Who: Chiara di Palermo, Gabriel Allen, Zipporah Bakst, various and sundry NPCs. What: Chiara achieves her objective - but at what price? When: August 21 1888/the New Moon Where: Various places dotted around London Rating: PG-13/R Warnings: Violence, mentions of blood drinking and sexuality, graphic description of bodily injury.
August twenty-first.
The new moon.
Chiara had looked at the date on her newspaper maybe a hundred times since the sun had risen that morning, feeling her glee and anticipation gradually rising and expanding inside her like a bowl of bread dough, ready to be baked.
Her near miss the last time she had left L’albergo to pursue this matter had not dulled her eagerness in the slightest. If anything, it had only served to make it keener. She could no sooner send a sorelle to complete this final task than she could allow the prize to reach its destination unscathed.
Night fell and she dressed once more in the gentleman’s clothing from her last excursion. She stole through the streets on those same velvet soled shoes, arriving at her destination and steeling herself. No simple breaking and entering, this - tonight’s task was much more complex, and she shivered a little, letting the thrill overtake her just for a moment.
She climbed up high.
The carriage would come through here. She had seen the proof with her own eyes. A letter, penned by Lord Henry Mountbatten the Third himself, to his valet, with explicit instructions regarding the route and the number of men that would guard the Maltese Falcon as it made its way through the streets of London, from where it was being held, to Mountbatten’s estate. It was Chiara’s intent that the carriage arrive safely, and the men inside it be unharmed. The Falcon, on the other hand… well, Chiara had a decoy tucked safely inside her greatcoat.
It had cost a pretty penny, to have it constructed. Not only were the materials pricey, the gold plating over the brass body, the imitation precious jewels, but buying the silence of the smith who had constructed it had cost more than she cared to admit. What did she care about the money, though, when she was about to pull one of the greatest heists she had pulled in some hundred years?
The carriage approached, and she stiffened, reading herself in a crouch for her descent. Just as it passed underneath her, she leaped, landing silently on the roof of the moving carriage. Swinging herself around, she slid into the window, and quick as a flash, switched the decoy with the real Maltese Falcon, sitting on a bed of linens in a (stupidly) open trunk. It was almost as if they wanted her to steal it from them, she scoffed.
The steel of the revolver was cold on the back of her neck, and she hissed.
“Are you the same man that tried to break in?” a steely voice asked, and she gave no answer. He pushed the revolver harder into the back of her neck, and this time she snarled, in spite of herself. Whipping around, she clawed his face so that he never actually got a chance to lay eyes on her, too busy clutching his now bleeding forehead and cheeks. He would survive, albeit with faint scarring. But he had not seen her.
She prepared to leap from the carriage. After all, she had what she had come for, and the security, such as it was, had been taken care of.
“I know not who you are, sir, but you will not prevail,” came the voice of Sir Henry himself. Werewolf, Chiara snarled internally.
Chiara could have kicked herself, if she had had the room to manoeuvre. As it was, and given that there were two - no, three - men on the carriage that she had not accounted for, her swift and silent exit was no longer an option.
“After your little visit, I decided to up security,” Mountbatten continued. “And may God be thanked that I did. I have outsmarted you, sir, and you will yield, and yield quietly, lest you taste the steel that Evans is itching to feed to you.”
She kicked out! She caught Evans in the kneecap, Mountbatten in the stomach, but she had only two legs, and there were four men to be accounted for. The gun was taken care of, but the knife… and the bat…
A vampire could usually take three or four assailants easily, but that calculation was predicated on room to move. Chiara had no room to move, no room to defend herself the way she needed to. After a brief but entirely unfair struggle, wherein Mountbatten took point and actually slashed her arm, through the sleeve of her greatcoat even, Chiara felt herself being lifted in the werewolf’s arms.
He shoved her back up onto the roof of the carriage, following and taking hold of her again. “Slender, for a man,” he observed. “Still, no one steals from Henry Mountbatten the Third.”
He threw her off the carriage.
He threw her off the front of the carriage.
The distinction didn’t make itself clear to Chiara until the hoof shattered her humerus. The second hoof smashed her tibia and fibula. The third crushed the left side of her ribcage…
The carriage rolled over her ruined leg and she lay still.
“Should we pick him up? Get rid of the body?” one of Mountbatten’s men asked.
“Vampire,” Mountbatten spat. “He could have backup lurking in the shadows. I say we leave him there and call the Night Watch as soon as we get back.”
Was it a good idea? Or was it just Lord Mountbatten’s idea? Either way, the carriage plodded on, leaving Chiara a crumpled heap in the road.
It took a few minutes to get her bearings, but thankfully - and if a God existed, it was purely down to His divine providence - she wasn’t far from Gabriel’s house. There was no way she could have made it back to L’albergo in this state. Slowly, painfully, laboriously, she dragged herself the few streets to his front door.
Knocking on the door was the last thing she had strength for. She fainted straight after.
Gabriel was a night owl by nature, and he tended to spend part of his evening making his usual rounds -- visiting the brothel, bedding a lover, wandering around by the Thames, or a combination of all three, and if he returned home after, his habit was to spend a little while reading or catching up on correspondence before catching a few hours sleep.
Tonight, he was in the study, finishing a letter -- otherwise he wouldn’t have heard the faint knock at all.
Given the circles he ran in, a late-night visitor was rare, but not entirely impossible, and at this time of night, his household staff was all abed -- for the better, if the visitor was less than reputable. He thought, as he stood and smoothed his dressing-gown, that it could be Pip -- the lad tended to keep truly ungodly hours, and he had exhorted him to keep a fair eye out after the murder at Whitechapel.
What he saw instead was a crumpled mess in formal clothes sprawled on his doorstep, and as he approached and knelt, turning the body, the hat fell off revealing a bun and he saw an all-too-familiar face, pale as a sheet, causing his heart to lurch.
Chiara.
He’d no idea if she was alive, but if she was, it was a near thing. He lifted her carefully -- she was distressingly limp in his arms -- and carried her to the study, setting her on a sofa.
The mud and dark fabric of her clothing hid the blood, but he noticed that he’d gotten a substantial amount on his dressing gown as he stood, trembling, and rushed to the kitchen for a sharp knife, swearing as he opened the drawers.
Back as soon as he could manage, he knelt by her, and cut into his wrist, holding it to her mouth.
“Chiara,” he whispered, “Oh, Chiara, ma bella, come on now, come on my darling.”
The last time they’d been together, she’d invited him over for dinner after he’d sent a massive bouquet to her at L’albergo. He’d taken her offer literally -- he’d offered her his neck as a sign of his trust, and while it hadn’t been the first time he’d made such an offer, nor would it be the last, she seemed to have appreciated the gesture, and seemed mollified -- although she’d made a point of leaving him significantly more light headed than usual.
This, however, was different -- rather than a playful dance during an act of passion, it was messy, and desperate, and it hurt -- her razor sharp fangs and healing kiss usually made for a far more enjoyable experience, but he knew she was far too weak for such pleasantries.
“Please,” he said, “please, Chiara, come back to me. Oh, Jesus,” he swore, holding her mouth to his wrist gently with his free hand.
For long moments, nothing.
As his blood filled her mouth though, something inside her awoke - perhaps not her full consciousness, but the part of her brain that allowed her swallowing reflex to work - and she drank from his wrist. The rest of her brain slowly woke up.
“Gabriel,” she breathed finally, shuddering with the pain that came flooding in. “Gods, it hurts…” But even in this much pain, she was still herself. “They tried to kill me, but I have prevailed.” She gritted her teeth, and licked over his wrist, stopping the bleeding but making a real mess of healing it. It would need to be bound.
“I need more blood than you have,” she admitted. “Call… call Zipporah Bakst. Ask her to bring blood, from the bar.” She slumped back into his arms, what little strength she had regained already spent.
He managed to get the operator to connect him, no small miracle -- there was only one Bakst with a telephone in the city -- and the pretty young witch answered sleepily after a few rings. He knew she was a canny sort, and it didn’t take long for her to grasp the import of the situation. He gave her his address and directed her to stop by a blood bar that wouldn’t be too far out of her way, and instructions for what to ask for.
Blood bars carried a certain degree of risk -- the desperate poor who sold a few drachms of their blood for money would be drunk often as not, and there was no guarantee they weren’t carrying some sort of impurity, and it was a shady enough business that it was always a toss-up whether the owners were reputable enough to guarantee a fresh supply without fillers or additives -- but he knew that the place he’d sent the young Miss Bakst to had a decent enough standing, even though it cost a pretty penny as a result.
He sank down again beside her after his errand was finished.
Her eyes were closed tightly, and she was holding herself eerily still, but he knew she had no need of breath -- given her injuries, that was most likely wise.
“She’s on her way, my darling,” he said. “Can you hold on til then?”
“Just talk to me,” Chiara hissed. Talking required breathing, and breathing hurt. “And… I can give you something to talk about. Reach under my greatcoat, in the inside pocket, on the right.”
The Maltese Falcon was contained within. At least she had accomplished that much, even if she had come very close to literally paying with her “life”.
He felt the outline of the Falcon, and pulled it out of her coat, looking at it for a few beats before setting it where she could see it.
“I suppose now is not the time to give you a lecture about risk,” he said, quietly. “It is a marvel, but good lord, my darling.”
He sighed, feeling the throb in his wrist, his heart finally returning to a steady beat after his initial, madcap panic. “I’m treating you to a session with Mihaela on the house after all is said and done,” he said, knowing the dark Romanian beauty was a favorite of Chiara’s as a source of both sustenance and pleasure. “It’ll give you something to look forward to,” he said, a small smile flashing across his face. “A celebration for surviving all this. And you’ll have to come up with a way to adequately display the thing, although heaven knows, you and I will most likely be the only ones to ever see it. I’m assuming you’re planning on keeping it for yourself rather than fencing it,” he said, trying his best to hide the worry in his voice upon seeing her forehead wrinkle with pain.
Now that she was conscious, he knew feeding was decidedly risky -- she was hurt enough to not have any control to stop feeding once she started, and most likely was still strong enough despite her injuries to make an attempt to stop her through external force difficult -- so he knew it was wisest to wait for Miss Bakst, and kept up a steady narrative about Mihaela’s numerous charms and general news and gossip of the day until he heard the second, tentative knock.
Miss Bakst stood before him, pale and wide-eyed, with a large man standing behind her laden with several earthenware jugs and a large leather bag.
“Thank God,” Gabriel replied, before ushering them both in.
Zipporah had been on what could rightly be called an adventure. After being awoken by none other than Mr Allen, of all people, she’d frantically dressed and somehow waved down a hansom cab. She’d headed to the place Mr Allen had directed her, and managed to wheedle two gallons of what she supposed was human blood at a dear price from a vile man who’d undressed her with his eyes. That there was such a place was one revelation -- that her patron, Lady di Palermo, required human blood to heal, and apparently was hurt badly enough to require a great deal of it, was another matter.
She knew she was working for an alushka -- had known from the very start -- but this was a crash-course in what that might entail. At the very least, it was an errand of healing -- as bizarre it might be to fetch gallons of blood in the process.
She’d last seen Mr Allen at a successful foray into tomb raiding -- they’d exchanged rather meaningful glances, and she’d known he’d recommended her to Lady di Palermo to begin with, but she still had yet to learn how he’d heard of her, and the man was largely a handsome, charming cipher.
When he answered the door, he was, to put it kindly, a wreck -- his face pale and worried, his dressing jacket liberally covered in blood and grime, and his wrist a mess.
She let herself be ushered to the study, where she beheld an even greater mess on the sofa -- Lady di Palermo looked barely alive, her mouth smeared with dried blood, and, bizarrely, she was dressed in rumpled and filthy gentleman’s clothes.
No matter.
Ach was quickly relieved of his burdens and sat dutifully in a nearby chair. Mr Allen passed her what she could only assume was a crystal wine goblet -- an odd note of refinement -- and she managed to fill it despite her shaking hands as Mr Allen went to the couch to gently cradle Chiara and prop her up. Zipporah knelt at her Lady’s head, holding the cup to her lips.
“I am here, My Lady,” she said, quietly. “I brought what you required.”
It was murky tasting, all the different donations mixed together, but there was plenty of it, and Chiara soon felt her strength returning. Of course that just meant that the pain was able to take center stage in her mind. She sipped slowly, hoping her body would know what to do, but by the time the goblet was drained for the third time, she knew her bones were still broken, badly.
“I have multiple broken bones,” she admitted. “Leg, arm, ribs. I think… I think this is one of those emergencies we talked about, Zipporah.”
Zipporah caught Mr Allen’s eyes before nodding, and refilling the glass again as she thought aloud, returning it to Chiara to sip at.
“I can bind your ribs, and set and stabilize the bones in your arm and leg for to help the healing,” she said. “I have bandages. Mr Allen, I need some boards or sticks. What else should I do? Is there anything for the pain?”
“Would pool cues work?” He asked. She nodded. “The billiard table is the second door to your right, and the kitchen is in the back, should you need anything there,” he said, taking the glass from her so that her hands would be free.
There was very little that Chiara could do, except submit to the healing actions Zipporah was attempting to take. Her left arm was useless, so she clutched Gabriel’s hand with her right hand, squeezing hard when the pain might have inspired her to want to bare her fangs at the young woman who was only trying to help her.
“So… you promised me a night with Mihaela,” she said, attempting to join in on his distraction techniques. “One of these days I’m going to steal that girl away from you, you know.” She huffed out a breath and snarled, knowing she sounded like a trapped animal and unable to do anything about it. Still, she didn’t snap at Zipporah, didn’t blame her for the pain she was in. No, that pain was down to Lord Henry Mountbatten, the Third.
Chiara always repaid her debts.
“Tell me again what she was wearing when you last saw her,” she prompted Gabriel. “Make it nice and descriptive. Anything to keep me from thinking about my ruined limbs…”
While the young Miss Bakst fetched his pool cues, he held Chiara’s hand and kissed her forehead, bringing the cup to her lips whenever she tipped her head forward, and as a man who noticed fashion, was able to give a rather tolerable account of the girl’s latest outfit, how the plum fabric set off the golden tones in her skin and how she’d worn her thick, dark hair in a riot of curls.
“I thought you didn’t feed from your Sorelle,” he teased her a little, petting at her hair. “How on earth would you keep from resisting? Or would she be something else entirely?” He added. “A mistress, perhaps?”
Zipporah returned, having secured the sticks, and grabbed her bag from where Ach had set it down. Given Chiara’s lack of a response and frightening expression, she assumed there was nothing more to be done for the pain, or that would help the vampire heal faster. “My Lady,” she said, looking up at her, “I shall have to cut away your trousers, for to access the leg. I shall use my hands to feel for the breaks and then… manipulate to align the bones, as quickly as I can. It will feel better after I do, but it will hurt during, and I shall need you to be still. Once I am finished, I will wrap and secure for to hold the bones in place.”
“I do not. Feed from my sorelle, I mean,” Chiara confirmed. “But one of these days I will whisk Mihaela away to L’albergo and set her up in my rooms, and just simply spend my days worshiping her, you see. But I will have to ask her first. Bought and paid for is all very well and good in a brothel, but in my home… everyone is there by their own choice.”
To Zipporah, she set her teeth determinedly. “Do what you must.”
The business was a messy one, and painful -- Chiara’s leg in particular took a while, as it was badly damaged, and at one point, Zipporah had Ach sitting on the floor and holding the leg in place with his two enormous hands as she used her own to feel for breaks and make slight adjustments, mumbling prayers under her breath. She wasn’t sure if prayers worked for a creature like Chiara -- she wasn’t quite alive, after all, and whether she had a soul was up for debate -- but it didn’t appear to hurt her, and it helped Zipporah concentrate.
Mr Allen kept up a steady stream of one-sided conversation about nothing in particular as she worked, holding Chiara’s hand in his and propping her up, and Chiara snarled and hissed and swore in a few different languages as Zipporah set the bones in her leg and arm and stabilized them with sticks (Ach snapped one of the pool cues to the proper length for the arm). Wrapping the ribs proved a challenge as well -- she had to cut away the jacket and shirt entirely, and Mr Allen held Chiara just upright enough to be able to pass the bandages around, and then managed to carefully worm his way out from under her to fetch some additional supplies.
His wrist would need looking after, but he’d said it could wait as he left, and she knelt by Chiara once more with another cup of blood, her patron’s poor, battered body now significantly more exposed to the elements.
“Thank you,” Chiara said weakly, lest her growls and snarls be taken for a lack of gratitude. Idly, she wondered where Gabriel had gone, but it was likely to find something to cover her with, so she didn’t ask any questions. “I had hoped you would never need to see me like this. Still, it is not as if you were unaware of my nature when we entered our little arrangement.”
“It is my calling for to heal, My Lady,” Zipporah replied. “I am only glad I was able to come and help.” She looked down at the glass she was holding up for Chiara, the red liquid in the crystal like a parody of wine, only thicker, and swallowed, before looking back at her. “I have seen my fair share,” she admitted, “but this is… I am learning a great deal about how to better help you and those like you in the future,” she said, firmly. “I am sorry you were so very badly hurt,” she added. “Is there anything else that helps besides blood? How fast will it take you to recover?”
Chiara didn’t know. “A week. Possibly two,” she guessed, based on past injuries. “I must confess I have not been trampled by horses before.” As to her other question, she wasn’t quite sure how to answer it. “Vampire constitution is much more rapid than human. It is important to set the bones properly as quickly as possible, because we begin to heal quickly, and letting a bone heal in the wrong position would mean needing to re-break it in order to set it.” She managed a smile. “And I suspect if you tried to re-break any of my limbs, you would come off second best, no matter how well meaning I knew you to be.”
It was a joke, a weak one, but a joke nonetheless. The danger was passed, and all that was left now was healing. “Your rapid arrival was exactly what was needed. That, and the blood. It was right not to bring animal blood. It would have served no purpose but to enrage me, and in my half conscious state it is entirely likely I would have taken that rage out on you. But you did well tonight, Zipporah.”
She reflected on her broken limbs, calculating what she could and could not do for herself. Leaving L’albergo was out of the question, once she was safely ensconced in her rooms, for the foreseeable future. Her dalliance with Mihaela would have to wait. Chiara pouted. Now that the purchased blood was coursing through her system, she was feeling much more alert, and with Gabriel’s promises and scandalous whispers, she was beginning to feel like she would not refuse the company of a woman. In other words, her spirit was oh, so willing, but her body was lamentably weak.
“Lend her to me, dearest?” she asked him as he came back into the room, putting on her sweetest, most cajoling voice. She knew he would know who she meant. “To warm my bed, if nothing else.”
Gabriel had washed his arm, exchanged his bloody dressing gown for a fresh one, and fetched her one as well, in addition to a basin of warm water and a sponge to try to clean her up a bit first. He’d also tossed a bucket of warm water and lye down the front stoop as a precaution -- with luck, the scent would be cold by the time anyone tried to track her in earnest, but he’d rather it not end directly at his front door.
“As long as she’s willing, and you don’t get too greedy, dearest,” he replied, gently. “I’d expect her back in one piece, and while you’re more than allowed to make her weak in the knees, it won’t be from excessive feeding.”
“I was thinking a sponge bath and a dressing gown, and then I’d make sure you downed the rest of this before morning,” he said. “Would you want Miss Bakst to stay, and provide assistance, or might we give her some respite?”
“She has done all she can, and I am grateful for it,” Chiara said, nodding to Zipporah. “You may leave.” This last was not said unkindly, but hopefully with the gratitude she definitely felt.
Gabriel knew just what to do to make things better, and not for the first time she thanked whatever Gods were up there for having met him. “I promise to be good,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes. “But I fear for now I must rest.”
Zipporah nodded at Lady di Palermo’s dismissal. “Let me look at your wrist before I go,” she said to Mr Allen, with a tone that did not allow for argument -- he looked significantly less awful than when he’d greeted her at the door (relatively speaking, of course -- the man was ridiculously pretty, even when distraught and bloody), but she hadn’t missed the careful way he’d held his arm throughout.
He paused, and then nodded, and pushed up the sleeve of his dressing gown.
It was a deep looking cut, but a clean one, and no longer bleeding. She touched it carefully, catching his eyes with hers. “I shall bind it, so that you do not need for to worry that it will open again,” she said. “Continue to keep it clean, and dry, and if it leaks lymph or blood, change the dressing.”
She found the mysterious Mr Allen quite intriguing -- they’d met twice now, and under very different circumstances, and she resolved to see if she might corner the man and talk to him after things were more settled -- at the very least, to sort out how he’d found out about her in order to recommend her to her patron.
For the time being, however, she settled for wrapping his wrist thoroughly and murmuring the typical spells for healing and purification, an act he endured with only a little wincing, and he met her searching look with a small smile and a nod. “Thank you, Miss Bakst,” he said. “I hope the next time we meet, it is under significantly better circumstances.”
She nodded. “I shall hold you to that,” she said, before dipping her head Chiara’s way. “Lady,” she said. “Should you require any further attention in the coming days, I shall come if you call.”
Once she and her brother had made their way out the door, he turned back to Chiara and dipped the sponge in the basin. “Useful little thing, isn’t she?” he said, smiling a little.
“Pleasant, knowledgeable, prompt, skilled, and… trustworthy,” Chiara pronounced, this last being the highest praise she ever afforded another being. She levelled her eyes at the door, regarding her seriously. “Trustworthy, and I hope, in time, a friend. Though if we keep calling her from her bed like this, I doubt very much she will think us worth the trouble of befriending.”
Chiara rounded on Gabriel, as much as she was able. “I got it,” she crowed quietly. “I am injured, but I will heal, and I have Mountbatten’s precious Maltese Falcon.” She preened inwardly, the expression on her face giving away how she felt. “And now, dearest, I must plot how best to kill Mountbatten. A fair fight I could just about tolerate. Deliberately outnumbering his opponent, and throwing said opponent under the horses - especially when said opponent happens to be me - I cannot and will not tolerate.”
Gabriel couldn’t help but laugh a little as he looked up at her, wringing out the sponge into the bucket as he did so, and dipping it back into the warm water. “It is so good to hear you feeling so much more like yourself. dearest,” he said. It figured that she’d be immobilized, bloody, and battered on his sofa, and still plotting. He wiped gently at her unbandaged arm. “And she seems quite devoted -- I don’t believe she even noticed the Falcon, she was far too busy fussing over the both of us.”
The finer semantics of her need for revenge were, of course, not something he was about to debate -- the fact she’d been accosted while stealing his priceless artefact, and had been foolhardy enough to attempt it completely on her own wasn’t worth what it’d cost him to say out loud.
“Do take care,” was all he said. “I’d rather prefer it if you stayed alive for the next few centuries at least. I’m frightfully selfish that way.” He kissed her fingers as he held her good arm and brushed away the dirt and blood as best as he could. “I am glad you were able to make your way here, Chiara,” he said, quietly.
“Well, for you, I will,” she responded with a wink. The pain was still there, but this was rapidly becoming easier to endure. Verbal sparring with Gabriel was one of her favorite things to do. “I am just glad you were here. Without you, I would surely have perished.” She didn’t like thinking about it, but that didn’t make it any less true. If there had been any doubt about his loyalty and his trust in her (and after their last dinner, there had been very little doubt left), it was all gone now.