Teeth_ Vampire Tales - Ellen Datlow [132]
Their mansion—castle—whatever one has to call it—was colossal. Duvalle had built high.
It rose, this pile, like a cliff, with outcrops of slate-capped towers. Courtyards and enclosed gardens encircled it. Beyond and around lay deep pine woods with infiltrations of other trees, some maples, already flaming in the last of summer and the sunset. I spotted none of the usual workplaces, houses, or barns.
We had taken almost three hours to wend through their land, along the tree-rooted and stone-littered upward-tending track. Once Casperon had to pull up, get out, and examine a tire. But it was all right. On we went.
At one point, just before we reached the house, I saw a waterfall cascading from a tall, rocky hill, plunging into a ravine below. In the ghostly dusk it looked beautiful and melodramatic. Setting the tone?
When the car at last drew up, a few windows were burning amber in the house cliff. Over the wide door itself glowed a single electric light inside a round pane like a worn-out planet.
No one had come to greet us.
We got out and stood at a loss. The car’s headlamps fired the brickwork, but still nobody emerged. At the lit windows, no silhouette appeared gazing down.
Casperon marched to the door and rang some sort of bell that hung there.
All across the grounds crickets chirruped, hesitated, and went on.
The night was warm, and so empty; nothing seemed to be really alive anywhere, despite the crickets, the windows. Nothing, I mean, of my kind, our people. For a strange moment I wondered if something ominous had happened here, if everyone had died, and if so, would that release me? But then one leaf of the door was opened. A man looked out. Casperon spoke to him, and the man nodded. A few minutes later I had to go up the steps and into the house.
There was a sort of vestibule, vaguely lighted by old ornate lanterns. Beyond that was a big paved court, with pruned trees and raised flower beds, and then more steps. Casperon had gone for my luggage. I followed the wretched sallow man who had let me in.
“What’s your name?” I asked him as we reached the next portion of the house, a blank wall lined only with blank black windows.
“Anton.”
“Where is the family?” I asked him.
“Above” was all he said.
I said, halting, “Why was there no one to welcome me?”
He didn’t reply. Feeling a fool, angry now, I stalked after him.
There was another vast hall or vestibule. No lights, until he touched the switch and grayish, weary side lamps came on, giving little color to the stony, towering space.
“Where,” I said, in Juno’s voice, “is he? He at least should be here. Zeev Duvalle, my husband-to-be.” I spoke formally. “I am insulted. Go at once and tell him—”
“He does not rise yet,” said Anton, as if to somebody invisible but tiresome. “He doesn’t rise until eight o’clock.”
Day in night. Night was Zeev’s day. Yet the sun had been gone over an hour now. Damn him, I thought. Damn him.
It was useless to protest further. And when Casperon returned with the bags, I could say nothing to him, because this wasn’t his fault. And besides, he would soon be gone. I was alone. As per usual.
I met Zeev Duvalle at dinner. It was definitely a dinner, not a breakfast, despite their day-for-night policy. It was served in an upstairs conservatory, the glass panes open to the air. A long table draped in white, tall old greenish glasses, plates of some red china, probably Victorian. Only five or six other people came to the meal, and they introduced themselves in a formal, chilly way. Only one woman, who looked about fifty and so probably was into her several hundreds, said she regretted not being there at my arrival. No excuse was offered, however. They made me feel like what I was to them, a new house computer that could talk. A doll that would be able to have babies . . . yes. Horrible.
By the time we sat down, in high-backed chairs, with huge orange trees standing