House of Corruption (12 page)

“It grows late,” Reynard said. “I wish I could be of service—”

“Driver,
why
have we stopped?”

“Miss,” Reynard insisted. “My responsibilities preclude being away for so long. If your father could attend personally to complete his research, I am inclined to—”

“No,” she said. “You cannot dismiss me.”

“Your terms are impossible,” he said. “I cannot—you cannot—afford to compensate my losses.” His hand settled against the door. The driver had not descended. “I think it is best we close these negotiations and leave it at that.”

“Have I offended you?” she asked. “This is not a trifling. We are prepared to pay any price. Anything. I will do...whatever you ask.”

“
Madame
, please.”

“I have no pride in this. You cannot condemn our families with your indifference. How could this offer be any disadvantage to you?”

Reynard faced her squarely. “You choose not to reveal how you learned about my curse,” he said, “so how can I trust anything you have to tell me?” He opened the door and stepped onto the sidewalk. “Do you want to know how it’s done? This...” He tapped at his left breast. “A silver bullet, lodged on my chest, inexorably boring toward my heart.”

“I…” She paused. “I did not—”

“Do not lecture me on suffering,” he said. “You have no idea.”

“Please.”

He shut the door, motioned to the driver and the man cracked his whip. The stagecoach pulled forward into the dark. Reynard watched it leave, noting the fading scent of Miss Carlovec’s perfume, how it mingled with the fetid smell of the gutter. He tried to forget her last, incredulous look.

Arté has to be right
.

He rubbed his hands together and took his bearings. By the dual arches and gatehouse he realized this was not Cypress Grove but Metairie Cemetery. That meant New Basin Canal was at his back, and that meant New Orleans proper lay east and south from his current location. The soonest chance to hail a cab, at that time of night, was at least a mile or more down Metairie Road. No matter. A long, cold walk would clear his senses, clear the scent of that perfume, clear away the realization that he had been a fool.

He managed four steps before a hansom emerged from the fog and stopped beside him. A gentleman descended the stair, paid the driver, and the hansom clipped away with a snap of a whip.

“Monsieur LaCroix?” the thin man asked with an accent, removing his top hat. “I am Edward Tukebote, Miss Carlovec’s valet. You may recall my attempt to speak with you the other day.”

“I could have used that hansom,” Reynard said.

“I doubt you wish to be here, alone?” The valet gestured toward the graveyard. “The dead do not make good company.”

“Audacious, don’t you think?”

“Pardon?”

“I have spoken with Miss Carlovec,” Reynard said. “I have given her my reply. It is not your place to convince me otherwise.”

“Oh, I see,” Tukebote said with a hard grin. “You take me for a mere valet. Allow me to clarify. I have been granted a measure of trust,
monsieur
. I must ensure that those whom I represent are satisfied in this regard. I am sure you can understand.”

Reynard smelled the musky odors of men emerging from Metairie Gate, heard their footsteps as they plunged at him from the fog. He tried to turn but strong arms wrapped around his back. Another man buried his heavy fist into Reynard’s gut, doubling him over.

When he struggled, another emerged from the dark and cracked a heavy blow across his head—something heavy but pliable, throwing his senses into a spin. The thug struck again, planting a knuckled blow across Reynard’s chin. That sent him to his knees.

“I regret,” Tukebote said, “to employ more persuasive methods.”

11

“Here.”

Grant pointed to the sidewalk and Savoy pulled the reins tight, drawing the horses and cart to a stop before Metairie Cemetery’s main gate. Grant lighted off the bench. With his finger he called attention to two steaming piles of horse manure near the gutter.

“Four horses yoked together,” he said. “They stopped then kept on. Not long ago.”

“How can you tell?”

“The droppings would have trailed off, like so.” He motioned down the street, then to muddy tracks along the sidewalk. “At least two men crossed here, maybe three. If—and I say
if
—your friend was one of them, and
if
he was aboard that coach, they
might
have gone inside.”

“It does not make any sense,” Savoy said.

Grant’s eyes examined the walk before the gate, then to the gutter, kneeling to touch at droplets upon the flagstone. He sniffed his fingers, wiped them on his trousers.

“Blood.”

Savoy descended the bench. Metairie’s front gate consisted of two iron-barred arches with an empty gatehouse in the center. Beyond the gate rose a tall obelisk to the left and a grassy hill to the right—the Tomb of the Army of Tennessee. Beyond them both stretched countless funereal vaults until the dark and fog swallowed them up. Savoy pulled open the left gate, the metal squealing, his finger sliding under the lock.

“It has been forced open,” he said.

“Why here?” Grant asked.

“It’s private.”

Savoy reached behind the cart’s bench and removed a satchel, slinging it over his shoulder and off his hip. He lifted a tarpaulin and revealed a new Winchester lever-action rifle; he slid open the chamber, confirmed it was loaded, and cocked it with some effort.

Grant watched him. “Know how to use that?”

“Well enough.”

Lantern in one hand and rifle in the other, Savoy led them through the gate and down an avenue into the cemetery. Soon they were surrounded by row upon row of whitewashed vaults decorated with bundles of flowers or nameplates or crosses, an endless depository of memorials. Metairie Cemetery, once a horse track and since converted to housing the dead, stretched with such vaults as far as they could see. The moist earth unsuitable for traditional graves, the vaults preserved the remains but made the cemetery, in the dark and mist, a misleading maze of granite and marble blocks.

Grant watched the ground, turned right and followed a smaller path. They wove through the vaults until their way ended in a thick grove of trees. These were the gardens where more elaborate tombs sat under oaks and cypress, adorned with rose-blossom wreaths and braided flower-fences. With the trees tangling the way, fog erasing the finer details, the two examined the dark; first here, then there, turning this way and that, raising the lantern to cast more light.

“This is a wild goose chase,” Grant said. “I have no idea where they went, even if they were here, and there’s no proof that ever happened.”

“You said you were a scout,” Savoy said.

“Arizona Tenth, sir, but there are countless prints and none too fresh, and I ain’t an Indian besides. There was a set that ran heavy a while back, but I could be making more of it than it warrants.”

Savoy sighed. He was right. They had lost the stagecoach’s trail a few blocks beyond City Park, regained it, and had lost it again. Grant’s skill had led them here, but Savoy found he was following his gut rather than logic. There was no real proof Reynard was here. His parents’ remains were buried elsewhere. Bill Tourney still lay in Charity Hospital. It was an odd place to speak with a lady, much less visit after hours.

Dramatic
, he thought.
Am I being dramatic
?

Mister Burlington’s strange death made his inner voice an unfamiliar companion. He now mistrusted his instincts. He envisioned Reynard again—dining and laughing, raising his cup in silent victory, Lasha laughing beside him at the thought of a stupid old man wandering aimlessly in a boneyard. He outstretched the lantern above his head. With his other hand he tightened his grip on the rifle. He had some practice firing a Winchester, but he was beginning to feel idiotic. What would he say to a constable who caught him hunting in a cemetery?

“Your light,” Grant said, “douse it.”

“What—?”

“
Now
.”

***

There was a marked difference, Reynard noted, between waking from sleep and the muddled return from unconsciousness. The emergence from his throttling came like being dropped naked in freezing water. One moment there was nothing. Then came confusion and dizziness and the groggy, staggering pain of nerves competing for his attention.

The broken memories of his assault returned in distorted segments. He remembered a heavy feeling like wet sand crashing against his skull. The stinging pain in his left jaw and along his swollen ear, he guessed, was where his face connected with the sidewalk.

He could barely move. A thick knotted rope, tied at his back, bound his wrists to his ankles. When he shifted his weight, the rough hemp scraped against his flesh. It sent spasms of burning down his arms and legs, like tiny ants burrowing under his skin, into his blood. He tried to stop moving, to shallow his breath. The pressure of the knots at his wrists and ankles dominated his senses, hammering into his brain, the rope scratching as if it rubbed open his skin, ground his muscles raw, and now scraped coarsely along his bones. 

Aconite
.

Wolfsbane had been soaked into the rope; he could smell it, feel it bleed into his veins. The burning worked into his joints, becoming pain, blossoming into an agonizing spasm down his back. He closed his eyes, opened them, straining to see.

Where
?

He was in a windowless chamber of stone. Granite. Walls notched with horizontal alcoves. In the alcoves lay the moldering remains of corpses—at least six of them—in various stages of decay. A mausoleum. Its solid slab of a door hung ajar to the night, and outside laid the viscous outlines of cypress trees behind rows of whitewashed vaults. A lantern hung from an iron hook in the ceiling, but its vague light could not dispel the uneasy glamour of death.

Reynard strained against his bonds, pulling, heaving, until blood oozed where rope ate into his skin. With open wounds, the wolfsbane soaked faster into his bloodstream; a heavy shudder clenched his muscles into his neck and forced him to stop.

“Do not hurt yourself.”

Mister Tukebote eased into the mausoleum, the light carving shadows into his sallow face. Just outside the doorway stood three cinnamon-skinned servants dressed akin to Kiria's exotic driver—robes and turbans and black-dot tattoos—the same three men who had pounced upon him at Metairie’s front gate. Each wore a leather belt with a wide-bodied dagger sheathed at the hip. Reynard smelled the electric tang as soon as they arrived; the daggers were made of silver. One man led a woman by her shoulders, face shrouded by a cloak and oversized hood. Reynard glowered. So Miss Carlovec came to gloat. That venomous shrew had been the very best of actresses; he cursed his lack of discernment.

“
Renny!
”

Lasha. She wrenched from the man’s grip and the hood fell to her shoulders—ringlets of white gold hair in her eyes, her powdered cheeks streaked with tears. She rushed for her brother’s side, only to be caught and held fast by the servant at her back.

“Let me go!” she cried.

“Have they hurt you?” Reynard asked.

“No,” she said. “Freddie came to get me, like you said, then—?”

“I never sent anyone to—”

“He
told
me—”

“Be still, child,” Tukebote said. “Contrary to rumor,
monsieur
, I see your reaction to
aconitum napellus
proves you are still very much afflicted.”

“Why is she here?” Reynard shouted. He strained again and the ropes caused more clenching. “Damn you, man! Get these ropes off me!”

“Renny,” Lasha said. “Why are they doing this?”

“I have no idea.”

Tukebote knelt, removed the glove of his right hand and slapped him across the face. “Tell her the truth.”

“I—” Reynard shuddered. “I did.”

Tukebote slapped him again. “Liar.”

“Please!” Lasha cried. “Stop!”

“You should have taken your sister to her vaudeville,” Tukebote said. “You left her alone and afraid in that obscene, soulless house that stinks of dead women.” He slapped a third time and split Reynard’s lip.  “Is that what makes you a man? Making women afraid?” He slapped a fourth time. “
Is it
?”

Lasha began to cry. “
Stop!
”

Tukebote spoke sharp words in a strange language. The man holding Lasha smothered his hand over her mouth and pulled her outside.

The valet clutched Reynard’s throat, squeezing, his long fingernails sharpened with the polished edges of a surgeon’s scalpel. His fingers were long, too long, the joints and knuckles fluid as they rolled against fibrous tendons under almost translucent skin. Reynard attempted to inhale and gasped, wheezing, all his strength gone as if it had bled into the stones of the floor.

With a deft flick of a fingernail, Tukebote sliced open Reynard’s shirt. He flicked again and the cloth tore away like tissue paper, revealing the puffy white scar above his heart. The edges of his nails brushed like knives over Reynard’s flesh, settling over the scar like a pale spider.

“So it is true,” Tukebote said. “
Be still
.”

Reynard thrashed, near bursting with terror.

Breathe.

“
Be still
.”

Can’t
—

The words slithered into Reynard’s brain. They crawled into his neck and down his spine, echoing faintly, until he could no longer move. He wanted to, really
wanted
, but his body found no will in it. He could only lie there as Tukebote swept his hand across Reynard’s chest, the nails scratching like dull razors, and his fear became panic as Tukebote lifted his hand and brought it down.

Nails sliced through Reynard’s skin and opened his left breast. Scarlet blood erupted. He quivered, gasping, locked in a lingering seizure, as the valet’s fingers dipped inside the wound. He fished about and pulled free the misshapen silver bullet.