He licked the last of the juices off his fingers and stood up. The night was alive with scents, each one of them a delicious possibility. With the angel it wasn’t that the meat was innocent, far from it, the angels had committed atrocities far beyond the conception of even the most fractured human mind. No it was the potential for violence that burned in their blood, the last lingering vestiges of His wrath. The homunculus had felt it once, so long ago, when like the others of the Bright One’s army it was cast out. And it hungered for it again, like the most addictive of opiates. It wanted to taste that infinite anger. It was far more potent than even the worst evil because in the name of good it was capable of anything.
But amid all of the aromas it sensed a dead zone—life without scent. That could only be inhuman and anything inhuman had to be considered a threat.
And then, of course, there was the girl.
He could still smell her, like forbidden fruit, so close but out of reach. For now. It could still feel the innate electricity of The Art that surged through her. She was strong but she didn’t know it. Coupled with the utter innocence of her flesh it was a heady brew. One to match the angels.
He had found her down at the river among the dead men. What fascinated him most was that she could see them. While the old foghorns blew the ghost city burned. Well, it wasn’t so much a ghost as it was a residual or oblique seam where then butted up against now. The mortal understanding of time was skewed by the short sightedness of their even shorter lives. Time was a constant. An always. It wasn’t measured by the ticking hands of Big Ben any more than it was measured by the passage of the sun and the moon. Time simply was. Yesterday, tomorrow, today, they were all now, here, in this place, echoes that touched each other obliquely. So, in certain places, under certain conditions, it was possible to slip through the cracks. That is what these ghosts were, he knew. There fear was as fresh now as the day the great city first burned because for them it was still the day the great city burned. They ran toward the river desperate for the safety crossing it offered. Their physicality could push through the oblique barriers, causing them to appear, but their voices lacked the strength to pierce the veil, adding the eerie effect of silence to their terrified faces and burning bodies.
She stood amid them, twisting and turning, arms thrown out wide trying to catch a hold of any one of them, to help, but there was nothing she could do. One by one they threw themselves from the embankment into the Thames. And for a moment they seemed to walk on the water, flames writhing around them, silent screams unheard in the here and now. The daemon knew this was because the course of the river had moved over the two centuries since the Great Fire. A few more frantic steps and they would be in the black water but for now they simply burned where they stood, or threw themselves onto the ground only for it to swallow them.
That she could see them meant she was special. The daemon knew that. And that was just one more reason why Nathaniel Seth wanted to possess her. But before it could, she ran, and those damned lions found her and he couldn’t get close.
So they bought her a few hours more, it thought, a slow smile of cunning spreading across its stolen face. It understood the oblique nature of time. It knew that somewhere in the city there was a weakness in the veil that would allow it to find her yesterday, before the lions could save her.
It was only a matter of time.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Brannigan Locke opened the door.
It was the simplest of actions, and by rights ought to have been utterly unremarkable. It was a door. It opened. It closed. It was an everyday occurrence, but this time opening the door changed his life forever.
The girl lay curled up on her side. She wasn’t sleeping. He had heard her screams after McCreedy’s wolf bounded past her. She had run back to her room and now she feigned sleep. He watched her, enjoying the way her lips twitched as she pretended to dream. Then he realised she was crying.
He stood there for a moment, not wanting to intrude and feeling like a sneak-thief. She put him out of his misery, rolling over onto her side and looking up at him through crying eyes.
Locke held up his hands, palms out, to show that he meant no harm. ”I don’t usually have this effect on women,” he said with a self-deprecating chuckle. ”It’s all right. It’s okay. You are safe. We found you in the street, across the road actually. We thought you would be more comfortable here than slumped in the doorway.” He smiled again to reinforce the fact that he meant her no harm.
It worked well enough to stop the tears. She sat upright, covering herself even though she was still fully clothed. It was a naturally defensive gesture. It was funny who people’s ’bodies spoke a language all of their own sometimes. He could see she was frightened and, for want of a better word, lost. Her vulnerability was compelling. Locke’s immediate and instinctive reaction was that he wanted—no, needed—to protect this woman. It was more than just duty; it was destiny, as though Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos had conspired to bring her to his door.
”Where am I?” She said, and before he could begin to answer, ”Who are you?” and with that the questions began to tumble out of her in a rush. ”Are they still there? Are they outside? Can you feel it? Can you feel the fire? What is this place?”
”One at a time,” Brannigan Locke said, trying to slow her down, but the questions kept on coming as though she couldn’t help herself.
”Is this place safe? Can they reach us here?”
”Yes,” he said, meaning it was safe. ”Of all the places in London, this one is safe, believe me. Now, it is my turn for a question, please. Who are you?”
She looked at him then, and he understood why she seemed lost. The simplicity of the question stumped her. ”I … I … don’t know.”
”Well then I think that is the first thing we should try and find out, don’t you?”
She nodded.
He had no idea how it must feel to be a stranger to yourself.
”Now, to answer a few of your other questions, my name is Brannigan Locke, and you are inside the chambers of the Greyfriar’s Gentleman’s Club in Grays Inn Road. If by ’they’ you mean the lions, then yes, they are still outside, standing guard at the door. If you mean some other ’they’ I am afraid I don’t know. But you are here now and you are safe. There is no fire.”
She looked at him gratefully. ”I remember something,” she said.
He nodded encouragingly.
”A voice … I remember a voice. It said something … It said,” she went blank for a moment, trying to recall the words. Then she remembered and her face filled with fear. ”’Burn with me.’ It said ’Burn with me.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
Burn with me.
The same message the dying angel had delivered to Mason.
It meant something.
He reached out and held her hand. It was a curiously paternal gesture. Brannigan Locke looked beyond the girl with no name to the window, and through the window to the sky beyond. It was a night like no other, of that he was damned sure. ”Are you all right to stand?”
She nodded, but didn’t look all that confident in her self-diagnosis. ”Very well, then I think we should take you to see one of my friends. He might be able to help unlock whatever it is that’s keeping your name hidden from you. Shall we?” He rose, and like a lady accepting a dance, she moved gracefully to follow. Together they stepped out onto the landing. She looked once, and just the once, toward the room where Haddon McCreedy had undergone his transformation, then seemed to shake it off, as though it were nothing more than another aspect of the bad dream she was living through.
They met Mason coming down the stairs.
”We need to see Dor for a few minutes,” he said. His tone brooked no argument. The chamberlain merely nodded and stepped aside.
”I put him in the old Cranleigh suite. Try not to excite him. He is very weak, and not a little frightened, though he would never admit it.”
”We’ll be in and out, Mason. You
have my word.”
”Very good, sir.”
The Cranleigh suite was actually the old master bedroom, dominated by a mahogany four-poster bed draped with thick curtains. The walls, save for one, were bare. The other was decorated by a huge tapestry that appeared to depict the Tower, the incomplete frame of Tower Bridge and the river from the old city wall along as far as Temple. The tapestry was unlike anything she had seen, in that the longer she looked at it the more impossible it was to focus on the minutia it depicted. She realised that, in fact, the boats on the river were moving, as were the people that swarmed all over it. In fact, every aspect of life caught within the weave was every bit as alive as the streets they depicted. It had been Lester Cranleigh’s greatest single achievement, his crowning glory, and given his gifts, that was no mean feat. It had been Lester who had found Stark and nurtured him in The Art. It had been Lester who had found most of them, truth be told, Locke realised. He had found them and brought them together offering them shelter in his house on Old Greys Road. They could just as easily have been called the Cranleigh Irregulars or the Cranleigh Guardians or any such derivation of the old man’s name, but as it was he chose to name them after the house. They didn’t need to be reminded constantly of his name to remember him, he was there in every one of them.
”Is that … ?” she asked, then turned, startled as Dorian Carruthers answered her from the bed.
”London,” he said, ”Yes, well, almost, and just in case you had been about to ask a different question, perhaps, is that really happening? The answer would still be yes, and probably still almost as well, but the bit about London would be somewhat redundant. I could try to explain, if you like … ?” he let the offer hang. She didn’t pick up on it but that didn’t stop him from expounding on the warp and weft of the rather peculiar tapestry. ”See, if you look closely enough you’ll notice it isn’t quite London, well not the London you know. It’s been a long while since I studied it properly, but I am fairly sure ’there are a few buildings there that aren’t, and never were, if you catch my drift?”
She didn’t.
Locke could tell and so could Dorian.
”There are streets, like Haspex Alley, that aren’t on any map I’ve ever seen, and aren’t actually walkable as far as I’ve been able to tell, but of course Fabian was the expert on the London That Never Was, I just try and make sense of the odd things I come across. Like the Rotters and the Tinkers. You’ll see them in the tapestry if you look closely enough. See, London That Never Was, well that’s misleading, because it is, it just isn’t our London, and the Rotters and Tinkers move between.”
”Like ghosts?” she said.
That pleased the blind man. He nodded encouragingly, ”Just like ghosts, my dear,” he said. ”They move between there and here just as easy as we walk down Charing Cross or stroll over to Regents Park. They’ve got their feet in both worlds, but are at home in neither. The Tinkers, well they feed off the rubbish of humanity like carrion crows. You’ll have seen them with their barrows walking through the streets shouting for rag and bone. It might well be our rubbish but they suck the marrow out of it as though it were the stuff of life itself.”
”I’ve seen them,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. A few hours ago she would have denied everything, but since the river, the lions, and waking up to see a werewolf, nothing seemed impossible in this life of hers. Why not creatures from another London, a hidden city within the city that fed on the detritus of mankind? What was outrageous about that, all things considered?
”Of course you have, they walk though our London as bold as brass, and why not? They make the best of it. The Rotters, they’re a different breed though. They’re strangers wherever they are, and they make the worst of it. They’re in the shadows, they make things go wrong. They’re meddlers. They’re hunters. And sometimes they’re killers. They’re the worst of all of us. They don’t just suck the marrow out of our cast-offs, they suck the marrow out of our bones, that’s how they survive.”
”And you can see them? In the map?”
Dorian Carruthers nodded. His smile was meant to be reassuring. It was anything but. If these things existed in the living tapestry, then surely that meant they existed out there, where she called home? And there was no magic wall hanging that would keep her safe. All of these things and more flashed through her mind as she wrestled with the realities of this new world she didn’t quite fathom.
”You sound in good spirits, Dor,” Locke said, steering the woman toward the side of the bed.
”Well, I’m alive,” he said, ”which given the realm of possibilities we were just dabbling in, I would say is a cause for celebration, wouldn’t you?” He chuckled at that.
”Most certainly.”
”So, tell me, Bran, who is this divine lady you have brought into my bedroom? I know the map moves for her, which is interesting in and of itself, but all the little details in the world are useless without a name?” Dorian Carruthers offered a charming smile, but its effect was considerably lessened by the fact that he was looking about five feet wide of where she stood.
”We were rather hoping you could help us with that, old boy,” Locke said. ”Seems she has no recollection, and given the manner of her arrival, and—ahh—certain events that have transpired, I was rather hoping you might feel up to working a little of your magic?”
”Magic?” the girl said, before Dorian could answer.
He raised a placating hand, ”Nothing quite so sinister, little sister, I assure you.” He flashed that smile again, this time right on target.
”I know you,” she said then.
”Well, isn’t that something,” Dorian said.
”You’re the magician, ain’t you?”
”Magician is such a crass word, but yes, Dorian Carruthers, prestidigitator and illusionist extraordinaire fresh from treading the boards of Theatreland and at your service, madam.”
”Well blow me down with a tail feather, if’n you’ll excuse me, but ain’t that just a trip? The Dorian Carruthers. My old mum’ll never believe me.”
”It’s my pleasure, little sister, believe me, and if I can help you remember a little more than my devilish smile, then all’s the better. Now, I want you to trust me, can you do that?”
”Yes,” she said, without a moment’s hesitation. It was funny how people were always willing to trust him once they knew he was a minor celebrity. It was as though his status as one of the city’s more renowned acts conferred an instant trustworthiness onto his shoulders. And of course, he wasn’t averse to milking it, if it led to the right sort of female company every once in a while.
”Excellent,” he struggled to sit up properly in the bed. Locke moved around behind him and fluffed the pillows up. Dorian settled back into them. ”Bran? My watch, please? There’s a good man.”
The gold pocket watch, an exquisite Swiss-made timepiece worth more than a year’s wages for downstairs staff, was still on its chain and tucked away in the breast pocket of Dorian’s jacket, draped over the back of the bedside chair. Locke extricated it, chain and all, and put it into his friend’s hands. Dorian closed his fingers around the fob and simply held it for a full minute as though drawing strength from the familiar cold touch of the metal and the regular tick-tick-tick of the time it contained.
Moving with grace that defied his new blindness, Dorian Carruthers let the watch slip through his fingers, his thumb releasing the catch that secured the fob, and caught it on its chain. He lifted it easily in front of his face, letting it spin lazily on the chain, and then bade her to look at it, concentrate, because everything she wanted to know was locked up inside it. ”The truth will set you free,” he said, his voice like honey.
She leaned forward, looking intently at the watch’s face as it twisted ever so slightly on its chain.
”Good,” Dorian said. ”Now I want you to listen to my voice. Can you do that? I want you to hear everything I have to say. Let my words wash over you. I want you to for
get everything else around you. I want you to forget the room. Forget this bed. Forget me. I want you to forget everything and focus on my words. Only on my words. Can you do that? Good. Now I am going to count slowly backwards from ten, and when I reach nought you will be in a state of complete relaxation. You’re safe. There’s nothing to fear here, so just relax. Relax. When I clap my hands you’ll wake up and you’ll remember everything we talked about. It will be as though a great lock has been opened and with it a great door and all of the things you can’t remember will be there waiting for you behind that door. All you need to do is relax. Ten. Nine. You’re starting to feel sleepy. Eight. Your eyes are getting heavy. You want to close them. You want to sleep. Seven. Six. You can feel yourself starting to slip away. You want to sleep. Five. Listen to my voice. You are feeling sleepy. All you want to do is sleep. Four. Surrender to it. Three, sleep. Two. Sleep. And one. You are asleep.”
Her head lolled forward on her shoulders, a bang of hair falling across her eyes. Her breathing was shallow and fast, not at all the deep slow regular breathing of a dreamer.
”What is your name? Can you tell me that?” Dorian asked, the rhythm of his voice still very much the same singsong that had lulled her under into the hypnotic trance.
”Emily,” she said. ”Emily Sheridan.”
”Very good, Emily. Very good. Tell me about yourself. Tell me where you are from. Tell me what brought you to my house. Tell me everything you think I should know. Can you do that for me?”
So she told him about the ghosts on the river, about the lions waking and the feeling of being followed. She told him about the birds, about following them and finding the angel having her wings torn off brutally by a man who didn’t fit within his own skin. She told him all of it. Everything that shock and fear had locked up inside her. And she told him more. She told him about whom she worked for, and what had brought her out into the city on this ungodly night.
London Macabre Page 10