The Best new Horror 4

by Stephen Jones

  Moran’s eyes glowed red in the gloom. The silvered length of steel held fast, its point dimpling the Colonel’s adam’s apple.

  “I’m going to turn him,” Genevieve said. “He’s too badly hurt to be saved any other way.”

  Beauregard nodded to her, his hand steady.

  With a nip, she bit into her wrist, and waited for the blood to well up. If Druitt could drink enough of her blood as she drained him, the transformation would begin.

  It was a long time—centuries—since she had had any get. The years had made her cautious, or responsible.

  “Another new-born,” Moran snorted. “We should’ve been more selective when it all started.”

  “Drink,” she cooed.

  What did she really know about Montague John Druitt? Like her, he was a lay practitioner, not a doctor but with some medical knowledge. She did not even know why a man with some small income and position should want to work in Toynbee Hall. He was not an obsessive philanthropist, like Seward. He was not a religious man, like Booth. Genevieve had taken him for granted as a useful pair of hands. Now, she was going to have to take responsibility for him, possibly for ever.

  If he became a monster, like Vlad Tepes or even like Colonel Sebastian Moran, then it would be her fault. She would be killing all the people Druitt killed.

  And he had been a suspect. Even if innocent, there was something about Druitt that had made him seem a likely Ripper.

  “Drink,” she said, forcing the word from her mouth. Her wrist was dripping red.

  She held her hand to Druitt’s mouth. Her incisors slid from their gumsheaths, and she dipped her head. The scent of Druitt’s blood was stinging in her nostrils.

  Druitt had a convulsion, and she realised his need was urgent. If he did not drink her blood now, he would die.

  She touched her wrist to his mashed lips. He flinched away, trembling.

  “No,” he gargled, refusing her gift, “no . . .”

  A shudder of disgust ran through him, and he died.

  “Not everybody wants to live forever at any price,” Moran observed. “What a waste.”

  Genevieve reached across the space between them, and backhanded the Colonel across the face, knocking away Beauregard’s cane.

  Moran’s red eyes shrank, and she could tell he was afraid of her. She was still hungry, having allowed the red thirst to rise in her. She could not drink Druitt’s spoiled dead blood. She could not even drink Moran’s second- or third-hand blood. But she could relieve her frustration by ripping meat off his face.

  “Call her off,” Moran spluttered.

  One of her hands was at his throat, the other was drawn back, the fingers gathered into a point, sharp talons bunched like an arrowhead. It would be so easy to put a hole in Moran’s face.

  “It’s not worth it,” Beauregard said. Somehow, his words cut through her crimson rage, and she held back. “He may be a worm, but he has friends, Genevieve. Friends you wouldn’t want to make enemies of.”

  Her teeth slipped back into her gums, and her sharpened fingernails settled. She was still itchy for blood, but she was in control again.

  Beauregard nodded, and Moran had the coach stop.

  The Colonel, his new-born’s confidence in shreds, was shaking as they stepped down. A trickle of blood leaked from one eye. Beauregard sheathed his cane, and Moran wrapped a scarf around his pricked neck.

  “Quatermain wouldn’t have flinched, Colonel,” Beauregard said. “Good night, and give my regards to the Professor.”

  Moran turned his face away into the darkness, and the cab wheeled away from the pavement, rushing into the fog.

  Genevieve’s head was spinning.

  They were back where they had started. Near the Ten Bells. The pub was no quieter now than when they left. Women loitered by the doors, strutting for passersby.

  Her mouth hurt, and her heart was hammering. She made fists, and tried to shut her eyes.

  Beauregard held his wrist to her mouth.

  “Here,” he said, “take what you need.”

  A rush of gratitude made her ankles weak. She almost swooned, but at once dispelled the fog in her mind, concentrating on her need.

  She bit him gently, and took as little as possible to slake the red thirst. His blood trickled down her throat, calming her, giving her strength. When it was over, she asked him if it were his first time, and he nodded.

  “It’s not unpleasant,” he commented, neutrally.

  “It can be less formal,” she said. “Eventually.”

  “Good night, Genevieve,” he said, turning away. He walked into the fog, and left her, his blood still on her lips.

  She realised she knew as little about Charles Beauregard as she had about Druitt. He had never really told her why he was interested in the Ripper. Or why he continued to serve his vampire queen.

  For a moment, she was frightened. Everyone around her wore a mask, and behind that mask might be . . .

  Anything.

  XIV

  She was who-the-bloody-ever she wanted to be, whoever men wanted her to be. Mary Jane, Marie Jeanette. Or Lucy. She would be Ellen Terry if she had to. Or Queen Victoria.

  He sat by her bedside now.

  She was telling him again how she had been turned. How his Lucy had come out of the night for her on the Heath, and given her the Dark Kiss. Only now, she was telling him as if she were Lucy, and Mary Jane some other person, some worthless whore . . .

  “I was so cold, John, so hungry, so new . . .”

  It was easy to know how Lucy had felt. She had felt the same when she woke from her deep sleep. Only Lucy had woke in a crypt, respectfully laid out. Mary Jane had been on a cart, minutes away from a lime pit. One of the unclaimed dead.

  “She was warm, plump, alive, blood pounding in her sweet neck.”

  He was listening now, nodding his head. She supposed he was mad. But he was a gentleman. And he was good to her, good for her.

  “The children hadn’t been enough.”

  Mary Jane had been confused by the new desires. It had taken her weeks to adjust. She had ripped open dogs for their juice. She had not known enough to stay out of the sun, and her skin had turned to painful crackling.

  But that was like a dream now. She was beginning to lose Mary Jane’s memories. She was Lucy.

  “I needed her, John. I needed her blood.”

  He sat by her bed, reserved and doctorly. Later, she would pleasure him. And she would drink from him.

  Each time she drank, she became less Mary Jane and more Lucy. It must be something in his blood.

  Since her rebirth, the mirror in her room was useless to her. No one had ever bothered to sketch her picture, so she could easily forget her own face. He had pictures of Lucy, looking like a little girl dressed up in her mother’s clothes, and it was Lucy’s face she imagined her eyes looked out of.

  “I beckoned her from the path,” she said, leaning over from the pile of pillows on the bed, her face close to his. “I sang under my breath, and I waved to her. I wished her to me, and she came . . .”

  She stroked his cheek, and laid her head against his chest.

  He was holding his breath, sweating a little, his posture awkward. She could soon make him unbend.

  “There were red eyes in front of me, and a voice calling me. I left the path, and she was waiting. It was a cold night, but she wore only a white shift. Her skin was white in the moonlight. Her . . .”

  She caught herself.

  Mary Jane, she said inside, be careful . . .

  He stood up, gently pushing her away, and walked across the room. Taking a grip of her washstand, he looked at himself in the mirror, trying to find something in his reflection.

  She was confused. All her life, she had been giving men what they wanted. Now she was dead, and things were the same.

  She went to him, and hugged him from behind. He jumped at her touch, surprised.

  Of course, he had not seen her coming.

  “John,”
she cooed at him, “come to bed, John. Make me warm.”

  He pushed her away again, roughly this time. She was not used to her vampire’s strength. Imagining herself still a feeble girl, she was one, a reed easy to break.

  “Lucy,” he said, emptily, not to her . . .

  Anger sparked in her mind.

  “I’m not your bloody Lucy Westenra,” she shouted. “I’m Mary Jane Kelly, and I don’t care who knows it.”

  “No,” he said, reaching into his jacket for something, gripping it hard, “you’re not Lucy . . .”

  XV

  Her touch had changed him. Beauregard had been troubled by dreams since that night. Dreams in which Genevieve Dieudonné, sometimes herself and sometimes a needle-fanged cat, lapped at his blood.

  He supposed it had always been in the cards. With the way things were, he would have been tapped by a vampire sooner or later. He was luckier than most, to have given his blood freely rather than have it taken by force.

  The fog was thick tonight. And the November cold was like the caress of a razor. Or a scalpel.

  Genevieve had taken from him, but given something in return. Something of herself.

  He stood outside Toynbee Hall, on the point of entering. He had been here for half an hour. Nothing was that urgent.

  She was inside. He knew.

  He was afraid he wanted her to drink from him again. Not the simple thirst-slaking of an opened wrist, but the full embrace of the Dark Kiss. Genevieve Dieudonné was an extraordinary woman by the standards of any age. Together, they could live through the centuries.

  It was a temptation.

  A gaudily-painted child, unable to close her mouth over her new teeth, sauntered up to him, and lifted her skirts. He brushed her aside and, sulking, she retreated.

  He remembered his duty.

  For nearly a fortnight, duty had made him stay away from Toynbee Hall. Now, duty brought him back here.

  At the Diogenes Club, he had received a brief note of apology from the Professor, informing him that Colonel Moran had been rebuked for his ill-advised actions. That could hardly be a comfort to Montague Druitt, who had washed ashore at Deptford days ago, face eaten away by fish.

  Yet Moran had said something which still ticked away in the back of Beauregard’s mind.

  Genevieve’s lips had been cool, her touch gentle, her tongue roughly pleasant as a cat’s. The draining of his blood, so slow and so tender, had been an exquisite sensation, instantly addictive . . .

  Toynbee Hall was named for its philanthropic founder. It was a mission to Whitechapel, Arnold Toynbee had said the Britishers of the East End were far more in need of Christian attention than the heathen Africans with whom Dr Livingstone had been so concerned.

  The Hall was in the centre of the pattern of the Ripper murders.

  Finally, Beauregard overcame his languid confusion, and spurred himself to action. He walked across the narrow street, and slipped into the Hall.

  A warm matron sat at a reception desk, devouring the latest Marie Corelli, Thelma. Beauregard understood that since she became a new-born, the celebrated authoress’s prose style had deteriorated still further. Genevieve had remarked once that vampires were never very creative, all their energies being diverted into the simple prolonging of life.

  “Where is Mademoiselle Dieudonné?”

  “She is filling in for the director, sir. She should be in Dr Seward’s office.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Shall you be wanting to be announced?”

  “No need to bother, thank you.”

  The matron frowned, and mentally added another complaint to a list she was keeping of Things Wrong With That Vampire Girl. Beauregard was briefly surprised to be party to her clear and vinegary thoughts, but swept that distraction aside as he made his way to the director’s first floor office.

  Genevieve was surprised to see him.

  “Charles,” she said.

  She sat at Seward’s desk, papers strewn about her. He fancied she was startled, as if found prying where she was not wanted.

  “Where have you been?”

  He had no answer.

  Looking around the room, his eyes were drawn to a device in a glass dust-case. It was an affair of brass boxes, with a large trumpet-like attachment.

  “This is an Edison-Bell phonograph, is it not?”

  “Jack uses it for medical notes. He has a passion for tricks and toys.”

  He turned.

  “Genevieve . . .”

  She was near, now. He had not heard her come out from behind the desk.

  “It’s all right, Charles. I didn’t mean to bewitch you. The symptoms will recede in a week or two. Believe me, I have experience with your condition.”

  “It’s not that . . .”

  He could not think along a straight line of reasoning. Butterfly insights fluttered in the back of his mind, never quite caught.

  By an effort of will, he concentrated on the pressing matter of the Ripper.

  “Why Whitechapel?” he asked. “Why not Soho, or Hyde Park, or anywhere? Vampirism is not limited to this district, nor prostitution. The Ripper hunts here because it is most convenient, because he is here. Somewhere, near . . .”

  “I’ve been looking over our records,” she said, tapping the pile on the desk. “The victims were all brought in at one time or another.”

  “It all comes back to Toynbee Hall by so many routes. Druitt and you work here, Stride was brought here, the killings are in a ring about the address, all the dead women were here . . .”

  “Could Moran have been right? Could it have been Druitt? There have been no more murders.”

  Beauregard shook his head. “It’s not over yet.”

  “If only Jack were here.”

  He made a fist. “We’d have the murderer then.”

  “No. I mean Jack Seward. He treated all the women. He might know if they had something in common.”

  Genevieve’s words sank into his brain, and lightning swarmed behind his eyes. Suddenly, he knew . . .

  “They had Dr Seward in common.”

  “But . . .”

  “Dr Jack Seward.”

  She shook her head, but he could tell she was seeing what he saw, coming quickly to a realisation.

  They both remembered Elizabeth Stride grasping Dr Seward’s ankle. She had been trying to tell them something.

  “Are there diaries around here?” Beauregard asked. “Private records, notes, anything? These maniacs are often compelled to keep souvenirs, keepsakes, memorabilia . . .”

  “I’ve been through all his files tonight. They contain only the usual material.”

  “Locked drawers?”

  “No, Only the phonograph cabinet. The wax cylinders are delicate and have to be protected from dust.”

  Beauregard wrenched the cover off the contraption, and pulled open the drawer of the stand. Its fragile lock splintered.

  The cylinders were ranked in tubes, with neatly-inked labels.

  “Nicholls,” he read aloud, “Schön Stride/Eddowes, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Lucy . . .”

  Genevieve was by him, delving deeper into the drawer.

  “And these . . . Lucy, Van Helsing, Renfield, Lucy’s Tomb.”

  Everyone remembered Van Helsing, and Beauregard even knew Renfield was the Prince Consort’s martyred disciple in London. But . . .

  “Kelly and Lucy. Who are they? Unknown victims?”

  Genevieve was going again through the papers on the desk. She talked as she sorted.

  “Lucy, at a guess, was Lucy Westenra, Vlad Tepes’ first English conquest, the first of his bloodline here. Dr Van Helsing destroyed her, and Jack Seward, I’ll wager, was in with Van Helsing’s crowd. As for Kelly . . . well, we have lots of Kellys on our books. But only one who fits our Jack’s requirements. Here.”

  She handed him a sheet of paper, with the details of a patient’s treatment.

  Kelly, Mary Jane. 13, Miller’s Court.

  XVI

/>   “Fucking Hell,” said Beauregard.

  Genevieve had to agree with him.

  The stench of dead blood hit her in the stomach like a fist, and she had to hold the doorframe to keep from fainting. She had seen the leavings of murderers before, and blood-muddied battlefields, and plague holes, and torture chambers, and execution sites.

  But 13, Miller’s Court, was the worst of all.

  Dr Seward knelt in the middle of the red ruin barely recognisable as a human being. He was still working, his apron and shirtsleeves dyed red, his silver scalpel flickering in the firelight as he made further pointless incisions.

  Mary Kelly’s room was a typical cramped lodging. A bed, a chair and a fireplace, with barely enough floor to walk around the bed. Seward’s operations had spread the girl across the bed and the floor, and around the walls up to the height of three feet. The cheap muslin curtains were speckled with halfpenny-size dots.

  In the grate, a bundle still burned, casting a red light that seared into Genevieve’s night-sensitive eyes.

  Seward did not seem overly concerned with their intrusion.

  “Nearly done,” he said, lifting out an eyeball from a pie-shaped expanse that had once been a face, and snipping deftly through the optic nerves. “I have to be sure Lucy is dead. Van Helsing says her soul will not rest until she is truly dead.”

  He was calm, not ranting.

  Beauregard had his pistol out and aimed.

  “Put down the knife, and step away from her,” he said.

  Seward placed the knife on the bedspread, and stood up, wiping his hands on an already-bloody patch of apron.

  Mary Kelly was truly dead. Genevieve had no doubt about that.

  “It’s over,” Seward said. “We’ve beaten him. We’ve beaten Dracula. The foul contagion cannot spread further.”

  Genevieve had nothing to say. Her stomach was still a tight fist.

  Seward seemed to see Genevieve for the first time.

  “Lucy,” he said, seeing someone else, somewhere else. “Lucy, it was all for you . . .”

  He bent to pick up his scalpel, and Beauregard shot him. In the shoulder.

  Seward spun around, his fingers grasping air, and slammed against the wall. He pressed his gloved hand to the wall, and sank downwards, his knees protruding as he tried to make his body shrink. In the wall, a scrap of silver shone where Beauregard’s bullet had lodged.