Shardeaters

*****

Chapter One

*****



Peace, peace, she cannot hear

Lyre or sonnet.

All my life’s buried here

Heap earth upon it.

- Oscar Wilde


Vampires are curious by nature; Schuldig had no inhibitions to wander through the tastefully furnished hallway and interrupt Crawford’s conversation in the living room. A scantily clad female lounged on their expensive green velvet couch - this was the day and age when a woman who showed the barest hint of cleavage was automatically deemed a whore - and smoked a black cigarette pinched between lace-gloved fingers. Christine de Chanel, as was her stage name these days, had been an actress for most of her several lives; her current existence on London’s stages had brought her to Schuldig’s attention, and now she was a frequent guest in the house on Shaftesbury Avenue.


Christine had dark, auburn tresses and sharp grey eyes set over a generous mouth habitually painted a deep crimson. Originally hailing from Ireland, she had a fierce temper and could be as cruel and unforgiving as death itself. She smiled at Schuldig as he walked into the living room and extended her hand; he caressed the inside of her wrist with the tips of his fingers and sat down on the broad arm of the couch.


 "You’re a miracle of nature, Schuldig. Seeing you always lightens my nights."


He took the compliment with a smile. Christine had tried to work her way into his bed ever since they had met; her methods ranged from obvious to subtle to brutally blatant and never failed to amuse him. It was a game between them. He had not made up his mind yet if he should eventually give in to her. She was beautiful, but it was a beauty he liked to admire from a distance. There was something in her eyes that let him know she could break his heart. For now he was content to tempt fate once in a while.


 "Christine just told me that we have newcomers in London," Crawford sat in the easy chair next to tall French windows, legs crossed, his fingers laced in his lap. His expression was frozen in what Schuldig liked to call his ‘predator’s glare’ - eyes slightly narrowed, a mean twist to his lips. On the antique table to his left, a pair of fine white gloves lay neatly folded, ready to be put to use. "Tell him, Christine."


The actress swept her hair back and revealed one perfectly white and round shoulder, settling herself more comfortably against the pillows on the couch. "We seem to have an infestation of cats."


 "Felidae?"


 "The very same. Our little brothers and sisters arrived on a ship some two months ago and have settled down in Mayfair since." She brought the cigarette to her lips and inhaled deeply. The blue fumes swathed her even, pale face and wandered up toward the ceiling. "I learned it by accident, really. I was walking down Piccadilly when I saw them standing at a street corner, four of them all dressed in black rags, their eyes all but eating me alive when I came closer." Dramatically, Christine widened her eyes, growled, and then deflated quickly, smoothing an invisible crease out of her skirt. "They were quite polite. I asked them what they were doing here and they told me they now lived in Mayfair and had been doing so for two months almost. Quite disturbing, if you ask me."


The gentle breeze disturbed the blue fumes of Christine’s cigarette and stirred the curtains before the windows. Schuldig pondered her words, picking at his hair. Christine’s description of the Felidae as their ‘little brothers and sisters’ was a dramatic understatement - of all three Dark Breeds, the catkin were the oldest and often considered the most vicious. Schuldig knew they lived in clans whose numbers often rose into the hundreds, led by a single Felidae whose word was the law among the others.


 "It is uncommon that an entire clan suddenly appears here," Crawford said, his eyes lingering on Schuldig. "While I wouldn’t quite call it disturbing news, I’d say it’s definitely interesting. I’ve not seen hair or whisker of one of them yet. They aren’t usually that...inconspicuous."


 "Mayfair, you say?" Schuldig turned to Christine. "That’s unusual. Mayfair is the playground of the rich and famous" - and here Christine smiled, because she lived close by - "and not the sand box of the cats. I’d say that their arrival can’t have gone unnoticed, but I wonder why we haven’t heard anything else yet."


Aside from living in clans, the Felidae were hunters and said to be even blood-thirstier than the Vampires. They did not live on blood alone but needed meat as well, and like the Wer their tastes ran toward human meat once in a while. Schuldig shuddered to think what an entire clan of Felidae could do to a distinguished society like the one living in Mayfair. Soon the Georgian houses on Chesterfield Street and the brick buildings on Mount Row would be awash with blood and ringing with the echoes of screams.


Yet it apparently had been two months already and the London Times had not reported any gruesome killings yet, aside from the usual drama playing itself out on the less distinguished streets. Schuldig rose and walked to the window, looking out at the dark sky before he let his eyes wander over the people drifting along Shaftesbury Avenue. It was a few hours until midnight.


 "I can see what you’re thinking," Crawford said behind his back, his voice ringing with barely hidden amusement. "Remember that we have cards for Christine’s performance of ‘Ophelia’ tonight."


 "And you’d better not miss it!" Christine was a performer at heart; even her protest seemed staged. "I’ve worked so hard at this part and I want to show off to you two."


Schuldig heard her rise from the couch and approach him, the taffeta of her wide skirts rustling. She slung her arm around his and gripped his hand. "Please come?"


 "All right," he said with a sigh, "But it had better be worth it. I’ll bring eggs."


Christine giggled and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. He gave Crawford a suffering glance over the top of her head and received a wide grin. Crawford picked his gloves up from the table and pulled them on, perfecting the illusion of English gentleman he presented to the world of the mortals.


 "We should hunt before we pay homage to Christine tonight," he said. "I’m hungry."


---


Halfway through the performance, Schuldig slipped out of the small theatre and collected his coat at the entrance. Christine would be furious if she noticed at all, but his curiosity had been piqued and that which was usually described as a cat’s deadly habit now drew him toward Mayfair.


London had been his home for so many years now that Schuldig considered the city his, along with every single inhabitant. There currently lived fourteen Vampires in London and its suburbs. As he crossed Piccadilly Circus with its imposing buildings around the plaza in the middle, Schuldig watched the mortals, on foot or in carriages, on their way back home from the theatres and other places of entertainment. Here and there, a less well-fed and scrubbed face stood out amid the masses, eyes dark with hunger and burning with greed as the prostitutes and beggars stood at the curb or hid in the archways of the houses. Normally the seedier populace of London kept to what were their appointed hideouts, but with the first tentative breaths of winter on the wind it was not unusual that their hunger drove them into the parts of London that were reserved for more ‘noble’ folks.


Beggars and prostitutes were what Schuldig considered ‘cheap meals’ because they were easy to find and easier to kill, their blind need for money, their diseases and despair often making them blind to dangers a fed and cautious person might have seen. He loved them because no one missed them. It was not unusual for a prostitute to disappear from her appointed road and if the body was hidden well enough no one would miss her or ask questions. London’s East End was ruled by ruthless street gangs whose methods of reign often appeared crueller to him than his very own murderous nature.


They all lived in London, they all were his to feed on, to live next to; the beggars, the prostitutes, the noble gentlemen and ladies in their carriages, the street vendors and performers. Even the cutthroats and thieves were his. Schuldig was equal-opportunity when it came to satiating his lust for blood. He made no difference between rich and poor; the difference lay in the victims themselves, in their struggle, their unique taste, and their alluring mortal shells. Even prostitutes could be beautiful, no matter how emaciated they were. Some of the Irish women, their mothers driven from their homeland in the harsh winter of 1847, were so captivating with their raw, wild beauty that they could rival any noble lady’s looks. Schuldig had once caught one and brought her to the house on Shaftesbury Avenue, keeping her alive and well for two weeks, just to hear her voice as she spoke of the hills and plains she came from.


He walked on and soon came to Green Park, the lights of Buckingham Palace shining through the trees in the distance. He noticed the difference in the air at once - the senses of all Dark Breeds were preternaturally sharp and Schuldig had made sure that his stayed sharp despite the easy life he had - and turned into Berkeley Street, sniffing as he walked into the heart of Mayfair. The tall, lovingly kept houses on either side of the street emitted an aura of wealth, safety and power, but here and there he saw the shadow of a mortal linger behind the curtains, staring out into the night. It was not unusual that a more sensitive mortal would pick up what to Schuldig smelled like an expensive, exotic perfume.


As he neared Bond Street with its luxurious shops, he picked up a different scent that was by far more familiar. It was not until he reached Brook Street and in particular the famous hotel Claridge’s that he could determine where the scent came from; in a narrow street a few houses down from the hotel, a broken gaslight lamp giving a fitting eerie illumination to the scene, he found what he was looking for.


They were three, two females and a male, bent over the small body of a child that lay at their feet and whimpered softly. Thin, grubby hands grappled at the bloodied ground as the child, a girl judging by its torn and dirty skirt, tried to crawl away from its captors, but one of the females put her foot on the girl’s back and held her down. There was a loud crunch as the girl’s spine broke. She whimpered once more and then was silent.


The Felidae did not notice Schuldig or did not pay any attention to him as he slowly walked up to them. The female who had killed the child, a tall, forbidding creature with long black hair and fiery eyes, yanked the corpse up from the ground and tore into the soft throat, biting out a large chunk. In the dirty light of the gas lamp, Schuldig could see her teeth; long, slightly hooked canines, bloodless lips stretched over them as she chewed and swallowed. He stopped a few lengths away from them and watched. The female took one more bite and handed the child’s corpse over to her companions as though they were sharing an apple, lifting a corner of her shirt to wipe her mouth and chin clean of blood. It was then that Schuldig noticed that she was wearing trousers like a man. Where her lifted shirt revealed her stomach, muscle knotted the skin.


He had dealt with Felidae before, once. These creatures did not appear to be that much different from the ones he had seen in his native Cologne. There was the same hunger in the female’s eyes as she turned to him and stepped away from her companions, the same aura of danger emitting from her as she watched him with narrowed eyes and slightly bared teeth. Christine had, as always, exaggerated. The three Felidae wore black, but their clothes were not in rags. The two females had long hair that hung wildly about their shoulders, but it was clean, as was their skin. The male was broad-shouldered, his hair trimmed above his ears.


Schuldig squared his shoulders and let the female look her fill. She kept her teeth bared and slowly advanced on him, taking small, cautious steps until she stood no more than arms’ length away. Now that she was closer to him, Schuldig saw that she wore small silver hoops in both ears. Boldly, she reached out and touched his hair, apparently admiring the long sunset-coloured strands that spilled over his shoulders and hung to the middle of his back. Then she dropped her hand and took a step back.


 "Vampire. Why do you interrupt our meal?"


Her voice was dark and had a slight growl to it. She had an accent he could not place - Eastern Europe something - but her English was easy to understand. Schuldig nodded a late greeting and said, "My name is Schuldig. Bring me to your leader."


The other two Felidae had meanwhile finished their ‘meal’ as well; the corpse of the child had disappeared into a rough sack that hung over the male’s shoulder, tied with a strong cord. Only a few small pools of blood remained where the kill had taken place. They hovered on either side of the black-haired female, watching him with an intensity any other being would have found unnerving. As a Vampire, Schuldig knew he was capable of the same intensive stare, so being subjected to one did not faze him. He calmly waited for the female to make up her mind.


 "Come along," she finally said. "My name is Anna."


The other two ran ahead, disappearing out of his sight so quickly they were like shadows fleeing from the light. Anna walked more slowly, now and then glancing at him as she led the way back to Berkeley Street. They crossed Piccadilly and walked along Green Park until they reached a house on the corner of at the very end of the park, almost within shouting distance of Grosvenor Place. The scent was so strong here, a mixture of spice and blood, that Schuldig’s nostrils flared as they stepped onto the porch of the house. It was large, Georgian style, and it looked expensive. He wondered how a clan of Felidae could afford such a house - if they indeed had bought it, and not simply murdered its inhabitants as he had learned they sometimes did - when Anna snickered and turned to him.


 "Vampires aren’t the only ones who have money."


He narrowed his eyes at her. "Do you usually listen to the thoughts of everyone around you?"


 "You think so loudly I could not help it." She knocked on the door. The male who had been with her opened it for them, giving Schuldig a curious stare as he stepped inside. "We are new in this city. We are not used to all its rules yet."


The teasing undertone of her voice annoyed him, as did the broad smile she gave as he wrinkled his nose at the smell inside the house. It stank of cat. Schuldig followed the male’s outstretched arm and walked up a broad flight of stairs. The house had two floors; both had been cleared of any signs of its original owners. There were no paintings on the walls, no furniture, not even carpet. How long would the Felidae be able to keep this place before the neighbours became suspicious and alerted the police? On the first floor, Schuldig stopped dead at the sight of at least twelve cats sitting on either side of the hallway, silent and still as statues, only their eyes moving as he walked past them toward the door at the end of the hallway. The door was half-open, allowing glimpses of dark furniture and the flickering light of candles. He did not wait for an invitation and pushed the door open.


The room was large and once might have been airy, but now it seemed every single piece of furniture had been removed from the other parts of the house with the sole purpose of stuffing them all in here. There was no order whatsoever - several chairs and tables lay upturned or stacked on top of other furniture, closets faced the wall instead of facing away from it. Mirrors lined one entire wall from which the tapestry had been cut or scratched off. As he closed the door, movement from above made him look up to see that large sheets of varying colour had been affixed to the ceiling; it made the already stuffed room look like a cave or an oriental harem. Large candles sat on every available flat surface, some of them lit to cast everything into a soothing, warm light.


To Schuldig’s right, a large four-poster bed had been pushed sideways against the wall, the floor in front of it heaped with blankets and pillows. His impression of an oriental harem only deepened as he became aware of the cats lounging there, stretched out lazily on their bellies or their sides, as colourful as the pillows, watching him through large, luminous eyes. The bed had been cleared of sheets and pillows. On the white mattress, a young man sat, holding a kitten on his lap.


 "I assume you are the leader of this clan," Schuldig walked to the edge of the pillows and sheets, the cats motionless as though his presence did not disturb them at all. "What is your name?"


The young man was tall and slender and had dark, tousled hair of a colour Schuldig could not determine in the flickering candlelight. He was pale, but it was a uniform pallor and not the whiteness of disease or famine. He wore no shirt, only dark pants, and no shoes, one leg curled under him and the other stretched out over the edge of the bed. His hands never stopped moving and continued to pet the kitten on his lap as he looked at the Vampire, his eyes reflecting the light so intensely that Schuldig realized they were indeed amber.


 "Farfarello," he finally said. "And I’m indeed the leader."


He said nothing else, apparently waiting for Schuldig to state his business or leave. His expression gave nothing away. There was something on his cheeks...Schuldig carefully manoeuvred over the lounging cats and stepped closer to the bed, curiosity momentarily winning over caution. He had dealt with the Felidae before but this was the first time that he was that close to one of their leaders. As far as he understood their clan system, the leaders did not necessarily have to be very old to be chosen; yet he had heard often enough that they were supposed to have special powers. Farfarello had the ageless face of a member of the Dark Breed; he could have been fifteen or twenty-five, with his true age ranging from a hundred to a thousand years.


 "I’m Schuldig. What are you doing here?"


Farfarello continued to give him a blank stare. "What do you mean?"


 "What are you doing in London?" Schuldig clarified, close enough to the bed now that he could clearly see the faintly raised lines on the Felidae’s face. "I would have thought that as the leader, you would make your presence known to the Elders of the city."


He had thought the light to play tricks on his eyes before, but now he saw that Farfarello had four scars on the right side of his face. They were ever so slightly darker than the rest of his skin and so fine that a mortal might not even see them. They looked like markings or signs; one short scar started at the highest peak of his eyebrow and trailed out toward his temple, the other three were single, straight lines beginning on the cusp of his cheekbone sharply beneath his eye and reaching into the hair above his ear. He also wore an earring in his right ear, set high in the delicate shell.


At the mention of Elders, something shifted and flickered in Farfarello’s eyes. "I am an Elder in my own right. What we do here is our business."


The cats lounging on the sheets and pillows sat up as though they had caught on to the slight undertone of hostility in their leader’s voice. Schuldig glanced back at them and straightened up as Farfarello rose as well, cradling the kitten to his chest with one hand. Standing, he was a little smaller than the Vampire but his arms and upper body were lined with muscle. The scars on his face were not the only ones. Randomly scattered over his chest, shoulders and arms were lines similar to the ones on his face - signs of struggles for power amid his clan, or more signs of his ‘royalty’?


 "To put your worrying soul at ease, we come in peace." Farfarello bore Schuldig’s study of his own person with the famous stoicism of the animal his kin was named after. "We don’t intend to take anyone’s territory and seek no trouble unless others seek trouble with us."


 "Yeah, the Felidae are known for living oh so peacefully next to the other Shadow Breeds." Schuldig snorted and shook his head. At his words, two or more cats in the room hissed, but he paid no attention. "The last time I had to deal with your kind was because a clan literally ripped the entire populace of a small town apart."


Farfarello bared his teeth at Schuldig and growled in the back of the throat, letting the Vampire know that he had hit a nerve. It was the first time since they laid eyes on each other that he showed any kind of emotional reaction to the Vampire’s words. "No cat attacks without a reason. On the contrary, it is the Vampire and the Wer that seeks us out, taking us for playthings and easy prey because we spend half of our lives as cats. Do not confuse history with hearsay here, Vampire." He set the kitten down on a pillow and stalked toward the door, grabbing a bundle of cloth off a table on his way. "I’ve had no reason to make our presence known here all too soon thanks to previous experience."


The audience with the king was obviously at its end. Schuldig watched with narrowed eyes as Farfarello shook the bundle of cloth and pulled it over his head; it was a shapeless tunica with long sleeves and a hood that hid most of Farfarello’s face when he pulled it over his head.


 "And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to hunt."


It was a clear dismissal. Schuldig gave him a condescending look and left through the door Farfarello held open for him, seeing that the cats in the hallway had not moved in the meantime. He had not noticed it before, but now he saw that these were no ordinary house cats. Their fur was ragged and knotted in several places, some of them had torn ears and scarred maws, and all of them were quite bulky. They looked more like miniature lions than cats. Warriors. The word passed through Schuldig’s mind as he watched them watch him. It made him wonder what their king looked like in his Felidae form.


Farfarello walked next to him as they left the house, as though he wanted to make sure that Schuldig really left it and not lingered behind. As they stepped outside, the Vampire drew in a deep breath. The clear air was a blessing to his senses, the harsh, distinct aroma of cat and blood clinging to his tongue and teeth as if he had bitten one of them. He had to get out of these clothes as quickly as possible.


He turned to Farfarello, who stood at the curb and watched him from under the large hood of his tunica. "I assume this won’t be the last time we see each other. Let’s hope it will be in peace."


The Felidae seemed unfazed by the clear warning in Schuldig’s words and shrugged. Without another word he walked away from the house and soon disappeared out of the Vampire’s sight, walking so softly that not even Schuldig’s sharp ears could detect the sound of his footfall. Glancing after Farfarello until he was out of sight, Schuldig turned back to the house once more. Behind the dark windows he saw the shapes of many cats sitting on the windowsills. Although he knew that no Felidae would ever willingly attack a Vampire Schuldig could not get rid of the impression that they were watching him hungrily. It made for a peculiar sensation.


Schuldig was not used to be looked at as though he was dinner. It was usually the other way around.


---



He returned to Shaftesbury Avenue an hour later. The audience with the leader of the Felidae had not so much given him a lot to think about but left him somewhat unsettled for reasons he could not name; it was as though Farfarello had purposely kept something from him. The sensation had settled in the pit of his stomach when he left Mayfair and had not gone away since. Schuldig tried to imagine what it was, what had not been said. He came to no satisfying conclusion. There was no reason to assume that the sudden arrival of the Felidae clan meant anything in particular for him and the other Vampires in London. If Farfarello wanted to keep the reasons of their presence a secret, Schuldig had no justifiable reason to drive him away unless that secret endangered his life.


In fact, perhaps he had acted a little too rashly and drawn too much from his previous experience in Cologne. Back then, a clan of Felidae had indeed torn so viciously into the population of a suburb that within a few days more than a hundred corpses were found on the streets. Schuldig and two other local Vampires had gone out to hunt the catkin down, killing them one after the other. It had not been so much as revenge but an act of precaution; superstition and hearsay were mightier than the sword and witch hunts had been a weekly occurrence back then. With the death of the catkin the killings had stopped. Neither Schuldig nor the other two Vampires understood why they had started killing in the first place, and none of the Felidae they caught gave them an answer to their question. It was as though the entire clan had suddenly gone insane. In the end it did not matter anymore. The killing had stopped. He could continue his life without having to worry about exposure.


Crawford sat in his usual place by the window as he entered the apartment, reading by the light of the fire. Without looking up from the book on his lap he said,


 "Christine was not amused. She told me to tell you that she expects a lot of flowers to make up for your sudden disappearance from the theatre."


Schuldig nodded and slipped out of his coat, seeing out of the corner of his eye how Crawford wrinkled his nose. He went to his bedroom and undressed, stuffing the clothes into a hamper to have them washed later, and took a bath before he returned to the living room. Crawford had not moved in the meantime but the book he had been reading now lay on the small table next to his chair.


 "So you found them. Where are they staying?"


 "In a corner house in Mayfair, at the end of Green Park. I’m assuming they killed the original inhabitants." He sat down on the couch and put his feet up. "An entire house full of cats but I doubt that were all of them. If it was, it’s an awfully small clan."


Crawford tapped his finger against his lips, looking at the crackling flames of the fire. He seemed to give Schuldig’s words some thought and said nothing for long minutes, during which Schuldig again went through his meeting with Farfarello. The more he thought about it the more he knew Farfarello had kept something from him.


 "Well, I say we don’t pay too much attention to them," Crawford finally said. "I don’t think they’ll interfere with anything that concerns us; let them have Mayfair as long as they don’t leave corpses everywhere."


He thought back to the child and the flickering gaslights, remembered Anna as she put her foot on the girl’s back and broke her spine. It sent a shudder down his back, the cold, ruthless way with which she had gone about it. Schuldig heeded few rules when it came to mortals, but children had always been off-limits to him. It was not their innocence or their youth; it was the easiness with which they could be caught. He liked to play with his food once in a while and a child was hardly a worthy opponent.


 "Have you ever heard the name Farfarello?" Schuldig asked.


Crawford frowned. "Only in a book. Dante Alighieri, ‘The Divine Comedy’. I have a copy of it somewhere in my collection. It is the name of a demon, if I recall correctly."


 "That is the name of their leader. Quite an interesting creature and as quiet as the proverbial grave. But he has a temper." He recalled the ‘harem’ of cats in the room, saw Farfarello’s hands move over the soft fur of the kitten on his lap, and wondered if what saw had been a father stroking his child. The thought required some severe bending of his mind before he was able to process it. "He said they come in peace and don’t want trouble."


 "Then let’s not give them any."


"Since when are you so lenient toward invaders?"


The other Vampire gave a small shrug and picked his book up from the table, flipping to the page he had marked with a slip of paper. "Perhaps because I’ve never had to directly deal with Felidae before. Now if it were a clan of Wer it’d be a different story, but they aren’t and it isn’t. They haven’t done anything to me. They’re no danger to me personally unless they endanger my very existence. We’re not in the Dark Ages anymore, Schu. Live and let live."


 "And yet you called their sudden appearance here ‘interesting and uncommon’." He swung his legs over the edge of the couch and sat up, combing the tangles out of his hair with his fingers. "Ah well, perhaps you’re right. Let’s see what happens."


---


Nothing happened. Three months passed before Schuldig so much as saw a Felidae again, and by the time it came to pass he had almost forgotten about his meeting with their leader. He spent two weeks trying to placate Christine, who was furious about his disappearance from the theatre during her performance but quickly gave in to his apology as he presented her with a bouquet of flowers and an expensive pearl collier. She listened to his narration of how he had met Farfarello but shrugged her shoulders as he mentioned how he felt about it all.


 "Cats," she said, and there was a derisive tone to her voice, "Never give you a straight answer. That much I’ve learned. You shouldn’t pay too much attention to them."


 "And what should I pay attention to?" he asked, knowing full well what she would answer.


 "Me." Christine didn’t disappoint him. She slung her arms around his neck and smiled at him, all teeth. "What else?"


The end of the summer brought with it a heat wave its likes Schuldig had not experienced in a long time. Even during the night the air was humid and heavy, and lightning frequently cracked the sky, bathing the skin of his victims in the hues of violet and blue. Heavy rainfalls turned the cobblestone streets of London’s East End into mudslides. The bloated corpses of rats floated in the large puddles of rainwater. An outbreak of cholera in the poorest corner of London’s East end occupied the London Times for two weeks before an aggressive move suggested by Queen Victoria herself put an abrupt end to the quickly spreading disease; the corpses were burned in large heaps and the sick treated in public hospitals that for once made no difference between rich and poor. Schuldig amused himself by following reports about a particular member of the royal family who caught the disease from a prostitute and spread it to his wife before the news feed trickled down, no doubt on orders from the queen herself.


The heat subsided as quickly as it had come, taking with it the storms and the lightning. He was glad. He was a Vampire, but even then he sometimes thought he could feel his very bones creak when he moved.


He was on his own during the first two weeks of September, rarely spending more than a few minutes with either of his friends. Crawford immersed himself in a crate of new books he had received from a trader in America, Christine was practising for her debut as Salome, and Schuldig was left to his own devices. He took long walks along the Thames and ventured into Mayfair twice, keeping away from the house near Green Park, though. His suspicion toward the Felidae - and that was it, he thought, pure suspicion brought on by his earlier experience with them - had faded entirely and made way for mild curiosity that he did not need to satisfy anytime soon.


On a quite chilly evening at the end of September he was intercepted on his way home. The young woman hanging onto his arm gave a shriek as Farfarello suddenly melted out of the shadows under a stone archway at the thankfully deserted Leicester Square and wordlessly stepped into their path. Even Schuldig was dumbfounded for a second, having neither heard nor smelled the Felidae prior to his sudden appearance. He quickly schooled his expression into a calm mask that Farfarello managed to shatter as he stepped forward and grabbed the young woman’s head in both hands. She died before she had the chance to utter another shriek, the sound of her snapping spine loud in the night.


 "What do you think you’re doing?" Schuldig asked as he caught the corpse before it hit the ground, fixing the Felidae with an acid stare. He kept his voice deceptively calm but inside he was fuming. The audacity! "You’ve just cost me my dinner."


Farfarello’s face was distorted by anger and his voice barely held in check as he said, "You’re coming with me."


He was wearing heavy boots, pants and the same shapeless tunica Schuldig had seen him in before, though now the hood was pulled down. His breathing was rapid as though he had run a long way. Schuldig looked for a convenient place where he could sit the corpse of the young woman down on the ground and felt Farfarello’s impatience as he took care to smoothen down her skirt and gown before he rose and turned around.


Schuldig had not meant to slap him quite as hard as he did but anger took the control out of his hands and sent Farfarello flying across half the square. He must have surprised the Felidae entirely with this attack; Farfarello landed with a loud, painful-sounding thud and lay motionless even as Schuldig walked up to him, staring up at the dark sky with wide eyes. Schuldig wondered if he had broken something but found that question answered as the Felidae rolled onto his side and got to his feet, shaking his head like a dog might.


 "That hurt," he said matter-of-factly, straightening up with an audible cracking sound coming from his spine. He seemed otherwise uninfected by a blow that would have killed a mortal.


 "You have one minute to tell me what’s so important that you had to kill my dinner for me," Schuldig let an edge creep into his voice, intentionally stepping closer to the Felidae until he towered over him. "That was rude, to say the least."


 "Drop the princess act and move," Farfarello said. In his impatience he reached out for Schuldig’s sleeve and growled when the Vampire shook him off easily. "Don’t you want to see the corpses?"


 "Corpses?" Schuldig snorted. There were corpses in London every day and he had no desire to see what Farfarello seemed to think was so important. "Why would I want to see two corpses?"


The way Farfarello rolled his eyes toward the sky amused him but he caught himself before he burst out laughing, and sobered up entirely as the Felidae reached into a pocket hidden somewhere on his tunic and produced a gleaming chain of pearls.


 "She was your friend, wasn’t she? Don’t you want to know what happened to her?"


He held the pearl collier Schuldig had given to Christine in his hand, stained with dried blood.


---


Farfarello’s hair had almost the same colour as the dried blood on Christine’s face, Schuldig observed numbly as he stood next to the corpse and stared down into sightless, cloudy grey eyes. He had noticed its unusual colour as they passed under the lamps of the Embankment and now it was everything he could think about as he looked at her face. He held the pearl collier in his hand, his fingers clenched so tightly around the smooth orbs that he felt several of them crack and shatter the longer he stood there, staring down at what was left of Christine.


He forced himself to look away from her face, at the rest of her body. There was not much left. Whoever, whatever had killed her had ripped off her legs and turned her lower body into a mangled mess of pale intestines and viciously torn flesh and skin. Her taffeta skirt, her favourite green one he noticed, had been ripped off shortly below her breasts, exposing the destruction of her body to the rest of the world.


The Thames moved sluggishly, sending a small wave over the corpse lying on one of the many natural gravel banks along the river. Christine’s loose tresses floated in the water like some bizarre kind of sea weed. Her intestines were pale snakes, the blood drained from them during the hours she must have lain here. Schuldig felt his stomach attempt to turn and took a deep, harsh breath, closing his eyes for a second. When he opened them again, one of her hands weakly moved in the water, a morbid parody of a wave.


He heard gravel crunch beneath heavy boots but did not turn, transfixed by that waving hand. Farfarello appeared at his side, arms crossed over his chest as though he was cold, and looked out across the river. He did not say a word but kept moving restlessly, stepping here and there, kicking at something in the gravel to send it skittering across the Thames, finally returning to Schuldig’s side.


 "Could you hold still for one damned second and let me..."


 "Mourn her? She’s dead. Keep her alive in your memory, that’ll serve her better."


Schuldig whirled around and would have struck Farfarello again, but this time his fist was intercepted by a surprisingly strong grip wrapping around his curled fingers and squeezing until he felt the small bones shift against one another. Over the top of his fist, Farfarello’s eyes were once again calm, cold, betraying none of his emotions. The Felidae held Schuldig’s fist for a moment longer before he let go and stepped back.


 "Dead is dead."


 "Shut up, heartless bastard." He turned back to the corpse and crouched down at her side. How long had she lain here? Who had killed her, and why? Schuldig felt bile rise in his throat as the stench of decomposition wafted toward him but he looked closely at the part of her body that spilled intestines like an offering to a hungry, dark god. "...my God. Who did this?"


The skin along the edges of the destruction was frayed, but here and there he saw stab wounds in Christine’s upper stomach. He could not imagine anything that had enough strength to tear a body apart; not even a Wer had that much strength and even if a Wer had done this, why was the body still here? They weren’t wasteful. They usually completely devoured their kill. Schuldig squeezed his eyes shut as the colour drained from the edges of the field of his vision.


Just two days ago he had visited her, watching one of her practise performances for her newest role. She had been so vibrant, so full of joy, that Schuldig believed the role of Salome would be her finest performance yet. And now she lay here, dead, destroyed, violated. Gone.


He must have faltered. The next thing he became aware of was Farfarello’s breath on his neck as the Felidae pulled him to his feet and said,


 "...land face-first in the fucking water, you idiot!"


Schuldig shrugged out of the hold and stumbled forward, back to Christine’s side. He ignored Farfarello’s annoyed sigh, he ignored the Felidae completely. Kneeling at the side of the corpse once more, he looked around. His mind detached from his body, clinically arranging facts. It was the only way he could deal with Christine’s death for now; thinking about the ‘how’ and ‘when’ distracted him from the carnage before him. Behind Schuldig, a little further down the river, the looming shadow of London Bridge led over to Thames to Southwark and its warehouses and factories. He could see the little boats and rotting docks at the riverside walkway and trailed his eyes over the grimy buildings at the edge of the river.


Although it was still the middle of the night, someone working over there, or strolling along the river, might have heard or seen something. Southwark was famous for its illicit offerings of pleasure because it had been out of city jurisdiction long enough to ensure that even today, the brothel, bear pub and restaurant owners considered their side of the river a town unto its own. Schuldig enjoyed the Elizabethan theatre in particular and knew that the streets of Southwark were never really deserted. There were prostitutes who lived and worked in houses facing the Thames; surely one of them must have seen something, heard something?


 "What makes you so sure she was killed here?" Farfarello’s voice intruded on his contemplations. "Look at the ground around you. There’s no blood anywhere and it hasn’t rained in the last few hours."


It seemed that the Felidae had an inborn talent to read the minds of their fellow Dark Breeds. It was annoying. Schuldig turned on his heel, rested his elbow on his knee, and looked up at Farfarello through narrowed eyes.


 "I would appreciate it if you stayed out of my head."


The Felidae shrugged and kicked at the gravel once more. "Can’t help it. You think too loud for me to miss it."


He ignored the comment and turned back, but Farfarello would not leave him alone. The Felidae’s shadow fell over Schuldig and the corpse, causing the Vampire to look up at him once more. He was both appalled and intrigued by the absence of emotion on Farfarello’s face as the Felidae looked at the corpse. Surely he must feel something at this tabloid of destruction?


 "That doesn’t faze you at all, does it? This sight?"


 "I’ve seen it too often," Farfarello said. "It stops getting to you after a while."


Suspiciously, Schuldig rose, forcing him to take a step away. "What do you mean, you’ve seen it too often?"


 "I said there was a second corpse, no?" The Felidae turned and started to walk away from Schuldig, throwing a look back over his shoulder at the Vampire who did not move from the side of the corpse. "It’s not far."


Schuldig did not want to leave Christine’s remains here, at the mercy of the Thames and the rats. Already he could hear them, their furry bodies moving close together further up the gravel outcrop, where fisher boats lay upturned, the paint of their undersides peeling. Rats made no difference between mortal and Dark Breed; flesh was flesh to them and food for their young. The thought of rats gnawing the flesh off Christine’s remaining bones made him reel once more.


But he stepped away from her and followed Farfarello up the river bank as curiosity won over emotion. If there was a second corpse he had to see it. They walked a bit further down the Embankment, closer to London Bridge, until they reached another gravel bank. Farfarello did not set foot on this one, but remained at its edge and pointed.


What Schuldig thought was two cats was one torn in the middle, the halves a few feet apart. Its fur was a light dirty grey that made its body blend in with the gravel; here and there it looked as though someone had shorn or ripped the fur off. There was something odd about it, though. Schuldig once more could not withstand the same curiosity that had made him follow Farfarello and walked over to the corpse, sucking his breath in as he saw in detail what had seemed so off about the cat’s body. What looked like shorn fur from a distance was skin shining through the coarse pelt. Human skin. Around the shoulders and the lower back of the cat, the light grey hairs covering the rest of its body had receded completely and given way to perfectly normal skin.


Curiosity pulled at him once more, and this time it was morbid.


He had to know. Ignoring Farfarello’s cry of outrage, he lifted the severed upper half of the corpse and pulled one eyelid up. What looked back at him was a sightless human eye, the pupil nothing but a pinprick surrounded by a brown iris. Although he had suspected he would see it, it still shocked him so much that he dropped the remains and took a hasty step back. The cat’s fur had left a thin film of grease and dirt on his fingers. Schuldig took out a handkerchief and frantically rubbed his hands, fearing for an absurdly long moment that this film would somehow seep through the pores of his skin. He threw the handkerchief onto the gravel and walked back to Farfarello, thoroughly disgusted.


 "Wretched bastard!" The Felidae was trembling with rage as though Schuldig had defiled the corpse somehow. "You just had to touch him, didn’t you?"


Surprised by the sudden outburst, Schuldig pushed Farfarello away as he advanced on him. "I thought dead is dead."


 "Accepting death and poking around in a corpse are hardly the same!" Shoulders hunched, Farfarello thrust his hands into the pockets of his tunica and glared at him. "I didn’t pull open her mouth to check if she’s a Vampire."


Suspicion reared its ugly head once more. Schuldig could not help it. He looked Farfarello up and down, considering the Felidae’s height, the breadth of his shoulders. He had not thought of it in a long time, but he suddenly remembered the female Felidae, Anna, and how she had broken her victim’s spine with ease. True, it had been a child, but bones were bones. Keeping his eyes on Farfarello, he circled him once, and then stopped directly in front of him, close enough to feel his breath stir the hair on his brow.


 "Then how do you know she’s a Vampire?"


Farfarello did not move while Schuldig walked around him, but the Vampire could tell it had made him uneasy. He must have picked some of his thoughts up again once more, too, because his mouth fell open and his eyes widened with incredulity, and he said, "You don’t think I...that’s ridiculous!"


 "How do you know?"


 "I can smell her. I can smell you."


It made sense. Standing so close to Farfarello and despite the foul odour of the Thames hanging in the air along the entire Embankment, Schuldig could detect the same exotic smell coming from the Felidae’s very skin. Spices, dust and blood. He moved his head forward like a snake and took a deep whiff, noting how Farfarello froze at the sudden closeness. There was no legit reason why to a Felidae, a Vampire should not have a distinct smell as well.


 "All right," Schuldig said, stepping back. "I believe you."


It did not subtract from the tenseness between them as they walked back to Christine. Schuldig wondered if Farfarello, as the leader of the Felidae, was simply going to leave the corpse of one of his kin on the bank of the Thames. Then he stood over Christine’s corpse once more and forgot about it. Oddly enough he wondered where the rest of her body was. He looked around the gravel bank and realized that what Farfarello had said was true; there was no blood anywhere, and even if the Thames had drained Christine’s completely there should have been evidence of a fight or at least of the slaughter. But the small pebbles around him and further up near the bank were clean. Apart from his and Farfarello’s traces there were no other signs of anyone having set foot on this bank lately.


What if she had not been killed here but further up the river, beyond London Bridge? He turned and looked at the construction stretched across the Thames and imagined the killer – or killers – standing there in the middle of the bridge, heaving Christine’s body over the railing and watching her sink in the waters. That her body would have been washed ashore at this very bank here seemed unlikely but was not impossible. The currents of Father Thames were strong and fast, they could push anything out onto the banks. It was one of the reasons why Schuldig did not like to discard of his victims this way.


A squeak roused him from his contemplations. Farfarello stood next to one of the upturned fisher boats, holding the wriggling form of an enormous grey rat in his hand. Its long pale tail swished furiously as the Felidae turned it this way and that, looking at it as though he was studying an object at the market. Schuldig’s stomach rebelled as he thought about Farfarello eating that thing until he remembered that the Felidae did not eat rats and mice like their animal counterparts. As he watched, Farfarello gripped the rat’s head in his free hand and twisted, the resulting crack startling Schuldig although he had anticipated it.


He could not suppress the sound of revulsion as Farfarello laid the corpse onto the upturned fisher boat and cut its tail off with a small knife he pulled from his boot.


 "Something you’re going to snack on later?"


 "Something for the kittens to try their teeth on," Farfarello said matter-of-factly, wrapping the tail in a piece of cloth he produced from a pocket of his tunica. "I have to go back. It’s getting late."


Schuldig watched him climb back up onto the Embankment, carrying the wrapped rat tail like a present. The feeling of something missing, something being left unsaid had not reappeared until now that Farfarello was about to leave him alone with Christine’s corpse. Whatever it was, Schuldig could not put his finger on it; the fact that Christine was dead did not seem to have anything to do with the Felidae clan’s presence in London and yet there was a connection somewhere. Farfarello had said he had seen this before. Did he mean he had seen dead Vampires before? Did it mean finding Christine’s corpse had not surprised him?


 "Wait!" Schuldig called out as the Felidae reached the Embankment. Farfarello glanced back over his shoulder. "Why did you get me? Why didn’t you just leave the corpse here?"


The answer was short and flippant and did nothing to ease Schuldig’s progressively darker mood. "Because I thought I’d play nice after you already accused me of not grovelling at your throne, Elder."


 "Why are you leaving now? Don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence that a Felidae and a Vampire get killed on the same day, at the same place?"


Farfarello turned around and crouched at the edge of the Embankment, giving Schuldig a stare he could not fathom. There was something off in those eyes, something distant and cold that made him think of insects encased in amber, preserved for all eternity. He suddenly wondered how old Farfarello really was.


Farfarello looked at him for a long time before he said, "Not on the same day. The brother has lain here for a week."


A week? Schuldig clenched his fingers and felt the oily film on them all over again. "So what were you doing here if you knew the ‘brother’ was dead?"


 "Checking to see if anyone was around. Don’t murderers have the habit of returning to the site of the murder?"


 "You know what that says about you, don’t you?"


Annoyed, Farfarello swiped at the air as though he was batting away the very thought Schuldig had right now. He stood and stuffed the rat tail into his pocket, balefully looking down at the Vampire corpse. "You should take care of that corpse. Come morning, there will be people all over the place."


Schuldig had not thought of that before. The thought of touching Christine now, of carrying her away, made him feel sick. All those trailing intestines, that wet hair, those soaked clothes... But Farfarello was right – a dead cat might go unnoticed. A dead Vampire would not, especially not if someone called the police and they took a look at Christine’s teeth. Pushing her back into the water was out of the question. The chance that the corpse might be washed ashore again further down the river was too great.


He looked at the corpse, not knowing what to do, until Farfarello’s footfall on the gravel interrupted him. There was an expression of deep annoyance on his face, paired with something Schuldig thought was impatience.


 "If you won’t or can’t do it, I will."


 "You’re not going to touch her, hairball."


 "Who said I’m going to touch anything, leech? I’m not the one who pokes around in corpses, unlike someone else on this gravel bank."


Schuldig would have answered to that insult but he was cut short by a strange sound. Before his very eyes, Christine’s soaked taffeta skirt suddenly caught fire and was slowly devoured by flames. Too dumbfounded to move at first, Schuldig watched the flames begin to eat at her hair before he managed to shake the surprise and shouted, "What are you doing?"


Farfarello’s eyes were narrowed in concentration as he bit out, "Taking care of the corpse." His right hand was held out palm-first, both directing the flames at the corpse and keeping them in check. Schuldig wanted to stop him and opened his mouth to tell him so, but a sudden roar of flames leaping at him forced him to retreat and curse silently. Farfarello gave him an acid stare and said something under his breath which caused the fire to burn higher, faster; within moments all that had remained of Christine’s clothes was gone. Naked and hairless, the pitiful state of the corpse ingrained itself even deeper into Schuldig’s mind. He clenched his teeth and felt tears threaten to spill down his cheeks.


A rancid stench quickly permeated the air around them. Schuldig could not bear it and stepped further away, finally turned around entirely and stared up at London Bridge through blurred eyes. His mind was doing cartwheels. He remembered speculating if the leader of the Felidae had any of those special powers folklore said the clan leaders usually had, but now that he was treated to a firsthand experience he could not bring himself to care about it. It did not matter.


Flesh sizzled as though water was poured onto a hot oven. Schuldig felt the heat at his back but did not turn around until the sizzling receded and made way for a more pronounced crackling. As that finally died down, he looked; the sight of the black, charred skeleton lying on the gravel bank was not as horrible as the sight of the corpse had been. In fact, the longer he looked at it the less he associated it with Christine. Christine was gone. What remained were bones that did not even deserve her name anymore.


Farfarello stood a little further away from the burned remains now, coughing. His cheeks were smudged with black grime and the whites of his eyes reddened. "You can take care of bones, no?" he asked, sounding strangely tired. The use of fire must have exhausted him. "I can’t burn those."


Schuldig nodded, once more feeling detached from everything. The only remaining emotion was emptiness as he slipped out of his coat to collect the bones. They made for such a small bundle. He made a makeshift sack of his coat and lifted it up.


He was surprised to find Farfarello still standing there, watching him. He had been so caught in his task that he paid no attention to the Felidae until now that he saw him.


On a whim, Schuldig said, "Come with me. You can take a bath at my place. It’s the least I can do by way of thanks."


Farfarello gave him a speculating look but followed him.


---


Schuldig insisted on a detour to St. Paul’s Cathedral on their way to Shaftesbury Avenue and expected Farfarello to object, but the Felidae was strangely silent. He walked behind Schuldig, so quietly that the Vampire looked back over his shoulder several times to see if he was indeed still there. Every time he looked, Farfarello seemed sunken into a world of his own, eyes focused on something only he could see. Perhaps the use of his fire had tired him more than Schuldig suspected.


They reached the ancient cathedral just as the horizon began to show its first patches of violet, heralding the coming morning. Schuldig thought it strangely adequate that Christine’s remains should be kept at St. Paul’s; it was also one of the few places in London he knew of where grave robbers were not all that common. He went around to the back of the monumental building, into a little graveyard surrounded by enough foliage to keep it private from prying eyes, and laid his makeshift sack on the ground as he selected a tomb. He paid no attention to Farfarello as he strained to push the heavy granite lid from the box below, the bones that already lay inside all but crumbled to dust.


When he turned to pick up his bundle, he found Farfarello perched on the edge of another tomb, knees drawn up to his chin. He was gazing at the tomb Schuldig had opened.


 "See something you like?"


 "A Vampire could have done it."


Schuldig lifted the bundle and carefully let it down into the tomb, saying a silent farewell. "Could have done what?"


 "Killed her like that. You pushed that heavy granite slab away as though it’s a straw mat."


He did not like the direction Farfarello’s contemplations were going and roughly shoved the lid of the tomb back into its place, giving the Felidae a sour look. "A Vampire didn’t do it."


 "What makes you so sure?"


He did not know. He knew. Walking over to Farfarello, Schuldig watched his eyes widen imperceptibly the closer he came, as though he was awaiting an imminent attack. "I just know it." He ignored Farfarello’s sudden jerk as he patted him down, searching for the pockets on the tunica, and sidestepped a kick that would have sent him flying backward. "Hold still."


 "And let a Vampire get his hands all over me?" Farfarello spat, twisting around onto his side to evade the questing hands. It only served Schuldig. His left hand suddenly slipped into the very pocket he had been looking for and touched the wrapped bundle that contained the rat tail. "Hey! What gives?"


Schuldig pulled the wrapped bundle out of Farfarello’s pocket and threw it into the bushes surrounding the small cemetery, withstanding the urge to wipe his fingers on his pants. "You’re not going to go into my house with that thing in your pocket."


The look on the Felidae’s face as he looked at where the rat tail had gone was so incredulous – and at the same time so sad – that Schuldig wanted to laugh despite it all. Then he remembered what Farfarello had said, that the rat tail was for the kittens to try their teeth on, and sobered. Chagrined, he realized that he might just have cost someone a much-desired toy. What he thought of as revolting might indeed have its uses for someone like Farfarello.


Farfarello slipped down from the tomb and stalked off without a word, making for the bushes. He gave a shout of anger as Schuldig caught him by the arm, yanking to get out of the grip, but the Vampire held tight and did not let go. Schuldig almost began to think that Farfarello would risk a dislocated shoulder or even a broken arm as he continued to struggle, when the Felidae suddenly relented and sighed, giving up in the face of Schuldig’s greater strength. He did not give up lightly, though. Schuldig could see the anger dancing in his eyes and felt the muscles beneath his fingers tremble.


 "You can get another rat tail," he said, and then: "Do you still want that bath?"


 "You’re the one who invited me to it," Farfarello pointed out.


"I’m the one who thinks we should talk about this," Schuldig answered.


 "I think you should go home and leave me in peace. What is there to talk about?" Farfarello suddenly gave another yank on his arm and nearly managed to free himself. "I don’t appreciate being manhandled. Let me go, you ass!"


He had to hand it to him; Farfarello did not give up lightly. But Schuldig wanted the Felidae to accompany him, wanted to talk to him. He had the suspicious feeling that if he let Farfarello go now, he would not see him again for another three months unless he actively sought him out. He quickly spun Farfarello around by the hold on his arm and tried to grab the other arm when the left sleeve of his shirt caught fire. Schuldig shouted more out of surprise than fear and reacted in a way Farfarello might not have anticipated: his hands moving so quickly the motion was a blur even to his own eyes, Schuldig grabbed Farfarello’s head and slammed it down on the edge of the nearest tomb.


As soon as Farfarello crumbled against the tomb the flames dancing up Schuldig’s arm disappeared, leaving behind scorched cloth and reddened skin. The Vampire gingerly ran his fingers over the skin and hissed as pain shot through his entire left arm and radiated into his shoulder. That had been unexpected. The fact that Farfarello would use his fire on a living Vampire – and indeed be able to do damage – was disconcerting. Schuldig wondered if fear or anger had driven the Felidae to this point but resigned himself to asking later.


If there was a later. Farfarello looked like a rag doll someone had carelessly tossed aside. A thin trickle of blood stained his chin and the skin above his right eyebrow and cheekbone was bruised and bleeding. Schuldig carefully ran his fingers over the Felidae’s head, fearing for a moment that he had cracked his skull, but as he pulled away Farfarello’s eyes rolled open and focused on him with some difficulty.


 "Bastard." His voice was faint, nothing more than a sigh. He did not protest as Schuldig gathered him up and sat him down on the tomb, cradling his head between his palms. "Fucking Vampire. You just can’t take a no, can you?"


As quickly as things had escalated they now calmed down; Farfarello was docile and leaned heavily on the Vampire as Schuldig set him on his feet. There was something about their very characters that made them opposed to each other, Schuldig realized. It was more than the different blood running through their veins, more than the cultural differences between them. He looked at the Felidae’s bowed head as they walked away from the cemetery. How little he knew of him. And yet he insisted on taking him home, insisted on talking to him. Hell, Crawford would go into conniptions about Schuldig dragging a Felidae into their home.


He had extended the invitation on a whim, but now that they slowly neared Shaftesbury Avenue like a pair of drunken comrades on their way home from the pubs, he wondered if that whim had not been intention. He felt the very same again he had felt the first time: that there was something the Felidae was not saying, something Schuldig should know about. He was not very sure of himself right now. Perhaps he was just taking Farfarello along to have something to distract himself with. It had worked so far; he had definitely not been thinking about the gruesome scene at the Thames while he was occupied with Farfarello. Trying to come to the grounds of Christine’s murder with the help of someone who had seen the corpse – and burned it, his mind added – might help him overcome the despair he felt at the loss of a friend.


Farfarello lost consciousness on the stairs up to the floor Crawford and Schuldig lived on, leaving it to the Vampire to carry him up. The flow of blood had stopped – in fact, the bruises on Farfarello’s face looked as though they were already beginning to heal – but his skin was clammy now, a slight sheen of sweat on his brow and cheeks. He had most likely acquired a concussion as Schuldig slammed his head down on the tomb. Sighing, Schuldig walked up the last set of stairs, wondering idly if the entire Felidae clan would be on his heels if it turned out he had permanently damaged their leader.


Death by cat. It was not nearly as funny as it sounded as he thought back to the miniature lions guarding Farfarello’s ‘throne chamber’ at the house in Mayfair.


 "What on earth..." Crawford opened the door before Schuldig had the chance to pull out his keys. He wore a robe and slippers, his hair was mussed, and the way his nose twitched let Schuldig know that he had smelled them. Rancid smoke clung to both their clothes and Farfarello added to the mix with his unique scent. Crawford stared at Farfarello, unconscious and pale in Schuldig’s arms. "Who is that?"


 "The king of the Felidae clan," Schuldig said matter-of-factly, pushing past his friend. In the hallway of their apartment, he turned and wondered how he should break the news of Christine’s death to Crawford. Christine had been mostly fixated on him, what with her quest to bed him, but she had been a friend of Crawford’s nevertheless, sharing with him his passion for dancing. He finally opted for bluntness, knowing no other way. "Christine is dead."


Crawford had been staring at Farfarello with unbridled curiosity but at Schuldig’s words his head snapped up. "What?"


 "Killed. Her corpse lay at the Thames, on a gravel bank near London Bridge."


 "You’re joking." Crawford’s started to laugh faintly, but it died away as he saw the seriousness on Schuldig’s face. He shut the door with a soft click and leaned against it, silent. Knowing he would need time to come to terms with the fact – and did they ever come to terms with the death of a friend, or a lover? – Schuldig turned and carried Farfarello into the bathroom, laying him out on the throw rug in front of their brass bathtub. He felt his brow, noting with a frown that his skin was hot now instead of clammy. Farfarello’s pupils were pinpricks swimming in a sea of amber, but as far as Schuldig could see they were the same size. What was going on with the Felidae? He occupied himself by heating water for a bath and listened carefully for sounds from the hallway.


He knew Crawford would not snap, would not shout or break things. Crawford’s sadness was much like his joy, his anger, and his despair: quiet, focused and deadly. There would be hell to pay later, when Crawford went out and vented his emotional turmoil on the mortal population of London.


Schuldig himself felt no anger, only a slowly sweltering desire to find out who had done it. That in itself could be more dangerous than the greatest fury, he knew. He glanced at Farfarello and remembered what he had done to the Felidae of Cologne during his attempt to find out if they were the ones responsible for the kills. Back then he had been driven by a relentlessness he had not known he possessed.


The minutes crawled. Crawford appeared in the doorway, hands clenched at his sides, as Schuldig began to pour hot water into the tub. "Tell me how."


 "Bloody and cruel." He kept his voice at a conversational level, knowing out of experience that keeping the details from his friend would only drive Crawford to ask until Schuldig surrendered every piece of information he had. "Her body was divided below the waist. Stab wounds further up, but whatever ripped her apart...must have used its teeth. The entire lower part of her body was missing. I have no idea if it’s still in the water or if it was...disposed of another way."


Schuldig could not bring himself to say ‘eaten’. It was a possibility he had thought of before, but the only creatures who would attack a Vampire and then eat them were the Wer. Like the Felidae, they needed meat to survive. But would a Wer attack a Vampire? Why? There were plenty of mortals in London to feed on. Furthermore, there currently were no Wer in London as far as he knew, and he could not imagine why one would venture from the woods and mountains they preferred to attack a single Vampire in the middle of a hectic, dirty city. He poured another bucket of hot water into the tub and shook his head at his own contemplations.


Crawford seemed to have pursued a similar line of thought and said, "It wasn’t a Wer. I don’t know of any in or around London." He narrowed his eyes and looked down at Farfarello’s still form. "What about them?"


Schuldig followed his gaze, setting the bucket down. "There was the corpse of a Felidae a little further up the river. Killed in much the same way." He thought back to the human eyes staring at him from a cat’s face and shuddered.


 "What did you do with the body?"


 "Bu...buried her. In a tomb at St. Paul’s Cathedral." There was no reason to disclose to Crawford the fact that Christine had not just been buried, but burned to a cinder by the very same Felidae now lying on the floor between them. Schuldig added cold water to the bathtub and then sat on its edge, rubbing his hands over his face. His palms smelled of smoke and grime. He needed a bath himself. "Did you hear anything unusual lately?"


 "No. In fact, I spoke to Christine tonight."


 "What?"


Crawford nodded. "She came by here after you’d left and asked me to accompany her to a dance."


 "When was that?"


 "A little before nine o’clock." Crawford’s fist impacted with the frame of the door, leaving a shallow dent in the wood. "I was going through a book and told her I’d go with her tomorrow. If only I’d gone with her then!"


Schuldig stared at his friend, trying to line facts up before his eyes. He had found – or rather, Farfarello had found Christine’s body somewhere before midnight because he had chanced upon Schuldig and his lady escort just a few minutes after. By that time, Christine had been dead long enough for the river to wash the blood out of her and spit her up onto that gravel bank – if she had indeed been carried there by the river. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made.


The Felidae moved on the throw rug, his eyes rolling behind their lids as though he was having a dream. It attracted both Schuldig and Crawford’s attention; they watched him roll onto his side and fall back again with a small moan as though he was in pain.


 "What happened to him? Is he ill?" Crawford asked, once again curious. He stepped forward and leaned over the prone Felidae, his hands twitching as though he wanted to touch him. "He looks like any young man to me."


 "Trust me, he’s more." Schuldig rose from the bathtub and selected a small vial of oil from their collection of bathing substances. As he opened the stopper, a scent not unlike the Felidae’s own unique scent made his nostrils flare. "As for what happened to him, I slammed his head down on a tomb."


Crawford did not ask and gave Schuldig a peculiar stare as he poured a few drops of the oil into the water. His eyes moved over the scorched sleeve of Schuldig’s shirt; he stepped back and leaned against the door’s frame once more as Farfarello’s eyes finally rolled open.


Had he been docile and calm before, the sight of two vampires so close to him alerted Farfarello. He was on his feet and retreated into a corner of the bathroom before Schuldig had the chance to say anything to him, staring at them with narrowed eyes. "Where am I?"


 "In our bathroom," Schuldig told him calmly. He nodded at the steaming tub. "There’s your bath."


That Farfarello was nervous, perhaps even afraid, was easy to see for both of them. He remained in the corner of the room, his body slightly hunched as though he was awaiting an attack, and watched every of their motions carefully, his breath rapid as it had been when he met Schuldig at Leicester Square. The vampire ushered Crawford into the hallway and said, "Take your time. It’s getting light out." Then he pulled the door shut and leaned against it. The only window in the bathroom was so small that Farfarello would never fit through it if he tried to escape.


 "Why did you bring him here?" Crawford looked at the door and shook his head. "He’s a Felidae for God’s sake! Do you have any idea what will happen if his clan finds out where it is, if they haven’t already? They’ll think we took him hostage!"


 "Lower your voice." He strained his ears, heard the sound of splashing water coming from behind the door, and, persuaded that Farfarello had accepted the offer, took Crawford by the arm and led him to the living room. "He was the one who led me to her corpse. If it hadn’t been for him we’d not know about Christine’s death until we read about it in the Times."


 "Still," Crawford insisted, "Bringing him here is a bad idea. Christine said she’d seen some of them hanging around Whitechapel and the Docklands lately. She thought they were up to something." He stalked into the centre of the living room and turned in a flurry of robe. "It begs the question why and how he found you. Why would he willingly search out a Vampire?"


What had Christine been doing in Whitechapel and more importantly, what had she been doing at the Docklands? They were the most dangerous and dirtiest part of London to date; Christine had preferred clean luxury to the grime-covered streets of London’s East End and all the other illicit little nooks of the city. Schuldig sunk into his thoughts, trying to make sense of it. Christine had mentioned the Felidae now and then but he had never detected anything more than a Vampire’s usual curiosity in her words. To think that she would seek them out, even follow them to places such as the East End, seemed impossible. He had known her to be curious, even a little adventurous at times, but she had never actively gotten herself in danger.


Until now. Now, danger had found and killed her.


He gave up trying to make sense of everything, his head feeling as though someone was slowly squeezing his brain in a tight fist. Around the closed shutters before their windows, the first rays of a cold, almost white sun crawled into the living room. Big Ben’s bells suddenly shattered the uneasy silence. Strange – the clock, one of London’s many landmarks, struck every hour but tonight Schuldig had not heard the bells for some reason.


Crawford looked at the rays of the sun painting striped shadows onto the floor and shook his head, giving a sigh that made him sound old and tired, as tired as Schuldig felt now. "It’s no use. It’s already daylight and we’ll never make heads or tails of this if we’re tired." He nodded in the direction of the bathroom. "Are you going to wait for him?"


Nodding, Schuldig sat down on the arm of the couch and said, "Yes. I have to talk to him. There’s...something about this all that tells me that Farfarello plays a role in this. I just need to figure out how."


 "Good night, then." At the doorway, Crawford stopped, seemingly considering. He turned back and asked, "Don’t you think it’s strange that a Felidae and Christine were killed in the same way and at the same side of the river, within walking distance?"


The same thought he had had earlier. "Farfarello said the Felidae had been dead for a week." Human eyes in a cat’s face...


 "What was he doing there, then?"


 "Waiting for the murderer to turn up? I don’t know, but that’s what he said. That’s one of the reasons why I have to talk to him." He disliked the tone of Crawford’s voice and recognized it as suspicion all too clearly; although Schuldig had not quite gotten rid of every suspicion as far as Farfarello’s part in all this was concerned he could not imagine that he directly had something to do with Christine’s death. It was too easy a solution to lay the blame on him or any of his kind. As much as Schuldig might mistrust the Felidae as a whole, he trusted Farfarello’s words that they sought no trouble. "We must find the others as soon as it is night. The least we can do is warning them that there is a killer in the city."


 "I will take care of that." Crawford inclined his head as though he was listening for sounds from the bathroom. "You always were the more inquisitive between the two of us."


He had to smirk. "Does this mean we are going to play detectives?"


 "Perhaps. Perhaps it just means that we are going to find whoever killed Christine and show him what it means to mess with Vampires."


Crawford left him alone in the living room. Although Schuldig’s mind was reeling with questions that needed answers, he fell asleep waiting for Farfarello to come out of the bathroom, strangely persuaded that the Felidae would not try to seek revenge for his treatment at the Vampire’s hands. The night’s happenings took their toll and sent him dreams so vivid and cruel that he slept uneasily; perhaps it was the light of the sun gradually shifting through the room. He did not know. In his dreams, the same scene repeated itself over and over again: him, at the Thames, staring down at Christine’s corpse. Pale snakes moving. She would open her eyes and surprise him, as though she had only played her death like she so magnificently performed the roles of the tragic heroines in her plays, and laugh at him.


 "Why Schuldig," she said in his dream, lying on the gravel bank in her green taffeta skirt, "Curiosity kills the cat!"


Her cold grey eyes were not hers anymore but the eyes of a cat.