Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [37]
‘My Lord Ruthven sends his regards,’ Art said.
The poet was almost flattered to be so noticed. As he began to say something marvellously amusing but unnecessary, Art leaned close to him and, in a voice so small only Penelope could make it out apart from Wilde, said, ‘and he would wish that you took great caution in visiting a certain house in Cleveland Street.’
Wilde looked at Art with eyes suddenly shrewd and refused to be drawn further. He escorted Florence off, to talk with Frank Harris of the Fortnightly Review. Since turning, Mr Harris sported goat-horns which Penelope found daunting. Kate tripped off in the poet’s wake, presumably hoping to suck up enough to the editor to place with him an article on women’s suffrage or some such silliness. Even a devoted libertine of Mr Harris’s reputation would presumably think Kate too undernourished a fish to count as worth netting, and cast her back into the seas.
‘What an earth did you say to so upset Wilde?’ Mr Reed asked, scenting a story. His nostrils actually did twitch whenever he thought he was on the track of some scrap that might possibly qualify as news.
‘Just some craze of Ruthven’s,’ Art explained.
The news-gatherer looked at Art, eyes like gimlets. Many vampires had piercing gazes. At social gatherings, they could often be found trying to outstare each other like a pair of horn-locked moose. Mr Reed lost the contest and wandered off himself, searching out his wayward niece.
‘Sharp girl, that,’ Art said, nodding after Kate.
‘Pfui,’ said Penelope, shaking her head. ‘Careers are for girls who can’t get themselves husbands.’
‘Meow.’
‘Sometimes I think everything is going completely above me,’ she complained.
‘Nothing to worry your pretty little head about,’ he said, turning back to her.
Art tickled her under the chin, and angled her head up to look into her eyes. She thought he might plan to kiss her – here, in public, with all of theatre London about – but he did not. He laughed and let her go after a moment.
‘Charles had better realise soon it is not safe to leave you lying around. Or else someone will steal you away and make of you a maiden tribute of modern Babylon.’
She giggled as she had been taught to do when anyone said anything she did not entirely understand. In the darks of Lord Godalming’s eyes, something glinted. Penelope felt a tiny warmth growing in her breast, and wondered where such might lead.
12
DAWN OF THE DEAD
Dawn shot the fog full of blood. As the sun rose, new-borns scurried to coffins and corners. Geneviève trailed alone back to Toynbee Hall, never thinking to be afraid of the shrinking shadows. Like Vlad Tepes, she was old enough not to shrivel in the sun as did the more sensitive new-borns, but the vigour that had come with the blood of the warm girl ebbed as the light filtered through. She passed a warm policeman on the Commercial Road, and nodded a greeting to him. He turned away and kept on his beat. The feeling she’d had earlier, that someone was just out of sight dogging her footsteps, returned; she supposed it more or less a permanent delusion in the district.
In the last four nights, she’d spent more time on Silver Knife than her work. Druitt and Morrison undertook double shifts, juggling the limited number of places at the Hall to deal first with the most needy. Primarily an educational institute, the hall was coming to resemble a field hospital. Seconded to a Vigilance Committee, she had been to so many noisy meetings that even now words persisted in her ears as music rings in the ears of those who sit too near the orchestra.
She stopped walking and stood, listening. Again, she felt followed. Her vampire sensitivities tingled and she had an impression of something in yellow silk, progressing with strange silent hops, long arms out like a somnambulist. She looked into the fog, but nothing emerged. Perhaps she’d absorbed one of the warm girl’s memories or fancies and would be stuck with it until her blood was