The cowled figure turned to face the board again.
“See? It continues, as it has always done. The next move was underway before the last, overlapping, interweaving. Observe, Cassandra, and understand!”
She looked more closely at the game. A new piece had appeared. This was no surprise. Cassandra had never been able to understand Crowe’s descriptions of the game. It often recreated itself, to some extent, and thus new pieces could spring into existence. This one seemed much less bizarre than a lot of the monstrous forms around it. In fact, it looked like a tiny human being, moving with a distinctly feminine gait.
It was a tiny perfect woman about four inches high. It had dark hair, a pale face, and wore a bright red dress. It was facing the Mortlake piece, which had its back to the newcomer. Then the red figure turned its head and looked directly at Cassandra. And smiled. She gasped and held up a hand, feeling a primitive urge to ward off evil.
“You could not resist taunting him,” the cowled man said. “Now you must take it to the next level.”
Crowe chuckled again. Cassandra tried to laugh, to show she was not truly disturbed, but she did not think she sounded convincing. She looked back at the board again.
The new piece had her face.
***
Tara walked off, not looking back. Mortlake stood watching in silence. He struggled to find better words that would change things, make her see that she was not to blame. But somehow, for all his erudition, the right words would not come.
His phone buzzed, and he glanced at it. Monty had sent a text, which was an event in itself. He opened the message and saw an attachment. It led to a website where students had digitized the contents of Cambridge College libraries. It was a long painstaking process and far from complete. But Monty had cleverly zeroed in on something relevant.
There was a JPEG of an old woodcut that showed a circle of stones. It was entitled The Haslam Ringe and dated 1593. In the next image, the stones were being smashed and carted away to clear the site. The third woodcut showed Haslam House. Mortlake switched back to Monty’s message.
The circle was considered an unlucky place by the locals, but some rich landowner with no interest in the views of peasants decided it would make a nice stately home with spacious gardens. The circle, I feel, may still be there in spirit. But what might lie at its center? M.
“A day late and a dollar short, old boy,” Mortlake murmured.
It was an expression he’d heard Tara use, he was sure, though he couldn’t remember when. He looked up from the phone, but she was out of sight. He started around the church, picking up his pace, trying to marshal his thoughts, find a clinching argument. Then he remembered widdershins and realized he had set off in the wrong direction.
“Damn,” he said, hesitating.
Then he laughed.
What the hell am I doing? he thought. I have no right to ask anyone to take risks. I chose this life, she was just pitchforked into it.
He wandered back to Helen York’s grave where he stood watching a round furry bumblebee going from flower to flower. He spent a while thinking about young women who do not ask for their wild talents. In the back of his mind, the vision of the strange game lurked, with its immense board and monstrous pieces. Now he was alone, he had to face the memory of that moment. The game player was a man he had seen die, along with the woman Mortlake thought he had loved. Or that was how he remembered it. Now, he doubted his memories and much else besides.
“Nathaniel Crowe,” he whispered. “And Cassandra. Oh, God.”
A sudden gust of wind lifted and scattered Tara’s posy of wildflowers. He squatted down to collect them. Suddenly, it seemed very important to reassemble the modest bouquet, to reaffirm that simple gesture of humanity.
***
“We have plenty of food down here,” said Crowe. “You should be more careful in your roaming.”
Cassandra felt uncertain. She had taken her time getting ready, a traumatic process as it involved fixing her face. Looking into her own eyes was an ordeal, but it could not be avoided. Now she was ready to venture above, but it seemed she might be ordered to remain.
“Nathaniel,” she said wheedlingly. “I need to get out more. If I’m to play my part in your clever plan, I can hardly sit down here vegetating among the fungus and rats and spiders.”
They were walking slowly from the game chamber to one of the other underground rooms. Crowe’s lair was complex and far-reaching. Cassandra still had trouble navigating the mixture of natural caverns, long-hidden river channels, half-forgotten cellars, and abandoned wartime bunkers. But she knew the route from the place where the game lived and the refectory.
Crowe called their destination the refectory as a kind of tribute to his great enemy. It was nothing like a Cambridge College dining room, Cassandra felt, except, of course, for the presence of food. Crowe, physically far frailer than she was, shuffled along slowly in the gloom. He needed to feed more often than Cassandra, and unlike her, he could not enjoy normal forms of sustenance. He had been older and weaker when he had died.
“Nearly there,” she said, holding his bony elbow to keep him steady. “I think the gang have found us some nice morsels.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Crowe hissed. “This is no trivial matter. I do not relish what I have to do. You may enjoy your—hobbies. Be grateful I allow you to indulge them.”
Cassandra held her peace until they rounded the corner of the rough-hewn tunnel. Now that the refectory was before them, she felt a stirring of appetite. It had been a while. The captives were lying on low couches around the room, four in all. They were young—not teenagers but not far into adulthood. Cassandra remembered her own youth, her time at Cambridge, the brief time she had spent with Mortlake.
She shuddered in a chaotic storm of conflicting emotions.
“Which one?” she asked, still supporting Crowe as they stood on the threshold.
“The nearest,” he croaked. “I grow weak.”
For one insane moment, Cassandra felt the urge to dash the feeble, wizened parody of a man to the ground. Except that she couldn’t. Without his arcane abilities, she was nothing. Or at least, nothing anyone would want to look at. Or touch. Or smell.
“You wish…” she began.
Then remembered not to speak lightly and helped him silently to the couch of a young man. The captive was unconscious, of course, but the drugs seemed to be wearing off. Or perhaps he had received too weak a dose as he was big and muscular. Crowe perched on the side of the couch, by the young man’s head, and leaned over. Cassandra looked away. She did not want to see what Crowe was, not up close in such detail. It was as bad as looking in a mirror.
But she could still hear the sounds. The gulping noise, the slight moan of the victim.
“You’ll be here for a while,” she said. “Can I go up, now?”
The gulping paused for a moment.
“Don’t be too long. And take no more stupid risks!”
“I won’t,” she said flatly and strode out of the refectory.
She had already decided on the exit she would use and had made her preparations.
Cassandra emerged into everyday overground London near Piccadilly Circus. The tunnel entrance was well concealed, but she moved away from it as quickly as possible. There wouldn’t be too many girls on the street tonight. A cold steady drizzle fell from a starless sky. The English summer had seemingly abandoned the city.
Cassandra turned her face to the starless night and stretched out her arms, took a deep breath. She was free of Crowe’s fetid labyrinth, if only for a while. She spent the next hour or so prowling a few of the back alleyways, checking out possible plainclothes cops.
The police had severely limited budgets and did little to curb the vice trade in London. There was, however, always a slight risk of being observed by some smart woman detective tricked out like a hooker. But it seemed improbable that the Metropolitan police would be running a sting operation tonight. All Cassandra exp
ected to see were women too desperate to stay indoors as the rain got heavier. Women too scantily clad to be simply waiting for a ride. Or at least, not in the regular sense.
So far, so good, she thought, peering out of the alleyway. Let’s see what we can find.
Cassandra stepped out of the shadows and into the main thoroughfare. It had been a while since she had hunted in this area, and she had forgotten the huge window of a fashion store. She caught a glimpse of herself reflected among the dresses, shoes, and lingerie. She looked into her own face and flinched, closing her eyes. She was leaning against the wall, staring down at the wet pavement, when someone spoke to her.
“You all right, love?”
The young woman—more of a girl, really—had walked up to her very quietly.
“I’m okay, thanks!” Cassandra said, straightening up. “Nearly fell off these bleeding heels onto me fat arse, that’s all.”
The girl looked down at Cassandra’s boots and made an approving noise.
“Business been good then?” the girl said. “Those are well nice.”
Cassandra could see very clearly in the semidarkness. The girl’s face was plastered with makeup, but she seemed painfully young to be on the streets. Cassandra pushed any sympathy she might have felt to one side, however. She had more important business to consider. She needed cash and sustenance, and there was one very simple way to get it.
“I like your bag,” the girl said.
“Louis Vuitton Vintage,” Cassandra said. “It is nice. Who do you work for?”
The girl instinctively looked right and left, furtive and afraid.
“Skulls,” she said, lowering her voice. “You don’t work for him? You’d better move on, up a couple of blocks. He doesn’t let other girls work this patch.”
Cassandra smiled down at her. This was good news.
“Skulls,” she said, rolling the word on her tongue. “He sounds like a fun guy. Does he collect the skulls of his enemies and turn them into drinking goblets?”
The girl looked baffled and spoke more urgently.
“Seriously, you’d better get a move on because he—oh shit!”
Before Cassandra could ask another question, the girl had walked off, cheap heels clacking on wet paving stones. A silver two-door BMW had drawn up to the curb, and a darkened window was already rolling down. Cassandra walked over and bent down to look inside.
“Hello, darling, I could do with a lift on a dirty night like this,” she said cheerfully.
“Who the hell are you?”
The man at the wheel was fat, moon-faced, with a goatee and small piggy eyes. He had a shaven head, and gold gleamed at his ears and one of his nostrils. It was the sort of face only a mother could love, Cassandra reflected, and almost a caricature of a pimp. A small necklace of silver skulls confirmed his identity.
“You run the girls ’round here, then?” she asked. “Because I’d like to apply for a post in your organization.”
Skulls snorted in derision.
“You?” he said. “Christ, mutton dressed as lamb, or what? They like ’em young ’round here, darling. How old are you, thirty?”
“Older than that,” she murmured. “But there’s many a good tune played on an old fiddle.”
Skulls guffawed at that and said a few insulting, obscene things. Cassandra made mental notes of them for future reference. When he’d finished telling her to go away, she leaned in closer and, before he could react, reached into the car and touched his cheek.
“Get your hands off me, you dirty slag!” he snarled, pulling his head away. “I don’t know where you’ve been!”
But the touch had had its effect. He was uncertain, no longer threatening.
“Don’t you want to give me a test drive, big boy? Kick the tires, so to speak? Then you can decide if you want to… take me on permanently.”
Skulls looked confused now, and she wondered if his thuggish impulses would win out against the lust she had inspired. She needn’t have bothered. He told her to get in. She walked around the car, seeing the scared young girl gawking at them from about thirty feet away. A witness, certainly. But unlikely to go to the cops.
And if she does, Cassandra thought, so what? They can’t arrest the dead.
As she got into the passenger seat of the sports car, her shoulder bag bumped against the seat. There was a liquid sloshing sound.
“You got some booze in there?” asked Skulls. “I don’t like winos.”
“It’s just a water bottle,” Casandra said, quite truthfully.
The drive took a few minutes during which Skulls interrogated her. Cassandra gave him a series of plausibly detailed lies just in case she could not go through with her plan for some reason. However, when they got to his apartment, she quickly confirmed he was alone and was planning to enjoy her for the night. She put her bag down on a coffee table as he started to paw at her with his plump, sweaty hands.
“No, Skulls,” she said, grabbing one of his wrists. “I’m afraid I’m off the menu this time. You’re tonight’s special.”
His infatuation vanished in an instant. As she’d guessed, he was the type who saw sex in terms of power, more than pleasure. He tried to free his hand, then when he couldn’t pull away, he tried to hit her. She dodged easily and shoved him away. Unprepared for her strength, Skulls lost his balance and fell heavily onto the coffee table, smashing it. Cassandra’s shoulder bag landed on its side and disgorged a plastic bottle full of oily yellow liquid.
“You bitch!” Skulls screamed. “I’ve killed people for less!”
Then he saw the bottle and frowned.
“What’s that? Who the hell are you?”
Cassandra smiled as she stepped over to him and kicked him in the crotch to stop him from getting up.
“That? Oh, that’s what the professionals call an accelerant, my fat little friend. It will show the police that it was arson. Criminals use that as a method to try and cover their tracks after a murder, don’t they? We want them to think this was gangland stuff, don’t we?”
Skulls shouted something and tried to get up. This time, she kicked him in the face, relishing the way her heel connected with his teeth. Then she squatted down and pinched his face between the fingers of her left hand.
“To answer your second question, who the hell I am is something you will never know. I wouldn’t let it worry you. There are more pressing concerns.”
Skulls tried to move but he was not strong enough. She banged his head sharply on the floor to keep him still. Then, with her other hand, she flicked her razor-sharp nails against his throat. The pain was trivial compared to what she’d already inflicted. Skulls was slightly concussed and didn’t seem to grasp what had happened at first. But when the blood began to gush, he realized how much trouble he was in. But it was far too late for him to do anything more than wriggle and howl.
As usual, it didn’t last long. Cassandra cut him some more, nice and deep, and drank him dry. Then she collected his ready cash and set the fire. Arson was trivially easy to research online. And it was simple enough when you didn’t care who knew it was arson. The flat would go up nicely but she had about twenty minutes to get clear. She had done this a few times and had it down to a fine art.
“Sorry, Skulls, but I have to love you and leave you,” she said to the flaccid corpse as she closed the apartment door.
“There’s only one man for me.”
* * *
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House of Whispers: Supernatural Suspense with Scary & Horrifying Monsters (Mortlake Series Book 2) Page 17
