Anno Dracula

29

MR VAMPIRE II

Charles’s tear still tingled on her tongue. She’d not meant to taste his grief but had been unable to help herself. In her old age, she was getting cranky and hard to fathom. Most elders went mad. Like Vlad Tepes. From Charles, she had a bubble of memory. The grip of a thin hand, the smell of dying blood, the heat and dirt of a far country, the fierce struggle of a woman to live, to bring life to the world. Alien feelings, alien pain. Geneviève could not become pregnant, could not give birth. Did that mean she was not truly alive? Not truly a woman? It was said that vampires were genderless, the sex of their bodies as functional as the eyes on the wings of a peacock. She could take pleasure in love-making, after a fashion; but it did not compare with feeding.

All this from a tear. She swallowed and licked the roof of her mouth until the mind-taste was gone.

‘We’re nearly at Toynbee Hall,’ Charles said.

They were by Spitalfields Market, in Lamb Street, just around the corner from Commercial Street. The market, open until dawn, was well-lit, and crowded. The noise and smell were familiar.

With a lurch, they came to a halt. Geneviève was thrown forwards, against the wooden shield that fastened over the front of the hansom. Charles caught her and helped her up, but she found herself on her knees in the tiny floorspace. She could not see out of the cab. The horse neighed in hysteria, the cabby trying to rein her in with ‘whoa’ and a hard pull.

Geneviève knew something was wrong.

With a horrid wrench, the neighing abruptly stopped. The cabby swore and bystanders yelped in terror. Charles’s face drained of emotion. He was a soldier moments before the charge. She’d been seeing that expression on the face of soon-to-be dead men for centuries. Her eye-teeth extended, and she salivated, ready for attack or defence.

There was a heavy thump on the top of the cab. She looked up. Five yellow fingers, nails like hooked knives, stuck through the wood. They flexed like bone-jointed worms and a fist ripped away a section of the roof around the trap. Through the splintered slit, she glimpsed a ripple of yellow silk. Her hopping persecutor had returned. A wrinkled face pressed close to the hole, mouth gaping to show rows of lamprey-teeth. It grew and grew, ripping into the cheeks, exposing glisteningly muscled gums. The elder chattered, lips shrivelling to nothing, sparse moustaches sprouting from raw, wet flesh.

Hands took hold of either side of the hole, and peeled away more wood. Layers of varnished carriage-wood shattered, singing like broken violin strings.

Charles had drawn his sword-cane and was looking for a point of thrust. She had to carry the fight to the enemy before Charles tried to be her protector and got himself butchered.

From the floor of the cab, she launched, pushing hard, gripping the edges of the tear and pulling herself up. She burst through the gap, jagged edges ripping her good dress and blunting on her skin. The cab was rocking under the weight of the Chinese, who was balancing on the cabby’s box. She saw the driver sprawled on the pavement a dozen yards away, trying to sit up amid a crowd of gawkers. A cold wind blew her unbound hair about her face and whipped her dress around her knees. The cab wobbled under their shifting weight, anchored only by the dead horse.

‘Master,’ she addressed herself to the vampire, ‘what is your quarrel with me?’

The Chinese changed. His neck elongated, dividing into prickle-haired insect segments. The arms extending from his bell-shaped sleeves were several-elbowed, with human-shaped hands as big as paddles. His head swung from side to side on his snakeneck, a yard of coiled pigtail lashing his shoulders. The queue ended with a spiked ball woven into his rope of hair.

Something at once wispy and prickly brushed her face. It was a cobwebby rope grown from the vampire’s face. While she watched his hands, he had reached for her with his joined eyebrows. Hairs like pampas grass scratched her skin. She felt a trickle on her forehead. The creature was trying for her eyes. She made a fist and swung her forearm against the brow-snake, wrapping it about her wrist several times. She pulled hard: thin strings cut through her sleeve and noosed her wrist, but the vampire was off-balanced.

She was yanked from her own perch as the Chinese tumbled from the box. He slipped through the air like a fish through water and landed perfectly on his sandals. The brow-snake let go of her arm. Feet-first, she slammed into a wall. Then she fell on to cobblestones. Her ankles jarred from the impact with the wall, she tried to stand. The heel of her hand sank into a rotted half-cabbage and she skidded, sprawling again. She tasted filth against her face. Deliberately, she lifted herself on to her elbows, then on to her feet. The elder had managed to hurt her, which was not supposed to be easy. His power made her a child.

She got the wall behind her and gathered strength. Her face burned as the skin tightened. Her teeth and nails grew, splitting the flesh of her fingers and gums. She tasted her own blood.

They were in the market, in a messy space between stalls. A row of dangling beef carcasses lined the concourse between them, shifting on their iron hooks. The stench of dead animal blood was all around. The crowds had gathered in a circle, giving the elders room to fight but also cutting off any retreats.

Pushing against the wall, she flew at the vampire. He stood steady, arms apart. Her hands brushed his robe as, a quarter-second before she reached him, he stepped aside. As she passed, he stabbed her in the side with his pointed fingers. Her dress was shredded, and her skin punctured. She slammed into a cold side of beef, and staggered away, colliding with spectators. They held her up and, with a cheer, pushed her back at the Chinese. It was like a bare-knuckles fight, the crowd continually throwing the pugilists at each other. Until one or other refused to get up again.

She would have given odds against herself. According to superstition, she could halt the Chinese vampire’s assault by tracing a prayer to Buddha on a sheet of yellow paper and pasting the incantation to his forehead. Or by scattering sticky rice in his path to fix him to the earth and, holding her breath to be invisible to the un-dead, cut him into pieces with lengths of blessed, blood-inked string. None of which appeared to be of any practical use.

Long arms stretched like the steadying wings of a crane, the elder kicked her under the chin. His sandal toe hooked on her jaw, lifting her into the air. She landed badly, coming down heavily on a trestle table. Laid out in flour on wax paper had been a row of kidneys. The trestles collapsed and she was on the floor again, surrounded by lumps of purple meat. An unbroken lamp rolled on the cobbles, sooty flame bursting from its side-vent, glass bulb of purple paraffinoil weighting it down.

She looked up and saw the Chinese vampire strolling towards her. He had green eyes in his withered leather mask of a face. His movements were as precise and purposeful as a dancer’s. His silks rustled as he walked, like the wings of insects. To him, this was a show, a demonstration. Like a bullfighter, he wanted applause as he made his kill.

There was a blur of movement behind the creature, and he paused, delicately cocking a pointed ear. Charles was closing on him, sword a silver flash. If he could get the point into the elder’s body and transfix him through the heart...

The vampire’s arm bent backwards in three places and his hand fastened on Charles’s wrist, halting the sword-lunge. As he twisted his grip, the sword revolved like the hand of a clock, never quite scraping the Chinese’s garments. It fell with a clatter on the cobbles. The vampire flipped Charles over, tossing him away with his weapon. The crowd groaned in sympathy.

She tried to sit up. The kidneys were like large dead slugs, bursting under her weight. She was smeared with their discharges. The elder returned his attention to her and stretched out a bony arm, sleeve seeming to swell in an unfelt breeze. From the dark of his robe was disgorged a fluttering cloud that grew like the impossible billows of a magician’s scarf. Darting and chittering, the cloud swarmed towards her. A million tiny butterflies, many-coloured beauties whose wings caught the light like a scattering of diamond fragments, closed around her. They clustered on the meat, devouring it instantly, and bothered her face, seething around the scraps stuck to her skin, worrying the corners of her eyes.

She kept her mouth shut tight and shook her head violently. She wiped at her face with her wrists. Every time she loosed a swath, the butterflies would gather again. She reached out for the fallen lamp, and pinched out the flame. After yanking free the still-hissing wick, she emptied the lamp over her head. The butterflies were washed away, and the smell of paraffin-oil stung her nostrils. One spark, and her head would be a candleflame. She scraped dead butterflies out of her hair, and threw them away by the mucky handful.

The elder stood over her. He bent down and picked her up by her shoulders. She hung from his hold like a length of cloth. She let herself relax. Her toes scraped cobbles. Maybe there was amusement in the dusty emerald of his ancient eyes. His needle-rimmed maw came close to her face, and she smelled his perfumed breath. From the teeth-circled red cleft emerged a pointed, tubular tongue like the proboscis of a mosquito. He could drain her dry, leave her a husk. She might live, but that would be the worst outcome.

Her feet flat on the ground now, she was looking up at the creature. She let her head flop back, and exposed her throat in submission. The tongue snaked towards her, its worm-toothed aperture pulsing. She gave him a few seconds to relish victory and grabbed him just under his armpits, nails stabbing through his robe and scrabbling against his ribs. Mouth agape, she lunged up at his face and bit. She caught his tongue and clamped her jaw tight around the wriggling meat. A peppery taste flooded her mouth, choking her. The tongue, stronger than a snake, fought her jaw-grip. She felt the filthy thing throb. Around his tongue, the vampire screeched in fury. She was hurting him. Her teeth sawed through gristle and muscle and, with a click, met. The tongue-end in her mouth writhed, and she spat it out.

The vampire spun away from her, a gush of oily black exploding from his mouth-hole and splashing down the front of his robe. He still cried, screams emerging in bubbles of blood. The creature would not be feeding on her. She wiped her mouth on her ruined sleeve, coughing and spitting, trying to purge the taste. Her whole mouth was numbed, her throat burned. The elder, spinning, flailed at her again. His blows buffeted her against a wall and he began to work on her like a boxer, hammering her belly and neck. He was angry now, and not so precise. All he had was force, no skill. Pain spread through her body. He took her head as he must have taken the horse’s and wrenched it to one side. Her neckbones parted and she howled in her hurt. The vampire threw her down and kicked her in the side. Then he jumped on her ribs. She heard her own bones breaking.

She opened her eyes. The vampire was sneering down, keening like a wounded seal. His lower face was a steaming mass of flesh and teeth, trying to mend itself. Saliva and blood dripped on her. Then he was gone and other faces were crowding around.

‘Let me through,’ someone said. ‘Move aside, for the Lord’s sake...’

She hurt. Her ribs were fixing as she breathed, stabbing pains receding with each wave. But her neck was out. And she was bone-weary, her vision clouded red. She was aware of the filth in which she lay, the crusted blood on her face. She no longer had even one good dress.

‘Geneviève,’ a voice said, ‘look at me...’

A face was close. Charles.

‘Geneviève...’