Anno Dracula

55

FUCKING HELL!

Charles swore, fighting to keep his breath. Geneviève, no shock to spare for his surprising vocabulary, had to agree with him.

The greasy smell of dead blood hit her like a bullet in the belly. She had to hold the doorframe to keep from fainting. She had seen the leavings of murderers before; and blood-muddied battlefields, and plague holes, and torture chambers, and execution sites. 13 Miller’s Court was the worst of all.

Jack Seward knelt in the middle of a ruin barely recognisable as a human being. He was still working, apron and shirtsleeves dyed red. His silver scalpel flickered in the firelight.

Mary Kelly’s room was cramped: a bed, a chair, a fireplace, and barely enough floor to walk around them. Jack’s operation had spread the girl across the bed and the floor, and up the walls to the height of three feet. The cheap muslin curtains were speckled with halfpenny-sized dots. There was a mirror, its dusty glass marked with bloody splashes. In the grate, a bundle of clothes burned, casting a red light that seared into Geneviève’s night-sensitive eyes.

Jack was not overly concerned with their intrusion.

‘Nearly done,’ he said, easing out something from a pie-shaped expanse that had been a face. ‘I have to be sure Lucy is dead. Van Helsing says her soul will not rest until she is truly dead.’

He was calm, not ranting. He performed his butchery with a surgeon’s precision. In his mind, there was purpose.

‘There,’ Jack said. ‘She is delivered. God is merciful.’

Charles had his pistol out and aimed. His hand was trembling. ‘Put down the knife and step away from her,’ he said.

Jack placed the knife on the bedspread and stood up, wiping his hands on an already-bloody patch of apron.

‘See, she is at peace,’ Jack said. ‘Sleep well, Lucy my love.’

Mary Jane Kelly was truly dead. Geneviève had no doubt about that.

‘It’s over,’ Jack said. ‘We’ve beaten him. We’ve defeated the Count. The contagion cannot spread.’

Geneviève had nothing to say. Her stomach was still a tight fist. Jack seemed to notice her for the first time.

‘Lucy,’ he said, alarmed. He was seeing someone else, somewhere else. ‘Lucy, it was all for you...’

He bent to pick up his silver scalpel and Charles shot him in the shoulder. He spun around, fingers grasping air, and slammed against the mantel. He pressed his gloved hand to the wall and sank downwards, knees protruding as he tried to make his body shrink. Jack was huddled, holding his wound. The shot had gone completely through and torn the murder out of him.

Geneviève snatched the scalpel away from the bed. Its silver blade made her itch, so she shifted to hold it by the enamelled grip. It was such a small thing to have done so much hurt.

‘We have to get him out of here,’ Charles said. ‘A mob would tear him apart.’

Geneviève hauled Jack upright and between them they managed him into the courtyard. His clothes were tacky from the drying gore.

It was nearing morning, and Geneviève was suddenly tired. The cold air did not dispel the throbbing in her head. The image of 13 Miller’s Court was imprinted in her mind like a photograph upon paper. She would never, she thought, lose it.

Jack was easy to manipulate. He would walk with them to a police station, or to Hell.