Supping With Panthers

by Tom Holland

  ‘And yet,’ he continued, ‘as you said yourself, they do not need to drink blood. I am right, am I not?’

  Slowly I rose to my feet. ‘You believe my blood is what we have been searching for? A … what? – an immortal’s?’

  Lord Byron shrugged. ‘We know that it is.’

  ‘But … what I am … the monster I’ve become …’

  ‘Is irrelevant. You do not require another human’s blood to rejuvenate yourself. That is what matters – that is the opportunity, the hope we have. To study your cells. To find an answer at last.’

  ‘But I am Lilah’s. I cannot escape her.’

  Lord Byron met my stare. His lips curled into the faintest smile, then he turned on me and began to walk through the mud.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I asked him.

  ‘To Rotherhithe, of course. To make you truly mine.’ He paused, waiting for me, but still I couldn’t move. I was suddenly aware of the flickering of flames and I stared back through the door.

  ‘They mustn’t find her,’ I mumbled, ‘no, not like that,’ I turned, but Lord Byron seized hold of my arm.

  ‘Leave her,’ he said. ‘You require a sentimental parting, after what you have done?’

  ‘Please.’

  Lord Byron laughed bitterly and shook his head. ‘If you want to serve her, then come with me now.’

  Still I gazed at the door. Inside, the carcass, dis-embowelled, defaced … Not Mary, not Mary any more. He was perfectly right, there was nothing I could do. ‘The key,’ I muttered, feeling in my pocket ‘At least …’ I pulled it out. ‘She mustn’t be disturbed. Not found like that.’ My hand was shaking, but I locked the door. I stood for a second, then felt another pull on my arm. I was led from Miller’s Court. We began to walk along the cobbles of Dorset Street. We trod through a puddle of sewage. With the stench of the effluent, it came to me again, what it was that I had done, the horror … just – the horror … I gasped for some air. I breathed the sewage into my lungs. But though I vomited, vomited for minutes, I could not empty myself – not of that room. Soon I was retching up nothing but air. The butchery remained. I sank to my knees. I rested the palms of my hands in the filth. I felt it bubble and ooze across my skin. I was grateful. I used it to wash away the blood and scraps of flesh.

  I looked up. ‘What will you do?’ I asked.

  ‘Destroy her,’ he replied.

  ‘And if you cannot?’

  Lord Byron sighed. He wrapped his cloak about him to ward off the rain. ‘If I do not destroy her,’ he said at last, ‘then she will destroy me. Now, come,’ He gestured with his cane. ‘I need to tackle this business before dawn.’

  He began to walk again. On the far side of Brushfield Street I saw two carriages parked by the market place. Lord Byron led me across to them. He rapped on the side of the first; the curtain parted and the door swung ajar. Lord Byron opened it. ‘How is she?’ he asked.

  ‘Dead,’ replied a woman’s voice. I peered inside the carriage and recognised one of the vampires from Fairfax Street. She was shaking her head. ‘Stupid and slow, as the dead always are.’

  ‘Not Lucy?’ I murmured involuntarily. ‘Not dead?’

  The vampire smiled. ‘See for yourself.’

  I took a further step forward. I could see a woman now, crouched like a beast on the floor. She looked up at me; her eyes were blank, her skin leprous and damp with rot. ‘Lucy?’ I asked, disbelievingly. I glanced back at Lord Byron. ‘But …’ – I swallowed – ‘she isn’t dead.’

  ‘Is she not?’ Lord Byron sighed. I realised he had taken up a bundle in his arms; he cradled it, then held it out towards Lucy. At once her expression grew cunning and alert; her eyes seemed lit by an animal greed; her lips grew plumper and began to dribble and smack. Suddenly, she started forward, and would have leaped through die door had Lord Byron not slammed it shut with his cane. His own face, I saw, seemed troubled and almost as hungry as hers. ‘Here,’ he muttered, ‘take it,’ He handed the bundle across to a second vampire, who had been standing in attendance by the carriage’s side. Lord Byron shuddered. ‘For God’s sake,’ he whispered, ‘don’t let it near me again.’

  ‘What was it?’ I asked.

  ‘Arthur,’ replied Lord Byron, ‘Lucy’s child.’

  ‘It was you who took him?’

  ‘Naturally. His father was dead at the time. His mother …’ – he gestured at the carriage door – ‘well, you saw her for yourself.’ He shrugged faintly. ‘I am Arthur’s only relative now. I would have preferred to leave him to his mother’s charge for a few years, but as it is – do not worry – I will ensure that he is brought up safely enough. It is in my interest, after all, to see him one day propagate an heir. I am sure your Professor will have told you that.’

  ‘But Lucy?’ I asked. ‘What has she become? A vampire? – no – her mind seemed gone …’

  ‘Rotted,’ said Lord Byron curtly, ‘as her flesh will also rot away. Her mistress, Charlotte Westcote, is not wholly destroyed, for no mortal can destroy a vampire of her strength; but your Professor has grievously harmed her, and while she is injured Lucy will continue to decay. For she is nothing outside her creator’s existence; nothing but her slave, her harlot, her toy. And this is the second reason, Doctor, why you must come with me now. For you have seen such creatures in India. You have seen how rapidly the sickness can spread. Imagine it, the plague of the dead infecting a city of eight million souls! I may be a vampire and a peer of the realm – but in my own way, I am also a democrat. I do not wish to see London become a wasteland of serfs. It is Charlotte who has begun to spread the sickness; but it was Lilah who infected Charlotte first of all. We must strike at her: Lilah – Lilith herself – the evil’s very heart. Strike her down.’ He glanced at me. ‘And see, while we do it, if we cannot rescue you.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘If you are ready.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good.’ He turned and ushered me through his carriage door. For the length of the journey I sat in silence, the horror of what I had left in Miller’s Court paralysing my capacity for observation and thought. But as we at last entered Rotherhithe, my determination to extract a revenge from the being who had made me what I was, and my dread of her strength, alike served to reawaken my mental powers. And yet as I considered the struggle ahead of us, and the terrible evil we would have to confront, so also I found it harder to contemplate the prospect of success – for a hope that is destroyed is worse than no hope at all.

  ‘Is it not possible,’ I asked Lord Byron suddenly, ‘that we are entering a trap? That it was not Lucy whom Polidori was fishing for when he let me escape, but you? It was you he has been promised, you whom Lilah will teach him to destroy?’

  Lord Byron shrugged. ‘I would almost welcome that’

  ‘Would you, though? Lilah’s destruction is not always death.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  I held out my hands. ‘See what she has made of me.’

  He shrugged faintly again, and turned away.

  ‘Beware, my Lord.’

  He stared back at once, his eyes very cold. ‘Beware?’

  ‘Lilah is a being of terrible powers.’

  He smiled, then glanced out through the window, for the carriage was rolling to a halt. He turned back to me. ‘And so am I,’ he whispered. ‘So am I.’ He squeezed my arm, then opened the carriage door and climbed out into the street. I joined him. We were standing in Coldlair Lane. Before us, dark-windowed, was Polidori’s shop.

  The door was open. We passed through it. The attic upstairs was empty. I frowned. So Lilah had indeed been bathing. An image of her, unbidden, arose in my mind: her limbs damp and porous, heavy like a sponge with blood, waiting to enfold me in their placental embrace. Lord Byron raised an eyebrow; he must have scanned my thoughts, for I felt his presence in my mind; but though I had no doubt he understood what he saw, his pale face remained otherwise motionless. He led the way across the wooden bridge and then, with a pause to check the
revolver he had hidden beneath his cloak, on through the warehouse door.

  From inside, I heard him laugh. I followed him, then stood frozen in amazement by what I saw. A colossal domed had stretched away before my gaze. Torches rose from the rim of the dome, soaring to form a great pyramid of fire. Around the wall were massive pillars, and stairways winding in rows up the side; in the very centre of the had, beneath the point of the pyramid of torches, stood a tiny Muslim shrine of the kind I remembered from my days in Lahore.

  Lord Byron pointed to it. ‘In there. That is where she will be.’

  ‘You recognise this place?’ I asked.

  Lord Byron nodded. ‘The vampire who created me,’ he murmured, ‘haunted a pleasure-dome very much like this.’ He began to walk across the had, his footsteps echoing through that colossal empty space. I followed him. We paused at last by the doorway to the shrine. Lord Byron gestured upwards, at a face carved out from the stone above the arch. ‘Is that Lilah?’ he asked me. I stared at it, then nodded. Lord Byron smiled. ‘Lilith is come,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Lilith the blood-drinker is come.’ Then he swept back his cloak. ‘Polidori!’ he shouted. ‘Polidori, come out!’

  There was silence. Lord Byron laughed. ‘You wanted me here, didn’t you? Well, here I am.’ He walked in through the door. I saw him turn and aim his revolver at a shadowy, cringing form. As I followed him into the shrine, I recognised Polidori. He was kneeling on the floor. On his face, however, was his customary leer.

  ‘So pleasant to meet you again,’ he whispered, ‘Milord.’ He spat out the tide as though it were the worst insult he could give, then he giggled. ‘My lord and creator. My noble lord. Always such an honour.’ His face began to twitch; he wiped at his sweat as it trickled from his brow. ‘Been waiting for you,’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Knew you would come.’

  ‘And Lilith – she is waiting too?’

  ‘But, of course, Milord.’ Polidori gestured at a blackness stretching down into the earth; then turned his head and gave me a wink. ‘Bathing,’ he grinned. ‘Just like I said.’

  ‘Well,’ murmured Lord Byron, ‘then I am sure we shall get along splendidly. Even the prettiest woman looks better for a bath. And Lilith – by all accounts – is not unpretty at all.’ He removed his cloak and tossed it to Polidori. ‘Keep hold of that while I visit your mistress. Guard it well, and you may earn yourself a tip,’ He turned to me. ‘Come, Doctor. Let us visit our Enchantress of the Bath,’ He began to descend. With a glance at Polidori, I followed him. Dark, very dark, the steps stretched ahead of us, but Lord Byron seemed to know his way, and so I was careful to follow the course of his footsteps, as we went deeper and deeper, into the earth. At last, ahead of me, I saw a faint red glow, and Lord Byron turned and waited for me. ‘We are almost there,’ he whispered once I had joined him. ‘Take this,’ He handed me a knife. He turned, then paused and took my arm again. ‘Remember Miller’s Court,’ he whispered. I nodded. We continued to descend. And all the time, the glow of the fire grew ever more bright.

  At length, ahead of us, I made out a doorway of stone. Lord Byron passed through it without a second’s pause but I froze, for I knew that beyond it Lilah was waiting, Lilith herself, whose terrible powers I had seen for myself, extraordinary, impossible, infinite. Suddenly I was certain we would fail. Lord Byron too, no doubt, had remarkable powers; but he could not hope to rival Lilah – not destroy her as he planned, for she was older and greater and more cruel than he. In the red shadows flicking on the stone, I saw only the flames of Miller’s Court; and in my mind’s eye the face of Mary Kelly, skinless, noseless; shredded by my knife. I sank down, crushed by the horror of the memory; and then I forced myself to walk on through the door. My last, best chance – I could not squander it. And one comfort, at least, I had; whatever destruction was wrought upon us, it could not make worse the Hell I had now.

  Lilah was standing against a wall of fire. She seemed barely silhouetted, for her own body was glistening red; and seemed to rise and change with the flames behind her back. The floor of the chamber was still awash; by Lilah’s feet was what seemed to be an altar, streaked and sticky with viscera. So she had finished her bath, I thought. I gazed on her naked form. It would be sodden, I knew, with blood; and yet how perfect she seemed – how blindingly and terribly beautiful. She smiled at me. Her face too; the depths of her eyes. All my loathing of her shrivelled and was dead. I would stay hers – now, and for all time. Whatever the cost I could never leave.

  And Lord Byron, I wondered numbly, what did he feel? Lilah was gazing at him. I could not see his expression as he stared at her.

  ‘I have waited,’ said Lilah eventually, ‘a long time to meet you.’

  Lord Byron inclined his head. ‘How exceedingly flattering.’

  ‘Oh, it is,’ Lilah smiled and smoothed back her hair. ‘More than you know. I am not accustomed to take much interest in your breed.’

  ‘My breed?’ Lord Byron laughed. ‘But you yourself are a creature of blood.’

  ‘How different though, my Lord! As you well know. Is that not why you are here after all?’ She gestured at me contemptuously. ‘To fight for him and his rich prize of cells, to unlock their secret and find yourself your cure? Yes, you see, I know your deepest hopes. But they are worthless, my Lord. They cannot help you change. They cannot help you become like me, however great you may be, the greatest of your kind – still you are nothing, compared with me,’ She flickered and rose before us, growing with the flames. ‘Do you see, my Lord? I change – and I am the same. I am the first and the last; the high and the low; all things … and none,’ Again she stood before us in the form she had worn before. ‘You see, my Lord. I am not like you at all.’

  ‘Indeed you are not,’ His voice was very cold.

  Lilah stared at him for a long while. Then she turned, and the flames behind her died away, and I saw, instead of the close, subterranean dark, the burning of stars in an unpolluted sky. I looked about me: the mountains were purple with the coming dawn; the jungle rich in vivid shadow; Kalikshutra, as lovely as I remembered it from my last day there.

  ‘Jack.’

  I turned round. Lilah was beside me, seated on a throne. She pointed, and smiled mockingly. ‘So brave, weren’t you?’

  I looked. I was standing, I realised, on the topmost point of the temple’s dome. Below us, the barricade I had erected from the shattered statues was blazing furiously; the army of the dead was beyond it; and behind it, sheltering from the attack, were you, Huree; the soldiers; and yes – next to Moorfield – me as well. I had a torch of burning wood in my hand. I was waving it and jabbing it in the faces of the dead. They surged forward suddenly; I remembered the moment it was when our flank was turned, and I had smelled our fate on our assailants’ breath.

  Lilah laughed, and rose to her feet ‘Should I save you?’ she asked.

  ‘Save me?’ I frowned. ‘But I was saved.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am here now.’

  ‘Yes – for the moment.’ Lilah smiled and inclined her head. ‘You. Me.’ She glanced round. ‘The noble lord.’ She sat down again, slowly, into her throne. ‘But we need not be at all.’

  Lord Byron shook his head. ‘What is this?’ he asked.

  Lilah gestured with her hand to me. ‘If he is killed on the barricades now, he will never meet me – he will never meet you. The whole fabric of the plot will be torn, and unravel into nothing. Our standing here need never occur.’

  ‘No.’ I ran my hand through my hair. ‘I don’t understand …’

  ‘But of course not!’ Lilah clapped her hands with delight. ‘And you never will! But I understand; it is perfectly simple. And I would do it if I chose, Jack, just because I can. However’ – she smiled at me – ‘I choose not to this time. You have had your chance and wasted it. I do not intend to pass up what happens as a result of this decision. I wish to meet Lord Byron – and yes, Jack, even you.’ She clapped her hands again. ‘And now, my Lord, see how the corpse
s drop. Yes! Down they go, withering away. Dust to dust – their natural state.’ Her eyes gleamed with pleasure. ‘And see our bold defenders – saved at the last!’

  I watched as Moorfield stepped round the barricade. As he did so, the flames began to rise; I saw them grow black with the bodies of the dead and leap higher and higher, up towards the stars. I searched for Moorfield; I searched for myself; but no one living seemed left on the dome. I remembered what I had felt at the time, and which you reported, Huree, and Moorfield too: a sense of being wholly alone in that place, and then suddenly, the six women, the vampires, seen in the fire. I looked now, from where I was standing with Lilah, and saw them again. They turned; they stared up; they prostrated themselves. And suddenly I remembered another thing I had glimpsed when I had seemed alone on that place: a throne, surmounting the very pinnacle of the dome; a shadowy form seated on the throne; and by its side, two other shadows, similarly dark, and I recalled, what I had forgotten until that moment, how one of those shadows had worn my face.

  Lord Byron frowned; he had read my thoughts; he had sensed my shock and my bafflement. ‘But how can this be true?’ he asked. ‘That the figure you saw … now proves to be yourself?’

  I stared at him; I made no reply.

  ‘It cannot be true.’

  ‘But it can.’ Lilah smiled. ‘Oh, it can, my Lord. And you thought …’ She laughed; she stretched languorously, and closed her eyes. ‘You truly thought you could challenge me?’ She shook her head. ‘When I am more than nature, more than time – and certainly more than your world of spirits, my Lord: I am control and the uncontrollable; union and the dissolution; I am truth – and also iniquity.’ She laughed again. ‘So enjoyable it is – being so much all at once.’ She opened her eyes. ‘You cannot fight me,’ she whispered as she reached for his hand. ‘But you have seen now, I hope, what I might give you instead.’

  ‘I have indeed.’

  Lilah ignored the coldness in his voice. Instead, she gestured with a sweep of her hand. The temple was suddenly still and empty, its pinnacle touched by the first rays of dawn. The stonework seemed impossibly steep; it appeared to grow from the mountain-side, and tower high into the oxygen-less air, yet I experienced no discomfort, only the pleasure I had felt in Lilah’s bed, when the knowledge of the whole world had seemed opened up and revealed to me. The mountains stretched away before us: the plains, the rivers, the jungles, the seas. I looked to the east. The sky was rosy now, and fresh with the promise of regeneration, of hope. My soul seemed flooded by a blaze of light.