London Macabre

by Savile, Steve

  The beast raged impotently. It threw itself at the wound, battering at it in search of a weakness. It roared. It bellowed. It became a tempest. It thundered. It shrieked. It fumed, summoning all of its hate and unleashed it in blow after hammer blow, huge fists impotent against time itself.

  The wound was sealed.

  And left behind, out of space, out of time, the Devil was lost, doomed to burn forever, alone.

  Strange Kind of Love

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  Dorian prowled from the Smoking Room to the Reading Room and along the landing, turning the silver disc over and over in his hand, making it disappear and reappear with a nervous flourish.

  He wished they’d all just come home.

  Upstairs a door opened and the surgeon emerged at the top of the stairs. ”He’ll live,” the man said, wiping his hands on a bloody towel as he descended. What he didn’t say was what they both knew, Brannigan Locke would never walk again. The damage to his spine was irreparable. They had won, but at what cost? Locke was crippled. Napier gone, and Stark had turned to stone. Save for Millington, he didn’t know what had happened to the others. Mason and McCreedy could have been lying dead in a ditch somewhere for all he knew, the Gentleman Knights of London reduced to him and Anthony and the crippled Locke. Vast swathes of the city were in ruins, crushed by Father London. There was little comfort in knowing that they had made it through the night.

  He scratched at his face. He needed a shave. The stubble itched beneath his nails.

  He looked at his watch. Millington had been gone an hour. The damned fool had insisted upon returning to the Sanctuary to recover Napier’s bones. He couldn’t argue that didn’t deserve a proper burial, but, after everything that had happened, waiting made his skin crawl. Millington had been adamant. He didn’t need their help. The place was a rat’s nest, and he was the Pied Piper. Even when Locke, through the morphine haze, had spoken of gods prowling the place, Millington had assured him he would be safe.

  A banging at the servant’s door startled him out of his dark thoughts. He pocketed the disc and rushed to answer, hoping to God it was Millington coming home. It wasn’t. It was McCreedy, and the man looked like death. Worse than death. He stumbled forward into his arms as Dorian opened the door. His back was scorched, blood caked across his side and had run down his legs. His bones were mangled, trapped between man and wolf. But it was his face where the worst of it, the true horror of his predicament, showed. It was as though the wolf had been wearing a mask with McCreedy’s face on it when it had burned, and the fire’s heat had melted clean through the mask in parts to bare the face beneath, fusing man and wolf together in one grotesque face.

  As he held McCreedy he felt a searing pain where the disc lay in his pocket. Ignoring it, he half-carried, half-dragged his friend up the stairs to the landing. The surgeon stood at the top, waiting. He laid a blanket down on the landing and Dorian laid the big man down on top of it. The surgeon immediately started fussing, but obviously had no clue what he was dealing with. Still, to give the man his due, he tried to act like it was nothing he hadn’t seen before.

  Dorian reached into his pocket for the disc, thinking only to throw it away so it stopped burning him. The silver disc hit the wall and rolled away onto the carpet. He saw the McCreedy family crest burned into his palm. McCreedy’s condition and the disc were connected, they had to be. That was the only rational explanation for the searing heat as they’d come into contact. Somehow the disc was part of whatever enchantment the Brethren had wrought to stop McCreedy completing his transformation. It had to be. He had found the disc with Locke’s clothes. In taking it, Locke had weakened the enchantment’s binding, leaving McCreedy in this half-wolf, half-man state, but he hadn’t broken it. The disc was silver, and silver was anathema to a werewolf. That McCreedy’s crest was embossed on the disc only served to direct the binding. This thing had been fashioned for Haddon McCreedy and Haddon McCreedy alone.

  The only way to break the binding was to destroy the disc, but he could barely stand to hold it let alone destroy it.

  He pulled the handkerchief from his pocket and picked it up from the floor where he had thrown it. He flinched as he did, expecting the disc to burn straight through the silk and fall into his palm, but it didn’t. The disc was cold. The heat, he realised, was purely down to the contact with McCreedy. The two of them were intrinsically bound.

  He left the big man on the blanket and went upstairs to where Brannigan Locke was resting. He closed the door behind him and walked quietly to the bed. Locke was asleep. Dorian was loath to wake him, but he could think of no other way to destroy the disc. Anything he might do with a hammer was nothing to what Locke could do with his mind. He placed his hand on Locke’s shoulder and shook him gently awake. As Locke opened his eyes Dorian held out the disc. Understanding passed between them, Locke knowing what was wanted of him without Dorian needing to say anything.

  He felt the disc cool against his palm, and then turn cold, colder than he could bear to hold and then it dropped degrees colder still. He flinched, pulling his hand back from the dead cold, and dropped it.

  The disc came down on its edge and shattered.

  To be sure, Dorian ground the broken pieces under foot, making damned sure no trace of McCreedy’s family crest remained on any of the fragments.

  Downstairs the big man shrieked, and it was an entirely human sound.

  Chapter Ninety-Five

  Millington returned an hour later with Napier’s bones.

  He would not say what had happened at the Sanctuary, only that the deed was done, but he didn’t need to go into any detail because the dead had come back with him. Dorian watched them circle around and around his friend, pressing up into his face, pushing at him, screaming wordlessly and soundlessly. He recognised them all, Penge and Crayford, Coram and Kilburn and Blackwell and Mortlake and Devil’s Acre and Lancaster, Hockley, Whitehall, Acton and Goodman, the Villain Kings. Arnos was not with them. Perhaps he had found some sort of peace, Dorian thought. Their anger was ugly, but Millington seemed almost peaceful himself as he sank into the old leather armchair. If he knew the dead had followed him home he gave no hint of it. He looked across at Stark’s empty seat, then at Napier’s. Things would never be the same. They both knew that. They didn’t need to dwell upon it.

  Those weren’t the only ghosts Millington had brought home with him. These last spirits were more vengeful and less impotent than the Villain Kings had proven themselves. All of those who had died at the waterfront: the sisters, Toth, and her black-hearted Osiris. Lucius Amun, Ra, and Hathor. They could not enter the lodging house, even in death, because of the wardings Stark had put in place against the Brethren, but that did not stop them from howling in the street and clawing and scratching at the glass windows. Someone or something hammered on the street door.

  He was eternally grateful that Napier was not with them. Perhaps he too was at peace?

  He could only hope.

  Dorian was not about to let the ghosts linger.

  He sank into his own chair and leaned forward to stoke the fire. So much death, so much suffering. He could feel it all. It was overwhelming. He was tired. So very tired. All he wanted to do was sleep. But he couldn’t. Not yet. It wasn’t his time.

  ”Be at peace,” he said to the restless dead, and closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again they were gone.

  But the hammering on the street door hadn’t stopped. Whoever was down there, they were very much part of the land of the living.

  Dorian pushed himself up out of the chair. ”I’ll go,” he said to Millington.

  By the time he reached the door they had almost taken it off its hinges with their hammering. He opened it to see a girl on the other side, soaked through to the bone and shivering. He didn’t recognise her for a moment. She grabbed at his cuff and said, ”You’ve got to help him … please … she’s got him … the ice …”

  He took her hand. ”Slowly, girl. You
’ll catch your death. Let’s get you into something warm, then you can tell me what has happened.”

  ”There isn’t time,” she said, tugging at his cuff again. She tried to drag him out into the street.

  He didn’t hear Millington come down the stairs behind him.

  ”Emily?”

  She looked up at him then, the unbearable lightness of hope in her eyes. ”You’ve got to help him, please,” she said again. This time she stepped out into the street, as though doing so would make him follow.

  Dorian didn’t move.

  ”What’s wrong, Emily?”

  ”The ice … Master Mason … I couldn’t stop him,” her hand went to her forehead, not quite daring to touch the skin, as though she could still feel the ice there. She better than any of them knew what the ice was doing to Mason. ”I followed him.”

  ”Where? Where did he go?” Millington asked.

  ”Out of the city, sir. I don’t know where.”

  ”I do,” Dorian said. ”Frogmore. It’s where her husband is buried. She’s got nothing else here. It’s the only place that makes any sense. It’s where I’d go if I were her.”

  ”I’ll hail a cab,” Millington said. ”You go grab our coats.”

  Chapter Ninety-Six

  The gardens, miles from the heart of London, were lush even in winter. Willows wept, the wind rustling through their teardrop leaves. A single white swan swam through the ripples on the boating lake, followed by her cygnets.

  ”Beautiful creatures. Did you know they mate for life,” Dorian said, watching the beautiful white bird. Everything about her was so serene. ”Her mate has died but she will not take another as long as she lives.”

  ”There is nobility in her love,” the Ice Queen said, not looking at him.

  ”Perhaps, but there is also sadness.”

  On the far side of the water the white-stone chapel, built in the shape of a Greek cross. The granite and Portland stone looked too bright, too stark, against the muted greens of winter. The tarnished copper roof was the only thing that didn’t seem to jar with the landscaping, but in time the stone would weather and the trees would grow to crowd in around it and it really would be a resting place fit for a queen. Millington and the girl stood unobtrusively off to the side, beneath the shelter of the Indian Kiosk, an oriental stone pavilion in the centre of the lawn. Conifers dripped with the last of the evening dew. The air smelled so much fresher than the choked up stuff of the city. This truly was how the other half lived. Dorian walked arm in arm with the Ice Queen.

  ”We always wanted a place for us to be together, always,” she said, full of memory and melancholy. ”We didn’t want to lie in Westminster or St George’s chapel, we wanted our own place. This was meant to be mother’s, but then he left me. It was too soon. I wasn’t ready for him to go. But then, that swan and I, we are not so very different, are we?”

  ”No,” Dorian said, ”not so different.”

  ”I can feel him here,” she said, turning slightly to look around the garden. ”This place, this is where his heart beats still. I can feel him in the air I breathe. He is here. Listen to me, going on like a foolish old woman.”

  This time Dorian smiled gently. ”Not foolish, believe me. I live with the departed as much as I do with the living, or so it has seemed for the last few days.”

  ”I want him back. Is that so wrong? We said forever. Ours was the love that would never die. The love they would write storybooks about. And look at me now,” she held out her stolen hands, cracked and blue with ice. The grass beneath her feet was rimed with frost, a single blue lotus, imported from the Indian subcontinent to mark the end of the Indian Mutiny, froze in the thin ice at the water’s edge as she knelt to trail her fingers in the lake. The ice cracked as she drew her fingers out of the water. Sadness frosted over her second face.

  ”Walk with me awhile, my queen,” Dorian held out his hand for her to take.

  ”You must hate me so,” she said, yet still she took his hand. Hers was cold in his. Colder than death.

  ”Not at all,” he said, suppressing a shiver. ”Truth be told, I pity you, madam.” He held up his free hand to forestall her objections. ”I can feel the weight of your loss and I would ease it, if you would let me.”

  She turned on him then. The ice mask slipped slightly revealing the true extent of the ice that had claimed her. It was the face of a woman used to having opportunists prey on her desperation. It was every bit as resolute as any statue that had ever been chiselled into her likeness. ”Be careful, Master Carruthers, we do not suffer fools nor charlatans gladly.”

  ”I would show you something, that is all, my queen. You be the judge of its worth to you. If it eases our pain, then how can it be a bad thing? But I will not fight you. I could just as easily show you at the water’s edge.”

  ”Then why don’t you?”

  ”Because there is a time and a place for everything, and for this, the time is right, but this is not the place.”

  ”And if I do not follow you?”

  ”You will, because I suspect you know what I am, and in turn, what my gift is,” he gestured toward the mausoleum. ”There is someone who would talk to you, my queen. He cannot abide long in this place, so I suggest we do not make it any more painful for him than it already is.”

  ”If you are lying to me,” the Ice Queen said, barely able to keep the hope from creeping into her voice even as she delivered the threat.

  ”I don’t need to, my queen. Besides, what would I stand to gain? Were I trying to trick you or fight you would I not have some weapon?” He released her hand and held his topcoat open wide so that she could see he had no such concealed blade or pistol. ”I am unarmed,” he said, emphasizing the point. ”But more than that, I understand the nature of your existence here. I could strike you down if I wanted to, I could kill the vessel that anchors your spirit if I wanted to, but if I did you would just claim my body, wouldn’t you? That’s how it works, isn’t it? You would simply move from shell to shell.”

  She nodded, ceding the point.

  ”So you see, I have nothing to gain from lying to you, and more to the point, I know it. Besides, the shell you are living in now just so happens to be a friend of mine, so I would ensure he wasn’t hurt.”

  Together they walked arm in arm into the mausoleum. The high stained-glass windows of the domed roof let in kaleidoscopic shafts of daylight. The walls were painted in the faux-Renaissance style of Raphael, lush and opulent. Where they weren’t painted, the red Portuguese marble was polished to a smooth shine. There were several memorials, including Alice, her daughter, and statues of her father, and, strangest of all, one of her beloved Albert, seemingly talking to her whilst she gazed up at him in adoration. The strangest thing about the monument though was their dress. Their likenesses were carved into the stone wearing traditional Anglo-Saxon garb. At the fair end of the mausoleum, directly below the centre of the dome and crisscrossed by the shafts of sunlight, stood a single flawless slab of Aberdeen granite that had been carved into the likeness of the dead Prince Consort.

  His ghost stood beside the sarcophagus.

  Seeing it, the Ice Queen’s hand went to her mouth. ”How?”

  ”Does it matter? This is my gift to you, my queen.”

  He let go of her arm and stepped back, allowing the Ice Queen to walk down the aisle toward her husband’s spectre.

  ”My love,” she said, holding out her hand. Her voice echoed to fill the mausoleum as she shuffled forward. He turned to face her, the daylight streaming down though his body. Motes of dust danced lazily in the air, filling the ghost’s face as it smiled wanly.

  The ghost held out its own hand, but she could not take it.

  She looked back over her shoulder at Dorian as though still believing that some sort of cruel trick was being played upon her. ”I cannot hold him here long, my queen. It is not fair on his shade. Every moment he lingers here exerts a toll upon his soul. Listen to what he would tell you, and take peace fr
om it if you can. I will leave you alone. You do not need me eavesdropping.”

  He stepped out of the mausoleum and closed the door slowly behind him. He did not need to hear the lovers talk.

  But, of course, the stone would not prevent him from hearing the ghost’s message. The words of the dead travelled far. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

  Please, the ghost begged, please let me rest, my love. I will be waiting for you. We have eternity. But for now, you must let me go. Our time will come again … I swear to you … but let me lie while you live. Let me go.

  He could not hear her answers, her pleading, her denials, but that didn’t mean he could not imagine them all too well. The longer they were alone, the more the shade’s voice weakened, until finally pain crept into its begging. It had abided too long. The cost of holding it here too long did not bear thinking about. He had to release it. He could only hope the Ice Queen would forgive him.

  Dorian opened the door.

  She was on her knees, looking up at the ghost, in love. The multi-hued beams of light bathed them in the warmth of the sun.

  As Dorian walked toward them he saw that she was melting. It was only a little of her ice, at the hairline, but it ran down the side of her face and her neck and dripped from there to the ground.

  ”Goodbye, my love,” she said, choking back tears of ice. Her voice ached. Her face had already begun to lose much of its hard edges. Water pooled on the floor, seeping down into the cracks between the stones. The rime that frosted the granite sarcophagus had already begun to melt into condensation. In a few moments, like the Ice Queen and her beloved ghost, it would be gone.

  Not goodbye, the ghost promised. Never goodbye.

  ”Be at rest,” Dorian whispered, relinquishing his hold on the shade.

  The Ice Queen sobbed, slowly melting into his arms as he melted into nothing, the pools of her tears on the unforgiving stone all that remained of their great love.

  Dorian walked toward where Mason lay on the floor. The man was shivering and inchoate. His usually immaculate hair was plastered flat against his scalp. He hugged himself, legs drawn up foetally, and stared up at the beams of coloured light and the dust dancing lazily in them. He didn’t show any sign of recognizing Dorian as he gathered him into an embrace. He held him like that for a long time.