stripping to the waist to fight each other. Barnett, even without the unreasoning prejudice of Jago, disapproved of Genevieve and was openly suspicious of her motives for joining the East End Settlement Movement. She did not blame the Warriors of God for their distrust of her. Centuries before Huxley coined the term, she had been an agnostic. When Dr Seward had interviewed her for this position, he had asked: ‘you’re not Temperance, you’re not Church, what are you?’ ‘Guilty,’ she had thought.
She sang the songs of her long-ago childhood. She did not know if Lily could hear. The waxy red discharge from her ears suggested she might be deaf as well as blind. Still, the sound – maybe the vibrations in the air, or the scent of her breath – soothed the patient.
‘
Lily’s throat swelled up like a toad’s and brackish blood, brown streaks in the scarlet, gulped out of her mouth. Genevieve pressed the swelling down, holding breath still in her nostrils to fend off the taste and smell of death. She pressed urgently, song and memory and prayer babbled together in her mind, leaking out of her mouth. Knowing she would lose, she fought. She had defied death for centuries; now the great darkness took its revenge. How many of Lily had died before their time to compensate for the long life of Genevieve Dieudonne?
‘Lily, my love,’ she incanted, ‘my child, Lily, my dearest darling, my Lily, my Lily...’
The child’s boiled eyes burst open. One milky pupil shrunk minutely, reacting to the light. Through the pain, there was something close to a smile.
‘Ma-ma,’ she said, first and last word. ‘Mma...’
Rose Mylett or whoever was the child’s human mother, was not here. The sailor or market porter who spent his fourpence to become her father probably didn’t even know she had lived. And the murgatroyd from the West End – whom Genevieve would track down and
Lily shook in a fit. Drops of sweated blood stood out all over her face.
‘Mma...’
‘It’s mother, child,’ Genevieve said. She had no children and no get. A virgin when turned, she had never passed on the Dark Kiss. But she was more this child’s mother than warm Rosie, more her parent-in-darkness than the murgatroyd...
‘It’s mama, Lily. Mama loves you. You’re safe and warm...’
She took Lily from her cot, and hugged her close, hugged her tight. Bones moved inside the girl’s thin chest. Genevieve held Lily’s tiny, fragile head against her bosom.
‘Here...’
Pulling her chemise apart, Genevieve thumbnail-sliced a thin cut on her breast, wincing as her blood seeped.
‘Drink, my child, drink...’
Genevieve’s blood, of the pure bloodline of Chandagnac, might heal Lily, might wash out the taint of Dracula’s grave-mould, might make her whole again...
Might, might, might.
She held Lily’s head to her breast, guiding the girl’s mouth to the wound. It hurt as if her heart were pierced by a silver ice needle. To love was to hurt. Her blood, bright scarlet, was on Lily’s lips.
‘
In the back of her throat, Lily made a throttling sound.
‘
Lily’s head fell away from Genevieve’s breast. Her face was smeared with blood.
‘
The child’s wing flapped once, a convulsive jerking-out that unbalanced Genevieve.
‘
She could see the gaslight glowing like a blue moon through the thin membrane of the wing, outlining a tracery of disconnected veins.
‘
Lily was dead. With a spasm of heart-sickness, Genevieve dropped the bundled corpse on the cot and howled. Her front was soaked with her own useless blood. Her damp hair was stuck to her face, her eyes gummed with clotted blood-tears. She wished she did believe in God, so she could curse Him.
Suddenly cold, she stood away. She rubbed the obstruction from her eyes and wiped back her hair. There was a basin of water on a stand. She washed her face clean, looking at the clean grain of the wooden frame which had once held a looking-glass. Turning from the basin, she realised there were people in the room. She must have made enough commotion to excite considerable alarm.
Arthur Morrison stood by the open door with Amworth behind him. There were others outside in the hall. People from outside, from the streets,
‘We thought you should know, Genevieve,’ Morrison said. ‘There’s been another murder. Another new- born.’
‘In Dutfield’s Yard,’ said someone with the hot news, ‘off Berner Street.’
‘Lizzie Stride, ’er as only turned last week. Teeth not yet through. Tall gel, rorty-like.’
‘Cut ’er froat, didn’t ’e?’
‘Long Liz.’
‘Stride. Gustafsdotter. Elizabeth.’
‘Ear to ear.
‘She put up a barney, though. Sloshed ’im one.’
‘Ripper was disturbed ’fore ’e could finish ’is job.’
‘Some bloke with an ’orse.’
‘Ripper?’
‘Louis Diemschutz, one o’ them socialisticals...’
‘Jack the Ripper.’
‘Louis was passin’ by. Must of been the moment Jack was a-rippin’ Lizzie’s throat. Must of seen ’is rotten face. Must of.’
‘Calls ’isself Jack the Ripper now. Silver Knife is gone and done.’
‘Where’s Druitt?’
‘Damn bleedin’ busybodies, them socialisticals. Always pokin’ into a bloke’s business.’
‘Haven’t seen the blighter all evening, miss.’
‘Speakin’ agin the Queen. And them’s all Jews, y’know. Can’t trust an Ikey.’
‘Bet ’
‘Ripper’s still on the streets, ’e is. The coppers is givin’ chase. By sun-up, they’ll have ’is carcass.’
‘If ’e’s ’uman.’
23
HEADLESS CHICKENS
It was as if the city were on fire!
Beauregard was at the Cafe de Paris when the cry went up. With Kate Reed and several other reporters, he ran to the police station. The street was full of people running and shouting. A masked lout, a dozen assorted crucifixes strung about his neck, drunkenly smashed windows, yelling that the Judgement of God was at hand, that vampires were Demons of the Pit.
Sergeant Thick was minding the shop. A come-down for the detective, but a responsible position. Apparently, Lestrade was at the murder site and Abberline off duty. Kate dashed out to find Dutfield’s Yard, but Beauregard decided to stay.
‘Nothing we can do yet, sir,’ the sergeant said. ‘I’ve put a dozen men out, but they’re just blundering in the fog.’
