by A. W. Exley
“She is alive, I promise you and we will find her,” his voice was so assured.
She glanced up to Jack at her side. He winked and a smidge of steel crept into her spine. Enough to confront her best friend’s husband. “Then tell me how you know. We all need a little hope at this time. What knowledge do you have that you’re not sharing?”
He shared a glance with Jackson. “These books refer to ancient artifacts that are not fictional. They are very real and powerful in ways we are only just beginning to understand. It’s why Jackson is now based at Lowestoft, his job is more than looking after the estate. Cara and I hunt down these items at the command of Queen Victoria, and then imprison them deep under the ground where they cannot hurt anyone.”
She gasped and looked to Jack. Infuriating man thought to protect her by being selective with the truth. They would talk about that later.
“Does one of these objects tell you Cara is alive?” She took the revelation Nate gave her and extrapolated it out. What offered him such assurance, perhaps a crystal ball? Could he see Cara trapped somewhere?
“Yes. There is one such artifact that contains a drop of Cara’s blood. The blood pulses with the beat of her heart. If she were dead, the droplet would also be lifeless.” He ran a hand through his short black hair, the only outward sign of his growing frustration. His fist opened and closed around nothing.
“Oh I say, that is clever. You really should have told us earlier though, instead of letting us all think she has perished.” She frowned and considered throwing something at Nate, not that she would ever be that bold, but it really was mean to not share what he knew. “Did you know it was a unicorn that brought Jack and me together?” She held up her wrist to show the horsehair bracelet.
The mention of the unicorn elicited the twitch of a smile from his lips. “Would you have believed me if I said I knew she lived because of what you discount as a fairy tale?”
She took the glasses off and laid them on the blotter. “Well, unicorns are real, so it’s not a very big leap to think my best friend is alive because a drop of her blood continues to pulse with her life force while outside her body. Although we still have the issue of where we can find the rest of her.”
“Quite,” Nate said.
With that settled, she decided to get back to work. The more recent of Cara’s studies lay to one side and concerned a Hebrew text.
Nate walked round the desk and kissed Amy’s forehead. “Thank you. We need you to find anything that explains how he managed to take her and any mention of a rahab. Malachi was to send more notes to Cara but they have not arrived yet, and I don’t know where he has gone.”
The door closed behind him, and she turned to find Jack giving her a gaze so heated the flush crept over her torso under her clothes. Oh, that man and the things he did to her. Dark, wicked things she could never have imagined in her wildest dreams until he opened her eyes. Or blindfolded her sometimes. Oh dear lord, when he stole her vision and she had to rely on sound and touch—
“Careful, princess,” he whispered. “I know exactly what that clever mind is thinking.”
She swallowed and swatted his arm. “Then stop looking at me like that and remove yourself. I have work to do and you’re distracting me.”
He gave a deep chuckle, kissed her thoroughly and then left.
All day long, she read and re-read Cara’s notes. Once she made the mental leap that the stories were narrations of true events, she found a renewed vigour. Early in the afternoon, she walked through the skeletal garden outside to recharge her brain. The bracing bite of the air flushed out the cobwebs, and she returned to the books to attack the last few pages. By evening, she had news for Nate and Jack.
“I concentrated on the rahab you mentioned. Cara had several notes about it.” She gestured to a pile of sheets covered in a neat script and two books with silver chain markers jutting out at certain passages.
“Her Latin really is quite appalling, she doesn’t seem to have advanced any further than what we learned as ten-year-olds. And her Hebrew is non-existent despite her tutor’s best efforts.” Amy tapped a finger on a page. “Here, she hasn’t even attempted a translation but has made a rather inappropriate drawing in the margin.”
Jackson snorted.
Nate narrowed his gaze at his number two. “Something you find amusing in this situation?”
“Yeah, I got the smart one.” He grinned at Amy.
Nate frowned. “And I got the one who put a bullet hole in you. When I have her back, I’m letting her use you for target practice.” The two stared at each other. “The rahab, Amy,” Nate said without dropping his gaze. Another long pause and Jackson looked down.
Amy shuffled her papers and waited until she had their attention. “Well there are two interpretations, one is it’s an Egyptian water dragon.”
Nate nodded as though he had heard this before. “She told me that the morning she disappeared. What’s the second meaning of the word?”
She cleared her throat. “The other comes from Jewish folklore and says a rahab is a demonic sea creature that spreads darkness and chaos. It represents the primordial abyss and brings despair,” her voice dropped to a whisper on the last two words.
Jackson let out a whistle. “Sounds like London all right. Something sucked the fun right out.”
Nate leaned his knuckles on the desk and tried to read Amy’s notes upside down. “Did Cara learn anything else? Anything we can use?”
She shuffled the papers to find another one and pulled it free of the pile. “Cara was working on that, her tutor Malachi was using the relevant story to teach her Hebrew. While it is an ocean demon in general, the rahab has a special affinity with the Red Sea. They were translating a story connected to Moses and the Israelites fleeing Egypt. I assume that is the further notes she waited on.”
“You mean Moses may have asked this rahab to part the Red Sea?” Jackson said.
“Sort of, since obviously God commanded the sea to part. But this is where her translation let her down and she began doodling in the margins. It’s quite fascinating really, did you know Moses is a recent spelling? Originally, it was Mošeh, with the inflection on the s. It refers to his origins in being drawn from the water.”
“Did God part the Red Sea, or did he use his dominion over the rahab, and it was the agent by which the sea parted?” Nate tapped a finger on his folded arm. “If this rahab is powerful enough to separate the Red Sea, then it’s conceivable it could make the Thames rise up.”
“Yes,” Amy whispered. Fear gripped her heart. Cara might still be alive, but what must she be suffering if a demon of darkness held her in its clutches? She glanced up, or was it so different from the clutches of the cold devil in front of her?
Nate took a break to scan the paper. The article made the third page, not quite headline material anymore, but significant enough to catch the eye. Coroner will rule today in death of Lady Lyons. At least the reporter Albright learned his lesson and it wasn’t his name that appeared on the by-line.
Nate held the rage contained, no hint would seep through his exterior. Somebody within the Enforcers failed to pass on the relevant detail to him that the coroner would rule today. His gut knew Fraser would have driven the omission. He folded the paper so the article was outward, and tossed it on the sofa next to Brick. “We’ll take the armadillo sled, it’s faster than the carriage.”
The bodyguard swore under his breath and then leapt to action, following his boss out the door.
Nate pointed to the man guarding the front door and held up four fingers. He kept walking, no need to check the message was received and understood. He ran a tight ship and his men knew how to follow orders. Out in the cold sat three sleds. Of his own design, these had squat coal fuelled engines at the front that pulled the body. They nicknamed them the armadillos due to their armoured appearance.
Nate jumped in behind the controls and Brick took the seat next to him. He turned a dial and smoke chugged from the rear
exhaust. A release of a lever and the sled jumped forward. The two other sleds took the rear. A small wheel controlled the steering and he manoeuvred it out the main gate and headed for Enforcers Headquarters. He pushed the throttle forward and increased their speed. The sled bounced over the hard compacted snow and ice. Any pedestrian in their path risked being mowed down. What few people they saw stuck to the pavement, but several horse-drawn sleighs and a couple of steam carriages struggled through the frozen sludge.
He pulled on the brake and brought the vehicle to a halt, and then jumped from the armadillo. Men in heavy over coats lined Whitehall Place and he paused on his way past for each man wore a pin on his lapel, a simple twist of two enamelled strands, one cream the other black. He stopped outside Fraser’s territory to shake hands with Liam.
“Saw the paper. The lads and I are here in case any problems arise,” the jovial Irishman said with his usual wide grin.
Nate nodded. “The support of the Rookery is always appreciated. What’s the pin about?”
Liam tapped the emblem with a fingertip. “Light and dark, a symbol of you and Lady Lyons. The wearers are your men; we thought it would be a handy way to know who is who in the event of a tight situation.”
Nate huffed. Liam’s idea of a tight spot was an all-out riot, but he was right. The pins would make it easier to mark who to take down and who to leave standing.
“No doubt you’ll hear if you’re needed.” He strode up the front steps and into his enemy’s domain.
A sea of blue uniforms encompassed the large hall and they parted before him. Whispers ran from one to the other as they recognised his face. Without slowing, he took the main stairs up to the coroner’s office. The coroner worked from Enforcers Headquarters so he remained handy when his expertise was needed in any investigation. Although these days he worked closely with the doctor down below to determine, and rule, on the cause of death.
He pushed through the door into the large room. The coroner sat behind an imposing desk. To his left, at a far smaller desk, his clerk. Several hard wooden chairs were lined up to one side as seating for witnesses and interested parties. Several people were already in attendance; Inspector Fraser and his sergeant, three other generic Enforcers, and four members of the public. Nate cast a glance at them, and pigeonholed them as either reporters or gossips.
The room fell silent at the intrusion and all eyes centred on Nate. Behind him, his men fanned out.
“Rather rude to start without me, Fraser.” He crossed his arms least he succumb to his need to skewer the man.
A frozen smile clung to Fraser’s face. “We thought to spare you the pain of this hearing, Lord Lyons.”
He didn’t understand Cara’s soft spot for the man at all, the inspector was insufferable in his righteousness.
The coroner cleared his throat and glared at Nate. “Shall we continue, gentlemen? I do have a full schedule for today. Inspector Fraser, please carry on.”
Fraser broke eye contact with Nate to refer to the notes in his hands. “At eleven o’clock in the morning on the third day of May, a wave rose from the Thames and claimed the personage of Lady Cara Lyons. Numerous witnesses saw the wave carry her body under the Thames. To date, despite an intensive search, her body has not been located.”
The coroner’s gaze flicked to the report on his desk, his pen poised above the paper.
“She is alive,” Nate said.
“You have evidence of that?” the coroner asked as the end of the pen twitched.
He held in the sigh. He had no evidence that would convince this assortment of lack wits. The power of the artifacts was beyond their comprehension. He shook his head. “None that I can provide to this hearing.”
“A witness then, who saw her arise from the Thames?” The coroner had the look of a man stuck in the middle of a battlefield as Nate and Fraser squared off, his gaze darting from one man to the other.
He shook his head in the negative again.
A smirk curled around Fraser’s top lip. “Do you believe she is still under the ice then?”
He ground his jaw. They were a pack of bloody idiots and this farce was wasting his time. “Perhaps.”
The coroner harrumphed and leaned back in his chair. “I have consulted with the Enforcers doctor over this matter, and we are in agreement. Given the freezing temperature of the Thames and the fact the ice refroze so quickly, we believe death by drowning would have occurred within minutes.”
“She is alive.” Even to his own ears, he sounded like an imbecile but they would never budge the conviction he held in his chest.
The coroner cleared his throat. “It is my ruling that at approximately eleven o’clock on the third of May, Lady Lyons died by drowning. We pray to God that once the river thaws, it releases her body to her widower.”
Widower. He dropped his arms and fisted his hands. He strode to the coroner’s desk. “She is alive, dammit. You cannot declare her dead with a wave of your hand.”
Fraser stepped in front of him. “Really, Lord Lyons. There is irrefutable proof to the contrary. Nothing human could survive five hours trapped under the ice, let alone five days. Even you wouldn’t last, although if you want to give it a go?” The inspector raised the spectre of Nate’s death-defying act off the Aurora.
His beast broke free of its chains the day the water took Cara, now it leapt to the forefront of his mind as his hand slid to the blade under his jacket. Before he could pull it free of the sheath, another hand wrapped around his arm and strong fingers dug into his bicep, halting the motion.
“You sure you want to start that in the middle of Enforcer Headquarters?” Jackson murmured so only he heard. “Even with all Liam’s men out in the street, once you make your strike, there won’t be any going back.”
One breath. Then another. Did he want to drive his point right through Fraser’s sneering face or go back to his search? His fingers moved away from the hilt. “Perhaps not today.”
Jackson relaxed his grip and returned to his position in the wall of flesh at Nate’s back.
A change of tactic is required.
“Jackson,” Nate called without breaking eye contact with Fraser. “Make a list. First name, Hamish Fraser.” He pointed his hand at the coroner. “Second name, Nigel Smythe.”
The coroner blinked. “What?”
“What do you think you’re doing?” the clerk said. He stood from behind his desk and, emboldened by the presence of the uniforms, walked up to Nate. “You can’t intimidate us.” He poked at the air, but his courage gave out at actually touching the villainous viscount.
Nate peered around the man to the nameplate on the desk. “Samuel Rollins.”
“What are you doing, Lord Lyons?” Fraser asked. “Making Santa’s Christmas list?”
“Of sorts.” He smiled like a predator, all teeth and no lip. “I’m making a list, and I’ll check it twice, who to ignore and who to slice.”
Fraser’s eyebrows shot up behind his gold frames. “You can’t threaten these people.”
Sergeant Connor detached himself from the other uniforms and moved to his inspector’s side.
Nate’s gaze swept the room and returned to the inspector. “I shouldn’t have to tell you twice, Fraser. I don’t threaten, I promise.”
“You’re losing it. You will falter, then fall.” Fraser returned his stare. “Or, perhaps someone will give you a little push?”
He couldn’t stay in this space where the inspector exhaled his stale air. He either left or he would feel the man’s entrails running through his hands. He chose to spin on his heel and left with his men tight behind him.
Outside in the bracing air, he signalled to Liam and the wall of men dispersed among the other pedestrians. With thousands at his command, he could swarm Enforcer Headquarters and have control of London before Fraser could choke on his tea. He only needed to take one small step into the dark and he could control the city, although Victoria might have something to say if he took that path. He sighed
and stood on the step to consider his next move.
An older woman bundled in furs huffed up two steps and waved to attract his attention. “Oh, Viscount Lyons. Such a terrible tragedy about Lady Lyons’ passing.”
He raked her with his gaze, noting the minute stumble over Cara’s title.
Unperturbed, the woman prattled on. “Have you met my daughters? Arabella and Mignette came out two seasons ago. They are quite the hit among the ton.”
Two young women stood at the bottom step, an eager glimmer in their eyes.
The ink wouldn’t even be dry on the coroner’s declaration, and already this vulture dared to offer up a replacement.
“You have come to the wrong market for your heifers, madam. I suggest you sell your cattle elsewhere.”
“Really, Lord Lyons—” Her chest puffed out under her voluminous coat even as her cheeks reddened.
The stupid creature couldn’t even begin to comprehend the insult she cast at Cara. “Get out of my sight, or I will introduce you and your daughters to my blade.”
“And he’s not being euphemistic.” Next to him, Jackson crossed his arms and glared as the other bodyguards appeared behind him.
The matron uttered an eek and hurried back to her daughters. She grabbed an elbow of each and hustled them down the street. One turned and waved at Nate, blissfully ignorant of the social death warrant her mother just signed.
Voices rose and fell behind him, and then Jackson passed a rolled up item to him. “You better take this, Gov, before I shove it up someone’s arse.”
He took the sheet and it unrolled in his hands. A name, date, and location in the middle of the page. A large gilt seal in one corner and a sprawling signature. His gaze focused on the swimming words.
In his hands, he held Cara’s death certificate.
Five days earlier
ara drew a sudden breath and then another. She took short, sharp gasps as she waited for water to force its way down her throat. Cold and dark surrounded her, and a shiver ran over her skin.
