Balthazar kneels down and, with one finger, turns the man’s head to the side. “Here,” he says.
Hesitantly, Emily, Gabriel, and I kneel down too. I look closely at the man’s neck, which is mottled with purple bruises. “The rosy sickness?” I venture.
“No,” Balthazar says. “Watch.”
I look on with morbid fascination. To my horror, Balthazar digs his fingers into the man’s neck. I close my eyes in revulsion but open them only to see him pull something out, which makes an awful squelching sound.
He holds it up, and the weak light in the room reveals a curious instrument. It is an iron-gray cylinder, like a small tube, caked with blood. I swallow and try to stay strong, although this entire venture is dreadful beyond belief.
“What in the name of God is that?” I ask.
Balthazar tosses the tube aside. “It is a draining device,” he says. “These bodies are completely drained of blood.”
Emily stands up and walks closer to the dead woman’s body. I peer at her sleeping face. Her long black hair falls to her shoulders, but her skin is sallow and mottled. Does she have a daughter? I wonder. Someone who loved her, the way I loved Mother?
Emily reaches down and points to the woman’s neck. “Same here,” she says. “Looks like somebody done sucked the blood right out of ’em. Like they was being had for supper.”
I close my eyes.
“Vampire?” Gabriel suggests.
Balthazar stands up. “No, Gabriel. A vampire takes only what is needed to sustain him. There is no blood left in these bodies at all.”
“How did you even find this place?” I ask, staring around the ruinous room.
Balthazar takes a handkerchief from within his coat and wipes his hands. “It is easy to find people who will take a few coins to keep their eyes and ears open,” he says. “All over the East End, I have heard reports of corpses just like these, drained of every drop of blood.”
“Mephisto?” I ask.
“It has to be,” Balthazar says. “But to what end?”
We exit the omnibus near the High Street and walk back to 17 Wadsworth Place. The day is gray and cold, and the clouds seem to slowly drift down to earth and swallow us in a heavy fog. The bodies in the Old Nichol are still with me. I will carry their faces forever.
There is noise and commotion everywhere: children running barefoot or begging for scraps of food, men pushing carts full of rubbish, and vendors shouting out their best bargains of the day. Dogs and cats as thin as skeletons root in trash heaps.
A woman leans out of a high tenement window and empties a chamber pot into the street, just barely missing my head. I almost gag as the smell rises up to greet me. I can’t imagine what I would have done if it had landed on me.
As we pass a jeweler’s shop, a man in dirty clothes blocks our path. Small, piggish eyes dart around in a prunish face. He holds a brush in his hand, and at his feet is a bucket of red paint.
“Excuse us, please, sir,” Balthazar says, about to step around him.
The man spits at Balthazar’s feet. “It’s all your fault! All of you!”
I gasp aloud. Balthazar looks at the spittle and lets out a long, frustrated breath. Emily steps out from behind me. “Piss off!” she shouts.
The man drops his brush, and in the blink of an eye, reaches in his trousers and whips out a crude knife. “Little rat,” he hisses.
With one quick movement, Emily kicks out hard with her left foot, catching the man right in his shin. I step back as he crumples to his knees, letting out a string of curses as he does so. The knife falls from his hand and clatters on the cobblestones. Emily scoops it up without missing a beat.
“I think you should be on your way,” Balthazar says calmly.
The man picks himself up and stands close to Balthazar, who does not flinch.
“Seen your like before,” the man says. “A new day is coming, mark my words.” He pauses and narrows his eyes. “You’re Irish, eh? I can tell. Hair blacker than coal.”
A few people have stopped in the street and are taking in the scene. “Be on your way,” Gabriel says fiercely. The man smirks, but something in Gabriel’s gaze sends him down the street, leaving his bucket and paintbrush right where we stand. Once he is some distance away, he reaches into his filthy coat, pulls out a bottle, then raises it to his lips, drinking greedily.
“He’s touched,” Emily says. “What’s he on about?”
And that’s when I remember.
“He’s painting red Xs. Like we saw before, at the clockmaker’s.”
“What news is this?” Balthazar asks.
We didn’t tell him, I realize. It didn’t seem important at the time, as all our attention had been focused on the boy in the alley. We quickly fill him in.
“Great calamity!” a voice rings out. “Mysterious sickness strikes London. Daily Telegraph and Courier. Great calamity!”