won't tip against you in the 'Great Game.' You don't understand. You refuse to understand."
"I understand how much damage a man like that can do, if he allies himself with any government. And I understand the kind of fee a government would pay such a man."
Fairport looked completely blank. Then, when Asher raised his brows, the old man flushed an unhealthy, blotchy pink. "Oh. Oh, that. I'm sure it's a condition that can be rectified with proper medical investigation... I've found astonishing virtue in yogurt as a food of longevity, and in Chinese ginseng. They won't always be drinkers of human blood..."
"I'm sure that lacemaker Ernchester killed last night would be glad to hear it," Asher replied grimly, though some objective corner of his mind had to fight not to laugh at the image of Lionel Grippen, Master Vampire of London, supping on a dish of yogurt and ginseng tea. "And don't you think there might be vampires who're as fond of the taste of human death as they are of human blood?"
The old man's mouth flinched. "That's the most revolting thing I've ever heard!
They can't possibly be... No one in his senses could be. They'll welcome that liberation as much as any drunkard would welcome the liberation from drink. And in the meantime there are the physically and socially unfit-"
"You mean traitors?" No other sounds in the house, though there was a dim clashing of shrubbery as someone passed by under the window. If he could disarm him without a shot being fired, there might still be time.
Fairport drew himself up. "I am not a traitor," he said with dignity.
Asher sighed in genuine disgust. "I never met a double agent who was."
"I have never passed information along to Baron Karolyi which would hurt any of our contacts or our agents..."
"How would you know?" Asher demanded tiredly. "You know nothing about politics, you barely read a newspaper, or at least you didn't when I was here. You don't think, if he can make a deal with vampires-if he can blackmail Ernchester into creating other vampires, fledglings loyal to the Austrian government- they won't eventually be used against us here? Or back at home?"
"That won't happen!" Fairport cried. "I won't let it happen! Asher, Karolyi is only a means to an end. These petty politics, a handful of military secrets that are going to be useless in three years, they're a small price to pay for the knowledge, the learning, that will free man, finally, from the grip of age, and debility, and death!
"Asher, look at me!" He gestured like a frustrated child with his miniature fist. "Look at me! I've been an old man since I was thirty-five! Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste..." He shook his head. "And every day for the past twenty years I have dealt with men who, like me, have felt that cold, awful terror of knowing their bodies are failing them. Men stumbling as they try to outrace the Pale Horse. I've tried everything, traveled to the far corners of the world, seeking out those who have conquered age-trying to find what it is that makes the body fail, that cripples us, blinds us, deafens us, renders us white-haired and flatulent and impotent and brittle."
Behind his thick lenses the blue eyes glittered suddenly, and genuine venom seeped into his voice. "What it is that wears out some while others continue to gorge and rut and dance into their eighties, their-"
Asher struck, thrusting off his long legs like lightning, smashing aside Fairport's gun hand at the same moment he drove a fist into the little man's chin. He struck with all he had, to carry him across the distance between them quicker than Fairport could react and shoot, and the impact hurled the professor back and to the floor, as if Asher had struck a child. There wasn't time to think or regret-in another moment Karolyi or one of the footmen might enter, and at that point Asher knew he would die. Karolyi, unlike Fairport, was not a man to justify or explain.
He scooped up the gun, transferred Fairport's key ring from the old man's coat pocket to his own, pulled free the old man's four-in-hand and used it to bind his wrists behind him, then stuffed Fairport's handkerchief into his mouth for a gag. He took another moment to drag him behind the desk, keeping low still, out of the range of the windows... Really, he thought, half regretful, the man had always been