Butterfly Catchers

It spiralled up and up, light as air, clear and perfect, rising through the slanting shafts of sunlight as if it had been made to do nothing else, created for just this time and place, and for him to discover it here. He wanted to reach out and touch it, to impossibly grasp the air and trap it between his fingers.

Then the man sitting near the pulpit coughed and the moment was gone, the music just music.

The coughing idiot turned to the two lace-mittened ladies, who were the only other people attending evensong, and began delivering an apologetic pantomime of chest banging, as if that somehow covered the situation. Angelus growled low in his chest. But the mood was broken – the choirboy had finished his solo and the cathedral filled with the complex blending of the whole choir, not the lone spiral of the soloist.

Angelus glared about him and considered how pleasurable it would be to snatch from the wall one of the ragged flags crumbling above the memorials of the county regiment, leap across the gaping expanse of the nave, and thrust the staff clean through the man’s eye-socket. To leave it quivering in the solid oak of the pew-back behind, and then gently lap the blood as it trickled down one rigid, white cheek.

There was a time when he would have done just that.

Angelus scowled. He couldn’t leave for at least another hour, the shafts of evening sunlight streaming across the cathedral close would see to that, but the intrusion had taken away all his pleasure in the music.

After a moment he pushed off the pillar he had been leaning against, and made himself head up the nave again, rapping his knuckles against the flag staff as he passed in a little tattoo that did nothing at all to relieve his feelings.

But even as he moved he could feel his footsteps start to slow, the fire of his annoyance slipping away, and, like a gnat’s whine in his head, as he approached the gaping expanse of the crossing he could feel the fury building against him, the pressure of dismissal, of disgust. And once again he spun round and turned back into the dark cavern of the aisle.

The aisle felt safe. A stack of unused hymn-books and service sheets in cardboard boxes lolled against one wall, while in the corner the stepladders and paint-pots of some artisan lay piled, inadequately hidden under a sheet. And, littering the walls and floor, the dull effusions of memorial plaques proclaimed that in this cathedral were interred the remains of the great, the good and the grossly moneyed. The mundanity of humanity ruled here, not the other thing. The gnat’s whine was muffled. Barely noticeable.

He made to kick out at the hymn-books and then something inside warned him not to disturb the service and that made him crosser still. He paced away and told himself that if he left well alone the boy might sing again. It was worth being patient for that.

Behind him the choir had finished, replaced by the drone of the priest. Angelus paused beside the small table bearing pamphlets detailing the architectural delights of the cathedral. He’d got an hour to kill, but neither the dignified presence of the Norman font, nor the soaring grace of the full flowering of English Perpendicular in the clerestory were going to keep him entertained. He lounged back against the table and folded his arms, challenging the world to amuse him before he amused himself.

After a while the priest intoned his blessing and the mittened ladies rose, smiling, clutching their prayer books to their chests as if afraid their bosoms would burst with joy. The idiot threaded his way towards the south door, still coughing. From the stalls came the orderly clatter of the choir preparing to leave. Angelus slunk back into the shadows.

The choristers came first, hurrying with the businesslike air of the young professionals they were, and only the occasional exchange of cheeky glances to show their natural animal spirits. The lay clerks followed, displaying considerably less unthinking grace and dignity as they chattered. Finally, the priest, hurrying off in the opposite direction with the air of a man with a dinner appointment.

Angelus waited.

The great cathedral church was left to him and to the rippling notes of a Handel concerto as the organist tripped his way through it, seemingly for his own delight. And to one other. Angelus stiffened as a small figure slipped out of the chancel to stand beside the little door that led up to the organ loft, peeping up the staircase within. From some window, shafts of rose, peacock and emerald tinted light fell across his white surplice to form a delicate flickering pattern. He looked fragile, almost ethereal. Hair as pale as dawn light and a narrow little face of such beauty as is supposed to belong only to the angels. The choirboy.

‘Mr Camberwell?’ The organist had finished and now the boy called softly up the stairs to the organ loft. ‘May I come up, Mr Camberwell?’

Angelus could hear no reply, and the boy stepped back a pace, rocking on his toes slightly, making his blood-red cassock sway. All his movements were light and neat, his attitude patient where most children would have looked bored or petulant.

Angelus let a sigh of breath whistle from his lungs, and moved closer.

Then a noise intruded from the choir-stalls, and a man emerged from the chancel, carrying a small bundle of sheet music. He smelt oddly similar to the boy, but there the resemblance ended, his hair was dark, his skin sallow, and there was no delicacy in the hard, pinched face. He dropped a proprietorial hand onto the boy’s shoulder. ‘You should have left to change with the others, we will be late home.’

‘I’m sorry, papa. I only wanted to hear Mr Camberwell play.’

‘You should be at home, practicing. Hurry along now.’

‘Yes papa.’

From his lurking place, Angelus made a fractional move forward, into better view, and stared, the stare that could send shivers down a man’s spine when he still had no idea who was watching him. But the boy was already turning away, trotting to where his fellows had vanished, leaving only the man – whose eye travelled away from Angelus with the disinterest of someone who had seen too many tourists lingering late in the cathedral to have any care for one more.

‘The boy is yours?’

The man hesitated, peering at Angelus.

‘And was that him, singing the solo?’ Angelus tried to keep the urgency from his voice. ‘The boy is… remarkable.’

‘Oh indeed, he is. Indeed. We are very fortunate.’

‘A voice such as that – perhaps one in a hundred years.’

The man inclined his head, as one accepting a personal compliment.

Angelus took another pace closer. ‘What would be his name, now?’

‘Oh, he… Ashworth.’ The man gave a sort of half bow. ‘My name is Ashworth. I am the organist and choir master.’

‘I did not ask your name.’

‘No, but… Did you perhaps come in particular to hear the boy?’ Something anxious hovered in his tone. Something eager.

Angelus raised one eyebrow and let the man do the rest.

‘You are a friend of…’ Ashworth’s voice dropped to a soft, slithering tone, ‘Mr Harmonia?’

Angelus smiled.

Just then there was a clatter on the stairs down from the organ and a young man with tufts of bright red hair and holes in the sleeves of his jacket appeared.

Ashworth instantly straightened up. ‘Ah, you will have to forgive me, sir, but you must understand that the boys are not permitted to accept outside engagements. I am sure you will understand.’ He shifted anxiously on his feet, turning slightly as if to block Angelus from the young organist’s view.

The organist smiled cheerfully at Angelus and looked at Ashworth expectantly. Ashworth instantly dropped the music he was holding into the organist’s hands. ‘Put that away, Camberwell.’

‘Yes sir. So… what did you think Mr Ashworth? Not bad, I thought, and young Grayling was superb.’

‘Yes, yes. You may go now.’ Ashworth smiled apologetically at Angelus and waved a hand at Camberwell, both explanatory and dismissive. ‘My assistant: Camberwell. You may go, Camberwell.’

Camberwell still lingered, beaming. ‘Your stepson has a great gift, sir. I was wondering if he could come and play with me again. We both really enjoyed the last time, and he—’

‘He needs to practice tonight.’

‘Yes of course, but—’

‘He does not have the time, Camberwell. I was just explaining to this gentleman that the boy’s voice must not risk strain and thus there can be no extra calls of any kind. The cathedral must insist on it, you understand. It is quite, quite impossible.’

‘But how can playing the organ with me possibly affect his voice! And it is all part of his musical education. His voice will break some day soon and then—’

‘It is impossible.’

Camberwell stared at him in bafflement for a moment and then turned away, his face pink, walking away from them with clipped, furious steps.

Ashworth looked after him. ‘The cathedral insists…’ he said.

‘Oh, I grasp your meaning,’ Angelus said softly.

Ashworth turned back to him, smiling with relief. ‘It would not do for them to be straining their voices at private concerts.’

‘Indeed.’

‘However… considerable… the fee.’

Angelus nodded, and slipped a card from his waistcoat pocket. ‘After all, a voice like that could earn, what – five guineas a night? Six? It would not be at all appropriate.’

‘Oh, not at all.’ Ashworth pocketed Angelus’s card.

Angelus nodded. ‘A thing of great beauty. And so fragile. So brief.’ Angelus raised his hand and snapped the fingers together, as a man might crush a butterfly. ‘So very, very brief.’

‘Yes.’ The man laughed nervously. ‘Well sir, good evening to you. Thank you for… attending evensong. The cathedral closes at six.’

Ashworth ducked his head and scurried away, fingering as he went the pocket where he had concealed Angelus’s card.

Angelus stuck his hands in his own pockets and lounged against a pillar, whistling the last few bars of the Handel, and waited for the night.

Angelus let the front-door slam behind him and tossed his overcoat in the general direction of the coat hooks, bellowing ‘William’ up the stairs as the coat slid in a dark heap to the stone flags. He ducked his head under the lintel of the parlour door, the notes of the Handel still soaring in his head.

‘So you’re back.’

‘Ah, you’ve been missing me, darling. I’m touched.’

She was standing in the bay window, apparently staring out into the black void of the garden, the lights of the candles she had lit reflected in the numerous little panes like a small constellation. She had a shawl clutched about her shoulders as if she was cold, but she stood very upright.

‘You said you would be home by midnight.’

With raised eyebrow he threw a lazy glance at the clock in the corner, which stood at nine thirty.

‘Midnight yesterday,’ she said.

‘So, did you have a pleasant day, then?’

He wandered over to the fireplace and watched her out of the corner of his eye while he cut his cigar, saw her toss her head back, her jaw set, eyes narrowed. On either side the sweep of dark velvet curtains, drawn back, framed her like the curtains of a stage. And he waited for her to start properly.

‘So, how old is he now?’

He propped one shoulder against the cracked wooden panelling of the chimney-breast and took a long pull on his cigar, the smoke biting rich and tangily satisfying at the back of his throat, like a snarl. ‘And who would this “he” be, now, darling?’

‘He is nearly four, Angelus.’

He starred at her impassively as he blew the smoke out in a steady stream.

‘I trust you have not forgotten what we agreed upon? You said you would see him properly prepared and presented to the Master as soon as he was four.’

No, she’d said that. And she’d said some time after Will’s fourth birthday, not the day he was four.

‘Angelus! Stop puffing that foul smoke at me and answer the question.’

He removed his cigar very slowly and examined its glowing tip. ‘What question?’

She didn’t quite stamp her foot but a ripple quivered through her skirts. ‘Is William ready to be accepted into the order, or not?’

‘Ah, that question.’

She narrowed her eyes at him.

The cigar tip was a tiny glowing coal, simmering with red menace as it retreated. If he pressed it to her arm he could make a mirror image in her flesh, red and weeping.

‘Well now, I spend several hours every night training him…’

‘No, you spend several hours with him – that is not the same thing. And that is when you bother to come home at all. How do you think he spent his time last night?’

‘Well, I told him to polish my boots.’

‘I am not talking about the menial tasks he has to waste his time on because you expect to be waited on hand and foot.’

Angelus sighed melodramatically. ‘What’s he done now?’

‘Done? He has done nothing. That is my point. If you aren’t standing over him every second he is quite content to idle the entire night away with Drusilla. As you would know if you paid the slightest attention. What has he learnt in the last month? What have you actually taught him?’

He drifted towards the little square piano, plinking a couple of notes from the yellow keys. ‘Well, I’ve taught him how to kill a Trecorde demon.’

‘Angelus! This is not a joke. If the Master finds him unfit he will not even be entered into the order, never mind being accepted for training. And I do not intend to suffer the humiliation of having another fledgling from my family rejected.’

He repeated the notes. ‘Ah, of course, darling.’ How did one play a chord? ‘You’d never want one of us kicked out of the Master’s lair for failing to be sufficiently obsequious.’ He caught her hand before it could connect with his cheek, twisting it down in a wrench that would normally make her smirk and suggest he hurt her some more. Pressing her back against the piano until the old wood creaked threateningly.

‘So you are willing to have your precious boy rejected, are you, Angelus?’

He released her with a snarl. ‘Of course not.’

‘Good.’ She twirled on her heels, her skirts flaring and dancing in the candlelight. ‘Then that is settled. You will write to the minions tonight – I doubt this God-forsaken backwater has an evening postal service but they should still get the letter by tomorrow afternoon. I have located a house in Marylebone that may suit. Then you can—’

‘Oh so that’s what this is about – you want to go back to London. Missing your dressmaker are you?’

‘If I wish to go back to town, Angelus, we will do so. What this is about is ensuring that you buckle down with the boy so that the Master doesn’t stake him on sight.’

‘Which was precisely why we came here – so I could have some peace and quiet with him.’

There was a small thump in the hall.

‘We came here because you were bored with London. And since we have been here, you have claimed that you need to spend all your time hunting and Will needs to spend every spare minute doing all the tasks that we should have the minions for. So what we need, my boy – do not interrupt! – is to be back in London where you do not have those excuses. The house in Marylebone is a good size. Properly fitted out.’ She cast a withering look around the low-ceilinged, dark panelled room. ‘The family will be leaving for Switzerland shortly, they are advertising for someone to take the house in their absence. We should be in London by Tuesday. That gives us time to collect the minions from Bayswater and be in Marylebone for dawn. Five family members, plus a governess and four servants – enough food for a fortnight. Then you can buckle down with him and get him properly prepared in time to leave for the Continent in April. Do you anticipate any difficulties?’

He raised one eyebrow. ‘Well, teaching Will anything in Latin is very slow, you know. He tends not to attend.’

‘Then if necessary you will find him a tutor. That also will not be a problem back in civilisation. Or you can turn one – somebody who is capable of teaching him if you cannot or will not.’

He turned to her with a frowning face, puffing his cigar as if deep in thought. ‘Four servants, you say?’

‘I said four. And I don’t want him just good enough to scrape by, Angelus. He needs taking in hand. Since you refuse to do so, the Master is—’

‘Four?’

‘Four! Angelus, are you listening to me? I want him good enough that the Master will want—’

‘Four’s not many for a house in Marylebone. Not like you to want to stay somewhere second rate, darling.’ From the corner of his eye he could see her lips, tight as a sealed envelope. ‘Of course a London tutor will be very expensive, so with only four…’

‘Angelus?’

‘Yes, darling?’

‘Do you anticipate any actual difficulties?’

The fire crackled cheerfully in the grate, casting warm flickering shadows on the faded oak of the panelling. And he let the thin brass hand of the lantern clock, which was almost as old as she was, tick away a full minute of seconds in which he refused to bow to her demand. Then he turned and bellowed ‘William! Stop eavesdropping and get in here, now!’

She snapped her mouth shut and he smirked at her whilst the door opened slowly.

Angelus threw his cigar into the fire and moved out into the centre of the room to meet him. ‘Where the devil have you been, boy? I called for you a quarter of an hour ago.’

‘Been…’ Will checked from him to Darla and back, his tongue darting across his lips as if tasting the atmosphere of the room. ‘Been with Dru.’

And from the defiant tilt of his head and the nervous shifting of his feet that statement was an outright lie. That or being with Dru had involved something he knew perfectly well Angelus wouldn’t approve of. Angelus just looked at him until with extreme reluctance Will added a ‘Sir’.

‘When I come home, boy, I expect you to be here, in attendance on me, immediately, not playing with your sister.’

‘Wasn’t playing. Sir.’

‘My best coat is being ruined while you lounge around at your leisure.’

Will scowled. ‘Wasn’t playing – I was helping her. And I hung it up.’

‘Did you brush it?’

‘No. Not yet.’

‘You are to brush it. And my hat. I suppose there is no hope you did any work last night?’

Will’s scowl deepened. ‘Didn’t know you wanted me to do anything – what with you being out all night.’

‘And this afternoon?’

Will flicked his gaze at Darla again. ‘I was busy helping Dru.’

‘So you say’ He clouted Will, a sharp cuff to the back of the head, the soft hair ruffling under his palm. Will winced and rubbed at it furiously, ducking back as if expecting another one. Angelus put his hands behind his back and caught Darla’s eye. He put on his most pompous tone. ‘William, you know perfectly well that you are not free to do as you please all night.’ Darla’s face was impossible to read. ‘You are nearly four now.’ Darla nodded imperceptibly. ‘You should not need me standing over you with the strap all the time to make you work.’

‘I—’

‘Fetch me a drink,’ Angelus said, and he strode over and turned his back to the fire, feet straddling the hearth rug, hands under his coat tails, blocking the heat from everyone else in the room.

Will looked between him and Darla again. Darla was holding herself a little less rigidly, but she was drumming the fingers of one hand against her arm as she watched.

‘Darla is concerned you haven’t been paying attention to your lessons. Have you?’

‘Yes.’

‘There you are, you see, darling – nothing to worry about. Where’s that drink, Will?’

‘And then you may fetch a Bradshaw, boy,’ Darla said pleasantly. ‘Angelus needs to look up the London trains.’

‘No I don’t.’

Darla’s back went stiff with an almost audible snap. Even Will hesitated, one hand on the decanter, the other holding the glass ludicrously in mid air.

‘And why not, Angelus?’ Darla said.

‘You’re forgetting, darling, I have a very good memory. I’ve no need for a Bradshaw.’

And Will made a small choking sound, quickly poured the brandy and held it out to Angelus.

A low, humming growl came from Darla, lasting while Angelus took a deep swig of his drink and swirled it around his throat. Then she rapped out ‘Come here, boy’ her eyes still fixed on Angelus.

Will hesitated, flicking an uncertain glance at Angelus, then looked at her. Angelus sipped his brandy again, saying nothing, and Will took two steps towards her.

‘I said, come here!’

Will took another two steps and Darla snapped her fingers, pointing for him to stand right in front of her. It was the exact gesture Angelus liked to use himself. Will jerked as if he’d been yanked forward on a string, and even lowered his head and put his hands behind his back when he was in front of her.

Angelus realised he was frowning and stopped himself.

‘He looks like something the cat dragged in, Angelus.’

‘We don’t have a cat,’ Will muttered. ‘You won’t let Dru have one.’

Angelus let his lip quirk.

Darla suddenly snatched Will’s chin between her little fingers and jerked his head up, turning it from side to side. Being so much smaller than him, it looked as if she was examining his throat. ‘Hmm.’ Darla released him. ‘He’s pretty enough, Angelus, but he’s too scrawny. If you’re going to half-starve the fledges you need to make them bigger to begin with.’

Angelus leaned one elbow on the mantelpiece in a bored fashion.

Darla was glaring at Will. ‘Last night you were sent to deliver a letter.’

‘Yes madam.’

‘You were told to run.’

‘Y-yes madam.’

‘Did you?’

Will paused. ‘Yes madam.’

‘If that is the truth then he is still as slow as a new-risen whelp.’

Will was staring straight ahead. Angelus considered the assorted contents of the mantelshelf. The cane wasn’t there, which meant Will must have hidden it again. He could see Will watching him out of the corner of his eye.

‘Can you kill off the vein, boy?’ Darla snapped.

‘What? I didn’t kill anyone last night—’

‘Can you or can’t you?’

‘He can,’ Angelus said.

‘Then why doesn’t he say so? I expect a polite answer to a simple question, boy.’

‘Er…’ Will was scanning Angelus’s expression.

Angelus raised an eyebrow. ‘He can kill off the vein, but not, apparently, recall the term itself.’

‘Yes I can!’ They both looked at him. ‘I know what it means. It means… means to kill somebody… only… off the vein. So not on their veins, just off them.’

Darla looked at Angelus with withering contempt. ‘And do you intend to beat him now?’ Darla asked. ‘Are you going to interpret this stupidity as impertinence that can be adequately dealt with by a few taps of that silly cane?’

‘If I decide to beat him, he will find the cane anything but silly.’

‘Something like that cannot possibly be appropriate for a vampire.’

Will looked surprised but in total agreement.

Angelus examined the play of light on the cut crystal of his brandy glass. ‘To kill off the vein, Will, means to kill a human quickly and cleanly by feeding directly from the vein. To be in such control of the situation that you can locate the killing spot and bite before they realise what is happening. To make the bite deep and clean enough that you do not spray blood all over yourself, your kill, or the surroundings. And to kill so fast that your prey has no time to struggle or call out before dying.’ He took a sip. ‘In short, to kill off the vein. When did you last kill off the vein, William?’

‘Oh. I killed that tinker, sir.’

‘He killed a tinker.’ Angelus picked a small book off the mantelpiece, wondering what it was doing there. ‘Not three days ago, Darla. He is perfectly capable of killing off the vein.’ The book was one of his own, a volume of Italian demonology, hardly the sort of thing Darla normally read for pleasure.

‘At nearly four – that is hardly much of a boast.’

‘The fact remains, he can do it. Stop fidgeting, William.’

‘What’s going on? Why is she…?’

‘How far can you leap?’ Darla snapped.

‘I dunno. I can get to the top of the cathedral wall. Is that what you want to know?’

Angelus made a mental note to find out exactly when he had had occasion to get over the cathedral wall.

‘Could you jump from this house to across the street?’

‘I…’ Will looked at him and Angelus nodded. ‘Yes madam.’

‘You seem very positive.’

‘I could. Er, I would be allowed a run up, right?’

Angelus quickly turned away to hide his smile.

‘Do you know the Twelve Aurelian Incantations?’

‘I know… some of them, madam.’

‘Seven,’ Angelus intoned, at the exact same moment as Will said ‘Four.’

‘I see. And what happened to the other three that Angelus seems too think he’s taught you?’

‘Well I know bits of three more. And maybe some of the others as well.’

‘“Bits” is not good enough, William.’

‘Yeh, I know that. But—’

‘Say the fourth.’

Will gave Angelus a helpless look.

Angelus glared at him. ‘Go on.’

‘The fourth. Right, that’s…, right. Nihil—’

‘Stop at once. Angelus, he doesn’t have his fingers crossed,’ Darla snapped. ‘Boy, do you not know what will happen if you say one of the Twelve without first…’

Will brought his fingers out from behind his back and held them up in what he clearly found a most satisfying gesture. His fingers were indeed crossed. Darla glared.

‘Happy, darling?’ Angelus asked. ‘Not scared he’s going to turn us all into geraniums? Carry on, Will.’

Will smirked and started again. ‘Nihil obstat quominus imprimatur… What?’

‘That, boy, is the third,’ Angelus said and he banged his hand on the mantelshelf. ‘Concentrate.’

Will swallowed and ducked his head. ‘Didn’t she say the third?’ He flicked a quick glance at Angelus, apparently not even slightly optimistic that the lie had been accepted.

Darla gave a little tiger-growl of annoyance.

Will slipped a pace backward.

‘Well I hope you are proud of this performance, Angelus.’ She turned away and seated herself in her favourite armchair, her back rigidly upright. ‘He does not know the most elementary things. He can barely run or leap better than a yearling. He clearly doesn’t know any of the Twelve. I know for a fact how abysmal his hunting is. He is not even approaching ready.’

‘There’s still plenty of time.’

‘I will not be made a fool of!’ The crack of her voice pinged on the air as if an overstretched wire had snapped.

‘Er, what’s going on?’ Will said.

‘Have you not even told him?’

‘Darla! Will is mine.’ He was aware that more of a growl had slipped into his voice than he had intended. ‘I will train him—’

‘Do not make that noise at me!’ She stabbed at Angelus with a poniard of a finger. ‘Nine months ago you assured me that you were preparing him properly.’

‘William, go and wait in my study.’

‘William, stay exactly where you are. Six weeks ago, Angelus, you said that you still needed a little more time. Well you have had that time and he is no more likely to be accepted now than he was on the day he rose. Boy, what exactly has Angelus taught you in the last six weeks?’

‘But of course you never interfere in how I train my fledges.’

‘What the bloody hell’s going on?’

That was going too far and Angelus reached out and grabbed his arm, then cuffed him, three times in rapid succession until Will hung limp and shaking in his grip, head down, fists clenched. ‘Behave,’ Angelus said with quiet venom.

Will looked up at him, miserable, confused and furious.

‘Well, boy?’ Darla demanded.

Angelus waited, curious as to just how Will would answer. After a bit Will reached up and rubbed slowly at his ear where Angelus had clouted him, remaining stubbornly silent.

‘And I think that says all there is to say,’ Darla said.

‘No!’

They both looked in surprise at Will.

‘He has taught me things. He…’ Will straightened up and set his jaw. ‘He taught me the third incantation.’

Angelus bit hard on the inside of his mouth to stop himself laughing.

Darla’s eyes were tinged with yellow. ‘How dare you.’ Will shuffled his feet, presumably assuming the words had been addressed to him. ‘How dare you presume to play me for a fool. Do you think I don’t know what is going on?’ The quivering of her dress as she stalked forwards was sending the candle flames shimmering and dancing on the window-panes behind her. ‘Well, Angelus?’

Very well. He dropped his hold on Will. ‘You are quite right, of course, darling. He really should know better. William, your grandsire has decided you’ve been grossly impertinent and lazy at your lessons. Fetch the switch from wherever you’ve hidden it and go to my study.’

‘What! You—’

‘My study, William.’

Will actually growled, then shouldered past him, not saying a word, and hurled the door open.

‘In this family, boy, children show respect to their elders.’ Angelus called after him. ‘And don’t you dare bang that door.’ He let his eyes drift up to meet Darla’s stone-cold stare. ‘Happy, darling? Did you get what you wanted out of this conversation, now?’ With relish, he tossed back the last of his drink. ‘Good evening, Darla.’

She refused to answer him.

The cane whipped down and Will screamed – a hollow, miserable sound, filled with despair. It was actually quite impressive.

‘How many was that?’

‘Nine, sir.’

‘Four more, then, I think. Might as well give you the full vampire dozen since we’ve got this far.

Will shrugged, and Angelus brought the bamboo cane down across the chair seat again, Will obligingly yelling from where he was lounging against the bookshelves, several feet away. He ended in a long, lingering groan on the final stroke and then they both stood for a while, listening. At last the front-door banged in a pointed manner. Darla had left.

‘And let that be a lesson to you,’ Angelus said, shoving the cane back beside the yellowing plant in its pot on the windowsill. ‘Now get the fire lit, it’s freezing in here.’

Will grinned and headed for the fireplace. ‘I never thought she’d fall for it,’ he crowed. ‘Did you see her face when I started the third incantation! I thought she was going to explode. Oh and sorry about the fire. She said I shouldn’t do one for you tonight.’

Typical of her. Never one to let the petty details slip.

‘She said I should go help Dru instead.’ Will started to make his normal phenomenal amount of noise with the coal-scuttle. ‘Also said I mustn’t clean the lamps, so don’t shout at me for that either.’

Angelus, long accustomed to disregarding Will’s babble, started to search through the drawers of his desk. ‘Where’s my sketch-book? Someone’s been moving things around.’

‘Not me. And when you said you didn’t need a Bradshaw! You really said that! God, I wish Dru’d been downstairs to hear that, she’d have loved that. She’s going to be green when I tell her. She wanted to come down but I knew she wouldn’t be able to keep the joke, you know what she’s like, so I told her to wait upstairs till later. I’d better not leave her too long or she’ll start playing with her dollies. But what was she talking about? I mean Darla, not Dru. What’s all this rubbish about entering me? Enter me for what? I’m not a prize pug. Is this something she wants to do when we get back to London, mate?’

Will sat back on his heels, the box of matches in one hand, the poker in the other, and looked at Angelus expectantly.

‘What did you just say?’

‘I…’ Will’s face fell. ‘Sir. I meant “sir”.’

‘London. What did you say about London?’ He hardened his tone. ‘I thought I’d cured you of eavesdropping.’

Will actually gave him a sarcastic look. ‘She told me to help Dru pack: it doesn’t take much thought to work out that means going back home, does it. Besides, she’s been…’ He trailed off, watching Angelus suspiciously.

Angelus could only stare at him, feeling the fury boil up in his breast, feeling the cold tug of hatred for her swirl and pull at his heart. ‘Your home is wherever I am, boy, not London just because we happen to live there occasionally.’

Will still stared at him. Waiting.

‘Hurry up with that fire and then bring me the switch.’

Will struggled with his expression for a second, then spun back to the fire, jamming the poker in fiercely.

Angelus made a show of opening his post. There were several from Harold, in the head minion’s painstaking copybook hand. Master, I beg to inform you… Master, There are several matters that require your urgent… Master, Please… The light in the room was dim, flickering as the oil-lamp guttered inside its chipped shade, sending shadows wavering across the walls and bookcases, turning the writing into a weak brown scrawl. He crumpled each letter in turn and dropped them to the floor.

‘Stop procrastinating, Will.’

Will stood up, snatched the length of rattan from the whip rack over the mantle and kicked out at a letter, scowling. ‘I suppose you want me to pick this lot up after you too, sir.’

‘I want you to behave.’ He held out his hand and Will slammed the handle into it then folded his arms, still glowering defiantly.

‘Darla told me to pack. Not my fault if you two can’t agree when it’s time to move.’

‘Hand out.’

Will swallowed, a momentary reflex, and then managed to produce his couldn’t-give-a-damn sneer. He stuck his hand out.

‘If you leave it like that, I shall cane it like that, and then you will have broken bones and I shan’t let you hunt for a month.’

Will deepened his sneer, but turned his hand palm upwards, slightly cupped, so the flesh formed soft cushions, his thumb tucked neatly out of harm’s way to the side. They had been here many times before.

Angelus rested the cane on Will’s palm, measuring his distance. ‘Look at me.’

Will looked. Jaw set, eyes hard.

‘Every conversation we have at the moment ends this way, Will.’

‘W-well that’s nice for you, then. Seeing how much you love thrashing me.’

‘You don’t need to prove how brave you are to me, lad. I know your capabilities far better than you do.’

Will swallowed again but he kept up his defiant stare. Angelus applied the slightest pressure to the cane, so it pressed into Will’s palm, a hard cream band against the flesh.

‘I don’t—’

‘Be quiet. Stop showing off for five minutes and listen to me. She told you we were leaving?’

‘Yeh.’

‘And that you should tell Dru we were going “home”.’

‘Yes.’

‘She wants you both thinking you want to be back in London. When did she start?’

‘She only told me to pack today.’

‘Maybe. But she started days ago, didn’t she – egging you on, getting you and Dru on her side. Talking about shopping and street urchins to Dru, pubs and theatres to you. What else did she promise you?’

‘Nothing, sir!’

‘Threats then.’

‘No.’ There was a note of contempt in Will’s voice and Angelus thought rapidly.

‘So she’s been dropping hints – saying that it was important we go back. Did she say the hunting was starting to dry up here?’

Will nodded.

Angelus lent forward, looking at Will intently. ‘You are being used, Will. She is using you to get her own way and she doesn’t give a damn if you suffer for it. Look at me. I will not have you used, Will. You are mine, not hers. Mine.’ He paused. ‘And I expected better of you.’

Will’s pointed little face was uncertain now, tinged with misery. He dropped his eyes again, staring at the cane.

‘Did you not even realise what she was doing?’

Will slowly shook his head.

‘What else?’

‘She… she said the minions couldn’t be trusted, sir.’

‘Ah.’

‘She said Harold might make a bid to take the territory for himself.’

‘And do you think he might?’

‘I…’ Will looked at the cane again as Angelus tapped it idly against his palm ‘…don’t know, sir.’

‘No, you don’t. So let me make it simple for you. Do you think I am incapable of judging how long it is safe to leave London for?’

‘No sir.’

‘Good boy. And?’

‘She said… she said you were ignoring me again. She said if I didn’t do something to attract your attention you’d probably forget I even existed. She said you always do that, cos you’ve got the attention span of a… of a… She said I should stop whining about it and do something. Ask you questions. Ask you to train me harder. Ask you to talk about the future and what your plans are for me and… what’s going on.’ It wasn’t quite a question, but Will wouldn’t meet his eye, staring down at the cane as if hypnotised by it.

‘William, who do you trust to make the appropriate decisions for this family?’

‘You, sir.’

‘Whose property are you?’

‘Yours, sir.’ And that was said smartly and with confidence, with the ease of long practice.

‘Mine.’ Angelus could feel the word warm and round on his lips. ‘Hand up higher.’

Will grimaced but did as he was told, still looking at nothing but the cane.

‘You will not let Darla make use of you.’

‘No sir.’ There was the slightest quiver in Will’s hand. Fear? Or simply the tension in his muscles, locked in place.

‘You will not involve yourself in petty schemes to manipulate me.’

‘No sir.’

The cane was pressing a red ridge across Will’s palm, held stiff and firm by the tension between them

‘You will not question my judgement.’

‘No sir.’

Angelus reached in and cupped the back of his neck, drawing him up against his chest, dropping the unused cane to fall on the desk behind them. Against his cheek, Angelus could feel fine hair brushing, lithe young muscles pressed against him, shaking with tension, fear, hurt, passion. He pressed a soft kiss to Will’s temple. ‘Do we understand one another, Will?’

Against his shoulder, Will nodded desperately, and made a small sound that approximated to ‘Yes sir’.

Angelus felt himself shiver.

‘Why?’ Will whispered.

‘Hush, little one.’

‘But what was she talking about?’

Angelus closed his eyes. ‘I do not wish to discuss it.’

Crushed to his shoulder, Will heaved a single, shuddering gasp.

Angelus stilled himself. Stopped his breathing. Letting his fury with Darla leak from him. If she wanted to play games then they would play games. And for that he wanted to be cool. As cold and icily calculating as the bitch herself. And then they would see just who the head of the family was.

The cathedral close was silent, still with the crystallised calm of a night gripped by frost. The limes that lined the paths held their rigid twigs stiffly, fringed with rime, no wind to make them stir. Each blade of grass beneath was a silent dagger, pointing to a black sky filled with un-twinkling stars. Much earlier there had been one or two figures hurrying about their business, well wrapped up, now the only signs of life were the cracks of light leaking from between the tightly closed shutters of the deanery.

And above this silence there spun music. Even out here, kept from the house by bolts, bars and shutters, and the mystical safeguard of the threshold that was stronger than them all, the small perfect tone carried to him, golden-light on the cold, black air.

The song ended and there came a ripple of polite but appreciative applause. Angelus decided to stretch his legs – experience had taught him that the dean’s wife liked to hold the concert up with tedious introductions for each song – and he tensed and leapt up to the parapet fronting the deanery, strolling along it and looking down at the next house along.

The little house was tiny, crammed into a corner of the close between the Queen Anne stateliness of the deanery and the medieval alms-houses where twelve aged but respectable paupers of the city were lodged. Its own age was indefinable, plain red brick without variation or adornment, but the walls were bowed with age – this had been the house for the organist of the cathedral since before the deanery was a brash new addition to the close. A little curl of smoke drifted up from its chimney and vanished into the moonlight.

Angelus could see down into the back garden of the organist’s house now. Two strips of grass, crisp with frost, stiff bushes of lavender bordering a path, a washing line, blackcurrant bushes against the far wall. Angelus gently dropped onto the roof of an outbuilding to give himself a clear view into the window of the first floor room. It was a bedroom with a narrow brass bed just wide enough for two and beside it an old fashioned wooden cot, pink, floral-pattern china on the washstand, a razor strop and a straw summer hat hanging behind the door.

From the deanery, another song started up.

Angelus jumped down and prowled around the edge of the outbuilding towards the one light showing from the ground floor of the organist’s house. Angelus leant, silent, into the shadow of the outbuilding’s wall. Through the curtains he could see a woman – the organist’s wife. The boy’s mother. She was thin, her hands red against the whiteness of the sheet she was endlessly hemming. She had the fairness of the boy, his narrow, pointed face, but in her, the lines were pinched, with white streaked into her golden hair, and when she stooped over the baby waving its limbs in the basket beside her she looked tired. She scooped the baby up and pressed it to her breast, swaying a little from side to side although it was making no sound. Indeed Angelus had scarcely ever heard it cry – as if the only noise permitted in that house was the endless shades of music.

The woman carried the baby towards him and, cradling it gently, she reached and opened the little window, pushing the casement wide. Then she lifted the baby up, the woolly shawl wrapped close about its form, and she smiled. ‘Do you hear that, baba?’ she whispered. ‘Listen – that is your big brother. He is singing tonight for the Dean and all the great ladies and gentlemen of the city. Can you hear?’ She craned forward a little more, the smile on her face lighting up her thin, tired features. So still was the night that he could feel her breath stirring the air just a few feet from him, and if he concentrated very closely he imagined he could almost feel the tiny spectral gasps of the baby itself.

If she leaned forward just a little more she would break the threshold and he could snatch them both in an instant. Rip the baby’s throat out in front of her eyes. Leave her bruised and bloody body, red in the frost for the morning sun to find.

And over the rooftops twirled and sparkled the sweetness of the boy’s singing.

‘Yes,’ his mother said, ‘that is James.’ She shivered and stood back and pulled the casement shut, settling the baby back in its warm nest of woollens. Smiling and murmuring to it as she turned to put a little more coal on the fire.

James. His name was James. Angelus felt as if the name had sent a bolt of electricity into his chest.

The song ended, giving rise to an eruption of applause with more feeling behind it than the earlier ones. There was a sense of finality and Angelus quickly bounded back up onto the roof, working his way over to the alms-houses from where he could lean out over the close.

Sure enough, a few minutes later two figures appeared at the kitchen door of the deanery, and hurried the short way down the path, James reaching up on tiptoe to lift the bolt of the gate and hold it for Ashworth. As he closed the gate again he lingered for a second, looking back, and Angelus longed to know what he was thinking.

‘Hurry up now, James. It is late,’ Ashworth called back. ‘You should be in bed.’

‘Yes papa.’ James came quickly.

Angelus craned far out, the stone finial of the gable cold and hard under his hand, the cross at its tip buzzing beside his cheek as he strained forwards almost to the point of falling, and then James was inside. Angelus sighed and settled back on the roof, hunkered down on his heels. He had not been able to discover any position from which he could see into the tiny window up in the eaves, so he must be content with his own imagination. A small room, he had decided, little more than space for the narrow bed. There would be no toys, no story-books, nothing to indicate a child lived there except the pair of small shoes tucked neatly side by side under the bed, and hanging on the back of the door a satchel filled with sheet music.

The flickering light of a candle appeared and Angelus edged forward, drawn to the thought of a small form kneeling to say prayers, then jumping into the bed. The light went out and still he waited. Beyond those walls a small body was relaxing sweetly into sleep after a long hard day. The cold of the night sank into his own ancient frame, blood deep, bone deep. Tonight he felt very old.

He thought about music – the steady progression of notes to an inevitable conclusion. And with a soft plump he dropped to the ground, smiling. With great care he picked three daffodils from the dean’s garden and laid them on the worn stone step of the organist’s house, then retreated, leaving a trail of footprints in the frost on the path.

Angelus strode briskly back across the close and plunged into the narrow warren of streets that led to the river. The city was silent, the air brittle with cold. The houses leaning out over the street were dark, shutters closed, the respectable citizens thriftily asleep rather than waste money on candles. Angelus’s footsteps on the cobbles were the only sound.

Once he paused, then took an unnecessary right turn, and another, cut down an alley and stood gazing back up the street he had just walked along. Nothing moved. Finally a hunting cat slipped along the gutter, turned to stare at him with wide scared eyes, and vanished over a wall. Angelus waited a little longer before telling himself he was being a fool and carrying on.

Back on the main street, one or two people were still about, most of whom tipped their hats civilly, and by the bridge a stream of yellow warmth spilled out from a pub, together with the roll of nasally sentimental singing to a refrain banged out on an out-of-tune piano.

‘Why be so hard upon the boy? He is our only son.
You know the work he has to do is always gladly done.

‘Oh give the boy a chance,
Give the boy a chance.
I know it will be better far to give the boy a chance.’

Angelus grimaced and took the steps down to the river. Here the cold was dank, oozing out of the stones of the buildings. The water sloshed and heaved, curdled with brown scummy ice. A continuous mechanical clank and rattle came from the sluice gates of the mill.

Angelus hissed, the sound carrying on the frozen air, and after a second there was a short cough, something that might have been the bark of a hunting dog fox, but wasn’t, and Will slithered out from the shadow of the bridge.

‘Well?’

‘Christ, but it’s bloody freezing tonight.’

Angelus gave him a sarcastic look to inform him he was aware of the fact. ‘What do you have?’

‘Chilblains, mostly.’ Will made a pantomime of clapping his arms about himself, dancing on the spot. ‘Couldn’t we have arranged to meet somewhere with a fire?’

Angelus peered past him, preparing to get very angry indeed if there was no sign of a human under the bridge.

‘Don’t worry, mate,’ Will said, still hopping from leg to leg, but grinning, ‘She’s a good one. Should be fun to play with for a bit.’

He led the way back into the dark, and there indeed was a woman, sprawled out in the mud, legs splayed, rucked skirts drabbling in the filth, the stench rising off her like the warm fug off a pigsty. She lifted a mop of saffron coloured hair and blinked slowly at Angelus. ‘Gi’ I a drink, deary?’ She sounded more hopeful than enticing.

‘Angelus, meet Polly Prim, local lady of the night,’ Will said with a flourish.

‘A tart?’

‘Yeh.’ Will stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, looking pleased with himself. ‘Found her in the King’s Head and told her I’d take her home for dinner. None of the local lads seemed to mind. So, will she do?’ Nothing in his demeanour hinted that he had the faintest notion of Polly being unacceptable.

Angelus frowned and shook his head.

‘What!’ Will’s outraged yell was far too loud and Angelus reached out at once to cuff him for it. Will dodged back a step. ‘You bastard. You right bastard. All bloody night I’ve been freezing my balls off waiting for you and now we’re not even taking her! Why not, for Christ’s sake?’ He grabbed for Polly, thrusting her out at Angelus. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

Polly leered up at them and belched.

Angelus gave Will a look and turned on his heel, striding back towards the steps. Under his feet, the ice in each pockmarked pool of the muddy path splintered with gunshot cracks.

‘Answer me!’ Will yelled.

He ought to just leave, display to Will that his word was to be accepted without question. Maybe hammer the lesson in when they got back home. He stopped on the first step up to the road, gazing up at the stars.

‘Angelus, tell me… please… sir. We’re always taking tarts, why not her?’ She hung limp from his hand like a bedraggled rag doll.

‘Because she’ll be missed.’

‘Her? She’s nobody, for Christ’s sake.’

Angelus gave Will his blackest look. ‘She is not “nobody”, you stupid boy. She is someone who half the men and a fair few of the women are all too aware of, and she would be missed. This isn’t London. And if you swear at me again, boy, shout, or so much as hint that you think it doesn’t matter about attracting attention, I will drag you into that pub, turn you over my knee and spank you till you sob. Then we’ll see how much attention you like.’

Will glared at him, jaw set, and actually hauled Polly up a little more, strengthening his grip. ‘Always has to be your way, doesn’t it. I get thumped for leaving a spot of blood on the pavement, but you’ve killed right out in the open and not cared – I’ve seen you do it.’

‘Yes, I have, once in a long while, when I judge it is appropriate to do so. Which means doing it for something good, something worthwhile – something to remember on the five hundred nights in between when we have to be cautious. Not a raddled, provincial dolly-mop.’

Will’s hold on the girl’s arm seemed a little less secure. ‘Oh.’ She giggled drunkenly, rolling her head against his lapel, leaving a smear of drool.

‘For God’s sake, Will, how many times do I have to explain these things to you?’

‘You never explained it like that before.’

He had explained. Surely he had? ‘Yes I did, only you weren’t paying attention as usual.’

Will shoved the girl off angrily, a sneer of disgust on his face. She bounced against the pier of the bridge, clutching at the slime-coated stones, head lolling, a draggled yellow lock swaying in front of bleary eyes as she giggled.

‘So what do I do now?’ Will asked helplessly.

Angelus sighed. It was growing late, but the family needed to eat. It took long hours, luck and skill to scour somewhere so respectable, but food could be found – an out of place farmhand trying his luck far from home, a flighty maid who everyone would think had run off with her fancy, a tramp sleeping under a hedge. The people nobody would miss. He looked at Will’s face, staring up at him miserably but with absolute confidence that somehow he would make everything right.

‘Oh bring her along,’ he said wearily. ‘We’ll dump her in the mill pond in a couple of days and they’ll think she fell in when she was drunk.’

Will hooted and grabbed for the girl. ‘Come on, deary.’ With a shake of his head he changed to demon face, still grinning impishly. The girl’s eyes widened in horror, shocked sober for the fraction of a second it took Will to plunge his fangs into her throat. Angelus watched impassively as Will drank, deep swift pulls of her heart blood, enough to slide her into unconsciousness within seconds. He was getting good at that – could pacify a kill within half a minute now and very seldom had to be thrashed for getting blood on his collar. Will pulled out, smirking, and smacked his lips.

‘I suppose you’re drunk now.’

‘Better than paying for it.’ Will swiped his mouth clean. ‘See, I knew you could make an exception – we’re vampires, mate. More than that, you’re Angelus. The vampire. We can do anything we want!’

Angelus looked at him tiredly. Was I ever that young? he wondered. And abruptly he covered the ground between them, yanked Will forward and kissed him, lapping the rich smears of blood from between needle-sharp teeth, feeling the soft lips velvet against his own. There was a gentle plump as Will dropped the girl in the mud. At last Angelus pulled back and considered him carefully.

‘Did you actually polish your boots at all today?’ he demanded.

‘Give the boy a chance,
Give the boy a chance.
I know it will be better far to give the boy a chance.’

He couldn’t get the line of the chin quite right. It kept coming out too hard, not the soft, baby curves of youth but, perhaps, how the boy would look in five year’s time, a young man grown – except of course, that would not happen.

Angelus tore the spoiled sheet off and began afresh. He tried to concentrate on how James would look walking beside him in the night. Soft fair hair almost silver in the moonlight, little round toed shoes tapping lightly beside his as he skipped from one moonbeam to another. If you froze blood could you make it crystalline, coated in sugar, something a child might accept to suck?

A clucking sound of disapproval came from where Darla sat on the far side of the parlour, which he ignored. They had already had the only conversation of the evening he intended to have with her – a narrow-eyed glare from her, a cheerful ‘Still here, darling? I thought you were going back to London,’ from him.

He tilted his sketch-book to catch the light better and swore as yet again the chin began to go wrong. He set his pencil down, looking inward, conjuring up the vision of James to fix it more firmly in his mind. Young, soft, perfect, a little angel. He wondered how the boy might react the first time he showed him his demon face. You could never tell with children. Sometimes there was confusion, often terror, once or twice awe. But if he was really lucky there would be curiosity, and the revelation of an innocence so pure it could not begin to conceive of the demon.

There was a stir of skirts swaying, a crunch of paper, and he snapped his head up with a snarl. ‘Darla!’

‘I’m not a mummy,’ Dru said very sadly. From across the room, Darla was giving him a withering look for his mistake. Dru stooped and scooped up one of the discarded drawings from the drift scattered at his feet, tilting her head as she studied it. Then she pressed it to her breast, rocking. ‘He misses his real daddy sometimes,’ she said.

Of course, Ashworth was only James’s stepfather. ‘What was his real father like, precious?’

She looked at him, a little surprised. ‘He was a priest. You pretended to be a priest once, but you aren’t a real father.’

A priest. Angelus felt himself begin to grin. It made enormously satisfying sense – the children of the choir school would be recruited from the sons of clergymen and those who worked for the cathedral. And then, when Mr Grayling had died, his widow had married the cathedral organist to provide security and a father for her boy. It would never have been a love match.

‘His father was a priest, and you weren’t a priest, and his father was a priest, and her father came as a priest, and she was born in a church, creeping out of her little nest of silk and rough, rough wool. So scratchy it was on her delicate new skins. But oh her wings!’ Dru turned on him a face of pure joy. ‘Black and blood red. Admirable, my mummy used to call them. Admirable Lord Nelson. Brown ones and blue ones and the ones like spotted snow. But you want the yellow ones, don’t you, Angelus.’

‘How did the priest die, Dru?’

She let the paper slip from her hands, so that it drifted to the ground in weary zig-zags and then settled. ‘An iron band at his throat.’ She touched her neck with both hands. ‘And at his heart.’ The hands dipped to press against her chest. ‘So tight that they couldn’t hear the screams.’

That might mean several things – perhaps an apoplexy, or heart failure. No point asking Dru when it had happened, she never had any concept of time. She was looking at him with a sparkle in her eyes now. ‘But I can hear him scream!’ She stretched her arms out, the dark drapery of her dress expanding like wings. ‘We all scream for you, don’t we, Angelus. We die silently, but in our hearts we scream.’

‘Oh you scream, my precious. And what of him? Can you see what will happen to him?’

She nodded solemnly. ‘Always. Can I help, Daddy?’

‘Yes, yes of course, precious. You’re always Daddy’s helpful little girl. Can you tell me how long he has, before… before his change?’ He hoped she would understand what he meant, but he didn’t actually want to say ‘until his voice breaks’ whilst Darla was in the room.

‘Someone wants to take him, make him stronger, make him… White wings on a throne of jet, seeking for him with eyes as red as… red. I can’t see… It’s dark where he is… He… he should emerge, break out of his cocoon, but he won’t. Something won’t let him. He…’ Her brow furrowed. ‘Should be spinning up, together in the sunbeams. Moths don’t do that – they flutter and beat at the window and ask to be let in, but if you lift the shade they only burn themselves in the flame.’

‘And what is his name? This boy Angelus has wasted half the night sketching,’ Darla said dryly from across the room. She was craning forward towards the nearest fallen papers and Angelus abruptly wished he had chosen to draw anywhere else except the parlour.

Dru tilted her head again. ‘He’s called “Will”, grandmother. I thought you knew that by now.’

And Angelus silently blessed the tangled skeins of Dru’s mind as Darla sat back with pursed lips.

‘Yes, well perhaps instead of drawing him all night you would consider spending an hour with the original training him. Where is he? Do you even know?’

‘He’s in his room,’ Angelus said, quickly leaning forward to grab the drawings before Darla took it into her head to examine one more closely. He briefly wondered where Will actually was. It hardly mattered. ‘He’s learning the fourth incantation, if he knows what’s good for him.’

Darla flicked a suspicious glance at him, but said nothing.

‘I’m going out.’

‘Where?’ Darla demanded.

‘Hunting.’ He tucked the sketches into his portfolio and snapped the little lock shut. ‘We vampires sometimes do.’

‘Drusilla, darling, come and give me your opinion on these hats,’ Darla trilled at once, holding open the pages of the ladies’ paper she had ostensibly been flicking through all night. He eyed her suspiciously as Dru tripped over and their heads bent together, but he couldn’t think of any real reason to interfere.

‘Don’t stay up too late, Drusilla,’ he said firmly. ‘You’re to be in bed by four.’

‘Yes Daddy.’

‘And make sure Will is as well.’

‘Yes Daddy. May I tuck him in and read him a bedtime story?’

‘Of course,’ Darla said, flipping over a page and pointing something out to Dru, ‘we wouldn’t want William staying up too late studying – very bad for his health.’

Angelus shut the door on them. It was cold in the hall, away from the island of warmth around the fire, and a keen little draft tugged at his ankles as he walked down the passage.

In the kitchen, Will was lounging in one of the spoke-backed wooden chairs, feet propped up on the table, a book resting on his lap. He tilted his head back and acknowledged Angelus without actually getting up. Angelus eyed him coldly in the hope it would elicit a response, and when it didn’t he tapped Will’s boots sharply until he took them down.

‘Fetch my outdoor things.’

‘What, the coat and hat you walked right past to get here?’ Will skipped out of range of Angelus’s cuff, took a route on the far side of the table and vanished through the door. Angelus examined his nails moodily. The room wasn’t as pleasant as the parlour but it was warm, and Will had set a tea-kettle on the little range. A plate covered in crumbs lay forgotten on the rag-hearthrug, next to the dark stain left from when they had moved in.

Will clattered back in, loaded with overcoat, hat, gloves and scarf. ‘Want me to come with you?’

‘No.’ He shrugged his overcoat on, then picked up Will’s book and read the title – The Antiquities, Mythology and Entomology of Western England by the Rev. V. S. Cockaigne. ‘Is this really the most useful way you can find to pass your time?’

‘It was in the parlour. All my books are back ho— in town.’

‘Well then you can…’ Angelus ran his eye over the kitchen, seeking inspiration.

‘Can what? I’ve cleaned the whole house. There’s enough coal in to last a month. I’ve polished all your footwear, and that includes your carpet-slippers. If your clothes are brushed any more they’ll go into holes. You don’t want me doing anything for Darla. If I spend the night with Dru you accuse me of playing. And you won’t let me go out with you.’

Angelus shook his head in irritation, tugging on his gloves. ‘Well find something more useful to do. You have got to learn how to fill your nights – we live for eternity, William, we have to fill it with purpose.’ It sounded pompous, as so much of what he said to Will seemed to do, and Will was staring at him blankly, perhaps with a little sneer. He wasn’t even four years old – he did not understand. Or worse, he thought that he did. But Angelus could not think of how to explain. ‘Well what do you normally do?’

‘Whatever you tell me to, sir. And when you can’t think of anything you ask Harold, or Lucius, or Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all – only none of them are here, are they. Can I take Dru out? Not that there’s anywhere to go in this dump but we could at least go for a walk.’

‘No.’ The last thing he wanted was Will and Dru turning up in the cathedral close. Will sighed but nodded, and he would obey – he’d had the consequences of going out without permission too firmly flogged into him for Angelus to have any fears on that score.

‘So do something useful, yes,’ Angelus said again.

Will just stared at him.

‘Can you play the piano?’

‘What? No.’

‘Yes you can, I’ve heard you playing for Dru.’

‘Wasn’t me.’

‘Who was it then? Dru’s dollies?’

‘I can’t play the piano.’

Angelus turned his back on him and left.

The panes in the window were old, the glass sagged and smeared with time, so his view was obscured, as if he were watching through a mist and from much further off, but he could see enough.

Books of music on the shelves, manuscript paper on the battered fly-leaf table, and against the longest wall there was just space for the upright piano. It was black, heavily carved, with a candle in only one of the pair of brackets, just enough to throw a golden glow on the earnest young face and set a shimmer of life in his curls as he bent over the keyboard.

Scales. Steadily advancing and retreating as they had been for the last half hour, and still the boy showed no sign of tiredness or boredom. It was as if with each reiteration he found something new to perfect in the notes. Not hammered, not drummed out, but rippling from his fingers as living and thrilling as a heartbeat. Angelus ran his tongue slowly over dry lips, smoothed down the stiff cloth of his coat.

In the small room at the back the boy’s mother would still be sewing, as she was every night. Across the table from her, Ashworth himself would be sitting, bent over papers that he studied every evening, scanning them as if they contained some great secret, every now and then his hand raising the pencil to scratch a furious mark, often as not only to cross it out, frowning, a few moments later. Some day soon Angelus must get hold of those papers to find out what they were.

The great cathedral clock started to chime the quarter. Every night at exactly this time, as the clock tolled the last note of the quarter hour, James would stop playing. Sometimes he would go through to the little parlour and kiss his mother, bid a solemn ‘Good night’ to his stepfather and obediently head straight up the stairs to bed. And sometimes – sure enough, Ashworth’s face appeared at the parlour door. But tonight the boy did not stop immediately. His face frowning still with concentration he played on steadily. Note after perfect rippling note.

‘It is time, James.’

‘Yes papa.’ The boy withdrew his hands, staring at the keyboard afterwards as if his fingerprints could still be seen there, little ovals on each ivory key. Then he pushed himself up and turned to his stepfather so Angelus could no longer see his expression.

Ashworth was fussing, wrapping a blue scarf about the boy’s throat, enquiring if he needed a cool drink. ‘The cold air is good for you, it builds your lungs, but you must keep your throat warm. Not too warm or it will relax.’

‘Yes papa.’

‘Have you got your gloves, my darling?’ his mother asked.

‘Never mind those, they don’t matter. Hurry now, James.’ Ashworth steered him to the door.

His mother clasped her arms around her waist, as if holding herself close. ‘Good luck, my darling.’

James flashed her a smile of pure sweetness, the smile that Angelus had drawn and redrawn. Ashworth pushed him through the door, tearing him from his mother as she settled his cap on his head. Angelus slipped back, deeper into the shadows.

‘Don’t wait up.’

‘No.’ His mother kissed James and again whispered, ‘Good luck,’ then withdrew into the house.

Ashworth rested his hand on James’s shoulder. ‘You must do your best. Your very best.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Yes papa, I meant, yes papa.’

Ashworth looked at James for a moment, as if about to say something more, and James looked back at him politely, waiting, but Ashworth only nodded and started to hurry down the path, past the little hedge of lavender bushes and onto the gravel walk that crossed the close.

On the first occasion they had gone to the party at the deanery, where James had sung to a circle of simpering females and bored looking men. On the second it had been the back room of the Three Feathers inn and an audience of gentlemen farmer’s and their not-quite-lady wives. The third time they had walked all the way across town to the tin hut where the Methodists sat on hard wooden chairs in an atmosphere steaming with the tea urn and unwashed farm hands, who gawped whilst James transported their minds to a world far beyond their own pettiness.

Now, as Ashworth once again steered James along the frozen streets, Angelus followed with a black heart. That a creature as delicate and rare as James should be displayed before these oafs and provincial clodpolls was unbearable. When Ashworth’s death came, it would be slow, and as he screamed he would be taught just what he was paying for.

Angelus matched his speed to theirs, pacing behind them beat for beat. They moved up hill, to where the largest houses were. Stone built, with fiercely polished brass-work on the doors and lights blazing from every window. Ashworth hesitated, checked a piece of paper in his pocket and then squared his shoulders.

‘Here we are.’

‘Yes papa.’ James’s voice was low, his eyes downcast, and his little hands, twisted in front of him, looked cold and white.

‘Do do your best, James. This is so very important. If Mr Harmonia likes you then it could lead to great things – very great things. Maybe even London.’

‘Yes papa.’

Angelus carried on slowly past them, his steps echoing hollowly on the cobbles so that Ashworth turned and watched him uneasily for a second, before turning back to the door. Angelus slipped into the shadow of a small, bow-walled church, its black flint walls a dark vacuum in the white Georgian stonework of the street.

Harmonia. He had heard the name before but couldn’t recall where.

Ashworth knocked.

The door opened and a tall and impeccably dressed manservant sneered down his nose at what he saw. ‘Yes?’

‘How do you do?’ Ashworth said in a rush. ‘My name is Ashworth, organist of the Cathedral. I am here to see Mr Harmonia.’ The last part sounded more like a question than a statement and the servant’s sneer deepened.

‘Mr Harmonia is not at home.’

‘But it has all been arranged! I wrote to him when I heard he was here!’ Ashworth flapped one hand, miming writing, as if this was somehow helpful, the other gripped James’s shoulder.

‘I have not been made aware of any arrangements.’

‘No, but… can’t you please ask him. The boy has been prepared very carefully.’

The servant’s gaze travelled to James and back. ‘How regrettable that there has been a misunderstanding,’ the servant said calmly. ‘Mr Harmonia is not at home.’

‘Wait!’ Ashworth actually put out a hand to prevent the door closing. ‘He sent a man – to evensong, to listen to my boy. He can tell Mr Harmonia about James. He gave me his card.’

The servant paused, one eyebrow raised, whilst Ashworth frantically searched his pockets.

‘Here!’ He held a card up triumphantly. ‘Give that to Mr Harmonia. He came and listened, and said that Mr Harmonia would be interested in a private performance. Tell Mr Harmonia that this is James Grayling. The boy Mr Aurelius wanted him to hear.’ Ashworth beamed, the servant took the card with a puzzled frown, and Angelus dropped his head back against the knobbly flints of the little church and tried not to laugh out loud.

‘I see. I will make enquiries.’ The servant held the door open the barest crack and Ashworth, his face white, edged inside. James followed him trustingly.

‘Wait here,’ the servant commanded, and then the door closed. Angelus listened to the servant’s footsteps retreating over a hard surface, and then James’s voice, sounding very small, muffled by the door. ‘Doesn’t he want to hear me sing, papa?’

‘Yes of course he does. It is just a silly misunderstanding with the servant.’ Ashworth cleared his throat. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

‘Yes papa.’

Angelus considered for a moment, turning over the possibilities, then he looked up, judged the height of the dark flint walls of the church, and made a clean leap twenty foot up to the roof. He worked his way back along it, looking down on Harmonia’s house beside him.

Many tall windows overlooked a rigidly formal garden, stiff in its winter tidiness. From the first floor, light spilled out, and with it came the sound of singing. Strange singing. Not quite a soprano, not quite a countertenor, a high but full, rounded tone the like of which Angelus had never heard in England before.

‘Va tacito e nascosto, quand’ avido è di preda, l ‘astuto cacciatore.’

It was a sound that stirred in him memories of sultry Italian nights and the fierce pointless feuding of the claques. Of a time when he had seen a long-stalked prey stabbed by a rival Tenor just before opening night. And again something nagged at the back of his mind about the name Harmonia.

Other lights flickered through the cracks in the shutters below stairs, but the ground floor was dark and presumably deserted apart from Ashworth and James. He jumped down into the garden, gravel crunching under his feet, the chill sweep of box trees stiff with frost brushing at his legs. There was a pair of glass doors in front of him, giving onto the garden from what looked like a small breakfast room. On a whim he stretched his hand out, palm flat, feeling for the resistance, the push of rejection that barred him from any home.

Well, wasn’t that interesting.

He smiled to himself and smashed his hand down on the door handle. The flimsy metal gave instantly and he swung the door open and strode inside.

He quickly removed gloves, hat and coat, hanging them over a convenient chair, and straightened the rest of his dress. Then he walked calmly out into the house.

There was a hallway of plaster painted to look like marble and gold leaf, sparsely furnished but lit by a full chandelier of candles, and sitting against one wall on uncomfortable looking chairs were James and Ashworth. Angelus paused and Ashworth shot to his feet.

‘Mr Aurelius!’ He seemed incapable of anything more, standing wringing his hands, but Angelus couldn’t care less because James had lifted his head and was looking straight at him from under long lashes. That perfect little face, a soft blush from the cold night air just creeping across his cheek, the fine hair seeming to glow in the light of the chandelier. He looked at Angelus for one long, wonderful second, and then he dropped his gaze.

Angelus cleared his throat and strode straight across to the staircase.

‘Mr Aurelius!’ he heard Ashworth call as he climbed. ‘There seems to have been a misunderstanding. If you could just speak to Mr Harmonia for us. Please, sir!’

Angelus turned the corner of the landing and closed his eyes for a second, clenching and unclenching his fists.

When he opened them a servant was coming towards him, bearing a tray of drinks and a puzzled frown. ‘Who are—?’

‘Ah, at last, a man could die of thirst.’ Angelus snatched a champagne flute and emptied it. ‘Well show me through, man. I don’t want to wait out here all night.’

‘Er, no, of course not, sir, I do beg your pardon.’ And the servant held the door beside him open, not demurring when Angelus took another glass in passing.

‘E chi è a mal far disposto, non brama che si veda l’inganno del suo cor.’

The strange voice twisted through the air, seeming to writhe on the hot, foetid atmosphere of the room. Everything was slickly white and gold, the walls and ceiling festooned with fat plaster cherubs dangling bunches of grapes, their undersides streaked with lines of soot from the guttering candles. And it was crowded with men, rank sweat prickling at the stiff collars of their evening suits. They stirred and shifted continuously as they stood, fidgeting with their champagne glasses, with collar and cuffs, as if not one of them were entirely comfortable, but nor could any of them take their eyes off the youth in the centre of the room.

He stood in the swell of the grand piano, tall, barrel-chested, ludicrously dressed in a skimpy tunic and gilded laurel wreath, one hand resting lightly on the ebony wood, the other raised as if to declaim as he sang. But his heavy, kohl smeared eyes kept returning to the man seated before him, each time with a downward tilt that parodied coyness, his red-smeared cheeks resembling a blush. And the man in the chair shifted, spreading his legs a little wider, his eyes feasting on what was before him.

Higher and higher the notes soared, higher than nature should ever permit.

‘Va tacito e nascosto, quand’ avido è di preda, l ‘astuto cacciatore.’

The youth threw his head back as he concluded and the audience broke into instant applause. Apparently oblivious, the youth pouted and flounced over to the chair, making the filmy material of his tunic bounce.

‘Ah, my Pedrolino,’ the man in the chair reached up and patted his cheek. ‘Bravo, bravissimo.’

The youth’s pout deepened and he stuck one leg forward, as if striking a pose. ‘I need a proper orchestra. That fool plays like cobbling shoes.’ His voice was simpering, high as a girl’s, and rose almost to a shriek at the end. ‘And they fidget. How can I create art when they fidget!’

The man only smiled indulgently and patted his cheek again. ‘You shall sing again in a little while and they shall be still as stones.’ He turned and glared about him. ‘Won’t they?’ And as he said it his eyes flashed red.

The others froze under his glare, and then there was a chorus of assent, of wonder at the perfection of the performance, of assurances that Mr Harmonia provided the very best of entertainments and they would not so much as breathe through the rest of the concert if they might only be permitted to remain to marvel. Harmonia smiled. Pedrolino only pouted deeper. ‘I need a horn.’

‘Of course you do.’

The butler appeared and threaded his way through the crowd. Angelus stretched his ears, slipping a little closer through the jostling ranks of men, always keeping his eyes unfocused, his face blank, so that none should feel the force of his gaze. Nobody so much as glanced in his direction.

‘The cathedral organist is here, sir,’ the butler said softly. ‘With James Grayling.’

Harmonia inclined his ear, and as the butler spoke a flickering, fat tongue slid out from between Harmonia’s teeth and darted back in.

‘Who is this Grayling?’ Pedrolino sneered, his lower lip stuck out in what he possibly considered a pretty pout. ‘What do you want with him?’

‘Now, now, you must not be jealous, Pedrolino. Come, sit on Papà’s knee.’

The youth scowled for a second, then plumped himself down, picking moodily at the hem of his tunic.

‘We’ll make them wait a little longer, I think,’ Harmonia said. He set one finger on Pedrolino’s thigh and traced a little circle. ‘Make them wait.’ Another little circle. ‘Then tell them to go away.’ Pedrolino smiled. And as Harmonia’s hand drifted higher, under the flimsy material of the tunic, Angelus could see that there was nothing there. Pedrolino was as smooth and featureless as a young child, only the shiny scar tissue showing what had been done to him.

‘And you, my Pedrolino, must sip some water and get ready for your next aria. Very little sips.’ Harmonia patted Pedrolino’s thigh and Pedrolino rose with a self-satisfied smirk and flounced off. Harmonia leant towards the butler. ‘Tell them to come back tomorrow night.’

‘Very good, sir. But Ashworth gave me this.’ And Angelus saw his own card again, this time presented on a silver salver. ‘Ashworth claimed that this gentleman attended evensong on your behalf.’

Harmonia raised his eyebrows and turned slightly. ‘Cotesia, did you give Ashworth your card? You were not told to do so.’

‘No, Mr Harmonia.’ One of the men worked his way through the crowd – tall, thin, and with eyes that glowed red and yet still looked cold and black. ‘I listened to the boy and then came away. I did—’ He cleared his throat and Angelus fought down the growl in his chest – it was the coughing idiot from evensong. ‘I did not speak to anyone.’

Harmonia waved at him dismissively and picked up the card. ‘Well, well – Angelus of Aurelius.’ There was instant silence. Harmonia turned the card over, examining it closely. ‘So, he is in the city and he wishes me to know it. Cotesia, do we know of this Angelus?’ He mispronounced it, as if the Scourge of Europe were to be confused with a devotion of the church.

Cotesia cleared his throat again. ‘Angelus of Aurelius, Mr Harmonia.’ The idiot mirrored Harmonia’s pronunciation. ‘He is the Master’s grandchilde and considered highly favoured by him. He became notorious for displays of violence and adopted the name of the Scourge of Europe, but he hasn’t done anything worthy of note for years.’ He sneered. ‘The last I heard of him was in sixty-seven when he killed a few nuns.’

‘Ah these vampires, always flamboyant. ’ Harmonia tossed the card back onto the salver. ‘Well we will not worry unduly about one vampire. Even one of the Master’s most favoured.’

There was a burst of sycophantic laughter, and Harmonia dismissed the butler with a wave. But whilst the others sniggered about how one became a most favoured amongst the Aurelians, Harmonia crooked a finger and Cotesia bent down to him. ‘Find him. Find out what the Master wants,’ Harmonia hissed, and the man nodded and slipped away.

Harmonia sprawled back in his chair, a small smile playing on his lips, his pink eyes flipping lazily around the room. Released from the immediate need to be sycophantic the others had settled into a babble of conversation. Glasses chinked, the champagne was refilled, and the heat and noise in the room began to make Angelus consider leaving. He circulated slowly, eavesdropping on as many conversations as possible, always keeping a distance from Harmonia. Then on the far side of the room he found himself face to face with Pedrolino, who glared at him, took a deep swig of champagne, and demanded ‘Who are you?’

‘Oh, just a friend of Harmonia’s’

‘I have never seen you before.’

‘No, well I’m not a very good friend. So, tell me, how long have you sung for him?’

‘Do you not know who I am?’ It was said loud enough that a couple of others turned in their direction. One of them was Cotesia.

‘An interesting question,’ Cotesia said, and he deftly removed Pedrolino’s glass while he eyed Angelus.

‘Ehilà, non fate così!’

‘Oh, I didn’t take it, Master Pedrolino, indeed no,’ Cotesia said smoothly. ‘Because you aren’t allowed champagne, so you can’t have had it for me to take.’ He ignored Pedrolino’s glare and tilted his head as he examined Angelus. ‘So, Mr…? I issue all of Mr Harmonia’s invitations, how unforgivable that I can’t recall your name.’ He coughed.

‘Smith,’ Angelus said. ‘James Smith. Is that the time? Well, it’s been most—’ A heavy hand clamped onto his shoulder and he risked a glance. A fat thug, about the size of a prize-fighter, looked back at him impassively with crimson glowing eyes above long tusks. Angelus sighed and punched him.

The demon grunted.

Someone seized Angelus’s arm, twisting it down before he could get in a second blow. Someone else took the other one. The demon in front of Angelus drew his fist back and pounded it into Angelus’s stomach, an explosion of pain driving up into him. Another came from behind. Then another from the front.

Angelus was vaguely aware of squeals as people retreated, of shouts, of Pedrolino shrieking with outrage.

Every punch felt like the hit of a flail. As they came down again and again it was like being in a threshing machine. His belly was a furnace of agony, his hearing fading, his sight turning black with the pain.

As a blow crashed against his back he stumbled forward, tipping the demons holding him off balance. Angelus exploded upwards with a roar, changing into his true face, somersaulting over the demon behind him, seeing red eyes and long tusks flash below.

He landed to find himself staring at a gape mouthed Pedrolino.

‘Stake him,’ a voice said loudly but calmly.

Pedrolino screamed and smashed his champagne glass against Angelus’s temple.

Angelus grabbed Pedrolino’s wrist and twisted, the jagged stump of the glass dropping neatly into his own hand even as he twisted Pedrolino round and clamped him to his chest. He thrust the broken glass at Pedrolino’s throat.

The room froze into silence.

‘Stand back, all of you,’ Angelus shouted.

He had only to flick the glass slightly and it would slice Pedrolino’s gullet.

Angelus was facing a rank of demons, heads lowered, long tusks flaring up at him from snarling mouths, red eyes darting from side to side as they searched for an opening.

Pedrolino squirmed, gasping like a landed fish.

‘Stand back!’

The demons exchanged uncertain glances, then Cotesia barked ‘Do as he says’ and they shuffled back a few inches.

‘Harmonia?’ Angelus called.

‘Oh I am here, vampire. And I have a message for your Master.’

‘I’m nobody’s minion! And if you want your Pedrolino’s throat intact, you’ll—’ He just caught the flicker of movement from the corner of his eye and jerked sideways, the crossbow bolt thudding into the wall behind him.

‘Don’t you people understand what a hostage is!’ He bowled Pedrolino at the crowd and leapt for the window. Then the familiar sensation of rushing wind and splintering glass surrounded him, slashing his skin even as he fell, and finally the cobblestones jarring through every bone. He coughed blood and staggered to his feet.

‘And I want my bloody hat and coat back, you bastards,’ he yelled up at the house. Nobody bothered to reply.

The little window was dark. He had known it would be dark and yet still he felt a pang of disappointment – anger that James had not chanced to waken and look out to see the gibbous moon hanging fat and low in the sky. Though of course he had not, such a well-behaved little boy would never think of doing something so naughty. He would have gone straight to bed on returning home, to lie quietly in his little cot all night, dreaming the sweetly innocent dreams of childhood.

Angelus snarled. He wanted to rip all the flowers from the silly prim little gardens, scatter the gravel across the lawns, snatch the jackdaws from their nests on the cathedral’s pinnacles and smear their blood and feathers across the clergymen’s doors. He should never have returned yet again to the close. Yet here he was, drifting about like a lovesick swain whilst the frost bit into the smarting cuts the glass had left on his cheeks, even as they healed over.

He turned abruptly away, striding out, seeking some reason for being abroad so late. The pubs were all closed now, the citizens soundly asleep, even the owl that had been calling mournfully from across the water meadows was gone. He needed a kill. The bloodier the better, something slow and vicious so he could lie fat in his bed and forget.

He was dragged from his thoughts by a dark figure appearing at the far side of the close, ducking out from one of the small houses where the minor canons lived and pulling on his gloves as he went. A young man, from his stride, though hunched against the cold, dressed in something close to clerical black and yet he wasn’t quite a clergyman. He seemed vaguely familiar. There was nothing guilty in his appearance, nothing remarkable in his behaviour except that he should be abroad so late. But it was unusual, and Angelus told himself that the unusual provided the cracks through which he could insinuate himself, that must be why his senses were tugging at him to investigate.

He strolled over and began to follow, ten paces behind.

The man was instantly aware of him – no fool this one – he never looked back but his stride lengthened, releasing his hands from his pockets to swing readily at his side, standing up taller. Not a local man then – it never occurred to the yokels that there might be anything dangerous in the night. A small place this, a comfortable place, where folk checked for friends, not hastened from the unknown, but not this one.

Angelus still followed, ten paces behind for every turn, every time the young man crossed the street, pausing when he paused, moving on when he did. Footfalls exactly timed to drop half a heartbeat later than the man’s own, and when the man cleared his throat, so did Angelus.

At last the young man stopped, clenched his fists, moved forwards a pace and stopped again, spinning round.

‘Can I help you?’ His voice was low, pitched with due consideration for the peace of the neighbours, but also fierce with unaccustomed fear.

Angelus stopped and considered the face under the low-pulled hat. ‘Mr Camberwell.’ The assistant organist.

Angelus moved slowly forward. Camberwell was healthy, his stance vigorous. Lean, the scant muscles of one who spent his days with notes and keyboard, but not incapable for all that. The dress was the product of a very small salary, and the missing button on his coat, the small stain on one sleeve, showed he lodged with a landlady, with never a wife or mother to care for him. But his gaze was steady, his eye bright, no hint of drink or tobacco on his breath, his scent sweet and clean, with just that little spice of nervousness to make things interesting.

‘Do you remember me, Mr Camberwell?’

Camberwell frowned, peering at Angelus, and then in an instant his anxiety and puzzlement changed to cold contempt. ‘What do you want, sir?’

Angelus held up a hand placatingly. ‘We met last week, after evensong.’

‘I recollect it, sir. You were talking to Mr Ashworth.’ Camberwell’s gentle green eyes flashed dangerously and for a moment Angelus wondered if he were going to sprout horns and a tail and prove that half the city was in fact populated with demons. Demons and angels.

‘Quite right, Mr Camberwell. My name is Aurelius.’ He held his hand out.

‘Indeed. You will excuse me, Mr Aurelius, it is very late and very cold.’ And pointedly ignoring the hand, Camberwell turned to go.

‘Please, Mr Camberwell, I do not know what I can possibly have done to perturb you, but it is vital we speak.’

Camberwell spun round again, his voice raised well above a polite level. ‘You have not perturbed me, but I will thank you to leave me alone, sir. You may tell Mr Harmonia that I have no interest in speaking to him, nor any of his… his people. I am not interested!’

Ah, so Harmonia’s pigs had been snouting in more than one trough, had they? This was becoming more and more engrossing.

‘Mr Camberwell, I do assure you that I have nothing at all to do with the man Harmonia. Quite the opposite, which is why I really must talk to you.’

And that got Camberwell’s attention. He goggled at Angelus for a little, then slowly rubbed a hand across his eyes. As if wishing to ensure his sight was clear. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You did indeed see me talking to Mr Ashworth in the cathedral, but I am not connected to Mr Harmonia. In fact it is precisely because there is a danger of Ashworth speaking to Harmonia that I have become involved.’

Camberwell’s eyes narrowed. ‘You represent a rival?’

‘No, Mr Camberwell. The Dean is concerned—’

‘The Dean!’

‘Indeed, the Dean has asked that I make particular enquiries as to what is going on in this city. Discreetly, of course, but I will uncover everything.’

‘Oh good heavens!’ The young face in front of him collapsed in relief. ‘Oh the Dean knows. Oh that is wonderful. Oh Mr Aurelius!’ Camberwell seized his hand and pumped it vigorously, his lean, muscular musician’s fingers wrapping around Angelus’s. ‘Oh I cannot tell you how glad I am to hear that. I have been so concerned.’

Angelus smiled. ‘And I assure you I am here for no other reason than to help.’ He clapped Camberwell on the shoulder. ‘Now, let us get off the street. Are your lodgings close? Perhaps you would be kind enough to invite me in.’

‘Of course! Of course!’ Camberwell was beaming as he produced a set of keys and led the way up a little side street, then, peering at the lock in the moonlight, opened the door. ‘Please do come in, Mr Aurelius.’

The door gave straight onto a tiny stone-floored parlour, almost filled with a small upright piano. There was a rag rug before the empty hearth, a square clock ticking loudly over the mantle. Camberwell lit a stub of candle left on the battered gate-leg table and politely gestured for Angelus to take the only chair, settling himself on the piano stool, seeming to turn with regret away from the keyboard itself.

Angelus ignored the chair, standing over Camberwell, toying with the small things in his trouser pocket. ‘Tell me about James Grayling.’

Camberwell rubbed his hands together. ‘So the Dean is having enquiries made! This is splendid news. I have been so very worried for poor James – and the other boys, too, naturally, but James especially. He has such talent, such promise as a musician. And that… that man has no proper care for him, no concern beyond his own selfish ambition.’ He slapped his knee furiously. ‘Do you know why he wants this? Let me tell you Mr Aurelius, it is no concern to see James do well. Oh never that – his jealousy wouldn’t permit him to concede his stepson is a musician of far, far greater worth than he will ever be. No, he hopes that James will be his way in, so that his own unspeakably dreary compositions have a chance of being performed. His famous concerto.’ Camberwell sneered. ‘He as good as confessed as much to me, before he realised I would have no part of his disgusting schemes. Let me tell you, Mr Aurelius, that I have applied for the post in Lincoln. I want no more of this place. I shall be rid of it. But what will happen to the boys once I am gone? I fear for them. Oh if only poor Mr Grayling were alive, how it would break his heart to know what use is being made of his son – what beastliness, what… exploitation! They are monsters, all of them.’ And again he crashed one fist emphatically down. ‘She should never have married him,’ he muttered, looking away.

So that was the way of it. Young Camberwell was carrying a torch for Mrs Ashworth. How very promising.

‘Mr Camberwell, you must understand that I can make no promises. However, if it were to be proved that the organist of the cathedral was misusing his influence over the boys, was encouraging private performances not sanctioned by the cathedral, or worse, well…’ He quirked a knowing smile. ‘You perhaps should not be over hasty to leave for Lincoln.’

Camberwell said nothing, frowning as he digested this information.

Angelus changed his tone to dismissive practicality. ‘Of course it is possible that Mr Ashworth himself is an innocent dupe in all this – the man Harmonia is notorious. The Dean needs evidence and without it we can proceed no further.’

Camberwell cleared his throat. ‘Exactly what sort of proof would you need, Mr Aurelius?’

‘What can you tell me?’

‘Harmonia approached me two weeks ago, through one of his creatures. A letter inviting me to perform for him. I was naturally keen to accept. I had never heard of Harmonia but you must understand that I am not a wealthy man, and it is quite understood I may take on private engagements if I can obtain them.’

Angelus nodded. ‘Have no fear, Mr Camberwell, you yourself are not under the slightest suspicion.’

Camberwell nodded, as one fortified by a clean conscience but nevertheless reassured that others too believed in him. ‘However, later a second note arrived, this one very different in tone. This time it was suggested I should bring the best of the boys with me – one of the most skilled choristers. Nothing was said plainly but it was clear that they meant James, and that my own chances of a fee would depend on my bringing him. And the suggestion of secrecy, I found intolerable. Naturally I refused.’

‘Did you tell anyone of your concerns?’

‘I told Ashworth.’

‘Ah!’ Angelus leaned back against the little mantle-piece, feeling it dig pleasurably into his shoulder.

‘I showed him both letters – he asked to keep them; I have them no longer, I’m afraid. He said he wished to consider the matter for a day or so – he said he was worried that the boys might have been approached directly, that there might be more to it than met the eye. He said he must be sure of all the facts before he told the Dean. He bound me to silence.’

‘I need hardly tell you, that he never has spoken to the Dean.’

‘The brute!’

‘Calm yourself, Mr Camberwell. James has other friends than just you.’

Camberwell nodded apologetically, turning a little towards his keyboard, as if longing to seek reassurance in it. He brushed a hand lightly over the ivory.

‘And James himself?’ Angelus asked.

‘James? He knows nothing, I am sure. He is an innocent in all this if there ever was one. He loves to sing but that is all. Surely, sir, you would never hold that against the boy?’

Angelus smiled.

‘James wants to be an organist, a composer – and who can doubt that he should? He has great talent, yet Ashworth will promise nothing, will arrange nothing, will not let him spend time on learning even the rudiments of composition. Do you know he is only allowed to practice the piano for half an hour a day? And Ashworth will scarcely let him near the cathedral organ at all. It is scandalous. There are scholarships, teachers who would gladly take him, I myself could…’ Camberwell dropped his gaze. ‘But nothing is done – everything must concentrate on his singing.’

‘Surely though, his singing—’

‘Is remarkable, oh do not mistake me, Mr Aurelius, I know he has a wonderful voice. But more than that, James is a musician in a way that many of the boys are not. He does not just perform music, he understands it. He feels it. He wishes to create it. That is his true talent, the thing God gave him to last when his treble is silent and forgotten.’

Angelus felt his hand closing around the knife in his pocket. ‘It seems to me, Camberwell, that if Ashworth undervalues his musicianship then you undervalue his voice. That voice is a thing of wonder, of beauty beyond value—’

‘And one day it will break.’

I could gut you, Angelus thought. I could tease the bowels from your body an inch at a time and force you to strum tunes upon them as you died.

‘Oh why can no-one see this?’ Camberwell cried. ‘All they hear is his voice, all they think about is his voice. Why can’t they understand that it is James who matters, not the sound he makes?’

Your blood dripping slowly across the ivory keys of your piano, your fingers flayed to the bone.

‘His voice cannot be preserved, his growing up cannot be prevented.’

You cannot hear music if you have no ears.

He stood and considered Will. ‘Come at me. Give me your best shot.’

Will’s eyes narrowed. ‘And then what? You slam me into the wall snarling “Don’t think you can ever get the better of me, boy”?’

‘No.’ Well, yes, probably – he’d have to control himself – but did the brat have to be so suspicious? It was normally a matter of preventing Will from charging at everything and anyone with fists flying.

‘Pretend I’m a Trecorde demon and I’ve just insulted Dru’s honour. What would you do?’

Will glared at him. ‘Come and fetch you, sir, because a three year old fledgling shouldn’t delude himself he can take on a Trecorde,’ he chanted.

Oh, right. Yes, well at least he had learnt that lesson. ‘Will you damn well just show me your best attack.’

Will raised his fists carefully and threw a punch, which Angelus allowed to connect, then Will gave a textbook two-three follow up and stood back. ‘How was that?’

‘Try again.’

The same three-part combination, with a look of grim determination on Will’s face. When he was done again he settled back, the heels of his boots clumping against the kitchen flagstones. He smelt of brass polish from where he’d been rubbing desultorily at the fender when Angelus came in, and his breath carried the sweet stickiness of something human. Probably jam, it was almost impossible to stop Will eating jam. In the warm, homely glow of the kitchen-range he looked even younger than he usually did.

‘Try something else. See if you can surprise me.’

Will hesitated and this time began on the other foot, with the high cross-cut Angelus had struggled half the winter to perfect. It was not quite faultless but it was close, and Will’s face was screwed up with concentration to achieve it.

Angelus folded his arms. He had a very slight throb in his jaw where Will had hit him. I’ve got Will, he thought. No minions, no Darla, Dru’s as likely to invite everyone to a tea-party as fight, so I’ve just got Will.

‘That’s very good. Exactly how I’ve taught you.’ He thought about Will fighting the Trecorde, his face lit with glee, inaccurate punches raining down in a flurry of incompetent fury that had somehow stunned the Trecorde into retreat. ‘Was that how you fought the Trecorde?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Liar. Come here.’

Will came slowly, a little sideways, slinking like a spaniel that has been too often whipped. Angelus took him and turned him round, back to his chest, laying his hands over Will’s arms, the way he had always taught him how to move. He felt Will relax under him, agile young muscles solid through the thin cloth of his shirt. Angelus moved him just a little off his balance.

‘What did you think about when you fought the Trecorde?’

Will turned his head to look up at him miserably. ‘Give over, sir. You already thrashed me for that, and it was ages ago.’

‘This isn’t about punishment, Will. I want to know what you thought about when you fought.’

Will frowned. Under his hands Angelus could feel Will shifting, unthinkingly trying to get back into a proper fighting stance. ‘I’m not sure, sir. About Dru, I suppose. And… maybe a bit about how spare you’d go when you found out.’

Angelus smiled. It was the first time Will had admitted he’d given a second thought to Angelus’s warning to avoid the Trecorde.

‘Did you think about your stance? Your balance?’

‘Yes.’

Angelus sighed and released him. ‘Good boy.’

And then very uncertainly Will turned and looked at him. ‘I did try, sir. I really did. But there’s so much to remember. And…’ He hung his head. ‘You’re always yelling at me to concentrate, but I just don’t know how to.’

Angelus set his hands on Will’s shoulders. ‘So what did you think about as you fought, truthfully?’

‘Nothing, sir. I don’t think I could think about anything. I was just fighting.’

And he’d been tiring when Angelus had come up, muscles beginning to forget their lessons, but Dru had said Will had been gone for half an hour. For the first time it occurred to Angelus that for a three year old fledgling to stand up to a Trecorde for half an hour was no little thing, and he had a flickering pang of regret that he had not paused for just a second to observe how Will was doing it.

‘Show me. Forget about everything I’ve ever taught you and just fight me like you fought the Trecorde.’

Will took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded, and Angelus took a step back. Will’s eyes narrowed slightly and Angelus imagined he was pretending he, Angelus, was the Trecorde. And then Will shook his head and as his fangs descended he charged.

It wasn’t graceful, it wasn’t model, but by God it was getting the job done. As Angelus dodged a fist with real intention behind it, he realised that whilst Will probably thought he was abandoning everything he had been taught his limbs were in fact perfectly following their lessons, only for once Will wasn’t concentrating on worrying about getting it right. Whatever he was thinking about was translating into whirling fists and feet so fast that…

A blow to his jaw like a carthorse kicking made Angelus stop analysing and start concentrating on fighting back. It was one thing to have a sense of pride in his boy’s achievements but he was damned if he would let him actually win.

Will was pushing him back, driving him into the corner between the dresser and the kitchen table, trying to hamper his movements.

Angelus swung low, sweeping out with his legs but Will jumped up, regaining his balance in a flash.

It gave Angelus time to roll sideways though and he came up and landed two blows on Will’s midriff before Will could counter them. Angelus followed it up with a punch intended for Will’s jaw but found it blocked and then another landed on his own side, catching one of the bruises Harmonia’s brutes had left. He gasped and Will dodged back, grinning from ear to ear.

‘What exactly is going on?’

They straightened up like guilty schoolboys, Angelus quickly tugging his waistcoat straight.

‘I should have thought that was obvious, Darla.’

‘You went out hunting, Angelus. Have you caught anything? Or did you spend all your time mooning around the cathedral and then come back to play with the boy?’

Angelus flailed between panic at her mention of the cathedral, the dire necessity of not making that apparent, and not giving in to retort to the obvious insult that he and Will were just playing.

‘I am testing the boy’s fighting skills – I would have thought even you would consider that important.’

‘It is his Latin and his hunting that needs attention. He is already well able to brawl as he shows with tedious frequency.’

‘Nothing wrong with my Latin,’ Will said.

Darla made an impatient gesture, as if flicking a fly away. ‘You evaded my question, boy, did you catch anything?’

‘When I need you to examine me on my hunting, Darla, I will ask you.’

Will was watching everything, wide eyed, and the little wretch was obviously scenting the air, his nostrils quivering as he picked up the waves of tension roiling between them.

‘So you did not.’

‘Hungry are you, darling? Not found anything yourself then?’

She smiled triumphantly. ‘That would be because this God-forsaken backwater is dry.’

‘Or because you lack the imagination to look outside the same tired tricks you’ve been using for twenty years.’ Any minute now she was going to hit him. ‘I have something in mind, it will take a couple more days but it is coming along nicely.’

‘Who?’ She snapped the word, head rearing back, frank disbelief in her face. She thought he was just stalling.

‘The assistant organist at the cathedral.’

As Angelus said it, Will gave a small gasp and Angelus wondered what that meant, but he couldn’t break his gaze from Darla, couldn’t let his concentration slip for a second.

‘The organist?’

‘The assistant organist. He is growing discontent with his position, in a day or so I shall organise an argument with his chief and the young man will be believed happy to leave for a better proposition elsewhere. Lincoln, as it happens.’ He smiled at her. ‘But then you clearly knew that, my dear, since you apparently know I’ve been hunting the cathedral.’ He waited, watching the play of carefully withheld emotion on her face, trusting that he was keeping his own hidden from her in return.

At last she sniffed, the sign that for now she was willing to concede a little ground – and that always meant she was planning something even deeper and more dangerous than ever.

‘I see, and why does testing the boy’s brawling come into this?’

‘Because there are Impresarios in the city.’

That shocked her, enough that she didn’t try to conceal it. Her eyes flew to Will and then back to him. ‘Oh Angelus, when did you find out?’

‘This evening.’

‘But we have no minions! No…’ Again she looked at Will.

‘What’s an Empress Ario?’

‘Quiet, Will.’ He took a step forward, looking down at her, setting a hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, darling, there are only a few, nothing I can’t handle.’

For a moment she let herself go, her eyes dipping closed, her frame quivering, and then her body snapped upright, her voice barking. ‘What, with that boy to help you? Don’t be a fool, Angelus. The two of you cannot take on a herd of Impresarios and there is an end to it. We will pack and leave tomorrow.’

‘And let the whole world know that Angelus of Aurelius can be driven off his chosen hunting ground by any stray demon that fancies to try? I think not, Darla.’

‘Yes, if needs must and you are foolish enough to have got us into this situation.’

‘You wouldn’t say that in London.’

‘And I hardly need remind you that we are not in London. Who cares if we concede this provincial dung-heap? If you fight them, you fight them alone, Angelus.’

‘He’s not alone, he’s got me!’ Will said.

‘Oh be quiet, boy. I warn you, Angelus, I will not risk my life for one of your posturings.’

He quirked a smile. ‘I never thought for one moment that you would, darling.’

‘So you think you can use that?’ She flicked her hand in Will’s direction.

‘Yes. Will and I will deal with them together, and you ladies need never set foot out of the house or look up from your embroidery frames.’

She glared at him for a moment, then turned her back, her heels making harsh little clipping steps on the kitchen flags as she headed for the door. ‘I shall send Dru out when it is all over,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘With a dustpan.’

‘Women,’ Angelus remarked.

As they approached the street, Angelus found himself reaching out, adjusting the set of Will’s collar, brushing aside a stray lock of his hair. ‘Try not to say anything except what I told you.’

‘Yes, Angelus, I know.’

‘And don’t go inside. Just deliver the message at the door, say your words and come away.’

‘Yeh. I know.’

‘Do you know your words?’

‘Yes!’

Angelus shot him a growl for being rude and forcibly prevented himself from asking Will to recite them again.

‘Very well, here we are. Straight down this street and it is the second door opposite, with the ornate lamp over the door.’

‘The blue door?’

‘Yes. What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing, sir. Just checking.’

‘Now pay attention. Your best mode of retreat is to walk calmly past the church. As soon as you hear them following you, jump up the far side, along that roof, down through the town…’ Will cocked his head, and Angelus realised with relief that he probably was concentrating for once, had managed to grasp some sense of the danger of the situation. ‘And if you’re ever unsure what to do just head east. Make them think the lair is somewhere in that direction. Clear?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘I’ll be waiting for you in the Shambles. If I’m not there – which shouldn’t happen but if it does – hole up wherever you can and stay put until I find you.’

Will nodded. His jaw was rather set.

‘You’ll be fine. Impresarios are strong but they’re slow.’

Will nodded again and made to move.

‘Wait.’ Angelus reached out and patted his collar again. ‘You’ll be fine.’

Will rolled his eyes and darted off, jogging to the end of the street. He paused, looking both ways, then crossed at a steady pace, going straight up the four steps to the door. He seemed to have grown a little taller, his gait something that might have been called a swagger. The loud bang of the door-knocker thudded in the sharp air.

Angelus secreted himself in the shadow of a doorway. If anything happened he had perhaps fifty yards to cover. He tried not to think about what could happen in fifty yards. He checked the fighting-axe hidden inside his coat, settling it more loosely in its sheath.

The door opened.

‘I have a message from Angelus, master of the Aurelians in England.’ Will held out the envelope. Angelus couldn’t see whoever had answered the door, couldn’t see Will’s face, only the ramrod straightness of his back. And then Will stepped through the door.

For the next ten minutes Angelus paced. Twice he set off across the street only to turn back again at the last minute, swearing. If Will could play his part then he would be perfectly safe. Harmonia would never risk the insult of harming a senior minion of the Aurelians.

If the Impresarios touched a hair on his boy’s head he would wind their blazing entrails on a stick in front of their eyes whilst the blood dripped from their flayed bones. Will was his.

And he was going to thrash him till he howled when he got him home.

There was a crash loud enough to startle the entire sleeping town, and something fell from the window next to the newly boarded-over one, bouncing onto the cobbles with a thud.

It took Angelus perhaps a second to cover the distance and then he was helping Will to his feet amidst a cascade of glass and splintered wood.

‘He got the message,’ Will said, and then he choked up a gout of blood onto Angelus’s waistcoat.

‘Damn it, Will, what were you playing at?’

‘Needed them to believe me.’ Will coughed again, holding his side as if it hurt. ‘Needed them to…’

A shout came from the house door.

‘…follow me.’ Will took off at a run.

Angelus paused long enough to take in the size of the group of demons emerging from the house, then ignored every instinct he had and ran in the opposite direction to Will. From the pound of feet on the cobbles behind him at least some of them were following.

He sprinted down the street, trying to keep his pace smoothly flowing between fast and slow as he tried out his pursuers’ speed, making the changes gradual so they would never realise they were being tested. With disquiet he realised they were faster than he’d expected.

He was unconsciously heading towards the cathedral and he quickly broke right, moving away towards the poorer parts of town, where the streets were a narrow maze of ancient alleys and the houses leant on top of one another as if needing the support.

Three demons were behind him. Three, or possibly four, had followed Will. He didn’t think Harmonia was amongst them. Will was fast enough and Angelus had no doubt he would delight in leading them a merry dance, but his stamina was limited. However willing, Will was a fledgling and would tire quickly. Angelus didn’t have much time.

He used a drainpipe to swing up onto a rooftop and dodged behind the chimney-stack, hearing them check in the street below. A low, musical warbling rippled on the air – Impresario hunting calls, planning their next move. He heard one returning the way they had come, moving down a side-street. They were trying to flank him.

He worked his way back along the roof, just below the skyline of the ridge. The warble came again, close, just below him on the far side of the roof. He didn’t hesitate, bounding over the ridge and down, his fighting-axe plunging into the demon’s throat even as he bore down on it. With a wheeze the bubbling whistle died in its windpipe and at once the flesh began to melt, oozing into a scummy white oil that trickled between the cobble-stones.

Ahead of him the second demon lowered his head, tusks fully extended, a long knife held ready in his hand. It was Cotesia.

Angelus looked back and there was the third, edging towards him.

Somewhere across town Will was running for his life. He had to kill or otherwise dispose of these two, get back to the house and complete his task before Will became too tired.

He was between them, and the second he attacked one the other would be on his back, but for the moment they were keeping their distance, circling, trying to cut him off from the protection of having the house wall behind him.

He made false starts at first one, then the next, making them snarl and twitch but not succeeding in tempting either to charge. At bay to two wild boars, he thought, it should be the other way round. Still, if he couldn’t go forward he’d have to go up.

He made another lunge at the smaller one, raised his arm and hurled the axe, and with his freed hands he reached higher, jumped and caught the decorative overhang of the house, swinging out, he let go and twisted, to land sitting on Cotesia’s shoulders, legs wrapped around his neck.

Cotesia squealed in shock and staggered back and forth, flailing with his knife above his head.

Angelus leaned sideways, dodging the thrashing knife.

Cotesia twisted his head from side to side, trying to find an angle where he could stick his tusks into Angelus’s legs, but they were too long, the backs brushing harmlessly at Angelus’s thighs.

Angelus held on grimly with his legs, arms flailing to keep his balance. He had a knife in his coat pocket but every time he thought about grabbing for it, he had to jerk his weight back again to avoid falling or the reach of Cotesia’s blade. If he fell off he was dead

He managed to land a punch on the top of Cotesia’s head and Cotesia bellowed, thrashing even harder. The knife seemed more unattainable than ever.

Angelus caught sight of the other Impresario. He must have avoided the axe – he had picked it up and come forward but didn’t seem to know what to do either, standing helplessly gawping up at Angelus and only making occasional starts forward, raising the axe as if he would throw it but was afraid of hitting Cotesia.

‘Pull him off!’ Cotesia yelled, spluttering past his tusks. ‘Pull him down!’ And then at last he reversed his own knife and tried stabbing at Angelus’s leg.

The blade slid in like a hot jolt, but it was what Angelus had been waiting for. As Cotesia concentrated on his own blow, Angelus reached for his coat pocket and withdrew his own knife, and hammered it down through Cotesia’s skull, feeling bone part and then the brain squish as he twisted it.

Cotesia grunted. For a moment he remained upright, frozen, then he began to topple forward and Angelus sprang free, gasping as his stabbed leg took his weight. He pulled out Cotesia’s knife with a roar of pain, spun round and hurled it after the last fleeing Impresario. It caught the Impresario in the spine, making him jerk and spasm as he pitched to the ground.

Angelus stood panting, watching the bodies begin to dissolve, then he grabbed for his axe and ran. Ran as fast as only a master vampire could run. So fast that the wind tore at his ears in a howl as if the blood were pounding from his heart. So fast that the houses on either side of him, the cobbles beneath his feet, the stars overhead, all vanished. No time to register pain or doubt or anything except the pound of limbs straining to their furthest, and it was only the map of the streets unrolling in his head that kept him from crashing off course.

And then he slowed as he approached Harmonia’s house.

The street was oddly quiet, ordinary, unalert. Only the crunch of glass under his boots as he walked up showed that anything had happened. The gaping hole of the window provided a convenient way in and it was the work of seconds to swarm up to it. He hung for a moment, arms resting on the sill, aware of a sharp pain in one palm where he must have cut himself on the glass. He could feel the blood trickling, warm and ticklish across his wrist. He pushed his way up and in.

He was in the music room. Empty and spacious, long windows at each end, rows of chairs pushed back against the walls, the piano a black bulk, squat in the centre. Angelus went up to the piano, running one finger over the satiny wood as he took a deep breath, and smiled to himself. From under the piano there came a little sound – too soft for a gasp, almost just a sigh.

And then from behind him came a slow, ironical clap. ‘Mr Aurelius, how very kind of you to come.’

Angelus turned, his demon and his smile firmly in place. ‘Mr Harmonia.’

‘I wonder, Aurelian, how stupid do you think I am?’ Harmonia held the note that Will had delivered out at fingertip, as if it were grubby. ‘“I have something you want. Meet me by the bridge, alone”,’ he read out. ‘Alone? Did you really think that would work?’

‘Well, you do seem to be alone now.’

Harmonia stepped further into the room and began to circle towards him, red eyes flickering. ‘I have men on every door, vampire, you cannot get out.’

‘But I wouldn’t think of leaving. I’ve only just arrived.’

‘Spare me your famous English humour.’

‘Now, now. That’s an insult to my honour, you fat shoat.’

With a bellowing snort, Harmonia’s tusks rippled out. Then he lowered his head and charged, tusks levelled to skewer and rip open.

Angelus laughed and sprang backwards, up onto the piano, kicking the stool flying towards Harmonia then crashing up over the keyboard. ‘I’m not English, piggy. I’m Irish!’

Harmonia bellowed as the stool slammed into his knees, then he tossed it aside with a flick of his hands and stormed forward.

Angelus had a moment of balancing on a steep slippery slope, arms flailing to keep his balance, and then the piece of wood propping the piano lid open cracked and the lid closed with a clap like a canon booming as Angelus danced back onto it.

Harmonia slapped against the front of the piano, sending it trundling back several inches, casters screaming. From inside came the tortured shrieks as wires snapped. ‘Barbarian!’ Harmonia flopped over the front, flailing but unable quite to reach Angelus.

‘Want to come up?’ Angelus asked. ‘Think it will bear all that weight?’

Harmonia pushed himself up and charged round the end of the piano, heading for the waist where he could easily reach Angelus.

Angelus promptly jumped down the other side. ‘Your boys are on every door, are they? Pity you forgot the windows.’

Harmonia came on round the far side of the piano and Angelus bounded back up to safety. ‘You’re not very quick. Too much time sitting in armchairs listening to your musico warble about shady palms.’

‘You’ll never get away with this, vampire!’ Harmonia tipped his head back and called, a strange squealing, musical bellow, tusks curving right up, mouth gaping, the roar filling the whole room until it seemed to throb and pulse with rage.

‘Oh do put those tusks away, now.’ Angelus kicked out, his boot flying sweetly out to smash against Harmonia’s face with a satisfying crack as one of the tusks snapped. Harmonia’s head jerked back, his hands flying to his face as he spun round once and he dropped like a beast in the slaughterhouse, moaning.

‘Sorry, didn’t catch what you said,’ Angelus said conversationally. ‘All that spluttering makes you a bit hard to follow.’ He jumped to the ground. From downstairs he could hear shouts, the pounding of feet running towards the stairs.

‘And you were wrong – I do have something you want.’ He bent down beside the piano, tilting his head to look under it, smiling. ‘Don’t I?’

‘Vi prego, non fatemi del male.’ Pedrolino’s lisping tones sounded less pettish in Italian, letting his native emotions role off his tongue.

Angelus reached under the piano to grab for him and Pedrolino scuttled back.

‘Per favore, Signore!’

‘What’s the matter, evirato?’ He grabbed again.

Pedrolino bolted, scampering for the far side of the room in a heady stink of fear, Angelus two paces behind him, grinning as he cut Pedrolino off from the door. Pedrolino pressed himself up against the wall, eyes white, hands raised feebly as if they could somehow fend him off.

‘You don’t need to be scared of me.’

Harmonia moaned, blood frothing from his mouth, crawling towards Angelus. The shouts of approaching Impresarios were from just outside the music room door now.

Angelus wrapped his arm around Pedrolino and prepared to jump from the jagged gap of the broken window. There was no time to go back to Harmonia, but he paused for one sweet moment and whispered to Pedrolino ‘You don’t need to be scared.’ He smiled. ‘You need to be terrified.’

Will winced as he dropped Pedrolino. ‘Bloody hell, I think one of those swine broke my ribs.’

Pedrolino scuttled away on hands and knees, cringing up against the kitchen dresser, pressing his face to its dark wood.

‘You need to gain height on an Impresario, then they are simple enough to deal with. And as I recall you were told to keep your distance.’ Angelus couldn’t take his eyes off his prey. Pedrolino was white – white as a woman. White as a vampire. Streaked with dirt and bruises and tears trickling over them in a silvery sheen.

‘He attacked me! It was kill or be killed. Sodding pigs!’ Will lashed out with his foot, kicking Pedrolino with a dull, wet sound. Angelus felt something quaver deep inside his chest. And Pedrolino screamed, sobbing over his belly, his head dangling down like a broken puppet, shaking.

‘William!’

‘What? Bastards hurt me, I’m hurting one of them.’

Angelus’s throat felt dry, his palms were slippery. ‘That is no excuse for anger. Come here.’

Pedrolino had put his head in his hands, was shuffling on his knees the few inches that there were, into the corner between the dresser and the stone bulk of the sink, clutching at the iron of the pump handle.

‘We are not human,’ Angelus said as Will scuffed over, scowling. ‘We do not give in to anger with our prey, ever. Do you understand?’

‘Yes sir,’ Will chanted. ‘We are finding the art in pain, the beauty in their suffering, one should never be angry with art.’

Pedrolino whimpered.

‘Will, listen to me – any human can torture another. They do it all the time. There is nothing we can do to them that they don’t do to one another sooner of later. But we are above that. We are special because we seek for something greater. Art for its own sake, the beauty of creation, the love behind the pain.’

Pedrolino was dressed in a suit of crushed green velvet, with a large lace collar and cuffs. The dress of an aesthete, an artist, a musician. Huddled in the corner he looked like nothing so much as a weeping child.

Angelus set a gentle hand to Will’s cheek. ‘Do you not want to be part of that art?’

‘Yes sir. You’re always explaining this. My side hurts.’

‘Show me.’

Will yanked his shirt up and they both stood and looked at the purple-black bruise. Angelus reached out and traced it, feeling Will wince under him, the tiny, barely allowed hiss of pain, the flinch of cold, soft flesh. So very alive.

‘It’s not broken, just bruised. Stop complaining.’

Will turned away to thrust his shirt back into place, his hair flopping across his eyes, keeping his expression hidden.

Angelus walked over to Pedrolino, making his footsteps loud on the stone flags, confident, without pause. There was a steady rhythmic plop of water from the pump as it dripped, and the gasping, irregular sobs from Pedrolino. Angelus forced himself to sound calm.

‘Now, evirato, are you paying attention? Sei sveglio?’

‘Sissignore.’ It sounded like a hiss, a sigh of pure fear.

‘Bene.’ Angelus squatted down over him comfortably.

‘Vi prego, Signor Angelus, Vi supplico…’

‘Hush, hush,’ Angelus held a finger to Pedrolino’s lips. ‘In English. My boy here speaks no Italian.’

‘Please, Signor Angelus, I beg of you.’

Angelus patted his cheek. ‘I’m sure you do. Now, we’d better do the paperwork first. Can you write?’

Pedrolino’s wide blue eyes went even wider than before, but he nodded, a little bobbing quiver of his head. ‘Sissignore.’

‘Splendid. William, a sheet of headed notepaper, if you please. And pen and ink. I have left some on the table. Here, evirato, let me help you.’ Angelus reached out and one finger at a time removed Pedrolino’s hand from where it clutched at the thin iron pipe of the pump. Then he stood back and crooked his finger for Pedrolino to come to him.

Inch by inch, Pedrolino shuffled forward on his bottom, out of his corner, edging round the side of the dresser, his back pressed against it, eyes staring wide and white up at Angelus.

Angelus smiled.

Will coughed politely and proffered the writing materials.

‘Thank you, William. You’ll have to hold the ink for him. Now, evirato, to my dictation.’

Pedrolino stared for one terrified moment at Will, who had slid into demon face. Angelus paused, wondering whether to criticise this unauthorised action, then shrugged. It could do little harm.

‘“Beloved Master.” Is that how you would address Harmonia, evirato? No matter. Dip your pen and begin. No time to waste. “Beloved Master, I bring you a message from the noble and powerful Angelus of Aurelius, the Scourge of Europe, Master of the Order in England, favoured of the High Master, most feared…” Well there’s more but one mustn’t show off. So. “The great Angelus returns me to you…”’

Pedrolino looked up, a breathtaking blossoming of hope in his eyes.

‘Don’t stop. “Returns me to you as a token of what good will exists between his clan and yours. Know that if you presume to remain within his domain, your remaining minions shall be destroyed. If you make any attempts upon any of the game within his lawfully held reserves, then that prey shall be taken from you, and dealt with as I have been. If you do not fear Angelus and the power of the Aurelians, then learn to now. A copy of Bradshaw is enclosed for your convenience.” Well don’t gape at me, evirato – sign your name. Will, hit him, please, once in the throat.’

Angelus clenched his fists whilst Will punched. Felt the waves of tension building up inside his sinews. It was as if cold prickles danced across his spine and through his scalp. Making him shiver. Making him alive. Under his skin he could feel his brow muscles twitch, his fangs strain to drop.

When the coughing and retching had subsided, Angelus fixed his gaze, cold, dead, on Pedrolino’s mouth. ‘Sign it.’

Will took the paper and passed it up for Angelus to glance over.

‘You don’t have very neat handwriting. Well it will have to serve; I don’t have all night. What’s the matter, Will?’

‘“Dealt with”, sir?’ And Angelus simply couldn’t tell if it was an honest question or if Will was beginning to show a little talent for the game.

‘Oh yes, thank you for reminding me.’ Angelus drew his knife. ‘Stand up, evirato. Help him, Will. Now pin his arms behind his back. Good boy. Now see if you can hold them with one hand and with the other tip his head back. Very good. Hush, evirato, you mustn’t make a sound. Don’t you remember? Evivva Il Coltello!’

Pedrolino struggled, frantic flailing of his podgy limbs, so that Angelus wondered if he would have to tie him down, or worse, knock him out. It would be such a shame. But Will’s grip was firm, although Angelus saw him swallow nervously.

Angelus gripped Pedrolino’s jaw, letting his eyes gleam golden at last. He breathed deeply, the pounding scent of fear singing into his blood.

‘Don’t you dare look away, William. I will expect you to know how to do this in future, and I will be asking questions.’ He opened Pedrolino’s jaw. ‘You however, Signor Pedrolino…’ the tongue felt wet and warm in his hand, a jerking, flinching rod, the knife slid through flesh and muscle like slicing a ripe peach, ‘…won’t be.’

Blood sprayed out as Pedrolino jerked his head back, Will’s fingers flying away, terrible, bubbling sounds rising in a froth as Pedrolino thrashed from side to side. Gagging, clutching at his throat.

‘Oh God,’ Angelus said.

He felt a shudder surge right through him. It was like being caught up in a wave – thrashed and pounded and driven against the shore, the pebbles sucking down all around him, and then caught up and hurled clear again. Again and again and again. Helpless to resist.

He stood back. ‘There,’ he held the severed tongue out. ‘That can go in the envelope, Will. Will! Well take it. You’d better wrap it in a handkerchief or something or the letter won’t be readable.’ Angelus cast the gobbet of quivering flesh on the table. ‘Don’t be so damn feeble, boy. I thought I’d beaten that nonsense out of you.’

Will shook himself, like a dog casting off water, and took a quick step towards the table. ‘I’m not being feeble. It just startled me, that’s all. I didn’t know you were going to do that.’

Angelus grunted, cleaning off his knife, forcing his shaking hands to still.

‘Is he going to bleed to death?’ Will asked, staring down at Pedrolino as he flapped, hands held across his mouth, the strange, bubbling, ill formed wail still emerging from his chest.

Angelus shrugged. ‘Maybe. We’d better get him back to them quickly. He might live if they can get him to a doctor in time.’

Will looked up, bewildered. ‘Why do you want him to live?’

‘Sometimes, the greatest art is to let them live. Don’t you understand that?’

‘Yes sir,’ Will said, but Angelus could see the frown in his eyes. Angelus sighed and turned away, shaking his head.

They dumped Pedrolino on the doorstep, pulled the bell and ran away like naughty schoolboys, Will hooting with laughter when they were safely out of earshot.

‘That was fun!’ He’d gone into demon face, probably without realising it, and was grinning like a gleeful imp. ‘Would’a been more fun if we’d killed him, but still—’

‘I told you, sometimes it is better not to—’

‘Yeh, yeh. I got it, mate. Sir. I understand.’ Will shook his head, dropping the demon and bringing out a cigarette. ‘Still would’a been fun,’ he muttered. ‘So what now?’

‘Now we go home and you go to bed, it’s well past your bedtime.’

That produced another mutter as he cupped his hands to his mouth over a match. ‘I meant with these Impresario buggers.’ He flicked the match away and blew out a long plume of smoke. ‘You expecting them to retaliate or what?’

‘No.’ Angelus yanked Will away from the turning that led directly home. With half his attention he was still concentrating on what lay behind and above them, trying to gauge if they were being followed. Angelus wondered if he should explain the intricacies, explain how with a dishonourably broken tusk, the wounded Pedrolino to deal with and several of his lieutenants dead, most of Harmonia’s authority would be lost and the Impresarios be too involved in internal power squabbles to mount an effective threat.

He looked back over his shoulder and again he felt a ripple of unease. He could neither smell nor hear anything following and yet the hairs on the back of his neck were prickling.

‘That’s it? “No.” That’s all I get? Can’t you at least—’

‘Be quiet, boy. And get rid of that cigarette.’

‘Bloody hell! I’m not allowed to smoke indoors, I’m not allowed to— Hey!’

Angelus crushed the cigarette and threw it as far away from them as possible, but it was no good, the scents were still disrupted, tangled into a warm fug by the tobacco smoke and the lingering brightness of Pedrolino’s blood.

‘What did you do that for?’ Will demanded.

‘Will you be quiet.’

Will gave him a glare and a further mutter, shoving his hands in his pockets. Angelus took them down another detour, doubling back so he could pause and check the way they had come. Nothing. And Will was at last maintaining what he doubtless considered a pointed silence.

‘Did you follow me a few nights ago?’

‘No!’ Will’s outrage was too emphatic and Angelus eyed him. Will looked distinctly guilty and then immediately tried to look innocent, something he always did very badly.

‘You did follow me.’

‘No sir!’

‘I saw you, boy – your shadow by the market place.’

‘It wasn’t me, Angelus.’

‘Wasn’t it? That had better be true, because if you think you can desert your post and presume to follow your sire…’

‘I didn’t, sir. Why would I?’ And he did look genuinely baffled.

‘You didn’t move from your post?’

‘N-no, sir.’ Now that was a lie, without a shadow of a doubt. Angelus tensed and Will immediately dodged round to the far side of an over-ornamented municipal horse-trough the citizens had been stupid enough to leave in the middle of the street. ‘I didn’t, sir.’

‘You left the whore, didn’t you. Of course you did.’

Angelus edged left and Will skipped a pace to the right. ‘No.’

If he tried to grab Will over the trough he’d probably fall flat in the scummy water. Or they could keep circling the thing all night if need be.

‘When did you ever have the discipline to do as you were told?’

‘Didn’t take my eyes off her.’

Angelus counted slowly to twenty in his head, never letting his glare relax for a second. Will was glancing from side to side as if considering making a run for it. How could Will be so stupid? He’d been told time and time again yet still the message never got through.

‘Boy, she is using you. Whatever she has said, whatever she has done to persuade you, Darla is using you for her own purpose.’

Will shook his head vehemently.

‘You left the river and you followed me to the cathedral. And now—’

‘Pub.’

‘What?’

‘I went to the pub. I’m sorry, sir. I know I shouldn’t have but it was just so bloody cold. And I didn’t think it would matter for just a little bit. It didn’t matter – the whore never went anywhere. She was already too addled to move, so I just slipped off for a minute. I went straight back.’ He stood up straight and braced his shoulders. ‘I know you’re going to thrash me for it but it didn’t make any difference. And it was nothing to do with—’

‘Oh be quiet.’ Angelus walked away.

So if not Will watching him, then who? Surely if it had been Darla herself he would have sensed her at once. On a cold night the scents were deadened, as if frozen in place. If she had wanted to follow him it was a good time of year. But even so, they had hunted together for over a hundred years, he knew her every move, the way she thought, the way she acted. Surely she couldn’t pull the wool over his eyes? Surely not after all this time?

There was the patter of boots behind him – Will, running to catch up.

‘Sir…’

She wanted to go back to London. Theatres, shops, parties, keeping the minions in line, the never-ending struggle for territory, ensuring the family name was never ever brought into disrepute.

‘Sir, I didn’t—’

‘Right, you’re going to play the piano for me.’

‘What? No I’m not!’ Will ducked the cuff, moving exactly the way Angelus expected him to and giving an outraged yelp when Angelus caught his ear and twisted.

‘Yes you are. Unless you want the beating you’re due in the parlour, in front of Darla and Dru.’ He pulled so Will rose up on his toes with a gasp. ‘And I will still make you play afterwards.’

He set off for the house at a brisk pace. Providing he twisted his ear and dealt out a few cuffs every now and then, Will trotted along as tamely as a dog on a lead at his side. The cursing wasn’t entirely acceptable but one couldn’t have everything. Will followed obediently up the street to their front-door and into the hall, where Angelus pulled himself up to his full height, transferred his grip to a gentle pressure on Will’s shoulder, and opened the parlour door.

Not that Darla even deigned to look up when they came in.

‘We’re back, darling. It all went perfectly. And now Will and I have plotted a little treat for you. Something of a celebration. There you are, Will.’ He prodded Will towards the piano, then headed to take up his position in front of the fire. Will was rubbing his ear and scowling down at the piano stool as if he wanted to chop it up for kindling. Angelus casually patted at the pocket where he kept the strap and Will sat down with a thump.

‘What do you want me to play?’

Darla was still feigning indifference.

‘You are forgetting your honorifics, Will. Don’t.’

‘What do you want me to play, sire.’

Angelus looked steadily at Darla. ‘Chopin. Darla likes Chopin.’

She looked at him at last, coldly, her face wrung with contempt.

‘I don’t know any Chopin.’

‘Well then play something you do know,’ Angelus snapped, still holding eye contact with Darla. Beyond her, he could see Will stare at the keyboard for a moment and then start to pick out the notes.

The tune was recognisable – something by Beethoven, the same thing he’d once heard him playing for Dru, but Will was hammering the notes without interest or feeling. The sort of playing any well-brought-up boy could produce if he’d been given one lesson a week and practiced when he’d been made to.

‘Delightful, William,’ Darla said.

‘Yes, Darla, we had a very enjoyable evening, thank you for asking. The Impresarios are no longer a threat and we had a little fun along the way. Most satisfactory.’

She said nothing. Will plonked his way slowly through what should have been a playful cascade of sound.

‘An interesting thought occurred to me though.’ He stared at her, watching her mask for the slightest crack. ‘I keep thinking I’m being watched – you know how it is, your sixth sense tells you, only there’s nothing there when you stop to check so you think you must be mistaken. But then a little later there it is, screaming at you again that something’s wrong.’

Darla sat primly, hands folded in her lap, green eyes fixed on Will.

‘I thought it was the Impresarios.’

She blinked once, slowly.

‘Then I thought it was Will.’

Will immediately stopped, staring at his hands and avoiding Angelus’s glare.

Angelus snapped his fingers. ‘Keep playing, boy.’

‘I can’t remember the rest.’

‘Don’t lie to me. And lighter, Will. Lighter! Don’t crack the notes as if you’re punching them… better.’

Will paused over a bar’s rest and looked at him as if he thought he was mad, then carried on, still hopelessly stiff and clumsy.

‘Perhaps he would do better if you didn’t cane his hands like a schoolboy,’ Darla said, her tone calm and even.

‘I will cane him any way I please.’

‘Stop, William, and come here.’

‘Do not stop, William.’

Will already had stopped and he was left uncertainly on the edge of his stool, looking between them.

‘Come here, boy,’ Darla snapped and Will shot over to her.

‘Now show me your hands.’

‘My…?’ Will gave Angelus an alarmed look but Darla simply seized his wrists and turned his hands palm upwards. Angelus looked away, feigning boredom, but not before he’d caught a glimpse of Will’s perfectly unmarked skin.

Darla didn’t pause. She clucked like a concerned mother hen. ‘Look at these. You poor, poor boy. Nobody could play properly with hands like these.’ And turning his palms this way and that, peering at them closely, she began cooing and fussing over them. ‘Look at these great black welts! You might as well have had a branding iron stamped on them. They must be so painful, poor little thing. Really, you cane him far too often and far too hard, Angelus. Did you lick them, Will?’

‘Er… yes, madam?’

Angelus snorted. Will normally only addressed Darla as madam when he had no choice.

She produced her handkerchief, spat on it and began to rub Will’s palms. Judging from Will’s wince she was making it hurt.

‘Angelus, you really shouldn’t cane him like this.’ She said without the slightest beat of sarcasm. ‘What if he needed to climb?’

Angelus matched her, tone for tone. ‘Oh, you want me to molly-coddle him?’

‘Of course not.’ She spat on her handkerchief again and started on the other hand, grabbing Will’s wrist when he tried to pull it away from her. ‘I want you, Angelus, to treat him like a reasonable, intelligent, person.’ And she finally looked directly at him.

Angelus waited, whilst Will fidgeted nervously and Darla just held Will’s wrist and glared at Angelus.

‘Come here.’

Will came to him at once, yanking his hand free of Darla to do so and shaking it as he went. ‘It was days ago,’ he said angrily. ‘Of course there’s nothing left to see. They only last four or five days when you’re human.’ All of this was ostensibly directed at the floor.

Darla was still glaring.

Will stood in front of him, looking utterly miserable, and Angelus set a hand on his neck, drawing him a little closer. ‘Whose are you?’

‘Yours, sir.’

‘Mine.’ He smiled down at Will and, tentatively, Will returned it.

‘And who do you trust to make the decisions for this family?’

‘You sir.’

Angelus bent over and kissed him on the lips, a light brush of cool skin against his own, the sudden quiver under his hands as Will tensed. Then he pulled back, still smiling, and ruffled his hair. ‘Silly little boy.’

‘Not little, and not a boy,’ Darla said.

Will’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes I am,’ he hissed. And he whirled round to face her. ‘All my bloody life you’ve called me nothing but “little” and “boy”, only suddenly you want him to treat me differently because you want something. Well I don’t care what you want, you silly bitch, I’m tired of—’

He must have been expecting it but he still squeaked in surprise when Angelus’s hand clamped across his mouth.

Angelus heard the bones creak, the tendons protest as he jerked Will’s head back, felt him shake under his fingers as he pressed his fangs to Will’s throat, felt the skin quiver and dip under him as he pressed, the scent of fear rich in his nostrils. Will froze, and stood still and unprotesting as very slowly Angelus bit in.

He didn’t take much, just three, long pulls. Enough that Will must feel it tugging at his heart. Enough for him to feel the anger. Enough to fill his own mouth with salt sweet iron. And then he pulled away and thrust Will from him.

Will stumbled, recovered, stood still, eyes cast down.

‘Do you want him beaten, Darla?’ Angelus asked, reaching for the strap.

She waited a moment, whilst Will stared at the floor, his hands clenched at his sides. Then she shook her head.

‘Get out,’ Angelus said.

When he was gone, Angelus looked at Darla. For a moment he almost said something – something that would probably sound like an apology. Something…

‘I will kill him,’ Darla said. ‘I will find him, Angelus, and I will kill him. And then this will be over.’ She didn’t mean Will.

He turned and left, banging the door after himself.

From the roof of the guildhall he could see half the city, laid out before him in shades of black and silver in the moonlight. Silent. Asleep. A small part of his mind told him that it was beautiful, and he angrily pushed the knowledge away. Over the decades he had trained himself to keep watch, long silent hours, immobile, not a muscle quivering, only his eyes moving ceaselessly to scan the ground. Keeping his body still was easy – a matter of refusing the twitches and urges that danced in every sinew after a while, keening at him to move. They could be denied. The focus of his thoughts withdrawn from them so that they ceased to plague him. But his mind – to keep it focussed and attentive, not straying for one moment lest someone or something slip under his guard – that was a different matter. Perhaps with time that too would become easy.

He could see the front-door of their house, the path from the back-door, and most importantly the light from the parlour. Darla was obsessively cautious of fire and she would normally never leave a light in an unattended room. The light burned steadily, casting a broad band of yellow across the grass. And as the cathedral clock solemnly rang the passing of another quarter of an hour, Angelus allowed himself to wonder if he had miscalculated. Perhaps she really wasn’t coming.

There had been another light briefly in Will’s bedroom and then after less than five minutes it had moved to Dru’s, where it still stubbornly shone. Angelus drove his nails into the rime of frost, one of the brittle tiles flaking and cracking under his fingers, until with a slither it slid down to shatter on the cobbles fifty feet below. For a moment there was absolute silence. Then simultaneously Darla’s form appeared at the bow window of the parlour, staring into the garden, and the window casement of Dru’s room slid a few inches open and Will’s head poked cautiously out.

‘The pig will visit the moon tonight.’

‘Hush, Dru.’ The whisper carried clear across the silent rooftops. Will dropped one leg over the sill, looking back into the room. ‘You must be quiet, sweetheart. I won’t be long.’ Then in one fluid move, Will squirmed over the sill, hung for a second by his fingertips and dropped to the ground with a thump. He stood up a little shakily, as if the landing had jarred him, and looked quickly back up at the window. But Dru had shut it already.

Will waited a little longer, then seemed to deflate, blew a kiss in the direction of the window, and slipped off with exaggerated caution. Through the parlour window, Darla watched him go with a small, smug, smile.

Damn them both.

Angelus rose onto the balls of his feet and stood up. He stalked along the roof ridge, not caring that he must be outlined, a dark shape against the twinkling stars for all to see, glaring down at Will.

When Will came to the end of the street, Angelus clenched his fists, willing Will to turn towards the pub, to just be a disobedient fledgling sneaking out for his own amusement. But the pub was cold and empty, respectably shut for hours. Will looked behind himself, snuffling at the air like a puppy nosing at someone’s hand, then cast a couple of nervous glances back and forth before finally squaring his shoulders and moving off again in the direction of the little wicket gate that led towards the cathedral.

Angelus lost him once, slinking between two houses so quietly that he seemed to vanish in an instant, and Angelus had to jump quickly across to the opposite roof and hunt about for a bit before he caught sight of the fair head again. Not that Angelus doubted where Will was going.

Angelus could smell him even from the rooftops – coal smoke, boot blacking, metal polish and the cigarettes that he’d taken to stealing again and that Angelus kept turning a blind-eye to. Strong enough to cover any hint of his being a fledgling vampire so no other demon would give him a second glance in a crowd of humans, but leaving an obvious trail that Angelus could follow for hours, even on as cold a night as this. He dropped to the ground and followed the bright strong young scent that was cutting clean across to the cathedral close.

He caught Will by the alms-houses, knocking him flat with a cuff that turned him three times over before he lay in a limp heap against the iron railings in front of the deanery.

‘Stay down.’

Angelus allowed himself to turn slightly and gaze for one long moment up at the organist’s house. The windows were dark, the curtains of the little upstairs bedroom tightly pulled.

Will coughed and spat something dark onto the glistening frost, pushing himself up on one hand.

‘I told you to stay down.’

‘Am staying down.’

Angelus wound a fist into Will’s collar. ‘You are going to wish you had never been made.’

Will scowled, probing at his split lip with his tongue then slurping up to catch the trickle of blood running from his nose. ‘Leave me alone,’ he mumbled.

Angelus hit him again, until Will groaned, folding over his belly, only held up by Angelus’s fist at his collar.

‘I was only…’

Angelus snatched Will’s cap off the ground from where it had fallen and hauled him to his feet. He wanted him away from the organist’s house, away from the boy.

‘Only what?’

Angelus thrust the cap at Will and then yanked so Will flailed off balance again with a yip of protest.

‘Only letting me down – again. Only ignoring everything I’ve said to you – again.’

Angelus began to walk briskly, Will’s boots scrabbling and skidding on the frozen flagstones beside him.

‘I thought we had an understanding, boy.’

They reached the first of the lime trees that formed an avenue to the great west door of the cathedral. Darker shadow in the darkness, the thick mass of bare branches above them making a grid-work of black bars against the sky. Angelus rammed Will against the trunk, curling his lip at Will’s grunt of pain.

‘I thought I could trust you.’

Will dropped his eyes.

‘Can I trust you?’ Angelus asked softly.

‘Yes.’

‘So why, Will?’

‘Because she told me to.’

‘Dru?’ He desperately wanted it to be Dru, needed it to be just another incidence of Will playing the fool to impress his beloved.

‘Darla.’ Will sighed, soul deep, and he wouldn’t meet Angelus’s eye. And Angelus found he was frozen, had not even the energy to shout or cuff.

‘She said I had to come here, watch that house.’ He didn’t point, Angelus had very carefully taught him not to point when hunting, but he flicked his eyes in the direction of the organist’s house. ‘She said I must watch and wait for her, and kill anything that came near that house.’

‘What else?’

‘She had me deliver a letter – nights ago – to the house with the blue door. And then another one, last night. I think she’s known about them all along. She said something about Florence.’

Florence. Seventeen sixty-three. Young Alfredo dying in the gutter from a stab wound to the belly – an Impresario’s unmistakable tusk thrust but he had been too blind to realise it. And that fat pig’s simpering protégé taking Alfredo’s rightful place in the opera the very next night. No wonder the name Harmonia had been familiar! He thought of Darla playing her fear of the Impresarios, the little quiver in her lip as she had leant against him – how could he have been such a fool? And he ran.

He was too late. The parlour light was gone, leaving only the single flicker from Dru’s bedroom. Angelus swore and bent over the ground, casting for the plume of Darla’s scent. He thought he caught it once, a faint drift of dry blood and lemons, fine as dust, but then some waft of air – the updraft from the swirl of his own coat as he paced back and forth – snatched it from him and it was gone.

He worked it an age longer, eyes peeled for any imprint of her footsteps in the frost, nose rippling at every suggestion of something new, and then he threw his head back with a snarl.

‘Sir… I know where they’re meeting.’

Angelus turned and stared at the impish figure, standing at a cautious distance, blood still smeared under one nostril, eyes wide and worried.

‘I read the last letter, see. Steamed it open in the kitchen before I took it. Want me to show you, sir?’

‘Run,’ Angelus snarled.

Angelus ran after him, feeling the iron hard ground rigid beneath his feet, always aware that at any moment the treacherous frost could send him sliding. But he felt alive, the motion sending the blood pounding round his body. Ahead of him ran a young creature, weaker than he, scared, with a scent of blood. And his eyes turned yellow, the night coming clear and sharp around him.

The boy was lying. He would always lie if he could; it came as naturally to him as breathing once had. And this would be a trick like all the rest. There would be no Darla, no Harmonia. She must have arranged it all, must even now be moving in on James behind him. He growled.

He could hit Will again. He could thrash him, grind his flesh to pulp, break, smash and burn until nothing was left. And then he would kill the bitch, spread her dust across the cathedral close. And Drusilla too. He would be rid of them all. Free. Just him and James.

Will stopped. They were near the market place, in the tangle of streets called the Shambles, approaching the ancient butter-cross. Will set one hand on the crumbling plasterwork of a timbered house, his skin creamy white against the mud-spattered grey, and leaned a little round the corner. Then he looked back at Angelus, grinning.

Angelus walked softly up and followed his gaze, setting one hand on Will’s shoulder.

The butter-cross was about a hundred yards off. The three steps rose up into a pinnacle of creamy stone, carved into curls and turrets more ancient than parts of the cathedral. And in the shadow of one buttress was a deeper shadow, one that sent a tingle down his spine. Darla.

‘Mr Harmonia’. Her voice was low, not the girlish giggle she so often adopted with him but something altogether darker, more solitary. And as she took a step forward, into the moonlight, he was reminded, as he not often was, of the woman who had first gazed at him across her shoulder with a little smile that sealed his fate outside a tavern in Galway.

‘Madam?’ Footsteps came from across the marketplace, limping but still confident, and Harmonia came up to her, stooping his fat face over her extended hand, his body jerking into a bow. ‘You have a proposition for me, I believe?’ Even in his human form his broken tusk was making him lisp.

‘Indeed. Mr Harmonia. It was time to leave off a mere correspondence and meet face to face.’ She tilted her head, letting a little curl of hair slip across her cheek. ‘You must forgive a woman’s weakness, Mr Harmonia, I find it difficult to act directly in these matters, I hesitated when I should not have done and there have been regrettable occurrences. Most regrettable. But now I believe the time has come for us to act together.’

He puffed and simpered. ‘Whatever you wish, madam. So charming, so very charming.’

‘There is a boy.’

Angelus growled, a drone buzzing at the back of his throat, his fingers digging into Will’s neck. Beneath him, he felt Will squirm.

‘A boy.’

‘The boy is valuable to you, yes?’

Harmonia, perhaps not quite as stupid as he was behaving, shrugged. ‘There are many boys. In England, in Europe, many boys.’

‘But you, I believe, Mr Harmonia, want this boy. And I, I assure you, do not. So there is an obvious solution to both our difficulties.’ She smiled at Harmonia.

Harmonia’s eyes narrowed, and he cast his red glare to left and right, but Darla only smiled on and he suddenly seemed to realise that maybe this was indeed the solution he was looking for because his face abruptly melted, the eyes returning to chocolate brown as he once again kissed her hand. ‘Dear lady, what do you propose?’

‘It is simple. I will remove my family from this town. You will remove your clan. We will both have nothing to do with one another again and it will be as if this little incident never occurred.’

‘You can control this Angelus?’

‘Mr Harmonia, Angelus is my childe – of course I can control him.’

Harmonia seemed to freeze and then slowly he digested the information. ‘And the boy?’

‘Someone will bring him to you. You may do with him whatever you wish.’

Harmonia’s lips curled upwards in a triumphant smile.

That was enough. Angelus thrust Will aside and roared as he hurled himself across the cobbles, his fangs descending, his fists curling to attack.

Harmonia turned, red eyes blazing, his tusks sliding out – one the length of his forearm, the other a jagged bleeding stump. ‘Vampire.’

‘Ah, Angelus,’ Darla was warbling, ‘how good of you to…’

Angelus bounded past her, leaping to reach Harmonia before he could move, right fist arcing for Harmonia’s face.

Harmonia met Angelus with a toss of his head, ripping his tusks upwards in a blur of blood and foam flecked ivory, so that Angelus had to twist, desperately throwing himself sideways, feeling the hot, stinking gust as the tusk passed, jagged stone smashing into his shoulder as he crashed back and down.

He pushed himself up, jerking his hand as the flesh of his palm sizzled with the burn of the butter-cross, rolling back onto his feet to find Harmonia was on him again, his sweating bulk inches from Angelus’s face, tusks slashing upwards. The brute must have turned on a sixpence.

Angelus took a step back, fists weaving to try to land a blow, but Harmonia blocked him with rapid jabs, tusks flashing from side to side in a flurry of spit and grunting roars.

Angelus swept out with his legs, low, beneath the razor sharp tusk, aiming to sweep Harmonia’s feet out from under him.

Harmonia was suddenly just inches from Angelus, a snarl of triumph and contempt on his features as he charged forward into and over Angelus’s attack. A blow pounded onto Angelus’s chest, thudding through Angelus’s whole body, and Angelus was on his back, the shudder as he hit the ground blinding all his senses for a fraction of a second. Sickeningly aware that Harmonia had wanted exactly this. He threw his arm up and felt the tusk slice through cloth and skin, grating against the bone, pain flaring up to his shoulder. But he lashed his hand back, feeling his knuckles thump into the flesh of Harmonia’s throat.

Harmonia squealed, and Angelus rolled, seeking a way out from under Harmonia’s crushing frame, trapped by a cage of limbs.

The tusk slashed again, a thrusting sword wound tearing up into his chest.

And again, within inches of his heart.

Angelus roared, bringing his knee up between Harmonia’s legs, feeling it connect with a judder.

Harmonia froze, a look of puzzled agony on his piggy face, and then with a little sigh he slumped, resting his head down on Angelus’s chest, a dribble of blood and saliva trickling out from beside the broken tusk.

Angelus looked at him for a second, then wriggled out from under the bloated mass.

Will was panting, half bent over, hands on his knees, staring at the small brown knife stuck in Harmonia’s neck.

‘Did I get him?’

Angelus toed Harmonia’s body. Already it felt soft, the tissues collapsing as it started to melt.

Will straightened up cautiously. ‘That was what you wanted, yeh?’

No, he’d wanted to kill Harmonia himself. ‘It will do.’

Will grinned. ‘I got him!’ He leapt up, tossing his cap in the air with a whoop fit to wake all the good citizens. ‘I got the bastard!’

‘Be quiet, damn you, boy.’

‘I killed him!’

‘Yes, well be quieter about it.’

‘Bloody hell, Angelus, what more do you want from me? I’m doing my sodding best. He’s dead, isn’t he? And that was what you wanted, so now what’s the matter?’ His eyes suddenly went wide. ‘You’re jealous!’

‘I am not jealous. I’m—’

‘Yes you are. I killed the demon and you couldn’t – admit it, you’re jealous.’

‘Don’t you dare—’

‘You’re jealous.’

‘I am damn well not jealous! And… what are you even doing out here? You know you aren’t allowed out without permission.’

‘What?’ Will stared at him in disbelieving shock. ‘No, you bastard, you right b— She gave me an order.’ He pointed at Darla furiously. ‘She told me to go to the close, you know she did.’

‘Do I? I know nothing of the sort.’

Darla lifted her skirts, picking her way around the oozing fatty scum that was all that was left of Harmonia. ‘So,’ she said, ‘if you have finished, Angelus?’

‘Oh, I’ve not finished,’ he said coldly. ‘Well, Darla, did you order him to go to the close? Did you tell him to wait outside a particular house and kill anything that came near it until you arrived, whilst you were here, arranging to sell me out to an Impresario?’

She made a show of avoiding some piece of gristle on the ground.

‘I have no idea what you are talking about, Angelus,’ she said. ‘I had no notion that man was an Impresario until he attacked me and you were noble enough to step in to my defence.’

‘I see. So Will is yet again proving he’s an irresponsible brat, not to be trusted to tell the truth or do as he’s told?’

She looked at Will, briefly, then away, playing with her gloves. ‘I imagine so.’

They stalked back in line, the three of them, Darla and Angelus flanking Will. Nobody spoke, probably because nobody felt calm enough to say anything without shouting. Angelus was aware of the sting of his wounds as he walked, the cold air biting into them. The coat wasn’t too bad – protected by his overcoat, though both had a rip in the sleeve, shreds of cloth that flapped against his arm – but his waistcoat must be ruined. He lengthened his stride. It was Will though who made it first to their own door, suddenly stepping ahead and yanking it open, and making it half way up the stairs within a second.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Angelus dropped his overcoat on the floor. ‘I haven’t finished with you.’

Will stared back at him from about five steps up, a sneer of undisguised contempt and anger on his face. ‘I’m going upstairs. Away from you – the pair of you – and your stupid bloody games.’

‘Come here.’ He looked down to fetch the strap from his coat pocket, taking his eye off Will as if he hadn’t the slightest expectation of being disobeyed.

Above him he could hear Will shift, retreating another step. ‘No, Angelus. You are playing some game with her. I don’t know why and I don’t care, but I am not going to be pig in the middle. I’m not taking a beating I don’t deserve just because the two of you can’t agree.’

‘Come here.’

‘No!’

Angelus began to pull his coat off, the strap dangling loose in his hand. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Darla, interested to see how she was reacting. She had removed her hat and gloves and now stood passively, watching them both.

‘This isn’t about your authority as my sire, Angelus,’ Will said angrily. ‘It’s got nothing to do with you being my elders. It’s you both trying to use me to get your own way, and thinking you can because you’re stronger than me. That isn’t discipline, it’s bullying!’

‘Oh dear, he’ll be telling us we’re evil next,’ Darla remarked.

‘No,’ Will yelled, he’d changed to demon face, ‘you’re petty. If you’re both so bloody bored, all you can find to do is pick on me, then for God’s sake let’s get out of this sodding dump and go home!’

Darla laughed.

Angelus took one bound to reach him, knocking him back to sprawl on the stairs. Angelus straddled Will and began to hit.

Will snarled, twisting this way and that to avoid the blows, punching repeatedly, jaws snapping like a furious puppy, then Angelus caught his temple and Will’s head thumped back against the wooden stair tread with a crack.

‘Stay still.’ He hauled Will up by the scruff, pinning both wrists behind Will’s back with his free hand and wrapping the strap around them, yanking it tight. Will’s head lolled a little. ‘I am going to flog your back to powder, boy.’ He began to drag him down the stairs.

Will was making a mewling noise, somewhere between pain and a growl, and he began to struggle, writhing in Angelus’s hold and trying to kick, then with his tied hands he made a grab for the newel post behind him.

He must know it would do him no good, was just being damn awkward.

Darla reached out and casually knocked Will’s hands off the post, then stepped out of the way as Angelus wrapped his arms around Will to pin his arms to his sides and picked him up and carried him down the passage to the kitchen. Will was bucking and struggling, yelling curses.

Angelus braced himself and set Will down. Will immediately twisted away and the strap must have come loose because it fell to the floor. Will flung himself round, fists coming up, and Angelus hammered a punch forward as Will turned to meet him. Will dropped to the floor and didn’t move.

Angelus stood, staring down at him.

‘You’re filthy,’ Darla said. She walked across the room and he heard the creak of the pump, the splash of water. Something splatted at his feet, flicking specks of water across his boots. A cloth, marked with a pattern of faded checks. ‘Clean yourself up.’

He reached up and slid apart the buttons of his waistcoat, moving down one at a time. Will still hadn’t stirred. He eased himself out of the sleeve holes, trying not to move too much, and pulled up his shirt. The air of the kitchen felt cold on his skin, clammy. The fire must have gone out hours ago. He balled up his shirt and used it to mop at the faintly seeping wounds on his chest, hissing at the sting. Then he stooped for the damp cloth and rubbed it over his hands and face, seeing it come back with a pinkish grey stain.

‘Is my face bruised?’

She didn’t answer.

Will lay between his feet, one fist curled against his cheek, fair hair flopping into his eyes. Angelus threw the cloth away and hunkered down to strip him, tugging off Will’s jacket and setting it aside.

‘Darla, pass the manacles from the top shelf.’

He bent over and unhooked Will’s watch chain, slipping it into his own pocket for safe-keeping.

‘Darla?’

He turned round. She was gone.

He ran upstairs, grabbed for a clean shirt, waistcoat, his best coat and spare overcoat, stuffing a tie in his pocket, yanking the drawer open and leaving its contents scattered over the floor, thundered back down the stairs. He delayed long enough to snap the manacles on Will’s wrists and ankles, and then he went after her.

No need to track her, he knew where she was going, and it took him only a couple of minutes, running through the silent town to come to the cathedral close. As he ran up the little path beside the alms-houses that led into the close he slowed, softened his footfalls, slipped up against the wall to the cover of the shadows. He watched her as he knotted his tie, adjusted the set of his cuffs. She was standing in full view on the gravel path, a solemn grey figure in the moonlight, staring up at the organist’s house.

‘What were you planning to do?’ he said. ‘Set fire to it?’

She turned to look at him, smiling mockingly. ‘You don’t have an invitation, do you.’

For one appalled moment he thought she was going to reveal that she did. Then she shook her head. ‘All this time and you haven’t gained an invitation – you’re slipping, Angelus.’

He strolled out to her. ‘So what now? Do we fight?’

She gave him a long, cool look.

It was a long time since he and Darla had fought – really fought, with fists and fangs and stakes, not the never-ending battle of minds with which they had replaced it. He had a sudden ludicrous notion that he would have to be careful of her pretty dress, and he laughed aloud.

‘So, this choirboy of yours, what is so special about him?’

‘Darla, have you not heard him sing!’

Her eyes cast about the close. ‘This world is full of music.’

‘Not like this.’

She slipped an arm into his and shivered. ‘It’s cold, Angelus, shall we walk?’

So they strolled arm in arm along the gravel paths, the avenues of limes arching over their head, silver as stone, the moonlight stretching their shadows long and dark across the frost-rimed grass. He showed her the deanery, and the pretty alms-houses, and together they examined the statues on the West Front and peered at the soaring pinnacles of the cathedral itself, crouching like a guard dog, watching over the city.

‘Drusilla says there are angels, holding up the roof,’ Darla said. ‘And demons buried inside the stones.’

‘Dear girl,’ he answered, and he stooped to kiss her, until she rose up on her little feet and kissed him back, her face sweet and pretty in the silvery light.

Afterwards they turned, without discussing it, to look at the organist’s house and she rested her head against his shoulder.

‘I’m tired, Angelus,’ she said.

He wondered, if he left, just how she would kill James – an idle curiosity, he wasn’t going to leave her.

‘You really want him, this boy?’

‘Yes, my love.’

‘It would be strange to have another childe in the family so soon. And such a little one. The Master would kill him, of course – he never allows the half-grown ones to live.’

‘Isn’t there some prophecy about a child-vampire who will usher in the Order’s time of greatest power?’

‘Is there? I’ve never really bothered with all that dreary history.’

She looked so pretty that he kissed her again. ‘Shall we sit down, darling?’ He led her over to a nearby bench and they settled down together, her head on his shoulder again, hand in hand, not speaking because really there was nothing they needed to say, and waited together for morning.

As the sky bled primrose yellow they used the last long shadows cast by the dawn to move towards the cathedral itself, a wide black zone of safety leading across the close as somewhere at the east end the rising sun set the stones on fire. Darla looked up at the great west door as they went under its shadow, seeing the carving of the pelican, ripping its breast open to feed great drops of blood to its young. She tipped her head to one side, then nodded.

‘I had forgotten that,’ she said.

Between the close and their house a broad band of unbroken daylight now stretched, an impassable barrier, into which, ten minutes later, stepped James.

In the daylight his hair shone as he skipped along, his school cap spun on one finger, the other hand trailing along the iron railings that kept the hoi-polloi from desecrating the dean’s lawn. His head was hanging, the locks of golden hair kissing at his eyes. The cold air or a proper scrub with icy water and honest soap had brought a pretty blush to his cheeks. Then he looked up as a couple of other boys appeared, running into the close, and he smiled.

‘Ah,’ Darla said, and she gave Angelus’s hand a little squeeze.

The three choirboys came together, running across the black shadow from the cathedral and out into the sunshine again on the other side. Then as they approached the wicket into the cloister their steps slowed and all three adopted expressions of meek angelic perfection as they filed in.

A stooped ancient in respectable brown touched his hat to Angelus and Darla with a polite wheeze as he limped past and applied a huge key to the great west door.

‘Excuse me, but where do they go, the boys?’ Darla asked, pointing as a couple more ran up. ‘Surely it is too early for their schooling.’

‘They be the quiresters, ma’am.’

‘The what?’

‘The quiresters.’

‘The choristers?’

‘Ay sir, the quiresters. The boys of the quire.’ He gave them a bright eyed nod as if worried that this information was unclear.’

‘We know that. But where do they go?’

‘Why they be a going to practice, sir,’ the old fool looked puzzled, as if unsure why Angelus and Darla would not know this. ‘Every morning, summer or winter.’ He nodded, bobbing his head like a jack-in-the-box. ‘Precious cold it were some mornings, but still we had to sing. Sung like little angels we did.’ He chuckled to himself and rubbed his hands together, turning back to the lock. ‘Little angels.’

‘You were a chorister?’

‘Ar, sir. Back in the old king’s time. Morning Prayer and Evensong, every day for five year. Te Deum, Jubilate and the Nunc.’ And he tipped his wrinkled throat back and warbled ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace: according to thy word…’ Then broke off into a paroxysm of coughing and wheezing as he thumped his chest.

Darla flinched.

‘And after their practice, what then?’ Angelus demanded. ‘Does the church educate them in anything except music?’ And then when the clown stared at him with dropped jaw, he snapped ‘Do they get taught their letters anywhere?’

‘Ar, sir.’

Angelus pronounced each word very clearly. ‘Do you know where?’

‘Ar, sir.’

Angelus sighed, wished himself patience, and reached towards his waistcoat pocket where he kept his small change. The bright eyes followed this movement and the old fool shuffled a step closer, bringing with him a waft of boiled cabbage.

‘Where?’

‘St Michael’s School, sir.’

Angelus produced a crown and held it in front of the man’s face. ‘Where is St Michael’s School?’

‘Why, bless you, tis up in St Michael’s tower, the way up be just over there.’ He gestured inside as he slowly pushed the door open. ‘I could show you, sir, for I must climb up and unlock and set everything right for the lessons, only first I must see to the clock or it will be half a minute slow again and the Dean will have a thing to say about it.’

‘The clock, of course.’

‘Ar, sir. And a weary climb it be up that long stair. Not as bad as the stair to the spire, mind, but steep enough for my old legs. And then the school stair afterwards.’

Angelus gave him a wolfish grin. ‘Age is a disagreeable thing.’ And he dropped the coin back into his pocket and turned his back on the old man, holding his arm out for Darla. They strolled through the door and into the cathedral, looking up at the fan vaulting impossibly high overhead, and discussing the clusters of imps and angels clawing out from the pillar-tops that stared down at them with white, limestone eyes.

The old man waited a little while, wheezing, then stamped away with a mutter and an outraged jingle of his keys.

Angelus continued the charade until the old man was out of earshot then dropped Darla’s arm and whilst she stood to one side, keeping watch, he pulled at the arched wooden door in the corner of the nave until he heard the shriek and clunk as the pawls of the ancient iron lock snapped. It only took them a second to be up the spiral stair and into the schoolroom.

It was a pleasant space, easily large enough for a schoolroom for a dozen or so boys. Small windows looked out between the curlicues and statuary of the west front showing views across the close and over the rooftops to the water meadows beyond. Once the sun had moved round only a little way the schoolroom would be filled with light. Darla drifted between the wooden forms, idly picking up an abandoned slate, running her finger about the rim of a china ink-pot. Angelus pulled open the chalky drawer of the master’s high desk to discover a withered apple and a book of Shelley’s love poems.

‘It’s all so very human,’ Darla said.

He grinned at her, then perched himself on the front desk, one boot up on the lid, back resting comfortably against the scarred stone of the wall where hundreds of boys had carved their names. He held his arms out for her and she came with a giggle, jumped onto his knee and snuggled back against his chest. He nuzzled her neck and they waited until the wheezing on the stairs heralded the return of the aged sacristan.

The old man stopped dead in the doorway, his mouth a perfect O.

‘Hello,’ Angelus said.

‘You broke the lock.’ The man seemed ludicrously more confused than outraged. The little drops of spit or sweat in the matted clumps of his whiskers shook as he spoke. ‘Over hundred year old, that lock be.’

‘Then it was high time it was changed.’

‘You broke the lock,’ the man said in bewilderment. ‘Why’d you want to do that, then? I’d’ve let you in, had you asked. Tis only a schoolroom. There were no need to break the lock.’

Angelus smiled again and reached once more for his pocket. ‘Yes, but we didn’t want to wait.’

‘The Dean will have to be told. There’ll be a mort of trouble too.’

‘Mort,’ Darla said. ‘What a nice word.’

He threw his knife and the man’s O of a mouth clamped around the handle as if it were an ebony sausage he were swallowing. Then his hands flew upwards, fingernails scrabbling at the stone as he toppled, scoring a little set of scratches low down, where probably nobody would ever notice them.

Angelus went to retrieve his knife, sucking up the bloody foam that bubbled into the man’s mouth to serve as breakfast and ensure it didn’t spill about and make a mess. Darla came over and they exchanged the blood between them in another kiss. Then he cheerfully picked up the corpse and carried it over to the master’s desk where he propped it. Darla brought the master’s gown over and draped it round the old man’s shoulders, whilst he set the mortar-board at a jaunty angle over one eye. They considered the composition for a second then he took out the apple from the desk and jammed it in the man’s jaw.

‘Very fine,’ Darla said. ‘Now, I think you should show me the cathedral.’

‘Of course, my dear. It will be my pleasure.’

As they tripped back down the stairs he heard the thud as the apple fell out and rolled away across the floor, but he couldn’t be bothered to go back up and replace it.

The two of them spent an interesting hour in the south aisle of the cathedral. If they positioned themselves near the transept they could hear, drifting in from the door that led onto the cloister, the rippling notes of the boys at practice, starting and catching up a tune, then falling silent before they began again.

Alternatively, they could wander down towards the great west door, and there, after a little while, there was a gratifying bustle of comings and goings. A balding, middle-aged man had been the first, climbing up the stair with the snail’s pace of a schoolboy and then hurrying down a minute later, his face the colour of week old milk. He had returned with two other men, both in clerical black, and remained at the foot of the stairs, wringing his hands and pacing whilst they went up. Then on their return they had fetched others, and they yet more so that the end of the nave filled with a succession of anxious, whispering groups that bunched and separated like flocks of nervous sparrows flitting from bush to bush. Until at last a very fat, very tall man arrived and he did not go up but stared upon the assembled people until silence fell. Then swiftly and firmly he gave his orders, to be answered with a brief nod of the head that a hundred years ago would have been a bow and the concurrence ‘Yes Dean.’

Angelus wondered if they should kill the dean next.

Just when matters were beginning to grow repetitive and dull there was the sound of boyish voices in the cloister, laughing and jostling, and abrupt silence when they reached the door and the choristers processed into the cathedral. As the first notes of morning prayer soared up, the men by the schoolroom steps looked guilty, as if caught in something furtive that had no place in the cathedral. The two attendants awkwardly negotiating the stretcher back out of the narrow door paused for a moment, heads turning to look up the length of the great nave. From under the coat someone had dropped over it, a wrinkled hand flopped out, before one of the men hastily stuffed it back out of sight and they trudged out. Angelus smiled and Darla gasped and held her hand to her face and he apologised to those around them and led her away again.

Once again he felt drawn to the music, just as he felt drawn to the cathedral itself. It tingled in his blood and buzzed in his ears. A flame that drew him with its heat and light although he knew it would burn. He could feel the towering menace of the high alter and the blood stained figure of the pure white marble crucifix above it. Not a scent, but something that tugged at the back of his mind and in the pit of his stomach – the knowledge that he was not worthy. That in this place something very old and very powerful was aware of him. Not inclined to do anything yet, but it was awake and it was watching.

And as ever he wanted to defy it, to stand with his legs straddling a pile of corpses in the very centre of the church and dare this God to challenge him.

Darla at his side was silent, her eye running over the stonework. She seemed tense, watchful.

‘What do you want to do now?’ he asked.

‘Hush.’ She tilted her head and he realised she was listening to the choir. The sound built and swelled, the voices blending and moving apart, then soaring together again.

Exquisite, he said to himself, and he tried to distinguish his own boy’s voice amongst the rest, but though he thought he caught a thread from time to time he never fully succeeded.

‘Vouchsafe, O Lord to keep us this day without sin.
O Lord, have mercy upon us.
O Lord, let Thy mercy lighten upon us, as our trust is in Thee.
O Lord, in Thee have I trusted, let me never be confounded.’

When they finished the silence hung on the air like frosty breath, still and perfect, then somebody walked down the aisle, footsteps clomping on the stone, and the moment was gone.

Angelus gave a little tug at Darla’s arm and together they worked their way back to near the schoolroom door, and waited for the most interesting part of the morning.

The choristers were a long time leaving their vestry, and when they came it was with wide eyes and glances that flitted between them on a suppressed rush of unspoken emotions. Angelus felt a wrench of regret that he had not been there when they were told.

‘Do you think there was much blood?’

‘Bound to’ve been. All over the floor, I expect.’

The boys stopped under the regimental memorial and peeped round the pillar.

‘I heard there was so much blood it ran down the stairs and the men slipped going up,’ a cherubic faced lad piped up.

Angelus frowned.

‘Well I heard his body was so stiff they had to break his legs to get him down the stairs.’ This elicited appreciative Oohs from the others.

‘Why stiff?’ demanded a stocky lad near the back.

‘Stiff with horror, course. Everyone knows you go all stiff when you die of fright.’

Angelus scanned the group, searching for one little form amongst the dozen.

‘He didn’t die of fright.’ The stocky boy shoved his way to the front. ‘Shows what you know, Tommy Brown. Old Ashworth said he had a heart attack.’

‘Yes, so there’ll’ve been masses of blood,’ insisted the first boy.

‘No!’

‘Yes! If your heart breaks all the blood spills out.’

The boy’s voices began to get louder and louder.

‘But Tommy said fright, and—’

‘I meant heart attack – you get a heart attack when you’re so frightened you—’

‘Well I can’t see any blood—’

‘Who told you about the blood—?’

‘Must have been blood because—’

At last Angelus spotted James, walking slowly up to join the rest, clutching a book of music to his chest. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked softly.

‘Boys! Boys!’ The thin, balding man clapped his hands and most of them stopped talking, several even looking slightly shame-faced.

Only Tommy Brown was left, trailing off with ‘But he must have been scared when he started to feel his heart break…’ He bit his lip.

‘Is this seemly? Is this appropriate?’ the thin man demanded.

The boys exchanged sidelong glances amongst themselves, as if hoping that one among them might have the answer to this question.

‘Please, sir,’ the first boy said ‘Mr Ashworth said a man climbed into the schoolroom and he died there.’

Angelus saw James’s eyes widen, his fingers clenching around his music.

The bald man looked stern. ‘And is that any reason to be chattering about it like a gaggle of geese, Harry White?’

‘No sir. But was there blood, sir?’

‘Who was he, sir?’

‘Why did he come here to die, sir?’

‘Was it that tinker who’s been living under the bridge, sir?’

‘Will there be any lessons today, sir?’

At this important question they all stopped and stared at their master, who cleared his throat and replied ‘I think not until…’ There was really very little need for him to say anything more because with a cheer the boys had hared off, spinning and laughing out of the door and into the sunlight, James the last of their number – with a slight frown on his little face but trotting after the rest.

Angelus watched him until he was out of sight, then swung his eyes back to the balding man.

The master looked after the boys blankly for a second, and then he smiled, perhaps a little guiltily, and tilted his head a fraction towards the sun, as if realising that he too would have an unexpected holiday.

‘Callous little brutes,’ Darla remarked, and the schoolmaster jumped and peered into the shadows.

‘I…I didn’t… Forgive me, madam, I had no idea anyone was there.’

‘Why aren’t they more upset?’ Angelus demanded.

‘Well, er, boys can be strange creatures, sir. I dare say they will be solemn enough when they have had time to think, and when they understand just what it means, but for now it is altogether too fascinating to be entirely unpleasant to them.’

Angelus stared at him, until the man shifted nervously and made as if he would nod politely and move on.’

‘What is your name?’

‘I-I— Denman, sir. Septimus Denman, master of the choir school.’

‘Ah!’ Angelus instantly changed his glower to a beam, holding out his hand. ‘You are Mr Denman. The Dean’s description was most misleading.’

‘It was?’ Denman seemed astonished and not a little concerned. ‘That is— the Dean?’

‘Naturally.’ Darla said. ‘He particularly wanted us to speak to you.’

Denman’s face fell.

Angelus took up the game. ‘We require your services, Mr Denman. We have a young relative who requires extra tutoring – a matter of an important examination in a few months that we are most anxious he should pass. Now my dear wife has suggested that we should return to town, find one of the top men there.’ He looked down at her affectionately and patted her arm. ‘But I have been forced to prolong our stay in the city, on other business, so we have decided that for now a local man might be just the thing.’

‘To tide us over,’ Darla said.

‘Oh, oh so…’

Darla smiled, Angelus smiled. ‘Perhaps we might have a chat?’ And between them they drew Denman back into the dark shadows of the church.

As soon as they were away from the west door and the sunlight and the bustle of people coming and going, Darla turned her full charm on Denman. ‘Dear William’ needed help with his Latin and his history, and before long a quite astronomical fee had been proposed – and by a rather dazed Denman, hastily accepted – and Darla was moving on to the fine details about just when the lessons should be held. She proposed from five until eight every evening, and was quite prepared to give up her parlour for that time if it would help William. And could Mr Denman also provide help with French? With German? Perhaps a little Italian? The Dean had spoken so highly of Mr Denman’s abilities that she was quite keen not to waste the chance for their dear boy to gain all he could from his tuition. Finally everything was settled and all parties were left beaming at one another, if with a little bewilderment on Denman’s part.

‘Splendid,’ Angelus said, ‘and now I was wondering, Mr Denman, since you have an unexpected holiday, would you possibly be so good as to show me and my dear wife around the cathedral?’

Denman looked alarmed. ‘Well, sir, I’m not sure that I—’

‘Oh do say you will,’ Darla trilled. ‘I am sure that a tour with a scholar such as yourself would be most instructive. And I so long to have the architecture explained to me.’

Angelus smiled down at her fondly and then they both turned to look politely at Denman.

‘Well of course, it would be my pleasure. Er…’ He looked around. ‘Perhaps we should start with the clerestory, and fan vaulting of the nave. A particularly fine example of the English Perpendicular, that… If you would just move out into the nave where we can get an unobstructed view?’

Angelus and Darla exchanged a look. ‘No, you misunderstand, Mr Denman. My wife wishes to see the clock tower.’

‘The clock tower is not open to… Yes of course, sir, madam, if you would care to walk this way?’

Darla and Angelus linked arms and went after him.

Denman turned out to be most instructive. His tendency to drone on about the historical wonders of the cathedral in exhaustive detail was more than compensated for by the ease with which he could be persuaded – with no more than a disarming smile – to reveal details about the boys. By careful questions and sudden enthusiasm for things just out of reach they led Denman higher and higher, up hidden spiral staircases and along narrow spaces crammed between the stones and the sky. They were in the very bones of the cathedral, the ribs and vaulting that kept the whole glorious structure aloft, thick with stone dust and mouse droppings, and the faint stirring as unseen things skittered away from them in the dark. Denman slowed, peering fearfully between the beams or walking with tight jaw along ancient planks laid by some long dead craftsman, then scurrying to keep up with the pair of them. And from time to time, Angelus caught the distant shimmer of childish voices on the air, or peering between sugar-coated pinnacles of stone snatched a glimpse of a fair head flitting in the sunlight far below.

Darla paused by a thin window, peeping out and exclaiming over the view.

‘Those are some of your boys, Denman?’ Angelus asked, looking out whilst careful to keep his head away from the sun.

Denman headed straight for the light and looked out just as a misbowled hoop caused a stout lady to pause in her passage along the footpath and stand with hands on hips, berating the pack of youngsters.

‘Yes. Oh dear, the Dean’s wife! Perhaps I should—’

‘No,’ Angelus said, setting a hand on Denman’s arm and pressing hard enough to make him shift uneasily. Angelus kept his tone enticingly mild and solicitous. ‘Not when we have only just climbed all those steps.’ Angelus gave him an even more disarming smile and tightened his grip to a pincer so hard that Denman gasped and looked in bewilderment between his hold and the beneficent smile. ‘I insist.’

‘W-well, Mr Aurelius, if you think so.’

‘Oh I do think so, Denman. So, these mortise joints were part of the 1452 remodelling?’

‘The, er… the joints? Well that’s a very interesting question, you see, the joints—’ Denman turned slightly, and seemed surprised when Angelus still did not release his arm. ‘The joints…’

‘What happens when a boy’s voice breaks?’

‘I-I beg your pardon?’

Angelus bestowed on him the slow blink of scorn he had perfected on Will, when he had failed to answer a particularly simple question.

‘His voice, yes… Well he has to leave the choir, naturally.’

‘And you?’

‘Yes, he must leave my school too – it is the school for the choristers. Even if it were permitted, the boy’s family would seldom wish to keep him at school. But the cathedral gives him a gift towards his apprenticeship – a guinea for every year he has been in the choir. Many of them go on to do very well.’

Angelus regarded him and wondered how he could stand it. The slow procession of boys through his care, each one snatched away by something beyond his control. He released his hold with a sneer.

‘Do tell me more about the joints.’

‘Er, you must forgive me, sir, but the day is getting on. I really should go down and find out what has happened about… the schoolroom, you understand, and… I must not neglect my duty to the boys.’

‘Oh no, you must not neglect your duty to the boy.’

As they made their way back along the dusty space, Denman was silent, casting occasional glances at Angelus and Darla. They came through a little arch and back into the clear space of the bell-tower, empty save for a single wooden chair and the dangling ropes of the bell themselves.

‘This will do, I think,’ Darla said.

They took him together, one on either side, fastening on, each holding down an arm as Denman struggled. And as Angelus pulled the blood from the schoolmaster’s veins, he almost imagined he could feel Darla pulling too, her sucks in perfect harmony with his own. As Denman weakened, his head starting to slip to one side, Angelus dropped the arm he was holding and reached out with his free hand, to find Darla reaching back for him. Their fingers entwined as they finished and let Denman slip between them.

Darla looked down at the body. ‘What a tedious little man.’

‘I dare say the boys will be very grateful when they find out.’

‘Yes, perhaps we should tell them so they can thank us.’

He laughed, and she slipped a hand into his trouser pocket, pulling out his pocket-knife. She knelt down over Denman, peering at him closely. ‘He needs some Gothic decoration, I think.’ And with her pretty little tongue just peeking out between her teeth in concentration she slipped the knife across Denman’s throat, running a jagged red line through the bite marks, joining his to hers.

‘What shall we do now?’

Their footsteps were light on the stone of the staircase as they descended. The cathedral was fuller now, little clumps of people here and there, lost in their own affairs – a gentleman stabbing a finger at some feature of the stonework for the benefit of two ladies accompanying him; a fat man crouching over a tomb; a young woman on a pew, head bowed; another flicking through a leaflet.

‘Observe the delicate soaring of the tracery of the perpendicular period,’ the gentleman enthused.

There was something in the air of this place. Not a scent – not something solid and real and understandable. He could smell the stone, cold and strong, and the wax of candles and polish. The dank sweat of the fat man. The boredom of the young ladies. The excitement of the gentleman. But it wasn’t that. And for the first time it made him feel excited, not just defiant but triumphant.

They slipped along the aisle, the bright brasses of the city’s worthies under their feet, walking east. They reached the end of the aisle, and up three steps he could see the space widening out into the transept and a speckling of tombs. The whole place was shaped like a cross, but it was just a glorified graveyard, a collection of indoor-bone-boxes, nothing more.

‘Where is the crypt?’ Darla wondered.

‘The crypt?’

‘Or do you think that’s maybe a little… obvious, darling?’

The crypt. Right under the high alter. The very earth where the saint had been interred. The air would be dank with the years of history, of worship, of bones. It would be dark, and solitary, and he could paint a portrait on the whitewashed walls with blood. The boy would never see it, but they would find it, and they would look at the boy and whisper.

‘On the contrary, I think that is an excellent idea.’

And he felt himself growl inside, a roar of defiance welling up as they moved, under the stare of the great crucifix, to the entrance.

The door was wide, set deep in the stone, the step at its base worn deep by the tread of pilgrim’s feet, and it swung open in front of them as if he had willed it to do so. And he stared into the astonished eyes of Will.

‘Bloody hell.’

Angelus dropped Darla’s hand.

Will’s sidestep and turn was a perfect example of the pivot Angelus had struggled to teach him. His crashing into a stout clergyman and sending him sprawling on the flagstones was less orthodox, but Will scrabbled to his feet and made a respectable recovery, dawdling only for a second to snarl. Angelus cleared the flailing man with one bound and followed, the boom of their feet down the aisle a pounding percussion.

Will was fast. Even with muscles that by rights should still be a symphony of aches he was fast. Light on his feet and agile enough to dodge between the pillars sharply, leap over a sleeping stone knight and cross straight over the nave. Angelus crashed on one pillar further, jumped the much higher table tomb and put on a spurt of speed towards the west door. The angles were such that he would cut Will off a few yards short of it.

Speed and quick-witted manoeuvring were vital skills for a fledgling and Angelus had always encouraged them in Will. It was with a mixture of pride and fury that he saw Will stamp one foot to a stop, turn, and dart away from the direction of the door and back up the far aisle. Angelus half fell over trying to match the acuteness of the turn, grabbed a passing tourist as a pivot and followed. Will had gained about ten yards. The continuo of voices shouting at them was getting louder. Will turned the corner into the transept and was out of sight.

High overhead the cathedral clock began to toll.

They were in a cathedral, isolated in a sea of sunshine, how had Will even got there at all? Who had let him out? Angelus rounded the corner and discovered that Will had sacrificed his lead, was stuck in the door out of the transept and was apparently struggling with Drusilla. Will seemed to be trying to simultaneously push her through the door and shield her from sight with his body.

As Angelus ran forward, his eyes met Will’s again.

Will’s face was set, determined, appropriately scared; then he got Dru through the door, letting the heavy oak slam behind them.

Angelus reached the door and wrenched it open.

Hand in hand, Will and Dru were running down the high vaulted corridor edging the great cloister, and, with a bravado that took Angelus’s breath away, Will had chosen the south-facing side, where the sun streaked through the archways in broad, defiant stripes. Drusilla was laughing.

Angelus watched in horror as his two fledges ran between each narrow band of shade. Will on the southern side was shielding Dru to some extent and his clothes were smouldering, smoke trailing from his hair. He’d come out without his good coat, as usual.

Angelus cursed again and headed down the other side of the cloister. The door at the far end of the southern cloister led straight out onto the sunlit close, so Will must have some other goal in mind, but what or why Angelus couldn’t imagine. With a flat stretch of good stone to run on and no tourists or clergy to impede his way he ran as fast as he could run. The cloister was exactly square – as Angelus turned the corner he could see diagonally across from him that Will and Dru had turned theirs. They were all running towards one another now, heading, as far as Angelus could see, for a collision somewhere near the south-west corner. And he wondered what Will’s plan was, and discovered with a small pang of surprise that he desperately hoped Will did have one.

Then just short of the corner, Will stopped, snatching Dru back as she carried on past him so that for a second they spun together at arms length as if they were dancing, then she twirled into his arms with a laugh. There was another door. Will had it open and they were through. With a loud click, Angelus heard the sound of a bolt being shot.

It took Angelus another twenty steps to reach the door, slowing down to a steady walk. He was tallying up in his mind – offsetting the skill of Will’s evasions, the quick-witted planning at speed, his care of Dru, against the heedless recklessness of taking the northern side, his attracting attention, his being there at all. From beyond the door Angelus could hear shouting. High, boyish yells, and as Angelus raised his hand to the wood he saw pinned to it a small white card with neatly rounded letters: Choir School – please be quiet.

As the boyish babbling crescendoed an adult voice abruptly called ‘Silence,’ and in the ensuing hush could be heard clearly saying ‘Sir, madam, this is a private practice. I must ask you to leave.’

Angelus set his hands on either side of the door-frame and judged the angle carefully.

‘Sir, I really must insist that you—’

The door crashed back under Angelus’s onslaught, and he was pitched into a semi-circle of shocked faces.

The choristers stood ranged behind their wooden desks, staring at him with round, childish eyes. Camberwell sat in the corner at a piano, his fingers immobile over the keys. Ashworth was in the middle of the room, one hand waving a rolled up sheet of music in mid air as if he had been gesturing with it. And in front of him stood Will, fists clenched, facing the door with his head reared back, holding himself at his full height.

Angelus nodded to Will, as if they were casual acquaintances who had just chanced to meet. He scanned the room, taking in the tiny patches of sunlight right beside the west facing windows, the height and positions of the desks, Drusilla hovering near the wall with the thin cruel smile that she wore when hunting. Her head was lowered, her eyes darting from one child to the next. A cat scanning a box full of mice. If she had a tail it would be wagging.

And then with a soft swish of silk, Darla came up behind him, lifting her skirts daintily to take the two steps down into the room and then looking about her with a polite smile. She moved over towards the opposite wall from Drusilla, causing a slight fluttering stir in the boys, and Camberwell, who were nearest to her.

Angelus calmly shut the door behind them.

‘Good afternoon, children.’

The boys glanced uncertainly at Ashworth and then chorused ‘Good afternoon, sir.’

Ashworth looked even more confused. ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but what—’

‘He wasn’t talking to you, silly’ Dru said. ‘Good afternoon, Angelus. Good afternoon, Darla’

‘Well, William?’

Will looked at him for one steady beat and then his face broke into a grin. ‘Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, madam.’ And Angelus felt a bolt of something like pride.

‘Have you enjoyed your morning in the cathedral?’

‘Oh, yes, the clerestory is particularly fine.’

‘Indeed. Perpendicular I believe.’

‘Ladies, gentlemen, I must insist—’

‘Quiet,’ Angelus hissed, and even Will started. ‘Be quiet or I will tell the Dean where you go every Saturday night.’

Several of the boys turned to look at him. Ashworth turned paper white and sat down with a thump.

Angelus prowled a little to the left, a little to the right, making quite sure that everyone had grasped that he controlled access to the only door in the room.

‘So, William, what did you plan to do next?’

He had expected hesitation, the habitual look of panic that Will favoured whenever challenged to produce an actual plan. What he got was a second of bright smirk and then Will vaulted neatly over a desk and grabbed a boy. Not just any boy – the boy – by the arm, crushing him up against his chest, one hand to the back of that delicate little throat. Gently, Will steered James forward, to the centre of the room, so that he was backed by two semi-circular wings of staring boys.

James looked tiny in Will’s grip, his fair hair rumpled against Will’s black jacket. Two pairs of blue eyes stared at Angelus. And then very slowly, and so quietly they came soft as a purr, Will let his fangs drop.

Everyone else was behind him; if Will kept looking straight ahead then they would not see. If Will kept looking straight ahead.

Will stared at Angelus and Angelus stared at James, who twisted a little in Will’s grip, as if curious as to what the strange man wanted with him, as if he would look up at his face.

‘William!’

James started and his attention was back on Angelus almost guiltily. Will smiled.

‘Twelve choirboys,’ Angelus said.

‘The organist,’ Dru said, rubbing her hand slowly across her belly.

‘And the assistant organist,’ Darla said, flashing a smile at Camberwell that made him turn bright pink and stare at his keyboard fixedly.

‘It would be memorable,’ Angelus said.

‘Something worthwhile enough to recall on all the hundreds of dull nights in-between?’ Will asked, with that little tilt of his head that meant he was feeling particularly mischievous.

‘Oh, definitely that, my boy, definitely that.’

He looked at James, so incredibly innocent, untouched by all the beastliness around him. His little angel. He could preserve for ever his voice, his beauty, but the second he did so that innocence would be gone, broken, and in its place just a grinning toy imp with no future. Something for other vampires to mock. A frozen butterfly stuck on a pin.

Then Will grinned, and bent down to the boy pressed against his chest, his teeth inches from James’s jugular. And he whispered something in his ear. It took a while, and as Will whispered, James broke into a smile, and nodded eagerly. Then with a long, hard look at Angelus, very old, very knowing, Will released his hold and took two paces back.

Angelus stared at Will.

And James began to sing.

‘Hear my prayer, O God, incline Thine ear!
Thyself from my petition do not hide!’

Up and up the notes soared, clear and bright and unexpected, like a butterfly spiralling in a beam of sunlight in a dark wood. There was no continuous buzzing of the church here, no coughing, no stamping of feet, just Angelus and the boy.

And then James reached for something so high, something that would be so indescribably perfect that Angelus found himself taking in a deep breath, feeling his chest rise in sympathy with James. But it never came. A squawk, strangled off on an outraged gasp of air.

James stopped, and the other boys shifted whilst James’s face flushed with red. He cleared his throat and tried again, starting a few bars earlier, fists clenched at his sides, and again the high note would not come.

Again he stopped, a look of confusion and annoyance on his face as he reached up to his throat.

‘God.’ Ashworth put his hand to his mouth, staring at James in horror. ‘Oh God. No! James no, you mustn’t force it. No. That is—’

‘James,’ Camberwell said kindly, ‘I think he is right, you mustn’t force it any more.’

And on James’s face Angelus could see the dawning realisation of what it meant. Fear, at first, flushing over the embarrassment, and then a little tinge of excitement, and, still marked with sorrow but there none the less – pride.

The other boys were babbling now, about how good he had been and how they wished they could be that good, and the alto boys clapped him on the back, teasingly welcoming him to their number, whilst Brown proclaimed that he would have to sing the solo at evensong now and White told him to shut up, and Ashworth stood up and cleared his throat. Probably about to ask for a performance fee.

Meanwhile Angelus stared into Will’s blue eyes and Will stared back, and they smiled at one another.

Dru danced across and stuck her arm in Angelus’s. ‘Are we going home now, Daddy?’

‘You knew, didn’t you, you knew that if you brought me here this would happen.’

‘Of course – the pixies told me the moon would cover the devil today.’

And there really was no arguing with the pixies.

‘And you knew too, did you?’ he asked Darla.

She slipped her hand through his other arm. ‘Darling, you really can’t blame us if we talk amongst ourselves, just occasionally, when you aren’t around.’

‘So are we going home?’ Dru chirruped.

‘Are we, Angelus?’ Darla asked.

Angelus looked at Will, and, very slightly, Will nodded.

‘Yes, we’re going home. Come on, Spike.’ And without a backward glance he led them all away, one hand rested fondly on his boy’s shoulder.

When Angelus joined them in the carriage with the tickets, Will was shoving the hand-luggage up into the overhead rack and rather pointedly showing the label on his own valise to Dru.

‘See: “W. S. Aurelius.” It wouldn’t say that if it wasn’t true. I am a proper Aurelian.’

‘No you’re not, little boy, that’s why you have to—’

‘Drusilla,’ Angelus said firmly, ‘stop interfering now, there’s a good girl.’

She turned wide, innocent eyes on him. ‘But, Daddy—’

‘Dru,’ Darla said from her seat, apparently deeply engrossed in a copy of Baedeker, ‘Will is Angelus’s property – it is for him to tell him what to do. You know that, dear.’ And then the two women exchanged a look that made Angelus turn away very quickly, before he was obliged to admit that he’d noticed.

‘What will happen in the cathedral now, do you think?’ Will asked.

‘Oh, not a great deal, I imagine,’ Darla said. ‘They will decide that the poor schoolmaster went insane and killed old Harry before cutting his own throat, or some such nonsense, and then they will all politely forget about it.’

‘Humans are very, very silly,’ Dru said.

‘Good thing we aren’t human then, love.’

The porter walked down the platform, slamming the carriage doors shut with echoing bangs. Beyond the sprawl of the new red brick villas that clung about the railway station, Angelus could see the solid black shape of the cathedral, its spire a dagger pointing to the fire streaked sky. They were ringing the bells for evensong.

A whistle blew, the train jolted and started to move, and Angelus turned back to his family.

‘Stop playing with the bags and sit down, Will. Have you got your cap?’

‘Yeh.’ Will threw himself down with a thump and pulled Dru on top of him. ‘See,’ he whispered to her, ‘I’m a proper Aurelian cos I’m Angelus’s, that’s why he always makes such a fuss about my cap.’ And he did something with the hand hidden in the folds of her skirt that made her laugh aloud and then squeal as he pulled her into a kiss. Darla, who would normally object loudly to such play, merely looked on fondly. Angelus clipped his ear, for form’s sake, and he desisted with a not unhappy sigh and settled back, Dru snuggling into the crook of his arm, legs sprawled out close enough to the opposite seat that Angelus would doubtless get to shout at him later for putting his feet up.

‘Glad to be going back to London, my boy?’

‘Yeh. You never wrote to the minions though.’

‘We’ll surprise them. Shake Harold up a bit – it will do him good.’

‘I think town will do us all good,’ Darla said.

‘Street urchins,’ Dru said firmly.

‘Decent pubs,’ Will said.

‘Someone to eat who doesn’t taste of hay.’ Darla smiled at Angelus and blew him a kiss. ‘We can always find you a stable, darling, if you decide you’re missing the country life.’ It was probably as close as she would come to thanking him.

Angelus looked out of the window again. The spire was still just visible, a distant shape across the water meadows. He reached into his pocket and brought out a small but thick book, which he tossed at Will. ‘Well we’ve got two hours until we get there. You can start with chapter one.’

‘Oh, bloody hell. Why can’t I ever just relax like everyone else?’

‘Because you’ll only start to fidget and then Darla will want me to thrash you. Read it, learn it, I’ll test you on it later.’

‘’s not bloody fair.’ Will examined the spine of the book in disgust. ‘Officium et Praecepio Ordo Aurelio. There’s an order of Aurelius? Never heard of it.’

‘Oh you will, my boy, you will.’

Will opened the book with a scowl, muttering something that Angelus pretended not to hear, and tilted his face against Dru. She purred and snuggled a little closer, but he seemed to be reading. For now at least.

Across the carriage, Darla smiled at him then bent over her own book.

Angelus let out a long sigh, propped his feet up on the opposite seat, closed his eyes, and let the rocking of the train lull him to sleep, smiling.