#james asher

“Simon . . .” He looked back, the gilt candlelight seeming almost to shine through him, as it shone through the edges of fingers held near to the flame—demon and killer a thousand times over, and the man who had saved Asher’s life. “Thank you.” “You are in my service,” the vampire replied, the unstressed axiom of a nobleman who questions neither his rights nor his duties. “And we have not yet scotched this killer." [... an eternity later ...] "James . . .” He turned, as Asher strode past him into the prison room again and over to the window where the detached window bar lay shining frostily in the square of moonlight on the floor. It was two and a half feet long, steel electroplated with silver, and heavy as a large spanner—or crow, as Ysidro called it—in his hand. Asher hefted it and looked back at the vampire who stood like a disheveled ghost against the blackness of the doorway. Picking his words as if tiptoeing through a swamp, Ysidro said, “Did Dennis bring you here, as he did me? Or did you come of your own accord, looking for me at daybreak?” “I came looking for you.” “That was stupid . . .” He hesitated, for a moment awkward and oddly human in the face of saying something he had not said in many hundreds of years and perhaps, Asher thought, never. “Thank you.” “I’m in your service,” Asher reminded him, and walked back to the door, silver bar like a gleaming club in his hand. “And,” he added grimly, “we haven’t scotched this killer yet.”