“I’m not melancholy.”
“You’d think a MacAlasdair would be a better liar. At least you’ve slept. You have slept, haven’t you?”
“Yes, Mother,” said Stephen. He had, in fact. A long life had taught him how to keep his emotions from getting in the way of his body’s most basic requirements. The night had been dark and peaceful. He’d only begun to worry when he woke up.
Undeterred, Colin eyed him. “She’s been gone a day, you great idiot. The wards can’t be causing all of this mood. Are you going to become one of those nauseating sorts who has to have his lady in sight at all times?”
“I will not, and she’s not my lady yet,” Stephen said, though speaking the words did lighten his mood a bit, foolishly enough. “And I wouldn’t be worried if this were an ordinary sort of absence or at a better time.”
“This is an ordinary sort of absence. Oh, it’s distressing now and all that”—Colin waved a hand—“but human children get ill. They’re known for it. They recover, generally, and Lord knows you gave her money enough to buy half the doctors in the East End if she feels it needful.”
“And if Mina gets ill?”
“Then you’ll put her in a bed upstairs and bring in half the doctors in London, I don’t doubt. I’ll even go after that bloke in Yorkshire with the familiar spirit if we need more than that, or we’ll bring her up to Brigid’s Well in Ireland. But things won’t come to any such pass. She’s a grown woman, and a healthy, strapping sort of girl at that.”
“Thank you for noticing,” said Stephen, only half sarcastic.
“I said I wasn’t in love with the girl, not that I didn’t look. She’ll be back. She’ll be fine. Now cheer up before I hit you with a bookend.”
***
“Well,” said Dr. Stevens, straightening up, “her condition hasn’t gotten any worse.”
“But no better?” Mrs. Seymour asked.
Dr. Stevens shook her head. The lady doctor of song and story, or at least of letter and mild dinner-table controversy, was surprisingly young, with only a touch of gray in her brown hair. She was gaunt, too—in Mina’s experience, half the educated people in the world forgot to eat if left to their own devices, and the other half ate too much—and her face was sharp, softened now by a look of confusion and regret.
“It’s actually rather remarkable,” she said, “how little she’s changed. I’d have expected—” She broke off. “I’m sorry. This isn’t the time or the place to wax academic.”
Mrs. Seymour didn’t care, Mina knew. She probably didn’t even hear most of what Dr. Stevens said because her attention was fixed on a single point. “Do you know what’s wrong with her?”
“A fever,” said the doctor, and spread her hands. “Some sort of influenza, perhaps. None of you have been feeling sick at all?”
“Not a one of us. Nor any of the neighbors.”
“Let’s hope you all stay as healthy, then.” Dr. Stevens frowned down at Florrie’s unconscious body. “All I can say is that you should keep going as you were. If you’d like to bring in another doctor, though, that’s quite reasonable. If she doesn’t regain consciousness by the time I come by this evening, I’ll send for one myself.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Seymour, and turned with set face and thin lips to her youngest daughter.
Watching, Mina blinked hard to keep tears firmly behind her eyelids. She looked away, toward Dr. Stevens’s retreating form. The doctor was glancing back over her shoulder, regarding the scene with puzzled worry.
Mina followed her out, stopping her on the landing. “Wax academic now,” she said, too weary and scared for preambles. “I’d like to know.”
“Oh?” Dr. Stevens peered up at her, surprised, but then shrugged. “It’s simply odd. With most disease, there’s some change from day to day, even if it’s not significant. Patients get better or worse by tiny degrees. Sometimes they get a little better and then worse again, or vice versa. And I suppose that could have happened while I was gone, but—”
“But?”
“But your sister’s condition, as far as I can tell, is exactly the same as it was yesterday. It’s not the oddest incident in the medical books, but it does rather stand out. And she hasn’t woken up at all, which isn’t common with fevers. I’d have expected at least one of you to be sick as well. It’s all very strange.”
“Oh,” said Mina. “I see. Thank you.”
She watched the doctor leave. She stood very still; there was earthquake enough in her mind without adding physical motion to it.
Nobody else was at all ill. Dr. Stevens didn’t know what was wrong. Except for the fever, Florrie was asleep, sleeping like a princess who’d pricked her finger or bitten into a poisoned apple. Sleeping like the target of a wicked fairy’s vengeance.
He wasn’t a man to bear well with being thwarted Stephen said in her memory, and she saw again the newspaper article: East End Slaughter.
Servants gossiped, and Mina had read letters in the kitchen. It would be easy enough to find out where she lived and who her family was, especially for a man who could throw money around. Illness wasn’t as quick or—please, God—as irreparable as the thieves’ deaths had been, but it got her away from Stephen and it probably made for very satisfying revenge.
“Oh, God,” said Mina, except she didn’t really say it. Her lips shaped the words, but no air went past them. For one thing, she didn’t want to alarm the household. For another, her lungs didn’t feel like they contained any such thing as air.
She could be wrong. Asking if Florrie had touched anything or eaten anything unusual would be pointless. Children here were all on their own often enough, walking to school or running wild with friends. Even if Ward couldn’t curse from a distance, there were a thousand opportunities for a poisoned apple or a stealthy pinprick when nobody was looking. Mina was no detective, and there was little time.
She stepped up to the sickroom doorway again. “Mum,” she said, trying to sound calm, “I’m going out for a bit. I think I might know someone who can help. Maybe.”
“This man you’ve been working for?” Despite her fatigue, Mrs. Seymour’s eyes were sharp and knowing. “If you think there’s a chance—”
“Maybe,” Mina said again.
“You could send Bert.”
“No.” If she’d thought they’d understand, she’d have told everyone in her family to stay in the house and bar the doors. She wasn’t sure if even staying inside would help—but thresholds were supposed to offer some protection, and any direct housebreaking would make the neighbors notice and raise hell. “He’ll see me quicker.”
Not stopping to get drawn into further conversation—even further thought seemed perilous just then—Mina went to her room. Alice was asleep, and that was just as well. It spared Mina questions about why she was putting her coat on, and it spared her a great deal of discussion when she took the revolver out from under her pillow and slipped it into her coat pocket.
***
Fog filled the street outside, thick and yellow and choking, heavy with the smell of sulfur. Such fogs were nothing new—Mina had grown up with them every few days of her life—but now, with Florrie lying ill behind her and six weeks’ worth of magic and strangeness in her consciousness, everything seemed more sinister, and the fog was no exception. She thought of Hell, shuddered, and walked faster.
Then there were three figures in front of her.
She had no sense of their approach. Part of that was the fog, but not all. They moved too quickly and too fluidly to be people. She thought that they’d stepped out from the shadows under a nearby building, but there was more than one way to come out of shadows.
Mina stepped back and tried to bolt left. One of the shapes darted in front of her and grabbed her wrist with a gloved hand. As she screamed, it dragged her forward, and she could see that it was a shape, not a man. It wasn’t entirely a manes either. She wished it had been.
It was both. Bits of human features floated in shadow:
one eye, a nose, a lower lip that stretched into raw meat before the shadow cut it off, and patches of yellow teeth. The hand on her arm was boneless and cold—not as numbingly cold as the touch of the pure manes had been, but with a crushing strength that made up for that lack.
“Come with us,” said the thing, its half mouth squirming around the words. “Come quietly.”
Mina yanked the revolver out of her pocket with her free hand and fired at the half man’s face, pulling the trigger over and over again. She realized that she was still screaming. She screamed louder when the bullets hit, when flesh and shadow tore away from the creature’s head and fell to the ground, and yet it kept standing, kept pulling her toward it. Its eye was gray-white, filmy.
Someone was shouting in the background. Footsteps rushed toward them.
The things looked at each other. Then the creature holding Mina said a word she couldn’t recognize, and everything went dark.
Forty-one
“There’s a boy at the door, my lord,” said Baldwin.
Events over the last few days had left the household reeling. Baldwin’s face was drawn with weariness, despite Stephen telling him to rest, and the latest development had clearly both baffled and worried him.
“He says he has to speak to you.”
“A boy?” Stephen turned from the last of his preparations and blinked. “I don’t know any boys these days.”
“No, my lord.” Baldwin swallowed. “He says it’s to do with Miss Seymour.”
The world stopped.
“Where is he?” Stephen asked. He was already walking toward the doorway.
“The kitchen, my lord. I didn’t—”
The stairs presented little obstacle; Stephen took them two at a time. He burst through the door of the kitchen and saw a boy rise hurriedly and shakily from a seat by the hearth.
Between a tall ten and an undersized fourteen, the boy straddled the gap between poverty and respectability as well. His clothes were clean, but patched and very plain. He snatched a gray cap off his head when Stephen entered, revealing a curly mass of brown hair, and looked up at the new arrival with a pair of dark blue eyes.
They were Mina’s eyes. And they were terrified.
Stephen froze.
“Sir. My lord. Sir?” The boy looked confused. Men like Stephen generally didn’t enter kitchens, and he was old enough to know it. “I—I need to talk to Lord MacAlasdair, sir, right away.”
“That’s me, lad,” said Stephen, as gently as he could manage. “What’s wrong?”
“I. It’s Mina. My sister. Miss Seymour, she would’ve been to you. My lord. She said she worked for you. She went out and she’s not come back, and Mum said as how she said she was coming up ’ere to talk with you.” The boy’s mouth worked silently for a second and then he swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing on his skinny neck. “And they say there was gunshots earlier, m’lord, and screaming.”
When Stephen’s heart went still, experience took over, freezing his brain and his blood, constructing an icy wall of action behind which his rage and regret became distant. When he spoke to Mina’s pale-faced brother, it was with all the calm he’d ever used to lead men.
“Near you?”
“A street away, maybe. People couldn’t see well for the fog.”
“Is that all you know?”
The boy nodded.
Action beckoned. Stephen held back. “Why was she coming back here?”
“It was about Florrie, m’lord.” Mina’s brother gulped. “Um. Our other sister. She’s sick.”
“I know. And Mina said I could help?”
“She said you might.” Now he looked hopeful as well as frightened, and Stephen felt an intense desire to put his fist through a wall.
Ward had set this up neatly.
“I’ll try,” said Stephen. “See here—Bert, isn’t it?”
Even in his panic, the boy’s eyes widened a little. “Yes, m’lord.”
“Stay in here. There’s jam in the pantry. I’ll be back before very long, or I’ll send someone else for you.”
Colin met him outside. “I heard the disturbance,” he said, “and the wards seem to be fine all over the house, so I take it the problem’s physical?”
“Mina’s gone,” said Stephen. “Her brother’s here. From what he’s said, it sounds like Ward’s taken her. And that her sister’s illness wasn’t natural. A trap, likely as not.” He let his breath hiss out between his teeth. “I should have known.”
“Yes, you really should be more omniscient one of these days,” Colin said. “Now, if you could flog yourself a little later, you can get me a bowl of water and we can get to work.”
“Scrying? Don’t you need something of hers?”
“I’ve already got it.” Colin grinned. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
A few minutes of hasty activity produced the bowl in question and sent Polly to the kitchen for supervisory and jam-distribution purposes. Then Stephen stood, his hands clenched at his sides, and stared into the bowl as clear water gave way to blue mist, which in its turn parted to reveal grimy walls and huge metal vats: a factory of some sort, obviously, though Stephen didn’t know what it had made. At present, it was sheltering Ward and five of the hybrid manes, who stood in a ring around a female figure lashed to a pipe.
Mina.
Stephen growled and felt his lips draw back, baring his teeth in a threat as instinctual as it was ineffectual. His nails lengthened into claws, cutting into the still-unchanged flesh of his hands. He felt dim pain and didn’t care. Rage was much closer, and much more vivid.
No. Not yet.
As Stephen watched, Mina struggled, and while the desperate energy in her movements tore at his heart, it also reassured him. She still lived. She still had enough strength left to fight.
Unless he could get to her soon, though, that strength might not do her any good. Stephen didn’t know what Ward had planned, but several horrifying possibilities sprang to his mind—and he didn’t know that he could get there in time to stop any of them.
He didn’t know exactly where Ward’s den was. In human form, it would take him at least an hour to find it. When he got there, he’d have five of the hybrids to fight, which would be no small task even with Colin—and he couldn’t bring Colin.
“He doesn’t have one hostage,” Stephen said. “He has two.”
“You think he’d kill the Seymour child?”
“I think he’d let her die. Can you break a curse like that?” Stephen swung to face Colin, prepared for another round of argument about throwing his life away for a human he’d never met.
“Does a full house beat a pair?” Colin winked. “I’ll come find you once it’s done. Try to whittle them down a bit, will you? Five of those things might be a bit much for me at the moment.”
“I’ll let you take your ease this time,” said Stephen, though his voice was thick for a moment. “Bert’s in the kitchen. Mina’s brother. He’ll take you to Florrie. And take this.” He held out the derringer. “I doubt I’ll be able to use it.”
Colin pocketed the gun, then clapped his good hand to Stephen’s shoulder. “Stay alive,” he said, serious for a second.
He closed the door behind him, but there was no time for Stephen to lock it. As Colin left the room, Stephen had already begun to change shape, not caring or even really noticing as his clothing shredded around him. He did notice when he burst through the closed window, but he didn’t care any more about the shattered glass than about his ruined shirt.
Launching himself into the fog, he sped toward the docks, only hoping that he’d arrive in time.
Forty-two
Touch was the first sense to return. Mina awoke to the feel of cold metal against her back and rough ropes cutting into her wrists and ankles. Her hands were behind her, and when she wiggled her fingers, she felt more metal, pitted and flaked with age. She could smell old metal too, as her head cleared, and a vague hint of rotten eggs.
Sulfur was not a go
od smell, considering the circumstances. At least Mina didn’t see any flames when she opened her eyes.
Demons, on the other hand, were clearly in stock. Half demons. Five of the creatures from before surrounded her, human features variously afloat in shadow. Each had a different arrangement of…bits…but their eyes were all the same, gray-white and completely expressionless. Mina would almost have preferred rage or hunger—or eyeless faces like the manes had. She wasn’t fond of the middle ground.
She wasn’t fond of anything about this situation. She rather wanted to be sick.
It was important to keep calm. It was also important, she realized after a breath or two, not to look too calm. The less Ward thought she knew, the more likely he’d be to overlook something. So she shrieked and threw herself about, imitating the heroine of every three-penny melodrama she’d ever seen, calling for help even though she knew there was nobody to hear.
Screaming and thrashing against the ropes relieved her feelings a bit, too.
At last, Mina let herself slump in her bonds, hanging her head as if exhausted. Blood was trickling from her wrists where the rope had rubbed off some of the skin. Feeling it, she thought she might have overdone the hysteria a bit.
Footsteps came toward her, echoing in the sudden silence. Mina looked up under her eyelashes. If one of the half manes was approaching her, actual hysterics became a very real possibility.
The half manes stayed where they were. The figure approaching was human, at least, although the man had very little else to recommend him in Mina’s eyes. He was tall, stout, and well-dressed, his coat and hat rather absurd given their surroundings.
He stopped in front of her: not, to Mina’s relief, within arm’s length. “Don’t bother with another show,” he said. “Nobody will hear.”
That wasn’t just a threat. He knew what he was talking about. Mina could tell as much from his voice, and she was glad of the dim lighting. There were several dark patches on the floor that she didn’t want to see clearly.
Legend Of The Highland Dragon Page 24
