The Kindred of Darkness by Barbara Hambly

observes. One of the few advantages I have ever found in being dead. He wishes
you
to find this interloper?’ Another man’s brows would have knit – there was only a flicker of shadow in those yellow pupils pleated with faded gray.
    â€˜He says he can’t. He’s a Serb, or a Montenegrin, Grippen says, calling himself Zahorec … Simon, before anything else, please, can you learn if Miranda is still alive? She’s with her nursery maid; Grippen kidnapped both.’
    â€˜Then I should say the odds are good that both thrive.’
    â€˜But it doesn’t mean she’s safe. It doesn’t mean she isn’t terrified, or hungry, or cold, or alone in the dark. It doesn’t mean they haven’t murdered poor Nan—’
    â€˜Nan?’
    â€˜Nan Wellit. The nursery maid.’ Lydia wiped her eyes again, propped her spectacles back into place. ‘She’s only seventeen. Heaven knows what will happen to her – to them both – if she tries to escape. Or if whoever is keeping watch over them panics. …’
    â€˜Were I employed by Lionel Grippen to guard one whom he wished to keep well,’ remarked Don Simon, ‘I should take great care how I panicked.’
    In appearance, the young man before her was as he had been when death had claimed him, in his mid-twenties, in 1555. Lydia had not seen him in waking life since a November night last year in Peking, and the scars on his face – taken in a struggle with the Master of Constantinople, to protect her – seemed fresh as ever after four years.
How long DOES it take vampire flesh to heal?
He could keep the living from seeing them, though Lydia suspected that they would be visible in a mirror.
    She wished she could do as much with her eyeglasses.
    He had killed, probably, at least as many people as Grippen had. Drunk the energies of their deaths in order to maintain his own powers to tamper with the perceptions of the living.
    Murderer and monster, a walking corpse.
    She took his thin hand. ‘Please.’
    â€˜It shall be as you desire, Mistress.’ Inflections of sixteenth-century Castille clung to his whispering voice. ‘At this distance, knowing neither your child nor the girl, no, my mind cannot touch theirs. In any case I would hazard that Lionel guesses you will call on me – though to my knowledge he knows not where I am hid – and he will have bestowed the pair of them underground. The thickness of earth baffles our senses. Thus it is, I suspect, that he can find no trace of this interloper himself. London is an old city, and built upon river clay. Underground rivers flow beneath her streets, and the movement of living water confuses perception. Ancient crypts lie deep below the palaces of your progress, and Roman vaults below them. An interloper, whose mind Lionel knows not, could easily hide from him for a time.’
    â€˜Since early February, Grippen says. But Grippen’s dealt with interlopers before.’
    â€˜But interlopers before promenaded themselves upon their arrival, walked the night streets that he might see them, and asked his leave to hunt. I take it this man has not.’
    Lydia shook her head. ‘Grippen says he’s been killing, every night and sometimes twice and thrice—’
    â€˜Has he, indeed?’ This time the vampire’s eyebrows really did go up.
    â€˜Grippen said the police – and worse, the people of the neighborhood – were getting angry and suspicious—’
    â€˜Well they might. There are those among the Undead who would – an they could – kill twice and thrice in a night, and most would hunt every night an t’were possible. But ’tis not. Indeed, without stooping to the vulgarity of a pun, I would say ’tis the chief bone of contention between most Masters and their fledglings that the Master must keep those he has created from over-hunting their grounds, and revealing to the