in the window of his study, though between the mists and the curtain lace he could distinguish nothing within. A carriage passed along Holywell Street behind him, the strike of hooves and jingle of harness brasses loud in that narrow corridor of cobbles and brick. From the weeping grayness of the garden, Asher could see the whole broad kitchen, lit like a stage set. Only the jet over the stove was burning—even after dusk was well settled, the wide windows let in a good deal of light. That put it no later than seven . . .

Put what? In spite of his chill and businesslike concentration, Asher grinned a little at the mental image of himself storming his own home, like Roberts relieving Mafeking, to find a note saying, Father ill, gone to visit him, have given servants night off—Lydia.

Only, of course, his wife—and it still startled him to think that after everything, he had in fact succeeded in winning Lydia as his wife—had as great an abhorrence as he did of confusion. She would never have let Mrs. Grimes and the two maids, not to speak of Mick in the stables, leave for the night without making some provision for his supper. Nor would she have done that or anything else without dispatching a note to his study at the College, informing him of changed plans.

But Asher needed none of this train of logic, which flickered through his mind in fragments of a second, to know all was not well. The years had taught him the smell of peril, and the house stank of it.

Keeping to the tangle of vine that overgrew the garden wall, conscious of those darkened windows overlooking him from above, he edged toward the kitchen door.

Most of the young men whom Asher tutored in philology, etymology, and comparative folklore at New College—which had not, in fact, been new since the latter half of the fourteenth century—regarded their mentor with the affectionate respect they would have accorded a slightly eccentric uncle. Asher played to this image sheerly from force of habit—it had stood him in good stead abroad. He was a reasonably unobtrusive man, taller than he seemed at first glance and, as Lydia generally expressed it, brown: brown hair, brown eyes, brown mustache, brown clothes, and brown mien. Without his University gown, he looked, in fact, like a clerk, except for the sharpness of his eyes and the silence with which he moved. It would have been coincidence, the undergraduates would have said, that he found the deepest shadow in the dark and dew-soaked garden in which to stow his gown and mortarboard cap, the antique uniform of Oxford scholarship which covered his anonymous tweeds. Certainly they would not have said that he was the sort of man who could jimmy open a window with a knife, nor that he was the sort of man who would carry such a weapon concealed in his boot.

The kitchen was utterly deserted, chilly, and smelling of the old-fashioned stone floor and of ashes long grown cold. No steam floated above the hot-water reservoir of the stove—a new American thing of black rococo iron which had cost nearly twenty-five dollars from a catalogue. The bland brightness of the gaslight, winking on the stove’s nickel-plated knobs, and the silver of toast racks, made the stillness in the kitchen seem all the more ominous, like a smiling maniac with an ax behind his back.

Few of the dons at Oxford were familiar with the kitchen quarters of their own homes—many of them had never penetrated past the swinging doors that separated the servants’ portions of the house from those in which the owners lived. Asher had made it his business to know not only the precise layout of the place—he could have passed through it blindfolded without touching a single piece of furniture, as he could indeed have passed through any room in the house or in his College—but to know exactly where everything was kept. Knowing such things was hardly a conscious effort anymore, merely one of the things he had picked up over the years and had never quite dared to put down. He found the drawer in which Mrs. Grimes kept her carving knives—the hideout he kept in his boot was a small one, for emergencies—then moved on to the archway just past the stove which separated kitchen from pantry, all the while aware that someone, somewhere in the house, listened for his slightest footfall.

Mrs. Grimes, Ellen, and the girl Sylvie were all there. They sat around the table, a slumped tableau like something from the Chamber of Horrors at Mme. Tussaud’s, somehow shocking in the even, vaguely flickering light from the steel fishtail burner by the stove. All they needed was a poison bottle on the table between them, Asher thought with wry grimness, and a placard:

THE MAD POISONER STRIKES.

Only there was no bottle, no used teacups, no evidence in fact of anything eaten or drunk. The only thing on the table at all was a bowl of half-shelled peas.

Studying the cook’s thin form, the parlor maid’s plump one, and the huddled shape of the tweeny, Asher felt again that chill sensation of being listened for and known. All three women were alive, but he didn’t like the way they slept, like broken dolls, heedless of muscle cramp or balance.

He had been right, then.

The only other light on in the house was in his study, and that was where he kept his revolver, an American Navy Colt stowed in the drawer of his desk; if one were a lecturer in philology, of course, one couldn’t keep a revolver in one’s greatcoat pocket. The other dons would certainly talk.

He made his way up the back stairs from the kitchen. From its unobtrusive door at the far end of the hall he could see no one waiting for him at the top of the front stairs, but that meant nothing. The door of the upstairs parlor gaped like a dark mouth. From the study, a bar of dimmed gold light lay across the carpet like a dropped scarf.

Conscious of the weight of his body on the floor, he moved a few steps forward, close to the wall. By angling his head, he could see a wedge of the room beyond. The divan had been deliberately dragged around to a position in which it would be visible from the hall. Lydia lay on the worn green cushions, her hair unraveled in a great pottery-red coil to the floor. On her breast her long, capable hand was curled protectively around her spectacles, as if she’d taken them off to rest her eyes for a moment; without them, her face looked thin and unprotected in sleep. Only the faint movement of her small breasts beneath the smoky lace of a trailing tea gown showed him she lived at all.

The room was set up as a trap, he thought with the business portion of his mind. Someone waited inside for him to go rushing in at first sight of her, as indeed his every instinct cried out to him to do . . .

Come in, Dr. Asher, a quiet voice said from within that glowing amber chamber of books. I am alone—there is in fact no one else in the house. The young man who looks after your stables is asleep, as you have found your women servants to be. I am seated at your desk, which is in its usual place, and I have no intention of doing you harm tonight.

Spanish, the field agent in him noted—flawless and unaccented, but Spanish all the same—even as the philologist pricked his ears at some odd, almost backcountry inflection to the English, a trace of isolative a here and there, a barely aspirated e just flicking at the ends of some words . . .

He pushed open the door and stepped inside. The young man sitting at Asher’s desk looked up from the dismantled pieces of the revolver and inclined his head in greeting.

Good evening, he said politely. For reasons which shall shortly become obvious, let us pass the formality of explanations and proceed to introductions.

It was only barely audible—the rounding of the ou in obvious and the stress shift in explanations—but it sent alarm bells of sheer scholarly curiosity clanging in some half-closed lumber room of his mind. Can’t you stop thinking like a philologist even at a time like this . . . ?

The young man went on, My name is Don Simon Xavier Christian Morado de la Cadena-Ysidro, and I am what you call a vampire.

Asher said nothing. An unformed thought aborted itself, leaving white stillness behind.

Do you believe me?

Asher realized he was holding his intaken breath, and let it out. His glance sheered to Lydia’s throat; his folkloric studies of vampirism had included the cases of so-called real vampires, lunatics who had sought to prolong their own twisted lives by drinking or bathing in the blood of young girls. Through the tea gown’s open collar he could see the white skin of her throat. No blood stained the fragile ecru of the lace around it. Then his eyes went back to Ysidro, in whose soft tones he had heard the absolute conviction of a madman. Yet, looking at that slender form behind his desk, he was conscious of a queer creeping sensation of the skin on the back of his neck, an uneasy sense of having thought he was descending a stair and, instead, stepping from the edge of a cliff . . .

The name was Spanish—the young man’s bleached fairness might well hail from the northern provinces where the Moors had never gone calling. Around the thin, high-nosed hidalgo face, his colorless hair hung like spider silk, fine as cobweb and longer than men wore it these days. The eyes were scarcely darker, a pale, yellowish amber, flecked here and there with pleats of faded brown or gray—eyes which should have seemed catlike, but didn’t. There was an odd luminosity to them, an unplaceable glittering quality, even in the gaslight, that troubled Asher. Their very paleness, contrasting with the moleskin-soft black velvet of the man’s coat collar, pointed up the absolute pallor of the delicate features, far more like a corpse’s than a living man’s, save for their mobile softness.

From his own experiences in Germany and Russia, Asher knew how easy such a pallor was to fake, particularly by gaslight. And it might simply be madness or drugs that glittered at him from those grave yellow eyes. Yet there was an eerie quality to Don Simon Ysidro, an immobility so total it was as if he had been there behind the desk for hundreds of years, waiting . . .

As Asher knelt beside Lydia to feel her pulse, he kept his eyes on the Spaniard, sensing the danger in the man. And even as his mind at last identified the underlying inflections of speech, he realized, with an odd, sinking chill, whence that dreadful sense of stillness stemmed.

The tonal shift in a few of his word endings was characteristic of those areas which had been linguistically isolated since the end of the sixteenth century.

And except when he spoke, Don Simon Ysidro did not appear to be breathing.

The carving knife still in his left hand, Asher got to his feet and said, Come here.

Ysidro did not move. His slender hands remained exactly as they had been, dead white against the blued steel of the dissected gun, but no more inert than the spider who awaits the slightest vibration of the blundering fly.

You understand, it is not always easy to conceal what we are, particularly if we have not fed, he explained in his low, light voice. Heavy lids gave his eyes an almost sleepy expression, not quite concealing cynicism and mockery, not quite concealing that odd gleam. Up until ninety years ago, it was a simple matter, for no one looks quite normal by candlelight. Now that they are lighting houses by electricity, I know not what we shall do.

Ysidro must have moved. The terrifying thing was that Asher did not see the man do it, was not—for a span of what must have been several seconds—conscious of anything, as if he had literally slipped into a trance on his feet. One second he was standing, knife in hand, between Lydia’s sleeping form and the desk where the slim intruder sat; the next, it seemed, he came to himself with a start to find the iciness of Ysidro’s fingers still chilling his hand, and the knife gone.

Shock and disorientation doused him like cold water. Don Simon tossed the knife onto the desk among the scattered pieces of the useless revolver and turned back, with an ironic smile, to offer his bared wrist to Asher.

Asher shook his head, his mouth dry. He’d faked his own death once, on a German archaeological expedition to the Congo, by means of a tourniquet, and he’d seen fakirs in India who didn’t even need that. He backed away, absurdly turning over in his mind the eerie similarities of hundreds of legends he’d uncovered in the genuinely scholarly half of his career, and walked to Lydia’s desk.

It stood on the opposite side of the study from his own—in actual fact a Regency secretaire Lydia’s mother had once used for gilt-edged invitations and the delicately nuanced jugglings of seating arrangements at dinners. It was jammed now with Lydia’s appallingly untidy collection of books, notes, and research on glands. Since she had taken her degree and begun research at the Radclyffe Infirmary, Asher had been promising to get her a proper desk. In one slim compartment her stethoscope was coiled, like an obscene snake of rubber and steel . . .

His hands were not quite steady as he replaced the stethoscope in its pigeonhole once more. He was suddenly extremely conscious of the beat of the blood in his veins.

His voice remained level. What do you want?

Help, the vampire said.

What? Asher stared at the vampire, he realized—seeing the dark amusement in Ysidro’s eyes—like a fool. His own mind still felt twisted out of true by what he had heard—or more properly by what he had absolutely not heard—through the stethoscope, but the fact that the shadowy predator that lurked in the legends of every culture he had ever studied did exist was in a way easier to believe than what that predator had just said.

The pale eyes held his. There was no shift in them, no expression; only a remote calm, centuries deep. Ysidro was silent for a few moments as if considering how much of what he should explain. Then he moved, a kind of weightless, leisurely drifting that, like Asher’s habitual stride, was as noiseless as the passage of shadow. He perched on a corner of the desk, long white hands folded on one well-tailored gray knee, regarding Asher for a moment with his head a little on one side. There was something almost hypnotic in that stillness, without nervous gesture, almost completely without movement, as if that had all been rinsed from him by the passing moons of time.

Then Don Simon said, "You are Dr. James Claudius Asher, author of Language and Concepts in Eastern and Central Europe, Lecturer in Philology at New College, expert on languages and their permutations in the folklore of countries from the Balkans to Port Arthur to Pretoria . . ."

Asher did not for a moment believe it coincidence that Ysidro had named three of the trouble spots of which the Foreign Office had been most desirous of obtaining maps.

Surely, in that context, you must be familiar with the vampire.

I am. Asher settled his weight on one curved arm of the divan where Lydia still lay, unmoving in her unnatural sleep. He felt slightly unreal, but very calm now. Whatever was happening must be dealt with on its own bizarre terms, rather than panicked over. I don’t know why I should be surprised, he went on after a moment. I’ve run across legends of vampires in every civilization from China to Mexico. They crop up again and again—blood-drinking ghosts that live as long as they prey on the living. You get them from ancient Greece, ancient Rome—though I remember the classical Roman ones were supposed to bite off their victims’ noses rather than drink their blood. Did they?

I do not know, Ysidro replied gravely, having only become vampire myself in the Year of Our Lord 1555. I came to England in the train of his Majesty King Philip, you understand, when he came to marry the English queen—I did not go home again. But personally, I cannot see why anyone would trouble to do such a thing. Though his expression did not change, Asher had the momentary impression of amusement glittering far back in those champagne-colored eyes.

And as for the legends, the vampire went on, still oddly immobile, as if over the centuries he had eventually grown weary of any extraneous gesture, one hears of fairies everywhere also, yet neither you nor I expect to encounter them at the bottom of the garden. Under the long, pale wisps of Ysidro’s hair, Asher could see the earlobes had once been pierced for earrings, and there was a ring of antique gold on one of those long, white fingers. With his narrow lips closed, Ysidro’s oversized canines—twice the length of his other teeth—were hidden, but they glinted in the gaslight when he spoke.

I want you to come with me tonight, he said after a brief pause during which Asher had the impression of some final, inner debate which never touched the milky stillness of his calm. It is now half past seven—there is a train which goes to London at eight, and the station but the walk of minutes. It is necessary that I speak with you, and it is probably safer that we do so in a moving vehicle away from the hostages that the living surrender to fortune.

Asher looked down at Lydia, her hair scattered like red smoke over the creamy lace of her gown, her fingers, where they rested over that light frame of wire and glass, stained with smears of ink. Even under the circumstances, the incongruity of the tea gown’s languorous draperies and the spectacles made him smile. The combination was somehow very like Lydia, despite her occasionally stated preference for the more strenuous forms of martyrdom over being seen wearing spectacles in public. She had never quite forgotten the sting of her ugly-duckling days. She was writing a paper on glands. He knew she’d probably spent most of the morning at the infirmary’s dissecting rooms and had been hurriedly scribbling what she could after she’d come home and changed clothes while waiting for him to arrive. He wondered what she’d make of Don Simon Ysidro and reflected that she’d probably produce a dental mirror from somewhere about her person and demand that he open his mouth—wide.

He glanced back at Ysidro, oddly cheered by this mental image. Safer for whom?

For me, the vampire replied smoothly. For you. And for your lady. Do not mistake, James; it is truly death that you smell, clinging to my coat sleeves. But had I intended to kill your lady or you, I would already have done so. I have killed so many men. There is nothing you could do which could stop me.

Having once felt that disorienting moment of psychic blindness, Asher was ready for him, but still only barely saw him move. His hand had not dropped the twenty inches or so that separated his fingers from the hideout knife in his boot when he was flung backward across the head of the divan, in spite of his effort to roll aside. Somehow both arms were wrenched behind him, the wrists pinned in a single grip of steel and ice. The vampire’s other hand was in his hair, cold against his scalp as it dragged his head back, arching his spine down toward the floor. Though he was conscious of very little weight in the bony limbs that forced his head back and still further back over nothing, he could get no leverage to struggle; and in any case, he knew it was far too late. Silky lips brushed his throat above the line of the collar—there was no sensation of breath.

Then the lips touched his skin in a mocking kiss, and the next instant he was free.

He was moving even as he sensed the pressure slack from his spine, not even thinking that Ysidro could kill him, but only aware of Lydia’s danger. But by the time he was on his feet again, his knife in his hand, Ysidro was back behind the desk, unruffled and immobile, as if he had never moved. Asher blinked and shook his head, aware there’d been another of those moments of induced trance, but not sure where it had been.

The fine strands of Ysidro’s hair snagged at his velvet collar as he tipped his head a little to one side. There was no mockery in his topaz eyes. I could have had you both in the time it takes to prove to you that I choose otherwise, he said in his soft voice. I—we—need your help, and it is best that I explain it to you on the way to London and away from this girl for whom you would undertake another fit of pointless chivalry. Believe me, James, I am the least dangerous thing with which you—or she—may have to contend. The train departs at eight, and it is many years since public transportation has awaited the convenience of persons of breeding. Will you come?

TWO

IT WAS PERHAPS TEN MINUTES’ walk along Holywell Street to the train station. Alone in the clinging veils of the September fog, Asher was conscious of a wish that the distance were three or four times as great. He felt in need of time to think.

On his very doorstep, Ysidro had vanished, fading effortlessly away into the mists. Asher had fought to keep his concentration on the vampire during what he was virtually certain was a momentary blanking of his consciousness, but hadn’t succeeded. Little wonder legend attributed to vampires the ability to dissolve into fog and moonbeams, to slither through keyholes or under doors. In a way, that would have been easier to understand.

It was the ultimate tool of the hunter—or the spy.

The night was cold, the fog wet and heavy in his lungs—not the black, killer fog of London, but the peculiarly moist, dripping, Oxford variety, which made the whole town seem slightly shaggy with moss and greenness and age. To his left as he emerged into Broad Street, the sculpted busts around the Sheldonian Theater seemed to watch him pass, a dim assemblage of ghosts; the dome of the theater itself was lost in the fog beyond. Was Ysidro moving among those ghosts somewhere, he wondered, leaving no footprint on the wet granite of the pavement?

Or was he somewhere behind Asher in the fog, trailing silently, watching to see whether his unwilling agent would double back and return home?

Asher knew it would do him no good if he did. His conscious mind might still revolt at the notion that he had spent the last half hour conversing with a live vampire—an oxymoron if ever I heard one, he reflected wryly—but the difference, if one existed, was at this point academic.

He had been in deadly danger tonight. That he did not doubt.

As for Lydia . . .

He had absolutely no reason to believe Don Simon’s claim to be alone. Asher had considered demanding to search the house before he left, but realized it would be a useless gesture. Even a mortal accomplice could have stood hidden in the fog in the garden, let alone one capable of willing mortal eyes to pass him by. He had contented himself with lighting the fires laid in the study fireplace and the kitchen stove, so that the servants would not wake in cold—as wake they would, Ysidro had assured him, within an hour of their departure.

And at all events, Ysidro knew where Asher lived. If the vampire were watching him, there was no chance of returning to the house and getting Lydia to safety before they were intercepted.

And—another academic point—what precisely constituted safety?

Asher shoved his gloved hands deeper into the pockets of the baggy brown ulster he had donned and mentally reviewed everything he had ever learned about vampires.

That they were the dead who infinitely prolonged their lives by drinking the blood of the living seemed to be the one point never in dispute, bitten-off noses in Rome notwithstanding. From Odysseus’ first interview with the shades, there was so little divergence from that central theme that Asher was—intellectually, at least—mildly astounded at his own disbelief before he had pressed the stethoscope to that thin, hard ribcage under the dark silk of the vest, and had heard . . . nothing. His researches in folklore had taken him from China to Mexico to the Australian bush, and there was virtually no tongue which had not yielded some equivalent of that word, vampire.

Around that central truth, however, lay such a morass of legend about how to deal with

Reviews for Those Who Hunt the Night

[plappen_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A new killer is afoot on the streets of Sherlock Holmes-era London. The difference is that this killer is targeting London's vampires, who have existed in the city for several hundred years. Someone, or something, is opening their coffins during the day, thereby exposing them to sunlight, and certain death.Simon Ysidro, London's oldest vampire, enlists the help of James Asher, an instructor at Oxford University, and former British spy, to investigate. Asher is given little choice in the matter. Any non-cooperation or attempts at double-crossing on Asher's part will lead to his young wife, Lydia, a medical doctor, becoming the newest member of London's vampire population.Taking great pains to keep Lydia as safe as possible, Asher and Ysidro visit the now-empty coffins, looking for clues. Ysidro is less than cooperative, not wanting to reveal too much as possible about life as a vampire. Lydia undertakes her own investigation, looking for anomalies in house ownership records, or people who have lived much longer than normal, while spending her nights reading medical journals.Asher learns that turning someone into a vampire is not as easy as just drinking their blood. More than that is involved, and it does not work all the time. Asher and Ysidro travel to Paris, where they meet Brother Anthony, a very old and frail-looking vampire who lives underground in the Catacombs. Asher also narrowly escapes getting his blood drained by several French vampires.Returning to London, Asher learns that Lydia, increasingly concerned about his lack of communication, has taken matters into her own hands. Does Asher find her in time? Is the culprit found and stopped? Does this have anything to do with a sudden rash of "unexplained" deaths in London, whose victims have had their blood drained?This is a really good novel, but not a very fast moving novel. It will take some effort on the part of the reader, but that effort will be rewarded, because Hambly shows that she knows how to tell a story. It is worth checking out.

[infjsarah · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was Okay. I like Barbara Hambly but am not a big fan of vampire stories. So somehow it didn't click for me and I won't pursue the series.

[scolgo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A well-written and somewhat atypical vampire story. The premise; what if someone is hunting and killing vampires by day and they need the help of a human agent to track down the killer? Hambly does an admirable job of developing her characters and plotting her way through this fun - occasionally grisly - tale. I will definitely be reading the sequel as I had a great time with this opening volume.

[mossjon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5 stars

Vampires without the romance. Very refreshing. Well drawn historical setting in late 19th or early 20th century London and Paris.

James Asher, a professor of philology at Oxford, and his wife Lydia, also a doctor, but of medicine, are reluctantly coerced into investigating the case of a serial vampire killer. Don Simon Ysidro, a Spanish vampire old enough to remember (and barely survive) the great London fire of 1666, forces James into his service by threatening Lydia's life.

Rather than risking his wife's precarious safety and sending her into hiding, he recruits her help in tracking down both the vampire killer, and the vampire victims haunts and hidey-holes. Lydia pursues the research through probate courts, registrar of deed office, newspaper articles and other public records and resist's the siren call of the medical pathology mystery of vampirism while James accompanies Ysidro to interrogate London's undead citizens.

All their combined efforts turn up clues that lead to a revelation and twist which I didn't see coming. I even re-read some of the early relevant scenes and could not see a clear foreshadowing of the mystery's resolution.

Like all mysteries, I kept reading and turning pages because I wanted to know who did it, who the vampire stalker was. No terror gripped me, no character cried out to me, no scene compelled me yet good pacing and interesting characters led me down a path less travelled, especially by daylight.

One of my misgivings surrounded James Asher. Even though he played the mild-mannered professor, his former life as a spy for the British Empire nagged at me. Some of the jargon of the spy trade and of his previous escapades seemed too modern and out of place for the times portrayed. Oddly, I readily accepted Lydia's pursuit of the medical profession, even in a patriarchal society.

I've read many of Hambly's novels, and know she can make me shiver with goosebumps, the cold sweat of fear and visualize some truly horrific scenes and entities. This work just didn't quite reach that far, but I enjoyed the thrills of the ride nonetheless.

[raizel_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Victorian style of writing forced me to read slowly. James Asher is a retired British spy who is now living as a mild-mannered Oxford professor with the woman he loves. She is a doctor who loves research and other unfeminine pursuits. And one of the few people of that time and place who would believe Asher's tale that he had been asked by a vampire to hunt down a vampire slayer.

[librisissimo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Substance: A British "secret agent" of the Victorian era is enlisted by a vampire, an erstwhile Spanish nobleman attendant on King Phillip in 1555, to discover who or what has been killing the other vampires of London. Style: A fair mystery, with well-placed clues, leading to a satisfactory solution. Sufficient action balanced with the cerebration, matrimonial romance, and some humor.

[ecolenca · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

REALLLY loved this book. The style is lyrical, the take on vampires is original, and everyone comes off as well rounded and authentic, even the villain, although at the end he is a bit over the top. I love Hambly's writing in this series, though I daresay some would find it too flowery. Her image evokes very visceral sensations, and the attention to detail, such as the vampire's antique Spanish, really stuck in mind. I've read this book three times over the past several years and it never loses its appeal.

[karlstar_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is one of my favorite vampire books. It brings to mind Dracula, but it has its own tone and style, and is one of the better books that features a vampire we can sympathize with. Excellent reading, though Anne Rice fans may find it tame.

[melannen_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Still the absolute best vampire novel I have ever read.And only part of it is the fact that I have a weakness for action heroes, like Dr. Asher, who in civilian life are - *ahem* - cunning linguists. Or the fact that I'm madly in love with Don Simon.This book does a great job of balancing an Edwardian feel with modern storytelling methods - it's a bit more formal in diction and style and loose in pace than your average modern fantasy book, but not enough so to make it difficult for the modern reader, though it is a bit of a slow start.The main thing that keeps me re-reading this, though, is her vampires. She has created the vampires who *must* exist - if vampires actually existed - who are believable, who are just tragic enough and just human enough and just *utterly terrifying* enough to take the concept of a vampire right to the edge of where it can go without ever chickening out on where that's leading her - or descending to sensationalism.And the human characters' reactions to the vampires are exactly human enough, as well; the way a human can become accustomed to *any* sort of horror, simply by being around it long enough - and the characters' own self-disgust as they find themselves coming to respect the vampire characters, despite what they are - is all just perfectly drawn without ever going too far.The murder mystery is fun, too. But this book's really about the characters and what necessity makes of men.

[maquisleader · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Boring. I didn't make it past the first chapter. There was just too much back story and explanation being stuffed into the story. I like to learn things as I go along. If there's only 2 lines of dialogue on a page and I have to go back to find out wtf the first person said so I remember the conversation -- too much thinking going on.

[bcquinnsmom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Set in London just past the turn of the 20th century, James Asher, who works (or rather worked) as an agent for Britain's intelligence service, comes home one day to his home in London to find his wife and two of their servants out cold. While he's taking in the scene, he is accosted by a man claiming to be a vampire. Threatened with the death of his wife by this person, James has no choice but to help him. The vampire wants him to hunt down someone who has been opening the coffins of other vampires throughout the city and burning them in the sunlight. Since the vampire cannot walk by day, he needs James to find the guilty party. James reluctantly agrees, to save his wife Lydia. This book was pretty good. Well written (although sometimes rather wordy), it does capture the times in which it is placed. The author never allows anything to distract from the mystery and keeps it on track at all times. A good addition to anyone's vampire library.

[Jay Hunter · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

a good take on vampires with smart characters. Those are so rare.

[TheSuttonStudios · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I just love a book that keeps my interest & involves me with the characters. Thanks!!!

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Those Who Hunt the Night by Barbara Hambly is a combination horror and mystery story that was originally published in 1988. Set in Edwardian England this atmospheric read harkens back to classic vampire stories like Dracula in that the vampires in this book are in-human monsters. There is a lot of vampire lore in the story as well as a high ratio of gore, but for me, that is exactly what makes a good vampire story.Ex-spy, now Oxford don, James Asher is approached by London’s oldest vampire and for a price, that being his life and the life of his beloved wife, he is asked to look into the recent spate of vampire murders. Someone or something is stalking and staking the vampires of London and James is expected to find this vampire hunter. When Asher starts to suspect that the killer is, in fact, a vampire, the hunt becomes all the more dangerous. This story is the first in a trilogy, but is complete in itself if the reader does not wish to make a commitment to another series. I enjoyed this tale, found it well written, full of mystery and suspense and the vampires had the right blend of creepy sophistication that I enjoy in stories of this sort. Those Who Hunt the Night delivered intriguing characters of both the living and the undead and I will be on the lookout for the next book in this series.

[kevinrubin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not a new book, but I finally got around to reading “Those Who Hunt the Night” by Barbara Hambly. I quite enjoyed it, overall.It takes place in mostly London during the Edwardian era, with the main character James Asher as a former spy and now Oxford don. He’s coerced by one of London’s oldest and most powerful vampires, Simon Ysidro, into hunting down who’s killing other vampires during daylight hours. He quickly goes from believing vampires are merely myths to meeting several.Asher’s young wife, Lydia, is a medical doctor and takes an interest in the medical qualities of the vampires, though Asher works to keep them separate from her, to reduce her risk. The two soon move to temporary, safely separate, quarters in London so they can work on different aspects of the manhunt. Hambly gives the addresses and I found one of them on a map, remembering my own wanderings around the area when I had weekends free on an extended business trip to England. So that brought back some memories.I was impressed by Hambly’s description of Lydia’s work sorting through public records, especially considering the character was doing it in 1908, while I imagined how I’d go about writing SQL queries on a computer in the now modern era.Overall I enjoyed the story. I was a little disappointed with two aspects of the ending. I felt like Asher and Ysidro had bonded throughout the book, so I expected something more in terms of possible friendship between them once it was finished.And I was disappointed at the culprit. I was hoping, I think, for something more along the lines of a Lovecraftian eldritch terror, so when the killer was revealed it was a little letdown. I had a bit of trouble suspending disbelief at who it was and how they went about it.Now I’ll have to track down some copies of the sequels involving Asher and Lydia…

[macha_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

first book of an older series i had never read into before, although i have always liked the author's work. this would be a fairly standard genre novel except for the formative idea of combining the tropes of spy stories with the assumptions of vampire lore, making the spy the occult detective, and setting the story in 1908 London, all the while deconstructing all those assumptions. light reading, just what i wanted. but i was sufficiently charmed by the conceits, and entertained by the blowing up of various norms - and then i became intrigued by the main vampire too. so onward to book #2.

[GhislaineBarrett · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I totally enjoyed this book. It was a refreshing read that reminded me of the way I felt reading the first Anne Rice Vampire book. Vampires were mysterious, very dangerous and not our best friend or lover.

[myriadbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I’m rebelling against the current vampire books. I’m tired of reading things like what Laurell K. Hamilton writes (for all that she lured me into the genre), and I’ve lately made a deliberate attempt to track down and revisit the vampire books I read when I first began reading vampire books. And this has been hard. Do you know how many thousands of vampire books have been published in the last 20 years? Yikes. The trees are weeping.Fantasy books hit me hard as a teen and young adult. Back then, I read like the words were on fire. In my haste to pick up a new book as soon as the last one ended, I’ve forgotten all sorts of the little things, things like the book title, author, and basic plot. And this has made things like tracking down Those Who Hunt the Night rather difficult.In this case, I remembered the details of a specific scene, and nothing about anything else of the book. The scene was good. I remember an overpowering feeling of dust and age and pity, and also a claustrophobic library. Fortunately, the NoveList search program did not let me down.Remember back when reading a vampire novel meant being scared of the dark? Of the things in the dark? Of walking out into the dark to meet those things? Has a book like that been published in the last 10 years?James Asher knows about the dark. As a college don and former spy, he knows about a lot of things. What he doesn’t know is about to kick his ass.Simon Ysidro knows about safety and politics. Four of his fellow vampires have burnt to ash within their coffins, and it’s no longer prudent to ignore the problem. Someone is hunting the hunters. And the vampires have no idea how to stop it.An unwilling ally is lead easily enough with death threats. A temporary master isn’t going to give out any more information than he has too. And the newest thing lurking in the darkness is closer to home than either of them ever feared.

[wealhtheowwylfing · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Oooh. Hambly is very good at characterization, and I always find myself intrigued by her characters. She seems to like taking fantasy tropes and twisting them a bit—not in an annoying, Piers Anthony way of punning and “ooh look how clever and cheeky we are, playing with these stereotypes,” but instead by adding a dash of realism and a spoonful of human emotion. Thus her 1900s spy gets PTSD and tries to retire to an academic life, only to be pulled back into violence by a vampiric threat to his lady love, a beautiful, wealthy and spunky woman. She also hates wearing glasses for her nearsightedness, burned many of her bridges in order to become a doctor, and doesn’t respond to the vampires threatening her life in a ladylike fashion. The plot is well-paced and exciting, and the evil is both insidious and horrifying. I would definitely recommend this to anyone, especially to people who enjoy AC Doyle or late Victorian England.

[starsister12 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I can’t remember exactly when I read "Those Who Hunt The Night" by Barbara Hambly, but I remember buying it from the local library book sale. The pages have a certain scent to them…I’ve never smelled it on a book before, but it was very…old and bookish, if that makes any sense.For the record, I picked it up, not because it had vampires in it, but because Barbara Hambly wrote it. I’d read "The Winterlands Quartet" by her and loved the language and description so much that this was an instant sell. I’d actually never understood the interest in vampires until I read this. But once I did…I got it. Or at least, here was a vampire story I could sink my teeth into, if you’ll pardon the pun.The premise of the story is that someone is killing off the vampires of London. Because these murders are taking place during the day, one of the vampires, an ancient Spanish noble named Ysidro, takes a chance on enlisting aid from the human Oxford professor James Asher. It’s great creepy gothic fun and plays with the ideas of humanity. Really, read this for the language, if nothing else. I enjoyed the story, but the simple act of reading it was a joy. And I really like Ysidro because he really gives off the feeling that he isn’t human. Not anymore, and you really can’t fully trust him because the whole while he’s running his own agenda. Whether you survive or not depends completely on his word…and how useful you are. No sparkles or vegetarian vamps here.

[AngelaLevesque · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was hesitant at first to read this book but I am so glad I didn't reshelve it! Very good read. I couldn't put it down! I can't wait to read the rest of this series!

[fence_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A James Asher book #1, also published as Immortal Blood

James Asher, retired spy and scholar, comes home one day to find a vampire in his house. A vampire who has his entire household asleep, and under threat. For if Asher does not hunt down whoever, or whatever, is killing the vampires of London then Asher will die, as will his family.

The vampire Ysidro believe their attacker is acting in the daylight, and so he is are forced to turn to a human for help, against all their rules and beliefs.

I can’t remember exactly why I picked this one up. I know it was recommended on some blog or another, but where that was, and in connection with what? I’m at a loss. I’ll have to start noting down where I get these recommendations from so that if I enjoy the book I can look to them for more.

And in this case I really did enjoy the book.

Asher, our hero, is a disillusioned spy1 and he left the Great Game after one too many dirty deeds. He retreated back into the life that used to be his cover, of sorts, academia. He is a linguist and his donnish ways meant that when he was spying he was never suspected. But his background in spying is exactly why the vampires want his assistance.

Once Ysidro has left Asher tells his wife everything that happened. And wasn’t that such a relief! I was so worried it was going to be another of those books where the husband goes off to “protect” the wife by keeping her in the dark about real life and so get her into further danger through ignorance2 but Lydia, his wife, has skills of her own. She, although facing great resistance from all around her, studied medicine and is now a researcher in that field.

And she has a mind of her own. And an intelligence that her husband respects and loves. I wish that weren’t something to remark upon, but it is. And I liked it :)

This book first came out in the 1980s so t=don’t worry about any sort of Twilight-esque vampire here, they even state that there is no sec between vampires, although some do like to entrap humans by playing the game. The vampires here must kill to live, they can live off animals for a short while, but it turns them stupid and liable to be caught out in the sun and killed. There is a psychic aspect to their killing, and to their hunting. They can persuade people to look away and ignore them, or to come close and do as they are bid. They are strong and fast, they are immortal, but they can be killed. They have their vulnerabilities.

I have to say that I really enjoyed this book, I think because Hambly writes characters so well, Asher could very easly have been almost a stereotype but I never found him so. And even the vampires have their nuances. Some have obviously serious questions about their life, but the will to survive is a strong one. It is that that makes a vampire live at the moment of turning. If you do not desire and fight for life you will not survive. However, the writing was a little convoluted for me, at least until I got used to the style of it. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but I think that I will be looking for other book about James Asher and the vampires of London.

[james_patrick_joyce · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

James Asher was a Victorian secret agent, who retired to the scholarly life, until a Vampire came calling. Don Simon Xavier Christian Morado de la Cadena-Ysidro is the oldest vampire living in England, and he needs Asher's help.

Someone is killing vampires, someone who can walk in the daylight. Someone with the strength of a vampire. Asher must use all his wits and the extensive training that kept him alive undercover in enemy territory, to both expose the horrible killer (who begins killing humans in large numbers) and to save himself and his wife from the London vampires, when he does.

Fun adventure at the early days of the 20th century. Fog, lamplight, the clatter of broughams and the clopping of hooves. Vampires, some genteel, some... monstrous.

Well worth the read. And onward, to the next in the series.

[themulhern · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Barbara Hambly's settings and situations are inventive (Edwardian London with vampires from various ages and an Oxford don and former spy as well as a doctor who must have been among the first few classes to receive a college degree in England) but there's something so plain about her writing and so predictable about the plot as to make this book impossible for me to complete.