Don't Go Alone

by Christopher Golden

  Then I smelled her, there in the darkness of my bed chamber.

  I smelled her blood.

  “Louise?” I peered into the shadows and saw her there, perched on the edge of a chair I had brought from Cairo, once upon a time. Dark crescents were beneath her eyes, as though she had not slept in a year, and though her dress was as elegant and proper as any she had ever worn, there was something torrid about her appearance. Though her face was slack and haggard, and far too pale, her eyes were wild with desperation. Before she said a word to me, I saw the plea in them.

  “He could not keep me from you,” she whispered, her words almost lost, despite the stillness of the room.

  Perhaps I did not expect her to leap into my arms, to catch me in a passionate embrace, but I confess I was surprised that she did not. I wanted to go to her myself, to feel her gentle lips upon mine, to caress her and cradle her against me.

  But I was not worthy of her. If I had come to any conclusion since my return from Edinburgh, it was that. I had soiled her, tainted her, and Ludlow had been left with no other recourse than to remove her from my presence.

  “You should not be here.”

  “I will die, should I go anywhere else,” she said, her gaze unwavering, even as tears began to spill down her face.

  With all the unnatural speed and strength of my kind, I sprang from the bed to stand, towering over her. I was so hungry that the copper scent of her blood seemed impossibly strong. The temptation aroused so many yearnings in me, none of them pure.

  “I am a monster. Has Ludlow not explained that to you? Whatever romantic notions have poisoned your sense of reason, dismiss them. What little honor I have, what love there is for me to give, are given over to the certainty that I shall never damn you to an eternity of bloodlust and darkness.”

  My Louise shivered as though a chill had passed through her. Though she seemed even more pale, a smile dimpled her cheeks.

  “But that’s what I want, Nigel. I want to be with you. I want to be like you. I want to live forever, to walk the night, to never sleep. There’s magic in what you are.”

  “No,” I said, all the fire draining from me. “It isn’t magic. It’s only a different kind of hell. I won’t take the vibrant life you have and give you this . . .” I gestured around the room, at this place that was my prison in daylight hours. “. . . in return.”

  Her smile faltered and her eyelids fluttered. She tilted forward in the chair as though she might collapse to the floor and then she caught herself. Louise blinked several times, lifting her head as though trying to stay awake.

  The smell of her blood was so strong, so rich. But was it only my hunger that made it so?

  “Louise? What have you done?” I asked, my cold heart dying all over again.

  She opened her hands and let the bloody dagger fall to the floor. Louise had taken the Turkish blade from its place upon the wall in my study.

  Her fingers splayed wide, she reached out her arms so that I could see the long, vertical wounds she had slit into her wrists. The elegant gown she wore was a deep burgundy, but only now did I see that it was stained with a darker red, spreading as it soaked into the fabric. When she shifted in the chair, the blood that pooled in her lap splashed on the rug at her feet.

  “No!” I snarled, and went to her, kneeling in the sticky wetness of her blood. I was so ravenous that when I had scented her blood so strongly, I had thought it the madness of my hunger that made the odor so powerful. A blind and foolish thought. A scent so rich came only from spilled blood. And now it was all around me. She reached out to touch my face and her fingers painted my skin with her blood. Every instinct I had demanded that I taste of her, that I run my tongue over her wounds and sink my teeth into her flesh.

  I wept for her and pulled her off the chair. I cradled my dear Louise against me in a grotesque parody of my desires.

  “You little fool,” I rasped. “What have you done?”

  Her eyes were glazed and she stared off into the darkness as though observing some faraway fascination. But she heard me, for the corners of her mouth twitched in the hint of a smile.

  “My love. I have eased your pain. The difficult task is already done. I am fading. You won’t have to take my life, only give me new life. Eternal life.”

  “No,” I said, shuddering.

  Her eyes fluttered closed. In my arms I could feel the rise and fall of her chest slow. The space between each breath grew.

  Louise inhaled sharply and her eyes opened wide. Her right hand rose weakly and she brushed her fingers against my lips. I tasted her blood. The tang of it upon my tongue was too much. I hissed, baring the needle fangs that death had given me, but I turned my face away so that she should not witness the beast in me.

  “Nigel,” she said, her voice light, as though she were talking in her sleep. “We’ll be together.”

  Confused by my hunger and the taste of her blood, her words brought me back to myself. They clawed at my insides. I wondered, now, if Louise had fallen in love with me, or with the idea of immortality, with the romance she perceived in the night time world, life in the shadows. The temptation to give in to her fondest wish was almost greater than my lust for her blood. To have this beautiful, fragile creature at my side for eternity, to have a lover and companion who shared my curse . . . perhaps it would not seem so much like damnation.

  Her eyes closed once more. Her breath rattled in her chest.

  I held her in my arms and lowered my head to brush my lips against hers in a whisper of a kiss.

  “Oh, Nigel,” she said, her voice barely audible, even to my ears. “Yes.”

  Her eyes closed for the last time. She slipped into unconsciousness as her life blood ebbed from her body. I crushed her to me and began to rock back and forth, and I sang to her a song I had learned when Constantine was a boy. My heart felt as though it had been the recipient of that dagger, and the blade now twisted inside me.

  Had I done as she asked, it would have been for my own benefit. Forsaking her desires was the only gift I had left to give her. I wept bloody tears as her heart beat its last, and I remained there for long hours, holding her.

  By the time Ludlow arrived, having only just learned of her absence, Louise’s flesh was as cold as my own.

  “And this is how it ends,” my old friend said.

  I gazed up at him, my face streaked with my lover’s blood, but I saw in his furious gaze that he did not think I had killed her. He was not a rash man. He saw the dagger, and the state of her, and he understood what had occurred.

  “Ludlow,” I began. “She wanted me to—“

  “I know what she wanted,” he snapped. “Thanks to you.”

  Bereft, I shook my head. “No. I never—“

  “Encouraged her? Of course not. But you make it seem so attractive, Nigel.” The grief in Ludlow’s voice twisted the dagger in my heart once more. “Your very presence is seductive. You have all the charm of Eve’s serpent, even without the malign intent. Are you so blind that you cannot see what that could do to the heart of a foolish young girl, grieving the loss of her father?”

  His words cleared a fog from my head. My friend had not condemned me, but as I accepted this truth, I condemned myself.

  “How can it be?” he roared, towering above me. “How can it be that a man could live as long as you have and never grow up? You did not kill Louise, my old friend, but do not let that release you from your guilt. You are still responsible. It would never have come to this if you had given one moment’s thought to consequence.”

  All the anger seemed to go out of Ludlow then. It was as though he began to shrink. He shook his head sadly and gazed at Louise’s limp form in my arms.

  “Nigel,” he said, sadly, and his tone had changed. This was my old friend speaking to me, now. “I dearly hope that this will change you. I dare say your whimsy has likely cost other lives in the past, and one day I fear it will be the death of you. Or perhaps of me.”

  

&nb
sp; In time, Ludlow and I repaired our friendship, but it was never the same. I was never invited to be a part of his stage performances again. I had the good sense to abandon my studies of spellcasting and the like so that he did not have to endure the additional heartache of dismissing me. We both knew that I was not to be his successor as Protector of Albion. In even conceiving such an idea, he had been guilty of a bout of whimsy of his own.

  But Ludlow’s crime was innocent enough. His love for me had not cost anyone their life.

  I braved the sun to attend her funeral, but there was little enough of it that day. The sky was dark and pregnant with black clouds. Thunder rolled and the heavens wept. And despite all that had happened, I was still arrogant enough in those days to fancy that they wept for my Louise and me.

  JOE GOLEM AND THE COPPER GIRL

  by Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola

  The October rain sliced down in razor sheets, billions of tiny needles striking the glass and stone and concrete of the Drowning City, forcing Joe to turn up the collar of his jacket and try to keep his face averted from the heavens. He’d rather have been sprawled in a chair in Mr. Church’s library with a book and a whiskey, or just about anywhere else than in his little cabin cruiser out on the canals of Lower Manhattan tonight. A storm had churned up New York harbor to the point where waves were rippling along the city’s sunken avenues and crashing against buildings that had withstood fifty years partially submerged but might not stand fifty minutes more.

  How much punishment could one city take?

  Joe wouldn’t even have come out tonight if there hadn’t been a little girl involved. If the choice had been him dashing the boat to splinters against the corner of some old 18th Street hotel façade or waiting until the storm passed, and it had been only adults in danger, he’d have stoked a fire in the hearth and poured himself another glass of whiskey. But Jillian Blum was only twelve years old and if her mother had been telling even a fraction of the truth, the little girl had reason to be afraid.

  There had been those who’d accused Joe of being something of a monster—it was a hazard of the work, and the kind of people he and his friend Mr. Church encountered while pursuing that work—and he knew that he looked the part. The Lord had not seen fit to make him handsome; Joe looked more like a prizefighter who’d spent a career throwing punches a second slower than the other guy. But he was strong and he could take the punishment, and he flattered himself by thinking he was, if nothing else, smarter than he looked.

  If you were so smart, he thought to himself, you wouldn’t be out here tonight.

  A thin smile split his grim features and for a moment he didn’t mind the stinging rain. He guided the boat, shielding his eyes as he tried to make out the numbers on the buildings he passed. In the more than four decades since earthquakes and floods had turned Lower Manhattan into a drowning city, the people who’d had nowhere else to go, or who were too stubborn to leave, or the disenfranchised who’d come here to flee the burdens of their old society, had built a new culture here. Some of the buildings were too unstable for anyone but the hopeless to take up residence inside. Others had been painstakingly repaired and adapted to the new paradigm—the lower floors closed off or filled with concrete or otherwise repurposed. In between were those that seemed solid enough that families and old folks were content to make minimal efforts to block off the moldy, flooded lower levels and carry on as if nothing had changed…as if this part of the city really had become the new Venice.

  All of this meant that some buildings had numbers painted or engraved on them, and others had lost any sign of their former identity when the waters rose and the city sank. Rachael Blum had promised him that he couldn’t miss their place, and he hoped that would still be true in the midst of the storm. The city was crisscrossed with bridges, now—stone and metal and wooden footbridges, some makeshift planking that shifted from month-to-month. Some of it could be hazardous, rotting wood and pulleys and improvised stairs—but Joe knew this part of the Drowning City well enough. He just hadn’t wanted to make the complicated trek in the storm.

  Lightning seared the sky, followed by a rolling crack of thunder and a loud bang a few blocks distant. He wondered what the lightning had struck, and if it would burn. It was ironic that in the Drowning City, fire could be so devastating. They had plenty of water, but only a handful of volunteer firemen, who were often otherwise occupied helping the tiny police force organized by the self-proclaimed and apparently innocently sincere Mayor of the Drowning City, Melody Heath. Mrs. Heath could barely keep her officers alive—every scavenger, pirate, and thief in Lower Manhattan would rather turn to murder than be stuck in a jail cell where they’d be beaten, fed the guards’ leftovers, and not be let out until someone reminded her they were incarcerated to begin with. Joe and Mr. Church had handed criminals over to her in the past, and Joe was convinced she either didn’t know about the brutality of her jail guards or didn’t believe the rumors. Joe had never given anyone over to Mrs. Heath’s police unless he felt they deserved a beating or two, but he and Mr. Church always remembered to go and let the Mayor know when the prisoner had done the decreed amount of time in jail.

  If Rachael Blum’s story checked out, and someone truly was menacing her daughter, Joe would make sure the guy stayed away for good. If he couldn’t put enough fear into the creep himself, some time in Mrs. Heath’s jail would do it, he felt sure. All of Rachael Blum’s talk about the man being some kind of goblin or demon had made little impression on Joe. He’d seen all kinds of things in the years he’d been working with Mr. Church—ghosts and demons among them—but never a goblin. Just because some ugly, greasy-looking creep lurked outside your daughter’s bedroom window, that didn’t make him a demon.

  Rachael Blum’s fear hadn’t been imaginary, however. The woman had been skittish, looking over her shoulder even in the quiet safety of Mr. Church’s parlor. The memory of her haunted gaze had made Joe keep his promise to visit her home this evening instead of waiting until morning, when the storm would have passed.

  Now he spotted the building she had described, and realized that he had noticed it many times before. Each of the windows bowed outward from the stone façade, like the windows of the captain’s quarters in the aft of an old schooner. A beautiful home. In a city with a high population of thieves and scavengers, keeping such a home beautiful must have been quite a challenge. Mr. Blum had apparently managed to repel or keep out such water rats in the past, so why was this one creep so deeply frightening to his wife?

  Joe held the throttle back, the boat rolling on the waves that ripped along 19th Street and the cross current from Seventh Avenue. He saw the dark opening of the building next to the Blums’ that had been converted to the sort of boathouse unique to the Drowning City—a tall, reinforced opening in what had once been a third story wall. Waiting for a lull, he gave the throttle a little tap and floated into the boathouse, carried along by the storm and a wave of curiosity.

  

  When Rachael Blum had arrived at Simon Church’s apartments early that morning, the sound of the doorbell chiming through the vast warren of rooms took Joe by surprise. Uninvited visitors were rare at Mr. Church’s residence. The postman—who paid only occasional visits—and various messengers and delivery men knew to deposit their burdens in the large drawer built beside the front door. Mr. Church never worried overmuch about thieves or assassins attempting to use the mail drawer as a method of intrusion or avenue of attack, even though there had been several such gambits, one involving a murderous capuchin monkey and another a small cluster of poisonous snakes. The madman Dr. Cocteau had even once attempted to utilize the mail drawer as an entry point for a trio of homicidal homunculi meant to end Mr. Church’s meddling in Cocteau’s affairs once and for all. But Mr. Church’s powers of deduction and analysis were not the only weapons in his armory. The same magic that he had used to keep himself alive since the Victorian age had been put to use creating powerful wards that warned of any intrusion
, natural or supernatural.

  But if someone wanted to make their way to the front door and ring the bell, there was no ward that would prevent it.

  The chimes had sounded through the house. Feeling foolish in his stocking feet, Joe had taken the time to slip his boots on and then make his way quickly down the steps and through the large foyer, adjusting his suspenders and running a hand through his floppy, unkempt hair. No one could make him more handsome, but he hoped at least to be presentable, even as his curiosity ran ahead of him.

  Even arriving at Simon Church’s front door was no simple thing. Mr. Church owned all of the structures that still stood on that block of Lower Manhattan as well as the old hat company building directly across the canal from his front door. All underwater ingress had been blocked and the lower, flooded floors closed off from the upper, except for the hollowed-out former law office that Joe and Church used as a boathouse. There were no docks attached to Mr. Church’s apartments and no bridges from any of the surrounding buildings…except for the wooden footbridge that led to the front door from the former hat company, and that could be raised like a drawbridge. Thus, the only approach was to arrive at the hat company building by boat or bridge and then cross the drawbridge to Mr. Church’s front door.

  Nobody arrived there by accident.

  Joe opened the door to find a lovely, thin, pale woman standing on the platform. She wore a light sweater the color of jade and her wide eyes reflected the clouds that loomed overhead, warning of the impending storm. From the way she stood, it was clear that she had been about to surrender and depart. Now she looked at Joe with a strange combination of gratitude and fear, as though now that someone had answered the door, she was frightened of the consequences of her arrival.