Legend Of The Highland Dragon

by Cooper Isabel

  Selina O’Keefe was tall, pale, and willowy, with large gray eyes and a heavy mass of raven-black hair, which she was currently letting tumble down her back to match the gown she was wearing: flowing gold silk and lace, as unstructured as it was impractical. Gems gleamed on every finger and dangled from her ears, catching the light from many shaded lamps. Her walk was airy and she gave Stephen her hand as if she was Cleopatra bestowing a favor, yet there was something in her eyes and in the set of her chin that suggested more practicality than the dozen or so similarly dressed women, or their smoking-jacketed companions, who currently disported themselves around the room.

  “Welcome, Lord MacAlasdair,” she said quietly but in a voice that made the simple statement a theatrical pronouncement. “In what way might our Society aid you?”

  If she mentioned anything about him being king hereafter, Stephen thought, he would leap out a window posthaste.

  “I’m looking for a man,” he said. “Can we talk somewhere a bit more private?”

  “There’s a couch near the window,” said Mrs. O’Keefe, and put a hand lightly on his arm. The butler had disappeared somewhere. “I’m afraid I can’t leave my guests alone just now.”

  As they walked toward the couch, Stephen understood why. He’d expected the lolling figures on other couches even before he’d smelled the opium. He hadn’t expected the woman with snakes winding around her wrists, like living ribbons of bright green and gold, or the man who stood near her casting bone runes onto a velvet cloth. Near them, a tall, lithe man with coppery hair was staring into the fire. As Stephen passed, the man looked up with eyes that seemed to hold the flame themselves for a moment, and the angles of his face were inhuman.

  Charlatans made up most of the Society. Hedonists. Harmless, if scandalous, degenerates. But a few were different—and Ward, if he was still interested in occult power, would have wanted to contact those few.

  They reached a red plush sofa with a high back in a corner that afforded a good view of the room while still a fair distance away from most of Mrs. O’Keefe’s guests. She took a seat, arranging her miles of skirts around her, and Stephen sat down at the other end of the sofa. Mrs. O’Keefe eyed the space between them, glanced up at Stephen’s face, and then gave him a humorous, rueful smile—Can’t blame a girl for hoping, it said—that looked much better on her than her former dramatic pose.

  Then she said a few words in Latin to the group, and the noise from the rest of the room died away. “What sort of man are you looking for, Lord MacAlasdair?”

  “His real name is Ward, though he might have been using an alias. He’s a tall fellow and skinny, with blue eyes sort of wide-set and blond hair, though it’s probably gray by now.” Stephen sighed. This wouldn’t help, not really. There were thousands of tall, skinny men in London, and Ward could have dyed his hair as easily as not. “Has anyone been coming in asking a lot of questions? Anyone other than me, that is—asking about spells, perhaps, or magical trinkets or books?”

  “Many people seek such wisdom as we possess,” said Mrs. O’Keefe with a graceful gesture of one hand. “But,” she added in a much more worldly voice, “there was one particularly insistent gentleman. He came in…oh, a month ago? My memory for these things drifts sometimes. One moment.”

  She rang a tiny silver bell, and the enormous butler drifted over, moving with astonishing silence.

  “Saunders—”

  Saunders, thought Stephen. For that hulk. He managed to keep control of his face. Mina, he thought suddenly, would be biting the inside of her cheek about now, her blue eyes dancing in that way they had when she was trying to stay solemn and proper and having the devil’s own time of it. Just as well she wasn’t here; he’d have never kept his countenance.

  “Saunders,” Mrs. O’Keefe continued, “how long ago did you have to, er, escort that gentleman out?”

  “Six weeks past, madam,” said the butler in a melodious tenor voice. “The incident, if you’ll recall, was just after the occasion of Sir Cartland’s epic recitation.”

  Stephen cleared his throat. “You had to throw him out, then?”

  Mrs. O’Keefe sighed. “He impressed me as an unfortunate character from the first. He was quite incredulous that I was the head of the Society—well, one does get men like that.” She shrugged, languid and indifferent. “But he was rather insistent on being admitted to the inner circles very quickly and on obtaining certain information that we were unwilling or unable to give.”

  “Were you now?”

  “Lord MacAlasdair,” said Mrs. O’Keefe, “contrary to the world’s opinion—and I know full well what that is—we do have ethics here. There are lines we will not cross, and summoning certain creatures is one of them. Even if the risks were not surpassingly great, the price is far greater than I would allow.”

  Certain pages of certain books had burned themselves deeply into Stephen’s memory. He grimaced and nodded agreement—and relief.

  Ward, after all, was no footpad and no brawler. Getting inside locked houses or past watchmen would have been difficult for him, and he’d already known that Stephen had an inhuman resistance to injury. If he’d hoped to ruin Stephen, either through physical damage or by exposure, without risking his own person, he probably would have had to deal with some very nasty forces.

  For that matter, he would probably have called on those forces to kill Moore. That would also have been safer for him.

  “I’m guessing he wasn’t pleased about your refusal,” said Stephen.

  “Anything but. He made a number of threats against me, but…” She spread her hands, gems catching the light, as Stephen was sure she’d intended. “I have protections enough.”

  And you’re not his main target.

  Stephen didn’t know the full strength of Ward’s arsenal, whether magical or financial. But from what he’d experienced and from Moore’s death, he doubted the Society would survive very long if Ward made its members the sole focus of his wrath.

  “Is there anyone else he could have gone to?” Stephen asked. Mrs. O’Keefe started to lift her shoulders and spread her hands again, and Stephen was certain that the next words out of her mouth would be something about how the city was crawling with dubious occultists. “Anyone in particular that you know of?”

  “A few,” said Mrs. O’Keefe, and reached for a sheet of paper and a pen. Many such objects were lying about on tables, Stephen noticed, presumably in case one of the Society members was struck with poetic inspiration. She wrote quickly in a graceful, flowing hand. “Of these, I think Reynolds is most likely to give your man Ward what he wants. He was a member of this society once, but his…tastes”—she almost hissed the word—“were profoundly unacceptable. Unfortunately, he has powerful allies now. Another thing your quarry would seek, from the sound of it.”

  “You’re thinking your visitor was Ward, then?” Stephen asked. He’d have followed the trail anyhow since it was the only one he had, but he wanted to be sure before he got hopeful. “Another might have asked for the same information.”

  “He looked like you describe. The hair was darker—not blond or gray—but such things are easy enough to manage. I wouldn’t have said he was particularly thin, either. But the eyes were the same, and he was tall.”

  Age could add a few inches to any man’s waistline. The description was close enough.

  “I’m very much obliged to you,” said Stephen, getting to his feet. “Good day, Mrs. O’Keefe.”

  “Good luck, Lord MacAlasdair,” she said.

  ***

  Earlier that evening, Mina had set aside the last of Professor Carter’s correspondence and made a decision. If she was going to stay in MacAlasdair’s house for some unknown length of time, she was by God going to stay in the house and not skulk around in the attics. MacAlasdair and his servants could like it or not as it pleased them.

  So, after a glance in the mirror to replace a hairpin or two and make sure she didn’t have ink spots on her nose, Mina had descended all
three flights of stairs with her head high and made her way toward the library.

  The servants were back by then—the stars had been out for quite a while—and Baldwin had intercepted her on the way. His expression managed to be both polite and forbidding. “Laird MacAlasdair’s out for the evening,” he said. “If it’s him you were looking for, Miss Seymour.”

  “Actually,” Mina had said, even as she briefly wondered where MacAlasdair had gone and why, “I was just going to find a book.” She didn’t explain that MacAlasdair had given her permission to look around the house. That would have been admitting that she needed permission. “There’s quite a library here.”

  “It’s verra large, yes,” said Baldwin. “A bit disorganized, though. Will you be wanting anything in particular?”

  “I thought I’d see what I could find,” said Mina. She’d risked a smile. In return, she’d gotten a slight softening of Baldwin’s heavily whiskered face. It was something, at least. “Could someone make a fire in the drawing room and bring me a cup of tea?”

  Training had kept Baldwin from looking surprised at her request. He’d hesitated only an instant before saying, “Of course. I’ll see it done.”

  Flush with minor triumph, Mina had proceeded into the library, managed to find a small subset of Dickens in the shelves’ jumbled contents, and was curled up on the couch with The Pickwick Papers when the door opened again and MacAlasdair, dressed in spotless evening clothes, walked into the room.

  “Owens said you’d come in here for the evening,” he said, looking from Mina to the fire and back. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

  It’s your house was the first response that came to Mina’s mind. What she said, as she hastily straightened up, was “No, not at all.”

  It was true. The extent to which it was true was no more surprising than the thrill that had run up her spine when MacAlasdair walked in. Both were unnerving.

  He did look good in evening clothes. That might have had something to do with it. The close-fitting coat and trousers showed off both his broad shoulders and the firm lines of his waist and thighs, while the white shirt made his hair look almost garnet-colored and his eyes even brighter. Somehow, unlike most men Mina had seen, he looked more powerful in evening dress.

  She resisted the urge to shift in her seat or to moisten her lips, although they’d suddenly gone dry. Thank goodness for tea.

  “You’ve been out,” she said, in a truly amazing feat of stating the obvious. “Er, Baldwin said you were. But not where.” She kicked herself mentally for sounding like a prying wife, and then kicked herself twice for caring. “Somewhere fancy, I’d guess.”

  “You could say as much,” said MacAlasdair, his mouth curling sardonically around the words. “There are a number of…clubs…around London that take an interest in mysticism. I thought some of them might be able to put me onto Ward’s track.”

  “Ah,” said Mina. “And did they?”

  “Perhaps. There are a few hints I might pursue. The Emerald Star, for instance—” MacAlasdair stopped. “But telling you all of it could take some time.”

  “Time I’ve got,” said Mina. “And I want to know.”

  “Very well, then,” said MacAlasdair. He settled into a seat near the fire, leaned back, and began.

  Eleven

  The next evening, as she stood by the drawing room window and watched night fall over London, Mina was still thinking over what she’d heard from MacAlasdair.

  She’d heard about clubs like the Emerald Star, of course. Florrie brought home stories every so often, and other girls in Mina’s boardinghouse gossiped about spiritualists and fortune-tellers. A few gauze-draped mystics had even called on Professor Carter from time to time, after which he’d usually had to have a lie-down and a glass of whiskey. Mina had just thought they were all frauds.

  Hearing otherwise had brought on very mixed emotions. On the one hand, the presence of other magicians in London meant other people who could maybe deal with Ward if MacAlasdair really fumbled the matter. On the other hand, in Mina’s experience, you could count on other people to foul things up more than you could count on them to be helpful, and now there was a whole other world of potential accidents—or not accidents.

  The sound of shattering glass broke through her reflections.

  Mina darted back away from the window and was halfway across the floor before she realized that it hadn’t broken. The noise hadn’t come from the drawing room. It had come from the fireplace, but nothing around that was broken, either.

  The noise had come down the chimney.

  Closing her eyes, Mina pictured the floor above her. The stairs led up from the hall, and the drawing room was on the right side of the lower floor. Retracing her previous exploration, she thought that the noise had come from one of the bedrooms she hadn’t entered.

  A bird or a bat had probably flown into the window. Granted, the second floor was a bit low for that and too high for children throwing stones, but stranger things happened.

  In London, burglary wasn’t really strange. In the house of a wealthy man who lived alone—who was known to keep few servants and to send those away at regular hours—it wouldn’t be at all unusual.

  And while Stephen had said the manes weren’t coming back for a while, Ward could have conjured up other things.

  Mina swore under her breath and found that her mouth had gone completely dry.

  MacAlasdair was locked away being a dragon for a little while longer. Running to get the police would give the burglars or demons or whatever time to do their work and get away. If they were working for Ward and managed to see Stephen in dragon form, that would be awful. If they weren’t human and caught either Stephen or the rest of the servants by surprise, that would be even worse.

  She took the poker from the fireplace. It hadn’t helped much last time, but she wouldn’t be facing a dragon now—at least, not with any luck.

  Mina went up the stairs slowly, keeping close to one of the walls and moving as quietly as she could. She wasn’t bad at that. She was no burglar, but she was a slim woman with a light step, and one who’d spent her life in crowded houses.

  Nobody was waiting for her at the top of the stairs. No hand lunged out of the dark hallway to catch her wrist; no chloroform-soaked cloth descended over her nose and mouth.

  Not yet, at least.

  She snuck down the hallway, passing one closed door after another. No noise came from within any of them so Mina kept going, the poker heavy in her hand.

  Then there was a thump at the end of the hall, from a room whose door had been left open just a crack. From what Mina knew about the house and what she’d seen from the servants’ routine, she thought that it was MacAlasdair’s bedroom.

  She stepped closer, pressing herself against the wall.

  “…anything in there?”

  It was a male voice, and the accent was familiar. The speaker might have been any of the men she’d grown up with.

  “Lot of fancy clothes,” said another similar voice. “You?”

  “Nothing big enough. Couple sets of cuff links, though,” the first man added, clearly pleased by this unexpected development. “Look like gold, they do.”

  “Well, don’t ’old out once we get clear of this place. ’E only cares for one thing, after all.”

  Mina had heard enough.

  Slowly, she put the poker down, then moved away and into the bedroom next door. Shuttered windows and dust cloths announced that nobody had slept there for some time, but the furniture still remained: a bed with a brass frame, a washstand, and most importantly for Mina’s purposes, a dark wooden desk and a chair to match.

  Good thing she was a strong girl.

  Even so, when she lifted the chair, she knew she’d pay for it later—and that she wouldn’t have managed it normally. Fear did wonders for the human body.

  As she approached MacAlasdair’s room again, one of the men inside spoke.

  “Nothing ’ere but papers. Bloody desk was
the devil to open, and it’s just a lot of scrap.”

  “Anything look valuable?”

  “Damned if I know, Bill. Do you take me for a barrister?”

  Mina set the chair down very slowly, wiped her sweating hands on her skirt, and then grasped the doorknob. The door closed very quietly so she wasn’t sure either man had noticed the click.

  Then came the chair. Terror still fueling her muscles, she shoved it against the door and wedged the top under the doorknob.

  “’Old up a tick, Fred,” said Bill. “Was that door closed before?”

  Mina didn’t wait to hear the rest. She picked up her skirts in one hand, the poker in the other, and ran. Behind her, the doorknob rattled. Then the door itself thumped.

  The chair was sturdy, but it wouldn’t hold forever, nor against all force. Mina didn’t know how strong the men in MacAlasdair’s room were. She went faster, taking the stairs down two at a time. She didn’t let herself look behind her because that wouldn’t help anything.

  It had been getting dark before she went upstairs. Surely the first stars would be out by now!

  At the bottom of the staircase she turned left, trying to remember her first mad flight through this house—and she did seem to be running for her life every time she came this way. She’d have to have a word with someone about that.

  Another left, and then a right, and oh, there was that room again, down the hall ahead of her. She couldn’t see red light under the door this time. Maybe that was a good sign?

  “Knocking” was an inadequate description for what Mina did next. She banged on the door with all her strength, rattled the doorknob as the men upstairs had done, and finally lifted her voice to shout. “MacAlasdair!”

  Nothing.

  “MacAlasdair!”

  Had there been movement from within? She couldn’t tell. Were there footsteps in the hall behind her?