Shardeaters

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Chapter Four

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Hands roughly trailed over his body, prodding him. Through the remaining shreds of darkness that clung to his mind like thick cobwebs, Schuldig heard a voice calling his name, but his lips refused to move, and there seemed to be something around his body, holding him down. At first he thought he felt arms around his chest and legs, but as he began to move he realized that they were not arms but belts.


Someone slipped a hand beneath his head, lifting it. He groaned loudly as a stab of pain shot from his brow down into his toes, spreading out along his spine like poison ivy. He opened his eyes, bright light from close by forcing its way past his lashes into the very depths of his brain, burning his nerves. Everything hurt. He felt some of the restraints around his body loosen and lifted a hand as soon as it was free, shielding his eyes from the light.


 "Schuldig? Wake up!"


The hurried quality of the familiar voice roused him completely. Through a bloody haze he saw George’s face very close to his own, and behind him he saw the fuzzy outline of another one. Probably Wilfred. The last of the straps were removed. George lifted him into a sitting position, one arm supporting his back, and carefully mopped his face with a wet cloth. Schuldig blinked furiously - the red haze obscuring his sight was blood - and saw the fuzzy outline behind George materialize into Wilfred. Thankfully, they had removed the source of the bright light - a lamp, he saw, held in Wilfred’s hand - from his direct view, sparing him another stab of pain.


Weakness kept him from moving on his own as he was lifted from the bed and put on his feet, George still keeping an arm around him. The other Vampire was speaking rapidly, telling him something about Crawford, about madness, that they had to hurry -


Why was he so weak? Why was he so hungry?


Lifting a hand once more, Schuldig gingerly touched his brow, dimly remembering that he had hit the shuttered window. Pain lanced him as his fingertips trailed over a swollen bruise above his eyebrow. He tried to take a step away from George and would have hit the floor had strong arms not caught him once more.


 "Sweet heavens, he drained him!" Wilfred’s hushed voice said close to his ear. He blinked as fingers touched his throat. How much time had passed? He batted Wilfred’s hands away and felt the puncture wounds himself, shuddering at the thought of teeth there, in his skin, sucking the blood out of him. Crawford would never do that to him. "George, sit him down. He’s going to faint if you keep him upright."


He let them manoeuvre him around and leaned his head against the wall as they put him on a chair somewhere in the apartment. His mind was in pieces, refusing to let him take hold of a single, clear thought. "What happened?" Even his voice sounded weak and distant to his ears.


 "That’s what I would like to know!" George’s words came like cannonballs, booming through the room. The Vampire was agitated and kept touching Schuldig, lifting a hand, turning it over. "Crawford comes into the Bear and tells us to take a look at you and we find you here, all strapped down like a madman in the asylum, and -"


 "George, shut up." Wilfred again, his voice more distant now. Schuldig heard something scrape over the floor and forced his eyes to focus past George’s shoulder. Wilfred was pulling something from one of the windows - they were in the living room - and threw it on the floor. A wooden board. Someone had boarded up the windows from the inside. Blinking, Schuldig gazed at the destroyed furniture around him. It seemed that all their tables had been taken apart, their legs scattered over the floor. "We need to get him someone to feed on. Everything else later."


 "Can you stand?" George asked, once more obscuring Schuldig’s view as he bent over him. "You have to come outside with us. Dragging someone up here is too dangerous."


 "Crawford...where is he?" Cradling his head in both hands, Schuldig leaned forward, cringing as a board hit the floor with a particularly loud sound. His injuries, his hunger - they made him even more aware of things preternatural senses already picked up easily. "He shoved me face first into the window. I don’t remember anything else."


 "Crawford’s gone crazy," Wilfred said darkly. "Told us he’s gone a-hunting."


Hunting? "Crawford told me he killed Theodore..."


The acid silence following his words made him think of nothing good. He forced his eyes open past the pain and saw the other two staring at him, their expressions frozen. Wilfred threw the last board down onto the ground and cursed under his breath.


He tried to make sense of everything and failed once more, his thoughts scattering as soon as he tried to concentrate. Why had Crawford shoved him into the window and strapped him down? Why had he killed Theodore?


 "Schuldig, we need to get going," George said urgently. "You need blood. Leave the hunting to me and Fred, we’ll take care of that. God! What is going on here?"


He thought he knew, and the more he thought about it the more it made sense. He just was not sure if he wanted to believe it. He let George help him stand up and leaned heavily on the other as they stumbled down the stairs, the fresh night air a slap to Schuldig’s senses. By the time they reached the street he was so hungry, so desperately weak, that even George’s physical closeness was tantalizing. Paying no attention to where they were going, he waited, leaned against a dank, crumbling brick wall, until George and Wilfred returned to him, dragging a wildly struggling man between them.


The man stank of urine and sweat - a homeless, a drifter - but he was past the point of giving a damn. He crushed his throat in both his hands as he drained him, drinking so quickly and hungrily that he felt sick and had to sit down again when he was done. Yet the blood rejuvenated him, chasing away the hunger and some of the pain. He was left with a raging headache radiating from the bruise on his brow and a fainter, more delicate ache sitting in the side of his throat, where Crawford had drained him according to George and Wilfred.


They had dragged him into a narrow street leading from Shaftesbury Avenue to the Strand. The houses stood so close on either side that he thought their roofs were touching as he looked up, trying to find his bearings. With the feeding, most of his senses returned to him. It was cold. A fine spray of rain made his hair cling to his face and shoulders, soaking through his shirt and pants. He still felt weak.


 "I need more," Schuldig said, rising to his feet. He had to hold onto the wall behind him to keep his balance. "One more. Then find Crawford. Oh god."


Thankfully, George and Wilfred asked no questions. They just gave him haunted glances as they led him out of the narrow street, finding a quick way down to the Embankment. There was no time to search out the more illicit parts of London - what time was it? Early night? Early morning? The darkly grey sky could have been any time’s companion - but he was willing to take any risk. There were more important things to worry about now.


Sheer luck led a rough-looking, dirty young man directly into their arms as they reached the Embankment. Schuldig drained this one as quickly as the first and threw the corpse into the Thames, feeling a dark, deep sting of irony as he watched the lifeless body drift a few feet before it sank beneath the unruly waters. Where would this one washed onto the banks of the river?


 "I would like to know what’s going on," Wilfred announced as Schuldig turned from the railing, feeling stronger, better now. "Everything’s gone utterly crazy since those cats arrived in London and now Crawford loses it?"


 "I don’t have time to explain," Schuldig said, turning into the direction of Mayfair. He had to warn Farfarello - or find Crawford, whichever came first. "Thanks for your help. But I can’t stay to explain now."


 "Then we’re coming with you," George said behind him. "Whatever’s going on, I got the feeling it’s bound to get more interesting, and I’ve never been one to miss a party."


He knew he could not get rid of them and mentally shrugged as they fell into a run next to him. There was no use in telling them that they were putting themselves into danger - they probably had gotten that gist as they found him strapped to the bed at Shaftesbury Avenue, if not already by the time Crawford told them to go looking for him. He was glad to have them by his side, though he hoped not to have to make use of their help.


He had no idea what was going to happen, what he would find. He hoped to find Crawford first, to stop him, talk to him - find out what was going on in that head of his. He did not doubt what his companion had told him. Crawford had no reason to make up something like this.


What he did not want to even contemplate for one second were the possibilities that came along with all those non-reasons.


With Crawford admitting to killing Theodore, there was nothing that stood between him and the assumption that he had killed Christine as well. Schuldig remembered the scene in their bathroom all too clearly: Farfarello on the floor between them, Crawford at the door, talking about how he had talked to Christine just hours before Schuldig was led to her corpse.


He had been so blind.


Farfarello had always insisted that neither he nor any of his kin had killed Christine. With what was beginning to form in his head - nothing concrete, just a subtle, dancing theory - Schuldig had no valuable arguments left that spoke against it.


But why? Why?


He gritted his teeth and doubled his speed, the houses and wet streets streaking past him as they flew along the Embankment and turned back onto the streets leading away from the river, toward Mayfair. George’s and Wilfred’s presences at his sides were but shadows to his awareness. They asked no questions, for which he was glad. Schuldig doubted they would believe the answers he could give them. He did not even know if he could believe it himself.


They reached Mayfair’s edge as Big Ben’s dull bells announced the eleventh hour of the night. The deceptive silence that greeted them put Schuldig’s teeth on edge; it was the calm before the storm, the tranquillity hiding the outbreak of the war. He bade Wilfred and George silence, an order they heeded without questions. They clung to his sides, watchful, tense shadows. Schuldig figured that he had lain unconscious and tied down on the bed for at least five hours - that gave Crawford a lot of time for whatever he planned.


With what had happened to Theodore in the back of his mind, Schuldig had a good idea of what Crawford was going to do. His stomach tightened as the saw the orange glow of fire over the rooftops.


 "What is he doing?" George muttered under his breath, his tone of voice sounding incredulous.


 "He’s burning them out," Schuldig said tonelessly.


Without another word, he pressed on, leaving the other two to follow. It was just a matter of time before the mortals saw the fire, before someone alarmed the authorities. Then all hell would break loose.


He heard them before he saw the house, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. George and Wilfred heard them as well - they stopped, looking around wildly, their teeth bared - as did some of the mortals. Windows were opened behind them as Schuldig turned the last corner and beheld the burning house. Someone shouted, a high-pitched alarm shattering the silence completely.


 "Fire! Fire!"


The shout started a chain reaction of opening windows and doors. More voices were added until it seemed that all of Mayfair was waking up; the mortals sprang from their beds, ran into the streets. Somewhere close by, someone was ringing an alarm bell, the clear, bright sound quickly drowning in the onslaught of voices, footsteps, and the roar of the fire.


Despite the recent rains and cold nights, the tall house burned like a cinder. Several of the windows had been shattered, the front door stood open, swinging gently in the roar of the flames as they licked at the wood. The acidic stench of lamp oil mixed with the smell of burning wood, carpet and fur. The heat made it impossible to get closer, but even from afar Schuldig saw the twisted, scorched shapes lying on the doorstep and the stairs in front of it, saw them fall from the open windows and press against the glass behind others. He heard their voices, both physical and telepathic, screaming for help, for someone to quench the fire and save the young ones.


In the end it was all he could hear, that choir of burning cats. He was dimly aware of George collapsing to his knees, hands pressed over his ears; Schuldig knew the voices of the catkin, had heard them often enough now, and listened for a single one in the cacophony; listened even as blood ran from his nose and his mind felt as though it was being torn in two. He stepped as close to the flames as he dared, mindless of the heat and the blisters that burst on the skin of his face and his arms.


Someone grabbed him from behind and pulled him back, shouting into his ear, adding to the noise. A mortal, a young man clad in a nightgown, slippers on his feet.


 "Are you mad? Stay away from the house!"


Schuldig turned and saw a tight ring of mortals behind him, some with buckets in their hands. They were shouting, fear and terror emitting from their very skin like a sickening perfume. He wrenched away from the young man, ignored the shriek of terror as he bared his teeth in a growl, and turned back to the house.


 "Farfarello!"


His voice boomed, carrying over the roar of the fire, the shouts of the mortals. For one perfect second, breathtaking silence followed his shout, for one perfect second even the dying Felidae inside the house seemed to listen to him, hear him, and recognize him. There were less and less of their voices. He opened his mind to them, asked them, but received only a terrified babble and a plea for help, a plea to save them, their kittens, put out the fire, take away the pain...why could they not get out? Why had they not smelled the fire, sensed Crawford’s presence, just as they had sensed Schuldig’s so often now?


He was grabbed once more, wrenched from his place. Wilfred yanked him back, shouting at him, "That way lies death!"


Farfarello was not inside the house, or he was already dead. He knew that much - he was certain Farfarello would have answered him. He let himself be pulled away, realizing how close he had come to the fire only as Wilfred forcefully pushed him through a narrow gap between two houses and the sudden cold against his blistered, heated skin made him gasp. George joined them, still clasping his hands over his ears and moaning, blood running from his nose as well.


 "Their voices," he gasped, "Oh god! Their voices!"


Wilfred gripped Schuldig’s arm so hard he moaned in pain and heard the bone creak. "Silence!" he hissed, and pointed up. "There!"


They followed his pointed finger and saw the shadows of the cats at the edges of the roofs above them, sitting as still as statues. None of them paid any attention to the Vampires, their heads turned toward the shine of the fire. Schuldig pushed Wilfred’s hand off and searched for a way to climb up to them. They would know if Farfarello was still alive.


He knew that if Farfarello was still alive, that was where Crawford would be as well.


 "What are you doing?" George, wiping blood from his mouth and chin, bumped into him. "We have to find Crawford! What if he burned in there?"


 "I have to find Farfarello!" Frantically, Schuldig looked for a way to climb up the wall, fingers scrabbling at the bricks to find purchase there. He was distracted briefly as the sound of horseshoes on cobblestone broke through the shouts of the mortals that had risen anew; the alarm bells of London’s fire fighters announced the late arrival of help. "Damn it!"


 "If they put out the fire and find all those dead cats..." Wilfred shook his head, eyes narrowed. "There’ll be an uproar its likes London hasn’t seen before."


 "That’s not important!" Schuldig turned to the two others, wildly gesticulating upward. "I have to get up there now!" He looked up and saw that none of the Felidae had moved from their spot. "Help me!"


They ran around the house and straight into a young woman and two children who had retreated into the garden to be shielded from the heat. The young woman began to scream at their sight. Schuldig ignored her and the crying children - he finally found what he was looking for and began to climb up the rose lattice let into the wall around the backdoor of the house. George and Wilfred would take care of the mortals.


He did not care if anyone saw him, anyway.


The shouts of the mortals, mingling with the whinnying of the horses, got louder and louder and gained a new level of excitement. Schuldig knew the fire fighters would not bother to try to put the flames out - they would try to keep the fire from spreading over onto the neighbouring houses. Heat greeted him again as he reached the steep roof and nearly slipped off, catching himself at the last second. The injured skin of his face and hands swelled once more as the blisters he had gained just moments ago erupted and sent streams of liquid oozing down into his clothing.


If the Felidae sitting at the edge of the roof saw him, they gave no notice. Finally finding purchase on the slippery shingles, he gasped as he made it to the roof’s first and looked over it. The flames were already licking at the houses around the burning one. Men in uniforms were carrying buckets of water as close to the fire as they could. There was nothing left to salvage. Whatever Crawford had used, whatever he had done, he had done a complete job of setting fire to the house. The Felidae had most likely been gathered in the cellar. Perhaps some of them had gotten away. He did not know.


He did not care. Holding onto the shingles, nearly crouched on all fours, Schuldig made his way over to one of the silently watching Felidae, blocking its view of the burning house.


 "Where is Farfarello?"


The catkin turned its head and blinked at him. There were tear tracks in the fur of its face. It gave no answer, no discernible reaction, other than another blinking of its eyes, and started to move around him to get its view back. Schuldig grabbed it around the neck and shook it brutally.


 "Damn you, answer me! Where is he?"


A heavy weight crashed into his back, pushing him off balance and over the edge of the roof. He heard the loud yowl of the catkin he was holding and flipped his body around in midair, feeling fingernails dig into his back and neck. Flinging his arm out, he let go of the Felidae before the impact on the ground pushed the air from his lungs and dazed him. His fall was cushioned by the body clinging to his back. He started to roll over as soon as he regained control over his limbs, coughing, blood running from a bitten lip. There was so much pain now that he could not even distinguish single sources anymore; his entire body felt like on big, throbbing bruise. The first thing he saw was the curled body of the catkin he had taken over the edge of the roof with his fall; lying on its back, a slowly spreading pool of blood around it, he blinked as he saw it take a last breath and die.


He rolled once more and staggered to his feet. Pain so bright it was like the touch of a hot iron shot from his left shoulder down into the rest of his body, threatening to throw him into unconsciousness. He leaned against the wall and breathed, gingerly touching his shoulder. Broken or dislocated.


George and Wilfred ran up to him. He ignored their agitated questions and looked at the one who had pushed him over the edge of the roof, recognizing Sara. She lay on her back, arms and legs spread from her body, her eyes wide open as she stared up. He looked up as well, but none of the other Felidae seemed to take notice of her fate, or of the one Schuldig had flung into death.


Her mouth was moving. He stumbled over to hear and kneeled down at her side, every jostle to his injured shoulder sending waves of pain straight to his spine. "Sara. Where is Farfarello?"


Her eyes shifted, flicking from whatever she had been looking for above her to him. She blinked, and as she spoke bright red blood bubbled out of the corners of her mouth. "Rot...in...hell..."


 "Tell me where he is! Please!"


Her mouth moved, but all that came out was more blood.


 "Schu, she’s dying, leave her alone." Wilfred appeared on Sara’s other side, giving her a critical look. "Broken back or something."


 "Shut up!" Setting his hands on either side of her head, Schuldig leaned over the Felidae, staring into eyes that were quickly becoming sightless. She might not be able to speak anymore, but... Where is he? Where is your leader?


In the orange-black light of the night and the fire, the Felidae’s pupils were constantly shrinking and widening. Schuldig pushed the question at her mind over and over again, desperation eating away at him. Finally, Sara seemed to come to her senses for one last time. The telepathic answer was so faint that Schuldig almost did not hear it.


 Park.


He nodded at her, clasping her face between his hands. Is there a Vampire with him?


 Yes.


 Thank you. He felt her pain, pressing through her words against his mind, and broke her neck with a sharp jerk of hands, the abrupt loss of the telepathic connection adding mental to physical pain. It was enough to drop him straight back to his knees as he tried to get up.


 "Schu..." Wilfred’s voice had an edge of fear as he helped him stand. "You’re going to kill yourself at this rate."


 "I have to get to the park." Leaning heavily on him, Schuldig squinted, dizziness turning the world into a chaotic whirl of colours. "Where’s George?"


 "Taking care of the woman and those two children."


 "Help me. The park - Crawford is there. With Farfarello."


Wilfred’s expression darkened at his words, the Vampire’s mouth pressed into a thin line. Finally, he nodded, slinging an arm around Schuldig’s waist to help him walk. They staggered out of the small street, ignored by the mortals whose efforts were now concentrated on keeping the fire from spreading, just as Schuldig had predicted it. He glanced back over his shoulder as they rounded the corner and saw the roof of the Felidae’s house collapse. The loud groan of wood was met by several small explosions from within the burning ruins. Schuldig winced as the last dying voices of the trapped Felidae were cut off abruptly.


Farfarello would go insane over this loss. There was no way the leader of the Felidae would ever overcome the killing of what had to be almost his entire clan. Schuldig kept looking back over his shoulder for as long as he could and tried to find the Felidae that had been sitting on the roofs of the surrounding houses, but they were gone. There was no telling if they had followed their brothers and sisters into the flames, or if they were on their way to the park as well now that there was nothing left to salvage, to pay homage to at the house.


With Wilfred’s help, Schuldig quickly reached the edge of Green Park. Thankful for the silence and the considerably cooler air beneath the trees, he stopped for a moment and let the other dab at his face with a handkerchief. His skin felt scorched. Wilfred was deliberately trying not to look at his eyes while he mopped some of the liquid off Schuldig’s throat and chin, but he knew that he had to look horrible.


 "It’ll heal," Wilfred said with a forced smile. "A little fire like that won’t do any lasting damage."


Schuldig put a hand on Wilfred’s shoulder, "Thank you. Now help me find Farfarello and Crawford."


 "That’ll be easy," With a jerk of his head, Wilfred pointed down the gravel path they stood on. "All we have to do is follow the shine of that fire, methinks."


Schuldig looked and saw the orange glow between the far trees, flickering and dancing, taunting him like a will-o’-the-wisp that threatened to vanish just as its unlucky victim steps into the bog. The thought of what Farfarello was going to do to Crawford...


But did he not deserve it? Had Crawford not killed Theodore, Christine, and just now killed enough of the Felidae to have it account almost for genocide? Still, the thought of having his long-time companion burned to a smoking skeleton made Schuldig’s stomach curl and twist with uneasiness. He wanted to at least know why Crawford had done it. Everything else was out of his hands. Elder he might be, but not even Crawford’s status as London’s Elder would save him from the rightful wrath of the Felidae’s clan leader.


Still...


 "Doesn’t make sense," he muttered under his breath as he and Wilfred hurried along the gravel path, "Doesn’t make any god damn sense..."


 "Nothing does," Wilfred said dryly. "When this is over I’m going to take a long holiday. You look like you could use one as well. Do they allow cats on those large steamers that’re crossing the oceans now?"


Schuldig had to grin despite it all. As always, Wilfred still found something amusing to say.


Hangman’s humour had a lot going for it, in the right situations.


---


As they neared the end of the gravel path that led into the very heart of Green Park, Schuldig heard the sharp ring of alarm bells coming from the direction of Buckingham Palace. It made him aware of the time - or rather, the lack of time they were facing, as it would only be a matter of the thing they lacked to have mortals crawling all over Green Park, looking for the source of the fire that was now beginning to eat at the majestic oaks and poplar trees.


There was an amazing number of dead Felidae on the path. Curled and twisted, some of them torn in half, some of them with scorched fur, they looked like morbid signposts. There were none of the rugged miniature lions among the corpses. Schuldig wondered if all of Farfarello’s guards had died in the house. Or where they with their leader, fighting Crawford?


Crawford would not stand a chance against both Farfarello’s fire and the guards.


 "If there’s going to be a fight, what am I supposed to do?" Wilfred asked, head inclined to listen to gasps, screams and shouts Schuldig had been hearing for a good two minutes now. "Intervene?"


 "No. Leave that to me. I don’t want you in any more danger than you already are." Schuldig pulled away from him, testing his balance. "Go back and find George. Then come back here to...pick up the pieces." He gave a small, helpless smile. "Whatever happens, don’t get mixed up in it."


They were close now. Through the trees, Schuldig saw movement, bodies both small and tall flitting around and through the flames. There was no sign of Crawford or Farfarello but he knew that he had to go on. Leaving a very sceptic-looking Wilfred standing in the middle of the path, he pressed on, again feeling the heat dance over his already hurt skin as he strode off the path and walked between the trees. Expecting an attack from every side, he was surprised to get as close as the edge of a small clearing before anyone noticed him at all; the injured Felidae tending to another one lying on his back beneath a tree, blood bubbling from a large gap in his stomach, gave Schuldig a curt glance before he dismissed the Vampire from his attention.


Perhaps, as Farfarello’s lover - toy, his mind cynically added - he had gained a status that ensured him safe passage among the Felidae.


Injured Felidae were scattered all over the clearing, some of them already dead. He finally saw the rugged guards he had missed among the dead on the path; they lay heavily bleeding, either tended to by others who still had the strength to move or staring up at the crowns of the trees, awaiting their death. Schuldig heard nothing from them, neither telepathic nor physical voices called out to him.


A ball of fire impacted with a tree on the other side of the clearing, setting it afire so quickly Schuldig heard the moisture in the tree’s bark explode with several loud bangs. He quickly located the source of the fire and felt his heart leap with relief as he saw Farfarello - half-naked, grimy, the leader of the Felidae stood between two of his guards, his hands raised above his head, fingers bent to claws. The guards by his sides stood attentively, shoulders hunched, ready to attack at a word of their leader.


Crawford stood with his back to Schuldig. There was a small spring fountain in the middle of the clearing, its former white marble covered in black grime from Farfarello’s earlier fire attacks. Crawford leaned heavily against the fountain, arms out of Schuldig’s sight. The Vampire’s clothes were in rags. His back was covered in bloody scratches, and some of the hair at the back of his head was missing.


He dared not interrupt them. An aura of stifling tenseness lay over the four as they faced off. Schuldig wondered why Farfarello was holding back - Crawford did not seem to have any weapons, nor had he any powers Schuldig was aware of. Cautiously, he moved forward, trying to remain unnoticed.


They did not move. Schuldig walked in a wide circle around them until he could see the side of Crawford’s face and stood closer to Farfarello than his companion; he saw it then, the small, dirty bundle of fur Crawford held pressed against his chest. It was the kitten Schuldig had seen twice now and held himself. Crawford was using it as a shield against Farfarello’s attacks. Blind anger at his companion’s sudden display of cowardice made Schuldig grit his teeth to keep himself from shouting. He had never known Crawford to be so vile that he would use a child to protect himself.


There were a lot of things he had not known about Crawford, it seemed. He did not recognize the gentle, comforting and steady companion he had known for so long in the dirty, hateful creature that stood next to the spring fountain, eyes ablaze, teeth bared.


 "Thought I’d come unprepared?" Crawford spat, his voice barely above a growl. He took no notice of Schuldig even as the Vampire slowly, carefully crept closer. "Thought I’d forget?"


Farfarello did not take his eyes off Crawford for one second. Eyes...Schuldig winced. He could not keep his stomach from turning as he took in the ruin of Farfarello’s left eye. The skin around the eye socket was discoloured, split over the orbital bone and above his eyebrow. The upper eyelid was drooping, covering what had to be a missing or squashed eye beneath. The orange glow of the fire around them had concealed the blood on the entire left side of the Felidae’s face, but now that Schuldig crept closer he saw the blood drip off Farfarello’s chin and meander down his chest, around and through new, bleeding wounds.


There was an expression of utter hate on Farfarello’s face as he said, "You’re going to die here, bastard."


 "Die?" Crawford threw his head back and laughed. One of his hands twisted, doing something to the kitten that resulted in a loud, painful yowl from the small thing. The guards moved forward, growling in their throat, but a sharp command from Farfarello made them retreat, their eyes ablaze. "Will you risk the life of your child to get your revenge?"


The life of your child. Schuldig closed his eyes for a second, swallowed dryly, and when he opened them again he turned to Crawford, calling out to his companion, "Crawford!"


 "Get away from here," Crawford said. He did not even look at the other Vampire. "That’s my business."


 "It’s mine, too." He walked forward, slowly, stopping only as his companion hissed at him, doing something that made the kitten yowl once more. "If you kill that kitten now not even the others will stand by you anymore."


 "They won’t have to," Farfarello said, "He’s not going to leave here alive. Go away, Schuldig. That’s between him and me."


 "In a few minutes this place will be crawling with mortals." Reason, maybe they would listen to that. There were few things the Dark Breeds paid attention to as far as the mortal world was concerned, but the danger of detection was one of them. That house full of dead cats would already raise suspicion. Finding a park full of dead cats, dead human cats and a dead Vampire... "Your stint at the house alerted all of Mayfair and fire fighters from all over the city, Crawford. Don’t risk your, all our safety!"


 "Look at you now being the voice of reason!" Crawford’s voice shattered, turned into an ugly, beastly screech. He grabbed the kitten with both hands, shaking it viciously. This time, even Farfarello moved forward a step, mouth falling open in a wordless, sharp protest. "You weren’t there! You don’t know how it was! I hate them! You have no idea what I’ve gone through!"


The guards at Farfarello’s sides moved again, but this time toward Schuldig. Farfarello must have given them the order to take him away, or kill him, or take him hostage - the situation was quickly escalating, and the more he thought about it the more he was convinced that it had to end in bloodshed. Someone had to die.


He had that idea again. It was a chance.


Knowing it was possibly the only chance he had, safe killing Crawford himself, Schuldig sprinted forward and slipped between the guards just before they reached him, their grasping hands catching air as they grabbed for him. Crawford’s surprised shout was only marginally louder than Farfarello’s, both voices mingling into one long, distorted sound as Schuldig passed the distance between him and the leader of the Felidae in a heartbeat and collided with Farfarello.


There was a split second of fear as Farfarello’s hands slammed against his chest in a futile attempt to ward him off. Using his fire now, Farfarello would probably kill them both. The thought came and went. Winding his fingers into the hair at the back of Farfarello’s head, his other arm trapping Farfarello against his body, Schuldig crammed his head in between the Felidae’s chin and throat, tasting sweat, blood and spices as he opened his mouth. Hands slammed into his back, fingernails digging through clothing and skin down to what felt like his very bones. The guards had reached them.


He pushed forward, toppled them over, and then Farfarello’s heartbeat echoed down into his veins as he ripped into his throat and opened the carotid vein, the first gush of frantically pumping blood a shock to his system. Awareness of his own aches and fatigue faded the more he drank, becoming aware of Farfarello’s; that pain beyond classification, radiating from the ruin of his left eye, the lightning flashes down his chest and back - anger, pain, fear and fury, he drank it all down.


Dimly, Schuldig heard shouts and screams and the fearful yowl of a kitten. The hands retreated as he growled, sending the guards a mental picture of what would happen if they yanked him off their leader now; the picture of Farfarello with his throat ripped out shocked them, confused them. They backed off. Schuldig saw it through Farfarello’s remaining eye as though the blood flow between them had opened a direct route into the Felidae’s head. He saw Crawford at the edge of Farfarello’s vision, distorted, elongated, like a monster in a cabinet of mirrors.


The spicy blood went straight to his head like it had the first time, with the difference that there was nothing sexual or even remotely intimate about it now. The mortals had it all wrong. There was nothing mystic or romantic about the Turning. Schuldig drank until Farfarello became a motionless weight in his arms. He heard his heartbeat fade and taper away, listening intently to the echoes inside of him until he knew the point had been reached. Schuldig had never created a Vampire - there had never been the need, and certainly never the urge - but he instinctually knew when to stop and rip his wrist open.


There was one long, agonizingly silent moment when he pressed his bleeding wrist to Farfarello’s slack mouth. Nothing happened. Sick from too much blood, too much pain, too much everything, Schuldig pressed his arm down harder and flexed his muscles, silently praying to whatever god cared for Farfarello to respond.


He almost did not feel it when it finally happened. Someone kneeled at his side, whispering to him. He could not bring himself to look away from the ashen face so close to his, the remaining eye flickering restlessly behind the thin skin of its lid. Lips fastened to his wrist. Schuldig sighed with relief and queasiness at the same time as Farfarello began to drink their now mixed blood.


Farfarello’s eye fixed on him with burning intensity just as Schuldig was beginning to feel weak from the draining. Hypnotized by the amber sea, Schuldig watched with morbid fascination how the slit pupil contracted sharply before it started to become round once more. It never became fully round, remained a pointed oval surrounded by far too bright amber. Farfarello’s lips released his wrist.


 "God, Schu...what...?"


Weakly, he turned his head and stared at the bewildered expression on Wilfred’s face. Behind Wilfred, he saw George, holding a weakly struggling Crawford back against the blackened spring fountain. Schuldig did not protest as Wilfred pulled him to his feet. He staggered, feeling sick to the stomach, sick to the head.


The guards stood aghast, staring back and forth between the Vampires and their motionless leader with open mouths. Schuldig stumbled toward them, croaking, "Leave. It’s over." He glanced at the fallen Felidae at the edge of the clearing. "Take your wounded and dead and leave."


They hesitated, the taller of them even stepping around Schuldig to look at Farfarello once more. He was holding the kitten. Crawford must have released it when Schuldig attacked Farfarello. The small thing was half-dead, blinking lethargically.


 "Leave London," Schuldig repeated, seeing his reflection in the Felidae’s eyes. Wild, tangled hair, ashen skin, bloody mouth and poison eyes... "He’s mine now. Vampire."


The Felidae gently shook his head and retreated, "He’s no one’s now." Giving a sharp nod to the other guard, he turned and looked back over his shoulder. "You’ve killed him."


Schuldig turned from him and shot Crawford a glance. His companion kept struggling, but his movement was weak, lacking conviction. Schuldig had no idea what to do with him.


George and Wilfred took that decision out of his hands. "We have to leave," George said, giving Crawford a sharp push that sent the other Vampire stumbling toward the edge of the clearing. "Get out of here before the mortals come. Everything else comes later."


Crawford kept trying to turn around, but George soon blocked Schuldig’s view of him, herding him on and away. Schuldig did not care if he brought him back to Shaftesbury Avenue or somewhere else. He turned around and gasped as he saw Wilfred bend down over Farfarello, reaching out for the newborn Vampire. "Let him be!"


Wilfred looked up at him, steel in his eyes. "Can you carry him?"


Farfarello was unconscious. Schuldig kneeled down at his side and tried to lift him onto his arms, but the moment he had his dead weight off the ground his shoulder gave out with a resounding crack. He gasped at the pain and fell back, colours dancing before his eyes.


 "Told you so," Wilfred easily lifted Farfarello and slung him over his shoulder. "Come on. George is right. I can hear their alarm bells."


The trip back to Shaftesbury Avenue would forever remain a blur of rain, alarm bells and blinding bursts of pain in Schuldig’s memory. He did not remember the names of the streets through which they slipped, the only lasting picture in his mind Farfarello, face turned sideways against Wilfred’s back, blood dripping from his mouth onto the uneven stones of the street. And even that faded to black as he collapsed onto the floor of their corridor, surrounded by the familiarity of his home that had never felt as alien to him as it did now.


*****

Chapter Four

*****


Two weeks later, the remaining London Vampires met in the Bear at Arms and held council.


Schuldig liked to think of it as a jury court.


They were all there, his beautiful monsters. Even Christine, William and Theodore sat around a table in the back of the pub, splendid in their crushed velvet, their straight, narrow suits, their predatory smiles. He had to blink twice before their ghosts faded, leaving the table empty.


Their faint laughter remained.


With the destruction of the "Raven" and Theodore’s death, the Bear at Arms had become the Vampires’ main meeting place in London. Eliza, Theodore’s mate - she called herself Theodore’s widow now, and wore black from head to toe. As though they needed a reminder of what had happened. As though it took a mortal custom to drive the point home - sat by herself at one of the front tables, staring at and through Schuldig.


It was the first time he made use of his position as Elder. He wished for any other reason, any different circumstances; and if he truly thought about it he wished it would never have come to this point.


But here they were, the monsters and him, and he was one of them.


Of all Vampires, only George was missing. He had volunteered to stay at the apartment and guard Farfarello. His absence was noted with varying reactions. As was the creation of their newest member.


‘Varying reactions’ was a good way to describe what Schuldig had been faced with all evening long. They ranged from simple disbelief to anger to stark sadness. He looked around the gathered, noted how none of them wanted to meet his eyes, and sighed, "Let’s begin."


To his right, sitting on a chair in the corner of the room, Crawford did not move as Schuldig turned to him. Crawford was dressed impeccably, none of the signs of the fight with the Felidae remaining on his face or clasped hands. He might as well have been sitting in the opera, paying attention to a particularly serious play.


 "As Elder of London I ban you from the city. Should you ever choose to return to London while I still hold power here, you will be killed. By my hands or by the others. As this is your verdict, so does it hold for all present - Brad Crawford, you have lost your right to stay among us as a member of our city-Coven." He swallowed, waiting for a reaction. None came, and he went on, "I blame you for the deaths of Christine de Chanel and Theodore Larkin. I blame you for actions that could have led to our detection and possible extinction. What weighs more on the scale of your crimes, I don’t know."


And how different were they now, how did they differ from the Felidae, whose rules Schuldig had thought of as arcane and antiquated? Christine fluttered up to him, smiling, and whispered, Not at all, Schu. Not at all.


 "I blame you, finally, for lying to me, thus causing a fight that could have been prevented."


Crawford sneered but remained silent. He had not spoken a word since George and Wilfred had cornered him in the living room at Shaftesbury Avenue and threatened to beat the living hell out of him if he made so much as one antagonistic move toward Farfarello or Schuldig. There was no telling what he was thinking now, how he took the ban - how he took a ban that came from Schuldig, whose companion he had been for longer than Schuldig liked to think about now.


He did not like to think about Crawford at all lately, come to think of it. He heard him moving behind his eyes when he slept, a laughing, sneering monster. "The verdict has been spoken. Does anyone object to it?"


He looked at the seated Vampires and waited for someone to raise their hand or voice, but no reaction came. Apathy lay over the assembled, threatening to choke the very life out of them all. Schuldig closed his eyes and counted to ten before he turned to Crawford once more.


 "Your belongings have been sent to a ship waiting at London harbour, course set on America." At a flick of his finger, Wilfred and another Vampire stepped up to Crawford’s sides, taking a hold of an arm each. "You’ll be brought to the harbour this very hour."


Crawford did not struggle as they tugged him to his feet. His eyes remained fixed on Schuldig’s face, strangely empty of emotion, until the door to the pub closed behind him. Schuldig sighed and shook his head. "This council is over."


---



 "Didn’t say a single word," Wilfred said two hours later, as he and Schuldig were on their way back to Shaftesbury Avenue. "Didn’t say good bye, nothing. I’ve known him for decades, Schu, but I never thought he’d be capable of what he’s done, what he did. If I didn’t know it’s Crawford I’d say he’s a complete stranger."


Schuldig was glad to escape the choking atmosphere of the pub and breathed in the fresh night air, now and then expecting to detect the faint tinge of scorched wood, scorched fur. Yet winter had come early this year, October had brought the first snow mixed into the sleet and the rain, and all he smelled were the city’s usual dirt and darkness. The story about the burned house in Mayfair had run its course through the newspapers for all of a week before the upcoming marriage of a member of the royal family replaced the wild speculations about what the public considered a cult murder.


Cult murder. One hundred and twenty dead cats had been found in the smoking ruins of the house, along with the skeletons of a few men and women. Most of the corpses had lain in the cellar of the house, their bones piled highest in the doorway.


How Crawford had managed to surprise the Felidae like that would forever remain a mystery. Schuldig had not asked him, and he had also not asked the surviving Felidae. The catkin had not left London yet - he sometimes saw them, sitting on rooftops, lingering close to the apartment, drifting in and out of the shadows deep at night - and knew that they would not answer him, anyway. What the guard had told him remained foremost on his mind.


He is no one’s now. You killed him.


Not a single Felidae had come to the apartment door or sat before one of the windows. Not one of them had asked Schuldig about Farfarello when he met them on the streets at night; he recognized them now, their telepathic voices whispering at the edge of his consciousness. It was as though with the drinking of Farfarello’s blood, he had taken the Felidae’s inborn telepathy into himself and made it a part of his psyche. Farfarello echoed through him with every breath he took. The voices were faint and stale compared to what it sounded like when they had directly spoken to him, but Schuldig could hear them now, too.


A new leader had been elected.


Farfarello’s offspring had died a fortnight after the fire, the maltreatment at Crawford’s hands claiming its tribute.


They were not leaving. Not yet.


There were only twelve left.


He kept this knowledge carefully to himself, although he spoke to Farfarello often, with more than words. Perhaps Farfarello already knew, and it made no difference anymore.


 "You’re not very talkative tonight," Wilfred remarked, rousing Schuldig from his thoughts. They were walking along the Strand now, amid mortals clad in thick winter garb. "Penny for your thoughts."


 "I’m just tired, Fred. I feel old."


 "That’s a very acute observation for someone who’s seen several centuries pass him by."


 "I can get rid of the feeling that the war has just begun."


 "What is that supposed to mean?" Wilfred asked, a note of alarm in his voice. "It’s over. Do you think they will try to get revenge?"


He stopped walking and turned his face toward the sky, watching his breath trail upward in white clouds. Habitually, he scanned the rooftops, but with the smoke rising from the chimneys and the shadows cast between them, it was hard to tell if any Felidae were watching them now. He could not hear them, either. "No. He literally died for them the moment I Turned him. He’s just another Vampire to them now, if at all. Crawford was wrong when he said that they would come after him. It’s crazy, isn’t it? As their leader he seemed to be both their scapegoat and their king. As a Vampire, he’s nothing to them now."


 "Crawford seems to have been wrong about a great many things," Wilfred said carefully, standing at Schuldig’s side. "I don’t know much about them, and I still don’t understand what exactly happened. Hell, I don’t think any of us really knows. But I think they have no reason to go after him."


He listened harder and detected the faint, spidery-thin blanket of noise layered over the sounds that intruded on his ears: the footsteps, the carriages, the rustle of clothing against skin. There were words, yet they were too far away for him to grasp their meaning. "No," he said finally, "They won’t."


 "Here’s your penny," Wilfred handed him one.


Schuldig had to grin, once more despite it all.


---


The apartment - and it was hard to think of it as his home now, with all that had happened - was strangely empty after all of Crawford’s belongings had been removed from the rooms. The temptation to move out entirely and leave behind all its memories had been plaguing Schuldig since the moment he knew what verdict he had to utter against Crawford. Yet Shaftesbury Avenue was his, as was the apartment. It was as simple as that.


He had no other place to go. He knew he would never leave London - a holiday, George and Wilfred kept nagging him, a holiday would be nice though and he had to agree with them; could not leave now, while the others were in their state of uproar. Perhaps it had taken all the recent happenings to make him aware of the responsibility he felt toward tem. They approved of his verdict. That, he thought, said it all.


The other choice would have been to kill Crawford. That, Schuldig knew, was something he could not have brought upon him, no matter how much he wished he could.


He walked up the stairs to the apartment, glancing out of the windows of the stairwell. It was nearing midnight. As he lost himself in the study of the streets and the people walking on the sidewalk, he saw the first true snowflakes trail down from the dark sky. If it kept snowing through the rest of the night, tomorrow morning’s sounds would be muffled by a white coat. It would bring back a little of the magic the writers and poets always said London had; Schuldig lived here, he knew what magic was, and he knew that London was nothing but a stage. A grand stage maybe, but it were the people on the stage that made London what she was.


 Final curtain calls are never the end, Christine whispered to him. He looked away from the window and saw her standing at the head of the stairs, dressed in a heavy woollen coat. Her hair was alight with a thousand small stars, as though she had just come inside from the rain. Schuldig knew those stars were snowflakes. The play goes on long after the audience has left. Behind the stage.


He nodded at her words, knowing that she was nothing more but a figment of his imagination. She smiled at him and vanished through the wall, leaving behind the silence he was quickly coming accustomed to. Sighing heavily, he made it up the rest of the stairs and stood before the door to the apartment. Perhaps he needed that holiday more than he was aware of.


George stuck his head around the living room door as Schuldig walked into the apartment, an expression of curiosity on his face. "How did it go?"


 "Ask Fred. I didn’t accompany him to the port. But he didn’t say a word through the entire council, just kept staring at me." He hung his coat up and shook his head, combing the tangles out of his hair with his fingers. "How is he doing?"


 "Didn’t say a word while you were gone. I don’t think he even sees me. Or doesn’t want to see me, however you want to put it." Looking back over his shoulder into the living room, George stepped toward Schuldig and quietly said, "Listen, something needs to be done. The others will freak when they see him, if they haven’t already. You say he hunts? He feeds?"


Schuldig nodded.


 "Are you sure all his right with his head?"


He heard the things George had not said as clearly as though the other Vampire had written them down for him, blinking at the fear, the uneasiness his usually brash friend was feeling when he was in the company of Farfarello. Over the last two weeks - ever since he had taken Farfarello’s blood - the ability to hear the thoughts of everyone around him had gotten stronger and stronger. Schuldig did not know yet what to make of it. He had not mentioned it to anyone. Seeing Christine all the time was bad enough. After all that had happened, the confession that he was now hearing things would not go over well with any of the others.


 "I don’t know, George," he said finally, "He doesn’t speak to me."


 "Do you want me to stay?"


 "No. Wilfred is waiting downstairs."


He locked the door behind the other Vampire and slowly walked into the living room, eyes automatically seeking out the empty bookshelves. Half of their storage space had been taken up by Crawford’s things. There was a lot of furniture he could get rid off now. Turning to the silent figure sitting on the couch, he said,


 "Good evening."


Farfarello’s state could be described as catatonic if Schuldig had not seen him hunt and feed. He had not said a word since they brought him here from Green Park and tended to his wounds; the scratches and internal damage Schuldig suspected he had healed quickly. Within two days, Farfarello’s skin was once more hale. Only the scars he already had had, on his face, his chest, his arms and stomach, remained. They were fainter now, nothing more but raised lines coloured slightly darker than the rest of his skin.


The left eye was a different story. It was a lost case. Thankfully, the eyelids had been saved from damage, but they had to take out the eyeball, which had been squashed by a punch. Farfarello had taken the procedure with stoic silence, only the tenseness of his shoulders revealing that he felt something. Schuldig had bought an eye patch for him. He wore it because Schuldig had put it on him; he had the sneaking suspicion that Farfarello did not care if everyone around him shrank from his sight, this morbid destruction of something beautiful.


Schuldig had bought clothes for him as well, dragging him to a tailor one early evening, George and Wilfred accompanying them. His first desire - to see Farfarello dressed splendidly for once - had faded quickly, made way for dullness and a sense of guilt that had remained with him henceforth.


 I’m not a doll! Farfarello had protested without ever saying a word, without looking at Schuldig. I won’t break!


The tailor, after much fussing and discussing, had finally acquiesced and measured, grumbling about having to use leather instead of the fine silks and woven cloths he had in his collection. Schuldig paid him enough to ensure exquisite work. Farfarello now owned three pairs of pants, a few shirts, a coat, and a pair of boots. The clothes were not much different from what he had worn before.


Deep down, Schuldig knew that he was trying to make up for what he had done to him.


Deeper down, he did not regret anything, and especially not the creation of Farfarello the Vampire.


Farfarello sat cross-legged on the couch, looking out of the open window before him. He did not move as Schuldig walked around the couch and sat down next to him.


 "I banned him from London today, in case you’re interested. Of course you are." He detected the faint note of curiosity running like a steady current beneath the tranquil silence of Farfarello’s mindscape. Reading his thoughts was exceedingly easy now. The path into Farfarello’s mind, opened when Schuldig took his blood, had not yet closed. Perhaps it never would. "He should be on his way to America now."


Farfarello moved his hands in his lap, drawing Schuldig’s attention to something that lay on his palm. It took him a moment to realize that he was looking at teeth - small, white canines, broken out at the roots, barely larger than the nail of Farfarello’s small finger.


He swallowed, fighting queasiness. "Are these...?" Farfarello knew, then, that his son was dead. He looked away from the teeth, his glance falling on the open window. A few errant snowflakes were trailing in, melting on the carpet. "Who brought them?"


 "Pavel. It is a custom."


Hearing the toneless voice surprised him, as he had become so accustomed to Farfarello’s silence over the last two weeks. Looking at the side of his face that showed the eye patch, Schuldig wondered what Farfarello would do with the teeth of the kitten. Wear them around his neck, one more reminder of the past?


 "You should not have intervened," Farfarello went on, looking down at his hands. "You should have let me kill him. It would have been over."


 "It is over now. Brad Crawford was my companion for so long, even with what he did I couldn’t just let him die. He is gone from the city, and he will not return."


Farfarello turned on the couch, closing his fingers around the teeth so hard that a few drops of blood dripped onto his leg as his palm was pierced. Schuldig had looked at him often since bringing him to Shaftesbury Avenue, yet he was not yet accustomed to the sight of that one amber eye burning into him with a Vampire’s intensity behind it. The pupil had not returned to its normal, round form. It would forever remain a pointed oval, hinting at what Farfarello had been and might still be. There was no telling what all had changed, what had been deducted, added, mutated.


 "What makes you think I’ll stay here?" Now Farfarello moved closer, the hand clutching the teeth between them, so close that Schuldig could feel his breath on his face. He reached up with his free hand, brought his fingers to Schuldig’s cheek, and trailed one fingertip down the elegant curve of the bone, a hint of fingernail scratching down the skin sending a ripple of shudders down Schuldig’s spine. He tensed as he felt the definitely hostile emotions welling up inside Farfarello, different from what his thoughts ‘felt’ and ‘sounded’ like, seeming to Schuldig like a swarm of hornets settling all over him but not stinging him...yet. "You’ve cost me everything. Everything."


The fingertip became a finger became a hand grasping his chin in a tight, hurtful grip. He reached up to push the hand away, and the hornets were stinging now, making it hard to concentrate...hard to breathe as Farfarello flung his other arm out and back, driving his fist into Schuldig’s stomach. Doubling over on the couch, Schuldig gasped, fingers scrabbling on Farfarello’s chest. He did not know what was worse - the gut-clenching pain in his stomach, or the sudden wave of hate washing over him like a furious flood crashing against a defenceless shore. The onslaught broke into his thoughts and scattered them, leaving him struggling against emotions that were not his own.


He hit the floor before he was aware of falling from the couch and lay on his side, clutching his head. His vision doubling and tripling, he saw Farfarello’s boots in front of his face, felt hands on his body roughly turning him over onto his back.


 "I should kill you, now," Farfarello growled, bent over him, "Crawford murdered my people but you killed me!"


 "You’re still alive!" Schuldig gasped. The hornets retreated from his head, leaving it throbbing and feeling raw. Farfarello seemed to know exactly what he was doing, what he needed to think to attack Schuldig - had probably gone through the same when the telepathy kicked in, he thought. It hurt. "If the other Felidae now go after Crawford that’s their business, but you wouldn’t have survived that fight! Either that, or that kitten would have died! Probably both!"


 "I can’t even hear them anymore!" Farfarello yelled on top of his lungs. He sprang to his feet and backed away, pointing a shaking finger at the open window. "I can’t hear anything anymore! Not you! Not them! Nothing! I’d rather be dead than be this!"


He managed to get up without throwing up, feeling the world shiver in its foundations as he crawled onto the couch and leaned against it, breathing hard. Now his ears hurt from Farfarello’s yelling. For a long moment, he revelled in the wonderful sensation of having a concrete pain to focus on, not the phantom aches his mind experienced. "I’m losing you, am I not?" He turned his head, even that slight jostling causing his vision to swim. "That’s what it boils down to, no?"


 "You never had me, Schuldig. I’ve listened to you. I know what you dreamed, what you wanted." Standing against the far wall, his arms slung around his middle, Farfarello glared at him. "You understood nothing. Still don’t. You couldn’t leave anything alone."


No, he could not. And it did not matter anymore if it had been his curiosity, his interest in Farfarello, or both, that turned him down the path he had now walked to its end. He ached at the thought of Farfarello leaving. He had fought so hard to keep him...and used the wrong means to reach that end.


 "Will you go after Crawford?"


 "I have no reason to. They have no reason to. All the old ones are dead. They might go after him for what he did in Mayfair, but the old score doesn’t count anymore. With what you’ve done you erased everything." Footsteps, coming closer, Farfarello walking behind the couch now, toward the door. Schuldig closed his eyes. "I have no reason to stay here anymore, either."


 "Not even for me?"


He picked up on the revulsion - no, despair? Exasperation? at his question and knew the answer before Farfarello voiced it. "Mutual interest, Schuldig. Interest." Farfarello sighed. "Did you ever really listen to me?"


 "I am listening to you now," he said, and into the deafening silence that followed his words he whispered, "London will always be there for you."


He knew he was saying it to an empty room.


---


Winter came fast and hard, demanding its tribute from the Docklands, the East End, and all the other dark nooks of London first. The newspapers ran horror stories about people who were found frozen to death, clutching at thin blankets. Someone broke through the ice on the Thames and was found maimed by the river, half in, half out of the water, and that story was particularly gruesome. Fearing to break through the ice as well, no one dared to cut the corpse out. It stayed where it was for several days before Queen Victoria herself, in what was termed ‘exasperation’, ordered a rescue crew.


He had his sanctuary, warm and dry, high above the screaming city below. He had his little trips to nearby pubs and theatres, his fire, his books, his familiar hell. Occupied with translating a second copy of the work that had been destroyed when the "Raven" burned down - the author of ‘Revolutionary Theories in Women’s Rights’ expressed her deepest regrets for his loss of a good friend - Schuldig nearly missed Christmas.


He told the other Vampires that he needed to recover from everything, that he needed time to think things over. That had not been a lie, but it had not been the entire truth, either. Following Farfarello’s disappearance from Shaftesbury Avenue and London altogether, Schuldig learned by painful experience that his newly awakened telepathy seemed to increase the more time he spent among the thinking. At times, it became hard to make a difference between the thoughts of the others and his own.


At times it became so bad that he thought about ripping into everyone around him. He had never known how blatantly mundane it all could be, London’s daily life as it happened around him. How mundane, how brutal...how tiring.


It was enough to drive anyone insane. How Farfarello had been able to stand it for centuries was beyond Schuldig’s understanding.


Early on Christmas Eve, someone knocked at the front door to the apartment.


He had spent a good deal of time on rearranging the furniture and buying new things to put into the now empty rooms Crawford had occupied. The apartment did not seem nearly as empty anymore; only sometimes, early in the morning or just before he woke, did Schuldig think that he could still hear him moving from room to room, that he could smell his cologne and hear his voice. Those were the times he wished he could turn back the time.


As he went to open the door, he picked up on two trains of thoughts; George’s, vowing to some strange deity that he would take Schuldig out for a hunt among company and if he had to drag him screaming and kicking by the hair; Wilfred’s, wishing for George to shut the hell up before he seriously thought about hurting him.


Telepathy had one good thing to it: he could always pretend he was not home if there were unwanted guests standing before his door. George and Wilfred though, with their constant visits and true concern, had grown very close to him over the last weeks.


 "Good evening," he said as he opened the door and stepped aside to let them in, "What brings you here on this dark and dreadful night?"


 "Someone’s got his humour back," George said with a lifted eyebrow. He wore a black, floor-length coat that was nearly white from snow. "Let me say, it suits you mightily."


 "Hear, hear," Wilfred muttered, unwinding a shawl from around his mouth.


He could not help it; his friends’ good spirits were affecting him. They traded news as he put on his coat and boots, Schuldig listening more than telling. He had nothing to tell. He learned that Eliza, Theodore’s widow, was thinking about rebuilding the "Raven" as a pub like the "Bear at Arms". There were minor concerns among the Vampires of London. With Theodore, they had lost their best forger of documents, which would become a problem unless they found a suitable replacement. That was something Schuldig would have to deal with once the New Year rolled around.


George and Wilfred had taken the news of Farfarello’s departure with equal parts relief and sadness. Schuldig found their now useless willingness to put up with the ex-Felidae for his sake endearing; he understood their relief all too well. He still wanted Farfarello to return, yet the rational part of his mind kept listing the disadvantages, the dangers, and he knew it was probably for the best. He had neither heard nor seen anything of Farfarello since the day he walked out of the apartment. It was anyone’s guess if he was still in England at all.


If Farfarello went after Crawford now, it was out of Schuldig’s hand. He did not wish for it to happen - had, in fact, even entertained wild thoughts about going after Crawford to make sure that he had reached America safely, that Farfarello had not killed him - but he knew that there was nothing he could do anymore. He had played his part in this drama; the curtain call had come, and Christine had been right: the play went on behind the stage.


Behind his eyes.


The three Vampires walked through London’s snow-covered streets, headed for nowhere in particular, and Schuldig learned that he could forget about all that had happened when they settled around a table in a small pub near Blackfriars Bridge. Ordering ale they would not touch, they spent a long time joking about the other guests, picking out their choice victims or those that interested them. Schuldig knew that he could not stay all that long - the swamp of thoughts, wishes, desires that was quickly becoming familiar whenever he was around the thinking, had started to press against his mind as soon as he walked in the door. For now, though, it was at a bearable level. Perhaps it was the season. Schuldig leaned back against the cherry wood panelling, eyes languidly roaming the interior of the pub while George and Wilfred discussed the clothing styles of the women.


At length, he closed his eyes and began to listen with his mind. It was not a conscious decision; it happened ever so often now that he felt his mind begin to drift away from what was happening around him. He found it easier to concentrate on the voices if he did not see their origins; he knew he would need years to come to bearable grounds with his newfound ability.


Time was one thing Schuldig had in abundance.


As he listened, he became aware of a rising anxiety within him. It came out of nowhere, no cause whatsoever, but refused to go away as he tried to submerse himself in the calmness around him again.


 Schuldig.


He opened his eyes. Farfarello stood before him - no, crouched before him, on the table amid ale mugs and candles. A thin halo of lights surrounded him, fiercely adding to the shine of his golden eye. The other one, covered by the eye patch, was like an abyss sucking in the illumination around him. He was dressed in the clothes Schuldig had bought for him, but now tiny silver disks had been woven into the leather lacing up the outsides of his legs, and the leather looked worn and soft. Arms and chest bare, light glinting off melted snow, dripping from his tousled hair, he stared at Schuldig and raised his arm, a long, viciously curved blade clutched in his hand. In his other hand he held Crawford’s head.


 You’re next in line.


The scene was so surreal that Schuldig could only stare, blinking furiously as the hand holding the blade rose higher and higher before it began its descend.


Blood dripped from the ragged stump of Crawford’s severed neck, forming little sinister pools on the table. It dripped into one of the ale mugs and off the edge of the table. Schuldig turned his head and saw George and Wilfred, chatting next to him. They did not see Farfarello. They did not hear the swish-swish sound of air as Farfarello’s hand raced past Schuldig’s face and swung backward, taking the same course once more.


He saw blood spurt onto the table and splash against Farfarello’s chest, knew it was his own, and started to scream, surprised that he could. Farfarello had severed all arteries, all flesh, all life.


He woke, fingers clenched around his neck, searching for a wound that was not there. Deafening silence around him and too many eyes staring at him; most of all he felt George’s and Wilfred’s stares as he gasped for air, looking around wildly.


 "Schu, what...?"


He gave George a haunted stare and rose, so hastily that he nearly toppled the table over. An ale mug shattered on the ground as he stormed toward the exit and raced down the street, as fast as his feet would carry him. He did not stop running until he reached trees, and silence, and cold snow in his face as he tripped over something and fell.


A dream. He had dreamed!


Shaken, Schuldig sat up, shivering as snow began to melt on his skin. He had no idea where he was - trees all around him, the ground beneath them covered with snow. It seeped through his clothes, into his mind; now that he was more or less alone he did not hear the voices anymore. They remained a faint, distant whisper somewhere beyond the trees, there, but easy to ignore. Wrapping his arms around himself, he pressed his face against his knees and listened to his heart hammering in his chest.


 "I’m losing my mind..."


He had no idea how long he stayed there beneath the trees, but when he rose his clothes were stiff and his skin felt frozen. Shakily, he made his way toward the nearest lights, and to his surprise he learned that he had run straight to Mayfair. Standing at the edge of Green Park, he stared at the houses, their sugar-coat toppings and white smoke clouds a bizarre contrast to what his mind told him this place should look like: charred and grimy, screams echoing down the streets.


A graveyard.


His feet carried him along streets that had nothing in common with what his mind insisted they were; he looked at the shuttered windows and the light of fire and candles shining through them, leaving patches of gold in the snow. As he reached the house, he braced himself against the sight. He had not set foot in Mayfair after the fire.


Yet the sight of the blackened ruin was strangely calming. The missing roof, black-hole-windows and coaly walls - all of this was softened, somehow, by the snow laying over everything. Schuldig blew warm breath into his cupped hands as he walked closer.


 "You looked better last time I saw you," said the shadow that detached itself from the askew pillars that had once held the entrance door. It was one of the guards who had stood at Farfarello’s sides during the fight with Crawford. He wore a thick jacket and heavy boots, and he left large footprints in the pristine snow as he walked down the stairs toward Schuldig. "You heard my call."


Schuldig did not know what to make of this meeting. With a feeling of trepidation, he wondered what the other wanted...and if he was alone. "Why did you call me here?"


 "To say good-bye." The guard stopped an arm’s length away from Schuldig and stuffed his hands into his pockets, looking down at the smaller Vampire with a look that he could only term ‘wistful’. "Why else would I call for you?"


 "I don’t know - to kill me? Sending me an image of Farfarello slitting my throat doesn’t really leave a good impression."


The guard chuckled and gently shook his head, "It was the only thing I could think of. My father really has a way of sticking in someone’s memory, does he not?"


Father? Schuldig blinked. His surprise showed on his face, for the guard went on, "Yes, he is - was my father. That is why I am here. The others don’t know. They shun this place. Too many of us died here."


Effortlessly, Schuldig picked up his name. He had not even tried to listen to the other’s thoughts, just concentrated on him. Perhaps Marc wanted him to know. "You’re here to ask me if I know where he is."


Marc nodded at that statement. "And to say good-bye."


 "The Felidae are leaving London?"


 "Yes. Farfarello brought us here because he was looking for those three Vampires. He got two. The last one was sent away by you." Marc did not elaborate how he knew of that, nor did he think of it. Schuldig was by now deliberately trying to listen to his thoughts alone, but he picked up nothing that really interested him. "With your intervention, Farfarello was the last Felidae who could settle the score. With his death -"


 "He isn’t dead, you know?"


 "To us, he is. He’s not Felidae anymore. We care little for the affairs of the others as long as they don’t intrude on our territory." Marc shrugged and kicked at the snow before his feet. "Perhaps that is why my father was so...irritated by you."


Irritated? That made Schuldig feel like a worthless piece of shit. "I don’t know where he is. He left London, and I haven’t seen him since."


Marc nodded. "It seems fitting that it should end this way. He led this clan for over a thousand years. We will remember him the way he was, not the way he is now."


A thousand years. Farfarello had never told him for how long exactly...Schuldig closed his eyes and swallowed, feeling the guilt well up inside him along with the anger. A thousand years, and with just one action born out of selfishness and despair rather than contemplation and decision, he had managed to wipe all those years away. He could not help the sting of anger at Marc’s reverent words and again thought how little he liked the customs of the Felidae. "Don’t speak of him as though he died!"


 "I am speaking of him as I have been taught by him," Marc said matter-of-factly. "Though I wish I could feel remorse, I cannot; the Farfarello I know, my father I know, has died. He is not of us anymore, he is of yours, and you are not us." He gave Schuldig a measuring glance. "Don’t expect absolution from me, Vampire." He sighed. "Our customs may seem cruel to you, but they’re not. You just don’t know them."


 "The more I see of them the less I like them. I have nothing more to tell you." Turning from Marc, Schuldig began to walk back down the street, calling back over his shoulder, "Good bye."


He expected to be called back, but all that followed him down the street was the deceptive silence of snow falling on Mayfair. As he reached the corner, he looked back over his shoulder. Marc was gone. Schuldig glanced at the ruin of the house for long minutes. Absolution? He sneered at the word. He had achieved nothing of the sort. What Marc had intended with his meeting was unclear, but Schuldig knew one thing: he was glad to know that the Felidae were leaving London.


With that thought held firmly in mind, Schuldig returned to Shaftesbury Avenue.


---


Vampires rarely die under violent circumstances brought unto them by someone else. They die of boredom or broken hearts. They despair over the mercilessly grinding wheels of time that carry everything they know with them and out of reach.


Eliza died in the spring of the year 1887; almost a full year after events had been set in motion their aftershocks still rippled through the Vampires of London now and then. Theodore’s widow was not able to cope with the loss of her long-time mate, but she kept her anguish, her tears and her utter loneliness to herself and did not share it with any of the others. She waited until the workers started to rebuild the ground walls of the ‘Raven’ and went to the apothecary one late afternoon, where she bought a pound of rat poison.


 ‘For the rats in my cellar’, she told the doctor behind the counter. ‘There are so many, I don’t know how else to get rid of them.’


Schuldig knew about her plan for a week and listened to her rehearse those few words at the last meeting she attended, still dressed in black, sitting by her lonesome at a table in the ‘Bear at Arms’. She repeated them in her mind, over and over again. He fought a bitter fight with himself, trying to decide if he should intervene. In the end, he decided not to.


He was not like them. It was not his right to decide over someone’s life or death.


They burned what was left of Eliza and left the grounds upon which the "Raven" had stood to the mercy of the city authorities. None of the others had an interest in seeing it rebuilt; times were changing for them, they all felt it in their bones, the very blood rushing through their veins.


George found words for it one night, sitting in Schuldig’s living room with a book on his lap. "It’s like a disease, Schu. It spreads among us as soon as even one of us has been infected, and then there’s no way to stop it."


Schuldig doubted that, but he doubted a lot of things lately.


He had, after much contemplation, broken into Christine’s apartment in Mayfair’s west end, finding something he had not anticipated. The stench greeting him as he walked through the large rooms originated from two heavily decomposed cats he found in her bathtub. Fur and flesh disintegrating and dripping from the bones, Schuldig had taken one long look at the carcasses before he fled the apartment and stumbled down the stairs, nearly bowling into a woman who stepped out of the door on the ground floor. She eyed him with undisguised suspicion as she asked, "Is Madame de Chanel back from her journey?"


 "Journey...?"


 "She left a few months ago, oh, September or October last year. Ever since then, there has been this terrible stench coming from above!" The woman sniffed, fiddling with the straps of her bonnet. "I’ve complained to the owner of the house, but he never responds to my letters. My daughter is already becoming sick from that smell."


It took him a week to find the information he was looking for. The records kept at the city’s supervisory board were just barely up to date, but he found an owner’s certificate at last, stuffed carelessly into a crumbling folder, that confirmed his suspicion.


The house Christine de Chanel’s apartment was in had been owned by William Darcy.


He mulled this discovery over and remembered what Crawford told him on the night he brought Farfarello to their home. Something about Christine strolling around the Docklands and the East End of London had always rubbed Schuldig the wrong way; now he knew that there were a lot of things that had simply escaped his attention while he had been occupied with Farfarello. He realized that he had been looking for answers in the wrong place.


Christine had not been strolling around the Docklands and the East End out of curiosity. She had been hunting cats. Now he also understood why he had found her corpse in such proximity to that of the dead Felidae’s; Farfarello must have come upon her just after she had killed the Felidae and decided to exact his revenge then and there. It must have been an added bonus for him to know that she was one of the Vampires he had been looking for in the first place.


Yet Farfarello had always insisted he had not touched Christine. It also did not explain why Farfarello had sought out Schuldig and led him to her corpse. And why had Farfarello not recognized Crawford as the third Vampire? He had known William’s and Christine’s faces, or at least their names.


 "Who knows what went on in that head of his," Wilfred said as Schuldig shared his insights with him. With Eliza’s death three weeks in the past, they had been spending more and more time away from the Bear at Arms, too depressed by the decidedly morbid atmosphere that held a tight leash on the others. "Let me say this, Schu: William, Crawford and Christine all lied to you. Maybe not William as much as the other two, but they all did. What if Christine and Crawford went hunting together? What if Crawford then went crazy and killed her, maybe to start everything that happened afterwards? I wouldn’t put it past him, now that I know a bit more."


Sucking on his pipe, Wilfred regarded Schuldig with a contemplating, calm gaze, and Schuldig inwardly sighed at his friend’s thoughts. They were mostly centred on how he seemed unable to let go of something everyone else was trying very hard to forget. There was also a faint tinge of annoyance mixed in with it all; Wilfred thought he had spent enough time thinking, worrying about everything, and it was time that Schuldig found his way back to his old self and left the past where it belonged: in the past. It was a sentiment Schuldig could have agreed with wholeheartedly had his heart not insisted he stayed with the past for a little longer. "Then why did Crawford kill Theo? Theo had nothing to do with all of this."


 "Perhaps not. But from what you tell me, Theodore was the only one out of all of us who knew something about what happened in Ireland, all those centuries ago. It must have scared Crawford to learn that there was someone who knew about it. Look at how he went about things - Crawford never planned to stay here after all was said and done. He used your rather obvious fascination with Farfarello to stay out of your view and went about what he had in mind, and when it came to killing Theodore he knew you’d start looking in other places, not just in that house in Mayfair. That was when he attacked you to keep you out of the way long enough." Wilfred gave a long, suffering sigh, not bothering to hide his annoyance with the entire affair now, and went on, "It is all rather simple, Schuldig, but you refuse to see the simplicity and look for more complicated answers."


He cringed at the words but managed to hide it, hearing Farfarello’s voice telling him almost the same thing in the back of his mind. "But Theodore never mentioned a third Vampire. Theodore only knew about Christine and William - why not Crawford? He was even in the same room with us when Theo told me about it all."


Wilfred shrugged. "Whether or not Theo knew about Crawford doesn’t really matter, I think. You’re still looking for someone to blame everything on, Schu, and I think I have the right to say that you’re doing it because of one thing only."


He felt cold and looked away, at the flickering fire. "And what would that be?"


 "Do I really have to say it?"


That question kept echoing in Schuldig’s mind long after Wilfred had left for his own home, leaving Schuldig to the silence and the familiarity of his own thoughts. No. Wilfred did not have to say it. He wandered through the rooms and opened the closet in his bedroom, running his fingers over the black clothes that lay folded on the topmost shelf. Farfarello had not taken them with him as he left. He had only taken what he wore on his body, as though he did not want anything unnecessary to remind him of the Vampire.


Yet Farfarello had left something behind, something that Schuldig suspected would stay with him until the day he died. Voices and whispers, thoughts and dreams, belonging to everybody else, slowly seeping into Schuldig’s core with every breath he took. It was a gift he was not sure he should appreciate, but knew he could not get rid of.


They were there now, along with his memories and desires.


Schuldig had not found a satisfying answer, neither in the case of Christine’s and Theodore’s death nor in Crawford’s role in all of this, or in his personal affairs with Farfarello. The last one weighted on his mind the most, bringing with it all the desire, the want, and finally, Farfarello’s refusal. That, Schuldig knew, hurt and occupied him the most.


But Farfarello had left London, and Schuldig had banned Crawford, and with that the only two people he could have gotten any answers from where gone.


Somewhere, someone was probably laughing about it all.


It would take him a long time to come to terms with that knowledge, but Schuldig once again reminded himself that time was one thing he had in abundance.


He walked back into the living room and opened one of the windows, looking out over the nearest houses and snowy street below. This was it, then. His stage. London and all the city’s streets, all the city’s monsters and tragedies and lies - all his. The curtain call on this act had fallen. Somehow, though, Schuldig had missed his cue to leave the stage together with all the others.


He sighed as he leaned on the windowsill, and thought, Well. The play goes on behind the stage.


THE END


Finished 2003-07-24, © Ningengirai.


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FOOTNOTES


[1] "So tear me open, pour me out, there’s things inside that scream and shout" - lines from Metallica’s ‘Until it sleeps’.