“Most people don’t know that he wasn’t just an illusionist and escape artist, but that he helped law enforcement in many ways—along with British intelligence and the United States military.”
“That’s how you and Max met, isn’t it? When he was working with the British army.” Max hadn’t been enlisted, of course, for he had his own enemy to fight, but he’d done his patriotic duty in other ways and was allowed to be part of the training.
“Yes, that’s right. We got to be quite good friends during a week-long training with Houdini.” Grady paused in his task of lighting the fire to look at her again. “Max and I would go to the pub after, have a few ales, talk about some of the things Houdini said. Sometimes Harry would even go with us—that was the beginning of how I got to know him so well.
“One time, the two of us were in one of the pubs and Max got up suddenly. He’d been watching this couple sitting at the bar, and he had a sort of intense look on his face. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he told me.
“He walked out the door and I realized he was going after the couple who’d been drinking at the counter. I’d watched the bloke sit down next to a pretty blond woman, and saw how he was getting a little fresh with her. She didn’t seem to mind—in fact, she was flirting right back—but she’d also had plenty to drink. They left together, the woman hardly able to walk except with the man’s arm around her waist.” Grady had a bit of a chagrined look on his face. “I suppose I should have thought to go after them myself, but the way I saw it, she wasn’t protesting and the bloke didn’t seem threatening. Those things happen every night in a pub like that. But something about them obviously bothered Max.
“I paid for our drinks and followed him—he’d left his hat, anyway—and though I was a block behind, I saw the couple shambling along and Max turn into an alley behind them. He looked like he was holding a pointy stick—though where he’d found that, I couldn’t imagine.” Grady laughed a little, then turned to poke at the fire. Savina was grinning, for she knew where the story was going.
“I got to the alley and found something inexplicable. I’d seen the man and the woman walk in there, and Max follow—but when I got there, the woman was gone. It was as if she’d disappeared, and it was a blind alley. There was bloody nowhere for her to go. Believe me, I looked. The man seemed stunned and confused, and he was bleeding from what I thought was a scratch on the neck. And there was a disgusting film of dust all over Max’s coat.”
“I suppose Max didn’t answer many questions afterward, did he?” Savina asked drily.
“Not a one. He insisted I’d had too many ales at the pub, and that the woman had slipped out of the alley and I must have missed seeing her.” Grady shook his head. “But what Max didn’t know was how familiar I was with literature. I didn’t learn to read until I was fifteen,” he added nonchalantly. “But once I did, I devoured a book a day. Quite literally. I worked in a bookshop when I first arrived in London from Dublin.” He grinned.
“And since you were familiar with literature, you’d surely read Dracula.”
“Among other stories too, like Varney the Vampire.” He sobered, turning back to the hesitant fire for a few moments, coaxing it into something more relevant.
“And so you put the pieces together.” Savina’s coffee had cooled enough by now for her to sip it, and she tasted the slug of whiskey he’d added. And some honey as well, she thought, for it was deliciously sweet. Nice touch.
“I did. He never admitted it, not really, but he didn’t really deny it either. And until he contacted me to meet him at Clancy’s Gold Coast after he arrived here in Chicago, I never did get confirmation of what I’d seen.” He was poking the fire with an iron implement. “He and I have kept in touch since London, though not as much after I moved here—even though I invited him often enough to visit. I was always curious as to whether what I’d seen was what I thought I’d seen.”
“Max is a very secretive, closed-off person,” Savina said—more to herself than to Grady. “You surely know he lost his wife to the vampires thirteen years ago. That changed him, completely and utterly. I knew him from when he was younger. He’s older than me by seven years, but we grew up in the Con—the same environment. He was always very much a rogue and a charmer, someone who bordered on arrogant with his skills and abilities—but he had a right to be arrogant and self-assured. Then after Felicia was murdered, he became a different person. He ran away. From everything. Everyone and everything. He still does.”
There was silence for a moment, filled only by the soft rustling and rolling noises as Grady stoked the blazing fire into something that could sustain itself.
“You’re not a Venator,” he said after a while of staring into the dancing flames. “But Max Denton is.”
“He is the Venator of Venators,” she told him, figuring at this point there was no reason to be reticent. Max had brought them here, he’d admitted what he did, and Grady had the right to know everything she knew. If Max didn’t like it, then he shouldn’t have abandoned her here for hours and days on end. “The Summas Gardella. The leader of the Gardella vampire hunters, descended on a direct bloodline from the first of them all.”
“Gardeleus of Rome.”
“That’s right.” Savina was mildly surprised he knew this bit of information, but Grady had proven already how resourceful and enlightened he was about many things.
“Was his wife a Venator too?”
“No. She wasn’t—female Venators are extremely rare—and truth be told, Felicia wasn’t particularly… Well, she wasn’t on the front lines, so to speak. She knew about the undead, of course, and what Max’s vocation was, and the legacy of the Gardellas, but she wasn’t part of it. Max did his best to keep those two parts of his life separate, while at the same time, protecting her as much as he could. Rather like a man going off to war, or a spy going on his missions, then returning to his normal family life.”
“He has a heavy burden.”
“The heaviest.” Savina sighed, unaccountable tears prickling her eyes. And she was adding to his burden, wasn’t she?
A man like Max—a man with brilliant, unique skills and the unwavering drive to destroy evil at any cost, who had a calling that took everything from him: physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually—had a vocation from which he could not escape, a responsibility to the entire human race.
And loss. Oh, God, he’d suffered such loss—not only of his wife, but of his daughter and her childhood, as well as his own freedom and peace.
What right did she have to demand more from him? What right did she have to expect what he could not give? Was she being a fool? Should she not do her part to eradicate evil by being his love and support so that he could go on?
“Savina?”
She realized Grady was standing there in front of her, holding a handkerchief at her eye level. She hadn’t even realized she was crying.
“You love him.”
“Incredibly. There is—never will be—anyone else. But…” She dabbed at her eyes with the cloth, feeling like a fool.
How small were her concerns—her mere matters of the heart—when Nicholas Iscariot was in possession of Rasputin’s amulet, when he was determined to obtain the Rings of Jubai in order to gain even more power…events that would surely jeopardize hundreds if not thousands of mortals.
Grady sat on the sofa next to her. “It’s obvious to any fool the bloke loves you deeply. But surely he’s afraid of the same thing happening to you that happened to his wife.”
“Of course he is. But it’s an entirely different matter. Felicia never fully understood what that world was, what Max’s role meant. And he…he kept her insulated from it too. I am—I’ve been part of the world of the Venators since I was a child. I’ve staked vampires on my own, in fact. Well over a dozen. You don’t have to be a Venator to slay an undead.”
“And so you don’t.” He was almost smiling now; she saw the quirk of his lips.
She couldn’t hold back a grin of her own. “They don’t call me an adventure photographer for nothing.” She reached over and covered his hand, squeezing it. “Thank you so much for listening to me. If I had a brother, I’d want him to be just like you.”
At that moment, the front door opened, and in swept Max: dark, wet, and clearly in a mood.
“Well doesn’t this look cozy.” He stood there for no longer than a heartbeat, then turned and walked back out the door, which closed very abruptly behind him.
“Well, bugger that,” said Grady.
+ + +
Max was not happy when he left Woodmore at The Silver Chalice in order to go in search of his daughter—who was not, as it turned out, in her bedroom—and he was even less happy when he returned to the pub several hours later: wet, chilled, and furious beyond belief.
Damned cozy scene, he thought to himself. Fire going, sitting on the sofa together—had they actually been holding hands?