The Devil & Lillian Holmes (2 page)

She’d also heard what George hadn’t said.
“What has happened to
you?”

George didn’t say it because he knew the answer. To save her life, he’d turned her into a vampire. He’d warned her about the harsh reality she would face, but she hadn’t much cared. At the time it was better than dying at the hands of her rapist. She couldn’t blame George; she had made the choice herself. He was the same. But she was no longer the woman he’d fallen in love with. That headstrong, independent, human Lillian had died on her living room floor, and this Lillian, reborn in George’s healing blood, was utterly lost.

In quiet times with only the ticking of the clock as company, or on solitary walks under the cover of darkness, she wondered what
had
happened to her investigations, to the burning desire to find her child and her mother. They had been replaced by the burning need to drink, to kill and feed. Although she and George took great pains to harm only criminals, those abusing others, she wondered if it was a charade. She worried that she would kill anyone should her hunger become fierce enough. At times, when she felt weak, lest she not be able to control herself, she sent away her few friends and her maid’s little brothers whom she called her Musketeers. It was best that her truest friend Bess had already abandoned her. Lillian could not forgive herself for killing such a good woman.

I miss you so, my Watson.

Lillian watched George sleep for a moment and longed to turn back the clock to a time when he was the arrogant, puzzling, mesmerizing stranger who saved her more than once. She loved him more than ever, but he, too, seemed to be slipping through her fingers. Perhaps she could blame the looming threat of Marie de Bourbon. Baltimore, once a home for benign adventures and good friends, now felt like a prison. Lillian was caged with a lioness she could not see.

Marie would find them—sooner rather than later, Lillian was sure. George would want to flee before she did. At one time Lillian would have followed him anywhere. Now, her rapist and his accomplice dead at George’s hand and her brain clear of opiates, she intended to locate her missing child and mother. No matter that she had given the investigation up until now. She had needed time to recover.

Or…would she bow to George’s will? He deserved loyalty from her, did he not? Loyalty and devotion. He was her maker.

You go back and forth, Lil. Where will you end? You make no sense anymore.
And was it their vampiric bond or her love for George that made her desperate to please him? What did it all mean, and how long would any of it last?

“Am I losing you, Lil?” he’d asked more than once.

“Don’t be a silly-heart.”

“You’re so far away.” Even a month earlier, the sadness in his eyes and desperation in his voice had tortured her. “Is it this life, catching up with you? Our ways? Please give it a bit more time.”

“I am left wondering who I am.”

“Who you are?”

“Yes. Everything I was, all I knew seems like a dream to me now. My child, my mother, my friends… Even my wonderful Uncle Sherlock. They are not real.”

“I am real. You are real. Hold on to that, Lil.”

Everything was out of her control.

Attend to your hunger first, Lillian, and then perhaps you will be able to focus.

George was still asleep. Silently Lillian picked up her boots and slipped a cloak around her shoulders. Blood or opium: either would be welcome, but only one would nourish. She shoved a few bills into her pocket, knowing that downtown a few ounces of stronger medicine than she’d ever tried could be had for a pittance.

Medicine.

No, you stopped calling it that.

She tiptoed to the end of the hallway and pushed open the window that gave access to a narrow ledge around the second floor of her home. The late fall air was cold, with a promise of coming rain in the swirl of leaves on the ground and the swaying tree limbs. While she wanted badly to ride her motorbike, to feel the uneven cobbles and dirt ruts make her sway precariously, George would hear its engine and might follow. So she held out her arms and stepped off the ledge, letting gravity tug at her for a moment before taking flight.

Flight!
The dip and sudden lift lit her nerves, and she felt alive again, felt the power flowing through her veins that would help her vanquish all except for a terrifying few. Even George could not cover the distances she could without resting on a rooftop.

Immortal. She was immortal. How far could she go before she tired? She didn’t know; George had always been with her, teaching her, warning her of dangers that seemed exaggerated. Mortals had little chance to harm her. A few Catholic priests and voodoo priestesses might understand that the descriptions of undeath by Bram Stoker were close—too close—to reality, but the good citizens of her town did not routinely arm themselves with ash-wood stakes or silver bullets and daggers. Still, her kind had to be circumspect, she admitted as a young couple looked up to see what streaked across the sky.

A schooner was docked near the cannery along Light Street. Resisting the urge to land on the deck and take for supper one of the burly men huddled in the cold, drinking and playing dice, she instead chose a nearby alley.

Where were the brutes tonight? The harbor hadn’t yet failed her: a man pulling an unwilling woman around a corner; a young sailor who lay dying, robbed of his meager possessions and begging to God for a less painful end; a homeless vagabond, coughing up blood… Never depleted of the dead, dying, or damned, the harbor gave up meals willingly. She and George would kick the bodies into the water, and they would emerge miles away but anonymous, unrecognizable, the Chesapeake tidewaters lapping at them.

Lillian hid in a doorway, a few rats and a stray cat her only company, a far cry from her warm, richly decorated home. Her triumphant solo journey now felt foolish. Strains of music and laughter carried across the water, no doubt from the nearby brothel.

“What have we here?”

Lillian jumped and turned to a lanky man of middle years, weathered by the sun and no doubt a sailor given his clothes and knapsack. A ragged hound sat by his heels.

“Move along, sir.”

“Wouldn’t you like some company?”

“I will say it once more only. Move along. You will not like the consequences of attempting further acquaintance with me.”

“My, my, aren’t you a most excellent Miss High and Mighty! So you’re waiting for a duke or prince, your majesty?”

“I told you to leave. Go shake your elbow with your fellow gamblers, or visit the brothel around the corner.”

The man took a few steps toward her and looked her up and down. The man’s mutt backed away, tail curled down, and growled.

“There, Abernathy, what’s wrong?” The man glanced at Lillian. “You’re scaring Abernathy with that silvery tongue. I’m no bad egg, lady. Not a bludger, not a lush, don’t hit children nor women. So, name your price.”

“I don’t know what a bludger is, sir, but I presume you are telling me it is a bad trait?”

“You’re a right corker, aren’t you? A bludger. A man with a bludgeon.”

Lillian groaned. The fellow was almost likeable, aside from being a rude oaf. Hunger tore through every bit of her at the vein that popped out now and again on his neck when he tilted his head. Who would miss him? Who would care? A wife, a daughter? Abernathy now whimpered for his master to quit the alley.

“You shouldn’t be out alone like this, miss…”

She could fly away and leave the man doubting his sanity. She could take two steps and rip through his sun-weathered neck, drink enough to last for days. She suspected that alone and hungry George might take this man’s life. But then, no. George had changed. She had seen to that, hadn’t she?

“You are the spit and image of a girl I knew…”

Lillian didn’t hear more. The pounding in her ears made her dizzy, and she clutched at the doorway.
Make your move. Lay your hand on me, so I may feel better about what I’m about to do.

He took a last look at her and waved his hand dismissively. “No offense meant, miss, but I think Abernathy and I will take your advice and go shake an elbow. Wish me luck!”

She reached out to make her move but caught the terror in the dog’s eyes as he dared cast a backward glance at her. “You have already found good luck, sir,” she called.

Lillian heard him mumble “Loony” as he left, whistling for his dog to follow. “Gave you the willies, didn’t she…?”

She sat on the slimy threshold and cried into her hands. What would this life be if she couldn’t bear to frighten a scrawny hound, much less his innocent master? Worse, if that was even possible. But she also thought of the daughter she’d never met, how at the very least she could one day tell the girl that she had never harmed an innocent man or woman.
Your mother is no monster, my love.

At least, not yet. Not fully.

She wiped at her tears with her cloak, wondering what the others would think if they saw her in this state: George, his brother Phillip, her own butler and governess, her friend Bess, her maid Aileen. Her Musketeers. They would not believe their eyes.

Lillian stood tall, pulled her cloak around her, took a deep breath and reached up to a windowsill where a rat scampered in the dark. She clutched it quickly, wrung its neck, and carried it with her off into the night.

CHAPTER TWO

Our heroine is attacked from all sides.

Dear Miss Holmes,

Thank you for your most recent letter. How wonderful that you have begun to follow in Mr. Holmes’s footsteps! I sincerely hope that you are able to locate the relatives about whom you spoke, and I am greatly calmed that you now have a beau to assist you. Certainly you will be safer in his care, if he indeed approves of your avocation.

I fear you will not welcome the news that I am no longer writing Sherlock Holmes stories. This fact has brought some small outcry from readers in England, but certainly they will forget about him in time. My efforts are fully turned towards my studies of spiritism, a subject that engrosses me in a somewhat obsessive fashion. As a person of great intellectual passions, if I may presume to know you well enough to say it, you might understand.

You asked me about vampires in your letter. Indeed, a rather surprising question from a young lady, but you intrigued me greatly. Might you expand upon the reason for your interest? I cannot comment on a belief one way or the other about vampire souls, however fascinating the question, but, yes, I am well acquainted with Mr. Stoker; he is a friend. His interests of late involve Mesmerism, and he now loathes discussing the subject of “vampire folktales,” as he calls them. He chides me regularly on my interests. In London there has been much talk of late about a supernatural connection to a recent spate of unusual murders. Most laugh at such notions, but I am not among them.

I understand your interest in me arose from my novels, and I will not presume that you desire to continue a correspondence. I am, however, quite curious about your talk of vampires. Might you humor me with a reply?

I wish you all the best in your future adventures, and of course on your forthcoming nuptials!

Cordially,

A.C. Doyle

Postscript—I will be in Baltimore within the month to speak to their chapter of the Learned Order of Psychic Scholars and will scour the newspaper for an announcement of your wedding and latest detective pursuits!

“Wedding’?” Lil murmured, folding the letter and tucking it into her desk drawer.
Wedding?

“What’s that?” George wrinkled his brow, struggling with a jeweler’s tool to fix a tiny handmade spyglass she had found in her former butler’s workroom. He turned to her and complained, “I can’t do this, dear! You must send it to Thomas. It is his. I am a complete failure at normal male occupations. And I’m starving. I think the postman will have to do today.”

“You are not so bad at
some
male occupations,” she replied, thinking of the night before. He snickered, and she winked. “And please do not eat the postman. He’s the most punctual I’ve had in ages.” But Lillian’s joke felt flat to her own ears and George always saw through her weak attempts to appear strong and nonchalant. She asked in truth, “You were teasing, were you not? Our bargain remains: Innocents are verboten?”

George looked away, annoyed or worse. “You have lost faith?”

“George, look at me. Have you killed anyone innocent since we made our bargain?”

“I have hunted only with you.” He turned accusing eyes on her. “You, however, cannot say the same. Was that not also part of the pact?”

“I…” What to say? He was right. And he had warned her that she was unready to hunt alone, that her education had just begun. He hadn’t gone as far as forbidding her to hunt without him, but that quick push at his hair told her he was angry. She thought of the chatty stranger at the dock, wondering how he had spent his night. She was glad she had not killed him.

“One mistake, Lil, one step in the wrong direction, will bring forces down on us that you cannot imagine.”

“What forces? Marie, you mean? Lady Lucifer?”

“She is rogue, insane, a cannibal. The forbidden drinking of vampire blood has made her supremely strong, but there are those stronger still. I told you of them.”

The Elders.
She had almost thought them a legend. Hoped it, perhaps. “Yes, you told me of them. So, they are real? They are the ones that rule the Houses? You said we had no House in Baltimore.”

George snorted. “The Houses are ruled by families who like to believe they have a stranglehold on a city, puffed up peacocks with an interest in wealth and position who have carried the worst of mortality into their new lives. No, the Elders are ancient. They are the ancestors of us all. And I have told you their rules. Marie breaks them regularly, and it seems you are flirting with breaking them, too. Where did you go without me?”