The Weeping Lore (Witte & Co. Investigations Book 1) (16 page)

Irene had her little revolver out. It probably wouldn’t kill a man outright—not unless she hit him just right—but it was better than nothing. She pulled her arm free of his.

Nothing showed itself in the alley behind them. At Cian’s nod, they moved forward again, this time trying to move silently. Again came the scraping sound, but this time from above. Cian looked up. The drifts of dust, suffused with starlight, hid anything that might have been moving.

Cian thought of the spiders as large as hound dogs.

To judge by Irene’s pallor, so did she.

After another pace, the carrion stench struck Cian again, hard and close. Something moved overhead. He shoved Irene to the side, and they both tumbled into a pair of trash cans. Half-frozen garbage spilled across the ground. Cian hit the brick paving and rolled onto his side as something landed in the spot where he and Irene had been walking a moment before.

Irene lay on her stomach, but Cian noted that fact in the back of his mind. His attention was fixed on the thing that had dropped into the alley. It stood like a man—a very tall, very well-built man, bigger even than Cian. In the dusty half-light, the thing was all ropy muscles, apparently shirtless in spite of the cold. It turned to face Cian, and vertical pupils widened in jade eyes.

A long tail swished across the ground, sending a tin can clattering across the bricks.

The thing darted forward. Irene spun onto her knees, firing her revolver. It turned towards her. Cian shoved Irene to the right. One of the thing’s massive arms swept out, caught Irene’s shoulder, and tossed her down the length of the alley. There was a rattle as her revolver hit the bricks, and then the thing had reached Cian.

He fired with the Colt. The shots caught the massive thing in the chest, and the force of the rounds knocked it back. One, two, three.

The Colt clicked. Empty.

One huge hand gripped Cian’s side. He swallowed a scream as blades tore through his coat and shirt, ripping him open. The thing lifted Cian into the air, keeping him balanced on the blades. Black spots danced in Cian’s vision as the pain cascaded over him. Somehow, he stayed conscious.

Vertical pupils contracted as they studied Cian.

He brought the Colt up, stabbing the barrel through the soft underside of the thing’s throat. The back of Cian’s hand brushed the thing’s skin and felt something hard. Scaly. But the thing hissed, pulled back, and slammed Cian against the wall.

Blackness fell like snow.

Through the roaring in his ears, through the falling darkness, Cian stared at the huge thing that held him. Its jade eyes moved across Cian’s face.

And then there was the crack of a gun, and the thing’s head twitched to one side, and it dropped to the ground.

Five long talons, dripping with Cian’s blood, were at the end of one hand.

Cian was on the ground. His legs were cold. Hell, all of him was cold. The stars weren’t cold, though. They were bright and alive. They made him think of summer nights in France, and the sounds from the village, and Corinne’s hand in his.

It felt small and warm. Just like the hand holding his right now.

He looked up and saw dark eyes in a slender face.

“Corinne,” he said. Sleepy. It had been a long day.

Words were coming through, washed by a crashing roar in Cian’s ears. The ocean, maybe.

The small, warm hand left his. Cian heard an angry shout.

And then a new face swam into view.

Cian tried to laugh because it was a dog’s face.

Then a cold circle of metal around his wrist, and the dog’s face again, and the stars were going to bed one by one. And Cian thought he might as well go to bed too.

At some point during the night, something had crawled into Cian’s mouth and died. This thing—a puffy, gauzy white animal, maybe a bit like a cross between a mouse and a sheep—left Cian’s mouth packed with cotton and the taste of dirty laundry. He shifted, trying to get more comfortable, and heard a metallic jangle. Something held his wrist in place.

Concern drifted at the edge of thought. There was something else too. Something heavy and warm and itchy as a wool blanket. It pressed down on Cian’s brain, suffocating the glimmer of concern.

Sleep seemed like a very good idea.

When he tried to turn on his other side, though, Cian heard another metallic ring, and then the same sense of frustration.

He wanted to sleep on his side.

Opening his eyes was an uphill battle. First, a glimpse of white. Then steel. Yellowed tile.

It was all very interesting, but sleep was calling.

The guttering spark of concern, though, refused to go out. Cian tried again.

A white and steel bed. A small room. Sunlight through a window, the lower third covered in frost. On the opposite wall, a framed cross-stitch of yellow flowers. Sunflowers. Maybe.

Cian thought that he might get up and check what kind of flowers they were, but the metallic jangle interrupted him again.

Handcuffs. On both wrists. Chaining him to the metal bed frame.

Outrage might have been an appropriate response. Or fear. But instead, Cian noticed the pain in his side, and the heaviness settling on his brain, white like snow. He decided that he might as well close his eyes again. And so he did.

When he woke next, the weight had lifted from his brain, although it felt like someone had packed his head with cottonwood puffs. Harsh cleaners filled the air, and the smell of someone who needed a bath—Cian himself, he guessed—and the scent of something like canned gravy.

Cian’s eyes popped open.

The same white and yellow room. The same mysterious yellow flowers. The same handcuffs.

But now a man sat in a chair next to the bed. He wore a long, rumpled coat with a stain on the left breast, a dark suit with frayed trouser cuffs, and a tie that had been loosened and looked like it was keeping company with the first stain’s twin. His eyes were small, dark, and hard. Ferret eyes, set into a face with heavy jowls and an even heavier shadow of a beard. He looked like the kind of man Cian wanted to punch on sight—the kind who liked badges and ranks and authority. The kind who wouldn’t mind pushing you around, if he could get away with it.

“Cian Shea,” he said. He had a voice like a rusted gutter.

“Who the hell are you? And where am I?”

“My name is Captain Irving Harper. I’m with the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division. I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Lieutenant Harley Dunn. As soon as you are fit for travel, you will be transported to Jefferson Barracks for court-martial.” The man stood, pushed the chair against the wall, and started for the door. He looked back. “By all reports, Harley Dunn was your friend.”

“Go to hell,” Cian said.

No expression crossed the heavy jowls. Harper left the room, and Cian sank back onto the bed, staring at the cross-stitched yellow flowers, and trying to ignore the pain growing in his side.

“You’re sure?” Irene said, looking at the starchy white bulk of First Baptist Hospital.

Patrick shrugged and pulled his hat down lower as another blast of freezing air struck them.

Irene didn’t feel the cold. “I suppose there’s only one way to know.”

“Irene,” Patrick said. He pointed with a gloved hand at a pair of men seated on a truck’s tailgate at the next street corner. They wore respectable clothes, but they were large men, and neither looked like the kind who had much trouble with his conscience.

“You know them? Are they from the Patch?”

“I know them. The Whelan brothers. I don’t know their first names. They’re mean. They worked for Seamus, and now they work for Byrne.”

“And they’re here for Cian.”

As though on cue, the two men stood and started walking towards the hospital.

“Damn,” Irene said.

“Go,” Patrick said. “I’ll see if I can’t slow them for a few minutes.”

She smiled her thanks, squeezed Patrick’s hand, and hurried towards the white building. Before the next block, she outpaced the Whelan brothers, and as she crossed the street Irene heard Patrick say, “Afternoon, boys. What are you doing in this part of town?”

If the Whelan brothers gave an answer, Irene didn’t hear it. A car lumbered behind her, the sound of its engine swallowing up everything else, and Irene entered the hospital without looking back. The hospital itself was nothing unremarkable. A mixture of scents hung in the air, creating a miasma Irene had never experience before but identified on instinct: illness. One part emptied bowels, one part closed-up air, one part despair.

Against the far wall, a woman with her hair in iron curls sat at a desk, listening to an elderly man. The woman’s eyes flicked to Irene. Those eyes reminded Irene of Miss Hannerley, one of Irene’s most formidable teachers. When the woman turned her attention back to the man, Irene slipped through one of the side doors and started her search.

She owed Cian this much, at least.

The night before had become a long blur. Her entry into the apartment, searching for information about the box, holding Cian at gunpoint. Irene wasn’t proud of that last part. Twice now Cian had saved her life, and both times she had treated him poorly. Last night, just when everything seemed to be going so well, the world had fallen to pieces again. Harry Witte showing up had been bad. But then—the apartment collapsing, Cian throwing her to safety, their flight from the building.

And the alley. That was where her memory became a smear of gray and green and the taste of rotting garbage. She couldn’t recall what had happened. Bits and pieces—something dropping from above, Cian shoving her out of the way, the feel of the revolver kicking in her hands.

Then Cian, on the ground, bleeding. And a bulldog-faced man who had arrived, cuffed Cian, and loaded him into a truck.

The next hallway was full of doctors and nurses moving in coordinated steps. Somewhere in the building, someone was screaming. Irene changed her course, checking another hallway of patients, most sleeping or reading the afternoon away. At the next corridor, Irene saw a stairwell, and she took the steps up to the next floor.

If only she had stopped the man from taking Cian. That was where things had truly gone wrong. Cian had been injured trying to save Irene. She thought of the thing moving in the darkness. She had shot at it. It had kept coming. And Irene was fairly certain she would have died if not for Cian Shea.

All of which left her with a bitter taste in her mouth.

At the time, though, she had been caught in the same paralyzing fear that blurred her memories. As the man had loaded Cian into the truck, panic had finally settled into Irene’s legs, and she ran.

That was twice, too, that she had proved herself a coward. She would not do so again.

The next floor was less crowded, with long stretches of patient rooms. The scent of urine was stronger here, and the plaster was chipped, the corners of the halls caked with grime. The men and women in the hospital beds watched her silently. They shared the look of men and women crushed by hard days that had lengthened into hard years.

Twice Irene saw nurses moving down the hall in their white uniforms, and twice she ducked into nearby rooms. The second time, she was certain the nurse had seen her, but the woman passed the room with slumped shoulders, not sparing the doorway a second glance. Irene traded gazes with the man in the bed—a wiry figure who seemed to be nothing more than skin and bone and scraggly white hair. He had soiled himself, staining the sheets and filling the air with the scent of his waste. Irene flushed and slipped out into the hallway. She paused in the next stairwell, wiped burning eyes, and hid her face in the sleeve of her fur coat. She still saw the old man’s eyes, though.

After a minute, though, she went up again. Up, because she had to get out of this place. Seeing Kerry Patch, with its poor and its hungry and its homeless, had been one thing. Seeing this—

Irene walked faster.

On the third floor, she paused at the sound of footsteps outside the stairwell. When the sound passed, she slipped through the door. A man built like an oven trudged down the hall, his back to Irene. He wore a long gray coat and a suit, the cuffs of his trousers visibly frayed. Irene headed in the opposite direction.