A Cautionary Tale for Young Vampires Read online

  The Ouroboros Cycle, Book Two

  A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR YOUNG VAMPIRES

  G. D. FALKSEN

  Copyright Information

  Copyright © 2014 by G. D. Falksen

  Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Lawrence Gullo

  and Fyodor Pavlov.

  *

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  Dedication

  To John Betancourt

  Chapter One

  London, England

  Early September, 1888

  Varanus studied the squalor of the East End from her seat in the hansom cab and reflected, not for the first time, upon the great tragedy of such a ruinous place lurking within the boundaries of the greatest city in the world. She had come from the fashionable places west of Charing Cross, and the contrast between the rich and poor was startling. There, the buildings were elegant and strong, with clean stone and metal brightly polished; here, everything was worn and stained and choked by refuse. The people she saw walking along the street were as weathered as the stones around them. They were haggard, exhausted, and hungry. She sometimes caught sentiments of anger and resentment in their eyes, often apprehension or fear, and above all a general acceptance. So many of them had given up on the prospect of a better life. And why not? What else was there for such a downtrodden people?

  Sighing, Varanus sat back in her seat and adjusted her garments. It was evening and the sun was still receding, which necessitated the wearing of a veil. Still, the pervasive smoke and fog provided as much shelter from the light as a cloudy day. It was most agreeable.

  Her companion, dark-eyed Ekaterine, sat beside her silently reading a newspaper with little regard for whether a woman of means should concern herself with such topics.

  “Anything of interest?” Varanus asked, speaking in French. It was the first language they had shared, and it remained their preferred method of conversation.

  “Not in the least,” Ekaterine said, lowering one corner of the paper so that she could turn and look at Varanus. “Well, very little. Some murder in a street called Buck’s Row.” She shook her head and added, “What a peculiar name. Poor woman was a prostitute they say.”

  Varanus frowned and said, “Not one of my patients I should hope. I shall be very cross if that is the case. Their survival is tenuous enough as it is without ruffians doing away with them.”

  “Poor dears,” Ekaterine agreed. “I shouldn’t think she was one of yours, though. It was further south, near Whitechapel Road.”

  “Anyone under suspicion?” Varanus asked.

  Ekaterine glanced over the article again and shook her head.

  “No,” she said, “but it was quite brutal—too much for a simple robbery. Probably a gang.”

  Varanus saw Ekaterine’s lip quiver, not from fear or sorrow, she knew, but with restrained anger. Varanus shared the sentiment. It was terrible enough that women were forced into prostitution, and worse that so many of them were run by gangs as little better than chattel. But that those men saw fit to brutalize or even kill a woman who spoke out or merely returned with an insufficient take.…

  “What a terrible world we live in,” Varanus said.

  “It could be worse,” Ekaterine said.

  “How so?” Varanus asked.

  Ekaterine folded the newspaper into a neat package and tossed it out the side of the cab. Smiling, she said, “We might not be here to look out for them.”

  “Every small bit counts,” Varanus agreed.

  Ekaterine looked down at her hands and frowned.

  “Oh dear,” she said, “I’ve gotten ink all over my gloves.” She began brushing her fingertips together in an effort to clean them.

  Varanus raised an eyebrow and looked at her. Ekaterine’s gloves were dyed navy blue to match her dress. The print was almost invisible against the dark leather.

  “No one will see,” she said, her tone half soothing and half admonishing. What a silly thing for Ekaterine to be troubled by.

  Ekaterine held her hand up and made a face.

  “I will see,” she said, but after a few moments she stopped fussing. Instead, she turned to Varanus and poked her in the side.

  “Stop that!” Varanus protested, swatting Ekaterine away. The black print might not show on navy gloves, but it would certainly show on the scarlet of Varanus’s dress.

  “You’re wearing a corset,” Ekaterine teased, as if it were something strange and eccentric.

  Varanus drew herself up. As she was scarcely five feet tall, it had very little effect.

  “Yes I am,” she said, “and you ought to be!”

  Though Ekaterine had deigned to wear European dress, she had refused outright to wear stays of any sort. Varanus had been forced to accept the decision, though not for lack of trying—each day when she dressed, she made the offer to Ekaterine, and each day she was refused. Thankfully, Ekaterine’s figure was such as to give the illusion of corsetry, but still there was a principle at stake.

  “It is enough that I wear this hat!” Ekaterine replied, pointing to the article that sat perched upon her head. It was charming, if a little bit ostentatious, with a tall crown, a narrow brim, and a sizable bow to one side.

  “I bought you that hat,” Varanus said, a little hurt.

  Ekaterine sighed and shook her head. “Which is why I wear it,” she said. She removed the hat and turned it over in her hands. Like her dress, it was navy blue and gold, with flashes of white for contrast. “I thought that you hated bows,” she added, as she put the hat back atop her piled hair.

  “It is on a hat!” Varanus protested. “That is entirely different.”

  She looked ahead past the horses and spotted a familiar tavern at the street corner. They had reached Spitalfields. She and Ekaterine had traveled through the area so many times over the past year that, regardless of which route their cabby took them, Varanus could always tell how close they were to their destination.

  “Stop!” Varanus shouted, and she reached up and slapped the side of the cab with her hand to attract the cabby’s attention.

  The cab slowed to a stop alongside a row of decrepit shops. Ekaterine alighted and helped Varanus down with a gentle hand. The cabby leaned out and called down to them:

  “’Ere, miss, you sure this is where you want’a be?” His tone sounded very doubtful. “This ain’t the right place for respectable ladies.”

  It was good of him to say so, Varanus thought. He seemed a decent man, and naturally he was concerned that something terrible might happen to them in the blighted rookery. It was rather amusing, actually.

  “We are quite all right, thank you,” Varanus said.

  She counted out some coins and held them up for the cabby to take. Due to Varanus’s short reach, the cabby was obliged to lean down to receive the fare, but when he counted it out, he was quite pleased.

  “Miss,” he said, “this ain’t—”

  “Keep the extra please,” Varanus said. “I’m feeling rather charitable this evening.”

  The cabby touched his cap and said, “Much obliged, miss.” After a little hesitation—no doubt his conscience doing its duty—he set the cab moving again and departed down the squalid street.

  “I daresay that kind man is concerned for our safety,” Ekaterine said, smiling brightly. “I find it so heartening to encounter nobility of character in such dark times.”

  “Yes,” Varanus agreed, “but he still took the money and drove off, leaving us to our fate.”

  Ekaterine held up a hand and said, “Don’t spoil the moment.”

  Varanus smiled and took Ekaterine by the arm.

  “Come along,” she s
aid. “We must get to the clinic promptly, lest my poor patients be left waiting. And what’s more, I’m feeling rather peckish.”

  They began walking down the street, deeper into the slum. All the while, the poor and derelict people who passed them shied away, bobbed their heads, and in several cases cast envious glances toward them. It was not surprising: she and Ekaterine were making a display of affluence in a truly impoverished place. They could have disguised themselves in the manner of locals, but that was contrary to Varanus’s purposes. Far better to be seen and noticed.

  “Peckish?” Ekaterine asked, as they walked. “I recall our having eaten only an hour ago.”

  Varanus grimaced and said, “If one can call that eating. I fear that the local fare disagrees with me.” She paused. “Well, all but one kind of local fare, and even then it is tainted by the local diet.”

  “Don’t you enjoy any part of the English cuisine?” Ekaterine asked, taunting playfully. In truth, she hated it as much as Varanus did.

  “As we have both learned these past few months,” Varanus replied, “the English do not have a cuisine. They have food that is heated, and that is the end of it.”

  Ekaterine laughed and Varanus joined her. It was good to be in the land of her ancestors, Varanus thought—half of her ancestors at any rate—but she was gravely disappointed by the state of English cooking. Thankfully, English fashion more than compensated.

  “I am glad that you wore the blue,” she told Ekaterine. “It suits you.”

  Ekaterine glanced toward the stoop of a nearby building where a couple of men were lounging around drinking in the first shadows of dusk. The men were looking in their direction with distinctly lecherous gazes.

  “So I’ve noticed,” Ekaterine said. She smiled at the men and fluttered her eyelashes. The men, rewarded by this display, made noises of encouragement to one another. One of them even stepped off the stoop and began to shamble slowly in their direction.

  “Ekaterine!” Varanus exclaimed, slapping her friend’s hand firmly. She began walking more quickly to leave the men behind. “Kindly do not make such a display of yourself. I’m surprised at you. Winking at them like a shameless coquette.”

  Ekaterine laughed and replied, “You said you were hungry. I had planned to lure one or two of them into a private place for you.”

  “I’m doubly surprised,” Varanus said. “Why surely, once they learned what we were about, they would be quite unwilling.”

  “In this instance I’d shed few tears,” Ekaterine said. “Unlike you, I trouble myself to learn something of our neighbors. The man following us beats his wife and children. And I suspect he’s a thief. I doubt the world would much mourn his passing.”

  “Oh!” Varanus exclaimed. How silly of her not to have trusted Ekaterine, however peculiar her actions. Perhaps there really was something to passing words with the neighbors after all. “I didn’t realize. Shall we go back?”

  “Uh…” Ekaterine glanced back and frowned. “No, he’s given up. A shame, but I suppose it was an unlikely thing from the start.”

  “A shame indeed,” Varanus agreed, licking her lips. She really was parched. It had been ages since she had properly indulged herself. “I fear that to approach them directly would be most unseemly.”

  “Yes,” Ekaterine agreed. “Almost as unseemly as this hat.”

  * * * *

  They continued on in the growing darkness. Within a few minutes, the sun had dimmed sufficiently for Varanus to remove her veil. It was nice to be able to see clearly, though little of what there was to see proved pleasing to the eyes. As they turned into a side street, Varanus fancied that she heard footsteps behind them, walking along at a slightly quicker pace.

  She leaned close to Ekaterine and whispered, “I think we’re being followed.”

  “Oh?” Ekaterine asked. She placed her hand over her mouth and giggled, as if being told some wonderful joke, and turned her head toward Varanus. When she turned back, she said, “You’re right. Three men. One has a cudgel. I think they mean to rob us. Or worse.”

  “Wonderful!” Varanus said. Suddenly the evening was looking up. And better still, she saw an alley branching off from the street where they would likely be concealed from the prying eyes of the locals.

  She led Ekaterine into the alley, looking about like a confused woman lost on her way. To her approval, the alley ended in a tall wooden fence. There was only one way out, so they would be cornered. Varanus led Ekaterine almost to the fence before turning back. The men following them had entered the alley by that point and were approaching. One man held a lantern and another had a short club as Ekaterine had said.

  Ekaterine did a good job of shying away nervously, and Varanus did her best to look proud but frightened.

  “’Ere then,” the man with the lantern said, leading the way for his fellows. “What’ve we got now?’”

  “I do beg your pardon…sir,” Varanus said, dubiously, “but I fear that my sister and I seem to have become lost in your…district. I would be most obliged—” She caught herself as the man with the cudgel approached and leered at her. He smelled horribly of sweat and alcohol. “Oh, my.…” She made a show of drawing away before trying again: “I would be most obliged if you could direct us to the London Hospital.”

  Ekaterine clung tightly to her arm and said, “Mildred, I told you we should have remained in the cab.”

  “Oh, there’s no need for that, love,” said the man with the lantern, smiling at Ekaterine and showing his yellowed teeth. “We’re all just good Samaritans, ain’t we?”

  The other men nodded in agreement.

  The leader took Ekaterine by the hand and continued, “We’d be ’appy to show you to the ’ospital. We just need a little compensation, don’t we?”

  The man with the cudgel grabbed Varanus by the wrist and pulled her to him while the other two men fell upon Ekaterine. Varanus obligingly fell forward into the man’s grasp, swiftly enough to avoid the cudgel as he brought it down at her head. She pressed forward further, now entirely of her own volition, and shoved her opponent into the wall, far harder than a woman of her stature should have managed.

  With her enemy momentarily stunned, she chanced a look back at Ekaterine. She need not have worried. She saw Ekaterine strike the leader in the throat with the heel of her palm. He dropped the lantern and stumbled away, gagging and choking. The third ruffian grabbed for Ekaterine’s neck. Ekaterine crossed her arms in front of her and slammed her fists into the crook of each elbow, breaking the grasp.

  Varanus sensed movement beside her and saw the man with the cudgel come at her again. His eyes were wide, his expression bewildered at being so easily overpowered by a woman, but he still had not given up the hope of an easy mark. It was just as well. Varanus was in no mood to chase him down if he happened to run.

  She caught him by the wrist as he swung his cudgel at her head. Surprised, the man resisted, pulling away for another strike. Varanus tightened her grip and held him fast. The man screamed in confusion and punched her in the stomach. Overconfident from her success, Varanus was caught off guard by the blow and she slumped forward. Much of the force was displaced by the boning of her corset and the firm muscles beneath, but it still hurt. In reply, Varanus tightened her grip on the man’s wrist until she felt the bones snap. The man started to scream, and Varanus slammed his head against the wall to silence him.

  She turned around to see Ekaterine’s progress with the other two. The leader was on his knees, but he had regained his breath. He would be up and back in the fight in a moment. The remaining ruffian was bruised and battered, with blood trickling from his nose and mouth. He lashed out almost blindly with hands and fists, but Ekaterine bobbed back and forth, bending at the waist and evading each blow effortlessly.

  Bending at the waist.… Perhaps there was something to Ekaterine’s obsession with going about uncorseted after all.

  Suddenly, one of the ruffian’s incoherent punches managed to get through, striking
Ekaterine on the side of the head. She stumbled a little and touched her face. In the interim, the ruffian drew a short knife from behind his back and raised it to strike.

  Ekaterine twisted away to avoid the ruffian’s first two thrusts. Finished with the game of strike and evasion, she raised one foot as high as her skirts would allow and brought it down on the side of the man’s knee, shattering the joint. The man screamed in pain, but Ekaterine rocked back on her heel and kicked him under the chin. His head struck the wall and he fell over.

  The leader of the ruffians was on his feet again. Ekaterine twisted in place to regard him, but with her weight firmly placed upon her heel, she immediately lost her balance and tumbled backward. She hit the ground with a painful smack.

  Stunned and startled, the leader of the ruffians stood still for a moment. Varanus could not tell if he meant to fight or flee, but either would be an inconvenience. Making up his mind, the man snatched up the fallen knife and lunged for Ekaterine. Varanus, already in motion, stepped between them. She caught the knife by the blade and shoved it away, leaving the man’s body open for a counterattack. Never one to waste opportunities, Varanus stepped forward and swept the man’s leg out from under him. Her free hand grabbed him by the collar and lowered him to the ground. The man struggled to rise, but Varanus placed one hand against his chest and held him down.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “It isn’t personal, though I suspect you deserve it.”

  Without another word, she took his head in her hands and snapped his neck.

  “Neatly done, liebchen,” said a gentle voice beside her.

  She turned her head and saw the slender, elegant form of her beloved Korbinian kneeling beside her. He wore a black and crimson hussar’s uniform, just as he had the night of his death almost thirty years ago. Dead but not gone: he had always been with her.

  “Thank you,” she said softly, smiling at him. She turned in place and looked over her shoulder. “Ekaterine, are you well?”

  “I am displeased!” came the reply.

  Ekaterine slowly picked herself up off the ground and tried with limited success to brush the dirt and grime from the back of her dress.