Read Online The Fifth House of the Heart by Ben Tripp - Free Book Online

their ridiculous venture. It wasn’t until the Third Crusade that they got a system sorted out. These little fellows”—here he indicated the silver hammerhead in Emily’s hands—“were instrumental in wiping out much of the coven. According to legend, the one you’re holding, Simon, was wielded by Conrad of Montferrat. It slew the vampires Abbas and Myrion, amongst others. No proof of any of it, naturally,but the slaying aspect is genuine enough. Someone I know quite well used this very instrument to put a great big hole in the vampire Corfax in 1965, eighteen years before you were born. I assure you, it does work.”
    â€œAre you serious?” Emily asked, her brows risen almost to her hairline.
    â€œDeadly serious, if I may,” Sax replied. “I’m not sure how to explain this. Bear along. Vampires are real, of course. Not like elves or fairies or anything of that nature. It’s sheerest vanity we humans imagine ourselves to be the dominant species just because there are so many of us. Sheep may entertain similar delusions. Like all predators, the vampires are few, but extraordinarily successful and dangerous. And they look like us, more or less, so one might never know. But they’re not the same. They take on the appearance of their prey. A thousand years ago, half of them were more wolf than man. Not so easy to spot now.
    â€œI’ve discussed them with scientists, you know. The few that are aware of them. Vampires come from something different from us. They’re a different form of life. That’s the main thing. All monster myths may descend from them. They’re the living clay from which nightmares are shaped.”
    As if regretting the mad horror of his words, Sax chuckled.
    â€œForgive my mood. I don’t anticipate you’ll have any, ah, difficulties, but they are also damnably clever creatures, and if one of them detected my relationship with you—”
    â€œUncle Sax?”
    â€œYes, Emily.”
    â€œHow do you know—?”
    â€œWell. That’s a very long story.”
    â€œBut for now.”
    â€œFor now,” Sax said, and shrugged an apology for being mysterious, “consider this a bit of insurance. I have the handle to it at the shop, butthe box was too big to carry. It’s as long as my arm. Keep it by the bed, I suppose. Seriously. I don’t think there will be any difficulties at all, but if there were, they would wind up on your doorstep, I’m afraid.”
    â€œVampires, you mean.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI think it’s time we discussed putting you in a home.”

1965
    Europe

I
    The new Canadian flag had just been introduced. Sax’s gentleman friend at the British Museum described it as “ gules a pale argent, charged a feuille d’érable, ” which seemed hilarious at the time, probably because Sax was at the zenith of his snotty phase and found all things Canadian to be parochial and dreadful.
    Martin Luther King marched on Montgomery, Alabama; Malcolm X was assassinated in Manhattan. The Voting Rights Act had been proposed to Congress by President Johnson and a cosmonaut had walked in space. My Fair Lady was deadlocked with Mary Poppins to sweep the Oscars; Sax had wept openly at the premiere of The Sound of Music at the Rivoli theater in New York City, and two weeks later, on March 16, he saw a pop combo called the Rolling Stones perform at the Granada Theatre in Greenford, England, and struck up an acquaintance with the drummer, Charlie Watts. Sax knew their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, having sold him some good Regency pieces for the offices of Immediate Records, in addition to meeting him socially in the back of Mary Quant’s shop. Meanwhile, 3,500 American combat troops had been deployed in Vietnam.
    In those days, Sax was spending half his time in Manhattan and the other half touring the restless world in search of what he called sound articles. He