by KJ Charles
He fucked me, rough and relentless, gripping my hip and shoulder to hold me where he wanted. I closed my eyes and pictured the wide grey river, the summer sun, and imagined that Simon was fucking me in the open, in the face of all the world, because nothing mattered except that he should take his pleasure with me. I clutched the counterpane and felt the rough wet wood of the palings under my fingers, inhaled the smell of sea salt and river rot on the air, felt him move inside me with the steady, unstoppable force of the tide. He wasn’t touching my prick, had no need; the blood pounded to the point of pain. He hauled me up, buried his face in the curve of my neck, bit down hard on the flesh there, and I came, spilling into the Thames itself like a sacrifice, sobbing his name.
We stood there, bent over the bed in our room in Fetter Lane, both gasping. At last Simon very carefully traced the bite mark on my neck with his finger. “Hell and damnation.”
“Did you feel it?” I asked, unnecessarily. “The river?”
Simon let out a long, hissing sigh that raised the hairs on my back. “Curse it.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was my teeth.” He kissed the mark. “I beg your pardon, Robert. Are you all right?”
I nodded, and he scooped me up, laid me carefully on the bed, and lay with me in his arms, his lips to my hair. Comfort and strength. I needed it then. So did he, I imagine.
“I should prefer that our work did not meddle with our play,” I said at last, striving for a light tone. There was still a faint scent of sewers in my nose, but I felt dirtied beyond that. “And I should strongly prefer that our time together was not shanghaied by some cut-price Cockney deity.”
Simon gave a snort of amusement, and we lay together in silence until it was time to dress, and to see what Miss Kay had for us.
She had a location. Under the earth, dark and dank. Stonework, not brickwork. A flat ceiling, not round. A ditch, within the cave—“writhing”, she said, without explanation. Close to the river.
And Peggy was alive. Of that she was sure.
We went back to Bermondsey, the three of us. It was close to seven o’clock in the evening now, golden light streaming over the foetid Thames, air warm as bathwater and damned near as wet.
Jeremiah Sweetly sat like a general in his cramped house, with a gang of toshers about him. Despite the heat they wore long coats with huge pockets for the spoils, the tails stained beyond description. They looked like the refuse of London, but they carried themselves proudly.
I introduced myself and Simon to the mass of men, and Miss Kay to them all, explaining briefly that she had some sense of where Peggy was, but their knowledge of London’s guts was required to identify the place. There was, perhaps, a little scepticism in the murmurs with which I was greeted, but Mr. Sweetly held up a hand with authority and all fell silent.
“Mr. Caldwell.” He tapped the white bite mark at the side of his neck, mirrored by the red mark on my own. “She?”
I shrugged. He nodded. “You listen to him, boys. She’s given her favour.”
That was all that was required. They listened when Miss Kay spoke, with intelligent respect that would have done credit to men of higher standing, and gathered round a table on which Simon spread a plan of the sewers. I stepped back. I had nothing to contribute to the discussion, and frankly, I was uncomfortable. The bite burned on my neck. I did not want to draw further attention to it, did not want questions as to who and how and when. And it was hot as hell in this cramped, stinking space full of men. I stepped outside.
The street was little better but at least there was air. I leaned against the wall, feeling wretchedly uncomfortable and dizzy. Nauseated too; my stomach roiled. Christ, I was going to vomit, and no surprise after the day’s filth.
I was sick and, as I looked about me, I was afraid.
People. There were so many of them. They clumped through the narrow streets, shoes echoing on the ground, careless of where they trod, with their young clutching at their skirts or crying for food. So many.
So many vermin.
Dangerous vermin, too. Intelligence in their eyes, and malice, and greed. They wanted to eat everything, consume everything, spoil and destroy. The city floated on a tide of their shit.
And they would kill me if they saw me. Me, with my lover’s bite on my neck, my mark of Cain. If they knew, if they suspected, if I ever allowed myself to emerge from the shadows, no matter my hunger, then the trap would be waiting for me, sharp jaws gaping.
I needed shadows.
I was walking then, without conscious volition, heading I knew not where. I threaded through a maze of passages, ducking under the low beams of little covered alleys with the bite throbbing on my neck and the sickness churning in my belly. I found a set of grey stone stairs, and went down, and through a gate whose rusty hinges screamed, and along a passageway that was wet underfoot even in this summer, the stench of piss in my nose. Mindlessly, urgently, following a need to be underground, through doors that stood open for no reason, until quite suddenly one shut behind me with a slam, and I turned back to look at it as I blinked myself awake.
“Oh fuckery,” said a man’s voice. “It’s Caldwell!”
I jerked around, bewildered, and took in my surroundings.
A room under the earth, stone-walled and stone-ceilinged, lit by oil lamps that cast as much shadow as light. The floor ended before it reached the wall, in some sort of wide, deep gutter, or sump, full of liquid that gleamed oily black, and heaved oddly as I watched it. The place of Miss Kay’s vision.
A cage. All too like the one we had used for the rat, but it was big enough to contain a large dog, or a small human, and it did. A young woman with dark blonde hair was curled up in it, unmoving.
A stone table in the centre of the room. Candles at each corner, and ropes attached to iron rings. A knife on it, shining pale metal. The word that came to my mind was “altar”. At one end I saw a rat, on its back, unpleasantly splayed out with what looked like pins through its pink claws. It could not move but its tail twitched urgently.
A caged woman, a tortured beast, and in front of them, moving in a half circle to surround me, one from behind where he had bolted the door, three men, in black robes, cowled like monks.
I did not, then, feel optimistic.
I cleared my throat. “I believe you have the advantage of me.” Someone chuckled, not pleasantly. “I take it the lady is Peggy Flowers.” She didn’t move at her name. I wondered if she lived. “And as you know me, you doubtless know that Mr. Feximal and Miss Kay will not be long after me.”
Two of the men shifted, and one muttered an oath. The third did not flinch. “Well, we knew there was interference. It had to be someone, and if it is Feximal I am glad of it.”
His colleagues didn’t seem to share that view. “He’s a damned great bruiser—” one began, and the other said, “But that woman—”
“Quiet, you vacillating fools!” snapped the leader, and I realised I knew the voice.
“Mr. Parker?”
He snatched the cowl back from his head. He appeared decidedly older than at our last meeting, though not quite three years had passed: older, thinner, angrier. His eyes were shadowed so dark they seemed painted, or bruised. He looked as though he did not sleep.
“You,” he snarled. “You and that accursed brute. What he did to me— Get him down.” It was an order, but the other men did not stir. Parker cursed them. “Get him down! Or do you want to wait for Feximal?” he shouted, and then they moved.
I struggled as best I could, but there was in truth little I could do. Simon could give a good account of himself against three, but I am no pugilist. In a humiliatingly, frighteningly short space they had me on my back on their altar, two easily overcoming my unavailing struggles while Parker secured my wrists and ankles. I bucked uselessly, but all it did was tighten the bond.
“What do you propose to do?” I demanded. “Sacrifice me to the Rat Queen?”
Parker gave a barking laugh
. “Good God, no. We’re going to sacrifice her.”
“What?”
He leaned over me. The silver knife was in his hand, and he ran the tip down my cheek and up, under my eye. It was almost ticklish.
“We trapped her in the trollop there, but she reached for you before we were done. So we’re going to have to kill you. And then we’ll kill her, and the rat, and take what she has.” He spoke as if it were quite reasonable. Government business. “I will command the rats. I will have an army of eyes, I will know everything. I will have power once more.” He snarled those words, lips drawn back. “And I will have my revenge.”
The Fat Man had made a mistake, I realised; he had played the wrong game, or with the wrong opponent. One could destroy a Whitehall enemy simply by removing him from the board. But this fallen piece had armed himself and returned.
Mr. Parker had seen the scale of power occultists wielded, and he wanted that for himself. A power nobody could take from him. A defence against what Simon had done to him in his office, three years ago, for my sake.
In the great sewer that was London, Mr. Parker intended to become the Rat King.
I strained against my bonds, looking around with desperation. There were sigils traced on the walls in drying blood. I prayed it was rat, although Mr. Parker was welcome to have used his own.
The other two men were murmuring intently, syllables that buzzed unpleasantly in my ear. The rat, splayed at the end of the altar between my pinioned ankles, scrabbled and squealed. Mr. Parker traced the point of the silver blade over the bite mark on my neck, his expression thoughtful.
“Who gave you this?” he murmured. “Or, no, do you know, I think I can guess. Is that how the Fat Man calls Feximal to heel? Are you his weakness? Oh, I shall enjoy this. I shall take you from him, and then I shall end him.”
I cursed him, in language I should be ashamed to repeat. There was little else to be done.
I cannot convey my state of mind then. I was afraid, needless to say, brutally afraid of what was to come. I am not a brave man, not a fighter. I use words, and when they are powerless, so am I. But there was something alien snarling in my mind, a heedless defiance for its own sake that said, You are the stronger, I cannot win, but still I shall bite you if I can.
She reached for you, he had said.
The chanting rose, in pitch and volume. Mr. Parker tilted his head back, mouth moving in a parody of prayer. I could hear his whisper. “Eyes, give me eyes. I shall take first his eyes, then hers, until you give me yours. I will have them all. I will see everything.”
An army of eyes. That was what the rats would give him, the rats that infested the whole city, hiding in crevices and cracks and under tables, in drains and alleys, on window ledges and under stones, and watching everything with their bright black button eyes.
Rats had seen me walking like an opium-eater, mindlessly called. Rats had followed me through the maze of narrow passages. Rats knew where I was, and where Simon was too.
I bent my mind to the bite on my neck. Not the cold stone at my back or the rough rope at my wrists, or the three men who stood around me, their incantation rising to an unmistakable climax. Just the bite, the Rat Queen’s mark.
Bring me luck, I thought. Even better, bring me Simon.
Parker moved the knife over my face. Positioned it beneath my eye socket. Put his other hand on my head, hard, to hold it still. Dug the point in.
Everyone screamed. I; the rat on the altar; the woman in the cage. He moved the knife, searingly, and it dawned on me through the pain that he intended to cut a pattern.
He shifted the knife again, gouging a chunk of flesh—I felt it lift—and there was a tremendous knock on the door.
Parker’s head went up, hand stilling, eyes wide with shock. The welling blood began to run down my cheek.
The pounding came again, and I bellowed, with all my strength, “Simon! I’m here!”
A thud, as if a heavy man had set his shoulder to the door. One of the acolytes swore; the other said, high-pitched, “Oh Christ, it’s Feximal, I’ll wager it’s Feximal, what will we do?”
“Kill him,” Parker snapped.
“With what?” yelped the robed man. “Did anyone bring a pistol?”
“He won’t kill you if you let me go,” I said, as the door shook on its hinges with the force being applied. It hurt like the very devil to speak.
The cowled men were evidently no more convinced by my words than I was. Parker snarled, wordless, then raised his arm once more, holding the knife high, ready to plunge it into my breast, as the door gave up the unequal struggle and crashed inwards in a shower of broken wood and groaning metal.
Simon and Skip Robey half fell into the room. Simon’s grim features were lit with unholy rage, and as he took in the scene, his face darkened in a way that made the two acolytes step back.
“Oh sweet Lord,” Skip whispered. “Peg? Peggy!”
“Move a muscle and I’ll kill him.” Mr. Parker’s eyes were intent on Simon’s. The knife was above my heart.
“You put her in a cage.” Skip looked from Parker to Peggy, slumped and motionless. His voice rang with incredulous fury. “A cage. You—”
“Don’t move,” Parker repeated.
“Be fucked!” Skip bolted forward, grabbing for the cage bars as if he intended to pull it apart by main force. “Peggy!”
Parker’s hand wavered, but he must have known Simon was the greater threat, and if he killed me he would have no leverage at all. God knows what thwarted anger he felt then, but his face smoothed into the serene mask of the civil servant as he spoke.
“If you want your dainty scribbler intact, Mr. Feximal, you would do well to negotiate with me. His life depends on your obedience to my terms.”
Simon was poised on the balls of his feet. He looked huge. He looked ready to kill with his bare hands, to break Parker’s neck and be damned to the consequences, but he managed to speak through stiff lips. “I agree. Whatever your terms, I agree.”
I think I had not fully known his love for me till then.
Parker’s face lit with triumph. There was a splintering noise from the cage. I twisted my neck to see. Skip cried, “Peg!” And Peggy Flowers, piebald girl, shot out of confinement like—there are no other words—like a rat from a trap.
She moved with boneless fluidity, knocking Skip out of the way, accelerating in one leap, and hit Mr. Parker from behind. The knife flew out of his hand as he was thrown forward across me, and her weight landed on his, crushing the breath out of me until she wrenched him to the floor. Then there was simply screaming. Skip and Simon, as one, turned on the two cowled acolytes, avenging their fears with savage blows, as Peggy ripped at Parker with claws and teeth.
“Simon!” I shouted, seeing his man drop and Skip still demolishing his opponent, and I jerked my head towards Peggy.
I did not want those young lovers tainted. If I had seen Simon with those blank black eyes and bloody sharp-toothed mouth, I might have been able to forget it again; I feared Skip would not. And at some point, or so I prayed, Peggy would come back to herself, and she should not have to do it with a death on her conscience. She had endured enough already. Whereas, for us, one more would hardly make a difference.
Simon took my meaning. He reached down, separated Peggy and Parker by main force, and picked Parker up off the ground by his lapels. He looked at me, splayed and helpless on the altar. He looked around. Then he walked over to the drain, dragging the gasping, bleeding man with him, and dropped him in.
There was a huge splash. Parker cried out in shock. Then he screamed.
Simon was slicing through the bonds at my wrists with the silver knife. I sat up as they fell away, and stared with disbelief at Mr. Parker, as the inky water thrashed and boiled and moved like thick black ribbons that entangled him and dragged him down.
“Oh Lord, sir, that’s eels in there.” Skip’s eyes were wide with horror. “Eels. Hadn’t we better— Sir, he doesn’t stand a chance.”
“Good,” Simon said, and moved to cut my ankles free.
“The rat,” I managed, tearing my eyes from the heaving waters of the drain. Parker had gone under now. “Let it go.”
Simon glanced down at the tortured rat, then, carefully, pulled out the pins. The beast leapt onto all fours, an acrobatic movement, with no sign of the pain it must have endured. It did not attempt to bite; rather, it stared at us, unblinking, and gave me what I can only call a regal nod.
“Thank you,” I managed.
With a skitter of claws and tail, it was gone into the darkness. Skip knelt on the floor, whispering to his sweetheart. Simon took me in his arms as I sat on that accursed table, my head on his shoulder, and I felt the tremors run through him as he held me close.
The bite mark on my neck did not scar, and I was pleased to see it fade. Supernatural luck is occasionally welcome, but I have no desire to bear more marks. The scar beneath my eye, a teardrop shape too deep ever to heal, is quite bad enough.
The two surviving members of Mr. Parker’s little cult included one fellow I had met several times at the Remnant, and rather got on with. I must say, that was something of a blow. Simon discouraged them both from pursuing occult studies, repeating any of Parker’s implications about us, or ever coming to his notice in any way. His discouragement was so thorough that they both emigrated.
Peggy Flowers suffered no lasting ill effects from her experience. She did not remember attacking Parker, and if Skip had watched her do it, he did not let it trouble him long. We were proud to attend their wedding three months later; seven months after that, Peggy brought Eugene Simon Robey into the world. Gene is eighteen now, a strong and decent young man, serving on a battlecruiser in the North Atlantic. I pray that the family legend is true. I pray he cannot drown.
But then, little Joanie Robey was born with one grey eye and one blue, strikingly pale against her tawny skin, so it seems the Queen still watches her people.
The Writing on the Wall
I am an author of some little fame now, among those who enjoy sensational yellowback fiction at least. (Fiction. Ha. I recall a review in the Criterion that observed, “While Mr. Caldwell’s talents as a wordsmith are only moderate, his grotesque imagination knows no bounds.” Considering that I had concealed the worst of the horrors rather than dwelling on them, I felt that to be a somewhat unkind cut.) Yet, when I look back at my published works, the Casebooks that tell of our first few years together, they seem to me nothing but a patchwork of holes. Yes, they recount the earlier cases on which I worked with Simon, when I deepened my knowledge of the mysteries and secrets that run under the polished surface of our age. But so much is missing. I could not write of our lives together, as mutual affection and desire ripened into a deep and passionate companionship. I could not write of his vulnerabilities.