Blood Coven Read online

  “The Ordine has other ideas on what is causing Annie’s health to deteriorate. Information points to a maturing symbiont.” George shifted with a squeak on the leather chair. “They’re giving her one last chance to lead you to Elva, then they want her erased.”

  “When?”

  “The seventh.”

  Walter frowned. “This week? That’s too soon. I feel like I’m getting somewhere with her. I think if we give her more time, her desperation will have her clamoring at Elva’s doorstep in no time.”

  “The Ordine thinks they’ve given her too much time already. If there is a symbiont maturing in Annie’s womb, and the blood that she’s coughing up on a regular basis is a sign that the symbiont is close to birth, or whatever the unholy procedure is called, then it’s too dangerous to allow her to exist.”

  “So the Ordine really believes that Elva has impregnated, if you will, all of these drones with her symbionts? What if they’re wrong? What proof do they have other than a few reports from now-dead noses?” Walter set his glass onto the table with a loud clank.

  “That’s why we have you,” George said with a grim smile.

  “Bloody wonderful.”

  “You’re to remove this Chapman woman’s womb and bring it and whatever abominable contents it may hold back to me, so I can deliver the atrocity to the powers that be.” George grimaced just slightly in expectation of Walter’s disapproval.

  “Remove her womb? You have absolutely got to be kidding me.”

  “We have to ensure that Elva isn’t physically reproducing. If she is, then we have to know what we’re up against. You know this more than anyone, Lusk. You’re the one out there fighting the bloody bastards. You know what vamps are capable of. How much more difficult is your job going to become if vamps find a way to implant symbionts into drone hosts? Think of the consequences if we don’t examine the wombs of these women!”

  “But that’s the problem, George; they’re still women! I don’t mind killing vampires. In fact, I damn well enjoy butchering the vile creatures. But these drones are still human. If we can eliminate Elva, they could be saved. What the Ordine has ordered me to do thus far …mutilating wombs of women…it’s incomprehensible. It’s nothing short of murder.”

  “I understand your point, Lusk. I really do, but we have to think of the bigger picture. What are one or two dead whores compared to hundreds of vampires unleashed upon mankind? What of that, my good Catcher?” George jabbed at the air dramatically.

  “I’m a Catcher, not a butcher. Cutting out the womb of a drone… my word, Sager. Just listen to yourself!”

  George shook his head. “I’m sorry, Walter. I know this is hard. I told them that you’d protest, but in order to know what we’re up against, we have to have something concrete to study. It’s a simple equation involving the death of a few to benefit the whole of mankind. They are drones after all. Unless one of them leads us to Elva, we have little to go on and quite possibly we may be hunting her for another hundred years. By that time, she might have reproduced a whole army of some new breed of vampire.”

  Walter grasped his head between his hands. “They ask a great deal of me.”

  “I know they do, but think of all of the lives you may save, Walter. Think of all of the sisters, brothers, mothers, and fathers that you will spare from the clutches of Elva’s offspring, or of those like hers.”

  Frowning, Walter looked at George. “I think of that with every vamp I extinguish.”

  “Good. Elva’s drones are no better, Lusk. It’s only a matter of time until Elva turns them or uses them as food for her demonic spawn.”

  Walter nodded in agreement. “So, the seventh it is.”

  “Unless Annie leads you to Elva. Then, well, you can do what you do best and kill the Elder vamp and save the drones.”

  “If I must face the Elder vamp alone, then say a prayer for me, Sager.”

  “Every day, Walter. Every day.” George stood and made his way to the door. “I’ll just let myself out again.”

  Walter waved from the chair without looking at George as he walked to the landing and began down the stairs.

  The following week went by too fast for Walter’s liking. Each day that crept closer to the seventh of September troubled him. Still, he poured over his map, searching for the next location in his cross formation. Annie frequented a lodging house on Dorset and often took men at Hanbury Street, and Hanbury would fit in well. He’d have to follow her closely and wait for an opportune time to approach her.

  With much reluctance he went over the contents of his bag to ensure the implements were in working order. Carefully he sharpened his knife of silver until the blade whispered through a piece of raw meat as though it were paper.

  He slipped into the cheap, timeworn garments obtained from his usual source and examined his reflection in the mirror. He purposely allowed his beard to grow unchecked over the course of the week in order to appear disheveled. He pulled his cap down over his longish hair and picked up his bag.

  Leaving through the servant’s door, he made his way to Dorset taking alleys and side passages. It was dark when he left, and darker still when he arrived. Plagued with thoughts of the Ordine and their mandates, he pondered how much time he should give Annie to lead him to Elva before he eliminated her. Judging from the loyalty of the past drones, he had no real reason to believe that she would make a run for her mistress. True, her sickness might be pushing her to desperate measures, but if Annie were going to run to Elva, she probably would have already done it by now. Her illness was in such advanced stages that certainly the woman knew she was going to die soon. Or maybe she didn’t care anymore. The thought occurred to Walter that perhaps the drones knew they were hosts to Elva’s symbionts. Perhaps that is why they fought so hard, to protect Elva’s offspring.

  A shiver rose gooseflesh over his arms.

  Annie stopped into a beerhouse for an ale and sat chatting with a group of chums that crowded around a table. Her trained eyes watched the male patrons, sizing them up for the easiest mark. He had no way of knowing if she was luring a man in for Elva’s feeding or luring a man in simply to tumble him for the coinage.

  Walter grasped the handle of his bag tightly and leaned against a grimy wall. Around him people buzzed of the stories in the newspapers of “Jack the Ripper.” He listened closely to their fears and concerns. He had kept a close tab on the reports. A couple of the dead were by his hand, but the rest were imitators using the spotlight to carry out their own dastardly deeds. This was good because it threw the police, and possibly Elva, off his true trail. Bad, because it ate at him to think that someone was using his techniques as inspiration to massacre innocents.

  He kept an eye on Annie who blended with passing dockworkers, propositioning some of them. She found a few who were interested.

  Hours passed and Annie had only ducked into an alley three or four times with a man. Each time the man reappeared so Walter thought it safe to assume that Elva was nowhere near the vicinity tonight. It wasn’t looking like Annie had any intention of seeking out her mistress either. It was getting late.

  The Ordine had said September 7th, but he was going to give her as much time as he could. He had to take Annie out before daylight. He may be late by a few hours, but he had to give her the extra time, if nothing else, in order to appease his conscience. He’d deal with any reprimands from the Ordine at a later time.

  Waiting as long as he dared, he watched her go from drunken sailor to drunken workers—desperate to make enough money to rent lodging. At one point later in the night, she bought and ate a baked potato, but never stopped looking for a man in need of her service. She was right back at it having eaten, but he noticed that every time she made a little money, she bought a little bit of alcohol. At this rate, she’d never make enough money to pay for her room.

  Finally at 4:30 a.m., Annie left the bar, slightly stumbled upon the wet stair, and walked toward Hanbury, having exhausted her possibilities where she was.
Walter followed close, mixing in with the murky darkness. He walked briskly but lightly, pausing to listen to her conversations, and once to observe her solitary drinking.

  Daylight was fast approaching. Elva was not going to show.

  It was time.

  He leaned back against the shutters of the building, propping himself with one leg, and whistled a pretty tune. Annie turned in his direction, smiling. She sauntered toward him saucily. As she drew nearer to him, he realized she was but a tiny thing, worn and far past her prime. She started to say something, but instead broke out in a fit of coughs. Rummaging in her coat pocket she produced the filthy, blood-soaked rag she’d coughed into before, and hacked a wad of bloody spittle. She took a few moments to compose herself and started toward him.

  He waited patiently. “Ain’t got much.”

  “What will you be wanting?”

  Walter looked around, surveyed the surroundings. The streets were growing quieter. “Aw, you know what a man likes, dove. But, I ain’t got much.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out two shillings, showing them to her with a sheepish grin.

  “What? Two bob? That all you got? I’ve got to make my nethers.” Annie frowned, but looking around and seeing no one else, she shrugged. “Aw, well, let’s have it then.”

  “Will you?”

  “Yes.” Annie led him to the rear yard and began to hike her skirts.

  He hesitated just a moment. Her eyes caught his, and momentary fear flashed across her face but it was too late.

  Walter lunged for her throat, wrapping his fingers tight around the soft flesh of her neck. Annie’s arms flailed against him, as she pushed and shoved and fought. Holding her neck tighter, he could see the budding fangs emerging, and her eyes throbbing scarlet. He squeezed harder, leaning into her belly with his knee, pushing her hard against the fence, trying to push the air from her. She fought, but her already weakened condition due to her advanced illness couldn’t be helped even by her partial supernatural strength. Even with the gift of Elva’s blood running inside of her, her mortal body just couldn’t stand the strain. Her eyes rolled back until only the whites showed, and her body went limp.

  Walter let her drop to the ground. He seized her by the hair, yanked her head backwards and slit her throat. The razor sharp knife hissed through flesh and scraped metal on bone as he shoved the blade down in one swift movement, coming short of decapitating her warm corpse. He kicked and spread her legs, bent them at the knees, giving him berth to work in. He had studied anatomy charts for days to make sure that he knew precisely what it was he was removing. With the stakes as they were, there was no margin for error. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to do this twice.

  Without much light to work by, Walter flayed open the skin of her abdomen and reached inside. He scooped her innards to the right of the body, some of the intestines proving loopy and unwieldy, but he finally got them out, flung over her shoulder. The blood that coated his hands was warm and greasy as he sorted the stomach aside. The scant light of a distant window shone in dark reflection upon his gruesome handiwork and he grew fearful of discovery; it did, however, provide him with the necessary illumination to expertly remove her womb, vagina and a great deal of the bladder. These he quickly wrapped in butcher paper, not wishing to verify for himself if some atrocious creature was incubating within. He stuffed the whole gory package into his bag and threw his tools in on top of it. He gave Annie one more glance, noticing her swollen tongue peeking from between her teeth, and shaking his head, made the sign of the cross over her mutilated body before rushing off through the street.

  -8-

  The mansion loomed over the nearby manors. Its parapets stood always dark, the courtyard always in shadow, deep with pools of darkness that stirred at the worst times of night.

  Few in the city went near it during the day; anyone who knew what was good for them wouldn’t stray near those cursed walls at night.

  A black, wrought iron gate stood in twisted repose as the entrance to the stone barrier that divided the mansion from the street. The gate swung open just a body’s width, inviting the unwary into the hollow of the courtyard. Dark shapes of statues and something else shifted in the depths of this manor’s inner world, and none had lived to confirm or deny the rumors that spread in fearful whispers among the residents of the surrounding areas. Inexplicably missing members of the locality never accounted for, and tales of ghouls stealing infants did plenty to further those rumors.

  Inside the stone edifice, gloom and shadow had long been lord of all—the drapes remained drawn by day, with an occasional open window by night…a window out of which the Countess would sometimes flow like a black lizard, climbing straight down the wall into the courtyard, snagging whatever small beast was unfortunate enough to roam the grounds. Other nights, the black lizard would dissolve into a yellow fog that drifted into the dank streets beyond the twisted gates, sometimes materializing as a dog, other times materializing as something unspeakable.

  Something no one had ever lived to really tell, save one, and he was a madman and few believed his tale. Those who went missing never returned, so to think that whatever was responsible for the disappearances would leave one man totally unscathed, when no trace had been left of the others, seemed unlikely. Nonetheless, Dale Abner, resident drunk and general misfit, claimed to have beheld the thing in full moonlight. He told an awful tale of a creature with giant half-furled bat wings, a hunched back, long neck, and misshapen baldhead boasting long ears and two blood-soaked fangs protruding over its bottom lip. Wide black eyes glowed at their centers with crimson fires of bloodlust and demonic evil. Its hands were pale, knobby knuckles and jagged fingernails like jutting, curved talons. The creature bore a thin torso, and legs bare with mottled flesh, melting into a pool of blackness where feet should be seen.

  This visage of horror allegedly hovered in front of Dale Abner, who was just a little off my bob with a reeb, er two after he claimed to have watched it feed on a small child by ripping its throat open and drinking its blood. It was far fetched. Most people dismissed the story entirely, marking it up to Abner’s typical ravings.

  At least until Abner disappeared, the only trace left consisting of an empty bottle of gin and his pocket watch amidst scant traces of blood. That was just last week. Now the area rang silent around the manor house at night.

  The Countess had taken to feeding deeper in the city. Finding victims for herself, and bringing something back for her brood. She’d come in through the window like a mother bird come to nest with sustenance for her young. Deep inside the mansion, she kept them: her children of darkness, her soon-to-be slaves of sensual lust and partners in the eternal feast.

  They waited on the floor beneath the window, misshapen creatures themselves. Baby-sized bloodsucking fiends with clawed fingers, black wings, jutting fangs, elongated eyes, and a thirst for human blood. They cried and hissed in the dusky room, writhing in the pool of moonlight as the ebony shadow of the returning mother, the Countess Elva Walacova, swooped onto the edge of the arched stone window, curling her wicked wings about her, throwing the half-dead body of a twelve-year-old child to the floor amidst the four atrocities. They fed on the lame child’s flesh and blood, slurping and gnashing at the screaming youth’s neck and thigh.

  The Countess sneered. She drifted off into the mansion as her children fed. A final whimper of the dying human child echoed above the savage sounds of her children’s feast.

  Her glee matched her anger this night; she bore the weight of the deaths of her drones. In a distant way she was aware at all times of the Ordine, sensed their lust for her death like a palpable scent in the air. They were a ragged pack of dogs tracking the bear. And she was irritated enough by them to arrange for a meeting with her Elizabeth, beloved Liz, to save the seed within her womb, and to confront whosoever came against her.

  The Countess glowered in the moonless hallway. A few yards away, in the room behind her, the offspring finished their kill and drank the last o
f the child’s blood. The scent of it intoxicated her. She would feed again tonight; on the blood of an enemy—the sweetest kind. The Countess sent for her carriage with a growled order.

  Moments later, a cloaked, cowled rider and black horses with wild eyes arrived, ushering her into the midnight gloom toward Whitechapel, their hooves echoing along the gray cobble corridor, polished by moonlit rain.

  Thunder roared.

  The horses reared and bolted into the night, the carriage chattering like ghostly chains as it dashed away.

  -9-

  The knife went in swift and sharp. Her eyes sparked red as her hands flew to her throat to ward off the attack, but he was too fast for her. Blood pumped from the gash, spraying upward in a grim fountain of death.

  He held her down with his knees, down in the muck and filth of the street. Elizabeth Stride. Three weeks later, she was number four on the list of drones to be eliminated as mandated by the Ordine. Number four on the list of Lusk’s burdens to bear. The blade glistened scarlet on silver in the pearlescent light of the moon. The orb hung heavy in the misty sky above. He held the knife up, examining the glint of the blade as her struggles grew weaker. The gurgle of blood in her throat mixed with exiting air began to wane. Her eyes, once full of a life that reflected misery and pain, happiness and sorrow, froze white in their state of shocked horror, then rolled backwards, fluttering, before she fell limp.

  Dutfield’s Yard was deserted save for him and his unfortunate prey.

  He eyed her abdomen, vessel of the unholy creature. For he now knew from the others that the information gathered by the Ordine was accurate. Elva Walacova, that diabolical ancient countess was nurturing her young in the wombs of the downtrodden. Drones cursed by life and, now, by death.

  A distant jangling, like a ring of keys, caught his ear. As it grew louder, it became a jangle of chains and the thunder of hooves. Lusk turned his head quickly in the direction of the oncoming noise. He ceased work and pulled his bag close to his chest.