A Victorian Demon’s Guide to London, Love, and Being a Hero (Time for Monsters)

London

Dora Nettles had earned her nickname for her generous gift of venereal disease, shared with every gentleman caller. Hers was the kind that made you itch and sting like you'd rubbed your sausage and potatoes in nettles.

Most men who had become afflicted after visiting her kept quiet as they could about their suffering or only unburdened themselves to sympathetic folk—other men who had suffered a similar fate between her legs or the legs of one of her compatriots.

Mac Finn (that was no more his name than Dora’s surname was Nettles) was a one-eyed Scotch-Irish laborer who had gotten drunk and fallen into the Thames at Cheapside and lived in ever since. He was famous for his drunkenness after payday and his temper at all times. No one dared to tease the red-haired giant even though, at the moment, he was walking around as bow-legged as a turkey's wishbone.

“Did you pay a visit to Dora Nettles?” one of the braver folks at the Eel and Feathers asked.

He growled, tried to sit on a wooden stool, and quickly rose back up with a heated curse. “She ought to be killed like one of them slavering dogs with rabies. She ought to be hung up by her heels! Giving honest paying customers such agony.” Finn shrieked when someone collided with him and sent him down on his arse. When he rose up, he took the drink of the man nearest him and drained it. No one dared object.

“Even whiskey don't help,” he whimpered.

“It's because she's so pretty with her flaxen hair and her big blue eyes, looking like an innocent little virgin. For tuppence extra, she'll pretend she is one!” one of her former customers rubbed his groin at the painful memory of his last visit.

Raucous laughter filled the air of the Eel and Feathers, but this only seemed to inflame the furious Finn more.

“Someone ought to do for her. Someone ought to take her off the streets.”

“Or you could just settle for something a bit homelier next time.” A plump brunette with a stump of an arm snuggled next to Finn with a winsome smile.

He gave her a rough shove, pushing his way through the laughing crowd. “Don't be daft. Then you'll have it, too, and pass it on to some other poor bloke. It's your fault, you know, being in this disgusting trade.”

“It wasn't so disgusting last payday when you went to visit Dora,” the brunette strumpet said, which set the bar to laughing again.

Finn stormed out.

DORA WAS RARELY SURPRISED by the requests of her clients, and she always insisted on getting at least half of the money first in case one of them asked for something truly queer.

The gentleman in front of her was well-dressed and bored-looking, two things her clients never were. To a man, they all looked eager or, at the very least, interested in what she had to offer.

“How did you find me, sir? Men don't usually come to see me in the middle of the afternoon. I charge extra if a man wakes me to do the deed.”

“I'm not most men, and after you've seen me, you might find yourself amenable to a change of schedule,” the stranger said with a bow. He studied her carefully, almost as if he were appraising her clothes.

That struck Dora as odd, as men usually couldn't wait for her to lift her skirts. This gentleman seemed to regard her apparel with a critical eye, finally placing a gloved hand under his chin and remarking, “That's a very pretty lilac color.”

“Thank you. All right. You woke me up. Shall we get on with this?” Dora asked, irritated for some unfathomable reason.

A flash of something dark and malicious flew across the gent’s face, but it was gone when he spoke with a slow, smirking smile. “As you wish.”

The gentleman took off his hat and gloves, revealing very dirty fingernails, which were almost completely black. Dora suppressed a shudder. Oh well. It was far from the only dirty thing that she'd encountered, and she would pay him back in kind with something far more loathsome.

As he unhooked his billowing black cloak, swinging it over his shoulders where it seemed to fly high in an unseen breeze, the door banged open. Dora jumped as Mac Finn appeared in the doorway, his shoulders hunched together and legs thrust apart. He looked comical, a child's string puppet that had been pulled too hard.

“I've saved you the trouble, mister. She'll give you the clap.” Finn pushed up his sleeves, revealing arms the size of Christmas hams. “I'm determined to stop her dirty tricks.”

“Finn, you should leave,” Dora hissed. Fear gripped her heart as Finn pushed past her new client with a murderous gleam in his single eye.

“Why should I do that?” he grunted. “I won't be able to go back to my missus until I've seen a doctor now, and you're not worth the cost of a doctor on top of what I paid for the shameful quick shag you gave me.”

“Pardon me, sir. Is it your intention to kill this lady?” The bored voice of her new client broke into the conversation.

Dora and Finn turned to look at him, and Finn demanded, “What business is it of yours if I do? Are you a constable?”

“No, no. Far from it. I was only curious. Go on about your business. I'll wait,” The gentleman flicked some imaginary dust from one of his horrible black nails.

“You'll not wait, you'll leave. I don't want anyone here except Dora and me.”

Dora pawed at the air in front of her as if she could force Finn back. “Finn, I'm sorry. I never meant no harm. I didn't have it to begin with. It was some other bloke that gave it to me,” she protested, realizing that the dapper Johnny would surely leave and let Finn beat her until she was disfigured or dead. Her pretty blonde hair and unlined face were the only reason she was still able to have a home of her own—such as it was, one of the worst boxes of bricks in all of , an eight-foot square in Hangman’s Yard.

With a sudden flash of blue light, the gentleman stood between her and Finn. With a strike of his arm, Finn’s dusty white shirt split down the middle, revealing a broad chest covered in reddish hair. The grubby peach flesh spilled with a gush of blood and glistening, writhing organs. Dora shrieked and started to run past the body that fell heavily to the floor and the man casually licking his fingers.

“You're some sort of devil, some monster,” she shrieked.

“Well, I suppose you've noticed it now. Better late than never,” the gentleman monster said, and his claws struck again.

JACK QUICKLY ATE THE flesh of the giant, muscular specimen, even though he felt quite ill and full halfway through. He reflected that Bunson had been quite a meal, perhaps a meal and a half. In the Middling, he would have lived a year on a prime catch like that. Now? He was soft and spoiled and would have eaten within a few days—maybe even a week. No, it was Dora that he had come to dine upon, and yet again, he found himself too full to enjoy a pretty meal.

“Well, bother it,” he muttered to himself, a phrase that he had recently picked up from humans in a coffee house. This was no use at all. He had killed Dora because she knew what he was and what he had done to the man she called Finn.

He knelt next to the female figure on the floor, lying on her side in a sprawl, her throat sliced. She looked rather like a sleeping Polly, and he found that put him into an annoyed mood instead of a hungry one.

“Waste not want not.” That was another phrase he’d learned. Jack worked his way across the girl’s torso, clucking his tongue at the red strains soaking into the lilac fabric. He should have taken her dress off first.

Why should that matter?

I think Polly would look nice in this color. This one did, and they’re very similar in height and coloring.

He left his second course unfinished and washed his hands and face in the cracked white basin by the unmade bed. He threw back a folded sheet strung on a piece of rope and revealed several pieces of women's clothing and a pair of worn black boots. He hesitated for a moment, staring at them, then took two of the dresses over his arm and walked from the squat brick home in one of 's darkest and dankest yards. As he left, Jack stabbed his heel down on the ground and sent a jet of flame across the dead woman's skirt and the remains of Finn. The place blazed up as he drifted higher, traveling unnoticed as a dark shadow in blacker smoke.

As he flew home. Jack considered the strange turn of events. He had intended to find a woman who looked like Polly and feed off of her to curb his appetite for the pretty blonde now under his roof. And he had. But he hadn't really enjoyed it. He was full, almost too full, and he was suddenly worried that he wouldn't be able to eat the meal Polly was cooking for him. How would he ask her to dine with him if he couldn’t bear to eat?

That is why you’re the master, and she is the servant. You can ask her to sit with you, and she’ll obey.

Polly seemed so eager to please—while still seeming afraid of him. Something rippled down his spine, another sort of hunger.

Eager to please. Pretty. Afraid.

His appetite surged back, but for the first time since landing in this feeding ground, it wasn’t for mere food.

That’s settled. I will eat as much or as little as I please, and she won’t say a word.

Perhaps she’ll feel badly that I just pick at her hard work—but the hurt may be soothed with these little trinkets, he thought, smoothing a hand over the pale blue dress in his arms.

Yes, I think she’ll be pleased with these.

“What do I care if she's pleased or not?” he asked himself in an aggrieved voice. “It doesn't matter.”

But it did.