Accursed (12 page)

Bodicea made room for him. Though he would have been able to pass right through her insubstantial form, neither of them would have been comfortable sharing space.

As he neared the door he heard a pair of voices engaged in energetic conversation, or some semblance of dialogue at least. Both of the voices were familiar.

One belonged to the demon, Oblis, and the other to William’s father. But where Oblis most often spoke in Henry Swift’s voice, rather than his own horrid tones, there was a difference. For when Oblis spoke, and the voice of Henry Swift answered . . .

“Father,” William whispered.

“. . . them alone, I beg you,” Henry pleaded, his voice muffled by the door.

“I’ll do with them as I please,”
the demon replied.

In his mind’s eye, William could picture the two of them speaking with the same lips, facial expression changing with each shift of persona. He glanced at Bodicea, arching an eyebrow curiously, but she only nodded toward the door, indicating that he should continue to listen.

“I can see it in your mind. Do you think I am asleep, when you suffocate me here inside? I witness every bit of your filth. I suffer the torture of knowing how you conduct your depravity with my voice, using my hands.”

A terrible sadness gripped William’s heart. His father had rarely spoken with such strength of conviction, yet it offered no comfort. If this was real, and not merely Oblis toying with him, then he knew he ought to rejoice at the idea that his father still lived.

Yet to know what he was experiencing, every moment of this damnation . . . William could scarcely breathe.

“Of what importance is that to me?”
Oblis mocked. “
There is nothing you can do. You always were a very small man. That’s why there was so much room in here for me.”

“What are you hiding?” Henry demanded. “You listen to the voices in the ether. I know, because I hear them, too, though I cannot understand the languages they speak. Yet I have seen the way you flinch at their words, the way they trouble you.”

“Of course you cannot understand, rodent. The tongues of devils are not for human ears. But to me . . . Your offspring might cage me, old fool, but I am not alone.

“The masters of the deepest pits speak my name, and I heed them. All the merriment of Hell unfolds for my amusement. I am eternal, sir. And if I desire it, I shall occupy this tender, rotting husk of yours until it stumbles its last, and the rush and throb of blood subsides.

“Darkness is patient, Henry Swift. Ever patient. Ever vigilant.”

There was a pause that followed, long enough that William became concerned. He wanted to look upon his father’s face, to see if he could locate the man behind those eyes, instead of the demon. But when he reached for the doorknob, Bodicea grabbed at his wrist.

Her fingers were cold upon his flesh and he looked up at her, startled. It required constant focus for a ghost to make contact with the physical world. Their yearning for the richness of life caused most ghosts to concentrate upon the senses, so that they could see and hear and smell. Taste was possible, but only briefly, as their ephemeral substance could not contain food or drink more than a moment, if at all. Touch was the most difficult. It required intense focus for a specter to make contact with the natural world.

The supernatural, however . . . that was different.

The Protectors of Albion were human, but they were suffused with the supernatural. It required far less concentration for a ghost to touch William or Tamara than an ordinary man or woman. The touch was fleeting, for maintaining that concentration was difficult, but it was possible. The knowledge was what caused William to be so unsettled that Tamara had allowed Byron such access to her boudoir.

Now, though, Bodicea’s grip on his wrist was like cold iron.

And then her fingers passed through his flesh and bone, insubstantial again. But her message was clear. He should be silent and listen. There might be something to be learned, here.

When at last Henry spoke again, William was surprised to hear laughter in his voice.

“Do you mean to tell me that your masters—these things from the deepest pits, as you say—they know where you are?”

“Of course. Nothing escapes their notice.”
Oblis snorted.

“And yet they do nothing to free you? Apparently you are even farther beneath their notice than I had thought. I’m both amused and disappointed. I’d hoped I warranted a more fearsome devil. Not some hellish court jester who—”

“Enough!”
Oblis roared.
“You speak only at my sufferance, fool.”

“And why is that?” Henry asked. “Why allow me my voice at all? Could it be that you know the truth? That you have been abandoned? You want to be quit of your prison just as much as I wish to be free of mine. Perhaps, if you agree to leave me, Tamara and William will permit your departure.”

The demon laughed then. The sound was sickening, so that William felt bile burn up the back of his throat. He could barely hold on to the plate of breakfast he had brought for his father. For the demon, so that his father would survive.

Now he glanced at Bodicea. Her eyes had narrowed, and rage danced in them. If she had a voice in the decision, Oblis would not be allowed to leave. Not after what the demon had done to her daughters, those long centuries ago.

“You are a fool, Henry Swift,”
Oblis sneered.
“Whatever you have seen in the depths of your own soul, you are mistaken. I enjoy the company of your children. I enjoy the pain in their eyes, every time they see me. In fact . . .
William,
it would be lovely if you would abandon your eavesdropping now, to bring me my breakfast before the kippers have gone entirely cold.”

William froze. He held his breath. Oblis knew he was here. Perhaps he had smelled the bacon, or the kippers. Perhaps that meant the demon had known he was listening to the entire exchange. Which, in turn, called into question all that William had gleaned. How much of what had been said was for his benefit? Was it all an act? Did his father really still have a voice? A mind?

A soul?

“Damn you,” William whispered as he balanced the cider glass carefully and turned the knob. He shoved the door open with the toe of his shoe and entered the room.

His father sat in his chair, as always. For just a moment, a sliver of an instant, really, he thought he saw the true Henry Swift in those eyes. Then the demon twisted Henry’s lips up into a smile.

“I do so love breakfast,” Oblis said in his father’s voice. “Do you remember, William, those wonderful breakfasts we had when your mother was still alive? Each one a celebration of family.”

It was as though Oblis could see right inside his mind, inside his heart.

“Damn you,” William snarled again.

With a dark chuckle, Oblis lowered his chin so that he was staring up at William from beneath a heavy brow. “Something nasty in the air, young Master William. Something ugly. A plague of poisoned souls and twisting hatred. The darkness sings with it, and rejoices. Another strain of magic takes the stage and all the foot soldiers of Hell sit back and watch, waiting for the curtain to rise and the show to begin. Oh, you and Tamara are going to be very busy soon, William. There is going to be screaming, and blood. So very much blood.”

William wanted to strike him and force him to be silent. Oblis often muttered about the voices of Hell, about the workings of devils that would threaten Albion soon. But there was something in his tone this morning, something out of the ordinary. Usually he intimated that he would be a part of the mayhem, but not this time. In his ravings this morning, he implied that some
other
force was at work.

A tremor of dread went through William.

“What do you know, demon? What is this plague you speak of?”

Oblis laughed. “I do like you, boy. You and Tamara both, though obviously for very different reasons. I could help you. Might be that I could be indispensable. But what pleasure would there be for me in that?

“Unless . . .” Oblis grinned obscenely with Henry Swift’s mouth as he let the sibilance issue into the room.

“Unless what?” William glared at him.

“I have enjoyed the intoxicating scent of your Miss Winchell, whenever she visits. She is unique. I can tell that I should like to see her face, to
meet
her.”

“Absolutely not!” William replied, fumbling with the breakfast plate so that a slice of bacon dropped to the ground.

“No?” Oblis asked playfully. “Ah, well. I can afford to be patient. Of course, so many will have died by then . . .”

William refused to allow the demon the satisfaction of a reaction. So he picked up a kipper and popped it into Oblis’s mouth, preventing any further response. He fed his father’s possessor as quickly as possible, but the conversation was over.

The very idea that he would expose Sophia to the horror of what his father had become, to the perverse tongue of Oblis, was madness.

And yet even when William at last left the room, numb and exhausted from his emotional sparring with the demon, Oblis’s words echoed in his mind. What if some terrible darkness
was
afoot?

Could the demon actually be of use to them?

T
AMARA AWOKE WITH
an idea.

For weeks she had been scribbling away at a lurid tale of murder and damnation, a brand-new penny dreadful concerning a man, possessed by a demon, stalking women of ill repute and dragging them to a cavernous lair beneath the city. Into the shadowy recesses where the Fleet River—namesake of her nom de plume—traveled underground.

In the months since Ludlow’s death and her inheritance of the power, she had written very little. This new tale,
Underneath,
was intriguing to her, yet it was a chore to write. She seemed to have difficulty finding the words.

How could she make thrilling fiction, portraying the darkest fears of humanity, knowing that the truth was darker still?

Yet this morning she fairly bounced from her bed and slid into her robe, tying it tightly around her. Through the window, she saw that the day had begun as gray as most Highgate dawns, but there seemed promise of sunshine, and the promise was ever and always enough for her.

The lace curtains danced in the breeze that slipped in through the narrowly open windows. It occurred to her that she didn’t know the hour, that there must be breakfast awaiting her downstairs. But Tamara didn’t have time for such concerns this morning.

Her muse had spoken.

Though she had plenty of space in her own chambers for a writing desk, Tamara had worked only in her late grandfather’s rooms, ever since his death. She went out through her anteroom and opened the door to the hall, where she nearly collided with one of the maids. Melinda, she thought.

“Oh, miss, pardon me,” the girl said quickly, backing away as though afraid Tamara might bite her. Melinda carried heavy, embroidered draperies in her arms.

“Not at all,” Tamara said, smiling. “My fault entirely. Not looking where I was going.”

Yet the idea seemed to panic the girl. “No, miss. I can be very clumsy. I’m sure you—”

“I tell you, it was my own clumsiness. Really. Don’t give it another thought, Melinda.”

In her uniform, with her straight brown hair and narrow features, the girl seemed plain. But when Tamara called her by her name, she positively glowed. The maid lowered her head in a sort of curtsy, accomplished in a way that wouldn’t drag the drapes on the ground.

“So tell me, how are you finding Ludlow House?” Tamara asked. “Do you like it here?”

The girl’s eyebrows shot up. “Miss?”

Tamara grinned. “A simple question, Melinda. Do you like it here?”

Once again the girl refused to look her mistress in the eye. “Very much so. It isn’t . . . well, it isn’t like any other house I’ve ever been in, is it? Never quite know what’s around the next corner.” The maid looked up now, clearly anxious to find if she had offended her employer.

“You’re not frightened then?” Tamara asked. “So many of them are.”

“Frightened?” the girl asked, as if she had forgotten her place. “Whatever the nature of those who come to stay at Ludlow House, miss, everyone’s been quite kind to me. I’ve known what it means to be frightened in my life. This house is far more welcoming than my father’s, I daresay.”

The final words escaped her lips as though she wished to hold them back, but could not. Even before she finished speaking, her eyes widened with the fear that she had been too bold.

“I’m sorry, mum. I don’t know what got into me.”

Tamara uttered a tiny gasp, as if horrified. When she saw the alarm in Melinda’s eyes, she laughed softly. “Don’t worry, Melinda. It’s not your outspokenness that caused me to react, but the fact that you called me
mum.
Dear Lord, don’t
ever
do that again, I beg you. I’m hardly older than you are.

“As for your thoughts about Ludlow House, I’m pleased to hear them. And to have you here. Now you’d best get on with your work. Those drapes are for the rear guest room, I suspect. The room Mr. Townsend uses when he is here.”