Prologue So kiss me sweet with your warm wet mouth, Still fragrant with ruby wine, And say with a fervor born of the South That your body and soul are mine. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox London, November 1885 She had always been attracted to death. Sought it out for reasons inexplicable to even herself. But it wasn’t supposed to end this way. And now she was dead. Of that she was certain. She felt the stinging tug of the knife as it pulled through her flesh. Her life’s blood, hot against her skin, cool as it spread in a crimson pool about her still body. Just before she died, the grizzled, grinning faces of the thugs around her began to fade, the world turning a muddy brown. Eliza’s last breath left with a soft, soundless puff. And now she was dead. She had fought so hard and so long to live. Done ugly things to remain alive, to survive. She’d come to London to find her distant family. They might help, offer her solace. And she hadn’t even had the chance to look, set upon by bad men barely an hour after she’d disembarked and stepped upon English soil. Rage surged up within her. She refused to be cut down like this, by these… mindless thugs. Her body