by L. J. Smith
“No need,” James said airily. “You’ll pay me back in some way. In the future.”
With a parting glance, I left, following James’s directions to the boardinghouse, my heart thudding against my chest. I tried not to think about what Violet was doing with Cora, not allowing my imagination to go to the dark places that probably held the truth.
I stopped at a tall brick building with a ROOMS FOR RENT sign hanging in its entryway and knocked on the door.
“Come in. Door’s open,” a voice croaked. I pushed open the door. A wizened old man was sitting at a rickety desk, poring over a ledger book. I coughed. “I’m looking for… Damon de Croix,” I said as he looked up.
“Damon de Croix?” The man let out a harsh bark. “If you mean the half-crazed gentleman who paid me with a handful of foreign currency, then he’s in Room 411. Although God knows what he’s doing in there. By the stench of it, he’s a failed taxidermist.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust.
“Thank you,” I said, racing up the stairs to the fourth floor. I slammed against the cheap wood of the door, easily breaking the lock. There, in the filthy, dark room, was Damon, bending over an oversize flowerpot on the windowsill. It was amazing that anything could grow in the weak light coming through the dirty window glass. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a wooden crossbow propped against the cast-iron bed.
“Brother,” Damon said dully, glancing up from the windowsill, sounding neither surprised nor angry. It was as though he was expecting me. I wondered if James had given him an identical message. He may not have been a witch, but if James could get Damon and me to reconcile, then he certainly worked magic.
“What are you doing?” I asked. It was hard to concentrate with the scent of vervain everywhere. I imagined that was what was growing in the pots. I felt woozy and weak, and I wondered why Damon was inflicting this torture on himself.
“I’m dosing myself with vervain,” Damon explained. “If Samuel can do it, I can, too. And then, once I’m fully immune, I’ll dose the water supply. Prevent Samuel from feeding and compelling in this city. The details are fuzzy, but the plan will work.”
“You’re ingesting vervain?” I asked in disbelief as I looked at the six paltry vervain plants. All they were doing was torturing my brother.
“Sometimes, brother,” Damon began, rolling his eyes, “you need to understand an enemy to vanquish him. Plus, suffering only makes you stronger,” he said resolutely.
I took a seat on the bed. I hadn’t come here to fight. I needed help. But what I wanted was the in-charge, confident Damon, not the rambling, maniacal man in front of me. Despite his outburst on the night of the Ripper killings, I knew he cared about Cora. I only hoped the mention of her would bring him to his senses.
“Samuel has Cora.”
Damon stiffened and dropped a sprig of vervain to the ground. But then he shrugged. “Well, we knew that would happen, eventually, didn’t we?” he said bitterly.
“I need to get her back,” I said firmly. “And I need your help.”
“You need my help,” he mocked. “What about all the other times you’ve said that? Didn’t work out so well.” He stood and crossed over to me, so close that I could smell blood on his breath. The rich, smoky scent was obviously human, and I couldn’t help but wonder where his blood supply was coming from.
“You need my help, too,” I said firmly. “Like it or not, we’re in this together. And we need to fight together, not against one another. We’re on the same side.” The desperation in my voice was plain, and I was showing all my cards. I didn’t have a strategy, and I wasn’t trying to one-up him.
A flicker of something—doubt, anger, or acceptance, I wasn’t sure—crossed Damon’s face.
“All right,” he said finally. “I’ll help you. But this time, brother, we do it my way. You follow my directions in the fight. I’ve been doing research,” he said, gesturing to piles of musty books piled on the floor. Damon? Doing research? This was a side of him I’d never seen. He’d never been one for books, always preferring to trust his instincts. “I have everything. Wooden bullets, sand, stakes…”
“Sand?” I asked in confusion.
Damon shrugged. “Apparently it’s a deterrent. It wasn’t for me when I was in the Sahara, but James said it could slow down a vampire on the run. I figure it can’t hurt.” He paused. “In the end, Samuel will be destroyed. It will be bloody, and there may be unintended victims. If you can’t handle that, then get out now and leave me to do what needs to be done.”
“I’m all in,” I said calmly. “And Damon… I’m sorry.”
Damon nodded. “All right,” he said. In Damon’s vocabulary, “all right” was as good as “apology accepted.” I decided I’d take it. I had to.
“Samuel has an office in the Magdalene Asylum where he feeds on the girls and keeps some of his campaign papers. We can sneak in, wait for him, and then…” Damon trailed off. Then what? Kill him? Follow him? Beg for Cora’s life back? This was going to be tricky, and we couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.
“It’s almost daylight. The girls will be going to Mass soon. We’ll sneak in then,” I said. “We can set traps with our supplies. If this is what we’re doing, we have to go now.”
“I have weapons,” Damon muttered. “I’ve been experimenting with explosives. Of course, I’d love to kill Samuel with my bare hands, but I wouldn’t mind watching his body burn.”
“Great,” I said. I was glad we were agreeing on something, even if it was the best way to murder our mutual enemy.
“Let’s kill him. I want blood on the floor, and his body ripped apart. I want him destroyed,” Damon said as if in a trance. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin was pale. The porter at the door had been right—anyone would take him for a madman.
He was out for blood. I was out to save Cora. But for now, our mission was the same: Take down Samuel in any way possible.
18
The sun was just coming over the horizon when we reached the Magdalene Asylum. Damon had an oversize rucksack on his back, in which he’d pack his explosives, his crossbow, his stakes, and my tiny pouch of hawthorn.
When we reached the Asylum, it was nearly seven. Our plan was to wait until the girls left to go to Mass, then sneak through the back and find the office Cora had described. We’d set our traps in the office, lie in wait, and then, when Samuel came in, we’d attack.
The church bells pealed and, as if on cue, the doors burst open and a line of girls trailed out behind Sister Benedict. I recognized several of them from the benefit. Their eyes darted from left to right, as if they were afraid Jack the Ripper would attack them at any moment. It was clear they were shaken by Cathy’s murder, but I doubted they remembered the incident in the basement at the benefit. Samuel would have made sure of that. I wondered if they thought Cora had met the same fate.
As soon as the line of girls turned the street corner, my brother and I looked at each other.
“It’s time,” Damon said tersely. We stole to the rear of the brick building and found a small, unused door that led to the basement. Damon pushed against it with his shoulder, and it burst open.
“Shhh!” I said, too late, as it banged against the wall. The iron-rich smell of blood wafted toward us from the passageway.
Together, we tiptoed down a set of rickety wooden steps and into the basement of the Asylum. The light streaming from a few tiny windows gave the hallway a grayish glow. A row of nondescript doors with glass windows lined the hallway. One of them must be Samuel’s office. I cocked my head, but I couldn’t make out any noise except for the dripping of water in the laundry at the end of the hall.
We crept closer, following each other’s movements in silence.
“Wait,” Damon whispered. He paused and rifled through the bag, finally pulling out a crossbow and a stake. He passed the stake over to me. “Just in case,” he said as he propped it on his shoulder.
We continued to creep down the hall until the sound of foot
steps stopped our progress.
“Get ready!” Damon hissed.
What if it was one of the nuns or one of the girls? The last thing I wanted was for them to see the de Croix brothers creeping around the basement brandishing weapons. I hid the stake under my shirt, ready if I needed it, but hidden, just in case. Damon kept the crossbow raised, but sunk deeper into the shadows of the basement.
Just then, a large figure lumbered into view. He was wearing filthy clothes and looked like a giant in the cramped basement.
“Who are you?” he asked gruffly. He had grease stains on his clothes, and I wondered if he was a handyman for the Asylum.
“From the Magdalene Church,” I said. “Sister Agatha’s asked me to check on the building. There’s been a lot of structural damage due to rain. Want to make sure it won’t collapse,” I lied.
“All right,” the man said, scratching his head.
“I’m surprised Sister Agatha didn’t mention anything.”
“No, she didn’t tell me,” the man parroted. He was so tentative in his words and actions I thought he must be slow, and was relieved when he shuffled on down the hall.
Damon moved out of the shadows, shaking his head. “What was that idiot doing down here?”
“It was just an Asylum worker,” I said, hoping I was right.
“If he comes back, I’ll kill him,” Damon decided. “We can’t take any more chances.” He shot me a glance as though he expected me to disagree, but I nodded. He was right.
“Good,” Damon said.
We started up the hallway, trying the doors on either side as we passed. The fifth door led us into Samuel’s office. Damon glanced at me, triumphant. “Let’s get to work,” he said, rifling through his bag. He pulled out a pair of gloves and tossed them to me.
I pulled them on, then set about tying hawthorn needles dipped in vervain to a length of wire and stringing it around the office. Damon stood on a chair in the corner, rigging a gun loaded with wooden bullets to be triggered by the trip wire now lining the room.
We worked silently. Damon had been right—it was him or us. The traps were crude and makeshift, but I hoped they would be enough. They had to be.
Searching for anything else we could use against Samuel, I opened a drawer stuffed with yellowed papers. I rifled through them, glanced at the dates: 1888, 1865, 1780. Samuel clearly had at least a century on us. I wondered when and how he had been turned.
Just as I was about to put the papers back in the drawer, I spotted the word Atlanta in the old-fashioned, slanting script.
“Damon!” I hissed. He carefully picked his way around the traps. When he’d reached my side, I pointed to the date on the document in my hand: 1864.
“What is this?” Damon whispered roughly, clawing the letter out of my hands.
“Give it back,” I said.
Damon shook his head, holding the letter out of my grasp. He scanned it quickly, then sighed in despair. “It’s not from her,” he said, handing it back.
Dear Sir,
This is to inform you that your letter, received in Atlanta and addressed to a Miss Katherine Pierce, is being returned as undeliverable. The address listed was destroyed under Sherman’s siege, with no survivors.
It was signed by someone I could only assume was a long-dead postal clerk.
“Do you think she was trying to escape him?” I asked.
“She must have been,” Damon said, his mouth set in a tight line.
I nodded. In truth, who knew what Katherine and Samuel’s relationship had been? They were the only two who knew for sure, and Katherine was dead—and Samuel would be, imminently. But from the way Damon’s shoulders relaxed, I knew he needed to believe that what Samuel and Katherine had wasn’t a true love.
I pulled more papers from the drawer. While Damon was focused on our upcoming battle, I was intent on finding out more about Samuel. I knew it didn’t matter; he’d be dead in hours.
And then I saw it.
The paper was yellow and crumbling, but five words at the bottom said everything we needed to know.
With eternal love,
Your Katherine.
My eyes followed Damon as he double-checked our traps. He couldn’t know. I had saved my brother’s life several times since we reunited in London, but what I did next was perhaps the most I’d ever done to protect him. I took the paper and ripped it into dozens of pieces, letting them fall to the stone floor like snow.
Damon would spend eternity thinking Katherine had loved him. He couldn’t survive otherwise.
Several hours later, as Damon and I crouched in Samuel’s office, I was still thinking about Katherine. There hadn’t been any more letters from Katherine hidden in the desk, and I wondered if Samuel had deliberately destroyed or hidden Katherine’s other letters. I wondered when Katherine and Samuel had met, and how many decades they’d spent discovering every secret of their bodies and brains. I’d only known Katherine for several weeks, and her image was branded indelibly in my mind. What could it possibly have been like to know her for generations?
Just then, I heard a loud bang, different than the sounds we’d been listening to all day, of girls hurrying to and from the laundry room, of nuns clicking their rosary beads as they walked by, of the building settling into itself. This sounded like a clap of thunder.
“I’m going to investigate,” I said, stepping delicately over our cobweb of traps. Maybe it was time for us to move into our hiding spot—the tiny coat closet in the corner of the room—and wait for Samuel to enter.
I cracked open the door, peering into the hallway. It was empty. The nuns and the girls must have been well trained not to go near Samuel’s office. Except for the odd interaction we’d had with the handyman in the morning, we’d barely heard footsteps. I stepped out, but saw nothing that could’ve produced the noise. I was about to turn back, when I thought I saw movement in one of the other rooms.
“Damon!” I hissed, before creeping to the window and peering in. I blinked in surprise. There was Cora, alone and unprotected. She was sitting in the corner with her knees hugged to her chest. “Damon, it’s Cora!”
I pushed the door with all my might and heard the lock break, but the door itself barely cracked open.
Cora looked up in fear when she heard the commotion.
“It’s me, Stefan,” I whispered through the slim opening. Relief was evident on her face, and then I heard the clanking of chains. Cora was shackled to the wall, and it was impossible for her to stand completely upright. “I’m coming!” I hurled my weight against the door again.
“Violet brought me here,” Cora said miserably. “She brought me around the back, where a man took me and chained me up.”
“Stay there!” I instructed. “Damon, help get the door open. It’s just jammed,” I lied to Cora. I could sense something was holding the door shut. It wasn’t a lock—my vampire strength could pull through that. It was something stronger, more sinister. My stomach knotted as Damon joined me and we both shoved against the door with our hands. Still, it wouldn’t budge wider than a half inch.
“What’s wrong?” I asked Damon. No simple door should be a match for the two of us, even with my diet of animal blood.
Damon shook his head and picked up his crossbow. “I don’t know. We’ll help her later. He’ll be back soon.”
“Stefan, go. Help your brother,” Cora said, sliding back to the filthy floor in a heap. “He’s right. It won’t do any good if Samuel sees anything amiss. I’ll be fine.”
I gave Cora an encouraging smile before Damon and I retreated back into Samuel’s office. We jammed our bodies into the coat closet, not daring to speak. Damon had the crossbow at the ready. We weren’t particularly well hidden, and I knew we only had seconds to react when Samuel finally entered. The waiting was agony—and I could only imagine how hard it was for Cora. Who knew what torture she’d endured?
Suddenly, I heard someone whistling discordantly in the hallway. Damon glanced at me and nodded.
Samuel was here.
The door clicked open. I braced myself, listening for the twang of the wire as it was tripped, but nothing happened. Instead, Samuel stood absolutely still in the doorway, sniffing the air.
Quick as a flash, he reached into his boot to pull out a stake. Damon used that moment to burst from our hiding spot and release a vervain-soaked bolt from the crossbow. It landed in Samuel’s gut, and he fell to the ground in a heap.
I leaped to my feet and raced toward Samuel, careful to avoid the trip wire. He lay on the ground, the crossbow bolt deep in his stomach, his face a mask of rage as he reached to pull it out. Damon appeared by my side, standing over Samuel with a candle in his hand.
“I’ve been waiting for this,” Damon said in a low voice. “And I knew revenge would be mine. I want you to burn before you get to hell,” Damon hissed, leaning down and allowing the flame to brush against the sleeve of Samuel’s shirt. The flames ripped through the starched white fabric. Samuel writhed in pain, but didn’t make a sound. For a second I wondered: Was he impervious to fire, too? But I could see a path of charred flesh where the fire had touched him. It just wasn’t enough to destroy him.
“Kill him!” I implored urgently as I rummaged through Damon’s rucksack for the hawthorn-tipped stake. I wanted to get Cora out of here as quickly as possible.
“Oh, I will, brother,” Damon cackled as I yanked the stake from the bag. “But first, I want to play a little game with Samuel. After all, he seems to love games,” Damon said, setting fire to the cuff of Samuel’s trouser leg. The flame sparked and danced up the hem of his pants. “Once you’re fully ablaze, I’ll let all of London know you were the Ripper. I have evidence. I have Cora, who’ll testify. I have the other girls from the Asylum. I’ll be a hero. And who knows, maybe I’ll even be the new London councilor,” Damon said, as he lit the other leg on fire.
“Damon, either I’m going to stake him or you will. But it’s time,” I said firmly. Damon ignored me and kept placing the candle to Samuel’s clothing.
