Blood Coven

by Christopher Fulbright

  BLOOD COVEN

  by Christopher Fulbright and Angeline Hawkes

  This eBook is protected by copyright laws. If you did not purchase or borrow this book via a legal lending method, please consider buying a copy to ensure that the authors are compensated for their work. This novella was previously published in 2007 by Dead Letter Press in a limited print edition of 100 copies, plus an exclusive lettered edition. The text has not been modified from the original edition.

  2nd Electronic Edition | Published by ND3 Press

  Copyright © 2013 by Fulbright & Hawkes

  All rights reserved.

  -1-

  London, 1888.

  Echoes of horse hooves clopped through the street mingled with the sounds of screeching cats and shrieking shrews. Fog thick with soot draped the night as rain came down in a constant drizzle, drenching Walter’s coat, plastering his starched white collar to his neck. He hurried along the street. A single gas lamp stood crookedly on a nearby corner, a final ward against the encroaching shadows; all of the other lamps up and down the block were broken and dark. A stench rose from the overflowing sewers, clinging to his clothing. He covered his face with his handkerchief and stepped beneath the eave of a narrow storefront with blackened windows. A stream of water splattered the steps as he knocked on the door before him.

  The door opened on shaking hinges to reveal a stooped Chinaman. Smoky gloom stirred in the air behind him, the cloying scent of opiates wafting out into the wet night. The Chinaman’s long black braid draped in front of his shoulder as he cast a quick glance over his shoulder before acknowledging his nocturnal visitor. He wrung his hands, bowing and greeting Walter.

  “It is good that you come. What take you so long?” Donghai asked.

  Walter raised one eyebrow. “I came as quickly as I could. You mentioned Langsuior in your note?”

  “Yes, yes.” Donghai peered down the street in both directions before pulling Walter inside of the dimly lit dwelling and closing the door. The meaty scent of unwashed humanity barely overpowered the other scents of charcoal and smoke in the small back entry, just a narrow wooden hall and no more. “Come in. You see.”

  Donghai led him through the corridor with floor planks that creaked at every step. Rodents twice skittered from their path. They passed a small room piled high with old clothes and blankets in the corners, two threadbare chairs, a couch, and a man in a lilting daze, water pipe slipping from one hand. A small charcoal fire burned in a stone fireplace, a thin sunless girl fanning the fire. Another man lay with a half-naked prostitute in the corner on a thin pile of blankets. The refuse of drug abuse lay scattered on the floor between them: two square tins and an intricately carved oriental opium pipe.

  They stepped over two more bodies on their way to the other rooms of the house.

  Donghai led him into a second narrow passageway. The door at the end of it stood ajar. The glow from several oil lamps bled out onto the grimy wood floor.

  The Chinaman stopped just before the opening of the door, looking up at Walter, making it a point not to look inside. His face was drawn, eyes skittish to look anywhere but inside the room. Walter took slow steps along the hall, passing by the Chinaman, gently moving the unsettled man to one side, and came to stand in the threshold of the small room.

  “Look.” Donghai urged, coming up behind him. “You see?” Donghai pointed to a prone figure sprawled across a shabby chaise lounge.

  His eyes adjusting to the dim orange glow of the oil lamps, Walter scanned the shadows of the room before taking a few steps towards the lifeless woman. A long, jade pipe lay on the ground beneath her outstretched hand and tapered fingers. He bent over and picked it up, examining it with trained eyes. The pipe was carved from a high quality jade, with a ring of fine polished brass circling the bowl that was caked on the inside with pungent resin. He moved it from side to side within his hand. The sides of the pipe were carved with an intricate oriental flower, a lotus perhaps. This pipe was no inexpensive bauble. Whoever this unfortunate woman was, she had money, or did have money at some point. Walter cast another glance around the shambles of the room. Why had she ended up here, in this hellhole?

  Carefully, he used the stem of the pipe to lift the glossy black tresses away from the dead woman’s face. He raised one eyebrow in surprise.

  She was stunning.

  Her flesh was the color of stark ivory. Her eyes golden brown and shaped like perfect almonds. Even in her bloodless state, her lips formed a dainty pink rosebud pursed ever so slightly. His vision traveled over the snug red satin dress that hugged the curves of her body. One porcelain smooth thigh emerged from the slit that stopped at mid-thigh. Her right leg was hooked, left leg straight out, feet bare.

  “Who is she?”

  Donghai shook his head sadly and shrugged his shoulders. Even if he knew the woman’s name, Walter knew that the Chinaman wouldn’t reveal it. In his business, keeping one’s mouth closed was essential to prolonging one’s life.

  Walter moved the black silk of her hair away from her throat to reveal a pulpy mess over her jugular vein.

  “Langsuior!” Donghai hissed.

  “Indeed.” Walter reached out and gently lifted the woman’s delicate left arm, turning it over. The bruised track marks of a morphine addict discolored the crook of her arm. “Do you know who they were?” He knew there was more than one. There were multiple bite patterns indicative of more than one set of fangs.

  Donghai held up two fingers.

  “Two of them?” Walter replaced the woman’s arm on the couch. A few droplets of blood splattered her dress. He surveyed the area. There was no blood pooled around the body. None at all on the floor. They had taken their time. The corpse had been drained.

  “Two, and then one.” The sound of another person stirred in the hallway. Donghai shuffled to the door and closed it with a sharp click. The Chinaman held a finger to his lips as he reached into his black pajamas, pulling out a handful of gold coins. “The one gave me this.”

  “To stay quiet?”

  Donghai nodded. “But, Donghai not stay quiet. Donghai call the Catcher!”

  “And I’m glad you did. Do you know anything about the first two?”

  “Ladybirds.”

  It was Walter’s turn to nod. “Hmm. And the third one, who came later?”

  A visible shudder trembled Donghai. His eyes went dark and narrowed. “Coven of East End.”

  “What about the coven?”

  “She is the coven,” Donghai said.

  “You’re speaking in riddles, man. There is more than one Langsuior in the coven. More than one vampire.”

  Donghai nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, but she rules them all.”

  Walter frowned. He reached into his suit jacket and brought out a silver knife. The hilt was intricate, silver and ivory, crafted ages ago by the ancients of his order. The thin holy blade gleamed and reflected the lamplight.

  He grabbed the hair on the woman’s head and bent her head back. A quick, expert slash cut deep through the flesh and sinew, severing her neck to the spine. As he released her hair, her head lulled awkwardly to the side.

  “No blood!” Donghai said, amazed.

  “The creatures drained her dry. That’ll keep her from coming back to join them. We have enough blood drinkers in the city, no need to add any more to their ranks.” Walter wiped the knife on the threadbare lounge. “You’ve told no one of this?”

  “No. No. Just you. I call Police Constable when you finish.”

  “Good man. She was robbed and murdered. You, of course, are horrified.” Walter slipped coins into Donghai’s hand. He followed as Donghai returned him to the front door. “One more thing.” Walter stopped. “Do you know
who this one is—the third one who came later and paid you off?”

  Donghai shrugged again. “I do not ask names. I sell opium to feed my children. Donghai know nothing of these people. Best to keep it this way. Donghai tell you all that is known.”

  Walter nodded. He went out into the stinking streets and headed home. He walked a few blocks before he found a cab. The driver reined in and the carriage came to a rickety stop, the horses displeased by the weather, the stench, or both. It wasn’t the cleanest cab he’d been in, but it was better than the torrential rain and filth of the black streets of the East End.

  -2-

  Walter let his weary head slump forward onto the stack of musty books spread on the desk. He stayed that way for several minutes. Sleep threatened to overtake him.

  Exhaustion frayed the edges of his awareness, which was dangerous, especially now, after the recent finding at Donghai’s opium den, another victim of the East End Coven. He’d been hunting members of the coven on scant information from the Ordine, seeking out and killing three of the lesser vamps over the course of the past two years. He couldn’t be sure that the Chinaman wouldn’t turn around and sell him out to the leader of the coven. Naturally, he’d be a fool to do so, because they’d suspect the truth of why the Catcher had been there and kill the Chinaman before he leaked any more information to the Ordine. He had a passing thought that the coven might have had some sort of prior arrangement with the Chinaman, an arrangement of which he’d grown weary, but dismissed it.

  No sane man would bargain with the Coven of East End, no matter how desperate he was for money. Given the amount of business Donghai seemed to be generating, Walter doubted the man was in any dire need of money—despite the man’s claims of struggling to feed his children. Walter gave a mental chuckle. It wouldn’t surprise him at all to discover Donghai had no children at all. Such was the business.

  The lids of his eyes were heavy. He started to drift off to sleep in his chair. Maybe he could just rest for a moment....

  The image of the dead woman in the satin dress haunted his thoughts. The crimson color of the fabric blurred with the gnawed meat of her throat. Hazy images from long ago mingled with the image of the body. His father. His mother. The torn ivory neck of his sister, only a year older than he had been, that fateful day when he was called home. He could still conjure the smell of death that lingered in the room around his sister Olivia, her swan throat a mangle of flesh and sinew. Her sapphire eyes stared cold at the velvet canopy above her bed. Had Walter not been away for his priestly training at the monastery under Uncle Elias, he too would have died beneath the ghastly fangs of the vampire that drained the lives of those dearest to him.

  Twelve is such a young age to lose one’s family, they whispered at the services. They said prayers for him and thanked God for his uncle who would continue to train him and care for him as if Walter were his own.

  Twelve is a young age to gain such rage, he thought. And much too young to commit to such a purpose in life. Nevertheless, with the gruesome deaths of his family, his fate had been sealed. He accepted the charge given him by his uncle with eagerness. The dark void that had opened within him at his great loss was filled by a thirst for revenge. It was all that he lived for, and he saw a means though his uncle’s appointment to satisfy that craving.

  Uncle Elias had been a historian for the Ordine Sacred Dei Cacciatori, the record keeper for the isle’s branch. The vampire attack on Walter’s family had been revenge against Elias—who was, of course, safe within the confines of a holy monastery, conducting training.

  Elias schooled Walter first in the ways of the Lord, and then in the ways of darkness. As Walter acquired combat skills, he acquired knowledge of the occultist ways of witches and sorcerers down through the ages that claimed to have created vampiric creatures. He learned of the lycanthropes and the loup garoux, the succubus, the dhampir, the langsuior, the ghoul and others on up through the monstrous ranks that culminated in the existence of the dreaded nosferatu. Long hours of study and prayer interspersed with long hours of intense physical training prepared the boy as he grew into a man, hardening his mind and body against the forces that would soon come against him. The elders at the monastery took note that Uncle Elias’s student, fueled by the need for vengeance, soon outshone his teachers.

  Walter forced open his eyes and sat up straight in his chair. He couldn’t afford to sleep just yet, nor take any leisurely walks down memory lane. He needed to focus on the riddle before him. Trouble was brewing; he could sense it in every fiber of his being, clear to the turmoiled core of his soul. Trouble that he found himself smack in the midst of. He had a feeling that many sleepless nights were in store.

  He rubbed his temples and sighed, thoughts wandering back to the problem at hand: the Coven of the East End. The last information fed to him by the Ordine noted that they believed the coven was run by a vamp with a scarred face named Ludwig, who had lived through an unsuccessful burning at the stake. That wasn’t consistent with what he’d heard last night. Donghai was insistent that a woman was at the helm. Not just a woman vamp, but a very powerful one. Donghai seemed to believe that the woman was the coven. If she had truly reined in the unruly masses of vamps that made up the Coven of the East End, then she certainly was powerful.

  A knock sounded from downstairs in the hall. Walter shoved his chair back and went out to the main stairway that led down into the foyer. Descending the stairs, he reached the door. Upon opening the door, he immediately recognized the visitor. He had, in fact, expected him. “Ah, Sager. I pray your jaunt was not too bad.”

  George Sager came in, stomping the rain from his pants. “That depends on what you define as too bad, Lusk, and what you define as a jaunt.” He wiped at his leather bag with his coat tails.

  Walter shut the door and took the wet coat George held out, hanging it on the ornate brass hall tree in the entry. “Come in by the fire. Are you for a cuppa?”

  “That would be splendid. I’m chilled to the bone.” George followed Walter upstairs into the study, opening his satchel along the way. By the time he reached the sofa he was making neat piles with stacks of papers along the couch seat. “I have much to tell you. The Ordine is eager to have you on this case.”

  “This case? Which case is that?” Walter poured George a cup of steaming amber liquid. “Sugar?”

  “Yes, thank you.” George paused. “The case involving the dead Chinagirl you mentioned in your message.”

  “Oh, it’s a whole case now, is it?”

  “Well, you didn’t think you’d get off easy did you, old chap?” George laughed good-naturedly. He was a far contrast from Uncle Elias’s pinched-faced scowls that Walter had grown accustomed to over the years. When Elias had been offered a higher position in the Ordine, George had been selected as his successor. He had earned the promotion; he was good at his job. Elias wouldn’t have handed the task over to him otherwise. “She’s no isolated incident. I know you’ve been slow here lately as the East End Coven seems to be going relatively inactive. It seems, actually, that the nature of the ‘activity’ is different from what we’re used to. It’s actually worse than we feared. This is no roving band of creatures intent solely on blood feasts.”

  George took the cup from Walter’s hand, settling into the sofa, spreading out a few stacks of papers on the coffee table with his free hand. He took a sip of his tea and then handed one of the packets to Walter. “This is the information on Countess Elva Francois Walacova.”

  “And who is she?”

  “She’s the Elder vamp leading the Coven of the East End. A gruesome old bitch at that.” When George set aside his cup and saucer, they chattered from his trembling hand. Walter couldn’t be certain if it was the lingering cold of the rain or the thought of the countess that chilled the wiry man. “The Ordine’s first record of her dates from 106 AD.”

  “My god. That’s very old, even for an Elder.”

  “Precisely. Reports of Elva state that she dates from pri
or to 106 AD. According to the information, she is originally from Dacia, ancient Romania. She uses the standard of the Dacian military: a wolf head on a snake body. There’s a lot of speculation mixed with fact, of course.”

  “Of course. What are the facts?” Walter settled into the leather wingback. He sipped his tea, eyeing the documents and listening to George.

  “Elva was once a common prostitute who, sometime after being vamped, married Count Constantin Walacova, and then promptly did him in. She’s rumored to have been Vlad the Impaler’s mistress.”

  “Just the facts, George.”

  George laughed. “Of course, of course. It’s just that the rumors are so intriguing.” He smiled. “What we do know for certain is that Elva has a history of creating drones from prostitutes—the most destitute of their kind—and has the drones bring her men for her feeding needs. By operating in this manner, she has eluded the Ordine since it became aware of her existence over a century ago. The way that the lesser vamps had been haphazardly feeding now and then in this area led us to believe Ludwig was guiding the coven. Now, we may think it was simply Elva’s way of throwing us off her trail.”

  “Clever creature.”

  “Very. One doesn’t live seventeen hundred years on luck alone. But, it’s not just because she’s an Elder vamp that the Ordine wants her eliminated.”

  “That’s not enough?” Walter looked at George with a jesting squint, a slightly raised brow.

  “Well, certainly, it’s enough; but there’s a much more ghastly reason. Recently a nose for the Ordine died bringing us this information.” George shuffled a few papers around and then handed a bundle of them to Walter. “Elva has managed to create some sort of vampire fetus, a symbiont, that she implants into the wombs of her drones. We don’t have any details on how this is done, but she’s using the human hosts as incubators and once the vampire matures, it eats its way from the drone, feasting upon her in a gruesome birth ritual. The drones, in turn, gain strength and, more importantly, favor from Elva, apparently unaware that they will ultimately serve as a meal for the vampire fetus they carry in their wombs.”