by KJ Charles
“God’s sake, Stephen. They’re your best friends. This is your life.”
“It’s my life, and my decision,” Stephen said sharply. “And until I have a damned good reason to make that decision—”
Being forced apart? Isn’t that a good reason? Crane pressed his lips together. Clearly, it wasn’t. Stephen wasn’t going to gamble with his closest friendships for the sake of a lover he didn’t believe would stay around. It made sense.
Stephen’s shoulders dropped slightly and he sighed. “It must be nice to be able to talk to your friends.”
Crane accepted the change of tone. “Mmm. Leo Hart guessed about you.”
“She’s never met me!”
“Not you personally. That you exist. That there is someone, for me.” Is? Was? He didn’t want to think about that. “She wants to meet you.”
“Um—”
“I said no, don’t worry.” Crane rolled his shoulders, aching from the stooping position that brought his mouth close to Stephen’s ear. “She’s the other victim.”
“The other… Rackham? He was blackmailing Mrs. Hart?”
“He was, the little turd. That was why I went round to have it out with violence.”
“I have to ask…” Stephen said.
“I have no reason to believe she knows anything about any of this. I’m quite sure she doesn’t. And if she wanted Rackham dead…”
“Yes?”
“Oh, if she wanted him dead, she’d have asked me to kill him,” Crane said lightly, recalling that she had done precisely that. “I’ll go and tell her the news now. Did you need anything from me regarding the Traders?”
“Not really.” Stephen straightened up, indicating that they should walk again. “Dr. Almont is very dull, isn’t he? He was so happy to have an audience for his theory on the Javanese anitu, or migratory possessive spirit.” He mimicked Almont’s precise tones. “But he had nothing at all to say on rat cults so I’ll spare myself a further lecture.”
“Wise,” said Crane, as they headed westward, towards town. “What did Peyton say to you?”
“Peyton. Medium height, fifties?”
Crane would have described Peyton as a runt, but since the man stood a good five inches taller than Stephen, he refrained. “And a face like a weasel eating unripe gooseberries.”
“Him,” said Stephen reflectively. “Yes. He followed me down to the conveniences and told me some rather bad things about you.”
“Did he. What sort of things?”
“Apparently, you like to bed men. I was shocked by that, I can tell you.”
Crane grinned. “My secret is out. What else?”
Stephen flicked a glance up at him. “He was rather uncomplimentary about Mr. Hart. He had some strong words about Mr. Hart’s business dealings, and you for supporting him in them.”
“Tom was a thoroughgoing rascal, no denying it. I smuggled for him, and on my own account. I told you that.”
“Mmm.” Stephen paced on. “He called him a murderer.”
“Did he.”
“That’s not news to you,” Stephen observed.
“Tom had men killed,” Crane said. “Whether you’d say murder—well, we differ on that.”
“We do. For example, in my view, if you kill someone for reasons other than self-defence or preventing acts of evil…”
“Yes, very virtuous, but you’re not in China.”
“Morality is different there?”
“You bloody know it is.” Crane saw Stephen blink. “And life is cheaper. Especially in the disreputable quarters of Shanghai. But if that spiteful little worm led you to believe that Tom Hart was some kind of criminal mastermind, or that he and I went around murdering willy-nilly, he’s a damned liar.”
“There I’ll agree with you,” Stephen said. “He reeked of malice. Dr. Almont was lethally dull, that man Shaycott managed to make a story about giant rats boring even under current circumstances, and on the whole, I cannot believe you made me put on a fancy suit for that experience.”
“It would have been more interesting if you were badly dressed?” Crane asked, striving for his usual tone.
“I’d have felt less like a silk purse in a pig’s ear,” Stephen retorted.
They bickered amicably back to Ratcliffe Highway, both forcing a lightness neither felt, and if that meant skating over blood and fear and the prospect of parting, Crane was happy with that, but the nauseated feeling in the pit of his stomach was still there when they parted in Oxford Street and he headed westwards to call on Leonora Hart.
Chapter Eleven
“I’m glad you came.” Leonora spoke in Shanghainese, locking the parlour door and putting the key on a side table. She looked drawn, older, obviously lacking sleep. “That bloody worm Rackham was supposed to call and collect five hundred from me today. He hasn’t turned up. I keep thinking he’s gone to Eadweard. You don’t think—”
“I’m sure he hasn’t,” Crane said. “Leo, what do you want me to do about him?”
“I don’t know. Could you not—well, couldn’t Merrick do something? What did he do to that horrible tax collector?”
“Broke both his arms and threw him into a high-sided hog pen.” Crane had no trouble remembering that incident. “And then stood there watching. I had to help him out in the end, I swear Merrick would have let the pigs eat him. It made the point, though, and we had no more trouble.”
“Are there any hog farms in London?” asked Leonora wistfully.
“There are doubtless alternatives. Is that what you want?”
“I don’t want to pay blood money for the rest of my life.” Leonora’s jaw firmed. “I will not let him keep me in fear, either. I don’t deserve that.” She paused, then added self-mockingly, “I just don’t know how to prevent it.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” said Crane. “The little shit’s dead.”
“He’s what?” The shock on her face looked as genuine as any Crane had seen. She leapt out of her chair and took a few paces. “Oh God. Lucien, this isn’t Shanghai. You have to be careful. What happened? Why?”
“I have no idea. I went round to his rooms and found him dead.”
“Oh!” Leo put a hand to her mouth and let out a relieved sigh. “Oh, thank God. I thought you’d killed him.”
“I realise that. Thank you for your good opinion.”
“Well, really—” Leonora looked round sharply at a rustle from the walls. “My damned cousins. They do eavesdrop, the nosy bitches. Avoid names. So what happened to him? Did he overdo the opium?”
“No, he was murdered.” Crane saw Leo’s eyes widen. “Just not by me.”
“By whom, then?”
“Presumably someone else he was blackmailing.” Crane looked round in his turn at a rattling, scratching sound. “I don’t know about eavesdroppers but you definitely have mice.”
“How horrid,” said Leonora, who had once killed a cobra with her bare hands. “Are you serious, though? He’s dead? Oh God, that’s…wonderful. That’s marvellous! Thank heavens.”
“Thank a killer. It wasn’t terribly pretty, Leo.”
“Oh. No, I suppose not. Well, I’m sorry— No, I’m not. I can’t pretend to be. I think really we have to consider it something of a stroke of luck, don’t you? Eurgh.” Her noise of disgust was directed, not at Rackham’s demise, but at the wall. “Listen. The damned things are scuttling up and down all along the other side of the skirting board. How filthy. And I don’t even think it’s mice,” she added, with distaste. “It sounds more like rats.”
“Rats,” Crane repeated, and the hairs all over his neck and arms rose up in response to the wave of fear. He rubbed his thumb and finger together gently, as Stephen did, and felt—imagined? Felt?—a strange greasiness in the air.
“—because it really isn’t. Lucien, are you listening to me?”
“We have to go.” Crane turned his head, watching the walls. “Now. Out.”
“What? Why?”
“Rats.”
“Darling, they’ll hardly come in,” said Leonora with amusement, and stared at him as he grabbed her arm. “What on earth are you—” Her gaze flitted beyond him and she gave a squawk. “Oh, how disgusting.”
Crane turned and saw the rats coming out of the wall.
They looked like the usual vermin, grey-brown, matted, pink-clawed, but they were fighting their way out of a crack in the skirting, not with the desperation he’d seen in rats fleeing a fire, but with a mad aggression that brought the word rabid to mind. The first tumbled through into the room with another rat’s nose butting hard against its bare fleshy tail, and as it found its feet it looked up at the two horrified humans, and opened its mouth in a yellow-toothed hiss.
Crane lunged for a fire iron. “Unlock the door. Now!”
“But it’s just a fucking hell!” said Leonora, as the rat grew. It swelled visibly in front of them, eyes bulging black, claws convulsing, huge incisors gnawing the air. Leonora made a high keening sound in her throat as the rat’s muscles bulged and inflated under the scabious skin. She bolted to grab the key from the side table, even as Crane brought the poker down hard on the rat’s deforming, bubbling skull. It hit the floor at the second the key did, slipping out of Leonora’s shaking hands, but that meant nothing, because there were five more of them in the room now, each growing monstrously, terrifyingly fast.
“Open it, Leo!” Crane caught the second rat in the jaws with the poker as it sprang, and brought the iron down on the third rat’s spine as it leapt past him towards Leonora, but that wasn’t enough or anything like it to stem the relentless tide. There were more of the things pouring into the room, lunging towards Leo, two on her now, teeth and claws ripping and scrabbling at her dress as she struggled with the key in the lock. Crane slammed the poker down on a monster’s head until he felt bone give, grabbed another rat two-handed and hauled it off the heap of squirming animals, flinging it away. It rebounded off a table, which crashed to the floor taking a bowl of flowers with it, and leapt straight back at Leonora.
Stephen, Stephen, where are you when I need you?
Leonora was screaming, blood blooming through her muslin dress, as she wrenched the door open. A rat landed on her back. She shrieked with agony, fighting her way forward, and Crane waded into the stinking furry mass and pushed at the door, almost closing it on her as she crawled out. He pinned another of the monstrous creatures against the doorframe with his foot to stop it following Leo and, as she disappeared through the gap, slammed the door on it repeatedly till the foul thing went limp.
His back to the door, he was confronted with fifteen or so dog-sized rats. They looked at him with bulging, mad eyes, unmoving, and Crane stared at them with a strange fatalistic calm, which turned to absolute astonishment as they all simultaneously turned and rushed back to their tiny hole of entry in the skirting board, shrinking as fast as they had grown.
It took him half a second to register that he wasn’t going to be torn to pieces, and then he realised there was a terrible noise on the other side of the door.
Crane jerked it open to reveal Leonora’s two cousins, her aunt and three servants, all shrieking with useless fear. Leonora was on the floor, desperately struggling with the rat on top of her, trying to force its yellow incisors back as it lunged at her neck. He grabbed the thing by tail and haunches, pulled it off her bodily and, for want of a weapon, swung it brutally down against the floor with his full strength, again and again, till something inside it broke.
He dropped the carcass. His ears were ringing. Or no: everyone was screaming.
Leonora was bleeding freely from neck, shoulders and arms, her dress and flesh torn, making a dreadful sucking noise in her throat. Crane knelt by her. “Leo? Leo, talk to me!”
Her eyes were wide and blind with panic, and she grabbed for him with bloody hands, her grip tightening convulsively as a terrible shudder ran through her body.
“Someone should send for Dr. Grace,” quavered Leonora’s aunt inadequately, as the stunned group of onlookers clutched each other and made horrified noises.
“I’ll take her to a doctor.” Crane scooped her up. “Get everyone out of the house. Now.” He didn’t hear footsteps as he ran down the hall, so he yelled over his shoulder, “There may be more rats!” and heard the panicked cries as he wrenched the front door open and tumbled out into the street.
There was a hansom just a few yards away. He shouted at the jarvey. The man looked round, his eyes widened at the sight of the torn and bleeding woman, and he raised his whip to urge the horse on, but a flurry of magpies rose from the railings and took off past him, chattering wildly, their wings skimming his face as they swooped by. The jarvey recoiled in alarm, and by the time the six birds had disappeared, Crane had the carriage door open and was hauling Leo in.
It still cost him valuable seconds of argument and a ludicrous ten pounds to make the jarvey take them to Devonshire Street. The man at least whipped on his horse with alacrity, but even so the ten-minute journey seemed longer than the nights Crane had once spent in a condemned cell waiting for execution. Leonora lay still at first, but as the cab passed up through Piccadilly she began to twitch violently, and she was thrashing around so hard he could barely hold her when the cab jolted to a halt.
“Dr. Gold’s surgery,” said the cabman, yanking open the door. “And—oh my Gawd.”
Crane looked down at Leo in the daylight and swore with spectacular foulness. Her face was, unmistakeably, hideously, swelling, like a bladder inflating under her skin. Her lips were drawn back over teeth that looked very large and very yellow.
Crane dragged her out of the cab, the jarvey’s obscenities ringing in his ears, and stumbled up the steps to the door, where, for want of a free hand, he kicked the door violently until an affronted-looking nurse opened it.
“Dr. Gold,” he gasped, but she was already calling urgently, “Doctor!”
A dark, curly-haired man stuck his head out into the hall. “What’s the pr— Great Scott! Bring her in here. Quick, man, on the couch.”
Crane put his bloody, convulsing burden on the consulting room couch. Dr. Gold told the nurse, “Hot water, now,” grabbing for cloths to stanch the bleeding. “What happened to her?”
“Rats. Giant rats. The ones your wife—”
“Hold her.” Dr. Gold stepped away from Leonora, took two steps to the door and bellowed, “Esther? Esther!” He hurried back to the couch as the nurse brought hot water in, and shooed her away. “Right, you know about my wife’s job? Fine, makes life easier.” He spread his hands over Leonora, and Crane saw his eyes darken as his pupils expanded. “What’s your name? Hers?”
“Crane. She’s Leonora Hart.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“Fifteen minutes— Oh, thank Christ,” Crane said, almost folding at the knees, as Esther sprinted in, followed by Stephen. Esther went straight to her husband’s side, but Stephen stopped short, eyes widening with horror. “It’s Leonora,” Crane told him. “The rats. The bloody rats got her.”
“Hell’s teeth,” said Esther. “What happened?”
“Are you all right?” Stephen demanded hoarsely.
“Fine.” Crane couldn’t understand why he was asking, until he glanced down at himself and realised that his shirt and trousers were dark with blood. “I’m fine. They didn’t touch me. Not even a scratch. They were trying to kill Leo.”
“Still—trying,” said Dr. Gold through his teeth.
Stephen and Crane both turned. Dr. Gold stood by Leonora’s head, gripping her skull, pupils hugely distended, knuckles white. Esther held his shoulder tightly. He was perspiring. “Can’t do this—”
Stephen turned and reached out a hand towards him, and Dr. Gold took
a deep shuddering breath. Crane could feel the suction in the air as the three practitioners dragged power towards themselves. Dr. Gold’s jaw was set and grim. Leonora jerked violently on the couch, and one clenching, crooked hand flew up in a clawing gesture.
“What’s happening?” Esther snapped.
“Can’t…stop it. Poison. Bloodstream. Everywhere. Too much. Hold her down,” said the doctor as Leonora’s arms suddenly flailed. Stephen leapt to one side of the couch, Crane to the other, and they each grabbed one of her wrists. Crane gritted his teeth as he struggled to keep her still, unable to believe he wasn’t hurting her.
Leonora’s cheeks and neck were swelling and shrinking, and her nose and top lip were horribly mobile, sniffing, questing.
“Anitu,” said Stephen. “Migratory possessive spirit. Is there someone in there, Dan?”
“Don’t know. Poison. She’s too weak for this. I can’t stop it.”
Crane stared up at him. He had heard so much from Stephen about Dan Gold’s skills as a healer. He had not allowed himself to think he could fail.
“Keep trying,” he snarled.
“I am. Steph, more.”
Stephen’s hands tightened on Leonora’s arm. That was all Crane allowed himself to see, then he concentrated his gaze on his own hands.
If he looked at Stephen now, he knew what the man would read in his face. He wanted to beg, to plead, to command Stephen to use the Magpie Lord’s power, right now, and save Leonora.
But he couldn’t do that. Couldn’t ask. He had no right. Stephen’s life and future depended on the secrets he had to keep. Crane couldn’t make that decision for him.
If Stephen kept his secrets, Leonora would die.
Paralysed, Stephen’s life and Leonora’s death on either side of the scale, throat thick with inexpressible rage and pain, Crane didn’t look up when Stephen said his name quietly, or when he repeated it louder. He did look up when Stephen said, “For God’s sake!” but it was too late, because Stephen had already reached over, and the scalpel he held seared across the back of Crane’s hand, opening a long cut. As Crane’s eyes flew to his face, Stephen sliced open the heel of his own hand, reached over Leo’s thrashing body again and slapped his bloody wound onto Crane’s.