By Blood We Live
Page 72

“Just water,” I said. “Is it okay to smoke?”
Grishma seemed calmly delighted at the idea. “One hundred per cent,” he said, and fetched an ashtray from the hall—a pretty copper dish on an ebony stand—which he set down beside the nearest Chesterfield. “I’ll bring your water,” he said.
“Actually,” I said, feeling wulf giving my spine a wrench, “I’ll take a scotch as well, if you have one.”
“Talisker, Glenmorangie, Oban, Laphroaig or Macallan?”
Not bad for someone who didn’t drink.
“Macallan, please. Straight.” Here’s to you, Jacob Marlowe. It’s a library, after all. Sorry I turned out to be such a lousy werewolf. It’s your own fault. You shouldn’t have died.
Grishma was back in less than five minutes with a silver tray. He turned the lamp on. “I’ll leave you now,” he said. “Feel free to have a browse in here while you wait.”
As in: Don’t leave this room, sister.
I didn’t. I lit a Camel and picked up the book next to me on the couch. Browning. Men and Women. A first edition. Open at “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.” I’d read the poem before, in college. For no reason I could think of, it reminded me of the dream. The vampire dream. The only dream I had, these days, these nights. I began reading.
My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the workings of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.
“Marvellous, isn’t it?” a voice said.
I looked up. I couldn’t have been reading for more than a few seconds, but somehow it was now completely dark outside. The lamp’s globe had brightened.
Olek—I recognised the voice—stood in the doorway.
Not what I’d been expecting, since like it or not I’d been expecting Omar Sharif. What I was seeing was a short, dark, plump, thin-moustached man in his mid-fifties (humanly speaking) with skin the colour of milk chocolate, mischievous black eyes and a full-lipped, currently smiling, mouth. His teeth looked unnaturally white. He was dressed in faded black jeans and a white cotton kurta. Green suede Adidas sneakers. Big gold and garnet ring on his left index finger.
“To my mind one of the most remarkable poems in the English language.”
“I don’t really remember it that well,” I said.
He came closer, and offered me his hand. At which point I realised what I should have noticed straight away. He didn’t smell.
Or rather, he didn’t smell of his species. He smelled of patchouli and toothpaste and lemons. He read my face.
“Talulla—I may call you Talulla, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And you must call me Olek, of course. No, I don’t smell as expected, I know. I’m delighted. I’ve put a lot of work in on olfactory inhibitors. But we can discuss that later. You don’t remember the poem much, you say? Please, please, let’s sit.”
I’d stood up to shake hands. He waited for me to resume my seat, then sat himself on the industrial glass desk, legs swinging. No socks. Delicate brown ankles.
“I remember it’s about a knight looking for the Dark Tower,” I said. I was yielding so easily to the casual madness of the encounter I wondered if they’d put something in my drink. “I remember a journey through a kind of nightmare landscape. I remember it’s long.”
“Do you recall whether Childe Roland finds the Dark Tower?”
I couldn’t see that it mattered, but I racked my brains anyway. “No,” I said. “I don’t. Does he?”
Olek smiled again. He had an immensely likeable face. So likeable that if this were a movie he’d have to be a psychotic villain. “I shan’t spoil it for you,” he said. “You must take that volume to bed tonight and see for yourself.”
Madder and madder. Browning for bedtime reading at a vampire’s house. In India. Okay. Why not?
“But you’ll want to freshen up, perhaps? You won’t be wanting anything to eat, obviously.”
I stubbed the Camel out in the ashtray. Mentally gave myself a slap.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but why don’t you just tell me what I’m doing here?”
“You’re here because I have a cure for your condition,” he said, not missing a beat. “Or I dare say more importantly a cure for your children’s condition. You’re here because they’re still young enough to slip through the world’s tightening net. You saw the footage. Hardship, one way or another, is coming to your species. Most likely to mine as well. Your face is known. Your children still have a chance.” He paused. I caught a sudden full stink of vampire.
“Mikhail, Natasha, come and join us.”
I looked past him. Konstantinov and Natasha were in the doorway. Konstantinov looked exhausted.
“Mikhail hasn’t slept,” Olek said. “Despite my best efforts to reassure him he insisted on sitting up all day, staring at the monitors.”
It had been almost a year since I’d seen them, but apart from Konstantinov’s obvious lack of sleep he and Natasha looked—of course—unchanged. As, visibly, palpably, was the love between them. Utterly sufficient and self-contained and above any law, human or otherwise. Their love made them their own law. I hadn’t realised how afraid I’d been until I felt the relief of seeing them.
“I’ll give you a little while alone,” Olek said. “Please, Talulla, help yourself to another drink.”
When he was gone, Natasha, Konstantinov and I looked at each other.
“Can you stand a hug?” I said.
We embraced, holding our noses, laughing—but the mutually repellent odours were no joke. Rolling her eyes, Natasha broke out the nose-paste. “He offered us something instead of this,” she said. “But we couldn’t take the chance. Sorry.”
They’d been here for two days.
“The place is CCTV’d,” Konstantinov said. “And there were guards, but we told him they had to go.”
“How could you not have slept?” I asked.
“Monitors are downstairs,” Konstantinov said. “Underground. I needed to be sure. I’m fine. One day I can manage.”