Heart of Iron (London Steampunk #2)

Heart of Iron (London Steampunk #2) Page 30

The metal automaton leaned down with a steely hiss, its enormous hand closing around her waist. “Got her,” called an echoing voice from within. Then it straightened and she caught a glimpse of the man encased in the metal.

“Trouble?” Mendici looked up at her as she dangled precariously. “From whom? The Devil himself?”

Several men laughed.

“We know how to deal with the bleeders,” one called.

“Stick ’em with a shiv coated in hemlock,” another called, making a stabbing motion.

“Or a screamer.”

“Set Rollins and Percy on ’em,” another called.

The laughter swelled.

A shiver of unease ran through her. Far from being the threat it was, these men looked as though they’d relish the idea, and they sounded remarkably well prepared to handle it. If Will had heard the whistle, he’d be walking directly into an ambush. How she wished she’d never blown it.

“Come on, boys.” Mendici gave her a wink. “Let’s take her to see the master.”

Will sat at the kitchen counter, watching Esme stir her stew. The smell of it made his mouth water. This was the one place that felt like home to him. He’d spent hours here over the years, dozing lightly in the corner whilst Esme went about her jobs.

When she’d first became Blade’s thrall he’d found her presence disconcerting. Until that moment, the warren had been strictly all-male and he’d had little to do with women since his mother sold him to Tom Sturrett.

Esme had been grieving the loss of her husband, desperate straits forcing her to accept Blade’s protection. It had been her that taught him to read and fed him good food when his body tried to outgrow him. Her that bandaged his cuts when his first forays into the rookery ended in fights—fights that he’d gone seeking.

He had little recollection of his own mother. Esme was as close as he was ever going to get.

“So,” she murmured, tapping the wooden spoon against the pot and turning to face him. “What’s going on between you and Lena?”

The question shouldn’t have shocked him. There were no secrets in the warren, with four of them owning preternatural hearing. But he couldn’t recall ever saying anything that might have given them fodder for rumor. “What d’you mean?”

Esme gave him a look. “William Carver, let’s not pretend that I’m in any way stupid. Or blind. You wouldn’t want to insult me, would you?”

“Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on between her and I. And that’s the way I intend to keep it.”

With a speculative look on her face, she wiped her hands on her apron and crossed to sit beside him. “Why?” She slid a warm hand over his. “It’s clear you have feelings for her, Will.”

He scowled down at the scarred kitchen bench. “I can’t, Esme.”

“John felt the same, you know,” she whispered with a sympathetic look in her green eyes. “He was afraid to hurt me. Afraid he couldn’t control himself around me. We took our time, but it’s worked for us.”

Will rubbed the back of his neck. “Esme, it ain’t that simple.”

“Oh?”

“Rip’s got the cravin’,” he said. “Spread through blood to blood contact. The loupe’s different. Spread by blood, by a man’s seed…”

A knowing light came into her eyes.

“I can’t ever be with her,” he growled the words out. “I wouldn’t subject her to a life like this. And that’s if she survived the initial infection.”

“Oh, Will—”

The door smashed open.

Will shoved Esme behind him. Rip glowered in the doorway, his gaze following the hand that had pressed her into the corner. A dark light came into his menacing eyes and Will jerked his hands away, holding them up in the air. If it came down to it, he could take Rip and they both knew it. But right now the man wasn’t thinking. Ruled by his own personal demons, all he saw was another man touching his wife.

“Just protectin’ her, Rip.”

“What’s wrong, John?” Esme asked.

“Heard a whistle.” His gaze darted over the pair of them. “Where’s Blade? Anyone missin’?”

Cold touched the back of Will’s neck. “Where’d you hear it? How long ago?”

“Outside the wall. Near Old Castle Street. ’Bout ten minutes ago mebbe.”

On the way to Aldgate.

Lena. Heat roared through him, blanking his mind. He was moving before he thought about it, snatching the bladed half gloves off the bench and his hunting knife.

“Who is it?” Rip asked, his voice sounding as though it were distorted through glass.

Esme grabbed Will’s arm. “It’s Lena, isn’t it?”

The next thing he knew, he was hauling himself up onto the gutters of the warren. The rookery stretched out in front of him, a maze of decrepit buildings and lean-tos. Taking a running leap, he headed for the wall that encircled Whitechapel.

Built fifty years ago, during the time of trouble when Blade had first come to the rookery, it stood nearly twenty feet high. More a symbol than a solid edifice, it had been constructed with whatever lay at hand, in order to keep the Echelon out.

Vaulting over the top of it, he dropped down onto a roof far below. Another jump and he was in the street.

People took one look at him and scattered. As he made his way to Old Castle Street, he saw a crowd hovered around something in the street. A glint of gilt caught his eye and his heart leaped into his throat. Shoving through the crowd, ignoring the cries, he staggered to a halt in front of the Caine carriage. It was tipped on its side, glass sprayed across the cobbles. Some enterprising sorts had already started trying to work the gilt free and the curtains were long gone.

Turning, he raked his gaze across the crowd, looking for someone he recognized. Bill the Tanner met his eyes and flinched. Will grabbed him by the collar.

“What happened here?”

“Dunno,” Bill muttered, his breath stinking of gin and his mismatched eyes darting independently. “Weren’t ’ere, guv. Didn’t see nuthin’.”

Will drew him up until they were face to face, letting the heat—the Beast—wash through his eyes. “Did you know I can smell it when a man lies? Think carefully, Bill, about whether you saw anythin’ here.”

“I can’t,” Bill sobbed. “They’ll kill me. Said they’d do it if I breathed a word.”

Will’s fist tightened until Bill could barely breathe. “What makes you think I won’t?”

Clawing at his collar, Bill’s eyes boggled. “They got…a monster with ’em… A fire-breathin’ monster! I can’t. He’ll roast me…like a leg o’ lamb! Better you than them!”

“They took a young woman with them, didn’t they? She’s mine, Bill. My woman. And they took her.” He forced his fist to open and dropped the man onto the cobbles before he killed him.

The urge to do so was almost overwhelming. The vein in his temple throbbed, his vision blanking at moments. Time and space became odd vignettes of sound and movement. Bill scrambled back across the cobbles and then the world blurred again.

Someone caught his wrist. He barely felt it. Looking down with a snarl, he stopped when he saw the young lad staring up at him with a face as white as a ghost.

“Don’t hurt me da,” he pleaded. “They went that way.” Then he pointed toward the nearest alley, one that ended in a brick wall and a boarded tunnel into the old, abandoned ELU line.

The world came back, narrowing in with crystal precision on the boarded up tunnel. Of course.

“Undertown.”

Eighteen

“Where are you taking me?” Lena demanded, as someone tore the blindfold from her eyes.

Blinking against the phosphorescent glare of the smuggler’s lanterns they carried, she looked around. Despite the chill to the air, perspiration dampened her hair. Her head felt like it was packed full of cotton stuffing, especially her sinuses.

The tunnels stank of mold and stale air. The men were quiet and moved with confidence; they’d come this way often, she imagined.

A little quiver of fear ticked in her chest. The old abandoned tunnels of the Eastern Line were said to contain the ghosts of all those workers who had died when the tunnels collapsed. Some men had been crushed to death and others trapped in the darkness to slowly suffocate or starve. The ELU had given up on the scheme after it drove them into dun territory and nobody had ever bothered to see it finished. Slowly, year after year, the tunnels had been taken over by those enterprising enough to carve out a living below ground when the rookeries began spilling over.

People trying to hide from the Echelon or the Nighthawks for whatever reason, or those who were simply too poor to be able to rent one of the hovels above ground. She could only imagine how terrified they’d been to live here, with the whisper of ghosts and the very real presence of the Slasher gangs—those who strapped a man down on a gurney and drained him of his blood to sell to the draining factories.

Then three years ago the vampire had taken up residence here, glutting itself on everyone’s blood until the tunnels were quiet again and there were even more ghosts to whisper. The vampire was gone, killed by Blade himself it was said, but the grim tunnels terrified her.

“Who are you?”

The man they’d called Mendici waved a hand in her direction. “Shut her up.” He struck a flare stick against his leg and the burning phosphorescent glow lit up the pressing darkness. Holding it high, he took a cautious step forward, edging over the rail tracks. The tunnel opened into an enormous cavern, the rail tracks shearing off into nothing. Mendici kicked a rock over the edge and she listened quietly, barely breathing, waiting for it to hit the bottom.

A distant plop echoed up. Water. There was water down there.

Then something thrashed far below. Lena felt the blood run out of her face. “What is that?” A bead of perspiration raced down her throat into her bodice and she shivered.

“The Gatekeeper,” the young boy muttered at her side. “Here, you be quiet now. There’s other things in the darkness. You don’t want to wake ’em now, do you?”

Lena stared at his pale, ghostly face and shook her head.

A steel cable stretched into the darkness. Mendici handed the flare stick to one of his men and pulled something out of his pocket. It looked like a metal rod with a hook on it. Snapping it open, he revealed a pair of handles, then he hung the hook over the cable and latched it tight.

Her gaze went straight to that yawning, gaping pit as she realized his intentions. No way. There was no way she was going over whatever hid in the depths of the waters.

Mendici snapped his fingers at her.

Lena shook her head but two of his men grabbed her by the arm and dragged her forward. Without ceremony, she was shoved against the burly giant’s side and his arm slid around her hips.

“Rollins,” Mendici called. “You’d best go back. Can’t bring Percy over this. Take him home and grease him up. Or whatever you do with that bloody thing.”

The gaslit eye of the automaton flared to life. Then it turned, clanking steps echoing back down the hollow tunnel.

“Ready for the ride of your life, luv?” Mendici grinned at her.

“No. I’m not. I won’t.”

He snatched a handful of her skirts and shoved her toward the chasm. Lena screamed, grabbing for his wrist. Her slippers danced on the edge of the cliff, pebbles crumbling beneath her feet as her horrified gaze met his.

“Choice is yours. You can either swim, or you can go over on this.”

Her gaze darted to the tenuous handgrip. “Fine.” She licked dry lips. “I’ll go over.”

Mendici hauled her back against his side. “You hold on tight then. Wouldn’t want me to slip.” With a nasty chuckle, he dragged her hard against him. Through her corset, she could feel the hard muscle of the man and reluctantly put her arms around his neck. He took back his flare stick and held it between his teeth, then put both hands on the handles. “Rearry?”

“No.”

With another laugh, he leaped out into nothingness.

Lena screamed, burying her face in his shoulder as they hurtled toward the far side of the cavern. Air rushed past her ears, cooling her flushed cheeks, and her skirts whipped around her legs. It felt like forever, but within moments he was curling his feet up underneath him and landing with a jolt on a rocky ledge.

“Righto, boys. We’re landed,” he called.

Lena collapsed onto her hands and knees, her body shaking. She felt like she was going to cast up her accounts, the world still whirling around her.