Strange Practice (Dr. Greta Helsing, #1)

by Vivian Shaw

It had begun to rain, a nasty, icy, slimy sort of rain that got down collars and under hoods and up sleeves, and the newcomer was soaked and shivering.

Hey, Helsing. Got your mass spec results. Whatever you’re into is some fascinatingly weird shit. Emailed you the numbers. Greta thought fascinatingly weird shit was the understatement of the century.

That reminds me,” said Greta, snapping her fingers, thinking of the neatly arranged surgical instrument tray he’d prepared for her. “Did you really drive ambulances in the Blitz?” “I really did.” The kettle boiled, and he got up to make the tea. “And I can speak four languages fluently and a fifth and sixth extremely badly, darn socks, and dance the tango, not to mention all the excitingly dangerous neck biting—and the bat thing. Do not ask me about the bat thing. I cannot, however, fly a helicopter, play the piano, or compose lyric poetry, and don’t ask me to keep houseplants alive. Ah, here’s Sir Francis back from Sainsbury’s, in fact.”

Greta couldn’t remember a lot about her occasional visits here with her father, decades back, only that the chapel had smelled of lilies and brass polish and incense the way Catholic churches always did, and the priests in their black suits had unnerved her with the silent way they moved.

Thought of the man they had left behind in Ruthven’s house, who had spent hours, perhaps, in vigil, kneeling within inches of this thing. Thought of the uncertain wavering voice, reciting bits of scripture cut and pasted like ransom note letters into a set of new and hideous commandments. For wickedness is in their dwellings, he thought, and among them.

Sufficient unto the day, Varney had said, and that would have to do.

“That’s more or less what I would expect,” Greta said, picking up the phone again. “That kind of vampire healing is fast when it’s working properly. One day I’ll write a paper on comparative tissue trauma recovery rates in the classic draculine and lunar sensitive subspecies of sanguivore. Hello, room service?”