by Multiple
There were many who didn’t believe vampires carried any humanity after they’d been turned. Yet he and his three brothers believed. They lived their entire existence bound by that comforting fact.
They were born from humans.
Four brothers. Lords of Blacknall. This century. Trinity chuckled, turning his sharp gaze to the west. Holding the title of Duke of Blacknall had irritated his eldest brother Church for the last fifty years. Church would rather be a scientist like Baptiste or even a rector like their youngest brother, Christian.
Trinity hardly believed that. Church could no more be a clergy than he could stop being the eldest. One of them had to pretend, in this decade, to be an English lord, for their family’s best placement. English dukes and their families, seen as eccentric, were not questioned as much as common men. Therefore, they could employ more privacy. Trinity carried the courtesy title Marquis Montrose, while Baptiste was Earl of Sterling, and Christian, Viscount Ash.
Trinity stretched his tall body to stand balanced on the stone angel’s wings as though he were an evil apparition come to devour the pure angel. A small, unexpected gust of wind blew the edges of his coat outward as he felt Church beckoning him. It was unusual, the connection he and his three brothers had. They’d not turned each other into vampires, but they were all born from the same evil Sire. Perhaps that was why he could forever feel his brothers’ call.
They knew other vampires turned by one Sire, yet none of them connected the way he and his brothers did. But there was nothing common about the Blacknall men, as either humans or vampires, and there never had been.
Minutes later, Trinity slid with unearthly quiet into the rosewood study on the second floor of Blacknall mansion. Because it was night, both Baptiste and Christian were there, having left their normal vocations for the daylight hours. None of them appreciated daylight; however, after a century of walking the earth as vampires, they’d discovered arcane ways to move about in sunlight.
“I still hear you, Trinity,” Baptiste called, without turning his head of light blond hair as he sat on a settee facing the fireplace, which was burning with a glowing fire.
“I do too,” Christian announced. He didn’t turn his even blonder head, so that Trinity looked at the back of both their heads after gliding so close behind them as they sat on the settee. He didn’t believe they knew that.
“Sorry,” Christian added, ever the soulful brother.
“Don’t be,” Church said. “He has to keep challenging his skill level, as we all do.”
Church was a tall figure beside the fireplace as he gazed at the flames. He did not turn his head either, as he added, “Be a useful skill if one of us could master it.”
“It would,” Trinity admitted loudly, startling both Christian and Baptiste, who jerked their dark blue-eyed gazes around toward him.
Trinity suspected he’d startled Church a bit too, but Church held his reaction well, only turning his head slowly after long moments. The flames from the fire slashed red glints through Church’s snow-white hair, while his black eyebrows arched with an elder brother’s look of congratulations. Church’s icy-colored hair was part of the toll it cost him to gain liberation from their damnable stepfather, who was also their depraved Sire.
“That was good.” Baptiste’s gaze captured Trinity’s, and his unnaturally handsome face, framed by wavy blond hair that clipped his square jaw, showed approval.
They were all like that … beautiful vampires. Church’s face appeared the most natural because he had some maturity to his features, except for his blond hair gone white, which they endlessly needed to explain away as the tragedy that occurred when he’d seen their parents die. When told, it was a grievous tale about a harrowing carriage accident that only Church survived.
All a lie.
They were all master liars. Trinity wondered if they even knew the truth anymore. But Baptiste tried to hide his youthful Adonis looks with a moustache. Christian tried with a goatee. But Trinity never tried to hide his appearance with anything but a glaring sneer.
“There’s been another woman killed in the Blood Cull’s territory,” Church reported with a grim slant to his features. He turned to face them before pinning them with a grave stare.
“Eleven in as many weeks.” Trinity stilled his fingers on the edges of his long coat, his mood shifted … darkened. He’d been set to remove his coat, but he lifted his fingers away. “Cull.” The distaste was evident in his snarl and the thickening of his tensed muscles. None of them appreciated Cull’s ways.
However, in their world, there weren’t many vampires that lived by rules. They had been able to enforce a rule not to kill humans for quite a few years and another rule, not to turn humans, for half that time. The Blacknalls lived by five unbreakable rules.
Because they chose to.
Because they came from humans.
And because they had to live among them.
These rules defined their existence. They did not kill humans and they did not turn humans into vampires. They did not use human slaves for feeders, did not let humans know they were vampires, or take any blood not freely given.
“My Bow Street Runner source states the woman was ripped apart like the others and left as though half fed upon by animals.” Church glared at them all with the inner disgust of blood wasted. Christian and Baptiste rose and all four men growled their disgust. “Her dress suggested she was a young woman of some means this time. Unlikely one of Cull’s, but considering the area …”
“If she’d been one of Cull’s, it would be because she was forced into prostitution against her will.” Christian’s mouth pursed with anger as his gaze shifted between them.
“That is an issue for another time.” Church grasped Christian’s shoulder for an empathetic squeeze he’d used numerous times on all them. There was a time, Trinity thought, when they never touched. He knew Church continually worked to overcome the abuse of their youth.
Church continued, “We must discover who or what is killing women on London’s eastside before someone or the constables run across a vampire as the culprit.” Church’s fierce gaze glinted; they all knew what that meant.
“And because it is wrong for any vampire to rip apart and murder innocent people,” Christian added, with his stubbornness born of devout faith. His sermons could bring people to tears or propel them into shouting God’s name. Ever the scientist, Baptiste said it was some quality in Christian’s voice or vocal cords that entranced people. Trinity thought that it was his littlest brother’s heart.
They were all parts of the whole. Church was the soul, Baptiste was the logic, and Christian was the heart. Trinity thought he, on the other hand, was the dark side of every man.
“I will go and convince Cull to tell us what he knows,” Trinity muttered foully as he turned to leave.
***
Cull had been nothing but a squalid wharf rat before he’d been turned into a vampire. There was still much of it inside him a century later. He tried to appear tough, but with his slender and wiry build, along with thinning black hair slicked back into a tight ponytail, he never pulled it off. Normally he wore sleeveless leather vests in an attempt to show off his pale, muscular arms. What Cull lacked in girth he made up for in continuously conniving talk. There was always a new deal to make money, and Cull was convincing enough to have gathered a fairly large brood of vampires around him. Of course, there were more vampires made in the lower eastside slums of London than any other place in all of England.
Cull’s main moneymaker was whores. Christian proclaimed there was dispute about whether the women were willing victims or not. The brothers Blacknall had used enough force and disrupted enough of Cull’s moneymaking schemes to convince Cull not to kill humans. They’d also persuaded Cull and his brood not to turn humans … for the most part.
Trinity found Cull entertained in his favorite pastime: whore fights. Trinity stopped on the eaves of a decaying rooftop, three stories up, looking down into the dank
, back alley. Except for a few excited chortles coming from the spectators, it would be too dark for any human eye to see what was going on from his vantage point. He crouched with his chunky, long blond hair settling over his shoulders. It was easy with his eyesight to see everything. The women were not vampires, just soft and frail bodies forced to fight each other, or perhaps they wanted to. He knew Cull would promise the winner higher status in his slut kingdom. The rules to winning the catfight were simple: one opponent had to be stripped bare and pinned to the ground before the other opponent won.
Trinity watched the women’s fat breasts bobbing with their ruddy slits contorting at unusual angles as the long-haired whores grappled with each other, rolling on the ground. Most prostitutes were chubby and round. These two were no exception, with fleshy buttocks that were pale and undulating in such a way he felt thick interest stirring his shaft; he instantly snarled his dissent.
He had always preferred voluptuous as opposed to thin. He’d stroked his shaft to imaginings of it every day until he ejaculated the need. Sex and blood-hunger were too closely intertwined. It was the one area in which the Blacknall brothers disagreed. Actually, it was the one area their righteous vampire lust had no answer for, therefore, they all dubiously ignored it.
Trinity turned his daunting gaze from the lush interests to Cull and the few who attended the catfight. “Business must be slacking,” he muttered. There were but three gents he saw as patrons betting on the fight. That left only two of Cull’s brood. That was all he concerned himself with because the patrons were not likely vampires.
As he climbed down the side of the crumbling brick tenant building into the alley below, he didn’t make his presence known until he stood between the two vampires from Cull’s brood. The advantage to Cull’s brood was they were likely so corrupt on opium, the stench of whores, and the rot from the lower eastside they’d lost all ability or inclination to scent another vampire’s approach.
Both, one tall, one short, were gazing intently at the wrestling women, so neither man saw him as he reached outward. He grabbed them by the back of their collars, and then, faster than humanly possible, he lifted one upward and he tugged them together, until their foreheads butted against each other in front of him. The force was immense as the crack sounded in the alleyway like the strike of an anvil.
It was hard to kill a vampire, but it wasn’t that difficult to knock one, or two for that matter, out cold. Trinity let the unconscious vampires fall limply to the ground with varying thuds, dependent upon size, as his piercing gaze lifted to Cull. Cull’s human patrons ran away in the darkness.
Cull snarled, “Blacknall blood, always have to ruin good business.”
Trinity snarled much louder, lifting his muscular body and height over Cull. Cull relented quickly, especially with his two cronies unavailable. Trinity had fought Cull twice and won the last time leaving the chicane Cull with his head half-severed. It had taken Cull quite some time for that one to regenerate. Cull knew who the master was, and he submitted with a bowed head. Trinity relaxed his stance … a bit.
“I pinned her, Master Cull!” cried out one of the women behind them.
He and Cull turned their gazes to the tangled mess of fat, pale tits and bare legs.
Cull cussed with his fist rising. “Bloody balls! I would have won it all. That bitch was bet as the loser.”
Trinity shrugged wide shoulders and stretched his neck, turning fully to face the women. He growled with a fierce showing as his fangs distended. The whore on top screeched, shaking and swaying her melon-sized breasts. The one on bottom craned her neck and, seeing him, she screamed along. They both scrambled up and began to run away. It was a vision, even giving rise to the predator controlled deep inside him. His nostrils flared with the thoughts of tender flesh and hot pumping blood inside weak and fleeing prey. Then, with effort, he forced his gaze away, turning back to Cull.
“My best whore’s dead, now this,” Cull hissed.
Suddenly, Trinity’s interest was piqued. With a swift motion, he grabbed Cull, whose betting coins and pounds went clattering onto the damp cobblestones beneath their feet. With barely an afterthought, he lifted Cull off his feet. A fierce growl erupted from his throat as he marched forward and slammed Cull into a brick wall on the side of a tenant building. Cull’s fangs extended, as did his nails, while Trinity held him up against the wall by his throat.
“Tell me about your best whore,” Trinity’s voice spat, unrelenting, into Cull’s twisted features.
Cull snarled and hissed, but then Trinity started to become angry, his eyes slanting yellow and Cull immediately became more subdued.
“Killed,” Cull spat, glaring.
“How?” Trinity bared his fangs. Cull wouldn’t meet his threatening gaze and became more submissive. “How?” His growl was fierce again with his fangs punching longer.
“It’s not my blame,” Cull whined. Trinity shook him with increasing strength. “All right,” Cull gasped. “Torn apart,” he choked. Then he added, “Like the others.”
Trinity asked, enunciating each word with his fangs bared, “Do you have a renegade beast in your territory, Cull?”
“Not a vampire blood,” Cull barked. “No vampire rips its food apart!”
Trinity stretched his neck one way, then the other, as though realigning a kink. He let the mangy vampire drop.
“Shit,” Cull cussed, barely catching his fall in a half crouch.
Trinity strode several paces away with his back to Cull. He lifted his nostrils to the night air. Rotting food and stenches from the sewer filled the air. The east side had such a decaying fragrance.
“I thought the woman just killed was a high society chit.” Trinity didn’t turn to look at Cull who answered his question quickly enough.
“It was my slut. She was just dressed to meet a titled gent. Same as the others … all whores.”
“All yours?” Trinity asked, and he turned to face Cull. He saw Cull was groping around on the damp cobblestones for the scattered coins and pound notes.
Cull looked up at him sideways with a half sneer. “Not all, Blacknall, some’s the Mongrel’s, some’s independent.”
Trinity nodded. He lowered to a crouch with his forearms balanced on his bent knees as he let his eyes glow yellow with predatory tints.
“Where was the last one murdered?”
“Murdered?” Cull hissed. “That’s human kink.”
“You said it wasn’t a blood,” Trinity hissed back.
Cull didn’t dissent further, he just gave Trinity the location and Trinity left Cull alive. Nevertheless, his last words and final threat to him were, “Your house better be in order, Cull. There are worse punishments for a blood than death.” In times past, Trinity had told Cull about several abhorrent ones the Blacknall brothers were not above inflicting.
Trinity found the spot within minutes. The carnage had taken place in a small park between King Street and Row Street. The corpse was gone, of course, but the area on the grass was still bloody enough to attract two mongrel dogs which he scattered with his presence as he strode into the park. His long hair was damp and his gaze was sharp as he scented the air. It took him moments to analyze the blood scent as he crouched and surveyed the area.
“Cull was right,” he muttered. “No vampire would let all this blood fall to waste.” He touched his finger to a smear of the old blood. He held it to his nose to sniff and lifted it to his tongue to taste.
The victim was young and opium sour. His hand lowered as he tilted his head to the side, slowly evaluating the blood like a connoisseur. Suddenly, his gaze jerked to the left and it latched onto a footprint in the soft dirt. “She was chased,” he growled. Hunted.
He rose, following the trail more by the taste of her blood than by sight. The footprints came from the far side of the park, and halfway across he found the scent of the foul beast that hunted her. It was a very weak scent, just a boot print and not blood. A barely perceptible tendril and it came from t
he west. Uptown.
“Interesting,” he uttered, rising again to follow the wavering scent west.
With difficulty — losing the scent, and then after barely finding it again — he followed it to a crumbling mansion in a section of London that housed the blue-blood nobles of old money and long lineage. He couldn’t say if the one carrying the odd, wavering scent from the possible animalistic murderer had entered the mansion or just stalked its circumference.
Then it came to him, on tendrils of wind suddenly moving the fog to swirl apart, an instant rise of awareness. There was a fear-laden hunt occurring somewhere. At the same moment, his attention rose toward an awareness of predator stalking prey. He could feel all three of his brothers’ attentions turning sharply to the west … following his own. He sensed the hunt in the wind and his brothers sensed it through him. Their connection was not of words, but more intentions, and he tried but failed to hold them back from following him as he tracked the newest evidence he perceived in the west.
The lethal monster was hunting again.
So soon …
Chapter Two
“You cannot hide from him forever, Beth,” Lord Adam Winslow announced as he lounged informally on the window seat in his sister’s small sitting room.
Said sister muttered at him, as she tried to tie her wavy, long black hair on top of her head with a velvet ribbon the exact emerald coloring of the ball gown she wore. “He doesn’t stalk you,” she replied with an accusatory tone.
Adam sighed. She was right; their stepbrother, Lord Fanton Rothschild, had always been very strange, however about three years ago he’d turned strangeness into a new life style. Fanton didn’t even seem to look the same. It was as though he’d gotten better looking with perpetually glossy hair and shiny eyes. Before, he’d been pimpled and fallow-looking. Back then he’d sweated profusely and had something he’d called a moustache on his upper lip, and that Adam called a few sorry hairs.
“Even his moustache is thick and glistens now,” Adam muttered under his breath. Fanton had been secretive and slimy, now he was secretive and feral. Adam didn’t know how his stepbrother had gone from a sappy pervert to a handsome deviant. But he had. One thing stayed the same though, unfortunately. That was Fanton’s unhealthy interest in his stepsister, Lady Elizabeth Winslow. Beth.