“I don’t care. I just don’t want you to end up…like that.”
She blinked at him. He noticed her long lashes, the curve of her brow, that scandalous mouth. And then he tried not to notice them.
“You’re doing something about it, aren’t you?” she said softly. “That Lock. I want to help.”
“You will only interfere.”
“At least let me see it. There might yet be something…”
“Dammit, woman! Must you be so…so…”
“So stubborn? Like you?”
Suddenly his anger deflated. “Very well. I give up. Spy or no, assassin or no, I can no longer fight you.”
“Then it’s a good thing I am neither, so we won’t waste our time. Back to your lockup?”
He nodded.
* * *
IT WAS EVENING again by the time the cab dropped them off near the mews. Leopold’s mind was in a whirl. If she could help, it will have been the first time any woman had known him this well. If he could only fully trust her. If only…
He smelled it first. Even as he pressed the key to the padlock. Sulfur. Smoke. Something vile…
The door exploded open, knocking them both back in a cloud of smoke. Ogiel the Cloven-Hoofed One, along with his disgusting imp, stood in the center of the mew, destroying what was left of his furniture and goods.
Without thinking, Leopold raised his hands and cried out. Hebrew? Latin? He didn’t know. But white angry light burst from his fingers and slammed the Otherworld creatures into the wall, dislodging several bricks.
Ogiel recovered first and snapped his head toward Leopold. “Kazsmer,” he growled. His enormous fist swept toward him, but Leopold jumped aside before that hand crashed to the floor, denting it.
He had to summon Eurynomos. He couldn’t fight the beast alone.
He reached for his switchblade, but that giant arm arced toward him again, this time aiming for Mingli. He grabbed for her hand and yanked her out of the way just as the clawed hand scraped along the stone floor with a cascade of sparks and a skin-crawling screech.
They both rolled and righted standing across from each other, with the beast situated between them and the door.
Remarkably, the switchblade was still in Leopold’s hand, but the moment he tried to poise it over his arm, the floor tilted. Ogiel’s weighty steps buckled the stone and the blade slipped from his fingers. A blur of red and the imp snatched it out of the air, dancing away with it held high in its hands. He scrambled up the wall and stood on the ceiling, laughing in a high-pitched cackle.
Ogiel squared with Leopold and Mingli. He closed his hands into fists and raised them. Each fist would crush them to a stain on the floor. Leopold gathered his magic again to push him back when the beast suddenly froze.
The imp’s laughter halted as well, as if a cork had been thrust into that wide muzzle.
They were both suspended in time, unable to move or speak.
Leopold looked at his hands. He hadn’t done anything; he was sure of it.
“Come on!” cried Mingli and grabbed his hand, pulling him toward the beast. He hung back until he realized she was aiming for the space between Ogiel’s spread feet and to the door and escape. “We only have a moment!”
“What did you do and how did you do it?” he asked as they neared the beast’s scaly legs.
“I have my own ways,” she said. “Do you think you are the only one who is marked?”
Before he had a chance to ask, Ogiel awakened again and seemed perplexed that his quarry had vanished. Mingli headed for the door, but Leopold shook her hand free and ran back.
“What are you doing?”
He slid along the floor under the giant daemon’s legs, grabbed the plans from the worktable and crushed it to his chest.
Ogiel bent down and looked between his legs at the retreating man. He howled and spun around.
Leopold zig-zagged and skidded toward another workbench and snatched the mechanism.
Ogiel stomped toward him, a roar on his open mouth.
Leopold looked back and saw the beast closing on him. The taloned hand reached.
Clutching the Lock and plans tight to his chest, Leopold dove for the door, all the while incanting, “Et clauso ostio, signatus servat!”
A flourish of light burst all around him in gold and crimson. He speared through it and just as he hit the pavement outside, the door slammed shut. The bricks surrounding the door began to melt and flow over the jamb and lintel until the entire door was covered in red hot liquid brick. On his knees and panting, Leopold’s cheeks heated from the smoldering sealed portal. He closed his eyes as it steamed and cooled. Slowly he lowered his taut shoulders.
Mingli was standing beside him and Thacker had landed next to her. “Cor blimey! You did that?”
He nodded, still out of breath, and slowly got to his feet.
A muffled roar and a mighty bang trembled the sealed door and Leopold edged back, but it held. A roar of frustration rang through the brick wall and Leopold sent a small ward through the wall to protect Raj before looking both ways up the street. “Come on. We’d best get out of here.”
Chapter Twenty-One
BACK AT HIS flat, Leopold quickly ushered her inside.
“Will they follow us here?” she asked breathlessly.
“My flat is warded very strongly. I never did ward the lockup. I don’t know why.” He dumped the plans and Lock on his drawing room table and fell into a chair.
Mingli did likewise. “Ogiel,” she sighed, wrinkling her nose. “He always smelled like a cesspool.”
“That’s an insult to cesspools,” said Thacker, appearing through the wall. “Why are we talking about cesspools anyway?”
She laughed and the sound eased Leopold’s heart. His tensed muscles unwound. “You missed a great deal, Spense. Ogiel, the same creature that dispatched you was at my lockup.”
Thacker nodded gravely. “I went there first, but I didn’t go in because…because…”
“Because though a spirit, your senses are attuned to the Otherworld,” said Mingli.
He pushed back his bowler. “And, er, that means…?”
“It means, Inspector, that your ghostly senses could tell that evil had been there and you naturally shied away. Had you been evil, it wouldn’t have bothered you.”
Thacker seemed to think about for a moment before a smiled cracked on his face. “Not evil. You hear that, Leo. Good news at last!”
“I knew it all along, Spense.” Leopold looked about his parlor wearily. “I’m afraid I haven’t much to offer you here, Miss Zhao. There’s tea, of course, but I have nothing by way of food. I might be able to ring up the pub and have something delivered.”
“I would like that,” she said. “But if you have spirits, I would also like that about now.”
He rose creakily and headed for a sideboard that boasted of crystal decanters. “Scotch, brandy, sherry?”
“Scotch, please.”
He refused to raise a brow, for there was nothing about her that surprised him anymore. He pulled out the stopper and poured into two glass tumblers, with an apologetic glance toward Thacker. He returned to her and handed her the glass.
“Kong chien,” she said, and drank it down.
“What does that mean?” he asked after taking a sip.
“The Chinese equivalent of ‘Bottoms Up’.”
He repeated the sounds in his mind and drank again. “I’ve neglected to ask you about the woman we rescued, the one we took to hospital. I have been otherwise absorbed, I’m afraid. Is there any news?”
She licked her lips and rested her glass on the side table. “As I suspected. She was drugged and had no idea what had happened to her. She was, no doubt, snatched off the street but has made a full recovery.”
“I’m glad of that. Does she recall anything?”
“No. Lucky for her. Not so much for us.”
“Human skins. Like Ilonka. What are they doing with them? Was it Ogiel or those gogg
led physicians? And what the bloody hell is the Order of the Valkyrie?”
She leaned forward. “I’m not yet certain of the details, but I believe it all has to do with Manfried Waldhar. First of all, that warehouse is owned by a German corporation, whose owner is yet unnamed. And there are copious rumors that tie him to proto-nationalist organizations. They consist of Germanic people who believe they are direct descendants of Odin.”
“Preposterous.”
“We’ve both seen stranger things.”
“But really! Odin?”
She chuckled. “Well, it does do great things for one’s self-importance when one thinks themselves to be descended from a god, no?”
“Lunatics.”
“Lunatics with a great deal of money. The rolls of businessmen who deal in English properties are said to be full of Germany’s elite. Their exceptionally wealthy elite. They could be financially supporting Waldhar’s whole world domination scheme. Just think of it. A free ride on luxury dirigibles, a gathering or two, all for a promise of dominion over all you survey? It’s very appealing. Well worth the price.”
“Not to you, I hope.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“I want to know more about this Waldhar,” said Thacker. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just nip back to the Yard and do some searching.”
“You might try the files in the Chief Superintendent’s office,” she said. “I’ve not been able to get access there.”
“Right!” He tipped his bowler, turned, and vanished through the wall.
She smiled. “I don’t know that I’ll get used to that.”
He was caught again by her calm rational recitation of facts and her amusement at their absurd situation. And yet, even though this made her more than appealing, something else kept poking at his senses. Something she had said earlier. “Miss Zhao, er, I hope I’m not being too personal. But you said to me previously that I was not the only one who was marked. What exactly did you mean by that?”
She closed her eyes and laid her head back against the velvet chair. When at last she opened them again, they fastened on him with a decidedly determined glint. “I’ll show you.”
She stood and peeled off her gloves and cropped jacket. What remained was a white ruffled blouse with a high collar tied with an elegant bow. She reached for that bow first and undid it, sending the wide ribbons fluttering on either side of her prominent bosom.
Leopold swallowed.
The untied bow left a gap at her throat, and below it the first of the buttons. Her deft fingers began to release the small, pearl buttons from their holes. As each button opened, the blouse cleaved wider, revealing a frilled and pin tucked camisole with pink ribbons running through eyelets.
Leopold slammed his glass to the table. “Madam! I’m sure this isn’t necessary…”
“Sit down, Leopold.”
He fell back into his chair, and she leaned over him, hands on each chair arm caging him in. Her blouse draped open wider revealing the whole of the camisole and consequently her bosom close to his face. He couldn’t help but inhale a healthy dose of lilac and woman. He pressed himself back into the chair as far as he could.
When she shifted back and stood up, she unbuttoned her cuffs and started removing her blouse. He made as if to rise, but she shunted him back down with only a glare. Her blouse hung from her arms revealing naked shoulders and an alluring décolletage.
“M-miss Zhao…”
Her thumb slipped under one sleeve of her camisole and pushed it down over her shoulder. That’s when Leopold saw it. At least the beginning of it. Keeping her eyes on him, she slowly turned, revealing a tattoo of intricate design, wending across the delectable curve of her back and down beyond her skirts. Chinese characters artfully combined to form the sinewy figure of a woman.
“It’s an incantation in a logogram, Mr. Kazsmer… Leopold. It is the yuan gui. Designed loosely in shape of the spirit itself. The Chinese term can be translated to ‘ghost’, but it is somewhere between a spirit and a daemon. Yuan gui is the ‘ghost with a grievance.’ I was marked to save me and to curse me. For I am haunted by the spirits of persons who died wrongful deaths and I must constantly strive to make it right. And they protect me, too, so that I may carry out my mission, for however long the gods wish it of me.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
HE COULD NOT help but continue to stare not only at the delicate design of the tattoo, but at the seeming miles of smooth curving skin she showed him. Her blouse hung alluringly from her elbows and one side of her camisole lay languidly off one shoulder, revealing the corset beneath.
His breath had left him some time ago. Yet he managed to gasp, “That…must be…quite a tale…”
“It is.” She knelt beside his chair and leaned in. “Just as your tale must be quite… something.”
He found himself leaning toward her. “I don’t know…that I am ready to tell it. I don’t know that I will ever be ready.” Her face was closer. Looking into her eyes, he noticed her irises were as dark as her pupils, long lashes shadowing all. But more than that, those slightly rouged lips parted, and he could feel her breath on his mouth.
“You must speak of it to someone,” she whispered. Too close. “Or it might break you apart.”
“I’m not broken.”
“We’re all broken…to some extent.” Her mouth was so very close to his. So close. He needed only to lean a little more…
She stood abruptly and began shrugging the sleeve of her camisole back over her shoulder and lifting her blouse back into place, deftly buttoning up to her throat.
Panting, Leopold sat back, eyes closed, drawing on years of self-control.
With a deep sigh, Mingli glanced at him, still buttoning her blouse. “I was a slave in my uncle’s household.”
Startled, Leopold jolted forward. “What…?”
“You see, in China, when a family is poor and has too many girl children, they are sold. Even though my father was a scientist, he made little money and there were many mouths to feed. My uncle was rich, by our village’s standards, and he bought me. I was ten. He forced me to work in the kitchens, but when I blossomed early at twelve, he made me work in his brothel.”
Leopold’s mouth dropped open. “My dear Miss Zhao,” he said softly.
“Is it so different from the poverty you find here in London? Girls are sold here, too, by unscrupulous men, but little is done to stop it. At least in China they are forthright about it.”
“No.” He shook his head. “No, there is no honor in this.”
“It is the way things are done, Leopold. Some girls make their way in that life, grow self-reliant, can even barter their way to higher positions in the house. But I never…took to it. I was meant for other things. I was attuned to a different life. And the spirits and daemons knew it. The household daemons soon found me. The others could not see them or hear them as I did, and I made a bargain with them to help me win my freedom. There is no dealing with daemons without a bargain. They are like a gambling house, you see, and the house always holds all the advantages. This mark I bear was put upon me by the ghosts of those wrongly killed. It was for my protection but also as a reminder of what tasks I had yet to perform.” She fell silent, her steady gaze looking beyond him. He didn’t move, waiting for her to finish her narrative.
“One night, there was a…mysterious fire in the house. The ghosts told me to take one object to safety and leave the rest. And that meant the people as well. That was my sacrifice.”
“The people all died?”
“Yes.”
“What…what was the object?”
Her eyes traveled back from the past and landed on Leopold. Her gaze stayed on him as she lifted a chain from her neck. The end of it fell deep into her décolletage. She dragged it up into the light. Holding it between her thumb and index finger, she turned it. It was no larger than a pocket watch. A carved piece of jade. It looked to be a dragon.
“This small piece,” she s
aid. “It was my uncle’s pride and joy. I’m afraid I had to hit him over the head to get it and he was one of the first to die in the fire. Pity.”
There was no sympathy in her voice. He could easily appreciate it.
“What was the purpose of saving this object?”
She studied it, as she must have studied it for years. “I don’t know. They have yet to tell me. But I am certain that its great importance will one day be revealed to me at the most inconvenient of times.”
“And so they…they marked you.”
“Yes. It starts at my shoulder here,” she said, laying her hand on the right side of her neck, “and winds about my back to stop here,” and she touched low on her left hip.
Leopold swallowed. As terrible as her tale was, he couldn’t stop himself from wanting to see that tattoo in its entirety.
She seemed to read his thoughts and leaned toward him. Her blouse was still opened at the throat and there were dots of perspiration there. “When we know each other a little better,” she whispered, “I will show you the whole of it.”
“There’s r-really no need of that, Miss Zhao.”
“Oh, I think there is. You and I know about daemons and spirits. And I hate them so.”
“Well,” he said, licking his lips, “some daemons are harmless. Even friendly. I have relied on one for many years. He saved my life and I count him as my friend.”
She raised her animated brow. “Your friend? Leopold, you must not make the mistake of believing that.”
“But it’s true. You don’t know the literal hell I’ve been through. You don’t know…how he saved me, continues to save me…”
She slowly shook her head. “Have you never heard the tale of the turtle and the scorpion? How the scorpion wished to cross the rushing river but the current was too powerful. He saw a turtle and begged her to take him across. ‘But you will sting me with your deadly poison,’ said the turtle. ‘No,’ said the scorpion. ‘I promise I will not do so, for I wish to cross this river.’ And so the turtle agreed. The scorpion hopped onto her shell and rode. But when they got to the center of the river, the scorpion reared back and stung the turtle. The turtle, quite shocked, turned to the scorpion. ‘Why did you do that! Now I will surely die and so will you as we sink beneath the waves.’ The scorpion merely shrugged. ‘You knew I was a scorpion when you agreed to carry me. It is my nature to sting.’ And so they sank down together into the depths of the river.”
The Daemon Device Page 18
