When I came out of the woods a little less than three years ago, I found the country turning. For months, as the Count climbed to his current position, I expected always to be struck down. Surely the invader who took such delight in the public ruination of Van Helsing would eventually reach out his claw and smash me. Eventually, as the fear subsided to a dull throb, I supposed I had become lost in the teeming crowds that so attracted our new master. Or maybe, with that diabolical cruelty for which he is famous, he had decided that allowing me my life would be a more fitting revenge. After all, I pose little threat to the Prince Consort. Since then, life has seemed a dream, a night-shadow of what should have been...
I still dream of Lucy, too much. Her lips, her pale skin, her hair, her eyes. Many times have dreams of Lucy been responsible for my nocturnal emissions. Wet kisses and wet dreams...
I have chosen to work in Whitechapel because it is the ugliest region of the city. The superficialities which some say make Dracula’s rule tolerable are at their thinnest. With vampire sluts baying for blood on every corner and befuddled or dead men littering cramped streets, one can see the true, worm-eaten face of what has been wrought. It is hard to keep my control among so many of the leeches but my vocation is strong. Once, I was a doctor, a specialist in mental disorders. Now, I am a vampire killer. My duty is to cut out the corrupt heart of the city.
The morphine is making itself felt. My pain recedes and my vision becomes sharper. Tonight I shall see through the murk. I shall slice the curtain and face the truth.
The fog that shrouds London in autumn has got thicker. I understand all manner of vermin – rats, wild dogs, cats – have thrived. Some quarters of the city have even seen a resurgence of medieval diseases. It is as if the Prince Consort were a bubbling sink-hole, disgorging filth from where he sits, grinning his wolf ’s grin as sickness seeps throughout his realm. The fog means there is less distinction between day and night. In Whitechapel, many days, the sun truly does not shine. We’ve seen more and more new-borns go half-mad in the daytime, muddy light burning out their brains.
Today was unexpectedly clear. I spent a morning tending severe sun-burns with liberal applications of liniment. Geneviève lectures the worst cases, explaining that it’ll take years for them to build a resistance to direct sunlight. It is hard to remember what Geneviève is; but at moments, when anger sparks in her eyes or her lips draw back unconsciously from sharp teeth, the illusion of humanity is stripped.
The rest of the city is more sedate, but no better. I stopped off at the Spaniards for a pork pie and a pint of beer. Above the city, looking down on the foggy bowl of London, its surface punctured by the occasional tall building, it would be possible, I hoped, to imagine things were as they had been. I sat outside, scarfed and gloved against the cold, and sipped my ale, thinking of this and that. In the gloom of the afternoon, new-born gentlefolk paraded themselves on Hampstead Heath, skins pale, eyes shining red. It is quite the thing to follow fashions set by the Queen, and vampirism – although resisted for several years – has now become acceptable. Prim, pretty girls in bonnets, ivory-dagger teeth artfully concealed by Japanese fans, flock to the Heath on sunless afternoons, thick black parasols held high. Lucy would have become one of them had we not finished her. I saw them chattering like gussied-up rats, kissing children and barely holding back their thirst. There is no difference, really, between them and the blood-sucking harlots of Whitechapel.
I left my pint unfinished and walked the rest of the way to Kingstead, head down, hands deep in my coat pockets. The gates hung open, unattended. Since dying became unfashionable, churchyards have fallen into disuse. The churches are neglected too, although the court has tame archbishops, desperately reconciling Anglicanism with vampirism. When alive, the Prince Consort slaughtered in defence of the faith. He still fancies himself a Christian. Last year’s Royal Wedding was a display of High Church finery that would have delighted Pusey or Keble.
Entering the graveyard, I could not help but remember everything again, as sharp and hurtful as if it had been last week. I told myself we destroyed a thing not the girl I had loved. Cutting through her neck, I found my calling. My hand hurt damnably. I have been trying to curb my use of morphine. I know I should seek proper treatment, but I think I need my pain. It gives me resolve.
During the changes, new-borns took to opening the tombs of dead relatives, hoping by some osmosis to return them to vampire life. I had to watch my step to avoid the chasm-like holes left in the ground by these fruitless endeavours. The fog was thin up here, a muslin veil.
It was something of a shock to see a figure outside the Westenra tomb. A slim young woman in a monkey-fur-collared coat, a straw hat with a red band on it perched on her tightly-bound hair. Hearing my approach, she turned. I caught the glint of red eyes. With the light behind her, she could have been Lucy returned. My heart thumped.
‘Sir?’ she said, startled by my interruption. ‘Who might that be?’
The voice was Irish, uneducated, light. It was not Lucy. I left my hat on, but nodded. There was something familiar about the new-born.
‘Why,’ she said, ‘’tis Dr Seward, from the Toynbee.’
A shaft of late sun speared through and the vampire flinched. I saw her face.
‘Kelly, isn’t it?’
‘Marie Jeanette, sir,’ she said, recovering her composure, remembering to simper, to smile, to ingratiate. ‘Come to pay your respects?’
I nodded and laid my wreath. She had put her own at the door of the tomb, a penny posy now dwarfed by my shilling tribute.
‘Did you know the young miss?’
‘I did.’
‘She was a beauty,’ Kelly said. ‘Beautiful.’
I could not conceive of any connection in life between my Lucy and this broad-boned drab. She’s fresher than most, but just another whore. Like Nichols, Chapman and Schön...
‘She turned me,’ Kelly explained. ‘Found me on the Heath one night when I was walking home from the house of a gentleman, and 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 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.’
She giggled. My pocketed hand was dipped in fire, a tight fist at the centre of a ball of pain. Kelly came 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 went into spasm. 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’d have ripped her heart out. But there were other emotions. She looked 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. She delicately scraped away the scabs, licking with shudders of pleasure. Shaking, I looked about.