Underworld

by Oliver Bowden

  She stood and gawped for a second. It wasn’t possible, a man of Starrick’s age and build managing to restrain Jacob. Yet there it was. Sourcing power from the Shroud it was as though Starrick was leeching it from Jacob at the same time. “You do not listen,” she caught him saying as her gaze traveled to an ornately decorated chest. Inside were what looked like jewels that had begun to rise as if of their own accord, glowing malevolently in the murky gloom of the vault. Drones, they began to revolve as if setting up a protective perimeter around the Grand Master and his helpless victim.

  She was about to find out how powerful they were, for having taken several steps into the vault she whirled at a noise from behind her. A guard had rushed into the vault, already breathlessly trying to address Starrick. “Sir, there’s . . .”

  But he never finished his words. The sudden movement from the doorway seemed to excite the drones and a bolt shot from one of them, catching the guard in the face and propelling him backward, dead before he hit the floor.

  As his singed and blackened face lolled, she realized it was the sudden movement that had set them off. She remained still, one eye on the deadly hovering insects, but also monitoring the center of the room, where Starrick held her brother captive, sucking the life from him.

  The situation was desperate now, Jacob holding on but only just.

  “London will soon be rid of your chaos,” Starrick roared. His eyes were wide and wild and saliva flecked his lips. “This city was a safe harbor. A light for all humanity. You would rather destroy the fabric of society. What alternatives do you propose? Bedlam?”

  Freedom, thought Evie, but stayed silent. Instead she directed her efforts toward her brother, feeling his pain as if it were her own. “Jacob, resist,” she called, and heard her own voice crack with helplessness and frustration. Her brother’s eyes bulged; the tendons in his neck were pulsing so hard she feared they might actually burst.

  “Evie,” he managed, “stay back.”

  “You do not know how to use the artifact,” Evie called to Starrick. “The Shroud was never meant for you.”

  But Starrick wasn’t listening. He was applying more pressure to Jacob’s neck, the power surging through him as he did so. He snarled as he went to complete the death grip.

  At the same time, as though they sensed events drawing to a close, the drones had withdrawn, their pulsing light fading as they receded. Evie took the chance to dash forward with a shout of defiance. Her blade rose and fell but Starrick was enjoying the assistance of the artifacts and seemed to easily dodge the blow. At least she’d done enough to knock him off balance, though, and in the next instant, Jacob was rolling on the stone, gasping and spluttering with his hands at his neck, released at last from the grip of Crawford Starrick.

  Suddenly caught by the combined aura of the Shroud, the trunk and drone artifacts, Evie found herself disoriented and in the next moment was taken by Starrick, who held her in the same grip he’d used on Jacob.

  “Another Frye to feed on,” he shouted triumphantly. His manic gaze bore into Evie. When they’d danced she wondered about his state of mind. Now she was in no doubt. Whatever was left of Crawford Starrick was in there somewhere but it was buried too deep. He was in some other place. “I admire your pluck,” he was saying, showering her with spittle, “but there is little you can accomplish now. Like Jesus himself, I am immortal. Behold the power of the Shroud.”

  “Jesus wore it better,” she managed, but if Starrick heard her, he made no sign, ranting on.

  “I will begin again and this new London shall be even more magnificent. First you will fall, then the Queen.”

  Around her the drones had begun orbiting with greater urgency. It was as if they responded to Starrick’s increased emotional intensity. Or perhaps—more likely—they were somehow inextricably linked to the impulses shooting through the Shroud he wore, drawing off his excitement.

  Either way, Jacob had pulled himself to his feet but the drones prevented him from coming any closer. Now it was he who urged her to stay strong and resist the darkness of Starrick’s death grip. Bolts shot from the drones, keeping him away.

  “No amount of planning or might shall beat me,” Starrick was raving. “I have history on my side. London deserves a ruler who will remain vigilant, who will prevent the city from devolving into chaos.”

  “Chaos that you are about to cause,” Jacob shouted, and came in close, hoping to dodge the drones and strike at Starrick.

  He was too slow. A bolt of energy slammed into him, knocking him into the wall. Starrick capitalized and with an almost unimaginable burst of strength pounced on him, his hand at Jacob’s neck.

  Now the Templar Grand Master held both Evie and Jacob. The power of the Shroud’s energy seemed to flow through the linen, through his arms and to the hands he made his claws, gripping the twins harder, lifting them like trophies. Squeezing. They hung, helpless, shoulders thrown back, chins jutting, jaws working with an agony so intense it refused to allow them even to scream.

  Evie felt that the very life force was being drawn from her. Short of breath, her vision clouding, her muscles refusing to respond to any of the weak signals of resistance sent by her brain. Starrick’s clawlike hands gripped her throat but it was as if he was driving the point of a pike into her neck.

  “Get. Out. Of. My. City,” he snarled and these, she realized, would be the last words she ever heard because his grip was increasing, and her consciousness was receding. Thoughts passed through her dying mind. Regrets that she would never have the opportunity to tell Henry how she felt about him. Visit Amritsar with him. How she would never make her peace with Jacob. Tell her brother she loved him. Tell him she was sorry things had turned out this way.

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  At first she believed she was hallucinating. Surely the figure in the doorway was an image projected to her in death, an out-of-focus product of wishful thinking? She’d take it with her, she decided. Rather than the grinning, sweating insanity of Starrick, it would be this that she carried with her from this world to the next.

  It would be Henry.

  She saw his hand rise and fall. Light flashing on silver. Something spinning across the vault toward them.

  And then from Starrick came a shout of pain, and his hand relaxed enough on her throat for her to see a knife handle protruding from his chest, a flower of blood already spreading across his shirt.

  A familiar voice. Henry. He had come. It really was him in the doorway, resplendent in his robes, activating his blade, moving toward where Starrick was trying but now failing to maintain his grip on the twins.

  The drones, she thought, but couldn’t say. Henry, beware the drones.

  She saw one of the probes seem to shudder with fury then shoot a bolt of energy that snagged Henry’s shoulder hard enough to knock him off his feet and unconscious to the stone. At the same time both twins pulled themselves free, sprawling to the floor and gasping for air even as they pulled themselves into defensive positions, blades at the ready.

  They needn’t have worried. Starrick looked beaten. Perhaps the drones were still responding to him but not for much longer.

  “You’re weakening,” shouted Jacob in triumph. He dodged a shot from a drone. “You cannot maintain this.”

  He was right. Blood was spreading across Starrick’s front and the Grand Master was already deathly pale. The probes glowed more faintly, their respective flight paths less certain.

  “The Shroud will not protect you,” called Evie.

  Starrick bared bloodstained teeth. “You are wrong,” he said. “The people of this city, my people, shall supply its energy.” Whatever power the Shroud gave him was fading now.

  “This city is bigger than you will ever be,” Evie told him.

  She and Jacob made to attack, and when Starrick pulled away, the Shroud fluttered off him and to the floor of the vault, releasing its hos
t.

  Simultaneously, the drones seemed to lose their energy, as though they, too, knew the battle was done, and they returned to the ornate First Civilization crate, theatergoers settling down to enjoy the show from the comfort of their box.

  Starrick sank to his knees. His shoulders slumped, his head hung, regarding his scarlet shirt.

  With Jacob covering Starrick, Evie ran to Henry, dropping to her knees and skidding across the stone toward him. She took his head in her lap and felt for a pulse. It was strong. He was alive; his eyelids were already beginning to flutter.

  “Henry,” she said, to let him know she was near. She cradled his head for a precious moment, allowing herself a kiss. There would be plenty more of those, she promised herself. A trip home for him, too—Amritsar.

  But first . . .

  Evie straightened, turned and crossed to where Jacob stood over Starrick, the Templar Grand Master, slowly bleeding to death before them.

  The twins looked gravely at one another. There was no honor to be had in slaying a mortally wounded man. But there was even less in letting him bleed slowly to death on the stone.

  To finish him quickly and humanely was the right way. Their father’s way. The Assassin way.

  They came forward.

  “Together,” said Evie to Jacob and they ran him through.

  “London will perish without me,” gasped Crawford Starrick as he died.

  “You flatter yourself,” Jacob told him.

  “I would have made it into a paradise,” said Starrick.

  Evie shook her head. “The city belongs to the people. You are but one man.”

  “I am at the very top of the order,” said Starrick with what would be his very last breath.

  “The very top should be barricading their doors,” stated Jacob. “We are the Assassins.”

  * * *

  Yes, thought Evie. She cast her gaze at the carnage in the vault and knew that, for the time being at least, the death was done. Soon, Evie and Jacob would dab their handkerchiefs in Starrick’s blood then the twins and Henry would leave this vault and knowing the Shroud’s true power, they would leave it behind, to be sealed up and left in the care of the Crown. And tomorrow London would awaken as a city renewed and together the three Assassins would continue to bring it hope. There would be more battles to fight, she knew. But for now . . .

  “We are the Assassins.”

  EPILOGUE

  Henry was trembling a little, he noticed. But that was to be expected. After all, it wasn’t every day that . . .

  He composed himself and moved into the room where Evie sat studying the bouquet he had sent her, a perplexed look on her face, and he wondered if he were making a huge error of judgment. And if he was, how he would ever recover.

  Because there was no doubting his feelings for her, none at all. He had fallen a little in love with her the second he first saw her. Their time together since had seen that feeling intensify into something so strong it almost felt like sweet pain, like a precious burden—the need to see her each day, just to be with her, breathe the same air as her; what interested her he found just as absorbing, what made her laugh tickled him too. Just to share a working day with her brought him more happiness than he could remember since childhood. She wiped his soul clean of his years as The Ghost; she scrubbed the slaughter from him. She made him feel whole and new again. His love for her was something he marveled at, like a rare butterfly find, such was its color and intensity.

  And yet, like a butterfly, it could so easily take flight and escape.

  Certainly, Henry thought she felt the same way about him, but aye, like Hamlet said, there’s the rub, he couldn’t be absolutely sure. All that time they had spent together researching the artifact had brought them closer, and for him feelings of friendship and attraction had swiftly blossomed into the love he felt now, this glorious renewal. But for her? Almost exactly a month ago she’d rewarded him with a kiss for saving her life. Was he reading too much into what might simply have been a hurried thank-you?

  It was not long after those epochal events at the Palace that he had found her in her study one day. She sat with one leg pulled beneath herself, leaning forward, arms on the tabletop, a pose he knew well, and he was sure that she blushed a little at the sight of him as he entered the room.

  (But then again. On the other hand. Maybe she didn’t.)

  He’d placed his still-empty herbarium down on the tabletop before her and watched her eyes go from her own reading to its cover.

  “An herbarium?” she said. “Are you collecting flowers for someone?”

  “Only myself,” he replied. “I’m told it’s something of a British pastime. Did you know they all have symbolic meanings?”

  “I had heard something of the sort,” she said.

  “Of course you have. Unfortunately, I’ve had no time to fill the book.”

  “I’m sure I can find some samples if you’d accept my help.”

  “I would appreciate that. Thank you, Miss Frye.”

  So they had, building up an impressive collection together over the weeks, searching for the meaning of their own relationship just as surely as they deciphered messages in flora.

  “Mignonette: your qualities surpass your charms,” she said one day, as they pored over the now-bulging herbarium.

  “I’m not entirely sure if that’s meant as a compliment. Love in a mist, that’s a pretty name.”

  “Alternately called ‘Devil in a bush.’”

  They looked at each other and laughed.

  “Narcissus: self-love,” she pointed out. “I should buy a bouquet for Jacob.”

  “Unkind, Miss Frye.” Henry laughed, but he was pleased—pleased the twins were reconciled—and pleased that she was able to see Jacob with a little more perspective.

  “Amusing as this all is, I really should get back to work. If you need me . . .”

  “I’ll send a bouquet,” he said.

  “. . . of irises.”

  “‘A message.’ Indeed.”

  And so he had. He had assembled a delightful nosegay of iris, snowdrop, strawberry flower, and red tulip, each of them well chosen, selected to say something he himself was finding it so hard to express. The man in the mirror scoffed at his indecision and uncertainty. Of course she feels the same way. She kissed you at the vault. The man who stood before it couldn’t be so sure.

  “A message . . .” he watched her say, as her fingertips went to the snowdrop and strawberry, “of hope. Perfection?”

  Next she went to the red tulip. She was more perplexed still, unable to decipher the meaning behind this one.

  In the doorway, Henry took a deep breath, cleared his throat and said, “. . . a declaration of love.”

  She turned to see him there and stood from her seat, crossing to where he stood, falling over his words. “I . . . Miss Frye, you must know that I hold you in the highest esteem . . . and regard. And I wonder if you would do me the honor of . . . if you would give me your hand . . . in matrimony.”

  Evie Frye took Henry’s hands, looked up into a face she loved with eyes that were misty with tears.

  And, yes, he knew, she felt the same.

  LIST OF CHARACTERS

  Abberline, Police Constable Frederick: police officer

  Ajay: Indian Assassin

  Attaway, Pearl: proprietor of Attaway Transport, cousin to Starrick

  Boot: lackey

  Brewster, Sir David: scientist, linked to the Templars

  Brudenell, James Thomas: Templar, Starrick’s lieutenant

  Brydon, Dr. William: officer

  Cavanagh: director of the Metropolitan Railway

  Charlie: young street urchin

  Dani, Tjinder: Indian Templar

  Disraeli, Benjamin: politician

  Disraeli, Mary Anne: wife of Benjamin<
br />
  Elliotson, Dr. John: inventor

  Elphinstone, Major-General William, aka Elphy Bey: British officer

  Ferris, Rupert: head of Ferris Ironworks, linked to the Templars

  Fowler, John: railway engineer

  Frye, Cecily: wife of Ethan, mother of Evie and Jacob

  Frye, Ethan: Assassin and mentor to Jayadeep Mir, father to Evie and Jacob

  Frye, Evie: Assassin and twin to Jacob

  Frye, Jacob: Assassin and twin to Evie, head of the Rooks

  Gladstone, Catherine: wife to William

  Gladstone, Mr. William Ewert: Chancellor of the Exchequer

  Hamid: mentor

  Hardy: one of Cavanagh’s fighters

  Hazlewood, Leonard: private detective

  Jake: vagrant

  Kaur, Pyara: granddaughter to Ranjit Singh, wife to Arbaaz Mir, mother to Jayadeep

  Kaylock, Rexford: gang leader

  Khan, Akbar: Afghan leader

  Kulpreet: Indian Assassin

  Lavelle, Colonel Walter: Templar

  Maggie: associate of The Ghost

  Marchant: site manager at the Metropolitan Railway

  Mir, Arbaaz: Indian Assassin, father to Jayadeep

  Mir, Jayadeep, aka The Ghost, Bharat Singh and Henry Green: Assassin undercover agent

  Other Mr. Hardy: one of Cavanagh’s fighters

  Pearson, Charles: Solicitor of London

  Pearson, Mary: wife to Charles

  Roth, Maxwell: Templar

  Sale, Lady Florentia: wife to Major General Robert Henry Sale

  Sale, Major General Robert Henry: British officer

  Shaw, Aubrey: police officer

  Singh, Maharajah Duleep: maharajah and Assassin contact

  Smith: one of Cavanagh’s fighters

  Starrick, Crawford: Templar Grand Master

  Thorne, Lucy: Templar, expert in the occult

  Twopenny, Philip “Plutus”: governor of the Bank of England, linked to the Templars