A slow grin eased over his face. “Ver’ well, then, luv . . . if yer to trust m’word, I s’pose I’m forced t’prove it to ye.” He reached up to his collar, and before I could blink, began to unbutton his shirt.
“Don’t.” I held out a hand to stop him as I put the other over my face. Not a good idea. Not at all. It would break so many Societal rules. Florence would faint dead away if she ever found out. My reputation would be in shambles. It would mortify me to no end. Blast . . . and it would fascinate me, too.
“And ’ere I thought ye was fearless, me bold vampire-rozzer.” There was laughter and something low and deep in Pix’s voice that brushed my spine like a gentle finger.
Then I peeked through my hand. He’d stopped with only the top two buttons of his shirt unfastened. That was more than enough for me to see his strong throat and the shadowy V that opened onto his chest. Which, unfortunately, I remembered all too well from that open vest he’d worn at the opium den. I swallowed hard. “I believe you. For now. I don’t know why I do, but I do.”
His face still bright with levity, Pix reached for one of the tankards. “La société . . . nay, luv, their way ’as no appeal for me.” He lifted the mug, drank several gulps, then returned it to the table.
“Nor to me.” The very thought of wanting to be with a vampire, to have one feed on me, piercing me with its fangs and drawing out my lifeblood . . . I shuddered. “It’s the chance for immortality that attracts them. And some say there is a sort of pleasure involved.”
Siri had educated me about La société. At the time, it seemed she spent more effort on the secret cult than on the vampires themselves. I wanted to learn to fight, and she wanted to teach me history. Both had been burned into my brain.
“There are some people who like to be fed on by the UnDead. They pine for it and become addicted to it. Like opium-eaters. And the vampires can feed without killing a person . . . without draining all of their blood,” I said.
“An’ if they drain all o’ the blood,” Pix said, his voice steady and quiet, “the mortal can drink from the vampire’s veins . . . and become UnDead ’imself.” He looked up, his eyes hard and glittering. “I’ll no’ lie t’ye on this, Evaline. It’s been offered t’me. In th’ past. But as ye must know . . . I’m still as mortal as ye are.”
“That’s good.” I really wanted to drink from the tankard. My mouth was dry as a wad of cotton. “For if you weren’t, I’d have to kill you. And then how would I find my way out of this place?”
Pix laughed, and the dark spell was broken. “Drink up, luv. Then I’ll take ye ’ome, like a proper cove. An’ this time, I’ll let ye stay awake.”
Miss Holmes
Miss Holmes Is Skeptical
“Vampires are back in London?” I lifted a brow at Miss Stoker, who sat across from me in Miss Adler’s office.
It was the day following our visit with Princess Alexandra, and I was beyond anxious to begin the Ashton investigation. I would have arrived at Miss Ashton’s front door at eight o’clock in the morning, but my companion refused to allow me to call so early. Despite my argument that Uncle Sherlock never allowed societal rules to dictate his investigations, Miss Stoker was adamant that we delay until a more proper time for making a call. Such as eleven o’clock.
“Did you actually see an UnDead?” I was still irritated with my companion’s vehemence over the delay.
Miss Stoker was sitting—or, more accurately, lounging—in an armchair. Miss Adler wasn’t present at the moment, or I’m certain she would have supported my disapproval for such an unladylike position. “Not exactly. But there have been signs of them. A mutilated body was found in Whitechapel, and it looked as if a creature with fangs had torn into it. According to my—my source, two drunk men tried to lift a bloke’s wallet outside the Pickled Nurse and were frightened off when the mark’s eyes turned red. And they both swore he showed fangs.”
Bloke? Apparently Miss Stoker had been spending some time in the stews—likely with that disreputable young man called Pix. As if I wouldn’t know who’d been feeding her information. “The Pickled Nurse?”
“A pub in Holborn. And there have also been rumors of activity from La société de la perdition.” Evaline gave me what could only be described as a challenging look.
Perhaps she thought I would be uninformed about La société. If so, she would be greatly mistaken. I had, of course, read my father’s copy of the rare book by Mr. Starcasset, The Venators, which was about Miss Stoker’s family legacy. I venture to say I was just as informed about vampires and vampire hunting as was my companion. Particularly since I didn’t believe she’d ever actually staked an UnDead.
I wasn’t even completely convinced of the existence of vampires. Reanimated corpses who were sensitive to sunlight and wandered around drinking blood from people? I could hardly fathom such a thing. The very idea defied logic and science. As far as I was concerned, The Venators was just as likely a work of fiction—albeit a convincing one—as it was a treatise on the Gardella-Stoker family legacy. The legend that vampires had been chased out of London sixty years ago could be merely that, and nothing more.
I couldn’t deny Evaline seemed unusually strong for a young woman, but that factor could be attributed to any variety of things—genetics, for example.
“La société de la perdition can be loosely translated as the Society Where One Loses One’s Soul,” I informed Evaline. “And it is aptly named. For, as I understand it, the group’s purpose was solely for the pleasure of drinking blood or having one’s blood drunk, vampires notwithstanding. Rather like an opium den, the purlieu is often hidden, dark and, quite literally, underground.
“The group was an illicit, secretive fraternity that identifies itself with the image of a spindly-legged spider with seven legs instead of eight. La société reached its peak of popularity in the early 1830s in Paris among those who enjoy that type of diversion. This was shortly after the UnDead were driven out of London by the famous Victoria Gardella. The vampires recongregated in Paris. My understanding is La société is a splinter cult which broke off from the more formal group known as the Tutela, a League for the Protection of Vampires. Although the popularity of La société waned in the 1860s, there was a resurgence of interest in the group in Paris in the late 1870s, but it was short-lived.”