Artful: A Novel (10 page)

“You . . . you will . . .?” His voice stirred with the slightest
glimmer
of hope that Fagin seemed to be presenting to him. “How . . .?”

“By making your death quick.”

Fagin’s eyes turned a fiery red with bloodlust, and Jack
Sheppard
let out a scream of terror that accomplished nothing except to cause Fagin to leap forward like a great beast of the jungle. He landed upon Jack, who tried to bring up his arms to fend him off, but poor Jack had absolutely no chance. With a roar of boundless triumph, unleashing the creature that had been stymied within him through sheer willpower and what seemed an eternity of thwarted desire, Fagin sank his fangs into Jack’s throat and drained him. The blood cascaded over Fagin’s tongue and down his throat, and strength and power began to ripple through him. He drank and drank until there was not a drop of blood left in the highwayman’s body. Fagin stood fully upright for what seemed the first time in decades, which it might well have been, as his natural posture tended toward the hunch or the crouch. His shoulders were square, his chin thrust forward proudly. He threw back his head and unleashed a noise that was a combination of a howl and a roar, and wolves who heard it miles away returned the salutation, whereas any domesticated dogs whimpered and hid, being thus reminded that they were mere shadows of the wild and truly terrifying creatures that still roamed the night.

“Why,” whispered Fagin, once the echoes of his triumphant bellow had faded, “did I deprive myself of this . . . this feast? What madness possessed me?” He received no answer as there were none to provide it, nor would he have listened even if it had been given.

Feeling energized, he looked down at the body on the ground. A benefit of draining Jack so thoroughly was that it ceased the spreading of blood from the gut wound, and because it had been flowing quite slowly to begin with, the result was that although his shirt was quite ruined, the magnificent embroidered vest he had been wearing was largely unmolested, save for the small hole as a result of the pistol’s discharge.

Fagin moved quickly, stripping the highwayman of his fine garments. He kept his own shirt, although resolving to find something far grander later, and within minutes had attired himself in the late Jack Sheppard’s clothing.

He tossed his old clothes upon Jack’s corpse, not bothering to dress him in them. When daylight reared its illuminated head once more, someone would come across his body and notify the locals, and it would be assumed that someone had
accosted
him, killed him, and stripped him of his clothes in search of valuables. Thus would the highwayman be buried in some
deserved
pauper’s grave, or perhaps cremated, taking with him the last bit of Fagin that existed in the world.

Satisfied with the night’s work, Fagin turned his back on the deceased and faced London, calling to it from the distance. “I hear you, my beauty,” said he, “and will heed your call. And by all the gods below, I shall give them something to talk about and remember me by, yes, I will.”

He started moving quickly down the road, but his enthusiasm was so overwhelming, and the youthful blood pounding within him so intoxicating, that in short order mere walking was insufficient to contain him. A walk became a trot and then a run, and soon even gravity could not contain him. He started leaping down the road, as graceful as a gazelle, covering many yards with each stride, as if the earth had only a passing claim upon him.

Thus did Fagin, a true bounder if ever there was, reach
London
, and waste no time in making a name for himself.

And so now do we bring our villain current with the events that have been otherwise transpiring, and we find ourselves in one chill night, focusing on a young actress named Celia
Dugan
who has just performed in a penny dreadful theatrical
detailing
—as coincidence would have it—the criminal career of Jack Sheppard, being the original, gone more than a century, and not the thoroughly unmemorable and unmourned version who had been dispatched truly by his own hand and thundering
incompetence
weeks ago.

Celia drew her shawl tightly around herself, for it was a chill night, and her purse was dangling from her wrist. She was passing a low building, and suddenly she heard a startling and chilling cackle, and she looked up and saw a darkened figure crouching atop the roof. For a moment, she was certain that she was about to witness a suicide, and she called out to him, “Wait! Do not!
Matters
cannot be as bad as all that!”

Matters indeed could be that bad, but for her, not the figure.

She shrieked as he leaped from the rooftop, cape fluttering around him, falling four stories, and landing directly in front of her. He, by all rights, should have been injured or perhaps even dead. Instead, he clutched at her and groped her, laughing dementedly the entire time, grabbing her purse and snatching her valuables before yanking her arm toward his mouth and starting to chew on it. His teeth punctured the skin, not too deeply, but enough that blood began to flow, and he licked at it eagerly.

“Stop! Get away!” shrieked Celia, and she pummeled at him with her small fists, which did nothing to dissuade him. Then he tore his lips away from her arm, and his mouth was smeared with blood, and his eyes were red and wild. Terrified, she tried to
pull away
.

“Jack thanksss you,” he hissed, and then he released her. As she had been endeavoring to get clear of him, this resulted in her losing her balance and falling to the street. She watched in wide-eyed amazement as he turned from her and vaulted straight up to another rooftop, as if he were a marionette being yanked skyward by a great, unseen puppeteer. He landed upon the rooftop, an impossible leap completed with inhuman ease, tossed off a wave, and vanished into the darkness, taking his crazed laughter with him.

“Spring-Heeled Jack,” whispered Celia. She was holding her gloved hand against the wound she had sustained, and the bleeding was already slowing and would soon stop. “My God, that was Spring-Heeled Jack. I thought he was a . . . a legend.”

And even though he was already two rooftops away, Jack heard her, and inwardly danced with joy.

He leaped from rooftop to rooftop, London spread out below him, his town, all his for the taking. He reveled in his strength,
in his
audacity, in his . . . dared he say it himself? Why not? “Legend,” he said. “I am legend. I am—”

He never saw the arm that emerged from the shadows, straight and hard as a log, that caught him across the face. He had been moving so quickly that it knocked him completely off his feet, and he landed hard on the rooftop. The world spun around him for a moment and then righted itself.

A figure stepped out of the shadows and glared down at him.

“Fang,” whispered Spring-Heeled Jack, and quickly he clambered to his feet. “I . . . that is to say . . . I didn’t—”

“Shut up, Fagin,” said Mr. Fang, and Fagin promptly did so. “Did you think I would not know it was you? Did you think I would not figure out that Spring-Heeled Jack, bounding around London with his flaming red hair and crimson eyes and snatching purses and handkerchiefs . . . did you think I would not figure out that it was you?” When Fagin did not respond immediately, Fang prompted,
“Well?”

“You, ah . . . told me to shut up, so I wasn’t rightly sure if respondin’ was—”

“Never mind,” said Fang impatiently. He folded his arms and looked Fagin up and down, like a scientist scrutinizing a disease under a microscope lens. “At least,” he said finally, “you are
doing
something with your potential. I will admit that much. This business of not drinking blood . . . it was ridiculous.”

“How did ye know I was not drinkin’ blood?”

“My spies are everywhere, Fagin. There is nothing I don’t know. Except, perhaps, what it was that you were trying to prove.”

“Somethin’. But truly, my dear, I can’t remember what it might have been. The foolishness is washed away by the
cleansin
’ power of the crimson ichor that nourishes all our kind.”

And Fang actually smiled at that and, to Fagin’s astonishment, threw wide his arms. “Embrace me, then, brother, as you have embraced your heritage, for both of us have been too far apart for too long.”

Fagin stared at him, drawing his cape more tightly around him, like a burial shroud.

“How now?” said Fang. He continued to stand there with his arms spread wide, as if he were being crucified, an ironic similarity when one considers it. “You would reject my overture?”

“It is not the overture that concerns me, brother,” said Fagin slowly, “but rather the main event. You want something of me.”

“How can you say that?” said Fang, looking abashed.

“It is not that great a difficulty, my dear. My lips move; my tongue forms the sounds.”

“I am shocked!”

“And I am waiting,” Fagin rejoined. “Mistake me not for the thing I was. No longer Fagin or even Reuben am I, but Jack, Spring-Heeled Jack, and I am not a fool and will not be treated as such.”

Mr. Fang’s mood darkened then, and for perhaps the first time in their association, he perceived Fagin as something he never had before: a threat. He raised a cautioning finger then, and his voice dropped to its customary growl, bereft of anything approaching humanity. “Have a care, ‘Jack.’ Newly revitalized you may be, and that’s all to the good. But my organization is not to be trifled with, and if you endeavor to come to a head with me or mine, it will not end well for you.”

“Or perhaps the same might be said of you,” said Fagin, but there was more barley than beef in his stew, for he knew that
Mr. Fang
was speaking truly of the breadth and depth of his
influence
and power. “But let this reunion not be a time of threats. Rather, tell me, brother, for old time’s sake . . . what would you have of me?”

“Your assistance.”

“In exchange for . . .?”

“My gratitude.”

“Which is worth more to me than all the riches in London,” said Fagin expansively, for that was the sort of mood that he was in. “Say on, then; I am listening.”

Fang, his hands draped behind his back, began to walk in a slowly and gradually diminishing circle upon the rooftop. “We seek a pair of individuals,” said he, “a young boy and a girl who shall be a woman ere long. The latter is of greater interest than the former.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning if you can only acquire one, she is the more i
mp
ortant.”

“Indeed. And who would they be?”

“The boy is Abraham Van Helsing.”

“Van Helsing?” Fagin spat out the name. “Son of the hunter, I take it?”

“The very same.”

Fagin growled in disgust. “If someone of such infamous name as Van Helsing is of lesser interest, who, I must wonder, is of greater?”

Mr. Fang paused, as if uncertain whether total candor were advisable under the circumstances, and then seemed to shrug and yielded to the inevitable. “Alexandrina Victoria.”

“Named after the princess?” asked Fagin, not yet understanding. But then he saw the impatient look in Mr. Fang’s face, and his eyes widened. “Ah.”

“Yes.”

“You wish to mount an assault on Buckingham?”

“That would be a pointless endeavor,” said Mr. Fang, “as she is not there.”

“Not there? How can that be? Her mother—”

“She is not there. If you trust nothing else I say, trust that.”

“Then I do not see the problem.”

“She is at a nun’s haven called Carfax Abbey.”

“I see the problem,” said Fagin immediately.

“They fled there, in the company of a young thief. Harry was able to trace them there because he had the boy’s scent, and there is no greater tracker than Sanguine Harry. But he reached the doors and was thwarted. The place,” said Mr. Fang, his face twisting into a mask of disgust, “reeks of godliness. Crosses
everywhere
. A bastion of Christianity. Plus, naturally, he would have to be invited to enter, and that is not bound to happen anytime soon. But”—and he paused for dramatic emphasis—“of what consequence could the religious aspects possibly be to one of your . . . persuasion.”

“My part in this becomes clear,” said Fagin slowly.

Mr. Fang nodded, clearly pleased that Fagin comprehended. “You, who have never bowed to the cross . . . who have
never
taken communion . . . who have never, at any time, taken Jesus into your heart . . . you will be able to enter the abbey with no difficulty. Remove the crosses so that they do not repel us.
Defile
, deconsecrate it. Thus will we be able to enter and carry her off.”

“One small problem,” said Fagin. “Even I cannot go where I am not invited.”

“Ah,” said Fang, “and again, that is where you are uniquely suited to the task. You may say that you are Fagin no longer, but your old identity will serve you in good stead. All you need do is convince the young boy thief whom I mentioned to do you that particular service, and then you can enter and do as you please.”