Savage Wings: Book Three of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 5

The blood dripped down onto his pale lips.

I parted them with my fingers and I watched anxiously as the droplets slid into his mouth and onto his tongue. When Harper didn't respond, I pressed my open wrist, squeezing the flesh to encourage the blood flow, but all I did was cause the blood to pool there in his mouth and the last thing I wanted to do was make him choke to death while he was unconscious. I turned his head and watched it seep uselessly out and run down his face, deftly wiping it away, before sagging back on the bed, feeling defeated.

I was thankful that Josiah had decided he couldn't bear to be in my presence when day break came and had told me to sleep in here, instead of his room. He was clearly sick of the sight of me and I wasn't sure I could cope with him a minute longer myself, yet sitting here now and knowing that every effort I made to revive Harper was pointless, I wasn't sure I wanted to be here either. Just looking at Harper made me realise how useless I was and how the longer he took to wake up, the higher the chance was that he might never wake at all. How long would it be before he became one of the nearly-dead and began haunting his own body in the desperate hope he wouldn't cross over and become imprisoned behind the dark gates of Purgatory?

A tiny snore from the corner made me glance up to look at Lucius' sleeping form, the blanket pulled up to his neck so only the back of his white-blonde head could be seen. With an exhausted sigh, I slipped down onto the floor, trying to make myself comfortable on the thin make-shift bed, eventually settling down on my side. Close by, Benjamin's journal lay on top of my jacket, having been thrown there earlier that morning after I had scoured the book over and over again, growing frustrated when it elicited nothing from the thin yellowing pages. Soon, the words just jumbled into a blurry mess and my tired eyes couldn't decide whether I was reading English or some weird alien language inscribed onto the paper and so, I had chucked the book to one side and collapsed onto the mattress next to Lucius.

The day had drifted by in a haze of broken, tormented slumber and I had awoken just before sunset, feeling more exhausted than I had before I had fallen asleep. And now the day was ending, just as it had started, with the book by my side, taunting me, daring me to pick it up and decipher the clues hidden inside.

Emitting a small growl, I turned to face the other way, watching the slight movement of Lucius' body as he breathed deeply in and out. 

All around me, I felt the walls closing in, the room growing smaller, the insistent pull of the book increasing with every second that I lay there. If it wasn't for the fact that I knew it was nothing but paper and ink, I would have thought it alive. A breathing, living creature with a heartbeat that seemed to resound in my head so loud that it could rival the choral voices of the underworld. And the more I tried to ignore it, the louder it got and the more the room seemed to shrink, crushing me from all sides until I felt I could not breathe from the pressure.

Groaning, I sat up, shifting my body so my back was resting against the wall and reaching over, I grabbed the book and held it on my lap. Running my fingers over the worn leather cover, I marvelled at how such a small book could feel so heavy, as if each page was made of lead, not paper. The string bindings were still undone from when I had discarded it earlier and I opened the journal carefully as if any sudden movement would cause the book to snap shut, taking the tips of my fingers with it.

My eyes drifted over Benjamin's neatly italicised writing, my fingers tracing over some of the words etched on the page, the faint smudges of ink that stained the thin paper.

The first entries in the journal, I had discovered quickly, had been concerned mostly with Benjamin's travels through the continent before that fateful day when he had met the priest and had ventured into the infected coastal town of Sozopol. All were interesting but fairly uneventful recordings, detailing the cities through which he passed, the people he had met along the way, the great sights and wonders of Europe seen through the eyes of a young doctor whose journey was energised by hope and vigour. I had no doubt that any eager historian would have lapped up his tales with a voracious hunger, because they were indeed an authentic account, full of rich description and intriguing detail, but they held little of interest for a person in search of an archangel. Even when Benjamin reached the borders of Transylvania, I had sat up a little straighter, expecting to discover echoes of Stoker and some sign of our vampire heritage, yet finding nothing but a very mundane tale of his travels with no mention of the undead, eerie castles or hair-raising journeys through perilous mountain roads.