The Weeping Lore (Witte & Co. Investigations Book 1)

by Gregory Ashe

  She was laughing. The wind stole the sound from her lips, filled her mouth with ice, but she didn’t care. She laughed. The revolver weighed a hundred pounds, and her legs were mint jelly, but she laughed at that too.

  When the first shadow leaped from overhead, Irene fired.

  The kick of the revolver surprised her, and she slid on a patch of ice. Cian kept a hold of her. Overhead, there was a splat, and then the clatter of twigs. Something the size of a hound hit the ground.

  The street was dark. Fear made Irene doubt her eyes.

  But she saw eight legs curl up in agony as the thing writhed in the shadows.

  Behind Irene, shouts filled the night. She risked a look. Men were settling into defensive positions, training guns on Irene and Cian.

  “It was a spider,” she shouted back to them, still laughing. “Just a spider!”

  Cian’s grip tightened on her hand as he yanked her down a side street.

  They went two more blocks, twisting and turning through the madness of Kerry Patch, Irene limping on bruised and frozen feet. Her cheeks were flushed, her skin tight and tingling, and laughter lurked just below the surface. The laughter rode on top of something else, like an oil slick, and Irene didn’t want to know what was waiting below. Something that wanted to sink cold teeth into her.

  At last they came to a wedge between two log dwellings. The smell of wood-smoke and roast chicken lingered on the air. Irene’s stomach rumbled. Cian moved to stand in front of her, tilting her face up to his. They were only inches apart, and heat poured off him like a furnace. Irene felt an epileptic smile teasing her face as she stared at him.

  She thought Cian might be worried.

  “It was a spider,” she said, feeling another storm of giggles on the horizon. “The size of a dog. Papa never let me have a dog.” A spatter of giggles. “Maybe he’ll let me have a spider.”

  Yes, that was definitely worry on Cian’s face.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “You’re in shock,” he said. “Or you’re cracked.”

  “You saw it too,” Irene said. “Don’t lie. You saw it. You know I’m telling the truth.”

  “Sh,” Cian said. “Fine. I saw something. I don’t know what. Don’t shout.”

  “Don’t you dare say I’m making it up. Don’t you dare.”

  Irene pushed him away and went to stand at the edge of their hiding spot. The sudden flare of anger had burned off the spate of crazed energy, clearing her thoughts, dragging her back to the cold, squatting night. Her mouth tasted like blood. She had bit the inside of her cheek.

  Irene tried to focus on where they were. She wanted home and dinner and bed and enough sleeping powder to keep her there for a week. If she could figure out where she was, she could still force Cian to go back home with her. He could confirm the delivery of the wooden box. Then Papa would have to admit she was telling the truth, that she wasn’t making it all up.

  She hadn’t been making it up about Francis Derby either.

  Ahead, several blocks distant, Irene saw the sparkle of moonlight on the river. The buildings here were more of the same: scabrous wood and leper-plaster, ready for a common grave. Something darted across the street, and Irene’s hand tightened on the revolver’s grip, but it was only a speckled tabby that disappeared between a pair of homes. Further down the street, to the right, a mass of folded shadows broke the sky. From its size and shape, Irene guessed it was a church—more solid than anything else in the area. If she could figure out which church it was, she’d be able to get home.

  With Cian, whether he liked it or not.

  “Let’s go this way,” Irene said. “It looks clear.”

  Cian joined her. He watched the street for a minute and then nodded.

  They picked their way down the frozen ruts. Once Cian helped Irene over a pool of frozen waste, but she pulled her hand free as soon as she was clear. He didn’t respond except to shove his hands deep into his pockets, hunch his shoulders against the wind, and stay at her side.

  Everything about him was a dozen times more irritating than it should have been.

  The church grew by inches. The river swept an arm out, hugging a point of land, and the church stood out along this curve of land and water. As they grew closer, Irene began to pick out things that looked more familiar. Shopfronts put on brick and glass and rose to two and three stories. The river air cleared the worst of the smoke, and overhead the stars had taken on depth and brilliance. Irene felt a surge of energy. She was almost out of this mess.

  The whine of motors came from the next street.

  Without speaking, Irene and Cian moved into the deeper shadows that clung to the storefronts. A pair of cars pulled out into the street and stopped. Men emerged from the cars. Eight men. Half of them carried guns.

  The other four were very big and wearing dark trench coats.

  Cian took her hand.

  It didn’t seem wise to protest, so Irene kept silent.

  With a nudge, Cian started Irene moving, keeping their backs pressed to the brick as they walked.

  “They said they were coming this way,” one of the men with the guns said.

  “Bugs. You can’t trust bugs. We shouldn’t have waited so long.”

  “You can tell him that, then. For now, get your mangy hide down that street and keep an eye out. They’re coming this way, believe it or not.”

  By now Cian and Irene were almost even with the men and the cars. Irene’s heart had climbed up her throat. Her fingers were sweaty in Cian’s. She studied the men in front of her as they split up. The darkness made it difficult, but she was fairly sure they weren’t the men from Patrick’s. They also were most certainly not federal agents.

  So who were they?

  She met Cian’s eyes and mouthed, Seamus?

  He shook his head.

  The church towered over them now, and it sat on the next block. From here, there was no doubt. The Old Cathedral. Night hid the tarnished copper steeple, but the stone pillars and the classical façade were unmistakable. Irene had a vision of herself hammering on the massive door, crying, “Sanctuary,” but this time she didn’t have to fight any giggles. Nervous energy had run its course. Now she only felt tired, her eyes sandy from the cold.

  While the men with the guns separated to cover both ends of the street, the four men in trench coats remained motionless near the cars. Although the wind set their coats flapping, the men didn’t seem bothered by the cold. They stood erect, shoulders wide, staring out at the night. Irene remembered the horrible face—burned, she told herself—and wondered what they saw.

  Nothing good, she imagined.

  And then her toe caught a rock. It skipped across the sidewalk, cracked against the brick paving, and slid into a pool of starlight.

  “Shit,” Cian said. He shoved her into a run.

  The men in the trench coats started moving too, but they weren’t as fast. The sound of sloshing footsteps filled the street, and Irene swore she felt tremors through the paving stones, but the big men were still a good dozen yards behind Irene and Cian. Cian steered her towards the back of the church, away from the main street.

  “The river—” Irene managed to gasp. “We’ll be trapped.”

  Gunshot chipped one of the stone walls of the church. Cian said, “Better trapped than dead.”

  Perhaps it was the sudden burst of wind off the river, like a grandmother’s slap to Irene’s face. Or perhaps it was her own exhaustion, making her stumble, fraying her pace. All Irene saw, though, was a coiled black ball launch itself toward her from the roof of a cooper’s shop to her left. It missed her, landing in a spray of eight thin legs as it came upright on a patch of grass and turned towards Irene. Glistening pincers snapped.

  Irene fired. The bulbous black body collapsed, and drops of something dark and viscous spattered grass and stone. Irene felt something brush her coat, and then the smell of burning fur filled the air.

  Another spider jumped from the wall of the church.


  Cian fired, catching the thing in mid-air.

  They kept running. The men in the trench coats were closing on them now.

  Frustration filled Cian’s face. He turned aside, toward a door set in the back of the church.

  It would be locked, of course.

  They were as good as dead.

  Cian yanked on the door. It held.

  Irene turned to watch. The trench coat men kept coming at full speed, like runaway trains. Black shapes crawled along the walls of the church and on the rooftops across the street.

  She didn’t have a single bullet left. Irene flipped the revolver around, holding it by the barrel, and got ready to swing it like a club.

  And then Cian grabbed her arm, dragged her back a pace, and she fell inside the church. The door swung shut behind them.

  A moment later, the door vibrated as something crashed into it. A few splinters shook themselves loose and dusted Irene’s stockings.

  Another crash. A crack came from the wooden door.

  Cian helped Irene to her feet. They stumbled down the narrow service hall. Behind them, blows continued to rattle the door. It wouldn’t last long. A few more minutes. The trench-coat men were strong.

  Irene had a half-remembered vision of the man being pulled apart in Patrick’s.

  Ahead, another door opened onto the nave. The main altar was a bulk in the shadows to their right. Pews bivouacked along the length of the room. The delicate stonework, the sculptures and tiled floor, even the beautiful paintings, all were lost in the darkness. There was only a tight jacket of winter cold, and their breaths like the plumes of exotic birds, and the two of them scrambling across the stone.

  A crash made Irene look back, and while she was doing so, Cian skidded to a halt. He dragged Irene back half a step before she managed to turn around.

  Floating in front of them, a shade of a woman stretched out her hands and smiled.

  A ghost.

  Cian still carried his Colt in his free hand. Irene’s hand filled his other. He had three shots left.

  The world had collapsed down to those facts, and to one other, significant detail: a ghost.

  She was a round-faced woman, her hair covered with a kerchief, her features pleasant and middle-aged. She was as substantial as a piece of gauze—through the woman’s figure, Cian could make out the cathedral doors—and she was suffused with an icy radiance. The illumination shed no light on the rest of the nave. She was still smiling, and she floated towards them a pace, hands reaching out. She reminded Cian of his mother.

  Cian fired.

  The shot passed through the ghost without a ripple, but the floating woman paused.

  Behind him, Cian heard the heavy, sucking steps of the men in the trench coats. He squeezed Irene’s hand and said, “The altar. Keep your eyes on the back door.”

  Irene shuffled back, and Cian trailed after her, keeping his gaze on the ghost.

  The plump, translucent woman huffed, and her skirt puffed up and settled, and then she drifted to sit in one of the pews.

  “Is this better?” she asked. Her voice was rich and deep and had a foreign accent. Spanish, maybe. Or French. “I forget, sometimes. I was so happy to see you.”

  “Delighted to see you too,” Irene murmured. “Next time, bring your body.”

  The ghost threw her head back and laughed. The sound was full of life. “You,” the woman said to Irene, “you I have been waiting for. You, young man, are a surprise.”

  “If I stay much longer, you’ll realize I’m actually more of a disappointment,” Cian said. He nudged Irene, because she had stopped moving, and then another nudge.

  Irene stayed still.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Cian said. “We’re leaving.” Then, in a low voice, “Let’s go, Irene.”

  With a clap, the door behind them shut. The wet-mud steps of the men in trench coats faded. The ghost leaned forward, folding firefly hands on the back of a pew and studying Cian and Irene. Mostly, though, Irene.

  “Where will you go?” the ghost asked. “The Children surround this cathedral. Their golems already stalk the halls.”

  Cian had enough sense to feel the trap closing around his ankle. He gave Irene’s arm a shake. “We need to go now.”

  Irene pulled her hand free and stepped forward. “Who are you?”

  “Marie-Thérèse. I know you, Irene Lovell. And I know that the Children think you have something very important. And I know that they will rip every strip of skin from your pretty face before they realize you have no idea where it is.”

  “The box,” Irene said.

  Marie-Thérèse smiled like a cat with a bowl of cream.

  “Damn the box,” Cian said. A blow shook the rear door of the nave. He grabbed Irene’s arm. “She wasn’t lying about those golem things. They’re going to be in here any minute. We should run while we can.”

  “My feet hurt,” Irene said. “And I’m tired of running. You run. I’m going to—”

  “What? You’re going to fight?” Cian laughed. “You’re out of rounds and you weigh less than a wet cat. Those things will snap you like a piece of kindling.”

  Irene’s cheeks reddened. Before she could answer, though, Marie-Thérèse said, “There’s another way, of course. I am not entirely without resources. I could provide safe passage.”

  “How?”

  “How is not the right question, my dear. How much is the right question.”

  And again that look, that Mediterranean smile that made Cian feel the snap of metal teeth around his leg. Run, his brain said. Leave the girl.

  It was the smart thing to do. Irene was pretty enough, if you liked your girl thin as a sheet of ice and with all the sharp edges, but she didn’t mean a wooden penny to Cian. Without her, he’d be faster, and he could lose himself in the Patch. By morning, he could be on a train and out of this city.

  He hadn’t been smart in France. He’d come back for Corinne.

  And look how that fucking fairytale had turned out.

  For some reason, though, he was still standing there.

  “How much?” Irene asked.

  A blow split the rear door of the nave. Wooden slats toppled to the floor, and the hulking form of a man in a trench coat—a golem, Marie-Thérèse’s voice said in Cian’s head—forced its way through the opening.

  Marie-Thérèse’s smiled had widened.

  Cian put himself between the golems and Irene. Run, run, run. He could still run. And then his brain shut down, and the only thing left was the Colt and three shots.

  The first golem made its way down the center aisle of the nave. Tremors ran through the ground, snaking up Cian’s boots. His hand, though, as he drew a bead on the golem, was steady.

  Maybe he had learned something in France after all.

  Irene was screaming something, but Cian couldn’t take his eyes off the golem. He squeezed the trigger. The bullet knocked off the hat, exposing a lumpy knob of flesh where there should have been a face. Chips of something that looked like dirt flaked from the hole in the center of that monstrous face.

  No blood though. And the damn thing didn’t stop.

  Cian readied himself to fire again, but hesitated when he saw someone sprinting between the pews. It was a man, and he headed straight for the golem. The lumbering creature noticed the newcomer a moment to late. The man slipped behind the golem, stretched up on his toes, and dragged a knife across the back of the creature’s neck. Then the man gave the golem a shove, and the creature toppled over. When the golem hit the granite floor, it shattered. A chunk of mud the size of a man’s head slid free from the trench coat and came to rest against Cian’s boot.

  Cian took a step back.

  “Don’t take the deal,” the man called to Irene. And then he ran towards the back of the nave, where another of the golems had burst through the ruined door. With a laugh, he feinted at the golem, slashing at its face and pulling back.

  Not fast enough. One of the golem’s massive hands caught h
im in the chest and sent the man sliding across the cathedral floor.

  “Harry,” a woman’s voice called.

  “I’ll get him,” said another man. A Hun’s voice. Cian turned and saw a short, gray-haired man striding down the aisle. He carried a silver-handled cane and had his hat under one arm, and he passed Cian without a second glance. A dark-haired woman stood at Irene’s side, her body turned so that she could stand between Irene and Marie-Thérèse while still keeping an eye on the cathedral doors.

  Irene met Cian’s gaze and shrugged. She had her revolver out.

  Good girl.

  “They’ll be alright,” the woman said, looking towards the altar. The old man cracked his cane across the back of a golem and danced back, more spry than he looked, and the golem turned away from the man called Harry. Harry was back on his feet in a moment, and another quick slice-and-shove sent the golem to the ground in a hundred pieces. “Between them, Freddy and Harry can handle just about anything,” the woman added.

  “Just about,” Marie-Thérèse said.

  The woman gave the ghost a pointed look and patted her clutch. This time, the look on Marie-Thérèse’s face had nothing to do with cats and cream. There was murder in those winter-lightning eyes. She didn’t move against the dark-haired woman, though.

  “I’m Pearl,” the woman said to Irene, holding out one hand.

  “Irene.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  Another crash shook the nave as the last golem hit the floor. The Hun—Freddy, Pearl had called him—was brushing dirt from his suit. Harry sheathed a long-bladed hunting knife in his boot and then started poking through the rubble that remained from the golems. Freddy moved to join Pearl. He gave Marie-Thérèse an iron glance, turned to Irene, and kissed her hand with all the grace of an automaton.

  “Friedrich von der Ehmke,” he announced. “Professor of comparative anthropology, at your service.”

  “Professor?” Cian said.

  “Yes, sir. And you are?”

  “Cian Shea.”

  Cian didn’t offer to shake hands. Neither did Freddy. Up close, Cian had an instant dislike for the man. Beady eyes, his hair in a stiff part, a close-trimmed graying beard, the man looked like a pest, never mind the fact that he was a Hun too. The accent was unmistakable.