A brief memory rose and the old familiar burn of bile with it; of his own mentor, reaching out to him through the mud of Ypres, his pale face going slack. He shook his head. Thinking of that day made his scars ache. He rubbed at his leg as he pushed himself up out of his seat and strode towards the door. He’d only caught a few in the leg—two deep and one long—and for the most part, it was only bothersome in the damp. Many who’d been at the Kemmelberg had caught far worse. Including poor Thomas Carnacki, who’d been plucked out of one world and sent into the next by a sniper’s bullet.
He’d been Carnacki’s assistant before the War, even as Carnacki had assisted Edwin Drood and Drood had done for Aylmer Beamish and so on and so forth, all the way back to Dee. While it took a royal decree to make it official, the Royal Occultists had been given tacit permission to pick their own successors sometime after the Restoration. Before then, it had been a royal appointment, and a political one more often than not, which had led to more than one unfortunate incident. The current set-up made things easier all around, and insured, theoretically at least, that the title-bearers were of an appropriate level of competency.
“Or that we have a replacement waiting, if nothing else,” he said out loud, walking downstairs into his sitting room, his hands in his pockets. The flat was cold, but that was nothing new. This close to the Thames, the cold seeped in and stayed for tea more often than not. It was practically a feature of the house.
No. 427, Cheyne Walk had been with the office since 1874, when a spectral entity of one sort or another had reportedly spoken to the then-Royal Occultist Aylmer Beamish and convinced him that the house was a necessary addition to the tools of the trade. It occupied a small plot on the Embankment, had cellars that went deeper than any other in Chelsea and provided access to the Thames, if one were willing to get a bit mucky. It was, like the rings, now part and parcel of the position.
“Did you say something?” Gallowglass said, peering at him from over the back of an overstuffed chesterfield couch. It was one of several that occupied the square footage around the cavernous Restoration era fireplace that clung to the closest wall. A fire crackled within it, filling the room with blessed warmth. A Victrola wobbled out the last heartfelt refrain of Gene Lockhart’s ‘The World is Waiting for the Sunrise’ before descending into quiet hissing.
“I was talking to myself,” he said as he took the needle off the record and went to stand in front of the fire. He held out his hands, warming them and glanced up, out of habit. Over the fireplace hung a xiphos—a double-edged, single-handed sword with a leaf-shaped blade. It was a family heirloom, brought over with Brutus and his Trojans. Or so his father had sworn. He’d been carrying it the first time he’d met Thomas Carnacki, in the crypts below the Guildhall. It had saved his life, and Carnacki’s as well, that night, and several times since. While firearms generally did for most of the things that needed seeing to, sometimes only the edge of a good blade would suffice.
“Must have been a dull conversation then,” Gallowglass said, lying back down on the couch. She lifted the newspaper she’d been reading and said, “They’re demanding that the Netherlands extradite the Kaiser.”
“Speaking of dull conversations,” he said. Gallowglass snorted, but didn’t reply. He turned away from the fire. Pictures of former bearers of the office lined the walls of the sitting room, jostling for space with fetish masks and lurid artworks by Goya and Blake. Great bookshelves, smelling of British oak and Puritan fires, groaned beneath the accumulated weight of the rest of his library of occult works. Said library was smaller than it should have been, by about three centuries. “Ta for that, Mr. Cromwell,” St. Cyprian muttered.
Prince Rupert of the Rhine, nephew of Charles the First, had been as energetic a Royal Occultist as he was a cavalry commander, and had spent his short term collecting and organizing the diverse libraries of the former office holders in between crafting treaties with Faerie and driving back incursions from Those Below. Books by Dee, Strange and Subtle, lost Pnakotic texts and hairy bibles of horrid knowledge had all been combined into one of the greatest sources of occult knowledge short of the Papal Libraries. And when Charles had gotten the chop, Cromwell’s men had burned Rupert’s home and the library with it.
Some of what had been lost had been replaced. Most, though, was gone forever. Granted, Royal Occultists past had never been meticulous diarists. Except for Drood, who’d paid a number of penny-a-word men to scribble his accomplishments for future generations; and there was Carnacki’s arrangement with Dodgson, of course. He was fairly certain no one was writing about him, unless Gallowglass had literary ambitions beyond the obscene doodles she drew in the margins of his case-files when she thought he wasn’t looking.
He examined her surreptitiously and idly scratched at his shoulder. There was still a scar there, a physical reminder of their first meeting, a year earlier. She was sprawled out on the couch, one leg bent under her, the paper held above her head. She wasn’t much younger than him, a few years at most, but he felt positively decrepit next to her. He had the War to thank for that, as well.
Dark and slim, she dressed like a Parisian street-apache and had the personality to match. It was all sharp edges, and prone to drawing blood. Then, given her background, it was surprising she wasn’t worse. She’d grown up in the slums of Cairo, and come to London, hunting something—and someone—singularly unpleasant. They’d met during that little affray, and had shed sweat, blood and cartridges in pursuit of the same goal, though for different reasons, he thought.
When the Shooter’s Hill incident had been resolved, he’d invited her to stay. She’d rapidly made herself at home. Some of it, he knew, was simply the pragmatic equanimity with which she approached anything that didn’t involve gunplay—a house was a place to sleep, as much as an alley or a tramp steamer for someone of her temperament. As for the rest, he fancied that she was, like many people, simply looking for a place to call home. Gallowglass yawned and he pushed the thought aside. “Have you slept?” he asked.
“Have you?”
“No, I was busy doing some research. What about you?”
“Sleep is for the weak,” she said. “There’s been another auto accident in Dartmoor, somewhere between Postbridge and Two Bridges.” She peeked at him around the edge of the paper. “Driver claims something grabbed the wheel out of his hands and sent him flying off the road.”
“Oh?”
“Fifth one so far this year,” Gallowglass added. “There was that cyclist last week, and the collision the day before that, and all on the same stretch of road.”
“It is a rather crooked road, I’m told. Quite dangerous in the fog,” St. Cyprian said, looking at her. “Something—ah—something grabbed the wheel, you say?”
“Hands,” she said, wriggling her fingers.
“Hands,” he asked.
“Hairy hands,” she said, “Two hairy, devilish hands.” She tossed the paper aside and gestured menacingly as she scrunched up her face and growled. St. Cyprian watched the pages scatter across the floor and frowned.
“Pick that up,” he said. The sound of the doorbell interrupted any reply she might have made. He gestured towards the door. “On second thought, answer the door.”
Gallowglass made a face, but didn’t argue. She got up and slouched towards the door. St. Cyprian made a show of examining the bookcases as she ushered their guest in. Hands behind his back, he ignored them until Gallowglass coughed into a fist. “It’s Morris,” she said.
St. Cyprian turned and smiled broadly. “So it is. Hello, Morris. I’m afraid that you’re a bit early for tea and a bit late for coffee.”
Morris was egg-shaped and dressed in civil servant greys and browns, colors that made his doughy features look even more so. He frowned at St. Cyprian’s bonhomie and his bulldog face wrinkled in exasperation. “Oh be quiet, you know very well why I’m here,” he growled, “And it’s not for tea or coffee.”
“No, it never is, is it?” St. Cyprian
said as he dropped, loose-limbed, into the wing-backed leather chair that sat close to the fireplace.
“I’m here on behalf of the Ministry. Not to indulge in petty pleasantries,” Morris said.
St. Cyprian gestured airily to the couch Gallowglass had vacated. “Business as usual, then,” he said. “Sit and speak, o’ traveller. Ms. Gallowglass, be a dear and see if there’s any coffee left. I’ll have some, even if Morris isn’t in the mood,” he said, glancing at his assistant. Gallowglass replied with a rude gesture, but did as he asked. Morris sniffed critically.
“Why you chose her of all people, I’ll never know,” he said.
“Given that she has even less patience for the old heathen hokum than you, I thought you’d be pleased. She’s a woman after your own heart, Morris old thing. She’s never met a problem that didn’t resemble a nail in need of a hammer,” St. Cyprian said.
“We should have sent her back to the protectorate authorities in Cairo after that incident last year was resolved. She left a trail of bodies from Cairo to Blackheath, and some of them had friends. Highly-placed friends,” Morris said.
“By incident, you mean the shootout with the leopard cultists?”
Morris’ face was stony. “You know very well what incident I’m referring to. Shooter’s Hill made a ruddy great mess for us in the Ministry.”
“From what I understand, those bodies all deserved to be forcibly transitioned from the vertical to the horizontal, by the Ministry’s own admission,” St. Cyprian said mildly. “They ate people, you know.”
“No one important,” Morris said sharply.
“Depends on your perspective, I suppose.” St. Cyprian leaned back in his chair. “Now, to what do I owe this obscenely early visit?” He paused. “It’s not about that business last night is it?”
“No,” Morris said. He smiled thinly. “But thank you for letting us know you were involved. Good to see you earning your keep.”
“You wound me, Morris. Here, in my heart,” St. Cyprian said, touching his chest.
“If only,” Morris said sourly. He shifted uncomfortably. “There was an incident last night. In Whitechapel,” he added.
“There are always incidents in Whitechapel, Morris,” St. Cyprian said.
“Not like this.”
“No?” St. Cyprian sat up straight. “Do tell, old man, do tell.”
“A number of individuals were involved. The nature of the scene makes determining that number difficult. We would like to arrange a—ah—consultation.” Morris spat the word as if it were something foul.
“Surely the Ministry of Esoteric Observation can handle whatever it is without me. I’ve had quite a busy night and, as you yourself have told me on many an occasion, this office is, oh what did you call it—‘an antiquated remnant of a less enlightened time’. Fit only for bogey-bothering and ghost-hunting.” St. Cyprian smiled genially. Morris frowned stonily.
“The Ministry lacks the resources in the current political climate to investigate this incident. Thus, we must fall back on tradition,” he hissed.
“Tradition is a fine thing,” St. Cyprian said, nodding. Morris’ egg-pale features went the color of plums, and St. Cyprian felt a brief stab of sympathy. In truth, Morris wasn’t a bad sort for a bureaucrat born and hatched in the back rooms of the government. He was more tolerable than most of his lot in the Ministry were, at any rate.
The Ministry of Esoteric Observation was where magic went to die, in a nondescript building near Whitehall, with quotas, allocations and stuffy offices filled with mouldering paperwork. It was a model of modern efficiency, and the men who worked for it prided themselves on their political and scientific acumen. Unfortunately, they had a bad habit of locking up dreadful tomes and sacred scrolls rather than reading them, thus necessitating the occasional consultation with, as Morris had put it, more traditional resources. They were never happy about it, and never shy about sharing that unhappiness. It offended them, in their callous little souls to have to rely on a relic of less enlightened times to get the job done. “I expect you to do your duty,” Morris began, with the air of a man readying a rehearsed speech.
“Thank you, Morris, but you don’t have to remind me of my duty,” St. Cyprian said. “I swore service to the King and all that.” He scratched his chin. “But I will, of course, require remuneration in this instance.”
“Of course,” Morris said, looking as if he’d swallowed something unpleasant. “What did you have in mind…money?”
“Morris, when has it ever been about that? No, I want a look at the Livre d’Eibon, the Gough-Thomas translation, from 1867. I believe you fellows confiscated a copy a few months ago, from that chap in Bradford. I seem to have mislaid my copy, and I was rather hoping to compare some of the formulas with those in the French edition.” St. Cyprian spread his hands. “What say you old top?”
Morris grunted and made a face. “Fine,” he said, after a moment.
“Smashing,” St. Cyprian said, clasping his hands over his stomach. “Now the only question is do we have time for a spot of breakfast?”
Andraste clutched her aching skull as Jadwiga caught her arm and hurried her along the back streets of the East End. The sun was coming up now, but that was no assurance of safety. Even if it had been, there were plenty of dark holes for the Ripper to crawl into, if that was what he—it—required.
“You’ll be safe in Bow,” Jadwiga said. He’d said it before. It had become something of a mantra. As if Bow were the city on the hill rather than simply another part of the East End, and she, a pilgrim searching for sanctuary. “It’ll be all right, you’ll be safe,” he said again.
She doubted that. In fact, she knew it was patently, and obviously, untrue. Her friends there could no more protect her than he could. But she humoured him. “And what about you,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll wait until its safe, and then I’ll go back to the garret,” he said, not looking at her. “I’ll grab the strong-box and some clothes.” She knew what strong-box he was referring to. They kept a small one filled with pound notes under a loose floorboard in her bedroom. It was their ‘get-out-of-town’ fund. “We’ll buy a berth onboard the first ship bound for somewhere else, Australia maybe or America,” he said, “Somewhere, anywhere, other than here.”
“And you’ll come back for me?” she said. She felt a dull ache in her belly, and felt—blade whistling as it carved a red loop across quivering flesh—ill. She felt hot and cold—eyes like lamps swept over her face as a smile like a crescent moon stretched wide over a featureless expanse of nightmare shadow—and exhausted.
He patted her hand. “As soon as I can,” he said and—I SEE YOU, it said—Andraste gasped and bent double. Jadwiga caught her in a painful grip. “What, what is it?” he hissed. His eyes darted around, searching for any sign of pursuit. Andraste pushed him away. He stank of fear and for a moment, just a moment, she wanted to strike him.
No, she realized, not her—the Ripper. It was in her head, in her soul, nuzzling at the underside of her thoughts like a curious scavenger. Even now, she could feel it kneading her mind with phantasmal claws. It wasn’t—quite—painful, but she knew it could, and would, turn agonizing easily enough.
“It—nothing, it’s nothing,” she said, shaking her head to clear it of the fluttering, insistent images that had overwhelmed her. There was no way to explain it even if she’d known what it was she was trying to explain. And there was no point. He was already frightened. So was she, come to it, but not as frightened as he was, and she wondered why that was.
Andraste knew herself well enough to know that she wasn’t, by nature, a courageous woman. She was a chancer and a swindler, but those only required audacity, not bravery. Maybe it was simply shock, or resignation. The thing—the Ripper—was going to come after them, and it would find them. They hadn’t escaped. They likely couldn’t escape. She’d seen that much, in its head.
Oh, they’d made a game effort, all right
. If that fellow, Eddowes, the gunman, hadn’t distracted the creature with a fusillade of lead and sent it bounding from the garret like a scalded cat, they might all have died then and there, butchered just like the others. Eddowes had gone out the door, not long after that, fleeing without so much as a backwards glance at his fellows, or what was left of them. She and Jadwiga had followed suit, though by a different route. She wondered if anyone had bothered to investigate the screams and gunfire.
“You’ll be safe,” Jadwiga said again.
He was lying. She’d been his partner long enough to know that he was lying. Not to her, but to himself. She could see the cracks forming in him, and the fear bubbling away like acid behind his eyes. He might go for the money, but he wouldn’t come back for her. Nor would he go for a ship. No, she knew that there was only one place he would go, even as she knew that it was no use to try and talk him out of it. He couldn’t help himself. That was always why he’d let her handle the money. He was pragmatic about his weaknesses and those self-same weaknesses had made him the perfect partner, in some respects. He was as predictable as the seasons, and a predictable partner was a safe partner.
“Why don’t we forget the money? Stay at the bakery with me,” she said. “We’ll get out of the city tomorrow, and go somewhere else.”
“Where would we go, without money?” he said.
“Plenty of places,” Andraste said. “We’d be alive.” You’d be alive, she thought, at least for a little while longer.
“We earned that money,” he said. “It’s ours.”
“And that makes it worth dying over?”
The Whitechapel Demon Page 3
