by VL Redmaine
I took it from her and, despite the dire situation, experienced a slight thrill at the thought that it had just recently been in contact with her skin, though it was oddly cold.
“When they come at you, aim for their head - that is the only way to hinder them effectively. Once outside, make for the main road as fast as you can. Run as if your life depended on it.”
I knew, as she regarded me with those dark mysterious eyes, that she was being quite literal. I also suspected that she was humouring me. I didn’t think she believed I would survive the next minutes.
“Ready,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady as my heart thundered in my chest.
She gave a slight smile, nodded and then ran into the main corridor. I hefted the knife and followed.
They were upon us in an instant. I saw something man-shaped grab Valentina’s arm, but was then bowled over, gasping as the wind was knocked from me. I yelled as I landed on my damaged arm but, in the same movement, brought my other hand round and, by sheer good fortune, lodged the knife into the side of my attacker’s skull.
I pushed the body away from me, yanked the knife out of its head and hauled myself upright. Panic erupted in my gut as I saw Valentina on the floor pinned down by two attackers. One sat astride her while the other held her arms down, his head at her neck. With a primal yell, I launched myself at the figure on Valentina’s stomach. As I remember this, so many years later, I can feel again the bestial fury that was awoken within me that night. I stabbed and stabbed again, slashing back at another attacker as it grabbed my arm.
I pulled the thing at Valentina’s neck away from her and my knife swung through the air again. My hand shook as it penetrated the eye socket and I recoiled from the spurt of warm blood that spattered my face.
“Valentina!” I called. Her neck was violated by two puncture marks and her white face remained inanimate.
A voice broke the sudden silence. “A pity, and so entirely unnecessary. She sought to protect you and yet, as you see, she has failed, despite paying the ultimate price.”
I turned to see Peregrine standing with his back to the front doors of the hospital, an ugly weal spanning his face. Beside him stood a half dozen nightmarish figures in human shape but with twisted features and protruding fangs. Their dark eyes regarded me with hungry anticipation, like hounds around a cornered fox waiting for the order to kill.
“What is this place?” I managed.
Peregrine gestured around at the dark hospital corridors. “It is a place of nightmares, Mr Makepeace. But, for you, the suffering will soon be over.”
He pointed at me and the creatures beside him advanced. I was transfixed by their murderous eyes and glistening teeth as they chattered in their excitement.
Be ready. Bring the woman.
I thought, at first, that it was a voice whispering in my ear, but there was no-one there.
I got to my feet, pulled Valentina’s knife from her hand and stood at bay, though, facing such a horror, I felt like a boy with bow and arrow challenging a grizzly bear.
And then, quite suddenly, the air turned to flame.
Reflexively, I shied from the sudden fireball that filled the corridor, engulfing the monsters that advanced on me, now left reeling away, screaming in their agony. Then I regained control of my faculties and stooped to gather up Valentina. As I did so, she stirred and I cried for joy in the midst of this inferno. “I can manage,” she whispered and I helped her to her feet.
“Thank God,” I said, “I thought you were dead!”
She smiled as she swayed. “Your god has little to do with it. But let us go.”
“How? We will be consumed ourselves.”
“He is here,” she said, before swooning.
I turned to look into the bright orange flames that swirled mere feet away. As I did so, the white hot centre seemed to take shape and I watched in utter astonishment as it resolved itself into the form of a man walking towards me through the heart of the fire. The figure emerged and the flame collapsed, leaving nothing more than a faint corona that framed his smouldering shape.
“Grimes!” I cried in utter disbelief.
He swayed a little before giving a brief nod. “Hurry,” he croaked.
THE OTHERS
I HELPED GRIMES back into his bed. Immediately, his eyes closed and he lay there, as still as if he were dead, his pale skin given a false glow in the candle light.
“You must watch over him in the coming days,” Valentina said as she sat in the chair I’d used mere hours ago to write the message I never delivered. “He had already been injured and the power he expended in that fire will have brought him to the brink. He saved us, and we must protect him from those who might seek to take this opportunity to strike.
I sighed as exhaustion threatened to overcome me. “I feel as though I have been thrust through a door into another world - a world I know nothing of. Those creatures at the asylum and the one that attacked Grimes; are they … vampires? I can hardly believe I am even asking, but that is the only sense I can make of this night’s events.”
“It is not my place to educate you,” Valentina said as she rubbed her neck. “You must ask Grimes, when he has recovered.”
I went to protest, but she held up her hand. “But your conduct tonight has earned you some explanation at least. Please sit.”
I sat on the edge of the bed feeling almost overwhelmed by exhaustion and yet desperate to learn more.
“You are correct, up to a point. While the creatures you saw tonight are not the same as those related in Mr Bram Stoker’s story, he was certainly drawing on much older legends that were a distortion of the truth.”
She paused for a moment as if collecting her thoughts. “Mankind is not the only sentient species on this world, Mr Makepeace. Others were here long before humans first walked the plains of Africa and more have arrived since. This is not the only world - though the theories and explanations are as uncertain as they are beyond me. It is enough to say that the others have always been here.”
“For many centuries, they retreated as humanity spread like an infection across the face of the globe. But then there was nowhere left for them to go and they tired of running. There was much conflict, much death on either side for, though many of the other races are superior to mankind in most respects, they were inferior in one critical way - reproduction. Put a small band of humans on a fertile plain and, within a century, that country will belong to them. The others, though they produce offspring in many different ways, share one thing in common - they only do so rarely.”
“And so, just over thirty years ago after the bloodbath of the Crimean War, the two sides - humans and the others - came together to agree a truce. As part of the terms of that armistice, the role of Enforcer was created to police the peace by dealing with rogue elements. Enforcers would come from each of the parties to the agreement. Grimes is one such. I am another.”
“You?” I gasped. I could feel bile rising in my stomach as panic threatened to overwhelm me.
I thought I could detect regret in her expression as she nodded gravely. “Yes, Mr Makepeace, I am one of the shadow folk - one of those some would call vampire.”
She took one slender white finger and lifted her upper lip. I saw no fang there, but one of them, the canine, was clearly more pointed.
“That proves nothing,” I spluttered. “I see nothing like the teeth of those who attacked us tonight.”
“Mine have been blunted. It is essential for my role that I am able to walk among humans and my teeth would have given me away.”
I examined her with my eyes for some time, not wanting to believe that it could be so.
“Do not worry, Mr Makepeace. Much of what is reported by Stoker is nothing more than exaggeration and myth. We are much more alike than we are different. You have your criminals and we have ours, but most of us wish nothing more than to live in peace and security.”
“And drinking blood?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“I do not know what to say,” I stammered, looking across at Grimes. “Is he a vampire?”
She shook her head and I bit back the desire I felt for her as I was overwhelmed with guilt and confusion. I had not led a good life, by most measures, up until that point. I’d wasted my talent by lavishing more attention on the bottom of a bottle than on cultivating what I had. The position I had been born into had afforded me more opportunities than I deserved and yet, in the end, I had squandered every one. But, for all that, mine was a simple enough story. I felt as though, in the space of a few hours, I had learned that it was all simply a veneer and those things that had seemed so important to me were like the petty intrigues of children who play while their parents plot revolution.
I snapped out of my reverie when I sensed her watching me. We locked eyes and I saw sadness there, as well as pity. “Grimes must tell you his own story, but no, he is not one of my people. And now I must go, there is a body swinging in a shed that must be reported to the police.”
“But will they not suspect you?” I said as she stood up and moved towards the door.
She turned and smiled. “I did not say I would be making the report, Mr Makepeace, merely that I will see it done. A man has died tonight - a good man with a story of his own - and he deserves to be treated with at least the appearance of respect. The Thames has quite enough bodies as it is.”
“Many of them put there by your kind,” I said bitterly.
“Indeed. And yours. Be careful when attempting to occupy the moral high ground, it may turn out to be rather less solid than it appears.”
And with that she left.
I pulled Grimes’ chair across to the side of his bed and slumped into it, too exhausted to think of the wider implications of what I’d learned tonight. All I could focus on was the protection of the man I sat beside and the dull ache in my bandaged arm.
The untidy white stubble and grizzly features that, when awake, gave Grimes such a singular vitality here, in sleep, made him look more like a waxwork exhibit from a freak show. Some sort of monster reconstituted from the mismatched parts of other men. His head, it seemed to me, was too large for his body and, whilst his legs were short and powerful, his arms were longer and almost ape-like. For a moment, my mind turned to the work of Mary Shelley but Grimes was no reanimated corpse, he was a living man and he needed my care. Who knew how many lives depended on his surviving to resume his duties?
“Makepeace?”
My face felt as though it was stuck to the rough blanket of Grimes’ bed. And then adrenaline surged through my heart as I realised I’d fallen asleep. I sat up, shrinking from the light streaming in through the bedroom window.
“Be a good fellow and fetch me a bedpan would you?” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
I heaved myself up, rubbed the life back into my cheek and then found the pan beneath the bed, mercifully empty. Not for long, I thought, and I suspected I would have the ignoble duty of dealing with it.
I turned away as he slowly and painfully raised himself up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed and began relieving himself. I sneezed on the acrid aroma that filled the room, struggling to hold back the vomit rising in my stomach.
“Well, my new friend,” he said as I leaned against the mantelpiece and attempted to compose myself, “it seems we have rather a mess to clear up.”
FROM THE AUTHOR
THANK YOU FOR reading this, the first of the journals of John Makepeace. You’ve witnessed the meeting of Makepeace and Grimes and you’ve also met the vampress Valentina. These journals give a brief taste of the sinister world that lay beneath the civilised veneer of Victorian London society.
There are many more journals to come, but I would like to know whether you’d be interested to read them. They will be published as full length novels and will pick up where this story ends as Makepeace learns more of the underworld he’s now inextricably part of.
I’d love to hear what you think - would you be interested to read more of Makepeace and Grimes and the world they inhabit?
Pop here and let me know: https://goo.gl/forms/G0fRo9cLt0jALIrn1
Please use that link for any feedback also.
Thank you.
VL Redmaine