Seward?” asked Jamie, incredulous. “My commanding officer? Is that who you mean?”
“Of course that’s who I mean, Jamie,” replied Marie. A look of concern had emerged on her face. “Is something wrong?”
No, nothing wrong. Definitely nothing weird about my boss hanging out with my mum in her cell. Not at all.
“I suppose not,” said Jamie. “What did he want?”
“He didn’t want anything. He just came down to say hello. He normally pops down about once a week.”
“Once a week? Like, every week?”
“I’ve upset you,” said Marie, a look of slight panic on her face. The possibility of her son stopping coming to see her was never far from her mind, and was the thing she was most afraid of. “Can we talk about something else?”
Jamie was still attempting to stretch his head round the concept of his mother and Admiral Seward socialising, but he let it go when he heard the nervousness in his mother’s voice. He took a deep breath.
“Of course we can, Mum,” he said. “What do you want to talk about?”
Marie smiled a broad smile of relief, and floated over on to her bed, apparently so relieved she had avoided a fight with her son that she didn’t even realise she was using her vampire abilities in front of him.
“Tell me where you went this evening,” she said, settling down on the lilac bedding. “I worry about you, out there with all those monsters. Tell me what you were doing.”
Jamie crossed to the rear of the cell, flopped down on to the battered sofa and began to tell his mother about his day.
7
VALENTIN RECEIVES A VISITOR
CENTRAL PARK WEST AND WEST EIGHTY-FIFTH STREET NEW YORK, USA
Valentin Rusmanov stood at the floor-to-ceiling window of his study, on the top floor of the Upper West Side mansion he had lived in since its completion in 1895. His ownership of the grand, stately building was, like most aspects of his life, a closely guarded secret.
Throughout the twentieth century, his long existence had required him to take certain steps to avoid attention, including the formation of a number of shell companies to administer his assets. His name appeared nowhere on any document relating to the building and, from the outside, it seemed little different to the other grand apartment buildings that faced Central Park from the west.
It was most similar in design to the Dakota, thirteen blocks to the south, but whereas that famous landmark had been originally designed as sixty-five individual residences, Valentin’s building was a single, almost obscenely spacious residence, arranged over seven vast floors, the majority of which were filled with the accumulated spoils of more than four centuries of wealth and influence. The seventh floor contained the suite of rooms in which Valentin slept, to which entrance was expressly forbidden without invitation. The study he was now standing in occupied the north-east corner of the seventh floor, from which the view of the park was nothing short of spectacular.
Valentin looked down at the wide-open space, an oasis of dark corners and shadows amid the blinding lights of Manhattan. The last of the joggers were making their way to the exits, leaving behind them the teenage couples, junkies, muggers and homeless men and women that made up the park’s nocturnal population. He watched them, observing their small lives from high above without objection or condemnation. He had never felt disgust, or anger, when he looked at ordinary humans; he had always left such sentiments to his brothers, and to his former master.
Valentin’s nose twitched, and a second later his face curdled into a grimace of disgust. He turned away from the window, flew swiftly across his study and landed gracefully in the blue leather armchair that sat behind his wide, dark wood desk. He leant back in the chair, staring expectantly at the door on the other side of the room. A moment later there was a polite knock, and the door slid open just wide enough for Valentin’s butler, a skeletal figure in exquisite evening wear, to slip through the gap and into the study.
Lamberton had entered service in the vampire’s house in 1901 and immediately demonstrated both impeccable professional ability, and an admirable willingness to ignore the horrors that routinely took place beneath his master’s roof; he had served Valentin for forty years as a human, and almost seventy more as a vampire.
His turning had been Lamberton’s idea; although Valentin had promised the butler that no harm would come to him while in his employ, a promise the ancient vampire had kept with great dedication, Lamberton had eventually been forced to confront his master with the problem of his advancing years.
After discussing the matter over half a case of 1921 Château Latour, Valentin had reluctantly agreed that no other solution seemed acceptable and, after checking for a final time whether the butler was sure, had bitten Lamberton’s throat with the tenderness of a lover, allowing the barest minimum of blood to escape. He had then flown out into the New York night and found a young nurse from Oklahoma who was about to ship out to the battlefields of Europe. He had brought her home and given her to Lamberton, when the turn was complete and the hunger gripped him for the first time. Once the girl was spent, the butler thanked his master, and returned immediately to his duties, duties he had continued to discharge admirably ever since.
Lamberton was now standing silently by the study door, waiting to be acknowledged before he spoke. When Valentin nodded in his direction, he spoke five words that his master had hoped never to hear.
“Your brother is here, sir.”
Valentin swore in Wallachian, his eyes flashing momentarily red. Then he regarded Lamberton, and sighed deeply.
“Show him in,” he said.
The door was flung wide, and Valeri Rusmanov strode into the study, as Lamberton exited silently. The oldest of the three Rusmanov brothers was wearing simple clothing: a black tunic, heavy woollen trousers and leather boots, and his grey greatcoat. He stopped halfway across the room, and looked around, taking in the opulence of his surroundings with obvious distaste.
Ridiculous old fool, thought Valentin, from behind his desk. He thinks he’s still a general, commanding troops on a battlefield. Pathetic.
Valentin opened a beautifully carved wooden box and withdrew a red cigarette from the velvet-lined interior. The cigarette contained Turkish tobacco laced liberally with Bliss, the heady mixture of heroin and blood to which he had become mildly addicted over the last three decades. He applied the flame from a wooden match to the tip of the cigarette, then leant back in his chair as Valeri, who had still not spoken since entering the study, paused in front of a shelf containing a glass tank in which three basketballs were floating in a clear solution.
“What do you call this?” asked Valeri, his tone gruff and unfriendly.
“I don’t call it anything,” replied Valentin, forcing himself to remain polite. “The artist called it Three Ball 50/50 Tank. It’s Jeff Koons.”
“And this is art, is it?”
“I would say so.”
Valeri turned away from the shelf, waving a hand dismissively at its contents. He crossed the study in three long strides and stood before Valentin’s desk, his nose wrinkling at the smell
