“Dreaming,” he said.
“What?”
“One of us is dreaming. Whatever made you think that I would marry you?”
“You did, dear. When your uncle died, you said, and you were wealthy in your own right, you said you’d make an honest woman of me. And now he’s dead, ain’t he? I can see you took it hard, with your kind heart, but that will pass, and then we’ll be wed. You do love me, don’t you dear? There’s nobody else?”
He fumbled at her, more out of habit than passion. “Of course there’s nobody else,” he said.
“No?” Sally pushed him down on the bed and slapped him harder than she had the man in The Glass Slipper. “And what about Miss Felicia Lamb?”
Callender was too stunned to reply.
“You think I’m stupid, don’t you? You thought I didn’t know about her! What do you take me for?”
Callender just sat on the bed and looked across the room.
“Here,” said Sally. “Have some gin.” She pulled a bottle from a pile of dresses in a corner and gave it to Callender. He uncorked it and poured half of it down his throat.
“That’s right,” said Sally. “Get yourself used to the idea. You thought I was just a silly girl. That’s what you think of all of us, ain’t it? And that’s why we do what we can to protect ourselves. You recollect a girl named Alice? Your uncle’s maid. We were good friends, Alice and me. She told me all about you. Now I don’t begrudge you your bit of fun, Reggie. I’ve had mine. We’ll forget Alice, even if she has seen more of your uncle’s money than ever I did. But I won’t let you marry this Felicia Lamb.”
Callender took another pull on the bottle and put his head in his hands. The liquor burned against his bleeding gums. This was hardly the evening he had planned.
“I saw her once, you know,” Sally said. “A blueblood virgin with big eyes and a tiny mouth. She’s no woman for a man like you. I’ll bet she wouldn’t even raise her skirt to piss!”
It was Callender’s turn to slap Sally. Then he picked up his hat and his stick and shuffled toward the door. “She is the woman I love,” he said.
“Love, is it?” shouted Sally. “See how much love you find there after today, Mr Callender! She’ll have nothing to do with you now! You’re mine! Do you think I spent two years on my back for the pure pleasure of it?” She rushed to follow him, shouting in his ear.
Callender summoned up a drunken dignity. “There is nothing you can do to prevent this marriage,” he said. “You and I shall not meet again.”
“I’ve stopped you already,” Sally screamed. “I sent her a note, that’s what I did. A letter telling her what you had been to me. She’ll have read it by now, and that’ll be an end to any love between you!”
Callender staggered back against the door. To have lost two fortunes in so short a time was more than he could bear. Without thinking, without even wishing to, he slammed his ebony walking stick into Sally’s face.
She seemed bewildered, and she made a whimpering sound. He saw by the candlelight that he had turned her right eye into red pulp.
She put her hand to her face, and something came away in it. She dropped to her knees and began to wail.
Callender was horrified. He stooped to help her, but she pushed him away and crawled across the floor. She began to scream.
It was intolerable. He hit her again, this time on the top of her head, but it only made her screams louder.
He struck her twice more. The stick broke, and Sally slumped to the floor. The screaming stopped.
Callender ran down the stairs and into the street. In an alley, in the rain, he vomited again and again. At first he thought it would kill him, but when he was done his head began to clear. The storm was lifting, and the gleams of lightning seemed to come from miles away.
He was almost home when he realized that he was holding only half a stick. He gazed at the jagged stump in disbelief. He tried to convince himself that he had dropped the other half somewhere in the street, but he felt a sick certainty that it was lying beside Sally Wood. Could it be used to identify him? Callender had heard of the detective inspectors newly appointed to Scotland Yard, and of the tricks they could play in catching criminals of every kind. He could not take the chance of leaving anything behind.
The journey back was agonizing. He wanted nothing less than to visit Sally Wood again, yet speed seemed imperative since he knew her corpse would be discovered eventually. He had to be there and gone again before it was. He could not bear to think of what would happen if he were caught with her corpse, yet he could not think of anything else. He wanted a drink. He was half tempted to hurry home for one, yet all the while his feet were carrying him back to The Glass Slipper. His thoughts were so agitated that he found himself there before he was quite prepared.
Several loungers stood outside, and the faint sound of music came from within. It was as if nothing had happened. Could it be that they didn’t know?
The thought froze Callender for an instant, and then he backed into the shadows of an alley. For the first time in his life he was afraid to be seen. Yet it was madness to remain here, a few feet from his crime but doing nothing to conceal it. He pulled down his hat and turned up his collar as if seeking protection from the rain, then stepped casually out into the street and walked briskly round the corner.
He looked up at Sally’s solitary window, where a light still burned. There was no hue and cry, no sign of anything but sleep. He pushed the street door open cautiously, thanking whatever power might protect him that he had neglected to close anything behind him in his hurry to be gone. He crept up the stairs, his ear cocked for the slightest sound. The house was as still, he thought wryly, as a tomb.
And so it remained until he reached Sally’s door. The sound he heard behind it gave him a chill the rain could not. He knew it must be his imagination, some symptom of a guilty conscience, but he would have sworn he recognized the melody of the song Sally had performed at The Glass Slipper not more than an hour ago. Someone seemed to be humming it.
Could this be a ghost? Another trick of that damned spiritualist? He didn’t believe it. He couldn’t. It had to be a trick of his own mind. A small thing, really, and he needed the rest of that stick.
He opened the door.
What he saw was worse than what he feared. It was Sally, her face awash with blood and her pretty hair matted down with it. She was crawling on her hands and knees around the room, singing her song as best she could through lips that dribbled blood. She had not died at all, but clearly she should have.
Sally knocked over a table, but still she sang her song. Callender realized that he had damaged her beyond repair. She had no idea that he was in the room.
His mouth twitched uncontrollably as he raised his boot and brought it down with all his weight on the back of Sally’s neck. He heard the spine snap.
He needed the last of the gin he took from her.
He picked up the second half of his walking stick and hurried home to his bed, where he spent the next three days attempting to convince himself that he had never left it.
IX. The Heiress
Three men dressed in blue gathered in front of a tall brick house near the gates of All Souls Cemetery. Their high hats held sturdy metal frames, and their knee-length coats had buttons made of brass. In each man’s belt was a wooden staff; one of them used his to knock on the door.
They waited in the darkness and the damp. One of them shivered in the cold. “There’s no one here,” he said. “We should have come by day.”
“And so we have, some of us, but we had no answer then, anymore than we have now.”
“We could break down the door.”
“We’re only seeking information from a gentleman. The people have little enough use for Scotland Yard without us making a name for ourselves as housebreakers.”
“Then knock again.”
“I’ll give the orders here,” said the man with the staff, but he used it again anyway.
A light appeared in one of the windows.
“We’ve roused someone.”
“Be still, will you?”
The door opened slowly and silently; a tall man with a black mustache appeared on the threshold, a black candle in his hand. Its flickering light gleamed unpleasantly on a long scar than ran down the left side of his face.
“Good evening, sir. I hope we have not disturbed you.”
“I have been sleeping, constable. What brings you here?”
“A woman, sir. Miss Felicia Lamb.”
“I do not see her with you.”
“No sir. She’s not to be seen anywhere, and that’s what concerns us. Are you Mr Newcastle, sir?”
“I am.”
“Well, sir, we’ve been informed that Miss Lamb was a frequent visitor here, and since she’s vanished, we take it upon ourselves to make inquiries. We’d be most appreciative of any help.”
“I see. Tell me, constable, how long has she been missing?”
“Just three days. It’s Sunday, and she was last seen on Thursday night, at a dinner party.”
“It has been longer than that since I have seen Miss Lamb, constable. Have you spoken to the people who dined with her?”
“Two of them sir. Her aunt, who mentioned you to us, and a friend of the family, a Mr Nigel Stone. The third would be her betrothed, a Mr Callender. We have visited him several times but found nobody home.”
“Perhaps they have run away together.”
“Yes. We thought of that. But why should they elope when they were already pledged?”
“From what I have seen of Mr Callender, he is a most headstrong young man.”
“So we have been told. You know him, sir?”
“We have met twice. And even on such short acquaintance, I could not form a high opinion of his character.”
“As you say, sir. We’ve had reports that he’d been drinking heavily.”
“Just so. Is there more that I can do for you, constable? Would you care to search for Miss Lamb within?”
Sebastian Newcastle stepped aside and gestured into the black recesses of his home.
The three men from Scotland Yard looked into the darkness and then at each other.
“Well, sir,” said their leader. “Since you’ve been good enough to offer, it follows that we needn’t bother you tonight. Clearly you have nothing to hide.”
“Then may I bid you goodnight, gentlemen? The hour is late.”
“Just so, sir. Thanks for your trouble, and good night to you.”
Sebastian shut the door and stood for a few moments with nothing to keep him company but the small flame of his candle. When he knew that the men had gone, he turned into the dark depths of the house and called for Felicia, but he knew before he spoke that there would be no answer. She could not be constrained at night; she wandered, ever weaker, through the valley of stones where the dead slept.
Sebastian went out into the night. He dissolved into an iridescent fog before the gates and drifted into All Souls, part of the thick mist that made the land look like a forgotten sea whose turbulence hid all but the wreckage of tortured trees and abandoned monuments. The landscape was more like a limbo for unhappy spirits than a part of the green earth.
He found Felicia sitting on a monument, her pale arms wrapped around the marble figure of an angel, her pale eyes staring off into the fog.
“Three men came to look for you,” he said.
“And did three men leave?”
“Since they came from Scotland Yard, it seemed unwise to detain any of them.”
“Police,” Felicia said. “Have I destroyed your sanctuary here, Sebastian?”
“Perhaps, but that matters little when I see you as you are.”
“I am as I wished to be.”
“And was it worth it, then, to see life and death as two sides of the same coin, and to hold that coin in your own hand?”
“I have learned much,” Felicia said.
“You have learned more than you bargained for. The price of that coin is blood.”
Felicia hugged herself and looked down at the ground. “I cannot, Sebastian,” she said.
“And yet you must,” he said, “and most assuredly you will. The lives of others must become your life, and their blood your own. It is your fate, and none may resist it.”
“I shall. I swear it. You know what I am now, better than any other could, but whatever I have become, I am still innocent of blood. I shall not stain my soul with it.”
Sebastian turned away from her. She rose and took his arm. “I meant no reproach to you,” she said.
“Then I must reproach myself. As you have said, I know what will become of you. You will grow weaker, and the thirst will grow stronger, until at length you will be transformed into the thirst. You saw how long I could resist you, for all my wish to do so.”
“You did what I desired you to do,” Felicia said.
“I would have done it anyway!”
Sebastian took her beautiful pale face into his cold hands. “You came to me as my bride,” he said, “and I have been alone too long. Now I must see to it that you survive.”
“Is there no other way?”
“If you can resist the thirst, then it will doom you. Your body will become too frail to move, but still it will contain your soul. Your spirit will never be free to seek the worlds beyond our own. It will be trapped in a lifeless husk, and you will be truly damned.”
She gazed deeply into his dark eyes, then stiffened in his arms at the sound of a human voice nearby.
A lantern gleamed dully through the yellow fog.
“Three men,” she said, long before she could see them.
“The constables,” Sebastian said.
“Then let us greet them and be done with this.” She laughed loudly and bitterly.
Three dark figures emerged from the mist, clustering around their light as if they feared to lose it.
“Mr Newcastle,” one of them said.
Sebastian bowed slightly but made no reply.
“And Miss Felicia Lamb?”
“And what is that to you?” Felicia snapped.
“Your aunt said you were lost, Miss.”
“And now I am found.”
“Just so, Miss. But look where we’ve found you. In a graveyard, at night, and with nothing to cover you but a nightgown.”
“This is my mother’s wedding dress.”
“Oh, I see. A wedding dress, is it? A runaway heiress and a foreign gentleman. You weren’t quite honest with us, were you, Mr Newcastle?”
“Sometimes a gentleman must keep his tongue, constable,” Felicia said. “Though you seem to know nothing of that.”
“No, Miss, I’m no gentleman, right enough. Just a rough fellow trying to do his job. Still, I offer our protection if you ask for it. This is no fit place for a young lady, and no fit company if I’m any judge.”
“You may never live to be a judge,” Sebastian said. He cast his eye on the lantern in the constable’s hand. At once its faint flame turned a blazing red; the metal was too hot to hold. The man screamed in anguish as he dropped the light; suddenly there was only blackness and the smell of burning flesh.
“There is danger in the dark,” Sebastian said as he moved forward. He felt Felicia’s grip on his shoulder and saw her pale eyes imploring him to stop. Together they watched the three men scramble away through the tombstones and the trees. At last there was silence.
“There will be danger from them,” Sebastian finally said. “We might have feasted, and now we must flee. Was it wise for you to stop me?”
“I stopped you because I wanted nothing more than to let you go. To join you, in fact. The one on the right, the young one. I wanted him.”
“He was yours, Felicia. He can be yours in a moment.”
“No, Sebastian. It must not be. I cannot do what you have done. I never thought of it. I only dreamed of death, and peace, and freedom. I wanted knowledge, not the power to destroy.”
“There is more to know,” Sebastian said, “and time enough to know it, but only if you will take life.”
She pulled back from him, and leaned against a marble slab engraved with the name of one long dead. She had never seemed more beautiful to him, and never more beloved, than when she renounced all that he could offer her.
“You have thrown away the mortal life that you were born to live,” he said. “If you throw away this second chance, there will be nothing left for you but an eternity of emptiness.”
“Would that be so different from what you endure?”
“At least I still exist. I walk the earth. What could be more precious?”
“Then this is all your magic offers you? The chance to walk the earth like other men?”
“Other men die,” Sebastian said.
Felicia reached out to him, took one step forward, and then sank to her knees. “Help me,” she murmured.
He looked down at her compassionately. “You must not kneel to me,” he said, “or any man.”
“I did not do it willingly,” she said. “I cannot stand.”
“You must have blood, and you must have it now.”
“No,” she said. “Too late. No blood. No life.”
She sank into the damp grass. Sebastian hovered over her; he tried to raise her to her feet. He kissed her; he shouted at her.
Nothing mattered. She could not be awakened.
Sebastian swept her up in his arms and moved toward his house, but he realized at once that men would be waiting for him there. He turned back toward the stones, toward the tombs he had guarded for half a century, but there was no consolation in them. He searched her face for some faint flicker of life and saw nothing but cold perfection. Yet he knew that her soul was trapped within her corpse, and would remain there until time stopped.
He put her to rest in a tomb and raged through the night. Dogs howled, marble shattered like glass, and three men who trembled in the night fog came to the decision that their investigations might be best conducted in the light of day.
X. The Wine Cellar
Reginald Callender awoke to the sound of a distant and insistent banging. It came from far enough away so that it drifted slowly into his consciousness, becoming part of his dreams before it ended them. He was striking something again and again with his cane.
The Mammoth Book of Vampires: New edition (Mammoth Books) Page 72