Lady Killer

by Michele Jaffe

  “Good afternoon, Clio,” a voice, not Miles’s, said from the threshold of the room. “I hardly expected such a warm welcome.”

  Clio stared at the person standing in the door with cold horror. One by one the thoughts that had been tickling her mind clicked into place. Blood! There was none around Inigo’s sister, but Kimberly had been soaked in it. Doctor LaForge, the man known as the Vampire of London, was right. She had been blind.

  Doctor LaForge had not been killing his sister when Miles came upon him, he had been trying to save her, Clio comprehended. He had not been sucking her blood but rather the poison in it, trying to stop it before it took over her body, just as he had done with Kimberley. He had been ill the morning they found no body, not because he was the vampire and had failed to drink enough blood, but because he had saved Kimberley’s life and the poison, diluted, was in his body. That was why there was so much blood around both women, why Miles had seen blood on his face and on his lips. Because he had been sucking the poison out. And that was why there had been so little blood around the other victims. No one had tried to save them.

  Crime is a virtue and virtue is a crime, he had said and suddenly she understood. His padded clothes and false mustache, the blood-soaked shirt in his armoire, his presence at the Curious Cat, they were not signs of his guilt but of his innocence. He wanted to revenge himself on Miles for the death of his sister. But he also wanted revenge on the vampire. Like she and Miles, he had been searching for the fiend. Indeed, she had no doubt that he had been following the vampire the night they followed him to the Curious Cat and that it had been him singing the song, to drive the vampire mad. It had all been in front of her eyes the entire time and she had misunderstood everything.

  But not any longer. She no longer had that luxury. Because Doctor LaForge was lying in his death throes at her feet. And standing in the doorway, was the face from Inigo’s drawing.

  The face of the real vampire.

  “No one has come out,” Arnold whispered to Miles as he and his cousins joined him outside the Painted Lady. “They must still be inside.”

  “Ian, you and Crispin go around the back. Tristan, Sebastian and I will enter through the front door… If you hear us whistle three times, come in as fast as you can.”

  None of the Arboretti thought to hesitate. Miles waited until Ian and Crispin were out of sight, then he, Tristan, and Sebastian crossed the street and slid through the door.

  The first thing they saw was Lovely Jake’s body stretched across the staircase. A sticky stain oozed across his doublet from the bullet hole in his chest.

  Miles turned to say something to his cousins, but Tristan interrupted him. “Don’t even think of ordering us to stay down here,” he told Miles firmly. “We are going with you.”

  Unwilling to waste any time arguing, Miles shrugged, then crept noiselessly up the staircase.

  One of the doors was slightly ajar and a low moan came from behind it. Miles kicked it open with his foot, then pressed himself back against the wall of the corridor.

  “Help me,” he heard someone call from inside. “Please. I am dying. Help me.”

  Miles spent an eighth of a second weighing the odds that it was a trap, and went through the door.

  The man known as Doctor LaForge was lying on the floor in a ball, clutching his arm. His hands were red with blood, and his face was entirely devoid of color. Miles stopped and stared for a moment when he saw him, astonished that he had been living under the same roof as the man for weeks and not realized he was the person he had fired at three years earlier, and even more astonished by his transformation.

  Suddenly, Miles understood what Clio had figured out an hour earlier.

  “The vampire has got Clio,” Doctor LaForge whispered as Miles entered and kneeled next to him. “The vampire took her.”

  “Where?” Miles demanded, ripping a piece of his shirt and wrapping it around, LaForge’s arm. “When?”

  LaForge watched with fascination as Miles bound his arm. “Why are you doing this?” he asked finally. “I hate you. Why are you saving me?”

  “Because you are the only person who can help me find Clio,” Miles explained. “Where is she?”

  “How do you know you can trust me?” LaForge asked, and madness gleamed in his eyes. “How do you know this is not a trap?”

  “I don’t, but if it is I will no doubt be able to get out of it. Now, damn it, tell me where Clio is and how long ago she left.”

  Doctor LaForge shook his head. “Arrogant. Too, too arrogant. I do not know where she is. It happened over an hour ago. I was going to use her as bait. To reel you in. And then the vampire.” Doctor LaForge’s eyes got a strange, serene look in them.

  Miles knew that look. He shook LaForge hard, demanding that the man hold on to consciousness a few seconds longer. “Who is it? Who is the vampire?”

  LaForge’s eyes focused slightly, but his speech began to slur. “You must find her before midnight or she will be dead. After midnight, she is expendable.”

  “What are you talking about?” Miles demanded.

  “You have not figured it out yet, have you?” LaForge told him, his head lolling to one side. He fixed Miles with an opaque eye and an eerie smile spread over his features. “Well I suppose I will have my revenge after all.” Something like a laugh escaped his lips, and then his body slumped forward, unconscious.

  “Where is Clio?” Sebastian asked as he and Tristan pressed into the room.

  Miles stood up and pushed LaForge away from him, wiping blood from his hands on his breeches. “I don’t have the damndest idea. But if our friend is to be believed, we’ve only got eight hours in which to find her and all of London to search.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “I know what you are thinking. I always know what you are thinking.

  “Don’t shake your head, Clio. How else do you suppose I have been able to control you for so long? We are very alike in some ways. You are like a shadow of me, with a shadow of my power. But it lives inside both of us. I can feel it coursing through your blood. Your father’s blood.

  “They call it evil, but that is only the name envy makes them speak. And who would not envy us? Who would not envy the power we can exercise over people’s lives? The way people look at us when they see what we really are?

  “You cannot deny that you have felt its potency, Clio dear, felt its pull. That you have never known the urge to cause pain. To bite or hit or hurt. You may struggle against it, but it is within you, longing to come out. Of course, I suppose you cannot be blamed. You are not strong like I am. You do not have my capacity, my power.

  “Really, it was quite audacious of you to think you might catch me, Clio. You would have been better off chasing chimeras. At least then you would have stood a chance of success. You did not understand that I was leading you the entire time. Like a stupid dog you devoured whatever bait I threw at you, without even stopping to sniff and see if it was rotten.

  “When I began, I had not even thought of you. But then you foisted yourself onto the scene, and I immediately apprehended what you could be. My plan was so clever. Drug you, leave Flora in your bed. I wondered about fixing your ankle, but I never do anything by half measures. I used the water pitcher, lest you were curious. One sharp blow was all it required.

  “It was perfect, a beautiful plan. A beautiful trap. It would buy me the precious time I needed and get you out of the way. And everything went just as I had intended. I was sitting outside in the apple tree when you found the body and I saw your face. The sheer, exquisite horror and self-loathing. I wish you could have seen it, too, I really did. You see, I am not ungenerous.

  “Why did you dawdle so at the fair? I had expected better of you. You are known for your tenaciousness, yet there you were, wandering around, ignoring all my carefully placed hints. I was tempted to give you a push myself, but my patience worked. Finally you arrived at the cockfighting pit, and what happened was better than anything I could have dreamed
.

  “Even with the viscount interfering I knew I had you. There was nothing else for you to think, nothing else for you to believe, other than that you were the vampire. You were mine, your mind was mine. I had you.

  “It was then that it unraveled. You did not go to the constables. You did not go to prison. You did not tell anyone what you were, what I had made you. You did nothing. You wasted all my efforts, all my work, all my waiting, you selfish, ungrateful bitch. You stopped being scared.

  “But only temporarily. Indeed, in a way I am glad it went this way. I am glad I shall have the opportunity of watching the life drain from you slowly, watching the terror rise in your eyes as you watch the clock clicking off the final minutes of your existence. You know, I have never really seen you properly frightened. Even when you found Flora’s body, you were not afraid, not as I would have liked. You were scared for others, but not for yourself. You have not tasted real terror yet. But you will. You will see how sweet it can be.

  “No, no, don’t struggle. You must stay alive awhile longer. But I promise the time will not hang heavy on your hands. I have so much to tell you.”

  Clio pressed herself with apparent fear against the post to which her hands and feet were bound. “I do not want to hear what you have to say, Saunders. If that is even your real name.”

  “It is. But I am not Sir Saunders Cotton. Since the death of my father four years ago, I have been Lord Mayhew.”

  “Mayhew.” The name was familiar. “Then you are not from Devonshire.”

  “No. But my stepmother was.”

  “Serena Mayhew. The vampire’s third victim three years ago.” Clio stared at him. “Did you begin all this the first time just to kill your stepmother?”

  “You may speak of the act as it deserves. It was brilliant. Everyone assumed she was merely another victim. When in fact, she was the victim. The one around whom the entire scheme was built.”

  “Why?”

  “She deserved it. They all deserved it. They were all bloodsuckers. She preyed on my father, stealing away his life, stealing away the fortune that was supposed to be mine. Mine. My blood rights. She sucked away my title, my property, my money, sucked them from my father. When she first came, she used to sing to me, sing me that song. She used it to lure me. I knew what she wanted to do to me, I could tell. I had seen her do it with my father. She would sing, to him afterward, and I knew she wanted to do it to me, too. But I would not let her. I would not be seduced by her wiles. She used her song and her body to steal everything from my father. When he died, she had everything. And I knew I would have revenge. I would make her sing her siren song. And then I would suck the blood back out, suck out what was mine, suck it out until she was dead. I would rid London, rid England of the bloodsuckers. I would make it safe.”

  “And you did.”

  “Yes. I was tremendous. No one suspected anything. And it was thrilling. When they understood what was happening, when they understood what I was doing to them, for them, you should have seen the expressions on their faces. They loved me. They pled with me. They begged me to release them. I was a god to them. A god.” He closed his fist in tribute to himself. He looked at her and saw terror, his victim’s terror, sparkling in her eyes. “You begin to understand, I see.”

  “I understand that you are mad,” Clio replied with an unconcealed shudder.

  Saunders shook his head. “They always say that when they do not comprehend. They always say that when they are overawed by your power. Mad? Mad am I? Because my brilliance is beyond your appreciation? Because my thinking leaves you awestruck? How can you be so ungrateful, Clio? After all I have done for you, all the attention I have lavished. No one has ever thought so much about you, about your well-being as I have. Use your petty words if you prefer. Retreat into them. But I am not mad. I shall triumph tonight.”

  “You mean you did all of this to kill me?”

  “No. Clio, Clio, Clio. What are you to me? Was it you I took to the cockfights? Was it you who loved to see the birds bloody one another so much that you fell and hurt your ankle? Was it you who captured my heart and showed me what it was to love? Who could have impersonated you so perfectly at the fair? Do you really think I would do all this for you?”

  “You did this for Mariana,” Clio breathed, letting the mask of fear she had been struggling to wear drop for a moment as she grasped everything. “You did it to kill Miles.”

  “Exactly. Mariana, my perfect angel, must be liberated from the prison of her betrothal. She must be uncaged, so her exalted spirit can fly free. And that bastard Dearbourn will have died in pursuit of the vampire. Just like Serena. Just another victim of the clever fiend.”

  “Does Mariana know of your plan? Is she helping you?”

  “My pure saintly Mariana? She knows nothing of all this.” He gestured about as if castles and land grants were scattered at his feet. “She knew only that we had to attend the fair in disguise so her reputation would not be sullied. She loved the idea of dressing up as you. She said she wanted to know what it felt like to look so ill.”

  “How charming,” Clio murmured despite herself.

  “Yes, she is. She was my helper. And my muse. Do you understand now?”

  Yes, Clio nodded. She understood many things. She understood that the bonds on her wrists and ankles were insoluble. She understood that she was in the hands of a lunatic. She understood that Toast, hunkered in a corner, could never get past him to summon help. She understood that her only power was in convincing her captor of her fear while actually keeping it at bay. And she understood that unless the note she had dispatched from the inn where they changed horses made it into Miles’s hands soon, they were both going to die.

  “None of you were following her?” Miles demanded, looking ferociously over the assembled inhabitants of Which House as if he suspected them of having broiled and eaten Clio.

  “After the threats she gave about what would happen to anyone who dared endanger his life by following her when she heard about Inigo the other night?” Mr. Hakesly shook his head.

  “Why weren’t any of you following her?” Mr. Williams asked, eyeing the Arboretti. “Strong men. Good for following. Look like you’d be willing to risk having your toes licked for ten hours straight by this puppy.”

  “Is that what Clio threatened as punishment?” Sebastian inquired, barely repressing a smile.

  “That, and drawing and quartering,” Mr. Pearl elaborated quietly.

  “But you know she would never do anything like that,” Miles ranted. “You should have—”

  “Miles,” Ian said, putting his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “You had two guards following her, remember, and she was still abducted. These men are not to blame, and your storming around is not getting us anywhere.”

  The room fell silent but for the sound of men shifting uneasily in their leather boots. Then Miles said, “You are right.” He nodded to Snug, Inigo, and the Triumvirate. “I am sorry.”

  He would have gone on, saying he knew not what, but a messenger in golden Dearbourn livery puffed into the study then like a bitter wind. “This just came,” he said, flapping a paper in front of Miles. “This just arrived at Dearbourn Hall.”

  Miles snatched the grimy sheet from him.

  My lord,

  The vampire has me. This shall be my last chance to get a letter to you. I overheard at the coach stop that we are going to the Garden House near Hartwell Heath. Please, my lord, come as quickly as you can. I am terrified.

  Your Lordship’s own, Clio.

  Miles handed the sheet to Mr. Hakesly. “Is this Clio’s writing?”

  “Looks like it,” Mr. Hakesly averred, showing it to Mr. Pearl.

  “Yes.” Mr. Pearl confirmed.

  “Hartwell Heath is close to my sheep pasture. It’s three hours hard riding away,” Crispin said hesitantly.

  Miles looked at the clock. It was after six. Six hours until midnight, and a three hour ride in each direction. What if Clio was wr
ong about where the vampire was taking her?

  “Saddle the horses,” he said grimly. “We had better get started.”

  “You know,” Saunders confided, “the hardest part is not the waiting. The hardest part is the pretending.”

  Clio would have liked to disagree. She was finding the waiting, the steady click of the clock in front of which she was tied, extremely tedious. Pretending to be afraid of Saunders was not a problem at all.

  Her mouth was still dry and tasted bad from whatever he had used to make her sleep during the coach ride from the Painted Lady. He had shoved something warm and wet between her lips when she tried to scream, and it must have been coated with a sleeping drug. She remembered telling herself that it was crucial she stay awake, alert, crucial that she know where she was going and what was happening, but no matter how hard she struggled her eyes would not stay open. Her last clear thought was of seeing Lovely Jake napping at the strangest angle on the stairs, and she recollected thinking that if he did not clean it off soon, all the red wine on the front of his doublet would ruin it. It was only when she regained consciousness in the coach that she had realized Lovely Jake was dead, and she had wondered who would look after his pig.

  Her first thought on waking in the lurching vehicle, however, had been one of relief, because Toast was nowhere to be found. He had gotten away. And perhaps he could lead help to her. But when, midway through their journey, they pulled up outside the inn where Saunders had forced her to write the note to Miles, she saw that Toast had been tied behind the coach with a sturdy chain, forced to grip its outer edges or run in order to avoid being dragged to his death. Exhausted, he now lay almost motionless in the far corner of the room.

  The chamber had no furniture beside the post to which Clio was tied, if that could be considered furniture, and the large clock that stood directly in front of her. Saunders paced back and forth across the floor in bare feet, his quiet footsteps keeping exact time with the steady ticking of the timepiece.