Welcome back! This chapter is part two of three for the flashback started in the last chapter. So that's a good place to start if you don't want to read from the beginning. Sorry about that, but the damned thing just kept growing until I needed to divide it. This chapter is relatively low on the smut and leans into the horror/suspense aspect of this series. If that's not your cup of tea, I get it.
Speaking of tea, welcome to
London, 1890
Gwendolyn hated cities.
They were cramped, dirty places filled with desperate people two missed meals away from savagery.
And London was worse.
The flood of humanity was everywhere, from starving, sickly children to the well-heeled gentry, with all of them scurrying about like rats in a barn.
Over her long years she'd traveled the world many times. She'd found herself in cities that fancied themselves the jewel of empires or the bedrock of kingdoms. She'd even lived in them at times, out in the open, when a woman of her talents could live anonymously among the masses.
The transformation of cities from merely cramped, dirty, and diseased to smoke-filled, toxic cesspits like London, had only occurred in the last hundred years.
Industry, they called it.
It was a pox on the surface of the land as far as she was concerned.
She was vaguely aware that a great transformation was occurring all over the world, that millions of poor, rural peasants were moving into cities in search of new factory jobs, and that this was causing a revolution in how people lived and worked. It was a hard thing to see when you lived during it, but she'd lived through countless of these transformations and her instinct was to stay far away until the dust settled and equilibrium was found again.
The stagecoach stopped in front of a seven-story tenement in London's East End. The building was near indistinguishable from those around it; just one of an endless line of brick buildings jutting upward in neat straight lines, each building bleeding into those next to it.
"Home sweet home," Lenore said with no hint of irony.
"I think that man is dead over there." Edward pointed to a body laying in the gutter.
The vampire Lenore looked over and shrugged. "He still has a heartbeat. For now."
They exited the stagecoach that had been their home for the last week, gathering their belongings and letting Lenore lead the way.
If London itself was a poisonous cesspit, the East End was where it drained out. A cacophony of smells assaulted Gwen as she stood on the street, only a few she could easily identify. Beer and piss and shit and coal smoke combined with the putrid smell of rot that came off the Thames.
"I can't believe you live here voluntarily," Gwen said, holding her nose.
All around them men and women lingered in various states of drunkenness, arguing and squabbling. The front of Lenore's building, however, was notably devoid of people. It was as if, even falling down drunk, the locals knew to avoid it.
"It smells like death here," Edward said.
"I know, isn't it lovely?" Lenore replied.
They followed her into the tenement. It was as dark as a cave inside, and they moved through a series of narrow hallways before coming to stairs that led into the basement. The air grew stale and then cold as they descended.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs Lenore led them through a door where she retrieved and lit an oil lamp.
"I thought the cities were using Edison's electric light," Edward said.
Lenore grinned darkly in the glow of the lamp. "They're being used in the street lights mostly. But only in the rich parts of the city. Here we still live in the dark."
Lenore led them through a series of corridors before entering a large chamber.
"Welcome to my coven," Lenore said as they entered. Then she froze, nearly dropping the lamp. "No," she whispered. "No no no..."
"What?" Gwen asked. She couldn't make out much in the large chamber, as mu of it was shrouded in darkness. Low light from candles gave some sense of the size but she didn't have Lenore's dark vision.
Edward took one of the dying candles to light another lamp.
She saw why Lenore froze.
Bodies hung from the ceiling. Pale and naked and drenched in dried black blood. Each had suffered a wound to their chest or abdomen and Gwen didn't need to get that close to know they were missing their hearts.
Lenore howled in rage.
Fangs out and eyes black, she grabbed the closest object she could reach--a heavy-looking reclining chair--and smashed it to pieces.
"You were supposed to wait!" she screamed at the bodies. "'Wait for my return,' I said!"
Gwen, who'd seen more death in her life than perhaps anyone who'd ever lived, waited until she was done before speaking.
"Lenore, sister, we may still be in danger here."
Lenore growled and disappeared into one of the rooms that connected to the main chamber. There were several and she searched them all in just a few seconds.
"We're alone," she announced. "Whatever did this is long gone."
Edward stood transfixed by the gory sight. "What creature out of hell could do this?"
"Nothing, I know of," Gwen said, solemnly.
Lenore cut the bodies down. There were four, and they were the last of her coven. Laying flat, their features desiccated, Gwen thought they looked pathetic rather than the ancient killers they were.
She knelt, inspecting their wounds. "You said the others were missing their hearts? Were they missing other organs?"
"We didn't do a bloody autopsy," Lenore replied darkly. "After we found Catherine I came straight away to find you."
Gwen reached into the chest cavity of one of the dead vampires. "This one is missing his liver too."
They looked over the other bodies. Two of the four were disemboweled as well, missing other organs along with their hearts.
The female vampire was missing her lungs and most of her windpipe. One was missing his liver, another his spleen. The fourth dead vampire was missing his stomach and most of his intestines.
Lenore lightly stroked the hair of the fourth corpse. "This was Albrecht. We've been together since the reign of Queen Elizabeth. We built this coven together."
Gwen knelt too and put a hand on the corpse's chest. "I'm so sorry, sister. I know what he meant to you."
Lenore wiped tears of blood away. "I'm going to find who did this and tear out their throat."
"Aye," Gwen agreed. "I'll stand by you as you do."
Edward just put a hand on her shoulder. Gwen's apprentice had grown rather fond of Lenore during the week of their travels, likely due to the carnal relations they'd shared during the otherwise long, dull journey.
They were silent a long time before Edward moved. He knelt next to the body of the female vampire and opened her clawed hand.
A burn was seared to the flesh of her palm, as clear as ink on paper.
