Avalon Revamped (23 page)

“Leave her out of this, Jeffries. Just let her go. Take me,” I said, knowing I could endure any sort of atrocity the thing could inflict upon me without further damage. Well, lasting damage anyway. Although the assault itself, however long it lasted, and I suspect he’d make it last, would be as harrowing for me as for any woman, after it was over, I’d suffer no further trauma. Any memory of it would just be a memory, without emotional attachment.

It was one of the gifts of my power.

“No?” Jeffries said, but I got the impression he wasn’t talking to us. “Her? Are you sure? Well, all right. Like I said, dear boy, it’s your choice. It’ll split her little body in two, but no matter. I’ve had my fill of her anyway. Rather bored with her cackling and whimpering.” He bowed a brief goodbye. “Ladies.” Ripping the sheet off the bed, he wrapped himself in it and jumped out the window to the alley below, hooting and crowing like a madman as he ran down the darkened alley out of sight.

“We’ve got a problem,” I said to Avalon.

ARTHUR

Deja-vu.

Again.

Wasn’t I just here not so long ago? Standing outside Avalon’s, hoping she’d speak to me. Seems so.

I had sent message after message to Avalon all day today, but Thomas always came back empty handed. He said she hadn’t been home. I came here myself, determined to wait, and I was delighted, and then terrified, to discover she was home now.

The wood of Avalon’s door felt somehow too hard, knowing behind its protection my love felt a hardness toward me that was all too well deserved. I knew that now. Every bit of this heartache I had brought on myself. Tilting my head up to the second story, I whispered, “Avalon? Please, Ava. Talk to me.” She could hear me even if I whispered.

No answer, but she was in there. As I had approached the house, I could hear her crying up in the library, the place where she and Victor used to work together, and she wasn’t alone. Another woman whose voice I didn’t recognize was with her. A friend, perhaps, comforting her and her broken heart. Her life had changed so much since she met me, and I’m not sure I could say for the better. Avalon stopped weeping and became very quiet. Two sets of footsteps came down the stairs and stopped just on the other side of the door. I didn’t care who else heard me or if I looked weak, I only wanted to fix things between us.

“Ava,” I whispered this time, my head leaning against the door. “I know you’re there. Please just hear me out. Please. Perhaps I acted rashly. It was quite callous of me to behave so on the airship. Things just hadn’t been right with us for some time, and I just fell into old patterns, is all. I see that now. I love you, Avalon. I love you so much, and I just don’t know what to do to make it better. Please help me.”

The tears stung my eyes, and I couldn’t risk crying blood tears here in the street for all to see. I truly did miss her.

She opened the door, and she looked beautiful, despite the red streaks down her face. The woman standing behind her was breathtaking, and she regarded me with none too friendly a stare.

“Come in, Arthur,” Avalon said, and I did, stepping past her and her curious friend. “I’m glad you’re here.” My heart leapt with joy. Avalon turned the key and took us into the parlour. Her house had been empty since Victor’s death, as he was her only tenant, and even more so since she had been living with me. The place had a stale air to it, and this woman with Avalon, beautiful though she was, made me feel all the more uneasy.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Ava?”

“This is Constance. She’s a succubus. Constance, Arthur. Vampire.”

“Pleasure,” she said, although her tone told me it was anything but.

“Succubus? A Demon? Really, Avalon, you’re consorting with a demon?

“She’s not a demon, Arthur, but there is one in town we have to deal with, and fast.”

“Avalon, sweetheart.” I tried to ensure my tone wasn’t condescending, but it was ever so hard. How foolish could she be? Of course a succubus was a demon. A demon who devours men after sexually engulfing them, a man’s worse nightmare. Right up there with vagina dentata. Dreadful stuff.

“No, Arthur,” the demon said. “I am older than you in life and in death, so you will listen to me, boy.” Disgust and hostility dripped from her words, and I was aghast, wondering what I had done to deserve such treatment by anyone, let alone a she-demon. “Succubi are vengeance spirits, of sorts. We’re corporeal, part human shape-shifters, and we do have supernatural power, but it is far from evil, and neither it, nor we, originate in hell. In most cases, as in mine, our power springs from hell being delivered upon us. Brutal acts, too ghastly to endure as a human, so instead of being destroyed, something inside us rises up. Our strength and rage fuels us to avenge the wronged, starting with ourselves. Then, others.

“An incubi, on the other hand, is, indeed, a demon. It comes from the deepest bowels of hell, and it has particularly lascivious tastes. It possesses and violates humans. Kills.”

“Ah! The serial rapist, right? The one who’s been murdering those women, in the papers.”

“Looks that way, although, one need not be a demon to be a serial rapist. I’ve known thousands in my time, and this is the first demon I’ve come across. His…style…is rather brutal, no doubt, but I’ve seen as bad and even worse from humans. Experienced it. Endured it. The difference is, I can punish a human. They can be forced into accountability, living out the suffering they cause until their heart and souls, if they have one, have been purified, then they’re released. Demons. I don’t know how to stop a demon, and they can’t be punished. They can’t be trapped, which is where you come in.”

“Me? How on earth can I help?”

“Your books, Arthur. Your library. You have centuries of mythology and lore on your shelves, and we need to come up with a plan.” Avalon spoke to me, hands folded politely in her lap, and she kept her face rather blank, but there was a slight quiver to her voice. “We need you, Arthur. Victor’s books fall short, and we have to stop this thing. He’s going after Polly, we think.”

“Polly? Polly Pooter? The spaniel?”

“Don’t call her that,” Avalon said, offense filled her voice and form.

“Why not? He calls her that, and that’s how she acts.”

“She acts that way because of a lifetime of abuse, by many men, most recently and atrociously, Roderick Jeffries. The demon possessing him wants to rip her in two, quite literally, from the inside out. We have to stop him. That woman has suffered enough for one lifetime, and once we get that demon out of him, Jeffries will get his.”

“Jeffries? The American snake-oil salesman is an incubus? Don’t be absurd.”

Preposterous!

I was doing my utmost not to be cruel or condescending. I came here to make up, after all. To invest in the relationship with Avalon. To be kind.

They made it very hard.

“I saw it with my own two eyes, Arthur, or has it come to where you don’t even believe what I say anymore. Has it come to that?”

“Besides,” the succubus said. “He’s not a demon. No. He’s very human, but he has a demon possessing him and he will do so much more damage now that I tried to punish him, and failed. I took his heart and his weapon, but the demon grew another one. It’s huge, Arthur. He will skewer women with it and laugh while he does it. If we don’t stop him, there will be much more bloodshed before New Year’s alone. No woman will be safe.”

“You cut off his—You bitch! You’re the one who got Ol’ Nick, aren’t you? The journalist and that daft doctor, too. You cut off —Ugh! I can’t even say it.”

“I don’t cut anything off. Don’t be barbaric, Arthur. But I do indeed absorb their power, and that does have unfortunate side effects. Well, unfortunate for them. Rest assured, if I punish someone, they deserve it. Your good friend Nick was also a serial rapist, as was the professor and reporter, as you call them. As are so many entitled, selfish men”—she glared at me with her insinuation—“but they’re just not as overt about it, not as sensational and gruesome. They don’t do it so it’s splashed all over the front page of the paper. They do it behind closed doors with no evidence but the traumatized woman’s word. They do it to people they know, women who trust them or believe they love them. They do it in such a way their victims remain silent or where no one will believe them if they find the voice to speak. After all, women are unstable and emotional and prone to exaggeration. Right? Hysteria? Jeffries did it that way as well, but the demon preferred to supplement his activity with the spectacle, with severe brutality. Even though society doesn’t care about the woman’s silent weeping as she endures, those are by far the most common assaults. It takes unimaginable violence, grisly tales of gang rapes that last for hours or are particularly brutal, to gain anyone’s attention, and those happen so rarely. Then the public can shake their heads and breathe a little easier when that man or those few men are caught, and turn their backs on the hundreds—yes hundreds—of women who are raped every day in this kingdom, let alone around the world.”

Daggers flew from her eyes and poison from her tongue, and I felt sick just listening to her. Rage boiled up inside me, and it took all the strength I had not to rip her throat out. I opened my mouth to speak, but now Avalon had the audacity to stop me.

“Not now, Arthur,” she said, raising her palm to me. “There will be time for understanding and explanation later, but now, we have to do something. Please. Can we just go to your library? I’ll gather the books I can from upstairs, but then, we must find a way to stop this man tonight. Tomorrow, I fear, Miss Pooter, and who knows who else, will be in great danger.”

CONSTANCE

Arthur started, his countenance of one affronted. Yes. How dare a woman speak to him thus?

“And weapons, dear Ava?” he questioned. “What about weapons? You know I have none, save a stake or two, ironically. Perhaps we should peruse Victor’s inventions before we trek across town. Hmmm?” My stomach turned at his tone. He spoke down to her, each word full of malice at being forced to be polite in mixed company, squeezing his fists to keep calm at her defiance.

Not much longer, Arthur York. Not much longer.

Avalon turned from the powerful woman who had been by my side just hours ago as we punished Jeffries into a broken woman. Just a few muscles of her face told of the change, imperceptible to most, no doubt, but not to me. The intent behind her eyes turned from the brightness of righteous anger, the feeling that one deserves better and was prepared to fight for it, to the darkness of defeat. This man had quite the hold over her, as they usually did once the woman had fallen in love. That was when they made their great change, that was when their abusive nature became more overt.

Arthur York was no different, not that I ever suspected he was. Now, however, was not the time. More pressing matters.

“Fine,” Avalon said in a broken whisper. “You’re right, of course. This way.”

I didn’t say a word at this juncture, just followed as Ava led us back up to Victor’s study. Avalon had told me a little about Victor when we were up there before. She had admired him, deeply, and he had been a good man. Lamenting his fate, not to mention how she felt, how her trust in Arthur was at least in part responsible for Victor’s death, how she had cried in my arms, and how I had comforted her best I could. She was alone. With Victor, her best friend and confidant gone, with Arthur behaving so monstrously of late, and with her losing her life and becoming something altogether otherworldly, it was too much to bear over a short few months. With my support, however, she had begun to remember who she was, she had begun to break that deep bond one makes with their abuser. That inexplicable, ironic, near-unbreakable bond.

Her insistence to turn to Arthur in this time of need was rather against my better judgment, but we didn’t have much time and so many more lives were at stake. We had to take the chance.

Victor’s study glowed in dim gaslight, soft shadows danced across the room and bookshelves from light filtering in from outside. Avalon lit the two candles on the center table, brightening the dark room.

“Get what you like,” she said to Arthur. “Of course, we don’t have any idea what we’ll need yet, since the research is at yours, but get what you like.”

Cheekiness. Good for her.

She sat on the white window seat, looking down at Baker Street, her face calm, somber.

“We might not know exactly,
sweetheart
, but we do know we’re dealing with something evil, do we not? Crucifixes at the very least.” Arthur spoke in the most delightful tone possible, edged with condescension, before collecting a bag from beneath Victor’s desk. He took three crosses from the top drawer and held them up to me, impressed with himself. He leaned in close to me and whispered, “They don’t really burn us, that’s just one of the many false myths around vampires.”

Yes. I knew that, of course, but more importantly, he was trying to impress me. Get a rise out of Avalon, more like. She didn’t take the bait. Good for her.

Such childish games men played.

Arthur thrust the crosses in the bag and picked up a long brass gauntlet adorned with vials and gauges. “Remember this, Ava?” he asked as he strapped it to his arm. Since jealousy didn’t work, he moved to nostalgia. “Right here,” he said pointing to the floor in front of the desk, “Right here Victor showed me how this worked. Remember, sweetheart?”

“I remember Victor quite well.” She spoke in a cold tone and didn’t look away from whatever held her attention below. Likely nothing, certainly not as interesting as the show up here.

Arthur stiffened and shoved the contraption into the bag along with the crosses. He grabbed a handful of extra vials from the second drawer and shoved them one at a time into leather loops protruding from a belt piece. “Holy water,” he explained for my benefit. “Again, pointless for vampires, but it might have an effect on a demon.”

“I would imagine so,” I said. “Great thinking, Arthur. How does the thing work?”

“There is a trigger release that goes around the finger like a ring, and with a flick of the wrist, it shoots a stream of holy water. It came in handy a few months back when Avalon, Victor, and I battled some vampire-hybrids. Long story, you see—“

“There isn’t time, Arthur. Please.” Avalon stood up and strode to the bookshelf.

“Fine.”

“You can tell me on the way to yours, Arthur.”—trying to keep the peace, at least until we’d stopped Jeffries—“She’s right. We best get going. Anything else?”

“This.” Avalon held up a thick revolver and pointed it at Arthur’s heart.

“Ah. The Slayer. Yes. I suppose you’re particularly keen on that one at the moment.”

“Indeed, I am.” If the glare she shot Arthur had been full of whatever ammunition that revolver held, I would be sweeping up dust at the moment.

“We’re not hunting a vampire, Avalon. This is a demon. Remember?” He didn’t even try to hide the condescending tone anymore.

After a jerk to the right, she pulled the trigger, and the straw-stuffed dummy in the corner right behind Arthur had a new hole in the center of its painted heart. “I think a wooden bullet through the heart of most creatures would do some damage, don’t you, Constance?”

“She’s got a point.” Glad to see she’d found her strength against this brute again.

“Take it,” she said, tossing the gun to Arthur who caught it and shoved it in the bag along with the rest. “Extra bullets as well.”

“Of course, sweetheart.” He was not amused.

“Is that all? Can we go to yours now? We have a lot of work to do and not much time,” she said, her voice softened. “Arthur, can we just put the rest of this aside for now. Please?”

“My preference.”

“Thank you.”

“All right,” I interjected, standing between them, breaking this lovers’ dance. “I’ll find a cab.”

Avalon walked out of the room first, and I followed. We didn’t wait for Arthur, but his footfalls followed soon enough.

The street was rather quiet, deserted. “What was I thinking?” I chided myself. “It’s too late for a cab.”

“We don’t need a cab, of course. We can move much faster than a cab can carry us anyway. Can you?” His eyes scanned me from my dark curls down to the tips of my buttoned up boots.

“Lead the way.”

“Up,” he said to Avalon, “Just in case.”

She nodded, and they were off at human speed until they came to the first alley. As soon as they turned, the next thing I knew Arthur called down from the rooftop. “Are you coming, or not?”

Something came over both Arthur and Avalon, a sense of energy and excitement. Avalon glowed. She lifted up her skirt and the sound of ripping fabric followed as she tore it clean off, revealing her bloomers below. “Only a hindrance, really,” she said with a smile, tossing the torn skirt off the building. It floated down next to me, landing in a pool of fabric at my feet.

This would be fun, a quick run and romp before work on this exhilarating winter night. As Avalon shed her bulky overcoat, dropping it, too, down to me, I transformed into some more moveable clothes myself.

“How convenient for you,” she said when I reached the rooftop, commenting on my dungarees and fisherman sweater. “That was my favorite coat.”

“One of the perks,” I mused.

“Fine for the two of you. Women’s suffrage and all that nonsense. Can we go now, or would you ladies like to continue exchanging fashion tips?” His tone was light, although his words weren’t.

Not the time.

“What are you waiting for, vampire?”

“Follow me she-demon.”

He took off in a blur, Avalon following, but it was only a moment before I was right behind them. We laughed as we jumped from building to building, dashing through the cold December air. I really must do this more often. I hadn’t felt so alive in years, decades, even. The wind through my hair. The sting of the cold in my ears and the tip of my nose. I must be a sight, red tipped nose, appled cheeks, and what felt like icicles forming around my ears.

Still, I laughed.

Little was more exhilarating than running. It was what the body was built for, methinks. As I hit my stride, my hips led the way and my feet barely touched the surface. I was flying. Coming down on the ball of each foot, again and again, feeling the muscles in my feet and calves and thighs propelling me forward, buildings whipping by, and the sound of laughter.

More laughter.

More joy.

More momentary, fleeting bliss.

Yes, moments like these, indeed. It was what made existence bearable.

Yet, as everything, good or bad, euphoric or devastating—before long, it was over.

Time to work.

Arthur’s home was beyond ornate. The finest of everything from wood to decor to rugs furnished this fine abode. But, of course, nothing but the best for this viscount. This once and forgotten heir apparent. He was, after all, a Tudor.

“Thomas,” Arthur addressed his butler. “Tea in the Library. Then, we shan’t be disturbed.”

“Very good, M’Lord.” Thomas had been roused from sleep, his hair a little on end, but he showed nothing but loyalty and grace, even in his disheveled state. With a click of his heels and a quick spin, he strode out of the foyer.

“Upstairs,” Arthur said, pointing. He removed his gloves, hat, and overcoat, leaving them all lying on the table near the front door.

Avalon had started to shiver.

“Cold?” I asked, wishing I could manifest more clothes for her as I did for myself.

“Yes, now that I’m cooling down from the run, my body is remembering that it’s, in fact, quite freezing out there.” Her teeth chattered, but Arthur turned from her, as cold as he was dead.

“Pity you moved out, then.” He didn’t look at her, but rather set his jaw and puffed out his chest in his arrogance. “Library. Now.”

He took the steps two at a time and Avalon and I followed. “Just through there,” she said, pointing. “I’ll be right back down.” She continued up to the third story and I went into Arthur’s Library.

He plopped the bag full of weapons on the edge of a burgundy chaise before moving to the far side of his impressive library. Avalon had not exaggerated. Sumptuous like the rest of his house, the room was full of bookshelves made from dark, fine wood. Books overflowed from each shelf, some sitting on the tops of others in many places, but it was far from chaos. There was an order to it all. The shelves reached to the ceiling, lined the walls, and there was even self-standing bookshelves in the middle of the room. Arthur climbed up to the third step of a wooden ladder set on a track and pulled himself along the shelves, taking a book from here and there before tossing them down onto the nearest leather sofa or chair.

“Collect those, would you? We’ll work over there,” he said, pointing to a table set in the center of two leather sofas as a sort of conversation area. “Get the bag of weapons, too.”

“I got them,” Avalon said, entering, dressed in what I assumed was Arthur’s clothes. Fine black trousers, a white, high-collared shirt, and a brocade waistcoat. A black cravat and her sable curls framed her heart-shaped face.

Arthur chuckled, shaking his head from side to side. “That’s my Ava,” he said.

He leapt down from the fourth step and swept Avalon up into his arms, kissing her. Her hands changed from defensive, against his chest trying to push him away, to wrapped around his neck halfway through the kiss.

“Now,” he said, pulling back from her. “To work.” He jumped over the back of one of the sofa’s and landed in the corner, arms and legs crossed.

“To work,” she repeated, breathless, then walked around and sat near him.

“I’m surprised the cold affects you, Avalon,” I said. “As a vampire. Arthur didn’t seem affected by it.” No. Little affect at all, actually.

“I’m still young in this new life, but over time it shall cease to do so.” Her rosy cheeks held a glow about them, no doubt from the kiss. Poor girl.

“These are quite old, Arthur. Impressive collection.” I gathered the books he had strewn about and placed them neatly in the middle of the table. “Although, I wouldn’t toss them about like that. They are rather fragile at this age, unlike us.”

“Books, Connie. They’re books. I once had a deep reverence for books, too, but, then I figured, they’re just books. There were so many other things more important than books.”

“Like what?” I challenged.

“This is not a game of wits and I have no interest in entering this debate with you. Of course the information therein is quite valuable, but why would it matter if a spine is cracked or no? The information remains the same. Besides, they’re unharmed.”

“Yes. Finely made, as is everything in your home, Arthur.” I took the top book that looked as old as me. I ran my hand over the cloth cover, even the leather corners had worn through. Barely readable, the title had little of its original gold leaf in the letters. It read: DAEMONS.