A Scandal in Battersea

by Mercedes Lackey

  “I daresay,” she replied, her words one step above freezing, and moved off briskly. She clearly wanted nothing to do with him, and there was no sign that the entity had made her more susceptible to him.

  So much for the entity helping, he thought, with irritation. It had better do a more competent job of helping me if it expects to get the sort of “witnesses” it wants.

  But he remained in front of the painting of grass, as if he had not just been rebuffed. It was in a good, central spot, about halfway through the Gallery. This was where people who were trailing behind their groups tended to get out of sight of them. And where people who wished others to think them “artistic” or “romantic” usually paused to gaze critically, or heave great sighs of admiration. Someone else would be along shortly. He had only to be patient.

  And sure enough, after a few single males and two couples, along came a gaggle of girls—beautifully dressed, and obviously here not to view, but to be viewed. And they were trailed at a few steps distance by a wallflower, who was exactly the sort of thing he was looking for. Someone’s cousin, perhaps; painfully plain to the point of being ugly, with a sallow, muddy complexion, untidy hair, with a hat pinned on anyhow. Her dress must have been borrowed; it hung on her skeletal frame, so poorly fitted she was managing to make a very expensive gown look dowdy. She was acutely embarrassed; perhaps by some of the nudes, perhaps by what the other girls were saying, perhaps by the fact that she was here at all, alternately blushing and going pale.

  But, to his acute annoyance, as soon as they spotted him, he was surrounded by the butterflies, who begged to know his opinion of the painting of the Downs, and were the Downs like that, and did he know the artist? He realized at that moment he had made himself rather too good a target for girls like that, who were lagging behind their more fortunate sisters in the marriage market. Handsome, young, and without a sign of a wife or a fiancée, well dressed, he was exactly what they were here to find . . . it remained only for them to find out if he was titled or not, approximately how much money he had, and where it came from.

  He was momentarily annoyed . . . but then decided to make the best of things, and allowed himself to be carried off with them as they continued to pretend to tour the Gallery. He had the feeling that if he let it slip, ever so slowly, that he was not in possession of a title, and his fortunes were modest, and, in fact, were due to being in trade. . . .

  And within ten pictures, he managed to do just that, finishing with, “. . . and I rather fancy if you ever ventured into the kitchen, you’d see my bottles . . .” going on to describe how the lowly pressed-glass bottles and jars were made. He had never had occasion to be grateful for the many forced tours of the glass-works his father had made him take—but he was now. By the time he was finished, all the others had left him in front of a still life of slightly dyspeptic-looking vegetables crowned with a dead rabbit, with only the plain one (who he now knew was named Cynthia) still listening to him. He smiled down into her eyes, making it rather clear that he was perfectly happy with her company.

  “I never knew all that, Christian,” she said (he’d used a false name, of course). “I always thought bottles were blown by people.” When she gazed up at him like that, she resembled a sad-faced hound with a pronounced overbite. Her teeth were appalling, and her chin a mere suggestion.

  “Those that are for decorative use, like perfume bottles are,” he told her. “And of course, those that are artworks in and of themselves are hand-blown by master craftsmen. But good, common, practical bottles, meant to last and be used, are pressed glass, mechanically blown into molds. I’m very proud that we make things people can depend on. People so rarely value virtues like dependability, don’t you think, Miss Cynthia?”

  She flushed, and gazed up into his eyes, mouth open a little. “Oh yes,” she agreed fervently. “They so seldom . . . do. . . .”

  And at that moment, he had the sensation of icy, cold hands reaching through him, and taking the girl’s head between them. Her eyes glazed over, her mouth fell completely open, and it looked as if she was drunk or drugged.

  “Why don’t you come along with me, my dear,” he said, taking her hand and tucking it into the crook of his arm. “Drop your head and look at the ground, so you don’t trip.” She didn’t resist and obeyed him. With her head down, and her face hidden by the brim of her hat, she couldn’t be recognized. And she didn’t resist when he drew her along with him at a brisk walk, retracing his footsteps so they wouldn’t run into that herd of inconvenient girls, heading for the entrance where Alf waited with the coach. The group she had been with probably would not miss her until they exited the Gallery, and maybe not even then.

  As soon as they stepped outside the doors, Alf saw them coming and moved the coach along the line of waiting vehicles to meet them. Alexandre moved with deliberation and care, neither too fast nor too slowly, so that it looked as if he was aiding an elderly woman rather than a younger one. Under the guise of giving simple, courteous help, he practically lifted the girl into the coach. He followed her quickly and pulled the curtains down over the windows as Alf clucked to the horse and moved off.

  The girl hadn’t seated herself; evidently the entity couldn’t control her that well. Instead, she was in a heap on the floor, which was just fine with Alexandre. As she lay there, unmoving, he bound her wrists and ankles, gagged her, and applied chloroform as Alf had instructed him, just in case. Then he rapped on the ceiling of the coach to let Alf know everything had proceeded according to plan.

  Then he raised the curtains. The girl was out of sight, and they planned to amble along, doing nothing to excite any attention, until dusk, when they would head again to West Ham. Alf was convinced that it was a superior hunting spot, and Alexandre was inclined to agree with him.

  He waited to see if the girl was going to awaken, and if she did, if the entity was still going to be in control. It was safe enough to allow her to regain consciousness now that she was gagged and restrained; even if she had been a trained fighter, the way he had her trussed up, she’d never be able to inflict the slightest amount of damage on him nor free so much as a single finger. And he was, he flattered himself, rather an expert at gagging someone so that nothing they uttered would be heard outside the confines of the coach. He’d taught Alf the right way to go about it, and neither of the first two girls they’d taken had been able to do more than utter a muffled squeak.

  He did have quite a bit of practice in that sort of thing—although usually it was so that sound didn’t penetrate room walls, not coach walls.

  Eventually her eyes fluttered open. And he was enormously gratified to see, first, sense, then terror in them.

  She wiggled uselessly, and vague, smothered sounds emerged from her, rather than the screams she undoubtedly wanted to produce. He leaned over in the dim gloom of the coach and put a finger to his lips.

  “Hush,” he said, as her eyes filled with tears and she began to cry. “You won’t be alone for long. You’re about to have a companion. And then I’m going to introduce you to an experience unlike anything you have ever imagined in all your life.”

  She shrank away from him, and he laughed at her. You pathetic bint. Now I can have my revenge on you for being forced to stare at your repulsive face and pretend that I liked you. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not the least interested in your pitiful virginity. An ugly little stick like you—I wouldn’t want you if you were served to me on a golden platter and came with a knighthood and a manor.”

  Oh that did it, now she was terrified and humiliated, and began to weep. Excellent. In four sentences, he had utterly broken her. He leaned back in his seat and laughed quietly. Now this . . . if only he could have his enemies at his feet like this. People who had humiliated him, who had snubbed him, who had stood in his way. This was real power . . . the power to break the spirit, the power to break the heart.

  Well, girls like this would do, for now. Bu
t . . . it was possible, given the reach the entity had now, that he could ask for revenge by way of reward.

  He and Alf shared a sort of picnic while they waited for the sun to go down, parking the coach in a deserted yard by the river and giving the horse a bag of feed to keep it quiet. The girl continued to sob brokenly. It was delicious—both the meal and the girl they were resting their feet on. In fact, this was probably one of the most entertaining meals he had ever eaten.

  Then, once the sun was below the horizon, they went on the hunt again, heading for West Ham. Not the same street—that would be too risky. He left the selection of the street and the selection of the girl up to Alf. He had pulled the curtains down so nothing could be seen of the interior of the coach, and had applied chloroform to Cynthia again, so she wouldn’t be making any noises to disturb or alert their quarry.

  He heard the sound of a girl’s voice in the distance but growing nearer, calling a name. “Jackie! Jackie! Oh where are you?” He felt the coach slow and stop; heard Alf tap on the left-hand door with his whip. He opened that door, made sure he had the chloroform sponge in his right hand, and slipped around the back of the coach, crouching in wait.

  “’Ere, miss? Yew lookin’ fer a liddle lad?” Alf called.

  “Oh aye!” he heard—the girl sounded much more irritated than worried. “Jackie run off with his friends, and Mum wants him back right now! Did you see him?”

  “Well Oi moighta,” Alf replied. “I seen some lads down by riverbank. C’n yew come over ’ere an’ tell me wut ’e looks loik?”

  As the girl prattled details of her brother’s clothing and appearance, Alexandre waited for the signal. And finally, it came.

  “Well blimey,” Alf heaved a huge sigh. “Hain’t seed ’im.”

  Alexandre leapt from out of cover. The girl was exactly where she should have been, standing right below Alf where he sat on the coach box. His sudden movement, or perhaps the sound of him coming around the back of the coach, even though it was getting quite dark, caught her attention. She turned quickly, spotted him, and opened her mouth to scream.

  That was when he clapped the sponge over her nose and mouth, and the involuntary intake of a huge breath, meant to power a shriek, instead sucked the sleep-inducing fumes deep into her lungs. She struggled, but only a little, and went limp. In moments she was in the coach too, and he with her. He shut the doors of the coach carefully, so as not to arouse any interest with a noise of slamming, and rapped on the roof. As Alf pulled away, he gagged and trussed her up as well, so adept at this that he could easily do it in full darkness.

  And then, he leaned back into his seat, breathless, almost giddy with relief and glee. They’d done it! They’d done it again!

  It was full dark when they got back home, and it was child’s play to carry the two girls into the flat and down into the basement without anyone seeing. At this time of night, everyone in this neighborhood was busy with supper. Alexandre suspected you would have to set a cannon off in the street to get their attention. This time he and Alf did not linger; since the entity didn’t need their help, they just put the girls down beside the pool of darkness and got back up the stairs as quickly as they could. He didn’t want to see the entity take its prey a second time, and, he suspected, neither did Alf.

  Alf hurried out, to take the coach back to the stable, while he waited in the kitchen for the entity to summon him.

  Finally, it did.

  Come and take the witness, it ordered. Then nothing more. Even that short a contact made his skin crawl. He hurried back down the stairs to find what was left of Cynthia lying facedown on the stones. Once again, he ordered the empty husk up the stairs, out the door, and out into the street. Once again, he told it to keep walking until someone stopped it.

  And once again, the thing walked mechanically off. He hurried back to his own door, after a quick glance around to make sure no one was snooping—but no one was. He watched the girl—or whatever it was, now—until it was long out of sight.

  As he closed the door and waited for Alf, he wondered just how long the girl would walk this time. And was the entity going to hold him to blame if something happened to her—if she got run over by a cab or a cart, or someone with fewer scruples than he snatched her off the street to have his way with her?

  No one will, he heard in his mind, and shuddered at the touch, at the cold of those words. She is under my protection.

  He had no hope, of course, that this would be the last—

  I need more, came the answer before the thought was complete. Many more. More to strengthen. More to witness. You have seven days.

  Seven days.

  11

  NAN woke straight up from a sound sleep immediately when Neville quorked a quiet alarm call above her head.

  As she had expected, it had taken several days for the last of Memsa’b’s “medicine” to purge itself from Amelia’s system. Amelia had looked . . . on edge tonight at dinner, as if she sensed there was something looming over her, and Nan had expected that tonight would be the night she fell into a vision. As a consequence, she had kept a single lamp burning low, just in case.

  She was up out of bed and across the room to Amelia’s bedside in moments, Neville fluttering in the soft half-dark to land on Amelia’s headboard. Amelia lay in her bed, rigid, every muscle tense. Nan sat on the edge of the bed, reached out to cup Amelia’s face in her hands, and she didn’t even have to close her eyes; the moment she made mental contact with Amelia’s sleeping mind, she found herself pulled immediately into Amelia’s vision.

  Literally pulled into the vision. Instead of being a mere observer, she found herself standing beside a rigid, statue-like Amelia in a horrific nightmare-scape of a ruined London, and she reached out and took Amelia’s right hand without saying a word.

  That broke the spell holding Amelia paralyzed; she jerked her head around to face Nan, eyes wide with shocked surprise. Her terrified expression eased, just a little, as Nan smiled reassuringly at her. Her hand clutched Nan’s convulsively.

  I’m here. And Neville is anchoring us. If anything threatens us, he can pull us out of this, she said into Amelia’s mind. You’re not alone.

  Amelia did not answer in words, but her hand squeezed Nan’s tightly as they both turned their attention to the scene in front of them.

  The sky swirled with ever-moving clouds, low and ominous. Lightning lit them from within, but there was no thunder. If Nan were to make a guess about the time of day, she would have said “twilight,” but there were no clues as to the actual time. It was not completely dark; there was a dim, apparently sourceless light. Shreds of mist moved among the ruined buildings around them, but how those wisps moved had little or nothing to do with the wind.

  Nan could not tell what part of London they were in; once you got into the “newer” areas, places that had sprung up or gotten built up over the last half century, they all tended to look alike—streets of terraced houses, all built as a single block-long building, streets of houses set narrowly side-by-side, streets of blocks of flats, streets of shops with living quarters above them. She knew it was London because . . . she knew it was London. There was no doubt in her mind that it was anyplace else; the feeling was as certain in her as it was that the earth was round. This happened to be a street of terraced houses; a street that presented a single, block-long face, with identical doors all along it—but what appeared to be a single building was, in fact, broken up into separate homes, each of those doors leading into one of those homes. They were set very near the street, with only a narrow strip of lawn or garden between them and the thoroughfare.

  But there were gaps in the row of terraced houses in front of them, like missing teeth. The rest of the houses were in various stages of decrepitude and overgrown with some evil cousin of ivy. The ivy swayed and rustled—again, like the mist, in a way that seemed to have nothing to do with the wind moaning through th
e ruins.

  She felt the urge to walk up the street; in the middle, avoiding that ivy. She looked at Amelia and she could see Amelia felt the urge to move too. The girl was torn between wanting to flee and feeling impelled to move forward.

  Remember, nothing can hurt us here. Neville can pull us out. And I . . . with an effort, she summoned the Celtic Warrior she had once been centuries ago, her bronze sword in her right hand, Amelia’s hand still in her left. I am not exactly unarmed.

  Amelia’s eyes widened with startlement. But the sight of Nan in her bronze corselet, made from the armor of Roman soldiers she’d killed back then, seemed to put more heart in her. Together they walked down the center of the street, Nan staying wary, ready to fend off anything that threatened them.

  But there was nothing this time, no tentacles reaching out of the shadows, no hint of other humans. Nothing but the moaning of a cold, bitter wind and the swaying of the barren trees and that evil ivy.

  They came to the end of the row of terraced houses and entered into a section of houses and shops that were set a little apart from each other, with bits of yard in front and more walled backyards behind. These were in no better repair than the ones they had left behind them.

  But one, at least, was in good repair. And it showed something like signs of life, although there was nothing about it that made Nan want to go knock on the door.

  The house itself was faintly luminescent, a sickly blue ghostlight. There was a dim red light coming from the windows, and as they watched, a terrified girl burst out of the door, ran into the street and looked frantically up and down it before breaking into a run in their direction. From the little Nan could see of her, she looked to be fifteen or sixteen years old, dressed in a coat and woolen hat and decent frock of some dark color. She looked exhausted as well as terrified, and she stumbled as she ran.

  But she hadn’t gotten more than a few feet before the street opened up beneath her, and with a shriek, she dropped into darkness. And as soon as she was gone, the gaping hole closed.