by Kat Ross
“I’d say it’s rather damning that he borrowed the murder weapon from you,” John said with feeling.
“That’s hardly been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
“Well, it’s highly persuasive. Don’t you think so, Harry?”
She nodded absently. She still had the crumpled letter from Mary Elizabeth Wickes in her pocket. Jackson had never returned to ask for it.
“If you find the amulet, I want it back,” the count said frostily.
“Of course you do,” Harry replied in a soothing tone, which wasn’t quite the same thing as a promise to return it. “Well, I must say, it’s been enlightening to speak with you, Count Balthazar.”
He nodded brusquely. “Give my regards to Mrs. Winter.”
Harry suppressed a smile. “We shall indeed.”
The sky had opened up while they were speaking with the count. Rain fell in torrents, sweeping across the park with Biblical intensity. A small river already raged at the curb. They dashed out of the townhouse and clambered into the carriage. Harry called out a Brooklyn address to Connor.
“Where are we off to?” John demanded, shaking water from his coat.
“The Sabellines.” She rubbed her hands together. “I knew the count would be the missing link.”
“Did you notice the medieval fellow in the portrait had the same crooked nose? As if they’d both broken it just the same way?”
“I did. There’s something strange going on there, but we’ve no time to worry about it now. The threads have come together, John.”
“The stepson, eh? Oughtn’t we go to the police?”
Harry patted her coat pocket. “Don’t worry, I have the revolver you gave me. We’ll be fine.”
He winced. “I’ll just let you go first. When we get there.”
Harry made a noise of irritation. “You’re worried I’m going to shoot you again.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Connor shook the reins and they lurched forward.
“It was an accident, John. At least I missed your vital organs.”
He clasped his hands and gazed heavenward. “A blessing indeed….”
Balthazar stood at the window, watching the carriage speed off into the rain. A moment later, his manservant, now in a long oilskin coat, slipped out of the house, leapt into a dog-cart and followed.
It never ceased to amaze him how one could simply stick a title before one’s name and it went unquestioned. As long as you had money and an aristocratic manner, people saw what they expected to see.
He wasn’t even distantly related to the Habsburgs or any other European royalty. He had lived in Hungary, but he had lived in many places. His true birthplace was Karnopolis, a city long buried beneath shifting sands. Balthazar was largely indifferent to verse, but he’d always enjoyed those lines by Shelley that began thus: I met a traveler from an antique land….
The poem appealed to his sense of irony. Everything fell to dust eventually, except for himself.
Well, it was done. There was nothing now but to wait. When the moment came, he would act.
He opened a teak box and examined the object inside, coiled and gleaming, though he didn’t touch it. The sight of the talisman stirred ancient memories better left alone.
Lady Vivienne Cumberland and Mr. Alec Lawrence.
The names were different but he knew them nonetheless. He made it a point of keeping track of everyone who wanted him dead. If Vivienne had any idea he still lived, she’d go to the ends of the earth to find him.
He still thought of her as Tijah, her daēva as Achaemenes. Along with Cyrus and Cassandane, the oldest bonded pairs on the planet. And yet they’d let this daemon leave England. It had outwitted them, just as it had outwitted his own mistress two thousand years ago.
Did they understand what it was they hunted? Balthazar very much doubted it. That it had somehow escaped its prison in the Dominion shook him to his core.
A creature of shadow and flame.
I know your name.
He turned away. Lucas would be his eyes and ears. The Devereaux family had served him for generations, their loyalty and devotion unquestioned. He understood the amulet must be recovered at all costs. Balthazar touched the ouroboros he wore on a chain around his neck. A serpent devouring its own tail.
He hated himself for what he did to survive, but he feared the prospect of dying even more. There were special levels of Hell reserved for his kind.
Unwillingly, his mind conjured up the image of a fey palace in the Dominion. The House-Behind-the-Veil. In the gardens, a stone well of pure darkness waited. He had seen the thing that lived inside. It called itself—
“Balthazar.”
He turned at the soft purr behind him. Evangeline waited, embroidered robe provocatively dangling from one bare shoulder. She wore a ruby necklace underneath and nothing else. Evangeline Martin was very rich, or at least her husband was. It was one of the count’s few requirements. He wouldn’t drain a woman who was poor simply because he knew she’d be doing it for the money or the food or whatever she imagined he’d give her. No, his victims had to be willing.
For some reason, there was never a shortage of the willing.
“You left me abruptly,” she pouted. “The bed’s gone cold.”
“I’ll be there in a moment, darling.”
“Who were those people?”
“Business associates.”
“Who arrive without an appointment, demanding to see you like common peddlers?”
She was starting to irritate him. “They had one. I forgot about it.”
Evangeline crossed the room to stand beside him at the window. Rain coursed down the glass, blurring the street beyond. She tangled her fingers in his dark hair. “Do all the Koháry men look like you? Every portrait in this house has the same eyes.” She touched his lips. “The same mouth.”
“Our blood runs thick.”
“Very thick.” Her eyelids drooped seductively. The pulse at her neck fluttered.
Heat flared in his groin and he felt a wave of self-loathing. You do what you must.
He’d tried to mend his ways.
There is evil in the world and I do my best to oppose it.
Not a lie. But not the whole truth either.
You see, Miss Pell, some would say I’m evil myself.
Evangeline ran a hand along his arm, light as a feather. He picked her up and she let out one of her throaty laughs.
“Count Koháry.” She gave him a frank green-eyed stare. “Have you ever made love to a woman in your library?”
“Never,” he lied.
“Then you must do it quickly because my husband will be home in less than an hour.”
He inhaled the scent of her, so young and alive. “I’m not afraid of your husband.”
“Well, I am. He’s a jealous lunatic.”
Balthazar carried her to a chair by the fire. The gold ourobouros glinted in the light of the flames, each jeweled scale perfectly lifelike. He removed it from his own neck and hung it around Evangeline’s so the talisman dangled between her small breasts.
“I don’t wish to hurry,” he murmured.
When she cried out in pleasure some time later and he felt all that life flow into him, all that precious time, Balthazar inexplicably thought of another face. Smooth brown skin, hair shorn to the scalp. A scimitar in her hand. So young, but she’d been formidable even then.
He’d tried and failed to have her killed.
What did she look like now? And why did he even care?
Part III
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
― William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Chapter 22
Two steamships arrived in New York on the afternoon of December 28.
The first was the White Star Line’s R.M.S. Oceanic out of Liverpool. She had been due to arrive two days earlier, but one of her boilers overheated and the ship hit rough weather, delaying her progress. The nor’easter toss
ed the steamer around like a tin can; anything that wasn’t nailed down became an airborne missile. Even some of the most seasoned sailors suffered from violent seasickness.
That wasn’t the worst of her troubles, however.
When the Oceanic departed on December 19, she’d carried one hundred and sixty-six first-class passengers and a thousand third-class passengers, along with a crew of one hundred and forty-three men. By the time she limped into New York Harbor over a week later, six of the passengers and two of the crew had vanished. They were officially presumed to have fallen overboard during the storm, but everyone knew that eight casualties was an unprecedented number for the voyage, weather or no. Rumors abounded, each wilder than the last.
There was a wild animal aboard the ship, or a crazed killer. Some whispered that it was Saucy Jack himself. An aura of fear and paranoia hung over the ship like a pall. For the last several days of the voyage, most of the passengers stayed locked inside their staterooms. The lavish dining rooms and salons sat empty. Those who did move about did so in groups of three or four.
The afternoon the Oceanic arrived in New York, a rising wind had whipped the surface of the harbor into whitecaps flecked with great webs of spindrift. A light rain fell, but even darker clouds mounded on the horizon. The passengers hurried down the gangplanks the moment the gates opened. They were relieved to be disembarking from the Oceanic, which some muttered was cursed.
Only a few noticed the large black dog that leapt straight from the deck to the wooden pier. They assumed someone’s pet had slipped its leash. A child cried out and pointed, but by the time her mother looked over, the dog had disappeared.
It loped along the docks to the cobblestones of Christopher Street, pink tongue lolling. In fact, the dog had once belonged to a Mrs. Aloysius Bellemore of Philadelphia, one of the vanished passengers. It was something different now. Neither alive nor dead, but a strange amalgam of both.
The dog skulked beneath the tracks of the Ninth Avenue elevated line. In the shadow of a ramshackle wooden warehouse, the creature paused, sniffing the air. It padded down a narrow alley that smelled of rotten fish and other even worse things. Muscular haunches rippled beneath matted black fur.
The old woman watched it come with trepidation. Her name was Alice Carstairs and she was a rag picker. Her feet had grown sore from wandering the city with her cart and she knew this alley as a quiet place out of the wind where she could rest for a bit.
“Here now,” she said in a calm voice, though her heart beat faster. “Here, boy.”
The dog stopped a few feet away, looking at her with intelligent eyes.
“Poor thing. Haven’t eaten in days, I’ll wager,” the old woman said. “I’ll give you a crust, my dear.”
She cautiously extended a hand and patted its massive head. The dog licked her hand.
The second ship to dock was the Etruria, which arrived precisely seven days, two hours and forty-one minutes after she had left England. Rain fell in sheets by the time she made port at the Cunard Line’s Pier Forty-Eight, just three blocks south of the Oceanic.
Vivienne Cumberland and Alec Lawrence took a hansom cab downtown and left their luggage at the once fashionable but now slightly decrepit Astor House, which they had chosen mainly for its location. Then they went straight to the offices of the S.P.R. on nearby Pearl Street. Dark had fallen by the time the aged butler led them up to Mr. Kaylock’s office.
He rose from his desk to greet them. Kaylock’s normally unflappable demeanor was fraying around the edges. He’d forgotten to shave that morning and ink stained his long, simian fingers.
“Thank God you’re here,” he said quietly. “We have a situation.”
Harland Kaylock proceeded to inform them of what had transpired at the American Museum of Natural History during the week they were crossing the Atlantic.
“The stolen amulet is likely a talisman,” Alec said. “A true one.” He looked at Vivienne. “It was our worst fear, Mr. Kaylock. The daemon already knows the location of the Greater Gates.”
“Daemon?” Kaylock interjected. “Could you perhaps….”
“Explain? Of course, sorry. That seems to be the nomenclature for this particular entity. We found a reference in a letter from a necromancer who had traveled to the shadowlands. He described its lair. A deep, dark hole. In other words, a lower level of the Dominion. He made a pact and tried to bring it through to this world but couldn’t manage it.”
“Are they similar to ghouls?”
“Superficially. Both possess a living host. But daemons can wield fire.” Vivienne produced her cigarette case but didn’t open it. “From what we saw of Dr. Clarence, they’re stronger and far more sophisticated.”
“I see.” Kaylock glanced at the case. “Go ahead, if you like. I don’t mind.”
“Thank you.” Vivienne took out her Magic Pocket Lamp. She clicked the button and a flame jetted from the wick. She lit the cigarette and exhaled toward the window.
“Fascinating device,” Kaylock murmured. “And how is this daemon killed?”
“We’re not sure it can be, not in any meaningful sense,” Alec said. “But we believe it can be banished.”
Vivienne shot him a look. “We’ve had a week to think of little else, Mr. Kaylock. Its weakness is that is has no body of its own. Ghouls don’t actually possess anyone. They consume flesh and blood to mimic the appearance of their victim. To absorb them, in a way.”
“Daemons are different,” Alec said. “The necromancer described the one he met as shadow and flame. I don’t think they can survive for long outside of a living host. The one we’ve been chasing went straight from Leland Brady into William Clarence. Then from Clarence into someone else, we don’t know who. It enters through the eyes, or perhaps even by touch alone. But if the host body dies before it can find another—”
“It will be vulnerable,” Vivienne finished. “We know how to open a temporary gate. Send it back to the lowest level of the Dominion and hope it takes a thousand years to find its way out again.”
Kaylock nodded. “I don’t mean to be contentious, but what’s to stop it from just possessing one of you?”
“Before he fled England, Dr. Clarence attacked Mr. Lawrence.” Vivienne tapped her cigarette on the edge of a crystal ashtray Kaylock had pushed across his desk. “It could have killed him but didn’t. I think it was trying to take him and our bond repelled it.”
“I was told about that,” Kaylock said carefully. He cleared his throat. “I’ve never met a….”
“Daēva?” Alec said, watching his reaction.
“Indeed. I must say, you look perfectly, ah, human.”
“Only on the outside.” Alec smiled wolfishly. “Now, Mr. Kaylock, we just have to corner this thing. Any ideas?”
“To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure it’s even here in New York yet. Julius Sabelline was killed two days before Christmas. Our agents have been investigating his murder, but we can’t blame that on the daemon.”
“Because it can’t have crossed the Atlantic so quickly,” Vivienne agreed. “Someone else must have stolen the talisman.”
Alec drummed his fingers on the silver falcon of his cane. “It can’t be a coincidence. I think we should speak with Miss Pell right away. Where is she?”
“I removed her from the case until you arrived,” Kaylock said. “It was too dangerous.”
“Well, get her back,” Vivienne snapped.
“If you don’t mind,” Alec added in a milder tone. “She seems to know more than anyone at this point.”
“Of course,” Kaylock replied distractedly. “I’ll send my messenger boy.”
He dug out a piece of paper and scrawled a note.
“I’m sure she’ll be at home in this foul weather,” he said with a confident smile, yanking on the bell pull. “We should hear back shortly.”
Chapter 23
The torrential rains slowed traffic to a crawl. It took more than an hour to get downtown and the same to cross the
mile-long span of the Brooklyn Bridge. Harry sat quietly, lost in thought. John stared out the carriage window at the turbulent grey waters of the East River, muttering to himself as he ran through a dozen new theories.
“Even if Jackson despised his stepfather enough to kill him, I still don’t see how it all fits,” he finally exclaimed as they inched down the exit ramp to Sands Street. A forest of black umbrellas clogged the pedestrian walkway to the right as some of the early-shift commuters made their way home from Manhattan. “How did he lock the door without a key? And why on earth would a promising young student from Yale want to unleash hordes of undead on his fellow man?”
“It’s an exceedingly peculiar and complex case,” Harry said. “But I believe there is only one explanation that fits all the facts.”
“Well?” John demanded. “Let’s have it.”
She adopted what she hoped was an enigmatic smile. “Don’t fuss, you’ll find out shortly.”
“You’re doing that supercilious thing again, Harry. Smug and awful.”
She laughed. “I could be entirely wrong, and I don’t wish to embarrass myself by bandying about pure conjecture.”
“Fine. My wager’s on Jackson then.” He searched her face for any sign of affirmation. “Wait, no, the whole madu weapon thing is too obvious. I’ll say Holland. Holland and Araminta.”
Harry just gave him her Cheshire Cat grin.
“You’re a horrible girl, do you know that? Davis Sharpe, and that’s my final answer! Perhaps he’s the illegitimate son of Jeremy Boot and they conspired together.” He pulled out his notepad and began flipping through the pages. “I know it’s in here somewhere,” he muttered. “It always is. That needle in the haystack of utterly irrelevant and misleading information.”
“Poor John,” she murmured. “You mustn’t forget Orpha. Despite her initial appearance at the post-mortem, she hasn’t been all that helpful, has she? Almost obstructive. And she has a strong interest in the supernatural. What if her true affiliations are darker than anyone imagined?”
