CHAPTER 22.
LONDON, 1914.
Jacob Harvey kissed his sweetheart goodbye, then climbed onto the train that would take him away from her forever.
His eighteenth birthday had been two days ago, and the day after that he had volunteered to join the army, and The Great War for Civilisation.
Victoria, his sweet heart, watches the train pull away from the station in a cloud of smoke and steam, and stood watching until it disappeared from sight. Despite her tears, she was proud to see him go. He had promised to write to her as soon as he could, and she was sure that he would be back by Christmas.
She mounted her automobile and was driven back to her father’s fine house beside Hide Park. Once indoors, she shut herself away in her room, closed the curtains, and set to work at her embroidery.
A few moments later, there was a knock on her door, and the serving maid entered.
“Juliet?” Victoria greeted her.
“Sorry to intrude, ma’m,” the girl said. “Letter for you, ma’m, came when you were at the station.”
“Thank you Juliet,” Victoria took the letter. “You shall not be required for the rest of the day.”
When the girl had left, Victoria looked at the letter. It was from Lady Charlotte, whom Victoria had met at a dance the week before. A tall lady who looked to be in her late twenties, but who carried herself with the dignity of a far older lady.
It read,
“Miss Victoria,
Please be so kind to meet me at Jenny’s Tea Rooms at six tomorrow evening. We have important matters to discuss.
Kind regards,
Lady Charlotte Rathbone”
“I know what you are,” Lady Charlotte said to Victoria. “I have seen the way that you hide yourself from the daylight, and come to life in the night. I have seen the way in which food and wine hold no joy for you. I see the lust in your eyes and lips. I know what you are, for you and I are the same.”
They had only exchanged a few pleasantries in the quiet tea room before Lady Charlotte had launched herself into this speech.
“I have not the foggiest idea of what you speak of,” Victoria replied defensively.
“You know exactly what I speak of. But you fear it. We are not made for the world of day. You are made to be dark and beautiful and free, and you shall be, when you are willing to remember…”
“Just what exactly do you think I am?” Victoria said as she stood to leave.
“A daughter of the night.”
“Humbug,” Victoria said as she stormed out of the tea room.
“Return to me when you are willing to remember,” Charlotte called after her.
Victoria left her home very little in the days which followed. She read or worked on her embroidery in her darkened room, and ate little. When she slept, which was very rarely, her dreams were full of blood.
It was very quiet in her house in those days. Her father and elder brother were away at war, and her elder sister was married. Only she and her mother remained.
Her family and her few friends put her bad mood down to the absence of her boyfriend, and the worsening situation on The Western Front.
After two weeks she received a letter from Jacob, saying that his basic training was over and that he would be sailing to France the next day. He said that he missed her, and looked forward to seeing her soon, when the war was won.
She did not see Charlotte for several weeks, until she unintentionally met her
at a Charity Dance to raise money for the recently war wounded.
“Good evening Miss Victoria,” Charlotte greeted her casually.
“Good evening,” she had replied coldly.
“You look tired. You shall find that you sleep better in the day time.”
“Lady! Have you no manners?”
“What use are manners to a monster?”
“Quite so,” Victoria said as she strode away.
Yet she could not keep her eyes from Charlotte, watching her from the other side of the hall. Nor could she bring herself to concentrate on or enjoy the music and dancing. Some deep, dark instinct constantly nagged at her soul.
At around midnight, when the punch had strengthened her heart and clouded her mind, she strode over to Charlotte, who stood alone staring out at of a huge bay window.
“Lady Charlotte, I detest you, but you intrigue me,” she said quietly, for fear of anyone else hearing.
“Look outside,” Charlotte said.
Victoria obeyed. The light from the window illuminated the well tended gardens. Beyond that, smoke danced from the silhouettes of distant buildings. Beyond that, a coal black sky was filled with stars around which a full moon sat enthroned.
“How beautiful the night is,” Charlotte continued. “How dark, how wild, how free. The laws of God and Man have no place there. There is only timeless beauty and instinct.”
“It is a pretty night,” Victoria was forced to agree.
“Come out with me into the night.”
Without waiting for an answer, Charlotte glided off across the room, then though a door, into the garden. Victoria followed her until they stood alone in the garden.
“Do you remember yet Victoria?”
“No. I’m sure that I don’t know what you mean.”
“What of your dreams?”
Victoria looked up at the glittering night sky, then up at Lady Charlotte’s majestic face.
“Blood. I’ve dreamt of blood.”
“Oh yes, I’m sure you have. Do you thirst for it?”
“That is horrid…”
“It’s Divine.”
“I think that you are mentally unwell, Lady Charlotte, may I recommend that you take yourself to a doctor.”
“I am quite well, thank you. But I can see that you need more time. I shall be in Jenny’s all evening tomorrow, I shall see you then.”
With that, Charlotte floated out of the garden and left Victoria alone in the night.
.
Victoria tried to sleep that night. But every time that she drifted off, she dreamed of herself hunting through the smoggy streets of Victorian London. Stalking men, biting them, killing them, feeding from them.
She slept in this fitful manner until noon. When she finally dragged herself out of bed, she had no appetite for breakfast.
She gathered newspapers and studied the action on The War. It seemed to be going well. She thought about her Jacob, wondering how he was doing and when he would write again. She daydreamed about him coming home a hero, just in time for Christmas, and then they would be married. But the daydreams seemed hollow to her.
She had no appetite all day, and a strange thirst plagued her, which no amount of water or tea would quench.
As hard as she tried to busy herself with newspapers, and then embroidery, and then sewing, and then reading poetry, she could not stop thinking about her dream, or about Charlotte.
She knew that there was something very wrong about herself, and the more she thought about the more she realised that there had always been something wrong about herself. She had always found it hard to make friends, she was always tired in the day time and restless at night, and in summer she would be sunburnt very easily and her eyes would hurt. She was thin and pale, even by the fashions of the time, she never enjoyed her food, even though she was always hungry- or thirsty.
And her thirst got worse, and she could not stop thinking about her dreams of blood.
At six in the evening it became intolerable. She summoned her maid and asked her to prepare her evening dress and have the automobile ready to take her away in an hour.
She found Charlotte sat at the back of the tea room, with half glass of gold coloured liquid and a half smoked cigarette in an ivory holder.
“I knew you’d be back,” Charlotte said.
“And a good evening to you too,” Victoria replied testily.
“Take a seat. Would you like a drink? A cigarette?”
“No thank you. I require answers. Something is wrong with me…”
“Dearest Victoria…Nothing is wrong with you. Let me tell you a story… One thousand three hundred years ago, I went through a similar situation to which you are going through. You too have already been through this before, but you do not remember it yet. But let me tell you what happened to me. I was in Denmark, during the pinnacle of a time which is now known as The Viking Age. I was the daughter of a Jarl, an Earl or Lord, and at the age of fifteen I was initiated into a coven, a sort of priesthood, of the priestesses of Freya, The Lady…”
Victoria listened, totally spellbound.
“There were initiation rites, most of which you would find immoral and horrific, but which were mostly very enjoyable. I became a Godi, a Priestess of Freya, but I became something more. My teacher knew it, she said that nothing of the like had happened since her grandmother’s time, and she accepted my authority. The blood lust fell upon me, as did the night love, and the sure and curtain knowledge that I would never truly die until the Ragnarok, and that even after that, I would rise again.
“I became what I am now. I believed that The Lady had made me that way, so that I could slay Her enemies, and so that I would always remember and honour Her. I have died many times since then, but I have not forgotten Her, I have not changed. I am what you are- a Vampyre.”
“A vampire? You are telling me that we are vampires?”
Charlotte stubbed out the end of her cigarette and finished drinking her mead.
“Yes. We are the Daughters of The Night. The creatures which men call vampires.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“I am sure that you do, but you find it harder to ignore. You are beginning to remember.”
“Yes…”
“Come with me, Miss Victoria,” Charlotte stood and took her hand, “I shall show you something beautiful.”
They steeped out of Lady Charlotte’s chauffeur driven Rolls Royce into a dingy street of narrow buildings in the East End of London. The night was dark, and the smog thick.
“Meet us back here in two hours, please,” Charlotte told her chauffeur.
“Yes m’lady.”
Charlotte led Victoria along the street, then down a cobbled ally between dilapidated buildings until they reached a door with peeling red paint.
Charlotte knocked on the door three times sharply, paused, then two more times.
They waited for a few moments.
“Who is it?” a girl’s voice asked from behind the door.
“Charlotte.”
They heard a bolt slide and a key turn, then the door opened.
A tall, slender young lady stood in the door way. Her large green eyes were unusually bright, and her red hair hung below her tiny waist. She wore a gentleman’s smoking jacket as though it were a dressing gown, and had no shoes on her stockinged feet. She looked inquisitively at Charlotte, then Victoria, then back to Charlotte.
“The usual, Charlotte?” the girl asked.
“No thank you, Violet, my friend shall be requiring something special tonight.”
“Come this way,” the girl said.
Victoria followed them up steep narrow stairs with a thread bare carpet. The rational part of her mind told her that the situation was very odd, the girl was clearly of the lowest classes and that Charlotte was being very silly in taking her to this horrible place. Yet some animal instinct, some mad hunger, drove her on. She found herself in a small, dim room with a low ceiling, a hookah pipe stood in one corner and the rest of the room was furnished entirely with an assortment of rugs and cushions.
The girl, who looked to be the same age as Victoria, reclined by the pipe, and Charlotte sat at the other end of the room on a pile of cushions. Victoria sat beside Charlotte, her back against the wall.
The girl undid her smoking jacket to reveile corset, briefs, stockings and a great deal of white flesh. Victoria could not help noticing how long and pale the girl’s neck was. Taking a candle, the girl lit the hookah, and puffed on it, filing the room with sweet smoke. She then offered the pipe to Charlotte, who inhaled deeply from it and offered it to Victoria, who declined.
“What’s it to be?” the girl asked sleepily.
“My friend has not done this before, I shall let her go first,” Charlotte said.
The girl looked at Victoria and smiled sweetly, then beckoned her over with her little finger.
Victoria had no idea what was expected of her, but a dreadful yearning was building inside her.
“Go…” Charlotte said, softly but firmly.
Victoria moved awkwardly over to the girl and sat down beside her. The girl took her hand and kissed her on the check. When Victoria did not respond, the girl took her other hand and placed it on her thigh. Leaving Victoria’s hand on her thigh; she then held Victoria’s head gently and faced it towards her. Victoria looked at the beautiful face inches from her own, smiling at her and gazing with emerald eyes into her own. She closed her eyes, and a moment later she felt soft lips on her own, and then a delicate tongue slide into her mouth.
Instinct took command of reason.
Charlotte lit a cigarette and watched as they kissed and ran slender hands over each others bodies.
Victoria’s lips found the girl’s neck. The skin was unbelievably smooth and the taste and sent irresistibly sweet.
The girl lay back, so that Victoria lay on top of her. Victoria held one of the girl’s hands in each of her own.
Then she bit.
The girl screamed as Victoria bit deep into her neck, fastening her jaws around her jugular. Then the scream turned to a sickly gargling and chocking as Victoria ripped her throat out. Still holding her hands, Victoria began to drink from her bleeding neck.
Charlotte stood and undressed in a few quick strokes, then was at the girl’s neck before she was fully dead.
When the corpse was finally cold and dry, Charlotte and Victoria turned on each other and made love on the blood soaked cushions.
They sat in the back of the Rolls, watching grey streets drift past.
“I feel some what light headed,” Victoria said.
“That would be the opium, my dear,” Charlotte told her.
“Oh gosh… Opium?”
“From the girl…”
Then Victoria no longer cared. She watched the dark streets fly by, and remembered other streets, which were yet the same. The smoggy, gas lit street of Victorian London, where horses raced and where the world was not at war.
“My Jacob!” Victoria suddenly examined. “I have betrayed him.”
“Do not worry about him,” Charlotte said, gently taking her hand. “You will not see Harvey again for a very long time, and when you do, he will not hold this against you.”
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