Rook

whether there was some sort of supernatural aspect to the whole thing.
    In any case, Thurow’s secondment to the Metropolitan Police Service had sharpened her investigative skills. Her discovery of the vampire involved a great deal of patient, camouflaged standing in private rooms and offices listening to the conversations of those who would notice the effects of a vampire. Her research took her from local police stations to the chambers of Episcopal palaces to a boarding school whose students were suffering from a peculiar strain of anemia.
    Eventually Thurow’s investigation led her to a mansion near Regent’s Park. She entered and found the house bare except for the two rooms that contained the aforementioned eggs, which were housed in palatial splendor.
    It was clear to Pawn Thurow that there was something peculiar going on in the house, but she was not immediately certain what it was. Remember, most of her ideas about vampires were based on fiction and folklore
(Dracula
would not be published for another nine years), and nothing added up. She searched all the rooms and found neither coffins nor anything sleeping upside down in any closets. There was no freshly turned earth in the cellars. To her bewilderment, she found a cross hanging proudly on the wall in the mansion’s chapel. Despite all her searching, she could find no sign of whatever creature had produced the eggs. So she made the decision to remain, cloaked, within the house and wait for nightfall.
    It’s not the decision I would have made, but then, I’m not habitually armed with a pair of revolvers and a quiet determination to prove my superiors wrong.
    I also know a little more about vampires than she did.
    In any case, Thurow selected one of the rooms that contained an egg, activated her camouflage ability, and waited patiently. Seven hours later, the sunhaving vanished, a tall man entered the room and carefully laid a fire. Thurow described him in her diary as “striking, with long white hair and a face that seemed drawn back from his nose.”
    The man lit the fire, piled it high with aromatic woods, and scattered sweet-smelling oils upon the flames. And then the hatching described above began. I have no idea why the parent vampire at the window did not pursue Thurow when she fled the house—perhaps it needed to tend to Pitt; perhaps it thought dawn was too close. Whatever the reason, it gave Pawn Thurow time to return to Francis House (then headquarters for the Rooks) and frantically report that she had found a vampire, had seen another one born, and believed there would be a third born soon.
    Only when she mentioned the neighborhood this was all taking place in were her superiors moved, worried that some influential and wealthy families might be at risk. Checquy forces were dispatched skeptically to the mansion, only to find it on fire. Pawn Thurow was eyed warily, patted on the head, and told to go home.
    Eleanor Thurow went home fuming and wrote furiously in her journal.
    She failed to turn up at work the next day.
    A Retainer was sent to Thurow’s home, and found her nailed upside down to her bedroom wall.
    An immediate search of her house was conducted. Her journals were discovered and brought back for inspection. Her corpse was taken down carefully, examined, and found to be missing more blood than one would have anticipated, even taking into account the… drippage. Upon this discovery, the Checquy operatives pounded a stake into her heart, cut off her head and crammed it full of garlic, and then gave her a good Christian burial.
    I would love to know how that jackass of a Rook was going to explain to his troops that the woman he’d sneered at had been right, but the next day his body was found sliced in two, lengthwise. It seems that Thurow’s intrusion upon the hatching had prompted some sort of vendetta, and by bolting back to the headquarters, she had given the vampire a trail to follow to the Checquy. With that began a nighttime war of attrition.
    At first, it was one death each night. Not in any pattern—one night it was a Rook, the next a Retainer, the next a Pawn who worked as a clerk. As a means of sowing panic, it was very effective. Checquy operatives in Londonwere petrified and became unwilling to leave the organization’s strongholds. The facilities, however, proved not to be as secure as everyone believed. Corpses were found, some of them drained of blood, inside Checquy buildings. One per night.
    Eleven days