by Mark Latham
‘Do you require an operator to assist you, Lieutenant?’ Pickering asked.
‘No, sir, thank you. We have been fully instructed in the use of the machine.’
‘Then I shall leave it at your disposal.’
Pickering left John and Smythe to their own devices. Smythe at once took a small copybook from his breast pocket, and began to create a coded message at John’s dictation.
To: Lord Hardwick, M.
HAVE MISSED THE TRAIN STOP SETTING SAIL NORTH STOP JOURNEY SHALL CONTINUE BY DAWN STOP ADVISE BY RETURN SHOULD CIRCUMSTANCES DICTATE
Lillian’s eyes opened and she jumped awake. She blinked several times, rapidly gathering her wits. The windowless kitchen was dark—the paraffin lamp had gone out, and the warmth from the stove was barely enough to keep the shivers from her bones. Everything was washed with grey.
As her eyes slowly adjusted, she peered towards the table on which Arthur lay. A bundled black shape told her that he still slept. His shallow breathing was the only sound she could hear; she thought that a good sign.
Lillian stood, placing her hand upon the nearby sideboard to steady herself. She felt around for the book of matches she’d left there. She’d forgotten to check the oil in the lamp, but she knew there was a candle nearby that would suffice for now. As she felt for a match in the darkness, she stepped towards the shelf that housed the lamp, but her toe bumped something hard and uneven on the floor, almost tripping her. She cursed under her breath, steadied herself, and then froze. There had been nothing on the floor in front of her earlier, she was sure. The outline of something square and dark lay before her now. Finally finding the matches, she struck one.
In the bright fizz of the match-light, the shadows of the room retreated in a sinister dance. On the floor before her was a planked trapdoor, open, the kitchen rug folded back with it. In her groggy, weakened state there was almost too much to take in all at once: the black space beyond the trapdoor; the suggestion of stairs leading down into a cellar; the hood over Arthur’s head and the binding at his wrists and ankles. And then the creak of floorboards behind her.
Her training gave instinctual life to her leaden limbs. She turned to face whatever threat came at her in the gloom, but she was weakened by her ordeal. She saw a scrawny face—a human face, a man—loom momentarily towards her, and etched upon that face was a look of fear or, more closely, desperation. A hand was raised high, and crashed down towards Lillian’s head. Pricks of light like sparkling cascades of Chinese fireworks filled her vision. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she felt herself go weightless, falling, seemingly for ever, as the lights, along with her senses, blinked out one by one like London streetlamps snuffed before the dawn.
Part 2
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried
The Lady of Shalott.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
COVERING NOTE FROM ‘A FIELD STUDY OF CROOKES’ NECTAR AND ITS EFFECTS ON MAJESTIC AGENTS’, BY DR. F.W. MCGRATH ADDRESSED TO LORD CHERLETEN, 16TH JUNE 1876
Sir, on the subject of etherium—that powerful stimulant of Majestics known among the common folk as ‘Crookes’ Nectar’—I can offer no comfort such as I know you were hoping for. My studies of the Nightwatch, and of lesser Majestics in the field, both licensed and otherwise, have shown quite clearly the dangers of this drug.
Of the thirteen subjects that used etherium on a regular basis, seven have shown signs of pronounced mania, with a clear danger of developing further into forms that will certainly cause harm to themselves or others. The remainder have all exhibited various physical ailments, from brain fever to wasting disease. All have become insomniac, only finding respite after receiving a higher than usual dose of narcotics. They fear sleep, claiming that it is a gateway to the ‘Eternal Night’, a supposed netherrealm from which one day they may not return. Those Majestics within the Nightwatch are no longer capable of independent function, and their promised rehabilitation into society now seems impossible.
I enclose within my report additional statistical analysis conducted by Dr. William James, of Rift anomalies and their correlation with Majestic phenomena. These data illustrate clearly the increased probability of Riftborn incursions into our world while the loci are under the influence of etherium.
The harvesting and distillation of fluid from the pineal gland is a distasteful process in itself; the properties inherent in the Majestic form of this fluid is unstable, its effects upon the Majestic psyche unpredictable, and its attraction to the Riftborn irrepressible. The mooted development of ‘mundane etherium’ will only serve to compound the underlying dangers of etherium dependency. After discussing these matters extensively with Dr. James, I have reached a decision. It will be my firmest recommendation that the use of etherium—in any form—by agents of Apollo Lycea be prohibited immediately.
FOURTEEN
Lillian drifted upon a warm ocean current, her eyes closed; she was suspended, weightless. Water lapped her naked body. It felt like the womb, like a memory from before her birth.
All at once she knew that it was the womb. She was an infant, dreaming of a life yet to be lived. She breathed not air, but her mother’s life-giving fluid. She almost panicked, but knew instinctively that it was the natural way of things; that she could not drown. She opened her eyes but saw nothing. Darkness, and the warm liquid, within and without…
* * *
Lillian awoke, and the feeling of calm that had so permeated her being moments before drained from her in an instant. She saw nothing, but she was drowning.
Warm fluid filled her lungs. There was something in her throat, some foreign object pumping liquid into her. There was a bag or sack over her head. Her hands were tied behind her, her feet tied fast also, and she tried to struggle, scream—do something, anything—but found she was helpless.
The liquid filled her gullet, her belly, her lungs, warm and salty. Seawater? She gagged and heaved, the taste of her own bile mingling with the brackish fluid. Her nose was pinched closed so that nothing could escape her. Each time she heaved, the fluid rose up into her mouth, only to be forced down again. She could not breathe, only swallow whatever was being pumped into her; whatever was killing her.
Lillian’s throat burned with pain. Every muscle strained against her bonds. She knew she was crying, and it felt like the only thing she could do; the only thing she had left to prove to herself, and to her killers, that she was fighting. And then, in the moment that she felt she was truly mad, that she could take no more without dying of sheer horror, she was dragged violently from the darkness, into the light.
Momentarily, she was blind. White light filled her vision. And then she was falling, feeling for a second as weightless as she had in her dream, until a hard, cold floor rose up to meet her.
The light shrank away into orbs somewhere above her. She now faced a grey expanse, a heavily stained lime-ash floor, onto which she spilled the contents of her stomach and her lungs.
Only then did it occur to her that she was not alone. Her bonds had been cut. She tried to shake the lethargy from her limbs, to bring circulation into hands and bare feet to save her from slipping around on the wet floor. Wet with blood. Bare feet… She was naked. The sudden shame of that sensation, the feel of rapidly cooling liquid on her skin, of air rushing over her, was numbing.
Lillian tried hard not to focus on the pool of wine-red liquid that had poured from her. She whimpered as something was pulled from her, from deep in her throat and out of her mouth, and she saw a slick red tube whip away across the floor, snake-like, leaving undulating trails in the pooling blood that she had regurgitated. Through watery eyes, she struggled to focus upon the scene before her, her mind lagging some distance behind the proof of what she saw, comprehension wilfully evading her. She followed the whipping movement of the tube, and saw where it led. In that moment she forgot all else; the shame of her nakedness, the desperation of her situation, the utter perversity of w
hat had been done to her. How could any of it make sense when confronted by depravity and cruelty of such proportions?
Sitting upright in a chair to which he was bound, was Sir Arthur Furnival. He was unconscious—at least, she clung to the hope that he was not dead. His head drooped lifelessly to his chest. His skin was pale and greying in the cold light. The rubber tube was attached to him, penetrating the bulging, blue vein of his left arm, where he so often injected himself with etherium.
She tried to say his name, but no words would come. Her throat was claggy from what she still could not admit was Arthur’s blood.
Lillian’s own arm was adorned with a similar apparatus, and as her thoughts cleared, and her eyes traced the path of the second hateful tube, a weak, lilting laugh reached her ears. She looked towards the sound, the lights burning her eyes, until she saw a dark figure, seated, which slowly came into focus.
Lord de Montfort was laughing at her. His posture was an idle one, like an opium addict spent too long acting the epicurean, and now barely able to summon the energy to face his daily reality.
Black shapes moved around de Montfort, amorphous at first, then coalescing into the forms of his cohorts. Two black-clad figures—women, as diminutive and subservient as the one that had followed Valayar Shah—helped de Montfort to his feet, and gently removed the tube from his mouth, where, unlike Lillian’s, it had been clamped in place with painful-looking metal clips. One of the women dabbed at de Montfort’s mouth dotingly with a handkerchief.
‘Your face is a picture,’ he said. His voice was tired, breathless, though he tried to disguise his discomfort with a sardonic tone. ‘I could barely guess how you would react to the process; you are the first, after all. But the agony, your sheer terror… exquisite! If you only knew what was to come, you would embrace this moment, savour it, for it is the last time you shall truly feel anything.’
‘Wh… what have you done to him?’ Lillian surprised herself with her own voice. It was raw, phlegmy, but stronger than she had expected.
‘To him?’ De Montfort cocked his head to one side, and then tossed it back as he laughed again, musically, beautifully almost. ‘Oh, my dear girl, you really are priceless. You stand upon the precipice between life and death, salvation and damnation, and yet your first thought is for the Majestic?’
Lillian tried to raise herself from the floor, but her body behaved as though it were not her own. She could barely feel her own limbs, nor anything else save the cold of the room. Electric lights hung high overhead from long cables. The walls were wooden, and old.
She gave up trying to stand, or even to crawl, and instead curled herself up into a ball, rubbing at her blood-slicked arms to aid the circulation.
‘Is he dead?’ she asked, her voice finding strength. Fear and revulsion began to part before her growing anger like the sea before Moses.
De Montfort shrugged, infuriatingly nonchalant. His consorts helped him on with his jacket. ‘Maybe. If not, he soon shall be. We are both beyond caring about this little blood-sack.’
‘Where am I?’ Lillian needed to keep de Montfort talking while her senses returned. She could not fight like this. She did not even know if she had the heart to ever fight again. She was soiled irrevocably. She felt barely human.
‘Irrelevant,’ he said, a look of amusement upon his alabaster features. Lillian began to take in more of the room; the searing lights became a manageable glow, and the shape of a large barn manifested about her, appearing to solidify all at once. Dark forms stood silently around the edge of the cavernous space—the hunters, perhaps the same ones who had pursued her and Arthur across the moors. At that, she felt horribly exposed. She was fumbling upon the dirty floor like a newborn calf.
‘What have you done to me?’
‘Ah, now at last you ask the only question that matters. Now perhaps you are ready to see.’
‘See what?’ Lillian’s eyes flicked to Sir Arthur’s prone form. She thought she saw his chest rise and fall, but weakly. She hoped it was not wishful thinking on her part.
‘Life, in all its savage glory, as it was meant to be seen. As it was meant to be experienced.’ De Montfort nodded to one of the women, who padded across the pool of blood—Arthur’s blood—towards her, bare soles sucking at the wet floor. Lillian saw that the creature was clothed only in a robe, pinned loosely at the breast, but was otherwise naked. Her skin was ghost-white, and her body hairless from bald head to clawed toe. As the vampire drew nearer, Lillian discerned uncountable scars upon the creature’s body, criss-crossing her skin, some horribly deep and puckered, others shallow slits. The creature’s head was malformed, with bony protrusions jutting from the back of her skull, half her nose missing, and another great scar that ran vertically down the centre of her face, so deep that Lillian fancied she could see the skull beneath. Even over the stench of blood, Lillian could smell the woman, a heady, musky scent, with the underlying odour of a hospital; iodine and antiseptic, masking a sweet, gangrenous decay.
The creature stopped a single pace from Lillian, pausing as if expecting an attack. Receiving none, she stooped and draped a cloak around Lillian’s shoulders. Lillian’s eyes were level with the creature’s navel, which was pierced with a long, metal barb. With disgust, Lillian observed similar adornments across the creature’s body, from its forearms to its scarred legs. Blades, hooks, the sharp teeth of predators, carved ivory fetishes, hoops of gold, all pushed through the necrotised flesh, deep and sore-looking.
Lillian allowed the creature to fasten the cloak about her with a pin, and only watched as it withdrew slowly, padding backwards, with blood from Lillian’s matted hair staining its pale waist. The creature ran long nails through the blood lasciviously, sucking it from bony fingers, her large, glittering eyes locked with Lillian. Lillian wanted to stand, to find her strength, to kill the thing with her bare hands. But she surprised herself once again, and began to sob. Her shoulders heaved, and she fell forwards, using all her strength to hold herself up from the bloody floor, which served now as a repugnant reminder of both her greatest failure, and her greatest shame.
‘Do you know how the Knights Iscariot came to be?’ de Montfort asked.
Lillian looked at him, her body trembling, full of hate. He mistook her silence for curiosity, and began to pace around her in a circle, carefully avoiding the spreading blood-pool.
‘The oldest of us still living remembers the Roman Empire; fought for the Romans, some say. The gift of immortality was given to him by creatures older still, who some say lived long before the Christ-child ever trod the earth. They say that Judas Iscariot himself was one of us, but he cast aside his true nature in order to follow Christ. In return, the Messiah stripped him of his weaknesses—his aversion to sunlight, his morbid degeneration—and promoted him to the ranks of the blessed disciples. Judas, having been denied the pleasures of the flesh for all of his long life, sinned and fornicated, creating progeny who were, to his dismay, ugly beyond measure and filled with the bloodlust of which he himself had been freed. He asked Jesus Christ why his offspring were cursed so. Christ told him that he had been spared his ill fate not to further his foul race, but to serve God, and in doing so to seek redemption for the impurities of his kind.
‘From that day forth, Judas Iscariot plotted against Christ, trying—and failing—to find his own cure for the cursed bloodline he had spawned. At last, frustrated, he betrayed Jesus, and saw him crucified. When he visited his former lord on the cross, Judas was overcome with remorse, and yet Christ forgave him. In that moment, Judas knew that Jesus Christ was the perfect being, and that within his veins lay true divinity. And so he gave in to his base urges, and drank of the rivulets of blood that flowed down the True Cross. He was for ever changed.
‘Judas left the Holy Land, and travelled west. For several hundred years he tried to bring salvation to the race of vampires which, he found, subsisted across the world. Legend has it that, possibly due to the blood of Christ within him, he was able to create oth
ers of his kind, made almost in his own image. These creatures were the first born—the Blood Royal, and a handful of them still survive to this day.
‘Judas founded a cabal of vampires from all walks of humanity—warriors, sages, holy men, slaves, farmers… it mattered not. But he elevated all of them to be his equals, and shared with them his knowledge—most of it, at least. He never shared the secret of creating others of the Blood Royal, and every attempt by one of Iscariot’s progeny to sire an heir ended in disaster. These offspring always bore terrible deformities that Judas believed were the work of the devil, and punishment for disobeying the express wish of Christ not to continue his line. Eventually, Judas left—perhaps he grew tired of enduring the centuries in a world that would only ever shun him, surrounded by ugliness and increasing depravity. He left behind scant fragments of knowledge, upon which our kind built a sacred code of laws. The Blood Royal—the first of them—scattered similarly. The most devout, the chosen few who followed the teachings of Judas Iscariot most resolutely, distinguished themselves during the Crusades, where they lent their formidable powers to a human cause. Perhaps they sought absolution for the sin of being born? In any case, the Knights Iscariot were founded, blessed by the Vatican, no less, and thus believing themselves finally to be free of the curse.’
De Montfort paused in his slow, circuitous path when he reached the slouched form of Sir Arthur, stopping by the chair and running a finger down the baronet’s sallow cheek. Lillian felt her blood boil in rage, but said nothing.
‘It was not so,’ de Montfort continued, looking absently at Arthur. ‘The craving for blood—the necessity for it—did not pass. The vast majority of their offspring still bore deformities, and were little more than beasts; walking dead, trapped between life and the grave. The Knights Iscariot, for the longest time, kept to their cloisters, refusing to sully the earth with their kind. But they saw the ongoing struggle between their kind and humanity, and they knew that, should the truth of their nature come to light, they would be hunted to extinction by the very Christians who had elevated them to knighthood. And so they began to take control of all vampire-kind, to establish themselves as rulers of a degenerate race that lived a pitiful existence in the shadows. They came to love these creatures as their children—in essence, many of them were exactly that: children, grandchildren, cousins… spreading across Europe and the east, living in crypts, caves, sewers and crumbling ruins. Those of us who herald from the Old Country call these poor creatures vârkolak. You might call them ghouls—the eaters of the dead.’