Read Online James Asher 1 - Those Who Hunt The Night by Barbara Hambly - Free Book Online Page A

right,” Lydia observed. She hesitated, turning the vertebra over and over in her fingers, not looking at it now any more than she looked at the grass stems she plucked when she was nervous. She swallowed hard, trying to sound casual and not succeeding. “How much danger am I in?”
    “Quite a lot, I think.” He got up and came around to sit on the pillows beside her; his arm in its white shirt sleeve was sinewy and strong around her shoulders. Her mother's anxious coddling—not to mention the overwhelming chivalry of a number of young men who seemed to believe that, because they found her pretty, she would automatically think them fascinating—had given Lydia a horror of clinginess. But it was good to lean into James' strength, to feel the warmth of his flesh through the shirt sleeve, the muscle and rib beneath that nondescript tweed waistcoat, and to smell ink and book dust and Macassar oil. Though she knew objectively that he was no more able to defend either of them against this supernatural danger than she was, she cherished the momentary illusion that he would not let her come to harm. His lips brushed her hair. “I'm going to have to go down to London again,” he said after a few minutes, “to search for the murderer and to pursue investigations as to the whereabouts of the other vampires in London. If I can locate where they sleep, where they store their things, where they hunt, it should give me a weapon to use against them. It's probably best that you leave Oxford as well . . .”
    “Well, of course!” She turned abruptly in the circle of his arm, the fragile suspension of disbelief dissolving like a cigarette genie with the opening of a door. “I'll come down to London with you. Not to stay with you,” she added hastily, as his mouth opened in a protest he was momentarily too shocked to voice. “I know that would put me in danger, if they saw us together. But to take rooms near yours, to be close enough to help you, if you need it . . .”
    “Lydia . . . !”
    Their eyes met. She fought to keep hers from saying Don't leave me, fought even to keep herself from thinking it or from admitting to a fear that would only make things harder for him. She squared her pointed little chin. “And you will need it,” she said reasonably. “If you're going to be investigating the vampire murders, you won't have time to go hunting through the public records for evidence of where the vampires themselves might be living, not if Don Simon wants to see results quickly. And we could meet in the daytime, when—when they can't see us. If what you say about them is true, I'd be in no more danger in London than I would be in Oxford—or anywhere else, really. And in London you would be closer, in case of . . .” She shied away from saying it. “Just in case.”
    He looked away from her, saying nothing for a time, just running the dry ribbons of the vampire's reticule through the fingers of his free hand. “Maybe,” he said after a time. “And it's true I'll need a researcher who believes . , . You do believe they're really vampires, don't you?” His eyes came back to hers. She thought about it, turning that odd, anomalous chunk of bone over and over in her lap. James was one of the few men to whom she knew she could say anything without fear of either shock, uncertain laughter, or—worse—that blankly incomprehending stare that young men gave her when she made some straight-faced joke.
    “Probably as much as you do,” she said at last. “That is, there's a lot of me that says, ”This is silly, there's no such thing.' But up until a year or so ago, nobody believed there was such a thing as viruses, you know. We still don't know what they are, but we do know now they exist, and more and more are being discovered ... A hundred years ago, they would have said it was silly to believe that diseases were caused by little animals too small to see, instead of either evil spirits or an imbalance of bodily humors—which