The Path of Razors

by Green, Chris Marie

  Lilly’s interest was piqued at his strong opinion about Claudia.

  How would he take the news of her plan to dash her out of the community?

  Then again, hadn’t Nigel been a victim of the same male-devised hands-off philosophy that had got the Underground into such a vulnerable position in the first place?

  She kept her mouth closed as he continued.

  “These attackers,” he said, “might be missed from society, and unless you’re ready to take a chance on covering up their deaths, we keep monitoring until we must act.”

  “And if we ever find them tip-toeing around Highgate?”

  He finally turned to her. “Then we rethink our position. We need more proof of their identities and intentions.” He gestured to the Southwark screens. “To do otherwise might reveal us, and that’s the last thing we need.”

  She knew that, while her instinct was all she needed, Nigel would respond only to steel-clad proof.

  And there it was. Lilly was definitely on her own.

  So be it.

  “Then regarding Queenshill,” she said. “I can go back there tonight, through the woodland sub-Underground entrance rather than the school’s. We need to see if anyone made it past Mrs. Jones’s room and into her private tunnel, since you were interrupted before you were able to cover that area earlier.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to take that on after my rest. Queenshill will still be there, deserted and sad without its little vampires in it.” With the energy they absorbed during the Relaquory ritual, they could avoid slumber except for an hour or two per night cycle, even though this rest was still imperative for maximum performance. “Are you ready to take over the monitoring?”

  “Ready.” And she had an idea in mind to pass the time, too.

  As Nigel retreated to their quarters, Lilly sat in the chair and, while keeping tabs on the main screens, began to access more of the previous footage, determined to catch sight of the attackers on camera.

  Yet, this time, she brought up recent images from in and around Highgate.

  A daunting job, to be certain, with all the hours she would have to cover. But if she could find any proof that the attackers had been anywhere nearby, perhaps Nigel would believe that the custodes were facing more than he knew.

  While she did this, she also monitored a well-hidden camera that was located in the main Underground, its glass eye on the kitchens where Della waited in a cage among the male prey.

  Anytime now, Lilly thought, wishing she could speed up the visions that had to be blooming in the vampire girl’s mind.

  Anytime ...

  ONCE long, long ago, just before the vampire found himself in need of healing in the woodland cottage and much after the vampiress shared the ecstasy of bathing with the countess, there was a big bed in a hushed, candelabra-lit room in a country estate.

  In that bed was the vampire, a seemingly human male who had been masquerading as a foreign noble at court so he might gain entrance to such high company, which he felt was his due.

  He held a young auburn-tressed mortal girl in his lap, reaching between her legs, strumming her until she buried her smooth face against his neck in a fitofanxious, innocent response.

  Delighted, he howled softly into her ear, and the girl giggled all the more, so nervous, so new to a nighttime rendezvous with a mysterious man about whom she knew so little.

  Then the sound of a door easing open and shut caught the vampire’s hearing, and he raised his face from the girl’s fragrant hair.

  When he saw his comrade in a corner, standing with his arms crossed, the vampire on the bed sighed.

  “Is it too much to ask,” he said, “for my valet to remain in his own quarters during certain times of the night?”

  “Valet.” The other blood brother had done away with his beard, and his brown hair, pulled into a queue, was dull in the dim light, his gaze just as flat.

  “Yes, my valet.” The vampire ran a finger through the moistened folds of the girl on his lap, the curious virgin who was set to marry an old wealthy man by month’s end.

  She winced into his neck, hiding her face from the intruder.

  “Oh, now, now.” The vampire kissed her forehead. “You have embarrassed Cerise. She did not anticipate an audience.”

  The interloper’s eyes began to burn with ire. “I am ready to leave this place,” he said, then added with a blood-brother mind connection, And I am not your valet.

  The vampire sent his companion a warning glance, thinking that they should act like humans among humans—at least until it was too late for the pitiful prey. It was all part of the hunting.

  “You know my invitation from Madame Bontecou to play here extends for more than a day or two,” he said while nuzzling the girl. “And I have not yet enjoyed all the natural delights to be found in the country.”

  She had started to tremble against him, and the vampire knew he had to finish this seduction soon before it soured.

  But didn’t everything? Even at court, where a certain clever wit was twisting folktales into new parlor distractions—stories meant to teach lessons to “attractive, well-bred young ladies”—the vampire had been chased away for fear that the tales would churn up the truth: that the rash of nearby woodland killings—new and old—had served as too much inspiration for the storytelling.

  That these amusements would expose him.

  Thus, a trip to the country, a change in location, was precisely what a vampire such as this one had required.

  His blood brother used their Awareness to communicate again. So you plan on being careless here, as well? Just as careless as you were at court before you called me to cover all evidence of your follies?

  Careless? the vampire in bed volleyed. I am not the one who has visited the old woman in these nearby woods for love spells, my friend. Just who is the careless party?

  His comrade’s gaze seemed wounded, and the vampire knew he had gone too far.

  I am sorry, he said.

  As if out of quiet desperation, his friend began to shift shape into one that had always pleased, that had always stoked the ever-burning fires in the gut of a vampire who never could satiate himself

  The vampire covered the girl’s eyes, lest she see. Yet her face was still pressed against his neck, as if to erase herself from the situation altogether.

  Not now, the vampire in bed thought to his comrade after it had shifted fully. Please. Later?

  After a moment of stunned hesitation, his friend whipped back into another shape—one that could glide away almost undetected through the halls. Through existence, really.

  His comrade then slunk out of the room, melancholy, leaving the vampire with such hunger, such thirst, that he looked down at the girl—the untainted font of blood to be had.

  When she slowly looked up at him, she must have seen it in his face, because before his fangs emerged with terrible thrust and speed, before he twisted into the grotesque that he was, she heaved in a breath.

  Yet when he tore into her throat, she ceased to breathe any longer, becoming merely one more body to dispose of after the vampire had finished....

  SEVENTEEN

  LONDON BABYLON, MAIN UNDERGROUND KITCHENS

  ♦ IT was only the dependable onslaught of images—Delia’s lone constant in these past hours—that had kept her from grasping the bars of her cage and yelling for someone to release her.

  To get her out and away from the tempting blood and scent of the boys in the cells around her.

  Yet instead of going over that edge, Della had found that the visions were like morphine, something steady to sedate her while she lay on her side with her knees cradled against her chest.

  As the most recent vision furrowed through her, she truly welcomed the sight of the blurred vampire with a young girl on his lap as he softly howled into her ear before going on to tear her apart....

  Upon finishing, the visual pieces gently settled into Della, as ingrained as all the others had become. But t
here was one jag of imagery that remained floating on top, as if reluctant to mix.

  Howling.

  It reminded her of Wolfie.

  Just like Wolfie.

  Della drew her knees closer to her chest, hugging, clinging.

  She didn’t want to believe that those visions featured her master. Yet was he the wounded vampire from the first one about the cottage, and now the creature with the girl on the bed?

  Yes.

  No.

  Oh, she couldn’t stop thinking that it very well might be him, just as surely as she believed the vampiress in the bathtub was Mrs. Jones, centuries ago, perhaps after she had first met Wolfie and he had claimed her as his mistress.

  After all, hadn’t a mistress been mentioned in the first vision with the woodland cottage? Hadn’t that rescuing vampire—the vague blood brother—said that the wounded creature—Wolfie?—had a mistress back at court?

  A question rustled around Della’s mind.

  Who was this other blood brother and where had he gone?

  It was as if that one question had given birth to a slew of them: Could this blood brother somehow be connected to last night’s attackers? Had the blood brother sent a troublemaking group to take over Wolfie’s Underground for some inexplicable reason Della wasn’t grasping?

  Jealousy?

  Revenge?

  She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling of the cell, repeating to herself that her mind was playing tricks on her, conjuring warnings out of her misery and fear, giving her something to muse over besides the stirring scent of these boys around her.

  But it did no good. Perhaps she would never be able to explain where the visions originated, yet her brain was in a frenzy to solve what they meant. To identify a clear face among the blurred features ...

  She felt something poke into her shoulder, and at first, she ignored the sensation, thinking it was only a part of another oncoming vision.

  Then Della felt it again, and she jerked to all fours.

  They have come to get me, she thought. Wolfie and Mrs. Jones.

  Then she focused enough to spy Noreen on the other side of the bars, where her classmate was holding a long stick—a snooker cue that was sharpened at the blood-stained end for playtime with the boys in the Underground common areas.

  Della arched her back, hissed at her, warning her off.

  Noreen, clearly flushed with a recent intake of blood, took a crouched step backward, a strand of her red hair falling over one eye.

  They stared at each other, the caged males around them suspending their cries.

  Finally, Della relented, wishing she could find that morphine-like state once again as she crept to the corner of her cell.

  Noreen was most likely here because she had been excited by the play in the common rooms and had found that easy blood wasn’t enough. It never was for their kind: they were made of sugar, spice, and anything they could gnaw their way through. Unlike most girls, the wonders of entering a sexual world did not drive them. Violence did, and the letting of blood marked a very special rite of passage into a never-ending girlhood for Wolfie’s darlings.

  Noreen cocked her head at Della, then slowly stood, clutching the cue stick. “I only thought I might get here before Polly did, because when she does come, it’ll be with a bigger toy.”

  “Then let her come.”

  “Della.”

  She glanced at Noreen. It was the first time Della had ever heard her classmate’s voice harden beyond a light note.

  But Noreen didn’t give anything away with an expression; her face was half-hidden by her red hair as she bent to undo the top of a Thermos flask that Della had just now noticed by the foot of the cage.

  Noreen had brought blood. Della could smell it.

  She leapt to the door of the cell, landing in a crouch, while the boys on both sides began to beg Noreen to notice them. To suck their cravings away.

  “Belt up,” Noreen told them. Then to Della, “Hold out your arm, you.”

  But Della had already rolled up a sleeve and presented herself, the juices in her mouth hot, her fangs pushing at her gums in anticipation. The other girl dripped the blood onto Della’s skin.

  At the first splash, her pores opened like desperate baby mouths, gulping in as much blood as they could, and Della groaned with the intake—the sucking, intoxicating absorption that made her tingle in her belly and between her legs.

  Her hunger grumbled, awakened from its stupor.

  Yet all too soon, there was no more to imbibe, and Della grabbed at Noreen’s wrist just as the other girl pulled away from the cage with her emptied container.

  With an impatient huff, Noreen twisted her way out of Della’s grip. “It was dicey enough getting this bit of a meal to you. I’m not about to stay and risk even more.”

  “Why did you even dare it? There are cameras round, you know.”

  Noreen cradled the Thermos flask. “Pity, I suppose.”

  Della had spent over a year with this girl: They were classmates of a special breed. They had been good friends.

  And, truthfully, they had been more family than either one had ever known.

  “Noreen,” Della said, sensing how closed the other girl was to her—all shields up and blocking any classmate thought-links.

  Nonetheless, she reached out with her mind, rubbing up against Noreen’s mental walls, wanting so badly to come in.

  The other girl’s gaze softened, connecting to Della’s need, yet she still didn’t drop her defenses all the way.

  Della whimpered low in her throat.

  Noreen sighed, as if extending this one token. “Perhaps I understood what you did to Violet and seeing you punished for it doesn’t sit well. Perhaps ...” She glanced down, then back up. “Perhaps I even wish it had happened sooner.”

  Encouraged, Della kept pressing her thoughts against Noreen’s closed ones, and when her classmate finally gave in, it was like breaking down a door to a clean, uncluttered room that bore a resemblance to Della’s own mind before it had become so foreign and possessed.

  In their link, Della felt everything Noreen had been suppressing: The glee when Della had impaled Violet with the tree branch last night. The justice when Della had sent the ravens.

  Then the other girl’s gaze hardened, just as her voice had earlier.

  Violet was irredeemable, Noreen thought, and if you ask me to say that out loud or think it in front of Polly or Mrs. Jones or Wolfie, I won’t. I’ve learned how to stay out of trouble the best I can. I’ve learned to fade when I need to. You used to be good at that, too.

  Then Noreen nudged Della out of her mind, closing herself off once again.

  But Della knew the reason. Her classmate would continue to fade as long as she thought it was the easiest method of survival.

  et it wasn’t, Della thought. It was the toughest way of all.

  Noreen brushed a hand over her long skirt, clearly attempting to set matters back to normal. To fade away again.

  “I’ll be leaving now,” she said, “while everyone’s still distracted by playtime with Wolfie. He’s in the middle of it all in the tavern room, with the girls scratching at him as he laughs and urges them on. And who knows when the cat will be back.”

  Mrs. Jones.

  A flash of that vampiress in the tub with the hanging, dripping girl roared through Della.

  As Noreen walked toward a steel kitchen basin, where she no doubt intended to clean the Thermos flask of its blood, Della stopped her progress by knocking at her friend’s mind.

  Reluctantly, the other girl opened up again.

  Mrs. Jones, Della thought, because saying it out loud would be unwise. Be careful of her, all right? Be very, very careful.

  I always do my best. Noreen turned toward the basin.

  Della halted her friend again by thinking, Briana, Sharon, Blanche ... ?

  At the list of their departed classmates, Noreen glanced over her shoulder, the anguish of losing their companions mapped a
ll over her expression.

  Della grasped the cell bars as the boys next to her watched both vampires, back and forth, while cowering in their own cages.

  You’ve always played the dancing jester, Noreen, Della thought. But you’ve also wondered about what became of our classmates. Haven’t you? You just never thought about it too much, because you didn’t wish to know the answer.

  I only wondered why they left.

  You never saw a pattern? You never had questions?

  Noreen stared at the Thermos flask in her hands. She was fading.

  Yet Noreen was still open to a mind-link, and Della took the advantage and shared a few of the vision images she had been experiencing, every picture like a slap that caused her to cringe while giving it.

  But when she had finished, it felt like a burden shared.

  The Thermos flask fell from Noreen’s hands and clattered to the rock floor.

  You think Mrs. Jones ... she began, and there were mental tears soaking her thoughts.

  Della nodded, even while keeping what had to be the worst part of the visions to herself.

  Wolfie.

  Did he know about Mrs. Jones’s baths, if she were indeed the one taking them? Did he know what precisely caused the youthful glow Della had noticed on their housematron’s flesh recently?

  Or had Mrs. Jones managed to keep the secret for centuries?

  Yes, that had to be it, she thought, seizing upon the excuse. Wolfie would never be an accomplice to the sacrifice of his darlings, his little loves.

  It had to be all Mrs. Jones.

  Noreen had wandered closer, a hand over her mouth, as if to keep herself from screaming, just as Della had been trying to do for hours now.

  And Della had been so hoping Noreen might only tell her that the images were rubbish.

  Perhaps if Della explained a bit more.

  Every six months, she thought to her friend, one of our class disappeared. There were always justifications: Running away. Disinterested parents suddenly becoming interested enough to claim their child from Queenshill.

  Tears were seeping from Noreen’s eyes now, and Della felt the oncoming ache of them, too.