Chapter Seven
It was a quiet drive back to London. Lavinia watched the cars pass on the motorway as Zachary expertly manoeuvred the vehicle through the busy lanes. A bright noon sun shone overhead. Its rays didn’t penetrate into the back of the car, the tinted windows protecting Lavinia’s skin from their sting.
She wondered how Michelle was doing. The Sisterhood hadn’t had a human stranger stay with them in decades, and she fretted over how her Sisters might behave.
For some reason, Lavinia thought Michelle would not be the kind of person to sit still.
She only hoped she wouldn’t run into Quintia.
Out of all of her Sisters, Quintia was the least…
civilised. “Quintia has the subtlety of a battering ram,” Pina had once said after Quintia had gotten them into hot water at some high society function, and Lavinia had to agree with her.
She adored her Sister, appreciated her intense loyalty and relentless drive for their work, but she could only imagine what kind of first impression she would make on a human.
With surprising difficulty, she tore her thoughts away from Michelle.
She forced herself to consider the matter at hand.
She was meeting Octavia at the alleyway where the demon had appeared last night.
Octavia had been off duty yesterday, and Lavinia would appreciate her Sister’s fresh eyes today.
It was easy to miss things in the heat of the moment, and it was possible there would be clues to help them find out who had sent a demon after Michelle.
Immediately, her thoughts drifted back to the human, her soft brown eyes, lined perfectly with dark eyelashes.
The way she smiled, even in the face of what must be overwhelming circumstances.
She had smelled so good this morning, coconut and that hint of cinnamon Lavinia had noticed yesterday.
“We’re here.”
It took Lavinia a moment to tear herself from her reverie. Zachary wore a questioning expression. The car idled in a quiet side street, away from the main thoroughfare.
“Right,” she said, ignoring the question on Zachary’s face, and got out of the car.
Zachary drove off, seeking to park somewhere he could comfortably wait for a few hours.
Lavinia felt a rush of appreciation for the familiar—he was dependable, but not overly deferential.
He was always ready to help, acting as the Sisterhood’s driver, messenger, or whatever role was required of him in that moment.
Additionally, he was discreet, never showing any interest in gossip.
It was difficult to find the right familiar, but Zachary was the best. Just like his father had been.
Octavia was already here. Lavinia could smell her Sister’s scent of leather and rose on the cool breeze.
The sun had hidden itself behind the cover of clouds again, cloaking the urban landscape in grey.
The daylight caused a slight prickly sensation on the exposed skin of Lavinia’s face and hands, which she ignored as she followed her Sister’s scent-trail.
She couldn’t see Octavia initially. She wasn’t in the alley where Lavinia had fought the demon and had first met Michelle, but instead had penetrated further into the warren of backstreets behind the row of shops.
“Look at this,” Octavia said. Her Sister was crouching behind a haphazard stack of garbage bags, only the top of her bright blue hair flaring above the pile.
Octavia had embraced the modern invention of neon hair dyes, and changed her colour every season.
The blue brought out the cooler tones of her dark skin.
Lavinia walked up to her, considering the pile of garbage.
The contents of the bags were several days old, judging by the smell of them.
Rats had eaten through the corners of some, the trash spilling out onto the ground.
Lavinia looked closer to where Octavia pointed, and saw the dark stains splashed against the brick wall.
Blood. Her nostrils flared, and there it was—the scent of the blood, hidden behind the rankness of the garbage.
It smelled sour with fear, with notes of alcohol overlaid with some kind of cheap cologne.
It could only be a day old, the metallic undertones still strong in the air.
“Your girl’s?” Octavia asked. Lavinia had updated Octavia on the phone this morning, explaining how she had taken Michelle to Thornblood. Octavia had listened without comment, but Lavinia was sure the eldest of the Sisters had some reservations about Lavinia’s impulsive decision.
“No. She didn’t come this way—she came from the other direction.”
“Any idea whose it might be?”
Lavinia studied the splatter pattern. Several of the shops had doors opening into this alley, and one of the kitchen staff could have cut themselves on a piece of glass in the trash.
There was quite a lot of blood here though, certainly more than an accidental cut.
Of course, not all blood was the sign of violence, but it looked like there was too much of it to be a coincidence.
She thought back to last night. She’d come from the other direction, had heard voices echoing down the streets.
There had been people talking and laughing along the main road.
She had passed a man leaning against a wall smoking a cigarette, the door to the kitchen propped open with a brick.
The city at night was full of sounds and smells, the stench of gasoline and concrete mingling with the traces of millions of people, a cornucopia of sensations that even an adept tracker with vampiric senses would have a hard time distinguishing.
“No,” Lavinia said thoughtfully.
“Let’s see if we can find any more.” Octavia straightened, wiping her hands on her black jeans, and investigated further down the alley.
Lavinia didn’t blame her—the stench here was truly despicable, rot and rancid oil, the cloying sweetness of decay.
She couldn’t wait to be free from it herself.
Rather than getting used to it, every breath was a fresh assault.
Bracing herself for a moment, lamenting the events that led up to this, Lavinia started removing the garbage bags one by one.
The splatter pattern suggested that someone had leant against the wall here only yesterday.
The ripeness of the bags would have been just as apparent then—it was hardly a place anyone would choose to rest. Unless, of course, the bags hadn’t been in this spot yesterday.
She heaved up one after another, disturbing a rat that skittered away carrying its lunch between its jaws.
Then, she found what she hoped she wouldn’t.
An arm lay cradled between the grey plastic of two bags, the skin a white pallor that could only mean death.
“Found him,” she called over to Octavia.
She removed two further bags, and his torso was revealed.
Another unveiled his face. He was in his forties, his black hair thinning along his crown.
His brown eyes stared into space, bloodshot.
A gash had been torn along the side of his neck, blood clotted on the ragged flesh.
A streak of blood had soaked through his jumper in a large vertical stripe, suggesting that he’d been upright when he was wounded. But if he had been killed here…
“There’s not enough blood.”
“No,” Octavia agreed. “Not by a long shot.”
Very little blood had pooled underneath the body. The body had been drained.
“Do you think it’s the same guy?” Octavia asked.
Lavinia assessed the way the body was positioned.
He’d abandoned the man close to where he’d killed him, had only made a token attempt at hiding it.
Hadn’t cared who found him. Lavinia leaned closer to the body and sniffed, but the scents didn’t provide any additional information.
She only smelled death and decay, with the sharpness of cologne that still wafted from the man’s skin.
“Yeah,” she finally said. “Unless we find any evidence to the contrary, I think we should assume it’s him.”
“How many does that make now?”
“Six.” Six dead humans, their bodies haphazardly dumped.
The first had simply been left where she’d fallen.
An older woman in her sixties, still clutching her purse, her neck and wrists ravaged by teeth over and over.
Witnesses mentioned a man fleeing the scene, but no usable description was given beyond that.
The second, a teenage boy—he’d been living on the streets for a couple of months and was found stuffed behind some bushes close to the doorway he’d been sleeping in.
The third, a young woman found floating in the Thames.
Although the body had been bloated by the water, the injuries to her neck were unmistakable.
Two others followed, their bodies dumped unceremoniously in places much like this one.
And now another dead body, another victim.
Although not all bodies had been found immediately, a pattern was emerging.
The time between deaths was decreasing, the killing seemingly indiscriminate.
There might be more victims, waiting for someone to find them, to acknowledge them.
Except for the young woman who had drifted several miles among the currents of the Thames, he hunted within roughly a ten-mile radius.
Lavinia had been so close to him yesterday.
It had only been luck, and the interference of the demon, that had prevented her from coming across this body—or his killer—sooner.