Anno Dracula

It was easy to know how Lucy had felt. They had both been gripped by the same soul-deep panic upon awakening from death-sleep. The same desperate, bottomless thirst. Only Lucy awoke in a crypt, respectfully laid out and mourned for. Mary Jane was on a cart, minutes away from a lime pit, jumbled in among other unclaimed bodies.

‘She was just an Irish whore. Of no importance, John. But she was warm, plump, alive. Blood pounding in her sweet neck.’

He was listening, head bobbing. She supposed he was mad. But he was a gentleman. And he was good to her, good for her. Earlier, with the strange toff, he had protected her. That madman, with his talk of Jack the Ripper, had threatened her, and John Seward fought him off. She’d not expected him to be so valiant in her defence.

‘The children hadn’t been enough, John. My thirst was terrible, eating me inside.’

Mary Jane had been confused by the new desires. It had taken her weeks to adjust. That time was like a dream now. She was losing Mary Jane’s memories. She was Lucy.

With his doctor’s hand, John smoothed her shift over her breast. He was the image of the considerate lover. She’d seen him from another side earlier. When he cut down the toff with a knife. His face had been different when he stabbed. John told her she was avenged, and she knew he meant Lucy. The toff had destroyed Lucy. But with his death, that part of the story was washed from John’s mind. Perhaps it would come to her as she became more Lucy and less Mary Jane. As Lucy’s memories seeped into her mind, Mary Jane slowly sank into a dark sea.

Mary Jane had not mattered at all and she should be glad to see her so drowned. In the cold, dark depths, it would be easy for Mary Jane to fall asleep and wake up entirely as Lucy.

But, her heart caught...

It was hard to keep pace as things changed but it was important to make the effort. John was her best hope for escape from this poor room, from these mean streets. Eventually, she’d have him keep her in a house in the better part of the city. She’d have fine clothes and servants. And well-spoken children with pure, sweet blood.

She was sure the toff deserved to die. He’d been mad. There’d been no one hiding in Miller’s Court, waiting for him. Danny Dravot was not the Ripper. He was just another old soldier, full of lies about heathens he’d slaughtered and brown wenches he’d bedded.

As Lucy, she remembered Mary Jane fearfully clutching her throat. Lucy slipped out from between the crypts.

‘I needed her, John,’ she continued. ‘I needed her blood.’

He sat by her bed, reserved and doctorly. Later, she’d pleasure him. And she’d drink from him. Each time she drank, she became less Mary Jane and more Lucy. It must be something in John’s blood.

‘The need was an ache, an ache such as I’d never known, gnawing at my stomach, filling my poor brain with a red fever...’

Since her rebirth, the mirror in her room was useless to her. No one ever bothered to sketch her picture, so it was easy to forget her own face. John had shown her pictures of Lucy, looking like a little girl dressed up in her mother’s clothes. Whenever she imagined her face, she saw only Lucy.

‘I beckoned her from the path,’ she said, leaning over from the pile of pillows on the bed, her face close to his. ‘I sang under my breath, and I waved to her. I wished her to me, and she came...’

She stroked his cheek and laid her head against his chest. The tune came to her, and the words. ‘It Was Only a Violet I Plucked from My Mother’s Grave’. John held his breath, sweating a little. His every fibre was held tense. Her thirst for him rose as she retold the story.

‘There were red eyes before me, and a voice calling. I left the path, and she was waiting. It was a cold, cold night but she wore only a white shift. Her skin was white in the moonlight. Her...’

She caught herself. She was speaking as Mary Jane, not Lucy. Mary Jane, she said inside, be careful...

John stood up, gently pushing her away, and walked across the room. He took a grip on her washstand and looked in the mirror, trying to find something in his reflection.

Mary Jane was confused. All her life, she’d been giving men what they wanted. Now she was dead and things were the same. She went to John and hugged him from behind. He jumped at her touch, surprised. Of course, he hadn’t seen her coming.

‘John,’ she cooed at him, ‘come to bed, John. Make me warm.’

He pushed her away again, roughly this time. She was unused to her vampire’s strength. Imagining herself still a feeble girl, she was one.

‘Lucy,’ he said, emptily, not to her...

Anger sparked in her mind. The last of Mary Jane, trying to keep mouth and nose above the surface of the dark sea, exploded. ‘I’m not your bloody Lucy Westenra,’ she shouted. ‘I’m Mary Jane Kelly, and I don’t care who knows it.’

‘No,’ he said, reaching into his jacket, gripping something hard, ‘you’re not Lucy...’

Even before the silver knife was out, she realised how foolish she’d been. Not to have seen earlier. Her throat stung lightly. Where it had been cut.

53

JACK IN THE MACHINE

A warm matron sat at the desk in the foyer, devouring the latest Marie Corelli, Thelma. Beauregard understood that since her turning, the celebrated authoress’s prose had further deteriorated. Vampires were rarely creative, all energies diverted into the simple prolonging of life.

‘Where is Mademoiselle Dieudonne?’

‘She is filling in for the director, sir. She should be in Dr Seward’s office. Shall you be wanting to be announced?’

‘No need to bother, thank you.’

The matron frowned and mentally added another complaint to a list she was keeping of Things Wrong With That Vampire Girl. He was briefly surprised to be party to her clear and vinegary thoughts, but swept the passing distraction aside as he made his way to the director’s first floor office. The door was open. Genevieve was not surprised to see him. His heart skipped as he remembered her, close to him, body white, mouth red.

‘Charles,’ she said.

She stood by Seward’s desk, papers strewn about her. He found himself embarrassed. After what had passed between them, he did not quite know how to act in her presence. Should he kiss her? She was behind the desk, and the embrace would be awkward unless she made room for it. Looking about for a distraction, his attention was drawn to a device in a glass dust-case, an affair of brass boxes with a large trumpet-like attachment.

‘This is an Edison-Bell phonograph, is it not?’

‘Jack uses it for medical notes. He has a passion for tricks and toys.’

He turned. ‘Genevieve...’

She was near now. He had not heard her come out from behind the desk. She kissed him lightly on the lips and he felt her inside him again, a presence in his mind. He was weak in the legs. Loss of blood, he supposed.

‘It’s all right, Charles,’ she said, smiling. ‘I didn’t mean to bewitch you. The symptoms will recede in a week or two. Believe me, I have experience with your condition.’

‘Nunc scio quid sit Amor,’ he quoted from Virgil. At last I know what Love is like. He could not think along a straight line of reasoning. Butterfly insights fluttered in the back of his mind, never quite caught.

‘Charles, this might be important,’ she said. ‘It’s something Colonel Moran said, about the Ripper.’

By an effort of will, he concentrated on the pressing matter.

‘Why Whitechapel?’ she asked. ‘Why not Soho or Hyde Park or anywhere. Vampirism is not limited to this district, nor prostitution. The Ripper hunts here because it is most convenient, because he is here. Somewhere near...’

He understood at once. His weakness washed away.

‘I’ve just pulled out our records,’ she said, tapping one of the piles on the desk. ‘The victims were all brought