The Devil & Lillian Holmes

by Ciar Cullen

  “I AM NOT A GOOD VAMPIRE.”

  She had not been a good mortal, either. Half-broken by a terrible secret, Lillian Holmes retreated into a fantasy world where the great detective Sherlock was her uncle and she could solve any mystery. Except, she had not yet found her parents. She had not yet rescued her stolen daughter. She was addicted to morphine, was still broken. And now she was bound to blood and to the caresses of the beautiful monster who sought to change for her, who had literally changed her to save her life.

  But for how long had George saved her? Lillian could feel safety and sanity slipping away. Devils prowled Baltimore. Some were allies, others lustful gluttons waiting to consume every last drop of goodness. Some came from far-off lands, mercurial, unknowable, unstoppable. Others lurked closer still—in the hearts of herself and her beloved.

  The Devil & Lillian Holmes

  Ciar Cullen

  www.BOROUGHSPUBLISHINGGROUP.com

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Boroughs Publishing Group does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites, blogs or critiques or their content.

  THE DEVIL & LILLIAN HOLMES

  Copyright © 2014 Ciar Cullen

  All rights reserved. Unless specifically noted, no part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Boroughs Publishing Group. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the permission of Boroughs Publishing Group is illegal and punishable by law. Participation in the piracy of copyrighted materials violates the author’s rights.

  Digital edition created by Maureen Cutajar

  www.gopublished.com

  ISBN 978-1-941260-32-6

  This book is dedicated to Kathryn Hall, who helped me find my voice. And for a man I never met, who read to my editor when he was a boy. Thank you both.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you, Bruce, for always encouraging me to do whatever makes me happy. And special thanks to Chris Keeslar, for helping me push a little farther each time. You’re a wonder.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Author Bio

  The Devil & Lillian Holmes

  PROLOGUE

  For the first time in months, Atil stirred.

  Ursula felt the pull of her maker the moment he awoke. She stared out from her window at the shroud of dark pines, trying to pick out his form. She made the sign of the cross out of habit as she scurried down the great staircase, even though her God had abandoned her long, long ago. The irony struck her anew that the devoted worshipped her as a saint, believing she had chosen to be burned alive at Atil’s hand rather than sacrificing her virginity to him. Too fearful of the unknown, her faith had failed her and she succumbed to the ruler’s will. To add to her litany of sins, she’d asked Atil to protect her devout reputation. What maiden had perished in her place? So long ago, she thought. The guilt barely haunted her now.

  Atil called her Saint Ursula whenever he was cross, which was often. He didn’t like to be disturbed from his long hibernations in the forest. So what new trouble made the Elders, his sons, call him from slumber?

  Ah. There. A tall silhouette barely visible against the setting sun: her twelfth child, not favored by Atil. No doubt Atil would send Vasil on another dreary journey to settle some political upheaval. Ursula thought that Vasil had kept some minute piece of humanity that only a mother might recognize. His solutions sometimes smacked of compassion, but he claimed that the Houses he ruled—young, unstable ones—required a gentler hand.

  Like beetles scurrying toward a corpse they came, one by one, from the forest and the valley to the west, up over the frosty grass, toward the main gate. And finally, her maker emerged, too. She could not see the face she had once thought irresistible, but she knew the disgust and determination that would mar it.

  Ursula rushed to ready the hall, where slaves already dragged heavy chairs across the floor and wiped at the table. To a man, fear made them shake and look away from her. One of them would die tonight, providing sustenance to the Elders, her children. She would plead for mercy, Atil would scowl and laugh, and she would look away.

  She prayed again to the God who hated her. Please let me die. But He would not allow her to perish. Evidently she was not worthy even of Hell.

  Atil burst through the door and she lowered her head.

  “Ursula, you look well,” he said.

  “I am, my lord. What need merits this gathering? The talk of war in Germany?”

  “Are you not pleased to see me and our offspring?” He pulled off his fur cape and let it drop to the floor.

  Ursula didn’t answer; she didn’t have to. Atil had already forgotten her and turned toward the door where their boy children entered and talked in low grumbles.

  I hate them all.

  “Come, boys, gather around. Hurry, Vasil, this issue involves your insipid domain.”

  So, Ursula realized, a trivial uprising among the Houses in the Americas. Young vampires in a young land, always mucking things up.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A fine meal.

  Baltimore, 1899

  Lillian tried to run but her legs wouldn’t move. She screamed, but no sound emanated from her mouth. She tried again, tears bleeding down her cheeks, turning her gown scarlet. Her hands and legs were bound to the bed, the smell of ether strong around her. Had she been drugged? Was she back in the asylum?

  My baby, give me my baby!

  No, not the asylum. She was in London. Had she been kidnapped?

  You are dreaming. You are dreaming. Still, she couldn’t make herself awaken.

  A dark silhouette leaned forward, and she recognized his tall lean form. Why would Uncle Sherlock want to kill her? Ah, because she was soiled, sullied, damned. He hovered over her, intensity and loathing turning his sensuous mouth into a grim line, making his dark eyes blaze. The wooden stake in his hand glowed, and she tu
rned her head away to avoid watching him plunge it into her chest.

  “Anathema. Pure evil. Return from whence you came!” He lifted the stake, ready to act—

  Lillian sat up, heart racing. As in her dream, scarlet tears stained her clothes.

  Why did she have this dream night after night? She’d curl up next to George, struggling to keep awake, fearful that she’d find herself once again tied up and about to be vanquished by her hero, the inimitable Sherlock Holmes. The horror stayed with her through a good part of each day, frazzling her nerves and exhausting her. Wasn’t it bad enough that George’s enemy stalked their peace? Madame Lucifer—Marie de Bourbon was her true name—hadn’t shown herself yet, but rumors were she’d put a price on George’s head.

  Quietly, so George wouldn’t wake, Lillian crept to her dresser. She had to see for herself.

  No. She sighed. There she was, disheveled but whole. Her image had not started to fade like the images of the legendary Elders who no longer had reflection or shadow. When George had talked about the Elders, about their history, that one detail had terrified her the most somehow. Despite George’s promise that she would need to live a thousand years before she lost that human essence, the fear still clutched at her in weak moments.

  It surprised her each time, this somewhat pleasant-looking stranger staring back at her. But her hands itched, her veins thrummed, and the cravings for a pill or liquid potion—her old “medicine”— gnawed at her. Or perhaps it was the craving for blood; at times the two addictions felt the same. At this moment, either would do.

  Don’t look. Don’t look. But she poked into the small drawers and cubbies of her desk, unable to stop herself but also unable to find anything. One night, when George was gone, she’d crawled on all fours about the room, praying a pill might have rolled into a crack in the floorboards. But, no, they had left nothing behind. No pills, no potions. No relief.

  With a deep breath she ran her hand across the satchel that held her most precious possessions: her Journal of Important Observations, the pistol she’d bought for herself on her twenty-first birthday, and a letter from her hero’s creator, Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle. At sight of the last, she gave herself a little shake. Uncle Sherlock would not stop until he had solved a case. Why had she?

  Do not hate me, Uncle. In her fantasies, the ones born of reading, the ones that had sheltered her for so many years, her fictitious Uncle Sherlock was real, he loved her, he was proud of her attempts to follow in his footsteps. And wasn’t she now the same woman she’d been, at least somewhere deep inside, someplace holy and untouchable by the blood of her prey and her hunger?

  Perhaps not. Perhaps she did not deserve to find the daughter torn away from her arms by the girl’s rapist father. How could she be a mother now? And perhaps she did not deserve to find her own. Wouldn’t the woman have come looking for her years ago? What would she think upon beholding Lillian? She would turn away in horror, surely.

  George. He was Lillian’s only lifeline. But George had walked the earth for eons. Eventually he might find her lacking and leave, as it seemed everyone did. In only months they had lost their easy way of sparring with words, and their passion and hunger for each other had taken on a dark intensity.

  I have taken on a dark intensity, she reminded herself. George was always so.

  She regretted having told him of her recurring nightmares. He’d said, “You dream of him because you gave him up. He will not go so easily. What of your waking dream of following in his footsteps? What has happened to your investigations?”

  She’d also heard what George hadn’t said. “What has happened to you?”

  George didn’t say it because he knew the answer. To save her life, he’d turned her into a vampire. He’d warned her about the harsh reality she would face, but she hadn’t much cared. At the time it was better than dying at the hands of her rapist. She couldn’t blame George; she had made the choice herself. He was the same. But she was no longer the woman he’d fallen in love with. That headstrong, independent, human Lillian had died on her living room floor, and this Lillian, reborn in George’s healing blood, was utterly lost.

  In quiet times with only the ticking of the clock as company, or on solitary walks under the cover of darkness, she wondered what had happened to her investigations, to the burning desire to find her child and her mother. They had been replaced by the burning need to drink, to kill and feed. Although she and George took great pains to harm only criminals, those abusing others, she wondered if it was a charade. She worried that she would kill anyone should her hunger become fierce enough. At times, when she felt weak, lest she not be able to control herself, she sent away her few friends and her maid’s little brothers whom she called her Musketeers. It was best that her truest friend Bess had already abandoned her. Lillian could not forgive herself for killing such a good woman.

  I miss you so, my Watson.

  Lillian watched George sleep for a moment and longed to turn back the clock to a time when he was the arrogant, puzzling, mesmerizing stranger who saved her more than once. She loved him more than ever, but he, too, seemed to be slipping through her fingers. Perhaps she could blame the looming threat of Marie de Bourbon. Baltimore, once a home for benign adventures and good friends, now felt like a prison. Lillian was caged with a lioness she could not see.

  Marie would find them—sooner rather than later, Lillian was sure. George would want to flee before she did. At one time Lillian would have followed him anywhere. Now, her rapist and his accomplice dead at George’s hand and her brain clear of opiates, she intended to locate her missing child and mother. No matter that she had given the investigation up until now. She had needed time to recover.

  Or…would she bow to George’s will? He deserved loyalty from her, did he not? Loyalty and devotion. He was her maker.

  You go back and forth, Lil. Where will you end? You make no sense anymore. And was it their vampiric bond or her love for George that made her desperate to please him? What did it all mean, and how long would any of it last?

  “Am I losing you, Lil?” he’d asked more than once.

  “Don’t be a silly-heart.”

  “You’re so far away.” Even a month earlier, the sadness in his eyes and desperation in his voice had tortured her. “Is it this life, catching up with you? Our ways? Please give it a bit more time.”

  “I am left wondering who I am.”

  “Who you are?”

  “Yes. Everything I was, all I knew seems like a dream to me now. My child, my mother, my friends… Even my wonderful Uncle Sherlock. They are not real.”

  “I am real. You are real. Hold on to that, Lil.”

  Everything was out of her control.

  Attend to your hunger first, Lillian, and then perhaps you will be able to focus.

  George was still asleep. Silently Lillian picked up her boots and slipped a cloak around her shoulders. Blood or opium: either would be welcome, but only one would nourish. She shoved a few bills into her pocket, knowing that downtown a few ounces of stronger medicine than she’d ever tried could be had for a pittance.

  Medicine.

  No, you stopped calling it that.

  She tiptoed to the end of the hallway and pushed open the window that gave access to a narrow ledge around the second floor of her home. The late fall air was cold, with a promise of coming rain in the swirl of leaves on the ground and the swaying tree limbs. While she wanted badly to ride her motorbike, to feel the uneven cobbles and dirt ruts make her sway precariously, George would hear its engine and might follow. So she held out her arms and stepped off the ledge, letting gravity tug at her for a moment before taking flight.

  Flight! The dip and sudden lift lit her nerves, and she felt alive again, felt the power flowing through her veins that would help her vanquish all except for a terrifying few. Even George could not cover the distances she could without resting on a rooftop.

  Immortal. She was immortal. How far could she go before she tired? She didn’t
know; George had always been with her, teaching her, warning her of dangers that seemed exaggerated. Mortals had little chance to harm her. A few Catholic priests and voodoo priestesses might understand that the descriptions of undeath by Bram Stoker were close—too close—to reality, but the good citizens of her town did not routinely arm themselves with ash-wood stakes or silver bullets and daggers. Still, her kind had to be circumspect, she admitted as a young couple looked up to see what streaked across the sky.

  A schooner was docked near the cannery along Light Street. Resisting the urge to land on the deck and take for supper one of the burly men huddled in the cold, drinking and playing dice, she instead chose a nearby alley.

  Where were the brutes tonight? The harbor hadn’t yet failed her: a man pulling an unwilling woman around a corner; a young sailor who lay dying, robbed of his meager possessions and begging to God for a less painful end; a homeless vagabond, coughing up blood… Never depleted of the dead, dying, or damned, the harbor gave up meals willingly. She and George would kick the bodies into the water, and they would emerge miles away but anonymous, unrecognizable, the Chesapeake tidewaters lapping at them.

  Lillian hid in a doorway, a few rats and a stray cat her only company, a far cry from her warm, richly decorated home. Her triumphant solo journey now felt foolish. Strains of music and laughter carried across the water, no doubt from the nearby brothel.

  “What have we here?”

  Lillian jumped and turned to a lanky man of middle years, weathered by the sun and no doubt a sailor given his clothes and knapsack. A ragged hound sat by his heels.

  “Move along, sir.”

  “Wouldn’t you like some company?”

  “I will say it once more only. Move along. You will not like the consequences of attempting further acquaintance with me.”

  “My, my, aren’t you a most excellent Miss High and Mighty! So you’re waiting for a duke or prince, your majesty?”

  “I told you to leave. Go shake your elbow with your fellow gamblers, or visit the brothel around the corner.”