“No!”
The glutinous sound came from a mouth that was regaining its human form. The transformation began to reverse itself as Mortlake got to his feet. More smoke, thick and greasy, came off the body as the beast receded, faded, to reveal Gonfallon. The man was now writhing on the flagstones in the scorched rags of his finery. He tried to crawl out of the patch of radiance but only managed to move a few inches. Then the writhing stopped, and Mortlake knelt down by the body to check for a pulse at neck and wrist.
“Nothing.”
The sunlight faded, ending after just a few moments, returning the church to its winter gloom. People were standing by the altar, looking up at the scene. The praying woman said she had called an ambulance.
“Best call the police, too,” said Mortlake, standing up and inspecting the shredded front of his coat.
“What just happened?” asked Tara, staring down at the contorted body. “Was it the wolfsbane?”
“No, it was the glass—you could say the operation was a success,” Mortlake said, suddenly feeling very tired. “But the patient died.”
He turned to look up at the great window. It showed the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child, guarded above by angels, while to either side, wise men and shepherds offered their gifts.
“Silver stain, it’s called,” he said. “Those angel’s wings, all golden yellow. Very lovely.”
He walked past the onlookers and slumped onto a pew. Four strangers stood over him in puzzlement. He could not resist the urge to lecture, just a little, as Tara came to stand beside him.
“They struggled to create these wonderful yellow colors for centuries, you see, and then some alchemist or humble craftsman hit upon the formula. Silver particles are suspended in the glass—a little-known medieval discovery,” he said.
Tara gazed up at the wonderful image, then at the Englishman.
“That’s why you took me to see that window in the college,” she said. “To test it on me, see if I’d been infected.”
Mortlake nodded.
“I thought sunlight passing through might somehow burn the beast out of him. It is a purifying force in both mythology and science. And I suppose, in a way, it did. But there wasn’t enough of a man left in there once the beast was purged.”
The wail of sirens, very familiar now, rose above the hubbub of the onlookers. Mortlake looked at Tara.
“Surely you didn’t follow me here from Cambridge?”
“Yeah,” she said. “And you didn’t notice. I thought you were supposed to be good at this cloak and dagger stuff?”
He stared at her in silence until she grimaced and shrugged.
“Okay, I just asked Monty where you were likely to be. I’ve been to like, four churches.”
***
“I have no idea what I’ll put on the official form,” said Westall. “But the coroner might give me a few hints. It looks like His Lordship died from some kind of seizure, that’s the preliminary finding.”
They were having an impromptu meeting in the Greasy Spoon, having gone through the routine of giving statements at Scotland Yard. There was, Westall had explained, the possibility of charges being brought. But witnesses seemed to agree that Gonfallon had launched some kind of attack on Mortlake. Then things got confusing.
“Eyewitnesses—they’re amazing,” Westall said, dipping fried bread into a runny egg yolk. “First thing they do at training college for us lot, they stage a fracas outside the lecture hall with actors. Then they herd us inside and ask us to write down what just happened.”
“Let me guess,” said Tara, pondering what was supposedly a Spanish omelet, yet seemed very British in character. “You get a dozen different versions of something you all saw five minutes earlier.”
“Precisely,” Westall said. “And that’s for a regular crime—bag snatching, drunken brawl. With this one, the onlookers seem to know what happened was impossible, so they’re rationalizing it like crazy. Some say a wild animal got into the church. Others say Gonfallon went berserk and started snarling.”
He smiled at Tara.
“They all agree a noisy American ran into the church and started yelling.”
“Fame at last,” Mortlake remarked.
He had been subdued for a while. Tara guessed that, from his perspective, he had failed. She found it impossible to care if Gonfallon or his surviving cohorts lived or died. But clearly, the professor wanted everyone to have a shot at redemption, and she could only admire that.
“What next?” she asked. “I mean, there’s the Honorable Charles Whatshisname and the other one, Rodney Something?”
The academic and the detective exchanged knowing looks.
“There are always loose ends in these weird cases,” said Westall. “I suspect they’ll both have to live very restrained, careful lives from now on. Maybe as hermits on a remote island. But I’ll be watching them. And I’ll make sure they know I am.”
Mortlake smiled thinly.
“I will try to find a cure, if there is one,” he said. “And I’ll make it known to them that I want to help. Perhaps that will get through to them. If not…”
They fell silent, and Tara looked past the men out into the gathering darkness of a winter afternoon. A mother and little girl were walking by with an Alsatian dog, tongue lolling, senses alert. Tara shuddered at the sight of the huge beast, still very much a wolf in essence. It had evolved over millions of years as a superb killer and was now thinly disguised as a pet.
The beast, she thought, was never far away. That was a loose end nobody would ever tie up.
Epilogue
“Kittens?”
Mortlake looked inside the basket in the college cook’s sturdy arms. Small, triangular faces looked up at him. Four were striped tabbies. One was pure black. The black kitten yawned, then tried to scramble out of the basket. The cook shoved it back in and covered her burden with a tea towel.
“It’s that bleedin’ Bigglesworth!” said the woman. “He’s a randy little sod! And that Doctor Carrington, he thought he’d had him done, but you know what he’s like, poor soul. Turns out Bigglesworth’s tackle is in perfect working order. Hence this lot!”
The cook went on describing just how difficult it was to handle a bunch of inquisitive kittens roaming around the back entrance of the college. She expanded on the theme that it was not her job to safeguard small animals in general. Kittens, in particular, were, in her words, “little bleeders who tried to get into everything”.
Mortlake said “Yes, I know” a few times, but it was a futile gesture. He knew better than to try to stop her. He had to wait until she ran out of steam. Finally, the cook did stop and then stood looking at him accusingly.
“I’m not sure if I’m the obvious person to ask…” Mortlake began. “I mean, surely the students would be the first to step up?”
“Oh, I’ll shift a few with the young folk,” said the cook. “But I thought, you being a cat person, you’d like first pick. So, which one is it?”
She whisked the tea towel off of the basket again. The black kitten, as if it had been preparing for this opportunity, leaped out and landed on the threshold of the apartment with a thump and a squeak. Then it walked inside, wobbling slightly, tail erect and twitching.
“Aw, seems like one of the little beggars has chosen you already!” the cook remarked, stepping back from the doorway. “Doctor Carrington will have plenty of food and other stuff it needs—toys and such. Well, I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.”
“But I can’t possibly—I mean…”
Mortlake was talking to thin air. The cook, who could move fast for a thick-set woman, was gone. The kitten was clambering onto his shoe and clawing at his trouser leg. He looked down.
“You need special food and a trip to the vet to be checked out.”
The small animal mewed at him and waved a paw. He reached down and picked it up.
“Well, I’ve got some milk,” he sighed. “And from Bigglesworth’s example, I assume y
ou’ll need some clean laundry to sleep on.”
The kitten started to clamber painfully up his chest toward his face, then settled precariously on his shoulder. It mewed some more.
“At least I won’t be talking to myself so much from now on,” Mortlake said. “I escape one beast only to become the prey of another.”
He walked carefully across the room to an armchair. As he sat down, a small, soft nose poked him in the left ear.
Purring began. It was surprisingly loud.
“Oh well,” he sighed. “Maybe you are the harbinger of better things to come. Where I come from, it’s lucky for a black cat to cross your path.”
***
“Yay! You’re back from exile!”
Anita needed very little excuse for a celebration. Tara pointed out that she had only been gone a few days, but the pizza had been ordered and a very bad rom-com earmarked for viewing. After pizza and some cheerful mockery of the movie, Tara returned Anita’s jewelry, the two of them examining each piece carefully. Anita insisted on looking for signs of paranormal damage, as she called it. Or blood, either would do.
“There was no shortage of blood,” Tara said grimly, lining up rings, chains, and bangles. “But none of it mine.”
Anita insisted on a blow-by-blow account of the fight in the cellar. Tara obliged but omitted the moment when her power manifested itself. Anita focused on the fact that the wolf-girl had attacked her, or at least knocked her aside.
“You sure you weren’t even scratched?” demanded the British girl. “If you’re moving back in here, I don’t want to wake up one night with you all hairy and slavering. I had enough of that with my last boyfriend. My last three boyfriends, in fact.”
Tara held up the hoodie she had worn during the raid. It had three diagonal slashes up the back. It was clear that, if the creature had wanted to wound her, it would have been easy. So, Tara suggested, maybe the sheer amount of silver she wore, coupled with the wolf-girl’s uncertainty over who was friend or foe, had saved her from infection.
“I had a few bruises and scratches,” Tara added, “but I guess those were just regular injuries. So far, I haven’t taken to turning around three times before I go to sleep.”
They laughed at that, but then Anita grew serious.
“Are you really going to go on with this weird sideline?” she asked. “I mean, you nearly died, more than once. Is it worth it for a few extra quid a month?”
Tara shrugged.
“Mortlake said a lot of the entities he investigates are pretty harmless—ghosts that have unfinished business before passing on, that kind of stuff. Way I see it, I’ve faced the worst the paranormal can throw at me.”
Anita folded the last piece of pizza and bit into it.
“Mmm, how can something so bad taste so good?”
***
Cassandra Tallantyre studied her face as best she could in the dim light. The chamber, far underground, was lit by candles, dozens of them placed in niches around the dank limestone walls. Her face, reflected in the small compact mirror, might have been mistaken for that of a thirty-year-old. The makeup helped, of course, along with the candlelight.
But the flaws are still there, she thought. All the rottenness that goes right down to the bone.
“Vanity, thy name is woman.”
The voice was very weak, not merely that of an old man but one struggling to speak at all. Cassandra snapped the compact shut and leaned over the seated figure. There was a splash nearby—one of the rats that infested these old tunnels was commuting. They were excellent swimmers. They had to be given how often the tunnels flooded. Once the nearness of feral rodents would have appalled Cassandra, but she had had to accustom herself to many unpleasant things in recent years.
“I was just checking for damage,” she said. “I’ve been outside a few times now. Even winter sunshine can be troublesome.”
The man seated at the time-worn oak table inclined his head.
“Another vain gesture, to go so close to him—he is not a fool to be lightly taunted. Do not take such a risk again.”
Cassandra felt a surge of annoyance but held her tongue. The old man was right. And she wanted to know what his next move would be. Every time she visited him in this labyrinth, the game grew stranger and more fascinating. She chose her words carefully.
“I am sorry, Master,” she said. “I will strive to be more discreet. I am eager to know how your strategy will evolve.”
“As am I,” returned the player.
He was cowled in a dark brown robe like that of a monk, but there was nothing Christian about his preoccupation. The table in front of him was occupied by a large, square board dotted with pieces. It was like a chessboard but larger and with thirteen squares on a side.
The pieces were nothing like those used in the traditional game. They were not merely black and white but an array of colors—different shades of blue, yellow, and red. Some clearly represented human types. Cassandra saw a crowned figure like a king, a soldier with a crossbow, a mother and child. Others were hard to define, more stylized or abstract in character. Many were disturbing, deformed, often monstrous.
She did not understand the rules of the game. She had asked the cowled man many times, but he had answered only in riddles. As far as she could tell, the game was the world. It did not merely represent a battle between various forces, but also influenced events and outcomes. And the rules, far from being fixed, changed over time. Once she had seen a new piece spring into being from nowhere on the board. At that point, she had stopped asking.
“Gonfallon—why him?” she asked. “A rich, arrogant man, no discipline.”
The player emitted a weak, strangled chuckle.
“That was the whole point of the exercise, my dear,” he said. “Such men are easy to manipulate. Once I suggested a new blood sport to him, the rest was almost inevitable. Mortlake had to become involved at some point. That was clear from the game.”
Cassandra leaned closer to the board. It was sometimes hard to focus on the pieces. A kind of haze descended upon the tiny battlefield at times, and she suspected that this was as close as she could get to seeing the entity or entities who determined the rules. She was almost sure the blurring of the board meant some unimaginable force was changing things. Altering reality, in fact.
“I’m not happy about the American girl,” she said. “She complicated the situation. She is a wild card, if you like.”
The seated figure inclined his head again.
“True, she was unforeseen. But such an ally can make a man vulnerable, as you well know,” he croaked. “We must expect surprises, never take anything for granted. I am still a mere tyro at the game, even after all these years. It is wiser than I. Now, let us consider our next move...”
A gray piece that represented a wolf about to spring began to wobble, without being touched. Then it slid across to the edge of the thick wooden board and fell onto the table, where it lay rocking on its side. Another piece started to move, a white figure of a robed man holding a book and a staff. It slid onto the square that had been occupied by the wolf.
“The scholar who is also a wayfarer, triumphant for now,” the player said. “But not for long. Let us present him with a different challenge—something that will test his powers and, perhaps, his loyalties.”
A piece Cassandra had not noticed before appeared from the massed ranks at the far side of the board and slid slowly toward the robed man until it stopped on a square diagonally adjacent. She stared.
It was certainly a marked contrast to the wolf.
* * *
Enjoy the following preview of
House of Whispers (Mortlake Series Book 2)
House of Whispers Preview:
Prologue
Northern England, 1872
The shadows were whispering in Helen’s room.
She was not afraid of ghosts, but she wished they would speak in the Queen’s English. If the spirits could not be understood, how could sh
e convey their messages to the living?
And, what was worse, she felt these spirits were not exactly friendly. Troubled souls she could handle. Helen York, in her meteoric rise as a medium, had dealt with much suffering and trauma. The dead, quite understandably, could be upset by a sudden transition to the next life. And they often had unfinished business with the living or simply wanted to reassure them. Helen, in her role as intermediary between mortals and those who had passed beyond the veil, did her best to bring solace to all.
But the whispering shadows did not sound lost, confused, or unhappy.
They sounded, at times, almost hostile.
“Please, talk to me in words I can understand!” she whispered.
But the shadows in the corner of the tiny attic room simply shifted, swirled like a black fog, and continued to whisper at her.
Helen finished dressing and checked her attire in a tiny, speckled dressing table mirror. She wore a new dress, blue satin, specially made for her by a discreet seamstress who was very well-paid. Helen had unusual requirements and her clothing—especially her undergarments—were unorthodox. She turned, eyes straining to see details under the lamplight.
“It will have to do,” she muttered.
Helen walked carefully down the steep attic stairs and paused outside the door of the parlor. Haslam House was the large palatial residence of a well-to-do family. Respectable. Wealthy. And Helen York, illegitimate daughter of a washerwoman and a drunken factory hand, was a guest. Not a servant, as she had once been, not a mere scullion “below stairs”. No, Helen York was now entitled to be treated like a lady—or as near as made no difference.
So why do I still feel like an impostor? Helen thought.
She knew the answer already. The people on the other side of the door would never truly accept her as one of their class. Hence, her meager guest room, the smallest they could find for her. She was not a typical female guest, not someone celebrated for her beauty, charm, or wit. No, she was wanted because of the show she could put on for her rich patrons. And she could never let them down, never fail to perform. Like a trained animal in a circus, she must entertain to survive.
Wolfsbane: Supernatural Suspense with Scary & Horrifying Monsters (Mortlake Series Book 1) Page 17
