Children of the Night

The Defeat

Near Waterloo Bridge.

The sun is already creeping mercilessly over the horizon and the first people are on the streets of London. The smell that Eve follows is faint, but the boy has made the mistake of forgetting the cloth of cloth in which his arm had been lying to heal. So she can orientate herself on it.

The wind that makes the alleys of the city more or less bearable blows around her nose when she arrives at the crossroads from where she could clearly perceive the smell of this boy. Her delicate figure scurries unobtrusively and almost silently from one shadow to the next.

If Ethan thinks she hasn't learned anything in all these years, then he is mere naive. While Lester and Lloyd take care of relocating Tristan and Cassy, she has set out on her journey. Tristan is too preoccupied with himself and his musings to notice she's gone.

She's been on the road for a while already and the approaching Thames doesn't make it any easier for her with the everlasting stench. Nevertheless, she is sure that the boy must have turned off towards Waterloo Bridge because his trail gets lost there. What she finds, however, is the connection of which once again nobody had told her anything. Tristan smelled strangely musty after the incident at the theatre.

The same smell comes from the carefully closed barred door in front of her, although the lock is only hanging loosely on one of the bars. The jetty for the delivery of small goods seems to be still not in operation today. The water runs viscously along the edge. It is so cloudy that you probably wouldn't even see your hand when you put it in.

It annoys her that she hadn't noticed Ethan before, but this time he was in a hurry and sloppy. He didn't even put on shoes when he went after the boy. It's so unlike him. A halfway fitting looking footprint, half in the mud to the right of the grate, indicates that someone slipped. She doesn't like the prospect of hiding in London's sewers for a whole day, but alternatives are rare if she wants to see what Ethan is up to.

After only a few steps into the sewers, she is already blown away by the stench that hits her. She has to cover her nose with her sleeve. How can Ethan stand this? Just as she is about to go deeper into the tunnel, she hears a scream from where she had just come. Carefully she scurries back to assess the situation on the footbridge of the twilight landing stage.

Before she can really see anything, the boy she was on the track of ends up in the dirt next to her. It has stopped pouring like a bucket, but the boy is soaking wet. Whimpering he turns around to look at the hand that just pushed him in.

"Butch! Look out," he shouts outside as a whirring sound cuts through the air and finally finds its way through fresh meat. A deep rumble, but no scream. Ethan is about to close the barred door as his eyes fall on Eve. "Get him to safety," he orders breathlessly but instead of following, Eve rushes outside and shows her fangs in the direction of the attacker.

Nuncio's white skin stands out dramatically against his dark clothing. He has carefully hidden his hair under a bowler, but the pale grey eyes send a cold shiver down Eve's spine. When he sees Eve, he lets his whip move aside with a jerk instead of striking again. This time she hears a scream, but cannot see why. The thin leather leaves a bloody trail on the wet cobblestone and Nuncio smiles with his narrow lips in a way that makes her doubt his sanity.

Eve realizes only a moment too late that the pale whip-swinging man is not the only opponent Ethan has tried to face alone. Her heart seems to do a somersault as a deep male voice with an Eastern European accent begins to speak quietly but much too close behind her. She whirls around with her knife firmly in her hand. In his hand, he holds a bloody saber which should be far superior to her knife's reach.

"Let's go, Nuncio, we have our gift for the master. This is going to be interesting," says Lászlo, and a moment later the two of them have disappeared over the parapet. Eve is thinking about running after them, but despite the light rain she smells something that she has been trying to suppress for seven years and her knees soften - Ethan's blood.