I followed the streak of Samuel’s shadow along the brick buildings that led to the pier, but soon lost his trail. Farther down the pier, I could hear the sound of bottles breaking, but I knew that wasn’t Samuel. The piers were lawless after dark, filled with lost souls—syphilitic soldiers, pickpockets, and gamblers desperate to make money by any means necessary—people who couldn’t even scrape together the few coins required to live in a lodging house.
I cocked my head, trying to catch the scent of blood or the sounds of terrified, uneven breathing when I sensed someone close by. I turned. It was a toothless drunk, his breath sour with the stench of whiskey. A knife shone in his hand.
“New boy,” he leered, pulling back the knife as though ready to plunge it into my abdomen.
I lunged toward him, pushing him onto his back. His knife clattered on the dock next to him. I set my boot down on his chest and leaned in close.
“Don’t,” I hissed, as I felt my fangs growing from behind my gums. This was blood for the taking. I could drink, and be ready to face Samuel as a true vampire.
I was about to take a delicious, forbidden sip when I heard a sound. I whirled around. But it wasn’t the girl, or Samuel. It was only two more drunks, leaning against each other for support.
I roughly kicked the man. “Get up and run away,” I snarled.
He sprang to his feet and raced down the pier. I shoved the knife in my boot and angrily kicked a spray of rocks into the Thames. They landed with uneven splashes.
And then I heard it: a sound so faint I thought it was my imagination. One whimper, then another, from a warehouse several hundred yards away from where I stood. I rushed toward the building and found Samuel crouched against the wall, half obscured behind several discarded canvas ship sails. I pressed my back against the weathered wooden slats of the warehouse, priming my Power and readying myself to pounce, when I realized that the girl wasn’t the one letting out the strangled sobs.
It was Samuel.
His mouth hung open in an expression of agony. His victim, meanwhile, was propped on her elbows, gazing intently into his face. Her lips were moving, but no sound was coming out of them. The girl was no older than eighteen or nineteen, with wild brown hair matted around her head. Whatever incantation she was using had momentarily incapacitated her assaulter, but before I could react, Samuel regained the upper hand and lunged, his teeth bared and glittering in the moonlight, using his brute force to throw her against the brick wall of the warehouse. Her head hit the wall with a sickening thud and she slumped to the ground in a heap.
Smiling, he pulled a long silver dagger from a pocket in his waistcoat, and I realized that he wasn’t going to drink her blood. He was going to mutilate her the same way he’d defiled Jack the Ripper’s other victims. He was going to slice open her chest.
In that instant, I yanked the stake out of my boot and shoved it between his shoulder blades as hard as I could. Samuel fell forward onto the girl, then tumbled onto his side on the dock. Blood soaked through his coat. The girl sprang up and darted to the other side of the warehouse.
My hands trembled. I’d staked Samuel. And if I staked him through the heart, it would all be over. But it wasn’t that easy. I needed him alive until he could take me to Damon.
He began to struggle to his feet, the wooden stake jutting unevenly from his back. I lunged forward to restrain his hands, but he spun away from me before I could reach him.
“These attempts are getting tiresome,” he hissed as he yanked the stake from his flesh and threw it to the dock. I dove for it just as a police whistle sounded. The subsequent clattering of footsteps caused us both to freeze.
“Commotion at the warehouse!” cried a foghornlike voice from the top of the pier.
Samuel stole off into the shadows as three police officers rounded the corner. Instead of following him, I calmly walked out of the alley, humming the song I’d heard the drunk singing outside the Lamb and Sickle as though I, too, was just a common vagrant.
“What’s the trouble?” one red-faced officer wheezed as he valiantly attempted to catch his breath. A taller policeman with a mustache appraised me suspiciously. I wondered where the girl had gone and whether she was in danger of Samuel doubling back for her.
“There is no trouble, sir,” I said, rising to my full height. “Just having a bit of fun.” I wavered from one foot to the other as I said it, pretending I was a whiskey-addled fool. I clenched my jaw, talking through my teeth to conceal my fangs, which always emerged when I was antsy.
The policeman glanced around, and I was thankful there were no gas lamps on the pier and he couldn’t see the bloodstains on my clothes.
The sound of a bottle breaking farther down the pier startled the policeman. He turned his head sharply over his shoulder. From the shouts and glass shattering, it was clear a true brawl was brewing.
“I ain’t got time to deal with you,” he said. “Now see you get into a lodging house. Make any more noise tonight, and you’ll be arrested. Are you clear?” he asked.
“Yes sir.” I nodded.
“Good.” The policeman hurried off to the scuffle while his short, red-faced partner struggled to keep up. As their footsteps faded, I realized I could hear the faint ba-da-bump, ba-da-bump of the mysterious girl’s terrified heartbeat.
The moon filtered through the mist, casting an eerie green glow on the slippery dock, now tinged red with Samuel’s blood. The ba-da-bump, ba-da-bump got louder and louder as I headed toward where I’d last seen the girl.
“Don’t get any closer!” The voice sounded weak. I remembered the terrible crack, loud as a thunderbolt, when her skull hit the brick wall. She was crouched behind a crate in an alley next to the warehouse.
“Are you all right?” I asked, kneeling down so I was at eye level with her.
“I don’t know.” The girl hesitantly pushed the crate away. Her eyes were catlike, the pupils more like keyholes than circles. I glanced away, nervous by how entranced I was by their unusual shape, only to see a slow but steady trickle of blood run from her temple and into her hair. “I think he meant to kill me,” she said shakily.
“You’re all right now,” I said in a soothing voice. “Do you know why he was after you?”