‘Beware… the house of the dead,’ he gasped. ‘It… it is… foretold.’
‘The good Lord preserve us!’ Mrs Bennett’s shrill tones announced her arrival, and the housekeeper almost dropped her bowl of water when she saw Sir Arthur lying on the floor in tatters.
Marie cradled his head as his eyes closed. He breathed but weakly.
‘Hold on, Uncle,’ she whispered. ‘Please. I can’t lose you again.’
Sir Arthur’s eyes opened once more, and a look of violent horror seized him. He shielded his eyes as though something was at the small window of his study, before collapsing into unconsciousness.
Marie turned to look, but there was nothing, save for the black mirror of the window, and the distant chiming of buoy bells upon the Thames.
FOURTEEN
Monday, 16th July 1888
THE OTHERSIDE
‘No! Again!’
Marie gritted her teeth as the Japanese instructor’s words were accompanied by the thwack of her cane on Marie’s behind. Mrs Ito must have been over a hundred years old, and for all of the old woman’s fierce reputation, it was only her venerable years that stopped Marie throttling the life out of her.
Mrs Ito shuffled away, climbing the steps to her podium. Marie, breathing raggedly, wiped blood and sweat from her eyes, tried to slow her pulse in preparation for the next wave. She glanced back to see Mrs. Ito take her seat, well out of harm’s way, beneath the only lamp in the training room. Agent Hardwick stood beside the old woman’s throne, face pale and impassive as porcelain, hair immaculately coiffured. Beautiful, like a doll.
Mrs Ito clapped her gnarled old hands, and Marie turned back to face the darkness. She saw the violet eyes bobbing towards her, heard the low, throaty growls. She tightened her grip on her two curved blades. The ghouls were more wary this time, as though they sensed what had happened to their predecessors. They fanned out across the tunnel mouth, hugging the walls. Marie could have sworn they were learning, forming a strategy, though that was surely impossible.
The last wave had been almost too much. Marie’s heart pounded, blood racing, anger threatening to overcome her. Her armour was stifling. It was alright for the other agents – they’d had years of training. Marie had only turned seventeen last Wednesday, and she was exhausted. She knew she’d been too eager to show what she could do in the first few tests. She hadn’t held anything back. She hadn’t expected more. And now here they were, more ghouls, walking cadavers come to tear at her.
Her vision blurred – tears of hot rage mingling blood and sweat. Each pair of violet eyes that blinked into view was another object of her vitriol. She would slaughter them all or be damned.
The first came, pouncing from her right. She darted beneath it, catching its inner thigh with the first blade, swirling about as it landed behind her, and stabbing the second knife through its temple. She snapped a kick at an onrushing ghoul covered in pustules, grimacing as something fleshy burst upon impact. She ducked beneath the flailing claws of two others. Her limbs burned with fatigue, but anger drove her on.
Rolling beneath attacks, springing over the bodies of the slain, slashing and stabbing, she went on. Two more fell, one with a slice across the throat, another disembowelled, the beast fighting on for a few seconds before it realised the extent of the wound and fell.
At once, Marie was aware of some new attacker. Her instincts screamed to leap aside, and she did. That sixth sense saved her life; a ghoul dropped from the arched ceiling of the cellar, raking its ragged claws down her back. They tore through her padded doublet, slicing flesh. Marie cried out. The armour was next to useless. This thought gripped Marie; knowing that she had been protected from the ghouls’ claws had lent her confidence. That confidence was misplaced. Knowing that the ghouls could not attack from above had likewise emboldened her. The ceiling was covered in an electrified mesh to stop this from happening – Mrs Ito had turned it off. Marie knew it, and the hard lesson felt like a betrayal.
She lashed out, slicing the creature across the belly, though not deep enough. It knocked the blade from her hand, and for a moment Marie stared into a face almost devoid of flesh, just a skull with sharpened teeth and burning eyes. It leapt forward, knocking the wind from her. She hit the flagstones, rolled over as the creature leapt on top of her. She slashed blindly, taking off two of its fingers, before jamming the knife hard into its throat. The skull-faced monster hissed and fell, then another ghoul dropped from the ceiling, its weight almost crushing Marie. She could barely see. In a moment of panic, she realised she could die here, in a training exercise.
The new attacker punched at Marie’s helmet. She batted its claws away from her eyes instinctively. With a flick of her wrist, a small blade sprang from her sleeve, and she punched it repeatedly into the creature’s flesh. It roared, then wrenched her arm aside. With its other clawed hand it tore off her helmet. Its distended, mutated face hung an inch from hers. She was powerless to stop its great fanged mouth descending. It was barely an inch from her throat when some dark force hoisted the creature away. A lithe, deadly shadow whirled amidst the remaining ghouls, and all of them retreated in fear from the pureblood before them.
From Lillian Hardwick, Apollo Lycea’s wampyr assassin.
Marie lay in shock among stinking carcasses. She heard the cell doors close, and knew it was over.
Lillian Hardwick dragged Marie to her feet. Marie wiped more blood and dirt from her eyes, and sniffed away her tears. She was half blind and hurt all over.
‘Never let them claw you, Miss Furnival,’ Lillian said, her voice like distant bells carried on a cold wind. ‘If you do that in the field, you would betray your mind and body to one such as me. Do you have any idea what it is like to have the wampyr in your head? To have them see through your eyes? To hear their honeyed whispers? Pray you never find out.’
‘She… she cheated,’ Marie gasped. Her legs were like jelly; she wanted to collapse to the floor and not move.
A walking stick rapped loudly on brick, three times. ‘Too emotional!’ Mrs Ito shouted from the podium. ‘If the girl not so blind by her anger, she would have seen the danger sooner. The girl is not ready for the field. You tell them she need more work. Much more.’
‘I shall tell them, Mrs Ito.’ Lillian bowed to the podium. The old woman nodded back.
Lillian Hardwick led Marie away, holding her up with great strength.
‘Do not fall, girl,’ Agent Hardwick said, quietly. ‘If she sees you fall, you’ll never get out in the field.’ Agent Hardwick led Marie through a reinforced door and into a corridor, where bright lights stung her eyes. ‘You have skill – more than the old woman would care to admit. But you’re reckless. More so than I ever was. If you wish to avenge your uncle, you have a lot to learn beside strength and speed. You need guile, and finesse. Above all, you must be fearless. Your anger was born not just of vengeful thoughts, but of fear. Fear will get you killed. Tomorrow, you train with me.’
‘Th… thank you,’ Marie croaked hoarsely.
‘Oh, do not thank me. I intend to break you, and remake you. The next time Mrs Ito sees you, you will either be a warrior, or a corpse.’
FIFTEEN
Friday, 22nd April 1892
OLD NICHOL, LONDON
John crashed shoulder-first through the stud wall of the dilapidated rookery, plaster exploding to dust beneath his charge. He hit the floor, rolling beneath the grasping arms of a huge bearded man, half-naked and full of rage. A woman screamed; she tumbled from a bed, covering her modesty with filthy, greying sheets.
The bearded man looked for a weapon. John was up and running. He leapt through the air, putting all of his weight into one herculean punch. John’s fist connected with the man’s temple, and he fell to the bare floorboards in a heap.
John looked for another way out. A dog barked upstairs. He marched for the door, his men already filing into the room behind him. John registered the sound of a knife on flesh as one of them slit the big man’s thr
oat. The woman stopped screaming, and fell to quiet sobbing instead.
John threw the door open, dashed down the next corridor. The element of surprise was lost. A thug in a bowler hat flew from a side-room, swinging a truncheon in a vicious arc. John blocked with his forearm, grunting at the momentary flash of pain. His right hand spun his blade outwards and punched it into his assailant’s ribs in swift, darting jabs; three times, four. The man’s face was a mask of surprise and disbelief at the swiftness and ignominy of his demise. The life drained from his eyes and he dropped to the floor like so much butchered meat.
Like all the men in this den of iniquity – these Old Nichol Street men – he had probably thought himself beyond the reach of law. That may have been true, but the Nichol Street Gang had begun dabbling in more esoteric crimes than trafficking, cash-carrying and petty extortion. Now they had drawn the eye of Apollo, and John had been dispatched to clean up the mess created by this gang of ne’er-do-wells.
John nodded to Bertrand, who at once entered the side-room. John himself dashed up the rickety stairs at the end of the corridor, three at a time, with Whittock, Clements and Raynor close at heel. He kicked down the door at the top of the stairs, darting away as a dog leapt at his throat, teeth gnashing and spittle flying. Whittock raised a firearm, but John stayed his hand. The dumb brute was at the end of its chain, and had seen better days. Its black-and-tan fur was matted with dirt and excrement, plastered to its skeletal frame. John gave the creature a fierce glare with his one eye, and it ceased straining at the chain, backing away warily. John sidestepped the dog, staying clear of its radius, and signalled his men to do the same.
A set of double doors burst open and two men took aim. John and his men scattered as a shotgun roared. Whittock was first to respond, twin revolvers blazing away. One of the attackers stumbled back into the room; the man who had fired the shotgun convulsed as three rounds turned his chest into a bloom of crimson before he fell.
John leapt to his feet, unslung his trusty Winchester and strode through the doors. The second gunman, wounded, scrabbled for a weapon. John shot him through the neck and levered another round into the breech. There were murmurs, cries, shouts of alarm. A stench of excrement, sweat and decay assailed him.
Before him, a long room stretched outwards, three, perhaps four slums, all knocked into one huge attic space, now a workshop for the Nichol Street operation. A few windows, covered in newspaper, let in slivers of sickly yellow light. On filthy mattresses arranged in two neat rows, like a hospital ward, emaciated bodies lay languid, dead or dying, some chained to ironwork, others rotting in open air.
The attendants to these poor souls shrank away into the corners of the room, whimpering, knowing full well that a righteous judgment had arrived to punish them for the cruelty they had inflicted. But John’s attention was not on them, not now. The hair at the back of his neck prickled. His flesh numbed with cold; each breath felt like icy daggers plunging into his chest.
Walking away from him, sweeping slow and silent along the shadowed aisle, was a girl. Her white dress billowed softly, as though she were underwater. Her hair was black, dark and shimmering, similarly drifting like seaweed in shallows. Her small hands and feet were white as her raiment. All of John’s guilt flooded back to him. He wanted to cry out, to tell her to leave him be, to end this accursed haunting. But he knew his men were near; he could not show weakness in front of them.
‘Sir?’ Whittock was by John’s side, doubtless wondering why his commanding officer had stopped. But John could say nothing; he could only watch dumbly as the shade – this ghost – walked away from him. The ghost of Elsbet stopped at the foot of one of the mattresses, and extended a slender arm towards the makeshift bed, fingers pointing to the wretch upon it. There was a woman on the bed, wasted and grey-skinned, lying in her own filth. Beside her sat a man, trembling with fear, fingers still curled about a syringe, the needle probing deep into the woman’s forehead, between the eyebrows. The ‘third eye’, mediums called it. Brownish fluid bubbled into the syringe, unpurified, impregnated with swirls of blood. John knew what it contained. He knew what Elsbet wanted from him.
Mercy. Mercy for the lost. For the ones like her.
‘Sir!’ Whittock snapped.
John blinked. Warmth returned to his bones. Elsbet was gone.
His men had seized the attendants, holding them now at gunpoint. Seven men and women, the youngest perhaps twenty, the oldest in their last winters. All were sallow-skinned and haunted about the eyes. They were low commoners, East End dregs, doubtless brought into this foul business against their will. They had performed the darkest deeds out of fear, perhaps out of ignorance. But they were now complicit in what the Order deemed a capital crime: the harvesting of etherium from Otherside refugees. They knew too much, and had become just as guilty as their paymasters.
John told himself this thrice more, steeling himself for what was to come. He trod the creaking floorboards, to the mattress where Elsbet had stood, and gazed down at the woman. The attendant dropped the syringe, which leaked its contents onto the floor, and stared up at John, and then to Raynor, who aimed a revolver at the scrawny man’s head. The woman on the bed breathed weakly. She would never recover.
‘Interrogation, sir?’ Whittock asked.
‘No,’ John said, grimly. ‘We shall get more out of the Old Nichol boys. These petty servants can give us nothing that we need.’ He hesitated. ‘We have our orders.’
Gunfire. Screams. And then silence.
As his men composed themselves after their grim work, John took a sodden, dirty pillow from the floor and pushed it over the face of the frail woman on the bed, holding it there until her weak resistance ceased, and she was at peace. He stood and wiped his brow with his sleeve.
‘Sir…’ Whittock had a strong stomach for killing, but John had broken orders. ‘Should we not take them alive?’ He was hesitant.
‘Check them all,’ John said. ‘If they are too weak to survive the trip, give them mercy. Otherwise… load them up.’ For the first time in a long time, John hated saying it. His reasons for smothering the girl were nothing to do with her physical state, although Whittock seemed to accept it, and went about his work.
John walked from the room, unable to look at the poor souls his men had so casually dispatched. How had it come to this? When had he become a contract killer for the Order? He could no longer reckon the butcher’s bill. It was necessary, he knew it. But did it have to be him?
Have I not done my duty ten times over?
A low growl, then a whimper.
John looked down at the skinny dog, cowed and whale-eyed.
‘Best let me kill the mutt, sir,’ Bertrand said, appearing at the door, wiping blood from his knife. ‘It’ll only starve to death here. Be a mercy, I reckon.’
Mercy.
John looked at the dog again. ‘No,’ he said. John stepped forward, ignoring the increasing intensity of the dog’s growls. He unhooked the chain from its anchor, and looked sternly into the dog’s eyes. ‘You’re coming with me.’ John touched his hand to the dog’s head, without fear, and the growls ceased. A twitch of its tail; perhaps this was the first kindness the brute had ever been shown. And it came with the last cruelty John would ever oversee. He swore it to himself.
No more.
PART TWO
O this world’s curse – beloved but hated – came
Like Death betwixt thy dear embrace and mine,
And crying, ‘Who is this? Behold thy bride,’
She push’d me from thee.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
SIXTEEN
Jim dreamed of madness, always.
Chaos reigned upon the streets outside his window. Naked lunatics ran barefoot over blood-slick cobblestones, beneath a sky that burned with liquid fire. They fell upon each other, shrieking and cackling as they tore out each other’s throats, poked out eyes, rutted like animals in the gutters. Other things cavorted with them; formless shadows dancing to
an inaudible tune, cantering on sharp hooves, slicing flesh with blade-like claws of metal and bone. Over it all was the shadow on the sky. That cyclopean, many-tentacled thing that picked at the roiling red clouds like the hand of some ancient god rising from the earth. Winged creatures of nightmare swooped and swirled on eddies of fire like crows around a steeple. Like some hellish rainbow, the shadow seemed both near and far, but when a man looked upon it, it could always be heard. It scratched inside Jim’s mind, until the scratching drowned out all other sound and thought. Even the sound of…
No. He recognised the room. He knew where he was, and he would rather be anywhere else.
‘Jim?’ The scratching subsided long enough for Jim to hear her – his Jane. The shadow allowed him to hear, for her voice was more a torture than anything the Other could conjure.
Jim turned slowly. He had no choice in the matter, though he did not want to see.
The wasted girl on the deathbed; garlands of sickly-sweet flowers hung all about; sweat-slick flesh, mottled with the marks of contagion. She reached out with a hand that was far too thin. Sunken eyes implored him to be by her side. Jim’s heart broke all over again; he had never been there at the end, yet he was forced to relive her final moments, night after night.
He went to her, knelt by the bed. He closed his eyes, and took her cold, weak hand in his. But when he opened his eyes, Jane was gone, and instead he looked upon Algie, his lover, dead and pale, neck snapped from the impact of his fall. His eyes were alive. They stared at Jim, full of accusation.
Jim snatched his hands away from the corpse, and raced from the room. Beyond the door, an opulent lounge of silk and velvet and red lanterns stretched as far as the eye could see. Men, young and old, lay languidly, half-naked on sofas and beds, drinking absinthe and luxuriating in each other’s arms. Mandrakes with painted faces pawed at Jim as he hurried past. Even as he approached the door, a great pounding came upon it, causing it to bulge in its frame. The unmistakeable ‘copper’s knock’, signalling the arrival of the law.
The Apollonian Case Files Page 17
