The Best new Horror 4

by Stephen Jones

  “She turned me,” Kelly explained. “Found me on the Heath one night when I was walking home from the house of a gentleman, an’ delivered me into my new life.”

  I looked more closely at Kelly. If she was Lucy’s get, she bore out the theory I have heard that a vampire’s progeny come to resemble their parent-in-darkness. There was definitely something of Lucy’s delicacy about her red little mouth and her white little teeth.

  “I’m her get, as she was the Prince Consort’s. That makes me almost royalty. The Queen is my aunt-in-darkness.”

  Kelly giggled, fangs shining.

  My hand was dipped in fire in my pocket, a tight fist at the centre of a ball of pain.

  Kelly came close to me, so close I could whiff the rot on her breath under her perfume, and stroked the collar of my coat.

  “That’s good material, sir.”

  She kissed my neck, quick as a snake, and my heart spasmed. Even now, I cannot explain or excuse the feelings that came over me.

  “I could turn you, warm sir, make royalty of you . . .”

  My body was rigid as she moved against me, pressing forward with her hips, her hands slipping around my shoulders, my back.

  I shook my head.

  “ ’Tis your loss, sir.”

  She stood away. Blood pounded in my temples, my heart raced like a Wessex Cup winner. I was nauseated by the thing’s presence. Had my scalpel been in my pocket, I would have ripped—hideous word, courtesy of the unknown jester who gave me my “trade name”—her heart out. But there were other emotions. She looked so like Lucy, so like the Lucy who bothers my dreams.

  I tried to speak, but just croaked. Kelly understood. She must be experienced.

  The leech turned and smiled, slipping near me again.

  “Somethin’ else, sir.”

  I nodded, and, slowly, she began to loosen my clothes. She took my hand out of my pocket, and cooed over the wound, licking the bled-through bandage with shudders of pleasure. I looked about.

  “We won’t be disturbed here, doctor, sir . . .”

  “Jack,” I muttered.

  “Jack,” she said, pleased with the sound.

  (Who is the letter-writer? Jack or John is a common name. He can’t know. If he knew, I would not still be alive.)

  In the lea of Lucy’s tomb, I rutted with the foul creature, tears on my face, a dreadful burning inside me. Her flesh was cool and white. Afterwards, she took me into her mouth and—with exquisite, torturous care—bled me slightly. I offered her coin, but my blood was enough for her. She looked at me with tenderness, almost with pity, before she left. If only I had had my scalpel.

  Now, I am jittery, nervous. It has been too long since I last struck. Whitechapel has become dangerous. There have been people snooping around all the time, seeing the Ripper in every shadow.

  My scalpel is on my desk, shining silver. Sharp as a whisper.

  They say that I am mad. They do not understand my purpose.

  Returning from Kingstead, I admitted something to myself. When I dream of Lucy, I do not dream of her as she was when she was alive, when I loved her. I dream of Lucy as a vampire.

  It is nearly midnight. I must go out.

  IX

  The city was on fire!

  As Genevieve understood it, the Ripper had struck twice last night. In Duffield Yard, off Berner Street, the murderer had cut a new-born whore’s throat, but been disturbed by a passerby named Diemschutz and fled before he could finish his job. Within the hour, he had cornered Catherine Eddowes—Cathy!—in Mitre Square, and done a thorough dissection, going so far as to clip the ears and carry off some of the internal organs.

  A double event!

  She had spent the evening at the Hall. The director had put her in charge of the shift, since Druitt was off on some business of his own. Lilly was dying, and Genevieve had been with her. The girl’s human body was immortal, but the animal she had tried to become was taking over, and that animal was dead. As Lilly’s tissue transformed into leathery dead flesh, the girl was dying by inches. Genevieve wished for a silver knife like the Ripper’s, to make the merciful cut. One of the warm nurses had given Lilly a little blood, but it was no use. Genevieve talked to the girl, sang the songs of her own long-ago childhood, but she did not know if Lilly could even hear.

  An hour before dawn, the news had come. One of the pimps, arm laid open to the bone by someone’s razor, was brought in, and the crowd with him had five different versions of the story. Jack the Ripper was caught, and was being held at the police station, his identity concealed because he was one of the Royal Family. Jack had gutted a dozen in full view, and eluded pursuers by leaping over a twenty-foot wall, escaping thanks to springs on his boots. Jack’s face was a silver skull, his arms bloodied scythes, his breath purging fire.

  Jack had killed. Again. Twice.

  A police constable told her the bare facts. She had been shocked to hear about Cathy. The other woman she didn’t think she had met.

  “He’s takin’ them two at a time,” the constable had said, “you almost have to admire him, the Devil.”

  Now, with the sun up, Genevieve was nearly dozing. She was tired of keeping things together, with Druitt and Seward away. A crowd of whores had been around, mainly in hysterical tears, begging for money to escape from the death-trap of Whitechapel. Actually, the district had been a death-trap long before the Ripper silvered his knives.

  Noisily, Lilly died.

  Genevieve wrapped the tiny corpse in a sheet. It was already starting to rot, and would have to be removed before the stink became too bad to bear. Whenever anyone she knew died, another grain of ice clung to her heart. She could see how easy it was to become a monster of callousness. A few more centuries, and she could be a match for Vlad Tepes, caring for nothing but power and hot blood in her throat.

  There was a commotion—another commotion—downstairs in the receiving rooms. Genevieve had been expecting more injuries to come in during the day. After the murders, there would be street brawls, vigilante victims, maybe even a lynching in the American style . . .

  Four uniformed policemen were in the hallway, something heavy slung in an oilcloth between them. Lestrade was pacing nervously, clothes in disarray. The coppers had had to fight their way through hostile crowds. “It’s as if he’s laughin’ at us,” the constable had said, “stirrin’ them all up against us.”

  “Mademoiselle Dieudonné, clear a private room.”

  “Inspector . . .”

  “Don’t argue, just do it. One of them’s still alive.”

  She understood at once, and checked her charts. Immediately, she realised she knew there was an empty room.

  They followed her upstairs, grunting under their awkward burden, and she let them into Lilly’s room. She shifted the tiny bundle from the bed, and the policemen manoeuvred the woman onto it, pulling away the oilcloth.

  “Mademoiselle Dieudonné, meet Long Liz Stride.”

  The new-born was tall and thin, rouge smeared on her sunken cheeks, her hair a tatty grey. She wore a cotton shift, dyed red from neckline to waist. Her throat was opened to the bone, cut from ear to ear like a clown’s smile.

  She was gurgling, her cut pipes trying to mesh.

  “Jackie Boy didn’t have enough time for his usual,” Lestrade explained. “Saved it up for Cathy Eddowes. Warm bastard”

  Liz Stride tried to yell, but couldn’t call up air from her lungs into her throat. A draught whispered through her wound. Her teeth were gone, but for four sharp incisors. Her limbs convulsed like galvanised frogs’ legs. Two of the coppers had to hold her down. Her hands shook like trees in a storm.

  “She won’t last,” Genevieve told him. “She’s too far gone.”

  Another vampire might have survived such a wound—she had herself lived through worse—but Liz Stride was a new-born, and had been turned too late in life. She had been dying for years, poisoning herself with rough gin, taking too many hard knocks.

  “She doesn’t
have to last, she just has to give a statement.”

  Genevieve was not sure that was a realistic hope.

  “Inspector, I don’t know if she can talk. I think her vocal cords have been severed.”

  Lestrade chewed his moustache. Liz Stride was his first chance at the Ripper, and he didn’t want to let it go.

  The door was pushed in, and people crowded through. Lestrade turned to shout “out” at them, but swallowed his command.

  “Mr Beauregard, sir,” he said.

  The tall, well-dressed man Genevieve had seen at Lulu Schön’s inquest came into the room, with Dr Seward in his wake. There were more people—nurses, attendants—in the corridor.

  “Inspector,” the tall man said. “May I . . . ”

  “Always a pleasure to help the Diogenes Club, Mr Beauregard,” Lestrade said, in a tone which suggested it was rather more of a pleasure to pour caustic soda into one’s own eyes.

  Beauregard slid through the constables with an elegant movement, polite but forceful. He flicked his cloak over his shoulders, to give his arms freedom of movement.

  “Good God,” he said. “Can nothing be done for this poor wretch?”

  Genevieve was strangely impressed. Beauregard was the first person who had said anything to suggest he thought Liz Stride was worth doing anything for, rather than someone whom something ought to be done about.

  “It’s too late,” Genevieve explained. “She’s trying to renew herself, but her injuries are too great, her reserves of strength too meagre . . .”

  The torn flesh around Liz Stride’s open throat swarmed, but failed to knit. Her convulsions were more regular now.

  “Dr Seward?” Beauregard said, asking for a second opinion.

  The director approached the bucking, thrashing woman. Genevieve saw again that he had a distaste—almost always held tightly in check—for vampires.

  “Mademoiselle Dieudonné is right, I’m afraid. Poor creature, I have some silver salts upstairs. We could ease her passing. It would be the kindest course.”

  “Not until she gives us answers,” Lestrade interrupted.

  “For heaven’s sake, man,” Beauregard countered. “She’s a human being, not a clue.”

  Seward touched Liz Stride’s forehead, and looked into her eyes, which were red marbles. He shook his head.

  Suddenly, the wounded new-born was possessed with a surge of strength. She threw off the constable who was holding down her shoulders, and lunged for the director, her jaws opening as wide as a cobra’s.

  Genevieve pushed Seward out of the way, and ducked to avoid Liz Stride’s slashing talons.

  “She’s changing,” someone shouted.

  It was true. Liz Stride reared up, her backbone curving, her limbs drawing in. A wolfish snout grew out of her face, and swathes of hair ran over her exposed skin.

  Seward crab-walked backwards to the wall. Lestrade called his men out of danger. Beauregard was reaching under his cloak for something.

  Liz Stride was trying to become a wolf or a dog. But that was a hard trick—like her father-in-darkness before her, Genevieve could not shapeshift—and it took immense concentration and a strong sense of one’s own self. Not the resources available to a gin-soaked mind, or to a new-born in mortal pain.

  “Hell Fire,” someone said.

  Liz Stride’s lower jaw stuck out like an alligator’s, growing too large to fix properly to her skull. Her right leg and arm shrivelled, while her left side bloated, slabs of muscle forming around the bone. Her bloody clothes tore.

  The wound in her throat mended over, and reformed, new yellow teeth shining at the edges of the cut. A taloned foot lashed out, and tore into a warm constable’s uniformed chest. Blood gushed.

  The half-creature was yelping screeches out of its neck-hole. She leaped, pushing through policemen, and landed in a clump, scrabbling across the floor, a powerfully-razored hand reaching for Seward.

  “Aside,” Beauregard ordered.

  The man from the Diogenes Club held a revolver. He thumb-cocked the gun, and took a careful aim.

  Liz Stride turned, and looked up at the barrel.

  “That’s useless,” Genevieve protested.

  Liz Stride sprung into the air.

  Beauregard pulled the trigger. His shot took Liz Stride in the heart, and slammed her back against the wall. She fell, lifeless, onto Seward, body turning back into what it had been, and then into rotten meat.

  Genevieve looked a question at Beauregard.

  “Silver bullet,” he explained, without pride.

  Seward stood up, wiping the blood from his face. He was shaking, barely repressing his disgust.

  “Well, you’ve finished the Ripper’s business, and that’s a fact,” Lestrade muttered.

  “I’m not complainin’,” said Watkins, the gash-chested warm constable.

  Genevieve bent over the corpse, and confirmed Liz Stride’s death. Suddenly, with a last convulsion, her arm—still wolfish—leaped out, and her claws fastened in Seward’s trousers-cuff.

  X

  “I think she was trying to tell us something,” he said.

  “What,” the vampire replied, “the murderer’s name is . . . Sydney Trousers.”

  Beauregard laughed. What Genevieve had said was not especially funny, but humour from a vampire was unexpected. Not many of the un-dead bothered with jokes.

  “Unlikely,” he replied. “Mr Boot, perhaps.”

  “Or a boot-maker. Like Leather Apron.”

  “Pizer had an alibi for Polly Nicholls. And he left Whitechapel a week ago.”

  Lestrade was carting Liz Stride off to the mortuary. Beauregard was walking the distance between Berner Street and Mitre Square, and the vampire from Toynbee Hall was tagging along.

  Genevieve Dieudonné dressed like a New Woman, tight jacket and simple dress, sensible flat-heeled boots, beret-like cap and waist-length cape. If Great Britain still had an elected parliament, she would have wanted the vote. And, he suspected, she would not have voted for Ruthven.

  They arrived at the site of Catherine Eddowes’ murder. The bloody patch was guarded by a warm policeman, and the crowds were staying away.

  “The Ripper must be a sprinter,” she said.

  Beauregard checked his watch.

  “We beat his time by five minutes, but we knew where we were going. He was presumably just looking for a girl.”

  “And a private place.”

  “It’s not very private here.”

  There were faces behind the windows in the court, looking down.

  “In Whitechapel, people are practised at not seeing things.”

  Genevieve was prowling the tiny walled-in court, as if trying to get the feel of the place.

  “You’re not like other vampires,” he observed.

  “No,” she agreed.

  “How . . .”

  “Four hundred and fifty six.”

  Beauregard was puzzled.

  “That’s right,” she said, “I am not of the Prince Consort’s bloodline. My father-in-darkness was Chandagnac, and his mother-in-darkness was Lady Melissa d’Acques, and . . .”

  “So all this – ” he waved his hand “– is nothing to do with you?”

  “Everything is to do with everyone, Mr Beauregard, Vlad Tepes is a sick monster, and his get spread their sickness. That woman this morning is what you can expect of his bloodline . . .”

  “You work as a physician?”

  She shrugged, “I’ve picked up a lot of skills over the years, I’ve been a whore, a soldier, a singer, a geographer, a criminal. Whatever has seemed right. Now, being a doctor is the best I can see.”

  Beauregard found himself liking this ancient girl. She wasn’t like any of the women—warm or un-dead—he knew. Women, whether by choice or from necessity, seemed to stand to one side, watching, passing comments, never acting. Genevieve Dieudonné was not a spectator.

  “Is this political?”

  Beauregard thought carefully.

  �
�I’ve asked about the Diogenes Club,” she explained, “You’re some sort of government office, aren’t you?”

  “I serve the Crown, yes.”

  “Well, why your interest in this matter?”

  Genevieve stood over the bloody splash that was left of Catherine Eddowes.

  “The Queen herself has expressed her concern. If she decrees we try to catch a murderer, then . . .”

  “The Ripper might be an anarchist of some stripe,” she mused. “Or a die-hard vampire hater.”

  A little way away from the square, a group of policemen were clustered, Lestrade and Abberline among them, a thin man with a sad moustache and a silk hat at their head. It was Sir Charles Warren, dragged down to a despised quarter of his parish by the killings.

  Beauregard sauntered over, the vampire girl with him.

  A new-born constable was shifting a square of packing-case away from the wall against which it had been resting. A fat rat, body as big and bloated as a rugby ball, shot out, and darted between the Commissioner’s polished shoes, squeaking like rusty nails on a slate.

  Lestrade moved aside to let them into the group.

  The constable had disclosed a scrawl.

  THE VAMPYRES

  ARE NOT THE MEN THAT WILL BE

  BLAMED FOR NOTHING

  “So, obviously the vampires are to be blamed for something,” deduced the Commissioner, astutely.

  “Could the Ripper be one of us?” asked a distinguished-looking new-born civilian who had come with Sir Charles.

  “One of you,” Beauregard muttered.

  “The man’s obviously trying to throw us off,” put in Abberline, who was still warm. “That’s an educated man trying to make us think he’s an illiterate. Only one misspelling, and a double negative not even the thickest coster-monger would actually use.”

  “Like the letters?” asked Genevieve.

  Abberline thought, “Personally, I think the letters were some smart circulation drummer at the Whitechapel Star playing silly buggers to drive up sales. This is a different hand, and this was the Ripper. It’s too close to be a coincidence.”

  “The graffito was not here yesterday?” Beauregard asked.