The central cavern of Undercity New York had been completed only recently, and vampires were still learning how to live together. In Britain, there was, as yet, no such place, and around London there were still a lot of powerful vampires who were fighting for supremacy. But there was one more powerful than any of the others. He was already known as the King of Nightmares, although the people who had known him longer still called him Carrigan. Even back then, he dwelt almost entirely in the catacombs beneath the city of London and enslaved other vampires to do his bidding. Truthfully, if he had ever tried to destroy his ‘rivals’ among other local vampires, then he could have done so centuries ago, but his reclusive existence meant that they seldom bothered him.
I couldn’t say how word reached him in his hole about the construction of Undercity New York by the newly crowned King of Hearts. They had been enemies from long ago, since before he dug himself away into the caves, before America was ‘discovered’ by Columbus, before I was born. The story is that the future King of Hearts fled to America to escape Carrigan, but I couldn’t swear to that being true. The idea of his old nemesis becoming a vampire king with a city to rule over gave the King of Nightmares something he had never had before; ambition.
The reason that my ‘employer’ wanted the King of Nightmares dead now was because he had started to build his own Undercity, after disposing of any local vampires powerful enough to make trouble.
I visited London and found the building process well underway. I also found the place large, confusing and well protected. If I were to go in to assassinate the King without an escort and without any idea of where I was going, then I would be as good as dead. But I would be just as dead if I was discovered skulking about the place making inquiries into this and that. I needed someone to do my investigating for me. Better yet; I needed someone associated with the project, who could tell me all I needed to know and be my passport into the city when the time came.
I found such a man in Cecil Christopher, whom I invited to stay with me in my castle on some loose pretext. Two important things occurred during the month Christopher stayed with me. Firstly, I bit him and put him under my control. He had been sworn to secrecy over the building of Undercity London, but all those secrets came tumbling out under my influence. He drew maps for me, gave me detailed information, and before the month was over I had a good idea of where I would find the King of Nightmares. Like all the humans who worked on Undercity London - and New York, for that matter - he had been mesmerized by the vampires in charge to make sure that he questioned nothing and understood little of what he was building. As far as the people of London were concerned, this hole in the ground was a new drainage system – something that London would not actually get for another few decades.
Secondly, he brought his daughter Marianne with him. Her side of the story you are already familiar with, through Ursula’s dreams – I’m sure she has given you a thorough account of them. I have little to add to that story except to say that they may be taken at their face value. I was not using Marianne, nor was she some idle plaything to pass the time. I loved her. I do not say that lightly. In several centuries of life up to that point, I had greatly enjoyed being what we used to call a ‘cad’ or a ‘rake’. These days, I suppose you might say ‘womanizer’, or perhaps ‘stud’ depending on your politics. I prefer the old words, which acknowledge that it was a bad thing to be, while also acknowledging that it was damn good fun to be one.
It’s not bragging to say that I have no idea how many women, human and vampire, I was with over those centuries. I never tired of the company of the female of both species and I’m happy to say that they never tired of me. I had my fun and had every anticipation of continuing to have it. The thought of settling down never crossed my mind. The thought that any woman might be of interest to me for anything more than a few nights of entertainment was ridiculous to me. Women were nothing but a diversion.
Then I met Marianne. I really can’t say what was different about her because in so many ways, nothing was. She was just like every other woman I had met, and yet nothing like any of them. She was very pretty, of course, but that was nothing new. But the more I got to know her, the less I found myself simply wanting to bed her. Every night, I watched her as she slept, through the eyes of a picture on her wall, and yet I did nothing more. I did not bite her, I did not mesmerize her, I did not seduce her. I did not even attempt to charm her. I found her powerfully attractive, sexually, but I knew she was a virgin and, for the first time in my life, found that I did not want to disrespect her by deflowering her, when I knew that nothing more could happen between us. I wanted more to happen between us.
I still don’t know why. She was childish and petulant, spoiled and bad-tempered – and none of it mattered. I cared about her more than all the previous women put together. She was special. I was in love.
So much was I in love that I had no plan to sleep with her and yet it happened anyway. Then we had to part, and it was an agony the like of which I had never experienced. I lost all interest in other women, and simply concentrated on my ‘job’.
Which was just as well. Remember, this was at a time when the world was still very small, when information was not available at the touch of a button. Although I had lived in Britain a long time, I had no great knowledge of the King of Nightmares, and what I was learning now was troubling.
I considered myself a powerful vampire. I had survived a long time in the face of some powerful enemies, and that had made me strong. But looking at the King of Nightmares, I realized that I didn’t even know what real power was. Still, I had committed to this course of action and I was determined to see it through. I was sure that my mental strength was enough that he would not be able to dominate me the way he did other vampires.
After months of preparation, I was ready, and I traveled to London.
As soon as I arrived, I felt that I could sense Marianne’s presence. Perhaps it was my imagination – I had not, after all, bitten her. Perhaps I told myself that I could sense her to give myself some excuse to see her.
I had enough self-control not to let her see me, rekindling an interest that could never be anything. But I visited her as she slept, gaining admission to her house by my own means. Isn’t that what vampires are supposed to do? To stand over beautiful young women as they sleep, staring down at them. But then, of course, they are supposed to bite them, and still I did not do that. I didn’t want her ‘under my power’.
Her father, I contacted at his place of work one evening, easily putting him back under my spell.
“So good to see you, Lord de Coeur,” he droned.
“And you, Mr. Christopher. You remember what you said you would do for me?”
“Yes. Yes. I remember what I said I would do for you.”
“Good,” I said. “You also understand, that you are to say nothing of this to your daughter.” I did not want her to know that I had seen her father and not her. There was a good chance that I would die that night, and even if I did not then I would have to flee. I did not want Marianne to think that I had ignored her or she might think that she had meant nothing to me. And, of course, I did not want her involved in this business, or her life, too, might be at risk.
“I understand I am to say nothing to my daughter.” He was completely under my sway.
“Excellent. Well, let’s not waste any time. What is the swiftest way down?”
We travelled down into Undercity London – this was before any had thought to call it Lundercity – by carriage. I suppose it must have been then that Marianne followed us, though I did not see another carriage.
She was on the back of ours? Really?
She was a remarkable woman.
Anyway, Cecil Christopher guided me to where the main cavern of Undercity bordered the catacombs. The King of Nightmares – now also referring to himself as the King of Clubs, mostly to irritate the King of Hearts – had made sure that his private hideaway was part of the city but also secluded. Those c
atacombs had been used by vampires since before even his time, and it was easy enough to call them a sacred site that was not to be disturbed.
Here, I let the enslaved man go. It seemed unlikely he could be of much more use to me and, while he was just a human, and I had little regard for the species back then, he had been a good servant and I had come to almost like him. Besides, I did not want to leave his daughter fatherless. I set out into the catacombs alone.
Again, I can only guess that Marianne followed me, though I had no idea. I suppose that sensation of her I had when I first arrived in town must have been all in my head. If I had known she was there then I would have gone back and taken her out again.
I was attacked not long after I entered the tunnels of the catacombs by the disciples of the King of Nightmares – the Night Wraiths, as some call them. They presented no problem to me physically – I was far stronger than them – but if they knew I was here then I feared their master would, too. As I penetrated deeper, I noticed that the attacks stopped, as if the King was allowing me to approach so he could deal with me himself. Perhaps he fancied the opportunity to control my mind and to create a Night Wraith as powerful as I was.
In a large chamber at the center of the catacombs, I found him, as terrible and as strong as all reports said. But it wasn’t his physical strength that worried me. As soon as I entered that chamber, I could feel him trying to get into my mind. It was like a physical assault, and as hard as I strove mentally to repel it from one angle, I soon found him trying another way in. I had never met another vampire with such mental agility before, and I never have since.
I could only hold him off for so long. My only chance was to kill him before he got control of me. So, as I did battle in my mind, I hurled myself at my monstrous opponent. In terms of pure strength and speed, he easily bested me, being so much older and having accumulated such vampiric power. But his isolated, subterranean existence counted against him. He had not faced another vampire in face to face combat for years, letting his wraiths do all the work for him. I, by contrast, got into fights on a regular basis. Some of them might just be scuffles with angry husbands, fathers, boyfriends or brothers, but in the vampire world, everything can be life or death. I was a practiced fighter; he was not.
Between my superior skill and his superior strength, we came out almost evenly matched, and the catacombs echoed with the sounds of our combat. He hurled me aside, only for me to recover myself and dive beneath his sweeping claws to pummel his body. The other difference between us was that I had a stake in my hand at all times; I was trying to kill him while he was trying to subdue me so he could take my mind.
I could not say for sure how long we fought. Probably not that long, although it seemed a very long time to me, perhaps because I was conducting two fights at once. But however long it was, at some point, two things became obvious to me; that I could not win the physical contest, and that I was going to lose the mental one. I could ward off his blows indefinitely, but I could not ward off his mind. Already, my brain felt as if it was in a vice, and it was only a matter of time before that vice tightened beyond my own endurance. Fleeing would make no difference; he had me now and his grip would not loosen regardless of how much distance I put between us.
So I fought on. I didn’t have much choice. But in my head, I had already lost. Which did not stop me from making the King pay with every blow I could land.
“Oh yes, Jack! Yes!”
If Marianne had been a vampire then I am sure the King would have sensed her coming, such was his mental control over our species. But his long self-imposed isolation in these tunnels had left him with very little sense of the human species, except for how they tasted. When Marianne cried out, the King turned and I am convinced that he could not even see her. Over the years, his eyes had become of so little importance to him that he saw largely with his mind, picking out the minds of others around him and using their senses when necessary. Marianne was an anomaly in his world.
I tried to use this to my advantage, but the King just swept me into a wall with bone-breaking violence. With that shock of pain, all the defenses I had erected in my mind against him came tumbling down, and I was his for the taking.
But he didn’t. Rather than finishing me off, as he certainly could have, he returned to the screaming Marianne; something was in the room and he did not know what or how. Perhaps in some corner of his mind he worked out that this was a live human – something never before seen in his domain – or perhaps he was just investigating. Either way, he forgot about me to go to her.
I wasn’t sure I had enough strength in my broken body to stand, let alone finish this fight. But then I saw that the King had found Marianne. I saw him open his loathsome mouth and sink his teeth into her.
Fresh strength flooded into me and I was back on my feet in an instant, shrugging off the pain. I sprang across the room in a single bound, sank my stake into his heart and he exploded in a shower of fine, white ash.
Marianne ran to me, and I saw the horror in her face as she realized what I was. The pain of that moment was worse than the physical pain of all my broken bones, that were now already mending themselves within me.
But I didn’t have much time to think on, either. I could hear sounds from all around me, from the tunnels leading off this chamber. The Night Wraiths were coming, drawn to avenge the death of their master.
Sweeping Marianne into my arms, I tore away as fast as my strength would allow. Marianne clung to me, and for a wonderful moment I allowed myself to believe that we might have a future together. With her breath on my neck and her heart pounding against my chest, I felt like a king, rescuing my love from her enemies. And I think, if only for a moment, she felt like that, too, able to put aside my nature as I carried her at inhuman speed through the tunnels. If only we could have lived forever in that moment.
“Jack…” she breathed as we came out the other side.
“We have to get out of here, Marianne.”
This was exactly what I had wanted to protect her from. The Night Wraiths were dangerous enough, but the real danger was yet to rear its head. For a project the size of Undercity, the King of Clubs had put aside certain enmities and recruited other powerful vampires to his cause. He had supporters who were not the braindead wraiths but strong vampires with a stake in this city and followers of their own. I had just become public enemy number one to every vampire in London. They would use anything to get revenge on me, and that included the woman in my arms.
Chapter 10
“What happened then?”
From where I lay, swathed in blankets and listening to Jack’s story, I could hear the genuine interest in Connery’s voice. He had started out as Jack’s enemy but had not been able to help becoming drawn into the narrative. He was not alone. Having learned so much of the story of Jack and Marianne through my dreams, I was well-invested in his story. I had closed my eyes as Jack spoke and seen the characters like the dream in my head. I wanted to know what happened next, but I also wanted there to be a happy ending, which seemed horribly unlikely.
Jack laughed at Connery’s question. “Nothing that has much relevance. I’ve said too much already.” He sighed. “Didn’t set out to tell you the whole damn thing, but you’re a good listener. And maybe I needed to tell it all to someone. Not even Bathsheba knows the whole of it.”
“And yet, you don’t want to finish it?” Connery was clearly as hooked as I was.
Jack gave a rueful smile, and suddenly I could see his true age in the weight of years that seemed to rest upon his youthful shoulders. “There are some things which only become more painful in the retelling. What matters to you, what I didn’t feel able to tell Ursula when she asked, is that it was chance.”
Connery frowned. “What was chance?”
“Killing the King of Nightmares. I didn’t want to crush your hopes, but I have no insight because I beat him through sheer bloody luck.” He shook his head. “He would have had me a few minutes later if Mari
anne hadn’t come in. There is no way I could have resisted him any longer than that.”
“I understand.” Connery knew what it was like to have the King of Nightmares in his head. Perhaps he had gotten out soon enough, carrying me with him as Jack had carried Marianne, or perhaps the King was still too weak after his resurrection to control him, but Connery had still felt that presence in his mind.
“The King was distracted by Marianne because he could not quite understand her presence,” Jack went on. “The Night Wraiths bring him humans to feed upon but they are already ‘subdued’ by that point. A living, alert human looks completely different to someone who sees predominantly with his mind. And to someone who views humans slightly lower than humans view cattle, she didn’t really exist. When she screamed, he couldn’t understand where this sound was coming from. If it hadn’t been for her, then I would have been one of his wraiths. The confusion distracted him and gave me the opening I needed. The chances of it happening again…” Jack shook his head. “That’s why I can’t come and help you. That’s why I’ve come here, amongst the ancient vampire dead, protected by something older than he is. For most vampires, he can’t reach out beyond the catacombs to claim them. But for someone whose head he’s already been inside, who he almost had… I don’t know if he could find me, but I’m not prepared to risk it.”
“Do you have any ideas at all?” pressed Connery. Jack seemed more willing to talk now I was ‘asleep’ so Connery pushed for more.
But the answer was another solemn shake of the head. “I didn’t want to say it in front of the human, but you’re doomed. There is no way to stop him.”
“I don’t accept that.” Connery was resolute.
Jack shrugged. “He doesn’t care what you ‘accept’. The only vampires who might be powerful enough to stop him are the Queen of Diamonds – who wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire – and the King of Hearts, who is just as bad. That’s why I came to Lundercity.”
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