Formal Dinner and Demon Dreams

Inspector Francis Hawkins of Scotland Yard glanced up from his desk at the big London ordnance map tacked across his wall. He then circled and marked a few points on the map of the East End on his desk and wrote a few notes. Rough narrow hands moved precisely and sharply so his pen’s tip scarred the paper deep, filling with ink like flooding trenches. Hawkins was in his fifties, with the white hair, parched skin and washed out eyes of a man decades older. Yet had one seen only his moving outlined profile, they’d have guessed him to be in his twenties. Life had shown the world to be a humorless unforgiving place, one he must watch and study, prod and engage, and be equally unforgiving. Hawkins had been such a man before reaching twenty. When he was not at work against that world, he went jadedly through the motions of leisure. His fellows pretended to believe his façade, and he saw their pretence and let them know it. Yet still they kept his company, he supposed because they saw something respectable and admirable in him. Sometimes he sought the company of those he respected in turn, though he never much trusted even these men. How he ever found true enjoyment mystified him, though he genuinely did, contrary to many impressions.

Hawkins rolled his East End map partway up and turned his attention to the files and folders stacked next to it. He pulled a file marked Red Duke and another marked Tempel-Tuttle. There were other files out, but Hawkins ignored them presently. A knock sounded.

“Sorry to bother you, Inspector,” said the nervous officer who poked his head in, “but there’s a gentleman insisting he file a complaint with you. Rather frantic, this one, sir. He created quite a stir, and I’ve had me hands full getting it in order. Some of the lads were off snickering, saying he was acting like a hysterical woman. I had to put them in their place, sir, all while –”

“Yes, yes.” Hawkins waved as if clearing noxious fumes from his face. “You said he’s a gentleman, likely too gentle – or ought I say genteel – for my nerves at this hour. Have him file his complaint at the desk and –”

“Quite right, sir, but…”

“Yes?”

“Meaning I’ve dealt with him before. He wishes to share things that would incriminate him, and he fancies we share some special bond or such rot. Have you been sensible enough to remember his name?”

“Yes sir. He’s a Mr. Ian Beauregarde, and he’s… Sir?”

Hawkins leaned back and stared at a framed photograph on his desk, taken many years ago, 1857 to be exact, in Delhi, India. All the men in the photograph were Englishmen, mostly soldiers, but not all. In the background moved a fuzzy human figure, clutching something close that might have been a bundle of laundry or freshly bought meat. Hawkins knew it to be a woman. The bundle she clutched was a child. Her eyes were on the backs of the men. Hawkins had glanced back and seen her not five seconds after the flash, blinking his eyes back into focus. Her pace had quickened as the child squirmed against her. Likely she’d at first taken the flash for a signal of fresh violence. Then she’d seen a gathering of English soldiers, and she meant to pass as discretely as possible before one of them got a notion to rape her. It would have done Hawkins no good to explain that they’d quelled the uprising savages more likely to do so. For all he knew, one of his fellow soldiers had spied her and thought she looked appetizing. For all he knew, one of them had followed her and done it.

1857… curiously it connected in Hawkins’s mind with a detail in his files, the birthday of a man whose file was also on the desk. “See the gentleman in,” Hawkins said simply. “Then leave us be and see that no one disturbs us.” The latter request should have gone without saying, but the emphasis felt right.

A moment later a paunchy broad-shouldered man with a full beard and a bushy cap of golden curls burst in. He was a decade and some years behind Hawkins. “Francis! Thank God I’ve found you here!”

Hawkins splayed his hands. “Where else would you expect to find me, Ian? Sit, please.” Beauregarde shook as he sat down. Hawkins watched and thought him over. “Would you care for a drink before you tell me what you’ve gotten yourself into?”

Beauregarde looked up in surprise. Between himself and Hawkins, their younger happier faces looked out from the photograph. Here they sat as comfortable old gentlemen, surrounded by all the comforts of civilization, and a photo of a time and place of blood and savagery was a reminder of happier times. It would have surprised Beauregarde more than it did Hawkins.

Hawkins opened the bottom drawer in his desk. His palm paused over a bottle of fine brandy. He opened the drawer further, brought out a cheaper bottle and filled two glasses. “Before you ask, no, this isn’t strictly proper. But I’ve no wish to hear you stammer through whatever you have to tell me, and I imagine it’ll do my own nerves some good while I listen.” Hawkins sipped his brandy and wished he’d brought out the finer stock for himself.

Beauregarde put the glass to his lips, threw his head back, poured the entire drink down his throat, slammed the empty glass on the desk, and slid it forward. It was the gesture of a destitute man in some dirty tavern, waiting for the barman to pour the next round. Hawkins narrowed his eyes and refilled the glass. Beauregarde sipped this one. This comforted Hawkins a little. Beauregarde generally sipped his drinks daintily, liked to use his mannerisms to show off his sophistication. Hawkins looked again at the woman’s blurred gray shape and wondered if she’d had the most to fear from Beauregarde. Beauregarde had been in India with his parents, his father a merchant from the trading company, and they’d been caught amidst the uprising. When the British troops showed up, young Ian Beauregarde the Second, then barely eighteen, had broken from his parents, joined the fight, and done what he could. One of the rebels had soon clouted him to the ground and would have stabbed him to death had not Hawkins come from behind and spitted the rebel on his bayonet. Whenever he saw Beauregarde, Hawkins’s muscles strained and burned remembering the act, his flesh recoiling from the rebel’s blood spattering his uniform. Half the time, he liked Beauregarde well enough to congratulate himself for heroism. Other times, Beauregarde sent a chill through him, a breathing embodiment of all Hawkins’s fears, that his every deed for queen and country had merely lent the world an arm on its stroll to damnation.

Curious fate had brought them together. Family influence had spared Beauregarde military duty, yet he read precociously on the political situations and caroused with military men wherever they’d have him. He absorbed their talk and manners so well that most people would think him a weathered veteran hearing him speak. When fate threw him into the middle of the horror he so romanticized, he’d proven himself well enough to be immortalized in a photograph, next to the soldier who’d saved his life.

“You must help me, Francis,” Beauregarde said. “There’s a man out to do me in, a man you must arrest.”

“Slow down, Ian. You’re a better man than this.”

Beauregarde’s eyes bulged. “I’ve just told you there’s a man means to kill me, and you’re lecturing me on my manners!”

Hawkins studied Beauregarde’s manners. How long since they’d spoken? Beauregarde’s speech was different, and not merely from distress. His jitters and paleness were those of a man who’d been chasing the dragon. Beauregarde never passed a chance to speak ill of folks of the lower orders, like livestock that needed to be closely watched, lest it need be beaten back into line. He also never passed a chance to slip away into the ghettos of such people, where he could openly indulge every vice his own polite society would not permit. It apparently never registered to Beauregarde when Hawkins mentioned his own roots as an East Ender, from which military success had elevated him. Hawkins wondered what all Beauregarde had been up to in Delhi before the uprising. He looked again at the blurred woman and child, and a chill touched him. Already Hawkins formed a picture of the men his old friend had fallen in with, and he imagined the places where they met. He thought of the East End. “I don’t give a damn about your reasons. I give a damn about you, Ian, for some bloody reason. Who’s out to do you in?”

“Frederick Hawthorne!”

Hawkins sat forward and drank faster. He’d nearly drained his glass before he remembered himself. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’d not have heard of him. He runs a tavern in Whitechapel. He’s a reputation in that area… Most men think he’s either a respectable businessman or a cunning thug who’s merely passed himself off as one… No, that’s not entirely true… It’s the queerest thing, Francis! Most of this, you’ll understand, I’ve merely heard…”

Hawkins struck Beauregarde hard across the mouth with the back of his hand. The blow was nearly strong enough to knock the chair over. The glass fell from Beauregarde’s hand and rolled, leaving an amber trail across the carpet. Beauregarde leaned sideways and fumbled for it like a man half-awake. When he brought it back to the desk, Hawkins refilled it.

“Now keep yourself together,” said Hawkins. “I won’t strike you again. That was for your own good.” That wasn’t entirely it, he realized. “You needn’t trifle with me over your activities, and you needn’t explain this Mr. Hawthorne.”

“You… you’ve heard of him?”

“As it happens…” Hawkins drew a file from his stack and splayed it between them. He didn’t need it, but he privately enjoyed the theatrical gesture. “Hawthorne, Frederick. Age: twenty-six. Parents both dead. Only living relative: Elizabeth Hawthorne, age: thirty. Parents left behind a comfortable fortune, but it was absorbed by debts, leaving the children penniless. Both children fell into prostitution at a young age. The sister now resides in a brothel. The brother – our Mr. Hawthorne – moved from prostitution to dock work when he was old and strong enough, then to petty crime. Now the proprietor of the Devil’s Draft pub of Whitechapel, formerly the Red Diamond pub owned by one Luther Holcomb, a disreputable character suspected of dealings with crooked businessmen from the Italian Quarter. There’s a lengthy gap in Hawthorne’s youth, between his waterfront days and coming to work for Holcomb as a barkeep. He was a barkeep for roughly a year, until Holcomb’s disappearance in 1879. Hawthorne was forced to take on managerial duties of the pub in Holcomb’s absence, and secured official proprietorship of the establishment later that year. Holcomb’s disappearance remains under open investigation. That is to say, Ian, that nothing much has been done about it, and likely never shall be. Hawthorne is reputed to be a vicious street fighter, particularly with a knife. He’s proficient with firearms. It is believed that his father taught him hunting and woodcraft at a young age. There’s a rumor that he’s missing the two largest toes on his left foot.”

“Yet he shows no sign of disablement!”

Hawkins arched his brows. “No, he doesn’t, does he? Shall I continue, Ian?”

Beauregarde shook his head swiftly. “You needn’t. But it’s the queerest thing, Francis! The stories they’ll tell of this man if you visit his pub… The men there, they’ve made a folk hero of him. They sing songs in the taverns. They call him –”

Hawkins closed the file. “They call him the Green-Eyed White Wolf of the Old East End, or simply the Green-Eyed Wolf. Yes, I know. So tell me, Ian, what do the whores say of him as they lie with you in bed?”

“They say – I mean to say, I’ve heard –”

“If you persist in that innocent playacting, I’ll strike you again. Now tell me. How has this man Hawthorne threatened you?”

“He hasn’t, not outright! I haven’t spoken to him, haven’t been to that horrible place since – But I know he’s out there, looking to kill me!”

“How would you know this?”

“I’ve reason to believe Frederick Hawthorne thinks I’ve stolen from him. He’ll have been in possession of materials that were not his to begin with, and he’ll believe I’ve taken them from him!”

“And have you?”

“What?”

“These… items you say Mr. Hawthorne believes belong to him. Have you in fact stolen them from him or not?”

“Francis, you must arrest this man. You must use the leverage I know you possess, and take him into custody! I am not safe while he walks free.”

“So why don’t you just give back what you’ve taken from him?”

“I didn’t say I –”

“Ian, even if your evasion of the question hadn’t given you away, I’ve known you too long.” And I truly hope I still know you at all, old friend. “What is it you’ve mixed yourself up in, and what do I need to know in order to help you?”

“What does it matter?” Beauregarde spat. Instantly he remembered himself and sipped his drink. “I’m sorry, Francis… It is true, I have fallen in with dangerous business, but I assure you, I am innocent of foul play. I was used as a witless pawn, I admit it, but…”

“And yet you can’t bring yourself to tell me of it.”

“Not yet, Francis, not yet! I shall in due course. But now… Oh, but there is too much. For now, you must remove this Hawthorne obstacle from my path.”

This Hawthorne obstacle. Just as Hawkins had long ago removed that lowly rebel obstacle. Hawkins’s muscles tensed, feeling the old spatter. “I must, must I?”

“Yes, or I am as good as dead!”

“But you’ve not given me plausible cause to arrest a man whom, to all official record, is now an upstanding, law-abiding citizen of his community.”

“Is it not enough that I, a truly upstanding, truly law-abiding citizen of my far, far better community has been threatened by one of his? How is that not enough cause for an officer of your station, Inspector, to not remove such a dangerous man from the streets?”

“Indeed, it needn’t be. Very well, Ian. I can see I’ll get no more from you at present. Let us put our heads together, and we shall think of a report to fill out, granting me just cause to apprehend Mr. Hawthorne at his place of business.” Beauregarde stared in mute relief, quivering with disbelieving joy. Hawkins began gathering and straightening his documents. “You see, Ian, your visit has proven an unexpectedly timely blessing, though perhaps not as you’ll fancy. If some of my theories are correct, you are not the first respectable citizen –” Hawkins’s mouth twisted with distasteful irony “– to be troubled by this Mr. Frederick Hawthorne of Whitechapel.”

“I’ve not? Then why have you not arrested him?”

“Because I’ve been unable to connect him to the matters in question.”

“These other gentlemen he’s troubled, then! Why have they not sworn against him?”

“Because most of them are dead, or have vanished entirely, along with quite a few East End men – men of the lower order – who were in their employ. There’s only one living proper gentleman I believe to have fallen afoul of Mr. Hawthorne, a Sir George Wimple. Perhaps you’ve read of him in the Times. Last I looked in on him, he resided in an insane asylum, his eyes gouged out and his tongue split in two. He was mixed up in the scandal that’s ruined the Widow Lariviare. I’ve called on her repeatedly, and I’m convinced her testimony would warrant Mr. Hawthorne’s arrest. But she’s too terrified to come forward. I suspect her involvement with Mr. Hawthorne is such that she would rather avoid greater scandal upon herself.” Hawkins peered hard at Beauregarde. “Funny, isn’t it. In all my study of this Mr. Hawthorne, such is always the case with his alleged victims, at least those who survive. Those who don’t, well, they aren’t around anymore to cover their crimes, so they are scandalized in death. Always, if I look closely enough, I find that their crimes have touched someone connected to Frederick Hawthorne. So there’s his motive. Yet he always manages – barely – to cover his tracks. I’ve brought him and many of his associates in for questioning. They never fail to provide consistent alibis. That’s the most confounding thing. Do you recall the scandal in the papers, Ian, some months back, linking a Mr. Robert Powel – still missing – to the late Mr. Timothy Henderson?”

“I read of it. Ghastly business, on both counts.”

“Quite. Do you also recall the sudden uprising of street violence among the gangs who plague the East End?”

“Yes, I read some of it, though I paid it little mind.”

Hawkins grunted and shrugged. “I went to Hawthorne’s pub to ask what he knew. His barman said he was indisposed. Seems he needed time to recover from some injuries, sustained on dates corresponding with the Powel outrage. Everyone I questioned agreed that there’d been a troublesome customer in Mr. Hawthorne’s pub, and Mr. Hawthorne had been forced to discipline him. The troublemaker got the worst of it and slunk away, though Mr. Hawthorne was carved up horridly by a knife. His barkeep had to stitch him up. He’s only recently recovered, so they say. Apparently such occurrences are common enough that this barkeep, a Mr. Michael Barrimore, has become quite the amateur surgeon. Have you heard any of this, Ian? Or did you avoid those places around that time, ’til you heard most of the blood had been washed from the gutters?”

“Well, I – Look here, Francis, you know me better than to suggest –”

“I know you well enough, aye. So tell me, Ian, these folksongs people sing in taverns of their Green-Eyed Wolf… What tales do they tell? Who are the villains they say their hero has vanquished?” When Beauregarde didn’t answer immediately, Hawkins said “Never mind. It’s settled. An honest man has come forth against Hawthorne, so I have what I need. Let’s get your statement filled out. I shall have some Officers escort you home. There you shall await further word from myself on the matter, at which time we shall have a long talk on these matters you seem so reluctant to discuss here and now.”

#

Clara Beauregarde, a tiny dainty scarlet-haired girl of nineteen, watched through the window as the plainclothes policeman strolled by again. The officer spied her watching and gave his brightest smile, long enough not to seem impolite, brief enough not to suggest indecency. He then continued on his circle. Fool, thought Clara. Did he think she’d not guessed by now what he was? Did her uncle think her too silly to figure it out? Clara paced back to her chair and picked up the thin cheaply printed book she’d been trying to read.

The maid entered. “Would young miss care for more tea?”

“That would be lovely, Kelly. Thank you.”

Kelly brought the tea and smiled sharply at Clara’s book. “Oh young miss, you know your uncle disapproves of you reading such lurid stuff.”

Clara lifted her eyebrows and her smile widened. “Oh, I never! A servant, daring to reprimand me! I shall have to flog you!”

“Should I tell Master Ian of your insolence, he shall flog you! But perhaps I needn’t tell him… if young miss would let me read that book once she has finished it. I shall slip it back behind Master’s proper books when next I clean his study.”

They giggled through this old routine, briefly relieved of the distraction that had plagued the house all afternoon. Clara held out the shilling shocker. “You may have it now, Kelly. Read it when you’ve time. I can’t seem to concentrate on reading this afternoon.” The relief bled from the room. “You may return it to Uncle’s study when you finish, if he ever immerges long enough for you to get in there.”

“He shall have to emerge for tonight’s dinner gathering, if you’ll forgive my forwardness.” Kelly gently pressed her mistress’s hand down. “Keep the book ’til you’ve read it, young miss. Soon the world shall be so dull again, you shan’t be able to tear yourself from those pages.”

“I hope so, Kelly.”

“As for myself, I’ve business enough with the preparations.”

Clara smiled again. “And that shall be so dull, I shall surely wish to tear myself away for more reading.”

Upstairs Ian Beauregarde had in fact just left his study. He’d been locked in there since the officer had called with a message from Hawkins. Hawkins had gone to the Devil’s Draft, as well as several other places throughout the East End. Frederick Hawthorne was nowhere to be found. No one had the faintest idea where he’d gone. The message didn’t say if Hawkins had visited Madam Chanfan, or if he intended to do so. Now Hawkins had set a policeman to watch the house. Surely Hawkins didn’t believe Frederick Hawthorne would come here! If Hawkins had reason to suspect such a thing…

All afternoon Beauregarde had poured over his books on the curious lore that had indirectly landed him in this trouble. He found nothing that could help him. But of course he hadn’t! How could he have been so foolish? Ratcliff might have found an answer in those pages. Ratcliff would be at dinner tonight. Ratcliff would know what to do. Perhaps so would Hawkins. Hawkins! Beauregarde would have to speak with Ratcliff about Hawkins, implore him to reconsider bringing the inspector in on things. All the while in the study, the glass eyes of Beauregarde’s safari trophies had stared down accusingly from the walls, as though they’d become agents of the outer forces at work. Finally he could no longer stand them, so he left the study in disorder and slunk swiftly to his bedroom. He shut the door quietly, locked it, and went straight to the burrow, not bothering to look around.

Beauregarde jerked open a small side drawer and gasped to see it empty. He looked around the empty room. A dim orange glow spilled through the slats of the closet door. Beauregarde let out a moan and sank into his easy chair. The glow went out. Shuffling sounded. A moment later the closet creaked open. From the darkness came a pair of green eyes, blazing from a sharp ghostly pale face. A long livid scar ran down one side of the man’s face. His clothes were plain and unkempt.

“Looking for this, mate?” growled Frederick Hawthorne, nodding at the pistol he pointed at Beauregarde. In his other hand was the freshly extinguished candle.

“Frederick, please, don’t kill me! I know how this must all look, what you must have heard, what you must believe, but I swear –”

“Don’t swear at me, and let’s not start on what I believe about you.” Frederick sat comfortably on the corner of Beauregarde’s bed, kept the gun on Beauregarde. “You might as well relax, Ian. Me holding your gun and all, it’s better for us both if you let me relax, see. I’ve no wish to kill you. In fact I’d rather keep you from getting yourself killed.”

“You’ll never make it out of here! There’s a plainclothes officer right outside –”

“Figured there’d be one by now, just as I figured it was you put the cops on me. Ironic, seeing as I’m the one with cause to put them on you. ’Cept unlike you, I’ve the balls to handle my own affairs. Lucky me. I was in the back when the police came. Mickey managed to slip me the word. I made it to the lot out back and had to scale the wall. Had me a pretty time on the rooftops for the next hour or so. Once I got down to the street, I caught a hansom, and knew just where to tell the driver to go. Pretty place you have here, though if I was you I’d stay on my servants better. You can’t imagine how easy it was to slip in through the back and reach your room, right under all their noses. I did catch a look at your daughter, though… Oh wait, no, she ain’t your daughter… What did you tell me your ward was to you? A niece, ain’t she? Whatever she is, she’s lovely. Looks smart, too, even if she was as easy to slip past as your servants. I know an intelligent woman when I see’s one. I’ve a nose for ’em, sure as any man has for a pretty one. Intelligent women make the finest company.”

For a moment Beauregarde nearly forgot the gun in Frederick’s hand. He looked down the black barrel, though, and gripped the chair arms for control. “Stay away from Clara, Frederick! I swear to you, if you harm my niece –”

Frederick feigned hurt. “Who said anything of harming her? I merely said I thought she’d be fine company. No, Ian, men of my lot don’t interfere with women of hers. We can’t afford to, see. It’s men of your lot, can afford to interfere with women of, say, my sister’s.”

“I’ve never harmed Elizabeth!”

“No, you’ve merely stolen from her, which means you’ve stolen from me. That’s not even what I’m sorest with you over. I’d be sorer still if I thought you had the faintest idea what you might have set in motion. But we’ll deal with that. See, Ian, that’s why I’m truly here, to set you straight on matters so’s you can help me sort it out.”

“I’m already straight on matters!”

Frederick cocked an eyebrow. “Are you now! Don’t answer yet. Here’s the thing. You’ve come to drink in my pub time and again, and you’ve held me in enough regard that we speak as equals while you drink. You’re a man of fine wit and humor, and you talk intelligently on subjects that interest me… Even though your opinions on such frequently remind me why I hate spoiled swells like yourself, so I wish to slit your blooming throat, carve and salt you in the lot out back, then serve your remains as snacks to my customers. You’ve no idea how often I’ve saved your life. Frequently you grow so drunk that you shout out sentiments that anger my customers. You rattle on obliviously as hulking savage men creep up behind you, eager to stomp your teeth down your throat, and I’ll have to give them a special nod so they know to leave you be. There’ve been times when I’ve been this close to giving them their way with you. And yet I haven’t, and do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because in your drunkenness – and often my own for that matter – we’ve shared enough thoughts and feelings and adventuresome stories that I’ve come to call you friend, against my better judgment. And then when this little misunderstanding arises between us – as I deeply hope it is – the first thing you do is put the law on me, disrupting my business no end, and I’ve been forced to meet with you like this. Bloody hell. I should have expected it. But couldn’t you have at least come to your room sooner instead of forcing me to wait all this time? I should have waited in your study instead. That’s where you went first, ain’t it? I was stuck here so long I’ve been forced to amuse myself in your personal affects. I don’t know that I shall ever recover from the things I’ve seen! Lord, man, I don’t begrudge a swell coming to my neighborhood for a bit of fun, so long as he ain’t a brute with the girls. And we all have our unusual bedroom proclivities… but must you keep photographs of yours? Having your whores dress up as Her Majesty… I swear… Elizabeth told me of a regular caller was into that, but I never quite believed her, and I certainly didn’t expect it to be you. I’d often wondered why you carry about that handbag.”

Beauregarde needed a moment before he could speak. “Frederick… You should know, I never subjected your sister to…”

“I know you ain’t. Because when you proposed the idea, she threatened to kick your balls up and out of your mouth.”

“Yes, well… Your sister is certainly a spirited whore…”

“That she is,” Frederick said with familial pride. “And she tells me she managed to satisfy you, even without dressing up as an ugly old woman with a crown. Then you fell asleep together. Or you pretended to sleep. Then you examined the little table next to her bed, didn’t you, the one she sits at, to make herself pretty for customers. There you found what you’d really come for, a tiny glass bottle full of glistening smoky amber liquid, set among various bottles of perfume. Clever disguise, wasn’t it? But you’d come with the exact description, knew just what to look for.”

“So finally we’ve reached the heart of the matter.”

“That we have. Sorry for prattling on. Bad habit of mine. I’ve been under quite a bit of stress lately, understand, and I needed to release some of it.”

Beauregarde looked at the gun leveled on his chest. “Quite right. So I suppose you want the bottle back and you’ll want me to call off the police.”

“Quite right. You don’t still have the bottle or you’d have offered it already, just so’s I’d go away and leave you and your pretty niece be. You ain’t stolen it for your own ends. Someone put you up to it, one of your highborn associates no doubt, perhaps someone in the East India Trading Company. Whoever it is, they’ve schooled themselves in much of the same arcane sordidness as myself. I ain’t yet figured what they want with it, and I don’t suppose you know either. Or at least you don’t know the extent of it. If you did, you’d have had the brains to run screaming from the business. How did they learn Elizabeth and I had found the bottle, and that Elizabeth was keeping it safe?”

“I don’t know.”

“That I’ll believe. No matter how drunk on the job I might have been, that’s not something I’d speak of. I do know something of the contents of that bottle, which is why it is essential that I retrieve it as soon as possible. I know it ain’t been opened, or we’d all be aware of it, to our ruin. So let’s start with what you know. Who’ve you given the bottle to, and what do I need to know about them before going to retrieve it?”

“You’ll kill them, won’t you?”

“If I find ’em willing to kill me, aye.”

“You won’t have to!”

“Won’t I now?”

“The gentleman you want is coming here, in several hours, for dinner.”

“Well then! This is a fortunate twist of fate.”

“But you can’t confront him here!”

“Why not?”

“He’s not the only one coming. I’m hosting a small gathering. The guests shall all be respected members of society, people I’ve known for years, associates of my family’s business.”

“Of the trading company, you mean. So who’s our man?”

“His name is Walter Ratcliff, a military man. He won’t have the bottle on him.”

“Of course not! That would be madness, carrying it around willy-nilly.”

“He means to talk with me after dinner, inform me of the greater extent of his plans.”

“And what do you already know of these plans?”

“Very little. The whole matter has been most queer. Ratcliff came to me in great excitement, asking strange questions of my East End associations. I’d not been private about such matters with him… He’s accompanied me a time or two himself.”

“And have you ever brought him into my pub?”

“Never.”

“Or to Madame Chanfan’s?”

“No! That’s the queer thing. He knew many particulars I’d not told him, and I can’t imagine how he came by them. Nor could I imagine what interest it could hold for him, ’til he told me of this strange bottle he wanted. He told me where he believed it to be, and told me to get it for him.”

“He must have offered you quite a lot, now that I see just how much wealth surrounds you. Or have your debts grown that unbearable?”

“He didn’t offer me money. He offered me a role in his plans. I was curious, so I accepted. From where I stood it all seemed harmless. Ratcliff told me our empire’s future hung in the balance, though I didn’t believe him. He’s always been overly fanciful, quite eccentric, possibly mad. But then, I’ve often thought the same things about you. As I said, it struck me as harmless. I thought your sister had perhaps formed an attachment to some strange rare drug. Perhaps Ratcliff hoped to decipher its properties and mass-produce it. Perhaps he was himself an addict, but had fallen out with all his other connections and was down to such desperation.”

“And you didn’t think I’d hear that you’d stolen from my sister?”

“I didn’t think she’d know it was me! Then another whore told me you were on the warpath. That’s nothing unusual, but she said my name had been mentioned. She told me I’d best stay clear of the Devil’s Draft, and of Madame Chanfan’s, if I valued my hide.”

“She must care deeply for you, this little whore, whoever she is. Perhaps you’re a better lover than I’ve heard. But as to this secret meeting… Shall anyone else at tonight’s gathering take part in it?”

“No. And you shan’t either. You can’t be here for it, Frederick.”

“Oh, but I can. Now that I’ve hid out here, I can’t leave your house ’til you’ve called the police off my back. So it seems I must come to dinner with you.”

“You must what?”

“You heard me. Surely you don’t expect me to skulk about in the shadows through the whole affair, or sit in here subjecting myself to more of your horrid little secrets.”

“But it will create a scandal!”

“Please don’t insult me, Ian, not if you wish to ever drink in my pub again, assuming either of us lives through this. I know how to behave among polite society. You will need to provide me with some proper dinner clothes, though. First tell me, who are your guests, besides this Ratcliff fellow?”

“Three others shall attend. No, possibly four. There is the Vicar Overton, and there shall be the Lord and Lady Woodley. The former is a prominent man of the cloth. The –”

“I know what a bloody vicar is, you twat.”

“Right then. Lord and Lady Woodley are prominent investors in the trading company. Also, Ratcliff shall possibly bring his daughter Genevieve. She’s a mere child, lest you form further indecent notions.”

“I ain’t here to letch. Tell me more of this Ratcliff. No, not yet. He’s a military man, you say? So he’ll know how to fight, then. No doubt he’s highly decorated. Also he’s retired, if he’s had time to form such sordid business ventures as you’ve implied. But he spoke of the fate of our nation in connection with this bottle… no, the fate of our empire. That fills me with more dread than anything else.”

“Because of that little bottle?”

“Tell me, Ian, how well do you know the story of Bran the Blessed?”

“One of our nation’s oldest heroes of legend. What has that to do –”

“Aye, before the time of good ol’ King Arty. The stories call him a God-King, though he don’t sound to me like any other god I’ve read about, more like just a man among men, though they say he was too big to fit inside any house. Likely he was simply a big fellow liked to brawl, not so much the sort who fought his foes as walked up to ’em and made ’em fall down. He married his sister off to some Irish king to make peace ’tween the nations. Then he got word the Irish king was treating her sore, so he set off across the sea – swimming it, they say, his navy sailing his wake, for no boat could hold him – to kick some Irish arse and rescue her. That he did. And he –”

“Yes,” Beauregarde said impatiently, seeming to momentarily forget the gun on him, “I’ve heard the tale. During the battle, a poison dart struck Bran. As he lay dying, he told his men to cut off his head, bring it back to England and bury it where the White Tower now stands, his eyes facing our ancient enemies the French, so that his spirit would forever guard us… Why are we discussing folklore when –”

“’Cause it bares quite directly on our present troubles. Y’know, they didn’t sail straight home with that head, Bran’s men I mean. They went through many more adventures across the sea, over many years, before reaching the home shore. Must’ve been a good deal more to see between England and Ireland back then if it took them years, wouldn’t you say? Can you imagine that? Hauling a rotting head about in a box or whatever through all that? They must’ve had a pretty time explaining it to the friendly ports they docked at. And you just know ol’ Bran must’ve had a laugh as he lay dying, knowing such would be the case. Can’t say’s I blame him. Were I to find myself dying in some foreign land amongst my remaining comrades and the stinking corpses of mine enemies, it’s just the sort of final request I’d make, just so’s my last sight on this earth would be the looks on their faces. You’d hear me laughing all the way to hell.”

Beauregarde almost smiled. “I’m certain I would.”

Frederick chuckled, shook his head and relaxed the pistol. Beauregarde didn’t seem to notice. Here they were, having just the sort of discussion they might share at the Devil’s Draft, except that Beauregarde suddenly wasn’t comfortable voicing his thoughts on England’s present Irish immigrant population, from whom Frederick was descended by a generation. “Anyhow,” Frederick went on, “the men finally got home, and they followed instructions with ol’ Bran’s head, or what was left of it. And there it rested, under the tower, ’til ol’ King Arty came along and didn’t think an old buried skull ought to steal his fire as protector of the nation. So he dug it up and buried it across the river, facing some other direction. I’d say he was a tad more superstitious about the whole affair than he let on, wouldn’t you?”

“Quite.”

“Now we come to it. See, Ian, Bran was no giant, nor god, but a real man. This I know full well. When he reached Ireland, there are perils he faced that you won’t hear of in the common lore…”

“And where have you heard of these perils?”

“That you don’t wish to know, trust me. I wager, though, that your friend Ratcliff has heard the same tales. See, the Irish king had made alliances in the Far East, and he’d drawn to his side a score of demons that are now forgotten, even in the lands of their origins. Ol’ Bran was something of a magician as well as a warrior – most of the great warriors back then was, to one degree or another, though the Christian historians like to tell you otherwise – and when them demons came against him, he drew them all into a little glass bottle. That bottle was taken back to England and buried with Bran’s head. When ol’ King Arty dug up the head and buried it elsewhere, he found the bottle, knew what it was, and relocated it along with the head.”

Beauregarde noticed the gun had relaxed. He found some nerve, but not too much. “Then how, may I ask, did this bottle come to be in your sister’s possession?”

“On the edge of the East End, by the river, there’s an old neglected monastery. One of Elizabeth’s nights off coincided with one of mine, so I caught up with her. She was in low spirits, so I asked her what she’d like to go do. She’d heard something of the monastery, and convinced me we should go explore it. My sister’s into all manner of strange dabblings, stranger than my own, and I don’t rightly understand most of it. She got into it when our parents was alive, when she still had time for such idle learning. Things she’s into, they’d have burnt her as a witch a hundred years ago.” Frederick grinned. “What’s the matter, Ian? You suddenly gone nearly pale as myself.”

Beauregarde was remembering time spent with Elizabeth Hawthorne, of strange bedroom practices that had led him to mad thoughtless pleasure. Burnt as a witch… He’d read of witches who used sex in their rituals to satisfy their dark gods. What had he unwittingly taken part in? How much did her brother know about it, the brother who now sat across from him? “Never mind that. So I suppose in that crumbling old place, you found entombed a rotted skull, along with that bottle. And because of the location, you naturally thought of the legend and arrived at the conclusion…”

“…That the bottle of swirling amber contained Bran’s demons, aye. Perhaps the swirls are the demons, and they account for how the liquid can be so darkly clouded, yet shimmer at the same time. Don’t ask me how all them big monsters fit in that little vile, or how they’ve turned themselves to liquid. Let’s suppose demons reckon size and space differently than you and I.”

“It’s still too fanciful. A skull that had lain in the earth since the time of Bran would be dust by now.”

“Unless it was a blessed skull, perhaps the skull of one who had something of godhood in him after all. This one I found was bare of flesh, crusted with the dirt of ages, yet when I brushed the dirt away, the bone was smooth and uncorrupted. Anyhow, Elizabeth had been on edge since we entered the place, said she felt things in there. She only wanted to look around. I was the one who went digging through them vaults, found the head and the bottle. She saw what I’d found and drew the connections almost instantly. She raved like one of the women from your society who’s been at her vapors, said we’d damned ourselves and all the world with what we’d unearthed, said it was my fault for digging into things I shouldn’t have. As you might imagine, it didn’t do much good, reminding her that she’d had the idea to go to the place. I got her out of there, and once I’d calmed her down she explained things to me. We couldn’t put the bottle back and leave it there safely, for my trifling had unsanctified the grounds. Now I’m no mystic, but I’ve seen enough strange things not to dismiss her ravings. I suggested she use her knowledge to reconsecrate the ground, but she’d not hear of it, said there was no way she was going back in there. So I said, if she knew so much, she should keep the bottle. She agreed to that.”

“What did you do with the head?”

“Eh?”

“Bran’s skull.”

“I placed it back where I’d found it, except it now faces our wayward colony across the pond. You never know.”

“Was it… the skull of a giant?”

“It was a skull not much larger than yours or mine. But I’ve read that men back then grew much shorter, so who knows how it must have looked to them when wrapped in flesh? The size of Bran’s skull ain’t my concern. My concern is what your man Ratcliff wants with a bottle full of demons.”

“If all you say is true… then it is I who have damned us all.”

“Not yet you ain’t. And in truth, it’s as much mine and Elizabeth’s fault as yours.”

“We must get the bottle back from Ratcliff!”

“Glad you’ve kept up with me. Here’s the plan. Tonight at dinner, you introduce me as your houseguest, a Mr. Edward March. After dinner you’ll go have your talk with Mr. Ratcliff. I’ll pass the time amusing your pretty niece, and the other guests of course. After that, come tell me what you’ve learned of Ratcliff’s plans. From there we’ll have to overpower him, make him take us to where the bottle is. Don’t try to double cross me. Ratcliff’s who you’ll double cross. I’ll act the pleasant houseguest, but I’ll be on my guard. If I sense trouble, I shan’t feel the need to be pleasant. Towards anyone.”

Beauregarde paled but held himself straight. “Keep insinuating threats upon my house, Mr. Hawthorne, and I shall –”

“I don’t insinuate anything. I’ve no time to insinuate. You’ve seen to that.”

“You needn’t worry! I see how I’ve been a fool, and I shall do whatever is in my power to set it right.”

“Good. That’ll include calling off the police, I’m sure.”

“As soon as it can be arranged.”

“Good. Now let’s see about finding me some proper dinner clothes. Then we’ll go downstairs and you can introduce the son of your old school chum, Mr. Edward March, to pretty young Clara Beauregarde.”

#

Clara liked Edward March a good deal, though not at first. She was initially alarmed, seeing her uncle come down the stairs with a stranger, and a striking one at that. Yes, striking, and not in a settling way. No matter how sedate he tried to appear, his eyes were like emerald fire, dangerous fire, likely to break free and spread at any moment. When she managed to look at more than the eyes she found him especially handsome, but in a sharp, cruel, almost savage way. Her brain was already astir from the day’s cryptic business, not helped by the story she’d been reading, and his scar in particular sent her imagination to wild dark windy places. The scar didn’t detract from his fine looks, except when she peered very closely. Then she noticed that that side of his face was slightly lazier than the other, almost imperceptibly, as though some nerve damage had accompanied the injury. He walked with a proud stride, arms swinging freely, unlike the gentlemen she’d known. His clothes hung just a little too loose, though she still saw that he was very slender and fit.

When Clara lifted her hand, Frederick touched it delicately with his fingertips, leant forward, and lifted his eyes to hers as he kissed her knuckles. This made her eyes gleam, though it didn’t make her blush, which impressed him. She looked on skeptically as her uncle explained how he’d come in with March late that morning, how they’d been upstairs talking all afternoon.

“I saw you enter the room as we went upstairs,” Frederick said, altering his speech a little, though not bothering to disguise his naturally rough voice. “I can’t imagine how you missed us. I am sore with your uncle for not introducing us at the time, though, and I’m remiss for not taking the initiative myself.”

“You needn’t be. I’m sure you had a great deal to discuss.”

He looked her over. “You’ve changed into a prettier dress since last I saw you.”

“Flattering that you should notice. Earlier I was dressed to go for a stroll. Then a servant delivered instructions that I was to stay in, and something told me that we would be having visitors early, so I dressed accordingly. I’d no idea that our visitor had already arrived and had glimpsed me in improper attire.” Her smile stayed, but her eyes shot to her uncle with many questions that would be improper to voice before company. Frederick noted this and smiled, imagining the scolding Beauregarde would later receive.

“You weren’t improperly attired at all, my dear, so far as I could tell,” Frederick said. “But then, I’ve been away from what your uncle would call civilized society for some time, so perhaps my grasp of such things is rusty. I do see that you aren’t improperly attired now. Quite fetchingly in fact, if I’m not too bold.”

“Not at all. Thank you.”

“Were I, I’m sure your uncle would chivalrously reprimand me. Isn’t that so, Ian?”

“Quite.”

“Away from civilization, you say! So are you a safari adventurer, as Uncle once was?”

“Clara!” Beauregarde raised his voice only a little, then settled. “That is not a proper question to ask our guest.”

Clara lowered her eyes. Frederick rolled his and said, “It’s quite well, Ian. I have been a hunter of sorts, my dear, though not on safari exactly. I’ve hunted more fair-seeming yet far more dangerous game. Indeed, though, perhaps not a good topic for conversation just now. Perhaps at dinner it shall make for spirited discussion.”

Clara thought how to rephrase her inquiry properly. “Is your family involved in the trading company, Mr. March?”

“The antiques business, actually. That’s part of why I’m here, over the cost of certain items your uncle has expressed interest in, and to chew over old times naturally.”

“Naturally.”

Frederick glanced at the chair where Clara had lately sat. She’d neglected to hide her book when they’d come down. He saw this at the same moment as Beauregarde, and he went and snatched it up before Beauregarde could. “Fine book.” Frederick glanced around. Now Clara blushed and so did Beauregarde. “Your niece and I share taste in reading, Ian.”

“It’s mine, actually,” Beauregarde said uncomfortably. He plucked it from Frederick’s hand and looked disapprovingly at his niece.

“And you’re right to encourage her with it.” Frederick folded his hands politely behind his back and smiled at Clara. When he smiled, something boyish came into his face that seemed to contradict her earlier impressions. “A young lady ought to read, ought to broaden her mind beyond the dreary confines of the parlor, especially in this wild, ever changing age of ours. Don’t you agree, Ian?”

Beauregarde cleared his throat. “Quite right… Edward. I do feel that it is an old man’s duty, however, to see that a young lady is allowed to learn… the proper things.” He folded the book and slipped it discretely into his waistcoat pocket.

Frederick leered and clapped Beauregarde on the shoulder. “And you’ve seen to it splendidly, old boy.”

Clara stifled a laugh, then looked Mr. March over further. She kept noticing his ill-fitting clothes. Strangely he was dressed for dinner, but as a member of the household rather than a guest. Even if they’d been tailored for him, she doubted they’d have looked right on him. In fact, she could have sworn she recognized them. They’d belonged to her uncle’s son, who’d long since married and now lived in France. If this Mr. March had truly come for dinner over business, why had he not come dressed in his own dinner clothes?

“In any event,” Beauregarde said, “the other guests shall soon arrive. Edward, come with me to make sure everything is properly prepared.”

“And I must go and change yet again,” said Clara, “this time into a suitable dinner dress.”

These society women, Frederick thought, constantly in and out of their clothes. Perhaps I should spend more time around them. This one, anyhow. Before parting ways, he leaned close to Clara and whispered, “You know, I believe I still have that book somewhere. If you’d like to know how it ends, I shall slip you my copy whenever next I visit.”

#

Lord and Lady Woodley were the first to arrive. Frederick immediately thought them brother and sister, upholding a time-honored family tradition of intermarrying bug-eyed storks. Lady Woodley’s shimmering silk gown seemed to sprout like plumage from the rest of her, as did the rich white fur about her neck, and she was speckled with enough bright diamonds to scorch the eyes. Lord Woodley’s jacket and trousers were of bright red. More diamonds might have been crumbled to powder and sprinkled through the cloth. His face was pale as his wife’s, and had a strange sheen as though wax had been melted over it. Frederick and Beauregarde approached the couple. When Beauregarde introduced them, Lady Woodley giggled and simpered shrilly, her husband quivering nervously as though a strong wind threatened to blow him over.

“Really, Ian,” said Lady Woodley, drawing out the first word in a voice that felt like razors in Frederick’s brain. “You did not tell us we would be dining with this guest… and such a… fine young specimen. Are you spoken for, young man?”

Lord Woodley quivered more violently. “My dear, do not be impertinent.”

“B-b-but Charles,” she whispered audibly, “I merely thought perhaps we should have brought Annabelle along. She ventures out so seldom, and meets few enough…” Her smile widened, showing what looked like thousands of piranha teeth. “…enough exemplary young fellows.”

“That is impertinent, dear,” Lord Woodley answered swiftly.

“Is it truly impertinent?” Lady Woodley gasped, then gaped silently.

Lord Woodley now looked as confused as his wife, and they gaped together.

“The vicar!” Lady Woodley finally exclaimed. “The vicar is coming to dinner, is he not, Ian? We shall ask the vicar if I have asked an impertinent question!”

“It’s quite excusable, Madam.” Frederick smiled. His voice was strained, but not from offense. “Doubtless your daughter is as fair as her parentage suggests, but alas my heart is lately spoken for.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Beauregarde’s troubled look. “I hear you and your husband are investors in Ian’s business. A mutually profitable relationship, no doubt.”

Lady Woodley stared mutely. Frederick waited patiently, then asked the question again. She stared harder, her lips quavering around all those piranha teeth. She realized she was gaping and snapped her lips closed, face reddening as though her dress had flown up. Her husband stood by, fidgeting uselessly.

Frederick found a moment alone with Beauregarde and snarled “What the hell’s wrong with those two, beyond the obvious I mean?”

“You questioned Lady Woodley on financial matters.”

“I merely asked the dullest question I could think of, and believe me, I gave it some thought!”

“It is rude for a lady to discuss financial matters publicly. You’ve placed her in the most uncomfortable position.”

“So why didn’t her idiot husband simply step forward to answer?”

“You hadn’t asked him.”

Frederick growled and walked away from Beauregarde. At least the parlor was large enough to do so without going back to the Woodleys, who chatted amongst themselves on the sofa. Beauregarde walked back towards them, so Frederick looked at the art covering the walls. Above a bust of Napoleon the First hung several paintings of scenes from the Old Testament, next to portraits of Beauregarde’s relatives. On the adjacent wall hung a pair of sabers, crossed over each other. Frederick noted these in the back of his mind. Until recently he’d thought of swords merely as knives with longer blades. Then he’d found himself and a gentleman using swords to settle a disagreement, he’d applied his knowledge of knife fighting, and these illusions had swiftly been bled out. As soon as he was able, he’d found some old books and diagrams on fencing. After committing these to memory, he purchased a rusty old army sword from the back of a corner shop and incorporated it into his nightly exercises. For now, though, he let his brain detach from the business at hand and drift through the art.

Art had its own language, and its voice never dulled or grew stilted to fit its confines. You could have whatever conversation you liked with a piece of art, and no one could step in and call you impertinent. It spoke silently yet echoing from the mysterious well of spirit and history that had produced it, and you could only speak back with a tempest of the most primal, naked responses of your soul. Art in all its forms sometimes felt like the only companion with whom Frederick could truly be himself. So that was why the folks who made the rules kept their hand in art, made sure it never grew too honest about the rotten world that spawned it. The more honest the art, the more honest one’s inner response would be. If folks saw the world and themselves too honestly, they’d not be content with so many rules of dishonesty, would they? And where would the folks making those rules stand then? In this fashion, Frederick shared a spirited talk with Napoleon on the campaign in Russia, on which he’d lately read at length while recovering. By the end of the talk, Frederick smelled the smoke and blood, heard the roar of canons, felt his sword cleave the flesh and bone of the enemies assailing him as the icy winds lashed his face. His eyes darted back to the sabers, then back to the bust. He shared some of his own adventures with the old Emperor, and felt those sensations again, too. Old exhilaration tickled his veins, his mouth watered for more such adventures, and he hated this simpering playacting more than ever. He wanted to feel one of those swords in his hand, test his new skills against a worthy foe.

No, he reminded himself, his true enemy hadn’t even shown yet. By the end of the night, things would grow exciting enough, with or without his help, and he’d probably find himself wishing for some of this tranquility he so loathed now.

Where the hell was Clara? Surely she had on her dinner dress by now. Likely she was staying upstairs as long as possible, avoiding these dreary guests. Frederick hoped she wasn’t avoiding him. He wanted to go upstairs, find her room, learn what sort of conversationalist she was when she wasn’t forced to play the compliant, reserved lady for her uncle. Or maybe she’d want something other than conversation. Surely she had enough pent up energy for it. He grinned and imagined Napoleon’s bust grinning knowingly with him.

But no, any of that would be improper, impertinent, indecent, too forward, whatever the hell they called it. Frederick turned away from the art, back to all these polite people he couldn’t stand. They’d noticed his absence and looked eager for him to rejoin them. They looked so far away across the blood red carpet that it dizzied him. He’d been in the fine houses of greater London before, but he’d never been struck by how vast they felt. This room alone might have held two small East End dwellings. It was all so warm and comforting, yet so wide… and Frederick still felt like it was closing in on him.

Shortly the Vicar Overton arrived. He was a stout gray clean-shaven man, and his dinner clothes were fine but plain. He seemed comfortable among these people, though he spoke little as possible ’til Frederick engaged him personally in conversation. Frederick liked the vicar instantly, and brought the old man’s attention to a painting depicting Samson’s destruction of the Philistines. They discussed the tale of Samson at length, though Frederick held back his personal insights, for they concerned several Delilahs he’d been unfortunate enough to love throughout his life.

“Edward,” Beauregarde chimed in, “I’d no idea you were a religious scholar. That particular painting…” Beauregarde went on to name the artists who’d done each of his paintings, where and when he’d acquired them, and how much he’d paid for them. Frederick might have found it interesting, if Beauregarde had said anything of the artists themselves. Beauregarde went on to the family portraits, describing each subject in detail. Frederick pretended to listen ’til he could pull the vicar away. They sipped their port and walked together towards the portrait of Samson. Here they discussed more of the particulars of the art.

“You mentioned charity work in the East End, your grace. What were the areas of your focus, did you say?”

The vicar named the neighborhoods, then grew weirdly uncomfortable. “You are… familiar with the East End, Mr. March?”

“As I’m familiar with my own arms and legs.” Frederick let some of his natural accent back into his voice. “I happen to know some fine… houses, in each of the neighborhoods you’ve mentioned as it turns out. I’ve close family in one of them in fact.”

“I am sorry to hear it, if I understand you correctly.”

“You needn’t be, and you do.”

“You should know… That is to say, I hope you don’t mean to insinuate…”

“As I told our host earlier, on a similar subject, I insinuate nothing.” Frederick grinned wolfishly and winked. “You needn’t be ashamed, your grace, so long as charity is truly your primary business. I’ve always fancied, if God’s still about, He’s seen the state the world’s come to, what it needs do to hold itself together. So I can’t imagine he sees sense in holding too strictly to dusty rules he set down for an older people, in what now seems a simpler age.”

The vicar suddenly looked much smaller. Caught in the green blaze of Frederick’s eyes, he could no longer lie or protest. “I assure you, Mr. March, the Lord remains with us, and His Law is eternal. Yet… so is man’s frailty, even within a man of the cloth. So you’ve seen through me, to my sin. Very well. Yes, I do what I can for the wayward souls, even though I myself am wayward in some respects. I judge them not, for I remember the higher power that shall judge me in the end.”

“So you’re no hypocrite.”

The vicar lowered his gaze. “But I fear I am.”

“A hypocrite, as I see it, ain’t a man who falls short of his own standards, but rather a man who holds others to standards he don’t measure up to.”

The vicar sighed and laughed. “There it is, Mr. March! There’s a problem I’ve struggled with through all my days in the clergy. And there you’ve hit upon it!” He paused and glanced back, making sure no one was listening. “Thank you, Mr. March.”

“Why?”

“You’ve seen my frailty, as I’ve managed to hide it from all but God –”

“God, aye. And don’t forget all them fine ladies help you get that frailty out of your system. Or is it fine young gents? Don’t worry. I’d not begrudge you that either, so long as the gents ain’t too young.”

The vicar tried to hide his fluster. “The ladies, yes. We mustn’t forget them.”

“No. How could we?”

“Indeed. My point is, Mr. March, you have seen in me what others do not, and you don’t seem to judge or threaten me over it.”

“You’ve given me no cause to threaten you.”

“…And I feel you’ve lifted something heavy from my soul, something I was unable to let go of myself. My path seems somehow clearer before me!”

Frederick leaned away, a little embarrassed.

“Tell me, Mr. March, may I return the favor?”

“Eh?”

“What troubles your soul, Mr. March? What do you hide from the world, from your fellows here tonight? What weight can I help to lift from your shoulders, so that our Lord’s path for you might lie clearer?”

Without realizing it, Frederick had slipped completely back into his natural speech. He fought down panic. “Oh, that’s not a conversation we wish to have at this time, your grace. Perhaps some other time.”

“As you wish. But remember, Mr. March… However far we may ere with ourselves, we must never lose sight of our appointed duty to the greater good, to draw this world back from its wickedness, back into His light, by whatever means we must.”

“If God has use for me, I must be an example of His most mysterious ways made flesh.”

The vicar leaned forward and whispered, “That you are indeed, Mr. Frederick Hawthorne.”

The vicar had said it so naturally, Frederick almost forgot he was supposed to be Edward March. He remembered, fought down his panic and peered hard at the vicar. Fool! It doesn’t mean a thing, not necessarily. If he’s been around the East End enough, he’s heard your reputation. It’s probably the scar gave you away. You have the dirt on him and he knows it, so he won’t be in a hurry to go shouting. There’s no one here of consequence he could shout it to, none but Beauregarde who already knows. That’s likely all it is. Still you’d best keep an eye on the old bastard.

A sound atop the stairs interrupted Frederick’s thoughts. Clara came down, dressed for dinner. Her new dress showed more of her smooth, delicate neck and arms and breasts than he’d seen before. His mouth watered, and he tried to get his mind back on business. Why did he pay her so much thought, anyway? She was lovely and striking, aye, but he’d only gotten a few guarded words out of her. Then her eyes met his and lit up happily. Clara’s gown was plain compared to Lady Woodley’s, with no diamonds or other gaudy jewelry to speak of. Frederick couldn’t imagine how it might have improved her. The space around him felt even wider now, less like a room, more like a vast fragrant field with a bright clear sky above. She reached the landing and he went to her before anyone else could. He no longer cared if it appeared proper or not.

For the second time this evening he kissed her hand. “You look lovely, my dear.”

“Thank you, Mr. March.”

Mr. March… Bloody hell, he wanted to hear her call him Mr. Hawthorne, or better still Frederick. But only Beauregarde and the Vicar Overton knew to call him that. They’d not tell her, and neither could he. For a moment Frederick absolutely hated both men for it.

Clara walked past Frederick and addressed the room. “Please excuse my tardiness.” She nodded to everyone. “Lord and Lady Woodley. Your grace. Uncle Ian.”

Beauregarde saw Frederick’s eyes lingering on Clara, and he hurried forward protectively.

A servant’s voice boomed from the doorway. “General Walter Ratcliff and his daughter Genevieve.”

Frederick’s eyes fixed from across the room on the man in the doorway, who stood straight and severe as though appearing before his military inferiors. The teenage girl at his side matched this stance and was equally unreadable. Ratcliff’s face was narrow and hard, his thin black hair slicked back so flat it might have been painted upon him. The girl’s hair was likewise black, but fell around her face in rich ringlets. Her gown was fancier than Clara’s though not gaudy like Lady Woodley’s, less revealing than either. She wore no jewelry that Frederick could see from here. Indeed, she held herself like quite the little lady, eerily so. She held her father’s arm as might a wife. That’s just what Frederick might have mistaken her for, had Beauregarde not informed him otherwise. Both man and daughter had small piercing eyes. Frederick thought they were brown, but couldn’t be sure from where he stood.

Beauregarde shook Ratcliff’s hands fiercely. “Walter! How good of you to come.”

“You invited me and so I have come, Ian. Did you expect otherwise?” Ratcliff looked over Beauregarde’s shoulder and his small eyes met Frederick’s across the room. “I was unaware that you would be hosting a sixth guest. Tell me, Ian, is he your new business partner?”

Frederick strode forward freely. “I’m nothing of the sort, General. Merely an old friend invited on short notice. Why Ian, surely I’ve not broken your house’s order, placed you in some uncomfortable position by accepting your generous offer?” He kept his eyes on Ratcliff’s as he spoke.

“None at all,” Ratcliff said. “A pleasure, I’m sure, Mr.…”

“Edward March is the name. A pleasure indeed, General Ratcliff.” He nodded to the general, then to the general’s daughter. “Young miss.”

The girl curtsied mechanically. “Mr. March.”

Beauregarde forced a large smile and clasped his hands boisterously. “Well then! Dinner should be ready by now. Let’s all to the dining room, shall we?”

#

Beauregarde first led Lady Woodley by the arm into the dining room, while everyone else stood near the doorway. The servants then escorted everyone else in, leading them to various points – strategic points, Frederick would call them – about the table. Frederick would have thought it a wedding ceremony for all the rigmarole. He smelled dinner from the moment he entered, though no one else acted as though they did. His mouth watered, and he realized he hadn’t eaten since morning. His hunger agitated him, so his cruel feelings towards these people and their decadence intensified. Even sitting down at so humble an affair was a militant procedure. He watched the other men without seeming to, and they all appeared to move as a single body – short dainty movements, with long agitated pauses between, while the ladies went through their own dance, with a few points of intersection. Frederick followed along best he could. Clara and Ratcliff came in last, arm in arm, and were placed next to each other at the table. Frederick had been placed between Genevieve and Beauregarde, who sat at the head of the table. Frederick had expected Clara to be placed across from him, on the other side of her uncle, but Beauregarde had apparently arranged for her to sit as far from Frederick as possible. Also, curiously, the Woodleys were not seated together. The better to attack everyone else with their screeching from two fronts, Frederick mused. Lady Woodley was seated across from him. She smiled and he tried not to look at the piranha teeth.

The ladies removed their gloves, then sat down. The men stayed up until each of the ladies settled, then removed their own gloves and sat down as one. Finally dinner was wheeled in, and an army of servants appeared to place it about the table. How did all those people see to the needs of only Clara and Beauregarde without stumbling over each other constantly? How did they occupy themselves when there was no gathering such as this in the works? Did Clara and Beauregarde go through all this for every meal?

Everyone remained straight-backed and silent ’til food was on their plates and their glasses were filled. The servants hovered behind them along the walls. The vicar led the saying of grace, then everyone carved and chewed so delicately you’d think they were afraid of offending the food by consuming it too roughly. A mile of tedious niceties steadily mutated into something resembling conversation. Frederick watched everyone’s faces.

“General,” squeaked Lady Woodley at Ratcliff, “I must, must, must scold you for being such a stranger to us of late.”

The vicar looked as though he had something to say but held his tongue.

“Indisposed, Madame,” said Ratcliff with a stiff smile, “but hardly a stranger.”

“You’ve been involved in some business concerning the East End, general,” Frederick said. “Are you engaged with the vicar in his philanthropy?”

“Hardly, my good lad, though I fancy the vicar’s good work for the souls of that area shall be of use to me in days to come.”

Frederick glanced at the young lady on his right. Her eyes lowered and she seemed to concentrate most gravely on her food whenever her father spoke.

“At my age,” the general continued, “with my military career safely behind me, I’ve decided to try my hand at real estate investment.”

The Woodleys had drawn up and started shaking at the mention of the East End, like children frightened by a ghostly bedtime story. “Oh, the East End,” moaned Lord Woodley. “Must we speak of that chilling realm?”

“It’s alright, Charles,” said Beauregarde pleasantly. “I’m sure neither the general nor Mr. March means to discuss the particulars of their sojourns there.”

“We shall be so polite, and follow your own fine example, Ian.” Frederick smiled then turned back to Ratcliff. “Real estate! Then you’re one of those quixotic souls who would buy up the wayward neighborhoods for renovation.”

“Hardly quixotic, Mr. March… for it is not windmills we would fight in the East End, but true dragons.”

“You’ll find few heaps of gold, I could well assure you. By dragons, do you mean the current residents of the East End? For surely the neighborhoods could not be made fit for polite society amidst the present population.”

Ratcliff swallowed a bite, dabbed his mouth with his napkin though he’d left no mess, sipped his wine, and dabbed his mouth again. “You do me an injustice, Mr. March. You make it sound as though I were still a soldier, and meant to open a new military campaign upon our own soil.”

“Not a military campaign, no, not unless you count the police who you’ll no doubt need to employ in such a venture.” Frederick’s tone stayed level and his smile never wavered, though his eyes blazed fiercely. “For surely the ultimate aim is to buy up the property, then raise its value so the undesirables could not possibly afford to remain to trouble the finer new inhabitants. But not all of the undesirables would go so willingly. For that you’d need the police. Have the police decided where they’ll put the undesirables, do you know? For surely England hasn’t enough jail cells for them all. Perhaps you should take the undesirables to the countryside and set them to work building new jails. Before telling them that they themselves shall be the inhabitants, naturally.”

“The dilemmas you speak of are the vicar’s domain… That is to say, part of his charity work, I’m sure, involves bringing better work to the East End, through which the people may afford better living conditions, as well as the education needed to appreciate it. Is that not so, your grace?”

“That is so,” said the vicar discretely.

“Ah,” said Frederick, “but the East End already teams with fine work. Why, it’s the very heart of industry that makes our fair city so wealthy. It’s just that so little of that wealth remains there with those who toil for it, one would scarce guess.”

“Take care, Mr. March!” chirped Lady Woodley. “Why, one might mistake your beliefs for that of one of those… those Nihilists… those… blue republicans?”

“Red republicans, my pet,” squealed Lord Woodley. “Red!”

“Here now, my friends,” said Beauregarde, politely but urgently. “I’ll not have you casting insults at my guests while seated at my table.”

“But he’s been casting insults at the general!” protested Lord Woodley.

Frederick smiled calmly. “I’ve insulted no one, sir. I was merely speculating with the general. If I’m bold, it’s because I’m a gentleman, secure in the knowledge that I am just, and thus have nothing to fear.” He chewed and swallowed some bread, then took a gulp of wine. “Isn’t that so, general? I’ve not insulted you, have I?”

“Indeed you’ve voiced no reproach, merely stated facts for the most part. The problems you address are real, Mr. March, and finding their solution is our ultimate goal. My life has been devoted to England’s quest to civilize the world. Now I devote it to finding the solution to such problems on our own soil. That should be our first concern, don’t you think, before expanding the empire?”

“On that, sir, we agree.” Frederick glanced again at Genevieve, who no longer lowered her eyes when her father spoke. Indeed she watched Frederick intently, fascinated by the heated spirit he’d ignited at the table, eager to hear where he directed it next. Once or twice he thought she stifled a laugh. Frederick looked down the table at Clara. She smiled guardedly at him. “And what are your feelings on this matter, Miss Beauregarde?”

She was so surprised to be asked that she needed an excuse to gather her thoughts. “Brigs, may I have more bread?” The servant took a small loaf from the bowl, which sat directly in front of Clara, and placed it on her plate. She broke it with her hands, buttered it and bit. Finally she said, “I should be interested to hear the length of your arguments first, Mr. March. I mean no reproach, but one might mistake your ideas for the same ones that once brought tragic destruction to the French nobility.”

“Ah yes,” said Frederick. “I’ve often wondered if I was one of that movement’s chief agents in a former life.”

“The revolution?” Lady Woodley gasped and paled. “You mean… when they cut off heads and dropped them into baskets?” Her hand moved unconsciously towards her throat, as though she feared Frederick wished to chop off her own head. Frederick wondered if Lady Woodley possessed latent telepathic abilities.

“I like to believe I’ve grown relatively more civil in my present incarnation,” he said. “Would you be a dear and pass the meat, your ladyship?”

Frederick cut off the rarest slice of beef he could find then turned up his cuffs before carving it. All round the table, the older participants stiffened with horror. Almost in unison, the young ladies lifted their napkins to hide their smiles. Frederick made no effort to hide his smile at Clara.

“Indeed you have learned as much, Mr. March,” Clara said before dabbing her mouth and lifting her glass. “And you’re far too kind and charming to have fit in among those of that era, I assure you.”

He lifted his glass in return. “I’m pleased to hear you say so, Mademoiselle.”

#

After dinner, the guests all returned to the parlor, where the maid, the one Clara had called Kelly, played Straus on the piano.

Beauregarde announced “If you shall all excuse us, the general and I have some business to discuss.”

Everyone excused them. Frederick didn’t watch them mount the stairs. Instead he watched the vicar watch them. Something tightened in the vicar’s face so he seemed to nod without moving his head. Frederick shifted his eyes in time to see Ratcliff turning his head forward, away from the vicar. Beauregarde’s eyes still trailed behind on the vicar, and they flitted briefly to Frederick. Frederick looked away, in time to see the vicar eyeing him severely. He thought things over, letting the rhythm and tumble of the piano level off his thoughts. A servant passed with a tray of champagne. Frederick took a glass and drank the first half quickly. It was stronger than the wine at dinner, which also helped his thoughts.

Lady Woodley walked past him and asked the vicar for a waltz. No doubt as they danced, she’d grill him on all the ways she and her husband had or hadn’t been impertinent, and of course she’d gossip quietly about “that dreadful Mr. March,” or “that exquisite Mr. March,” or some veiled combination of the two. Either way Frederick was glad to have them both distracted from him. At dinner he’d been happy to leave them all aghast at his unrefined manners and outrageous talk, for they’d been too busy watching him to guard themselves. Ratcliff and Beauregarde had exchanged many troubled glances, which was unsurprising. They’d both exchanged many such glances with the vicar, though. Frederick still didn’t have the vicar figured. He’d watched most keenly for lies in the general’s face, and he’d found them at the most curious points. Ratcliff truly meant to acquire property in the East End, and he’d meant all he said about England’s duty to civilize the world. But he didn’t sound quite like most patriots when they spoke of such things, and he’d lied when he said his military career was behind him. How did he expect a bottle of demons to help him civilize England, let alone the world?

Frederick finished his drink and saw Clara approaching him nervously, likely hoping for a dance. He wanted more than anything to oblige her, which was why he’d have to disappoint her. Now he finally had a chance to act on his own footing, while Beauregarde and Ratcliff were away, and he couldn’t be distracted. Presently Beauregarde was either following the plan or letting Ratcliff know how things had been compromised. Either way, things would soon move to a new phase. Frederick wouldn’t wait for someone else’s move. He looked and saw Genevieve seated on the sofa, hands folded pleasantly in her lap. She seemed to enjoy the music, growing lost in it. A new soft glow had settled over her since her father’s departure, leaving her eyes less cold, more like the child she was.

Frederick approached her, while he could still pretend he hadn’t seen Clara advance. He set his drink on the edge of the piano. “Miss Genevieve, would you do me the honor of a waltz?” She smiled, gave him her hand and rose into his arms. She drew a bit too close for his comfort, closer than he’d have expected an adult woman of her class to find proper. He guided her into the simple motions of the dance.

“Lord Woodley,” he heard Clara say with barely hidden sharpness. “It seems it is down to us. Would you offer a lady a dance?”

“I fear you’ve left Miss Beauregarde jealous,” Genevieve whispered, pulling Frederick faster into the dance. He found there was more to waltzing than he’d realized, and she was practically the one leading him. He let her. The less he thought of it, the easier it came.

“Have I?” He smiled. “I merely thought you looked so pretty and lonely.”

“Then your intentions do lie towards Miss Clara.”

“If I find her welcoming of them. Tell me, Genevieve, is the vicar involved in Lord Woodley’s business with your father?”

“I imagine if he were, he’d have joined them in their private conversation.”

“I imagine Sir Ian would rather have his grace down here, making sure my conduct towards Miss Clara remains honorable.”

“Ah, but there is Lord and Lady Woodley for that!”

“I’m certain the gentle Lord Woodley is the most vicious and valorous knight.”

Genevieve arched her brows. “And has Sir Ian cause to worry?”

Frederick studied the girl’s face. “Between ourselves, he does. Need I worry about your confidence?”

“Only when I speak with Miss Clara.”

“Splendid. You’ll have to tell me what she says. At the moment, tell me more of the vicar’s business with your father.”

She stiffened in his arms, and for a moment she was again that chilling little creature he’d first seen. “Surely you know, Mr. March, it is not proper for a young lady to discuss such things with a gentleman.”

“Ah,” Frederick whispered, “but you’re not yet a lady. Surely you’re not yet old enough to have been presented to the queen. Think of me as your friend, and speak to me of whatever you wish.”

She stared silently. The vicar and Lady Overton had passed close in their dance. Genevieve guided Frederick away from the other couple. “Is that how you see me?” she whispered. “As merely a friendly child?”

“I don’t know,” Frederick said startled. “We’ve only just met.”

“Then suppose I don’t wish to discuss my father’s business with someone I’ve only just met.” The chill was bleeding from her face. In its place was deep fear, and not for Frederick.

“I believe you do.” She was about to pull away, so his hand clamped like iron on her waist. “For now keep dancing and speaking quietly.”

Panic flashed over her face, but she remained composed. “The song’s nearly over. Who are you, Mr. March?”

“Who’s your father? That’s what I wish to know, and I sense you’ve the need to tell someone.”

Now she was frightened of him, terrified in fact. He had the dance mastered by now, and he led her effortlessly. “What are you, Mr. March?” she hissed.

“Think of me as a friend to anyone who lives with horrors they can confide in no one else. I know well enough how to spot such folks and I see that’s what you are. I warn you, though, don’t trifle with me on behalf of those horrors, for you ain’t the only one they bedevil.” She nodded without meeting his eyes. The song ended and they drew apart. “Let’s mingle with the guests,” he whispered. “We’ll find our chance to talk.”

She fluttered away without a word and began discussing fashion with Lady Woodley. Frederick eyed everyone else. He wanted to chat with Clara, though he’d probably better focus on Vicar Overton. Before he could make up his mind, Clara announced “I feel the need for some air. If anyone requires me, I shall be in the garden.”

She passed Frederick on her way to the great crystal patio doorway, and he caught a whiff of her perfume. It was heady and rosy, not unlike what he’d smelled on the girls at Madame Chanfan’s, but smoother. Through it he smelled her natural scent, from her hair and bare skin. It made him wish to growl pleasantly, throwing his mind into a sweet limbo where he couldn’t find his duty. One of these days he’d have to learn a way to sedate his manhood while engaged in this sort of business. Then again, for Frederick, feelings of attraction were so akin to his bloody adventure-lust that silencing one might dampen the other, which would be fatal. Something occurred to him, and he waited until Clara was gone.

“Where’s the convenience?” he asked no one in particular.

Lord and Lady Woodley looked awkwardly at him, then at each other. Genevieve blinked blankly, unhelpfully.

“I believe it’s just down that hall,” said the vicar, pointing. “It’ll be the last door on your left.”

Frederick thanked the vicar and headed for the hallway. There he found an empty room with a low window, undid the latch and slipped quietly out along the side of the house. He took the dark narrow path between the wall and the wrought iron fence, pulling his shoulders inward from the rose and ivy vines. Finally he came out onto the garden path, lit only by the glow of the house and a gaslight from the nearest street, shining yards away over many thick trimmed bushes. Clara stood between two mulberry bushes, framed in an orange spill that came from around the corner. Frederick crept silently forward, maneuvering expertly through the shadows so she didn’t see him ’til he stood a yard in front of her. She started and stiffened.

“All’s well, Clara. No need to raise the alarm.”

“Mr. March! How did you –”

“I’m a magician,” he said, wishing there’d been enough light for her to see his broad smile.

“Are you now! So have you turned yourself into a gentleman who distributes his attention properly, rather than merely to little girls?”

“My dear, I was never anything else… well, except when I was a boy myself. Had I found myself in this company at that age, I imagine I’d now be seeking to meet with Miss Genevieve as improperly as I now meet with you!”

Clara tried and failed to stifle a giggle. “You are an extraordinary fiend, Mr. March!”

“You’ve no idea, my extraordinary angel. Would you care to learn?”

She thought for a moment, or tried to think. Then she stepped hesitantly forward and whispered “I think I would very much.”

He sprang, caught her in his arms and kissed her fiercely. She stiffened only with surprise, then locked her arms hungrily about his neck. Their lips drew apart, and he wanted to kiss her neck and shoulders. Instead he cradled her close and said, “You should know, before I say anything else, my feelings are already true.”

“You’ve left no room for doubt,” she sighed.

No room for doubt… Frederick shook his head. She was a smart girl, aye, though not so worldly. “After tonight, I should like to ask your uncle’s permission to court you in proper fashion. It’ll be a wild new adventure for me.”

“Ever more I wonder what sort of adventures you are accustomed to.” She drew back a little, suddenly uncertain. “After tonight?”

His voice became serious. “Clara, listen to me. It’s an evil night on which we’ve found each other. What we’ve found is better than anything I’d hoped to bring from it. I merely hoped to stem the spread of more evil.”

“Evil? Edward, what are you talking about?”

“First, my name’s not Edward. It’s Frederick. Frederick Hawthorne, if you please. Your uncle’s entangled us all in something horrible.”

She pulled free and turned away, breathing rapidly. “This… This is too much! You’re lying, you must be! Why do you play such games?”

“I play no games.”

She started towards the house, no doubt to raise the alarm. He caught her arm and turned her to face him.

“Let go!”

“Not ’til you settle down and see sense.”

“You’re my uncle’s enemy! He said you were a friend!”

“I am his friend, which is the only reason I hope to bring him through things in one piece. Or it was ’til there was you to think of. He’s been an innocent pawn. Better men than he have let themselves be more innocently used in such dirty business, and I’ve treated them far less kindly, because they weren’t friends. Keep it in mind!”

“You haven’t let me know anything!”

“But you must already know something. Think, Clara! Think over this past day, over the last few months even.”

Her shoulders sank. “You’re right. Things have been strange. That horrible general… He’s paid several calls over the last few weeks. Always he and Uncle lock themselves in the study for hours. I’ve tried listening at the door, but they always speak in hushed whispers, as though they’ve anticipated my snooping.”

Frederick nodded. “Yours, or the servants’.”

She continued, “Then Uncle will be gone for long spells, longer than business ever detains him, and he returns in the most frightful states and won’t speak for hours. The vicar’s in on it, though how I can’t say. The vicar hasn’t actually come to the house, not since it all started, not ’til tonight. But I know he’s been in on it. I’ve watched Uncle’s outgoing letters, and many have been postmarked to vicar.”

Frederick peered as far as the street lamp. A figure passed beneath the lamp, turning its head towards the garden. Frederick slipped further into the shadows of the tall bushes. Clara watched him, then followed his gaze.

“It’s that plainclothes policeman,” she said. “He’s been watching the house all day.”

“I know.”

“Is he watching for you?”

“Yes.”

“Before you appeared just now, I saw him stop and speak to a uniformed constable.”

“That don’t mean much. If they thought I was here they’d’ve come calling already.”

“Please, Edward, Frederick, whoever you are, tell me what’s going on!”

“Let’s go further from the house first.”

He took her hand and led her to a small stone bench. Her fingers were limp and stiff in his, and he worried that he’d ended whatever there might be between them. ’Til she’d announced her stroll, he’d been too busy viewing her as a fascinating woman to think how she might assist matters. Then it occurred to him, so he’d gone looking for her with nothing but business in mind. Then he’d seen her between the mulberry bushes, his fool’s heart ran away with him, and they’d acted like silly children on the excitement of finally being alone together. Then he’d had to go and spoil it by getting down to business. Frightening her had been unavoidable, but now he’d truly hurt her, this beauty he already cared for. Very well. Perhaps she hated him now. He could live with that, so long as she remained unharmed.

Keeping her hand in his, Frederick said, “Before I tell you any of this madness, know that I don’t strictly believe a lot of it. I don’t think your uncle does, either. But I’m certain General Ratcliff believes it, and true or not he’ll do plenty of harm to many innocent folk.” With that, he spat out the long and the short of it briefly as he could.

She took a long time to speak. “It’s madness, yes… And yet it makes a strange sense. This whole dinner gathering has been on the general’s insistence.”

“Blast! Then he’s planning something for tonight!”

She nodded rapidly. “The social ritual of a small dinner gathering of close friends… It’s the mask for some darker ritual. It’s horribly perfect, don’t you see?”

“No. How?”

“Too small a clandestine gathering might draw unwanted suspicion from those gossips who knew the respective participants too closely. That’s why the vicar hasn’t called ’til now. Uncle and the general knew each other in India. It’s easier for them to invent reasons for meeting. A large gathering wouldn’t do either. Too many people might notice something amiss.”

“Hence the Woodleys. They’re the least likely to be aware of anything.” Frederick smiled. “You’re quite the natural deductress, my dear. Perhaps I should consult you the next time I get entangled in something like this.”

She either missed the levity or ignored it. “You entangle yourself in such matters often?”

“I suppose I do.”

“Why?”

The answer was so fundamental to him that it took the longest time figuring how to explain it. It must have seemed he had no comprehension of it at all. Finally he said, “It’s a dirty bloody world that’s bred me, my dear. To survive it, one either grows a bit dirty and bloody one’s self or becomes a slave to those who do. You’d scarce understand it any better than I understand your world. I suppose wherever you go, folks are cruel to each other, and some fall under cruelty they can’t fight against. Where I live, though, no one masks cruelty in pleasantries. But I can’t accept it as normal, not when it falls on those I love. I see it happening to them, and I can’t abide it. I’ve never managed to figure my compulsions. There were too many times when the bad things fell on me, I suppose, and no one around thought it worth bothering over. I try setting one bad bloke straight, just so a few people I love will be safe with me for another day. Next thing I know, I find out the troubles are bigger than I thought, that my troubles are actually tied to everyone’s troubles, and there I find myself in the middle of it.”

“Then why not solve your own problems, then walk away from the rest?”

“I’d rather do so. But the smaller problems often can’t be fixed without seeing to the larger ones, and I seldom find anyone else looking to the larger ones in a way that does any good. I wish there were. I ain’t always the best bloke I can imagine taking charge. Often my ways cause pain to folks I’d rather see left alone, but they’re the only ways I know. My life would be a lot quieter if I turned a blind eye more often. But the real truth is that quiet life doesn’t suit me, so it works out well that I seldom find it for long.” His eyes lowered and drifted everywhere but to her. His vision had adjusted enough to look into her eyes, and he feared that more than anything. A rage of many feelings had shaken loose, tumbling against each other. It was everything he never let loose unless it was what he needed to keep himself alive. At those times, he’d let the madness burn itself out on his instincts ’til the threat lay dead and bloody. Then it was all he could do to fight down the madness ’til he needed it again, keeping it from those who filled his quieter life.

Her soft fingertips touched and trailed his face. “This scar,” she whispered as if reading his mind, “it wasn’t made by a knife, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t.” He caught her hand and moved it gently – protectively – away. “But about our business. Your uncle – my misbegotten friend – is in the thrall of a madman, playing with powers no one should play with, and I don’t wish to see what that playing would bring about.”

“But you said you didn’t believe it, that it was mere superstition!”

Frederick grumbled, “Suppose I ain’t willing to chance it.”

“But the vicar… Why should a man of God be involved in such blasphemy?”

“My dear, that’s the easiest part of all. If you thought you had the devil’s servants at your command, and you had some mad idea that you could force their powers towards your own ends – perhaps even some warped notion of good – who better to help you temper and wrangle the devil’s power than a man of God?”

“But I can’t wrap my head around such sacrilege! Who would conceive of such a thing?”

“More mad bastards than you’d guess.”

Before she could answer, they heard soft feet on the path. Clara rose. Frederick stayed seated. “Miss Genevieve,” Clara said a moment later.

“I had to get out for some air myself.” Genevieve’s voice was shaky. “Do you mind if I walk with you for a while, Clara?”

Frederick rose. Genevieve drew back and gasped. “It’s alright, Genevieve. Miss Clara’s in our confidence. I think it’s time we had that talk. In fact…” Frederick lowered his eyes and his voice grew grim. “In fact you might rather speak with another woman than with me, over what I suspect you have to tell.”

Genevieve backed away, shaking her head, trembling violently.

Clara spun to face Frederick. “What on earth are you talking about?”

Frederick shifted awkwardly then whispered to Clara. “I don’t know how to be delicate, so I won’t try. The girl’s been interfered with, see? By her own father.”

“How can you say such a thing?”

“Look at her. It’s all about her. I’ve seen it plenty. I know all the queer ways a child’ll act, when they’ve been left twitchy in the head from it. Bloody hell, I wish I didn’t. It’s just she’s been raised with all your society’s refinement, so she masks it better. That’s right, Clara, your uncle’s up there consorting with the worst sort of abomination a man can become.” Frederick had stopped whispering without realizing it.

Clara took a step away. She looked at Genevieve, then back at Frederick.

Genevieve sobbed. She’d crossed her arms over her stomach and sank slowly towards the earth. “He’s right, Miss Clara! God preserve me, he’s right! Lord, Mr. March, you’re a fiend, the serpent who brings out poison knowledge!”

“I ain’t no fiend,” Frederick growled. “It’s your father’s the fiend, leaving you with such a horrid secret to carry!”

“Frederick, hush!” Clara snapped in his face. She then turned, went to the sobbing girl and cradled her.

Frederick turned away from them, seething. Bloody hell, he just kept making a worse mess of this! He wasn’t here over the lass’s pain, so he tried to think coldly of it. At least he knew she had reason to turn on her father, and she knew he knew. He could still make an ally of her. He turned back to the girls on the ground.

“Genevieve,” he said, “what can you tell us about what your father’s up to?”

Clara cradled Genevieve’s head and glared at Frederick. “Not now, you brute!” she spat through her teeth.

Frederick paced from side to side. “I… I’ll be back in the house.”

He walked past them. Neither of them spoke to him. The glass door opened as he stepped onto the patio. The vicar stood in the doorway, eyeing him accusingly. “You seem to have gotten lost on your way to the convenience, Mr. Hawthorne.”

Frederick grabbed the vicar by the collar, dragged him out and to the side, slammed him against the stone wall. “Listen well, your grace! I want to believe you’re a good man. Don’t think I assume so because of your station, or that it’ll protect you from me if I learn otherwise.”

The vicar squirmed and thrashed. “Let me go!”

Frederick tightened his grip. “None of that, now. So you know who I am. Let’s a word about that first.”

“Your description’s well known in the East End. Does that surprise you?”

“Figured that was it. Does Ratcliff know who I am?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then what do you know?”

“What do you know? Do you know what Ratcliff’s planning?”

“I know the instruments of it, how he’s set it up. It’s his ends I ain’t figured. Tell me, your grace.”

“You know of the demons in the bottle?”

“I just said I bloody well know his instruments! You know anything useful or not?”

“I’ll speak to you if you put me down and talk with me as a civilized man.”

Frederick realized he’d lifted the vicar so the tips of the man’s shoes barely touched the stone. He lowered the vicar onto his feet. “Suppose I ain’t what you’d call a civilized man. Don’t take me for a brainless thug, either, I warn you. Say what it is you know.”

The vicar gathered himself. “Ratcliff believes God has appointed him to speed England’s quest to bring peace to the world. He believes the same demons inhabiting that bottle are the sort who hold back the tide of God’s wrath in the lands our empire would conquer. He feels that God has blessed him with the right to turn that demonic power upon itself. He says he has learned of an ancient forgotten ritual that would place the demons within our power. He would then send their spirit – their strength – throughout England’s armies. Thus the power of the fallen angels would be returned to the grace of God, and that power would sweep across the entire globe.”

“And do you believe that?”

“No! It is madness, blasphemy! I’ve known Ratcliff for years. He said he needed a man of God to stand by him through the process, and he would trust none but myself. Ratcliff is a dangerous man. I feared for my life, were I to refuse. But I thought I might see things through to a point, then do what I could to turn the catastrophe around, avert it. There was no one I could have gone to that would have believed me. If nothing else, I could sabotage the ritual, then convince Ratcliff that he’d been a fool and it was all for naught. But were I to fail…”

“You needn’t worry over that, one way or the other. The ritual won’t take place. I mean to put an end to it, by putting an end to Ratcliff.”

The vicar gazed hopelessly. “God help you, Frederick Hawthorne.”

“I doubt it.”

The vicar peered closer. “I believe He shall. I believe you do God’s work, in your own way, whether you yet realize it or not.”

Frederick patted the vicar on the shoulder. “Go on believing that, your grace, if it lets you rest easy, having aided a man such as me.” With that Frederick turned and strode towards the open doorway.

“I should rather have aided you than a man such as Ratcliff,” the vicar called after him.

Frederick glanced back with surprised irony. Lord and Lady Woodley looked up as he stormed in. In that same instant, Ratcliff and Beauregarde appeared atop the stairs. Frederick met Ratcliff’s eyes and glared. The room between them faded into a red fog as Frederick strode towards the staircase. A bell rang somewhere, bringing him back to himself. Someone was at the door.

“Inspector Hawkins,” announced a servant. Hawkins stood in the doorway, accompanied by the plainclothes officer from the street.

Frederick went towards them confidently. “Inspector! So good to see you again, and so well timed at that. You’ve arrived just as things are about to get interesting.”

“Indeed, Mr. Hawthorne,” said Hawkins. “I’m here to place you under arrest.”

“I know that, you idiot! I’m telling you now, things ain’t as you think and you’d best listen to me.”

“He’s right, Francis,” said Beauregarde, hurrying down the stairs. He looked back at Ratcliff. “I’m sorry, Walter. All you’ve told me is balderdash. I’ll have no more part in it. Francis, I wish to drop the charge against Mr. Hawthorne. He’s been my friend all along, and I regret baring witness against him. This man beside me is whom you should arrest.”

Hawkins looked up at Ratcliff. “Walter? What are you doing here?”

Frederick’s eyes shot back to Hawkins. “You know this pervert?”

“Why should I not know a fellow veteran?” Then back to Ratcliff, “What are they talking about, Walter? What have you been up to? Why should I arrest you?”

Ratcliff was backing up the stairs. “It’s them you must arrest, Francis!” He stabbed a finger at Beauregarde, then at Frederick. “They’ve conspired to rob and kill me!”

The vicar had entered and stood behind Frederick. “Enough of this, Walter! It is the devil’s work you would do, not God’s. I’d hoped to dissuade you from it quietly… Now I must beg you to abandon it before anyone is hurt.”

Frederick glanced back over the vicar’s shoulder. Clara was hurrying towards the door, urging Genevieve along, drawn by the commotion.

“What the hell do God and the devil have to do with this?” growled Hawkins impatiently.

“Everything, Francis!” Ratcliff shouted. Then swiftly, desperately, “Francis, think of all we accomplished in India. It is nothing, I tell you, to what I seek to do. Think how the women of Delhi used to burn themselves on the pyres of their husbands. In our own city, women and children sell themselves on the streets. There are a thousand worse atrocities, all throughout the world, that we could put an end to, this night.”

“Not we,” said Hawkins, “not through whatever you have in mind.”

“Then you mean to let them kill me!”

Beauregarde turned and eased back towards Ratcliff. “No one wishes to kill you, Walter. But you’d better hand over the bottle.”

Ratcliff stumbled as he reached the top of the stairs. “I shan’t, I tell you! Stay away!”

“I’ll take it from you myself if I must,” said Beauregarde, advancing.

Ratcliff snarled, drew his old service pistol from his coat, and fired. Beauregarde shrieked. The back of his coat burst and spat blood near the shoulder and he tumbled down the stairs. Clara screamed and rushed towards her uncle as he rolled to a stop on the landing.

Frederick caught her by the shoulder. “Clara, keep back!”

Hawkins and the plainclothes officer drew their pistols and pointed them at Ratcliff. Frederick drew the pistol he’d kept from Beauregarde’s study.

“Guns! Everyone has guns!” It was Lord Woodley. He and Lady Woodley had shrunk into a corner and were holding each other. “We’re undone, my pet!”

“Shut up!” The words had come at once from both Frederick and Hawkins.

Beauregarde moaned on the floor and tried to push himself up on his good arm. Clara tried again to run to him, but Frederick held her fast. Ratcliff was wild-eyed, and might shoot at any sudden movement. Frederick would have already shot Ratcliff dead, except Ratcliff may or may not have had the bottle on him. Frederick needed to know where it was.

“Drop your weapon, Walter,” shouted Hawkins. “You can’t shoot all three of us before one of us shoots you.”

“No,” Ratcliff hissed, and he reached into his pocket. “I can do worse!” He drew from his coat a tiny glass bottle, his thumb pressed to the cork. If they fired now, he might pop it open with a dying reflex, even if killed instantly. “Lower your guns or I’ll open this!”

Frederick thought I should have just shot him in the first place.

“What is it?” Hawkins asked Frederick.

“No time to explain. He has the upper hand.”

“Do we lower our guns?”

“The hell we do.”

Ratcliff’s eyes found his daughter. “Genevieve, do something! All we’ve worked for is at stake! Do something to save your father!”

A small but powerful shape crashed into Frederick’s back, and he stumbled forward. Genevieve’s arm locked around his neck and his knees almost buckled. A slender hand shot out over his shoulder and tore the gun from his grip. He twisted around with a growl and grabbed her by the throat. He was about to wrestle the gun from her, but she aimed quickly and fired. At the top of the stairs, Ratcliff spun and fell, a tiny crimson arc spouting from the side of his neck. The bottle flew from his hand and shattered on the banister. Amber smoke rose from the runny smear, glowing from within. The cloud grew and spread as if the liquid on the banister had caught fire. At the top of the stairs, Ratcliff staggered to his feet, his palm clamped over his bleeding neck. For a moment he stared at the smoke, then he turned and ran into the darkness of the hallway above.

Frederick threw Genevieve aside, ran to Beauregarde and dragged him up by the uninjured shoulder. Beauregarde groaned and convulsed. Frederick dragged him beneath the staircase, then tore off his own coat, twisted it up and pressed it to both wounds. He tied it in a crude knot beneath Beauregarde’s armpit, then pressed Beauregarde’s hand to it.

“Stay under here,” Frederick hissed at the panting, shaking man. “You’ve been brave enough.”

Frederick darted out from under the stairs. The cloud was growing, splitting into many clouds, and those clouds were taking shape. Soon those shapes would solidify. Everyone but Frederick stared frozen. Frederick hadn’t quite known what to expect, but he’d done his best to be ready for anything. Everyone else would doubt their sanity and become useless. He remembered Beauregarde’s gun. Genevieve still had it, bloody hell! Frederick didn’t go for her, but ran instead towards the wall where the two old sabers hung. One of the cloudy shapes, almost solid, broke from the infernal tangle and he heard its banshee shriek as it flew after him. Another scream sounded, a human scream. Frederick looked around as he ran. The first thing he saw was a pair of red muddled eyes, mad from uncounted ages of captivity, a horrid sentience leaking slowly threw them. The shape that held those eyes swam through the air at him like an eel, the last tendrils of amber smoke wafting off its warty, slimy body. Behind it, the maid who’d been playing the piano ran in the opposite direction, towards the door to the dining room. Another shape broke from the cloudy tangle and shot after her. Frederick saw her reach the door, saw the shape slither through after her. He looked back to the swords and sprang for them as the shape closed in. Far away, the maid screamed again, and something growled in harmony with her. The scream became a wet gurgle and died off. Frederick spun to face his demon in midair, his hand shooting up behind him. His hand closed around a sword handle as his back hit the wall. He slid down, staring into the onrushing red eyes.

The nails holding the sword bent and popped free as Frederick pulled the blade downward. The thing’s mouth opened as it neared Frederick’s face. Somewhere far away in his mind, those jagged dripping fangs made him think of Lady Woodley’s piranha teeth. His blade lashed out, catching flesh and bone. The thing twisted and folded, champing and foaming, thrashing and flopping against the steel shaft embedded in its trunk. Frederick pressed himself to the wall and tightened his arm against the heaving mass that threatened to pull his shoulder from the socket. He heaved, wrenched the blade free and drove it between the monster’s champing, frothing jaws. The blade snapped off between those jaws, and the monster fell limp at his feet. Almost instantly the whole corpse dissolved into a bubbling black gob that burned the carpet like acid.

Panting and snarling, Frederick grabbed the second sword from the wall. He drew himself upright against the wall and stared out at the other creatures from the cloud. Some of them looked at him. Some had set down clawed or webbed feet on the stairs. Frederick studied them. They seemed in no hurry to make their move… or they were uncertain what move to make. In the brief instant before his blade had struck home, he’d seen real intelligence in the eyes of the first attacker, but it was an incomplete intelligence, not yet fully awake.

At the far end of the room, the creature that had gone after the maid stalked out of the dining room doorway, its snarling maw dripping red. Though it had set down legs, the rest of its body much resembled the eel-like thing Frederick had killed. It looked around the room hungrily. Frederick followed its gaze. The Woodleys were still huddled in their corner. Three more servants present had pressed themselves to various places along the walls. Hawkins and the other officer stood frozen by the front door. Genevieve had slumped into a sitting position, the gun limp in her fingers, the barrel touching the floor. Behind her stood Vicar Overton, his hand on her shoulder. All their faces were long and white and blank, their minds blasted, their bodies petrified by these sights from hell. Frederick didn’t see Clara anywhere, and he nearly panicked. His eyes again met the monster across the room, saw how it sized things up uncertainly, and he suddenly understood why all the beasts hadn’t attacked. The paralysis that had claimed the others had nearly settled through him. He let the rage rise and chase it off, and he rushed across the room towards the demon, sword ready. The demons on the stairs snarled and stirred as he passed. The one before him rushed to engage him.

“Genevieve, officers,” he roared strongly as he could, “you’ve got guns. These are beasts of flesh and blood! Kill them!”

Hopefully that would be enough to snap them out of it. A moment later, the world behind him shook with the roar of gunfire and the roar of beasts. Apparently his battle cry had done the trick, though he hoped they were choosing their shots carefully. Judging by the heavy thuds shaking the floor, they weren’t doing too badly. He just hoped they caught any demons coming at him from behind. He’d almost reached the one before him when something collided with him from the side. He spilled sideways and a human shape shambled and crawled, trying to get over him. It was the young male servant who’d announced Hawkins’s arrival. Frederick floundered and shoved the man back. Suddenly the man jerked and his eyes bulged. Something crunched, and the man’s body bent upward. The body thrashed and contorted and gurgled as the demon’s jaws fastened through the upper spine, demolishing the ribcage from behind. Frederick saw the demon’s eyes as it chewed and sucked, glazing ecstatically in its feasting. The monster jerked its head upward, and the spinal column tore free. The body fell on Frederick, a gory hollowed shell. He shoved it aside, sprang up and took the sword in both hands. He let out a choking cry as he swung the edge down on the scaly neck. The head fell, the meaty, segmented bone still clenched in its jaw. The monstrous body thudded next to it. Both lay for a moment in a heap with the servant’s remains, then melted into smoking black goo.

Frederick’s clothes clung to him, sticky with blood and slime. He shivered and tore off his ruined shirt. There’d been some half dozen beasts originally. One remained, and it bore down on Genevieve and the vicar. Hawkins aimed coolly, mechanically, and shot it through the head. It fell and melted away.

Frederick looked around wildly. “Clara! Clara, where are you?”

“Frederick!”

He followed her voice under the stairs, momentarily forgetting everyone else. She sat cradling her uncle. Beauregarde was soaked in sweat and his breathing was harsh, but his eyes appeared lucid. Frederick crouched before them. Before he could say anything, though, he heard footsteps behind him.

“Dear Lord, Mr. Hawthorne, what has that madman unleashed?”

Frederick turned. Hawkins stood pale and tall, his smoking pistol lowered. Behind Hawkins stood the plainclothes officer, trailing him like a lost puppy, eyes glazed in shock.

“All the demons of the ancient world,” Frederick said.

Finally the plainclothes officer spoke weakly. “Yes, well… demons or no, they’re no match for our fine British aim, or for the fine British steel in Mr. Hawthorne’s hands, aye, Inspector? We brought them down easy enough.”

Frederick rolled his eyes. “That’s ’cause they weren’t at their full strength. After all that time in Bran’s bottle, well… I’d say we met them as something between the mindless beasts they seemed and children born anew, already eager to grow into their selves from a previous lifetime. It’s battle they were drawn to our realm and made flesh for, long ago, and it’s the movement of battle excited them to act… or the panicky scurrying of those who run from battle. They won’t go so easy next time. We have to think how to –”

“Next time,” said Clara. “You mean they’ll –”

“Aye, we’ve only temporarily knocked ’em down. Their spirits are still bound to this realm, and they have their physical essence here. I’m sure they’re regrouping as we speak.”

“How long do we have?” demanded Hawkins.

“How the hell should I know?” spat Frederick. He looked at the bubbling stains around the carpet. “I suspect we’ve a while.”

“What a night this has been,” droned the plainclothes officer. “Look how the sun rises red…”

Frederick’s eyes widened and he shot from beneath the stairs, nearly knocking Hawkins and the plainclothes officer aside. He looked out through the great crystal French window. “That ain’t the sunrise!”

Crimson light pulsed in. The door still hung open. Genevieve and the vicar still knelt with their backs to it, the gun smoking in Genevieve’s trembling fist, the vicar trying to shake her to her senses. Outside past the patio, the garden and the London streets beyond had vanished. In its place, a black sweltering alien wilderness spread out. Frederick heard the ghastly gibbering noises of that wilderness, and for the first time his senses were threatened. He shook it off, hurried past Genevieve and the vicar, slammed the door and locked it, hoping it would do any good at all.

No, his instincts somehow told him, the things out there wouldn’t interfere with them. This matter was between him and his companions and the things in here. The things out there would merely watch.

As Frederick turned back to the room, his eyes fell on the dismembered manservant. The body had fallen partially into the steaming puddle. The portions that had fallen into the mess were sinking into it, dissolving. The mixture’s stench burned his nostrils, unlike any other death smell he’d known. It must have played havoc with everyone’s nose, but the worst thing was seeing and comprehending the source. Frederick’s gut clenched inward so he doubled forward, and his gullet caught fire. Up and out came all that fine beef and wine from dinner, spattering the nice shoes Beauregarde had loaned him. Twice he thought he’d spat out the last of it, then more came. When he finally managed to stand up straight, everyone in the room was looking at him. Even Beauregarde and Clara had come out, Beauregarde clinging to his niece with his good arm. Genevieve’s eyes were cold as when Frederick had first seen her. She seemed more horrid now than ever. He looked at the gun in her hand and managed “So your father taught you to shoot, too, eh?”

“Not so well,” she said with a hopeless smile. “I meant to shoot him in the head or the heart.”

“What’s happened?” Hawkins demanded. “What’s going on out there?”

The answer came not from Frederick, but from the vicar. “My friends, we’ve passed into a realm that’s neither heaven nor hell, but somewhere in between. Perhaps we are in what some call purgatory. This house around us is the same, and yet not. I believe we now stand in some infernal double of the space we lately occupied. Somewhere else, the London streets run the same as ever. People in passing carriages look out and see this house as though nothing is amiss. Were they to enter, they would find it empty. The demons have drawn us through the looking glass into their arena for the final battle.”

“So this double as you call it,” said Beauregarde weakly, “has Ratcliff been drawn into it as well?”

“I would imagine he has,” said the vicar.

“Then he’s still armed, and he still might –”

“Ratcliff’ll cower in the shadows of what he’s unleashed like the coward he is, ’til someone routes him out,” Frederick growled. “Hawkins and I’ll deal with him later. Right now we need to –”

“She!” came a shrill screech. Lady Woodley had pulled free of her husband and rushed flailing from her corner towards Genevieve, all her piranha teeth bared. “She, she, she! Look here, she’s the little harlot who’s done this to us, trapped us forever in this hell!”

Lady Woodley swatted and clawed at Genevieve’s head and shoulders. Genevieve tottered and squirmed halfheartedly, her eyes still distant. Frederick grabbed Lady Woodley by the hair and dragged her thrashing and screaming away from Genevieve.

“Unhand my wife, you barbarian!” squealed Lord Woodley, rushing from the corner and slinging his fists sloppily at Frederick.

Frederick grabbed Lord Woodley by the throat and squeezed ’til the man grew limp. He held the couple at arm’s length, out to either side. “Any more of that and I’ll clap your empty skulls together!” With that he flung them to the floor, as far from Genevieve as possible. They scuttled backwards and kept quiet.

“They’re right,” Genevieve droned where she sat. “Father… he made me help him in his research, trained and tutored me, made me help prepare for this… just as he made me…” She trailed off.

The vicar crouched beside her again. “There, there, child. You’re not to blame. If we’re to survive, we must first pray for strength –”

“No time for prayer, your grace,” said Frederick. “We need to act, and just hope God’s got the idea and lends us the strength we need.”

“Have you a plan, then?”

Frederick looked around the room. The smoky black pools had begun to bubble stronger. No fresh shapes seemed ready to rise, though. Bloody hell, he’d been mad to let everyone terry this long. “I have, actually, but it’s risky. If we don’t time it right, we’ll find ourselves being ripped to shreds out of nowhere in the middle of it. Clara, get your uncle stowed in one of the downstairs rooms. You, Mr. Plainclothes –” He pointed to Hawkins’s companion. “– Go find your way to the kitchen through the dining room. You’ll find a bloody mess that used to be a pretty maid on your way, so brace for it. Find all the large sharp kitchen knives you can carry. Bring them back and pass them out. Clara, you see your family’s piano there? You and the Woodleys open it up and set to unwinding the wires. Careful they don’t snap loose and cut you, but get them all out quick as possible, then twist them together at the ends, soundly as you can. The rest of you help me carve and tear up the carpet around all the spots where our fiendish friends now lie marinating. Careful that you don’t touch the mess itself, then drag all the shreds of carpet to the center of the floor.” He almost gave the command to get to work, then he noticed the two remaining servants present. He went and shook them lucid. “You two, help your mistress and the Woodleys.

“What madness are you proposing?” asked the vicar.

“You’ll see. Unless you’ve a better notion, set to helping me with it. First, though, your grace, make a quick tour of the downstairs rooms. Best do it while Mr. Plainclothes gathers our instruments. Find any remaining servants who might be hiding out. Give them whatever sermon you need to, to rouse them to our work. Bring them and have them help us with the carpet. No, don’t bother upstairs. I won’t have you shot in the dark by that bastard Ratcliff. If there’s any servants up there with him, I fear it’ll have to be their sore luck.”

The vicar came back shortly with a shaky old woman and a shakier young man, barely more than a boy, in toe. They all set to work, sure enough. Once Frederick and the others finished piling the torn up carpet, they helped Clara and the Woodleys and the other two servants weave the piano wire together. All in all, it took a little less than half an hour. By then the pile at the center bubbled and spewed smoke.

“We ain’t got long,” Frederick said. “The demons’ll be stronger and smarter when they rise again. That’s why they’re taking so long, the better to properly gather themselves this time. Now let’s drag in all this furniture around the pile. We’ll weave these strands around and above the pile like a web. Draw it tight as you can without breaking the bonds.”

As Frederick and Hawkins handled the sofa, Frederick asked “How’s your sanity holding, Inspector?”

“Better than I’d have expected, were someone to have told me this would be my evening. Yours?”

“Never finer. Or I’ve gone utterly mad and am simply at ease with it. Perhaps that happened long ago, so it’s the madness preserves me now.”

“Still, I’m curious how you’ve any instinct at all for strategy against demons.”

Frederick glanced back at the bubbling pile. “I ain’t sure I do.”

Once they’d strung up wires, Frederick said “It won’t hold ’em, just trip and slow ’em up. In that moment, these officers must be ready to shoot down as many as possible, quickly as possible.”

“And what’ll you be doing while we face the monsters?” demanded Hawkins.

“I’m off to flush out Ratcliff.”

“What good’ll that do?”

“If my hunch is right, you’ll see soon enough. If I’m wrong, well… have you any hunches of your own, Inspector?”

“No.”

“Good. Then get ready. Clara, get everyone else into the room where you’ve stowed your uncle.”

Clara nodded gravely and began gathering them. Before they filed from the room, Frederick stopped Genevieve. “I’ll have that back now, little love,” he said, slipping the gun from her hand.

She looked into his eyes. “You’re off to kill my father.” He looked away. “See that he doesn’t die too quickly.” She spat on the floor between them then followed the others into the hallway.

“Where shall we make our stand?” asked the plainclothes officer.

Frederick clapped the officer on the shoulder. “You’ll follow me to the top of the stairs. When the beasts come, shoot at them from the banister above.”

“I shall guard the passage to the others,” said Hawkins.

“You will not,” said Frederick. “You’d draw them straight to you, they’d be through with you in an instant, and be on their way to the others. You’ll shoot from the dining room doorway. Shove the table or something across and shoot from behind it. You both have spare bullets, I gather?” The officers nodded. “Then reload now.” Frederick checked his gun. Genevieve had left him two shots. He’d have to make do. He tucked the gun into his trousers waist and picked up the saber. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be upstairs.”

Frederick mounted the steps in a crouch, heard the plainclothes officer scurrying behind him. He neared the top and peered over the final step, along the floor into the darkened corridor, expecting to see Ratcliff ready to shoot him. Ratcliff wasn’t there. Frederick peered down the corridor Ratcliff had taken. Behind him, he heard the pile of torn-up carpet bubble and pop louder. He looked back, saw the circle of furniture in the center, saw the wire web between it. Amber smoke rose and thickened through that web. From deep within the smoke came the growling chatter of the beasts. They seemed to echo from their bygone age, as though the smoke would clear to reveal them upon their ancient battlefield, with Bran the Blessed standing resolute before them.

Frederick didn’t wait to see if the young officer took his post, but slipped straight into the shadows of the corridor. The deeper he went the safer he felt, even though those shadows might cut him down with gunfire any second. But the hallway was empty. A line of doors ran down either side. Which of them would open on his enemy? If only he could think of the best way to make the enemy be the one to open the door… Perhaps he wouldn’t have to. He stayed close to the more deeply shadowed wall. The noise downstairs drew further and further away, leaving him in a strange dark calmness. He reached the end of the hallway, pressed his back to the wall and waited, his sword lowered. A moment later the roars and screeches of beasts shook the house, accompanied by the tearing of flesh, the crashing and splintering of wood and glass. He couldn’t hear the hum and twang as the wires strained and snapped, but he imagined it and smiled. Most of the beasts would have materialized around the wires, so the metal ran through them, tearing their flesh and guts when they moved. They’d be battering and crushing each other as their flesh filled out in the close space, like bony meat in a grinder. A moment later the first shot rang out from atop the stairs. One of the beasts howled louder. Then came Hawkins’s shots. There was no sound yet of monstrous feet bounding across the floor, only the crash of furniture. Possibly some of the winged ones had gotten free and were already in flight.

A door opened midway up the hall. Out shambled a tall lean shape, its back to Frederick, head cocked like a curious child going to innocently investigate strange noises. A bloody cloth was bound tight around Ratcliff’s neck like a cravat. Frederick slipped silently towards him from behind. He was ready to draw his gun, but the sword felt so perfect in his grasp, so at home… He wanted, needed to feel his enemy’s fall, feel the body twist and buckle against his arm like the first monster he’d faced. In his zeal he must have made some noise. He’d closed half the distance when Ratcliff turned and pointed the gun at him.

“Still you’d fight, Mr. Hawthorne!” Ratcliff’s voice rippled shrilly with mad giggles. Frederick couldn’t see his face, but he imagined Ratcliff’s eyes bulging and twitching wilder than ever. “You’d have done well in the military. I should have loved to have such a fine madman as you under my command.”

“I doubt it. So why don’t you go join the fight you’ve started?” Frederick’s hand tightened on the sword. The blade rose slightly. He watched Ratcliff’s finger and thumb, on the trigger and hammer of the pistol. “Or have you gone too mad from realizing what you’ve landed us in to keep comprehending it?”

Ratcliff watched Frederick’s blade gleam in the dim light. “The noble savage stands resolute against the unstoppable tide of a corrupt civilization! How romantic! As always, the savage comes with the sword against the gun. It’s a dead fight, either way.” Ratcliff’s head rolled back, from side to side. “Listen to it! Hell has consumed us all and there’s no escape, and still you’d fight your little duel as though –”

Frederick’s free hand shot behind him, slung out the gun, shot Ratcliff in the stomach. Ratcliff buckled, dropped his gun, flew backwards and sprawled across the floor. Frederick stormed forward, bent and locked his gun arm around Ratcliff’s neck, hoisted him up and faced him forward.

“Aye, so it always seems to go,” Frederick growled in Ratcliff’s ear as he dragged him out to the top of the stairs. Ratcliff didn’t fight him, exactly, but thrashed and twisted as he bled out, squealing and screeching his agony through clenched teeth.

Hawkins and the plainclothes officer had fired their guns empty. Frederick couldn’t see Hawkins from here, but a slick warty blue-skinned tusk-mouthed apelike beast the size of an ox barreled towards the dining room door. The plainclothes officer slumped forward on the railing, eyes glazed, still aiming and squeezing the trigger on empty chambers. Several small imps scampered up the stairs. Frederick had been right: there were more this time. The air-swimming eel-thing he’d stabbed earlier flew straight up for the officer. Frederick flung Ratcliff against the banister and fired his last shot into the eel-thing’s head. It folded upwards mid-flight, dropped out of sight, thumped somewhere below. The imps reached the top of the stairs and rounded the corner towards them. Frederick stood ready with his sword, but looked out frantically over the room. Several beasts lay dead in and around the shambles of the trap, melting slower than before. Above them hovered a gigantic winged shape, a red tusk-mouthed thing with bulging orange eyes. A red forked tail lashed behind it, the tip leaving smoking scars in the floor and walls.

Frederick looked straight into the king fiend’s eyes and roared “Demon of the East!”

The imps on the landing skidded to a halt. So did the apelike thing that rushed Hawkins. Frederick stared deep into the eyes of the great thing of the pit. Those eyes stared back into him, burning him. He tightened his whole body against it. The lower monsters shuffled in place and looked about uncertainly, as if awaiting their master’s command. The tusky red jaws parted, letting out their guttural thunder in a single rumbling word. “Bran.”

Frederick twitched with confusion. “You got the wrong bloke, mate. You fellows have been out of sorts for quite a while, you might say.”

“You are Bran, who a while ago banished us to confinement. You wear the slighter frame of a diminished age, yet your spirit has lived on and resides in flesh again, as does ours. You left the task for which we had been summoned incomplete, and we may not return to our beloved home realm until our duty is fulfilled. Yet that duty no longer exists for us to fulfill, for though the time has been short by our reckoning, it has been so long by yours that the conflicts of old have gone to the same dust as the shape you wore then.”

“That’s a dilemma, sure enough.” Frederick nodded in agreement.

The beast continued, “Our purpose then was war, so we came to your world in shapes suited for war. Thus we are trapped together, your kind and mine in this midrealm, and we feast on you in battle, unguided, for there is nothing else for us until we can find our way home.”

“I suppose you ain’t thought of what you’ll do, once you’ve killed all of us and are still trapped in this midrealm as you call it.”

“Our shapes are those of war, and there is nothing else for us –”

“Right. So what do we need to do, then, so’s we can all get back to where we belong with no more ripping each other to pieces?”

“He that summoned us, your ancient mortal foe, is not here to release us from his service. There is only you, Bran. From him we would have required a sacrifice in blood, and so we shall require it from you.”

Frederick grinned wolfishly. “Aye, thought you might. Well, I’ve just the thing.” Ratcliff had slumped down along the railing and lay on his side moaning and shuddering, curled into a ball. Frederick dragged him to his feet so he screamed. “It’s this one here freed you from your smaller confines, brought us all into this midrealm. He meant to bring you into his service as Bran’s – my, so you say – ancient foe did. As you see, though, he ain’t up to it. Will he do?”

“You must spill his blood for us.”

Frederick snarled, dragged Ratcliff to the edge of the staircase and thrust him outward. The imps parted and hopped backwards from him. “I’ve already spilled his blood, you idiot! Look at him!”

“You must spill it before us, in offering to us, so that we may offer it to the gods below to whom we answer, as toll to reenter our homeland.”

“And if I do that for you, me and mine will be sent back, as we are, to our own realm?” Ratcliff had bled very weak and dull, but he suddenly strained and moaned against Frederick with fresh enthusiasm.

“That is not mine to decide. That matter is between the greater, darker gods who have drawn us here, and the gods of light with whom they sometimes duel and sometimes consort.”

Frederick sighed. “Well then… Whatever they decide, will you do us one little favor?”

“Name it.”

“Take our dead and all traces of them with you. Take them as a snack for the way home if you care to.”

One of the bulging demonic eyes seemed to arch with a mix of bafflement and amusement. “That will not satisfy your people’s customs as I remember them. Do you not wish to see the bodies of your dead… laid properly to rest?”

“To hell with custom! As you’ve said, see, it’s a diminished age, full of endless legal tedium I’m always needing to tiptoe over. Leaving them bodies around, assuming we’re let go, would cause me further trouble, see?”

The creature grinned. “It shall be done. No trace of this battle shall follow you or your companions home to your realm, save whatever injuries you carry and that which you yourselves have wrought.”

“Here goes, then.”

Frederick started down the stairs, shoving Ratcliff ahead. The imps hopped and scampered behind and alongside them in a gibbering parade. As he descended, he looked about and saw the demons converge towards him, grumbling and drooling eagerly. The fallen, half-melted ones stirred to life, rose and slogged towards the foot of the stairs with their fellows. The leader continued to hover above the wreckage, surveying all patiently. Ratcliff squealed through his teeth and struggled helplessly. Frederick imagined Genevieve squealing and struggling against her father, and he gripped Ratcliff more cruelly, smiling at his captive’s state. They reached the landing and the demons drew in close. Frederick felt and smelled their hot breath. His flesh crawled and shrank against his bones. He raised the sword to Ratcliff’s throat, then looked at Ratcliff, looked at the demons. Frederick lowered the sword, turned it in his hand, and drove the tip into the floor. The blade bobbed, giving off a faint musical hum. Frederick reached into his fine dinner trousers and found the one item he’d transferred from the plain trousers he’d come wearing. He raised his hand in front of Ratcliff’s face and flipped open the blade of his prized pocketknife. Keeping his eyes on those of the chief demon, he dragged the razor edge down the side of Ratcliff’s face, scraping the bone, temple to jawline. He’d forgotten how fiercely such a wound will bleed, and was startled as it splashed his hand. The demonic eyes around him lit up at the sight of the blood, and their nostrils flared.

The red light spilling through the windows vanished. So did the lights of the house. As darkness came Frederick saw demons swarming in over him. He let out a shuddering moan and flung Ratcliff away from him, at them. Ratcliff’s flesh and bones ripped and crunched, but he didn’t scream. Only Frederick and the demons screamed.

#

Frederick groaned and stretched. Bright clean light seeped through his closed eyelids. He realized he’d slept without dreaming and felt relief. He also felt sore, horribly sore. A blanket had been thrown over him and his torso was still bare beneath it. His limbs and nerves and wits had been pulled towards their limits in a short span of time. He remembered everything that had happened, better than he cared to, until the lights had gone out. He spread his arms, and the back of a sofa met his left. A soft hand stroked his face. He opened his eyes. The blackness of a good London night spilled through a small window. The first hint of dawn bled through it, blue not red.

“Thank heaven,” whispered Clara. “You’re alive, and you are safe. Frederick… Frederick, do you hear me? Do you understand me?” They were in a small sitting room. She looked tired and pale, but seemed to have her sanity intact.

“Aye, my mind’s still my own, you needn’t worry.” He sat up, pulling the blanket about his shoulders. He took her hand and urged her onto the seat next to him. “Are you well, my dear?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“And your uncle?”

“He’s in his bed, convalescing. Doctors were sent for and have seen to him.”

He leaned in on her. “And did those doctors inquire –”

“All excuses have been made. You needn’t worry.”

He heard in her voice that she didn’t wish to further discuss what they’d experienced. He settled back. “Of course, love. I’m sorry.”

She squeezed his hand. “You needn’t be. Thank you so much, for everything.”

“What of everyone else?”

She shivered and slumped slightly. “The servants, those who still… They tend to their business well enough, saying very little. The Woodleys and that younger officer have been seen away to the hospital. They moved only when guided. They were horrid to watch. They haven’t spoken, and I doubt they ever shall again, at least anything comprehensible. I fear their minds are shattered. The vicar and that other officer are in the next room. They’re eager to see how you’ve fared. Shall I tell them yet that you’re awake?”

“Not yet, dear, please,” he said quietly. “Would you… would you just sit with me a bit?”

“Gladly.”

After a long silence he asked, “What of Miss Genevieve?”

“I’ve sent her to rest in my own room.”

“You will see that she’s taken care of, won’t you, however necessary?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll have to look in on her wellbeing myself.”

“I… Frederick, if it’s not too soon to speak of such things… I would hope that wouldn’t be your only reason for coming about.”

He smiled and stroked her cheek. “Of course it wouldn’t. There is the matter of a book I promised to loan you, my dear.” He winked at her.

#

Finally Frederick faced Vicar Overton and Inspector Hawkins. The vicar seemed most reluctant to speak with him, so Frederick pressed him first. Best to get the really unpleasant matters out of the way.

“I don’t see why you ain’t at ease, your grace.”

“Don’t you?”

“Well, let’s see. Together we’ve foiled the works of an evil man, set a young girl free from his horrid attention, and I’ve banished the demons back to hell. True, a few souls misplaced their mortal coils, ’tis a shame. All things considering, I’d say we were lucky enough.”

“Banished the demons, so you put it.”

Frederick’s eyes narrowed. “So you didn’t stay in the room as you were told.”

“For what you have done tonight, Mr. Frederick Hawthorne, no mortal law shall ever touch you. When I heard the battle start, I felt compelled to leave the room and move towards it. I was unarmed, yes, certain to die. But as a man of God, my conscience would not permit me to sit by while men clashed with the fiends. When I heard the chief fiend’s terms, I was prepared to offer myself as a sacrifice.”

“Then you heard my counteroffer. I see you didn’t approve. You still might have stepped forward.”

“Had I offered myself to the demon, would you have stopped me?”

“I’d’ve tried talking you out of it, called you a silly sod, but I’d’ve left the final choice to you, if that’s how you’d wanted it. You’d not have saved Ratcliff.”

“Ratcliff’s life was not my concern. You bargained with the fiends, and you sacrificed a man of your own race to the abyss.”

“He weren’t of my race. He was a white man. I’m Irish, remember? Would you rather I’d let hell have us all?”

“Did you ever think to sacrifice yourself?”

“Why would I? I had Ratcliff.”

“Good evening, Mr. Hawthorne,” the vicar said hopelessly and walked sadly towards the door.

Hawkins leaned against the fireplace, watching the exchange with cold amusement. He smoked one of Ian Beauregarde’s cigarettes and sipped Ian Beauregarde’s brandy. The decanter rested on the mantle next to his head. He poured a second glass as Frederick approached.

Frederick took the glass. “Much thanks, Inspector.”

“Thank Sir Ian. It’s all his.”

“It’s a small compensation for being that silly swell’s friend.” He watched Hawkins laugh and nod. “So you’re Ian’s friend, too, eh? Were you also friends with that bastard Ratcliff?”

“He was my commanding officer once, and I knew him then to be a horrid man. To this day I call myself a coward for not stopping some of his ill treatment of the native people, though to do so would have been treasonous. Sir Ian, whom I also met there, hasn’t such good judge of character.”

“He counts us as friends, which has seen him through well enough. Got any more of his smokes handy, then?”

Hawkins took a fresh cigarette from a polished oak box next to the decanter, lit it and passed it to Frederick. “By the way, good show, sir.”

“Glad to hear you had wits enough to watch. Sorry if I denied you a splendid grapple with that blue ape thing.”

“I meant just now, with that rude clergyman.”

“He ain’t so bad, just naïve I suppose.”

Hawkins shrugged and grunted noncommittally through closed lips. “Well, Mr. Hawthorne, I suppose I’ve missed another chance to catch you in the act.”

“I suppose you have.”

“…And since it grew so dark, I shan’t be able to tell anyone that I’ve seen you fall fainting.”

“I didn’t faint,” Frederick snapped. “Something… must have struck me in the head.”

“As you say, sir. By the way, you dropped this.” Hawkins produced Frederick’s closed pocketknife.

Frederick snatched the knife and pocketed it quickly. “Thanks.” He blew a plume of smoke. “This is fine tobacco. Ian at least has good taste in some things. Next time our paths cross, Inspector, I’ll have to make sure to save your hide again. I rather prefer you as an ally.”

“As well you should.” Hawkins sipped, shook his head, chuckled. “Bran the Blessed…”

“I know! Imagine it. Little ol’ me… that fellow.”

“Yes, you, a man of Irish blood. You know, in the version I read of that story, Bran’s siege of Ireland proved so bloody that no men of the country were left alive… only six pregnant women, it is said, whose sons went on to repopulate the land. Do you suppose, in all his fighting, ol’ Bran stopped to do the honors for one of those girls? God may be an Englishman, but only Ireland can claim the blood of that most powerful warrior.”

“Aye. Do me a favor, would you? Whenever we fight together again, if I’m killed, cut off my head and bury it on the edge of the East End, so it faces Buckingham Fucking Palace.”

“I was born in the East End myself, you know. I should be happy to do so.” Hawkins eyed Frederick curiously. “Are you melancholy about something, Mr. Hawthorne?”

“It’ll pass no doubt. It’s merely, well… I’ve faced down the demons of hell itself this night, been told I’m the living embodiment of an ancient hero. Yet here I stand, same ol’ Frederick, and I’ll scarcely find any excitement in this life to equal what I faced in that earlier one, assuming for a moment there’s any truth in it. Soon I’ll need to get home to my pub and salvage my business. No doubt I’ll get into more trouble before long, yet after surmounting all this, it seems all life shall feel rather dull.”

Hawkins smiled and clapped Frederick on the shoulder. “Perhaps you measure too much by the world’s darkness. Perhaps it is possible, even for our sort, to find fulfillment in the world’s light…” Hawkins’s eyes went somewhere else in the room. “…In the things of warmth, and of love.”

Frederick followed Hawkins’s gaze to the hallway. Clara hung back watching in the shadows. She smiled tiredly at him. He smiled back at her and said, “You may be right at that after all, Inspector.”

#

Genevieve Ratcliff slumbered peacefully in Clara Beauregarde’s bed. In her dreams she saw a bright open plain of mist and wind. Far ahead, the brightness and wind gave way to a swirling, translucent blackness, pulsing from within with amber flames. Towards the blackness, the wind carried along a cloud of scaly winged shapes. The largest shape herded the others along, its pointed tail lashing about behind it. It turned its thorny head back to her and called out, “You have served us well, child. Go your way in peace through your world, as we go to ours.”

“Thank you,” Genevieve called after them.

Here in her dreams she’d found the demons, for they’d been able to reach out in no other way to the people of this earth. Since her mother’s death, Genevieve had lain awake every night, dreading her father’s visits, when she would be forced to see to his needs, as he put it. Always he visited her, ’til she wished to kill him. But how could she kill her own father, even with what he did to her? She felt too weak in body and spirit to act against him, but had anyone else set to do him harm, she’d not try to hinder them even if she could. But who could act against a man of such power, both physically and socially? She prayed hard as she could to the Christian god to be delivered from him. The Christian god never answered. Instead she was answered, in her dreams, by the dark gods in the ancient books that were her father’s obsession.

“He seeks us,” the leader of the dark gods told her in her dreams, “but he knows not what he would bring upon himself. We would happily oblige his folly, but we are ourselves shackled. Bring about our release, and we shall bring about yours.”

“Tell me how.”

“There is a man… a man known in this lifetime as Frederick Hawthorne. In another age he was the man of whom you have read named Bran the Blessed. It is he who imprisoned us. He shall set us free, and in so doing set you free.” And the leader of the dark gods told her what would need to transpire. He told her first of her father’s old friend Ian Beauregarde, things her father didn’t know. He told her what her father would need to do to employ this man, how the wheels would be set turning, on the road to Frederick Hawthorne and the freedom of the demons. “You shall awake remembering all of this. Go to your father… and simply tell him the truth, that his gods have visited you in your dreams. He shall doubt you at first, but curiosity will compel him to investigate what you tell him. As ever more of it proves true, you shall become his little prophet, orchestrating his designs for him out of harm’s way.”

Well, she hadn’t been out of harm’s way when it all came together, and in her panic she’d acted briefly, however feebly, against the dark gods along with the men. She’d even once, spontaneously, found it in herself to try doing the dark gods’ work for them. But the dark gods hadn’t harmed her, and now they had kept their promise.

Genevieve smiled in her sleep and moved on towards a life of brighter, fearless dreams.

Matt Spencer is the author of the well-selling novel THE DRIFTING SOUL, illustrated by award-winning artist Stephen R. Bissette. His short fiction has appeared in Aphelion, Back Roads, Demon Minds, Gallery of Snuff, InfinityPlus, Lilith's Lair, and Hardluck Storis. Mr. Spencer has worked as a film critic, film script editor, adult film star, factory worker, and professional chef. He now lives in Kansas, where he functions as the caring voice of reason and council - and occasionally "enforcer" - for family and friends. Visit him on line at http://www.myspace.com/edge_of_the_dark_lands.

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