A Clockwork Victim Read online

  Beware when a vampire loses control!

  In 1850s London, most mortals are not aware that vampires walk amongst them. Lord Sebastian Hawthorne, himself a vampire, intends to keep it that way. Unfortunately, when someone begins killing off well-known citizens—in gruesome ways—all signs point to a newborn vampire unable to control the bloodlust.

  Marcus Dwyer, a fellow vampire, admits to turning a woman for companionship, and now she’s out of control. He needs Sebastian’s help. Together, Marcus, Sebastian and Theo, Sebastian’s human friend, set out to catch the rogue killer before she exposes their secret.

  Will they find her in time? Or will the police capture her first, and will their discovery lay waste to the vampires’ immortal world?

  A Clockwork Victim

  Quinn Langston

  Dedication

  For my momma, the wicked Sandie Scarpa, just because I love her.

  To Kimberly Cannon, aka Aubrey Mc Knight for cracking the whip and her brilliant knowledge of...Everything.

  To John for surviving the family, the vampires and loving us anyway. You are one of us, whether you like it or not.

  To Aaron for understanding and supporting the supernatural bond between critique partners and forever buds. Thank you!

  To Dav, for my beautiful new office built while singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow to the hum of a circular saw.

  Very special thanks to Don D’Auria for being the coolest editor one woman can stand and for sharing my love of fanged creatures! I look forward to working with him on many more books to come.

  Special thanks to Copy Editor Jeffrey Curry for his stellar edit and polish of the manuscript into pristine form.

  Special thanks to Cover Artist Scott Carpenter for yet another deliciously creepy cover! Bravo!

  Chapter One

  Just out of the cast of the gas lamp’s light, Josephine waited in the shadows at the top of the cobblestone alleyway. She heard the resonating echoes of Big Ben chime midnight and knew that the monthly meeting of the London Brimstone Club would soon gather in secret only steps away.

  “Josephine!” The shape of a rotund woman came toward her through the murky atmosphere. She had hoped that Madame Payne would attend tonight and there she was. Mutton dressed as a lamb. Lamb to the slaughter. The bloom was definitely off the rose of this lady of the evening. She quickly approached with a labored gait. “Where have you been? It’s been a month we’ve been looking for you. You have such angry customers. You have been a very naughty girl.” It wrenched Josephine’s stomach to hear Madame Payne’s voice in that scolding tone. As if she were a child. “And you have been costing me money.” She grabbed Josephine’s wrist and twisted it to pull her along behind her and out of the dank alley. Her first fatal mistake. “Come along with me now and you can make up some of those lost coffers at Lord Dashwood’s party. You will be my party favor to them.”

  “No. I shan’t allow you to ever harm me again. Your reign of terror is over. Mine has just begun.” She bared her fangs and pinned Payne to the damp brick wall with one hand.

  “No. Please. I have money.” Panic shown in the old woman’s wide open eyes. She blinked hard and fast as she groveled. Who has the power now, eh?

  “Money cannot save you now.” Josephine stabbed her at the neck with razor sharp nails and clawed open the length of her body. The two sides of the woman’s torso gapped open. Bloody entrails spilled out and dangled like ropes of fat sausages from her belly. “You can only pay me with your life.”

  Lord Beaumont Dashwood heard the iron lion’s head pound against his front door with thunderous insistency.

  “Damn and blast. Where is Blanton?” he muttered. “Perhaps this is more of our entertainment arriving.” He smirked. Excusing himself from his guests, he stormed to the heavy wooden front door and swung it open wide.

  The corpse’s head lolled back into the threshold of the door, eyes staring lifelessly up at him. The head was almost touching his boot. He stepped back quickly so as not to get blood on the patent leather of his custom-fitted shoes.

  The stone steps of Dashwood’s elite London townhouse were awash with blood. A woman’s body torn to shreds and almost unrecognizable lay with arms splayed in a macabre gesture, as if imploring heaven to take her. There were no witnesses. No one to tell the truth of this event. The blood had cascaded down the steps into the street. The gore glittered like an evil red waterfall in the midnight gas lights.

  He could not allow his guests to see this mass of human flesh.

  “Blanton! Call the police! Hurry, man, there’s been another one.” Lord Dashwood barked out orders to the butler as matter-of-factly as ordering tea. “This one on our doorstep,” he murmured to himself. He furrowed his brow and turned to stop the rest of the gentlemen at the meeting from reaching the door.

  He held his gloved hands out to redirect them to another exit. “Gentlemen! Gentlemen, please. It seems there has been a most unfortunate incident on our steps this evening. I will ask you to kindly depart by way of the servants’ entry.” He raised his eyebrows and looked down his nose as he directed. “To the rear of the house, lest any of you want to account for your whereabouts of the evening once the constables arrive.” This was Dashwood’s club, organized for persons of quality who wished to engage in what the commoners called immoral acts and all forms of debauchery. Dashwood just called it his right.

  Arrayed in full evening attire the group of thirty-odd men did not need to be told twice. They spun on their heels with a rustle of silk and velvet evening capes and made way for the alternate exit to the alleyway. None questioned Lord Dashwood and none of them needed reminding that this was not a meeting that any of them wanted to expound upon. Indeed, no one wished to be discovered at this particular address on this particular evening.

  Beaumont Dashwood was unruffled that there was a dead body on his doorstep, but he must preserve the secret and integrity of the Society at all costs. That meant getting this body off his doorstep and the blood cleaned away before dawn.

  No sooner was the last man out the back door than Fred Johnston, the local bobby, and two detectives showed up at the scene. The policemen were all wearing Her Majesty’s standard issue exo breathing apparatuses. The sight of the masked faces gazing up at him, at his service, made his cock twinge and begin to harden. There was no ginger way to step around the blood and descend the steps to meet the officers, not that Dashwood had intentions of doing so.

  Lord Dashwood stood in the doorway to keep from getting anything on his elegant evening clothes. He spoke to them from atop the stairs. “How soon can you remove this from my doorstep?” Dashwood enquired and turned slightly to hide his obvious growing erection from the police. He was becoming overwhelmed with excitement. He mustn’t let them see this effect. The iron smell of the fresh blood and the sight of the masks was almost more than he could take. “I would be most appreciative if this address was not in the Times tomorrow morning.” He tried to keep his voice steady, in control.

  The mangled woman’s body at the gentleman’s feet had crossed that very threshold in life and brought other “entertainment” with her as well. But that was Dashwood’s business, and none of the concern of the police.

  “Yes, your lordship,” Constable Fred Johnston responded in a thick cockney accent. This was his beat and he beamed obvious pride to be of service. “We’ll have a shufty around the premises and remove the victim within the hour, your lordship. Certainly there should be no suspicion on you, your lordship.” Hand to helmet, he saluted as Lord Dashwood stepped farther back into his house and closed the door on the corpse.

  “Oy, Johnston,” Detective Chief
Inspector Sam Wilks snapped at the officer. “Get over here.” Wilks stared down at the body.

  “Whatcha think, Guv?” Detective Inspector Louis Bates asked his partner. “Papers are calling ’im the Thames Slasher.” He squatted near to the woman’s body, shoved up his leather breathing apparatus and peered at the wounds. “Looks like the same killer. Savage. He’s becoming bolder with each kill. Brazen. Didn’t even bother to hide guttin’ this poor woman.”

  “Indeed, Bates. This is a villain with no soul. That’s one thing for sure. Baffling.” He shook his head. “The city’s in terror. Even the whores will be afraid to walk the street after word of this latest murder spreads,” Wilks agreed. “Johnston, you check down the alleyway. See if you find any weapon or anything. Take this torch with you.” Detective Sam Wilks handed him a pyraballien. The pyraballien had become a very handy little trinket that he picked up at a local clockmaker’s shop. It could serve as a small weapon or a bright torch. He briefly recalled a girl had made it. Curious. He made a mental note to be sure to get it back. Johnston could buy his own.

  He watched Johnston disappear into the darkness of the alleyway. The pyraballien cast a globe of golden light before the man. Johnston seemed eager to be as far away as possible from the victim.

  “This makes nine, Bates. But this is the first woman.” Detective Wilks spoke his thoughts out loud. He leaned over the body and tried to make sense of what had become a pattern over the last four weeks. Until now, the killer had only chosen men, gentlemen in fact. None of the deaths had been quick. It was clear every victim had suffered, agonized. The bodies had been ravaged. “I don’t think we can make much more of it while she is still here in the streets.”

  Fred Johnston rounded the corner and emerged out of the shadows of the alley. “Didn’t find nothing. Just a few dust bins and some stray cats what ran when I shined me light on ’em. If you ask me, Guv, looks like an animal what did this. Look how her guts is all strewn about and her nose half chewed off.” Fred leaned in a little too close to the slick, wet body and obviously got a whiff of the sickly sweet smell of punctured intestines. He winced and gave a loud cough. A fly landed in the hollow of where the woman’s nose once was and greedily lapped up a meal. “Maybe a pack of mad dogs. Hydrophobie, that would do.” After the young constable contributed his thoughts, he ripped off his exo mask and quickly pressed a hand over his mouth.

  Wilks assumed the lad was trying to force down the bile in his throat. Wilks himself had seen bad things before, but this was the worst even for him. Nasty. “Weren’t no weapon other than teeth if you ask me. Everthing is all…raggety.” Fred’s voice trailed as he twisted violently and vomited in the street just as the police horse and wagon arrived.

  “Back to the Royal College of Medicine?” the wagon driver asked the detectives. He lifted his cap and scratched his forehead. “Bodies are piling up, Guv. No room at the station house.”

  “Aye. The College. Be quick about gettin’ her out the street.” Wilks growled his order as the man in charge of the black wagon pulled out a canvas stretcher. He stood with hands on hips. He gave the driver a nod toward Dashwood’s door and raised his eyebrows. “The gent wants his doorway clean.”

  “Blimely, this is a messy ’un,” the helper said to his boss. “Looks to be fresh, too.”

  The driver and his helper rolled the body into a waxed cloth wrapper. Flipping the scattered intestines and rags of clothing into the body cloth with practiced motions, they made a neat bundle. A few blots of red struck through to the outside, seeping through the cracked waxing. The wrapped body now looked like a limp, rolled up carpet. The men chivvied it onto the stretcher and slid the whole into the wagon. Without further comment, they slammed the rear doors.

  “No hurry now, eh, Detective Wilks? She ain’t going nowhere special anymore.” He fished in his jacket pocket for his pipe.

  The driver’s mate silently nodded and struck a light for the older man. The younger man wore an exo breathing mask, but the older added to the smog with his tobacco. The driver sucked on his pipe and let a cloud of smoke drift away. The driver snapped the reins gently and shifted them to one hand. The London meat wagon trundled slowly down the cobbled streets leaving the grisly scene behind them.

  “No hurry now, boys.” Wilks gave a heavy sigh and watched the men in the black wagon pull away. He looked back at the mire of blood and street muck and up to the top of the stairs.

  “Thanks, love.” Wilks spoke gently to the household maid who had silently arrived and waited on the upper step with buckets of water and brushes. “No use alarming the public before they read about it in the morning papers.” He gave her a weak smile.

  It was not yet dawn. She looked at the mess, her face still and emotionless, but for tightly compressed lips. A long gray apron covered her working uniform from unsightly splatters. She sluiced the first bucket of soapy water down the steps, before she commenced scrubbing. One of Lord Dashwood’s well-disciplined staff, she was silent and quick—and experienced, Wilks thought as he watched her. The puddles of stale blood began to lose their hold on the stone, diluted to a pale pink, and trickled down and away in the gutter. Soon all would be as it was before, before the muted sunlight could reveal a violent death, the passing of a human life.

  Josephine crouched just out of sight in the alley across the way, licking her lips clean of the blood from the ravished body. That was her handiwork. She took no notice that this was a dangerous place to stop. It meant nothing to her that she could have been easily seen.

  Her fangs were not yet retracted. Absently, she rubbed the blood spatters into her cheeks, as if the gore were beauty cream. Blood smeared across her face and matted in her hair. She wore no breathing apparatus, as would be required by most humans. No longer a twenty-three-year-old human, she was barely one month a vampire, still wild and unrestrained in her kills. Yet, there was a method to the madness.

  Her passion built between feedings and nothing would sate the lust for the kill. The blood was not the victory. The last beat of the pulse from her victim’s heart, in their last moment of terror she tasted their panic. Horror fueled the shots of blood into her hungry mouth. The taste of fear was sheer intoxication. Vindication.

  She hunted with a purpose. She had a plan. Revenge. Vengeance. To watch the fear in each victim’s eyes and to hear the screams of agony as she slowly exsanguinated them. Death of a thousand cuts. In her case, a thousand rips. Tears. Slashes and bites, followed by her lapping tongue. It was the manna she needed to live, the kill she craved to survive. Until they were all killed, it was her only reason to survive.

  Josephine had bitten off the woman’s nose and spit it to the dogs that roamed the streets. Like a hummingbird she lapped the blood nectar around the stamen of cartilage left in the gaping hole. That would teach Madame Payne to finally keep her nose out of her business. Josephine chuckled to herself. Yes, nosey old bitch.

  The madam would never watch her through the peepholes in the brothel walls again. She was worse than most of the patrons. It was the specialty of the house to encourage their deviances, catering to every sexual whim. Aristocratic men watched in groups behind the walls for their own lurid pleasure. Sometimes, Madame Payne watched alone.

  As for Lord Dashwood, all that pillow talk while he was whipping my bare flesh, forcing me to cower in his presence. Josephine’s superior vampire eyesight saw the twinge of concern in his clenched jaw muscles as he slammed the door on one of his oldest confidants, dead on his doorstep. Concern was for himself, she was sure, not Madame Payne. She hoped that Dashwood quaked at the sight of blood reaching tell-tale fingers toward his feet. No matter his calm façade, he knew who was on his doorstep. He knew this could mean something worse than his death. It could mean his secrets could be revealed. All his secrets. Josephine smiled and touched her tongue to her fangs. All his secrets.

  “It’s time for you to cower and fret that your depravities wil
l be out. Every last sinful and lascivious one of them.” She hissed and disappeared into the shadows of the alley.

  Chapter Two

  Marcus Dwyer snapped his pocket watch closed and looked up into the sooty noon sky. As a vampire in this new century, there was no need to worry so much about sunlight dissolving him to ash anymore. That had only held true in the old days. Times had changed. Real sunshine was rare to break through the smoke-filled clouds that hung low and debilitated and irritated most everyone’s sight, except for his. He had not decided if it was that he was becoming more immune with age, being almost one hundred years a vampire. The scientist in him pondered if it could be a change in the atmosphere that protected him.

  Marcus Dwyer, MD. 1755 read the back of the pocket watch. He smoothed his thumb over the engraving as was his habit and slipped the gold timepiece into his waistcoat. He had greater concerns on his mind than the fate of London’s climate. Those musings would have to wait. His main concern was of his own making, quite literally. In his estimation, he had made a mistake and now he needed to clean it up, before revelation of his being one of the undead came to the public view. If his error was to become common knowledge, certain humans and other vampires would seek revenge for his putting their lives in jeopardy with his foolish actions.

  Marcus stepped into the back entrance of the Royal College of Medicine autopsy theater. At the moment, the facilities were doubling as the mortuary for the London police. He was, after all, a fully qualified surgeon and had every right to admission to observe. He needed to see the latest victim in a string of unsolved murders.

  Fresh corpses were always in demand for lectures and demonstrations for students. And these victims were for free, which saved a pretty penny from not having to buy from the illegal “resurrectionists”, the eager free-lance grave robbers.

  For a short time while in France, Marcus saw many of his dinner companions displayed in the more modern facilities of the Paris police station. The deceased remains were laid on marble slabs, with slight drops of cold water dripping at the top of the stone tables. As the water trickled down, it cooled the bodies. Corpses could be held for longer periods in order for the families to identify the dead. Large windows were set into a wall and corpse-viewing, called morgueing, had become quite the moral and money making exercise. Families would stroll past to be edified as to the violence and degradation of the common man. Or beast as the case may be. It was rumored a giant cooling machine was being planned, that would circulate ammonia somehow, to keep the dead almost miraculously fresh. Again, another new innovation to ponder at a later date.