POOR BUTCHER-BIRD

GEMMA FILES

Down here,” he says, and I nod, like it’s not obvious. Dip my head like I’m nervous, but a little shakily, too. Like I’m as excited as he is. You have to be careful about these things; he’s dumb, sure, but nobody’s that dumb.

You’d be surprised.

I had to work hard to hook up with this guy, who claims his “name” is Shrike93, just like his email. These Web-handles really crisp my arse-hairs, which I know makes me sound old—old enough to know what a Luddite actually was, any rate. The main good part about having once been a factory girl is, it keeps me small and weak-looking. Not a threat, supposedly, ‘specially when stood next to some bro like the Shrike, all swole up with hormone-saturated meat and childhood vaccines. Nothing like. That, and I know not to sound how I think, either, when I speak out loud. Worked hard on that over the years. So much so, it holds pretty well, except when I get riled up; lucky how none of this posturing is quite enough to rile me, though. Not as yet.

He always picks two, and one of ’em doesn’t tend to come back—that’s the rumour. That’s why I wasn’t surprised I found another potential initiate waiting for him, when I got to our IRL meet-point; made sure to bristle a bit, then waited for the Shrike to step in once it got truly heated. Can’t waste that precious red, now, can we? And he was quick enough to make his move, the minute this other wee pixie-haircut bitch pulled a flick-knife out. Which was just as well . . . for her.

She thinks she’ll be the one gets picked, all right. But I know I will, and that’s the difference.

Experience always wins, that’s my motto.

So down we go, the three of us, the Shrike leading the way, with me and Pixie-Cut trailing after. It’s almost always down, with these sorts. The house is an abandoned two-story box on a high-fenced lot somewhere in the Annex, thick inside with cobwebs and mouse shit and dust, except for the lane these slags have cleared between the kitchen’s back entrance and the door to the basement. And at the bottom of those stairs there’s another door—brand-new, very fancy, normal on the outside but heavier than it looks, with a neat little combination smart-lock built into its knob that has to be keyed from the Shrike’s iPhone, using his thumbprint. He undoes it on one side, then does it back up on the other.

Note to self: Need to get hold of that thumb.

Inside, another stubby flight of stairs, going down half a story to some sort of sub-basement; might have been meant as a wine-cellar, maybe, or a bomb shelter. There’s lit candles stuck in bottles everywhere, half-melted into wax stalagmites, and the air heavy with incense like it’s 1969. Whole floor’s paved with bare mattresses slicked in dark plastic on either side of a clear area, three feet wide by thirty long from the door on inwards, mosaic-tiled in red and gold—a ritual path to that joke of a shrine they’ve set up along the back wall. And there, at last, is that big red lacquer cabinet, inside which I can only assume they’ve got the thing—the person—I want.

The rest of the cult are all lined up on either side of it, too, not that they probably think of themselves as such: Twenty of ’em, all told, unless somebody else is hiding in the bog somewhere. Not that they seem to have a bog down here, that I can see.

They’ve all got names he insists on telling me, which I forget almost immediately, ’cause it makes it easier. Instead, I file ’em under characteristics: Blue Hair; (too much) Face-Metal; Green Highlights; Snatched Brows (with scarification); Needs More T. Not to mention Bare Midriff, Assless Chaps and straight-up Topless (girl and boy), plus a variety of other mock-Goth costuming; leather, studs and vinyl, too-large hoodies paired with artfully ripped fishnets. There’s even one in the back seems to be wearing a blood-stained fake fur-suit, bright pink, splotched all over like some naff bunny-leopard hybrid. Think I’ll call him Anime Chimera, if and when it comes to it.

This is church night for them, I reckon. Get together with like-minded individuals, share something meaningful, go through the ritual celebration that gives their dull little weeks a goal—all dressed up with something to pray to, not to mention somebody to kill over it. And so blessed, blessed sure, in their black little hearts, how no one else ever does the same. Bloody children.

Still, kids can be tricky, ’specially when they’re high, and armed. As I know from hard experience.

They’re passing ‘round bottles now, probably scarfed from parents’ liquor cabinets: tequila, scotch, bourbon, vodka, red wine. I take a swallow or two, enough to make sure my breath smells like theirs, and mime the rest, while Pixie-Cut gleefully chugs whatever she’s handed. By the time the Shrike stands up by the cabinet and loudly claps his hands, she’s well and truly plastered.

“Brothers and sisters!” he shouts. “The moon’s gone ’round again. It’s that time!” Yells and cheers and hoots. “Time to renew ourselves, once more. Time to be more”. More noise. I clench my jaw, holding my cardboard smile still. “Anyone have a story to share?”

A beat.

“I did it!” Green Highlights yells abruptly. “I found my boss. Told him I’d changed my mind, and when we were alone, I broke his nose and I knocked out his teeth—” this gets more cheers “—and then I carved PERV into his forehead, and I whammied him so hard he’s never gonna know who did it! Ever! ”

Howls of triumph fill the room; people hug Green Highlights, slap her back, hoist her hands into the air like she’s won a boxing match. She’s actually crying now I look close enough, poor cow. Still, I’m sure it feels good, while it lasts.

Up by the cabinet, Shrike’s grinning like a preacher tallying up donations in his head. Calls for other stories, and gets them: All much the same, though none quite as righteously vindictive as Green Highlights’. Petty grudges, gleeful sadism, conquest-notches; the sort of selfish tat people dream about in bed or in front of a bathroom mirror, through clenched teeth, tears or panting, between the short strokes. The I Deserve This rag, I call it—high on their own drama, the sweet bile backwash. Pixie-Cut looks pretty much like she’s already halfway to getting off herself at the spectacle, what with those big eyes and that flushed face, rapid-breathing through her nose; me, I make sure to keep on trembling just in case. Not that anybody’s really looking.

Finally, Shrike calms the crowd down with a gesture and beckons me and Pixie-Cut closer, both of us shouldering past each other down the red-gold road to Paradise. Because tonight’s the climax, right? The end of a monthslong seduction waged over every form of social media available, led down a trail of whispers about transformation, transfiguration, apotheosis, power.Some new kind of kick, or—just maybe—a very, very old one, all dressed up in post-Millennial drag.

“Other people talk about confidence, or love, or tapping enneagrams,” he tells us. “But we’re not like that. Our shit isn’t bullshit, it’s real. Gotta be ready to handle it, though . . . to show how you’re willing to pay the price. That you can stand knowing this sort of secret.”

The crowd’s stepped back by this point, clustered to hide exactly what’s happening with the cabinet’s slick red doors; behind them, I can hear a couple of flunkies wrestling with the gilded handles, grunting in effort as they heave it open and pull out something, heavy enough to scrape the floor beneath. The ones in front grin a bit to themselves, eyes studying our faces: Oh, they want a reaction, can’t wait to see it, that first moment when—whatever it is we’re gonna end up looking at—registers. Not that Pixie-Cut even seems to notice, her gaze still riveted to the Shrike’s own, chest heaving pornographically.

“No rituals,” Shrike goes on, smiling even wider. “All you need to do is see it. ’Cause when you do, I’ll look at you, and I’ll just know. That simple.”

I nod, slightly; Pixie-Cut swallows, quick and dry enough I know she’s going to ask, which means I don’t have to. Blurting out, a second later: “Know what?”

“If you’re one of us, of course.”

He turns, smoothly—like he’s rehearsed it. Steps aside to show what’s standing there: a triangle of tarnished brass, three coiled legs topped with a wide, flat metal bowl big enough to wash in, and who knows, maybe that’s what it was originally meant for. There’s a half-mirror set above it, after all, fanned out like a glass ruff behind the thing that sits inside, haloing its awfulness in sullen, splintered light.

A gasp, from Pixie-Cut. While from everyone else—even the Shrike— comes a long, slow breath, drawn out rather than in. Half religious awe, half physical pleasure, admixed with just a hint of happy recognition: So beautiful, this artifact, this thing we serve and own. This thing that owns us.

It’s really hard not to laugh, watching the other girl’s face change. Watching her suddenly grasp that this isn’t a joke or a piece of ego-boo, simple playacting. That when they crow about violence wreaked on anyone who pisses them off, they actually mean it, and the only right move for any still-halfway sane and moral person who finds themselves in this particular situation is to scream and run forever.

Neither of which she has the brains to do, of course. Instead—

“That’s a head”, she blurts out, yet again; can’t stop herself from doing it, poor bint. Like she genuinely thinks maybe someone in here just hasn’t noticed yet, and needs to know.

“It is,” the Shrike agrees.

“A head . . .”

“Yes.”

“You guys . . . killed somebody . . .”

The Shrike smiles, slightly. “Not exactly,” he replies.

Which is when the head opens its eyes and blinks at us, blearily. Like we just woke it up. Like it’s pissed.

Around us, the crowd whoops and claps. One of them gives this weird crooning laugh, a baby’s crow of pure delight. The head opens its mouth, lips drawing back in a snarl, the corners slightly torn—think it’d be hissing, if it only still had a voice-box instead of that ragged bit of gristle and skin where the neck’s been sliced through right underneath the jaw. The slightly uneven mixture of bone, tendon and sluggish black grue prevents it from standing straight up, like it’s on a pedestal, so it has to sit cocked sidelong instead, off-kilter.

Pixie-Cut is shocked silent now, for which I don’t blame her. The head in the bowl rolls bloodshot, ice-coloured eyes up at us, lids flickering spasmodically—I see its pupils narrow horizontally, u-shaped, cephalopodal. Its filthy mat of hair is snarled to the point I can’t tell its original colour, let alone whether it’s supposed to be curly or straight; the face, both gaunt and flat, has skin like black volcanic beach-sand, cheekbones like napped flint. The teeth are stained brown, serrated edges sharp enough to glint in the candlelight. Its jaws work up and down, trying to bite at empty air. Its nostrils flare, eyes snapping back and forth between me and Pixie-Cut, who’s started to make a noise like a balloon deflating. I raise my eyebrows.

“Someone’s not too good with surprises, is she?” I ask the Shrike, as his cult explodes in laughter around us. He doesn’t reply, though; only sighs, like he’s seen this before. Then he glances at me—I try to look thrilled, or not disgusted, at the very least—before nodding to the others.

They’re on Pixie-Cut before she’s even finished taking her first step backwards, one on each arm, one behind her; Green Highlights yanks her head back and cuts her throat with a big kitchen knife, while the other two shove her hard, backwards, into the cast-iron clawfoot bathtub they dragged up behind us during the Shrike’s little speech. She trips over the edge, hands still trying to staunch her wound, quick enough her head slams into the tub’s metal floor, ending her struggles instantly. And then there’s only the sound of liquid, hot enough to steam a bit, glugging into the tub.

There’s an odd little beat of silence, as if even the Shrike’s startled how fast she went down. It sets me back a moment myself, truth told. Can’t feel too much sympathy for Pixie-Cut; she wanted what these gobshites are selling, after all . . . just couldn’t reckon the real price, not ’til it was too late. But it still hits hard sometimes, seeing life end like that: So sharp, so sudden, a blank face on a mound of cooling meat. Meat which used to be a person.

I’ll probably go the same, one day—too fast to see it coming, let alone feel it happening.

The Shrike recovers himself, with a little shiver. He leans down and grabs Pixie-Cut’s belt, hauling at the corpse ‘til he folds her into one end of the tub, making room for her blood to pool at the other. Then he turns and reaches up, carefully, to lift the head from its dish. Hooks his fingers through knots of hair over its ears and makes sure to stay well shy of the teeth, slow and steady, same way a smith uses tongs to carry a casting cup full of molten metal. Gasps and whispers ripple through the crowd; they back away as he brings it within sight of the tub, which sets its jaws working even faster; the teeth grind against each other, making an eerie sort of zizzz, so much like flint striking I almost expect to see sparks fly from the mouth. But all that comes out is a slice of tongue, liver-coloured, torn where hunger’s made it chew at itself.

“Who drinks first?” the Shrike asks, that same hyper, cultish, too-happy tone back in his voice. To which all the rest of ’em yell back, pretty much as one—

“She does!”

“That’s right: Her first, then us. Blood in and blood out, blood come ‘round and back again like every full moon, every time, forever.” Turning to me, then, with a return of that oh-so-charming smile, of his: “And you drink too, of course, if you want to. Because . . . you do want to, don’t you?”

And me, I don’t even spare Pixie-Cut a blink, since that’d put me in the tub right along with her, most likely. Just hold his gaze instead, coolly, and reply, as I do—

“Wouldn’t have come here in the first place if I didn’t.”

“Smart girl,” he says, approvingly. And lowers the head into the blood.

The moment he withdraws his hand, they all surge forwards, gathering ‘round with avid eyes and panting mouths. I let the crowd carry me, let my mouth hang open too, trying not to breathe too deep; can’t let the scent get to me. Not just yet.

The change starts the instant the head sets down. Swollen threads of reddish-purple tissue crack their way through the sand-black skin, spiralling up jawline and cheekbones like time-lapse footage of vines growing, inflating out of nowhere. The eyes widen, their slotted pupils rippling, blooming circular; irises darken, sclera flushing abruptly clear—alert, aware, human.The lips plump out, tongue soft instead of shrivelled, blushing from purple back to pink the way jerky soaks up water. Beneath the black outer crust, smooth brown skin wells up, splitting it apart and shedding it in a rain of dark flakes; dust powders off the teeth, bleaching to old ivory, new ivory, salt-white. Even the hair thickens, darker and sleeker under its entangling slick of dirt.

All of a sudden, the thing in the tub is a living woman’s head, face distorted with rage, eyes flashing around to glare at all of them, mouth shaping curses none of them would understand even if they could lip-read. The sight only makes them laugh, and applaud; Metal-Face actually leans down and mouths a version of her own words exaggeratedly back at her, like he’s imitating a bad kung-fu movie dub. That just gets more laughs, making me sigh in disgust, if only on the inside: These bloody kids. No respect for anything, them. Not even themselves.

“Is that safe?” I distract Metal-Face by asking, when I can’t stand to watch any more. “I mean . . . you’re not supposed to look ’em in the eyes, right?”

He makes a raspberry noise, scoffing. “Nah, bitch can’t tell you to do shit, not without lungs—just glowers at you, way she’s doin’ now. It’s kind of a turn-on, actually.” He grins at me, confidentially. I make myself grin back, choking down the spiky knot of fury in my gut. “’Sides which, sometimes if you get close enough, you can even kinda tell what she’s thinking . . . you know, like all the stuff she wants to do to us for cuttin‘ her up in the first place, and yadda yadda. Like sharing somebody else’s dream, and you’re starrin‘ in it. Know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“You’ll find out soon enough. It’s trippy as hell.”

The Shrike grabs the head by her hair again, lifting it high; the throat’s ragged, severed edges have lengthened, strands of tissue twining down the way an avocado grows tendrils if you stick it in a glass of water, still soaking up red drops. I can see the white of bone amongst raw flesh—half a new vertebra straining to form itself, maybe—and the twin holes of trachea and esophagus. It’s fascinating, if queasily so. The Shrike holds her above his face and shakes the drops into his open mouth, gulping them down, shuddering like it burns him good. Blood like scotch, like tequila, like mescal. Like Black Death vodka. Then he brings the head back down and smiles, right into her raging, champing face.

Next to him, Mr. Anime Chimera hands over yet another knife; no ripped-off cooking tool, this one, but a big, ugly thing with an ulna-length blade and a handle made from antler, fit to gut a wild boar with. The Shrike takes it, spins it like some hibachi grill chef at a teppanyaki restaurant. The head snarls at the sight.

“Open up, baby,” he tells her—practically purrs it—before he jams the blade in between her jaws, stabbing through tongue and soft palate alike with a squelch, then slicing back and forth out through both cheeks with a flourish deft enough I know the son of a bitch must actually have practiced.Her mouth rips open in a soundless scream, tearing the wounds wider; I can see the helpless agony in her eyes before the Shrike drops the knife, forces the lower jaw shut and slams his mouth against her ruined lips, sucking up the spurting blood the way one of my old factory-floor mates might’ve slurped up the froth off the all-sorts keg’s spigot when no one was looking—that hideous mixture of dregs sold for whatever pittance got offered at the local boozer’s, right between the rat-fighting pit and the hanging meat. The bottom half of his face is a crimson mask by the time he’s done, white eyes glaring through the spatters above it.

He raises the head high. His teeth are sharper. His nails have sprouted into claws. He howls, and his flunkies all howl back at him. For the first time, there’s a note in their voices sends ice over my skin. They’re stupid petty slags, these infants, but they’re still monsters. Can’t go forgetting that.

Shrike-boy turns the head so the mouth is facing away and holds it out, like an Aztec might show off a fresh-cut heart before throwing it into the flames. These blood-junkies all scramble up to it in a line, each one gulping down as much as they can before the rush knocks them crazy-eyed and reeling, stumbling away to make room for the next. Every few drinks there’s a pause as the Shrike reopens the gaping wounds in her face, which keep trying to close. And then it’s my turn, right at the last. Bastards actually start chanting, like it’s a frat party, while Shrikey lifts the head towards my face.

I tip my head forward, touching foreheads with the thing like we’re old friends. Through slitted eyes I see the head’s nostrils flare; it can’t breathe, but this close, my scent’s got to be in its nose all the same. Any luck, that’ll be enough.

I’m sorry, I think, trying to will the words inside her skull. You’ve suffered so much, taken so much insult, such . . . indignity. But this is the last time, I promise.

(We promise.)

I press my mouth to the hot, sodden, shredded lips and smear my own with the run-off, forcing dry-swallow after dry-swallow to make as if I’m drinking. Trying not to think about how, if the Shrike relaxes his grip an instant, she could take my nose and lips off with one bite; probably won’t, if she’s recognized whose spoor lies on me, and yet. At last I pull away, do my best job of screaming at the roof like the rest of them, and then suddenly they’re all around me—hugging me, pounding my back, kissing my cheeks and forehead and red, dripping mouth. I grin back and let them kiss me, let the orgy take me, even though I want to puke.

Metal-Face flops onto the mattress beside me, naked and grinning, blood-mask already drying to powder. “Rush, huh?” he sniggers, propping himself up on his elbows. “Like crack and meth and MDMA all together, an’ it lasts for weeks. Barely need to sleep, and it never takes more’n five minutes to get it back up again . . .”

He rolls over and gestures proudly down at himself, like: see? (Schwing!) I drag my hand over my eyes, trying to look too shagged-out for him, stifling the urge to kick him there as hard as I can. If he senses it, it doesn’t bother him.

“Don’t worry,” he laughs. “You’re one of us now. We don’t do anything we don’t want. That’s for them. Out there.” He lies back and grins at the ceiling, letting out a long, slow, happy breath. “There are,” he tells me, “so . . . many . . . little bitches out there never got told ‘no’ in their life, you know that? So many assholes think they own the world. That it owes them.” He holds his hands up, drawing his lips back in a silent snarl, flexing the claws on his fingers so they slide in and out. “I live for that moment,” he confides. “When I catch them, and they realize it’s just me, and them. And everything they thought kept them safe, their money, their looks, their family, their guns, some of ’em . . . none of it means shit. I look in their eyes, and I know no matter how many pills they take, they’re never gonna sleep again without screaming.

“That’s why we try not to kill, you know?” he adds, suddenly earnest, in some weird mentoring-big-brother mode. “Like the Shrike says, anybody can kill. That’s nothing. Leaving someone alive, and broken, and stuck that way, like a worm on a hook . . .” His gaze defocuses; the claws retract. “That’s what it’s really like.”

“What what’s really like?”

His eyes snap back to mine, looking almost startled.

“To be God,” he says, simply.

Can’t think of an answer to this that doesn’t involve murder, so I just shut up. Not that I give two shits about God if he’s even up there, and my own jury is still very much out on that.

Against the wall where the Shrike flung my jacket after pulling it off me, I can see the alert light flickering on my phone, fallen from pocket to floor.

Finally.

I slip my panties on, quick and quiet. The rest can wait. I step over the Shrike, heading for the cabinet; he blinks after me, clearly taken aback by how fast and steady I’m suddenly moving, but too blood-drunk to quite realize what’s going on. And then, before comprehension can hit, I’m back, his big fancy gutting knife in my hand. Down on my knees, free hand slamming his arm down, whack. It’s a good knife, no denying that. Takes his hand clean off, quick as a guillotine.

Shrike’s mouth opens ludicrously wide, his eyes bulging; he grabs his spurting wrist, so choked with shock he can’t even get a scream out, only a kind of rattling gasp. The blood dulls pain, but I think it must really just be plain failure to understand what happened—he’s gotten far too used to invulnerability. I don’t give him time to recover. I grab up his iPhone from where he left it, on a cabinet shelf, then weave deftly through the rest of the junkies to the door. His thumb activates the phone, and the security code’s pre-entered on the app.

I shake my head, amused. “Sloppy, sloppy,” I murmur, triggering the app as I toss the Shrike’s hand over my shoulder.

The door unlocks with an audible clunk. I pull it back.

The woman who stands there is—as ever—the most lovely thing I’ve ever seen: Angel-tall, her eyes and hair the same shiny black, skin the colour of rose-gold buffed with silk. When she smiles at me I feel dizzy, lit from within, ready once more to beg to be drained to death’s point again and again, living forever in that moment just before my heart starts to stutter and my breath to catch, my blood mainly plasma, sucked transparent. I start to kneel, but she lifts me back up, effortlessly.

“Not tonight,” she murmurs, and I know it must be true. She always knows best, after all.

“Milady,” I agree, instead. And bow my head.

The Shrike’s roar cuts through the air, shocking the ghoul-junkies to their feet, turning the post-orgy haze instantly into a cold blast of fear and fury; they’re all on their feet, crouching with claws out, sharpened teeth glinting through snarls. He staggers towards us, and I can see that his wrist’s already begun healing—give him a couple of weeks and he’ll have his hand back, not that he’ll ever get to see it. “Who’s this bitch—?”

“She’s my boss.” I grin at him, this time, feeling like I’m washing away a week’s worth of sweat. And then I point over their heads, at the cabinet behind them. At the head in the dish. They turn like they can’t help themselves, and I finally let myself laugh as they see what I see. They gasp, swear, a couple even shriek.

The head is smiling. And its eyes are wide with joy, even as tears spill down its cheeks, trickling into the rotten grue around its throat.

“My boss,” I repeat, “and her sister.”

Milady smiles, close-mouthed, and shrugs off her cloak; it puddles to the floor, leaving her body nude and shining in the candlelight, like polished wood. Her eyes throw back the candlelight in a yellow-orange glitter. The ghoul-junkies instinctively shrink back, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, looking as much dismayed as terrified—like children about to cry, thinking only Oh shit, someone caught us they caught us they caught us! And then Milady lets her mouth spring open, and a forest of dripping fangs bursts forth. A long, purple tongue lashes out, whipping back and forth; drops of smoking spittle fly across the room. One hits Green Highlights’ face. She screams in flabbergasted agony and staggers back, hand over her cheek; when she takes it away, her smooth pretty skin is a raw patch of oozing lesions, like leprosy gone mad. That really freaks the shit out of them.

Except the Shrike. I’ll give him this, he must have been the only one with enough brains to think about this possibility. He moves fast enough even I can’t follow, scooping up his knife with his remaining hand and flashing across the floor. In the next instant the knife’s sliced almost spine deep through Milady’s neck, in and out, while his wrist-stump smashes into her stomach and drives her backwards. She grabs her throat, genuinely surprised, as blood slicks her breasts in a crimson flood. I can’t repress a gasp. The Shrike pins her against the wall with his stump and poises the knife over her breast, point first.

“Head and heart, bitch,” he rasps at her, panting. “Everything else in the stories, it’s all bullshit—but the one thing they all agreed on? Head, and heart, and spilling your blood. How do you think I got hold of that thing in the first place?” A jerk of his head, back at the cabinet. Then turns his head, slowly, to glare at me, and asks exactly what I know he’s gonna ask:

“ . . . the hell are you laughing at?”

It takes a second to master myself. “Well—you, obviously,” I finally force out, revelling in being able to use my real voice for the first time since this whole dance began. His eyes narrow. “Regular Van Helsing, you, eh? But I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you that some vampires, they come from places outside Transylvania.”

His flummoxed look only makes me laugh harder. Adding, as I do—

“Yeah, that’s right. Like . . . this.”

An unearthly noise rips through the air, between us: A sickening wet crunch like a hundred bones breaking at once, followed by a glutinous, bubbling, drawn-out squelch. Milady lifts her head, seeming to stand up taller—and taller, and taller yet, even taller still, as her blood-smeared body slips downward out of the Shrike’s one-armed wrist pin and thuds to the floor. The torn skin of her sliced-open neck stretches wide, like a sphincter, shitting out a viscous tangle of pink and scarlet, purple and yellow; the acrid sour stink of acid billows into the room, so strong the Shrike stumbles backwards and half a dozen of the cultists double over, retching. Down against the wall like some cast-aside doll with her skull popped off, legs slid out in front of her beneath, an abandoned toy made from flesh. And then . . .

Then, Milady floats free, glorious as some bee-orchid floating on the tide, her beautiful head sat proud atop a hovering mass of slimy, shining viscera. Flowers of breast-fat cling to her fluttering lungs, her unshelled heart hammering fast enough to spurt blood with every beat, a thready red halo, jet upon jet upon jet. Her nude spine whipping like a wet glass-snake, a legless lizard, all scale and tail.

Penanggalan, they named my kind, in my homeland long ago, she told me, the night we met, laughing at my fumbling attempt to shape my Southwark-flavoured lips ’round the word. Still can’t really pronounce it, even now, but she never did make me try again, after that night.

Just the sight’s enough to break some of them. Metal-Face is one, exploding into a frantic screaming sprint for the door, face stretched and blind with the terror the vicious little idiot thought a god never needed to feel again. He’s not as fast as the Shrike, but he’s still faster than a human—and it’s not enough. Milady’s tongue whiplashes through him like a razor, turning off his scream in a gurgle; he hits the floor in two pieces, body fountaining blood and his piercings clacking as his head rolls away. Howls, wails and screams drown the room once more; this time, though, there’s no triumph, no joy. None but hers.

Milady floats forward as the blood-junkies cower away, sobbing, trying to push themselves back into the walls. I slam the door hard behind me, hearing it lock—should’ve kept the hand, shouldn’t I? Ah, well, spilled milk; find it later, easy enough—and bend down to scoop Milady’s abandoned body up by hooking my arms under hers, dragging it after her. The head is still grinning, still crying, as Milady draws up before it and lowers her eyes, her own tears welling up in sympathy.

“Sister,” she says, voice gurgling like vinegar through old, slimy pipes. “I am . . . so sorry we could not be here sooner.” Gives a sigh like bagpipes tuning up, and cuts her wet eyes my way; I carry Milady’s skin-suit to the cabinet and set it down, seated against the side, empty neck gaping upwards. Then I lift her sister’s head—no need to be careful now—and set it onto the hole, positioning it carefully. Within an instant, I feel it jolt and twist in my hands; see the skin rippling as tissue weaves to tissue, sealing fast. The body jerks, hands thrown high, grabbing at the head to make sure it’s on tight. A second of startlement, right before she knows she’s truly free once more. Then she throws her head back, mouth wide in soundless laughter.

At that, Milady laughs too, a sound like a tar pit swallowing something helpless. Sister turns to me. Can you still read lips, little one? she mouths. I nod. Her grin turns savage. Then tell them this. She gives me the words, and as she stands, her fangs sliding out, I turn to the cowering crowd, and say:

“You owe this woman a lot of blood.”

It’s a different sort of orgy, after that. Milady lets her sister do most of it, though she joins in when the ghouls start fighting back at last, terror supercharging their strength and fury rather than sending them running; if they knew how to fight, or fight together, even Milady might have trouble with these numbers. But they don’t. I go back to the door and stand guard, meanwhile, the Shrike’s knife in my hand, making sure none of them escape. Which is why I get a great little surprise bonus when the boy himself comes at me, having managed to grab his iPhone again—I hear the door unlock behind me, as we struggle. Well, I’ve earned a little fun for myself, haven’t I? So I step aside, let him by, watch him use that same blinding speed through the door and up the stairs—

Which is when I show him my speed. My strength. Catch him by the ankle just before he reaches the upper door, and with one hand I twist and whip him back down into the subcellar, hard enough to bounce him a yard high off the mattresses when he hits. Then I jump back down onto him and hamstring him in both legs, flourishing the knife the way he did when he carved up Sister’s face—not that he’ll appreciate that irony, but I do. I flip him over, then sit back down on his stomach, crushing the remaining breath out of him.

Most people when they know they’re beat, they just crumple. Credit where credit’s due, the Shrike isn’t one of them. He glares up at me. “You bitch,” he rasps, repeating himself. “Go ahead, kill me. I’ll still die something you’ll never be: Free. You work for monsters. I . . . made the monsters . . . work for me.”

Believes it, too, even now; well, well. Some prats, they never learn.

So I cup his face in my hands and lean down, suddenly not angry any more. Just tired. “We’re all monsters to somebody,” I tell him, and twist, hard.

Still got enough of Sister’s blood in him the broken neck won’t kill him, right away. Nor will what I do next, which is to chop off every limb at elbow and knee; his boosted metabolism’s sealed up the first amputation before I finish the last. He doesn’t feel the pain, but I can see it in his eyes: Inside, he’s screaming. And he’ll scream until Milady and Sister finish him.

I take a deep breath, then, and let myself collapse sideways, finally resting, not moving as warm blood slowly pools ’round me like a comforting bath. Nobody left alive that’s capable of running, not any more. And as always, my mind goes back to the past . . . my past, long past, a hundred years and more. When I made my choice, the choice he thought was such a joke, and why.

Milady wasn’t the first monster I ever met, you see. But she was the one that changed me.

On the factory floor, we were all of us just meat to the owners, one mere mistake away from being maimed or killed, lit on fire or sliced apart by machinery gone wrong. I once knew a girl licked matches for a living, ha’penny a week, and called it good; she died with her face gone soft and her teeth rotted out, unable to eat for fear of choking on bits of her own phosphorus-poisoned jaw. Just like the hat-makers who went mad from mercurous nitrate fumes, or the dyers who puked themselves to death turning out yards of arsenic green just because it was that year’s most fashionable shade, or the poor Radium Girls in their turn, glowing in the dark while their bones decayed from the inside-out.

But me, I was lucky; Milady took me away from all that. Fed me her blood, and fed on mine, though never enough to turn me. Only enough to bind us together and keep us bound so I could do her daytime work throughout the years, the centuries. ’Til I knew myself older by far than almost any other ghoul in North America, if not the whole world. I never had to give up the sun, or the taste of bread, or anything else most true humans think make their tiny, fragmentary, mirror-shard fragile mockery of a life worth living. I never had to give up nothing I didn’t want to, did I? And I never, ever will.

The Shrike thought he’d got it made, breaking the chain like he did: All the perks and none of the labour, none of that hunger to love and serve and be mastered. Bloody child, like I said. But I’m no Renfield, nor is Milady any sort of Dracula. It’s far more like being an apprentice than a mere employee. Far more like being someone’s adopted child, loved for her dreams as well as her skills, her capacity to love and be loved. And no human gets in the way of that, ever.

But I’m something else now—a monster, a god. Servant to a god, sole priestess of She I worship. It’s a better life than any I ever hoped to have, back when, or could ever hope to have, in future.

Milady comes—mother-lover, endless fount of knowledge, strength, power. Eternity.

Who raises me back up now from where I lie cocooned in these false ghouls’ blood, her rescued sister at her side, and kisses my cheek, my forehead, my mouth.

Who licks the excess from me like a cat cleaning her kitten only to take my lower lip between hers and nip it lightly, tattooing it with the sacred symbol of her bite.

Who lifts me high in her cold embrace, her guts twining ‘round me like tentacles, digestive acids burning at my skin, and cradles me against her doubly-naked bosom, pumping with stolen blood.

“My little London sparrow, my soot-grimed dockyards orphan,” she calls me, knowing how I can’t help but shiver with delight at her voice. “My lovely, faithful, poison-hearted little cannibal girl.”

“Always, Milady.”

Stroking my face, thumbing my eyelids closed, as the ecstasy comes on me—that deep, slackening, satisfied sleep which always comes after true slaughter. These fools thought they knew it, but they didn’t know the half; couldn’t, could they? No human ever will.

“My sweet, poor little butcher-bird.”

I close my eyes and dream, glad yet once more how when death finally did come for me, it had nothing at all to do with industry. And in the dark behind my eyes, I see only red, the same endless hot salt sea that laps inside Milady’s skull, the same thing that will surely drown me, eventually—take me down, drag me deep and ingest me, never letting me surface again until my flesh has changed to sharp-edged, quartz-toothed pearl, fit to stand at her side instead of kneeling before her. The same thing which will finally lick the last sad taste of my humanity from me forever and spit me back out, re-born into darkness.