by Peter David
“Don’t worry about it,” said Dodger. He was quickly sliding off his overlong coat, and he draped it over her trembling shoulders. Her arms were fortunately not manacled; the chain was wrapped around her right ankle. Quickly she slid her arms in and drew the coat tightly around her. “Just hold tight, and we’ll get you out of here, Highness.”
Her head snapped around and she looked up at him, startled. “You know?” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
He nodded. “Hope that’s all right with ye.”
“Of course it’s all right. It . . .” Her voice trailed off for a moment and then in an even lower voice, she said, “I’m sorry. I should have told you. I was being selfish.”
“Ya were being a girl, and that’s what gets ya that,” Dodger said. He was going through the keys as quickly as he could, eliminating one after the other as he tried to unlock the lock that fastened her. “Just hold on.”
Bram was glancing out the door. “Hurry up,” he said. “I think we’re about to have company.”
“Telling me to hurry doesn’t make me hurry any faster than I’m already hurryin’,” said Dodger in irritation. He turned up the last key and looked at it nervously. If it didn’t open the lock, then he didn’t have the faintest idea what the hell he was going to do.
Closing his eyes, he slid the key in and turned.
At first, nothing happened, and a great sense of tragedy swept through him. But suddenly the lock turned. Apparently there was some rust in the lock that was impeding the turn, but that only lasted for a few seconds. When he applied more force, the rust gave way and the key turned. The lock snapped open with a click that seemed to reverberate through the room.
“Did it!” said Dodger, crying out in joy. He promptly yanked the lock off and unthreaded the chain from the manacle.
Drina drew herself to her feet and immediately fell over again. “Muscles . . . my muscles aren’t working,” she managed to say.
“Take it easy, Highness. One step at a time.” He stepped in close to her, draping her arm over his shoulders, and helped her to stand.
“Dodger . . . would you please go back to calling me Drina. I don’t feel much like a Highness right now.”
“Whatever you say, Drina.” Inwardly it tickled him slightly that he was on a first-name basis with a princess. Him! Jack Dawkins, the Artful Dodger, a street scum who picked pockets for a living, trading first names with a princess of the realm. What had the world come to, to have reached such a strange point in time?
To be fair, the world had come to apparently be filled with vampyres, so . . .
Having regained her feet, this time Drina seemed a bit more sure. He helped her forward a few steps, and in moments she was walking on her own. “There. That’s . . . that’s much better,” she said.
“Good. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
He guided her toward the door, and just as they got there, two large men were blocking their way. It was two more orderlies, and it was instantly clear who they were looking for.
“’Ere ya are! And where do ye think yer goin’?” said the larger one of them.
The Artful tried the only thing he could think of. “You,” he said as sharply as he could, “will get out of the way of a princess of the realm, or know the consterquences of your inaction!”
“A what now?” The two larger men exchanged amused looks.
“This girl is the Princess Alexandrina Victoria!” Bram was now speaking. “And I can promise you she’ll run a whole investigation into whoever is running this place and thought that locking her up was somehow acceptable!”
The two men were not the slightest bit convinced. “Right. That’s it,” said the larger, and he grabbed Drina by the wrist.
To their surprise—“their” being both the man and Drina—she pulled away from him. In fact, she yanked her arm clear of his as if he were not holding on to her at all. The Artful did not hesitate, but instead brought his cane around quickly and slugged the man on the side of his head. The man did not, however, go down. He staggered, clutched at his head, and let out an angry roar. When Dodger attacked again, this time the orderly managed to catch the walking stick in his hand and yank it from Dodger’s grasp. He tossed it aside angrily and shouted, “Right! That’s enough out of you!”
Drina leaped forward, her arm cocked back, and she threw a vicious punch. It caught the bigger man on his chin. His head snapped around, his eyes rolled up, and with nothing but a loud sigh he sank unconscious to the floor.
His associate looked on in shock and then turned to flee the room. He only got two feet, though, because Bram had thrown himself forward to block him, and the man tripped over the lad. He went down hard, and Bram grabbed the fallen cane, leaped onto his back, and started pounding away with the stick. He delivered several resounding shots to the back of his head before he threw Bram off. Before the man could get up, though, Drina was upon him . . . and pounding on him. Her small fists were flying with remarkable speed and strength. The Artful and Bram watched in astonishment as Drina drove the man into unconsciousness. And even then, she was not done. She grabbed up the fallen chain and swung it, prepared to slam him in the head with the heavy iron. Quickly, Dodger ran forward and grabbed her hands. “What’re you doing?” he cried out.
She turned and looked at him and for a moment he didn’t recognize her. Her face was twisted into an expression of pure primal fury. He called her name once, twice, and it was only on the third time of him calling out to her that she appeared to respond. Her breathing was rapid but shallow, and her pupils were dilated. Her hair was still hanging in her face, and she was straining to see him through random strands. “Dodger?” she finally managed to say.
“Are ya all right?” He was gripping her by the shoulders and looking with confusion into her face. “Drina? Are ya all right?”
She seemed irritated by the question. “Yes. Yes, of course I’m all right.” She was reacting as if insinuating that there was anything wrong with her was somehow thickheaded on his part. “No thanks to them. They’ve kept me trapped here. You’ve seen what they did to me. They should die. They should all die. I should just . . . just kill them all.”
“No one’s killing anyone,” Dodger said firmly. He buttoned the coat around her to prevent it from swinging open and exposing her nudity. She seemed less concerned about her state of undress now, and that bothered him. “Come. Let’s get out of here.” Bram snatched up his fallen walking stick and handed it to him.
Hastily, they withdrew from the room, but once they were in the hallway, they saw their larger problem.
Someone had apparently freed Doctor Huddleston. His eyes wide with fury, he was at the far end of the hall, and there were at least four guards surging behind him. Huddleston’s jacket and shirt were torn, and on his face bite marks were bleeding. Apparently, one of his patients had worked him over before he’d been rescued.
“There! There they are!” he howled, and the group sprinted directly toward the youngsters.
The Artful was about to turn and run, and naturally assumed that his companions were going to follow him.
Instead, Drina turned to face the hospital workers. Her lips drew back into a snarl, her eyes went wide, and she let out a loud and infuriated hiss. It was so vicious, so animalistic, that the people charging toward them skidded to a halt. Huddleston even took several steps backward, looking thoroughly intimidated.
Seizing the opportunity of this momentary pause in the pursuit, Dodger grabbed Drina’s arm. “Drina, come on! Come on!”
To his astonishment, Bram then said the last thing the Artful could have expected: “Leave her.”
“What? Are you insane?”
“Dodger . . .” Bram began to speak.
The Artful wasn’t interested in anything he had to say. “Drina! I said come on! Now!”
Reality appeared to sink in u
pon her, and she turned and nodded. They sprinted down the hallway, a reluctant Bram taking up the rear. Shaken from their momentary paralysis, their pursuers sprinted after them.
They got to the large door at the far end, and fortunately it was not locked. The Artful threw it open and ushered Drina and Bram through it. There was a stairway leading up, and they immediately started climbing it. The Artful hesitated long enough to slam the door, shove in the key, and twirl it. The lock within the door snapped closed with a satisfyingly loud clack. “That should hold them for a few minutes,” said Dodger, hoping that one of their pursuers didn’t have a set of keys on him.
They sprinted up the stairs, Dodger taking them two at a time. There was a door at the top of the stairs, and Drina banged into it first, shoving it open. The Artful heard a crack and realized that the door had been locked. Drina had simply struck the door so hard that she had broken it open. How did she do that? the Artful wondered, but something within him already knew the answer to that. He simply didn’t want to face it.
He followed Drina, and they found themselves on the roof. The sun had already dropped below the horizon line; some distant orange streaks in the sky were the only remains of the sunlight. The group of them wandered the roof quickly, desperately looking for a way down. Nothing, though, seemed to be presenting itself.
A distance away, Dodger saw the coach in which they had arrived. Quinn was standing outside it, leaning against it and staring at the building with what seemed to be extreme boredom. The Artful shouted his name repeatedly. Quinn heard it immediately but initially could not determine whence it came. Eventually, though, he caught a glimpse of Dodger frantically waving his arms. Immediately, he ran to his horse, yanked the oat bag off the horse’s face, and then clambered up into his seat. He shouted at the horse, snapping the reins, and the coach trotted toward the youngsters and their position on the roof.
Unfortunately, they were still standing on the roof, and the ground was a two-floor drop. Furthermore, there was banging from the door below. Bereft of keys, their pursuers had apparently decided simply to knock the door off its hinges.
“We seem to have a problem,” said Dodger with no trace of sarcasm. He truly did not have the faintest idea how they were supposed to get safely down to the ground. “Bram, any thoughts?”
“None that are especially positive,” said Bram.
Suddenly, Drina grabbed Dodger around the waist. He started to ask her what she was doing, but she silenced him with a loud “shush.” Then she turned to Bram and simply said, “Come along. Now. Grab on.”
Bram did as instructed without hesitation. He ran to her and as she knelt slightly, he threw his arms around her neck, hanging from her back.
“What are you doing?” cried out Dodger. Drina did not bother to respond. Instead, hauling Dodger along as if he weighed nothing, she sprinted straight toward the edge of the roof.
And leaped off.
The Artful cried out in alarm and closed his eyes, which was the only action he could take against the impending impact. Bram remained silent, as if none of this were remotely surprising to him.
A second later, they hit the ground. Drina absorbed all the impact with her legs but still lost her grip on Dodger. He rolled out from her grasp and hit the ground, and then bounded to his feet. “What just happened?” he cried out. “How are we not dead?”
Before Drina could reply, the carriage rolled up. Bram was not wasting any time. He dropped off Drina’s back, ran to the door, and threw it open. “We leave now or we don’t leave at all,” he said.
Putting aside his confusion for the moment, Dodger ran for the carriage. Drina was ahead of him, and she climbed in. Dodger got in right behind her, and Bram clambered in after them. “Where to?” called down Quinn.
“Anywhere but here!” Dodger shouted back.
That was more than enough for Quinn. He snapped his whip and shouted for the horse to get moving as quickly as possible. This time the horse did not trot; instead it took off at a near gallop, hauling the coach behind it so quickly that it momentarily tilted on its wheels and Dodger thought it might actually fall over. Then the coach settled itself, and it was riding evenly as it barreled down the road.
“What happened back there?” said Dodger. “How are we still alive? How did you—?”
“Don’t you know, Dodger? How could you not know?” said Bram. His face was paler than it had been, and he was clearly speaking with great effort. He was doing everything he could to keep his voice steady. “They’ve made her into one of them.”
“That’s right rubbish!” Dodger told him immediately. “That’s—”
But then he saw the look in her eyes, the grimness in her face. He drew back from her on the seat and stared at her in horror. “No. No, it’s . . . it’s not . . . you’re not . . . your neck! There’s no mark on your neck . . .!”
Bram abruptly grabbed her right arm and shoved it upward. The sleeve of the coat slid down the arm and sure enough, there in the crook of her elbow, twin fang marks were easily visible. Naturally, they could have been noticed when she was naked, but Dodger had been busy making a point of looking everywhere but right at her during that time.
Drina immediately yanked her arm away, allowing the sleeve to slide down back over it. “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me,” she said softly, her voice barely sounding like her own.
Bram completely ignored her. Instead, he thrust himself toward her, clambering on her so quickly that it was completely unexpected. She cried out but the determined young man ignored her, shoving his fingers up into her mouth, peeling back the upper lip.
The points of her fangs peeped out at them.
Dodger cried out in alarm even as Drina shoved Bram away as hard as she could. He slammed across the interior of the cramped coach, banging up against Dodger, who did a piss-poor job of halting his flight. Bram didn’t appear to care. He was too preoccupied shouting, “See! See! I told you!”
“Drina,” whispered Dodger. He stared at her but felt as if he wasn’t really seeing her. “Drina, how . . .? When . . .?” His voice dropped. “Who?”
She looked at him defiantly for a moment, and then she dropped her gaze. The future queen of England was not able to stare into the shocked eyes of a young street urchin. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “I was blindfolded. I was . . . I was bitten. They drained my blood . . . so much . . . and someone . . . he had a deep voice. Polished. He dripped blood onto my mouth. I tried to spit it out, but there was too much . . . too much . . . then they locked me away. And I started to . . . to . . . .”
“Change,” said Bram tonelessly.
Drina managed a nod and touched her fangs. “Then these came in. And I . . . I don’t . . . I feel so much . . .” She raised her eyes, and there was desperation in them. Hard desperation, her eyebrows knitting. “Hunger. I’m so hungry. It’s all I can think about. It’s all I want. What am I going to do?”
Dodger had no idea. He turned to Bram and said desperately, “Is there a cure? Bram, is there a cure?”
“She hasn’t killed yet,” said Bram. “As long as she hasn’t killed yet, there is still a chance.”
“A chance? How much of one?”
“Not a great one,” Bram admitted. “We have until midnight. We need to slay the vampyre who did this to her. If we are able to do that before midnight, then the change will reverse itself.” Surprisingly, he hesitated for a moment—something Dodger had not expected to ever see from the young boy. Finally, Bram said, “At least, that’s the theory.”
“The theory?”
“It’s the story I’ve heard. The tale of vampyre origins. I’ve never actually seen it happen, so for all I know, it’s not true. But I think it is.”
“And what if we can’t? Is there some other—?”
Bram shook his head. “None that I know of. The only alternative then is to kill her. Maybe we
should just do it now.”
That was precisely and exactly the worst thing he could have said.
Drina’s eyes opened wide. “What? What did you say?”
“He said nothin’!” Dodger told her, but he was hardly convincing.
Nor was he helped by Bram, who simply repeated, “Maybe we should just kill you now. The odds of our being able to help you are so slim that—”
Drina didn’t wait for him to finish the sentence. Instead, she shoved Dodger out of the way and lunged for the door.
“Drina, wait!” shouted Dodger, but she was hardly of a mind to wait. Instead, she pushed him back with startling strength, although in retrospect it really should not have been all that startling anymore. She punched the door open. The ground was passing by quickly, but the speed of its passing didn’t seem to deter her. With a furious roar, she leaped out of the speeding coach. She hit the ground and rolled immediately out of Dodger’s sight.
Quinn, seeing that someone had fallen out of the coach, yanked the speeding horse to a halt. “What the bloody hell—?” he shouted.
Drina wasn’t waiting. Instead, barefooted, she sped past the coach, running down the road as quickly as she could. Quinn watched with shocked eyes, unable to believe that this relative slip of a girl was moving so quickly.
The Artful hung out the door and shouted, “After her! Get after her!”
Quinn wanted to fire off questions about what was going on, but instead he simply followed orders. He snapped the reins, and the horse immediately bolted forward in pursuit.
“Faster! Faster!” Dodger howled. He did not want Drina to escape. If she got away, he had no idea what they were going to do.
She sped ahead of them, staying on the road, for which he was grateful. There was a thick grove of trees ahead, some swampy area, and the road curved off to the right. His view was blocked by another grove. Drina sped around the road curve and vanished from sight. That did not concern Dodger, though. She would only be out of his field of view for seconds; certainly they would be able to catch up.
The coach swept around the curve, and Dodger couldn’t believe it.