Hawke said nothing, his lip curling into a mocking sneer. Once more, that light gathered between his hands. Red as blood, evil as I would have always sworn light simply could not be. Light was light, color was color; neither good nor evil.
But I felt it. Even from this distance, my skin crawled beneath the vile touch of whatever power the Menagerie’s own devil summoned.
The world had gone utterly barmy; with it, my own senses. I could only stare, rooted to the spot, as the light gathered in intensity—frozen by the cold power in azure eyes.
“All who oppose me will burn,” Hawke said, still in that showman’s voice I despised. He turned that sneer upon the stranger and let fly the mysterious light.
The man I did not know sketched a shape in the air that glowed brightly purple, distorting the air about it. A contour appeared in his fingers’ wake, a pointed set of angles I did not recognize.
Hawke’s red light did not engulf him. It did not touch him.
The evil power banked over him, and Hawke’s smile turned to satisfied leer.
I stared, worn down to nothing but numb futility, as all in my sight turned red.
The cove turned, but too slow. “No!” he shouted. Fury filled it, and he flung one hand. “Hamaxa!”
Everything within me ignited.
My lungs burst. My eardrums popped. Blood filled my throat, my nose. My heart tore itself apart. Everything that could rupture, did.
Or at least, that is what it seemed to me.
Whatever happened after that, it all faded to the faintest of displays, as if I watched a play from far beyond the stage, buried in the wings. My body skidded across the ground, listless as a rag doll, and sent candles spiraling in my wake. No flame caught, but smoke filled the amphitheater.
When I finally fell still, I could not move. I could not will my body to stand, to twitch, even to breathe.
I could only watch in numb horror as everything fell to flame and chaos.
The tail of a rabbit can not be long.
Betrayal had come to the Karakash Veil after all. But did it come from my doing?
Or was this only a matter of course?
My lashes lowered. Weariness—a fatigue the like I’d never known—settled upon my limbs.
Sleep. All I wanted now was sleep. Perhaps forever.
Yes. Forever.
“Cherry!” Hands seized my shoulders; I did not feel them, not really. I was aware that it happened, but not that it hurt. It should have. Everything should have.
My sense of self dissolved into air and nothing.
Cherry. My sweet, sweet girl.
A woman’s voice coaxed me into slumber.
This time, I did not care that I dreamed it. I obeyed.
For once in my bloody life, I did not fight.
You will let me in.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The jarring is what woke me first. My world shuddered, sending vibrations all the way to my aching bones, and I came to already sobbing. It hurt. Everything about me hurt. My body. My head.
My empty, aching heart.
A steady arm wrapped around my shoulders, supporting me against a warmth that combatted the chill I suffered, but it did not help. Everything rocked. “Easy,” murmured a soft spoken voice. Masculine, firm. “Rest while you can, Miss St. Croix. ’Tis a long journey out.”
A glass rim touched my lips. Bitter alcohol coated my tongue. Because I was naught but a creature of habit, I drank every drop of the laudanum fed me.
I had learned nothing, after all.
Peeling my crusted eyes open showed me the blurred glare of a small lantern, and a glint of red where it reflected off copper hair. The gentleman cradled me against his side, his features lost in my bleary sight.
A carriage, I realized. We were in a carriage, it was night—or perhaps the curtains were drawn. The jarring came from roads that were not of London-make, yet that we took a carriage and not a sky ship suggested a certain amount of secrecy.
The laudanum burned a path to my belly. What little deductive reasoning I’d grasped faded away beneath a tide of sweet lassitude. Pain faded. Worry, theory, even interest dulled to nothing.
Opium to dull the pain, and I bore so very much.
My head lolled, and gently, the man I traveled with adjusted his arm so that he supported my inevitable wilting.
My lips moved. “Who...?”
The carriage rocked again, and this time he splayed his free hand over my chest, covered by an ermine blanket to combat the chill. It put his face closer—enough that I could see that his hair was short, messy as if he’d dragged his fingers through it repeatedly, and a bruise stained the pale skin of his jaw. Another abrasion marred his left cheekbone.
Aristocratic features. I could not place them; could barely be bolloxed to try.
“Rest, Miss St. Croix,” he murmured. The lantern reflected back in brown eyes. “There will be time for questions after we’ve dried you out.”
My eyelids drooped. I wanted to feel fear at the words, feel worry or anger or anything—I could not. Sleep beckoned, and with it, that woman’s ghostly song.
I didn’t want to hear it; didn’t want to dream of red ribbon wrapping my limbs, of echoes of weeping and my own worthless sorrow. I did not want to dream of a wicked man with unfamiliar eyes, taunting me from Micajah Hawke’s cruel sneer.
I whimpered my distress.
His arm tightened around me. “It will not be easy,” he said in soft tones designed to soothe. “We will nevertheless persevere. Non omnis moriar.”
My Latin had not been utilized for far too long. I could not parse his intent.
“Who,” I mumbled again. My fingers found his side beneath the blanket, clenched into his shirt. “Please...”
The hand he’d used to brace me now stroked my hair from my forehead. “It has been entirely too long, I think. Oliver Ashmore, at your service.”
I stiffened, more out of habit than any true fear. It was as if the memories of it—the understanding that I should be afraid of this man—hammered at the door to my fatigue, and opium sealed the lock.
Long had I imagined my absent guardian a demon, always had I feared when his booted steps echoed down the halls of my childhood corridors. I had never gone out of my way to see him, always avoided him. Seven long years, and he had remained the demon I feared the most.
Ashmore paused, perhaps recognizing my worthless struggle for what it was. He did not let me go, nor did he allow me space to wriggle away—I could barely summon the will to try. With his arm wrapped around my shoulders, his voice dropped an octave. “I promise you thisY,” he intoned, with such lyrical rhythm as to be nearly mesmerizing. “You are once more in my safekeeping. Now rest.” What dregs of sudden panic spiked beneath the laudanum he’d fed me soon evaporated to bone-deep lethargy.
I would never have dreamed the word I whispered next. “Stay.”
“You have my word.”
The irony of my new predicament did not elude me. Saved from the madness of the Menagerie, only to be threatened with the loss of the one vice that kept my sanity in check. That the determination came from my guardian only made it all the worse, for long had I bemoaned his long-distance interference in my life. The naïveté of those days might have shamed me, were I not so eager to avoid thinking of anything at all.
For all my conceit, it took a demon to save me from the devil.
My eyes closed entirely. Part of me could not decide whether weeping or laughter would be most appropriate. With my head pillowed against Ashmore’s shoulder, I could do neither—only fall into a deep and trance-like state of sleep.
I had, after all, nothing left to lose. In the end, sobriety had become the demon I feared most.
* * * * *
Author’s Note
“But, Karina,” you might be saying to yourself as you ponder the events within the Midnight Menagerie, “everyone knows the English were prudes. What’s all this talk of racy showmanship and possession?”
<
br /> A fair question. If you’ll allow me, I’d like to introduce you to a man who might give you something of a new view about Englishmen and Brits in general. Through one man’s efforts, I will show you a time in which sexual deviancy, pornography, piracy of the literary kind, and mass mailings all took place.
Although the exact date is unclear, it is proposed that two clubs were formed at the same time in 1863. The first, The Anthropological Society, which is a club whose interests are obviously included in the name. The second, founded by Sir Richard Francis Burton and Dr. James Hunt, was given a name much less telling—or, given your nature, all the more so: The Cannibal Club. It’s thought that the name was derived from Burton’s obsession with the act, which he had long regretted he’d never seen in his many travels.
Burton was a man whose healthy regard for sex and sexuality often put him in conflict with the rather, erm, rigid viewpoints of the Victorian Era. Within The Cannibal Club, he held meetings—which he liked to call “orgies,” though his wife’s father and brother often visited—wherein deviancies of all kinds could be discussed. If it was considered wrong, taboo, or otherwise unacceptable by the staid British institution, then it was ripe for the talking—and, rumor goes, testing.
The members of this club were all men, naturally, though rented girls would have to be an occasional part of the equation. From discourse to experimentation, and rumor had it more than just that, The Cannibal Club played host to any number of vagaries uncommon for the time—or rather, uncommonly spoken about for the time.
Not content with discussion, the members fancied themselves authors, of a sort. They’d gather to write pornographic stories, utilizing a round-robin style that started with one man beginning the tale, then passing the story on to the next, then the next, each adding to it. Sound familiar, writers?
Sir Richard Burton’s contribution to the, ahem, betterment of English mores and morale did not end there. An accomplished spy and polyglot, he was well-traveled and extremely adept at hiding his origins as an Englishman, even so far as darkening his skin to better fill the role. He spent years in India, and he also achieved a disguised pilgrimage to Mecca—not the only Englishman to successfully do so, but arguably the most famous. He was known for the books he brought back, and while the most widely known might be The Arabian Nights, certainly the most infamous came from India—The Kama Sutra.
There was never any secret that Burton was fascinated by sex and sexuality. His writings were often frank about the sexual practices of the cultures he visited, and his journals detailed. The Kama Sutra, translated with help from Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot and archaeologist Bhagwanlal Indraji, was the kind of book suggestive, seductive and scandalous enough to get a man jailed. Quite literally, no less. Since the Obscene Publications Act of 1857, many publishers had been jailed after prosecution by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and publication of “obscene” material had become too much a risk.
In 1883, convinced that the unhealthily uptight Brits could use some education, Burton brought The Kama Sutra back with him, and proceeded to employ a campaign of letter-writing to associates who might be willing to risk a little jail time for the privilege of owning the first English translation of this scandalous and educational book.
Can you imagine what the letter must have said? While most consider The Kama Sutra a tell-all on sexual positions, it also includes advice regarding prostitution, some discourse on how to deal with a cheating lover, and various texts regarding love, family, and other pleasure-oriented goals for a man or woman who wants to live a full and healthy life. Do you suppose he focused more on the lotus or the living well portions in his pitch?
As it turns out, Burton wasn’t the only one with a healthy interest in sex. The requests for a copy of the book came back, and one by one, Burton had them printed and sent off.
So tickled by the contents, at least one of the recipients of The Kama Sutra duplicated his or her copy a few times, then sent that along to friends. Friends reproduced the book and passed it on, leaving a trail of scandal and sex so far and wide that when the authorities tried to trace the source, it proved too tangled a web to follow.
To recap, not only had Sir Richard Francis Burton engaged in unlawful distribution of pornographic materials, but he’d used a mass mail campaign to do so, inspired some early piracy, and got away scot free!
All the while, we hope, enlightening more than a few of those prudish Society trendsetters as to all the good stuff they’d been missing.
While the Victorian Age arguably holds the record for “most sexually repressed” in history, I would point you to all the anecdotes recorded in letters, individuals breaking the norm, and pictures of the time as a suggestion that this might be more of a widely accepted misnomer than absolute fact. It’s certainly true that the expectation of society was that of repression—that women were expected to behave a certain way, that sexuality was no fit topic for any environment, that the appearance of the thing was all that mattered. However, it’s also true that history is so often written by those who live in the time, from a position of power and influence—in more peaceful times, the equivalent of “the victors.” Whatever they wanted further generations to think of them, whatever they expected people to do, that is what they wrote. (Which bears consideration: What do you suppose future generations will think of us?)
From the prostitutes plying their wares across London, to the close-mouthed fascination among the uppercrust with all things dark and occult, to the commonplace but silent acceptance that a man—and occasionally, a woman—would “take a lover,” the obsession with sex and sexuality was never truly stamped out of the Victorian Era. This was a time when men were encouraged to develop such close bonds that their letters to each other sound more like a love letters than a shout out between bros; when women of no relation could inhabit the same home, speculated to be lovers, and simply be spoken of as if they were “aunt” and “niece”—when spoken of at all. It’s a period when we’re rather more focused on the “society” folk, so we forget that it’s also a time of great social upheaval—suffragettes willing to die for their cause, union men banding together, great scientific breakthroughs, rampant drug use, and yes, the repression of gender, class and social distinction.
When Micajah Hawke speaks of ownership and possession, is he really so far out of place as to be a deviant?
Or is it simply that he speaks of it that breaks the mores?
I’ll let you, dear reader, be the judge.
A final note: My greatest of thanks goes to Sophia McCloy, for taking the time to help me with Chinese idioms. You have inspired me to learn again.
About the Author
After writing happily-ever-afters for all of her friends in school, Karina Cooper eventually grew up (sort of) and went to work in the real world (kind of) where she decided that making up stuff was way more fun (true!). She is the author of dark and sexy paranormal romances, steampunk adventures and crossover urban fantasies. She writes across multiple genres with mad glee. Her steampunk series, The St. Croix Chronicles, has won a Romantic Times Award and has been nominated for an RT Seal of Excellence.
One part glamour, one part dork and all imagination, Karina is also a gamer, an airship captain’s wife and a steampunk fashionista. She lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with a husband, a menagerie, a severe coffee habit and the fantasy of a summer home somewhere sunny. Visit her at www.karinacooper.com, because she says so.
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