Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [108]
In the hall, she found an opera cloak, lined with red silk. It did not feel heavy. She tried to set one of Art’s top hats on her head, but it slipped down around her ears and visored her eyes. The only headgear on Art’s rack that could be made to suit her was a soft check cap with ear-flaps. It hardly fit with the rest of the get-up she had appropriated but it would have to do. She was at least able to bundle up her hair under the cap and get it out of the way. Some vampire girls cut their hair short, like a man’s. She might consider that...
... outside, the sun was rising. She thought she should get home and stay indoors. Maybe she should rest during the hours of daylight. Kate told her the sun could harm new-borns. She supposed she would have to put herself in the invidious and humiliating position of seeking Kate out and soliciting her advice on any number of unforseeable points.
She left the house and found the early morning fog thick. Yesterday, she would not have been able to see the other side of Cadogan Square. Now she could distinguish things a little better, although her vision was better with shadows than fog. If she looked up at the foggy clouds that blocked the sun, her eyes stung. She pulled her cap down, so the peak would shade her face.
‘Missy, missy,’ a voice said. A woman was coming at her out of the fog, dragging two small children.
The thirst was upon her again – the red thirst, they called it – and her mouth was parched, her teeth pricking. It was not to be compared with the needs she had known as a warm woman. It was an overpowering desire, a natural instinct on a level with the need to breathe.
‘Missy...’
An old woman, her hand out, was before her. She wore a tatty poke bonnet and a ragged shawl. ‘Do you thirst, missy?’ The woman grinned. Most of her teeth were missing and her breath stank. Penelope could smell twenty layers of differing dirts. If Fagin had a widow, this was she.
‘For sixpence, you could drink your fill. From one of my pretties.’
The woman picked up a bundle. It was a girl child, one of a pair. The face and hair were dirty but the girl was pale, mummy-wrapped in a long scarf. The woman disentangled the scarf from a thin, many-times-scabbed neck. ‘Just sixpence, missy.’
The woman clawed at the little girl’s neck, scraping scabs. Tiny drops of blood welled. The child made no sound. The blood-smell caught in Penelope’s nostrils. It was a hot, spiced, penetrating scent. She thirsted.
The girl was handed to her. For a moment, she hesitated at the intimacy. When warm, she had not cared to be touched, had especially not cared to be touched by children. She had vowed after Pamela’s death never to submit to a man’s lusts, never to bear children. That eventually came to seem childish, but she had not relished the thought of her wedding night. That side of things had very little to do with her engagement. What she had done with Art had been more than a feeding, more than an agent of the turn. There had been a carnal element, repellent and exciting. Now, it was acceptable, even desirable.
‘Sixpence,’ the woman reminded, her voice dwindling as Penelope concentrated on the child’s neck.
With Art, the drinking of blood had been an unpleasant necessity. She had felt a strange thrill, not quite indistinguishable from pain, when he bit her. Taking his blood had been a repugnant chore; this desire was different. The turn had awakened something in Penelope. As she touched her tongue to the open wound, her old self truly died. As the blood trickled into her mouth, the new-born she had become awoke.
She had chosen to become a vampire because she thought it proper. She had been angry with Charles, for his dalliance with that elder creature, for his failure to appear and make sufficient apology. He treated the warm woman badly, but perhaps his attitude would be different if she turned. All of that was absurdly by the bye.
She gulped, feeling the blood seeping throughout her. It