Venomous Secrets

by Anne Renwick

  This woman had aspirations far beyond her current station, a goal the woman confirmed with a quick glance at Cait’s purse.

  For the right price, she would set aside her employer’s principles.

  Cait could work with that. “Miss—” she prompted.

  “Smyth.” Her eyes grew bright and animated as she prepared to negotiate.

  Cait nodded. “I have reason to believe that one of your clients is suffering from a medical condition that adversely affects those with whom she comes into close contact.”

  All true. Those who had lost their testicles or pituitary glands hadn’t survived the experience. All save one.

  “Is that so. Might this be related to,” Miss Smyth lifted her hand to peruse the formula beneath, “a certain skin condition? Perhaps ichthyosis?”

  “It is.”

  “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. That’s not a communicable condition.” Miss Smyth smirked at Cait’s misstep and reassessed the value of such information. The price notched higher.

  Crumbling mummies.

  “Nonetheless, I need to speak with her directly.”

  “Mr. Everly keeps the names of his clients close.” Miss Smyth spoke with gravity, her voice stressing the unscrupulous nature of Cait’s request. “There’s a small notebook he keeps tucked into his coat pocket. Occasionally, while working in the stillroom, he removes it to work in his shirtsleeves.”

  Ah, so that was to be the game.

  “How much?” Cait asked.

  “Fifty pounds,” Miss Smyth replied, shrugging a shoulder when Cait gaped. “Your request risks both my livelihood and reputation.”

  She snapped her mouth shut. “Done.” An outrageous sum, but if it led her to Helena’s door? Cait would pay it. Somehow. “But only if you provide me with all three names and any known addresses.”

  “Agreed. The store closes at nine.” Miss Smyth gave her a knowing look. “There’s a small courtyard around back…”

  And payment would be required upon receipt.

  “I’ll meet you there.” Cait inclined her head. “Until then.”

  She slid from behind the curtain back into the store. Now to acquire the necessary funds and send an agent to collect the information.

  Her next undertakings required expertise and equipment that could only be found at the Lister Institute. Delivering the notebook into the hands of a competent neurosurgeon was her first priority.

  Jack’s habit of pressing his fingers against his eyes was a constant and worrisome reminder that, millimeter by millimeter, the tumor stole his vision and threatened their future. Moreover, she required a few hours in her own laboratory. Torment at the hands—snakes—of Dr. Thrakos presented a unique opportunity she refused to squander.

  Cait was so focused that, as she swept her mother out the door, the whispered and derisive words of two nearby ladies who stared at her in open horror, “Is that who he married? A lab rat?” barely pricked her skin.

  She was a Queen’s agent now and above such malicious gossip. Shoulders back, chin up she marched down the street with pride and purpose.

  Chapter Twenty

  “He stole from me,” Mr. Garlock protested. “I was within my rights!”

  “I’m afraid the courts do not recognize murder as an acceptable form of vengeance.”

  Anger bubbled and seethed deep inside Jack’s chest. Word of the shocking death of Dr. Oakes buzzed through high society, a fact that would carve frowns into the faces of his superiors. Worse, the doctor’s death stole away Jack’s best chance to force a relatively sane man of science to answer his many questions about Helena and the nature of her poison.

  The temptation to corner Aubrey and apply thumb screws to encourage and hasten his brother’s answers grew with each passing moment.

  With a firm grip upon the shackles that bound the man’s wrists behind his back, Jack marched Mr. Garlock behind the gurney transporting his victim’s corpse through the morgue entrance. A few feet inside Lister Institute, he steered his prisoner into an interrogation room.

  There, the torture of sitting upon a battered chair for ten minutes in a bleak, windowless room broke Mr. Garlock. The man was terrified and rightly so.

  “Physicians take an oath to do no harm!” he shouted as Jack entered, closing the door behind him.

  “And how did Dr. Oakes betray your trust?” He suspected he knew the answer and braced for details of the man’s impotence.

  “I was advised that he was an expert in the field of,” Mr. Garlock all but spit the next word, “fertility.”

  “Was Dr. Oakes unable to provide a satisfactory treatment for your flagging virility?”

  “Excuse me!” The man drew up, offended. “It’s my wife who cannot conceive.”

  Of course it was.

  Cait would roll her eyes, snigger.

  He fought back a smile.

  Apart only a few hours and already he missed her. Years of working alone, preferring it that way, and he’d fallen fast and hard for a career-minded woman, one who’d crashed headlong into his life, irreversibly complicating everything.

  Yet in a way that made him long to spend years at her side, not a mere handful of weeks or months. Deteriorating vision would end his days in the field just as hers began. The tumor might not kill him, but it would render him blind, then slowly steal his virility. He did not care for the bleak picture Thornton had painted.

  The best solution was to oust the menace lodged in his skull. Surgery, with its many risks, loomed. Locating Helena and the mad scientist she patronized were his best chances at increasing his odds of survival.

  A shame Cait was not here, that she might bring her keen and unmatched insight to the questioning process.

  Or was she?

  He pulled out his pocket watch, cringed at the time. He was late to their meeting with the Thorntons. His decision to visit Sharp’s—an all-male stronghold—had immeasurably twisted the afternoon hours into a knot he had no choice now but to untangle.

  Time to focus, that he might wrap up this interview, hand the man over to another agent for processing, and hunt his wife down.

  “You already have five children.” Jack frowned. “Not a situation suggesting fertility is a problem.”

  “All my wife has managed so far is to produce a passel of daughters.” Mr. Garlock crossed his arms. “We wish for a son.”

  Cannot conceive.

  The very problem that Helena reportedly faced, and the reason she’d turned to Dr. Thrakos for aid.

  If Mr. Garlock had not paid to enhance his own virility…

  Jack narrowed his eyes. “And Dr. Oakes promised…”

  “A fertility treatment for my wife!” The man pounded on the table. “Yet all that time, he knew.” Fury filled his eyes. “Knew that my reinvigorated efforts to father a child would come to naught.”

  Helena struggled with her own fertility. So much so, she’d turned to murder in an effort to conceive.

  Men had lost their testicles.

  A woman her pituitary gland.

  Jack all but cringed as he asked, “What, exactly, did Dr. Oakes do for Mrs. Garlock?”

  The man turned puce. “It’s more what he did to her, to countless ladies.” Leaning forward, he snarled. “I caught her red-handed. Gathered around the table with her friends, taking tea. Nibbling on little cakes. Discussing society weddings. Frivolous nonsense. I was about to call a greeting from the doorway…” He glanced away.

  “Until?” Jack prodded.

  His shoulders tensed. “My wife reached beneath the table to produce a trinket box. Not one I’d seen before. When she opened it, a white fog billowed out and cascaded to the floor. Inside were four vials. Each woman counted out coins from their purse, stacking them in a pile, then took a vial. They toasted each other before tossing back a strange, yellow-colored fluid.”

  “Toasted,” Jack repeated. “To what exactly?”

  “To keeping the cradle empty.” Mr. Garlock’s eyes blazed. “Shameless, a
ll of them betraying their wedding vows.”

  “Did you confront her, your wife?”

  “I did.” He crossed his arms. “After dispersing the tea party. Their husbands will all be hearing from me.”

  Not any time soon. Outside communications were forbidden to those in Lister holding cells.

  “And her reply?”

  “My wife claimed it was an elixir, a method to temporarily prevent conception, introduced to her by none other than Dr. Oakes. Tears and pleas followed. She claims she’s not yet ready to bear another child and begged me for more time.” His lips flattened. “She will have it. Divorce is more commonplace these days.”

  The man’s quest for a son at the expense of his wife’s health left a sour taste in Jack’s mouth. “That may be within your marital rights, yet you confronted her physician with deadly force.”

  “I care not how fleeting the drugs’ effects might be, a physician has no business salting the field, as it were.” His lips flattened. “Wives, all of them, yet thrilled to avoid their duty to bear children. That defies a husband’s fundamental rights!”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, willing away the growing ache between his eyes. The man could take up such legal squabbles with his barrister.

  Jack’s primary concern centered upon the contents of that refrigerated box. One that held several vials containing a consumable drug aimed at suppressing the negative effects—as perceived by the ladies—of conjugal relations, no bite to the neck required.

  A twisted kind of logic emerged.

  A venomous woman unable to conceive due to the poison she consumed with every swallow. Did the venom force her, a lamia, to practice a reproductive strategy involving the harvesting of human reproductive organs to boost both her and her partner’s fertility? With the final act a nip to the neck to send her lover into a sexual frenzy?

  If so, it was an ingenious twist of marketing to sell that very venom as a male stimulant and a female contraceptive, capitalizing on her biology. A bite for the men, direct into the blood stream. Ingestion for the women.

  “Did Dr. Oakes himself provide her with the vials, directly, that is?”

  The man threw his hand in the air. “One presumes.”

  Jack dug deeper. He pushed and prodded, but the man knew no more.

  “Your address?” he asked. Mrs. Garlock would need to be interviewed, the contents of those vials confirmed.

  He ordered the man to a holding cell, then took to the maze-like halls of Lister Institute, burrowing deeper into the research wing that housed those men and women who worked to unlock the mysteries of human biology.

  His first stop, the Department of Neuroscience.

  Lady Thornton glanced up as he entered the office she shared with her husband. “You’re late. Not that it matters, as your wife filled us in on all the particulars.” She lifted the notebook he’d rescued from the floating laboratory, tapped a page. “Sebastian is in the laboratory taking inventory, then we’re off to Clockwork Corridor to procure any additional parts and pieces necessary to attempt a reconstruction of this device. The notes appear to detail an early version, so if you can catch the lamia—”

  “You will be the first to study the pituitary extractor,” Jack promised. “Where is she, my wife?”

  “Off to her laboratory.”

  He hesitated, unwilling to be rude.

  “Go.” Lady Thornton waved a hand, her eyes drifting back to the pen and ink drawings. “Catch your venomous murderess and her collaborators, place them under lock and key. You can regale us with all the details later.”

  Minutes later, he marched into the Department of Pathology and stopped short. A long hall stretched before him. Which door was Cait behind? Whose laboratory had she joined? Was this even the right department? Building?

  “Two days married and you’ve already lost track of my sister?” Black materialized beside him. “Returning to London in a singed dirigible tethered to a rail car is quite a dramatic end to a honeymoon.” He slapped Jack on the shoulder—hard—pushing him down the hallway. “Wise of you to send a skeet pigeon, warning me of the impending railway bill.”

  “I thought so.” Now was not the time to spar. “Will you direct me to her research laboratory? There is much to share.”

  “I would hope so, given a key suspect plunged to his death from a clocktower.” Black’s visage darkened. “What exactly did you find floating above the moors?”

  Jack shook his head. “Take me to Cait. Easier for us both to debrief you at once.”

  “Very well.” Black strode to a door secured by multiple bolts and an iron bar and placed his hand upon a biometric gel pad to verify his identity.

  Jack shook his head slowly. Was there anywhere in Lister the top agent was denied entry?

  A red light blinked green and a toothed gear rotated. Click. Scrape. Snap. Black heaved the heavy door open and beckoned Jack to follow.

  “It’s about time,” Dr. Whitby grumbled, setting aside a pipette. “Married? A Queen’s agent? Primary investigators are to be informed when their students are tapped for service to the Crown.”

  “There were—are—pressing circumstances,” Black replied. “Is she here?”

  “Given her unauthorized absence and complete lack of progress on the TTX project, not for much longer.” Thin-lipped, Dr. Whitby crossed his arms. “Unless I am provided with a detailed explanation.”

  Silent, Black offered nothing save a long, unyielding stare.

  The scientist sighed, then tipped his head. “In the back room. With the Haimatos Separation Machine. She hooked herself up to it, claiming the procedure is of vital importance to her new duties as a Queen’s agent.”

  Black shifted his gaze to Jack, eyebrows raised.

  “That may well be,” he offered. “Our unconventional honeymoon involved a number of poisonous, fanged creatures.”

  “Of course it did.” Jaw tight, Black led the way to a small, windowless room.

  There, Cait reclined upon a padded bench, her face pale and drawn. Though dressed for a stroll through Hyde Park, the tasseled and fringed edge of her sleeve had been yanked into a bunch above her elbow. Fashion and taste swept aside to connect her vein to the Haimatos Separation Machine. The internal centrifuge of the device spun, whirling and humming, as her blood passed into the contraption via a length of rubber tubing.

  His gut twisted. “It’s far too soon, Cait.”

  “I disagree.”

  “We agreed—” Black began.

  “Hear us out?” Her voice rose. “I have my reasons.”

  Black glowered. “They had best be outstanding.”

  “They are.” Battle won, she caught Jack’s gaze. “I have news!”

  Jack braced himself, praying he would be as enthusiastic.

  “My mother and I found traces of the lamia’s recent past in Covent Garden, near the theater district.”

  He nodded. “Hub of most of the attacks.”

  “Remember the mention of scales upon her legs?” Cait’s eyes danced.

  He nodded.

  “A woman involved in the theater would treat rough skin with a cream or an ointment—and my mother knew of a place with a reputation for catering to leading ladies! Turns out the chemist compounds a special emollient to treat a skin condition called ichthyosis vulgaris for three women.”

  “Who are?”

  “He refused to say.” She grinned. “But, with a little bribery, I convinced his shopkeeper it was worth her time to delve into his coded notes after hours—one of them must be our lamia. The shop closes at nine.”

  Pride swelled his chest. “Excellent work.”

  “That’s twice you’ve used that term.” Black lifted a finger. “Lamia?”

  “A beautiful half-woman, half-serpent creature of Greek mythology reputed to seduce young men then later feed on their flesh,” Cait answered. “Some accounts mention a thirst for blood. In short, a lamia is a folkloric monster on par with a vampire or succubus. Ours happens to be
hunting men and women upon the streets of London with an aim toward reproduction.”

  “Part cat. Part seal. Why not part snake?” Black fell back against the closed door. “Speaking of our not-so-mythological lamia, there were two more attacks while you were on your honeymoon.” His brother-in-law grated out the last word. “Another man, castrated. A second woman, bitten. Pituitary removed. Both left for dead.”

  Shit.

  “Thornton conducted the autopsy of the woman’s brain,” Black said. “Seemed particularly taken with the findings—chemical cauterization, sharp blades and the like. He thought you would deem those particulars of interest.” He side-eyed Jack. “What is it you and Thornton are keeping from me?”

  A potentially career-ending brain tumor.

  “Nothing of great import,” he lied. The double vision and headaches were manageable. For now.

  Black exhaled with force. “Fine. What more did you learn in Yorkshire?”

  While his wife’s blood flowed in and out of various tubing, Jack delivered a succinct account of their experience with Ceyda at the Grand Menwith Hotel and Spa. Though it pained him to report the physiological effects of the venom upon male anatomical structures, he did so. Black’s eyes rose to study overhead light fixtures as a deep crimson colored Cait’s cheeks.

  He omitted mention of a certain hayloft, choosing to highlight instead the floating circus, their time spent imprisoned within the airborne laboratory, and their subsequent escape.

  “Dr. Thrakos may be here in London,” Jack finished. “Have agents search for a glider-class dirigible with patagium wings—singe marks on the port side—retrofitted to carry an oversized propulsive engine.”

  Rigid, Black nodded.

  During the second half of his narrative, the agent’s expression had tightened, and he now drew in long, steady breaths. For a moment, his dark gaze focused upon his sister.

  “So first a lamia, then snakes modified to carry the same poison glands. Multiple exposure events inside forty-eight hours?” He shook his head. “Rats, you promised me, would be your research subjects. Not yourself.” Teeth grinding, he waved a hand at the dark fluid that coursed through the machine. “Yet your recklessness proceeds apace. How you’re still alive…”