Both of us froze as a whispered congregation was held behind the partition.
Though I’d only heard one set of footsteps enter the Shiloh room. Hadn’t I?
The tracks returned from whence they came, and the familiar sounds of the Velvet Glove drifted through the crack in the door before a soft snick shut it out completely.
Before I had a chance to formulate an extrication plan, Aramis Night Horse stepped from behind the screen.
My limbs went cold. Colder. I could no longer feel the fingers that clutched the shawl to me.
Of course. Aramis Night Horse was one with the shadows. He was the Blade, never far from the Hammer’s side.
He’d been here the entire time.
He’d heard me accuse him of murder.
“Croft,” was all he said, his fathomless eyes never leaving mine.
No, his voice was nothing like I’d heard in the alley. It fit him to precision, dark as midnight, and sleek as a black cat.
His word registered with a jolt of panic. Oh, God! Croft couldn’t find me at the Velvet Glove. I had no good reason to be here, especially in my current state of undress. This could ruin everything. Were he in a good mood, he’d throw me over his barbaric shoulder and haul me home.
Were he in a bad mood…he’d arrest me.
The Hammer straightened, forgetting me instantly. “Inspector Croft? Here? What does that sanctimonious fuck want at this hour? We know it isn’t a whore, opium, a loan, or a good time. The bastard wouldn’t know what to do with such things.”
I knew it was an absurd moment to laugh, but some truths were both gloomy and amusing.
“Answers.” A cold, midnight gaze slid to me, and even with the Hammer by my side, I felt as though I might never be safe again. “About a murder in Whitechapel.”
Retrieving his tailored jacket from a hook, the Hammer donned it in a smooth motion and salvaged his cufflinks from the desk.
Gems that size would have paid for my entire house in Chelsea.
“See her home,” the Hammer commanded. “I’ll deal with Croft.”
It took a moment for my dread to register. “But—” I couldn’t be alone with the Blade! Chances were I’d never make it home alive.
“See her home safely, Night Horse,” the Hammer amended as he leveled a speaking glare at the assassin. “And then we have much to discuss, you and I.”
7
It is impossible to express the array of sentiment I experienced whilst alone in a dark and confined space with perhaps the second most unrepentant murderer in London.
The first, of course, being Jack the Ripper.
I had harbored a slight suspicion that Aramis Night Horse and Jack the Ripper were one and the same. But now…I had a sense of the Ripper. A voice. A scent. The memory of his body pressed against me.
The Ripper had those corporeal details of me, as well.
A terrifying thought, that.
Not allowing myself to blink, I stared at the Blade as the Syndicate’s luxurious coach swayed on well-oiled springs beneath us.
And he stared right back.
An ashen dawn coaxed the Thames to add silver to the inky swath of ribbon before the light burnished it a dull brown. The moment of beauty was ephemeral, and still, I didn’t dare glance away from the assassin before me, even to enjoy what might be my last lovely view before I died.
St. Brendan’s bollocks, I inwardly used my father’s favorite curse. I’d just been caught tattling—for lack of a better term—on Mr. Night Horse.
I tried not to note the alleys still darkened by shadows as we passed. Nor did I fail to notice the many fantastic places to hide a body short as mine, should one be so inclined. Granted, I generally did the corpse hiding for his operation…but come to think of it, expediency had kept me in the Syndicate’s employ rather than anyone else’s lack of ability to do the job.
I’d been given to believe that power simply meant you no longer had to hide the bodies yourself.
Ultimate power meant…you didn’t have to hide the bodies at all. You could kill people to the sound of applause, and even God would absolve you.
If there were such a thing as God.
If there were such a thing as absolution.
The vice winching about my ribcage released a quarter turn when the carriage veered toward Westminster rather than following the river. Tite Street was a little row of lovely houses tucked beyond Westminster and Belgravia in the charming borough of Chelsea. The quickest route from the Strand was through the city.
I’d never in my life been so happy to pass the grey grandeur of Westminster Abbey.
The wool of my pelisse scoured my bare shoulders through the thin silk lining, a prickly reminder that I was all but naked beneath. I wondered after my blouse.
Shredded, the Hammer had said.
Ripped.
By whom? I wondered. My assailant? The Hammer? Mr. Night Horse?
I peered across at the pillar of ebony and shadow that was my companion, his legs splayed in an alarmingly indelicate manner.
Though an expensive evening jacket stretched over shoulders broad enough to be considered uncouth, nothing about Aramis Night Horse spoke of gentility.
So much of him glinted and shined, even in the pallid light. His inky hair caught in one long braid down his back. The curiously dark fabric of his trousers and fine leather boots. His marble-black eyes. The beaded silver earing dangling from his left lobe.
Turquoise.
A voice of caution whispered to me that it would be most wise to remain in this treacherous, silent nether position until we reached my home.
Unfortunately, treacherous silences made me nervous.
And we all knew how I reacted to nerves.
“So, Mr. Night Horse.” I summoned what I hoped was a winsome smile, though it felt rather brittle and tight. “I suppose I owe you a debt of gratitude for saving my life.” Even as the words spilled into the coach, I winced. Only a rank imbecile would dare to admit owing a man like Night Horse a debt.
One could only imagine how he would choose to collect.
A clever lass would have said, “thank you” and left it there, I thought glumly.
“I did not save your life,” he said without inflection.
“Oh. Well. It’s only that—that the Hammer alleged you did.”
He shook his head, causing the earing to dance. “He said I found you in Crosspoint Alley and took you to him. Had I left you there, you would not have died. Even though it bled, your neck wound was not deep enough to kill you.” His accent was American but tinged with an exotic note no less than primeval. It evoked images of jagged mountain peaks and rugged, skyclad people with skin the color of sunbaked sienna.
His eyes burned at me from across the carriage. Two embers of dark coal smoldering within features graced with composure.
I clutched the modest collar of my pelisse tighter. “Who tore my blouse?” I asked tentatively. “Was it you, the Hammer, or the Ripper?”
When he didn’t answer, I made an impatient noise.
“Was it before or after you found me in the alley?” I prodded further.
Silence.
“Do you even know?” I demanded.
“Yes.” His voice was as smooth and frigid as a clear Irish stream sluicing over hard stone.
“Well…then answer me.” One look at his face caused me to amend my command. “If you please.”
“Where I come from, answers are earned through sacrifice.”
I tried and failed to swallow the lump of trepidation lodged like a marble in my throat. What kind of sacrifice would a man like Aramis Night Horse demand?
Blood, perhaps.
Mayhap only flesh.
I didn’t want to find out. Did I?
“I just…I would like to know if it was the Ripper,” I explained honestly. “I deserve that, at least.”
“Perhaps,” he conceded. “But is it your experience people get what they deserve?”
“No.”
He made an infuriating motion with his jaw and eyebrows. One that told me his point had been made and that he would say nothing further on the subject.
It’d been him. Somehow, I knew it with chilling certainty. He’d torn away the high-necked collar. And, for some reason, had kept ripping until the garment was nothing but tatters in his hands.
No image generated by my mind’s eye of the occurrence made any semblance of sense.
I’d barely spoken a dozen words to the Blade in as many months, and he’d given me nothing but orders and the occasional corpse. Always staring with those obscure, dark eyes until I made some sort of gesture of understanding. I wasn’t proud of the fact, but I often found myself speechless in the company of Mr. Night Horse.
Though, why I couldn’t be blessed with that sort of wisdom—or caution—at the moment was beyond the likes of me. Perhaps I was getting used to his company enough for my mortal terror to abate to the aforementioned loquacious unease.
“The Ripper was gone,” I deduced. “When you came upon me in the alley?”
“Whoever cut you was gone.” A skeptical mien tightened the beautiful skin over high cheekbones sharp enough to etch glass.
Did he not believe my assailant to be Jack?
“Not interrupted by you, then,” I clarified, which garnered me a barely perceptible nod.
So, murder—specifically my murder—had not been the Ripper’s intent during our interaction. What was the significance of that? Why would he want to know what I thought of Mr. Sawyer’s demise?
Seized by a sudden chill, I burrowed my hands into the pockets of my pelisse, grazing what was left of the turquoise beads.
I could ponder my terrifying interaction with the Ripper when I was alone and out of danger. Also, after I’d had a few hours’ sleep and something to eat. What sat before me now was an opportunity to glean information. I wondered if interrogating Mr. Night Horse was clever or foolish.
Letting this chance slip through my fingers would be pure cowardice.
Better to die a fool than a coward…
I think.
“Did you—know Frank Sawyer?” I ventured.
“You mean, did I kill him?”
“Aye, I was working up to that, I’ll grant you.”
“Do you think I’d confess to his murder if I had?”
His answer evoked anger in me, which I suspect shocked us both more than a little. If there was one thing I despised, it was a person who answered a question with another question. “It’s not as if I don’t know what it is you do, is it? What you are. I’ve rid the world of enough of your victims to show a bit of good faith. What am I going to do, go to the police? I don’t ask these questions to condemn you for Mr. Sawyer’s murder. I ask for my own peace of mind. All I want to know is if it was you having a bit of gruesome fun with Mr. Sawyer, or if the Ripper has truly returned to torment London again.”
“To torment you,” he corrected.
I fought the intense urge to squirm beneath his shrewd regard.
“I thought you said he confessed to the deed when he had a blade at your throat.”
“Yes, well…” How did I articulate my concerns? Something about that interaction in the alley felt wrong, somehow. And I still wanted to test Croft’s theory that Jack hadn’t carried out his dastardly deeds alone. The Blade would make a perfect accomplice to the kind of work for which the Ripper was infamous.
Extracting the beads from my pocket, I extended my hand to him. A peace offering of sorts.
“Those do not belong to me.” He made no move to take them. “I didn’t kill Mr. Sawyer. And neither did the Ripper.”
At this, my head snapped up. “How could you possibly know that?”
He gestured to where my thumb fidgeted with the beads. “Where would Jack the Ripper acquire turquoise like that?”
“He could have had them imported from America,” I suggested. “I imagine one can buy turquoise at great expense just as we do gems and the like.”
“Then why suspect me at all? If the stones are so readily available?”
I scowled. Mostly because he’d made an excellent point. In truth, I had the impression turquoise was not so easily obtained. But I could be sorely mistaken. I might make a comfortable living now, but life had taught me that I still had much to learn about the value of things.
“Aren’t you curious as to the owner of these?” I asked.
“No. I have plenty of turquoise of my own.” He parted the open collar of his dark shirt to expose a string of similar beads artfully set in silver. The necklace gleamed against the smooth, hairless amber hue of his chest above a different strand that seemed to have been intricately carved from ivory. Or bone.
“Even though you’re a foreigner, you mostly wear English fashion…why not a cravat?” I asked. I thought he’d look rather smart in one, and then his chest wouldn’t be on distracting display.
“I don’t like cravats,” he answered simply.
“Oh…” As far as reasons went, it was a sound one. “But still, if these beads are from—”
“Does it matter to me where someone else’s beads came from?”
“It does if they imply that you’re a murderer.”
“I am a murderer.” He said it as though reminding a simpleton that the sky was blue or that rain was wet. “My people were not miners or workers of turquoise. Though we traded for it on occasion with people from the south. The gems we found were usually glass or sometimes sapphires. If I’m honest, I’m not fond of the stone.”
“Then why wear it?”
He scrutinized me for a long moment before he answered. “It identifies me.”
“Oh.” To my eternal discomfiture, I sort of ran out of things to say. Did he mean he identified with the stone? Or that the stone identified him to others?
A safer question leapt into my mind like a startled rabbit. “Do you know of any other Indians? Hereabouts, I mean. Anyone to whom these might belong?”
To say his displeased frown dismayed me would be a gross understatement. “The only Indians I know are from India.”
“Right. Well…any other of…your people, then.”
“All my people are dead,” he informed me drolly.
I ceased to breathe for a full minute as I gaped at him, doing my best to make sense of the words he’d so blithely strung together to form one of the most lugubrious statements imaginable.
“Certainly not—not all of them,” I stammered. “I mean, I know a great deal of…you have been… killed in the wars…” I faltered, stuck on his revelation. “But, surely, some of your people survived. That is to say, you did.”
I couldn’t tell you if it was exhaustion or astonishment causing my witlessness. But, suddenly, I didn’t want to know what I knew. For nigh on two years, Aramis Night Horse had been an absolute enigma to me. A sort of preternatural being who melded with the London mists. A primal hunter who’d adapted to urban environs but still capable of some primordial brand of mystic slaughter.
At the moment, he was a man. One who’d lost what I had lost. Maybe on an unimaginable scale.
He regarded me with a touch of pity as though he understood my inner struggle. “Your people. Irish people. They live in tribes.”
He posed it both like a question and an assertion, so it took me a bemused moment to reply. “We call them clans, but yes, they do. Or did. That way of life isn’t so prevalent anymore.”
“My nation is the Niitsitapi. In English, we are called the Blackfoot. We once numbered as many as the Irish, and our lands were twice as vast. Your tribe—your clan—is the Mahoney Clan.” He paused, his eyes shifting to catch an errant thought. “What means Mahoney?”
My Aunt Nola had taught me this when I was young. “In the old language, it was O’Mathghamhana, which loosely means Clan of the Bear.”
My answer seemed to please him as he peeled his shoulders from where they rested against the seat and shifted toward me. “My tribe—my people—were the Peenaqui
m. It means seen from afar. There were so many, you could find our village for miles.”
“I see,” I whispered, and I did. But that didn’t stop him from explaining.
“If the Mahoney Clan is…exterminated, there are still Irish, are there not?”
Mutely, I nodded. A lump of emotion lodged in my throat.
“There are still Blackfoot,” he said.
But no Peenaquim.
Little did he know that we had more in common than he realized. There were not many Mahoney left, either. For much the same reason. They’d been exterminated, to borrow his word.
What had happened to the Peenaquim, I wondered?
I thought of all the reasons the clannish philosophy was fading in my country. Ancient hostilities caused clans to war between themselves. For untold centuries, there was raiding, raping, and many regrettable conflicts. The skirmishes impeded the clans from uniting against foreign invaders. Rudimentary arms gave way to advanced weapons. Unwise leaders signed reckless treaties. Unscrupulous invaders broke those agreements.
And then came the Christians. With a whole new set of troubles.
Their wars still claimed so many.
I didn’t want to show Night Horse how his words affected me, but I wasn’t convinced I could hide it from him. Especially as I forced my next question through the thickness gathered in my throat. “What happened once your people were…gone? Did you seek sanctuary?”
“No.” He picked a tuft of imaginary lint from his suit jacket. “I sought revenge.”
The blood seized in my veins. This, I could appreciate. “Did you find it?”
If I thought Aramis Night Horse was intimidating when he frowned, I underestimated what his smile could do to me. It contained a glee only found in nightmares. I could see the blood of his enemies staining his brilliant white teeth as he feasted on the still-beating hearts he tore from their chests.
I could hear their screams as he grinned.
“Did you find other Niit—Niitsit—Blackfeet to take you in?” I asked tremulously.
“Blackfoot,” he corrected. “In my tribe, men were makers, shamans, braves, or hunters. I was both a shaman and a hunter before the American army came to claim our land for Montana.”
The Business of Blood Page 8