Chapter Fourteen

“G et this fucking thing off me!”

Crawling with horror, Josef pushed at the corpse, the headless bloody corpse, that pinned him to the ground.

“Easy,” Alex said, shoving the body with his foot until it rolled aside, flopping grotesquely onto its back. Then he reached down to offer Josef a hand up.

He glared at the strong, elegant hand stretched out towards him and ignored it, rolling onto his hands and knees, gasping for air. But the stench of the creature made him retch, and only his own bloody obstinacy saved him from vomiting.

Shakily, he tried to rise, but his legs were like jelly from running and his lungs still burned, so despite his fury at Alex, he didn’t object when the other man took hold of his arm to haul him up.

“Steady on,” Alex said quietly. Kindly, even.

Josef stared at him, at his handsome face creased into a concerned frown, at the stupid bloody sword. His head swam, and he heard a clatter of metal on stone before two strong arms wrapped around him, pulling him close and keeping him on his feet.

“Easy, now.” Alex’s voice was oddly shaky. “Take another breath.”

Josef did; it didn’t help because of the stench, and he retched again.

He was drenched in gore and the stench of the creature, his head a swirl of horror and fear and fury. He hardly knew which way was up, and the only thing keeping him anchored to the world were those sure arms about him. Somehow he remembered the feel of them, as if despite everything that had happened since, Josef’s body recognised the embrace that, for one night, had brought him respite from the war and its horrors.

Helplessly, he sank into that embrace, his head dropping onto Alex’s broad shoulder as those strong arms tightened their hold on him.

“For God’s sake, Alex, get him inside,” said a crisp voice Josef recognised as belonging to Subadar Dutta. “Saint’s going to have your hide for this.”

Alex’s arms tightened again. His voice, when it came, sounded angry. “What else could I have done? Let it kill him?”

A speaking silence followed, and when Josef lifted his head from Alex’s shoulder, he saw that the two men were locked in silent communication.

And then there came a flurry of movement and people around them. Josef glimpsed a stretcher, a young man crouching next to the decapitated corpse, examining it with interest, before a billowing white sheet came up to cover everything and the shrill blast of a policeman’s whistle pierced the fog.

“Come on,” Alex said, steering Josef away. “Inside, quickly now.”

Instinct made Josef baulk at being dragged away, but when Alex looked at him, there was such an expression of concern, even fear, in his eyes that Josef startled. It was possibly the most honest expression he’d ever seen on the man’s face outside the bedroom.

“Please,” Alex said at last. “I’ll answer all your questions, but we must get inside now.”

Nodding, torn between curiosity and distrust, Josef let himself be helped up the stairs and into the discreet building that housed the Winconian Society.

It was like entering a beehive that had just been poked with a stick—when you were the offending stick.

The door opened onto a large entryway, a grand staircase sweeping up to an entresol overlooking the foyer, and myriad doors and hallways leading deeper into the building. Several knots of respectable-looking men had gathered in the hallways and doorways; others stood looking down from the landing at the top of the stairs. Everyone was silent, the hush so recent Josef could hear it falling as the door swung shut.

All eyes were on them.

Having recovered somewhat from the flight and the fight, Josef became acutely aware that Alex still had an arm around his waist and that his own arm was slung across Alex’s shoulders. He had a mad urge to take a bow, but instead returned the cool, curious glances with one of his own.

So, this was the Winconian Society. According to Alex, a secret order dedicated to fighting supernatural beings. More likely a shadowy branch of the Intelligence Corps.

“Lord Beaumont.” A man stepped forward with the dress and demeanour of a servant. He glanced briefly at Josef. “May I be of assistance?”

“Mr Shepel has been attacked by a ghoul,” Beaumont said, as if such nonsense was unremarkable. His voice, Josef noticed, was pitched for the onlookers as well as the servant. “He barely escaped with his life. See that he can bathe and has clean clothes.”

“Of course, my lord.” The servant gave a slight bow. “I will see to it myself. Meanwhile, Mr Saint is waiting in the library.” A weighted pause. “At your earliest convenience.”

Josef felt Alex stiffen, the arm still around Josef’s waist tightening.

“I'll go to him directly.” To Josef, he said, “Go with Graves. Do exactly as he says.” Their eyes met and held, and again Josef saw that shadow of fear in the other man’s eyes. “You are safe here.”

Alarmingly, Josef wasn’t sure that Alex believed it.

“I’d rather stay with you,” he said.

Alex’s eyes widened, and then he smiled, a faint but true smile. “Would you?”

“Better the devil you know, and all that.”

Something passed between them, then, an unexpected sense of comradeship in a tight spot. “You’ll be all right with Graves,” Alex promised. “Trust me.”

There was a hint of a question at the end of those words, and Josef nodded. “All right,” he said. Not that he had much choice, but Alex had just saved his life. Again.

“Mr Shepel?” Graves gestured towards a corridor leading to the back of the building. “This way please.”

Alex dropped his arm from around Josef’s waist, and as they separated Josef swayed somewhat.

“All right?” Alex said, reaching out to steady him. “Do you need help?”

“No, I’m fine.” He braced his shoulders. “Or I will be, once I’m out of these disgusting clothes.”

With a nod, and a serious, lingering look, Alex turned and strode off in the opposite direction.

Josef noticed with unease that all the eyes in the room followed Alex, several men turning to murmur quietly to each other as he left.

***

For the second time in a week, Josef found himself stripped bare and studied as if he were a medical specimen.

This time, however, it was not in the warm intimacy of Alex’s bathroom but a tiled, utilitarian space that reminded him of the mortuary where he’d found Sykes. There was nothing admiring in Graves’s gaze either, thank God, just a clinical appraisal followed by the application of iodine on several grazes on his back, shoulders, and arms.

A porcelain bathtub stood against one wall, with a contraption of pipes hanging over it, and a curtain on a rail. Graves said, “You can shower off in there. I’ll have fresh clothes sent in.”

“Shower off?”

“The water comes out at the top,” he explained, pointing at the pipes. “You stand underneath it to wash. Like a rain shower.”

It sounded odd, but Josef would have happily bathed in a duckpond to get the filth off him, so once Graves had left, he turned on the water, startled as it spurted out about six feet above the bath, and hurriedly drew the curtain to keep it from spraying everywhere.

Then he turned his attention back to his clothes, left in a gory pile in the centre of the room. With one eye on the door, he picked up his jacket, grimacing at the stench, and with his fingertips reached into his breast pocket to retrieve the photograph Alex was so desperate to get his hands on. Glancing around the bare room, he set it face down on the tiled windowsill and hoped that it wouldn’t be noticed by whoever brought in the clean clothes Graves had promised.

Then he returned to the bath, fiddled about with the taps to get the right temperature, and finally climbed into the tub.

The hot water hammering down on his head didn’t feel terrible. Nothing like as luxurious as the bath he’d had in Alex’s flat, but it did the job and washed away the blood and gore. He watched it swirling around his feet and down the plughole until the water began to run clear. Then he picked up a bar of sweet-smelling soap that had been left in the tub and used it to wash himself from head to toe.

By the time he stepped out of the bathtub, shivering in the chilly room, someone had left a towel, a comb, a pile of clean clothes, and a pair of shiny black shoes on a stall next to the sink. Josef glanced quickly at the window, relieved to see the photograph where he’d left it. There was no sign of Graves, and so Josef could dry himself and dress in privacy. The clothes fitted remarkably well—a shirt and a smart three-piece navy-blue suit. Finer than anything Josef had ever owned. He planned on keeping it, too, because his own clothes must be beyond salvation. He hoped Graves had burned them.

Once dressed, he examined himself in the mirror and tried to tame his dark curls with the comb. While damp, they slicked back neatly enough, but he knew they’d be all over the place once his hair dried. He scarcely recognised the well-dressed young man staring back at him from the mirror and wondered what Alex would make of him, looking so posh.

Then he wondered why he cared. It was hardly relevant, was it? Although there had been something in Alex’s gaze today, a concern for him that had felt honest…

“He’s a liar.” Sternly, he stared down his own reflection. “Don’t forget that, Joe. Alex Beaumont is a liar.”

That much settled, he tucked the photograph into his jacket pocket and pushed open the bathroom door with the hope of doing a little exploring, only to find Graves sitting sentry outside.

He rose when Josef appeared, looking him over in apparent satisfaction. “This way, please, Mr Shepel.”

Josef had the strong impression that he had no choice but to follow, that had he asked to leave he’d have been politely and entirely refused. Besides, now that he’d recovered from the shock of the attack, his journalistic nose had started twitching. Here he was, Joe Shepel, inside a secret society. He paid attention to his surroundings as Graves led him back along the corridor to the foyer. The wood-panelled walls held several portraits, stern men gazing down at him from centuries past with little plaques on the frames that read Lord this or Viscount that. August members of the Winconian Society, no doubt.

His fingers itched for his camera.

The foyer was quieter now that the excitement was over, and Graves led him across it quickly, footsteps clack-clacking on the parquet floor, and from there along another short corridor to a small sitting area. A waiting room, perhaps, because there was a second, closed, door on the far side of the room.

And staring out of the window stood Alex. He turned when Josef entered, a flash of relief, quickly covered, crossing his face. Then his eyes flicked subtly over Josef’s body, making him newly aware of his fancy suit, before returning to settle on Josef’s face.

If Graves noticed the telltale sparkle in Alex’s eyes, he didn’t react.

“Please wait here, Mr Shepel,” Graves said, before backing out of the room and closing the door quietly behind him.

Josef didn’t hear the turn of a key in the lock, but the effect of that closing door was the same. Alex turned back to the window, frowning, and Josef noticed a splatter of dried blood on the pristine white of his shirt cuff.

Presumably from when Beaumont had decapitated the…man.

How on earth had they explained it to the police? Clearly, Alex hadn’t been arrested. Perhaps casual murder went unremarked upon among the upper classes. Maybe it happened all the time. God knew people like Alex were happy enough to step over men, women, and children starving on the streets…

He rubbed a hand across his face. No, that wasn’t fair.

He remembered Alex drawing the blanket up over Sykes’s face, that day at the clearing station. There had been compassion in the gesture, more than Josef had shown. And Alex had saved his life, twice. Josef had no doubt that he’d be dead on the street right now if Alex hadn’t, by some miracle, intervened.

The certainty made him shiver, and despite the warm shower and dry clothes, he realised he was still cold. Or maybe it wasn’t the cold making him tremble. Another shiver as he squeezed his eyes shut against a flash of memory, then opened them abruptly when the creature's ruined face and sharp teeth forced their way into his mind.

He found Alex watching him from the window.

“You look like you need a drink,” he said, and moved to a cabinet near the room’s inner door. “Whisky?”

Protest formed on Josef’s lips—it wasn’t even midday—but he found himself too weary to argue. More than weary, mentally exhausted, and when Alex approached and offered him a glass, he took it without comment and sat down.

Alex wasn’t drinking, but he took the chair opposite Josef’s and leaned forward, elbows on knees, fingers steepled. He looked anxious. “How are you?” he said. “Were you hurt?”

“A few scratches, that’s all.” He hesitated, then added, “It didn’t bite me.”

Alex nodded. “I know. If it had…”

He didn’t finish the thought, but Josef remembered the gun on the laundry hamper in Alex’s bathroom. It hadn’t occurred to him before that Graves may have been armed during his inspection of Josef’s body.

He swallowed a mouthful of whisky, the fiery burn settling warmth in the pit of his belly, instantly relaxing.

“Who are we waiting for?” he said.

Alex looked up. “What do you mean?”

He really was handsome, with those fine aristocratic features and silky dark hair flopping over his forehead. Josef remembered the weight of it running through his fingers. He said, “You look like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Alex surprised him with a snort of laughter. “Very observant.”

“Journalist, remember?”

Across the space between them, their eyes met, and Josef felt the same electric jolt of recognition, of connection, that he remembered from their first encounter in Pops. It made his stomach fizz.

Alex smiled, rather a sweet smile for his serious face. “Have you ever heard the expression, ‘Curiosity killed the cat’?”

“Frequently. And I say it’s a good job cats have nine lives.”

Alex’s smile broadened, warming his dark eyes. Then it fell away abruptly. “I’m afraid things are about to get a little…sticky.”

“They were very sticky out on the street.” He took another sip of whisky, washing away the taste of his terror. “How did you know? Did you hear me shouting?”

“Not exactly.” Alex tapped his fingers against his lips. Soft lips, Josef remembered. Clever fingers. “The alarm was raised by the watch.”

“Coppers?”

“Hunters. We keep watch on all avenues of approach. For security reasons.”

“Ah. ‘Security’ reasons.”

Alex shook his head. “You can’t seriously still think this has anything to do with the Intelligence Corps.”

“You can’t seriously think I believe your fairytales.”

“Why not?” Alex snapped. “Did you fail to notice the ghoul trying to eat your face? Or the fact that I decapitated it with an original Crusader sword? Does that seem, even remotely, like the work of the bloody government?”

Josef set his jaw. “I don’t dispute that something was about to eat my face, but—”

The click of an opening door had Alex jumping to his feet and standing to attention. Subadar Dutta appeared at the inner door. His cool gaze travelled over Josef and landed on Alex. Then he nodded and stepped back into the room beyond. Shoulders braced, Alex headed for the door, pausing at the last moment to give Josef a serious look before he disappeared inside, and the door closed behind him.

Josef was alone.

After a moment, he rose and ambled over to the bookshelf next to the fireplace. A small blaze flickered in the grate, pleasant on a cold November day, but the books were nothing extraordinary. Encyclopaedias, atlases, a couple of Bibles. Reference books. Nothing to hint at the secret purpose of this place.

Hunters of supernatural creatures.

Ridiculous. Every fibre of Josef’s rational mind rejected the notion. And yet the horror of the attack, of that ruined face and those awful teeth, was sharp in his mind… His chest tightened at the visceral memory, and he had to push it aside vigorously.

Supernatural or not, there had been nothing natural about the man who had attacked him.

And the answers to who or what he was lay in this place of secrets, lay with Alex and perhaps with the man on the other side of that door. Stepping closer to it, Josef realised he could hear the low murmur of voices coming from the other room. He leaned closer still until his ear pressed blatantly against the door.

One voice, rising in volume, was clearly Alex’s. “...couldn’t leave him to die in the street!”

“Many men have been sacrificed in this war,” said another, waspish and older. “More than you can possibly imagine.”

“But this man is a…friend. Of sorts.”

“A friend ?” The other man sounded incredulous. “We are Winconians, Lord Beaumont, and we are on the front line of this conflict. There is no room for sentiment .”

Silence. After a long pause, Alex said, “To answer your question, he came here because I told him to. I gave him my card, and I told him the truth.”

A thump followed that announcement, the sound of an angry fist hitting a table, and a garbled exclamation Josef couldn’t make out even though the other man’s voice was loud enough that Josef pulled his ear from the door. “An outsider!” he fumed. “The founding laws of our society—”

“Were written a thousand years ago!” Alex had raised his voice, too. “It’s a different world now. People have a right to know what’s lurking in their city. Who are we to say they don’t?”

“Who are we?” The other man was shouting. “ We are the people keeping them safe!”

“Maybe they don’t need us to keep them safe anymore—”

“Oh, believe me, they do. People are worse than the damned ghoul. They twist the truth and abuse it for their own gain.”

“But they’re changing.” Alex again, quieter now. “Surely we should change too?”

A snort, the sound of a chair pushing back. “People don’t change, I can assure you of that. People are fearful, vain, cringing creatures no better now than they were when King William and your noble ancestor first set foot on our shores. And no better equipped to deal with the truth.” Footsteps, and then the voice was closer. Crisp and precise. “They used to drown witches in the Thames, and the only reason they stopped is because they stopped believing the truth. We will not—will not —give it back to them.”

Into the silence that followed came a third voice—Dutta—who said, “It appears to be too late for that. Shepel is—”

“Right here,” Josef said, opening the door. Given that he was the subject of the conversation, he felt it was high time he joined in, and sod propriety. “Shepel is right here.”

As he’d guessed, the room was an office, or perhaps a small library because bookshelves lined all its walls. A grand mahogany desk dominated one end, Dutta leaning casually against the shelves to its right. Alex, who stared at Josef with wide, startled eyes, stood toe to toe with another man in front of the door.

That man was short, slight, and wiry, with a curiously ageless face and a corona of silver-gold hair. Dressed in a velvet smoking jacket the colour of red wine, he turned hard pale eyes in Josef’s direction.

“Wait until you are summoned,” he snapped.

“I don’t think I will.” Josef let the door close behind him. “Seeing as how you’re talking about me, I might as well be part of the conversation, don’t you think?”

Silence filled the room, and Josef was acutely aware of Alex and Dutta watching him, or perhaps watching the other man.

Eventually, the stranger spoke again, his voice very clipped. “Very well. Since you are here…” He shot a baleful look at Alex and walked around to sit behind the desk.

Alex visibly relaxed, and Dutta moved from his position next to the desk to take a seat in front of the small fireplace, stretching out his long legs.

His gaze touched on Josef, then moved to Alex. “I assume he wasn’t bitten.”

“Graves checked him.”

Their locked gaze held before Dutta nodded and Alex subsided into another chair with a sigh, pulling a packet of gaspers from his jacket pocket.

“ He has a name,” Josef said. “It’s Joe Shepel. And you, I presume, are Subadar Dutta.”

The other man’s eyebrows rose in an expression of polite surprise so like Alex’s that Josef wondered whether they taught it at Eton. “Mr Dutta will suffice.”

“I see. ‘Subadar’ being a fraudulent rank, I suppose,” Josef said. “Just like ‘Captain’ Winchester over there. That’s a serious offence, by the way: impersonating an officer.”

“Don’t you ever stop?” Alex sighed, lighting his cigarette.

“No. Do you?”

Their eyes met, clashing. “You’re in enough trouble as it is, you know.”

“ I’m in trouble? You just chopped a man’s head off in the middle of bloody Belgravia!”

“You’re quite right,” Dutta interjected pleasantly. “Alex is in much more trouble than you, as you’re about to find out. However, the degree of trouble is all relative. In truth, we’re all up to our necks in it.” He turned to Alex with an ironic smile. “I see what you mean about his spit and fire. Right up your alley, I should imagine.”

“Put a sock in it, Dal. You don’t—”

“Enough.” The other man’s voice cracked across the room, silencing them both. His gaze fixed on Josef, bright, inquisitive, and cold. “My name is Saint,” he said. “And Mr Dutta is quite correct. You— we —are now in a difficult situation.”

“Are we now?”

“You have a photograph of a ghoul—”

“So you say.”

Saint blinked his cold eyes. “So I say ?”

From his chair, Alex added, “I didn’t have time to explain that Shepel doesn’t believe a word I told him. He thinks I’m a liar and a fraud. And that I work for the Intelligence Corps.”

“Which is what?” said Saint.

Josef laughed. “Oh, very good. Deny it even exists. Of course, why not?”

Saint stared at him, unblinking.

“No, he’s serious,” Alex told Josef, taking a drag on his cigarette. “Saint is focused on … other matters. He doesn’t pay much attention to the outside world.”

The outside world …

Josef rubbed his forehead. “If you expect—”

“What I expect ,” Saint snapped, “is that you hand over the photograph of the ghoul before it’s too late. What I expect is that you will never speak of what you have learned here and that you never again return to this place, that you never—”

“Or what?” This was bloody rich! “Will you have me arrested for telling ghost stories? Sent to prison?”

After a long silence, Saint said, “We have no prisons, Mr Shepel, but rest assured that if your silence cannot be ensured voluntarily, it will be enforced. By other means.”

“Oh, it’s threats now, is it?”

Alex grabbed Josef’s arm, holding him back. “Saint, you can’t mean—”

“I ain’t scared of you!” Josef spoke over him, trying to pull free of Alex’s grip. “None of you. And when my editor gets that picture—”

“Silence!” Saint held up his hand, and the room fell quiet. After a moment, and in a cool voice, Saint said, “Beaumont, this is your error, and I expect you to correct it. All of it.” His gaze lingered, measuring. “Do I make myself clear?”

This close, Josef could hear Alex’s harsh breaths. “As crystal,” he said stiffly, his fingers tightening on Josef’s arm.

“Very well.” Saint retrieved a letter from his inbox, flicking it open with a flourish. “Get it done, Beaumont. No more blunders. Put a lid on the ghoul situation before London’s overrun with the stinking bastards. And no loose ends.”

With that, they were dismissed.

Alex turned and, before Josef could protest, frogmarched him out of the office, out of the waiting room, and out of the building.

Dutta followed on their heels. “I did warn you,” he said, as they stopped in the darkening November afternoon. A breeze had picked up, needle sharp as it dispersed the fog, and Josef pulled his coat tightly around himself.

“Warned me about what?” Alex reached for his cigarettes and lit up, offering the packet to Josef. He took one, and leaned in to share Alex’s light, close enough that he could feel his warmth through the chill air.

“I told you in Pops that he’d be trouble,” Dutta said. “And now”—he pressed a hand to his chest— “you’re entangled.”

Alex met Josef’s eye, unflinching and unrevealing. “Nonsense.”

“Liar.”

Turning away, Alex blew a stream of smoke into the cold air. In the dusky light, his eyes looked like chips of coal. “Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’ve got my orders, and I’ll follow them. You know I will.”

After a silence, Dutta put a hand to Alex’s shoulder. “Yes, I do,” he said, letting go as he turned back to the club. “That’s what concerns me the most.”

No loose ends , Josef thought with a shiver.

It was transparently obvious that he was the loose end in question.