The Van Helsing Legacy: We Shall Not Sleep: The Van Helsing Legacy, #1

By M.R. Graham

The Great War is over, its fires quenched. 
The guns are silent. 
The Dead are waking.

Meg van Helsing grew up with a book in one hand and a wooden stake in the other, a crucifix always around her neck. But the world has changed, and the monsters she hunts with her friends are less frightening than gas burns and shell shock. The ghost of the War looms darker than Dracula's shadow.

Until the night one of her friends disappears.

Now, they are under constant attack, beset by the blood-hungry corpses of un-dead soldiers at exactly the moment another monster appears: an incubus, lethally attractive. The young man offers help, and Meg wants to believe him. If only she could convince her friends she is immune to his spell.

Someone wants them dead at any cost. The answer lies in old books, dark sorcery, and a secret kept for twenty-five years, written in blood. If Meg wants her friends to live, she'll have to open her eyes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: qui est in literis
• Release date: Aug 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393458999

Book preview

More by M.R. Graham

The Liminality Series

The Medium

The Mora

The Mage

The Martyr (coming soon)

In the Shadow of the Mountains

The Wailing

The Van Helsing Legacy

We Shall Not Sleep

Dark & Hungry Graves

The Adventures of Morrigan Holmes

No Cage for a Crow

The Death of a Swan (coming soon)

Stand-Alones

The Siren

Poetry

Versos

Papalotes

Strange Matters

CONTENTS

A NOTE

I know that most who pick up this volume will assume it a work of fiction, these few words from me nothing more than an artistic flourish of verisimilitude. Very well; the topics upon which I touch are fantastical and have been so long relegated to the fiction shelves of libraries and bookshops that I can hardly lay blame on that well-read bookworm whose own expertise condemns him to misinformation. There is no shame in fiction, but there is much in treating as fantasy that which ought to be approached with the intensity of scientific enquiry.

The pursuit and destruction of evil never has been nor ever will be a simple task, and is not one to be undertaken lightly.

And monsters, I fear, are not the worst of it.

There is no supernatural horror so terrible as the things we human beings do to one another.

In 1894, six friends chased a monster across Europe. That particular supernatural horror was a terrible thing. They confronted and killed it, and none of them went home whole. One of them did not go home at all. But the rest limped back to England, drew the pieces of their lives back together, and healed.

Twenty years later, the mouth of Hell opened in Flanders fields, and its fires razed a generation. It could not be confronted. It could not be killed. It could only be fed, and we let the beast gorge. Few came limping home. Fewer healed.

Given the choice between Count Dracula and mustard gas, I would always choose the former. Always.

MSvH

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

-Lieutenant Colonel John McRae

3 May, 1915

These last years have seen a fearsome madness descend across the West, a rain of blood that must by its nature infect the minds of all on whom it falls, for it is impossible that a feeling human should witness such chaos and slaughter and retain his reason intact. Where first this unbalance was considered a moral failing, we identify it now as ‘shell shock’ and would treat its sufferers more kindly. Sadly, our knowledge lags behind our needs, and of those whom medicine knows not yet how to help, many inevitably will be lost to suicide.

-Fr. Josephus van Helsing, OSB

De Vampiris Fortuitis et Tempore Praesenti

1920

Translation by M. van Helsing

ONE

Early spring, 1914

Sir Hannibal eyed the boy on the table. Young man, he corrected himself. Peacefully etherised, the patient seemed younger than he really was. His hair had grown longer during his confinement, and it curled in obsidian-dark spirals behind his head, like Van Gogh’s brushstrokes. Its darkness emphasised his unearthly pallor. He had been pale before, but it had been every bit of six months since he had last seen sunlight, and he glowed spectrally in the fragrant golden light of the beeswax candles.

His weird eyes were closed, and beneath the feathery fan of thick, dark lashes, the mask obscured his nose and mouth, its wire frame preventing the ether-damp cloth from coming into contact with his skin. Brightwell let another drop fall onto the stockinet.

Hannibal painted the final few letters onto the patient’s chest and stood away to view his handiwork. He had briefly worried that he would run out of space and they would have to roll the patient over to get at his back, but the entire inscription fit neatly onto the front of him, albeit with entire phrases scrunched together unaesthetically. That was fortunate. Rolling him over might have smudged something.

‘This will work,’ Green murmured in Hannibal’s general direction. It was not a question, but it still failed to be the least bit reassuring.

‘We’ll find out,’ Hannibal replied. He retreated, not turning his back on the eerie tableau, until the backs of his thighs struck the edge of the ratty old sideboard that they had dragged down for the purpose. He set down the pot of paint and the brush, pressing his fingertips into the scarred wooden tabletop for a moment to steady himself.

‘I meant it had better, Ralston,’ Green hissed, ‘or the Chancellor will have you out. Me, too, probably.’

‘If it doesn’t work, I’ll try something different. If I knew exactly what had been done in the first place—’

Green’s impatient gesture upset one of the candelabra, and the heavy iron rumbled against the flagged floor. An almost imperceptible spasm tightened the patient’s eyelids. Brightwell’s hand shook as he let another drop fall. Green caught the stand and steadied it, and the rumble died away as he brushed at the speckling of beeswax that had fallen on his plaid sleeve.

‘You won’t be given time to keep experimenting indefinitely. Barbara…’

Hannibal flinched. ‘That’s exactly why I have to, though. She got us this opportunity. I won’t waste it.’

Green shrugged and mimed washing his hands as he left the little room.

‘What about you?’ Hannibal rounded on Brightwell, and the other man’s mouth puckered. ‘Do you think I’m tilting at windmills?’

‘Generally, no. This, though…’

‘You thought it was a brilliant idea when I proposed it.’

‘Innovative, certainly. And it could have been a brilliant idea. But then Barbara…’

‘That seems to be the general consensus.’

Brightwell shrugged, too, and set down the phial of ether and the dropper as he passed by the sideboard. ‘It won’t matter much, though, if you kill yourself at the first try. If it starts going wrong, just stop. You won’t honour her memory by throwing caution to the winds.’

And he left Hannibal alone with the candles and the ether and the unconscious boy.

The floor was cold, and the candles did not provide much heat, though they illuminated the space nicely. Hannibal buttoned his cardigan up to his throat, his fingers suddenly clumsy. They had not faltered even for a moment while he traced lyrical veins of Latin across the boy’s white skin in paint mixed from holy oil and the soot of burnt incense. He had not trembled as he drew a white circle on the floor around the table, whispering the names of angels into the stone.

He quaked, now.

If it started to go wrong, there would be no stopping. Either he would be strong enough, or he would die. The forces he was about to invite into the room did not care which.

He crossed back to the table, reached underneath to trip the catch, and levered it upright, securing it in the new position. The patient’s head lolled forward onto his chest with a soft groan and a sudden tension in the muscles of his neck, but the mask stayed in place, secured by cotton laces that disappeared into his dark hair. The tension left him as the drug reasserted its hold. Heavy leather straps fixed him to the table at the wrists, shoulders, hips and ankles. With his arms stretched to his sides, secured to the table’s steel wings, he seemed crucified.

Something rustled in the corners of the room, on the edges of Hannibal’s awareness, but he concentrated on the boy.

Beneath the mask was a classically beautiful face, like the work of a Renaissance master. It looked very young in anaesthetised sleep, innocent. Beatific. Very different from when he was awake. Wholly different from the white, mercilessly attractive apparition rising languorously from beside Barbara’s cooling corpse in that squalid room in Geneva. That was an image that would never leave Hannibal’s nightmares. The lambent, naked body with its serpentine grace, lazily uncoiling like a cobra, arms spreading wide to invite them all to the same death Barbara had enjoyed. And every one of them, to a man, fighting the eager, quivering urge to accept.

It would have been easy to loathe the boy. He was not like other monsters, the ones born to it or forced into it by circumstances beyond their control. This one weighed his options and turned his back deliberately on the human race. Hannibal was familiar with the stories of men and women like his patient. There had been a scattering of them throughout history. They hungered for power and learned to take it however they could, by feeding on the soul and blood and flesh of ordinary people. This one had chosen his path.

But there remained the question of the scar, the ugly, Y-shaped mark so very like the incision left by an autopsy. It was the only blemish on that beautiful, alabaster body. Who had been rooting around inside him? It hardly seemed likely that a power-mad devil would submit to vivisection of his own volition. What had they been looking for? And what had they left behind?

There remained the question of the family. It was an old line, and well-known in some circles, each generation slightly more depraved than the last. What were the odds of that? Hannibal had never believed that morality was an inherited trait. In a world where criminal fathers invariably produced criminal sons, there would hardly be a place for a justice system, and there would be no place at all for free will. No, if this boy was evil, it could not be because he was born that way. His repulsive family must have instilled in him that contempt for his fellow man, that insatiable hunger. But that would not be enough. Children were always rebelling. Slavers’ sons became war heroes. Ministers’ sons became pimps. No child of that family had ever gotten fed up and fled into the light of the wide world, seeking something different. Perhaps they could not run, could not escape, could not even see the flaws in their warped little reality. Perhaps they were trapped. Or perhaps they did run, sometimes. Perhaps those who tried never made it out.

The infuriating thing was that he could not know. Maybe the family was just congenitally evil, and even if something really had been done to the boy, be it a curse or a seal or a lobotomy, it had left no mark, unless it was the scar. Without knowing, Hannibal could only guess at how to fix it, or if it even could be fixed. All of this—the inscription, the delicate scent of beeswax, the book and bell that still lay on the sideboard—was nothing but an elaborate guess, and one that could kill him, if he got it wrong.

It would be so easy to loathe the boy, with his murderous loveliness and his cankerous pedigree. It would be easy to abandon the entire project and quietly euthanise the patient. If Barbara had been a closer friend, no doubt he would have given in to the temptation.

But he concentrated on the boy’s peaceful expression and held fast to the belief that no one is born evil, and he gritted his teeth and squared his shoulders and drove the hatred out of himself. It would not serve him in the trial to come.

Time.

He had confessed his sins during the day, the popish custom uncomfortable at first, but strangely freeing once it was completed. In some ways, he was ready to concede, the Catholics did know what they were about. He had been surprised to find a papist priest who would hear the confession of an Anglican, more surprised still when he mentioned the fact and was told that anybody at all was welcome in a confessional. Somehow, in all the years his work had taken him among them, that had never come up.

His soul felt wiped clean. He did not quite believe that a cassocked man in a box had the power to forgive him, but there was no denying that speaking the things aloud to an understanding fellow human, a creature of faith striving for the light, had lifted some of the shame and worry he had not known he was carrying. The peace of mind would be necessary.

His hands slid into the basin of water on the sideboard, cupped, and carried a shimmering palmful to his face. He ran his damp hands over the crown of his head, wetting his greying hair, splashed another palmful on his breast, shivering as it soaked through his cardigan and shirt, then stepped out of his slippers and sprinkled the basin’s last contents over his bare feet.

He picked up the bell. It seemed heavier than it had when he had set it down there. There was nothing special about it but a silver body and a sweet, clear voice. He rang it once in each corner of the room and stood still and silent, eyes closed, breathing the honeyed air until the note faded into the oak walls.

Now the book. There was nothing special about that, either, except his connection to it. There were older, more valuable volumes in the Academy’s library. There were more valuable volumes in bookshops across London, in fact; books did not become interestingly old until they had seen many decades more than this one. Its cloth cover was peeling, pages yellow and full of spilt tea and blots of mustard and breadcrumbs. It was a Bible, of course, a school prize for Scripture knowledge. At eight years old, it was the first prize he had ever won, and at that age, he could not imagine a nobler accomplishment. The knighthood had come as a pleasant surprise.

He kissed the cover.

The rustling in the corners grew louder. That was a good sign. If something was there, paying attention and concerned, it could only be because his efforts were touching on something forbidden.

Now, finally, the boy. Carrying the Bible with him, Hannibal positioned himself before the upright table, loosened the laces holding the mask in place, and threw it aside. The smell of the ether cut a sharp path through the perfume of the candles. The patient was young, in excellent physical condition despite his long confinement, and full of uncanny power. Hannibal estimated no more than fifteen minutes before he regained consciousness, but not fewer than ten. He placed the Bible at the foot of the table and returned to the sideboard one last time for a fresh brush. The brush was necessary because he did not dare touch the boy’s bare flesh. Barbara had touched him. Barbara had died.

He spat into his hand, wet the brush in the spittle, and traced a cross on the patient’s forehead.

‘In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.’

He dipped again and traced a cross on the patient’s lips.

‘In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.’

Once more, between the ribbons of Latin covering the patient’s chest, at the intersection of the three branches of the scar.

‘In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spritus Sancti.’

He touched his own forehead, his own lips, his own heart, and knelt on the cold floor with the Bible between him and the crucified monster.

The rustle became voices. What is this? What’s it doing? We don’t take kindly to thieves.

It would be easy to euthanise the patient. There was a syringe ready on the sideboard. That would be a different type of mercy, but a mercy still. Things like this one should not live. Hannibal looked up into the patient’s face.

The eyes were open, all pupil without a sliver of colour to separate the black from the white, without a trace of the usual ether-redness. Fixed on him. The peace had fled, innocence turned to ice.

The bottom dropped out of Hannibal’s stomach as something moved inside him, reaching out longingly for the beautiful young man. There was no fighting that want, that echo of the monster’s terrible hunger. It coiled in Hannibal’s gut and began to squeeze.

What’s it doing? I think it’s forgotten what it was doing.

No, he had not forgotten.

He pressed clenched fists into the tops of his thighs, concentrating on the feeling of his nails slicing into his palms.

‘I have come to do battle for this man’s soul.’

The whispers in the corners ceased and then began to chatter all at once.

The ice in the patient’s eyes glinted with curiosity. ‘Why?’ he croaked. ‘Do you even suppose I’ve got one?’

He didn’t answer, instead taking hold of the tailor’s receipt tucked between the pages of the Bible, and flipped to the page he had marked. ‘The Lord is my firmament, my refuge, and my deliverer. My God is my helper, and in him will I put my trust. My protector and the horn of my salvation, and my support.’

There was silence once more.

‘Praising I will call upon the Lord: and I shall be saved from my enemies.’

Do you have that much trust, Hannibal Timothy Ralston? When Peter became afraid, he sank, and you are no apostle.

‘The sorrows of death surrounded me: and the torrents of iniquity troubled me.’

Oh, they do, indeed. And the sorrows of hell encompass you: and the snares of death will prevent you.

‘In my affliction I called upon the Lord, and I cried to my God: And he heard my voice from his holy temple: and my cry before him came into his ears.’

Very well. You think your voice is loud enough to be heard on high? Let us see how you can scream, Man.

TWO

December, 1919

The jangle of the telephone woke me at about four o’clock. I peeled my face reluctantly out of the fold of the book that had become my pillow and waited to see whether or not it would ring again. It did.

The lights in the hall clicked on, and Chessie’s puffy face appeared at the door of the study. During daylight hours, she was the very picture of feminine perfection, as though she’d been painstakingly snipped out of a fashion paper and magicked to life. In a few hours, her skin would be creamy smooth, cheeks naturally blushing, dark hair flawlessly arrayed in a dangerously modern bob, not a wrinkle to be discovered in her stylish flannels. In a few hours. At four o’clock in the morning, her eyelids had stolen the rosy hue of her cheeks, and all the wrinkles that never saw the light of day seemed to have been stored up in the pillow-creases fanning across the right side of her face. She had gone to bed with her short hair damp, and half of it stood straight up, making her look like a startled frilled lizard.

‘Wa,’ she said.

I did notice that she wasn’t heading for the ‘phone.

I took full advantage of her ignorance of the Dutch language and muttered a few choice phrases at her as I prised myself out of my chair, my back crackling in protest, and pushed past her to the hall table. The receiver was cold. Colder than the carpeted floor, certainly. I had never been the sort to receive premonitions, but perhaps that was one. It was a trunk call.

‘Halloa?’ I muttered peevishly into the receiver.

‘Meg? Is that you?’

The voice coming through the earpiece was tired and strained and thick with tears. It was female. I shook myself a little further awake and pressed the earpiece closer. ‘Yes, who is this?’

‘Oh, thank God. Meg, I’m terribly sorry, I know it’s late…’

‘Early, actually,’ I corrected, squinting at the clock beside the telephone. ‘Who is this?’

‘It’s Clare. Oh, Meg, I understand if you can’t, but could you come?’

‘What, right now? I’m in Oxford.’ She had to have known that, of course, in order to place the call, but I felt she could use reminding.

‘If you could. I wouldn’t ask it of you, only Quincey…’

Clare dissolved into sobs. I felt Chessie at my elbow and glanced over to see her eyebrows pulled into a question. I held up a finger.

‘Clare, what happened to Quincey? Is he all right?’

Chessie met my eyes and widened hers meaningfully.

‘I don’t know!’ Clare wailed. ‘I don’t know! He went out for a smoke last night and never came back.’

‘Clare, darling, we’re on our way, but isn’t there someone closer? Someone who could come immediately? And have you talked to the police?’ I waved a hand at Chessie, shooing her back toward her room, hoping she was awake enough to understand that she was to go dress and possibly pack.

‘They said…’ Her voice caught again, and for a moment, I was afraid she would not be able to get it out, but she mastered herself. ‘They said… They said a b-big woman like me shouldn’t be surprised if her husband…’ She was not able to get it out, after all, but I got the gist.

‘Good God. Good God, Clare, I hope you got the policeman’s number. That can’t go unreported. But look, you keep trying. See if you can get a constable with some professionalism. And see if you can reach Doctor Seward, and…’ The last thing I ever wanted to have to do was tell a mother her son was missing, but it would have to be done sooner or later. ‘And Mrs Harker, if you haven’t already. Chess and I will be there as soon as we can.’

It wasn’t a long drive, not for someone accustomed to navigate the Continent, but the first long bit of the drive was in pitch darkness, and the grand old Metropolis was anathema to automobiles. A van full of sheep had overturned in the road, and the startled animals, finding themselves free, refused to budge for the traffic piling up behind them. A detour had to be located. The sun was well up by the time we reached the Harker residence in Barking. Chessie slept the entire way, naturally, curled up tight beneath a travelling rug. I huddled inside four cardigans and multiple layers of stockings and watched my frosty breath glow in the reflected light of the headlamps.

Clare wasn’t exactly pressed against the window waiting for us, but near enough. She hurled herself out into the street as we approached and barrelled into Chessie, already starting up a reprise of her telephonic misery. She was inconsolable. Irrational. I could see the circles under her eyes from a sleepless night, deep lines etched around her mouth. Her eyelashes had clumped together in spikes, cemented by dried tears, and yesterday’s cosmetics were tracked down her cheeks and splattered on yesterday’s collar. She had been sitting up waiting all night.

‘Clare,’ Chessie cooed, stroking the trembling woman’s back, ‘darling, let’s go in, shall we? We’ll find him, don’t worry.’

Clare did not respond. Chessie blinked pointedly at me over Clare’s shoulder. Together, we two managed to shepherd her back into the house, where she took a deep breath and held it in an effort to get herself back in hand.

‘The children aren’t up,’ she explained in a hoarse croak. ‘The longer I let them sleep, the longer I don’t have to tell them…’

She seemed in danger of losing herself again, sleeping children or no, so Chessie and I wasted no time in bundling her into the chintzy little parlour. I hurried off to make tea, and by the time I got back, Chessie had her rolled in blankets and installed in one end of the settee, where she stared out the window with hollow eyes.

It is worth mentioning that Clare Harker was one of the most practical, dependable people I have met in my life. A short burst of panic over the ‘phone I might have expected. She was frightened. But now, hours later, in the light of day, when it was time for action… There was more to this than she had said.

‘Clare,’ I said, as gently as I was able. She startled like a rabbit and turned her empty gaze on me. ‘Clare, what time did Quincey go out?’

‘Oh, after supper,’ she muttered. A shiver passed through her. ‘About eight.’

So he had been gone for about eight hours by the time she rang us.

‘Did he say he was just going out for a smoke?’ Chessie asked, leaning forward to warm Clare’s cup.

Clare blinked. ‘He… Yes. Well… He had his cigarettes…’

I was pretty sure I understood what Chessie was getting at. ‘No, did he say he was only going out for a smoke? Might he have gone somewhere else after?’

‘No!’ There was a little too much fervour in the denial, but she deflated a moment later and pushed a hand through her dark hair. ‘Well… No, he wouldn’t, but… I don’t know…’

Chessie raised her eyebrows at me. What on earth? she mouthed.

I tended to agree. ‘Clare, what are you not telling us?’

For the first time, her numb cocoon seemed to crack, and she whipped her head around to glare at me, her perfect little cupid’s-bow mouth compressed into a hard line of fury. ‘My husband is missing,’ she bit off. ‘The father of my children. What more do you think there needs to be?’

Clare had a formidable presence, but she didn’t scare me. Not the way her mother in law did, anyway. ‘And?’ I pressed.

She resisted. She huffed and hedged, but finally shuddered and fixed despairing eyes on me. ‘He… he keeps asking if… if I’ll be all right. And he won’t say why. Making sure I have all the information for the bank account and his solicitor and… He keeps moving his pistol around, hiding it in strange places. I’m afraid he’s thinking of…’

The last word wouldn’t come out, but she didn’t fall to pieces again. The numb shell closed back around her, and she sighed deeply and took a noisy sip of her tea.

‘Christ!’ Chessie exclaimed at length. ‘Jesus H. Christ, Clare!’

I didn’t feel like admonishing her for the blasphemy. ‘Where is his pistol?’

Clare shrugged. ‘I looked, and I couldn’t find it. But, well, if he’s hidden it again, it might be anywhere around the house.’

Like pulling teeth.

‘Do the police know any of that?’ I could hear the echoes of a vulgar joke about fat wives being motive enough for suicide, but surely the police could rein in their vicious humour when a veteran’s life was at stake.

‘Certainly not,’ Clare whispered, as I had known she would. ‘Suicide is illegal.’

I managed not to lean over and slap her. Every paragon of good sense is allowed her off days. At least she’d had the awareness to know she was off and call for help.

‘Did you look for him at all?’

‘What? Oh, well… I ran up and down the street calling for him for a bit. Then the police came. I didn’t want to go anywhere, in case he came back. And the children…’

‘Good. Good thinking.’ On the slim chance he had needed his pistol for use on something other than himself, the children should not be left alone.

There was no time to lose.

‘Have you spoken to anyone else, yet?’ I asked. I had noticed that none of our friends who actually lived in London had gotten there before us.

Clare shook her head. That explained it.

‘I will, then.’

The telephone was an extravagance. When Quincey Harker had been invalided home minus the use of his left arm early in ’18, he had followed his father into estate agenting, only without the travel abroad. It paid comfortably enough that Clare did not have to work, but not comfortably enough that the family could afford to fill the house with all the newest technology. The line was a gift from Chessie’s father, Arthur Holmwood, Lord Godalming, who greatly enjoyed being able to talk to whomever he wished, whenever he wished, regardless of intervening distance. Thus, all of the gang had telephones, though Chessie sometimes neglected to answer hers when I wasn’t around to do it for her.

I rang Mrs Harker, first, leaving out Clare’s speculation about suicide. She was as quietly dignified as ever and said she would be ‘round as soon as she could.

I rang Doctor Seward, next. I didn’t have to mention suicide to him. He asked if Quincey’s pistol was missing, and I told him I wasn’t sure, but that we thought it might be. He swore and said he was on his way.

Then I rang up Chessie’s father. He was at home in Surrey and would be some time in coming.

Finally, I rang the only other person in London upon whose help I knew I could rely at any time of the day or night. This connection took longer. He was often up for most of the night, reading, and I expected that he was still asleep. Come to think of it, he might not even have been in London.

He answered with a wordless mumble.

‘Uncle Joe,’ I told him, ‘it’s Meg.’ He had met Quincey only a few times and didn’t know him very well, but he would come all the same. He did know exactly how our families were connected. I told him what had happened. ‘His wife is afraid he’s going to kill himself,’ I said. Uncle Joe made a soft clicking sound. ‘But it’s possible it’s something else,’ I added. ‘He keeps an eye on Barking. Watches out for particular dangers.’

There was silence for a moment, and when Uncle Joe answered, he had slid into the Dutch language. ‘Our kind of particular dangers, you mean? Is somebody listening?’

I replied in the same tongue. ‘His wife knows about the book, but she thinks Stoker used a lot of friends’ names for his characters. She’d handle it well if she knew the truth, but that’s for Quincey to tell her, not me. If he turns up in one piece and finds her arming herself against all of Europe’s superstitions…’

‘And that’s worse than her being eaten by all of Europe’s superstitions?’

‘That’s what we’re for. You have to admit, it’s a terrible burden. We’ll tell her if it’s necessary, but until then, better just to not. But if that’s where Quincey went, I’d really appreciate your help.’

‘Any time, obviously. Have you your automobile?’

‘Yes, we came down in it.’

‘You had better come get me, then. I don’t want a cabbie wondering about my kit.’

‘You could solve that problem by keeping your kit in a more ordinary carrying case. And anyway, London’s cabbies have seen much stranger than an old man hauling a leather box.’ The box was actually more like a small trunk, and the thing that tended to attract attention was that the leather was tattooed with interesting scenes of the lives of the saints. People usually assumed that, because it was tattooed, it must be human skin, and when informed otherwise, they usually assumed that someone had gone to the inhumane trouble of tattooing a live animal. That wasn’t correct, either, just as one need not tool or gild the cover of a nice book while it’s still attached to the creature, but that didn’t stop anybody from accusing Uncle Joe of being some sort of morally bankrupt cultist.

‘I’ll be waiting for you,’ he said, and he hung up.

And I had only just begun to get warm.

Fine, then.

I marched back through the parlour for my coat.

‘The gang’s on its way,’ I said. ‘Less your dad, Chessie.’

‘And where are you going, then?’

‘Uncle Joe wants to help, but I have to go fetch him.’

Chessie blinked at me to show she understood why.

Clare stared with a sort of bleak curiosity. ‘Isn’t that the one who’s a priest?’

‘He is.’

Her lips trembled, and tears spilled over. ‘You’ve called a priest?’

I realised my mistake at once. ‘He wants to help us search, Clare! And he’s frightfully clever. I think he’ll be useful.’

She was not appeased. The tears came faster. ‘Do you think we’ll need a priest when we find him?’

I did not point out to Clare that, since neither she nor her husband was Catholic, Uncle Joe was entirely the wrong sort of priest.

Perhaps that didn’t matter to her, at the moment, though, or perhaps she thought that wouldn’t matter to me.

Chessie caught my grimace and moved to intervene as I moved to escape. Getting through the door was tougher than it ought to have been. I felt as though I were abandoning Clare and her offspring—unacceptable, even if I did mean to bring back help.

Uncle Joe kept a flat in Westminster, Baker Street, where he liked to indulge a fantasy of being Sherlock Holmes. As a Benedictine, he had never taken a vow of poverty, but he lived simply when he came to London, in a nest of papers, books, and inkstains. He had a tendency to construct a similar nest wherever he went, and St Catherine’s was always relieved to be rid of him, however briefly. I took after him, in that respect.

Another drive. Far too much time wasted, though I bypassed the City. Without any breakfast to appease it, my stomach was beginning to complain when I arrived in Baker Street, frozen through once more. Worry, hunger, and lack of sleep conspired to put me in a vicious temper, but I did not bother to smooth my features before I approached the door. Uncle Joe had never required a smile when there were more pressing matters.

I pulled the bell.

A feeling of unease prickled along my arms. I stopped.

What had I noticed? A sound? A smell? I scrutinised the door in front of me. No smoke at the keyhole, no damage. What, then?

I turned back to my motor, and something caught my eye down the street. There was a man on the nearest corner. There were dozens of men and women moving up and down the street with their shopping, with parcels and prams and papers, but this one stood stationary, facing me. I lost sight of him for a moment as two workmen manoeuvred a freestanding bookcase into another flat, but when they had made it inside, he was still there. He was too far away, and the shadow cast by the brim of his hat was too dark for me to make out his eyes, but there was no doubt that he was watching me watching him.

I looked away for an instant, embarrassed. But, dash it, if he was staring openly, then so could I. He hadn’t moved when I looked back. There was something strange about him, and I strained my eyes trying to figure out what it was. He was dressed in a sombre, charcoal-grey topcoat, open over a lighter grey suit. His wool scarf was dark green. The coat was bulky, but he seemed well-built underneath it, with broad shoulders and long legs. His hands were thrust into his pockets, and an umbrella was hooked over his elbow. He could have been any banker, any solicitor, any student. Still, something was strange.

I glanced down to the other end of the street, just to make sure there was nothing incredibly interesting just behind me. There was not.

The door opened suddenly, and I nearly fell backward off the step.

A hand caught me by the coat and hauled me inside, driving the staring man from my mind.

‘What were you doing?’ Uncle Joe enquired. He did not wait for an answer before continuing. ‘Help me with my things, if you would.’

He turned his back on me and charged up the stairs ahead, leaving me to follow more slowly behind. I found him in his sitting room, which was obviously arranged more for solitary study than for entertaining—only a single chair was empty of books. He crouched over his kit on the floor, rummaging through its contents.

Uncle Joe’s Sherlock Holmes fantasy was not absolutely implausible, despite his occupation. His height was obvious even as he sat there on his heels with his shoulder-blades stretching the black fabric of his cassock. He was six feet tall, with a spare, ascetic frame, sharp, deep-set eyes, hollow cheeks, and a nose like a falcon. A few strands of fiery red still showed in his snowy hair. The hands buried in the depths of the box were long and hard and sensitive.

‘What is it?’ he asked, returning to Dutch.

I thought, for a puzzling moment, that he meant my mood, which ought to have been self-explanatory. Then he held up a string of garlic bulbs, sniffed at them, and replaced them in the tattooed box.

‘There’s no telling,’ I replied. ‘It might be nothing at all. He’s just left, or was captured by someone entirely mundane, mugged. There was no sign of anything otherworldly at their house.’

He looked up at me with an ugly bronze dagger balanced in his palm. ‘I’ll do my best to be useful, either way, but