Supping With Panthers

by Tom Holland

  ‘And yet,’ said Lord Byron very softly, ‘I have also seen what was done in Miller’s Court.’

  ‘What, squeamish, my Lord?’ asked Lilah. ‘A blood-drinker like yourself?’

  ‘All this beauty, all this wonder and hope …’ – he swept with his arm – ‘the earth, the air, the stars – can it only be bought with the skinning of a whore?’

  Lilah’s eyes narrowed. ‘And if that were true?’

  Lord Byron shrugged. ‘Then I would not be interested.’

  ‘And yet you kill.’

  ‘Yes. But you know why: because I have no choice. It is not a great comfort, I admit, but it is better than killing without reason at all.’

  Lilah laughed. ‘And the Doctor, here – if he were like you – killing only in order to survive: would that make him happier, do you think?’

  Again Lord Byron shrugged. ‘You would have to ask him that yourself

  Lilah glanced at me as I tried to think. Suddenly the dawn, the mountains, the sky seemed shrunk to a room lit with darkness and fire. ‘No.’ I said. ‘No. Anything but this.’ Mary’s corpse, her hand in her stomach, ripped and skinned, lay stretched before my gaze. ‘No,’ I said again, burying my face in my hands.

  ‘You would rather kid, then, to slake a thirst than for pure amusement’s sake?’

  Slowly, I uncovered my eyes. Mary’s face was gone; instead it was Lilah who was watching me. We were in the vault again, deep underground, beside the wall of fire. ‘I would rather not kid at all,’ I replied.

  ‘No, no,’ she laughed, ‘you are forgetting, that what the Gods give, they cannot take away. And yet’ – she stroked my cheek and smiled – ‘for all that, I am compassionate.’

  ‘Compassionate?’ Lord Byron’s smile was dark with bitterness. ‘You are the damnedest politician I have ever met’

  ‘Unfair, my Lord. Politicians promise what they cannot give.’

  ‘Yes, of course, my apologies – you are perfectly correct – you have already shown us tonight what you can give. No.’ He shook his head. ‘No, I will not have you. Even as I am, the slave of my thirst, I am freer than I would be as the slave of your gift.’

  ‘But if that gift were freedom from your thirst?’

  ‘I will not be beholden to you.’ He smiled suddenly and glanced back at me. ‘But I will fight you for it,’ he whispered softly.

  Lilah stared at him. A shadow of sudden anger crossed her brow. ‘And that is your final decision?’ she asked.

  ‘You heard me. Cant – cunt – whatever it is you are hawking – I will have none of it.’

  Lilah smiled thinly. ‘How regrettably obdurate of you,’ she whispered. ‘How regrettably base.’ She turned, and clasped herself, and gazed into the fire. ‘Well,’ she said at length, ‘it is no great loss. You will still be mine. Yes’ – she smoothed back her hair and turned round again – ‘you should make an entertaining addition to my menagerie. Your friend, Doctor Polidori, has offered me several suggestions as to what you might become – all quite amusing. I will give you to him, I think. Yes. As a reward for his honest and devoted months of service. Would that not be fitting, my Lord?’

  She spat out the word as Polidori had done. Lord Byron surveyed her with a look of faint amusement; he turned to me. ‘A tigress robbed of young,’ he murmured, ‘a lioness – or any interesting beast of prey – are similes at hand for the distress – of ladies who cannot have their own way.’

  ‘Very pretty,’ smiled Lilah. She reached out to stroke Lord Byron’s cheek. ‘But have you ever’ – she kissed him – ‘met a lady quite like me?’ Their lips met again, then she broke away. ‘I doubt it, my Lord. Even so praised a Don Juan as yourself. I doubt it very much.’

  Again she kissed him; she held him in her arms; and I saw blood, thickened to a fleshy slime, oozing from her body and sucking on his. From behind me I heard a sudden intake of breath. I looked round. Polidori was crouching in the doorway, his eyes gleaming, his teeth parted in a greedy smile. Lord Byron staggered. Polidori leaned forward even further, and bit on his knuckles so hard that they began to bleed; and as he did so, Lord Byron smelled the air and looked round, and saw where Polidori was watching him. Lord Byron laughed; but his face was very cold, and stamped not with fear but with pride and contempt. He raised his arms; blood streaked with jelly ran in strings from Lilah’s skin, but they snapped, and fed, and Lord Byron’s arms broke free. He combed her hair away from her neck; she struggled to twist back from him, but his grip tightened as, with a sudden moan, he bit. Lilah shuddered; she too moaned; locked, they staggered and fell, body against body, limb against limb.

  Still, Lord Byron drank; and still the bog of Lilah’s blood and mucus sucked; and still they rolled across the sticky floor. The wall of fire enveloped them, flickering and twisting gold about their forms, as they continued in their embrace, nothing but dark shadows now, so tightly locked they seemed like one, and yet they were moving still, and then one was breaking free, and though I drew closer to the flames, and tried to peer through, I could not make out who it was, body arced backwards, arms upraised, and then falling, so that the two forms were joined once again. Suddenly, so ghastly that I could barely endure it, a shriek idled the vault, rising on a note of horror and disgust that seemed to dim the flames, for as I stared at it, the fire was dying away, and fading into the dark. Again a piercing shriek of revulsion, mingled now with disbelief; and this second time I knew I was hearing Lilah’s voice. I stepped forward; where the fire had been there were now only stones, and the light was very faint, but I could see, ahead of me, Lilah’s body stretched out. Lord Byron was lying on her. Slowly, he rose to his feet. I looked down; I held my hand to my mouth. Lilah was marked with Mary Kelly’s wounds.

  Lord Byron stepped back. ‘Get aside,’ he ordered numbly. But I continued to stare. Still beautiful she was, as lovely as before, despite the mutilations to her body and face. No blood though. No blood from the stomach, or the thighs, or the throat. ‘Get aside,’ repeated Lord Byron. I saw he was holding his revolver in his hand. He waved it at me and I took a single step back. He fired; then again; and again and again. He dropped the gun; he looked around the room; then he knelt by the corpse and beckoned to me.

  ‘Do you still have your knife?’ he asked.

  I removed it from my cloak.

  Again he glanced round the room, making certain Polidori was gone. He closed his eyes, then turned back to me and clasped my hand, gripping it tightly round the handle of the knife. He did not speak to me, but I understood at once what it was I had to do. I swallowed my disgust. I cut out the brains and the living heart. I finished the job, and slumped back. As I did so, I heard the crunching of glass.

  I looked about me in surprise. The vault was gone; we were kneeling on a warehouse floor, amidst shattered bottles, and bricks, and clumps of weeds. I stared up: through the roof I could see the early-morning sky; through a paneless window the gleam of the Thames. I looked for Lord Byron. He was limping slowly across the rubbish-strewn floor. By a pile of boxes, he paused and, brushing a couple aside, uncovered Polidori as he crouched amongst the weeds. Lord Byron held out his hand; Polidori flinched, then scrabbled through the boxes and passed up a cloak. Lord Byron draped it over his arm, then felt in his pocket and tossed Polidori a coin. He continued towards the bridge, and I joined him there. Together, we crossed into Polidori’s shop, and down into Coldlair Lane where the carriage was waiting for us. ‘Mayfair,’ ordered Lord Byron. I climbed in, then sat back dumbly as the wheels began to turn.

  I gazed out at the streets: at the workmen drinking their breakfast gin, the early-morning traders, the bedraggled whores. I saw the newsboys, with their placards and their gleeful cries: ‘MURDER – HORRIBLE MURDER – MURDER IN THE EAST END.’ I shuddered, of course, as the image of Mary Kelly rose before me; but though I knew the horror of what I had done would never leave me, yet I felt no prickling, no anger in my brain. Again I looked out at the streets. They were teeming now, for we were drawing
nearer to London Bridge, and the crowds were a ceaseless, thickening flow; yet still I felt nothing. Or rather – I felt what I had always felt in the past, before Lilah, before my mind was changed; but of hatred, of revulsion, of disgust … not a trace. I was no longer the monster she had made me. I was myself again. I turned to Lord Byron. I smiled. ‘She is dead.’

  He glanced at me. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Why? Do you not?’

  He smiled faintly, then gazed out through the window. His silence disturbed me. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘No, she isn’t dead.’

  ‘But …’ The words froze on my tongue, as I stared out again at the filth and the crowds. Still no prickling. ‘But you saw her … What I did … What I feel now in my head …’

  ‘And what do you feel?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘Well … no. I feel – as I did before but almost – stronger – reborn,’ I breathed in deeply. ‘The very air – it’s as though I am tasting it for the first time.’ I met Lord Byron’s stare. ‘I am myself again. Only somehow, even more so than before.’ I paused. ‘No, I’m not making sense.’

  ‘But you are, Doctor. Perfect sense.’ He smiled. His expression, though, was mocking and almost sad.

  I stared at him. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How you can think that she isn’t dead? Surely it is over. And soon we shall have our prize. Immortality, my Lord – freedom for ever from your hunger for blood.’ I held up my wrist and nicked it gently. I dyed my nail with a touch of red, and held it up to the morning tight. ‘Look at them, my Lord. My precious cells.’

  For a long time he did not reply. Then he frowned. ‘When I held her,’ he murmured, ‘I would have felt it I would have known …’

  ‘But you defeated her …’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You saw … What we did …’

  ‘Yes.’ He shrugged faintly. ‘But I was stronger than she had ever thought.’

  ‘So you agree? She might indeed be dead?’

  He sighed. ‘Yes, perhaps.’ He shrugged again. ‘But we shall know for certain soon, anyhow. If Lilith is dead – then Charlotte Westcote is dead. If Charlotte Westcote is dead – then Lucy is dead. But if Lucy is alive …’ He glanced out through the window. ‘We shall be in Mayfair very soon.’ He hunched himself up in the folds of his cloak. ‘Let us wait until then.’

  And so wait I did, in silence, until our carriage had stopped in a quiet Mayfair street, before the steps which rose to Lord Byron’s door. I climbed out and walked up with him; as the door was opened, I saw a shadow pass across my companion’s pale face and then, almost simultaneously, a gleam of pleasure and desire in his eyes. His nostrils widened; and as I watched him smiled the air, so too, just faintly, I caught a scent myself. It was rich, and golden, and like nothing I knew; as we walked through the hall it grew progressively stronger, until, by the time we had arrived in the dining room, I was conscious of almost nothing but the pleasure it was giving me. Lord Byron too seemed similarly entranced; I asked him what the perfume was, but though he smiled at me faintly he didn’t reply. I wondered if it were not some drug we were breathing in, which had the power thus to affect the olfactory nerves; and I knew, with a surprised shock of utter certainty, that whatever it might be I had to have more. You will know, Huree, that I was never a man of intemperate tastes; I was surprised, now that Lilah’s curse had been purged from my brain, that I should desire anything quite so strongly; I wondered if, perhaps, I was still not quite myself. I would recover soon, no doubt. And yet in the short term my enslavement to the drug seemed, if anything, to be growing; and my desire to taste it felt almost like a pain.

  Lord Byron breathed in deeply; he leaned against the wall. ‘Where is she?’ he asked.

  Only a single candle lit the room. I stared into the shadows, expecting not to make anything out; but to my surprise I found I could see perfectly well. A couple of vampires were lounging over a bottle of wine. They both smiled at me, and I saw their eyes gleam.

  ‘Where is she?’ Lord Byron asked again.

  One of the vampires drained her glass. ‘Below,’ she replied.

  ‘With Haidée?’

  ‘But of course.’

  ‘And has she …?’

  ‘Haidée?’

  Lord Byron nodded.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Doctor …’ Lord Byron reached for my arm. ‘You had better …’ He stared into my eyes, then he shook his head. ‘This way,’ he murmured. He led me through the dining room and on through the hall. We began to descend a flight of spiral steps. The scent was almost unbearable now; the further we went, the more desperate I grew. By a large oaken doorway, Lord Byron paused and smiled at me and pressed my arm. Then he opened the door and passed inside. I followed him. The scent, in a wash of gold, flooded my brain.

  Dimly, I could make out the room we were in. The floor and wads were stone; but the fittings were wonderfully beautiful: glittering ornaments, many-coloured rugs, rich woods, bright flowers, paintings, rare books. These meant nothing to me, however; nothing at all; I wanted only one thing … I wanted the drug. I stared about the room, searching for it. I breathed in deeply; then saw two women seated on a bed, the one rocking the other’s curled body in her arms. Lord Byron had already crossed to them. The woman cradling the other looked up; she seemed remarkably lined and old, and I knew her at once: Haidée, whom I had met one evening at table with Lord Byron, and who had asked me to help cure her disease. But it was not her I was smelling. No. It was the other one, the girl in her lap, I was smelling her blood. That was what the perfume had been; that had been the drug – human, mortal, living blood. I remembered Lilah’s question. ‘If Dr Eliot were like you,’ she had asked Lord Byron, ‘killing only in order to survive: would that make him happier, do you think?’ And at once I knew, Huree. I knew what I was.

  I watched as Lord Byron took Lucy by the hand. Her eyes were glazed, but otherwise she seemed the very picture of health: fresh-skinned, rosy-cheeked – vital … fresh. For several minutes Lord Byron spoke with Haidée; and all the time my hunger was growing worse, and I was almost tempted to seize Lucy myself. But at length Lord Byron shook his head, and turned away; Haidée screamed after him, but he made no reply and, walking past me, led Lucy through the door.

  ‘I can never resist temptation,’ he said.

  ‘No’, I replied.

  He motioned me to shut the wooden door. I did so. Lord Byron nodded, his smile now a terrible and chiding one. He led Lucy on up a further spiral of steps; then he seized her by the arms; he thrust her against the wall. He was shaking violently, but as he unbuttoned Lucy’s dress his expression seemed almost tender, and his eyes were half-closed as though reluctant to watch. Suddenly he bowed his head; for a second he froze. ‘I am not like Haidée,’ he muttered. Again he paused. ‘And even she – one day – even she will give in.’

  ‘Haidée?’ I asked.

  Lord Byron glanced round at me. ‘It is not just my blood’ – he stroked Lucy’s neck – ‘which flows in these veins,’ He shuddered; he seemed ready to bite; then he paused and turned to stare at me again. ‘Almost eighty years,’ he whispered. ‘Haidée has endured, growing older, and drier, and more withered by the hour,’ He laughed softly, despairingly. ‘How long, Doctor? How long will you wait, now you have realised what you are?’

  With his nail he punctured through the skin of Lucy’s neck. The blood began to pump from the jugular. Lucy moaned softly, as she slumped into his arms, and I closed my eyes as I smelled the flowing blood. Lord Byron was on his knees; and I knew I was weak, that I couldn’t fight the scent. He glanced up at me. ‘Hungry?’ he asked.

  I tried, and failed, to reply.

  ‘I shouldn’t ready waste this blood on you,’ he said, ‘but I feel guilty. You wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for me.’ He reached up for my hand, and pulled on it. ‘Come, Doctor. Join me. Have your first taste.
’

  A minute more I resisted. Then I staggered; I fed to my knees, I gazed at the blood. Lord Byron laughed and gave me her wrist. ‘There,’ he murmured. ‘Bite deep. It’s always best that way.’

  I stroked the veins.

  I glanced at Lucy’s face.

  I bit, as Lord Byron had advised, very deep …

  Like a couple of dogs, we fed on our prey.

  ‘I am compassionate’ – so Lilah had claimed. Yet even now, the game was not quite over; there was one last joke to be played. It was waiting for me in my study in Hanbury Street. I had returned there to pack, just the barest essentials I would need, for I could not stay in London; the whole world was now my exile. Indeed, I almost missed Lilah’s parting gift, for I had not at first planned to take my microscope. My work, my dreams, seemed like dust to me now.

  Yet at the last moment, I found I could not abandon either – not altogether. I crossed back to my desk. As I approached the microscope, I saw the slide of blood beneath the lens. I frowned. I remembered it quite clearly, for I had looked at it before leaving for Miller’s Court: Lord Byron’s leucocytes – a film of white cells. I bent down. I peered at the slide with my naked eye. The sample was now red. Thick, vivid, haemoglobin-rich red. I adjusted my microscope’s lens. I stared through the glass. I inspected the slide.

  The leucocytes were still alive as they had always been; but now the red cells were active as well. Somehow the slide had been doctored; somehow, the structure of the blood had been changed. For there was no phagocytic activity; no absorption of the red cells by the white; instead both seemed utterly stable. I remembered, from my researches into the structure of vampire blood, how Lord Byron’s white cells had broken down and fed on alien haemoglobin; I rushed downstairs, to the astonishment of Llewellyn and the attendants who had clearly given up on me for good; I took a sample of blood from a patient; back upstairs, I added it to the blood on the slide. Still there was no activity. I waited, speaking to Llewellyn, lying in response to his questions as best as I could manage, and ad the time wondering, wondering what I had. At length I inspected the sample again. Still nothing; no phagocytosis; no reaction at all. The alien blood had not been consumed. Nothing had changed, Huree – nothing had changed.