by Nathan Long
“Thank you, angel,” said Aurora solemnly, and pressed Nellie’s fingers to her lips. “Then we will fight him together, but I will finish him. You must promise.”
Her eyes seemed to stare into Nellie’s soul. Nellie couldn’t meet them. She hung her head. “I... All right, I promise.”
“Good.” Aurora started forward again, pulling her along. “Now come. There are still many blocks to go.”
***
After quite a lot more skulking and hiding and keeping to dark alleys, Nellie and Aurora at last stood in the shadows of the trees of Chester Square, looking across the cobbled street at the elegant white frontage of a townhouse. The windows were all dark, and Nellie saw no coach waiting out front.
“Is this Lord Childers’ place?” she asked. “It looks deserted.”
“It is possible Malagnita fled,” said Aurora. “As he will know what I wish to do to him now I am free. But I believe not. He thinks too highly of himself. He will wait for me, wanting to force me again to his will.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of!” said Nellie. “Maybe I should go in and you wait...”
Aurora was already striding across the street. Nellie groaned and trotted after, sweating under her collar.
When they reached the front of the house, Aurora immediately started to climb the facade. Nellie hissed at her.
“Aurora, wait! I can’t do that. And besides, that’s how he’ll expect you to come.”
Aurora looked down. “But how else are we to get in?”
Nellie took out her penknife and toothpick and held them up.
Aurora hopped down and squeezed her arm. “How resourceful you are!”
Nellie beamed. It felt like the sun was warming her from the inside. “The benefits of a Kilburn education. Now keep a lookout.”
She turned and applied herself to the lock, and a few moments later, the door swung in, smooth as silk, revealing a dark foyer with the polished surfaces of hall tables and vases and chandeliers glinting from the shadows. There was also a mound of heavy trunks and carpet bags stacked against the wall opposite the stair.
“He is here,” murmured Aurora. “And, it appears, he means to stay. Those are his things.”
“Stay here? Ain’t he out t’murder Childers? Why would he stay at the scene of the crime?”
“Unfortunately, I can no longer spy upon the doctor’s thoughts, so I do not know what he intends.”
They tiptoed through the ground floor and found nothing but empty, lavishly decorated rooms, and so started up the stairs. As they reached the middle floor, they saw a dim yellow light filtering down from above and heard a faint scraping noise.
Nellie gave Aurora a questioning glance. Aurora shrugged. They crept to the base of the ascending stairs. As they went up, the scraping sound continued, slow and deliberate. Nellie was certain she had heard such a sound before but could not place it.
At the top, they saw that the yellow light was coming from a gap in a pair of double doors toward the back of the house. Nellie tried to see what was within as they edged toward them, but glimpsed only drawn curtains, part of a painting, and an Oriental screen. It was only when they had reached them and were able to peer through to the left and right that they discovered at last the source of the scraping sound, and were discovered in their turn.
Never had Nellie seen a scene so mundane in all its pieces, yet so horrible in its whole. Reclining on a chaise longue in the center of a large, window-lined salon, with a towel draped over his shoulders, was Malignita. At least, Nellie thought it was Malignita. The man was certainly the right height and build, but his great mane of hair had been trimmed to a respectable length, and he was being shaved by a girl who could not have been more than twelve, the razor in her hands scritching slowly over his neck and jowls as she removed the last traces of his fearsome beard.
Observing this shearing with rapt attention was a circle of astonishingly beautiful women and girls, all sitting with perfect posture upon couches and high-backed chairs, and all dressed in sheer and flowing nightdresses. Nellie recognized Robert Brightline’s wife among them and wondered if the rest might be the wives and daughters and lady friends of Malignita’s other victims. It did not surprise her that every single one of them was weeping silently from eyes that did not blink.
“At last,” said Malignita as he rose from the chaise and wiped his chin and neck with the towel. “I wondered when you would arrive. Please, come in.”
12
The Devil in his Den
Nellie edged uneasily into the salon as Aurora pushed the doors wide and strode in ahead of her. The heads of all the women swiveled to regard them with placid, wet eyes. Their gaze, and the unison of their movements, made Nellie shiver. Then she gasped at something she saw behind them.
Lying on a day bed in a corner that had been hidden from view at the door was a rotund older man dressed in magnificently understated clothes—and stabbed through the heart by a dagger that matched Aurora’s exactly. He was quite dead.
Malignita chuckled. “I’m afraid Lord Childers cannot rise to greet you as a host should.”
“Y-You killed him!” gasped Nellie.
“Obligingly, he killed himself,” said Malignita. He looked at Aurora. “When I lost you, I thought it prudent to suggest it to him. In case you refused to do it for me.”
“I will never do your bidding again!” cried Aurora. She drew her dagger. “You will be the last man I kill.”
Malignita stepped back. “Perhaps. But how many women will you kill to reach me?”
As one, all the women and girls in the room stood and encircled Nellie and Aurora and Malignita’s abandoned chaise, standing with their arms at their sides and staring straight ahead. Each one of them had a kitchen knife in one hand. The young girl who had shaved Malignita held her razor.
The doctor laughed from outside the circle. “Come, then,” he said. “I await your fury.”
“You are a coward,” said Aurora.
“I am cautious,” said the doctor. “My vengeance, so long in the planning, so perfectly conceived, is almost complete. I would not jeopardize its success by facing a trained killer such as yourself.”
“You’ve piled your trunks in the house of a murdered lord,” sneered Aurora. “How perfectly conceived is that? You will be arrested.”
“You will be arrested,” said Malignita. “The murderer of Wedlock, Brightline, Unwin, Tomlinson, and now Childers, apprehended at last.”
“Aye,” said Nellie. “Along with Dr. Malignita, the mentalist who forced the poor girl to kill them all. You think they won’t make the connection?”
“Of course they will,” said the doctor. “But where is Malignita? Certainly not here.” He spread his arms. “You see before you Reginald Childers, long-lost younger brother of Sir George Childers and now, with George’s death, heir to his titles and estates.”
He indicated one of the women in the circle, a stately blonde beauty of forty or so. “Perhaps I’ll even marry his grieving widow.” His gaze slid to the girl beside the woman. “I will certainly comfort his grieving daughter.”
Nellie shuddered. “Y’sick trickster, nobody’s going to believe yer related to Sir George. Y’look nothing like him.”
“That matters not at all. George formally recognized me as his brother before he died, changed his will, made me joint holder of all his bank accounts, and recommended me for his clubs. I am, in the eyes of the law, his rightful, legal heir, with full power of attorney of all his estates. And if anyone does question my bona fides, five minutes alone with me will change their minds. That’s all it took with Aurora, wasn’t it, my dear?”
“It will take me an hour to finish with you!” she snarled, advancing with her dagger.
“Now, now,” said the doctor, as the women closed ranks before him. “I know how it pains you to kill. Will you really kill these poor innocent women to reach me?”
“You have forgotten my training,” she said, and hopped upon the chaise,
then sprung from its back over the heads of the women and landed beside Malignita, blade slashing.
The doctor shrieked and skipped sideways in a manner that betrayed his attempted dignity, then bolted for the door, screaming over his shoulder, “Kill her! Kill her!”
Aurora made to give chase, but the women turned toward her, knives held high, and got in her way. She backed off, as reluctant as Malignita had suggested to hurt them. They, unfortunately, seemed to have no such compunctions and stabbed at her with clumsy abandon.
Behind them, Nellie cursed and began shoving them and kicking at their ankles. Half turned on her, knives slicing, lips moving.
“Put down your weapons,” they all said in perfect unison. “You cannot win.”
Nellie recoiled. It was the doctor’s cadence, coming from a dozen mouths at once, as if he were manipulating a squadron of ventriloquist dummies.
“Aurora,” she called, backing away. “What do we do?”
“Don’t speak,” Aurora replied. “He can hear through them as well as speak through them.”
“Then?”
“Wait.”
“Ha!” said the women together. “Wait too long and you will be trapped.”
It was true. Half the women were edging Nellie toward one corner of the room, while the other half were angling Aurora into another. But then, just as it seemed there was nowhere to go, Aurora jumped backward toward the windows and started clawing at the curtains that hid them.
“Running?” said the women as they hurried after her. “I think not. This ends here.”
“I am not running,” said Aurora, and yanked down the curtain which she held, throwing it over the women who surrounded her. As they struggled to cast it off, she pulled down another and added it to the first, then danced around the flailing, multi-legged mass and ran for the door.
“Stop!” said all the women, and the ones menacing Nellie suddenly turned from her to try to intercept Aurora.
Nellie kicked the Oriental screen toward them, and they tripped over it as it clattered down in front of them, then she skipped past and joined Aurora at the door.
In the two far corners of the room, the women were freeing themselves from the curtains and picking themselves up off the floor and starting for them.
“Out!” said Aurora.
They darted into the hall, then pulled the doors closed behind them.
“Here!” said Nellie, and slipped her shillelagh through the loops of the brass handles.
A multitude of thuds and a straining at the doors proved she had not been a moment too soon.
“Whew,” she said. “That’s them sorted. I hope.”
They turned to look for Malignita. He was right behind them, swinging a cane of his own. It struck Aurora a mighty blow across the brow and shattered the plaster imago. It thudded to the floor in shards and chunks, leaving her beautiful face once more bare.
“Now, Aurora,” said Malignita, smiling. “Kill your friend.”
And to Nellie’s horror, when Aurora turned to face her, her eyes were again closed and tears were running down her cheeks.
13
A Kiss Before Dying
Nellie scrabbled at her shillelagh, trying to free it from the door handles, but Aurora shoved her back and raised her dagger.
Nellie caught her wrist in both of her hands. “Aurora, please. It’s me.”
Aurora kept pressing, and such was her strength that the knife inched ever closer to Nellie’s face no matter how hard she fought to keep it away. Beside her, Malignita laughed, then backed away, watching with fevered, fervent eyes.
“That’s it,” he murmured. “Overpower her.”
“Aurora!” cried Nellie. “Don’t listen to him! Wake up!”
As it ever was when she was under Malignita’s control, Aurora’s face was as placid and blank as a Greek statue’s, but were her tears flowing even more strongly than usual? Nellie could not tell. She had never been this close when Aurora was weeping.
Then Aurora’s lips began to move. “You call her in vain, foolish girl. When I possess her, Aurora does not exist. Do you understand me?”
Aurora wrenched her wrist out of Nellie’s grasp and stabbed again. Nellie leapt back, yelping, and tripped over an upholstered bench to land heavily on the floor. Before she could recover, Aurora flipped her over and sat on her chest, knees pinning her arms to her sides, then raised her dagger in both hands.
“Aurora,” sobbed Nellie. “Wake up. You asked me to wake you. Please! Wake up!”
The blade started to come down, then slowed suddenly. Aurora’s hands were shaking. With difficulty, Nellie pulled her eyes away from the dagger’s quivering tip and looked at her closed eyes as if they were open, as if they could see each other.
“I knew you were there,” she said. “I knew it.”
“No!” rasped Malignita from where he stood rigid and sweating across the hall. “She...is...gone!”
Nellie ignored his words. “It looks like I’ll not get another chance t’say this, Aurora. So I better say it now. I...”
The knife jerked closer, then stopped again.
Nellie swallowed. “I-I love you, Aurora. I love you.”
Aurora’s dagger froze only a handspan from Nellie’s face and shook even more violently. Suddenly, her eyes flew open and she dropped the blade to the side, then kissed Nellie full on the lips.
“Angel,” she murmured, as Nellie’s heart soared. “Angel. I—!”
Aurora tensed as Malignita roared at her, red-faced and sweating. “Pick up the dagger! Kill her!”
Nellie clutched at Aurora’s arms, trying to hold her close. Trying to keep her attention. “Don’t listen to him. Look at me. Look at me!”
Aurora howled and pulled away, snatching up the fallen dagger, but instead of stabbing Nellie, she twisted and flung it behind her—and cracked Malignita between the eyes with the pommel. He flew back, crying out, and collapsed against the wall behind him.
“How dare you...defy me...” he mumbled. “Your mind is mine for the—”
With a crack like a pistol shot, Nellie’s shillelagh snapped in half as the pressure on the salon doors finally grew too great, and the women flooded into the hallway, knives held high. No longer were they blank-faced and weeping. Now flames of rage and revulsion flared in their eyes, and they fell upon Malignita like crazed jackals, stabbing and snarling and screaming.
“No!” he cried. “Unhand me! I am your—”
His words died in a bloody, bubbling gurgle, and he spoke no more.
“Quick,” said Nellie, remembering Tomlinson’s story of Ruth and how she had taken her life after Malignita had released her mind. “Take their knives!”
Aurora was still reeling from resisting the doctor, but she stumbled after Nellie as she hurried to the now-huddled and sobbing women, and helped her strip the kitchen blades from their slack and bloody hands.
After that, however, Nellie was unsure what to do. Malignita was dead and his victims alive, so she and Aurora had achieved the victory they had wished for, but the women seemed inconsolable, weeping and shaking and hugging themselves.
“Come,” said Aurora, rising unsteadily to her feet. “We can at least get them away from this...mess.”
“Aye,” said Nellie. “Aye. Good thinkin’. Let’s take ’em down to the parlor and I’ll put the kettle on, if I can find it. Then maybe we can draw ‘em a bath.”
“Yes,” said Aurora, letting out a tremulous breath. “It will be good to be doing something.”
They hadn’t done more than help the first of the women to her feet, however, when a feminine voice came from the lower stories of the house.
“Helloooo! Is anyone at home? Helloooo!”
A male voice followed. “Everything quite all right?”
Nellie looked at Aurora with wild eyes, a hundred thoughts roiling her mind. Could they turn the visitors away? Hide the bodies? Hide the women? Clean up the blood? Explain their innocence? Aurora seemed paralyzed too, an
d before either of them could move, there were footsteps on the stairs, and, rising out of the darkness of the middle floor, as strange a pair of persons as Nellie had ever seen—and, being in variety, Nellie had seem some very strange pairs of persons indeed.
The woman was tall, indeed statuesque, with broad shoulders and a formidable bosom, but clad in a plain black dress and a severe black bonnet. The man was her opposite in every way but his clothing. Short, hunched, wizened, and frightfully thin, with a head so gaunt as to appear skeletal, he seemed a cursed homunculus beside the woman’s valiant valkyrie but also wore the most modest of clothes, including a broad-brimmed black hat and steel-rimmed spectacles.
“Mercy, friends,” said the woman as they topped the stairs and beheld the bloody scene. “What has happened here?”
Nellie’s mind raced, trying to come up with a story. “It... There... There was a burglar. He...”
“Now, now, my dear,” said the man in a merry, plummy accent that clashed with everything else about him. “No need for prevarications. We are well acquainted with the particulars of the situation. Only, we didn’t dare be so optimistic as to hope for so felicitous an outcome.” He clasped his hands together and grinned, showing a horrifying palisade of teeth. “You’ve brought the villain low. Well done!”
“Er...” said Nellie. “Uh....”
The woman stepped forward, extending a gloved hand. “We are Miss Lazarus and Mr. James, of the Society of the Hermetic Sciences. One of our members informed us there might be trouble of this nature at this address, and we have come to help.”
“Ah...” said Nellie, limply shaking her hand. “Thank you?”
“Not at all,” said the woman, who was more than a head and a half taller than Nellie, even disregarding her bonnet. “Now what have thee done so far?”
Thee? She’s a Quaker, thought Nellie, just like—
Nellie gasped as she realized who Miss Lazarus and Mr. James must be, and who the member of the Society of Hermetic Sciences who had told them to come here must be as well. “You... you... you...”