Accursed (19 page)

Yet despite the evil that festered in him, Oblis could accomplish little here at Ludlow House except offend and annoy those who looked after him. The Swift siblings had spent days devising just the right combination of spells to weave through the house, and particularly this room, to keep the demon prisoner.

“Did you hear me,
ghost
?” Oblis said, as if the word were an insult.

Byron sniffed. He shot Oblis a sour look.

“You should wipe your mouth, oh castoff of the devil, and then shut it,” he muttered. There were those he loved, those he feared, and those who were beneath his notice. There were very few beings in the Lord’s creation whom he hated, but he knew what Oblis had done to Bodicea’s daughters, and here he sat with the physical evidence of the heart-wrenching grief the demon had caused the Swifts. Yes, he hated Oblis with every fiber of his soul.

Oblis smiled hideously.

“Shall I hurt you again, Oblis? Are you simply a glutton for punishment, or do you enjoy the pain? I wonder, for that has never been one of my proclivities. If so, however, I shall oblige,” Byron said, his voice thick with warning.

Oblis only broadened his smile, until it was like a gash across poor Henry’s withered face.

“Do your worst,
ghost,
” hissed Oblis. He strained against his bonds, his body shaking with anticipation.

But Byron was no fool. The demon wished to draw him into a fight, hoping to shatter the magical bonds that restrained him. Byron recalled all too well how Nigel Townsend had been lured into battle with the demon, only to find himself unconscious on the floor, his captive having escaped.

“If you insist, Vapor. There is a bit of verse I have been composing for several weeks now. Shall I recite it for you, with all its dramatic inflection?”

“No!” Oblis shrieked. “No poems!”

Byron laughed softly, the spark of mischief in his heart. “Oh, this is no mere poem. This is an ode to love in rhyming couplets—”

Oblis covered his ears and shrieked as if his cries would protect him from the poetic onslaught. Byron hadn’t even begun to recite his latest rhyme and already the demon was in agony. It made Byron giddy.

But just as he began to clear his throat, even though the need for that was a thing of the past, he was interrupted by a ripple in the ether.

Byron looked up to find the ghost of Lord Admiral Nelson floating beside him, as grim-faced in death as he had been in life. He was altogether too serious for Byron’s tastes. But that made it easy to agitate him, which was a pleasure all its own.

“You’ve terrible timing, Horatio,” Byron moaned. Oblis perked up, looking out through Henry’s wretched eyes with curiosity now that he had been saved from Byron’s poetic flogging.

“But I come bearing interesting news, my friend.” Horatio spoke with a clipped, nasal cadence; years of commanding naval fleets resonated in his authoritative tone. “A tale that I know you will find very curious indeed. The earl of Claridge—”

Byron snorted, “That lecherous old windbag? The self-same syphilitic glock who pokes his prick into whatever poor chambermaid he can trap alone in a room?”

Horatio began to nod, but Byron cut him off.

“I detest him.”

Horatio nodded again. “Yes, yes, I’m aware of his reputation. That is why this news bears such import.”

Oblis sat up and watched the two ghosts, his ears taking in their every word.

“Has he died? Passed into the ghostly realm to torment our female peers? Bodicea shall make short work of him,” Byron commented wryly.

“Nothing so fortuitous as that, I’m afraid. But far more colorful. It seems the earl has gone mad. Off to Bethlehem Hospital for him, for taking liberties with the bishop of Manchester’s niece at a dinner party.” Though he was a phantom, a pale, translucent shade, Lord Nelson’s cheeks reddened at the word
liberties.

“So they’ve taken this man to a sanatorium, have they?”

The two ghosts turned to look at Henry Swift, who stared at them with a man’s face and a demon’s eyes. He sat on the cold wooden floor with his back against the far wall.

“Do they know the curse that ails him?” Oblis asked, his voice perfectly conversational, as though they were all reasonable men. Then he grinned, and his voice dropped to an insidious whisper. “Could they still see the whites of his eyes, or had the change already begun?”

“The change?” Byron was on guard. Though it was rarely clear, Oblis never spoke without reason. He thrived on toying with their minds, and this new gambit might be some attempt to play them for fools.

“Ask the lovely Tamara if she saw the whites of his eyes,” Oblis rasped cryptically. “Before he changed.”

Horatio looked askance at Byron. The one thing Nelson abhorred was being left in the dark. Years spent with the Royal Navy had only encouraged his controlling nature.

“Has something happened in my absence? Tell me . . .”

Byron nodded, understanding now that Oblis had knowingly confirmed a connection between the lecherous behavior of the earl of Claridge and the encounter with Frederick Martin.

“It seems, Horatio, that a new shadow has fallen upon the land. Albion’s defenders must unite once more.”

T
HE BUILDING WAS
small and squat, with no means of illumination except the candle stubs that its occupants brought with them to light their way in its depths. There were no windows, so that even at midday the interior was black as pitch.

It was inside this inauspicious building, not far from the stink of the Thames, that many foreign treasures lay hidden, wrapped tightly in linen and then ensconced in sturdy wooden crates between layers of brittle straw.

The crates did not stay in the building long, though, as the dampness that came from being so near the water could destroy their contents.

Two men kept watch over the place, though they both tried to stay well away from the interior, preferring to
observe
the building from the safety of a nearby public house. They paid one of the young street Arabs a few coins to keep an eye out, and report to them at the public house if there was trouble.

In the past six months, they had seen neither hide nor hair of the boy except when he came for his coin at the end of the day.

There were few other patrons in the Merry Lady this early in the morning. The two watchmen sat at their usual table, a tankard of ale each in front of them. They were both in their twenties, but the younger—who was more brawn than brain in the outfit—looked much older than his companion. He had stringy red hair and close-set eyes that shone dully with the blankness of apathy. His partner, a small, wiry man with dark hair and almond-shaped eyes, had a sly expression that was prominent in his eyes, and enhanced by his tiny cauliflower-shaped ears and pointy rat’s nose.

They sat like this all day, staring at each other as they sipped their ale, until one or the other passed out face-first on the tabletop. After dark, the less inebriated of the two would carry his companion back to the flophouse where they spent their nights. When the next morning arrived, they started the whole process again.

Today was like any other. They sat silently sipping their drinks. The younger of the two watched the barmaid as she wiped down the wooden counter with a damp cloth. He liked the way her breasts jiggled in her bodice as she scrubbed. She was a thick-waisted girl with a pockmarked face and greasy blond hair that she kept pinned loosely at the nape of her neck. She paid no mind to the watchman’s leering gaze. There was no shortage of lecherous drunks at the Merry Lady.

The barmaid jumped with fright at the sound of the front door being roughly thrown open by a scrawny, filthy boy with long hair and a dirty face. He must have been running, for his breath was ragged in his throat. Nevertheless, he galloped over to the two watchmen and began to speak in quick bursts.

“I were watchin’ . . . as you liked . . . and then there were . . . this
sound
—”

The older watchman collared the urchin and yanked him bodily toward the table. The boy was wild-eyed and unfocused, and he struggled to control his breathing, until the man cuffed him roughly with the back of his hand.

The man’s voice was low and hoarse as he spoke.

“Show me.”

The street was almost deserted as the two watchmen opened the door to their place of employment and stepped inside. The older man fumbled around in the darkness before pulling two candle stubs from a niche in the wall. The meager light from the candles illuminated only the first few feet in front of them. The rest of the large front room was lost in darkness.

“Damn the boy!” the older watchman said through gritted teeth.

The child had refused to go into the darkened shanty. He had led the two men back to the building, but taken off toward the docks as soon as the older watchman loosened his grip. Now they had no idea what the boy had heard or seen. They were on their own in this unsettling blackness.

They moved forward, weaving their way through the unpacked crates. The candlelight barely illuminated their way, but the men could see in its flickering that a number of the crates had been ransacked.

On the floor lay the shattered remains of some antique marble busts. A pair of paintings, their canvases shredded, rested on top of the marble debris. When they reached the next doorway, the older man paused, holding up his hand for silence.

In the inky blackness of the next room, something was breathing.

There was a low chattering sound from deep in the darkness, and then a sound like knives being raked across stone. It filled the air. The two watchmen still couldn’t see past the ring of candlelight, and their faces were twin mirrors of graven fear.

A shriek tore from within that darkened room.

The men turned as one and ran for the door, but the crates that littered the floor barred their way. The younger watchman tripped and sprawled across two large boxes, his limbs in a tangle, scrambling to right himself, flailing. Exposed and vulnerable.

The other watchman turned as his partner began to scream. Frozen in fear, he watched the scene that played out in the weak glow of his candle. The thing that leaped from the darkness was massive, its head nearly scraping the ceiling. Its eyes were green-yellow coals burning in the shadows, and they fixed on him with quiet intensity, even as their owner reached for his associate, hauling the younger man up by the leg.

The fellow thrashed in the air, caught in the grip of a thing that could only be the spawn of Hell.

“Help me, Dinsmore!” the younger watchman wailed.

But Dinsmore still could not move. He stared in horror as the thing grasped the fallen man’s other leg and, in one swift motion, ripped him in two. The screaming turned into a bloody, burbling sound.

That broke the paralysis. Dinsmore spun, his own voice now rising in a scream of terror that came up from some deep, primal place within him. Breathless, he ran . . . and collided almost instantly with a second hulking monstrosity.

His heart seized up as his face struck cold, prickly, stubbled skin. The thing picked him up by the shoulders, causing him to drop his candle. It fell into a pile of dry straw that had spilled from one of the crates, and the straw began to catch fire. The creature stepped away from the flames, which had quickly begun to spread, even as it drew him up to its own height, his feet dangling beneath him.

Dinsmore’s eyes were wide, and the scream continued to tear from his throat, though it was more like a throaty moan now. His nostrils caught the rotted-meat smell of the creature’s breath, and he began to gag, interrupting the screaming.

The monster’s jaws opened wide, as though unhinged, rows of needle fangs glistening inside. Then it shoved Dinsmore’s face into its maw and snapped its jaws down, shearing his head off, teeth grinding through bone and muscle.

It swallowed his head whole, then threw the remains of the watchman’s body into the flames, which had already begun to consume the rest of the building and the two halves of his partner’s corpse.

As the flames took over more and more of the building, the monsters vanished into the smoke, leaving their victims to burn.