Rings of Anubis: A Folley & Mallory Adventure

by E. Catherine Tobler

  But this time was different; she had sent an urgent telegrapheme. Caroline had something urgent to share. After his current mission, could he meet her in Athens?

  She had never asked to meet him. What had changed? He didn’t want his mind to wander, because the list of what he hoped for was long. Had she come around to his way of thinking, that they needed more time together? He knew that neither of them would leave Mistral for the sake of their marriage, and perhaps that spoke loudest of all. They were both dedicated to the organization before they were dedicated to each other.

  Virgil’s eyes swept the train car and, finding it lacking what he sought, he moved through the toppled and smoking debris to the next car. The windows had been blown inward from the impact here, glass covering every surface in a glittering veil. A pair of well-worn shoes peeked out from under a desk. Virgil circled the desk to find their Crimean scientist flat on the floor, neck slashed by a shard of window.

  “Bad luck,” Virgil murmured and closed the unseeing eyes before he began to search for the satchel.

  The train car was a collection of debris and overturned furniture. With every step Virgil took, the car creaked and tipped further on the tracks. Chairs dangled out windows, books spilled across the polished wood floor through more broken glass, a small set of assay scales lay crushed beneath a metal globe.

  Seeing little else of immediate interest, Virgil backtracked to the dead body with the good shoes. He knelt in the glass and lifted the man’s hands. Shaking back the jacket sleeves, he discovered a metal cuff ringing the left wrist. A short length of chain dangled without a matching cuff on its opposite end. Virgil’s eyes went to the man’s neck, and a closer look revealed the manner of the injury: a clean sweep that looked intentionally made.

  “Hell,” Virgil whispered and straightened from his position. He reached for his revolver. It was too much to ask that a mission go smoothly.

  It was also too much to ask that they reach the satchel first, for, as Virgil stood, a black-clad figure approached him from the neighboring car, carrying the satchel with its dangling handcuff. The train car shifted again, metal groaning in angry protest, and Virgil reached for the crooked desk to steady himself. The approaching figure let out a startled cry and grabbed the splintered doorframe.

  “Impassable, then?” Virgil asked.

  The person’s head jerked up in surprise, clearly not expecting company within the demolished train. He aimed his revolver at the figure, steady and true. The scent that rolled from the stranger proved their sudden, desperate fear. Virgil smelled blood, too, and noted the crimson staining the hands that clutched the doctor’s case. Carrion stench and something else, something familiar. Something feminine.

  “Mallory—”

  Joel’s voice rose from behind the woman, startling her again. She moved like lightning thrown from a stormy sky, bright and swift. She drew her own revolver from the belt at her waist and turned to fire before Virgil could react; when he did, it was with a savage snarl.

  The first shot caught Joel in the jaw, and he crumpled in a splatter of blood. Virgil dropped low to avoid the second and third shots, then plowed his shoulder into the woman’s knees, dropping her into the broken glass.

  The satchel tumbled free, but she held fast to her revolver. Virgil dropped his own, covering her hand as she attempted to angle the barrel into him. Her hand felt somehow familiar beneath the blood covering her. Her free elbow pistoned into his ribs.

  Virgil’s hand closed hard around her revolver, trying to wrest it from her grip. Beyond their struggle, he caught sight of Joel, motionless in a spreading pool of blood. The woman’s arm snaked around Virgil’s neck and she pressed her cheek to his. They had danced this way before, hadn’t they? The thought was abrupt.

  Ah God—don’t ask this of me.

  “He’s already dead,” she said as her free hand fisted into his hair to hold him firm, to keep him from looking away from Joel. Beyond the neat point of blood against Joel’s jaw, Virgil spied the blossoming wound at the top of his skull, blood and brain soaking his hair.

  The wolf within him had been close all night, but never so close as this. At her words—that voice held familiarity, too—and Joel dead in his own blood, Virgil could feel the claws, could feel his human flesh part to give way to the thing inside him, that which he hated above all things. It wasn’t always the moon that controlled the wolf; anger was an equally powerful force in this equation. Virgil allowed the anger to consume him; his human form was ripped away.

  It was no gentle transformation and never came any easier. The shedding of one form for another might have provided solace for some, but it was not so for Virgil Mallory. Blood and other viscous fluids spilled as flesh gave way to chocolate-colored fur; bones twisted and reformed as the wolf consumed the human. Arms rippled with corded muscle, turning to legs; clawed paws devoured hands, and his once-fine suit fell to shreds.

  The woman in his arms screamed. It was primal and went to the core of the beast he had become. He drew in the scent of her again—too familiar, no matter the terror and disbelief—and then ripped into her. His claws delved beyond her mantle, into breast and belly to spill flesh and blood to the glass-strewn floor around them. The scent of her blood hit his nose and a strained growl escaped him before it turned to a full-fledged howl.

  Some part of his animal brain begged for quiet, or maybe it was a lingering shred of the human within him. Humans: he didn’t want them here, didn’t need them discovering this. No.

  He bowed his bloody head and pressed his nose to the silver ring that gleamed within the fur of his paw. The beast used the ring as a focus, to calm himself and draw backward, before he tore the entire train from the tracks.

  Virgil pulled himself out as if emerging from a tar pit, bones piecing themselves back together, goosebump-riddled skin replacing the brindled fur. He took a shuddering breath as reason intruded where only violence had reigned before. Naked but for his old silver ring and shaking, he moved toward Joel, to ascertain what he already knew.

  “Vir . . . gil.”

  Virgil blinked. Let me be wrong. He turned from Joel’s body to the ravaged woman on the floor behind him. She reached a bloody hand toward him, crooking her fingers once.

  “Virgil.”

  No. The denial was swift inside him; how expert he had become at denying everything these past years, denying the wolf, denying what he did while his body was given up to it. It wasn’t him, it was a thing he couldn’t fight, a thing beyond his control.

  Virgil reached for the hood that covered Caroline’s face and he drew it off. White-blond hair spilled over the glittering shards covering the floor, the green eyes that had looked into his on their wedding day already growing distant and unfocused. She tried to hold her hand up, but it dropped against her slashed belly.

  There had been signs, Virgil supposed as he lifted Caroline’s hand into his own. Her blood was still warm. There had been signs that something wasn’t right with her; too many secretive meetings at work, too many middle-of-the-night airship flights to destinations unknown. “Work” only covered so much.

  She sputtered blood. Virgil folded Caroline’s arm across her chest, but kept hold of her hand, his mind leaping in an effort to understand what was before him. There were questions, accusations, but he forced them away, knowing that this, that Caroline’s betrayal, answered all questions and explained all accusations.

  A ragged laugh escaped him as he realized how much they had in common after all. It wasn’t easy, leading such a life, but Caroline always flourished under a challenge. She loved it—this was the life she loved, the life that kept her away from Virgil.

  “God, no. No.”

  He repeated the word like a litany, as if it would mend what the beast inside him had torn apart. His free hand trembled as he pressed it against her ruined belly. Logically he knew there was no putting her back together, but still he tried to gather her up and put her right.

  “Caroline.”


  Her fingers twitched in Virgil’s grip. “Wanted to tell . . . you.”

  Hell. He’d wanted to tell her about the thing inside him, but had never taken the time to find the proper words. In all these years, both of them had denied and hidden so many things. And now, the thing inside him had taken her life.

  “Sweet bird,” he whispered and stroked shaking fingers across her pale cheek. He left strands of scarlet there, her own blood. “Caroline—no.” The taste of her in his mouth made him want to retch.

  Caroline blinked once, trying to concentrate on him again. “Don’t . . . let go.”

  Virgil held firm to Caroline’s hand until it went limp, until her eyes rolled to the side and went blank. Only then did he turn and retch into the mess around them. He screamed until he was hoarse and empty of all things, until there was only ice in the center of him.

  Virgil extracted his bloody hand from hers and forced himself to pat her body down. This was the job. A distance. He didn’t expect to find anything of use on her body; agents went in clean, whatever agency they worked for. Who was she with? Good Lord, who?

  An unfamiliar growl intruded into the whirlwind of his mind. Virgil’s head snapped up, senses coming back to the here and now, mindful again of the unfamiliarity of the landscape around him. A jackal crouched in the train wreckage, lips curled back from gleaming, ragged teeth. Another five jackals approached from behind. The longer Virgil kept his hand on Caroline, the more insistent the warning growls became. Jackals this far north? Virgil couldn’t fathom it, but knew he didn’t have the time.

  Virgil closed Caroline’s eyes and reached for his revolver in the debris. He rose on bare feet, naked and bloody, to face half a dozen jackals that appeared intent on eating him alive. As the wind shifted, he could smell others coming and the rotting carrion stench of vultures.

  He reached for the creature inside him, and disgust consumed him. The idea of allowing it to resurface after it had killed Caroline was a thought he could not endure. He lifted his revolver and managed to get one shot off, but the jackals did not fully retreat. The closer they came, the stranger they smelled to Virgil. They were not wholly animals, he thought; they were like him.

  He took a surprised step backward, able to claim Joel’s body if not Caroline’s as the jackals crept ever closer. They didn’t look vested in Joel as they did Caroline. Was she with them? Virgil stared at her, knowing to his marrow that she was not wolf or jackal, but he couldn’t explain the creatures’ behavior.

  Virgil hefted Joel over his shoulder, grabbed the satchel, and staggered out of the wreckage. Naked, bloody, hauling his dead partner—not exactly the way he had envisioned the mission. He moved swiftly toward the shadowed airship that hovered across the murky plain.

  No Athens, he thought numbly, but opium’s blessed haze? Soon. Soon.

  Paris, France ~ October 1889

  He was always careful, exceedingly so.

  He never brought opium to the townhouse—though his first choice would have been to partake of the smoke within his private rooms—and always made certain that no one followed him to the den he did favor. If anyone did, he was not aware of it. Word never reached his superiors; so far as they knew, Virgil Mallory was not a habitué of any such place. He was a wolf, indeed, and often kept odd hours because of that, but he was not suspect.

  Thus it was in his usual comfort that Virgil accepted the pipe from Clementine, a small Chinese girl with a gleaming black braid worn over her right shoulder. The idea that she was too young to be in a place such as this crossed Virgil’s mind again, but he would not judge. When she offered to stay and assist as she always did, he shooed her away as he always did. She bowed, braid whispering over her brocade robe, and backed out of the low-lit private room. She closed the door and allowed him to lock it. He paid extra for the privacy, but then many did.

  The couch was covered in brocade, a deep blue that recalled the color of his mother’s eyes. Virgil stroked his fingers over the fabric once, then set to the task before him. The pipe was his favored ivory, pale against his long fingers, while the bowl was a jade shaded toward the color of Caroline’s eyes. How many eyes would haunt him, because he recognized Miss Folley’s in the spill of umber pillows around the couch, in the gleam of the blanket draped over the curled couch arm.

  He set flame to the opium lamp. The oil caught and funneled heat upward, a perfect channel to warm the jade bowl of his pipe. He packed the opium with care and never minded going slow, for the entire process had become ritual to him. Virgil held the long pipe in his left hand and crossed himself with his right, over lips and brow and heart.

  “Holy Virgin Mary,” he said in the silence of the room, “you are reigning in glory with Jesus your Son. Remember us in our sadness. Look kindly on all who are suffering or fighting against any difficulty.”

  He brought the pipe to his mouth and took a long draw, bringing the vapors slowly into him. It was a curious thing, like the trespassing of a small hand inside his chest, a hand that took hold of the beast and kept it happily caged.

  “Have pity on those who are separated from someone they love.” Smoke curled from his mouth as he whispered, pale tendrils of sweetness glancing over him. He followed the smoke trail, mind turning to Eleanor Folley, to the glimpse of her scarred hand and the buried warmth in her eyes. Like called to like, he thought, and didn’t try to push the images aside. “Have pity on the loneliness of our hearts.”

  He reclined into the spill of brocade and opium-soaked silk. His gaze drifted to the ceiling, where more fabric billowed. It resembled a cerulean sea bottled in this small room, but as the opium began to have its say, the walls seemed to dissolve. He was no longer in the den, but floated on a sea of blue, which merged with a golden sky.

  “Have pity on the weakness of our faith and love,” he whispered and inhaled another long draw of vapor from the pipe. He felt the wolf within him retreat, massive head lowering in complete submission.

  But as the wolf withdrew, Virgil felt a hollow sensation he had never known before. The wolf bowed, and in the space he had occupied, there was nothing. There was a strange void where Virgil could not find purchase.

  He continued his prayers in murmurs, half-formed words falling from careless lips. “Have pity on those who are weeping.” He pictured Caroline, afloat on the same blue waters, pale hair spilling about her. “On those who are praying.” These words, wreathed in opium smoke, were still a prayer to him: a connection to a thing he felt beyond the wolf. “On those who are fearful.”

  Fearful. Virgil’s head reeled and the wolf rose up. So fearful, but not him. God, that was not me, and he gasped for air. The pipe tumbled from his hands and claws appeared before his eyes. Not me. Not me. It became a chant in his head, over and over, until well-known hands wrapped round the clawed paws and drew him back to the safety of the couch.

  “Holy Mother,” he whispered, seeking an anchor in the prayer. There came a laugh, a low thunder that Virgil reached for. “Please obtain for all of us hope,” he continued.

  “And peace, with justice,” said the thunder, a voice that was both familiar and not as the smoke seeped into Virgil’s mind.

  “Amen.”

  He drifted, a boat without shore. He didn’t know how long, but when he came back to himself Auberon was there, crouched across from the lacquered tray with its pipes and the still-burning lamp. The flame was low, nearly gone. Virgil blinked, trying to erase the sight, for Auberon should not be here witnessing this. Had he picked the lock? Virgil knew it was not beyond him, nor beyond Clementine’s tender heart to lead Auberon to this room.

  “Ah, God.”

  Auberon’s slash of a mouth moved in a smile. “No, not that, my friend.” He poured water into a cut crystal glass, offering it to Virgil.

  Virgil took the glass and drank, which cleared his gummy mouth if not his mind. Friend, Auberon called him, not partner. “You should not be here.” Michael Auberon: named for an archangel, but always preferring to be called by
his surname—which he shared with the magical king of fairies.

  Virgil supposed it would have been easy for Auberon to tell him that he should not be here, either, but he didn’t.

  “I have tried to respect your needs as I watch you leave the townhouse most evenings.” Auberon poured himself a glass of water as well and took a sip, his Adam’s apple working above the precisely tied fabric at his neck. “But in so doing, I have neglected my need to keep you clear-minded and an asset to Mistral.”

  Enough of the opium still held sway with Virgil that it didn’t occur to him to be cross with his partner—his friend. Was Auberon sent to watch over him? Virgil didn’t care. He looked at the man who had never attempted to replace Joel Abernach, but had only tried to be a good partner in his own right. The man who had succeeded in doing such from the beginning.

  Virgil gestured to the opium tray. “Will you join me?”

  “I cannot.” That silence again, as Auberon cupped the glass in his large hands and watched Virgil with fathomless eyes. “You will never silence the wolf,” he said. “Surely you know this and yet you persist? The wolf is part of you, my friend.”

  “It is not.” The denial was swift.

  Auberon moved swiftly himself, throwing his water glass to the side and batting Virgil’s away next. Still becalmed by the opium, Virgil did little when Auberon charged. The large man bore Virgil back to the couch, his hand fisting into Virgil’s shirt collar. Auberon pulled hard, ripping the shirt open to expose the vicious scar that marked Virgil from neck to belly.

  “Part of you,” Auberon said. “Look upon yourself!”

  It was the one thing Virgil did not wish to do. It was the reason he came to this place, to forget himself and silence the creature inside. He bucked Auberon off and slid backward over the low couch, crouching in a tangle of blanket and pillows. One hand came up, to touch his scarred chest. His fingers curled deep, aching, and he thought of Eleanor’s own scar around her wrist, across her hand. Another on her chin.