Moonglow

by Kristen Callihan

  Poole’s muttered string of obscenities filled the ensuing silence. Ian agreed with all of them. Having Archer along was an annoyance, but at least the man knew with what they were dealing. Inspector Winston Lane did not. Humans were never to learn of the other world. The results would be calamitous. Starting with mass panic. It had been Ian’s hope to obscure certain evidence before the CID got to it. He shot Archer a glance, and the man blinked once. Understood. At least in this, they were partners.

  Lane took a deep draw on his pipe, and the tip burned red hot in the blue light of the morning. He let the smoke out slowly. “Hello, brother,” he said to Archer. Aside from being an annoyance in this matter, Lane was also husband to Miranda and Daisy’s eldest sister, Poppy. Whether that would turn out to be a further nuisance or a boon remained to be seen. “I ought to have expected you here as you do turn up in the oddest of places.” Lane did not wait for a reply from Archer but turned his keen gaze on Ian. “Lord Northrup, I understand you took my sister Daisy to shelter after the attack. I thank you for that.”

  Ian inclined his head. Lane was an odd piece, carrying himself with a pride that went far past his station, yet conveying the manners of a man long used to bureaucracy. Had Lane been of higher birth, he would undoubtedly be running for parliament. Regardless of his station, one look from him had Poole squirming.

  “I’m certain Lords Northrup and Archer will have a reasonable explanation for their presence here,” Lane went on softly. “As for your colorful evasion of me, Poole, we shall discuss it later.”

  Poole grunted and avoided Lane’s gaze. Lane waited for one of the men to confess his sins as it were. Archer merely stared at the man. A good tactic for Archer, as his stare was quite effective. Ian, however, hated keeping quiet. “I do hope you like waiting, Inspector, as you will be doing a fair bit of it.”

  Lane smiled blandly. “Patience is a virtue most valuable to an inspector.” Lane knocked his pipe against the sole of his boot, sending red embers tumbling and the release of fragrant tobacco into the air. “Now that we’re all here, let us proceed.”

  “Are we certain?” Ian asked. “No others are forthcoming? No wives? The bootblack boy? Perhaps the muffin man I passed on the way?”

  The only answer was Poole’s rather shocking hand gesture, to which Ian would rather not acquiesce.

  Poole pulled out a set of large iron keys. The door swung easily and in stepped Poole, his once nervous visage turning instantly to one of cool professionalism.

  Ian followed at a pace behind, hating the damp coldness upon his neck. The narrow corridor, painted institutional green and lit by two stingy lamps, made a sharp turn and the cloying smell took on a decidedly sulphuric taint.

  “Cost me twenty quid to delay matters.” Poole’s sandy-colored head bobbed along in the greenish gloom. “The Fenn family wanted the burial today. Today. Had to tell the coroner I’d sent the body on to the wrong address to give us more time. Rubbish, and the coroner well knows it. I’ve never misplaced a body in all my life.” He shot a glance at Lane. “And you can well blame these two.” He jerked a thumb toward Archer and Ian. “Tell me, what’s a man to do when a marquis and baron are breathing down his neck?”

  “Inform the lead inspector?” Lane offered.

  Ian let Poole rant. He knew the man helped him not out of desire for money but from the fact that Ian had stepped between him and the wicked edge of a thief’s knife on one dark night. Loyalty ran deep within Henry Poole. What Archer had on Poole, Ian didn’t know. Nor did he care.

  The little surgeon stopped by a massive iron door, and Ian’s insides turned.

  “You’ve read the report?” Poole asked him.

  Ian forced himself to nod. Behind him, Lane made a sound of disgust. “You sent him an official report?”

  Poole pretended not to hear as he led them into the room and closed the door with a ringing clang. “I don’t know what more I can tell you. But it’s best to take a look.”

  Compared to the corridor, the examining room was as light as midday and washed clean, the blood having long since flowed down the drain in the tiled floor. The space was Poole’s pride and joy. The men accepted the heavy leather aprons Poole offered and followed him to the row of bodies that lay upon the steel tables lining the room’s center. Bathed in the sunlight slanting down from the overhead windows and the power of four large gas lanterns, the scene appeared oddly peaceful—were it not for the stench.

  When Poole was busy laying out the tools of his trade, and Lane watching the process, Archer stepped close to Ian, his strong features still and guarded. The shock of seeing Archer as he was now had yet to wear off. For seventy years, the devil had worn black masks and gloves to hide himself from the world. Transformed by an evil demon, Archer had slowly been turning into a monster of ice and stone, and would have become a demon himself had Miranda not saved him.

  Ian swallowed down a bite of regret that he had stepped in between them. The truth was, the greater part of him was relieved to see Archer whole and human again. Even if he’d never admit it to a living soul.

  “Ian.” Archer gave only the slightest of nods, his eyes icy. He leaned in, lowering his voice to a murmur. “Miranda says you were the one who found Daisy.” His eyes narrowed. “A werewolf, was it? It was very… convenient that you were at the scene.”

  And there it was, the cold accusation in those gray eyes. Ian had been waiting for it but still his claws itched to break free. “Yes, you would know all about being at crime scenes at the wrong time. Or mistaken identities.”

  Archer flinched. As he should, the blighter. Archer himself had been suspected of murder based on mistaken identity. “Fine then, do you know who did it?”

  Ian’s annoyed whisper was but a breath. “If I did, I wouldn’t be here, now would I?”

  A small twitch moved the corner of Archer’s mouth. “Fair enough.” He moved away to join Poole by the examining table.

  Poole put on his spectacles and leaned over what had once been Mr. Mark Ashford. “You can see what’s been done to the poor bastard,” he said, oblivious to Ian’s disquiet. And why shouldn’t he be? He’d given Ian several lessons in anatomy, Archer as well. Trained them both to conduct their own dissections at a time when performing one could get them all tossed into Newgate. Thankfully, the law had finally seen the benefits an autopsy provided the medical profession.

  Ian had long since worked past every normal man’s fear of blood. The human body, from skin to flesh, sinew, and bone, was a miracle. Every organ, the blood that pumped through its veins, a wonder. The perfect order of it, the way all parts worked in harmony to keep it alive, boggled his mind. Ian had often found himself overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. But the wolf in him hated death. Its natural instinct was to let the dead alone and concentrate on the living. Which was why Ian had given up practicing medicine; one could stave off death for only so long.

  The body before them had been all but destroyed. Only the limbs lay relatively intact. Beside Ian, Winston Lane shifted his feet. The man’s skin had taken on a greenish hue, and he’d pulled out a handkerchief to press to his mouth. Archer stood silent and still as a statue, betraying nothing of what was going on in that head of his. A neat trick, that.

  “Not much left by way of evidence,” Poole went on. “But look here.”

  Ian let his eyes move past the raw, open ruin of the chest. It was a body. Nothing more. Shapes and colors and smell.

  Poole pointed to the edges of the flesh. “See there. The incisions along the pectoralis major. They are still relatively intact for proper study.”

  Clean cuts, four in an evenly placed row, the flesh, muscle, and sinew severed in one neat swipe. Claw marks. He didn’t need to look at Archer to know the man had picked up on the fact. Ian bent closer, pretending to inspect the wounds, and let Archer do the talking.

  “Made from a knife?” Archer murmured aloud, tilting his head.

  “I agree,” said Poole as Ian took the moment to inhale
deeply. “Look there. Ripped into the abdominal cavity like it was soft butter.”

  God, the stench of death. His insides rebelled, his morning’s meal threatening to surge up. He forced himself to get past the ugliness of it to the very essence of the body and caught a distinct note on the body’s skin. A slight presence of perfume. The same Ian had smelled in the alley. He lingered on it for a moment, relishing the sweetness, the way it made his wolf relax, then moved on. There. There it was, the scent of sickness and wolf.

  Poole bent close as well, startling Ian. “Note the depth on the slash at the trachea. Nicked the spine at the fifth vertebra. The victim bled out within moments due to massive hemorrhaging.”

  Archer and Lane nodded, Lane still looking rather peaked. Ian did not blame him in the least. “Still new to this bit of business, Lane?” Ian asked him.

  The man glanced up. “I’ve been to my fair share.” Lane’s mouth twitched. “Admittedly, every time feels like the first.”

  Poole laughed. “Can’t say that about everything, now can you?”

  “Quite right, Poole,” Lane murmured dryly.

  Ian straightened. “The other body, if you please, Poole.”

  Poole glowered, clearly wanting to give a full lecture, but he shrugged. “Suppose it makes no difference, as they died the same way.” His snub nose wrinkled. “At least these two bodies here did.”

  Lane jerked his head round to Poole. “And the other victim?”

  “A bit… more. She’d been violated, I’m afraid.”

  The men bent their heads for a moment, and then Ian moved to the second body, the widow Alexis Trent. Just get through it. Do not think. “Let us see this one first.”

  Poole pulled back the sheet, and one of the men cursed. Poor woman was as ruined as the man, but her once lovely face stared up at them as if silently begging for justice. “Not much difference, as I said. Slashed with the same marks.” He tossed away the sheet. “The odd bit of it is, were it not for the precision and size of the incisions, I’d be pressed to think this was the work of an animal. But there you’d be looking at lacerations rather than incisions.”

  Lane perked up. “An animal, you say? Would be a rather large one to do such damage.”

  “That was why I said ‘if,’ ” Poole retorted without much heat. “We don’t have anything larger than a dog roaming our city streets, and this isn’t the work of a mere dog.”

  Archer remained impassive, but Ian knew he’d gone on full alert. “I should think the populace of London would notice a large predator walking its streets,” Archer added and then leaned in to study the wounds. “And Poole is correct. Wounds from animals are usually more ragged lacerations than clean incisions.”

  Ian had to give the man credit; he was excellent at diversion. When Winston blinked in confusion, Ian said, “Lacerations have jagged edges, such as might occur when an animal tears into a body. Incisions are clean, deep wounds as occur from the slash of a knife or sword.” Or the razor-sharp claws of a were or lycan. Now as to a were’s teeth, they certainly would cause lacerations. Ian wondered at the lack of bite marks. There were none he could see on the organs or interior cavity either. Had the thing not wanted to eat its prey? Odd. If it hadn’t been eating, what was it doing?

  The only possibility that came to him was that the were was scenting the body. But why? What about Mrs. Trent would attract the beast so intently?

  Archer tilted his head as if contemplating. “Mmm… Curved blade. Something extremely sharp.” He accepted the pair of forceps Poole handed him and delicately peeled the skin back from the flesh along the upper edge of a cut, which also quite effectively disturbed a set of the incisions, ruining the shape of them. Poole was too intent upon Archer’s lecture to notice. “Sliced down to the bone in some places. A single-edged knife. And large.”

  Poole nodded. “Exactly.”

  “Well, that narrows it down a bit,” Archer said wryly.

  Poole’s grim smile widened in response. “Yes, quite. Knives in London being as common as a crab in a whore’s… ahem… But why always four even cuts, each obtaining the same depth, as though the bastard used four knives at once?”

  Rather pasty and swallowing quite frequently, Lane clearly forced himself to study the marks. “Perhaps a torture device of some sort?”

  Ian leaned in, pretending to decipher the nature of wounds so obviously left by a full-fledged werewolf. “I agree. Well done, Lane.” Bracing himself for the hit, he breathed in. Wolf. Sickness. Something inside of him stilled.

  Again came the scent of spring, sweetness, and decadence. Delicious. It was Daisy’s perfume, he realized with a hitch in his chest. That maddening woman who’d called him out and left him to hang in his humiliation. Damn if her sass didn’t stir him. He’d thought of little else since, and though it rubbed him raw, he itched for another encounter. At the very least, a chance to best the clever little cock tease.

  Alexis Trent had worn the same perfume. Odd. She was a friend to Daisy. Perhaps they had shared?

  He stood back. “The other body, Poole. The poor lass.” The police had found her tossed like rubbish in some dark bowery corner not three days before the attack in the alleyway. According to Poole’s report, they’d only made the connection between the three bodies due to the violent abuse done to each of them.

  Gods, this poor girl had died days ago. Days, and his kind had done nothing to stop the mad werewolf or protect the people of London, as was their duty. Anger boiled within his veins. The Ranulf, the bloody king of Clan Ranulf, was supposed to act, not sit with his head stuck up his arse. Even Ian, who’d willingly turned his back on the clan, knew as much. The stink of it was Ian could not even approach them to ask why. He was in exile.

  “One Miss Mary Fenn of Camden Town,” Poole said, bringing Ian’s attention back to the fore. “Found her reticule with the body, if you can believe. Seems even the lowest of scavenging thieves hadn’t the stomach to approach her.” Poole shook his head sorrowfully, but then hesitated. “See here, she isn’t…” He glanced at Lane, and the man bristled. “Well, inspector, you usually just read the reports. These men are used to such sights, being surgeons in their own right. This poor girl’s been dead much longer. Given the recent heat and the work of rats, there isn’t much left of her. The rate of decay is quite advanced.”

  “Then how do you know she’d been violated?” Lane countered, his skin pebbling with sweat.

  “Found her with her skirts tossed up.” Poole flushed crimson. “Legs spread apart.”

  Lane nodded. “Of course. It was in the report, was it not?” He touched the side of his head as though pained by his lapse in memory. Ian knew it was the morgue, the specter of rot and death at work on him.

  Lane suddenly looked tired. “Same marks? From what you can tell?”

  “Yes, sir. We needn’t view her.”

  Oh, but it was most certainly needed. Ian had to compare her scent. He glanced at Archer. The man’s eyes narrowed a touch. Ian pressed his lips together. He didn’t know how to insist without it looking odd. And there was the grim fact that the more subtle scents would be overwhelmed in a highly decayed body. Ian would have to all but stick his nose into it, a notion to which his wolf, and his stomach, thoroughly rebelled. Unfortunately, Archer’s expression made it clear that he hadn’t any brilliant ideas either.

  Irritation swelled and then a thought hit Ian. “Have you her clothing, Poole?”

  Poole’s eyes widened but he went to a storage locker. “Certainly.”

  Under the watchful eyes of Lane, Ian accepted the ragged bundle of clothes. Archer stepped back toward the body of Alexis Trent. “If you would, Poole, I’ve a question about the damage done to the greater omentum.”

  At Lane’s look of confusion, Ian smiled. “Fancy physician speak for that fatty looking mass in front of her intestines. You know, the lumpy yellow-gray bit hanging before them.” His grin widened as Lane went decidedly green. “If you are feeling faint, you can stay with me. I w
ouldn’t blame you in the least.”

  The man glared at him, but strode off on wobbling limbs to stand by Archer’s side as the men waxed lyrical on many methods of evisceration. Ian shook his head, his smile remaining. Predictable as the sunrise, calling a man’s courage into question to get him to react.

  But his smile faded as he studied the gown he set on a working table before him. It was in tatters but once quite respectable. A machine-made, plain cambric dress with wide skirts and a bodice slightly out of date. The clothes of the middle to lower class. And most thoroughly soaked in the same perfume as worn by the other victim—and the luscious Daisy Craigmore. He needn’t even inhale. It was there, just beneath the muck and dried blood crusting the fabric. Dread sucked at him. The were wasn’t attacking at random. It was attracted to the perfume. Daisy’s perfume.

  Chapter Five

  Ian tracked her easily through the crowded streets. Though her mourning gown blended well within the sea of working-class worsted, the widow Daisy Craigmore stood out. Her pace was steady and serene as a lady’s ought to be and yet that stride of hers was pure eroticism, hypnotic in its bump and sway. The elaborate gathering of fabric over her bustle only served to highlight the motion, enough to glue more than one man’s gaze to her rear as she walked. And though his hackles rose with each covetous glance, she paid the men no notice. Beneath the black taffeta, her shoulders were set and tight, and he wondered if she thought of that night when death brushed its hand too close to her cheek.

  That Daisy had chosen to walk after the funeral of Alex Trent wasn’t so strange. He understood the need to clear one’s head. Only he’d expected her to find a pretty park in which to take her promenade. Instead, she moved farther away from the safety of Mayfair. The neighborhood they entered was working class, but not so poor as to be dangerous. Simply a place decent men lived, worked, and played. Ian stuck out like a brass tack in old leather.

  Not breaking stride, he took off his ruby stickpin and stuffed it into his pocket, along with his gold watch. He didn’t fear theft. Pity the man who tried it. But he’d rather not shout out his presence; the cut of his suit and the cost of the cloth already did that enough.