A Case of Possession

by KJ Charles

  There was a flurry of wings as a group of magpies caught up with them, five landing in a row on the railings, four right in front of them on the pavement. Crane counted automatically and couldn’t help grinning. “Look at that. Do the damned things know the rhymes?”

  “I hope not. It’s nine for a funeral, isn’t it?”

  Crane let the back of his hand brush Stephen’s arm. “Try, ‘Nine for a lover as true as can be’.”

  “Oh. I like your version better.” Stephen bumped gently back against him, a little touch, nothing to which an observer could object. “Here’s the Traders.”

  Crane slowed his pace as they approached the square brick building. “I want this business over. I think I could feel sorry for Peyton, you know, and that’s not something I’d often say.”

  “So could I. But I bet Mr. Trotter couldn’t. Lucien, I want you to come to Hammersmith with me. You don’t have to talk to Peyton, or even witness the conversation, since I doubt it’ll be pretty, but I want you to stay close. And you can wipe that smirk off. I meant, in case of rats.”

  “Rats? Me?”

  Stephen shrugged. “You were Hart’s friend. I don’t know how far this will go. Humour me.”

  Crane lifted an acknowledging hand. “If you insist on me not dying horribly, I suppose I’ll have to indulge you.” He led the way into the relative cool of the entrance hall and nodded to the porter. “Hello, Arthurs. Can you whistle up Mr. Peyton’s direction for me?”

  “Certainly, my lord, but do you want to speak to him? He’s lunching upstairs.”

  Crane glanced at Stephen. “Really? That’s a stroke of luck. Yes, we’ll go up, never mind the direction.”

  “What would you like to do now?” Stephen asked quietly. “Stay down here if it’s too close to home.”

  “No, I’ll come with you. It might be easier to get a word in private that way.”

  They headed up the stairs together, Crane torn between a flinching distaste for the job ahead and the temptation to head for the bar and order champagne. It had doubtless been a crashingly inappropriate time to raise the subject of their relationship, but now… He didn’t have to watch that look of pain and loneliness come back to Stephen’s eyes. He could take away the money worries, the fear of arrest, the quiet, constant fretting about a lonely future. He could treat Stephen as he deserved, and what was for certain, he would find a way to make sure the little sod was curled up in his bed every night, returning home to him, instead of vanishing wordlessly off to unexplained dangers. My little witch. Mine. He suppressed the urge to whistle.

  “You look like the cat that swallowed the cream,” Stephen said softly.

  “That comes later. Here’s the dining room.”

  The small-windowed room with its dark wood furnishings looked particularly dingy against the bright sunshine outside. Peyton was sitting alone with a newspaper. He didn’t look happy to see Crane as they walked up to his table.

  “Vaudrey. Oh, I beg your pardon, Lord Crane.” He gave the usual sneer. “And your little friend.”

  “Can we have a word with you?”

  Peyton shrugged. “If you must. What is it?”

  “In private, please,” Stephen said.

  “I don’t particularly want to speak to you in private.” Peyton rustled his paper pointedly. “I’m waiting for my luncheon.”

  Stephen put a hand on Peyton’s. “Listen to me. Get up and come with us now.”

  Peyton got up immediately and followed as Crane led them to one of the small studies. Stephen came last, shutting the door, as Peyton blinked in surprise to find himself there.

  “Mr. Peyton. Tell me about Arabella.”

  Peyton stared. “Who?”

  “Your relative Arabella.”

  “What about her?”

  “When did you find out she was dead?”

  Peyton’s brow furrowed. “Well, when my sister wrote to me, of course.”

  “Your sister,” repeated Stephen.

  “Yes. Maria. Great-Aunt Belle lived with her, till she dropped off her perch. What the devil does my family have to do with you?”

  “Family?” said Crane.

  Stephen held Peyton’s gaze. “I want to know about your female relative from the Baptist mission in Shanghai.”

  “We’re Anglicans,” Peyton said. “I don’t have any relatives in Shanghai. Never did. And—”

  “Have you many here?”

  “Four sisters and their children. Look here, I don’t—”

  “Shit,” said Crane. “Shit. Stephen…”

  “I know. Mr. Peyton, were you in Shanghai when Xan Ji-yin disappeared?”

  “What?”

  “Answer me!” Stephen shouted, making both the other men jump.

  “Yes, I—” Peyton began in wounded tones.

  “Do you remember a girl who went missing from the Baptist mission?”

  “Is that what this is about? Town’s sister? Lord, yes, she ran off with some man, didn’t she? At least, I heard—”

  Stephen turned and bolted for the door, Crane at his heels. They took the stairs two at a time, and Crane nearly tripped over Stephen as he stopped at the bottom. “Send a note to Esther at the surgery,” he said shortly. “Tell them all to meet us at Cryer’s lodgings. Catch me up.”

  “Take a cab.” Crane fumbled for a handful of change. “I’m sorry, Stephen.”

  “My responsibility.” Stephen grabbed the money and darted outside.

  Crane scrawled the note and paid a messenger lavishly to get it there as fast as possible, then hailed a hackney himself, cursing foully. It hadn’t occurred to him to doubt Town: the man had always been part of the scenery, a reliable gossip, something of a joke. He observed and relayed events; he didn’t take part in them.

  But he had sent them off on a wild-goose chase after a man he knew Crane disliked. And Crane should have known there was something wrong with his tale of the solitary man and his only relative because he’d bloody met Peyton’s bloody nephew—at this point he banged his head, hard, against the side of the carriage—and now he had comprehensively let Stephen down. Fuck.

  He believed part of Town’s story though. The beloved sister, the lifetime of bitterness. That had rung very true. He could imagine how it would feel to have someone you love vanish forever—he had imagined it, he realised, that time Stephen had gone off after a warlock and not come back for four days without a word. And to have men like Peyton cast casual aspersions on a loved sister’s honour must have been gall in the wound, even before Town knew she was dead.

  Who had told him?

  The cab stopped, and Crane hurried up the steps to Town’s lodgings. The housekeeper let him in without argument, a blank look in her eyes. Stephen was using fluence with abandon, it seemed.

  Town’s door was open.

  “Don’t come in,” called Stephen from within as Crane strode up. “He’s long gone. I’m trying to ascertain where. Not very good at it, I need Esther’s nose. Can you stay outside? You play hob with everything.”

  That, discretion aside, meant that Stephen was interrogating the ether for traces of Town. He had occasionally mentioned that Crane’s etheric presence was extremely strong, pulling the imperceptible currents towards him. Yu Len, a Chinese shaman, had always said Crane had powerful ch’i, but it had never actually caused a problem before.

  Feeling that he’d done enough damage for one day, Crane retreated obediently outside and stood, waiting, estimating how long it would take the other justiciars to arrive, wondering what they would do with Leonora. What he really wanted to think about was whether Stephen would agree to move his home to Crane’s rooms in the Strand, but under the circumstances that felt like tempting fate.

  He was staring out into the road when a cab pulled up further down and Monk Humphris got out.

  Monk seemed fr
etful and worried, as he had for weeks. He marched up towards Town’s lodgings, brows close. Crane lifted a hand in greeting, and, since that failed to catch the man’s eye, called, “Hoi, Monk!”

  Monk looked up and saw him. His whole face changed to a mask of horror as he registered Crane outside Town’s building. Then he turned and fled down the street.

  Crane was after him before he had time to think. It wasn’t a rational decision. He saw the running man, and he chased, his mind catching up with his body as he ran.

  This was probably stupid. Probably pointless. But Stephen could follow him if he had to, and better he should chase down Monk and find him irrelevant than let another lead go.

  And it wasn’t pointless. Why would Monk run if he didn’t have to? The heat thundered on the back of Crane’s neck and beat down on his light grey suit, rapidly getting sweat-soaked. Merrick would murder him. Stephen had told him, long ago, “no Savile Row” when they faced running for their lives; as his expensive shoes slithered on the paving stones, he recalled the truth of that.

  Monk was tiring now, shoulders heaving, steps slowing. He cornered desperately into an alley. Crane put on a burst of speed, long legs giving him an advantage as ever, swung round the corner, hurdled a pile of rubbish that Monk had knocked across the way, and grabbed the man by his shoulder.

  Monk, gasping, turned. He was trying to fight but he looked exhausted.

  “Pack it in,” Crane panted. “What the hell, Monk?”

  “Go away,” Monk managed, between heaving breaths. “In God’s name, go, man. Run. Run!”

  “Why?”

  Monk stared at him, wide eyed. He took a single sucking breath. Then his pupils contracted, vanishing to pinpoints, so that his eyes were blank and staring. Something dreadful, fear and pain, swept across his face and vanished, leaving only a featureless acceptance. He focused his unseeing gaze on Crane, and hissed, “Shaman.”

  “What?” said Crane. “I’m not.”

  “Shaman,” repeated Monk, sniffing, his nose wriggling with hideous mobility, greed blossoming in his dead eyes.

  “No.” Crane took a step back, wanting to run, suddenly realising what a bad mistake this had been. “Monk?”

  “Power.” Monk spoke in Shanghainese. “Strength and joy and ch’i. So much. Yes, this will do.”

  He reached out a clawed hand. Crane took another step back, then finally obeyed his screaming instincts, turned, and bolted, right into Town Cryer, who grabbed him by the arm.

  “You stupid bloody fool,” said Town, and everything went black.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Crane blinked back to consciousness because of the pain, and wished he hadn’t.

  His arms hurt like hell, his shoulders shrieking. This was, he realised, because his wrists were tied to the wall behind him, arms high and wide, crucifixion-style. His unsupported body had lolled forward so that all thirteen stone hung off his shoulder muscles, and his arms were bending backwards.

  His ankles were tied, but he got his feet under him, straightened till they took his weight, and felt the agonising fire in his shoulders damp to a mere inferno.

  He was in some kind of cavern. A cellar? It was cool, dark, earthy-smelling. A lantern sat on the earth floor and illuminated whitewashed but rough and grubby walls. There was a sturdy table placed in front of him, and on the far side of the room was a door made of dark wood, reinforced with a thick wooden bar that sat across the frame.

  Monk was walking around the cellar, muttering, but it wasn’t Monk. Crane didn’t need a practitioner to tell him that. The jerky movement, the hideous facial twitching, the light in the blank eyes, none of those belonged to the body being jerked around like an ungainly puppet.

  Is there someone in there?

  Town was squatting against the wall, Chinese style, face in hands.

  “Oi,” Crane said. “What the devil is this?”

  Town looked up. “Vaudrey. You had to interfere, didn’t you? You couldn’t just go away. I told you to go to Hammersmith, damn it! Why didn’t you go to Hammersmith?”

  “Shitty luck.” Crane’s voice was hoarse and dry. “You tried to kill Leo Hart. With rats.”

  “She deserves it.”

  “The hell she does. Rackham, those two so-called shamans, yes, but not Leo, and not a houseful of people on Ratcliffe Highway.”

  “Who cares about them?” Town snapped, but his eyes flicked away as he spoke.

  “Stephen Day does. Remember him? Short chap, reddish hair, one of the most dangerous men in London, on his way here right now to rip your spine out through your arsehole. So, who’s in Monk?” Crane looked over at the man’s awful, mad twitching. “Xan Ji-yin, I presume?”

  Monk threw back his head and howled. His jaw seemed to unhinge, stretching wide and gaping, like a snake.

  “Nice.” Crane had to keep talking, because otherwise he was liable to piss himself with terror. “Charming friends you have, Town.”

  “This is what happens when you treat people like offal.” Town spoke with concentrated vitriol. “That bastard Hart and his madmen murdered my sister and Xan Ji-yin and threw them into the water like dead dogs. If they’d had decent burial— Well, those swine are paying now.”

  “Rackham and the shamans have certainly paid,” Crane said. “More power to your elbow. Why am I here?”

  “He wants you.” Town jerked his head towards Monk.

  “Him? That? Why?”

  “He needs a suitable body.” Town licked his lips. His face was under control but his eyes were full of horror. “And normal people won’t do. They die, you see, all of them. He’s been through body after body, but with the best will in the world, they just don’t do, not once he starts using them, and he can’t live in corpses. He was in Monk for a while without him noticing, but now… Poor Monk. But he knew Bella, he liked her. He wouldn’t have minded, really.”

  “Really?” said Crane, watching Monk’s neck muscles distort as the thing inside his body raged.

  “And now he wants you. Apparently you’re a shaman. That’s what he needs. I didn’t know you were a shaman.”

  “I’m bloody not!”

  “He says you are. He wants you. When he’s finished here and he’s got a shaman host, he’ll go away, and it will all be over, at last. I’m sorry, Vaudrey, but you should have gone to Hammersmith. I did try and tell you. And you were thick as thieves with Hart—”

  “I was a thousand miles away when your sister died,” Crane said. “The first I heard of it was this morning. Town, for God’s sake, don’t let it do this!”

  Town was shaking his head. “It’s too late. Xan Ji-yin needs a body with shaman powers, and you have them, that’s all.” He shrugged one shoulder with a tip of the head, a characteristic little gesture Crane had seen his friend make hundreds of times. “I’m sorry, my dear fellow. If you don’t fight, I think it will be quick.”

  “That fucking thing is not fucking taking my fucking body.” Crane’s mouth could barely work with the terror. He had seen shamanic possession reduce Merrick to a drooling imbecile, had had his mind repeatedly attacked, had even had his memories violated by Stephen once. The thought of the foul thing inside Monk moving to his own mind dizzied him with horror and fear. “You’re making a bad mistake. Stephen’s a shaman. A real one, not a fucking travesty like that reject from a charnel house. You touch me, he will hunt you to the grave. You won’t know what vengeance is till he comes after you.”

  “I know vengeance,” Town said. “Hart’s dead. Xan has killed Rackham and Pa and Lo. Now he’s going to walk out of here wearing you like a coat, and that’s how he’ll finish Leonora Hart off, and I hope Hart looks up from hell to see it.”

  “You bastard.” Crane thrashed and strained against the ropes, but it was no good, the bonds were tight and secure. Town got up and spoke to Monk, quietly. Then he picked up a small bow
l and a knife and walked over to place them on the table. He undid one of Crane’s cuffs and rolled the sleeve back.

  He took up the bowl and the knife again. “We’ll need some of your blood for this,” he explained, and sliced into Crane’s forearm.

  Crane yelled, with the pain, and in the hope of attracting attention. The blood ran down his arm, splashing into the bowl Town held, unnaturally fast, too much of it, pouring out from the minor wound as though an artery had been cut. “Blood magic?” he snarled. “You’re a fucking warlock without even being a shaman. Stephen is going to kill you, and then bring you back from the dead just to kill you again, you son of a bitch!”

  “I suppose he’s your new bed boy.” Town placed the full bowl carefully on the table. “They don’t usually stay around when things get difficult, do they?” He took a roll of bandage and started to wind it around the wound.

  Crane spat in his face. Town’s mouth tightened as he wiped the spittle away. “Don’t do that,” he said. “This isn’t my fault.”

  The thing in Monk’s body came up to the table, facing Crane, as Town finished with the bandage. Its face was moving and jerking continually, lines and creases running across it, lips twitching and mumbling.

  Crane pulled violently against the ropes that bound him, knowing it was no use.

  Monk raised his hands in a gesture that looked entirely Chinese, entirely shamanical, and the blood in the bowl began to stir, first rippling, then bubbling. The red darkened, cloudy brown swirls appearing through it.

  Crane was thrashing now, desperate, helpless, crying out with fury. It was so damned, bloody unfair, that he should die now, or worse than die, should lose his mind to this creature, without having kissed Stephen again or even held him. It was no consolation at all that he’d told the man he loved him or heard it in return. All it meant was a full, agonising knowledge of what he was going to lose.

  Nine for a funeral.

  The infected blood in the bowl was rising up now in a shape like a waterspout, a rotten dark brown, defying all nature, and as Crane stared at it, he felt the ghost’s invasion.

  It was filthy. A choking charnel foulness, like thick wet cobweb, over his face and eyes and mouth, crawling in his ears, up his nose, through his body. He tried to scream and the tendrils dug deeper. He could hear an insane muttering in his mind, fragments of rage and fury and accusation and a horrible glee as the thing tapped into somewhere deep and wrenched. The power lit in his blood, but it was snatched greedily, dragging at his flesh and bones, nothing like what Stephen did. This was a rape. He shook his head violently because he could do nothing else, and the dead man’s soul settled to feed, pushing a film over his eyes as he stared in helpless horror at the bowl of foaming, churning blood.