Thaniel did not reply.
Alaizabel felt the cold breath of the breeze across her skin, a chill rippling in its wake. They turned on to Crawley Street and strolled onwards, Thaniel touching the tip of his top hat at a couple coming the other way. With his youth concealed by the shadow of its broad brim, and his lean frame disguised by his heavy coat, Thaniel made an entirely convincing gentleman.
They had been walking for perhaps two hours now, making random paths through the streets, not knowing what they were looking for or if they could even deal with what they found. The Green Tack murderer had never been seen, never failed to kill. Even Stitch-face had been spotted several times in his life, and his knife had missed its mark more than once.
“Sir?” came a voice at Thaniel’s elbow, and he looked around to see a small, pale-skinned lady in a black dress. She had slipped out of the shadows of a stone stairway. “Sir, could you help me?”
Thaniel glanced at Alaizabel and then nodded. “How can we be of service?”
“Im being followed, sir,” she said. He felt Alaizabel’s grip tighten slightly on his arm. “At least, I believe I am.”
“Who is following you?” Alaizabel asked, her doll-like features creased in concern.
“I do not know,” the lady replied. “I cannot see him, but I hear his footsteps. Oh, maybe I am only letting the night play tricks on me.” She seemed less than convinced with her own rationale.
“We could walk with you to your destination,” Thaniel offered.
“Oh, I couldn’t, you see...” she trailed off, averting her eyes. It was obvious that her journey was intended to be secret. Certainly, it was difficult to imagine why a lady would risk being out alone at this hour, even without the ever-present threat of Stitch-face.
After a moment, she came to a decision and spoke. “Could you wait here for a few minutes?” she asked. “If someone is following me, they will pass by here and... sir? Are you all right?”
Thaniel wore an expression of pain on his face, his head inclined as if facing a stiff wind. His wych-sense had suddenly blossomed with a painful intensity, a pressure inside his skull such as he had never felt before.
“Thaniel?” Alaizabel queried, seeing him cringe.
“Perhaps I should... well, thank you for your time,” said the lady, eyeing Thaniel nervously. Her frayed nerves were evidently not up to any more strangeness. “I shall be going.”
“No, wait a moment,” Alaizabel said, trying to prevent her from leaving while simultaneously attending to Thaniel, who was scrambling inside his coat for something. The lady was having none of that, however; she saw only a man reaching for a knife or a gun, and was retreating as fast as she could without running. Alaizabel seemed about to follow, to keep her from slipping away, but Thaniel gripped her arm. From his pocket, he withdrew a phial of pre-prepared sulphur, glowing faintly from the Ward that he had laid upon it, and tipped it on the ground.
The lady had already made a good distance away from them, and had turned a corner into a side street by the time the liquid splashed on the cobblestones. Thaniel straightened, having managed to get over the initial shock of the sensation in his head, but Alaizabel’s eyes were on the sulphur compound that was spreading through the gullies and valleys between the cobblestones, creeping away from them with a life of its own, branching and dividing slowly to follow several paths. And as she watched with increasing horror, the sulphur began to form a shape in the road, a vague yet unmistakable outline of a two-toed footprint.
“Oh,” she said.
Thaniel broke into a run, his hat toppling from his head and his hair flying free as he sprinted after the woman. It was impossible, it just couldn’t be...
Do not look behind!
Thaniel projected the thought at the lady as he turned into the street where she had gone, still not quite believing what he was allowing himself to think, what the thing they were facing would be. But he already knew nothing could stop it now. He saw her, hurrying away from him, alarmed by his pursuit and thinking that he was the one she had to fear. She cast a terrified glance over her shoulder.
It was her third backwards look since she had started to notice the extra footstep in her walk, and that was all it took to make visible the thing that trod behind her.
There was no shimmering as the creature revealed itself to the eyes of its victim, no gradual unveiling as of the moon from behind a cloud. It was simply there; one moment not, the next it was lunging at her, a huge and terrifying bulk of claws and metal teeth that dwarfed her as it reached to open her up.
The roar of Thaniel’s pistol sounded like a cannon on the still of the night, blasting the creature aside at the same moment as its claws made contact with their target. There was a scream as the lady was pitched bodily across the street; she slammed across the cobbles and rolled to a stop in a storm gutter, dark blooms of blood moistening her black dress and seeping from her hairline to inch down her face.
The creature staggered, turned a baleful gaze on Thaniel, and he felt his heart shudder under its glare. What he was seeing was inconceivable.
Rawhead.
When he was a child, he had stared for hours in horrified fascination at the carving in the sanctum at his home in Crofter’s Gate. Rawhead and his companion, Bloodybones: they were a tale to frighten youngsters, the things that lived in cupboards and hid in the dark beneath the bed. Now he stood facing the creature that had haunted his childhood nights, when he had lain awake in terror at the thought of what might reach up and grab him. No myth any more, but real, as if the carving that had so scared him all those years ago had come to life.
Rawhead was huge, grotesquely muscled and hunched, a heavy brow shadowing small, louring eyes that sat above a wide mouth in which small, pointed teeth of brass gleamed faintly in the light of the gas lamps. He was an exaggerated mockery of the human form, terrible and fearful, and Thaniel felt himself suddenly wishing that he was not alone, that the others who must have heard the gunshot would arrive soon.
A slow snarl came from the throat of the thing as he took his stance to deal with the newcomer. Thaniel’s pistol had done no discernible damage, even though he was quite certain he had struck the creature in the side of the neck.
Rawhead came at him like a bull, roaring as he charged; Thaniel levelled his pistol and shot him square in the face. The creatures forward momentum was checked violently, as if by a hammer blow, and he was lifted off his feet to collapse heavily to the cold stone of the road. Thaniel was already holstering his pistol, tugging free from his belt a long string of charms, an array of Warded artefacts linked by wire. Cured snakeskin wrapped in hay; vulture feathers; a depiction of the evil eye carved in a coin-sized piece of wood—there were perhaps twenty in all. It was the wych-hunters first line of defence against an unknown foe: a broad spectrum of Wards and charms that had proven effective in the past against other forms of wych-kin. The theory was that at least a fraction of the arsenal would work against the enemy.
Rawhead had already regained his feet by the time Thaniel had the charm-string ready, his heart trip-hammering against his ribs and cold sweat slicking his hands. No mark showed on the creatures face from the bullet, but he was certainly enraged. He lunged again, bellowing mindlessly, and Thaniel threw himself aside as the enemy thundered towards him. But Rawhead had moved faster than Thaniel had credited, and his dodge was clumsy. One foot snagged the other, and he felt himself trip. He lashed out with the charm-string as he fell, praying that fortune was with him.
This time, it was.
He crashed to the ground, Rawhead missing him by centimetres, and the charm-string snagged on the creature as he passed. It tore free from Thaniel’s hand, wrapping itself loosely around the body of his enemy, and as he rolled he felt the wave of force wash over him that was the Wards flaring into life. There was an animal howl of fury and pain, and then Thaniel was up and ready once more.
In the steely moonlight between the gaslights, the charm-string lay on the floor,
blackened and smoking faintly. Of Rawhead, there was no sign.
“Thaniel!” came the cry, and there was Cathaline, appearing from a side street with Carver, attracted by the sound of gunfire. Two others, Crott’s men, were with them.
Thaniel blinked, realizing by the fading intensity of his wych-sense that Rawhead really was gone. A moment later, he was rushing to the lady, whom he had all but forgotten. The others reached him as he crouched by her bloodied form to check her pulse.
“Are you all right?” Cathaline panted. “What was that you—
“Never mind me,” he said sharply. “She is still alive. There is hope yet. The chackh’morg has not been completed while she still lives.”
“Get her help!” Carvei barked at one of Crott’s men. The pair of them ran to comply.
Thaniel was beginning to shake now, the adrenaline leaving his body and making him weak. Cathaline crouched next to him and put an arm round him.
“It was Rawhead,” he said quietly.
“Rawhead?” Cathaline asked.
“When I was a child, late at night, when the lights were out...” he said. “If I had to visit the bathroom, I had to walk along the dark landing.”
“I know,” said Cathaline. “You can’t look over your shoulder more than twice.”
“They used to sing it in the playground,” he said. “Rawhead close behind you treads, three looks back and you’ll be dead.”
“But close your eyes and count to ten, and Rawhead will be gone again,” Cathaline finished.
Thaniel laid his hand over his face. “How could he be here, Cathaline? He is not real. Stories of Rawhead go back long before the wych-kin came. How could he be here?”
He heard the tread of Carver’s shoes behind him before she could reply.
“Thaniel,” came his puzzled voice. “Where is Alaizabel?”
Thaniel felt a flood of ice wash out from his heart. In the heat of the chase, he had forgotten her, assuming she was right behind him. Now he realized that he had not seen her the entire time he had been fighting Rawhead.
Alaizabel.
She was gone.
VIGIL FOR THE DYING
DESPAIR IN THE BELL TOWER 16
The room was dark and cool, tiled in faded green ceramic from ceiling to floor. Three figures busied themselves around the centrepiece by the glow of a single gas lamp set against one wall. By the doorway, several more clustered, watching, their expressions blank in the darkness.
“There is little more I can do,” said the doctor, and stepped away from the hospital trolley on which his patient lay. “We shall have to wait and see.”
Leanna Butcher, the last of the Green Tack victims, struggled for life beneath the Crooked Lanes, and only her heartbeat held back the tide of disaster.
Cathaline stepped into the light, holding the letter that they had found in her pocket, the declaration of forbidden love from a married man that had brought her to this point. She was still now, the great rent in her chest bandaged and treated, her head in a clamp to set the crack in her skull. If not for that letter, she would not have been hurrying to a secret rendezvous that night. If not for Thaniel, she would not even be alive. Cathaline slipped the letter into Leanna’s limp grip.
“I hope he was worth it,” she murmured.
“It is in fate’s hands now,” Crott said. “She will be safer here than any hospital, and better cared for.”
“Leave us now,” the Devil-boy croaked. “I will set Wards. There may yet be other wych-kin to finish the job.”
Cathaline and Thaniel drifted away, heading for the cluster of rooms that Crott had assigned them as quarters. They were furnished well enough with scavenged chairs and beds and rugs, a chaotic blend in which nothing matched. In other circumstances, Thaniel might have found himself missing his home by now, and wondering what had become of the place they had abandoned. But for now, he had greater worries.
“She’ll be all right,” Cathaline said as they walked, correctly guessing the reason for Thaniel’s silence. “You’re not to blame.”
Thaniel was a slender obelisk of shadow, radiating suppressed anger and frustration.
“We should have left her here,” he said.
“She insisted upon coming,” Cathaline replied. “Couples are less threatening at night than lone men; we talked about this. That woman would never even have talked to you if Alaizabel had not been at your side.”
He made no reply.
They reached their quarters through a cracked and peeling corridor that used to be the basement and boiler room of a schoolhouse. It was cold and damp, with an oil lamp burning in an alcove. Thaniel lit the fire in the small wood stove and set about blowing on it to kindle the tinder.
“She may have left of her own accord,” Cathaline suggested, as if they had not already thought of every possibility. “If she—”
Thaniel snorted. “Either Stitch-face has her or the Fraternity do. If the latter, then they have Thatch back and things have just gone from bad to worse. If it is Stitch-face...” he paused, “at least we need not worry about Thatch any more.”
“Thaniel,” said Cathaline, a little shocked at his callousness. “You sound like your father now.”
“My father would not have failed to protect her,” Thaniel said.
“Of course he would,” Cathaline replied, sitting in a chair. When Thaniel was silent, she looked up at him and saw him staring at her in disbelief.
“How can you say that?” he asked.
“Oh, Thaniel, did you think you were the only person who knew Jedriah? I hunted with him dozens of times. He was good. Exceptionally good. But he was not what his legend makes him out to be. And you should stop trying to live up to something impossible.”
“I do not know what you mean,” Thaniel said, but the blaze in his eyes indicated the opposite.
“You had a choice,” Cathaline said, infuriatingly calm. “If you hadn’t saved Leanna Butcher, we’d all be in a whole lot more trouble than we are now. So which was it to have been? To keep Alaizabel and let the Fraternity complete their plan, or lose her for the sake of saving that woman and buying us all some time?”
Thaniel’s face was shadowed. “You know the answer to that one, Cathaline.”
Cathaline looked at him levelly. “Then don’t pretend that you don’t care she’s gone.”
Despair was not an emotion that society would have a gentleman show, so Thaniel found his own dark place to despair in, alone. It was an old bell tower, the upthrust arm of a crumbling church that rose high enough above the tumbledown roofs of the Crooked Lanes to let him sorrow in the pure moonlight, unhindered by tethers of fog.
He sat with his knees against his chin, hugging himself in the spectral light of the gibbous moon. The cool stone pressed into the curve of his spine. All was silent. Through the Gothic arches of the tower, he watched the distant, ghostly cigar of light that was an airship turning slowly and heavily over Finsbury Park. Somewhere far away, he heard the dull boom of the bombs being dropped on the Old Quarter. Tonight was one of the monthly forays by the fleet into Camberwell, dropping explosives on to the already ruined areas where the wych-kin bred, in an ineffective attempt to keep the population down. Bombing their own city to destroy the heart of the cancer.
He was thinking about his past, about the time when things were simpler. When his father was alive, and he was not a wych-hunter but only a child. He had been too young to understand his mothers death; most of his recollections of her were half-formed sounds and feelings that fled his memory as he tried to take hold of them. But his father; that was different.
He was missed by few when Jedriah took him from under the wing of Her Majesty’s educational institutions and into his own nest. He had always been quiet at school, and did not make friends easily. Jedriah took him away from that, and taught him the trade of the wych-hunter, and Thaniel loved him for it. How to set and bait a soul cage; how to administer a Rite; what kind of hollows to look in for a stumpfoot; how to rec
ognize a Black Shuck; how to look at a marshlight without being drawn in. And the boy, wide-eyed, worshipped his father, who was the greatest wych-hunter of them all.
Then Jedriah died, and Cathaline took his place. The boy, distraught, threw himself into the one thing he knew, immersed himself in it completely. He was a wych-hunter first, foremost and always. It would have been what his father wanted. But being a wych-hunter left little room for anything else.
Father; he thought. If you hadn’t died, perhaps I would have seen you as Cathaline sees you. How can I live up to a legend Father? How do I beat a ghost?
Jedriah had been lonely after his wife died. He had never loved again, and never wanted to. That was the man with whom Thaniel had grown up, and the lessons he had unconsciously absorbed. To be solitary. To be alone. To need nobody.
But then Alaizabel had arrived.
All it had taken was Alaizabel to destroy the walls of silence in his life. Without really doing anything, just by being there, she had awakened in him feelings he did not know he had. She had unravelled him, unknotted him. And it was not until now, now that she was gone, that he realized the depth of it all.
He despaired. He despaired, because Alaizabel was gone and no matter how he racked his brain, he could not think of how to find her. The charm that Cathaline had made for her for the purpose of protecting her from the wych-kin was now preventing them from trying to locate her. He had spoken with the Devil-boy, and the Devil-boy had confirmed his worst fears. No Rite could locate her without a token of hers, something like hair or a fingernail or a treasured piece of jewellery. It had to be something dear and close to her; nothing else would do. And even if they had such a thing, Cathaline’s charm would hide her from them.