Artful: A Novel (8 page)

Both men had—there was no other way to say it—evil faces. They had distended brows; small, ferocious eyes; and scraggly black hair, coupled with a stench like the dead coming off them. One of them said to the boy, “Ya should have thought of that before ya run off!”

Meanwhile, the one who had shown no ill effects from
Dodger’s
assault reached down and grabbed the Artful by the front of his shirt, yanking him off his feet as if he weighed nothing. “And yew, li’l mon,” he said in a thick Scots brogue, bringing the Artful face to face with him, “yew’ll pay fuh thot!” Indeed, his breath was so foul that the Artful Dodger thought he was already paying for it.

“Release him! At once!”
Drina’s voice thundered, but
unlike
the cab driver, the man who was holding Dodger was not
overwhelmed
by an urge to obey her. In fact, he rather seemed nothing but entertained . . . until he turned and looked at her as she leaned out of the side of the cab. Then his jaw dropped, his eyes widened, and he was clearly stunned by what he saw.

At that point, the Artful did the only thing he could think of doing: He pursed his lips, sucked in his cheeks, and then left fly a huge wad of spit directly in his assailant’s face. The hope was that it would startle him sufficiently that he would lose his grip on the young thief, allowing Dodger to slip free.

Instead, it had a far more profound impact than Dodger could possibly have anticipated.

The moment the saliva struck his face, the man let out a screech like unto a howl of the damned. The liquid did not simply run down his face; instead it began to eat right into it with a sizzling and hissing, and the foul smell of the man’s breath was obliterated by a brand new aroma: the stench of burning flesh.

He dropped the Artful as he staggered backward and then fell, clutching at his face, thrashing about like a fish just landed on a pier.

“What the bleeding Christ did you do!”
shouted the other man, the one who was holding the boy roughly, and the truth was that Dodger had absolutely no idea, but he knew one thing and one thing only, and that was that something that had worked once might well work again. He wadded up and spat once more, although this did not strike as directly as the first one had.
Instead
, it grazed the other man’s cheek, but it was sufficient to cause him extreme pain. The ruffian staggered, grabbing at his face and letting out a string of profanities, but he still clutched the boy. The Artful Dodger grabbed the man’s hand and spat upon it, and it had the same effect as his spit had upon their faces, causing the skin on the back to sizzle. Now the man released the boy, grabbing at his own wrist, and Dodger seized the boy’s hand and yanked him toward himself. In his other hand, he was still clutching the remains of his walking stick, and he ran toward the hansom cab, hauling the boy behind him. He as much as hurled the boy bodily into the cab even as he shouted,
“Go! Go!”

The driver had observed everything that had happened with eyes the size of two half-crown coins. But the moment the
Artful
and the boy were in the cab, he snapped the reins and yelled,
“Yaaaah!”
at the top of his lungs. The horse wheeled around and started barreling down the King’s Way.

“What happened back there?” asked Drina. She seemed out of breath, although that might well have been from the excitement of what she’d just witnessed. “Dodger, what happened?”

“I don’t know. Honest to God, I have no idea.”

“Dodger?” said the boy. “You’re the Artful Dodger?”

“The same.” Reflexively Dodger tipped his hat even as he felt his mind was whirling.

“What did you do to them?” Drina was still looking stunned.

“I spat on them. I spat on them and it just . . . it burned them somehow. How is that possible?”

“Pardon what may seem a ridiculous question,” said the boy, “but you haven’t been drinking holy water by any chance,
have you?
”

“Holy water?” said Drina before Dodger could answer. “That’s ridiculous! Why would he be drinking holy water?” Then her voice trailed off and she looked at him with suspicion. “Wait. The . . . the tea . . .?”

“The water was just sitting there in the stoup,” he said
defensively
.

“You stole
water
from a
church
? To make
tea
?”

“It’s not like I was impersonatin’ a choker and goin’ ’round and usin’ it to baptize babies and chargin’ a quid for it!”

“That’s not the point, and . . . choker?”

“Priest,” he said, motioning to his neck to indicate a collar. And before Drina could start up with her recriminations once more, he quickly turned his attentions back to the boy. “What dif’rence would it make what I was drinking?”

“It probably won’t last for long—a few hours from now, your saliva will be back to normal—but for the moment there was enough residue in your spit to be effective against them,” said
the boy.

“Effective how?” said Drina. “I don’t understand. Who were those villains?”

“Not who.
What
.” The boy said very darkly, with much drama and pronouncement, “Vampyres.”

Drina and the Artful Dodger exchanged looks. Dodger didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the notion. “Vampyres,” said Drina slowly. “You cannot be serious.”

“Serious as the grave, miss,” he said. “Those two took me prisoner . . . held me captive . . .”

“And that makes them vampyres?”

“No, the fact that they are undead, drink blood, and are burned by holy water makes them vampyres.”

“But there’s no such things!” said the Artful. “They’re myths and stories and things that parents try to scare their children with!”

“There
are
such things,” the boy said firmly. “And there’s more of them than you’d think, and they are more highly placed and in positions of influence than you can imagine. Which is why we cannot trust anyone in authority.”

“Well, I’m with you in that regard, at least,” said Dodger. “Still, you can’t think that
—
”

“Bloody hell!”

It was a startled exclamation from the driver above. Immediately, Dodger leaned out the side to look up and see what was happening, and then he gaped at what he saw.

The second blackguard, the one whom Dodger had slowed, but not badly injured, was running after the speeding carriage. Not just running; bounding, as if he were a great jungle cat.

And he was overtaking it.

Yet with all that before him—and all the boy had said—still the Artful Dodger was having trouble grasping the reality of what he was seeing, precisely because it all seemed so utterly
unreal
. But the threat presented seemed real enough, and Dodger
shouted
, “Faster!
Faster
!”

The horse needed no urging from its driver, for there was
terror
in the creature’s eyes.

The carriage turned sharply onto Great Queen Street, losing a bit of speed in the turn but able to take advantage of the greater width of the road. Their pursuer drew closer, and his clawlike fingers almost reached the cab. Then the cab picked up speed and barreled down Great Queen, heading toward Long Acre Road. Their pursuer seemed to be falling back, and within moments Dodger was certain he would lose his taste for the chase.

Dodger sagged back in his seat, the hansom cab—not precisely designed for high speeds—swaying wildly back and forth as it sped down the road. “I think we’ve lost him,” he said, and that was the moment that Drina let out a scream of alarm, because their
pursuer
was right there, right next to them, having picked up speed with apparently no effort whatsoever, and was now clinging to the side of the hansom cab. His arm was thrust into the cab, and he was clawing at Drina, trying to yank her bodily out of it. She cried out, trying to pull loose from his grip, but he was clearly too strong.

The Artful Dodger tried to wad up more spit, but his mouth was dry. He lunged forward, yanking at the villain’s hands, trying to force them off, but they were like unto iron. The villain looked at him, and his appearance seemed to change as his fury mounted upon seeing Dodger. His eyes were blazing an unearthly red, and his lips were drawn back to reveal fangs that would have been more at home in the mouth of a snarling beast.

That was when Dodger saw that as Drina had endeavored to pull free of the villain who was trying to yank her from the cab, a jeweled necklace had slipped out from under her bodice.
Dangling
from a string of purple beads was an ornate cross.

Desperate in the face of the unreal, but remembering the ancient tales that he’d heard, Dodger grabbed the cross and yanked it free of the beads. It snapped off and he held the cross up directly before the intruder’s eyes.

The fiery eyes widened and the creature hissed, reflexively drawing back, allowing just enough slack in his grasp for the
Artful
to yank Drina away from him. But there was not much room in the cab, and with a roar of fury, overcoming his initial revulsion to the cross, the monster yanked open the door, presenting the entirety of his body as he prepared to climb in and do the Lord only knew what to the passengers.

And it was at that moment that the boy, a youth still in his short pants, grabbed up Dodger’s cane—or the remnants of the cane, which was now little more than a long wooden pole with a jagged point—and thrust forward with all the strength his small but determined body possessed. The villain clinging to the cab had only a moment’s warning, and it was insufficient, as the lad drove the wooden shaft into the attacker’s chest with surgical precision. One would have thought that such an effort would have required considerable power, perhaps even a hammer to drive it in with finality. Not so; it punched through the creature’s chest as easily as through a wall of cheapest plaster and straight into the pathetic, shriveled thing that passed for his heart.

He let out a high-pitched shriek and there, before the eyes of the stunned youngsters in the coach—although in actuality only two sets of eyes were stunned, whereas the third set knew all too well what it was looking upon—the body began to desiccate as if a thousand years of existence were passing within a few scant seconds. His burning red eyes receded entirely into his head, leaving nothing but blackened sockets; his gums peeled back, and his fangs fell out; the flesh upon his head shriveled and revealed the skull beneath, and then that burned away as if being consumed from the inside out. With a final low, mournful howl, their pursuer fell away from the cab, hitting the ground as nothing more than a sack of clothing with some bones within.

The youngsters barely had time to adjust to what they had witnessed before the hansom cab jolted to a halt. They were thrown about, Dodger slamming into Drina and apologizing profusely for doing so. They jumped then, startled, crying out as another dark form appeared at the door, but this time it was the driver who was shouting,
“What the bloody hell ’ave you lot gotten me drug into!”

“Here now! There’s a lady present!” the Artful said. “No need for such language!”

The driver stared at them, stupefied, and then the young man who had stabbed Dodger’s cane into their attacker said with supreme calm, “There shouldn’t be any more attackers. At least, not for now. All will be well. But we’d be advised to gain some distance until we can plan our next move.” He fixed a stare upon his companions. “Are you beginning to believe more in vampyres now?”

“It would seem problematic not to,” admitted Drina. “But who
are
you?”

“Abraham. Abraham Van Helsing. My friends call me Bram. We need to find my father; he’ll know what to do.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” said Bram in obvious frustration. “We were staying in some inn somewhere, but I don’t remember the town name.”

“How can you not remember?” asked Drina.

A tad defensive, he said, “They all sound alike to me. Something ending in ‘shire,’ I think.”

“Well, that narrows it down to a few dozen or a hundred, perhaps,” said the Artful drily.

The driver was becoming increasingly impatient. “Look, you lot! Either give me a destination so I can be quit of you, or get the hell out of my cab!”

“We . . . we need to go to the police, or the magistrates, or
someone
—” began Drina.

Bram shook his head vigorously. “No. It’s what I said before, what my father said: We can’t trust anyone like that. We’ll find ourselves right back in the hands of the vampyres if we do.”

“Never did trust coppers,” Dodger muttered. His mind racing, he said, “I know a place. I wound up there once, years ago. The women there took care of me.”

“The women?” Drina inquired with an arched eyebrow.

Dodger was confused from the sound of her voice at first, but then he understood and would have laughed were the situation not so serious. “Nuns. It’s an abbey. They’re good women and true. I may not trust chokers farther’n I can toss ’em, but I’d stake my life to those nuns. It’s a distance from here . . .”

“Distance is exactly what we need,” said Bram.

“All right then.” He turned to the driver. “We need to go to Purfleet.”

“Purfleet? In Essex?”

“Unless they moved it to Liverpool, aye.” The Artful removed his purse and jingled it, the coins within making an impressive noise. “It’ll be worth your while.”

The driver, embracing the notion to focus on more rational and natural pursuits such as making money, nodded, touched the brim of his hat, and climbed upon the coach to his seat. Moments later the hansom cab was in motion once more, although with far less of a mad headlong rush than before.

Drina looked as if her head were spinning. “You seem so . . . so calm, Bram,” she said. “I can scarcely conceive of the reality of that which you take as a matter of course.”

Bram shrugged and then, as if it meant nothing to him, turned to Dodger and said, “Are you sure this place you’re taking us to will be secure?”