It would have been foolish to return to his flat and so Josef did not, going instead to the little house along the square. The housekeeper let him in with a scowl and he found Coraline perched at the top of the stairs, wearing a dressing gown that billowed out about her, long hair loose down her back and her magnificent eyes shimmering in the faint light. "I knew you would come here," she said needlessly, her posture indicating she had waited for him for several hours. The housekeeper left muttering about how immoral such nightly visits were, and they ignored her, studying one another in the flickering shadows. Rising and descending to accompany him into the parlor, she observed as he poured a glass from the decanter in the far corner and then offered, "You were gone a long time."
"I went for a walk to clear my thoughts. For a moment, at the club I thought…" He turned to her and paused, for she had never been a woman in which he might confide. Coraline sensed his reluctance and came further into the room, the slenderness of her form evident in the firelight. "I sensed something… the same presence I encountered in the street that night, when I discovered her body. It was not a vampire, Coraline… that is what has me so perplexed by it. I can understand the need to kill, even the gruesome act of dismemberment if it serves a purpose, but that was nothing more than barbarism, of such an unfathomable nature that it astounds even I. Humans are not like that… most of them have some sense of right and wrong, however misguided. But that… it would have turned even your brother's stomach."
She was quiet as she poked at the fire, so dangerous to vampires yet so enticing. The poker in her hand prodded the burning logs and they settled into the grate, sending up a shower of flickering sparks. "We cannot always comprehend what humans may do," she said softly. "Their actions are never without motive, as ours are never without consciousness thought." Biting her lip, she refused to look at him.
Josef loosened his cravat and rested one arm on the mantle, staring down at her, such an unmistakable beauty in the faint light, so enticing and dangerous. And yet there was something unmistakably young about her in that instant, vulnerable and frightened. "What is it you want with the duke?" he inquired after a time, and she looked at him, her eyes deeply mysterious as they shifted away again. "I know you well enough to suspect you do not seek him as a lover, or even as a source of amusement. There must be some other reason that you hide beneath pretty smiles and grand flirtations."
"Perhaps I am searching for a soul mate, as the medium said."
Lifting her chin with one hand, Josef gazed into her porcelain features. "When you find a soul mate, it will not be a simpering duke," he answered. "Tell me the real reason." His hand dropped as her expression fell, a hint of resentment behind her eyes before she replaced the fire iron.
"I want to be out of my brother's shadow," she said, "and to do that, I must find a patron of my own. I thought it might have been you at one time, but no, we were incompatible from the beginning. This duke may be persuaded to help me. Lance is… not impossible, but very demanding. I thought it would be easier in Europe but even when he is not here, I can sense his presence, his oppression, his constant surveillance, his preoccupation with me. I am his sister, his only sister. Most of our family is dead and of course I understand why he desires to protect me, but I just want to be something, Josef. I want to have something that is my own. I want to find someone to spend all of eternity with."
Silence surrounded them, interrupted only by the ticking of the clock and the distant churning of carriage wheels on the lonely street. Josef surveyed her for a long moment, for the first time experiencing compassion for her plight. Coraline had always been a spoiled aristocrat in his view, one that enticed as well as irritated him, but there was something equally winning about her. For all her professions of liberty and an astounding lack of decency, Coraline was in her soul excessively Victorian. She wanted nothing more than a lifelong lover, a husband, for she was an incurable romantic. She must have sensed his train of thought, for she blushed and began to turn away from him, but not before he caught her arm, his eyes burning into her own.
"I will help you," he said. It was an offering she could never have asked for, nor that he would have given anyone else, but once Josef adopted someone it was for eternity. Coraline was maddening to anyone who was in love with her, but he wasn't, for he knew she was nothing more than a flame, a flickering fragment of light that would burn on into the darkness, incinerating the moths that came to flutter against its beautiful hue. She was of no danger to him as long as he remained indifferent to her, and the gratitude that looked out through her eyes was profound.
The lateness of the hour was apparent and it would soon be morning. "The police may be watching the house for you, when they discern you have not returned home," she said. "You may stay here, but be careful when you come and go. It would not do to have them discover your presence." She did not say it, but he knew what she meant; it would not do to have anyone discern their secret. Individuals who observed vampires were often harmed, for it was simple to see too much. To catch a glimpse of white eyes in the darkness, or the turn of a sharp fang, even the swiftness with which they moved, or the strength in their arms. That the police were fascinated in his potential involvement was perilous to all of them, something that would not be stood for within the vampire ranks.
"Something will be done about it," he promised, and this must have satisfied her, for she soon went to bed, leaving him the guest room, cold and dark beneath the thickly pulled draperies. It was far more luxurious and comfortable than the boarding house and he did not stir in the hours that followed, not even as light began to creep in around the corners of the curtains, the gloom shifting around him, increased by the rain out of doors. The sleep of a vampire is deep and undisturbed, absolutely silent and unmoving, for no heart beats beneath their chest, nor breath passes through their lungs. Josef was no different from any of his kind, motionless and immobile in sleep, yet keenly aware of the room around him, of the faint footstep on the threshold, of the heartbeat that increased as someone crept toward him. Every muscle in his body tensed but he did not open his eyes, only his fingers slightly firming against the coverlet beneath him, for he slept on top of it, having no need for its warmth. His skin, if she had touched it, would have felt like ice, but she did not touch it; the housekeeper stood over him, looking down at him with a mixture of fear and hatred.
She lifted the hand bearing the wooden stake and drove it down with the intention of piercing his heart, but he sprang at her, teeth bared and eyes burning, snarling as he knocked her from her feet. Astonished terror was in her eyes an instant before they were shut forever, a snap accompanying her form as it went limp and dropped to his feet, the wooden stake rolling beneath the bed as it fell from her fingertips. There was no sound from the rest of the house, nothing to indicate Coraline had heard him, and he made his way cautiously down the open passage, pushing open the door to her room. It was so dark that mortal eyes could not have seen into it, but he saw her, stretched out across the bed, unmoving, a vision of magnificence in a semblance of death just as she had been glorious in life.
Through her heart was a wooden stake. Without hesitation, he crossed to the bed and pulled it out. The agonizing cries stifled through her paralyzed limbs burst forth as she came up from the bloody coverlet, a trickle of blood at the corner of her white lips. She pressed her hand to the open wound across her chest, moaning as he crossed to the decanter on the far side of the room and found it empty, the contents thrown away by the repulsed housekeeper. Coraline would recover, but not without blood. Moving with ruthless determination, Josef went out the back door and through the side gate. There was no constable outside the house, but he knew not to trust that one was not nearby. He crossed the mouth of the nearest alley and then hesitated, turning within as he saw someone rummaging through the muck. It was a lean boy of twelve or so, clearly from the streets. He did not run as the vampire approached, but tensed in preparation for a fight.
"How would you care to earn twenty pounds?" Josef demanded.
The urchin stared at him with mouth agape. "What would I have to do for it?"
"Come with me, and ask no questions."
Suspicion flashed across the boy's countenance, but the prospect of such wealth was too much for him to resist and he agreed, saying nothing as Josef covered his eyes and led him quite a distance in order to confuse his senses, and prevent him from sensing where they were. Coraline was where he had left her, having silenced her cries but not her weakness, for she looked up at them through trembling lashes as they entered, relieved to see he had not abandoned her. Shoving the boy to his knees, Josef asked him to hold out his hand. He did so, crying out as Coraline sank her teeth into his wrist, but Josef gripped him by the shoulder and said, "It will not hurt long." And it didn't, for in that mythical way she had about her, Coraline eased his suffering and brought him into a trance almost like a dreamless sleep, his form relaxing as her wounds healed. She took just enough but not too much, and the boy was unconscious when she finished.
"If you hadn't been here last night…" she said, looking at him with immense relief. He knew the terror in her eyes, for he too had experienced flashes of it, when he had been young and uncertain of his abilities. All of them were strong but also vulnerable and the merest mistake, the one instance in which they blinked, might have been their downfall. He had no desire to think of might have happened if the woman had succeeded, if she had turned her mistress over to the police or informed the newspapers. Their society was built upon the notion of secrecy, of no one ever knowing the truth; even if they sensed it, or feared it, or caught sight of a glimmer of fangs in the darkness, no one would ever believe in them, for they were mythology, legend, things written about in penny novels for children to fear. Vampires were not real. They were monsters from the darkest fathoming of the human mind, blood drinkers, obscure stories that parents smiled knowingly over, never realizing that they encountered these creatures numerous times in their daily lives, for their occupations were vast, their features timeless. They never remained too long in one place, but continued to shift and move, ever aware that their recognition would be their undoing.
Drawing her to her feet, Josef was relieved to see that she was unharmed, however injured her dignity, the desperation and bloodlust having faded from her eyes. "What must be done with the boy?" she asked.
"Take him away from here, before he wakes. Leave him in an alley a fair distance from this place, with this in his pocket. He may remember something of it, but not all, and no one will believe him. He is, after all, an urchin. It is too light to take her body out now, but I will send for someone to attend to it. We will open the curtains and act as if nothing has transpired. You will go to France, or at least profess your intentions to do so, and have sent your housekeeper ahead of you. It would be wise for you to go abroad until this matter is ended."
He saw the argument in her eyes before it came to her lips, a protest that she could not leave London just then, that she would lose forever her opportunity with the duke; but his warning glance silenced her. This was far more serious than her ambition of financial independence. Coraline pursed her lips in that pretty way she had of pouting but did not quarrel with him. He left her to dress and wrote a brief note on a card. It was easy enough to summon one of the messenger boys that were always lurking about the square and he told the lad to deliver it to a Madame Rosamund at a particular address. The boy took off at a run with a farthing in his pocket and Josef returned indoors as Coraline came down the stairs, supporting the urchin without much effort, for her strength had returned. Josef turned as there was an impatient knock on the door. Through the sunlight glinting against the frosted glass he could make out the singular form of a constable. "Damn," he growled, and sprang through the nearest doorway.
Coraline dumped the young man into one of the bedrooms with a loud thump and then hurried down the stairs, her fingertips reaching the polished doorknob and drawing it open without hesitation. "Sorry to call at this hour, Miss," said the constable, turning to her with a most serious expression, "but we were wondering if you had seen Mr. Ryder in the last few hours. He's not returned home, and the Inspector wishes to speak with him."
Before she could part her ruby lips and offer a convincing deception, her skin radiant from the benefits of having fed, and the urchin upstairs stirring discernibly, her vampire companion emerged from the parlor, removing his hat and walking stick from their place just inside the doorway. The constable was shocked by his appearance, no less so his companion, for she stared at him with concern as he took up her hand and kissed it. "I will speak with you later," he said meaningfully, and she nodded slightly, just enough to convince him that she knew what to expect in response to his summons. Accompanying the policeman down to the waiting coach, Josef was grateful for the moodiness of the day, of impending rain and gloom crowding the lower streets, for he would have appeared quite ill in the sunlight otherwise. It had been an instinctive, protective motion that had prompted this sacrifice, one he hoped he would not regret as they traversed the narrow streets to Scotland Yard.
Vampires in captivity were dangerous, even more so because they were not offered alternative sources of nourishment, but were often forced to reveal their true nature behind bars. He was disconcerted but not overly worried, knowing that they had nothing but suspicion in which to put against him, and his air was confident as he mounted the steps outside the Yard and entered with the constable. Narrow corridors fed into winding stairs and open offices, with file clerks running in all directions and various individuals of unsavory appearances awaiting their escort to the holding cells. There was a distinguishable scent of anger and fear, intimidation and cowardice, cunning and intelligence, but above it all was a stronger scent, one he found almost comforting: the scent of another vampire. His eyes turned toward the source and found a woman behind a desk watching him, her eyes murky beneath the soft brown curls that formed over her brow. It was unusual for her to be there, for women in those times were rarely among the working class, but the pen and slender pad of paper indicated that she was a journalist, a writer, ink staining her fingertips.
Escorting him into a massive office stacked underneath unfathomable amounts of paperwork, the constable introduced him to the hump behind the desk and it straightened up to reveal the Inspector. He looked at Josef for a moment and then motioned for him to close the door. The constable did so as he retreated, shutting them out of the noise and confusion of the outer rooms, although Josef could still see what was transpiring beyond the glass windows. "You are a difficult man to find, Mr. Ryder," said the Inspector as he shuffled through various pages in search of something. "I called at your flat and found no one but your less-than-amiable landlady. Tell me, why does a man of your position in society occupy such low-rent accommodations?"
"I prefer solitude, as most men of business sense do." Josef ran his hand along the nearest stack of documentation, finding that it contained a mountain of newspaper clippings surrounding the murder. The tabloids had dubbed the killer "the Ripper." It seemed more than fitting considering his crime, and Josef was curious enough to lift one of the scraps of paper to look at it. The Inspector took no notice, rummaging around in his desk with open aggravation.
"And yet you were seen at the Opera last night. Is not society the opposite of solitude?"
"Not in a private box, with a charming companion," returned the vampire, replacing the tasteless article and assuming the nearest chair without having been invited. There was an aura of confidence about him that threw the inspector off, for he found it peculiar that his companion would show no sense of concern at having been summoned so urgently. "But you did not invite me here to question my taste in music, did you, Inspector?"
"No, I did not." Finding whatever it was he had been looking for, the Inspector sat on the edge of his desk and studied his companion at length through narrowed gray eyes. "I know your type well, sir," he said. "You are the foundation of society but also abhor its constraints, so you find some pleasure in 'slumming' among the lower classes. You give up nothing of your refinement but manage excitement in being surrounded by those considerably less fortunate than yourself. I am not a fool. I can see that you have no ambition toward murder, but I do think you were afoot that night. One of my constables saw you, and the murder transpired at no great distance from your current place of residence, in the early hours of the morning. You must have seen or heard something, surely."
They studied one another, one curious and the other suspicious, for Josef sensed that to make such an admission might further endanger himself, but to deny it would only arouse greater pursuit. He rubbed his thumb over the molded head of his walking stick, contemplating the room and its occupant with intensity that sharpened along with his senses. It was a gamble, and if there was anything Josef loved, it was a gamble. "I saw nothing," he said. "I heard footsteps in the fog, and the sound of a hansom cab pulling away into the darkness, but that was all." He could not tell the man the rest, that he had sensed a mortal, a human, a man fleeing into the night, with blood on his hands and swiftness to his feet that indicated he had been disturbed. His butchery was done, but his purpose was not yet complete.
The Inspector studied him through narrowed eyes, and then asked, "What hour was this?"
"I do not know. Near to four, I should think."
Behind them, voices mingled with the sounds of Scotland Yard at its busiest hour. The journalist was still standing in the distance, watching him discreetly through the glass. Something about her looked familiar to him, as if he had encountered her before. After what seemed an interminable silence, the inspector threw something at him. It arced through the air and fell into Josef's outstretched hand, unfurling his fingers to find a plain silver cufflink. There was no beauty to it, no marking of any kind, a simple, unadorned item that held no significance beyond the fact that it was stained with blood. "That's one thing the papers did not report on," said the inspector. "We found that inside her. The madman must have dropped it." He lowered his gaze deliberately to the long sleeve protruding from beneath Josef's cuffs, and made it intentionally known that he had taken notice of the diamond cufflinks.
"Rather an inexpensive commodity," answered Josef, and threw it back to him. It was unusual that it would be shown to him, either as bait or a taunt, but it caused him to remember something, a faint pinging sound as the man had fled from him into the mist. He wondered then if they had discovered whatever it was, but allowed no emotion to cross his face, nothing to eradicate his total calm. The inspector looked at him a moment and then nodded his head abruptly, indicating the door.
"You will remain in London, Mr. Ryder, will you not?" he inquired as his companion retreated, and they shared a lingering glance before the vampire crossed into the passage.
