I'll Be Damned

by Erin Hayes

  I’ll Be Damned

  The Harker Legacy Book One

  Erin Hayes

  Erin Hayes Books

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Hazel

  2. Hazel

  3. Hazel

  4. Jared

  5. Hazel

  6. Hazel

  7. Jared

  8. Hazel

  9. Hazel

  10. Jared

  11. Hazel

  12. Jared

  13. Hazel

  14. Jared

  15. Hazel

  16. Jared

  17. Hazel

  18. Hazel

  19. Jared

  20. Hazel

  21. Hazel

  22. Hazel

  23. Hazel

  24. Hazel

  25. Jared

  26. Hazel

  27. Jared

  28. Hazel

  I’ll Be Damned - © 2018 Erin Hayes

  All Right Reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art by Rebecca Frank

  Edited by Contagious Edits

  Created with Vellum

  Prologue

  Hazel

  October 1888

  London

  Something is dripping on my face.

  It doesn't splatter when it lands on my forehead, it merely runs along my temple down my cheek, slowly and thickly. Its consistency reminds me of the oil that I use when I tinker on inventions with Father.

  Thick. Wet. Viscous.

  Disgusting.

  I try opening my eyes, but they're crusted shut, rendering it impossible. I try to rub the crust away, but my arms feel like they're made from lead. In fact, my entire body aches.

  What happened to me?

  The last thing I remember is joining my older sister Catherine for a hunt in Whitechapel. There's a murderer on the loose, and he's killed six women in the past few months. Scotland Yard had shown Catherine and me photographs of the crime scenes, bloody, grisly visions of death. Nothing human would have done something like that—the newspapers called the murderer a monster.

  Catherine and I recognized the killer for what he truly is—a vampire. And we were going to kill him before he could get to any other women.

  I remember getting ready with Catherine. I remember taking a carriage to Berners Street and bidding our cabbie farewell. We had talked to an old woman who pointed us down an alley, and then I remember seeing a dead body, then Catherine aimed her weapon at me, and—

  I flail, trying to move. Her name comes to my lips as I reach out for anyone to hear me, to help me.

  "Catherine!"

  My voice comes out as a hoarse croak, barely audible. It's as if I hadn't had a drink of water for the past week.

  I finally force my eyes open, though it's painful.

  And there's Catherine's face looking back at me.

  For a split moment, I think it's her looking down at me, to help me with a fever or some other ailment, like I've been sick, and this is just me waking up from a nightmare. Her green eyes look into me, but there's no recognition there. Nothing. In fact, she's completely still, with a dull, hollow look to her. And I realize that she's been tossed aside near me, the rubbish around us propping her body up a little above me. Her dark hair is swept over her face and hangs in damp, sticky clumps.

  Then I see the gaping wound in her neck and the source of whatever has been dripping on my face for however long I've been unconscious.

  I've been lying under my dead sister's body while her blood drips onto my face.

  "Children must think I am the Bogeyman," Catherine had told me before we left our house on our hunt. She'd been looking at her reflection in the mirror, making sure that no one could see the scars on her face, evidence of the disease that was slowly killing her. A vampire mixed his blood with hers, and instead of Turning her like it did normal humans, it infected her with a flesh-eating disease that killed her.

  I remember standing behind her, memorizing the planes of her face and how her once-delicate beauty had been marred by a red scar that claimed one side of her face. The more-infected sites had open sores on them and oozed pus and other bodily fluid.

  Despite hunting vampires at night, Catherine was a kind soul. I knew it killed her that children screamed when they saw her.

  I had given her a sad smile, hoping to ease some of that hurt. "And you can tell those children that you hunt their Bogeyman."

  And now, lying underneath her dead body and looking up in her face, it's me who screams.

  Not children.

  Me.

  Her younger sister. The one person who tried to help her face the public when the disease ravaged her body.

  I scream and scream and scream, tears creating rivulets through the dried blood on my face. I try to move, to do anything to get away from Catherine's dead body. My hand touches something wet and soft and I turn in horror to see another woman—this one most likely a whore—discarded like yesterday's rubbish. Her lips are still rouged, and her skin is powdered to cover up the smallpox scars on her cheeks.

  But I have accidentally stuck my hand through her abdomen. She's been completely gutted, her intestines and innards all over the place.

  In horror, I realize that I've been lying on top of her dead body, while Catherine has been heaped over me.

  The very last thing I remember is seeing this dead woman's body. Catherine was at my side, and we realized that the Whitechapel Murderer had freshly killed another victim. No, not just killed a victim—set a trap. And Catherine, in a moment of acting like my big sister, turned her disrupter pistol on me to incapacitate me and make me seem like the dead.

  Because she knew we wouldn't be able to win against the vampire.

  I scuttle away from the rubbish heap, away from the two bodies. My mind scatters to hundreds of different directions at once. At the pain and betrayal of Catherine not trusting me to be able to help her. At the fear of knowing what this vampire is capable of. At my own helplessness when my sister needed me most.

  I scrabble at the cobblestones, my limbs still not quite working properly after having been paralyzed. How long did Father say the disrupter pistol would leave a victim unconscious? Two, three hours?

  I think about Father and the rest of my family. They were expecting both Catherine and me to come home, victorious in killing the Whitechapel Murderer.

  And here I am, alone. A failure. Helpless.

  I cup a hand to my mouth in an attempt to stifle my cries, but I can do nothing for the tears that continue to fall from my cheeks.

  I'm going to have to tell Father, my younger siblings Margaret and Thomas, and Mrs. Hudson, our family retainer, that Catherine was killed at the age of twenty-five. She'd been sick, dying from infection given to her by the vampires, but we were working toward a cure, dammit. We would have saved her.

  And now...

  At some point, I manage to get to my feet, and I stumble out of the alleyway. I'm looking for a policeman or someone to help me bring back Catherine's body. My walk is slow, stilted, like I'm already dead. I can't seem to get my feet to work correctly, so my shuffle must do for now. It gives me time to think, but there's nothing left to ponder.

  My world has been turned upside down.

  A woman spies me from the street and she screams in terror. "Help! Someone help me! There's a monster out there!"

  As if in another sort of dream, I look down and realize that I'm painted in Catherine's and the other woman'
s blood. Not a scrap of fabric has been spared from the onslaught of blood.

  My new life has been baptized by their blood.

  I must look a fright. And the thing is, I don't care at the moment. Because my sister's body lies broken, discarded in a dark alley in the worst part of London. I feel empty, dead inside. Like the Whitechapel Murderer didn't just scoop out the whore's insides; he did mine as well.

  There's nothing left of the woman who left her house earlier this night.

  "You there!" A policeman runs to the alley, answering the woman's cries, but even he stops and gapes at me. I meet his eyes, frowning at him. He licks his lips, and his own gaze travels all over my body, taking in my state. He has his pistol out but doesn't aim at me.

  "Who—who are you?" he asks. "What are you doing here?" He pauses, as if trying to process everything. "What happened to you?"

  I swallow back the lump in my throat, finding my voice once again. A single tear slides down my cheek, carving another path through the dried blood on my face.

  I decide to answer his first question, since that is the easiest and the hardest one for me. Being a man of the law, he would recognize my station, which would help with any further questions.

  "My name is Hazel," I tell him. "And I am the new Harker."

  1

  Hazel

  June 1889

  London

  The French have beheading down to an art. A bloody, gruesome sort of art, but an art nonetheless.

  I've seen a guillotine once, and never have I seen it in practice, but there's something so compact and effortless about a blade that beheads in one fell swoop. As someone who dabbles in tinkering and inventions, I'm amazed at the simplicity of the machine. And how horribly effective it is at its purpose. Revolutions have been created at the foot of a guillotine.

  For better or worse, it makes killing and dismembering easy.

  A convenience I wish I had right now.

  I spit out a mouthful of blood and attempt to wipe some of it off, but it just smears across my face. It's not my blood, which makes it that much worse.

  "How's it going over there?" my hunting companion and cousin Elizabeth Cypher asks as she works at hacking apart her vampire prey.

  "As messy as it always is, Lizzie," I tell her. I try to get more of the blood off my face, but I'm just moving it around. The only thing that will get it off now is a warm bath back home. Even then, there are some stains that are impossible to remove with any amount of washing. I feel like my soul is dirtied beyond repair at this point.

  I raise my sword again and bring it down on the dead vampire's neck. The blade makes it most of the way through the spinal column, but it imbeds itself in a vertebra. The shockwave of the sudden halt jitters me all the way to my bones. That is what I get for using a magical sword that comes out of the palm of my left hand. It’s a gift from being the Harker, something that I inherited when Catherine died, and while it’s sharp, it’s still a part of me. My teeth ache from all of it, and I grimace. More blood—too much blood—spurts out of the corpse's neck and covers me again. Again, I get it in my mouth.

  There must be a better way of beheading bodies than this. I only have so many dresses I can get bloodied up.

  "I think Silver Bane needs to be sharpened again," Lizzie quips, referring to my enchanted sword by name. She brings her own cold steel sword down again, and this time, the vampire's head separates from the rest of the body and spins its way toward me. The head finally comes to a stop, and the vampire is facing me, his mouth forever open in a silent scream. Lizzie straightens and gives me a wide grin. "That was a bit of a to-do."

  I sneer at the face of the vampire and turn back to the corpse that I'm trying to deal with. I bring down Silver Bane one last time, and thankfully, the head separates from the rest of the body. It covers me in another spray of blood.

  Yet I feel invigorated.

  These two hungry vampires will never roam the streets of London ever again. I wish I could say there were no more vampires in London, but that is just wishful thinking.

  I have yet to find the vampire that is known as the Whitechapel Murderer. The vampire that murdered my sister.

  Thinking of Catherine, my hopes deflate, and I retract my sword back into the palm of my hand. I am such an imposter. She should have been here instead of me. She would have saved the vampire’s victims before they were murdered.

  She would have been able to hack off these heads with one strike.

  I was taught that a well-placed stake to the heart stops vampires, but after encountering a few vampires who tricked us into thinking they were dead, Catherine and I had started beheading them.

  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, even though I feel as though I have pounds and pounds of bloody prevention all over me.

  “Shall I dispose of their bodies?” Lizzie asks as she searches in her satchel for her combustion pistol. Invented by my brilliant father, the combustion pistol issues a stream of kerosene, which is then ignited by a spark of gunpowder at the very tip of the weapon. It is a brilliant way of starting a fire.

  In the case of a frightened London, fires are a good way of not frightening the public. I can only imagine the hysteria there would be if someone found these bodies.

  “Please do,” I say with a sigh. I’m too tired to deal with them myself. It’s a bone-weary, aching kind of tired that seeps through my joints and into my soul. I have been feeling this way since Catherine died.

  As if I may never find rest again.

  Lizzie lights the bodies on fire with her combustion pistol, and I watch the controlled blaze, welcoming the heat. It seeps through to my numbness. I contemplate jumping into the fire, just to feel more. Even if the flames eat my flesh away.

  I blink a few times to clear my vision and those thoughts away.

  “Catherine used to be able to use her magic to conjure up fire,” I tell Lizzie. “I have yet to gain that ability.”

  Lizzie glances over at me, her expression grim. “You are new into your role as the Harker. Your magic will come.”

  “Right.”

  I do not believe her, though. It is just another reminder that my older sister was a better vampire hunter than I’ll ever be.

  “Hazel, behind you!” Lizzie shouts suddenly, reaching for me.

  I turn, a moment too late, to see the shadows behind me move, the moonlight catching a silver blade. Pain lances my shoulder as the blade enters me from the front, and I find that I’m facing a hooded figure.

  The figure—a man, I believe, although it’s hard through the haze of pain and night to make out his features—lets out a grunt as he withdraws the blade from my shoulder. It’s a long, skinny sword that he sheathes inside a cane.

  And with that, he turns to flee through the alleys of Whitechapel. Lizzie shouts and gives chase, while I stagger to one knee. My skirts tear as I lean up against the wall. I raise a hand to my wound, to try to staunch the flow of blood, but it comes out between my fingertips.

  There’s a hazy quality to my eyesight now, and my thoughts scatter like marbles skittering across the ground.

  Poison. Nothing life-threatening, or else I would feel my heart speeding up. No, it’s meant to keep me from giving chase.

  “I’ve lost him,” Lizzie says coming back into the shadows. She’s heaving great breaths, clearly distressed as she looks around before kneeling beside me, covering up my hand with hers. “Hazel, I’m so sorry, I lost him.”

  “I think he meant to just stab me and run,” I say. The notion is both ridiculous and intriguing.

  Lizzie frowns. “Why do you say that?”

  “There was an anesthetic agent on the blade.” My words begin to slur. “I think he just wanted to incapacitate me, so I couldn’t chase after him.” Which means that he knows who I am.

  “Why?” I lift my good shoulder in response, but she still gives me a stern look. “Don’t do that, Hazel.” She tears the hem of her skirts into a strip and starts wrapping my shoulder.
“This will need some attention and my potions.”

  I chuckle. “Just like old times with Catherine.” Except Catherine would still be able to hunt the attacker.

  Lizzie ties off the strip harshly and I grimace. “Can you stand? Should I have you taken to the hospital?”

  “No,” I say to her question about the hospital. If a physician gets a closer look at me, he may throw me in an asylum. Like Bedlam, in which I have already been a patient. It had been to hunt a vampire there, but I do know that some neighbors would love to see me institutionalized.

  In their eyes, I am a strange woman. I tend to agree.

  “I do think I can stand if you help me,” I say. My mouth feels dry as I swallow. “Papa will be able to help, too.” I only mean that he will help with my injury. I do not think he’ll be much use now.

  “Right.” Lizzie sits back on her heels. “I suppose you aren’t too heavy.”

  “I feel like I should be offended by that.” I suck in a deep breath as she helps me to my feet. I sway on my feet. Everything inside me feels leaden. Whatever my attacker used has me barely able to hold myself up.

  “You’ll just appear as a drunkard to anyone who notices,” Lizzie says, grunting under my weight. “Should I be worried that you’ll pass out on me?”

  I shake my head, and the world swirls around me. Need to not do that. “I think he merely meant to keep me from chasing him down.”