At that, she laughed genuinely, allowing a few more ragged heaves to slip out of her frail body before swilling down the last of her ale and slamming the empty glass back down to the table. “Enough pointless banter. I need to smoke something real.” She snuffed out her freshly expired cigarette with emphasis. “Will you be joining me, kind sir?” Her eyes sparkled as they met his, and he realized they were actually a muted shade of blue.
“I would be delighted.”
The brisk night air welcomed them as David and his stumbling counterpart descended deeper into the bowels of London’s East End. Neither of them hesitated, strolling past the shadowy figures nestled between the looming tenements and the factories narrowing the poorly demarcated streets. She struggled to keep her balance, gripping his arm as the aroma of alcohol, violets, and a hint of decay wafted up from her skin into his nostrils. It suddenly occurred to him that as close as she was to him physically, he could not hear her thoughts, something he’d become accustomed to with humans. He surmised she kept them hidden subconsciously, a common practice he’d observed in souls whose lives depended upon secrecy.
The opium dens of Limehouse were perhaps more sordid than its pubs, their congested, smoke-filled rooms teeming with languid bodies sprawled out in various stages of inebriation. The one they entered was no exception. Heavily painted Chinese women moved from guest to guest in a tranquil promenade, silently offering more brown tar for their pipes or removing tools from open palms that had relaxed with the onset of oblivion. This particular den was the best kept secret in London, catering to the elite while remaining cleverly concealed in the slums. Although the décor remained perpetually blurred by thick, brown opium vapors, the walls were papered red, matching the Oriental curtains draped over the windows. Over-occupancy obscured the view of the bedding strewn about the floor for customer comfort, but David knew from experience that it was also covered in the same silk fabric. Soft, exotic music emulated from one of the rooms, but for the most part, the den was quiet.
A small woman greeted them, wearing a deep-set frown. The black oil paint she’d used for her eyebrows had smeared across her powdered face, giving her an expression of contempt. After offering his companion a look of disapproval, she nodded politely his way. “The usual, sir?”
The woman at his side looked at him, amused. “You’ve been here before, have you?”
David didn’t respond, nodding in the direction of the owner. “Yes, that would be fine. Thank you.”
She led them through the congested mass of bodies, a few erupting in disgruntled interjections as the three of them stepped around their sprawling limbs. At the back of the main den was a curtain so large, the owner was forced to awkwardly lift it, revealing a locked door. She retrieved a set of keys from the pocket of her dress to open it, exposing a secret hallway of private rooms. She scuttled down the corridor to the one furthest from the entrance, throwing open its respective door and gesturing them hurriedly inside. “Quickly now. Large crowd to watch tonight.”
David pressed more than adequate compensation into her palm, which she wordlessly but gratefully accepted before she hurried away. Although the owner applied the utmost discretion to his occasional visit to the dens, casting a blind eye as he lured patrons quickly approaching self-inflicted expiration into the backrooms, he never wanted her to grow too suspicious, and made a note to monetarily ensure her compliance whenever he could.
His companion flopped down on the cushioned floors, in open wonderment of the room. On the far table rested an opium pipe brimming with fresh supply, a lit oil lamp, and matches arranged in a glass bowl. A bottle of rice wine was stationed nearby.
“My luck to have run into you,” she murmured, pulling the cork from the bottle to take a celebratory swallow. Her lips pursed in displeasure. “Bloody hell, how do they drink this shyte?”
David laughed as he removed his hat, freeing his rusty blond curls.
She admired him from where she lounged. “Ah, so you’re Irish, like me.”
“Close, but not quite,” he responded cryptically. He imitated her reclined position on the floor as he watched her lift the long pipe fashioned out of bamboo. A bowl packed with a fresh opium pellet was secured at its base, which she aimed directly over the flame of the oil lamp. She inhaled as it caught, the murky haze escaping from her mouth as she exhaled. She immediately succumbed to a coughing fit, pounding at her chest with frustration. “My bellows are long past their proper function,” she explained between spasms, passing the smoldering pipe his way.
He mirrored her movements, pleasantly surprised at the warmth that soon flooded him. He had never smoked the opium before, only experienced a diluted sensation of pleasure as it flowed through an intoxicated victim’s blood into his own. Smoking the tar directly, however, surpassed those sensations, and he let the delightful languor wash over him before placing the pipe back into her eager hands and settling comfortably into the cushions.
She inhaled and exhaled more deeply this time, the smoke that escaped her lungs filling the room with muddy brown. She sighed with pleasure. “Whatever numbs me and kills me faster,” she murmured.
David was suddenly overwhelmed with her thoughts, flooding him like the euphoric poison now coursing through his veins. She was alone, dying of consumption, without any desire to live on. Her life had become exactly as she briefly revealed, a series of hours spent scouring the earth for anything that would anesthetize her final days. But her death was slow and painful, ravaging her body for months with no sign of release. Flashes of her as a cherubic youth with flowing raven hair, dancing freely in the fields of the English countryside. Images of her pulling herbs from the earth with an equally beautiful mother, the knowledge of a bond strengthened through tragedy and solitude.
She peered at him coldly, a sudden sober severity flashing in her eyes. “Now you mustn't do that, doll, it takes all the fun out of it.”
David blinked, finding himself at a loss for words.
“Yes, I know what you are and that you can read my thoughts,” she offered, her voice suddenly robbed of its playfulness. “Don't think I found you by accident.”
He felt the rush of his preservation instinct, prepared to either flee or sink his teeth into her neck until her heart ceased its toil.
“Oh, please, not yet,” she said as she sat up to retrieve the bottle of wine. “I’ve grown weary for good conversation. My life has been without it for quite some time now.”
“You know what I am.”
“You are a vampyre, are you not?”
David winced. “I suppose that is the word for it now, though I’m not nearly as dashing as Lord Ruthven.”
She raised an eyebrow, her eyes sweeping over his crisp suit and the top hat sitting on the table. “Then perhaps you shouldn’t fit the part so nicely,” she pointed out with a smile. “Regardless of your preferred title, you are a blood drinker, are you not?”
David sighed. “That I am.”
“You probably don’t remember the night I first saw you, but I will never forget it. I grew up in the countryside, a novice herbalist and midwife like my mother, who immigrated here when she was very young. The absence of a male in our home immediately cast suspicion upon us, as it always does. So many years after the witch burnings, but still the hatred for independent women remains.” She took a generous sip of the rice wine, ending it with another disgusted grimace. “I don’t know how she contracted the pox. I can only surmise it was from one of the gentlemen callers who visited her while I was safely tucked away in my warm bed, dreaming a child’s dreams. But I witnessed the sickness as it ravaged her later. No concoctions nor any salve we could muster helped. Our most faithful customers drifted away. Whispers trickled throughout our village that she was cursed, a whore, or both. We were forced to leave our countryside home, the home I grew up in, to come to this rotten place. My mother took on the only occupation left for a destitute woman alone in this world. One evening, she left me, as customary, with an older lady of the night turned nanny for the children of the whores. But I knew tonight was different. I knew my mother was ready to die. I followed her into the alleyways, concealing myself in the shadows. And that’s when I found her … and you.”
David peered at her as the memory became clear. “You abhor me then.”
“I do not, actually,” she replied, tucking her long limbs beneath her. It struck him how childlike she appeared; boyish, disheveled, sickly, but lovely, like a once cherished doll that had been tossed into the trash heap. “My mother wanted to die. She begged for it. She never spoke the words aloud, but I knew. I was not only a gifted herbalist, but I inherited her intuition. You relieved her of her pain. I am grateful to you, actually.”
David recalled the delicate, sickened woman who had fallen submissively into his embrace, begging him with soft whispers to end her suffering. He hadn’t picked up from her thoughts that she would be leaving behind a child. She must have been a clever mystic, even in her final hours. “Is that how you came to follow in her footsteps?” he asked her gently.
“Aye,” she nodded. “There is no place here for healing women like me, and I was too young to flee this dreadful abyss. So, I became a part of it. Now here I am, sick and dying, just like her.”
David lifted the smoking pipe to her lips. Grateful for the kind gesture, she smiled before she inhaled. Yet her lungs could no longer bear the abuse and she erupted into a coughing fit, her body convulsing with the exertion. Blood spewed from her mouth onto the blankets before her, running down her chin as she halted the hacking with a labored sigh. She paused, fingering her bloodied lips for a moment before seductively lifting them to his.
David closed his eyes, enjoying the tease of her blood. A wave of empathy for her settled over him, and he enjoyed the brief reminder of his long-abandoned humanity as her taste sweetened his tongue. “Do you wish me to take you now?” he asked her, reaching up to caress her face.
She placed her hand on his, shivering at its chill. “Do you hate my company that much?”
“Quite the opposite, in fact,” he replied honestly. She was the most intriguing individual he had spoken to in a very long time.
“I’ve told you my life, now what of yours?” she asked, removing his hand so she could rest her head in the folds of his lap, as a child might her father. Her raven hair blanketed his legs in streams of black. “The night is young and I adore stories.”
“I haven’t spoken of myself in over a century,” he remarked, taken aback by the notion. “I’m afraid my story would be quite a bit longer than yours.”
“Then you shouldn’t waste any more time,” she teased as she looked up at him. “Tell a dying girl one last bedtime story, creature of the night.”
“Alright, lady of the night. If you insist.” David lifted the abandoned pipe to his lips once more, allowing his memories to drift back into his consciousness. The smoke congested room fell away as he plunged into the worlds of old—accosted by the smells of Ancient Rome when he was a mortal boy, the feel of warm sun beating down upon him in the peak of the day. He recalled the laborious passage through time, the cold, damp horrors of Wallachia, the Night War, the creatures, the gods. The pain of losing all that he had ever loved. The remembrances became vivid, as if they were happening again, and he closed his eyes as he began to speak in the melancholy vein that reminiscence often brings ...
