Blood Coven Read online

  “Dear Lord. What are you saying?” Walter took the papers that George held out to him and looked them over, not wanting the information to confirm this awful revelation.

  “The Ordine believes that the Countess Elva Walacova has found a way to physically reproduce.”

  “And your ‘nose’ was able to verify these atrocities?”

  George shook his head. “No. The Ordine only has this one report. But, it was from a very reliable source. However, they’re closely watching a prostitute by the name of Annie Smith, sometimes Annie Chapman. Information has it that she’s very ill, and also a drone of Elva’s. Her illness is probably what drove her to cling to whatever Elva had to offer. The Ordine hopes that Annie’s worsening health will cause her, out of desperation, to approach Elva with requests of being fully turned. We’re hoping Annie leads us to Elva.”

  “I’m supposed to follow a Dollymop around then, and hope she leads me to this Countess Elva’s lair?” One of the oil lamps in the corner of the room was running low on oil and its flame grew suddenly smaller, sputtering noisily. Walter’s mood darkened with the dying flame. “How many drones does this vamp have?”

  “Five. All of them are recorded in those papers you’re holding. The nose had watched all five with some precision before Elva discovered him and did him in. Fortunately, he had left his journal where the Ordine could find it. Should Annie not be enough to take us to Elva, the Ordine wants to use the known drones, one-by-one, to flush her out.”

  “Use them how?”

  “Eliminate them. If her drones are hunted and killed one at a time, perhaps Elva will be so infuriated that she’ll make a personal appearance. We need to confirm that it’s her before we decide how to proceed. If it is Elva Walacova orchestrating this coven’s activities, we must be very careful indeed. She’s a dangerous opponent that can’t be defeated by a silver crucifix and a bundle of hawthorn stakes. Age gives an advantage to these beasts, but I don’t have to tell you that, my good man. You’re the Catcher.”

  Walter stared at the list of women’s names before him, feeling a subtle form of dread settle over him at the thought of vampire embryos feeding on their maternal hosts. He admitted to himself that the thought of facing down a vamp like the Countess Walacova set him ill at ease. George was right—she’d prove no easy prey. “Risky plan, Sager.”

  George Sager reached out for his cup and saucer again, taking a sip. The glow from the oil lamp flickered ever so slightly, shining like a hint of madness in his eyes. “It’s a risky business.”

  -3-

  Walter leaned against the brick wall of the beer house, watching the comings and goings of the patrons and street toughs. He stood beneath a corner eave as a steady drizzle fell, more a thick, misty fog than rain. His clothes were a bit too tight, uncomfortably binding now that they were wet. He’d procured them from the rag picker in order to blend into the crowd. He pushed his tattered hat further back onto his head, and squinted at the distant glimmer of light emitted by the only working gas lamp on the street. The haze of the alley all but obscured its glow.

  Last night he paid a boy, a dishwasher at the alehouse, to point out Annie. Tonight he was back to trail her, establishing her usual haunts and habits. She didn’t do anything out of the ordinary for a woman in her position. He figured she must work for herself for he noticed no specific man, or woman, for that matter, that she reported to. Most of the women in the area were self-employed, choosing to risk the dangers of the street over the dangers of a pimp. From what he had observed so far from talk among the alehouse drinkers, many of the prostitutes only showed up for some occasional “business.” When they needed money they put in a few hours on the streets. It seemed a convenient arrangement for making some fast money.

  She didn’t come into the tavern, and the place was a foul gathering of ilk and bad manners. The smell of unwashed humanity finally drove him into the street at just the right moment.

  Annie was across the street trying to cajole a man into coming with her into the back alley. Her voice carried to him intermittently over the other sounds in the area, higher pitched womanly tones that sounded like laughter. Walter nonchalantly watched the exchange from beneath the brim of his hat. He kept one eye on the man, who looked almost convinced to join her, but was still making sounds of reluctance, protesting by means of gentle pushes, trying to ward off the persuasive woman’s advances. Walter decided to head over and try to catch pieces of their conversation, glean what information he could.

  As soon as he stepped from the curb, a black carriage rumbled by nearly running him over. He leapt backwards, with lightning fast reactions, to the loud guffaws of the drunken men behind him. Ignoring them, he focused again on Annie in time to see the man she’d propositioned walking away while Annie was practically running after the speeding black carriage.

  Walter picked up his pace, trying to follow her without being too obvious, but damn it, he didn’t want to lose sight of her now. He made out a crest painted in red on the side of the carriage door: a wolf’s head with a snake’s body. If Sager’s information was correct, this could be Elva’s coach.

  The black carriage took the corner ahead at what looked like a dangerous cant, ricketing over the cobbles, rattling bits and chains. An old woman veered from its path, shaking an angry fist in a shower of muck and pebbles.

  Walter stuck to the shadows, hurrying around obstacles and past pedestrians who didn’t even notice his presence. He lost the trail of the carriage twice but picked it up again a block away. It disappeared abruptly, but he ran now, heedless of who saw him, trying desperately to make it to the carriage’s wake before he lost its trail. He rounded the corner around which he thought the carriage had disappeared, but the street came to a dead end. Two cats hissed and fought amongst the decaying food littering the end of the alleyway, but there was no Annie, and no black carriage.

  “Damn it!”

  Heavier rain began to fall, beating rhythmically against his felt hat.

  Leaving the alley, he made his slow, nondescript way back to the pub Annie mostly frequented and waited in the doorway, mingling in that cloud of pungent scents along with half a dozen other wet men. Wherever she had gone, she wasn’t coming back here anytime soon. Not in this rain.

  Walter hung around for another hour, scrutinizing the streets before giving up and heading home. Waiting on his front stoop when he got there was a parcel with a card addressed to him. He picked it up and went inside, tossing the threadbare jacket onto the hall tree on his way upstairs into the study.

  The box contained a map of London’s east end, and a letter from the Ordine. Kicking off his scum-covered boots by the fireplace, Walter lit the nearest lamp, moved the chair closer, and unfolded the letter. It wasn’t a long note. The Ordine stated that they had decided not to waste time and that he was to stop tailing Annie, and eliminate another drone from the list on Tuesday. Walter looked to his desk and checked Tuesday’s date: August 7. He frowned. What was so special about Tuesday? Not that the Ordine would answer the question even if there were someone here to ask. The Ordine was in the business of giving orders, not issuing answers to their curious worker bees.

  He stared at the letter in his hand again. In the past he’d never had any problems taking the vamps out as assigned, but this case was different. The letter referred to them as drones, like some dehumanized shells, but these were still mortal women in his eyes. Drones could be treated through transfusion and herbs. They might possibly be saved if Elva could be killed. The countess was the real problem. Elva was the one with the stranglehold on the women. Eliminate the vampire and her drones would be disconnected from the vile power source that fueled their existence. Surely killing these women just to flush out the true enemy was no better than murder.

  His stomach churned.

  Grim, he flipped the letter into the embers of his earlier fire and watched blue flames leap, flashing orange as they licked the edges of the paper. He flexed his jaw muscles and scowled. Feeling th
e heat upon his face, he closed his eyes, summoning again the horrid vision of his dear sister, eyes wide in her death stare, throat mutilated, one arm outstretched toward their dead parents, likewise gnawed and drained. This time, that agonizing image was barely enough to convince him this was the right thing to do.

  -4-

  Walter studied the maps of the East End, recalling the back streets he’d visited yesterday disguised as a drunken dockworker wandering the streets between the Thames River and George Yard. While the rain had abated during the day, now that he was preparing to head out the night of August 7, as the Ordine had requested, it had picked up again into a steady drizzle, tapping upon the panes of his study window.

  Walter unlocked his bottom desk drawer and picked through its contents, assembling a bag of tools consisting of a silver crucifix, a looking glass, several stakes, a hammer, and a long silver knife, weighted for throwing, with ornate decorations around its ivory inlaid hilt. This was his primary weapon of choice, the same knife he’d used to cut the throat of the woman who’d been vampirized the other night in the opium den. It had been bestowed upon him by his uncle, forged and blessed by monks at the monastery where he was trained. He had sharpened it last night as he prayed and meditated on tonight’s task. He tried to eradicate his feelings from the equation, but he was plagued by the nagging thought that the woman he hunted tonight was still a woman, not yet a full vampire, and still able to be saved.

  He couldn’t admit that he was entirely successful in this endeavor. Nevertheless, the task remained. To hunt a vampire over a thousand years old required extreme measures. In all of his years of hunting, he had yet to face a vampire so ancient, and thus so powerful.

  When he’d replied to Sager at the Ordine with last night’s telegram, he expressed none of his reservations. He was, after all, the Catcher—vampire hunter of the highest order, a title bestowed with no small amount of consideration. Despite his personal feelings, he was a professional. In the telegram, he simply acquiesced to the request for Marty Tabram’s death, and asked the Ordine to plant additional noses: a match seller, chimney sweeper, and a rag picker, to monitor the comings and goings of the additional drones: characters that would blend into the London streets without so much as a raised eyebrow. He needed information, not commotion.

  His bag packed, he ensured that it was small enough to carry relatively easily. He used an old black doctor’s bag as it served the purpose well and proved very sturdy. The bag had taken a lot of hard knocks.

  Rain beat against the window of his study as he extinguished the lamp on his desktop. He said a brief prayer before heading into the street, checking the grandfather clock in the front hall. It was near midnight. Late enough that there’d be some activity among the prostitutes…and everyone in the area would be, by now, drunk and sloppy about minding their surroundings. Fewer witnesses, less reliable reports to the police. He didn’t need a slew of Bobbies poking around in his business. The fewer questions he answered, the more trouble he avoided. So far in his career, he had avoided entanglements with the legal system, and he intended to keep it that way.

  He perched a ragged cap on his head and hunched his shoulders against the chilly rain as he headed through the street. The narrow brim was just enough to block the rain from his eyes. He hailed a cab to George Yard where Martha “Marty” Tabram was rumored to spend time trolling for soldiers or dockworkers fresh off the Thames with a day’s pay.

  He wandered the area for a while, had a meaningless conversation with an incoherent rube who kept asking him for fags. He stumbled off for a while, leaning now and then against a soot covered brick wall, clutching the same mostly empty bottle of beer he’d brought with him as a prop for his disguise. The cough that rattled his chest as a result of all of these late nights out in the elements was genuine, adding a nice touch to his seedy character.

  Shortly after one o’clock, while wandering along High Street, Walter spotted Marty. He wasn’t sure of her identity at first until she wandered into the light of a row of gas lamps. She was weaving her way out of a dingy red brick building with high stone archways. All of its windows were dark. Her clothes were a mess. Her hair hung awkwardly to one side in a wet mass. She walked drunkenly with slow, meandering steps, a woman with no particular place to go, and no particular reason to get there.

  She followed the street, sticking to the lamplight whenever it was available. Occasionally she cast a glance over her shoulders to survey her surroundings, but didn’t seem overly concerned so much as interested in who else might be around. She had worked these streets for a time and knew her way around. Evidently, she was comfortable in her familiarity of these mean streets. A comfort that would be her undoing.

  As he followed her, Walter’s ears grew ever more sensitive, picking up the slightest movements around and behind them. Dark figures moved occasionally through the shadows, and he hoped that she was the only drone working in this area. If another came to her rescue while he was trying to finish the job, it could prove disastrous. Though not a full vampire, drones such as Marty were not without their prowess when provoked; and, if what Sager said was true, that the symbionts within the drone’s wombs gave them strength, then he had no way of judging what he might be up against. This symbiont business was all new and undocumented as far as what he might expect in the midst of an attack.

  He pretended to be slightly off balance as he called out to her. “Say there, ladybird,” he slurred. “They say your name’s Marty, eh? Let me buy you a reeb? Give yer belly an airing, maybe?” Thrusting a hand out against the wall, he caught his swaying body and feigned the need to prop himself up.

  She turned and paused at the edge of shadow, regarding him shrewdly, with deep black eyes that seemed to widen just barely, as if in excitement. Her nostrils flared and her upper lip twitched as if to growl. At that moment he realized she was indeed part vampire. There was that certain something in her eyes—mischief bordering on evil. Elva’s blood pumped in Marty’s veins. She was enslaved to the Elder vamp and lusted after the gift Elva could bestow upon her. That much was clear in her fevered gaze.

  His reservations fled. She was part monster. Part killer. Her eyes flashed with unholy light, one lip curled in a barely perceptible inkling of thirst. To bring him to her mistress would earn her the greatest reward: Elva’s blood. The blood of the Countess was sweeter than any wine Marty’s lips had ever caressed.

  “Aye,” she said waiting for him in a deep pool of gray and ebony beneath the stone arch entrance of one of the George Yard buildings. “C’mon o’er this way. I’ll be glad to shag a sturdy chap for a price.”

  Walter fumbled with his breeches as if he were going to loosen them in preparation for the act. He stumbled toward her, following her to wherever she might lead. She moved purposefully from the darkness of the sidewalk into the black building entrance, and then onward to the first floor landing. No doubt she had used this place for her clients before; he wondered how many men had met their deaths under Elva’s fangs here.

  He cast a few subtle glances around them. His senses tingled like electricity, wary of an ambush, wary of trickery. Perhaps the drones worked together. Perhaps they were here now, deeper in the shadows.

  He heard the rustle of her skirts as she hiked and bunched them above her waist. It was so dark he could barely see her form against the wall as she reached for his hand and guided him toward her, grappling to undo his trousers.

  As soon as she was occupied with his pants—she made a quiet curse of his clothing—Walter drew the sharpened knife and brought it up in a swift practiced motion aimed for her throat. In a whispered chant he prayed an ancient passage over and over, his words gaining momentum as he aimed to cut her throat.

  In an instant she turned from sully prostitute to maddened animal. With a hiss she bared her budding fangs, a red glow emanating from her eyes, and swiped the skin of his cheek with broken, jagged nails, tearing runnels of flesh from his face. He couldn’t tell if he’d sliced her throat, b
ut from her spirited resistance he guessed if he had, the cut proved an insignificant detriment to her defense. He stabbed forcefully a few more times, each penetrating jab sinking deep into her flesh. Still, his efforts didn’t slow her. She writhed against his blade, blood splattering his overcoat and shoes. Guttural, primal grunts emanated from her in angry bursts as she struggled against him. Her fist caught a hunk of his hair and she wrenched it from his scalp. The searing pain set his nerve endings afire.

  With the strength of several men, the woman shoved him back against the stairs. Hard. He stumbled, lost his footing, and fell backwards. He dropped the silver knife as he hit the ground. It clattered with a metallic clang to the landing.

  He rolled across the filth of the floor then, gagging from the stench. The foul waste of human existence, garbage, cast off food, excrement caked his clothing and body. His hand searched through the mire for his lost blade.

  She caught him by the back of his neck and pounced, landing heavy upon his back. His bag of tools fell a couple of feet away, rolling on its side. His skull hit the hard floor with a painful smack, jarring him momentarily, knocking the wind from him. He flailed beneath her heavy mass, yanking at her dress, shredding the fabric in an attempt to get a hold of her, to gain leverage.

  The heat of her fetid breath was potent against his face, within his nostrils, as she neared his throat with her fangs, holding him flat with her full weight, hands like steel gauntlets clamped upon his wrists. Even if she had found purchase on his throat, he doubted her infantile fangs could pierce his flesh. Even so, he wasn’t going to allow her the opportunity to find out. He gave a solid heave to dislodge her for a minute. It was just enough to give him the reach he needed to reclaim his knife and turn around as she came at him again in a streaked blur.