The Vampyre Read Online Free PDF Page A

ever heard. ‘This one,’ it whispered. ‘You promised me. This one! Look, look, don’t you see her face?’ Rebecca struggled to stay awake, to listen further, but the words began to fade into the dark. The dark was satin, and delicious to the touch.
    But Rebecca never swooned wholly into unconsciousness. She was aware of herself, all the time, of the blood inside her veins, of the life inside her body and soul. She lay in that place of the dead she knew not how long. She did recognise, when it happened, that she was rising to her feet, but only remembered being led up the steps and out across the church once the wind from the London night had blown cold across her face. Then she began to walk, down endless dark streets. Someone was beside her. She began to shiver. She felt cold inside, but her skin was hot, and across her neck the wound burned like liquid gold. She stopped, and stood still. She watched as the figure from beside her walked on, just a silhouette in a long black coat. Rebecca looked around. To her right flowed the Thames, its waters greasy with the dark and cold. The storm had died to a preternatural hush. Nothing living disturbed the calm.
    Rebecca clutched herself and shuddered. She watched the figure ahead of her walk along the Embankment sweep. He was limping, she saw, and carried a cane. She felt her wound. The pain was already beginning to chill. She looked for the figure again. He had gone. Then Rebecca saw him again, crossing over Waterloo Bridge. The silhouette reached the far bank. It disappeared.
    Rebecca wandered aimlessly through London’s depeopled streets. She had lost all sense of time or place. Once, someone tried to stop her, pointing at the wound to her neck and asking to help, but Rebecca brushed him aside, not even pausing to glance into his face. Morning broke slowly, and still Rebecca walked. She grew aware of traffic, and the faint songs of birds. Streaks of red light began to touch the eastern sky. Rebecca found herself walking by the Thames again. For the first time that night, she glanced at her watch. Six o’clock. She realised with a shock how light-headed she felt. She leaned against a lamppost, and stroked at the pain that stretched across her neck.
    Ahead of her, she could see a crowd of people by the riverside wall. She walked along towards them. Everyone was peering into the waters below. There were policemen, Rebecca saw. They had dredging hooks. They began to pull on them, and a limp dripping bundle was hauled up the embankment face. Rebecca watched as it was rolled over the wall and fell with a damp thud onto the paving stones. A policeman bent down to peel some rags away. He made a face and shut his eyes. ‘What is it?’ Rebecca asked the man in front of her. He said nothing, just stood aside. Rebecca looked down at the bundle. Dead eyes met her own. The face was smiling, but wholly white. There was a terrible gash across the dead man’s neck.
    â€˜No,’ said Rebecca softly to herself, ‘no.’ Like the sound of a stone dropped into a well, comprehension of what she was seeing had come slowly. And broader comprehension, of what or who could have done such a thing, to the corpse and to herself, seemed impossibly beyond her reach. She felt tired and sick. Turning, she hurried from the scene. Instinctively, she muffled herself behind her coat, so that no one should see the wound to her own neck. She began to climb the bridge that led to Charing Cross.
    â€˜Rebecca!’
    The same voice, the one she had heard outside St Jude’s. She spun round in horror. A man was standing behind her, a leer on his face.
    â€˜Rebecca!’ The man’s grin broadened. ‘Surprise, surprise! Remember me?’
    Rebecca turned her face. The smell of acid on the man’s breath was foul. He chuckled softly as she looked at him again. He was young and well-dressed, almost dandyish, but his long hair was tangled in greasy knots,