Transmuted (31 page)

“Leaving?” asked Piers.

At the same time, Ashmore’s brow furrowed beneath my palm. “You can’t go alone. I—”

“Yes,” I cut in, favoring them both with a stern gaze. “I will ensure that I am not wholly alone. However,I cannot remain here in good conscience. I have,” I added gently,“brought enough concern to this house.”

Piers, knowing what he did of things, said nothing.

Although my tutor understood as well as the earl, he caught my hand and tugged it from his brow. “Fetch me my clothing, and I shall—”

“Stay here,” I said over him once more, with enough severity learned from him that his efforts to sit up stilled. That I could keep him down with but a hand on his shoulder certainly helped my case.

“She’s right,” Piers replied, a droll comment that implied it to be a rare thing.

I spared for him a flash of my tongue, stuck out in childish impudence.

He grinned back. “We’ll take care of him.”

“I am grateful.” For Ashmore, I smiled. “You are still weak, and must regain your strength. I couldn’t bear it if the Veil took advantage of you in this state.”

Left unsaid was the terror I had suffered when I’d seen my tutor collapse. The sheer grief of it as he’d convulsed before me.

Perhaps it was to his credit that Ashmore sighed deeply, easing back into the coverlets. He touched my hand. “Call for Hawke.”

That he allowed that much said more of his mind than anything else.

I chuckled. “I shall do just so,” I said. I rose. “Well, then. I believe I shall pay Lady Sarah Elizabeth a social visit.”

“Oh?” Piers’s arms folded over his chest, rumpling his riding jacket. “To what end?”

“At the very least,” I said with asperity, “she can be coaxed to share all that she knows of the Veil. ’Twas no accident that— What is that?” I said, cutting myself off with a frown.

Footsteps pounded down the hall.

Piers half leaned in surprise, caught mid-turn as the door flew open and a footman with a graying mustache grasped the doorframe, panting.

Instinctively, I stepped in front of Ashmore, but he caught my hip in one hand and pushed me gently to the side.

“What the devil is wrong with you, man?” Piers asked, striding to the footman’s side and bolstering his flagging strength with a strong hand at the man’s upper arm.

Red-faced, the footman sucked in as much air as his lungs allowed and croaked, “Message for the lady.”

What warmth had been reinforced within me went cold. With a pit in my stomach, I stepped forward. “What is it?”

Eyes of a dark hue met mine, such concern and fear within that my hands turned to fists within my skirts. “Little Chelsea,” he gasped. “There’s been a runner.”

“Speak up,” Piers encouraged.

The footman sagged in the earl’s grasp. “An incident. The child said there was blood.”

An incident? Such pretty verbiage could mask any number of hateful things, and mention of blood drew it all to a fearful spike in my heart. My vision abruptly narrowed to a dark tunnel. “Dear God,” I breathed.

“Right,” Piers snapped. “Prepare the gondola.”

“Go on,” Ashmore said, and I turned, numb with fear, to meet his catlike stare—and the firm resolve there. “I will be fine. Go see to our family.”

Our family.

Nodding with lurching resolve, I gathered my skirts in hand and sprinted for the door. “I need clothing,” I said sharply.

“I’ll send a maid,” Piers called after me.

“Cherry!”

I halted just in the hall, the footman’s footsteps fading away. I turned back to Ashmore, who had not moved but gripped his coverlet with white knuckled intensity. “Remember the lessons I’ve taught you.”

Again, I nodded.

“Go with God,” Piers said fiercely.

Would I really? Would such superstition care for me? When it came to these matters, to the hope made of such fragile threads, I could promise nothing. I could only pray.

With my heart cramping, choking on my dread, I prepared to go below.

Chapter Twenty-Six

There have always been those times when I stepped into a tableau so achingly familiar that it forced within me a sense of what the French term
déjà vu.
Often, I could attribute such things to the wisp of smoke or the draught I’d taken.

This was not one such time.

As was common for the hour beneath the choking drift, full night fell thick and heavy. Lamps flickered and jumped, gas flames struggling to pierce the yellow-streaked gloom that swirled like a current from corner to corner.

Thanks to the parting gift pressed upon me by the aging butler, I was not caught without some protection from the acrid burn of the smoke. The case he’d handed me, saying simply, “With regards,” had contained a small pair of ornate gold-rimmed fog protectives.

Delicate and sublime, they engendered within me not the grief I’d expected but a warmth that spread through me like a balm.

My late husband had gifted these to me, delicate French protectives in light of the fact he’d thought I owned none. I’d thought them forever gone after I’d abandoned my house.

Though I could not be certain as to what they were meant to signify, I knew them to be from the marchioness.

Perhaps, in some small way, this was her acknowledgement of my regret.

It went a long way to easing my nerves.

By the time I stepped from the gondola to a lane eerily empty, abandoned by even the onlookers who made of such matters a performance to watch, I was coolly collected, calm despite my fears. A stillness broken only by the swirling tide of the coal-laden smoke gripped the area in a wretched peace, so far from serenity that were a scream to rise, it would be welcome.

“Should I wait?” The gruff voice of the Northampton gondolier spoke volumes as to his growing qualms. The environ to which he was not accustomed would make of him a useless thing.

I surveyed the tattered remains of Fanny’s front door—a splintered hole where there had been a pretty little portico—and forced myself to think through lurching fear.

“Wait here,” I said, holding out my hand. “If there are wounded, can you take them back to Lord Compton’s Eaton Square home?”

“Right, my lady,” returned the gondolier, squaring his wide shoulders and tucking down the brim of his hat. He looked a great deal more wealthy than any who might cross this lane, but that he reached below his seat to withdraw a pistol spoke as to his grit. “Leave it to me.”

“Thank you,” I whispered, and took the steps of Fanny’s front stoop with a hop. My throat was dry, my heart hammering so hard that I wondered if lack of corset would force my chest to burst. The gondolier had said nothing of my apparel, though I’d earned a sideways look ere the earl ordered him to take me below.

I was grateful that Piers had managed to find for me trousers and more that would make my efforts easier. He had even allowed me a pistol of my own—an Enfield revolver, likely taken from his brother’s time in Her Majesty’s commission.

I was, as a rule, more comfortable with blades; I’d spent much of my time as a collector wielding them, for firearms were loud and drew too much attention. In this matter, however, the weight of the grip in my palm was comforting.

I was a fine aim, and a steady shot.

No fool, the earl’s gondolier kept the aether engine warm enough that a quick rise would be made easier. The sound of it, pinging gently in accord with the flare of burned-off aether at the back, was the only sound to infiltrate the ambient thrum of the city around us. The fog choked most sound, but nothing could truly silence London.

It was eerie. Worse, the heavy burden of it continued, a muted muffler that only tangled the tighter as I stepped over the splintered remains of the door and into the black beyond.

Only through careful utilization of closed doors and sealed windows did a house below the drift remain free of the creeping smoke, and this was a careful balance easily broken by days when the peasouper thickened.

With the entry laid bare, the fog crept within as it did all things, hanging low and heavy in a veritable tide. Currents rolled it gently across the floor, knee-high and feeling as though I waded through treacle for all it bore no more weight than wisps.

The first bit of blood I noted smeared a line across a wall, jarring against the mustard yellow wall paper.

The knot this made of my internals reached knees to throat.

“Fanny?” I called. The house swallowed my voice, choked it down into a muffled nothing as an unseen breeze dragged fingers through the smoke.

Was it courtesy of this current or my own fear that bloomed like ice upon my cheeks?

“Booth!” Another call, another empty response.

I pressed into the corridor, pausing at the door leading to the sitting room. Pale furrows marred the frame, carved so deep as to leave wefts of splintered remains in its wake. I touched them with bare fingers.

No man had done this.

Or rather, only a certain type of man—one whose body had been twisted beyond humanity.

I took a deep, juddering breath and spun from the signs of violence. “Levi!” I shouted, abandoning all below for the stairs. The fog did not reach so high there. “Zylla? Mrs. Booth?
Fanny!
” Over and over I called the names.

Until my voice gave way on a sobbed, “Hawke,” and I stumbled over the ruinous mass of what was left of my boudoir spilled out into the hall.

I fell to my knees, tears falling from my eyes and horror clogged within my throat. Choking on it, gasping, I struggled upright and pushed my way further into the dark. My limbs felt leaden, too heavy, and still, I forged ahead.

Please
. A prayer as such I had never before felt so keenly.
Please be safe.
Please be alive.

Please be unwounded.

Please, please, please.

The final obstacle formed abruptly in front of me. Fanny’s door, closed tight but bowed inward. The wood had fractured, splinters raining over the floor at its base, but it held.

A terrible hope grasped me, fueled my hands as I hammered upon the remains. “Fanny? Booth!”

A thud. A clatter.

Did it come from beyond the obstacle or behind me?

Oh, God, to hope that there was life within. “’Tis I,” I sobbed, pressing my cheek against the ruined entry. “Please be all right, please!”

“Easy, girl,” came a rumble of such throttled fury that it did not sound at all like a voice I recognized. I turned, flattening my back against the door, arms spread. The revolver I carried rattled against the wall.

When Ishmael Communion’s heavy hand wrapped around my side, just under my arm, I had not realized how badly I sagged. Relief stole the rest. “Ish.” So much relief in a single name.

If the riotous echo of thunder and the force of an avalanche might ever meet in flesh, it would bear the face of Communion gone angry. Even so, he was not a man to which casual violence came naturally, and so each gesture was painstakingly drawn out as though a mountain forced the move. With care, with effort, he pulled me aside and ensured I stood upon my own feet before letting me go.

“Word came by carrier,” he told me.

“Same,” I said, breathy still. “What do you know?”

Behind his broad shoulders, two Bakers crept through the remains of my home. “Got more blood,” called one.

The yellowed whites of Communion’s eyes all but vanished as he glowered at the door so blocked. “Too little. Step away.”

I did so. Hastily, for he leaned back, lifted a tree-trunk leg and sent it mightily into the obstacle. The last of the wood gave way, splintering with such force that the echo of it rolled through the house in crashing waves.

I did not realize until a gap formed within that a bureau had been forced before the door.

And with it, an armoire.

A woman screamed beyond.

“Mrs. Booth,” I called, raising my voice to be heard above the groan of wood. “Step back from the door, we’re coming in!”

My housekeeper’s screams turned to sobs, hysteria no doubt having sunk claws into her senses. Communion tucked his shoulder to the barricade, caught the inside edges of the door frame in his large, rough hands, and pulled his weight through.

The sound of wood scraping against wood, of two large pieces of furniture colliding and then tipping wholly over, overwhelmed my housekeeper’s cries.

I slipped into the gap between Ishmael and the frame, intent on providing proof of rescue, but all that I was came to a devastated halt.

In all my years as collector—as circus waif for the cruelties of a sadistic ringmaster—I had grown accustomed to the sight of blood. It was a part of my world, as familiar to me as the taste of the tar I no longer allowed myself. Whether it was mine or that life fluid that belonged to another, I was no miss to wilt at the sight of it.

But then, I had never been forced to endure this.

My butler sat with his back to the bed, braced upon the floor with both legs splayed. The curved foot of his ornate prosthetic gleamed dully in what little light was afforded. The same light caught in the shiny barrel of the revolver his fingers listlessly wrapped around.

Blood caked his matted chops, stained the single white glove he’d retained and pooled beneath him. He was bone white, his eyes half-lidded in a failing bid to remain conscious, but still he held an arm around his wife, who clung to him in terror.

The same crimson stains marred her starched apron, crusted upon her hands. I saw no signs of wounding upon her, but the horror that bit deep on her features was not the sort a bandage would mend. Upon the bed, a knot of tangled cloth, colored the same horrifying vermillion as what stained them both.

“Booth,” I croaked, a ragged whisper.

His mouth eased into a weary, strained smile. “I knew,” he said, hoarse with effort, “you would come…little miss.”

His wife pressed harder against his coat, and the pain this caused him drove deep into his beloved features. “Don’t you leave us,” Mrs. Booth sobbed. “Washington Barrett Booth, you are not to abandon your duties.”

Ishmael straightened from his assault against the barricades, rolling his shoulder. Although the violence maintained so carefully beneath his enormous façade did not ease, he did not yell as he surveyed the scene and asked, “Where are the others?”