Magistrates of Hell

TWENTY-NINE

A shot cracked the night.

Close. Lydia’s heart lurched. A few courtyards away . . .

In this part of the Tatar City gunplay could have nothing to do with the situation in the Tso compound tonight. Since the Emperor’s fall, Peking had become a violent place, the gangs that controlled the brothels and p’ai-gow games, the rickshaw stables and opium dens all fighting for mastery, the soldiers of the President and of the Kuo Min-tang staging murderous battles in the taverns. Robbers, layabouts, and killers for hire hid out under the bridges and in the empty temples around the shallow ‘Sea’ and vastly outnumbered the new police-force.

But the shot filled her with panic.

Deep beneath the pavilion, Li had fallen silent.

For a thousandth time, Lydia pulled and twisted at the silken rope around her wrists, trying to at least get her fingernails on the knots.

Nothing.

Then, so softly she wasn’t sure if the sound was actually in the ground beneath her or inside her head, Lydia heard Li crooning, a horrible mixture of words and throat sounds.

Oh, God, she thought, struggling again though she knew it would do her no good. Oh God—

Something – someone – pounded on the pavilion door.

Where are the wretched guards? They were every way I turned three hours ago . . .

Yet there had really been only a few. Not a soul, Hobart had said, and he’d been very nearly right; she remembered how Mrs Tso had appeared with only her son for escort. Had they heard that Jamie was going out to the Western Hills today and went out to prevent them blowing up the mine?

And did Li know that?

Fists crashed on the shutters, a yard from her head. Lydia fought not to scream. Two of them – even in her terror she identified the sounds at the windows. Two of them, pounding on the wood with the violence of machinery. Hobart’s face swam into her mind, distorted, fanged. The bloody mouth and sprouting teeth of the samurai Ito, the horrible thick claws of the things chained in the cellar . . .

More crashing, on the shutters of the main room this time, the pitchy darkness seeming to shake with the noise—

Jamie, Jamie get me out of here!

Gunshots again, right outside the pavilion. The things hammering at the front windows stopped, but the crashing at the windows beside her, in front of her, kept on, unheeding, and through the hammer blows she heard a man scream. Three more gunshots, with the speed of someone shooting wild in panic, and then the rending crash of wooden shutters tearing, and moonlight streamed into the room.

Two of them, black slumped silhouettes. One crossed the room to the door as if it didn’t see her, but the other came straight for her, eyes flashing yellow like a cat’s. After the blackness the dim blue moonlight seemed bright, and Lydia brought up one foot and kicked it in the stomach with all her strength as it reached for her.

It staggered back, bayed at her, a yawping animal sound, then drove in again. She kicked again and felt her skirt tear where it grabbed her, kicked a third time, and a fourth – it didn’t seem to have any other strategy than to keep coming, keep grabbing, as if it knew that she’d tire long before it did. It leaned its weight on her, swung its arms, and her kick turned into a desperate shove, holding it away.

It howled.

Then it turned from her and followed its companion out the door and into the main room.

Lydia heard other things in that room and realized that the crashing in that direction had stopped. So had the screams and the shots. The smell of fresh blood came to her, and of cordite. She heard them crashing and pounding on the door of the western chamber, drowning out the crooning wail of the vampire Li below.

Can he really control them, once he’s brought them to him? Command them?

Or will they only see him as flesh that can’t fight them when they go to eat it?

There was nothing on the floor around her – or nothing she could see, by dim moonlight without her glasses: no shattered glass or broken shards of wood. There’s got to be something . . . Hesitantly, she bent her cramped knees, slithered down the pillar and squinted to get a better look at the floor. Distant and muffled, she heard Li’s voice, shouting what sounded like commands . . .

Shouting them again, louder and then louder . . .

Then he screamed.

A slumped form loomed suddenly in the moonlight, huge as it staggered through the door. Lydia tried to push herself to her feet but it was too quick for her. She smelled the blood on its clothing, blood on the huge hand that closed on her arm as it dragged her up to her feet.

Blood on Hobart’s breath as he stammered, ‘Get you out— Get you out— Oh God, that thing down there!’

He must have had a penknife in his pocket. Lydia twisted her hand aside when he sliced her bonds. Do not, DO NOT get a cut . . .

He kept his grip on her arm, stared down at her with eyes that caught the moonlight like an animal’s. In a voice that astonished her with its own reasonableness, she said, ‘Let me go, I can walk,’ just exactly as if he were Mr Woodreave trying to help her over a puddle.

It didn’t work. His grip tightened.

‘You’ll run away.’ His voice slurred over the swollen bloodiness of his growing fangs. ‘Need you. Make them give me medicine.’

Dammit . . .

When he dragged her through the pavilion’s central room she could hear Li screaming down below, hideous shrieks. Dear God, they must be tearing him to pieces, eating him as he lies there . . .

She tripped over the corpses in the doorway. Two of Mrs Tso’s men, blood-covered.

‘Dying in my head,’ whispered Hobart. ‘I feel it – I felt them all, dying, oh God! I’m going mad, and I can’t go mad . . . I’ll make her give me medicine . . .’

In the middle of the courtyard a third figure lay: a woman’s, in a satin ch’i-p’ao. Bound feet in tiny shoes poked out from beneath her hem, and a gun lay near her hand.

Tell him who she was, or not? He barely seemed aware of her.

‘You’ll be all right. Swear it. Honor bright—’ Hobart giggled suddenly and looked down into Lydia’s face. ‘Just – put you someplace safe for awhile. There’s places under the bridges, under the palaces—’

‘That really isn’t necessary.’ She forced her voice to be matter-of-fact. ‘I can arrange—’

‘No arrangement.’ He dragged her to the walkway. ‘Fed up to the bloody back teeth with goddam arrangements. Can’t let them see me like this. She’ll give me the medicine. I’ll make her. They’re all dying, I can feel them . . .’

More voices shouted in the courtyard, over the braying of the yao-kuei. Hobart stopped, and Lydia turned, to see in the moonlight indistinct figures rushing into the court as the slumped forms of the Others emerged from the pavilion. A shotgun roared. Lydia thought she saw the white blur of a beard on one tall figure, the flash of round spectacles and a samurai blade. She screamed, ‘Jamie!’ as Hobart seized her around her waist and lifted her from her feet, covered her mouth with a reeking hand.

And ran. Faster than she’d guessed the yao-kuei could run, down the walkway, across a court. Lydia kicked, writhed, nearly suffocated by the paw over her face, but he only tightened his grip. She heard him panting, almost in her ear, the hoarse, animal note of it terrifying. His mind is nearly gone, and what then . . .?

Through a broken gate and out on to the sloping shore of the shallow lake, water scummed with dirty ice in the moonlight. A marble bridge where the northern lake ran into the southern, and broken steps leading down to blackness underneath. Hobart stopped, set her feet on the ground and looked around him—

‘Remember this place,’ he panted. ‘Extraordinary—’ And there was a lightness in his voice, like a man in a dream. ‘Never been here in my life but remember it. They were here, there’s a hole they went down, cellars – cellars into cellars . . . It’s like I dreamed it.’

Then he flinched, put one hand to his head, face twisted with pain. ‘They’re dying. They scream when they die, inside my head. It’s like pieces torn away bleeding from my brain. I’ll put you there safe, then go back, talk to her . . . make her give me the medicine. It saved her boys, or would have, if they hadn’t been killed—’

‘She can’t give you medicine,’ gasped Lydia. ‘She’s dead. Back there. She’s dead.’

He struck her, jerking her arm to drag her into the blow. Half-stunned, Lydia sagged against his gripping hand, and he pulled her up again, held her against him. The moonlight reflected in his eyes like mirrors. ‘You’re lying,’ he whispered. ‘Won’t do you any good. You cunning little bitch.’

Then he grinned, with his bloody teeth, and put his palm to her cheek. ‘But pretty—’

A second set of reflective eyes appeared behind his shoulder, and a long white hand wrapped around his chin, another braced on his shoulder. Hobart roared, spun, faster than Lydia had ever seen a living man move, flung her down on the broken steps and slashed at Ysidro with his claws. Ysidro strange and wraithlike, as she had seen him when he hadn’t fed, weakened and stripped of illusion. He dodged, tried to twist free as Hobart grabbed him by the wrists—

And as if she’d rehearsed it a dozen times for a pantomime performance, Lydia stuck her foot between Hobart’s legs.

Hobart went down like a felled tree on top of her, his weight crushing, and with a whispered oath, Ysidro reached down and neatly broke his neck.

‘Dios.’ The vampire rolled the horrible corpse away, held out his hand to help Lydia to her feet. His fingers were like frozen bone, his long hair hanging in his eyes. ‘Mistress, I—’

In the same instant that Jamie’s voice shouted, ‘NO!’ a dozen yards away, a shotgun roared.

Ysidro’s body bowed under the impact of the blast, his white shirt starred suddenly with blood. For an instant his hand closed convulsively on hers, and their eyes met, as if he would have said something to her . . . She was aware of running footsteps, of Jamie and Professor Karlebach racing toward them, Asher tearing the shotgun out of Karlebach’s hand—

Then Ysidro’s eyes closed. His fingers slipped from hers, and he stepped back from her, his face relaxed into an expression of unearthly peace, and fell into the ebony lake without a sound.