The Infernal Express

by Josh Reynolds

  Harker slammed into him, carrying him back against the wall. She caught his wrist and smashed his hand against the rough brick until he dropped his weapon. His wrist crumbled in her grip. He made to scream, but she slapped her palm over his mouth. “Shhh,” she murmured. “Shhh, there’s a chap. No need to scream. The Bloofer Lady won’t harm you.” Her red eyes flickered to his crushed wrist and then back. “Well, won’t harm you anymore,” she amended, smiling. He whimpered. She glanced towards the mouth of the alley, and saw a number of the Ministry of Esoteric Observation’s plug-ugly gunsels lurch up the stairs and into the train station.

  “I apologize for interrupting your ambush,” she said, looking back at her prisoner. “I know you and your fellows had a rendezvous planned, but much as I sympathize with your desire to put a bullet in Morris and his bureaucratic bully-boys, I simply cannot allow it. Thus, here we are. And there they go.” Her eyes bored into his as she continued, “Your man inside has failed as well, I wager. Even if not, he won’t get far.” Her smile widened, revealing the thin fangs which marred her otherwise attractive smile.

  “Tell me who you are, and I won’t snap your other wrist,” she said. The man stared at her, eyes starting from their sockets. She squeezed his remaining wrist gently, and he squealed. He glared at her and spat a single word. She hissed and before she could stop herself, her fingers had sunk into the flesh of his throat and he was twitching in his death-throes. She stepped back and let him slide down the wall. She stared down at the body and felt a flicker of unease.

  Dhampir. That was what he’d called her, with enough venom in the syllables to sting. Derived from the Albanian; pire, meaning ‘to drink’ and dham, meaning ‘teeth’. To drink with teeth, she thought idly. The result of a liaison between the living and the dead. In her case, a solicitor’s wife from Purfleet, and a Wallachian voivode with a penchant for foreign fare. Mumsy had been naughty, and daddy had been dastardly, and Harker herself was caught somewhere in between.

  She examined her fingers, which were sticky and red. She knelt and cleaned them off on the dead man’s coat. What she couldn’t get with the coat, she cleaned with her tongue and lips. The blood tasted like pennies and salty caramel, and she felt a cold thrill as it touched her tongue. Something white hooked the corner of her eye and she turned.

  The woman in white stared at her from the mouth of the alley, her blood-spattered burial shroud wafting about her shrunken form as if she were underwater, rather than standing in broad daylight. She stretched out a hand, and her mouth moved in a soundless plea. Harker blinked. “Oh do go straight back to Hell, Mumsy. I’m sure Daddy is quite lonely in whatever fire-pit his soul is roasting in,” she said, as she stepped through the phantom. It vanished like a popped soap bubble.

  Harker stepped to the mouth of the alleyway, and made sure the coast was clear before hurrying towards the entrance to the station. It wouldn’t do to let Morris’ bunch spot her. That might lead to awkward questions, especially given that the Westenra Fund had publically handed responsibility for this debacle-in-the-making over to the Ministry. What would Morris think, if he learned that his good friend Arthur didn’t trust him not to bollocks it all up, post haste?

  Then, if he were as intelligent as he liked to claim, he should have known that Lord Godalming and the Westenra Fund would never voluntarily allow someone else to handle anything having to do with Dracula. Dracula was the reason for the Fund’s existence, it’s impetus and aleph. Dracula’s satanic rites, the scars he’d left, were their raison d’etre, and Harker would not rest until every trace of him had been scoured from the earth. And that included anyone stupid enough to try and bring him back.

  As inconvenient as this situation was, it was also something of a Godsend. Dracula had been no mere grave-maggot, but a spider sitting at the center of an ever-expanding web, a web that was even now twitching to beat the band. Despite what Stoker’s book had said, Dracula hadn’t spent his centuries quietly mouldering in a mountain-castle. He’d set fires from one end of Europe to the next, inciting wars, buying property, pulling strings, all in the name of a singular goal.

  Before he’d come to Purfleet, by way of Whitby, he’d been in the Crimea. And before that, he’d had a hand in the Epirus Revolt. He’d spent decades drawing blood from the flanks of the Ottoman Empire, even as he had in life. It was for that reason, above all others, that Dracula had been—and still was—considered so dangerous. Dracula, unlike many vampires, had a purpose. What it had been, Harker couldn’t say. Van Helsing had suspected, but he had never shared his theories. Not to her, at any rate.

  She frowned as she thought of the old Dutchman. He had never liked her. He had always preferred her brother, Quincy. Golden, cheerful Quincy. Quincy, named after a fallen comrade. Quincy, who had been all sound and fury, and who had passed into nothing at the Somme. Harker pushed the thought aside. I’m sorry, Quincy. I’m sorry you were your father’s son. I’m sorry that I am who I am, and that none of my father’s hideous strength made it into you. If it had, you might have survived having a bayonet buried in your thick skull, she thought, bitterly.

  She and Quincy had not been close, but that had not been his doing. Not really. Quincy had loved her, but she had not realized that the feeling was mutual until it was too late, and his body was crossing the Channel. The bitterness flared and flattened into sadness, and she pulled her coat tighter about herself as she entered the bustle of Victoria Station. She could smell blood and gunpowder and fear. Uniformed constables were pushing through the crowd, blowing their whistles as they charged towards the A.B.C tea shop near the southbound platform. She caught sight of Morris, waving the police on, and smiled. As she’d expected, Morris could take care of himself.

  She hurried towards the Dover train. She’d had her luggage loaded earlier, before she’d set out to ambush the ambushers. She might not know who the would-be resurrectionists were, but she knew their pattern by now. They were persistent—dogged, even—and their attempts to snatch Dracula’s remains would only increase as they drew closer to Walpurgisnacht. The night the Devil held sway was the one night that a creature like Dracula could be drawn from whatever hell now held his black soul.

  The question was, who was it who wanted to do the raising? And what lengths might they go to, to see it done, now that they’d failed here?

  The three people—two women and one man—sitting around the table in the corner of the teashop were a study in contrasts. One woman was young, the other seemingly middle-aged. The first, dressed as if she were on her way to a Chelsea booze-up, the latter as if she were preparing to pay a visit to her grandchildren in some isolated rural village. The man was dressed elegantly, if a trifle out of fashion, and sported a Byronic air, which he went to great pains to maintain. For all their outward differences, however, the three had two things in common.

  They were all English. And they were all vampires.

  “Tea, dear?” the older woman said, hefting the pot.

  The younger woman, who had been staring out the window at the platform, glanced at her, and then away. The man said, “No thank you, Elizabeth.”

  “I don’t recall asking you, Ruthven,” Elizabeth said. “I was asking Sarah. She looks a bit peaked. Should get something warm in you, dear. Bring some color to those cheeks.”

  Sarah growled. It was a beastly sound, all ugly hunger and need. She glared at her companions and fingered the silk scarf she wore about her slender throat. As she tugged at it, a raw, ugly weal became visible. Elizabeth reached out and pulled the scarf back up. “There, there dear. Your past is showing.”

  “We should have taken them when he pulled his gun,” Sarah hissed, glaring at Ruthven. “Why wait?” Despite the commotion that inundated the tea shop in the aftermath of the confrontation, the three of them were left alone. They had, in fact, been left alone even when all others had been hurried out of the shop by officious government bully-boys, and throughout the entirety of the confrontation which had followed. No one saw them, if
they didn’t wish to be seen.

  “I have explained this before,” Ruthven said, calmly.

  “Explain it again, if you would be so kind,” Elizabeth said, pouring herself a cup of tea. “I find plans, like meat, to be best well-chewed.”

  “We are not taking them now, because we cannot be certain that this whole affair is not simply a blind, meant to throw other, lesser interests, off of the trail.” He gestured to the unconscious body of the gunman, where he lay on the floor. “And, we are not taking them now, because the Countess Zaleska, and by extension, the council of Sepulchre, has commanded such.”

  “Bitch,” Sarah spat.

  “Quite so,” Elizabeth murmured, blowing on her tea.

  Ruthven sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Regardless, she is in charge of this…expedition, and it would behove us three to work together. Uphold the national honor, and all that rot.”

  Elizabeth snorted. “Is the Cossack still meeting us in Budapest?”

  “If necessary. And the brothers as well,” Ruthven said. He scratched his chin with a thumbnail. “Though I dislike involving such disreputable creatures in such a delicate operation.”

  “You mean dislike the thought of sharing the glory,” Elizabeth said primly.

  Ruthven laughed. “There is precious little of that to be had here. In fact, quite the reverse. This will bring nothing but shame to our folk. To treat a hero thus…”

  “He was no hero,” Sarah said. “An invader. A fool. Taking that which was not his. He deserves this.” She turned back to the window. Ruthven and Elizabeth shared a look. In truth, and despite Ruthven’s statement to the contrary, they both felt the same, he thought.

  Dracula, for all his power, had been nothing more than another foreign invader, no different to the Vikings, or the Normans. A demanding potentate, seeking fresh fields of plunder. If the humans hadn’t done for him, others might well have. Or perhaps not, he mused. Vampires were not one mind, or one people. They were infinite and varied, with a thousand permutations, every single one of them a unique manifestation of sin and deviltry. Some rose with the moon; others were no more substantial than an ill-breeze; still others loped as wolves or flew as bats; he himself could no more alter his shape than could a stone, but like a stone, he was stronger than he appeared.

  But despite their variety, all of the autumn folk paid homage to the laws of Sepulchre. In his mind’s eye, he saw again that great city of black jasper, its streets and buildings eternally in mourning, and its folk ever caught in twilight. Some called it Selene but Ruthven preferred the less poetic, and more honest, Sepulchre. For that was what the city was—a sepulchre, a tomb for the aristocracy of the night, in all their multitudes and malevolence. In the vast silences which followed the dull tolling of ancient cloister bells, they plotted and schemed in the fashion of the Byzantines of old. Rarely did they unite in common cause, but Dracula was a special case.

  Ruthven leaned forward. “Come, let us discuss more pleasant matters. Elizabeth, I’d heard you were calling yourself Amworth now, rather than Chaston. Decided to shuck the coils of memory at last?”

  “If you must know, I was married,” Elizabeth sniffed.

  “And you did not think to invite me? My sorrow knows no bounds,” Ruthven said, with mock sadness. Elizabeth shook her head.

  “You are a fool, Ruthven.”

  “No. I am often foolish, but never a fool. This world does not suffer fools gladly.” He looked at Sarah. “As Sarah, dear Sarah, last of the Kenyons of Hagarstone, has found out to her cost more than once. Tell me Sarah, what did you think of a motor car, the first time you saw one?”

  Sarah ignored him. Ruthven chuckled. A train’s whistle split the air. Elizabeth finished her tea and stood. “If you’re quite through, Ruthven, Sarah and I have a train to catch. We will meet you in Paris, I trust?”

  “I will be there,” Ruthven said, taking her hand and brushing his lips across her knuckles. She pulled her hand back.

  “See that you are. I am not entirely certain I can keep dear Sarah from jumping the gun, on my lonesome.” She glanced at Sarah, who ignored them both as she stared at the fallen gunman. A thin trickle of blood ran across the man’s scalp where the tea pot had connected with his skull. Sarah licked her lips. Elizabeth took her arm in firm grip, and they left the tea shop. Ruthven watched them go. Then he glanced at the unconscious man. It was no wonder that Sarah was frisky. The air stank of blood and violence. Two dead men, and one wounded, filling the air with the smell of their hurts.

  Ruthven dabbed at his lips with his napkin and stood. Sarah and Elizabeth would keep their quarry in sight, while he tracked other prey. They were not the only hunters on this trail, and it was to their advantage that the identity of those parallel coursers be uncovered, lest they gain the advantage. He stepped towards the unconscious man, and flexed his long fingers.

  When Morris and his men returned to the tea shop, police constables in tow, Ruthven was gone. And so too was the unconscious gunman.

  5.

  The English Channel, Strait of Dover

  The French coastline crept closer as St. Cyprian lit his cigarette and sucked in a lungful of calming smoke. The cigarettes were hand-rolled to his specifications, at great expense, by a Moro woman in Limehouse. There was more than tobacco in them, and they helped to soothe his nerves. He stood at the rail of the ferry, and watched the lights of Calais play across the dark, choppy waters.

  Gallowglass leaned against the rail nearby, watching the crowd that had gathered on deck. Men and women talked, laughed, read newspapers and drank stale tea purchased from the ferry commissary. Gallowglass had a deck of grimy cards in her hands, and she shuffled it without looking, her light fingers moving the cards quickly and efficiently. “We could have brought the Crossley,” she said.

  “And drive across the continent to Istanbul? No, I think not. This journey will be stressful enough as it is without adding road hazards to the mix.” St. Cyprian glanced at her. “Did I ever tell you that I once took…”

  “Seventeenth in the 1913 Grand Prix,” Gallowglass finished. “Only all the bloody time. You crashed into a bakery.”

  “I did not crash,” St. Cyprian said loftily.

  “Right,” Gallowglass said.

  “I merely scraped the paint a bit.”

  “Yeah.” Gallowglass watched the crowd and shuffled her cards. “We’re being watched,” she said, pulling a card from the deck, and examining it. She slid it back into place and shuffled them again.

  “I know,” he said, turning back to the sea. “One could hardly expect that the attempt in London would be it. If I were our mysterious opponents, I would make damn sure that the ports were under observation, what?” He tapped his cigarette on the rail, casting ash into the water. “So long as they are content to merely watch, I couldn’t care less.”

  “I’d feel better if we knew who ‘they’ were,” Gallowglass muttered. She glared at the crowd. “Who’d want a bloody pile of bones?”

  “Didn’t we discuss this earlier?”

  “Specifics, innit?” Gallowglass countered. She cut the cards on the deck rail and began to shuffle them again. “Think it’s the sheep-fondlers again?” He looked at her, one eyebrow quirked, and she said, defensively, “Well, they tried to bring a werewolf back to life last time. Why not a vampire?”

  “Given the state we left the Order of the Cosmic Ram in, after our last encounter, I doubt they have the resources to try. Those who aren’t still awaiting trial at the Old Bailey are either fled from Albion’s fair shores, or in hiding. Or dead, at the talons of said werewolf,” he said. There were more cabals than just the followers of the Cosmic Ram. London was a prism of occult facets…there were dozens of groups which might be mad enough to attempt to snaffle something out from under the Ministry’s nose.

  The information Morris had given them wasn’t exactly helpful in that regard. The Ministry didn’t care about the identity of the would-be thieves. They only cared that the prob
lem was solved. St. Cyprian wondered whether Morris would get anything from his traitorous bodyguard, Stevens. Then he wondered whether Morris would deign to share it, even if he did. St. Cyprian sniffed. Probably not.

  Still, he could make his own guesses, and formulate his own theories. At the very least, it would keep his mind occupied. Seeing Dover again had brought the old bad memories back to the surface, like silt dredged up from the Channel bottom. It had been a main embarkation point during the War, and he couldn’t help but recall how the skies over the Channel had bristled with aeroplanes and zeppelins, and how the shells cast from warships had ruptured the waters, filling the air with stinging spray. Fortress Dover had weathered the War well enough, but the same couldn’t be said of many of those who had left it for France.

  The night sky was darker than it ought to have been. There were clouds gathering overhead, and the sea was growing rough. He glanced down at the valise that Gallowglass had trapped between her ankles. Gallowglass followed his gaze. “It bothers you, doesn’t it?” she said, softly.

  “Yes,” he said. He smiled slightly. “Though not necessarily for the reasons you might think. I suspect that we have been made a stalking horse, Ms. Gallowglass.” Gallowglass blinked at him. St. Cyprian gestured with his cigarette. “We’re being played, innit?” he said, mimicking her.

  Gallowglass grunted. “Morris?”

  “Possibly.” He looked down at the valise again. “Someone has been trying to steal these remains, always through third parties. That implies that the someone in question has some reason to occlude their true identity. Which implies further that…”