Free Bloodborn by Nathan Long

Lily, but… but…’
    ‘Never mind that, sister,’ said Hermione, tight-lipped. ‘What happened? Where did you find her?’
    Ulrika thought it fairly obvious what had happened. She stared at the corpse of the dead vampire with morbid fascination. That is what I shall look like when I die, she thought. She saw Famke staring uneasily at the corpse as well, and wondered if she was thinking similar thoughts.
    The late Mistress Alfina may have once been an attractive woman, but it was difficult to determine that from the broken remains that lay before Ulrika. Her fangs and claws were extended in the way Hermione had described the other corpses being discovered, while her limbs were locked in an attitude of furious attack and her face frozen in a hideous snarl of rage.
    But it seemed that neither claws nor fangs nor rage had been enough to protect her. Her well-cut clothes had been torn to shreds, as had the flesh beneath them, and a wooden stake had been driven through her heart – so deeply that it came out her back. None of these things, however, was as fascinating, and at the same time repelling, as the quality of her skin. Alfina must have looked young in life, no more than thirty, but now her skin looked a hundred years old. It was as dry and powdery as a parched riverbed, and had sunk in against her bones as if the meat had withered and shrunk within it. She might have been dead for centuries, which, as Ulrika came to think about it, was most likely true.
    Ulrika inhaled deeply as a strange mix of smells came to her from the body. Beneath the usual Lahmian scent of musk and spice and dusty corruption was another, a faint putrid odour rising from the body – foul and earthy, like a battlefield full of corpses after a week in the rain.
    ‘She…’ began the red-haired woman, then shivered and began again. ‘She was hung up on the iron fence outside the brothel. Hung by the stake.’
    Famke winced.
    Hermione cursed. ‘Did anyone see her? The witch hunters?’
    Madam Dagmar shook her head. ‘I do not think so. My doorman, Groff, found her when he went out to get a carriage for one of our gentlemen. He and the grooms brought her in as quick as they could. But… but who could have done this? Mistress, there are three of us dead now! Three!’
    Hermione grabbed Dagmar and shook her. ‘Be quiet, curse you! Answer my questions! No one saw her before Groff brought her in? Are you certain?’
    Dagmar pulled away from her and covered her face with her shawl. ‘I don’t know! I don’t know! No one said anything! The witch hunters didn’t come!’
    Hermione breathed a sigh of relief and Ulrika saw that Gabriella shared it.
    ‘Then at least we can cover it up,’ said Hermione. ‘Good.’
    ‘It still leaves us with the question of who did it,’ said Gabriella.
    ‘A beast,’ said Famke.
    ‘Aye,’ said Rodrik angrily. ‘A savage beast.’
    ‘Beasts don’t wield wooden stakes,’ said Ulrika. ‘Or hang women from fences.’
    Rodrik glared at her, but Gabriella patted her arm. ‘Very true,’ she said. ‘No, this was not as mindless an attack as it appears. It was clearly meant to kill two birds with one stone.’
    Hermione and the others looked at her curiously.
    Gabriella held up a finger. ‘One, it was to expose poor Alfina as a vampire, as Rosamund and Karlotta had been exposed before her.’ She raised a second finger. ‘And two, it was to cast suspicions onto Madam Dagmar’s brothel.’
    ‘They mean to ruin us!’ snarled Hermione.
    ‘Indeed,’ said Gabriella. ‘Whoever “they” are.’
    Otilia coughed politely from the stairs. ‘Pardon, mistresses. If I might suggest?’
    Hermione turned to her. ‘Yes, Otilia?’
    The housekeeper smoothed her dresses nervously, then spoke. ‘Perhaps a trip to the brothel? Perhaps traces left by the murderer could be found there.’
    Gabriella nodded approvingly. ‘Very good, Otilia. You are the smartest of us all.’
    The housekeeper looked down to hide a