Anno Dracula

49

MATING HABITS OF THE COMMON VAMPIRE

His house was interesting, his books and pictures confirming her intuitions. In his library, she found a reading desk piled with volumes, many with places marked. His interests were eclectic; currently, he was absorbed by A Modern Apostle, and Other Poems by Constance Naden, After London by Richard Jefferies, The True History of the World by Lucian de Terre, Essays on the Endowment of Education by Mark Pattison, Science of Ethics by Leslie Stephen and The Unseen Universe by Peter Guthrie Tait. Among his books, Geneviève found framed photographs of Pamela, a strong-faced woman with a pre-Raphaelite cloud of hair. In pictures, Charles’s wife was always frozen in sunlight, at ease in her stillness while others in her group posed stiffly.

She found pen and ink on a stand and considered leaving a note. With the pen in her hand, she could not think of anything she needed to say. Charles would wake up and find her gone but she had no excuses to make. He knew about being bound by duty. Finally she just wrote that she would be at the Hall this evening. She assumed he’d return to Whitechapel and that he would look in on her. Then they might have to talk. After a moment, she signed the note, ‘love, Geneviève’, the accent a tiny flick above her flowing signature. Love was all very well; it was the talking about it that enervated her.

On the third attempt, Geneviève found a cabman willing to take an unescorted vampire girl from Chelsea to Whitechapel. Her destination might not be outside the Four-Mile Radius, that arbitrary circle beyond which hansom cabs were not obliged to venture, but cabbies often had to be overpaid to discharge duties which lay in that Easterly direction.

En route, lulled by the gentle trundle of the wheels and her sense of satisfied repletion, she tried not to think about Charles and the future. By now she had suffered enough involvements to guess accurately what they could expect of life together. Charles was in his middle thirties. She would stay sixteen, unchanged. In five or ten years, she would seem his daughter. In thirty or forty, he would be dead; especially if she continued to feed off him. Like many vampires, she had, with the insistent complicity of her victims, destroyed those about whom she cared deeply. An alternative would be to turn him; as his mother-in-darkness, she would nurture him into a new life, finally losing him to the wider world as all parents must lose their children.

They crossed the river. And the city became noisier, more cramped, more populated.

There were vampire couples, even vampire families, but she thought them unhealthy. After centuries together, they tended to meld into one creature with two or more bodies, leeching off each other so much that they lost their original individualities. If anything, their reputation for extreme cruelty and ruthlessness was worse than that of the worst of the un-dead outlaws.

It was a cold, drab morning. They were well into November, past Hallowe’en and Guy Fawkes’ Night, neither much celebrated this year. The fog was so thick that the sun did not penetrate down to the streets. The cab made slow progress.

This time, the world was truly different. Vampires were no longer secret things. She and Charles would not be unique, hardly even out of the ordinary. Their little love must be playing out in a thousand variations up and down the country. Vlad Tepes had not bothered to think through the implications of his rise to power. Alexander-like, he cut the knot; loose ends fell where they might, without any guidance or judgement.

Last night, with Charles, it had been more than feeding. Despite her worries, she remained elated by his blood. She could still taste him, still feel him inside.

The cabby opened his trap and told her they were in Commercial Street.