Chapter Fifteen

“W ell,” Josef said, “this has been enlightening, but if you’ll excuse me, I should be getting back to—”

“The Cohens?” Alex shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not unless you want to bring this,” he made an encompassing gesture with the hand holding his cigarette, “to their door.”

“But you killed the…” He grimaced. “… the ghoul.” It sounded ridiculous in his ears, but he had no better word for the creature that had attacked him; certainly, it had not been a man.

Alex lifted an eyebrow. “I killed a ghoul.”

“There are more, then.”

“Inevitably.”

Josef folded his arms, shivering as the rising breeze cut through him. “What—fuck, I can hardly believe I’m asking this, but what are they, then? Ghosts or…?”

“Not ghosts, no.” Alex’s eyes met his, bright with something like satisfaction. Excitement, perhaps? “They’re creatures of the Otherworld, ancient and slumbering, for the most part, in the deepest parts of the earth. But now we’ve woken them, and they’re hungry.”

“ You’ve woken them? Your society? Why?”

Alex shook his head, took a drag on the remains of his gasper, and dropped the stub on the pavement. Crushing it out with the toe of his shoe, he said, “When I say ‘we’, I mean mankind.” He looked up again, right into Josef’s eyes. “This bloody war has woken them, the violence and blood and agony of it sinking into the earth. And not only them.” Alex cocked his head. “You must have heard the stories at the front? Angels and ghosts in no man’s land.”

Josef had, of course. “Men staring death in the eye will inevitably imagine ghosts and angels.”

“Maybe so, but do their imaginings often chase them through Belgravia?”

Josef had no answer to that. His mind was slowly rearranging itself around a reality too incredible to believe, and yet with no convincing alternative. Eventually, he said, “I have a lot of questions.”

A smile tugged at Alex’s lips. “I can try to answer them for you, but let’s go somewhere warmer, shall we?”

Josef couldn’t argue with that; he was bloody freezing. “Any decent pubs in this neck of the wood?”

Alex consulted his watch and said, “The pubs aren’t open yet.” After a hesitation, he added, “My flat isn’t far.”

The idea of returning to Alex’s warm and sumptuous mansion flat, with its soft carpet and well-stocked drinks cabinet, was extremely appealing. Too appealing. And Joe Shepel was no fool; he remembered the revolver on the laundry basket, and Saint’s warning about loose ends. “How about you treat me to a cup of tea, instead? There must be somewhere around here.”

Alex’s expression closed. “There’s always Harrods, I suppose. It’s not far.”

Harrods ? “I was thinking of something more like a Corner House.”

“It’s a tramp to Leicester Square,” Alex said, “and in the circumstances, I’d rather avoid the Underground.”

Josef couldn’t help but agree. The very thought of those dark tunnels made him shiver with something worse than the cold. To distract himself from unwanted memories, he said, “Lord Beaumont takes the Underground, does he?”

“Only when his golden carriage is unavailable.” Then, with an exaggerated sweep of one arm, Alex said, “Shall we go?”

Josef had no reason and, in all honesty, no will to argue further and so he let Alex lead him through the quiet streets of Belgravia towards the bustle of Knightsbridge. It was a comfort to have the other man’s company, but even so, his ears were pricked for the sounds of footsteps behind him, and his nose twitched in dread of that death-stench.

Into the quiet, he said, “Tell me this, then. Are they…?” He thought back to Sykes’s body in the morgue with its sepulchral blue gaze. “Are they reanimated dead men, or do they just look like them?”

Alex gave a slight nod, as if in approval of the question. “By nature, ghouls feed on the dead—in graveyards or plague pits, typically. But at the front, in no man’s land…” His expression darkened. “There, they’ve started to feed on the dying, and sometimes their victims become infected, for want of a better word, before they pass.”

“Bloody hell, is that—?” Josef stopped walking, staring at Alex, who also stopped. “The black rot on Sykes’s arm?”

“Yes. We believe that men infected like Sykes can transform after death.”

“Transform into a ghoul?” Josef almost laughed; the idea was preposterous. “Like… Like Count Dracula?”

Alex winced, but only said, “Different process, but yes. The same outcome.”

“Fucking hell.”

“That’s what I said, or something like it.”

Josef laughed, although it came out wobblier than he’d have liked. “So, what you’re saying is any of these poor buggers who got bitten at the front could turn into a ghoul when they die?”

“That’s about the sum of it. We’re trying to weed them out before they leave the Continent, or at least when they reach the hospitals, but a few are slipping through. Clearly.” He added, “I’d hoped that Sykes had been spared that fate.”

“There are worse things than death,” Josef said, staring into Alex’s stark, pale face. “That’s what you said at the clearing station. I thought you meant dishonour, or some crap like that.”

Alex cocked his head. “And now you know better?”

Something in the man’s direct, dark gaze made Josef admit, “I don’t believe in ghosts or ghouls, but… I’m struggling to find another explanation.”

Alex held his gaze, and there was a warmth in his eyes at odds with the subject. “Well, as the great man said, There are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy .”

“True, but Hamlet was doolally, wasn’t he?” He grinned at Alex’s look of surprise. “What? Didn’t think I’d know my Shakespeare?”

“I’ve come to realise, Josef, that there are more things to you than one might dream of.”

“Oh yeah? Dream about me, do you?”

With an unexpectedly self-conscious smile, Alex said, “If I did, I’d hardly confess.”

There was no reason whatsoever for that smile to work its way into Josef’s chest, and yet he felt an anticipatory flutter of wings beneath his sternum just the same. “Come on,” he said, “I’m freezing my balls off out here.”

“And we wouldn’t want that,” Alex observed mildly, and started walking again. But his smile was still there and, aggravatingly, Josef’s lips also curved up as he fell into step next to him.

They were halfway along Piccadilly when Josef heard the first boom of a distant explosion, then a second. A moment later, whistles began to screech in warning, and everyone started to run.

“Air raid!”

A new, different fear seized Josef as he looked up to find the night sliced by searchlights. In the distance came the rat-a-tat-tat of antiaircraft guns, and below that the ominous drone of huge German Gotha aeroplanes.

“Damn it.” Alex pulled Josef back against the side of a building, out of the path of the panicking crowds.

They’d almost reached Burlington Arcade, and its well-heeled clients were being directed to shelter by the stoic Beadles in their ridiculous top hats and frock coats.

“Dover Street tube,” Josef said, grabbing Alex’s arm, “that’s the closest.”

Alex hesitated. “Not underground.”

“What? Come on—it’s a fucking air raid!”

“You know what’s down there.”

Josef watched helplessly as people ran past them towards the tube station. “Well, what about them?” he said hoarsely.

“The ghoul aren’t hunting them.”

“Shit.” He scanned the sky. Was that a shadow, moving beneath the clouds? “But surely in a crowd we’d be—”

An enormous detonation sucked all the noise out of the world. For an instant, he felt weightless, and then the pavement thumped him hard in the back, knocking the air from his lungs, and something warm and heavy covered him. No, not something, some one . Alex, shielding him from the pattering rain. Only there was no rain, just falling masonry, brick, and dust.

Josef didn’t move—couldn’t move—as he struggled to get air back into his lungs. On top of him, Alex was still, too. Breathing, though. Josef could feel his chest heaving, heart pounding, breath warm against Josef’s neck. He could feel the ponding of Alex’s heart against his chest. It helped him find his breath, even if he couldn’t hear it over the ringing in his ears.

The brickwork rain stopped; the world held silent for a long moment. And then the shouting and screaming began, and Beaumont moved, pushing himself up enough that he could study Josef’s face. Very close. He’d lost his hat, and his hair fell forward across his handsome face, his eyes dark in the dim light, lips parted as if about to…

“Are you all right?” Alex asked in a ragged voice, barely audible over the concussion in Josef’s eardrums.

Josef wheezed out his reply. “Think so.”

“Fuck,” Alex said, in very un-lordly manner, “that was a squeaker.”

Josef only nodded, and with a soft exhale, Beaumont leaned forward and rested his forehead against Josef’s. Only for a moment, but despite everything, Josef felt his blood rise and sing. Clumsily, he lifted a hand and patted the man’s shoulder in reassurance. “I think it was me doing the squeaking.”

To his surprise, Alex chuckled and lifted his head to look Josef in the eye once more before pushing himself up and away. It was easier to breathe without the man’s weight, but nevertheless, Josef found he missed his warmth. He shivered as he sat up too, gazing around at a world transformed. People were scrambling to their feet, or standing dazed, clutching friends or family, staring at the flames billowing out of the building not a hundred yards further down the road.

“Christ,” Alex said. “That’s the Royal Academy.”

“I hope no one was working late.”

Alex scrambled to his feet, pushing his hair back with one hand. He cast around for his lost hat, snatching it up. Stiffly, Josef also stood. No permanent damage, but he’d probably feel it in his back tomorrow.

As he rose, Josef realised that all around them people were panicking. This was nothing like the front, where men bent lower beneath the deadly barrage, hunkering down into the sodden earth of the trenches. For these people, these civilians, this single detonation was a catastrophe, and they were reacting like ants when you lifted a stone, running in all directions without thought.

Further up the road, the Beadles were shouting orders—they were old soldiers, after all—but few were paying attention. A woman hurried towards them, a bloodied handkerchief to her head, dragging a screaming child along by his hand.

Another huge explosion echoed across London, not far away, and a plume of flame and smoke rose up from the direction of the river.

The woman yelped, half turned and caught her foot on a piece of broken brickwork. She would have fallen had Alex not caught her arm and steadied her. “Careful,” he said. “It’s all right.”

She grasped at him, dropping her handkerchief, and revealing the bloody gash on her forehead. “Oh God,” she said, wobbling on her feet. “My son…”

“I’ve got him,” said Josef, and scooped the squirming lad up onto his hip. As the eldest child, he was no stranger dealing with young children. “He’s all right, aren’t you, mister?”

The boy sniffled and shook his head. Josef didn’t blame him.

Another explosion shook the city, and then a third, as fire rose into the sky, red and bloody. Josef met Alex’s eyes through the flickering flamelight, and they came to a silent agreement.

“Let’s get you to the Underground,” Alex told the woman. “You’ll be safe there.”

By the time they’d made their way back to the packed Dover Street station, the bells of the ambulances and fire engines were ringing, and they were able to discharge their wards into the tender care of the women on duty. And not long after that, the first bugles sounded, announcing all clear. Thank God.

Obviously, the tubes weren’t running; their platforms and tracks would still be crowded with frightened Londoners. And that left Josef with a long walk home.

“You’ve no choice, then,” Alex said as they left the chaos and noise of the station. “You have to come back to my flat.”

Josef shook his head. That was a bad idea for many reasons, not least of which being that he had to check that the Cohens were all right. And to tell them that he was, too. They’d imagine the worst if he didn’t come home after an air raid.

“We’ll send a messenger boy,” Alex said when Josef explained. “And to your family, too, of course.”

“Not to my family, no.”

Alex said, lightly, “No?”

“We’re not on terms,” he said. “Not since the start of the war.” Which was all he intended to say on the matter.

Alex didn’t press, simply nodded. “Very well. When we get back, you can write a note to the Cohens. The boy can take it and bring back any reply.”

“Oh, so it’s all right for a boy on a bike to be making his way through London during an air raid, but not me?”

“For one thing, the air raid’s over,” Alex pointed out, lifting a finger to count. “For a second, the boy hasn’t been attacked, grilled by The Society, and nearly blasted to Kingdom Come this evening. And for a third—I tip exceptionally well.”

“Even so, I could easily—”

“For God’s sake!” Alex snapped. “Can’t you just let me—?” He gritted his teeth, glancing around them and then lowering his voice. “You nearly died today. Twice. Don’t you think you might need a little…care tonight?”

Josef swallowed at the strange crack in Alex’s voice. “That’s not what—” After a moment, he rephrased, “I’m used to getting by on my own.”

“Yes, I realise that.” Alex ran a hand through his dishevelled hair, a disarmingly frustrated gesture. “I’m also aware that your perception of the world has been radically altered in the last few days, and that I may be able to help you…adjust. If, that is, you trust me enough.”

Josef held his gaze, trying to see into the heart of the man. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Can I trust you?”

“If I meant you harm,” Alex said, “I’d have let harm come to you.”

That was true, as far as it went, but Josef hadn’t survived as long as he had in the world by trusting easily. “I suppose you do keep saving my life,” he conceded.

Alex’s lips twitched into his wry half-smile. “Only because you keep putting it in danger.” He inclined his head in the general direction of St. James’s Park. “Come back with me and we’ll talk. I’m too tired to save your life again tonight.”

Josef made a show of considering, but in truth his decision had already been made. “I do have a lot of questions,” he admitted. “And no other bugger is going to give me any answers.”