Free Anno Dracula by Kim Newman Page B

Devon dialect with a new-born market porter. Geneviève knew too well the gamey taste of pig’s blood. It could keep the red thirst at bay, but never slake it. She swallowed her spittle. These nights, she did not have the opportunity to form attachments. Her work occupied so much time that she fed only rarely and then not well. Although strong with the strength of centuries, she could not push herself beyond certain limits. She needed a willing partner and the tang of blood in her mouth.
    She knew most of the regulars, at least by sight. Rose Mylett, a warm prostitute Geneviève thought was Lily’s mother, was cutting her finger with a penknife and bleeding into tiny glasses of gin which she sold for a penny. Woodbridge’s slightly hare-lipped son, Georgie, a soft-faced youth in an apron, darted between the tables, collecting the empties and wiping away glass-rings. Johnny Thain, a constable who had been putting in a deal of extra hours since he got a look at what Silver Knife left of Polly Nichols, was at a corner table with a couple of detectives, a tweed coat over his uniform. The casual trade fell into obvious groups: itinerant workmen hoping for a shift at the market, soldiers and sailors looking for a girl or two, new-borns thirsty for more than liquid pork.
    By the bar, Cathy Eddowes was simpering up at a big man, stroking the tangle of his hair, pressing her cheek to a blocky shoulder. She turned from her potential client and waved at Geneviève. Her hand was wrapped in cloth, fingers sticking stifflyout of the bundle. If there were more time, she’d have been concerned. Mick Ripper, a knife-sharpener reputed to be the best three-fingered pickpocket in London, closed on Cathy’s beau. He got near enough to see the man’s face and backed off, plunging his hands deep into his pockets.
    ‘Evenin’, Miss Dee,’ said Georgie. ‘Rushed off ’em tonight, we are.’
    ‘So I see,’ she said. ‘I hope we shall see you at the Hall for the new course of lectures.’
    Georgie looked doubtful but smiled. ‘If ’n Dad lets me off of an evenin’. An’ if ’n it’s safe to go out by night.’
    ‘Mr Druitt will be taking a class in the mornings in the new year, Georgie,’ she said. ‘Mathematics. You’re one of our promising young men. Never forget your potential.’
    The lad had a gift for figures; he could keep in his head at once the details and totals of three separate rounds of varied drinks. That talent, nurtured in Druitt’s classes, might lead him to a position. Georgie might exceed the high-water-mark of his father, and become a landlord rather than a potman.
    She took a small table to herself and did not order a drink. She was stopping here just to put off her return to the Hall. She’d have to give a report on the inquest to Jack Seward, and did not just now want to think too much about the last moments of Lulu Schön’s life. As an accordionist murdered ‘The Little Yellow Bird’, a few maudlin drunks tried, with only marginal success, to remember all the words in the right order.
    ‘ Goodbye little yellow bird ,’ Geneviève hummed to herself,
    ‘ I’d rather brave the cold, on a leafless tree,
    Than a prisoner be, in a cage of gold .’
    A group of noisy newcomers barged through the doors, bringinga gust of night’s chill with them. The noise of the pub momentarily abated, and was then redoubled.
    Cathy’s prospective beau turned away from the bar, roughly pushing the new-born away. She rearranged a shawl around scab-dotted shoulders, and walked off with broken-heeled dignity. The man was Kostaki, the Carpathian who had been at the inquest. The three who had come in were his fellows, grim examples of the barbarian type Vlad Tepes had imported from his mountain homeland and set loose in London. She recognised Ezzelin von Klatka, a grey-faced Austrian with a close-cropped scalp and a moss-thick black beard. He had a reputation as an animal tamer.
    Kostaki and von Klatka embraced,