by Kim Newman
Geneviève’s blood, of the pure bloodline of Chandagnac, might heal Lily, might wash out the taint of Dracula’s grave-mould, might make her whole again...
Might, might, might.
She held Lily’s head to her breast, guiding the girl’s mouth to the wound. It hurt as if her heart were pierced by a silver ice needle. To love was to hurt. Her blood, bright scarlet, was on Lily’s lips.
‘I love you, little yellow bird...’ Geneviève sang.
In the back of her throat, Lily made a throttling sound.
‘Goodbye, little yellow bird, I’d rather brave the cold...’
Lily’s head fell away from Geneviève’s breast. Her face was smeared with blood.
‘... on a leafless tree...’
The child’s wing flapped once, a convulsive jerking-out that unbalanced Geneviève.
‘... than a prisoner be...’
She could see the gaslight glowing like a blue moon through the thin membrane of the wing, outlining a tracery of disconnected veins.
‘... in a cage... of... gold.’
Lily was dead. With a spasm of heart-sickness, Geneviève dropped the bundled corpse on the cot and howled. Her front was soaked with her own useless blood. Her damp hair was stuck to her face, her eyes gummed with clotted blood-tears. She wished she did believe in God, so she could curse Him.
Suddenly cold, she stood away. She rubbed the obstruction from her eyes and wiped back her hair. There was a basin of water on a stand. She washed her face clean, looking at the clean grain of the wooden frame which had once held a looking-glass. Turning from the basin, she realised there were people in the room. She must have made enough commotion to excite considerable alarm.
Arthur Morrison stood by the open door with Amworth behind him. There were others outside in the hall. People from outside, from the streets, nosferatu and warm alike. Morrison’s face was dumbstruck. She knew she must be hideous. In anger, her face changed.
‘We thought you should know, Geneviève,’ Morrison said. ‘There’s been another murder. Another new-born.’
‘In Dutfield’s Yard,’ said someone with the hot news, ‘off Berner Street.’
‘Lizzie Stride, ’er as only turned last week. Teeth not yet through. Tall gel, rorty-like.’
‘Cut ’er froat, didn’t ’e?’
‘Long Liz.’
‘Stride. Gustafsdotter. Elizabeth.’
‘Ear to ear. Thwick!’
‘She put up a barney, though. Sloshed ’im one.’
‘Ripper was disturbed ’fore ’e could finish ’is job.’
‘Some bloke with an ’orse.’
‘Ripper?’
‘Louis Diemschütz, one o’ them socialisticals...’
‘Jack the Ripper.’
‘Louis was passin’ by. Must of been the moment Jack was a-rippin’ Lizzie’s throat. Must of seen ’is rotten face. Must of.’
‘Calls ’isself Jack the Ripper now. Silver Knife is gone and done.’
‘Where’s Druitt?’
‘Damn bleedin’ busybodies, them socialisticals. Always pokin’ into a bloke’s business.’
‘Haven’t seen the blighter all evening, miss.’
‘Speakin’ agin the Queen. And them’s all Jews, y’know. Can’t trust an Ikey.’
‘Bet ’e’s an ’ook-nose. Jus’ bet ’e is.’
‘Ripper’s still on the streets, ’e is. The coppers is givin’ chase. By sun-up, they’ll have ’is carcass.’
‘If ’e’s ’uman.’
23
HEADLESS CHICKENS
It was as if the city were on fire!
Beauregard was at the Café de Paris when the cry went up. With Kate Reed and several other reporters, he ran to the police station. The street was full of people running and shouting. A masked lout, a dozen assorted crucifixes strung about his neck, drunkenly smashed windows, yelling that the Judgement of God was at hand, that vampires were Demons of the Pit.
Sergeant Thick was minding the shop. A come-down for the detective, but a responsible position. Apparently, Lestrade was at the murder site and Abberline off duty. Kate dashed out to find Dutfield’s Yard, but Beauregard decided to stay.
‘Nothing we can do yet, sir,’ the sergeant said. ‘I’ve put a dozen men out, but they’re just blundering in the fog.’
‘Surely the murderer will be covered in blood?’
Thick shrugged. ‘Not if he’s careful. Or if he wears a reversible.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Thick opened his grey tweed coat and showed a tartan interior. ‘Turns inside out. You can wear it both ways.’
‘Clever.’
‘This is a bloody messy job, Mr Beauregard.’
A couple of uniformed constables dragged in the window-smasher. Thick hauled off the struggling man’s flour-sack hood and recognised one of John Jago’s fearless Knights of Christendom. The sergeant cringed away from the Crusader’s whisky breath.
‘The unholy leeches shall be...’
Thick balled the hood and shoved it in the vandal’s mouth.
‘Lock him up and let him sleep it off,’ he ordered the constables. ‘We’ll talk about charges when the shopkeepers get up tomorrow and see what damage he’s done.’
For the first time Beauregard was at hand when the murderer was about his business, but he might as well be safe in bed in Chelsea for all he could do.
‘Headless chickens, we are, sir,’ Thick said. ‘Running around in bloody circles.’
Beauregard hefted his sword-cane, and wished the Ripper would come out and fight.
‘Cup of tea, sir?’ Thick asked.
Before Beauregard could thank the sergeant, a warm constable, out of breath, shoved through the doors. He took off his helmet, gasping.
‘What is it now, Collins? Some fresh calamity?’
‘He’s gone and done it again, sarge,’ Collins blurted. ‘Two for a penny. Two in one night.’
‘What!’
‘Liz Stride by Berner Street, now a bint called Eddowes in Mitre Square.’
‘Mitre Square. That’s off our patch. One for the City boys.’
The boundary between the jurisdictions of the Metropolitan and City Police ran through the parish. The murderer, between crimes, had crossed the border.
‘It’s almost as though he’s trying to make us look complete bollock-heads. He’ll be ripping them outside Scotland Yard next, with a note for the Commissioner written in scarlet.’
Beauregard shook his head. Another life wasted. This was no longer just a commission from the Diogenes Club. Innocent people were being killed. He felt an urgent need to do something.
‘I had the news from PC Holland, one of the City blokes. He said this Eddowes...’
‘Name of Catharine, I reckon. A familiar face around these parts. Spent more time sleeping it off in our cells than wherever she was lodging.’
‘Yeah, I reckoned it’d be Cathy,’ said Collins, pausing to look upset. ‘Any rate, Holland says the bastard finished his job this time. Not like with Liz Stride, just a slash at the throat and a scarper in the dark. He was back to his usual, and gutted her proper.’
Thick swore.
‘Poor bloody Cathy,’ Collins said. ‘She was a dreadful old tart, but she never did anyone no harm. Not real harm.’
‘Poor bloody us, more like,’ Thick said. ‘After this, unless we get him sharp-ish, it’s not going to be the easy life being a copper in this parish.’
Beauregard knew Thick was right. Ruthven would have someone important’s resignation, maybe Warren’s; and the Prince Consort would probably have to be restrained from impaling a few lower-ranking policemen, pour encourager les autres.
Another messenger appeared. It was Ned, the fleet-foot from the Café de Paris. Beauregard had given him a shilling earlier, pressing him into the service of the Diogenes Club.
Thick glowered like an ogre and the child skidded to a halt well away from him. He had been so eager to bring Beauregard a message t
hat he had dared venture into a police station. Now, his nervousness was reasserting itself; he trod as gingerly as a mouse in a cattery.
‘Miss Reed says you’re to come to Toynbee ’All, sir. Urgent.’
24
A PREMATURE POST-MORTEM
Her eyes dry, she wrapped Lily in a sheet. The corpse was already rotting, face withering on to the skull like an orange left too long in the bowl. The girl would have to be removed to quicklime and a pauper’s grave before the smell became too bad to bear. The job of winding done, Geneviève would have to fill out a certificate of death for Jack Seward to sign and draft an account for the Hall’s files. Whenever anyone died about her, another grain of ice clung to her heart. It would be easy to become a monster of callousness. A few more centuries and she could be a match for Vlad Tepes: caring for nothing but power and hot blood in her throat.
An hour before dawn, the news came. One of the ponces, arm carved up by someone’s razor, was brought in; the crowd with him had five different versions of the story. Jack the Ripper was caught, and being held at the police station, identity concealed because he was one of the Royal Family. Jack had gutted a dozen in full view and eluded pursuers by leaping over a twenty-foot wall, springs on his boots. Jack’s face was a silver skull, his arms bloodied scythes, his breath purging fire. A constable told her the bare facts. Jack had killed. Again. First, Elizabeth Stride. And now Catharine Eddowes. Cathy! That shocked her. The other woman, she said she didn’t think she knew.
‘She was in here last month, though,’ Morrison said. ‘Liz Stride. She was turning and wanted blood to keep her going. You’d remember her if you’d met her. She was tall, and kind of foreign, Swedish. Handsome woman, once.’
‘He’s takin’ them two at a time,’ the constable said, ‘you almost have to admire him, the Devil.’
Everybody left again, for the second or third time, the crowd melting away from the Hall. Geneviève was alone in the quiet of the dawn. After a while, each fresh atrocity just added to an awful monotony. Lily had bled her dry. She had nothing more to feel. No grief left for Liz Stride or Cathy Eddowes.
As the sun rose, she fell into a doze in her chair. She was tired of keeping things together. She knew what would happen later. It had been getting worse with each murder. A troupe of whores would call, mainly in hysterical tears, begging for money to escape from the death-trap of Whitechapel. In truth, the district had been a deathtrap long before the Ripper silvered his knives.
In her half-dream, Geneviève was warm again, heart afire with anger and pain, eyes hot with righteous tears. A year before the Dark Kiss, she had cried herself empty at the news from Rouen. The English had burned Jeanne d’Arc, slandering her as a witch. At fourteen, Geneviève swore herself to the cause of the dauphin. It was a war of children, carried to bloody extremes by their guardians. Jeanne never saw her nineteenth birthday, Dauphin Charles was in his teens; even Henry of England was a child. Their quarrels should have been settled with spinning tops, not armies and sieges. Not only were the boy-kings now dead, so were their houses. Today’s France, a country as strange to her as Mongolia, did not even have a monarch. If some of the English blood of Henry IV still flowed in Victoria’s German veins, then it was also liable to have filtered down to most of the world, to Lily Mylett and Cathy Eddowes and John Jago and Arthur Morrison.
There was a commotion – another commotion – in the receiving rooms. Geneviève was expecting more injuries during the day. After the murders, there would be street brawls, vigilante victims, maybe even a lynching in the American style...
Four uniformed policemen were in the hallway, something heavy slung in an oilcloth between them. Lestrade was chewing his whiskers. The coppers had had to fight their way through hostile crowds. ‘It’s as if he’s laughin’ at us,’ one of them said, ‘stirrin’ them all up against us.’
With the police was a new-born girl in smoked glasses and practical clothes, tagging along, looking hungry. Geneviève thought she might be one of the reporters.
‘Mademoiselle Dieudonné, clear a private room.’
‘Inspector...’
‘Don’t argue, just do it. One of them’s still alive.’
She understood at once and checked her charts. She realised immediately that there was an empty room.
They followed her, straining under their awkward burden, and she let them into Lily’s room. She shifted the tiny bundle and the policemen manoeuvred their baggage into its place, pulling away the oilcloth. Skinny legs flopped over the end of the cot, skirt-edge trailing on odd stockings.
‘Mademoiselle Dieudonné, meet Long Liz Stride.’
The new-born was tall and thin, rouge smeared on her cheeks, hair a tatty black. Under an open jacket, she wore a cotton shift, dyed red in a splash from neckline to waist. Her throat was opened to the bone, cut from ear to ear like a clown’s smile. She was gurgling, her cut pipes trying to mesh.
‘Jackie Boy didn’t have enough time with her,’ Lestrade explained. ‘Saved it all up for Cathy Eddowes. Warm bastard.’
Liz Stride tried to yell, but couldn’t call up air from her lungs into her throat. A draught whispered through her wound. Her teeth were gone but for sharp incisors. Her limbs convulsed like galvanised frogs’ legs. Two of the coppers had to hold her down.
‘Hold her, Watkins,’ Lestrade said. ‘Hold her head still.’
One of the constables tried to get a hold on Liz Stride’s head, but she shook it violently, ripping apart her wound even as it tried to mend.
‘She won’t last,’ Geneviève told him. ‘She’s too far gone.’
An older or stronger vampire might have survived – Geneviève had herself lived through worse – but Liz Stride was a new-born and had been turned too late in life. She’d been dying for years, poisoning herself with rough gin.
‘She doesn’t have to last, she just has to give a statement.’
‘Inspector, I don’t know that she can talk. I believe her vocal cords have been severed.’
Lestrade’s rat-eyes glittered. Liz Stride was his first chance at the Ripper, and he did not want to let her go.
‘I think her mind’s lost too, poor thing,’ Geneviève said. There was nothing in the red eyes to suggest intelligence. The human part of the new-born had been burned away.
The door pushed in and people crowded through. Lestrade turned to shout ‘Out!’ at them but swallowed his command.
‘Mr Beauregard, sir,’ he said.
The well-dressed man Geneviève had seen at Lulu Schön’s inquest came into the room, with Dr Seward in his wake. There were more people – nurses, attendants – in the corridor. Amworth slipped in and stood against the wall. Geneviève would want her to look at the new-born.
‘Inspector,’ Beauregard said. ‘May I...’
‘Always a pleasure to help the Diogenes Club,’ said Lestrade, tone suggesting it was rather more of a pleasure to pour caustic soda into one’s own eyes.
Beauregard nodded a greeting to the new-born girl, acknowledging her with her name, ‘Kate’. She stood out of his way, eyes lowered. If she wasn’t in love with Beauregard, Geneviève would be very surprised. He slid between the constables with an elegant movement, polite but forceful. He flicked his cloak over his shoulders, to give his arms freedom of movement.
‘Good God,’ he said. ‘Can nothing be done for this poor wretch?’
Geneviève was strangely impressed. Beauregard was the first person who had said anything to suggest he thought Liz Stride was worth doing something for, rather than a person something ought to be done about.
‘It’s too late,’ Geneviève explained. ‘She’s trying to renew herself, but her injuries are too great, her reserves of strength too meagre...’
The torn flesh around Liz Stride’s open throat swarmed, but failed to knit. Her convulsions were more regular now.
‘Dr Seward?’ Beauregard said, asking for a second opinon.
The director approached the bucking, thrashing woman. Geneviè
ve had not noticed his return, but assumed the news must have dragged him back to the Hall. She saw again that he had a distaste – almost always held tightly in check – for vampires.
‘Geneviève is right, I’m afraid. Poor creature. I have silver salts upstairs. We could ease her passing. It would be the kindest course.’
‘Not until she gives us answers,’ Lestrade interrupted.
‘Heaven’s sake, man,’ Beauregard countered. ‘She’s a human being, not a clue.’
‘The next will be a human being too, sir. Maybe we can save the next. The next ones.’
Seward touched Liz Stride’s forehead and looked into her eyes, which were red marbles. He shook his head. In an instant, the wounded new-born was possessed of a surge of strength. She threw off Constable Watkins and lunged for the director, jaws open wide. Geneviève pushed Seward out of the way and ducked to avoid Liz Stride’s slashing talons.
‘She’s changing,’ Kate shouted.
Liz Stride reared up, backbone curving, limbs drawing in. A wolfish snout grew out of her face, and swathes of hair ran over her exposed skin.
Seward crab-walked backwards to the wall. Lestrade called his men out of danger. Beauregard was reaching under his cloak for something. Kate had a knuckle in her mouth.
Liz Stride was trying to become a wolf or a dog. As Mrs Amworth said, it was a hard trick. It took immense concentration and a strong sense of one’s own self. Not the resources available to a gin-soaked mind, or to a new-born in mortal pain.
‘Hellfire,’ Watkins said.
Liz Stride’s lower jaw stuck out like an alligator’s, too large to fix properly to her skull. Her right leg and arm shrivelled while her left side bloated, slabs of muscle forming around the bone. Her bloody clothes tore. The wound in her throat mended over and reformed, new yellow teeth shining at the edges of the cut. A taloned foot lashed out and tore into Watkins’s uniformed chest. The half-creature yelped screeches out of its neck-hole. She leaped, pushing through policemen, and landed in a clump, scrabbling across the floor, one powerfully-razored hand reaching for Seward.
‘Aside,’ Beauregard ordered.
