The Compelled Page 2

  Cora opened her mouth as if to say something, then thought the better of it. “All right. But Stefan,” she said, grabbing my wrist in a surprisingly strong grip. “This is war, and I won’t have you lose on principle.”

  “What do you mean?” I tugged my wrist away gently and peered at her. “It’s more than principle—it’s survival. I don’t drink human blood.”

  “I know you don’t. All I meant was that I’ll do whatever it takes to stop Samuel from killing more innocent people. And I hope you’ll do the same. Maybe drinking human blood would be different for you now. Maybe you could try.”

  “I can’t,” I said firmly. “You don’t know what blood does to me. And I don’t want you to find out.”

  Cora looked at me indignantly, but I didn’t want to pursue the subject any further. “We should get some sleep,” I said. I settled on the hard ground on the opposite side of the tunnel. I heard her shaky breathing, but I couldn’t tell if she was shivering or crying. I didn’t ask.

  I closed my eyes and pressed my hand to my forehead, a gesture that did nothing to ease the relentless pounding in my skull. Cora’s suggestion echoed in my mind: Drink human blood.

  Could I? I hadn’t in twenty years, not since I was in New Orleans, where I’d sometimes drank the blood of four, five, ten humans a day with little thought to the consequences. I often dreamt of it, the moment when I was bent over a victim, smelling the rushing, liquid iron, knowing it was about to run down my throat. Sometimes the liquid was bitter, like strong, black coffee. Sometimes it was sweet, with traces of honey and oranges. It used to be a private, perverse game of mine: to guess the taste before the blood touched my tongue. But no matter what the flavor, the result was the same: With human blood in me, I was stronger, faster.

  And ruthless.

  In a way, Cora was right. In the short term, blood could be the fuel to power me to rescue Damon. But in the long run, it would destroy me. And as much as I needed to save Damon, I needed to save myself, too.

  I reached into the darkness and allowed my hand to graze Cora’s slim fingers. She took it and gently squeezed.

  “I know you’ll find a way to save Damon,” Cora said. “…with or without blood.”

  It was meant to be reassuring, but I knew from the hesitancy in Cora’s voice that she was simply trying to make me feel better. She didn’t really believe it—which only made me feel worse.

  I turned to face Cora.

  “I promise, if I need to drink blood, I will. You have my word.”

  Relief flickered in her large eyes. “Thank you,” she said.

  I didn’t fall asleep for a long time after that. I could sense from Cora’s slow, deep breathing that the evening of terror had taken its toll. She was resting, exhausted, her face in calm repose. Meanwhile, my brain was reeling.

  Damon, I whispered into the darkness.

  Nothing.

  2

  The next day, I left the tunnel, telling Cora I needed to do some errands. Cora didn’t offer to join me, and I wondered if she thought I was off to hunt human blood. If so, I let her believe it. But instead, all I did was joylessly kill a squirrel, feeling weak even as the blood hit my tongue. Human blood would make me feel sharp, alive. This only made me feel more despair.

  Darkness had fallen when I returned to the tunnel. Cora climbed out to join me, and the two of us headed toward the Asylum. We knew Samuel often stopped there at the end of the day. If we could catch a glimpse of him as he exited, then follow him, we hoped he’d lead us to Damon. We were armed with stakes, but they provided minimal comfort. My stake was jammed in the shaft of my boot and poked my skin every few steps. It didn’t make me feel any safer. At this point, stakes were as commonplace to us as guns were to hunters heading into the woods. But having a gun didn’t guarantee a hunter couldn’t be killed.

  The crisp fall air smelled like burning leaves, and, unlike the East End, this part of town was filled with well-dressed men and women, strolling from dining clubs to the theater to their fancy hotels. I didn’t mind the crowds. Having to navigate through the masses and around horse-drawn carriages took my mind off the task at hand.

  Gradually, the crowds thinned out and the smell of illicit fires made with newspaper kindling replaced the aroma of roasted chestnuts. The streets were empty, but the slums surrounding them were full, and I could sense eyes watching us suspiciously behind plateglass windows as we walked up High Street, the main thoroughfare of Whitechapel. From there, we turned onto Crispin Street and soon arrived at the Magdalene Asylum. The stone edifice towered, churchlike, over the now-empty Spitalfields Market. Cora’s attention was focused on the padlock on the heavy iron gates surrounding the building. The only sign that anyone inhabited the Asylum was a lone candle flickering in an upper window. It was only a little past eight o’clock, but unlike the rest of London, the street and building were as quiet as a tomb. It was, after all, only two blocks away from Mitre Square, the location of Jack the Ripper’s most recent kills. Ever since then, the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee had urged residents of the East End to stay indoors. Clearly, they were taking the request seriously.

  “I hope they’re all right,” Cora said quietly, and I knew she was thinking of the girls she’d met when she’d infiltrated the Asylum. All young and down on their luck, they’d seen the organization as a chance to get back on their feet. When they’d entered the Asylum, how could they possibly have known their blood would be used to feed monsters or that their benefactor would handpick them to be slain on the streets?

  Behind us, I heard the sound of leaves crunching. I turned, ready to face whatever new danger was headed our way, but it was only a watchman, swinging his nightstick in one hand and holding a lantern in the other.

  Don’t come over here, I willed, focusing my Power on him. He moved toward me, and for half a second, our eyes locked. Turn. Go back where you came from. He paused, but didn’t shine the light our way. Instead, he pivoted on his heel and walked back in the opposite direction.

  “Did something happen?” Cora whispered sharply as she noticed my cocked head.

  “Shh!” I motioned for her to be quiet until the footfalls faded. Cora didn’t have the same ultra-honed senses I had and was oblivious to our near miss.

  Before I could explain what I’d seen, the front door of the Asylum opened and Samuel strode out into the darkness, an attaché case under his arm and a silk top hat on his head. I stiffened as Cora grabbed my arm. I pulled her up the street behind a hedgerow, but Samuel didn’t look toward us. To anyone passing him on the street, he was simply the future London councilor, out doing charity work for the poor. They would think him admirable, I reflected in disgust. He turned down the flint path toward the curb and up the street, in the direction of the barren Spitalfields Market. As soon as he did, a coach veered toward him. Clearly, the driver was confident he could collect a generous fare from this well-dressed man.

  “Here, sir! Happy to take you wherever you want!” the cab driver called across the square. Samuel nodded once, then hopped into the cab.

  “Let’s go,” I hissed to Cora, grabbing her arm and breaking into a run. Together we sprinted behind the coach as it clopped its way through the stalls surrounding the seedy market, heading deeper into Whitechapel. I was ten feet away, then five, and was about to catch up when I realized Cora was no longer on my arm.

  I turned around and saw her doubled over, her hands on her knees, in front of the Lamb and Sickle public house. She had attracted the attention of a few patrons lurking in the doorway, who’d stopped their round of singing to gape at her.

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t run anymore,” Cora panted, her face red and slicked with sweat. “You go on ahead.”

  “No need to run, girl,” one man said as he lecherously stumbled toward her. “You can relax in my arms.”

  I turned to him and bared my fangs menacingly. He let go of Cora and backed away, his face white with fright.

  “All right, no need to get nasty. J
ust having a bit of fun,” he said slowly, holding up his hands and walking away.

  “Go on! I’ll meet you later. I know the barman here. He’ll take care of me. I’ll be fine,” Cora urged with the same fierceness I’d seen last night.

  “Are you sure?” I didn’t want to leave Cora, but I couldn’t lose Samuel. I glanced around. The Ten Bells was nearby. Cora did know the area, and she had a stake hidden in the folds of her skirt. I knew as well as she did that a stake would also do a perfectly fine job incapacitating a human threat. Still…

  “Yes!” Cora hissed. “I’ll meet you back at the tunnel.”

  I nodded and surged ahead at vampire speed, but the busy street beyond the market was crowded with coaches, and I no longer knew which one held Samuel.

  I was about to cut my losses and head back to the pub to collect Cora when I spotted a figure stealing down a dark alley. I narrowed my eyes. The form was moving far more quickly than any human. Samuel. And worse, he was carrying a girl in his arms. The girl was clawing at Samuel’s shoulder, forcing him to stop and adjust his hold every few feet. I couldn’t believe she was still conscious. Many of Samuel’s victims fainted from fright, or were killed immediately. But now, he seemed to be taking care not to jostle the girl, holding her as carefully as a wolf would bring its prey back to the pack.

  My heart clenched and I broke into a run when I realized he was headed for the warehouses near the Thames. I hadn’t been there since the terrible night when Samuel had turned Violet into a vampire. Why was he taking a human girl there now? He had Damon; he didn’t need to frame him for any more Jack the Ripper murders. He had a steady supply of blood from the girls in the Asylum. So what could he possibly want with this girl?

  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?”

  The girl laughed, one short bark.
“Well, it wasn’t because he liked me, I can tell you that much. No. When a vampire sets after you, you don’t ask why.”

  I rocked back on my heels in surprise. “You knew he was a vampire?”

  “Yes. And so are you,” she said. “But you saved me. Why?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? Do you know who that man was?”

  The girl shrugged. “I knew he wanted to kill me, so we never got around to making formal introductions. I was just minding my own business and then…” She shuddered.

  “You’re safe now. I don’t drink human blood. I only want to protect you.”

  The girl’s eyes blazed into mine, her pupils widening and contracting. And then, after a long moment, she nodded.

  “Thank you for being honest,” she said. “I’m Mary Jane. And I suppose you can tell that I’m more than I seem. You saw one of my tricks. I only wish it had worked better,” she said ruefully. She clearly knew how to control her power. But was she a witch? Or some other creature of darkness I’d never encountered? I leaned in, hoping to hear more about her trick. How had she pushed Samuel back?

  Instead, she took a deep breath and said, “So, who are you, vampire?”

  But before I could respond, she fainted, hitting the dock with a muffled thud.

  3

  Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed the unconscious girl and made my way back to the tunnel, staying in the shadows to avoid any suspicious glances. As expected, everyone on the pier was too involved in their own miseries to notice me, or the girl breathing shallowly in my arms.