Hide Me Among the Graves

changing the names, but everyone would know who the subject is.”

After a few heartbeats, “You’d see to that, I suppose,” said Swinburne sourly.

Trelawny shrugged.

Swinburne shook his head as if to clear it. “Blood? What do you want my blood for?”

“To kill flies, to scare children, to keep Christians away from my door, what do you care? Just a couple of drops, no more than what you’d lose if you try to shave this morning.”

Swinburne made a fist of his free hand to hide its shaking.

“Blood,” he said, as if to remind himself of the subject at hand. “And you’ll give me these statements you got from the girls? In exchange? And not get more?”

“That’s it.”

Swinburne sat back, brooding. “She might not like it. My blood is hers.”

“You know I’m an ally of hers. She could hardly blame you.”

“If she blames a person for a thing, there’s no help in him being justified.”

Trelawny exhaled. “Damn it, little man, if Shelley’d been as lily-livered as you are, he’d never have … just go and shave the lint off your chin and then look the other way while I steal the towel afterward!”

Swinburne shook his head. “Go home. This is insane.”

“Humor an old lunatic.”

“What do you want it for?”

“Ahhh…” Trelawny tried to think of something plausible. “Well, if you must know, rejuvenation.” He tried to look mildly shamefaced. “I’ve reason to believe that a few drops of your sort of blood, in brandy in an amethyst cup, might restore me to—”

“Semi-decrepitude.”

Cheeky bugger, thought Trelawny. “If you like.”

“You’re as bad as the supplicants under London Bridge.”

Trelawny just stared at him from under his bushy white eyebrows. The mix of vampire-tainted blood with brandy in an amethyst cup was indeed a drink sought after by certain perverse folk, and Trelawny had heard of a sort of club called the Galatea under London Bridge, where such people gathered.

Swinburne shifted in his chair. “You’ll leave immediately afterward?”

“I’ll be away down the street before you’ve heard the door close.”

Swinburne stared at him, then shrugged and got to his feet, the sword still trailing from his right hand — and then his nervous gaze fell on the box Trelawny still carried.

“What’s that?”

“A box. For cigars. If you have any, I’ll put them in it.”

But Swinburne’s eyes were suddenly wide. “That lid! — is a mirror, on the inside!” He stepped back hastily and raised the rapier again as the gaslight threw his shadow across the whips hung on the walls. “Get out! I know what mirrors can do to her sort — you’ll not deprive me of my poetry! Get out, I say!”

Trelawny set the box on the mantel, then spread his hands placatingly and stepped forward, but Swinburne wasn’t letting the old man get near him — Swinburne’s sword snapped forward, and Trelawny yanked his right hand back just in time to avoid losing a finger.

The old man sighed and shuffled backward to the fireplace, and he reached up to pull the other rapier free of its hook. He suppressed a wince as his scorched palm closed firmly on the grip.

“I’m sorry you know it,” he said, exhaling.

Swinburne laughed in surprise. “You’d fight me? I’m not yet near forty, and you must be twice that — and you should know that I’ve studied fencing.”

“I must be a fool,” Trelawny agreed. And I’m only seventy-seven, he thought. He raised the sword, holding the grip as he would hold a hammer.

Swinburne relaxed again into the en garde position, and his disengage and thrust at Trelawny’s wrist was contained and fast.

Trelawny parried it with a deliberately clumsy swat that rang the blades, and he retreated a step, his rear heel knocking on the hearth bricks; he didn’t want the young man to experience any mortal alarm that might call up Miss B. prematurely.

“Hah!” exclaimed Swinburne. “You fence like a man trying to hang wallpaper!”

That was in fact the impression Trelawny wanted to give. Blisters on his palm were broken now, and the sword grip was wet.

“I’ll cut you,” said Swinburne, and he licked his lips. “It’ll hurt.”

If she senses his mood now, Trelawny thought sourly as he tightened his hand on the slick leather grip, she’ll simply imagine he’s gone back to the sport at the Verbena Lodge.

Swinburne lunged, driving his point toward Trelawny’s shoulder, and at the last moment spun the point around the old man’s bell-guard and jabbed for the elbow; but in the same instant Trelawny fell backward, folding his arm across his chest, and sat down heavily on the hearth, rapping his tailbone against the bricks and rattling the fire screen.

Swinburne paused over him and giggled breathlessly. “Now I know that all your exploits in your books were lies! Pirates, sea battles, Arab brides!”

He eyed Trelawny’s raised knee and dropped his point toward it.

And Trelawny straightened his leg forcefully, kicking Swinburne’s forward ankle out from under him; as the young man fell on him, Trelawny parried his blade aside and with his free hand punched the young poet very hard on the shelf of his descending jaw.

Swinburne tumbled into his arms, unconscious.

Very quickly, for Miss B. would have sensed that blow, Trelawny pushed Swinburne’s limp form off him — the little poet hardly weighed more than a child — and stood up to snatch the box from the mantel.

The poet had rolled over on the carpet and was now face-down, and Trelawny crouched beside him and flipped him onto his back, and with a fingertip collected a smear of blood from Swinburne’s lip — and he had no sooner smeared it around the grooves in the box’s mirrored interior than his panting breath became a visible plume of steam.

The room was suddenly very cold, and books and papers flew in a whirlwind as a loud, fracturing buzz rattled the few pictures that weren’t tumbling off the walls.

Trelawny spun toward the window and flinched as he held the open box up in front of himself.

Boadicea of the Iceni had arrived from out of the night.

Iridescent gleams played over the scaled serpent’s body as it swung heavily in the vibrating air, its wings a blurred gale of rainbow colors; vertically slitted eyes like poisonous golden apples swiveled back and forth in the room’s brightness.

Trelawny could feel the freezing chill of her gaze as it swept past him — and then his hands were numbed as she focused on the box.

And the serpent shape rippled and seemed to implode, and the floor shook as it fell and crashed to the carpet. Trelawny kept the box aimed at the bending, darkening shape. Streamers of heavy black smoke blew away from her and out the open window.

The eyes had shrunk to black stones, but they could not look away from the mirrors that were etched now with Swinburne’s beloved blood.

Boadicea was a spasming black fetus now, waving stiffening limbs on the carpet as more of the thick black smoke burst out of her and spun away; Trelawny was able to scuff closer on his knees, and he could still feel the electric shiver of her attention in the box in his aching hands.

At last, with a loud crack, she lay still on the frosted carpet, a black statue no more than two inches long — and he lowered the box onto her and gingerly tilted it to scoop her inside as he swung the lid shut.

For nearly a minute he didn’t move, but just knelt there, gasping as the night breeze from the open window warmed the room. Thick black soot stained the floor and wall and windowsill.

Carefully he lifted the box an inch, and it was not particularly heavy — and he allowed his muscles to relax a little; her mass was nearly all gone, presumably carried away in the billows of leaden smoke. This trick had indeed drastically diminished her.

At last he got shakily to his feet and swung the latch on the box’s exterior, shutting her in. He tucked it