Night Falls Darkly

by LENOX, KIM

  On the third floor the deputy announced, “ ’Ere we are.”

  He pulled a ring of keys from his belt loop, and with a metallic rattle, thrust one into the dented knob. As the door creaked inward, Archer clamped a hand upon the deputy’s shoulder, and held him in place as he moved past.

  “I won’t be long.”

  “Now see ’ere—!”

  Archer shut the door—but not before coaxing an image from the man’s memory. It wasn’t hard to do, as the memory of the unnamed tenant hovered in the forefront of his mind. Again, as Archer had seen in the prostitute Kate’s memory, all he saw were eyes. Cold, blank eyes.

  Hands wrenched and turned at the knob, but the lock Archer mentally put in place defied any key or violence. Standing in darkness, he surveyed the narrow room. A cool, damp wind gusted through an open window, carrying the fetid stench of the street. All around him stood teetering stacks of newspapers, some almost as high as his shoulders. He touched the nearest ones, and found them damp through and through, as if the windows had been left open for days, through the recent rains.

  A shoddy desk occupied the space beneath the window. Its surface gleamed with moisture, as did the slightly buckled wood floor. A narrow bed spanned the adjacent wall, its wool blanket tucked neatly in place.

  Wretched sobs penetrated from the floor above, and in the room next door a man cursed with rage. There was so much misery here—thin walls, misery and madness. Never before had he experienced such an intense concentration of human deterioration.

  This was why the Ripper had disappeared so effectively last night after the murders of Liz Stride and Kate Kelly. Most assuredly the Ripper had chosen this place because he fed off such suffering, and in doing so, he had found a near-perfect hiding place from the Shadow Guards who hunted him—at least in the first hours, while Archer’s powers grew attuned to his target’s elusive trace and the emotional tangle of the city.

  Here, the Ripper’s trace would have been soundly buffered by rows upon rows, and floors upon floors of tenants, and the complex emotional turmoil they exuded.

  He went to the desk. Atop it was a pair of rusted scissors, devoid of residue. If they had been used by Jack, he had worn gloves. Archer pulled the handle of the solitary drawer, but the wood had swollen tight against its frame. He easily wrenched it open and found the space packed tight with newspaper. More precisely, newspaper headlines, each carefully cut.

  He lifted a few. They dealt with the murders of Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols and Annie Chapman. The investigations. Suspects. False arrests. He sifted deeper, and paused.

  There were headlines about natural disasters: China’s Yellow River Flood in 1887; North America’s Great White Hurricane in March. There were also headlines about other crimes, solved and unsolved, all over the world—names and locales familiar to Archer. No, he hadn’t hunted each of the souls himself, but other Shadow Guards had.

  He uttered an oath.

  He reached the bottom, only to find what seemed like a thousand bits of snipped newspaper, headlines cut down to the individual letter. They covered and almost concealed a leather-bound journal. Here again, there was dampness, as if rainwater from the open windows had trickled in to gather at the bottom.

  He brushed away the sodden fragments as best he could, and laid the journal on the desk. The pages were warped and swollen, and the green, leather cover bleeding and stained. Opening the book along the center, Archer pried apart two random pages.

  There were words, mostly illegible because of the damp, and a few cartoonish drawings. He squinted, trying to make them out.

  Separating another pair of pages, his immortal blood went cold.

  There, he saw a drawing of a man and beside it, the words “Alexander” and “shadow.” On another page was drawn what appeared to be a—

  Volcano.

  Ancient memories hurtled out of the dark vault of his mind. Unease rippled beneath his skin. He closed the journal and slipped it into his coat pocket. He shoved the drawer closed, and stared out over the dark street, trying to make sense of everything he’d seen.

  A sudden gust swept through the room. Something rustled behind him. He felt as if a jagged fingernail had been dragged down his spine. He turned.

  On the wall above the door, in large black letters formed of hundreds and hundreds of newspaper fragments, was the word:

  TANTALUS

  Elena awoke uncomfortably early Monday morning. She lay in bed for a long while, staring at her nurse’s uniform, carefully cleaned, pressed and hanging on the brass rung where she’d placed it the night before.

  Before her visit to Lord Black’s chamber.

  She rolled her face into her pillow and groaned.

  She spent the next hour on her window seat, fully dressed and staring at the pages of Gray’s Anatomy before she admitted to herself she hadn’t read a single word. One image kept replaying itself in her mind—that of Lord Black’s stricken expression as he pushed her into the hall and shut the door in her face.

  But it was childish to sit here, hiding in her room. She was a grown woman, and she had done nothing wrong in responding to the passion of a man whom she found soul-searingly attractive—even if he was her guardian. She didn’t expect anything from him. She didn’t want marriage or promises.

  Usually by now her door would have received its morning knock from Mary Alice telling her Mrs. Hazelgreaves had gone down for breakfast. This morning there had been no such knock, but then again no one had been privy to the discussion between her and his lordship the night before in which he’d insisted she avoid Whitechapel and the London Hospital for the next few days.

  Putting her book away, she left her room.

  “Miss Whitney!”

  Elena gasped, startled. Mr. Leeson hurried toward her out of the shadows. Had he been sitting in the chair at the far end of the hallway?

  “Good morning, dear,” he said graciously. “Going down for breakfast? I’ll escort you there.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Leeson.” She hadn’t gotten to know Mr. Leeson since his arrival with Lord Black. His eye patch and swirling mustache gave him a rather flamboyant appearance, but he seemed to be a very pleasant sort.

  At the central staircase, Mary Alice and Lizzy polished the banister.

  “Good morning, ladies, Can you tell me whether Mrs. Hazelgreaves has gone down to breakfast?”

  Mary Alice paused, rag in hand. “I checked on her earlier, miss, and while there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her that I can see, she didn’t want my help with dressing. She told me she still doesn’t feel up to her normal snuff.”

  Elena placed a halting hand on Mr. Leeson’s sleeve. “Mr. Leeson, I’ll be down in a moment. I’d like to visit Mrs. Hazelgreaves.”

  “Very well.” He smiled, his one eye crinkling at the corner.

  Elena went on toward Mrs. Hazelgreaves’s room, and thankfully, saw no snakes slithering along the edges of the hallway. She prayed Xerxes and his companions were each coiled up happy and tight in their little baskets inside the countess’s apartments.

  She knocked and heard a faint reply from within. Mrs. Hazelgreaves reclined on a rose-hued sofa, her slippered feet on a striped pink and white pillow.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Hazelgreaves. Mary Alice tells me you are not feeling well. I could not help but notice you did not come down for supper last night, or breakfast this morning.”

  Mrs. Hazelgreaves smiled blandly. “I’m fine, dear. I’m fine.”

  Mrs. Hazelgreaves didn’t look fine. While she wore an elegant dressing robe, its buttons had been fastened all out of order. Her always-perfect hair was decidedly askew. Gray curls sprang out in all directions. One in particular bobbed over her left eye. She tried to peer around the curl, but with each turn of her head, the coil interfered, blocking her view.

  “I do believe, however, that I shall need spectacles,” she groused. “To think, after all these years of managing without.”

  “How many tonics have you h
ad today?” Elena had never been sure what the tonics contained, but the lady’s behavior had her suspicious.

  The older woman’s shoulders drew in sharply, and she scowled defensively. “No more than my usual.”

  “Are you certain?” Elena searched the tabletops and dared even to pull up the long bed skirt, but found no flasks or bottles hidden anywhere.

  Mrs. Hazelgreaves didn’t look offended by Elena rummaging about. Instead, she softened like melted butter. “Really, I’m just tired.”

  She rolled on the chaise, away from Elena, to look out the window.

  A little bird perched on the outer sill, peering in.

  She yawned delicately and touched her fingertips against her mouth. “Could you come back tomorrow dear? I’m certain I’ll feel more like talking then.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to come down for breakfast? Perhaps just some toasted bread and cocoa?”

  Mrs. Hazelgreaves grimaced. “That sounds absolutely horrid.” She turned her face away, into the palm of her hand. “I suppose I’m just not hungry.”

  She wondered if Lord Black had anything to do with Mrs. Hazelgreaves’s sudden malaise. “Have you spoken to his lordship since yesterday?”

  “Ah, his lordship,” Mrs. Hazelgreaves sighed, rolling again to her other side to face Elena. She attempted to smile around the dastardly curl. “Delightful man. So handsome. So rich. Might you consider a match with him?”

  Elena blinked. “Pardon me, what did you say?”

  “Lord Black. He’d make someone a divine husband. Why not you?”

  Elena remembered the door slamming in her face. She could practically hear its echo in her mind. “I don’t get the feeling his lordship is looking for a wife.”

  “Nonsense,” chuckled Mrs. Hazelgreaves. “The most difficult catches are the most satisfying.”

  Elena sat with Mrs. Hazelgreaves a while longer. While her companion did not appear to be in any real mental or physical distress, she would send Harcourt a note asking him to make a call. She needed to speak with the doctor anyway to assure him of her plans to return to her work at the hospital as soon as possible.

  When the lady started to doze, Elena tucked a blanket around her and slipped out the door.

  “Miss Whitney!”

  Elena jumped. Mr. Leeson swept toward her from the end of the hall.

  He said, “I got a bit distracted myself. Come now, dear.” He took her hand and placed it on his arm. “Let’s go down for breakfast.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Buttoning the front of his frock coat, Archer hurried down the front steps of Black House. His visit had been limited to a quick meal, a bath and a change of clothes. He had not so much as taken the time to review correspondence, business or otherwise, as Leeson had assured him there had been no more letters from the Ripper.

  Ducking beneath the black canvas calash top of the Victoria, Archer seated himself on the leather bench. He had spent the past four days in the city, observing the police investigation, and evaluating the spate of letters received by various entities throughout the city, all claiming to be from the Ripper, though few proved to be authentic. When not at Scotland Yard, Archer had immersed himself into the many subterranean tunnels beneath the streets and the Thames, searching for any trace of his elusive soul. He had found exactly that. The Ripper’s trace—a faded trace that led everywhere, and nowhere.

  Everything—from the killer’s ability to move beneath Archer’s awareness, and his continual taunts to the police—pointed to the likelihood this soul was not merely Transcended, but Transcended to some extreme level never before experienced by the Shadow Guard.

  Tantalus.

  Everything he’d discovered in the Thrawl Street boarding room put a different slant upon things. Perhaps the Ripper’s advanced level of Transcension was not due to any fault on anyone’s part, including his or Mark’s. Perhaps the Ripper really was unique.

  God curse him, but his blood quickened at this new and unparalleled challenge. For one who had existed from the earliest of times, new didn’t come around often enough. As a result, the dark thrill of danger had become something he craved, but rarely ever experienced. If it weren’t for the Ripper’s drawing Elena into the game, he’d actually be able to enjoy it.

  Out of the corner of his eye, someone raced down the stairs: Elena, fully dressed with a hat and bag for an outing. His stomach muscles tightened. He had not seen her since that night in his apartments, and with only a glance, he was reminded of everything that made her irresistible to him.

  “Wait,” she shouted to the footman, who had approached to close the door.

  She scampered up, a brief ping ringing out with each strike of her shoes against the metal stairs. She swept her skirts inside, gracefully tucking them about her legs, and seated herself beside him.

  Leeson raced out of the manse, appearing traumatized. Being that Archer had chosen to take the Victoria today, there was no space left for another passenger.

  “What are you doing?” he asked coolly.

  “I’m going with you.” Her black bonnet, richly trimmed with pleats upon pleats of shining ribbon, artfully concealed everything about her face except her unsmiling lips.

  “You don’t even know where I’m going.”

  Spying Elena in the carriage, Leeson’s arms fell to his sides. He appeared infinitely relieved.

  “I’m afraid I forced it out of your man, Leeson, there. The British Museum. Wonderful! I’ve never been.” Her words, spoken in her rich, low voice, carried a mildly sardonic edge.

  Her beautiful orange-blossom scent filled the air around him, making him want to press his lips against the small, bare space of skin above her high collar. Her skirts were pressed tight against the length of his leg, and he could not help but imagine everything beneath. He really needed to get her out of the carriage, and out of his reach.

  He managed to hold his distancing tone. “I’m going to the museum on business, not for pleasure.”

  She crisscrossed her hands over her bag. “I don’t expect you to escort me through the exhibits. You may go your way, and I’ll go mine. I’m simply grateful for the ride.”

  The carriage sagged slightly as the driver took to his perch.

  “And grateful,” she muttered, “to get away from my dear shadow, Mr. Leeson, if only for a few hours. Is it my imagination, or has he been appointed my new companion until Mrs. Hazelgreaves returns to good health?”

  Rather than provide an answer, Archer raised his gloved hand and waved Leeson off.

  “How is our dear Mrs. Hazelgreaves?”

  “Dr. Harcourt visited on Wednesday and diagnosed her with melancholy.”

  “Melancholy?” he repeated doubtfully.

  “She’s just . . . melancholy. He believes she’ll come out of it in a few days’ time. We’ve got a nurse to sit with her. If she doesn’t improve, he intends to telegraph her son.”

  With a tap of the driver’s long cane-whip, the two black horses in silver harnesses jerked the Victoria into motion.

  They sat in rigid silence until the vehicle slowed in the congested, midmorning traffic. He sensed her agitation growing with each passing moment. She shifted in her seat, and one of her gloved hands fidgeted with the lacquered bamboo handle of her bag.

  “I won’t have you avoiding me,” she announced suddenly.

  “Why would I be avoiding you?” He had known they must have this talk, and he supposed he was glad to get it underway.

  “You know why.”

  She spoke quietly, even though the clatter and tumult of vehicles around them ensured not even the driver would overhear a syllable of their conversation. Still, she refused to lift her chin. He grew weary of speaking to her bonnet.

  “You are referring, I believe, to all that kissing between us the other night in my chamber.”

  Ah, that did get him a full, head-on view of her face.

  “Yes,” she said, sounding slightly strangled.

  Her cheeks burned as
red as roses, and despite the four days exile from her, he wanted nothing more than to seize her in his arms and resume where they had left off. Here, on the carriage bench, in the midst of London traffic.

  “For your information, I haven’t been avoiding you. My interests have required the entirety of my attention in the city. It was more convenient for me to lodge there.”

  “Oh, yes?” Again, the sardonic edge. “For four days? Did you sleep on your banker’s couch?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  He hadn’t slept at all. Fortunately, he needed very little rest in comparison to mortals. In his mind, beds were more for sex than for sleeping.

  A silent half hour later, their carriage clattered off Great Russell Street, drawing in front of the Grecian-columned façade of the museum. After assisting Elena down from the carriage, Archer pulled her reluctant hand inside the V of his elbow.

  “You say you’ve never visited the museum?” They walked beneath the colonnade.

  “The grounds were too extensive for Mrs. Hazelgreaves to walk, so we always went to smaller exhibits.”

  They entered through the grand doors. Off to the side was a large desk serviced by library employees.

  “What would you like to see first?”

  “Really, your lordship.” She pulled free of him, her expression bland. “I shall do very well on my own. I’ve my watch here, in my bag. Just tell me when, and I’ll meet you here.”

  Elena was as transparent as a pane of glass. He had hurt her, kissing her, then forcing her from his room. He couldn’t do anything to repair that hurt. To do so would mean drawing her closer, only to hurt her all over again. Still, he could be her guardian and do the proper things a guardian would do. He was disciplined enough for that. Wasn’t he?

  “Would you like to see the Reading Room?” he asked.

  Her chin lifted an inch higher. “I have heard much about it.”

  “Come along, then.”

  “Don’t we need a ticket?” She gestured toward the desk, specifically at the short queue of people beneath a sign designated READING ROOM. She hurried over and purchased a copy of the guide. Returning, she thumbed through the opening pages. “I remember reading somewhere that one must first apply to the principal librarian.”