He thrust out with his knife repeatedly, running now on sheer adrenalin, his heart crashing against his ribs in a wild staccato rhythm. Too late, he realized that her vampire-infused strength outmatched his, and that if she were to grab hold of his arms again, he would surely be finished.
He stabbed again and again, losing track of what he was doing, hearing only the shrill screeches of her inhuman pain, like an alley cat in painful death throes, hissing, eyes glowing crimson in the darkened archway.
Walter had no idea how many times he’d ended up driving his blade into her torso before she fell limp, backwards onto the landing, legs spread, clothes in disarray, lower half of her body exposed and drenched with blood. He peered at her underdeveloped fangs and decided that had she had the opportunity to use them, their only purpose would have been to rip and tear, and in quite a dull fashion at that. Elva was clever. She gave her drones strength and speed, perhaps fighting knowledge, but she limited their vampire attributes to keep them lusting for more. If you give the child all of the candy, there would be nothing left over to use as a bribe later on. Walter gripped his aching side and took a moment to catch his breath.
He coughed a hacking cough, eager for the warmth of home, and fetched his bag of tools, stumbling over Marty’s bloody corpse, down the stairs, and out into the street. He went back through an alley off of Wentworth. He was reeling from the furious attack, had lost his cap in the melee, and was blinded by the grimy rain that still pelted him in a steady stream. He paused to ensure that his bag was intact, and all items safely inside. The spires of Christ Church loomed in the darkness.
As if by some ominous cue, as he glanced up at the cross atop its highest spire, a low rumble of thunder trembled the air.
Walter slipped through the foggy night and escaped the area undetected.
-5-
In the struggle with Marty, Walter had lost the coins he had stowed in his pockets to hire a cab for the ride home. Cursing his bad fortune, he walked to his home, grateful at least for the cover of darkness. It hid the blood-covered clothing he wore. The clothing he’d burn. Elva could trace the unholy blood.
Walter stomped up the front stairs and into his hall, beset suddenly by a racking cough that stayed with him until he got inside. He just wanted to get out of the filthy clothes on his back and drink something hot. Something to vanquish the chill that had gripped him. The touch of Elva’s drone had permeated him with a coldness that he was having a hard time banishing.
He had just reached the top of the stairs headed toward his room, when a voice called out from the parlor.
It was Sager.
Heart pounding, he cursed. He’d been too preoccupied after the walk with the cold and his health to notice that someone was inside of his own home.
Had the visitor been different, he might now have been dead.
“That you, Walter?”
“Who else would it be in my own home?” Walter quipped, in a bad humor.
“Sorry, I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in. The Ordine gives me keys to all sorts of places.”
“Of course they do,” Walter said, grumbling to himself about the liberties taken by the Ordine. “Why are you here so late?”
“Go on and get out of those retched rags, man. I’ll wait here. If I might say, you look like you could use a good drink.”
Walter nodded in agreement. “You know where it all is. Go ahead and pour me something. I don’t care what. I’ll be out in a moment.”
He made his way to the lavatory slowly, exhausted. On the way he stripped from the reeking clothes, and entered naked. With George in the parlor, he had no time to boil water or wake the maid, so he made due with the freezing water in the basin and cleaned himself up as much as he could. He tugged on his bathrobe and slipped his cold but clean feet into his slippers and padded downstairs with the dirty clothes bundled in an old towel.
When he entered the room, George handed him a glass. Walter drank it all in a few gulps and set the crystal tumbler on a table with a hard clink. He crossed to the grate and shoved his foul clothes in, watching the fire take a slow hold on the wet garments, hissing in flame.
“Blood?” George asked.
“Work hazard, I’m afraid,” Walter sat on the nearest couch and rubbed his head where the drone had tried to crack the stones with his skull. “Are you going to keep me up all night waiting to learn why you’re here? I’m exhausted and that’s not a good thing when I’m hunting.”
George set his glass down. “The Ordine is pleased with your work tonight. The kill has been confirmed.”
“They work fast.”
George reached into his suit and brought out a folded map. He handed it to Walter. “The Ordine wishes to wait a few days to see how Elva will react.”
“They’re assuming she is going to react. What if she doesn’t care? She has four other drones. It’s entirely possible that one or two of them are dispensable.”
George ignored Walter’s comments and continued. “That’s a map of Whitechapel. The Ordine wants you to carefully choose the locations of your eliminations in order to draw a visible warning to Elva that she can see from the sky. Noses tell the Ordine that Elva hunts the night skies over the area in bat form, minding the whereabouts of her drones. She has the powers to sense the life forces of each of her drones, as well as any vampires she has sired. Every location where one of her drones has been killed will emanate with the fading life force of the kill. A barely perceptible glow.”
“What kind of a visible warning?”
“A symbol. One she knows and fears.”
“A cross?” Walter unfurled and studied the map. There was already a black dot inked onto the spot where Marty Tabram had been eliminated tonight.
“Precisely. What better warning to give the Countess?” George smiled. “The Ordine will leave it to you to decide the best routes to take and the best locations to mark with the blood of the eliminated drones. They want Elva to have no doubts who is behind these eliminations.”
Walter stood and crossed the room to his desk. He tossed the map to the desktop and turned around to dismiss Sager.
“I’ll see myself out,” he said. “Get some rest, Walter.” George retrieved his hat from the hat stand and waved to Walter with the felt Derby.
“Good night,” Walter said.
-6-
The Ordine gave the Countess a good solid three weeks to react, to show herself and possibly slip up enough to provide some clues to her whereabouts, but that hadn’t happened. So the order was issued for Walter to eliminate “Polly,” also known as Mary Ann Nichols on August 31. Polly was a lady of the night who’d spent most of her time in workhouses. She’d taken to working as a prostitute to pay for her drinking when money got low. Though the Ordine provided much more information on his target, Walter didn’t read any more; the dossiers almost told him too much, and he couldn’t afford sympathy. Already, since he’d killed Marty, he’d begun to second-guess the rightfulness of what he’d done. At this stage, plunging into the thick of things in order to set a deeper trap for an Elder vamp, questioning himself wouldn’t do at all. There was no room for second thoughts. He didn’t have time to grapple with the moral implications of his or the Ordine’s plan. He only had time for quick, decisive action.
It was another miserable night. Temperatures were chill; rain fell hard, snapping against the cobble street along Whitechapel Road. Peals of thunder roared from low hanging skies. Despite the bombarding rain and the pervading mist that lingered, the skies glowed red from dock fires, ash mingling with coal soot to make a gray watery rain that left behind an ashen grime. The weather had done little for his cough, but Walter managed to use it in his favor, posing once again as a dockworker out in the dead of night, drunk and approachable. The glow of the fires was a fitting backdrop: the fires of hell, and water running along Whitechapel Street like the dark River Styx…and Walter himself as Charon, come to take his due.
I’ll be taking more than my due to
night, he thought. The Ordine had information leading them to believe that Polly had been implanted with one of Elva’s symbionts. He’d been given explicit instructions to mutilate her womb to ensure that any chance of life there was obliterated. The thought of what he had been told to do made him uncomfortable, but he had learned years ago that it was useless to argue with the Ordine once they issued a mandate. They made the orders; he did the dirty work. That was all part of being the Catcher. Repeatedly ringing in his head, haunting him, were the lines of Tennyson’s poem:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Unfortunately, unlike the Light Brigade, he didn’t have 600 men, vampire hunters, or anything else, for that matter, to back him up. It was just him and the ever-present, behind the scenes support of the Ordine.
Polly staggered along Whitechapel to the intersection of Osbourne Street. Walter hung back, blending into the blackness engulfing the alleyways. Foot traffic lightened on the street due to the downpour, but the destitute didn’t mind. Being cold and wet was commonplace this summer. A carriage came rattling by, rounding the corner where Polly paused as she met an older woman in front of a grocery.
Walter became invisible in the umbra, creeping as close as he dared, stopping within a few shop fronts of the two. He narrowed his eyes, focusing on the women as he struggled to hear the conversation. His initial hope that the Countess had come out into the open was dashed as he heard snippets of their talk… “had my doss money three times already today, but I drank it away…” and discussion punctuated at times with Polly stumbling against the wall, her friend helping her stay upright. Polly quickly waved off the help and happily showed off her new bonnet to the friend before they went their separate ways. Polly staggered further along until she turned into the dusky alley of Buck’s Row.
Walter closed the distance between them, assuming his role as a likely customer for her exploits. He jingled the coins in his pocket as if excited by the prospect of spending them.
Buck’s Row was a narrow street, lined on one side by small, shabby two-story homes with dark windows. The other side of the street was a high wall of warehouses, which cast the road into a deeper gloom than mere night could achieve. Indeed, no better opportunity would present itself, so Walter moved ahead, edging ever nearer to Polly. Rain washed into his eyes. He blinked, wiping ringlets of hair from his face and called out: “Say there, lady… Buy ye a drink o’ gin fer a tryst if you’ll ’ave me.”
She paused and half spun, stopping in front of one of the lackluster houses to squint her eyes and focus in on Walter.
She giggled a bit and came for him, and as she entered his line of sight he had to work hard not to show any surprise at her relatively clean appearance…certainly no aristocrat, but nevertheless cleaner than your average whore. And yet, somehow, she had been sucked in by Countess Elva’s grand delusions, hooked by the Elder vamp’s hollow promises. What did Elva promise this wretched woman? Food? Money? A fine house? Something simpler, like beautiful clothes? The bonnet, perhaps? Everything and anything a poverty-stricken woman might desire.
He felt a sorrowful pang deep in his chest as she grasped his elbow and sidled up alongside him, pulling them both into the shadows against the wall of one of the houses. He could smell the sour scent of sweat and sex mingled with gin upon her, and her smile was more a grimace…she was thinner and more attractive than Marty had been. But not much more attractive.
And no more human.
Walter gripped the handle of his silver knife, ready to pull it from his coat pocket and slash her throat with a swift motion, but a flash of the botched hell he’d gone through with Marty shot through his brain. These drones were strong, and quick. And while Polly seemed drunk, the awareness of the vamp could kick in at any moment, working against him. Vampires and their drones alike could strike like cobras. One foul move could end it for him.
He came in close to her as if to embrace her. So close that he could smell the reek of her breath, heavy with alcohol and tooth decay. Her smile was atrocious; gaping holes glared where she was missing teeth. The red glow of the fire that shone from several streets over reflected from the warehouse walls across the street, pinpoints of crimson light dancing in her eyes…the wide, black eyes of a drone. Hungry, deep, and deadly.
Quickly Walter grasped her throat, aiming to crush her windpipe, pinching off an attempted scream. She clutched his wrists with dirty fingernails, raking flesh from the backs of his hands. Mindful of the jagged talons that sprang there, he kept his face out of her line of defense.
She kicked with one foot, but she was so drunk he was able to anticipate the move in time and swept her feet from beneath her with his own leg. He dropped her to the ground, pushing at the same time hard onto her neck, crushing her esophagus with his left hand as he reached into his coat with his right. He expertly withdrew the silver blade, laying her throat open in a scarlet flash—no room for error this time. He cut the neck deep, in usual fashion, nearly severing it from the body but leaving her spinal cord attached.
Rain fell around him in a watery onslaught, never ceasing. The flickering glow of dock fires in the night reflected from his blade, dripping now with blood. Her life pumped from her, spraying into the gutter as her heart continued to beat. Her eyes went dead after a moment, now staring in a death gaze past him toward the lightning studded sky.
As thunder rolled in response to the flash, he ripped open her dress above her abdomen and cut deep into it—stabbing and slicing with jagged cuts to carve deep into whatever possible horror may be incubating there in the name of Elva’s diabolical plan for reproduction.
Walter froze as another skeletal hand of lightning flashed. The horror of his handiwork was revealed in a stroboscopic moment, and beneath him lay what appeared to him as no more than a common prostitute. When the skies went dark again, and the hellish glow refilled the misty night, Walter sensed another being nearby. With a quick intake of breath he turned and crouched, ready to pounce, wielding his blade. Had Elva come for her drone? To protect her symbiont? His heart crashed against his ribs, mimicking the nerve-jarring crash of lightning that echoed all around.
The rag picker stood several feet away, staring aghast at the Catcher’s handiwork. It was one of the noses the Ordine had assigned to work this case with him, but from the looks of him, the nose was green. Or hadn’t ever seen someone nearly decapitated and eviscerated before his eyes. Which means he couldn’t have been working for the Ordine for very long. Decapitations and eviscerations were commonplace among the missions of the rank and file.
Walter stood, tucking his blade into his coat. He checked Buck’s Row up and down. Narrowing his eyes, he scowled toward the rag picker. Aye, I see you there, chap, he thought. He knew the man was just doing his job, but it irked him nonetheless that after all these years the Ordine still sent noses out to verify completed tasks. He had requested noses be posted to gather information. The Ordine did just that. Bothersome to Walter was the thought that he, too, was part of this information. The Ordine had eyes everywhere. Walter pulled his coat closer, and hurried off into a nearby alley between two warehouses to be swallowed by mist.
-7-
A few nights later, Walter was back on Annie’s trail.
The weather had stayed consistently wet. One of the wettest summers on record. He’d finally gotten used to wandering around in wet clothes, blending with his surroundings like a chameleon.
Annie slumped over a pile of garbage, body-racking coughs quaking her. Walter could hear her hacking up mucus and spitting black bloody globs upon the cobblestones. She wiped at her nose and mouth with a dirty rag, pulled from a bulging pocket. People passed her without even a glance in her miserable direction. After several minutes of this, she finally heaved herself up and tucked the filthy rag away. Her face showed deathly white in the light of the moon.
Walter hung his head, walking by her without looking up, careful not to meet her eyes. Watching her out here, like this, on the streets with no hope of solace except whatever evil the Countess may have promised her for her tribulations, rent his heart. But he had to disconnect. She was the Countess’s pawn, which made her an important part of the Ordine’s game. He just silently prayed that she would lead him to the Countess and thus confirm the Ordine’s suspicions. He didn’t want to kill her, although at this point, killing her might be an act of charity.
He made his way back to the warmth and relative luxury of his town home. By no means was he a rich man, but the Ordine took care to make him comfortable. The widening gap between the aristocracy and the lower classes in London pushed him closer to an upper crust appearance. Though his father had been of the lesser nobility, he related more with the common man. Such was fate.
George Sager was waiting for him again, sipping brandy before the roaring fire, when Walter stomped inside and made his way upstairs. More orders, no doubt, he thought.
“Bloody hell out there,” Walter said, shaking the rain from his poor man’s overcoat.
“That’s why I’m the historian,” Sager said with a good-humored laugh. Walter wasn’t in a good humor so he didn’t join the laughter.
“I didn’t expect you back quite so quickly.”
Sager sighed. “You know how the old boys are once they get a ball rolling.”
Walter nodded and poured himself a brandy. “So?”
“Annie Chapman’s health is growing worse.”
“I know. I just came from tailing her. She’s coughing up blood all over the place. I’d say she isn’t long for this earth by the looks and sounds of her.” Walter ran a hand through his wet hair.
Blood Coven Page 3