After retrieving his things from the footmen, the Vampyr stepped out onto the broad portico and stood for a moment, taking in the cleaner air in deep reviving breaths. He knew that the Other had been in the Assassin’s Club that night, but he also knew that now was not the time to confront him. Behind him a figure stepped out of the shadows and approached him, coming forward into the pale light cast by the flickering gas lamps in the drive. It was a woman. She was beautiful, her skin pale and her auburn hair gathered up at the back of her long, slim neck. Around her neck was a string of perfectly matched pearls.
“I’ve sent one of the servants to fetch a hansom,” she said. “Would you like to share it with me?” Her accent was languorous, almost a drawl. She wasn’t native to New York.
“We haven’t been introduced,” murmured Enoch Bale. “It wouldn’t be proper.”
“But I already know who you are, my lord,” she said. “Jay told me.” She paused and smiled. “My name is Lily.” She took another step toward him. “Lily Palmer.”
“Madame,” said the Vampyr, touching the brim of his topper.
“Miss, actually,” the woman answered.
“You’re a friend of Mr. Gould’s, I take it, then?”
“Take it any way you like,” the lady said, laughing lightly. “You still haven’t answered my question about the cab.”
“It would depend on your destination,” said the Vampyr.
“I’m presently staying at the Saint Nicholas,” she answered. “But my destination is still at question.”
The Vampyr ignored the obvious suggestion. “I live on Gramercy Park,” he replied. “It’s only a matter of a few blocks and the night air is refreshing. It occurred to me that I could easily walk.”
“How cavalier,” said the woman who called herself Lily Palmer. “To leave a lady to the depredations of the night unattended. Is chivalry so dead in your part of the world?”
A hansom cab came rumbling down the drive, one of the colored footmen balanced on the step. The driver sat hunched in his seat, wrapped in a canvas coat, a dusty bowler crushed down on his head. As the cab drew up in front of the portico of the mansion, the footman nimbly dropped to the gravel and swung open the door of the hansom.
“Well?” Lily asked, staring at the Vampyr. “Shall we go?”
Enoch Bale gave her a brief, formal bow. “If you insist,” he responded. He was fairly sure now of who and what she was, and he decided to play along, at least for the moment. Besides his curiosity, there was also the fact that it had been some time since he’d feasted on a young lady, and at the very least Lily appeared to be in excellent health.
She stepped up into the small carriage with the footman’s help, and the Vampyr followed close behind. The footman shut the door and they moved off. The seat was narrow, and as they turned out onto Fifth Avenue and headed southward the woman swayed against him, one gloved hand reaching out to steady herself, gripping the Vampyr’s arm through the cloth of his cloak.
“Strong,” was all she said. He felt her thigh against his, felt her warmth, watched the soft heaving of her bosom in steady rhythm. He sensed the great flow pulsing just beneath the milky skin, and could just barely on the edge of his great senses hear the very beating of her heart. “Jay doesn’t think you’re a lord at all,” she murmured. “Or if you are, you’re one of those cousins of the czar you see so many of around the city these days.”
“If that’s the case, then why does he invite me to his club to meet his friends?” asked the Vampyr. He smiled. “Why does he arrange for me to meet a woman such as yourself, Miss Palmer?”
“Because he thinks you have money.” She laughed. “You could be the son of a sailor and a fishwife, for all Jay Gould cares, just so long as you have the tin.” She moved even closer to him, and he felt her hand on his thigh now, moving in small circles. He took his own hand and placed it over hers.
“There’s no need for that, Lily,” he said softly.
“You’re not flattered by my attentions?” She paused, her lips curving into a smile, revealing her small white teeth. “Or you’re not so inclined?”
“My inclinations are of a different sort altogether,” he answered, looking the young woman in the eye. He saw the sudden look of disdain and smiled. “And not the kind you’re thinking of.”
“I can provide anything for any man,” she said. “And if I can’t, I know someone who can.” She slipped her hand out from under his, then brought it to his cheek. “I know just the place.”
“I thought you might,” the Vampyr answered.
“Your skin is so cold,” said Lily, frowning slightly, taking her hand from his cheek. “Your flesh is like ice.”
The Vampyr cupped her own cheek in one gloved hand, the thumb under her jaw. He moved his palm a little, gently forcing her head back against the padded rear of the seat, examining the line of her long, slim neck. “There are ways to warm my flesh,” he said quietly, his eyes fully on hers. “Ways you could not imagine in your most secret dreams.” He saw the sudden fear and knew it was too early. He released her. There was more to know this night.
They trotted down Fifth Avenue to Eighth Street, then turned left. Lily had moved away from him a little, her thigh no longer pressing his, her hand no longer on his thigh. There was a nervousness about her now, an anticipation. She was frightened certainly, but there was something else there as well; an eagerness, a hunger perhaps?
The Vampyr whispered, “The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, / And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; / And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, / When the blue wave rolls nightly on the Galilee.”
Lily turned to him. “What did you say?”
“It’s a poem,” said Enoch Bale. “By Lord Byron. I met him one evening at the Villa Diodati, in Geneva. He was quite entertaining.”
“Another lord, is he?” Lily replied archly. But she turned to look out the window again, the fear still bright in her eyes, unable to meet his look.
“There’s another verse,” said the Vampyr, and he quoted, “For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, / And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; / And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, / And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still.”
The hansom turned right onto the Bowery, an impoverished version of Broadway to the west. Even with the first bleeding hints of dawn climbing weakly over Brooklyn and the river, there were still a few gin mills, dram shops and free-and-easies open on the gritty avenue. As well as the liquor emporiums there were warehouses and sweatshops aplenty, as well as dozens of pawn-brokers and small traders of every kind. The signs that the Vampyr could see were a babel of languages: German, Hebrew, Dutch, Italian, Greek and Russian.
At this early hour there was very little traffic on the avenue itself, but even now a few brewers’ drays were drawn up outside one of the German beer gardens, draymen in leather aprons rolling huge casks down from the wagons on plank ramps to replenish the establishment’s depleted stocks while the teams of massive Percherons waited patiently in their traces, stamping their feet heavily and leaving masses of droppings to steam in the early-morning air.
It seemed that half the buildings on the avenue offered some kind of amusement or entertainment, from musical halls to broken-down theaters, dance halls and shows of every kind imaginable. The stink in the air blowing in from the east was a mixture of coal gas, brewery hops and varnish. Suddenly, out of the semidarkness the giant-columned front of the Bowery Theater appeared like a Greek temple rising out of chaos then just as quickly vanished behind them.
The cab slewed to the left and they were plunged into the gray half-light that leaked down a narrow street lined on either side with rotting tenements that clawed into the air like brown and broken rotting teeth. The smell here was even worse than the chemical stink from the factories east of the Bowery. This was the odor of human filth and desperation. In the narrow spaces between buildings the Vampyr could make out crude galleries hung with laundry, rickety ladders and stairs, torn curtains over windows without glass.
“Not a pleasant place,” he commented dryly.
“You have no idea, friend,” said Lily without turning, her eyes keeping watch out the window.
“You might be surprised,” said the Vampyr. For all the difference it made, it might have been one of the rookeries off St. Giles High Street in London, one of his favorite hunting grounds. Les Halles in Paris, the old Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin. They were all the same; poverty and ignorance knew no borders.
Enoch Bale smiled, gazing at the back of the woman’s neck. The hair had fallen a little, wisps of it brushing the pale skin, translucent, each fragile bone in the elegant, delicate neck perfectly visible. He realized that he’d seen her before, blowing on the fat man’s dice at the crapaud table. He also realized where she was from.
“Tu es très belle,” he said, speaking in French.
“Merci, monsieur,” she answered. She half turned absently, and he could see a faint smile of triumph on her face. It faded suddenly and she frowned. “How did you know I spoke French?”
“Your accent,” he said. “You’re from New Orleans. I’m acquainted with someone who lives there. He has an indigo plantation called Pointe du Lac.”
“What’s his name?” Lily asked. “I know most of the gentry there.”
“You wouldn’t know him,” said the Vampyr. “He prefers to keep to himself.”
The cab lurched again, and Enoch Bale saw that they had turned down one of the alleys between the looming tenements. The hansom pulled up in a rotting courtyard at the alley’s end. There was filth and litter everywhere. Staircases with flimsy railings rose dizzyingly in all directions. Lines strung between windows sagged with ragged laundry, gray sheets flapping in the faint breeze. The only light came from the half-hidden square of purple sky high overhead.
“Here we are,” said Lily. There was a creaking sound and the Vampyr turned just in time to see the woman dropping down through the open door on her side of the cab. She didn’t bother to close it. The horse drawing the cab made a few small motions and the carriage rocked slightly on its heavy iron springs. There was no sound from the driver, hidden from view on his perch behind. Enoch Bale pulled open his own door and stepped down to the ground.
Almost on the instant, the driver’s whip cracked and with a grinding lurch the hansom wheeled round in the narrow court, almost crushing the Vampyr against the wall of one of the tenements as it turned. The whip cracked again and out of the corner of his eye Enoch Bale saw the cab pause for an instant to pick up Lily, who threw herself through the still-open door before the hansom sped off the way it had come. The trap had been sprung. The Vampyr turned to see what Lily and her friends had prepared for him.
There were four of them, descending from the staircases all around him, slipping down from the rooftops where they had waited, watching for his arrival. These weren’t Five Points bullyboys like Maddersly the prizefighter or the grotesque door minder Snatchem Leese; these were all Damphyr, hard men in long canvas dusters and heavy boots, dark cloth caps pulled low over bright, expectant eyes, their long incisors glistening wetly in the night.
The Vampyr stood alone, watching them descend the staircases. One carried a gleaming cavalry sabre, one the rag-wrapped and splintered end of a chair leg, while a third carried an army-issue boiling can with a wire bail for hanging over a campfire. There was a rich odor of turpentine and mothballs: the bucket was filled with camphene. The fourth creature carried a shotgun on a hanging strap with its barrels roughly hacked off a few inches short of the stock. The leader of the group. He reached the bottom of the steps before the others. He stepped forward, picking his way over the litter of broken bottles and other refuse that was strewn about the courtyard.
He sidestepped a barrel filled with scum-covered rainwater, then stopped, leaning one elbow on the broken and half-burned remains of a worn-out pushcart. A sign on the side of the cart said FAGIN FRESH FISH in faded pink. When the man leaning on the cart spoke, his voice was harsh and as dry as dust, with the faintest suggestion of a hissing lisp, like a snake.
“The master says there’s only one way to kill you.” He paused, then spit into the dirt and coughed. He spit again. “Cover you in camphene and then set you alight. Watch you burn until you’re a cinder.”
“Then take off what’s left of your head and bring it to the master in a sack,” said the man with the saber in his hand. He gave the blade a few swipes through the air, making soft, swishing sounds from his perch. “Anything less than that and you might rise again, or so the master says. If you really are one of the Nine, that is.”
On the stairway next to him the man with the chair-leg torch reached into the pocket of his duster, then swept a match across the soot-covered brick of the wall beside him. He touched it to the soaked rags on the end of the torch and it flared to life, the flame yellow and smoking.
“Do it,” said the man with the torch.
“Hold off,” said the man with the shotgun. “Ain’t every day we do this.”
“The master said not to wait,” cautioned the man with the torch.
“The master was right,” answered the Vampyr.
He moved so quickly, there was no time to react. In a whisper of time and with no warning he stood before the man with the shotgun. The man raised the weapon but it was too late. The Vampyr gripped his wrist and broke it cleanly, bone splintering like a twig. The Vampyr struck at the horrified Damphyr like a snake, jaw moving and curved teeth dropping down and locking in a split second, then tearing into the face of the man and ripping first at his cheek and then at his mouth, chewing once, then spitting out the remains before giving his attention to the eyes. The man screamed blindly through his own gushing blood, and the shotgun dropped from his maimed hand. The Vampyr swatted away the man’s weak struggles, then grabbed him with both hands beneath the jaw. He squeezed, the sharp, bony nails of his fingers digging deep into flesh and crushing bone, then twisted once, and hard, separating the skull from the spine with a wet snapping sound.
The man’s bladder and bowels voided in a rush, and he fell to the ground. The Vampyr turned in time to catch the creature with the saber as the flashing blade came down. He slipped away to one side as the saber slid past his head, then ducked and brought his own rigidly held hand down in a blow that struck under the man’s arm, momentarily paralyzing the shoulder. The Vampyr stepped forward, swung his cape up, blinding the man and confusing him, then lunged forward, tearing out the man’s throat as smoothly as a butcher’s blade.
The third man rushed ahead with his bucket of camphene, his eyes on the Vampyr and not his feet. He ran forward, screaming wildly, then stumbled on the broken wheel of the cart, almost dropping the container. By the time he’d regained his balance the Vampyr had retrieved the saber from the dying man’s hands. With his arm low the Vampyr whirled, the blade extended, catching the running man just above the level of his belt.
He swept the saber across the man’s belly, feeling the steel cut through cloth, skin, muscle and gut, twisted purple offal spilling down onto the already filthy ground. The man’s furious screams ended as his mouth filled with blood and he sank to his knees. Almost idly the Vampyr swept the blade around a second time and the man’s severed head tumbled backward into the dirt.
The last man, still holding the flaming torch, stood dumbfounded on the bottom step of the tottering stairway.
“Bring that to me,” said the Vampyr, standing with the blood-soaked saber in his hand.
The man with the torch, eyes wide, stared at the carnage at the Vampyr’s feet. He shook his head slowly and stumbled back up a step.
“Bring it to me or I will come and take it from you,” said the Vampyr, extending his free hand. The man with the torch hesitated, then slowly stepped forward, shuffling across the courtyard, his eyes never leaving the bright, dripping blade in the Vampyr’s hand. He stopped and held out the torch, his entire body shaking.
“Closer,” said the Vampyr softly.
The man with the torch took another shuffling step.
“Closer.”
He did as he was told. The Vampyr took the torch, then leaned forward; his face, mouth glistening with fresh blood, was only a few inches away from that of the terrified creature. The Vampyr smelled muck, sweat and urine.
“You’d kill one of the Nine? You?” The Vampyr smiled a ghastly, glinting smile. “Tell your master that he’d best do better than this next time. Master, indeed!” He laughed. “Now, go!” He thrust the flaming torch into the frightened man’s face. The Damphyr fled, running and stumbling down the alley, never looking back even once.
The Vampyr jammed the torch into the remains of the pushcart, then spent a few moments dragging the bodies of the three Damphyr into a pile beside the broken little wagon. He opened the boiling can of fuel and tipped the contents over the corpses. When they were thoroughly doused he searched in the shadows and found the severed head in the dirt. Holding it by the hair, he tossed it onto the sodden pile of dead men, then tossed in the torch. With a hellish sigh the camphene burst into life, a great fuming fire blossoming up into the purple predawn night. The Vampyr threw the saber and the shotgun into the flames and turned away as the first cries of “Fire!” began to ring out.
Lily Palmer awoke just before dawn in her single room on the sixth floor of the Saint Nicholas Hotel. Drifts of weak light leaked from divisions in the heavy velvet curtains across her window. Outside, barely heard, were the first sounds of commerce on Spring Street. Her heart was pounding and she felt short of breath, as though some great weight was pressing down on her chest. A nightmare. There had been a terrible nightmare and for an instant she felt a rush of relief. The day was here and she was safe. She’d done just as she was ordered, and now she’d have her reward.
She felt something sticky and wet in her hair, just below her ear. She tried to lift her hand to the spot, but for some reason she couldn’t raise it from the bed. She turned to the left, lightheaded. She was confused. Surely the sheets covering her where white, not this terrible shining crimson? She blinked and saw movement. She stared, her eyes widening. Dear God in Heaven, it could not be. The young woman tried to scream, but nothing came except a rattling sigh. She knew then, with startling clarity and a strange sense of peace, exactly what her fate was to be.
“They failed,” said the Vampyr, stepping from the shadows and looking down at her. She thought for a moment that she saw pity in those strange, terrible eyes, and then the slight light of dawn faded and there was only night. She lay dead below him on the sodden, bloody sheets.
“A waste,” he murmured, then turned, his dark cloak sweeping around his ankles like a matador’s cape, and then he too became one with the blank darkness.