Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [64]
Entering the graveyard, I could not help but remember everything again, as sharp and hurtful as if it had been last week. I told myself we destroyed a thing not the girl I had loved. Cutting through her neck, I found my calling. My hand hurt damnably. I have been trying to curb my use of morphine. I know I should seek proper treatment, but I think I need my pain. It gives me resolve.
During the changes, new-borns took to opening the tombs of dead relatives, hoping by some osmosis to return them to vampire life. I had to watch my step to avoid the chasm-like holes left in the ground by these fruitless endeavours. The fog was thin up here, a muslin veil.
It was something of a shock to see a figure outside the Westenra tomb. A slim young woman in a monkey-fur-collared coat, a straw hat with a red band on it perched on her tightly-bound hair. Hearing my approach, she turned. I caught the glint of red eyes. With the light behind her, she could have been Lucy returned. My heart thumped.
‘Sir?’ she said, startled by my interruption. ‘Who might that be?’
The voice was Irish, uneducated, light. It was not Lucy. I left my hat on, but nodded. There was something familiar about the new-born.
‘Why,’ she said, ‘’tis Dr Seward, from the Toynbee.’
A shaft of late sun speared through and the vampire flinched. I saw her face.
‘Kelly, isn’t it?’
‘Marie Jeanette, sir,’ she said, recovering her composure, remembering to simper, to smile, to ingratiate. ‘Come to pay your respects?’
I nodded and laid my wreath. She had put her own at the door of the tomb, a penny posy now dwarfed by my shilling tribute.
‘Did you know the young miss?’
‘I did.’
‘She was a beauty,’ Kelly said. ‘Beautiful.’
I could not conceive of any connection in life between my Lucy and this broad-boned drab. She’s fresher than most, but just another whore. Like Nichols, Chapman and Schön...
‘She turned me,’ Kelly explained. ‘Found me on the Heath one night when I was walking home from the house of a gentleman, and delivered me into my new life.’
I looked more closely at Kelly. If she was Lucy’s get, she bore out the theory I have heard that vampire’s progeny come to resemble their parent-in-darkness. There was definitely something of Lucy’s delicacy about her red little mouth and her white little teeth.
‘I’m her get, as she was the Prince Consort’s. That makes me almost royalty. The Queen is my aunt-in-darkness.’
She giggled. My pocketed hand was dipped in fire, a tight fist at the centre of a ball of pain. Kelly came so close I could whiff the rot on her breath under her perfume, and stroked the collar of my coat.
‘That’s good material, sir.’
She kissed my neck, quick as a snake, and my heart went into spasm. Even now, I cannot explain or excuse the feelings that came over me.
‘I could turn you, warm sir, make royalty of you...’
My body was rigid as she moved against me, pressing forward with her hips, her hands slipping around my shoulders, my back.
I shook my head.
‘’Tis your loss, sir.’
She stood away. Blood pounded in my temples, my heart raced like a Wessex Cup winner. I was nauseated by the thing’s presence. Had my scalpel been in my pocket, I’d have ripped her heart out. But there were other emotions. She looked so like the Lucy who bothers my dreams. I tried to speak, but just croaked. Kelly understood. She must be experienced. The leech turned and smiled, slipping near me again.
‘Somethin’ else, sir.’
I nodded, and, slowly, she began to loosen my clothes. She took my hand out of my pocket and cooed over the wound. She delicately scraped away the scabs, licking with shudders of pleasure. Shaking, I looked about.
‘We won’t be disturbed here, doctor, sir...’
‘Jack,’ I muttered.
‘Jack,’ she said, pleased with the sound. ‘A good name.’
She tugged her skirts up over her stocking-tops, and tied them around her waist, settling down on the ground, positioning herself to receive me. Her face was exactly Lucy