Clockwork Stalker: The Dirty Heroes Collection

by Silverwood, Cari

  Why in all the several Hells of the various writers of the supernatural were those names under that secrecy umbrella? His brother, Mycroft, might know. He might also refuse to divulge such information, and he’d act snide about it. Sherlock didn’t feel like begging, yet.

  Another dead end, for the moment.

  He recommenced his observations of Wilhelmina, taking careful notes. It was clear from what she did and did not do that money was in short supply.

  The Irregulars said they’d seen her bowing her head over meals that were mostly soup.

  Still, she did not come to him.

  What bait would she take, if not money?

  When she returned despondent from a visit to the office housing the World’s Fair organizers, he knew the bait. This was the worm that would catch her.

  He lowered his binoculars and began to slowly pace in this dilapidated room, weaving around the armchair. The bleak wallpaper taunted him. A large bug waddled upward past the faded floral print and waved its antennae. The yelling of the washer woman and her drunken partner next door deafened him. He screened them out.

  The World’s Fair… He wasn’t certain he could get what she wanted, however pretending he could do this was as good as reality. What value was the truth when you intended to catch a criminal? The truth must be trodden underfoot, when necessary.

  As on the airship, his twisted logic made him jar to a stop.

  That thought was not him. Stomping on the truth? It was not Sherlock Holmes. Disguise and deception, yes. Lying to the face of a lady to get her to respond to an invitation? No.

  Neither was sitting for a week watching a pretty woman through a window and growing an erection multiple times a day, when he should have been working the Missing Wife case he and Watson began.

  He had forgotten about Watson, and even if he’d instructed himself to do precisely that, it was very unlike him. Was this woman, this Willa, as he’d come to think of her, truly that important or was he merely letting his cock lead him on?

  And if he was doing the latter, why?

  It did not normally get a vote in his investigations.

  When he looked in the mirror lately, his eyes were rimmed with red. Sometimes his hands shook. A few days ago, he’d forgotten to eat until Mrs. Hudson presented him with a meal on his return in the evening.

  This so-called lady was a Moriarty.

  Moriartys were devious. She might know he was following her.

  His original suspicions reared up. Was she somehow making this happen? That machine of hers might be quackery, but what if it did work? It could have altered him in some frightful way.

  For the average man this conclusion would be a bizarre leap, but he knew the inner workings of his brain like a clockmaker understood the intricate mechanism of a clock. These thoughts he was having were not him. They were some strange cancerous mutation stemming from a supernatural influence.

  Could this be a curse? How the devil could he know that? A curse was not a solid observable fact. Except…

  Sherlock grasped the tail of a concept. One couldn’t see a curse, but one could see the effects it left behind, similar to how a wake on the water told one that up ahead was a boat. This was food for thought.

  Perhaps he should simply kidnap her, tie her to a chair, and interrogate her until she told him what she had done?

  Oh so tempting.

  He stopped his predatory musings and wrote her another note, only this time he stated he could get her approved for the World’s Fair. Also tea and scones with fresh cream and strawberry jam was mentioned in the scribbled PS.

  For now, he would leave the surveillance to the Baker Street Irregulars. He would go to his apartment, wait, and read the news. No new leads had blossomed from his meagre investigations of the missing wife, and the newspapers sometimes held hidden gems.

  When he was comfortably sitting in his armchair in his sitting room at Baker Street, Sherlock shook open the Standard newspaper.

  The first page story was about an animated corpse that’d died a second time before anyone saw it. Frowning, he read on. It had supposedly walked from a cemetery to a man’s doorstep after his wife wished on a preserved monkey’s paw for their dead son to come back to them.

  “Poppycock,” he muttered, and he rechecked the masthead of the paper, wondering if the wrong one had been delivered. It was the Standard. He should’ve picked up the Times instead. Whatever was the reporter injecting when he wrote this? Pure cocaine? A man must take care with injectable cocaine even when using the weaker concoctions.

  On the second page was a story about an unidentified woman found dead and naked in a basement, with stab wounds to the heart, ligature marks on her wrists and ankles and, most curious of all, symbols carved into her flesh.

  “Hmmm.” He lowered the paper. That story tugged at his instincts. He should go to the mortuary, but the Irregulars would have trouble finding him quickly if Miss Moriarty left her flat.

  He sniffed, settled back into the upholstery, and held the newspaper higher. The dead would wait.

  His instincts poked him again. Sherlock Holmes was not a man who sat and waited. He deduced, he followed through, he devised traps and deceptions, and he thought about clues.

  “Damnation.” He rattled the paper before his eyes again and set his jaw, annoyed at himself for being upset by a dead woman.

  And… at Willa, for not arriving. It was her, still. She was the real reason behind his annoyance.

  4

  Hunted

  Standing on the skinny front porch, with anger simmering just below the surface, Willa stared out across the street. She reread this second invitation from Sherlock Holmes. The paper threatened to tear from the pressure of her fingers. She was going to be in arrears in a week. Penniless. She must do something, must make a decision.

  The World’s Fair entry was well out of reach unless she found employment.

  As she passed the landlady in the hallway, Willa smiled at her. Purchasing parts for the ME machine to try to repair the damage it’d suffered on the journey across the continent had used up almost all her funds.

  Her engineering knowledge was partly learned from her father, partly self-taught or learned through various grandes écoles, universities, and schools in France, Russia and India, where her late husband had been stationed, and none of those counted for much here in England.

  If she returned to France, she’d have a better chance at finding a good job, but that, to her, said defeat.

  At the impromptu airfield, there’d been an address on the paperwork the truck driver had given her, and that dubious job offer. She’d be damned if she would crawl to Mr. Holmes for charity. He’d want something in return, and giving him anything would probably make her want to throw up.

  From memory, she wrote out the address. It wasn’t within easy walking distance, but it was doable.

  She donned her sensible thick black stockings and neat red dress then placed her heavy revolver in her handbag. A lady never went anywhere doubtful without a trustworthy companion, and she really wasn’t sure what she would find. Today the gun was her escort.

  Shooting was second nature after all the lessons from her father.

  A woman must never rely on her strength or a gentleman, he’d taught her on the way over the mountains, through bandit-infested territories, and into the land of the bear, the Czar, and of snow deep enough to bury churches.

  Cunning, a thick fur coat, and a good pistol trumped a man.

  The walk took over an hour, at the end of which she found herself with dreadfully sore feet and in a cul-de-sac. This was a tree-lined street of well-built though ancient houses, all of them two stories high and with mildewed stone frontages. Leaves caked the sidewalk. A stray dog trotted by then a horse and carriage as she stood checking the address against the numbers on the letterboxes.

  She went further and found her destination was the last house in the street. The black iron gate creaked when she pushed on it, but she paused and
did not enter. That would be foolish. Instead she crossed the paved roadway to a small park where trees blocked out most of the sun, and the grass grew sparsely. The leaves here were thick and wet, and her boots sank an inch into the soil.

  Willa sat down to watch the house. It had looked deserted. For two hours she watched, nibbling on the jam sandwich she’d packed, and sipping water from a drinking fountain, though the revolver had squashed the sandwich rather flat.

  The sun descended behind the rooftops. The street was busy with people at times, then quiet. Soon, more people would be returning home from work—work she did not have. No one had entered the house as far as she could tell. If no one lived there, her quest was fruitless. She closed her eyes and sighed.

  What had she intended to do anyway? Had she sunk so low enough as to want employment from whoever had brought in those women? There was a small chance she could gain some sort of reward if she told the police, but even that had risks. She was not blameless.

  France then?

  She stood, brushed off the crumbs on her dress then marched forward and across the street. France almost certainly, and yes it was a backward step, but at least she could settle her curiosity and peek in the front window? If she pawned some of her mother’s jewelry that her father had left her, she could purchase a steamship berth and train ticket to Paris. The jewelry held a piece of her heart but what must be done, must be done.

  The gate creaked again, yet no face appeared in a front window to see what had created the noise. No one opened the white front door. Since the windows before her had curtains, she ventured a few yards down the side between the brick fence and the house, and went up on tiptoes to look in.

  The glass was too smudged to see through, and the room inside too dark.

  She swore in disappointment.

  Someone put an arm around her throat, a gloved hand over her mouth, and pulled her to the ground, twisting her so she fell face first onto the thin lawn. From their boots, there were two men. Though she fought them, they gagged her, roughly, blindfolded her, and tied her hands and feet. They carried her somewhere, with her still trying frantically to wriggle free.

  This was not good; in fact it was terrible. She spat to get room in her mouth, but the cloth stuffed in there mostly stayed put.

  Would they kill her? Rape her? Put her in a cage?

  She’d heard the door open then it slammed shut.

  The house echoed with the bang of the door and the huff of their breathing, with the scuffle of shoes. She paused in her squirming to inhale. She hadn’t stopped trying to scream since they wrestled her down but with a rag in her mouth, nothing came out except her muffled gasps and bubbly squeaks.

  They took her down some stairs, into a basement, and laid her on top of a timber table—she felt the edge under her shoulder until they shoved her into the middle, and a slip of the blindfold had let her glimpse their legs. They stripped her naked, chuckling as they did so, untying her ankles and wrists when they needed an arm or leg loose. Once they’d pulled off her shoes or stockings, or whatever piece of clothing was their goal, they retied the ropes. She ended up restrained on her back, splayed out with her arms above and her legs below, and stark naked.

  Never before had she felt so exposed and helpless. Her muffled pleas for mercy were ignored, and though she yanked at the bonds, they fastened down her right arm then swabbed the inner elbow. Some cold, blissful substance was injected into her vein.

  Instantly, the drug spread through her body, transforming into a flood of warmth.

  Nirvana drowned her, rocking her into her happy place.

  Opium, or similar. She smiled and stopped struggling.

  5

  The Table

  With his shoes barely making any sound as he placed them on each tread of the stairs, Sherlock descended the last two steps. From the top, he’d seen what was down here—Willa, nude, blindfolded with red cloth, and bound to a rectangular table. Her hands were tied together at the wrists and above her head, while the ropes leading from her ankles pulled apart her thighs, for they were tied to separate table legs.

  This threatened to take his breath away, to leave him swimming in lust like some uncontrolled beast. He was a man, not an animal, and a better example of a man than most of those outside on the streets.

  Yet her presence had swallowed him and the room.

  Nothing existed except her and the warning drumbeat of his heart, and so he made himself stop and look.

  The house above was safe. He should be deliberate and precise, he had plenty of time.

  No one would be coming to disturb him.

  He made himself take in everything here, as if this were an average crime scene: the stains and moisture on the plastered walls, the small, waist-high table, the healthy pinkness of her feet and hands…

  The coolness of the air that made her nipples jut upward in the center of her areolas.

  The neat triangle of her scarlet pubic hair, and the line of her slit where even now moisture glistened… and the smallness of her toes.

  Sherlock inhaled, exhaled, and shut his eyes. Listen to the beat of the blood. Make the body obey. Turn the eyes elsewhere.

  He pressed his lips together.

  Except this was not an average crime scene. He had her naked, helpless, and alone.

  The room was dominated by this massive elephant of a table that you’d need a lorry or four men to shift. The floor beneath was stained where the stone tiles met. Sherlock knelt and scraped a dark red substance from the grout into a bottle and stoppered it. If human blood, the Uhlenhuth Test would detect it.

  On the table between her spread legs was a large wooden dildo and for a second he was angry—at the men and what they must have contemplated doing to her, and at himself for how tempted he was. He moved on.

  The small, round table held a tray with a hypodermic syringe and a vial. He paused to read the label, check the level of fluid, and to collect himself. The languid rise and fall of her breasts said she was under the influence of the drug, as did the bleb of blood at her inner elbow. With the blindfold on, she couldn’t know how intently he stared, nevertheless this was a beginning, and he refused to begin in any way except perfection.

  With a gentle touch, he rolled down the blindfold, enough to let him lift an eyelid and see her pupil. It was constricted more than normal considering her eyes had been covered. He loosened the cloth, slid it aside, and still she barely stirred.

  A chair waited in a shadowed corner. He carried it closer, beneath the dangling electric light then untied both her feet but left her hands bound. It should not take long for her to rouse. Already she moved, showing signs the sedation was lessening. In that respect, her laudanum habit was to her advantage.

  The edge of the table was cool under his palms as he leaned over her body.

  Such lush beauty. The swell of her breasts and sweep of her hips and waist stirred him carnally.

  He would not touch her.

  He would not.

  But he raised his right hand and let the curve of his palm hover over one breast, an inch from the jut of her nipple, until he swore he could feel the heat from her. Inches, bare inches. To caress her there… it lured him.

  His forefinger bent at the join of hand and finger, flexing downward. So close. When she inhaled, her breast rose as if to meet his finger. He pulled the finger higher. His eyebrows twitched.

  Something warned her or she simply awakened, for she moaned, her face turning toward him, her eyelids flickering open, shut. For a few seconds, the shine of her eyes showed.

  Was she aware of him?

  No, it seemed not. Even laudanum addicts took a while to shrug off the effects of intravenous doses.

  He lowered his hand to his waist. With his next breath, he smelled her. Not perfume, this was simply her.

  As on the airship his sense of smell was heightened. The air was thick with sexuality, ripe with eroticism. His cock pushed against his buttoned fly.

  Quietly, Sherlock
swore his way through a whole dictionary. If her effect on him was a curse, it was stronger than he could fully resist, but he could, and would, slow the effects to a trickle.

  Control.

  His hand brushed the side of his trousers and he fisted the cloth and held on.

  He would not touch her, but he would interrogate her to the depth and breadth of his ability and extract from her promises, promises that he would encourage to breed. This woman was a Moriarty, and the deviant attraction he felt for her was, or should be, a minor kerfuffle compared to his need for justice.

  He sat on the chair and took out his pocket watch to time the event, observing as she woke, as her fingers flexed against the wrist ropes, twining about the strands.

  One should seize one’s chances where they lay, especially if they lay before one naked and bound.

  This day would not end without him taking from Miss Wilhelmina Moriarty an agreement, and from there he would discover why he had changed and who had perpetrated this evil.

  6

  Interrogation

  Memory and awareness sifted into Willa’s consciousness. Thoughts reassembled. She’d been assaulted, stripped, and tied to a table. Her heart rate kicked up several notches. The same table seemed beneath her back. Subtle pulls told her that her hands were still bound with ropes, but her feet were free.

  The blindfold had been removed. The slightest shift of her eyelids let her see without showing anyone she was awake.

  And someone sat nearby, to her right, watching her.

  The lighting in here was good, too good for her comfort. He would be seeing everything of her. She’d inched her legs together so those intimate parts were hidden, but the rest, she could only pray he would leave so she could attempt to slip from or undo the other ropes. The room was cold, and she couldn’t stop herself from shivering.