Venomous Secrets

by Anne Renwick

  “Did Lord Saltwell happen to meet his wife at a theater?” she asked.

  The servants glanced at each other.

  The maid leaned forward. “There were rumors—all hushed—that she did once tread the boards and bask in limelight.”

  Cait set down her fork and leaned forward. “Would you happen to know which theater?”

  Eyes wide, the maid looked to the cook. Both shook their heads.

  A distant pounding echoed down the stairs. A door burst open and the steam butler exclaimed loudly, “Not at home. Not at home! NOT AT HOME!”

  “Agents?” the cook asked.

  Among the voices overhead, she recognized Logan’s. Definitely Queen’s agents. They’d made impressive time.

  “Yes.” Cait rose. “I’m afraid that’s my cue to assist. Have you any idea where the three women may have gone, as a group or individually?”

  “They frequent Hyde Park.” The maid twisted her hands. “Though sometimes they take the children to the zoo.”

  That perked her ears. “The zoo?” Perhaps they enjoyed reptilian company?

  The maid bobbed her head even as her eyes skittered to the doorway, where Jack now stood.

  “Any leads?” he asked.

  “Possibly.” Cait laid a hand on the maid’s arm. “Any chance the children have a favorite animal?”

  “An Egyptian crocodile. Lady Saltwell claims staring at the beast’s teeth is the only thing that will calm Master James. He’s having a horrible time with teething, chewing on everything he can wrap those tiny fists about.”

  Cait’s breath caught. “Behind the exhibits there are laboratories.”

  “Twenty minutes by crank hack.” Jack held her gaze, his mind leaping to the same conclusion. “That’s the fastest we can reach the Reptile House at the Zoological Gardens.”

  Wooden joints, nails and screws groaned in protest as the crank hack took the corner on two wheels. Jack had promised the driver a gold sovereign if he travelled at top speed, the wisdom of which he now questioned. In a heartbeat, they traversed the bridge crossing Regent’s Canal and careened left. The wheels slammed back down onto the road, a final test of the vehicle’s structural limitations.

  Ahead, the rooftops of various zoo buildings rose among treetops. In mere minutes, they would reach their destination. Beside him, Cait tugged gloves onto her hands and adjusted the angle of her hat, the better to masquerade as a casual visitor out to see the exhibits with her husband.

  They’d verbally tossed Black a sketchy outline of their discovery, of their destination. A few hasty questions and answers had followed, then they’d departed the townhome in a rush, leaving Black to organize reinforcements.

  Three women. Two children. Two pregnancies.

  What on Earth had been going on in Carruthers’ townhome?

  The man himself might wish to attribute his wife’s and mistress’ persistent interest in bedsport to his own virility and sexual prowess, but from an outside perspective, he’d been manipulated. Was he aware of what his father had been up to in the nursery? Jack doubted it. He rather suspected Carruthers had spent the better part of his marriage in a drug and venom-induced haze.

  “Do you think all three women are lamia?” he asked Cait.

  “Quite likely,” she replied. “Two rotating in and out of his bed according to gestation. A third preferring to seduce the elder Lord Saltwell for reasons as yet unknown. Regardless, they weren’t there for fun and recreation.”

  “That household does seem to be where the lamia first sank their teeth into London society, only later hatching a plan to sell their venom.”

  “At which point they drew your brother, Dr. Oakes and Dr. Thrakos into their scheme.”

  He pulled a face. “But why take up with Carruthers in the first place? There are plenty of wealthier ton to prey upon.”

  “His ‘patronage’ of theaters.” She ticked items off on her fingers. “His title. His pre-existing abuse of alcohol. All make him an easy target.”

  “But fail to address the question of ‘why Carruthers’,” Jack pointed out. “Insofar as I am aware, he engendered no bastards—there’s no preexisting evidence of his fertility. Only of his father’s.”

  “An excellent point.”

  This whole situation was bizarre.

  The hack came to a sudden stop. Or rather, the driver pulled so hard on the hand break that its iron banded wheels skidded along the drive, throwing sparks.

  Jack handed the promised treasure to their driver and, moments later, they strolled into the Reptile House.

  A soft afternoon glow of sunlight struggled to percolate through soot-dusted rooflights such that overhead chandeliers contributed more than their fair share to the general illumination. Ferns dripped fronds from hanging baskets, and potted palms dotted the room.

  In the center of the main hall, low walls topped by domed, iron cages surrounded larger reptiles, including a solitary and forlorn crocodile hunched beside a small, stagnant pool of water. At the sides of the room, spectators gathered behind brass handrails and before enormous sheets of plate glass.

  They both spotted Lady Saltwell at the same time, strangely still amidst the moving swirl of other visitors, as she watched a bright orange snake slither its way up a twisted tree branch.

  Cait’s hand tightened upon his arm, her chin lifted. “That’s an African bush viper.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “A snake with retractable fangs. Perhaps she’s bitten her own lip too many times and is seething with jealousy.”

  He snorted softly, shaking his head.

  Lady Saltwell rested one hand on the gentle swell of her stomach, the other on the handle of the pram. The child within seemed equally entranced with the snake on display. He turned his head, looking upward to his mother, with a wide grin upon his laughing face—one that displayed a shocking amount of teeth for an infant of only nine months.

  Not just incisors, but—

  “Do you see that?” he asked.

  “Canines,” Cait said. “Uncommonly sharp ones at that. One might even call them—”

  “Fangs,” he finished.

  Hissssss.

  The sound came from their right. A woman in plain dress holding an infant. The nanny sounding a warning?

  Lady Saltwell’s head snapped up. She met Jack’s gaze.

  For a moment, time stood still. Lady Saltwell’s eyes flashed, cold and hard, and her lip curled as if she might bare her teeth. Then she turned, pushing the pram with both hands toward a distant exit.

  A classic split maneuver. Two women, two agents.

  “Go.” Cait let go of his arm. “I’ll grab the nanny. Do not let Lady Saltwell bite you.” She turned and pushed through the crowd, all elbows.

  Every instinct screamed at him to guard his wife. But she was immune. A fact he reminded himself of with each step as he pursued his own quarry. Protected. Invulnerable. Safe.

  He, on the other hand, was not. The reason Cait had assigned him the task of chasing a visibly pregnant woman pushing a large child in a pram. Not that such slowed Lady Saltwell. Her increasing speed was hindered only by the length and weight of her bustled skirts.

  He’d eat his left shoe if she wasn’t also a lamia.

  Behind him, Cait let out a cry of distress.

  Heart in his throat, Jack glanced over his shoulder.

  “Stop that woman!” Cait cried. “She stole my baby!”

  A feint. And one that worked.

  An older woman holding a sturdy parasol stepped in front of the nanny. Thwack, she snapped the steel core of the parasol down upon the brass railing blocking the nanny’s advance. “That’s far enough.”

  Others responded, surrounding the nanny. A top-hat-wearing cane-carrying gentleman. Two little girls in short skirts joined hands. A group of young men.

  Cait had cornered her prey while his was still on the move.

  Pride filled his lungs.

  With renewed effort, he dashed about the corner, searching the interior o
f the building for his own lamia. But there was no sign of Lady Saltwell or her pram. How far could a pregnant woman and nine-month-old child possibly travel in mere minutes?

  But they had disappeared.

  In the distance, a new round of shrieks erupted.

  Cait.

  He turned, moving in an all-out sprint.

  Jack burst back into the main hall in time to watch the nanny—now wielding the gentleman’s brass-topped cane—smash the pane of an exhibit. Sharp pings sounded as shattered glass rained down.

  The crowd recoiled.

  Someone cried, “Snake!”

  And everyone turned, scattering toward the exits as a light gray viper with black zig zag marks slithered across the black and white checkered floor.

  Jack ran toward Cait, dodging both spectators and the snake’s winding trajectory.

  The nanny leapt into the display case, clutching a now-screaming baby, and ignoring the escaped viper’s serpentine habitat companion. She kicked open a small door in the back of the enclosure and jumped, disappearing from view.

  With equal nonchalance, Cait had ducked beneath the brass handrail and climbed into the display case in pursuit. The remaining viper took advantage of her crouch to strike, sinking fangs deep into her hand.

  Shit.

  Jack’s heart gave one great thud, then stopped as he landed on the cage floor beside her. Twice now extreme measures had been necessary to keep her alive, and this was a new breed of snake.

  “How bad will your reaction be?” Straight and to the point, lest she soon not be able to answer.

  “I doubt I’ll react much at all.” She grabbed the snake at the base of its triangular head, squeezing to pry its fangs loose. “It’s but an Asp Viper.” She gave it a great shake. “Common to much of France. Nothing special, we met long ago during a family visit to the continent.”

  Short for, “I’m immune to the snake that killed Cleopatra.”

  Was he gaping?

  Yes, but at least his heart had begun to beat again.

  From a bag at her hip, she pulled a mesh-like draw-string pouch.

  “Go.” She waved at him, urging him past. “We need to catch the nanny. I’ll secure the viper, then follow.”

  Jack ducked through the door and dropped into a narrow access hallway, searching for any signs of the nanny’s escape route.

  A door marked “no entry” caught his eye. Not quite shut, it had caught upon the latch. As a door might when one attempted to carefully and quietly conceal one’s exit.

  TTX pistol at the ready, he nudged it open. Heat blasted outward, lifting hair from his forehead. There was a roar of flames and the clang of machinery.

  Inside, a series of conveyor belts, power shovels and steambots worked to feed coal into a huge furnace. Valves hissed and spit as pipes carried cool water in, hot water out. Such was the boiler room, source of the heat that kept the Reptile House at a comfortable temperature for the more tropically adapted serpents.

  The room was empty of humans. And lamia.

  Cait appeared at his side, weapon drawn. “Any sign of her?”

  “Not even the cry of a distressed infant could cut through this din.”

  Together, they moved through the room, searching in vain.

  But there was something about the equipment. Or was he seeing double again? He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. Sweat broke out on his forehead, between his shoulder blades. This was not the time for everything to go sideways.

  Cait pressed a hand to his arm. “What’s wrong?”

  He opened his eyes. “For a moment I thought, but…” He squinted at the metal contraptions before him.

  There were two hulking furnaces. Surely the zoo did not require the function of both at once.

  “She left.” Cait pointed at a second door set in the wall, an emergency exit, and gave a gentle tug at his elbow. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait.” Jack tugged her toward a hulking heap of metal, one with rusted edges and angles, pressed the back of his hand against its metal surface. “Cold and unused. Why leave behind an old furnace?”

  “It must weigh a ton…” But doubt narrowed her eyes.

  He grasped a worn handle, one that was conspicuously rust-free, twisting and pulling. Without the slightest of squeaks, the great iron door swung open on well-oiled hinges.

  Instead of impenetrable darkness within, a distant, faint light beckoned—from below. Plunging through the base of the not-so-abandoned furnace was a duct wide enough to accommodate the breadth of a man’s shoulders. Welded to the side was an iron ladder.

  “A secret underground hideaway!” Excitement lit Cait’s eyes as she bounced on her toes.

  He pressed a finger to his lips. “Shh.”

  From an inside coat pocket, he produced a decilamp. A few shakes activated the bioluminescent bacteria. Much as he wished to offer his wife the thrill of first descent, she was a new and untrained agent. He would go first.

  Taking care not to let the leather of his soles tap against the rungs and announce their arrival, he climbed down into what one might best describe as a cellar. Various bits of old machinery were stacked into towers that leaned against the rough walls.

  Cait dropped onto the ground beside him.

  Given they’d landed in storage, he’d guess this was the back door. Rule number one, always have a secondary exit.

  Which, of course, meant there was a front door.

  He could hear the murmur of voices. Would they find both the nanny and Lady Saltwell hidden within?

  Step by step, backs against the wall, they edged closer.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Greek?

  They were speaking in Greek.

  But of course they were.

  Cait forced herself to analyze the words that the women hissed and spit at each other. But she struggled with the translation. Her working vocabulary began and ended with the bare basics necessary to pass Lister’s entrance exams, a project she’d set herself in a misguided attempt to keep up with Alec and Quinn.

  The volume of the conversation rose, growing heated enough to upset at least one baby who let out a loud, objecting wail.

  “Please, ladies.” Dr. Thrakos interrupted their squabbling. Metal clanged and glass clinked. “English please. I agree with the infant. Your Greek is positively archaic and hurts my head.”

  “You’ve ruined everything, Helena,” a woman accused. Her voice lost none of its edge as it sliced back into proper English like a razor. “There was no need to harvest yet another pituitary. In. My. Home.”

  Jack mouthed her name: Lady Saltwell.

  “There was every need. But isn’t that just the problem,” Helena snapped back. “Your home. Your husband. Your money. Everything is yours, yours, yours.”

  Helena, the woman who attacked me in the carriage, Cait mouthed back.

  Jack’s eyes grew wide. She’s also the woman who escaped through the garden at my brother’s ball!

  He reached into his pocket and tugged out a telescoping rod of dull silver. At its end, a tiny mirror. One with just enough surface to allow them to catch a glimpse of activities around the corner.

  Cait squinted at the looking glass.

  Shrunken heads!

  A secret laboratory, fully equipped and land-based! All this time it had been tucked beneath the Reptile House of the London Zoo, beneath the feet of countless visitors as they gasped at the serpentine exhibits overhead, blissfully unaware of the true horrors below.

  Dr. Thrakos bent over a laboratory bench, twisting the knobs of a machine as a thick, viscous fluid dripped into a test tube. What was he processing? At one elbow, a refrigerated carry case, much like the one she had used to transport her cobra, though his three precious transformed morphophídian snakes had been moved to a wire cage. Such were quite likely the source of venom milked for ladies wishing to avoid childbirth, yet not something that required processing.

  However, on his other side, a tray held an assortme
nt of medical instruments. Beyond that, the most Cait could make out was the corner of a metal gurney. Not unlike the one in his floating laboratory. A shiver ran down her spine. Did this one also sport leather straps? She’d wager in the affirmative, but was a victim bound to its surface?

  Jack adjusted the angle of the mirror, providing a view of the quarreling women.

  “Hush, sisters,” the nanny admonished. “Lower your voices, lest you wake another child.” Unbuttoning her bodice, she lifted the fussing baby from the pram to set the infant to her breast. The infant latched on with gusto.

  Had she just seen—?

  Cait squeezed her eyes closed.

  Opened them.

  Nope. Her vision was fine.

  A trickle of blood leaked from about the infant’s lips.

  Fangs. And at only three months!

  Cait caught Jack’s gaze. They’re all lamia!

  “Yes, Lord Saltwell is my husband,” Lady Saltwell hissed back at Helena. “He chose me. I was, after all, the first to conceive.”

  Stripped to her underpinnings—an old-fashioned chemise and a corset with additional grommets and laces to accommodate an increasing pregnancy—she sat upon a low stool, yanking at silk stockings that appeared to be caught upon something.

  Impossible not to stare.

  The silk pulled away, and Cait cringed at the dry and scaly patches of skin covering Lady Saltwell’s legs from toes to knees, disappearing beneath the edges of her petticoats. A flash of sympathy that vanished the moment the woman unscrewed the lid of a squat jar, scooped forth a thick emollient, and spread it over the angry epidermis.

  Not so rattled by the shop assistant’s death that she was willing to abandon the jar of lotion. She pulled a face and mouthed, cold-blooded.

  “I am the most fertile, in both body and mind,” Lady Saltwell continued, pulling a pair of plain, cotton stockings from a carpet bag. “Without me, you’d still live in a tumble-down hut. Instead, we live—lived—in luxury, built an empire that had London’s elite kneeling down before us. All destroyed when you took to the streets of London to perform an outdated ritual hunt.”