A/N: This chapter has been re-written since the original release in 2015 so please consider this when surveying the comments. Thanks and enjoy!
PREFACE: ADRIAN
London, September 1887:
The clouds hung oppressively low in the bleak London sky; so large and threatening that even the drunkards had staggered away to some kind of shelter. No one dared venture outside when the frigid night air was so thick and easy to pierce. Above where I stood the heavens were brooding and storming, swirling as though with rage. It felt like a single breath would turn into a hurricane and haul us away into the hell above. The wooden deck beneath us groaned. The passing wind forced a foul odour to pass beneath my nose, drawing my attention back to the scene at my feet. At my side, Amadeus shuffled uncomfortably as the coppery scent reached him, too. It sure is a foul smell, no matter how many times you meet with a corpse.
"It definitely doesn't smell like roses," I mused in response to his unusually dull, lifeless tone.
His eyes met with mine, the green washed a shade of blue against the moonlight. He had grown so accustom to me hearing his thoughts that it no longer bothered him. We had been partners in combat for so long, I hardly needed to pay the thoughts heed to know how he would react. It was an awful sight to behold, no matter how many dead you had seen--limbs spewed in an unrecognisable splay; dark, coagulating blood staining the wood of the deck. The smell was repugnant, as any dead body tended to be, but holding an intensity in it's scent that had brewed for many days.
This will be shit to clean up.
A sigh fell from his lips as he ran a hand through his golden hair. I could hear him trying to mentally will the image of the woman from his mind as he turned away towards the water, sloshing against the barnacle covered pillars below. Surely, it would be horrendous to clean but it was a necessity, lest a human found it and caused a scene. We had enough to worry about without Victoria raging about another one of her people dead. If we were to convince her of our ability to coincide with humans, a mutilated corpse was surely not the best way to do so.
"Call Lucien," I ordered, addressing his thought. "He can organise having it cleaned. We will search the perimeter--see what we can find. It is our responsibility to deal with anyone who goes against the decree of the High Court."
Amadeus nodded, still staring over the water glowing with the moons rippled form. He slid his hands back into the pockets of his coat and fled in the opposite direction to me. It was an arrangement we had perfected over the years--seperate, scour and then come back together. Kill or apprehend whatever we meet along the way. Amadeus' exceptional hunting abilities and keen nose meant that he would usually find anything well before I did, but we continued our coordination nonetheless. Not all important information held a scent.
Snaking through the wooden shipping containers and the sleeping homeless brought nothing to my attention. No incriminating voices bombarded my mind, simply sitting dormant as distant whispers that moulded into a light thrum. I was alone in my part of the dock, the humming in my skull interrupted only by the pounding waves below. I began to believe our search was fruitless until a resounding cry assured me that the perpetrator--the criminal--was in our midst. His fear slammed into me, as loud as though he was right beside me as he cried for mercy and tried to breathe against the steely fingers pushing against his windpipe. Amadeus was promptly by my side and we followed the ferocious shriek towards the end of the dock.
A substantial wooden container concealed Lucien's form, holding the floundering youth by his throat as he clawed at his hands and hissed between his teeth. My friend was but a silhouette against the moonlight, unmoving and graceful as always, staring at him with his cold, angular eyes. His thoughts betrayed his normal calm persona as he fought to try and not rip out the young boy's throat in an instant.
"You'll have your chance to butcher him, Lucien. Put him down so he can speak."
Lucien, filled with rage, did what I said with no hesitation. In an instant, he became suffocating, insidious mist that laced around the boy like a chokehold and then settled back into his usual form; steely knife pressed against the juvenile's windpipe. The boy chocked a sob, continuing to fruitlessly flail and snarl. He was scrawny and dirty; a street-dweller, maybe, before he had been turned into a vampire--before he had killed that girl. He hissed at me, raining saliva on my face and baring his sharp fangs. I had never met with such a feral creature, newly turned vampire or not. He seemed disinterested in the blood coating him, only in the pursuit of death.
"I found him picking at his teeth with human bones," Lucien hissed in his usual, humourless way. "The blood on him belongs to a mortal."
Stepping forward, I drew my own dagger from inside my coat and pressed it against his chest. He lurched and screamed, silenced only by Lucien pulling his own knife tighter against his neck.
"What exactly are you? Are you a vampire, boy?"
He was silent, squirming quietly as though it would draw no attention. The lack of response was enough. I pushed the tip of my dagger deeper into his chest, sizzling and setting the runes engraved into its steel ablaze in dancing, white light. The feral vampire threw his head back, screeching into the night.
"You are speaking with Adrian Edavane, son of the Lord of the High Court. I would suggest you answer my questions to avoid a troublesome death."
"I've neva' heard of you... Adrian Edavane? High Court? What are ya' on about?"
His thoughts relayed the same lack of clarity as to what he was. I heard only his confusion; his desire to kill, above all else. No one had guided this boy into the next life, told him of our ways or of the Court which ruled our kind. He had been left alone. But even so, the primitive urge for bloodshed was not something he shared with us. His lust for blood was dangerous for us whilst we tried so intently to mend our relationship with the mortals.
He could be cursed, Adrian. Amadeus looked towards me, his strangely dreadful expression laced with sombreness. Ask if he met with a witch, if he knows what makes him so different from us. It was a reasonable segue.
"You will have plenty of time to curse my name in the afterlife, boy. Did you meet with a witch? Do you bear a curse which makes you this way?"
He wriggled for a second, reeling through blurry memories that made no sense to me--waking up, seeing the woman, tearing out her throat with his hands and then playing with her limp, lifeless limbs. I shivered, but held his gaze. His thoughts were a precious commodity, as heinous as they were.
"I don't know what ya talkin' about, you pompous fool!" He continued to squirm against Lucien, causing my companion's lips to fall into a hard line. Let this be done. Amadeus said, Lucien itching with a similar sentiment.
Sighing, I brought the steel back to the bareness of his chest and pushed between his ribs. The runes flared again, washing us in blue-white light and searing through his flesh like a brand. The sizzling met with the boys screams in a crescendo, tearing though the night. His small, sickly limbs were beating against Lucien, claws tearing through the air; fangs exposed. I wasn't fond of having to kill such a child who had no say in his turning, but his actions had compromised the peace between the human monarchy and the High Court. He had to die, along with any proof of his crime. Otherwise, our kinds would never find resolution and I would have to face my Father's wrath for another 300 years.
His screaming grew on my nerves. I slid the dagger deeper, drew it out, and then pushed it into his sinewy heart. Blood spewed from his mouth onto the front of his dirtied, ragged coat. The fire in his eyes crackled before becoming dulled, lifeless. His body became limp against Lucien's form, falling to the wood below us with a thud. We shared a moment of silence, looking down with a familiar sombreness at the corpse. A feeling of sickness knotted in my stomach, but I pushed it away. Weakness was not something a Lord's son should indulge in. With a wave of his hand, Lucien had the body dissipate into mist that twisted through the night like a poison. The boy was now nothing; no one.
"May the stone bring you into it's warm embrace and bless you in your next life."
With a hand on our hearts, we looked towards the crimson staining the timber; the only indication the vampire boy had ever existed. The moment died quickly. Let's go, Amadeus insisted, all I can smell is blood. The feeling was unanimous. Amadeus and I grasped each of Lucien's shoulders, evaporating into the darkness of the storming night before we could all share the same, relieved sigh.
However it was not a reprieve which would be long-lived, for that night London fell to the plague.