A Cautionary Tale for Young Vampires

by G. D. Falksen

  “Maybe,” Constantine said. “Maybe. But yes, I would very much appreciate it if you went along and called on her. Just to assuage my worry.”

  Cat nodded and said, “Then I’ll be a’ ’t.” She pointed at Luka. “An’ ye stay abed, Mister Luka. I’ll no’ have ye doin’ yeself a mischief while I’m gone.”

  “I will be fine,” Luka said. “Now go, make yourself useful.”

  The girl smirked at him and hurried out the door. As she departed, she nearly collided with an old man hobbling along on a crutch. She gave her apologies and rushed off into the court.

  Constantine spotted the newcomer and politely bowed his head to Varanus.

  “If you will excuse me Doctor, Mister Luka,” he said, “it seems I have a patient.”

  “Of course,” Varanus said.

  Constantine nodded again and walked into the front room, saying:

  “Ah! Mister Miller, come sit down. How is the foot? Still giving you trouble?”

  Varanus shook her head.

  “I almost feel unnecessary,” she said. “It seems that between Doctor Constantine and my son, everything has remained well in hand in my absence.”

  “Is that not as you intended?” Luka asked.

  “It is,” Varanus admitted.

  Though in truth, she had rather assumed that there would be something for her to do upon her return. It was just as well that Constantine had things so well handled, for someone would have to look after it when she left for Georgia, but still.…

  “Doctor,” Luka said, “there is one thing I wish to speak to you about.”

  “Oh?” Varanus asked.

  Luka frowned, his moustache twitching a little. “Yes, we have suffered a small number of kidnappings in your absence.”

  “Kidnappings?”

  “Yes,” Luka said. “Rumors of them, primarily. There have been stories of people being grabbed off the street, thrown into a wagon, and carted off to some mysterious place.”

  “Rumors?” Varanus asked, sighing.

  Rumors were neither useful nor welcome.

  “Primarily rumors,” Luka said. “And apparently the stories were first spoken in Whitechapel last spring, though they have since migrated here.”

  “Is there any proof?” Varanus asked impatiently.

  “Yes,” Luka said. “A little, but enough. I came across the wagon myself. By chance, the men driving it happened to take a criminal that I had just finished dealing with. I followed them to a warehouse south of Whitechapel Road, which I believe to be their headquarters. My plan was to return and investigate further, but before I could do that, I was forced to confront Jones and.…” He motioned to his injuries. “I have been unable to continue my investigation.”

  “Who are the victims?” Varanus asked.

  “Prostitutes and vagrants, mostly,” Luka answered. “People who would not be missed.”

  “To what purpose? Surely not ransom.”

  Luka shook his head and replied:

  “I suspect the men are being taken for forced labor or perhaps to be pressed into service on ships. The women are doubtless intended for prostitution. And since most of them are already of that occupation, I suspect the gang responsible is attempting to replenish its stock—if you will forgive the expression.”

  Varanus shook her head. It was a terrible thing to say, but it was quite probably true. The women were likely being sold to low-class brothels and similar establishments.

  “You have done well in discovering this, Luka,” she said. A thought occurred to her. “Where is the headquarters of this gang?”

  “I can give you directions if you would like,” Luka said. “Why?”

  Varanus smiled, her expression tinged with anger.

  “You may be confined to bed, but I am not. And I would like to look into this matter before it is allowed to continue any further.”

  * * * *

  Varanus found the warehouse easily. Luka’s instructions were reliable and precise. The building was large, looming over most of the surrounding structures, and it was surrounded by a high wall. There was nothing openly suspicious about it at first glance, which Varanus actually found all the more suspicious. She walked around the block once, working out the best point of entry. She spotted a tumbled pile of rubbish—crates and barrels—that had been left against the wall some distance from the main door.

  It was as good a method as any.

  Varanus climbed onto the pile with a great deal of care and made a jump for the top of the wall. She managed to grasp the edge with her fingertips as the rubbish heap collapsed below her.

  Well, she thought, that was very nearly irritating.

  With a heave she pulled herself up enough to grab the far side of the ledge. With that leverage, she had little difficulty climbing atop the wall and dropping down into the yard beyond. She crouched low in the shadows and studied the place. There were a few men armed with clubs and pistols standing around on watch, though they were not especially attentive. Likely they put too much faith in the wall to worry about intruders entering by stealth.

  Varanus hurried through the shadows toward the warehouse, using a row of delivery wagons as extra concealment. She moved quickly but quietly, and none of the guards took any notice of her, even as she pushed open the door to the warehouse and snuck inside.

  The interior was not quite what she had expected. It was lit with lamps, and she saw rows of smaller rooms built from brick along either side. Perhaps this was where they were keeping their prisoners.

  At the far end the main room, she found a set of stairs that led into an underground passage. This was better lit than the room above, for it had a number of lamps built into the walls that led Varanus further along. The whole building had been piped for gas, it seemed. There was more to this place than just a gang kidnapping people for prostitution and hard labor.

  As she went along, Varanus sniffed the air and scented blood. It was old and stale, but it was definitely blood. Blood and chemicals. Now that was odd.

  Suddenly suspicious, she followed the smell into a well-appointed office some distance along the corridor. The room was large, comfortable, and furnished with wooden walls, soft carpets, bookshelves, chairs, and a desk.

  Varanus looked around only briefly, instead following the smell into an adjoining room filled with rows and rows of tall shelves. The room was dark, but the chemical portion of the smell was most certainly coming from there. And the scent of rot and corruption was there as well. Varanus wrinkled her nose, suddenly feeling sick to her stomach. She turned the gas knob on the wall, and as the lamps brightened, she saw rows and rows of glass jars on each of the shelves filled, she realized with a twinge of revulsion, with human organs, all in various stages of rot and decay.

  Whoever had been accumulating these specimens had done a terrible job preserving them. Only about half had been submerged in chemicals or even plain water. The rest had been left to rot in various mixtures of oils, broths, and even milk. Varanus recoiled as much at the treatment of the organs as the scale on which they had been accumulated.

  But the scent of blood was not from there. It drifted in from somewhere further along. Varanus continued to the back of the ghastly trophy room and found another door set to one side. She tried the handle and found it unlocked.

  The room beyond was brightly lit and smelled horribly of blood and rot. It was a small chamber by comparison to the first two, but it was large enough for its purpose. There was a desk in the corner with pen, ink, and paper spread out across it. There was a shelf with skulls on it and a porcelain bust painted with a phrenology chart. An assortment of chemicals in small bottles sat on a stand alongside an open case of surgical knives.

  But what drew Varanus’s attention—what demanded it—was a long table on the far side of the room. It was wooden and covered with old blood. A drain was built into the floor, and it too was caked in blood. And there was little question where it had come from.

  On the table lay the body of a y
oung woman. She was dead, of that there could be no question. Strangled, if the bruising around her throat was an indication. Her dress and underclothes had been torn open, leaving her exposed and bare. But the abuse of her dignity had not ended there. Her abdomen had been split from throat to pelvis and partly emptied of its contents. The girl’s heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver had all been removed. It had been done cleanly and with great precision. Under other circumstances, Varanus might have been impressed by the butcher’s knife-work.

  She looked at the girl’s face for a few moments and sighed in recognition. It was Sally Conner, one-time prostitute turned Constantine’s nurse.

  Varanus closed her eyes and shook her head, feeling anger boiling inside her. The poor girl. What senseless theft of life. What unnecessary destruction. And what waste! The missing organs had no doubt ended up in the rotting collection in the other room.

  Who would have done such a thing?

  Could it be the Whitechapel Killer? Varanus wondered. Have I found his lair?

  No, but that was absurd, she realized. According to the papers, the Ripper was sloppy and brutal; his was the work of a deranged man cutting and stabbing about in the dark. What Varanus saw before her now was clean and skillful, perhaps a bit mundane in quality, but ultimately the work of a practiced surgeon working with time and care in a well-lit place.

  The two were not in the least bit similar. What nonsense, what absurdity, to think that anything and everything untoward might be connected to the Whitechapel Killer! Perhaps the sensationalism of the Press was getting to her.

  The thought of untoward things set off a cascade of ideas in her head, for the moment distracting her from the matter at hand. Hints of what she had learned at Blackmoor suddenly began struggling to reach her conscious mind.

  She was brought back to the world by the sound of voices behind her.

  “I think I have just about finished, Mister Pim,” said the first. “You may dispose of the remainder.”

  “Yessir, Doctor,” said the second. “Making progress, are ya?”

  “Oh yes, Mister Pim. Steady on. We shall have a cure for your wife in no ti—” There was a pause, and then the first man exclaimed: “Good God, who is that?”

  The shouting brought Varanus around fully. She turned in time to see two men standing just inside the doorway. The first was of middle height and middle-aged, his hair graying slightly. He wore spectacles, a respectable suit covered by a bloodstained apron, and a broad moustache and sharp beard. The second was larger and broader, his clothes and countenance labeling him as one of the many rough men who inhabited the East End.

  The second man—the one called Pim—did not respond. Instead, he rushed forward and made a grab for Varanus. Though Varanus’s thoughts were still muddled, the sudden action brought her round again, and she lashed out to knock away Pim’s reaching hands. The space was cramped, but Varanus could make due. She struck Pim twice in the belly before punching him in the chest. Pim gasped as the air left him, and he gurgled in pain. But he continued grabbing for Varanus, and she was forced to kick his leg out from under him.

  Sufficiently occupied by Pim’s stubbornness, Varanus felt content to ignore the other man, who was fairly unassuming and seemed physically unready to join the fight.

  “Liebchen,” Korbinian said, “pay attention to your surroundings.”

  But the warning came a moment too late. As she turned, Varanus felt the other man come upon her from behind, grabbing for her with one hand and shoving a wet cloth against her face. She threw him off with ease, but in the vigor of the moment, Varanus felt herself breathing—that horrible, insidious, addictive habit that was so difficult to break. She had been breathing heavily the whole time, throughout the fight with Pim right until the moment she consciously reminded herself to stop.

  Don’t breathe! she thought. Don’t breathe!

  She recognized the smell on the cloth.

  Chloroform.

  But it was too late. She had already inhaled more than enough, for the cloth had been liberally drenched with the stuff. She struggled against her body, but she felt dizzy and disoriented as the chemical worked its way through her.

  A moment later she was in darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Varanus passed the next several hours in a state of muddle and confusion, fading in and out of consciousness. She could not tell for certain how long it was. All she recalled was tremendous pain—in her head, her limbs, her chest, and her belly, like they were being cut open with knives or driven through with other sharp instruments. The part of her mind that still functioned noted the repeated stench of chloroform that seemed to arise whenever coherence returned to her. She often felt the prick of needles as well, though at the time she could not understand why.

  Presently she came round to consciousness, and for the first time since arriving, she was not immediately drugged again. And that was what had happened, she realized, as her brain shook off its lethargy: each time she had awakened before, she had been drugged again.

  It took a few moments for her to open her eyes and take in her surroundings. Her vision was blurred, and she was dizzy for a time, but presently it began to fade. The first thing she noticed was the pain. That had not been imagined. And as she craned her head upward, she managed to see why.

  Her arms and legs refused to respond to her for the simple reason that they had been impaled. Metal spikes had been driven through each limb, and they held her fast without difficulty. The exertion of looking at them made her dizzy again, and she lowered her head and stared at the ceiling for a little while.

  She raised her head again and saw that her dress had been torn open right down the middle, from collar to pelvis. Her corset had also been cut open, and her undergarments all but ripped away from her body. Her bare flesh, exposed to the world, was covered in dried blood, though thankfully it was still whole.

  My God, Varanus thought, I need a drink.

  And she did. She was so terribly hungry. The injuries must have taxed her body significantly, for she was starving beyond belief.

  Turning her head to the side, she saw the bearded doctor from before standing at his desk, writing something down with feverish excitement. Varanus tried to get up, but the spikes held her fast. With a little more vigor, she might have managed it, but the starvation made her weak, far weaker than she could recall feeling in recent memory.

  She felt a burst of panic, and she stared up at the cracks in the ceiling to focus herself, counting each one in turn and forcing her mind to do something more productive than mull over its fear.

  The doctor finished his writing and looked over his shoulder at her.

  “Ah, yes, yes, yes, you are awake,” he said. He crossed to her, rubbing his hands together in delight.

  Varanus tried to speak, but she felt something hard between her teeth. She had been gagged.

  “No, no, no,” the doctor said to her, laughing in a curiously lilting tone. “I’m afraid you bite, naughty girl. And we can’t have that, can we? No, we cannot! Very nearly took Mister Pim’s fingers, you did. Naughty, naughty, naughty!”

  Varanus snarled in indignation. How dare the lunatic speak to her in such a way!

  “Murderer,” she managed to say.

  The doctor leaned over, trying to hear her.

  “What was that?” he asked. “Murderer?” He laughed again. “Oh, no, no. I am no murderer, you mad creature!” He backed away a pace and folded his bloodstained arms across his chest. “Ah, but perhaps you mean the unfortunate that you so unfortunately came upon last night!”

  Last night? Varanus thought. How long had she been there?

  “But you see, it isn’t like that,” the doctor carried on. “I mean, that girl was one of the street people: a whore, a vagrant, little better than an animal. It was practically a mercy killing, whether she realized that or not.

  “You must understand,” he continued, once again leaning over her, his eyes alight, “I’m doing them a service. My
…specimens are the dregs of humanity, the garbage in the street! They contribute nothing to society, but rather fester and corrupt within it like a disease. From cradle to grave, their lives are at best meaningless! But I…I have given them purpose. In death, they are allowed to redeem themselves by helping me to heal those more worthy of life. Together we are advancing the science of wellness so that the righteous might be rewarded for their godly lives.”

  He smiled as if pleased with himself.

  “It is a marvelous thing to do,” he continued, “bringing purpose to such miserable creatures. I had started my good work here in Whitechapel”—he sounded almost wistful—“so many months ago. It feels like a lifetime.…”

  Suddenly the doctor frowned, and then his frown became a scowl and he snarled:

  “Until all the hubbub about this ‘Ripper’ started. Why anyone should care is beyond my reason. His victims are all whores! He is doing us a great service, whoever he is. Cleaning up the streets, just as I am. But no…no, no, no, no, no…suddenly the public cares about dead whores! And with all eyes focused upon Whitechapel, I was forced to send my collectors further afield, which is a great inconvenience.”

  He leaned over Varanus and looked her in the eyes.

  “Can you believe that?” he asked. “My good work disrupted by whores!”

  Looking away, the doctor wrinkled his nose in a sudden display of disgust and added, “That girl you found here was a whore. Her sole purpose in life was to tempt men to sin. She was an agent of the Devil; they all are.” He suddenly pointed at Varanus and chuckled, as if sharing some secret joke known only to the two of them. “But you knew that, didn’t you? Jezebel. For I know you for what you are!”

  Varanus raised an eyebrow and stared at him. The man was clearly a lunatic.

  “You are an agent of the Devil as well, aren’t you?” the doctor demanded. “But not like those weak painted harlots, no.… You are not merely a servant of evil, a vessel for pestilence.”

  What? Varanus thought, bewildered by the ranting.