He gulped, taking more than he should. It was hard to draw away from the fountain. No wonder many new-borns killed their first fancies. Penelope’s blood was of the finest. With no impurities, it slipped down his throat like honeyed liqueur.
She laid her hand on his cheek and pushed him away. The flow ceased, and he found himself sucking cold air. He would not be stopped. He swept her up in his arms and threw her on to the settee. Growling, he held her down and pulled at her collar. Her chemise tore. He mumbled an apology and fell upon her, his mouth gathering a fold of the flesh of her upper bosom. Her blood thrilled him. His teeth caught in bitemarks, blood seeping around them as he worried at the wound. She did not resist. Blood bubbled into his mouth, and there were violet sunbursts behind his eyes. There was no warm sensation to compare. It was more than food, more than a drug, more than love. Never did he feel more alive than in this moment...
... he found himself kneeling by the settee, prostrate on her chest, silently sobbing. Minutes had been burned from his memory. His chin and shirtfront were soaked with blood. Electrical charges coursed through his veins. His heart burned as it filled with Penelope’s blood. For a moment, he was almost insensible. She eased herself into a sitting position and lifted his head. He stared at her with dazed eyes. Angry purple wounds stood out on her neck and breast.
Penelope smiled a tight, quiet smile at him. ‘So that is what all the fuss was about,’ she commented.
She helped him up on to the settee like a mother posing a child for a photograph. He sat, still tasting her in his mouth and head. His shudders subsided. She dabbed her bites clean with a kerchief, wincing in minor irritation. Then she buttoned her jacket up over her ripped chemise. Her hair had come undone, and she fussed with it for a moment.
‘There now, Arthur,’ she said. ‘You’ve had your satisfaction of me...’
He could not speak. He was glutted, helpless as a snake digesting a mongoose.
‘... now, I shall complete the exchange and have my satisfaction of you.’
The paring knife was in her hand, shining.
‘I understand this is quite simple,’ she said. ‘Be a dear and don’t struggle.’
Her knife was at his throat, slicing. It was sharp enough to slit his tough skin, but he felt no pain. The knife was not silvered. The gash would heal over almost instantly.
‘Ugh,’ she said.
Penelope swallowed her distaste and put her tiny mouth over the cut she had made. Shocked, he realised immediately what she was about. Her tongue kept apart the lips of the wound as she sucked blood from him.
34
CONFIDENCES
‘You should be upstairs, resting,’ Amworth told her. ‘You’ll mend sooner.’
‘Why should I get well?’ Geneviève asked. ‘The hopping toad will only return and finish me off.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Yes I do. I don’t know why it’s going to destroy me, but I know it will. I’ve been in China. Those creatures don’t give up of their own accord. They can’t be reasoned with and they can’t be stopped. I might as well go out in the street and wait for it to come for me. At least that way, no one else would be in the way.’
Amworth was impatient. ‘You hurt it last time.’
‘And it hurt me worse.’
She was not entirely better. She often found herself moving her head around, to test her broken and re-set neck. Her head had not fallen off yet, but sometimes it felt about to.
Geneviève looked around the lecture hall that had become a makeshift infirmary. ‘No Chinese callers?’
The nurse shook her head. She was listening to the chest of a little new-born girl. For a moment, Geneviève thought it was Lily. Then, she remembered. The patient was Rebecca Kosminski.
‘I wish I knew which of the enemies I’ve cultivated was responsible.’
The Chinese vampire was a hireling. All over the East, such creatures were employed as assassins.
‘I expect I’ll be told. It would seem a waste not to let me know why my head is being torn off.’
‘Shush,’ Amworth said. ‘You’re frightening the girl.’
With a squirt of guilt, she saw the nurse was right. Rebecca looked thoughtful but her eyes had shrunk to tiny points.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘Rebecca, I was just being silly, making up stories.’
Rebecca smiled. In a few years, she would never believe a lie that transparent. But now she was still a child inside.
Feeling useless – all her duties had been reassigned for a specified period of convalescence – Geneviève loitered in the infirmary for a few minutes then drifted out to the corridor.
The director’s office was locked; Montague Druitt lurked outside. Geneviève bade him a good evening.
‘Where’s Dr Seward?’ she asked.
Druitt was reluctant to talk to her but got the words out. ‘He’s off somewhere, with no explanation. It’s most inconvenient.’
‘Can I be of assistance? As you know, I have the director’s confidence.’
Druitt shook his head, lips pressed tight. It was business for warm men, he was thinking. Geneviève could not tell what the man wanted. He was another of the Hall’s scorched souls; she had no hope of making common cause with him, much less of being any help.
She left him in the corridor and traipsed out to the foyer, where an unfriendly warm nurse directed a stream of malingerers back into the fog, occasionally deigning to admit someone obviously suffering mortal injury.
Dr Seward had been much absent recently. She supposed he had some private grief. Like everyone else. Through all the pain of her broken bones, she still could not get the death of Pamela Beauregard out of her mind. Everyone lost people. She had been losing people for hundreds of years. But in Charles, the loss still burned.
‘Miss Dieudonné?’
It was a new-born woman. She had come in from outside. She was dressed well, but not expensively.
‘Do you remember me? Kate Reed?’
‘Miss Reed, the journalist?’
‘That’s right. The Central News Agency.’ She stuck out her hand to be shaken; Geneviève responded weakly in kind.
‘What can be done for you, Miss Reed?’
The new-born let go Geneviève’s hand.
‘I was hoping I could talk to you? It’s about the other night. That Chinese thing. The butterflies.’
Geneviève shrugged.
‘I don’t know if there’s anything I can tell you that you don’t know. It was an elder. Evidently the butterflies are a quirk of its bloodline. Some German nosferatu have a similar affinity for rats, and you must have heard of the Carpathians and their pet wolves.’
‘Why were you singled out for persecution?’
‘I wish I knew. I have passed blamelessly through life doing nought but good deeds, and am beloved by all whose path I have crossed. It is beyond conception that anyone could nurture in their heart hostile feelings for me.’
Miss Reed did not appear to notice the irony. ‘Do you think the assault has anything to do with your interest in the Whitechapel murders?’
That had not occurred to Geneviève. She considered a moment. ‘I doubt it. Whatever you might have heard, I am scarcely an important figure in the investigation. The police have talked to me about the effects of the murders on this community, but that is the extent of my involvement...’
‘And you’ve been consulted by Charles... by Mr Beauregard. The other night...’
‘Again, he has spoken with me but nothing more. I understand I owe him a debt of gratitude for distracting the elder.’
Miss Reed was rather intent on digging out something. Geneviève had the impression that the lady journalist was more interested in Charles than in the Ripper.