When the Dark Wins Read online

  “You’ve done it this time.” Harshly whispered self-chastisement stuttered past chattering teeth. “You should have just let him have his fun.”

  Acid hit the back of her throat. One gag and her stomach emptied.

  Tears running from her eyes, Pearl gripped the side of the sink. Red smeared the bowl but it was nothing to the horrid puddle of bloody vomit the drain could not draw down fast enough.

  A little whirlpool grew in the mess. Running water diluted the crimson from deep red to light blush. All the while, hot tears ran down cold cheeks.

  The man had tasted terrible.

  Mottled bruises marked her cheek where the stranger had struck her. The back of her head was a pulped mush from the impact of the sidewalk. One look in the mirror told her there was more blood... in her hair, around her mouth, saturating the black wool of her only coat.

  Torn throats made a mess.

  Behind a split lip, a pair of delicate fangs remained distended. She’d been unable to retract them, too upset and far too scared.

  Bloodshot from weeping, violet eyes stared back at her. “You have to wash off the blood. You have to wash your coat. You have to clean this room before anyone wakes up. Stop crying.”

  A block and a half away, a corpse was being dusted by snow, the same snow that bore a pair of uneven tracks right to her door.

  At her back, the communal bathroom door was locked, but it was only a matter of time before one of the other tenants knocked so they might get ready for work. It took over an hour before water off her coat ran clear, for Pearl to wash her hair in the sink, to clean up the cuts and scrapes.

  The sun was rising by the time she huddled in her bed. Outside her only window, the storm raged on, and the world looked white and clean.

  Pearl knew what was hidden under that snow, and in a matter of hours, so would the rest of New York.

  Chapter 2

  Black and white photographs of the sprawled corpse filled front page news. He’d been found frozen solid, mild bruising on his arms and legs, throat torn open—bite marks identified on his neck. Beside the horror was the smiling image of a handsome man of quality reputation. Chadwick Parker: entrepreneur, man about town, and son of the powerful Judge Parker. He glowed with life in that photograph, handsome and chirpy—a real heartbreaker.

  One conniving lie of a man.

  Good Christian men didn’t attack seemingly defenseless women in dark alleys. They didn’t rape them.

  Pearl knew better than to assume she had been the first woman he’d followed home. Over the years, how many others had he hurt?

  She wasn’t sorry he was dead… but she could still taste his sour blood in her mouth, could feel him inside her, and felt completely unclean.

  Though the man who attacked her would never be able to hurt her again, she was the one left terrified.

  The police were looking for the killer. For her.

  The boroughs had grabbed onto the story, the press sensationalizing every known fact regarding the grotesque murder. Though the body had not been exsanguinated, it didn’t matter. The official coroner’s report stated that long, sharp teeth had been the weapon—that they had torn through the carotid artery while gnawing a path from left to right.

  It did not resemble the bite of any known animal. The bite pattern appeared human, save two fang-like incisors.

  The City Daily had been the first paper to use the word vampire.

  Illustrious Chadwick Parker’s death was treated as the most vicious murder New York had seen in ages. Keep your children inside after dark, your womenfolk safe. Nightmares lurked in the cold dark. No one mentioned that he’d been found with his fly open, cock out, or asked why he had been on a late night stroll through a shoddy neighborhood during a blizzard.

  “Cigarette?”

  Every table, every canoodling couple was whispering, boasting, making conjecture on the same thing. Her.

  “Cigarette?”

  Pearl had never felt physically well a time in her life, but since that man’s fetid blood had pooled in her mouth, she could hardly keep anything down.

  More bones than curves in her clothes, her paunchy boss was dissatisfied with what he saw. “You look like shit.”

  It wasn’t just her flagging looks. Pearl had been jumping at shadows; she’d knocked over drinks on guests. Her time at the supper club was up, her little room with its window was going to be lost, and once again, any type of life she had tried to imagine for herself had been ruined.

  She should have known better than to hope things might be different.

  Pearl, her voice low so the other girls wouldn’t hear, said, “Just give me one more night, sir.”

  “You ain’t been so bad, Pearl. You show up on time, do your job… but no one wants to look at a skeleton slinging cigs.”

  “I’ll put on more rouge, take the section farthest from the stage lights.” Lightheaded, she flat out begged. “One more night, Mr. Weller. Please?”

  He was unconvinced, eyeing the dark marks under her eyes, the bony knobs of her shoulders. “You got the consumption?”

  That wasn’t what was wrong with her. “No, sir. I am just hungry. Winters are hard.”

  “Well, for Christ’s sake, eat something, girl!”

  She took his admonishment as approval, and flung the strap of her cigarette box over her head. Once she had it flush to her neck, she offered a close mouthed smile. “Thank you.”

  Rushing from the dressing rooms, she heard Mr. Weller call at her back, “The first complaint I get, you’re gone, kid.”

  Smile glued on, everything was by the book: drop a curtsey at each table, stay moving, no lounging. Assure guests were happy. The sidelong glances, Pearl could handle, even the occasional look of disgust at her split lip. If they sneered, she smiled even bigger, fangs retracted, all her teeth on display, until they stopped sneering and looked through her.

  That was how people worked; that was the world Pearl had always known.

  One more night, two more dollars then she would leave her little apartment with its floral papered walls and single overhead light. In a pair of sturdy shoes, she could walk to Boston or maybe Philadelphia. It would take time, weeks, but there would be no more scary newspapers, no more feeling like the buildings were closing in around her.

  She could find a job just like this one, maybe even another apartment with a window.

  Or... what if she didn’t leave? What if she took some time and ate a great deal? If she could fatten her cheeks up by spring, maybe Palace Delight would want her back. Without funds her room would be lost, but living on the street wasn’t so bad. She’d done it before; she could do it again.

  Hope, it was a vicious deceiver, but still it came to prick at her heart. It had been two weeks and no soul had knocked on her door. Perhaps New York was big enough to shield her. After all, she’d come here for a reason. The Big Apple, the Golden City she’d dreamed of for decades. Art Deco, shimmering buildings, picture shows.

  Everything would be fine.

  A deep breath and her smile became genuine.

  True to his word, Mr. Weller fired her at the end of the shift, but not without payment. He even tucked an extra dollar in her hand out of charity. By the time she’d pulled on her coat and stepped out into the icy night, her bad turn had begun to feel manageable.

  He’d hire her back, Pearl was certain. She just needed to gain some weight first. The long walk home was a good place to start. There were always rats in New York City, and they were easy enough to catch.

  She snatched up two, draining each out of sight of the street. When her teeth sunk into the third, her heart stopped racing, her breath became even for the first time in days, and feeling began to come back to her frozen toes.

  Starving herself out of fear of the shadows had been unwise. It was a mistake she promised herself not to repeat.

  The dead, mangy creature was dropped on dirty snow. A full sigh puffed like smoke in the chilled air, Pearl leaning her head back aga
inst the brick wall of a dreary tenement. In the narrow alley, sandwiched between two tall buildings she had a small view of a pretty sky to enjoy.

  “I can smell the human’s blood on your coat, apostate.”

  Cutting off her startled shriek, a hand closed over her mouth... a hand attached to an arm that had grown from the wall at her back.

  Screaming behind the clamp of rough fingers, Pearl threw a terrified glance side to side in a desperate attempt to see who’d caught her.

  Nobody was there, only a wall and a garbage bin.

  Fear elongated fangs behind her lips, kohled lashes spiked with cake mascara so wide, the whites of her eyes shone bright in the dark.

  The feeling of jagged mortar grinding against her spine melted away, morphing from ice cold brick to the firm body of a man.

  He hoisted her upward, despite frantically kicking legs, while silent figures materialized to her left and her right.

  Brick met her face, cheek split, teeth cracked.

  Dazed from the blow, Pearl’s mouth gaped and her eyes settled on an angel.

  The being, the stranger, gripped her chin, his fingers distorting her cheeks as he smiled. That grin promised pain, the torments of hell, and was the most terrifying thing Pearl had seen in her long, laborious life.

  Begging was not beneath her. “I never meant to hurt anyone.”

  From the monster’s mouth, a milky white pair of razor sharp teeth grew long and menacing.

  Two long fangs just like hers.

  It could not be…

  It couldn’t.

  Things like her did not exist. She was sick, that was all. She was sick and needed the absolution of God to save her from her deformity and perverse hungers.

  Instinct would disagree with her. One look at those fangs and Pearl hissed, began to fight in earnest, and was punished horribly.

  The smiling man jammed his fingers into her mouth. Gagging when he hooked her fang, she tried to bite. It took several hard jerks, but with a final twisting wrench, he ripped her tooth straight from her skull.

  Gums torn, the socket open and spurting blood, Pearl wailed.

  No pain she’d ever known compared to this.

  Her second fang was gouged out, her cheek ripped fully apart from corner to ear when the man laughing in her face caught his sharpened nail on the flesh.

  The angel had no interest in her words, the question in her eyes, or her gurgled prayers... only her agony.

  Feet dragging over pavement, a stream of blood poured from her mouth to mark the path. In the time it took to bring her to this place, she had counted them. Three men with angelic faces and evil hearts had hauled her the distance, and not a single soul had seen.

  Dangling between them, the best she could do was press a hand to her maimed face, swallow the constant flow of blood collecting in her mouth, and weep. Her attacker had taken more than her fangs, he had taken her misguided hope that there might be answers to her life—that there might be more for her than year upon year of isolation and loneliness.

  There were others like her.

  How could she have never known?

  Even as they’d beat her, Pearl had tried to ask them what they were. But these men, these glowing angels, were so much stronger and possessed no pity for what they’d deemed an apostate.

  She was going to die, be ravaged. If what he’d done to her face was any example, it would be a painful and brutal end.

  Sticky crimson ran down her chin, over her neck, staining her clothes. Trying to keep her jaw together despite torn tendons and shredded skin, she failed at speech. Useless lolling tongue only smeared gore from ear to ear, mixed it with her tears.

  Tearing the fabric, her coat was yanked down skinny arms, the girl left in only the supper club’s flashy uniform and torn stockings. And that was how they made her walk down the dark, littered alley where she expected they would murder her and leave her to rot.

  It was not a good place to die.

  Hair in the grip of the one who’d torn out her teeth, head bent back, she saw one last view of the stars.

  The man began to chant.

  Groaning in protest of the unnatural bend of her spine engorged a bubble of blood on her cheek. It popped, her bones cracked in symphony with her captor’s guttural pronunciations, and the world lurched.

  Vision distorted, walls leaning toward her as if ready to crumble and crush her to dust, Pearl watched the awful world twist in upon her and turn her inside out.

  This must be death.

  A moment later, it was over.

  The grim reaper had not come. Her heart still banged against her chest, her blood still poured from her ruined mouth, and pain only grew.

  They were no longer standing in the snow, hidden between tight row houses. Now, uneven, time-worn masonry was under her feet, her scream echoing off an arched stone roof, with not a speck of sky to be seen.

  The cry died, and all around them the sound of softly traded conversation, the noise of footfalls echoing as if they stood in a great cathedral replaced it.

  A church?

  But there were no crosses or priests, only a congregation of strangers watching as she was dragged deeper into the sanctum.

  Maybe she had died and this was how she was to be judged, bleeding and broken before heaven’s shining hosts.

  When she was dragged forward, when she caught a glimpse of the quiet crowd watching her advance, she met eyes with curious strangers.

  She disgusted them. Some even sniffed her way, sneering.

  A sharp kick hit the back of her legs; knees knocked into stone so hard her teeth snapped and the pain in her jaw doubled. Hunched over, Pearl clutched her torn cheek, pathetic, scared, and completely confused.

  The angel who’d torn out her teeth and ripped open her face shouted so all might hear, “This apostate is responsible for abandoning the remains of Chadwick Parker where humans would find them. I have brought it before you, my lord, as you ordered.” He threw her stolen coat on the ground before them. “And here is the proof. The dead human’s blood is matted into her coat.”

  Tightening his fingers until her scalp burned, the man jerked her head back so all might look upon her ruined face.

  The men and women gathered around whispered excitedly, but Pearl saw none of it, heard nothing. From the moment her head had been flung back, her eyes were fixed in horror, glued to the thing that waited at the head of the room.

  This was not heaven and she was not to be judged by God…

  It was dim, the chamber lit only with gas lamps instead of the popular electric bulb but she saw the face of the fallen one. Light flickered, drawing the pits and edges of its face into stark relief. More hideous than any imagined devil, it spoke, glowing red eyes engaged upon the man who held her down. “Ten days it took you to find the one responsible, and all you have to show me is one unremarkable, toothless female.”

  Towering over her, her captor answered his liege. “Weak as it is, it obviously has not fed in days. My lord, it thought to hide from your authority. Once it emerged, the apostate was captured easily, defanged with minimal effort. Its teeth I offer to you.”

  Like the shabby coat, the bloodied pair of elongated incisors were tossed to bounce like dice toward the feet of the monstrosity.

  The gift was ignored.

  The devil turned his eyes to her instead. The power of that burning red gaze traveled like a living thing to settle on her bloodied face.

  It stared through her, unmoving where it rotted in its seat. Rope-like muscle encased prominent bones—as if the creature’s flesh had wilted in the grave. Grotesque as it was, its form remained massive.

  It wanted to see the whole of her face, demanded that she lower her hand—Pearl could hear him whispering into her mind, urging absolute obedience. There was no possible question of resisting. Weak, her fingers slipped from where she’d relentlessly tried to hold her jaw together, the damage on display for all to see.

  Her captor had called her toothless;
Pearl grasped the slander was meant to shame. It did. She was almost as hideous as the demon.

  Incapable of forming words, incapable of screaming, she could not move, not a muscle, when an arm stretched impossibly far across the room. Boney fingers slid over the ruined side of her face. He probed, snagging her bloody lip to prod the empty sockets and the bits of exposed bone between torn gums.

  Her throbbing, horrible pain faded into nothing.

  An unexpected caress of the devil’s thumb wiped away her steady trail of tears, the long yellowed nail at the end careful not to scratch.

  Just as the pain had vanished, her fear began to drain away until she was empty of all things.

  Red, scorching eyes were all she might fathom, her end and her beginning. Nothing else mattered; nothing existed but that rotting devil and her.

  A flicker of satisfaction and his interrogation began. “Child?”

  The mummified monstrosity cupped her jaw, holding it in place to facilitate her speech. Tongue thick, Pearl found herself answering without hesitation. “Yes?”

  Raspy and horrid, his voice slithered through her ears. “Did you slay the human, Chadwick Parker, and leave his body on the street?”

  She blinked once. More tears fell from red-rimmed eyes, her voice vacant. “He was hurting me. It was the only way to make him stop.”

  The unblinking monster projected his pleasure, looking upon her as if beholding something truly worth devouring. “Tell me what happened.”

  Still as stone, legs awkward under her, Pearl found herself leaning into the corpse-like touch. “It was dark. I didn’t want to talk to him.”

  “And?”

  “He forced me down, tore up my skirt so fast he was inside me before I could scream.” No one would have come even had they heard her cry for help. People didn’t go down dark alleys in search of damsels in distress.

  Humans ignored screams in the night.

  The demon answered her unspoken thoughts. “Because they are nothing but animals.”

  “It hurt.”

  There was no change in the fierce expression of the creature who commanded the room, only more demands. “Why leave the body?”