The Uprising (GRIT Sector 1 Book 2)

by Rebecca Sherwin

  “Trace?”

  I didn’t speak Danish. Trace had learned every language he could, in order to do his job. He spoke Russian, Polish, Albanian…it would have been easier to list the languages he didn’t speak. He was committed to saving these women, to wiping out the trade, obliterating the supply chains so the demand would die and women around the world would be safe again. I’d learned French because I wanted to. I spoke Spanish because I liked the way the language sounded. I spoke Italian because it was the country where I’d spent the most time, and I spoke Chinese, because it had always grated on me that I couldn’t decipher what the writing meant. My knowledge of language was selfish. Trace’s was entirely selfless and beneficial to our family.

  “They were drugged. Chloroform, I imagine. She’s talking about a rag.” He said something else to them; judging by his gesticulation, he was excusing himself. He slid off the lorry and back to the ground, nodding his head for me to follow him. “Rags are found all over the world, we know they’re from Denmark and they were brought in from outside. It’s all the same stuff we’ve heard before, but nothing to help us find out who’s running the trade.”

  “Excuse me?”

  The voice was rough and hoarse, once feminine now broken. Trace and I turned around to face one of the girls. She’d left the back of the lorry and was standing in front of us, on legs that belonged to a stranger, with hips that suggested Latino ancestry, although her eyes were an ice blue and her hair so blonde it was almost white.

  “What’s your name?” Trace asked.

  She cleared her throat and replied, “Annabella.”

  “Er du okay?”

  She nodded. “I am.” She looked at me and pointed. “You.”

  “Me?”

  She nodded. “He look like you.”

  I glanced at Trace. He was staring at the girl with his head cocked. “Who?”

  “The man who take us. He look like you.”

  “How?” Trace asked. “What was it about him?”

  “Eyes.” She tapped her own cheekbone on the outside of her eye. “Black.”

  Dark eyes were common. Mine were black for reasons unknown. Big pupils, a dark blue that just didn’t have much warmth. I didn’t know, never felt the need to investigate something I couldn’t change.

  “Mouth.” She traced her lips. “Same shape. Face.” She reached forward and I flinched when she cupped my cheek. “Same. This the same.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Older.”

  She was scary. She was like something out of a horror movie, with washed out white-blonde hair curtaining her face. Her eyes were hollow holes rimmed with black and watering with dryness. Her lips were chapped; the dirt beneath her nails left residue on my face as she stroked my cheek, and the strap of her vest slid off her shoulder, revealing a little too much. Trace reached out and slipped it back into place, taking a gentle hold of her wrist and guiding it away from me. She was like a ghost. She was so calm, so serine, her voice soft and husky and a strange addictive monotone. She’d been taken by someone who looked like me.

  “Trace,” I said, leaning closer. “Keep hold of her.”

  He nodded, agreeing silently as if he’d already planned on keeping her around. Maybe she couldn’t offer us much more than a description of a man with dark eyes and normal-shaped lips…but she had a description, and it was more than we’d ever received before.

  “Where are the couriers?”

  “Dead.” The girl kept her eyes on me, her head tipped to the side, as she pointed at Trace. “He kill them.”

  “Keep her contained, yes?” I said to my cousin, edging away from the ghostly woman.

  “I will.”

  We were dancing on the line. The one where we were about to do something evil to try and cancel out something more evil than us. Trace knew what I was thinking and I was on the same wavelength as him. We were going to keep her prisoner because there was something about her that had us both on edge. She was a victim, but she was too strong to have been damaged by her experience. She was too calm, too brave, too…I just couldn’t figure it out, but I knew Trace would put her in a cell until we had. We had to keep her safe, but we had to keep ourselves safer and there was a good chance this girl knew more than she was letting on. I’d never been more grateful to hear my phone ring, pulling it from my pocket and frowning when I saw the name of our coroner on the screen.

  “Hamish.” I nodded to Trace and walked towards my car, slamming the door closed and looking out of the windscreen at Annabella. She was staring at me as Trace spoke to her. “What have you found?”

  “Evidence of poisoning,” our coroner said, and I heard the snap of latex. Was he standing over the bodies now?

  “Why would someone use poison? Why not a gun or a blade, or something more…”

  “Masculine?” Hamish asked. “My thoughts exactly, sir. Well, poison has always been seen stereotypically as a woman’s weapon.”

  A woman.

  “Stereotypically?”

  “It’s not one hundred per cent fact, sir. Statistically it’s a gender-neutral weapon, but when poison surfaces the first suspect is usually a woman.”

  “How could a woman have poisoned a house full of men, and arranged their bodies like they were?”

  “Belladonna.”

  “Beautiful lady?”

  “Yes.” I heard the creak of Hamish’s chair as he sat down. “It’s a plant found in Eurasia and Africa. Harmless in small doses—it’s used to treat Parkinson’s, motion sickness…until it’s taken in a concentrated dose.”

  “What happens then?”

  I turned the key in the ignition, let the engine warm up for a fraction of a second, and then I pulled out of the car park.

  “Belladonna is also known as the deadly nightshade. Its berries are the most poisonous part of the plant and when administered in more concentrated doses, can cause delirium.”

  “So that’s how she killed them.”

  I shot along the city streets, bustling with life at the same speed the city always moved…like we were running out of time.

  “That’s how the killer killed them. We still have to address the fact that a woman dragged twelve bodies into the same room and piled them on top of each other. It’s a heavy task, Mr Blackwood.”

  “So she had help.”

  “Or it was a man.”

  “How do I find out more?”

  “My advice would be to look at import. Belladonna isn’t grown in the UK and certainly not in the city…it has been brought in from somewhere and you should be able to raise some flags by asking for such an unusual product.”

  “Call me when you have more information. And Hamish?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Did you find any wounds?”

  “Are you referring to the blood from the crime scene?

  “I am.”

  “It’s not from any of the victims.”

  “Can you-?”

  “Run it?” He hummed and sighed, as if dealing with a naive child. Then he remembered his place and answered, “Yes, sir. It’ll take me a few days, but I’ll do my best.”

  The blood wasn’t from the victims. Victims. Is that what they had been? Victims? I couldn’t believe it; I didn’t want to believe it; I’d arrived there with the intention of killing them all and someone had beaten me to it. How could I feel threatened by someone who had eradicated criminals like I’d intended to? Because whatever this person had done, it was calculated, it was pre-meditated, and it was murder…they didn’t have the power or right to do this. But where had the blood come from? Were there more victims waiting to be found? How long had this person been in the underground and how was I supposed to find them before they caused any more damage?

  I wasn’t allowed to draw. I’d promised Elias I wouldn’t touch the easel, and it already seemed like a lifetime. We’d only been apart for one day and the world felt a little smaller, a little more suffocating.

&
nbsp; After the run-in with Ambrose, who had finally relented and let me go, I’d thanked Christen for being around, asked him not to tell Elias, and returned to my room to find Lola waiting for me.

  “Your clothes are on the way, ma’am,” she said. “Would you like anything else?”

  “Yes. Where is the art kept?”

  “Art?”

  She cocked a brow, but I knew they’d have some. Ashford Estate had always had pieces fixed to the walls; pieces that made no sense, and rows of portraits that told a story with more depth and honesty than words ever could. Art was everywhere; it was something people had done for centuries and if GRIT was so set on tradition, I knew it would have a museum somewhere on the grounds. It had none on the walls—they were left bare and empty, much like my father-in-law who was yet to give up ownership of his home. But I’d seen the mural on the ceiling in the salon. I’d seen the value GRIT placed on art and its depiction of their stories. I knew there would be something here.

  “Yes, art.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “There are no pictures on the walls. There are no paintings or sculptures or vases. Every house has art and I want to know where the Blackwood collection is kept.”

  “Lord Blackwood has banned it from the estate, my lady. He doesn’t allow creativity to dress the walls of his house.”

  “What about Elias’ collection?”

  Lola stared at me and sucked her lips into her mouth.

  “You won't get in trouble, I promise.”

  Nodding, Lola took a deep breath and tipped her head for me to follow her. She led me down the stairs, through the foyer and out into another corridor where I’d walked the night Elias and I left the estate. I remembered all the doors being locked the last time I’d been here; I’d tried in vain to open each one and felt a stab of disappointment when the house refused to expose its secrets. Now Lola could help me. She would help me uncover whatever the house kept hidden.

  “Mr Blackwood enjoys art. Like you. His collection is out of bounds. I cannot enter the room.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t going to defy whoever had banned her from looking at Elias’ investments. I would defy him without thought. Art had been my life before I’d been taken prisoner on this estate and if I couldn’t draw or paint or sketch, I’d lose myself in the pieces that would tell me about my husband. I reached out, turned the handle and opened the door on a dark room illuminated only by the soft sunlight that seeped through the gap in the curtains. Lola closed the door once I’d stepped in and I looked around for a light. There was no electricity here. There was no hint of modern technology or power. It was just a room with hard, unpolished flooring, dusty windows with moulded trim; a heavy mirror lay above a mantelpiece with an open fire. Crossing the room, I crouched in front of it and piled up some wood in the firebox. I was surprised to find matches and some scrap paper on the hearth and I combined the two quickly, tossing piece after piece of flaming paper on top of the wood. It took a few minutes but eventually the fire caught, and I sat back on my heels to watch the vivid orange glow light up the surround. The crackle of burning wood, the flurry of smoke and soot as it travelled up the chimney, the smell of warmth, took me to another world, where central heating didn’t exist and life was simple and self-sufficient. Placing my hands on my knees, I stood up and turned around to look at the room.

  Elias had a private collection of timeless masterpieces. I wasn’t the only one who was an appreciator of Reaper’s pieces; he hadn’t been lying when he suggested he knew how to deal with art on the night we’d first met. He was an art connoisseur. He had his own taste, his own flavour, his own obsession with the macabre and gloomy. Each piece that hung from the walls was a landscape painting of a part of the city. Blood cascaded along roads and dripped into drains. Women succumbed to evil as men drank blood from their arteries like modern vampires who needed blood to survive when everything around threatened to end them. Men stood tall and proud, commanding a world that was consumed by darkness. Women had become their pets; loyal to their owners. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like the London I lived in. Women were strong. Sure, statistically, more of us were killed than men, but even now, with devilry running through their veins and hatred driving their actions, men knew they needed women to survive. More paintings depicted childbirth, infants entering the world covered in blood, screaming for mercy; their mothers prayed their offspring would be the one who saved us, who brought us peace and granted us survival. These paintings didn’t portray hope. They didn’t tell me that the man who had bought them had faith in his abilities to shape a brighter future for us. These paintings told me the true desires of a man who thirsted for blood, hungered for power, and lived for selfish satisfaction. I rounded the room, looking at each piece in turn and trying to figure out why Elias had bought them. I stumbled upon Reaper’s latest piece, which had been hung recently and was yet to gather dust. It was still as magnetic, even now, when it blended into the collection and found companions against the dark depictions. It still fascinated me. I still wanted to know if that was really what was underground. An old abandoned tube station, completed with rusted turnstiles, an abstract mosaic tiled onto the wall, and pillars covered in the graffiti of teenagers who could deface without facing a death sentence. The train was still on the tracks, the doors open to show the emptiness inside. A wolf stood on the tracks behind, as if it had been following the train as it sped into the tunnel and found a bitter end before the second half could enter. His coat was black, his eyes yellow, teeth bared in a sign that showed he was menacing, but he had no power here. Someone else had shed the blood that splattered onto the windows of the train. Someone else had torn clothes from victims, shaved their heads and piled the locks up until they were nothing but threads of lives lost. They had been humiliated. They had been dehumanised. They had been executed, just because they lived in the city of death. There were no bodies. There were no wounds, no slashes, no limbs piled up like dirty laundry, or scattered like puzzle pieces. There was just a hand, extending out of the door from the floor of the train. The hand belonged to a girl, her nails painted in what must have been a pretty coral pink. The entire painting was made from blood and dirt, but I could see this little girl was a princess. She had been the most undeserving to face an end, because she would have taken us back to the beginning. She would have saved us. I leaned closer, narrowing my eyes to search for something that would reveal her identity.

  “Ow!”

  I fell over a pile of frames covered by dusty cloths, and landed on the floor quickly enough to guarantee an instant bruise. I rubbed at my backside as I stood up, and pulled the cloth off. More paintings. These ones were beautiful. These ones were not pieces from inside the walls, but treasures collected from faraway lands. I turned on the spot, noting there were tens of frames all lined up directly below the ones on the wall. My heart broke for Elias because now I knew what this place was. It was his own personal warzone. There was no dust on the paintings because they were replaced often. The evil paintings were switched out for sunsets in the Caribbean, celebrations in Europe, and dawns in Asia. Elias battled with himself constantly and the only way he could make sense of the torrent inside was to hide away in here and fix his feelings to the wall.

  I wanted to get rid of the dark. No, I wanted to put it alongside the paintings in orange and purple and blue. I wanted them side by side, always. I wanted Elias to stop fighting with himself, stop wondering if his desires were truly his or just those he’d been taught to embrace.

  A quiet knock on the door made me jump, and I stood up from where I’d been sitting and looking at the paintings.

  “Lola?”

  “Your order has been delivered, ma’am. I just wanted to let you know.”

  “Thank you. I’m ready to leave.”

  I stepped out of the room to join her in the hallway, pulling the door closed behind me and watching as she locked it.

  “Here,” s
he said, handing me her key. “Mr Blackwood sent me in to clean once and never asked for the key back. I’ve never been back in here, and I think he’d like you to have this.”

  I nodded and thanked her, slipping the key into my bra. I left her to continue her chores and ran up the stairs to get changed. When I was dressed in beige linen trousers and a white cotton blouse, I stood at the window and looked out at the estate. I wanted Elias to come back. I wanted him here so I could ask him about what Ambrose said. How were we supposed to run this empire together if he kept leaving without me and not letting me in? Sighing when I realised he wasn’t going to emerge from the forest and fill me with knowledge and inclusion, I left my bedroom, heading straight out into the front yard.

  “Lady Blackwood.”

  Beatrice gasped when I rounded the path and stepped into the village. She was sitting on her rocking chair crocheting a blanket. She dropped her hook, squeezed the ball of yarn and stared at me like I was a ghost.

  “I want to help out,” I said, pulling my hair back and tying it at the back of my head. “I don’t want to sit in that house and wait for my husband. I want to be out here and I want to help.”

  “Lady-”

  “If you don’t let me help, I’ll order you to let me help and I don’t want to exert power over you, Beatrice.”

  She was silent, taking deep breaths and looking behind me, as if a dragon was going to burst from the forest and wreak havoc on her home. I wouldn’t allow it. If I had as much power as Elias, more than Ambrose, there was nothing they could do if I decided to spend time here. I wouldn’t be forbidden in my own home.

  “Okay.” She sighed and pulled herself up out of the chair, extending her arm to ask me to hand her the walking stick. “Okay, you can help.”