Sanguine (Improbable Truths #1)

by J. R. Burnett

  "Physics hold a special interest for me."

  "Then you should not be surprised at my methods. Magic is nothing but physics, defined and bound by rules that we do not completely comprehend. Are you familiar with Nikola Tesla's work?"

  I stared at him, not understanding the sudden change in direction that the conversation had taken.

  "No matter. His brilliance is not fully recognized by any of his contemporaries, but it is he that I followed across the ocean to your shores. His theories border on madness at times. Yet…I can see great genius in them. I think that he may understand the workings of this world, and those beyond it, more than even he knows." Holmes's voice had taken on a soft, dreamlike quality that I had once seen during a demonstration on mesmeric phenomena. After being induced into a trance the subject had waxed poetic about the universe in a similar fashion. I had deemed it a farce at the time, mere trickery, but perhaps....

  "The bird?" I asked, hoping to bring Holmes's attention back to the issue at hand and avoid any further reflection of my own preconceived notions of the world.

  "Of course. The bird."

  Holmes turned towards the table and the sparrow trapped there. "It's a binding spell. One of the simplest and most rudimentary enchantments that exists. No true talent or understanding of magical forces are required to produce the effect, only a writing implement and the correct sequence of marks. Even you could manage the same if you took the time to learn the required inscription. Overall, as a method of entrapment, it is crude and not all that effective. Anyone with even a semblance of training in arcane studies could break the spell. That leads me to believe that the person we seek is not a talented wielder of magic and that the target was even less so."

  "The rest of the ritual is no less simplistic, but far more dangerous," Holmes said, picking up a small silver dagger from the table. The blade had been forged into a wicked curve and an intricate etching covered the hilt. "A payment in blood. One which, while taxing to the caster in its own way, requires no special skill set other than the willingness to withstand some minor discomfort." The blade sunk easily into the Holmes's flesh and bright blood welled up on the palm of his hand.

  A slight lightheadedness overtook me then. As a doctor, the sight of blood is all too often a daily occurrence and I do not usually recoil from the sight. Yet there was something about Holmes's nonchalance at his self-mutilation that disturbed my very being and caused such a visceral reaction as I might not have had otherwise.

  Holmes dipped the forefinger of his uninjured hand into the pool of blood, using it to draw a complex symbol upon the table. The mark was similar to the one I had seen on the wall at the crime scene, but not an exact replica, though I could not quite articulate the differences between the two. Apparently satisfied, Holmes took a clean white cloth and wrapped it around his wound. "Blood is too closely bound with one's own energy to treat callously. It doesn't do to give more of oneself than absolutely necessary."

  Holmes picked up the rune from the crime scene and handed it to me. "Now for the final touches…. In this case, the engraved runes already hold the energy required to set the ritual in motion."

  Despite the fact that it had been sitting alone on the table, the stone was warm in my hand and heavier than its size warranted.

  "All our mystery caster would need to do is to arrange them in the correct order...."

  "To what end?" I asked.

  "To call forth Death." Holmes's smile was that of a cat toying with a mouse. "In a manner of speaking, that is. I almost forgot...."

  Holmes took a small ebony box from his pocket and opened it. A purple crystal sat cushioned within a nest of red velvet. Taking the angular gem from its home, Holmes placed it on the table in between the bloody symbol and the bound sparrow. "I think we'll forego the charged rune stones and do things the traditional way."

  Holmes picked up the chalk and started to trace out a line of runes. The air in the room seemed to thicken with each slow and deliberate mark that Holmes added to his inscription. I had nearly convinced myself that the sensation was only a trick of my own anxiety when a sharp popping in my ears took me by surprise—the change in pressure apparently not all in my mind. I found myself panting as I struggled to inhale the syrupy air and my head spun as the neurons in my brain cried out for oxygen.

  Finishing the last rune, Holmes put aside the chalk. He unwrapped the makeshift bandage on his wounded hand and held it above the cryptic writing. Darkness swirled at the edge of my vision as the world compressed until it encompassed only a single ruby drop. Falling…. Falling…. Blood splattered across the sketched runes and a dull red glow radiated out along each chalk line. The sparrow chirped once, then exploded in a puff of feathers. A thin tendril of smoke rose off the table and the, unfortunately appetizing, smell of roast game bird hung in the air.

  From the lack of Holmes's usual self-celebratory speech, I expected that this was not the desired outcome. "Ignatius," he said, finally. "I think I will be in need of another experimental subject."

  Chapter 7

  Thanks to our remarkable landlady, Mrs. Hudson, the day's paper had been laid out in the dining room next to my morning tea by the time I roused myself from my slumber. In fine womanly fashion, she had noted the extra holes in the wall and had taken matters into her own hands, shifting the Hepplewhite sideboard a few inches to one side in order to mask the recently added defects. A least my aim had spared the furniture, though I couldn't say the same for our guest. The discarded remains of the chair had disappeared, though no replacement had presented itself as yet. Truthfully, I did not see Holmes nor myself hosting dinner parties, so an even chair count was not particularly required. But the imbalance grated against my aesthetic sensibilities. The scorched table top had not eluded the landlady's sharp eye either and a slightly yellowed doily had been discretely placed over the area. It seemed a shame that the furniture, made by such skillful hands, should survive so many years unscathed only to fall into our inept care.

  The entire front page of the paper had been dedicated to Lestrade's swift handling of the murder case. In crisp, businesslike quotes, the detective made a strong case against the man in his custody. Though, for some readers, I imagined the prompt response of a brother to the perceived harm of his sister's reputation, even so far as murder, would make him more a hero than a villain. A jury of his peers may take pause before convicting such a man, but convict him I was certain they would given the detective's elegant argument against his innocence.

  As it had the past several days, a knock at the door interrupted my morning routine. This time a young boy, hardly out of his teens, stood on the steps.

  "Mr. Holmes?" the boy asked. His voice had not yet settled to its final baritone timber.

  "I'm afraid he is not yet available this morning."

  "On the contrary...." Glancing up, I saw my companion only a few steps away on the street. Had I not heard his voice, I would hardly have recognized him. Dressed in torn pants and simple shirt, he had a flat cap pulled low over his uncharacteristically soot stained face.

  The young boy seemed as taken aback as myself and it took him a few moments to remember why he came. "Detective Lestrade sent me to fetch you."

  "He has changed his mind about the identity of the killer, then?"

  "I'm afraid so," the boy said. "There was another murder last night."

  Holmes's eyes gleamed more than I'd care to admit. "Fantastic."

  The boy fidgeted, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Not for the victim, I'm afraid, sir."

  Holmes's smile widened further. "I think we shall find that these victims are no saints themselves and that we shouldn't lose sleep over their parting. It is, however, good news for the innocent fellow that your detective has locked away and planned to deliver to the gallows."

  The excitement upon Holmes's face disturbed me and I wondered what exactly he had been up to out on the streets dressed as he was. For a fleeting moment, I doubted my friend.

&
nbsp; "What is your name?" Holmes asked the boy.

  "Gregson, Sir."

  "Well then, Gregson. Leave the address with Dr. Watson here and then run along and tell Lestrade that we will join him shortly."

  Handing me a slip of paper, the boy turned and dashed off down the street. While I had only recently become familiar with Detective Lestrade, I imagined that the man's wrath was no less motivating than the sharp teeth of an apex predator. The man had, after all, risen to a high rank in the New York City police force. No easy task, I was certain.

  Once the boy had skedaddled, I attempted to inquire about where my roommate had spent the morning, but Holmes seemed to already know my purpose. "It is no matter you need concern yourself with, Watson" Holmes said.

  "Holmes...." I insisted, refusing to be silenced.

  "It is nothing. I was merely out on a minor reconnaissance mission. Do not fret about such things." With that, Homes trotted up the stairs and into the apartment. A furry, quadruped shadow followed after him.

  "Ignatius...." I tried.

  The shadow turned and hissed at me before bolting through the open door.

  I lingered on the street in my dressing jacket, wondering what I had gotten myself into.

  ***

  The second crime scene could not have been any more different than the first in regards to location. A fancy black pony pulled our cab along freshly cobbled streets and past pristine houses untouched by the smoke of the factories. It hardly seemed plausible to me that two murders in such divergent areas of the city could be related.

  We slowed in front of a boarding house and Holmes leapt out of the carriage before it had come to a full stop. He had already disappeared into the building by the time I had alighted from our transportation with the coachman's assistance. I limped along in my companion's wake, resigned to the fact that this was likely to be our arrangement from here on out...Holmes rushing to the front like a crazed hound on a fox's heels and me dragging along at the back of the pack.

  When I reached the room in question, my companion was already hot on the scent. He paced back and forth, magnifying glass in hand. Pausing at the wash basin, Holmes picked up a burnt piece of paper and squinted at it.

  Lestrade leaned against the wall next to the door, wisely staying out of Holmes's way. "It pains me to admit that he was right," the detective said as I joined him.

  More than just the affluent location distinguished this crime scene from the other. The abandoned building had shown no signs of a struggle. The dust on the floor had borne no marks save those that the killer, or the somewhat careless police who had responded to the crime, had caused. I doubted the police had been any more cautious at this scene, but even that could not explain the room's disarray.

  The victim's steamer trunk had been toppled to one side, spilling trousers and shirts all over the floor. The sheets had been ripped off the bed and lay in a heap. Having witnessed the ritual that Holmes attempted to recreate, I could now make out the oily marks of candles on the wooden floor and the scuff marks where the killer had attempted to erase their binding circles. Details, though glaringly obvious to my companion, which had escaped me at the previous scene. The bloody mark on the wall, a match to the one which had originally attracted Holmes's attention, still glistened as if the blood had not yet fully dried.

  "May I?" I asked Lestrade.

  He shrugged. "If you must."

  A pair of fine leather shoes, still attached to a now inanimate pair of feet, peeked out from behind the bed frame. The body lay where it had fallen. No one had yet shown the common decency to bother covering the corpse. As I approached, my breath caught my throat. The deceased was the mirror image of Edward Dahmen.

  I glanced back at Lestrade who simply smiled at me. It was not a warm and welcoming smile. "The name's Joseph according to the innkeeper. Joseph Strangerton Dahmen. Twins, I would guess."

  "Evidently." My companion still occupied with his examination of the room, I turned to the victim, hoping perhaps that my medical knowledge could shed some light on the matter.

  Whereas the previous victim had failed to share any details of his death, this corpse was much more communicative. I suspected a gifted medium could produce no more information from his recently departed soul than I could from a mere glance. Blood blossomed against the fabric of the man's shirt in the upper left abdominal quadrant. From the amount of blood pooled on the floor around him, I suspected something had pierced his abdomen—and subsequently his spleen—causing him to bleed out relatively slowly. Exploding in a puff of feathers would likely have been more desirable.

  "Stabbed?" I asked Lestrade, surprise evident in my voice.

  "That bothers you?" Holmes asked as he strode past me, his steps careful and precise.

  "It does not bother you?" I inquired after his retreating form. While murders were new territory, I expected them to follow some natural order. As dark buboes on a sickened patient marked the presence plague, so, I assumed, should a murderer's methods mark their identity.

  "No."

  I hesitated, completely without the appropriate words to convey my reservations about the situation.

  "It's elementary, my dear Watson. The killer broke into our apartment in order to steal back the rune they had previously lost. However, we provided them with a counterfeit stone that did not contain the stored energy of the original. When the ritual failed to perform as expected, our killer took matters into their own hands. Literally." Holmes knelt down and fished a bloody dagger out from under the bed. "Your murder weapon, I presume," he said, offering the knife to Lestrade.

  "Surely you have changed your opinion on the gender of our offender," Lestrade said, taking the knife from Homes. "A woman isn't capable of stabbing a man to death."

  "I expect the right woman is capable of most anything given the proper circumstances," Holmes said.

  I left the body and stepped up between the two gentlemen before a fight ensued. I suspected that Holmes had no care in the world as to the gender of any of his quarry, but Lestrade's words carried an edge that made me uneasy and I worried for my companion's safety. Holmes didn't seem to notice and carried on about his business. The twine was out of his pocket and he was carefully examining the distance between two points on the far side of the room. "The gender of our killer seems less important than their identity," I offered to both parties.

  Holmes and Lestrade both nodded, apparently in agreement on at least one thing.

  "Then perhaps we can continue on with our investigation," I said.

  Holmes simply shrugged. "I am done with my investigation, though the fine detective may continue on with his...it no longer concerns me since he has made his own assumptions about the case."

  "Holmes...," Lestrade said.

  "You can join me tonight if you care to apprehend your suspect," Holmes said. He stepped to the door and donned his top hat. Taking that as our cue to leave, I limped my way across the room after him. I hoped I was to be more than the spaniel sent to flush out the game and then return, dutifully, to its master's side. "I'll send a telegram with the location."

  ***

  Upon our arrival back at 221B, Holmes settled into his favorite chair with a pipe and a dusty, leather bound volume. I, on the other hand, paced. Ignatius watched me from his perch on top of the sitting room bookcases, a feline soulmate to Poe's demented bird.

  "You will wear a hole in the rug if you keep that up," Holmes said. He lazily turned the page in his book.

  "Another man is dead, Holmes," I said as I paced, each word punctuated by a sharp step. "We were supposed to prevent this from happening. If I hadn't hesitated..."

  "You would have done what exactly?" Holmes glanced up at me over the top of his book. "I don't think you have it in you to shoot a woman, my friend. You're far too much of a gentleman." Holmes puffed at his pipe, a fragrant haze of smoke swirling around him. "Besides, our matched pair of victims brought their demise upon themselves. It is perhaps that the killer has done the greater
world a favor in removing them from the population."

  I turned away so that I didn't have to meet Holmes's unnatural stare. "And if another person dies?"

  "There will be no more deaths by our killer's hands, that I am certain. Still, a crime has been committed and someone must answer the charges. Lestrade would not allow otherwise. He is an honorable man to the core and justice is the lifeblood that flows through his veins. I fear there will be no opportunity for leniency. My part in this affair is nearly over and I take no credit nor blame for what comes after."

  My nervous energy spent, I sank down into the chair opposite Holmes and picked up the newspaper that I had failed to read that morning. "Your name will grace the headlines."

  "I expect not. The credit will go to Lestrade regardless of the case's outcome. That is how politics must work. Order must always triumph over anarchy. The masses enjoy a good fright, so long as lawfulness is restored in the end. That is the way it has always been and, I suspect, the way it will always be. While the good detective may value my opinion enough to consult me from time to time, he has not yet made up his mind to which side I pledge my allegiance."

  "Fight you, Sir, on the side of the angels or the demons?" I asked, my voice light with amusement.

  The perpetual storm in Holmes's eyes darkened and the tempest raged stronger than usual. "What say you, Ignatius?" he said finally. His words did not share my teasing demeanor. "'Am I angel or am I demon?"

  Ignatius jumped down from his perch, landing on the floor without a sound. He strode across to the front door, his tail flicking back and forth. You are both wasting my time.

  "Of course." Holmes took a folded piece of paper from the table beside him and extended it out in my general direction. "If you don't mind, Watson, I need to send this to our friend Lestrade. Ignatius will show you which telegraph office to use."

  I leveraged myself up from the chair with my cane and shuffled across the room to take the paper from Holmes. I was curious as to what information it contained inside, especially since I had not seen Holmes put pen to paper since we had returned home. My curiosity was not to be abated, however. The paper had been folded over and sealed with wax the color of dried blood. I rubbed my fingers across the mark pressed into the seal. It was a match to the symbol that Holmes had drawn in his own blood on our table the day before. A mark far too similar to the one that graced the walls of the murders for my peace of mind.