Chapter 1
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Introduction
August, 1899
Newgate Prison looms overhead, squat and wide, grim stone rising sheer from the sidewalk. Arthur rubs his damp palms against the legs of his trousers. The wool of them is strong and dark, the shirt crisp against his skin. A good suit- shillings and shillings worth of clothes he’s wearing, shillings they- he could’ve spent on food. (Shillings he doesn’t know where Gregory got them from.)
Except the thought of food makes the tense nausea sitting in his stomach bubble, and he has to swallow.
No, he has to do this.
No matter how much he wants to be anywhere, anywhere but here right now. No matter how clammy he feels, how small, how weak.
They aren’t going to keep him there. They aren’t going to lock him in some dark cell with real criminals where the rats will eat him. It’s been weeks since he’s nicked anything, and they don’t know about it anyway.
Rationally, he knows that. Nobody is looking for him.
He slides a sideways glance at the man beside him. He’s not terribly tall or wide, and is tunelessly humming to himself as he strides across the street, like he doesn’t have a concern in the world. Like they aren’t going towards a prison. Like this is just a pleasant afternoon stroll. Jolly, Arthur supposes is the word.
Despite the man’s lack of size and good humour, or maybe because of it, Arthur can’t help the prickle at the back of his neck. He’s only talked to him once before today, when Gregory brought Arthur to meet the man at Blair’s pub.
Arthur was sure then that the man was going to disappear with the money he said he needed for Arthur’s clothes, that it was a scam. Why would someone just agree to accompany two boys he didn’t know to a prison?
But he showed up with the suit for Arthur just like he said he would, and that makes Arthur only more suspicious for what the con is, the angle, the trap.
But he has to do this. For Gregory. For himself.
To stop the questioning. The wondering.
To fix it.
Not that Gregory wants it fixed- he says everything’s fine. He says he’s himself. Even despite the things he can do now. The demon was already almost dead, he says. Only a little of its powers survived, he says. It didn’t have the strength left to take him over, he says.
But how can Arthur believe him? What if that’s the demon, trying to lure him in- isn’t that what demons are supposed to do?
Is it Gregory behind that familiar face? Or is it something else?
None of the books in his father’s library had any “check whether you’ve turned your best friend into a demon” spells.
Gregory seems to act like himself- Arthur thinks. But he’s not sure.
And he can’t go on like this- he has to figure it out.
(He remembers the church, a week ago: Lurking in the back, watching Gregory step inside. Gregory yelling: “I’m burning, I’m burning!” The painful jump in his heart- oh god, Gregory really is a demon/oh god, he’s losing his best friend again, he’s killed him again- Gregory laughing, grinning- “I’m just joking, Artie! I’m fine, see?”
The churning anger in his chest, so much he barely minds the annoyed priest throwing them out.
Gregory’s pleading and apologies while Arthur refuses to speak to him unless absolutely necessary.
Which is familiar. But does it mean it’s Gregory?)
And there’s only one person he can ask. Even if it’s the last person he wants to ask.
So he goes along with Mr. Jernigan, and watches him talk to the door guard.
That doesn’t change that his voice feels thready and pathetic, the piping of a small child as he tells the guard his name and who they’re there to visit.
That doesn’t change that he has to force his back stiff and ramrod straight to not jump at the sound of the keys in the doors, the slam of them as they enter the building.
He doesn’t look at the brown tabby cat following them, but he knows it’s there. Probably thinking this is all a great lark.
~~~~
Where Mr. Jernigan disappears to, Arthur doesn’t know. The moment he’s facing his father, he knows he made a terrible mistake. The bars between them feel insubstantial. His father is gaunter than he remembers, the lines of his face harsher. All thoughts leave Arthur’s head, and he has no idea what kind of explanation he stutters out. Black disdain snaps at him from his father’s eyes.
He just wants to run away and hide, run away to his room and curl up against Gregory and pretend he’s going to be okay.
But he can’t. And the money he’s spent on this… Helplessness and futility claw at his throat and the back of his eyes.
But worse than the disdain is the dark light in his father’s eyes when he looks at the brown tabby cat posturing in front of Arthur.
“A demon? Maybe you aren’t entirely useless, after all…”
Or something like that is what he says- there’s a rushing in Arthur’s ears, maybe it’s the sound of his hammering heart, that makes it hard to hear.
He’s wanted to be not entirely useless for so long, he’s worked so hard for words like these, and he didn’t think he would ever hear them.
But now, they only mean he fucked up again, he shouldn’t have come, it was a mistake- the greed in his father’s eyes- he wants Gregory, he’s going to use Gregory, or whatever Gregory is now, he’s not going to tell Arthur how to undo what he did, why did he think he would, that was stupid, stupid, stupid!
He stutters and mumbles, all the things his father hates (“Speak up, boy!” The snarl, the glare, the threatening step towards him), and backs away, and somehow, he’s out in the corridor again, and miraculously, Gregory is there, too, isn’t doing anything rash.
Arthur’s legs feel like water, and he staggers, braces against the wall- they need to get out of here. He needs to… to find another way to figure out about Gregory (nevermind that going to see his father was already his last resort.) Away, for now he needs to get away so he can think, reason, plan.
Which way…? He lifts his head, looks up and down the corridor- for which way they came, for the guard that brought them. He thinks it was that way, from the right.
He doesn’t see the guard, only a lump on the floor.
Except that is the guard. And he’s dead. Very dead, with a white face and bugging eyes and rusty-red splashes all around his chin and chest and hands and only red where his throat should be.
Arthur backs away- it doesn’t make sense, but the guard is dead, oh god, what if they think he did it, what if someone sees, what if the next guard shows up, it can’t be long, why didn’t he pay attention when they came in, where did they pass guards?, they have to get out of here.
Gregory. He looks around, finds the cat still at the door to his father’s cell, or the visitor room or whatever it was. It’s looking at the dead guard with a curious tilt to its head.
“Gregory!” he hisses.
The cat turns, meets his eyes with a guileless green look, and then runs over to his side as Arthur starts to hurry away the other direction from the dead guard- he’s pretty sure that’s away from where they came, but… they’ll have to find a way around.
He rounds the corner, weight on the balls of his feet, quietly, quietly- and freezes. The lighting in this place isn’t terribly good, but he can still clearly see the figure of another guard down the hall, between more doors.
His back is to them, and Arthur holds his breath, shifts his weight backwards.
Before he can inch back around the corner, the form of the man slumps, folds, falls to the floor with a sound like a sack of flour hitting pavement.
Behind it stands another figure, but it takes a moment for Arthur’s mind to make sense of what his eyes are seeing. It looks almost like a stick figure of a person, too thin, too angular.
It’s a skeleton. A skeleton is standing in the hallway, over the body of the guard on the floor. Strange silver sparks and glitters chase its limbs.
Fear has Arthur’s heart and throat in a brutal grip, and he is almost glad for the pain that chokes any startled noise he might have made. Slowly, slowly he steps backwards- his eyes on the skeleton as it crouches in front of the guard. What it does or wants, he can’t tell and doesn’t want to. After a moment that lasts a syrupy eternity, he is back around the corner, shielded from the thing.
Gregory. He looks down, and Gregory is there, is opening his mouth- Arthur makes a frantic gesture, presses a finger to his lips and looks along the corridor.
Only one way to go- past the other dead guard.
But better that than the thing around the corner. And who knows when it’ll come back.
He casts a look over his shoulder- can only see a section of wall. What he would’ve done if the skeleton had been behind him, he doesn’t know.
Far too aware of even the softest scuff of his shoes on the floor, he hurries along the other way- gives the dead guard as wide a berth as he can in the corridor.
And he isn’t far past when an alarm bell starts clanging. Voices and footsteps echo along the stone walls.
Not far in front of them is the rectangle of a stairwell leading up and with a vague idea of circling around the guards to the exit, he dashes up into it before they can run into the guards below.
~~~~
Somehow, avoiding the guards pushes them higher and higher up, until they’re heading along a corridor Arthur thinks is at the top of the prison. The cell doors here are almost normal, wooden doors, except they have a barred opening at eye height- well, not his eye height. It looks like this is a slightly nicer part of the prison.
At least that seems to mean less guards, since he can’t see or hear any while he heads in the direction of what he hopes is the front of the building.
Below them, the alarm is still going, and footsteps, and shouts, and screams. And from the insides of the cells, there are questioning calls, “What’s going on?!” and Arthur ducks down as far as he can as they pass, to maybe avoid the glance of anyone he can hear moving behind their doors.
Gregory is running along ahead of him, but stops as they come to a corner. There’s a door there, too, but it doesn’t have any viewing slit, and there’s a wooden box on the wall next to it with a key.
“Could be an exit!” Gregory says excitedly, and Arthur gives him a look- they’re… four? stories up, where would it exit to?
But before he can protest, Gregory has already turned back to his human form and grabbed the key, while Arthur looks around frantically- what if someone saw that?!
The room beyond the door isn’t any sort of exit- it’s a bedroom. A… very pretty and rich-looking bedroom. Lots of red fabric, and a neatly-made bed with curtains, and… he’s pretty sure that’s a harp in the corner, and colours and brushes strewn over a desk. It’s definitely not an exit. There’s a window, but it has bars. An open book lies on the sill- which makes him wonder about the occupant of the room, just when there’s a sound from a wardrobe.
And Gregory walks inside.
Arthur hisses at him from the doorway, but of course that has no effect.
~~~~
Darcy wants her papa. But she’s also old enough to know that he can’t magically appear from wherever he is on the Continent. Knowing that doesn’t mean she really, really doesn’t want him to appear out of nowhere and save her anyway, save her from her hiding spot in her wardrobe. Make the horrible sounds go away, make sure nobody finds her room. Nobody finds her.
Wait. That’s the key in the lock. Is Uncle coming? She opens the wardrobe door the tiniest bit to peek only to close it again, right away. No, no, no, no, she doesn’t know them. They shouldn’t be here, nobody can be near her. She has a bad, dangerous blood disease. She’ll make them sick and they look like they are, she shudders, lower class boys. In her room! Oh no, what is going to happen to her?
She really can’t tell because, of course, the brown-haired brute in the front opens the door to her hiding place. She screams in terror through his protests that they aren’t going to hurt her. But then the sound tapers off as she smells something. Something that wipes all fear away, something that wipes all thought away, as one single sensation surges through her: Hunger.
~~~~
Arthur, edging into the room to be out of sight of the corridor, startles back as the girl suddenly ignores Gregory and rushes right past him, in a flutter of red dress and red hair.
At least she’s not screaming anymore. His heart is pounding harder than ever- what the hell is Gregory thinking?! This is some kind of fancy room, this girl maybe someone important, and now she’s seen them, and they could be in so much trouble!
Except now she ran out, really, really fast- is it bad that she escaped? He pokes his head outside the door, realises her footsteps have stopped and there’s weird sounds… kind of wet, slurpy sounds.
Which are explained when he realises he can see around the corner from where he’s standing, and there’s another dead guard on the floor. One the girl is crouched over, and has her face buried in his throat, and that’s where the slurpy noises are coming from. And also, the body is jostling a little back and forth with jerks from her head.
Arthur’s pretty sure she’s drinking the dead man’s blood and queasiness roils in his stomach.
And as he stands there and stares, Gregory walks past him, towards the girl, because… because self-preservation has never been his strong suit and… and the thought sends a confused jolt of grief through Arthur and he shouldn’t be thinking about this, he has more important things to think about, such as how they really really need to get out of here, because… because someone (or something) killed this man, and they just accidentally let a blood-drinking girl escape and they really need to get out of here!
And the blood-drinking girl lifts her head when Gregory comes close and… and growls. And there’s blood all over her face. And her canines are too long. Those are definitely fangs. And the movement made her hair slide off of the dead guard’s chest, and Arthur can see that her fingers end in claws, which are sunk through cloth and flesh.
At least her growling makes Gregory stop and look back at Arthur- not that Arthur’s taking his eyes off of the girl with her fangs and claws. But then she lifts her head, nose in the air, and dashes off again, further along the corridor- where Arthur can see another still form on the floor.
“Maybe she knows the way out, she lives here! Let’s follow her!” Gregory says- and runs off without paying Arthur’s incredulous look any mind, leaving him with no choice but to run after, as well.
Towards another dead body. He hates dead bodies. He doesn’t want to see another dead body. And he definitely doesn’t want to see it being turned into dinner. By a girl who a) was locked in a room, so probably isn’t supposed to be running around the place, and therefore b) probably doesn’t know a way out, and even if, c) doesn’t seem to be in any state of mind to think that far!
But the only thing worse than running through a prison full of dead people and creepy skeletons after Gregory and some blood-drinking girl would be running through the prison full of dead people and creepy skeletons by himself, so he follows along, keeping his distance- down the corridor, down some stairs, down another corridor, around a corner… and there’s the skeleton.
It’s way, way closer this time. And looking right at them.
Because it has eyes. Staring, glistening eyes, round as balls, lidless in the sockets of the skull. The iris is a ring of colour, the pupil a dot. And they’re fixed right on them.
Of course it doesn’t have a proper facial expression. But its yellow teeth part, its jaw quivers… like maybe it’s laughing.
It lifts a hand, crooks a finger- beckons them. Dark liquid and rusty brown stains cover its hands, the metal claws that are its fingertips. Blood drips between the bones, from wires that hold them together, is speckled up its arms and over the rib cage and onto the teeth and the jutting cheekbones of the skull.
Arthur’s lip quivers and he has to swallow hard against the way his stomach is heaving.
The girl, on the other hand, dashes for the fallen form at the skeleton’s feet, no sign of fear, snarls at it as she did at Gregory earlier.
And the skeleton turns and walks off.
Which really shouldn’t look that easy. It doesn’t have any muscles, or anything to hold it properly upright, but it still walks off like… like a person. There’s no shambling or dragging or shuffling.
It’s the second-creepiest thing Arthur’s ever seen.
And then Gregory runs after it. Why, Arthur has no idea- fine, the only other way to go is back the way they came, but… why would they not let it get further away?!
Also, as Gregory runs past the girl, her head comes up again, fangs bared- but instead of going back to mutilating the corpse she’s crouching over, something in her expression shifts, she cocks her head… and then takes off after Gregory.
Arthur shouts a warning, and Gregory looks over his shoulder- sees the girl and grins, of all things, then at least keeps running.
Arthur groans, curses, and follows them. He doesn’t dare overtake her, though, in case that draws her attention to him. He just hopes she doesn’t look back, because… he doesn’t like being separated from Gregory like that, her between them. What if she does notice him and go after him instead? He doesn’t want to get torn into with those fangs and claws of hers. And he doesn’t like the intent expression he saw on her face before she took off after Gregory- predatory, but differently predatory than before.