by Mark Latham
‘We should take care,’ Arthur warned. ‘This building could be part of a rookery; we do not want any unpleasant surprises.’
Lillian poked her head into what she presumed was once a kitchen. Now, like all the other rooms of the poky tenement, it was stripped bare, the plaster fallen from the walls like rotted flesh, revealing the rough brick behind, and covering the floorboards in rubble.
‘Here,’ Lillian said. Sir Arthur stood at her side and looked where she pointed.
‘Most unusual for a slum, wouldn’t you say?’ he mused.
Before them was a heavy door, ironbound and studded like the door to a vault. Its frame was similarly reinforced, and the door was secured by a large lock and two substantial draw-bolts.
Sir Arthur reached out and touched the cold metal panelling, closing his eyes. After a moment he turned to Lillian.
‘She’s down there,’ he said.
Lillian reached to her hairpins, and knelt by the door, working the lock expertly. She had practised her craft on every type of lock imaginable. John had taught her; he had even given her a chest full of locks for her to practise on for her last birthday, much to their mother’s chagrin. Lillian liked to think she had surpassed her brother in the art, however. Locks were the only things for which she had any patience. She appreciated the craft; loved the idea that she was pitting her skills against another artisan, listening for the tumblers to click perfectly into place. The greater the precision of the locksmith, the more difficult the task.
She smiled as the lock clicked open. It was a good one, expensive. Too expensive for a slum.
She stood and dusted herself down while Arthur withdrew the bolts and opened the door. She at once wished he hadn’t.
The stench that assailed them was unbearable. Lillian’s investigations had taken her to more than one dead-room, but this was something else entirely. It was the iron-tinged scent of blood in a Spitalfields slaughterhouse; the smell of disease and corruption in a poor hospital; the filth of the worst jail cell. Lillian retched, moving as gracefully as she could to the corner of the room before evacuating her stomach. She was ashamed—Sir Arthur Furnival did not react at all, other than to pull his muffler up around his nose and mouth. He was not known for his physical fortitude—their pairing was often thought an odd one, because Sir Arthur was not a fighter. How then, could he hope to protect the Order’s first female agent? In fact, it was the other way around. Sir Arthur Furnival was a Majestic, and one of the very best they had—she was assigned to protect him in the field, for no one would ever suspect a slip of a girl to be a deadly assassin, burglar, and spy.
Or so she liked to think. She had had few opportunities to test herself so far—her father had seen to that.
She straightened herself as Arthur’s hand gripped her arm, nodded to assuage his concerned expression, and returned to the door, this time braced for the assault on her senses.
Behind the door was a steep flight of stairs, stretching down into pitch darkness. Sir Arthur shone his lantern into the cellar, its beam barely illuminating the floor at the foot of the stairs. Lillian would have steeled herself with a deep breath, but did not trust herself not to be sick again, and so she held a scented handkerchief to her mouth and led the way down the stairs.
‘Lord preserve us,’ Arthur gasped.
Lillian said nothing. She followed the beam of the shuttered lantern as it shone along the walls and across the floor, bringing into stark focus thick, congealed blood smears and piles of gnawed remains. Human remains, mostly, flung into piles with the rotted bodies of rats, cats and dogs. Lillian spotted the tattered remnants of clothing in the corner of the cellar, and as she went to investigate she cried out despite herself. Sir Arthur shone the light upon her at once, and Lillian staggered away from the thing that had alarmed her, that had touched her.
A human torso hung from the ceiling, suspended upon a butcher’s meat hook. It was mostly stripped to the bone, but some muscle and flesh still glistened upon it, enough to reveal the sex of the victim. The right arm was almost intact, slender and pale, terminating in a small, feminine hand with grubby fingernails.
‘Is… is it her?’ Lillian asked, feeling the strength sapping from her as her nausea grew once more.
Arthur barely needed to concentrate his energies before he nodded. ‘It is.’
‘Who would do this?’ Lillian felt it was a stupid question, but she had to say something to allay the shock.
‘Perhaps the question should be what would do this?’ Arthur said, shining the beam of the lantern to where three sets of rusting, heavy manacles were affixed to the bloodstained wall, all but one hanging empty. In this was a pale hand, its severed wrist still oozing blood onto the cellar floor.
‘Oh…’ Lillian moved towards the manacles. ‘Is this even human? It looks strange—some kind of ape, perhaps. I’ve heard of worse things kept in captivity in London.’
‘I’d like to think so, but I doubt it.’
Arthur stepped closer and shone the light at the grotesque object, and Lillian knew at once she was mistaken. The hand was large, with unusually long, bony fingers ending at thick, talon-like nails, but it was human nonetheless.
‘It’s been bitten off,’ Lillian said. ‘Another victim then.’
Arthur shook his head solemnly. ‘I doubt that also. I think that the wretch who chewed through his own hand to escape these shackles was also the killer of these poor souls. Or at least, was employed by the killer to do the deed—nothing chained up down here could entice a victim to the cellar, after all. And look at the walls.’
The chains were long; whatever had been held by them would have had the run of half the cellar. Lillian estimated that, with the exception of arterial spray, the blood upon the walls was smeared within reach of the chains. She tried to dismiss the notion that there were human handprints within the blood, but once she had thought it she could not see it as anything else. Arthur was right.
Her thoughts were abruptly shattered by a distant but unsettling noise like falling masonry, followed by a strange, low, staccato growl, definitely made by some kind of creature. Lillian fair jumped out of her skin, and felt deeply embarrassed yet again. If Arthur had noticed her fright, he said nothing. Instead, he unshuttered the lantern completely, bathing the cellar in light.
‘The time for stealth is past,’ he said gravely.
Both agents looked beyond the half-gnawed cadavers, and to the far corner of the cellar from where the noise had emanated. Beyond a pile of bricks and timbers was a large hole in the cellar wall, which led to a rough tunnel.
Lillian drew her pistol and moved stealthily to the man-sized aperture, glad of something to take her mind off the horrific stench and her jangling nerves. Arthur followed, lantern held high, and his own revolver readied. In the eerie cast of light, a pale form was revealed lying on the earthen floor of the tunnel, bloodied and half-eaten as if by some monstrous beast. The cadaver itself was not recognisably human—not in any normal sense—but was long-limbed and white as alabaster, with hideous lumpen deformities to its head and body. Its legs had been devoured, all but a foot that lay discarded further along the shaft, while its rib cage had been prized open, presumably so that its assailant could reach the organs within.
It smelled even worse than the other bodies. It smelled like the grave.
‘Good lord…’ Arthur muttered.
At the far end of the narrow tunnel—more a burrow, Lillian could not help but think—something moved. Swift and pale, one second an indistinct, ghost-like shape, and the next gone, melded into the very shadows.
And in that second, Lillian was after it.
Arthur’s protests fell on deaf ears. His cautious nature would not catch this killer—this monster—and so Lillian moved as fast as she could, crouching as the tunnel grew smaller, soil falling upon her, the heat of the earth stifling, hanging roots whipping at her face. It also sloped downwards, steeply in places, and that worried her more than anything else.
Sir Arthur had followed, but the light of the lantern faded regardless as the passage narrowed such that Lillian, despite her slender frame, almost filled it. She realised she was rushing headlong into pitch darkness, and fought her impulse to stop and wait for her fellow agent. Hesitation would not win the day. Action always trumps inaction.
She emerged at last. She hadn’t expected to, but was instantly grateful for the rush of cooler air that greeted her, and the reassuring ring of hard stone beneath her heels. And yet, she was not in a cellar, but in a larger cavern. It was dark, although her eyes quickly became accustomed to a dim glow from shafts set in the ceiling periodically, along a large, arched tunnel.
The light from Arthur’s lantern drew closer, dancing on the floor by her feet, dully illuminating the narrow platform, the ballast beyond, and the rails.
Lillian was about to turn back to the tunnel, to urge Arthur to hurry, when she felt something move towards her from the shadows; an almost imperceptible rush of air, the feeling of imminent danger causing her skin to tingle. She barely had time to meet the threat, her pistol aimed and readied by instinct before she had fully registered what was happening.
Looming from the darkness, too fast to counter, a hideous face, luminescent, was just inches from her own. It came and went so fast that Lillian’s mind could picture only large, yellowed fangs, an upturned, porcine nose, a bestial snarl on a marble-white face, and those eyes. Bright, violet eyes like amethysts twinkling in lamplight. It was there, next to her, a high-pitched shriek tearing from its ghastly maw like the wail of the banshee, and then it was gone.
But the pain remained.
Lillian’s shoulder felt as though it had exploded as the claws had raked it, ripping through her jacket like it were crepe-paper. She felt her own blood against her skin as she wheeled around and fell to the ground, the wind knocked from her. She was vaguely aware of Sir Arthur arriving, shouting something, stooping to her. Her vision swam, but she caught sight of something pale and lithe racing along the tunnel, leaping up at the ceiling and crawling along it like a monstrous bat.
She squeezed off three shots into the shadows, the noise deafening her. And yet she still heard the darkness reply. A scream of hate and rage; and then nothing. The creature had escaped her.
As Arthur tried to staunch the bleeding from her shoulder, Lillian struggled against an overwhelming desire to faint. As her vision swam and her head throbbed, all she could think was:
What will my father say?
* * *
They had been briefed for this assignment by Sir Toby Fitzwilliam, commander of the Order of Apollo, with Marcus Hardwick in attendance. Lillian loathed such briefings, in which she was always reminded of her junior status in the Order, and made to feel like a schoolchild before the withering gaze of her father. Afterwards, Lillian had sent Sir Arthur ahead to make the preparations for their mission, whilst she herself loitered outside the famous library of the Apollonian Club, waiting to catch her father before he departed. Several grey-haired old clubmen passed her as they went about their academic business, and some stole disapproving glances at Lillian. It had been three years since Apollo Lycea had changed its rules to allow women into the Order, whose headquarters formed the heart of the grand gentleman’s club, and still Lillian was not accepted by most of the members. They frowned upon her sex having any sort of career or opinion; they frowned upon her unconventional attire, for all its practicality. But most of all, they frowned upon her intrusion into their traditional retreat. Three years—and yet in that time only three women had risen to any sort of prominence in the militant arm of the Apollonian, and Lillian was by far the youngest of them.
Perhaps it’s not the intrusion that they resent, mused Lillian, but the fact that I’m his daughter…
Almost as if he had heard her thoughts, Lord Hardwick appeared at the top of the stairs. He paused when he saw her, a flicker of annoyance crossing his features for a moment, before he marched down to the landing.
‘My business is not over yet,’ he said, dismissively. ‘I have an appointment with the police commissioner about the latest Rift breaches.’ Marcus Hardwick’s responsibilities had increased tenfold since the first breach. Now he was the Minister for Defence, a relatively new position that had elevated the old soldier to one of the most powerful men in the Empire, changing his relationship with the Order for ever. And with such responsibility came a long list of commitments, upon which his family, it seemed to Lillian, sat very near the bottom.
‘I’m sure you can spare a few minutes for me… Father.’ Lillian held his gaze confidently, and he sighed.
‘Very well, but only a few minutes.’
They made their way down to the great marble lobby and through to the members’ bar, where they secured a private booth.
‘How was Alaska?’ Lillian asked.
‘Cold,’ her father replied.
‘You look tired.’
‘It was an arduous voyage.’
‘Had it not been for the summons to the briefing, I would not have known you had returned.’
‘What is it, Lillian?’ Marcus Hardwick sighed again. ‘Were your orders not clear enough?’
‘Perfectly. In fact, Sir Arthur is down in the armoury right now, no doubt haggling with Lord Cherleten’s secretary over exactly how many forms he must sign for our supplies this time.’ At the merest mention of Arthur’s name, Lord Hardwick let out a disapproving snort. ‘Father, please,’ Lillian chided.
‘What? Must I be happy that a daughter of mine is off gallivanting around the country with that… that…’
‘He’s a good man, and a good agent. Would that I had his experience, so I could serve my country half as well.’
‘So it’s true?’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘What is?’
‘You and him?’
‘I shouldn’t have to dignify that with a response. Am I not a lady still?’
‘I don’t know, my girl, are you? I certainly raised you as one; and yet the rumours suggest that you have had “relations” with a… a… Majestic.’
Lillian felt embarrassment and anger in equal measure redden her cheeks. ‘I thought I could bear the callous remarks and tittle-tattle of the so-called “gentlemen” of this club, but to learn that my own father listens to such hearsay is hurtful indeed. As it happens, it was my mother—if you even remember you have a devoted wife—who raised me as a lady. What you raised was a killer. And now, when I am finally given the chance to serve my country as you did, you join the gossiping old men of society in slandering me?’
‘Hold your tongue, girl. Your privilege as my daughter carries you only so far.’
Lillian rose. ‘Sir Toby has been more of a father to me than you have these past years, and I barely see him. I do not feel especially privileged to be your daughter.’ As she stepped around the table to leave, her father grasped her wrist firmly.
‘Wait. I…’ He took a breath, and tried his best to soften his tone. ‘Don’t be upset, child. What was it you wanted to say?’
‘I was hoping you would wish me a happy birthday,’ Lillian said, coolly, ‘before I go off “gallivanting” with Sir Arthur Furnival.’ She pulled her arm from her father’s grasp, and without another word walked briskly from the room, leaving him silent in her wake, as the sage old clubmen pretended not to pay any heed.
* * *
John rushed into another room, throwing shut a large door behind him, and slamming his back against it.
But for his lantern’s pale glow the room was dark; no electric light shone in here. The air was distinctly musty and foul, carrying the scent of soil and age upon the gentlest of breezes. He could hear scratching and tapping ringing in the corridor behind the door, accompanied by a muffled sound as of deep, guttural voices, or perhaps pig-like grunts. The tiny derringer in his hand suddenly looked most inadequate.
The tunnels were impossibly vast and labyrinthine—they could not have been put here by the builders of a factory. More like
ly, John guessed, they were catacombs from some ruined abbey, now pressed into service as stores. He felt like he had run for miles.
John cast the lantern about, praying for a way out. The meagre light fell upon a set of stone stairs up ahead, and John’s heart lifted, just for a moment.
Even as he stepped forward, the door behind him burst open, and something—several somethings—scrabbled into the room. He saw shadows move and felt hot breath upon his neck.
John leapt forward even as something grabbed at him. He felt his trouser leg tear and almost fell flat on his face.
There was movement to his left and a pale shape leapt through the air. John saw it from the corner of his eye, as though time itself was slowed, but it was too late to react. The snarling thing crashed into him, and the two of them rolled across the stone floor before smashing into a pile of crates.
The lantern rolled away, casting ghastly shadows dancing on the walls, and illuminating just briefly a writhing mass of grotesque creatures, pale of skin and bright of eye, scurrying about the shadows.
John’s arm was pinned to the ground in the creature’s vice-like grip; he could not bring the derringer to bear. He kicked at his attacker as hard as he could, but it was strong, and did not withdraw. Instead, it turned an ugly, bestial face towards him, and let out such a low, keening moan that it chilled him to the bone. Its large eyes sparkled violet for a moment. Its features were unmistakeably human, though hideously deformed and pale. John yanked his knife from his jacket pocket and pushed it into the monster’s throat. He kicked at the brutish creature again, and this time it staggered backwards, clutching at the wound.
John sprang to his feet and snatched up the lantern, turning about in all directions wildly, pointing his derringer at the shadows that even now leapt about in an amorphous mass of living darkness. The knife was lost, buried in the flesh of the creature that had attacked him. The single-shot pistol seemed so very small in his hand.