An Immortal in London: Corruption (10 page)

The next morning I was sitting in bed alone and I began to think about the attack from the night before. My lack of concentration had almost killed me. Clarence shouldn’t have had to save me. My own hand should have been quick enough. I held up my left hand, and to my surprise my ring was on my ring finger. I looked across the room and saw that Levi had taken my clothes to
be washed and must have found it and put it back where it had always belonged.

             
I took a shower and put on one of Katelyn’s favourite yellow cotton dresses, Levi always laughed at her whenever she wore it and often said how she looked like a deadly daffodil. The winter chill was a welcome feeling on my bare skin, it was a constant reminder that I was alive, that I could still feel.

             
Clarence was sat at the dining table eating when I landed downstairs. “Good morning,” she said, as she motioned for the waiting staff to pull out a chair for me and find me my breakfast.

             
A cool arm wrapped around my waist and hot lips met my neck. Levi turned me around and smiled with a sad frown tainting his brow before handing me a hot cup of coffee. “What a beautiful dress,” he said as he rested his hand on the small of my back.

             
I held my coffee to my chest and pushed my fingers through his hair before I stood away from him and sat down opposite Clarence who had been watching us keenly the whole time. “Thank you for the coffee, just what I needed.”

             
“I know,” he said with a smile that could have killed a fainthearted maiden.

             
Clarence was watching us with quiet calculation. Although her eyes were a picture of mental absence I could feel the intensity of her gaze. She could feel the truth of our bond, the bond that had broken so many others that I had with old friends. She stood and kissing my cheek quickly skipped out of the room.

             
“How long will she be staying here?” I asked, not meaning it to sound as it did. In no way did I want her to leave, but she had caused more trouble to me in a week than anyone had in almost two hundred years.

             
“She’ll skip off soon enough, I’m a difficult person to tolerate, or so I’ve been told.”

             
“You’re perfectly tolerable now; it comes with age I have found.”             

“We should get going to George’s.”

George poured Levi a whisky and I sat back with a cigarette, joining George in his filthy habit.  “I take it you need something from me, Levi.”

              “After last night it’s clear that it isn’t safe for Rose at my house either.”

             
George turned to me and smiled slyly, “So you want to live here?”

             
I met George’s eyes and nodded. “
We
need to stay here for a week or so, if that is alright with you of course.”

             
“Like I have a choice with you two, of course you can stay. I’d do anything for you, but wouldn’t we all,” he said, directing his final comment to Levi. As I looked across to him I felt a pang of guilt within my chest as I remembered Victor’s words.

Later that day, after moving all that we needed to two of the six rooms in George’s home, I called Clarence and she stole me away, not telling me where we were going until we got there.

“There she is.”

Clarence pulled my hand and ran over to a young girl. She couldn’t have been older than eighteen. Once we reached her I could feel that she was far, far older.

The girl smiled up at us both and offered us a seat at her table outside of one of the many darling cafés. “Clarence, Miss Jewels.”

“Please, call me Victoria.”

“Victoria, it’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Pat.” We shook hands over the table and she offered me a bread stick. “Clarence has informed me of your situation and I will be happy to do everything I can to help. I have already contacted several hunters.”

Pat was watching me and Clarence quietly with a small smile playing on her lips. I looked between Clarence and her and suddenly I could see the resemblance. It was uncanny.

“Are you two related?” I asked as a way of satisfying my curiosity and changing the subject.

Clarence laughed and nodded her head. Pat spoke up, “I am Clarence and Levi’s mother.”

“Oh, well I…” I laughed nervously and turned to Clarence, “how come it never crossed your mind to tell me you had a
living
mother?”

Pat took my hand and pulled my attention from Clarence. “I was never much of a mother.” She sighed and smiled sadly at our hands before she met my eyes once more, “Clarence spoke fondly of you over the years and it broke my heart to hear about your family.”

I realised that Clarence most likely hadn’t spoken of her mother because I had lost mine. Since meeting her, not long after my own transition, Clarence always had truly loved me. She had taken me under her wings like the sister she had always craved, and the friend that she had never been able to find.

“Do you wish that you were with Sedric?” Pat asked, her question seemingly appearing from out of nowhere.

I closed my eyes and laughed. In the early eighteen hundreds when I had lived in London I saw Sedric almost every day.

It was winter, the year before our engagement in
1821
. Sophie walked arm in arm with Peter a little way behind me, and Sedric was just in front of me gazing carelessly at the wild flowers and the frozen branches.

He turned to me with a foolish smile and pulled me to a tree which
stood solitary just off of the path. Before us was a leaf as green as the grass in summer. No ice tarnished it. No wind had knocked it from its place. It was incredible.

“Sophie, Peter! Come and look,” I called. We each stared in amazement. It was so simple yet meant so much to us on that frozen winter’s afternoon. It was those memories that I treasured the most.

I turned to Pat and smiled sadly, “I wish that I had realised what really was important.”

“Greed gets the better of us all sometimes, my darling. But I can see from your light that you have more than made up for your past sins.” She looked down at her watch and smiled hastily. “I must be off. Thank you for getting in touch Clarence, and it was wonderful to finally meet you Victoria.”

She hurried off, her small but agile legs carrying her perfectly preserved body rather quickly away. Clarence waved limply and then turned to me with a tired smile. “So, what do you say to that drink now?”

“You needn’t be so sensitive to me Clarence,” I said as we walked away from the café. I was silently hoping that Pat had paid before she sat down, else we wouldn’t be returning there anytime soon.

Clarence sighed, “I always felt rotten for having her and never really loving her or trying, when you never had the chance to try.”

“I wouldn’t have resented you for having a mother and I certainly wouldn’t have been bitter for your feelings towards her. Did I ever begrudge you for having Levi?”

She shook her head, “no, but I guess I always thought that Gabriel was like a brother or something.”

“Are there any other secret relatives I should know about?”

She laughed and took my hand, “well I do have a great uncle in Africa, but he’s extraordinarily odd. We don’t have much to do with him.”

We spent the afternoon in the bar talking about nothing in particular. When an intense situation came around Clarence often found the solution would crop up at the bottom of a glass. I had to give it to her though, nine times out of ten she would come up with a fabulous solution. This time around however, we weren’t so lucky.

It was almost half past five and Clarence slid her glass across the bar to the tender. Neither of us noticed that it wasn’t the man who had been serving us all night that caught her glass.

Damp, cold breath slithered across my neck. Clarence was standing staring like a crazed woman at the figure behind me. At my side a thick pale hand was holding the glass and with one light squeeze it disintegrated between his fingers.

“Francis wants you to stop interfering.”

I turned my head so that our noses were torturously close to touching. My lips curled up into a smile as his breathing faltered.

“And who might our little messenger boy be?”

“Your last messenger boy if you don’t back off,” he said his voice a rough whisper.

“Ha, do you really want to test that theory?”

He stood back and I span around on my seat. He held his hands in his pockets and swayed from side to side. “Leave her to do her thing and she’ll let you live.”

I jumped off of my seat and pushed my hand against his chest, “oh she will, will she?”

Clarence’s hand rested on my elbow and she motioned towards the door. I put one arm around his shoulders and I rested my hand over his heart. To all of the other drinkers I looked just like an over friendly drunk.

Once we were outside I walked him to the opening of the alley which lay by the side of the pub.

The messenger looked at my hands with unbearable fear boiling up in his eyes.

Clarence put her hand onto my shoulder. “Not here, take him to Levi, we can interrogate him there.”

I pushed him onto the ground and he crawled back. Clarence let out a worried breath and dropped her hand from my arm. Before she could walk around me to pick him up I was upon him and I had his heart in my hand. His body fell limp against the wall.

“Victoria…”

“I have to get back to Levi.”

She stood dumbstruck staring after me as I walked away from her, my bloody left hand hung by my side for the world to see. The sky was quickly darkening and the dead would soon rise to wreak their havoc throughout the city. The newly dead were careless and untamed; they were dangerous which made them more fun to hunt. B
efore I ran out into the battlefield I took a sharp right and ran to Gabriel’s house.

Roberta was stood in the driveway looking up at the house. Her lips quirked up into a thin smile as I stood behind her, her hair rested against her body like a cloak.

              “Victoria, is Levi not to your liking?”

             
“Levi has never been to anyone’s liking.” My reply was ignored. She watched me watch her and she continued to smile.

“He’s upstairs sleeping.”

              I ran into the house and pushed his door open quietly and walked in, my footsteps were silenced by the thick brown carpet. I knelt down and brushed his hair back, as I touched his cheek his eyes flickered open and he smiled across to me.

             
“Gabriel, what’s going on?”

             
“I was attacked.”

             
“When?”

             
“The night that you left with Levi, I went out for a walk to clear my head and they came out of nowhere.”

             
“What did they do?” I asked, looking over his body.

             
He motioned for me to help him sit up. I pulled his shirt over his head and stood back in shock at the mark, it had spread all around his body eating away at his living flesh.

             
“What is it?”

             
“Painful,” he moaned.

             
“Who did this to you?”

             
He shrugged and rested his heads against the wall. “I didn’t see them. I woke up the next day in the same place on the street and managed to walk back here before I passed out again. The mark keeps getting worse.”

             
I sat next to where he lay and noticed how he grimaced as I lightly touched his bubbling flesh. His skin was an array of purple, red, and bright puckered pink flesh. I inhaled deeply to see if I could pick up a scent, but there was nothing.

             
“I can’t find a cure. No one can help me.”

“I
will find a cure,” I said as I kissed his forehead and stood. “Francis is in London.” I couldn’t help but divulge the news to my maker, my companion, my love.

             
“It’s true then that she is involved?”

             
I hated to say it aloud, but if I was going to be honest with anyone, I had to be honest with myself first. “Yes.”

I left the house and of course it was raining, when wasn’t it raining? Was it so wrong to wish for one day of sun in that godforsaken city? 

             
My heart was breaking with each breath I took; every time I drew air into my body the truth would hit me harder and harder. My footsteps were monstrously loud, my head was pounding and I had no idea where or when I was. Past mixed with present as street names blended into the brick walls.