A Different Hunger

by Lila Richards

  “My dear Serafina,” Viviana’s voice was as smooth as finest wine. “I do apologise for waking you early. I trust you’re well enough rested?” Without waiting for Serafina’s reply, she motioned to her to sit in the chair opposite her, and went on, “I’ve been wondering, my dear, how you might begin to repay me for all I’ve done for you. I think it’s time, don’t you?” Again she went on without waiting for Serafina’s response. “My initial reason for bringing you here was to draw Anton to rescue you, for how could such a fond sire as he is not come to rescue his beloved Serafina? I’m still persuaded he cannot be far away, but I’m sure you’ll agree the results to date have been disappointing, to say the least. I’ve been at something of a loss over this. Could the so moral Anton Springer really care so little about you as to abandon you to his worst enemy? Surely not!

  “But inspiration has come to me, Serafina! Of course Anton wouldn’t come to me, not even for your sake. He knows it would be far too dangerous to try to rescue you from me directly. Whatever else Anton Springer may be, he’s no fool. He’ll not risk confronting me in my stronghold. However, if you were somehow to – break free, why then he might come to you. If he believes you’ve escaped me, surely he’ll try to save his precious little sister.

  “Of course,” Viviana added thoughtfully, “he may well realise, as indeed he should, how very unlikely it is that anyone would escape me. But it’s a new and rather intriguing variation of the game, don’t you agree?”

  Serafina said nothing, knowing no reply was either needed or wanted, but waited for Viviana to reveal her new plan and the part she would play in it. She did not have long to wait. Viviana rose from her chair and took Serafina’s hand to pull her to her feet. She placed her hands on Serafina’s shoulders and stared into her eyes. Serafina returned her gaze, allowing Viviana to speak to her mind to mind.

  Serafina, from now on you will go out when I tell you to. You will walk where I direct you until sunrise, and then you will return here. You will not attempt to communicate with Anton Springer, or, indeed, with anyone. Whatever is necessary, I shall do through you. Do you understand?

  Serafina nodded. “Yes, Viviana.”

  She saw Viviana smile, but her mind, controlled by Viviana’s, did not register the look in her eyes of a cat preparing to toy with its prey.

  And so, Serafina went out to do her mistress’s bidding, returning at sunrise to sleep the day away in her freshly made bed. If she came back empty-handed, Viviana showed no anger. After all, she could afford to wait.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Despite his vow to find Serafina, and his efforts to fulfil it, the weeks went by with Rufus no closer to discovering her whereabouts. She seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. Night after night he searched the town, both physically and mentally, but not the faintest glimmer of her reached his distraught senses. Day after day, fearful dreams ravaged his sleep. Only blind animal craving forced him to drag himself out to feed, yet more often than not he ended up roaming the streets for hours afterwards, not caring where his footsteps led him, so long as he could put off returning to a house empty of Serafina.

  One night, after satisfying his blood hunger with one of the Chancery Street habitués, Rufus wandered to the end of Queen Street and across Custom House Street to the wharf. He stood staring out over the sea, listening, without really hearing, to the cries of gulls and the creaking of the ships berthed at the wharf. From somewhere out in the sea mist came the hoarse moan of a foghorn. For what seemed the thousandth time, he tried to imagine what could have happened to Serafina. Despite their quarrel, he remained certain she would not have left of her own volition, so someone must have taken her, and whoever it was must have powers beyond the merely human, or Serafina would never have succumbed. Once again, he saw Serafina’s face frowning as she caught the fleeting sense of another vampire. It had to have been him – or her. Serafina hadn’t been sure. But what could some unknown vampire possibly want with her?

  Perhaps his certainty was misplaced. Perhaps, after all, Serafina had simply become tired of their quarrelling. Why had he been so determined not to let her go to Martin’s with him? Had it really been for her sake, or because he didn’t care to stand out from the crowd, as if the opinions of a bunch of colonial gamblers mattered a damn compared to Serafina? It wasn’t as though any of them were friends, or even social acquaintances. They were nothing more than a means to make money. And he’d put that before his duty to Serafina. He’d failed Serafina, and he’d failed Anton, whom he’d promised to take care of her. A strangled cry escaped his lips.

  Startled by the sound of his own anguish, Rufus leapt to his feet and began to stride along the waterfront. The mist had turned to a soft rain that draped the gaslights with gossamer drifts of mist and turned the ground to sticky mud that seemed to clutch at his boots as though seeking to drag him down into itself like some monster of the deep. With a snarl of impatience, he crossed back over Custom House Street and onto Hobson Street and began to walk away from the harbour, although there was little difference underfoot. Somehow, he told himself, he had to find Serafina, but where could he search, with no clue to her disappearance beyond a few seconds’ awareness of an unknown vampire who might or might not have abducted her? It did seem likely that this vampire was Serafina’s abductor, if only because no one in Auckland knew them, though what his or her reason might be Rufus couldn’t begin to imagine. Besides, any vampire who knew Serafina presumably also knew Anton, and he could have had no sense of danger, or why would he have left them? Despite the anxiety for the two of them to go with him to Australia that had caused such friction between him and Serafina, surely he wouldn’t have left if he’d thought she might come to harm. The entire situation was insane, not least because he couldn’t sense Serafina anywhere, although the entire town of Auckland was small enough to be within range. Unless, of course, she was no longer in Auckland. And if that were the case, then his quest must surely be hopeless.

  Or maybe his senses just weren’t yet well enough developed to sense her. After all, he’d failed to sense the unknown vampire when Serafina had. Perhaps, he thought as he turned into Wellesley Street, he needed to work on developing his senses further, although the thought of putting off his search for any reason made him sick with apprehension. On the other hand, none of his searching so far had borne fruit. He was no further ahead than when he’d started. The rain began to fall harder, and he quickened his pace. It was a long walk back to Gillies Avenue. He had no great desire to go home. It felt empty there without Serafina, though he’d have to be somewhere safe by the time dawn arrived. By the time he came to Symonds Street, he had half decided to find a hotel room for the day. He began to trudge down Symonds Street, uncomfortably aware of the rain dripping from his hair and trickling down his neck, and the squelching of his sodden boots in the slippery mud. As he walked, it occurred to him that no decent hotel would be likely to take him in – he must look like a tramp, and a half-drowned one at that. But he had to get out of the rain, at least for a little while.

  A short way ahead of him he saw, through the driven rain, what looked like a public house, or perhaps one of the rough grog shops that abounded in the town. As he drew closer, he saw that it was, indeed, a public house, The Fitzgerald, according to the sign creaking in the wind above its door, and the light spilling out onto the street told him it was open for business. Rufus decided to go inside. At the very least he could sit somewhere dry for a while and have a glass of wine to fortify him for the rest of his journey. There might even be a fire where he could dry himself off a little, although the idea of so much heat was unappealing to his vampiric sensibilities. Judging by the hubbub drifting from within, the place was well patronised. All the better, since he could find himself an out-of-the-way corner and remain anonymous. From somewhere inside there came the strains of a piano tinkling out a tune he didn’t recognise. Rufus pushed open the glass-paned door and found himself in a long, high-ceilinged room with a bar running most o
f its length along one wall. The atmosphere, dimly lit by oil lamps hung from the ceiling, was thick with their acrid fumes as well as tobacco smoke and the smell of warm human bodies in varying degrees of unwash. Even more overpowering to Rufus was the beating of human hearts and the pulsing of blood through human veins. They seemed to blend with the tinkling music and the hubbub of voices to form a bizarre sort of music that he found oddly comforting.

  He pushed his way to the bar, taking care to make himself as unobtrusive as possible, and ordered brandy, since only beer and spirits seemed to be on offer. There was no fireplace such as he might have expected to find in an English public house, so he took his drink to a corner table near the door but out of the draught created by the comings and goings of patrons. The customers were overwhelmingly working-class males: raucous young men intent on becoming as drunk as possible in the shortest possible time, groups of middle-aged men with the air of having escaped domesticity for a few hours to indulge in a game or two of cards or dice along with their beer, and a number of down-and-outs making their grog last as long as possible. Rufus thought the few women present, laughing and chattering – and occasionally quarrelling – in small groups, were most likely prostitutes snatching some brief respite from the rain-swept streets. It had never occurred to him before just how weather-dependent their incomes must be, and he felt a strange kind of fellowship with them. After all, weren’t they all hunters of a sort, depending on the streets for their prey?

  Distracted by these thoughts, Rufus didn’t notice that someone had come to his table until he heard a soft voice speak his name. He looked up, his eyes widening in surprise.

  “Good God, Eleanor! What are you doing here?” His gaze flicked to a group of women laughing over pots of ale. “You’re not…?”

  Eleanor shook her head, chuckling. “No, I haven’t sunk to that, after all. I work here as a barmaid.”

  “Didn’t you find a position teaching, then?”

  “I did for a while, as a governess, but I didn’t like it. Not that I want to make myself out to be better than I am, but I was expected to be nursemaid and teacher combined to four horridly over-indulged brats, and all for a pittance and with not much higher regard than the scullery maids.” Eleanor wrinkled her nose in disgust. “It’s hard work here, but at least I’m paid what I’m worth and valued for what I do.”

  Rufus grinned. “Well, it’s good to know you haven’t been reduced to being a lady of pleasure, at any rate.”

  “Pleasure! One would have to be desperate, indeed, to take on such employment –especially on a night like this! I take it you didn’t go to your uncle, after all?”

  A warning note sounded in Rufus’s mind; he must take care how he answered Eleanor’s question. “No,” he said. “In the end, I found Auckland a more attractive proposition than a farm in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Yes, I can see that. I’m afraid Auckland’s quite primitive enough for me. And the smell! I thought I’d left that behind in London.”

  Rufus smiled in sympathy. “Not to mention the dust in the streets, and the smoke from the house fires. And I thought London was dirty! But tell me, do you think you’ll stay here, or will you return to England?”

  “I can’t afford to go back, not yet, at any rate, though I’m saving as much as I can. I have a room upstairs here, which means I don’t have to pay so much rent. Besides, in spite of the dust and the smell, and the other drawbacks, there’s a kind of freedom here that I never felt in London. Oh, I know there’s poverty here as well. One only has to walk about the town to see the beggars and vagrants, and the poor, hungry little children sitting in the dust. But here a person can rise above the station into which they were born in a way that rarely happens in England. There, I’d have been nothing if I hadn’t married. Here, I can be my own woman. Oh, I know I’m only a barmaid at the moment, but I don’t intend to stay one forever.”

  “Good for you! And what do you intend to become?”

  “I don’t know just yet. Perhaps I’ll own my own public house one day, who knows?”

  “Well, whatever it is, I wish you well.”

  Eleanor smiled and patted Rufus’s hand. “Thank you, Rufus, it’s been lovely to see you again, but if I’m to climb the ladder of success I’d better go and do some work now.”

  “Of course.” Rufus took her hand and drew it briefly to his lips. “And I must go, too. I hadn’t intended to stay for this long, but I’ve so enjoyed talking to you it’s seemed no time at all.”

  Eleanor stood up. “Good night, Rufus. Do pop in again sometime, won’t you?”

  Rufus got to his feet. “Thank you, I will. Good night, Eleanor.”

  The rain had eased, although the ground was still slippery with mud, but Rufus felt sufficiently restored – as much by seeing a friendly face as by the brandy – not to mind the long walk home.

  * * * *

  Rufus continued to trudge the streets of Auckland hoping to find a clue as to Serafina’s whereabouts, but with no more success than he’d already had. Somehow, without really intending to, he quite often found himself in Symonds Street, outside The Fitzgerald, and despite a niggling feeling that he was somehow betraying Serafina, he would go inside, promising himself he’d stay for just one drink, but would end up nursing the drink until closing time. There Eleanor would find him, and they’d talk until she was too tired to keep from her bed any longer. Then Rufus would walk home, his spirits lifted by her companionship.

  Little by little, although he did not stint in his search for Serafina, he found himself looking forward to his talks with Eleanor; they were like a tiny oasis of pleasure in the never-ending desert his life seemed to have become. Even hunting and feeding gave him little of what they had once provided. What had given him such joie de vivre, such delight in all his senses, without Serafina merely made him nervous and irritable. He would walk for hours in an effort to shake off his despair, but in the end the only thing that made sense was the time he spent with Eleanor Fox. If it weren’t for the blood hunger and the immense weariness that overtook him each dawn, in her company he could almost have persuaded himself he was still human. But with the gradual passing of winter, the sun rose a little earlier and set a little later each day, its relentless cycle reminding him of his true nature.

  One night, after slaking his thirst with a drunken sailor by the New Wharf, he made his way to The Fitzgerald, ordered himself a brandy and settled down at his usual corner table to wait for Eleanor. As he waited, he amused himself by reaching into the minds of whichever patrons took his fancy. As Serafina had told him, this was not as easy as with other vampires, but he looked on it as practice to hone his vampiric skills until he could sense Serafina or her captor.

  All at once, he sensed something familiar.

  Oh, God, could it be Serafina? He was sure he could smell the musky scent she always wore.

  His heart pumping like a piston, Rufus stared about him. He knew, because Serafina had told him, that her scent had been created especially for her by a Paris perfumer who owed Anton a favour; it even bore her name. It was impossible that anyone else could be wearing it. Yet for all he could smell her perfume, he had no sense at all of Serafina’s physical presence. He closed his eyes and concentrated on tracing the scent to its source. When he opened them again, he found himself staring at a young woman he’d never seen before. She was eating a slice of meat pie that she washed down with hearty draughts of ale, though she seemed more interested in finishing her meal than in enjoying it. Very gently, Rufus reached into her mind. It was blank, just like…his eyes widened as the realisation struck him. Her mind was blank – exactly like the woman from whom he’d been feeding on the night of Serafina’s disappearance!

  Rufus could barely contain himself until the woman stood up to leave, pulling a grey knitted shawl about her thin shoulders. As soon as the door had swung shut behind her, he slipped out after her. He was careful to withdraw into himself so that whoever was controlling her – and it had to be a
nother vampire, nothing else made sense – wouldn’t sense him as he slipped through the shadows to avoid the woman herself seeing him. She set off along Symonds Street travelling south, not hurrying but not looking about her either. It was clear she wasn’t just strolling home after a night out. She had some purpose in mind. Or, rather, whoever controlled her did.

  At the lower end of Symonds Street, the woman turned into Mount Eden Road. Where on earth was she going? Rufus wondered. She continued past the high, stone wall of the Mount Eden Stockade until she came to a tall laurel hedge above which the silhouette of a roof loomed black against the sky. Withdrawing into the shadows, Rufus watched as she opened the wrought-iron gate and disappeared through it. He heard her footsteps crunch on a gravel path, climb three steps and cross what was presumably a veranda or porch. Then he heard the rap of a doorknocker. Moving silently to the gate, he peered around the hedge. A worn-looking woman in a dressing gown of faded pink brocade was standing in the open doorway, and the two of them were conversing in low voices. Still completely withdrawn into himself, Rufus allowed his hearing to pick up what they were saying.

  “Have you got it?” the woman he was following asked.

  The woman in the doorway nodded. “I’ll just go and fetch it.” She disappeared, returning moments later with what looked like a large pouch or a small satchel made of some stiff fabric. “It’s all there,” she said, handing the pouch over.

  The other woman said nothing, but opened it and peered inside. Focusing on her intently, Rufus almost caught her thought before it was snatched away by whoever was controlling her. He supposed her controller must have been reading her thoughts for information about the pouch’s contents. As she nodded and turned to leave, Rufus ducked back out of sight, standing still and silent in the shadows until she had passed him. Then he continued his pursuit. Just what was in the pouch the woman now carried tucked inside her shawl? he wondered. From the brief conversation he had overheard, he imagined it was probably money, and that she was taking it to her controller – who was most likely Serafina’s captor. That had to be the reason he’d sensed Serafina through this unknown woman. She had presumably been in contact with Serafina and had picked up a hint of her scent, and the link between them must surely be Serafina’s captor, the unknown vampire. His stomach tightened with excitement at the thought, and with the hope that his suspicion might prove correct.