Chapter Seventeen

A fterwards, they lay quietly together, Josef spooned against Alex’s chest with his head resting on one of Alex’s powerful arms.

For the first time in forever, he felt relaxed. Boneless. His mind drifting in a happy miasma of drowsy dreams.

Alex’s warm breath ruffled his hair as he murmured, “I’ve thought about you a great deal over the past few months.”

“Have you?”

“I know I shouldn’t; I know this can’t be more than it is. But I wanted you to know that the night we spent together in Pops was… real.”

Josef twisted slightly in his arms, trying to see his face. “Was it? You were lying about everything that night. Even your name.”

“Not true. I told you my name.”

“Only half of it.”

“The most important half.” He kissed Josef’s shoulder, then sighed, tightening his arm around Josef’s waist. “I wish things could have been different, though.”

“Different how?” Josef squirmed onto his side so that they were face to face. Alex’s hand came to rest on the small of his back, warm and heavy.

“I wish we could have parted as friends.”

Josef snorted. “Friends? That was hardly possible.”

“It could have been,” Alex objected. “If…if we’d had fewer secrets.”

“And you weren’t such a toff.”

“And you weren’t such a socialist oik.”

Josef gasped in mock outrage. “Oik?” He turned his caress of Alex’s chest into a poke in the ribs, making him yelp. And then fight back, which resulted in a ridiculous tickling match as they wrestled around in Alex’s enormous bed. It only ended when Alex pinned Josef’s arms to the bed, straddling him as he leaned down and thoroughly kissed him into submission.

And submit Josef did, giving up everything to that moment of untethered joy. And to Alex, to his body moving over Josef’s, moving inside him, to the overwhelming rise of pleasure. When it broke over him, he let it wash everything away and leave him, for a few precious moments, pure and cleansed of troubles.

Much later, Josef woke from a deep sleep to the sound of a telephone ringing.

For a moment, he was confused—the Cohens didn’t own a telephone. And then, with a complex rush of warmth and wariness, he remembered where he was: Alex Beaumont’s bed.

Propping himself up on his elbows, blinking sleep away, Josef watched through the bedroom door as Alex, half dressed, picked up the telephone handset.

“Yes, of course,” he said after a moment. “Send him up—the long way, please.”

Josef sat up straight. Send him up ?

Bolting out of bed, he scrabbled around in the semi-dark looking for his clothes. He didn’t know what the hell Alex was playing at, but he wasn’t about to be found naked in his bed.

“You might want to—ah.” Alex stood, well, lounged, in the doorway. His shirt was only partly fastened and revealed a slice of muscular chest that Josef might have found enticing had he not been searching for his underwear. “I take it you heard that we’re expecting company?”

“Yes, I bloody well did. And I suppose you think I'll just hide in a cupboard or climb out the window. Well, think again, sunshine.”

Alex looked amused. “You’re welcome to any of my cupboards, but I wouldn’t recommend trying to scale the building at this time of night.” His amusement softened, and he smiled, holding out a hand to Josef. “Come here.”

Reluctantly, but unable to stop himself, Josef took the offered hand. Warm, strong—he remembered the feel of it on his body, the dexterity and subtlety of those elegant fingers. Goosebumps rose along his arms, despite the warmth of the room.

“Don’t worry,” Alex said, tugging Josef against him, “we have time. I’ve no intention of exposing you to any danger.”

“Ghouls aside?”

Alex’s eyebrows rose. “ You were the one poking about in that business. I tried to warn you off.”

That was true, Josef supposed. “I’m not very biddable,” he confessed.

“I know. It’s one of the things I like most about you.”

Josef’s turn to smile, and although he tried to make it arch, he had a feeling it was embarrassingly eager. “You like me, do you?”

He was expecting a wry response, but Alex only said, “I do, rather.”

It was silly that those three words sent Josef’s heart knocking about in his chest, but there was no denying that they did. Or that Josef was, apparently, in extreme danger of being smitten by this toff.

Bollocks .

When he didn’t respond, one corner of Alex’s mouth lifted into an odd little smile. “You should get dressed,” he said, letting Josef go. “Dutta will be here soon, and you might be interested in what he has to say.”

“Which is what?” Josef said, pulling on his underpants and buttoning them hurriedly.

“That, I don’t know. But he wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t trouble.”

“What—?” Josef began, but he was cut off by an urgent rapping on the front door.

Alex grimaced. “No more questions. Get dressed and come through. Then we’ll find out what this is about.”

He didn’t much like being ordered about, by Alex or anyone else, but he was curious. Obviously. So, he dressed quickly and hurried out of the bedroom, trying to appear nonchalant as he sauntered into the parlour. Trying not to look like a man sneaking out of another man’s bed.

He needn’t have worried what he looked like, though, because neither man was paying him the least bit of attention.

Dutta, in a red turban, sat on the green velvet settee, his back to Josef, facing the fireplace where Alex stood leaning against the mantel in his—thankfully, fully fastened—shirtsleeves. He looked utterly unruffled, a cigarette dangling from one languorous hand.

“...died of wounds,” Dutta was saying in his cultured accent. “He was taken to the mortuary at Cemetery Station to be transported by train for burial at Brookwood tomorrow. If they get out of London...”

“Yes, very bad,” Alex agreed. Then, noticing Josef, he smiled. “Ah, there you are.”

Dutta turned his head, eyes narrowing sharply, and Josef tried to match Alex’s sangfroid. “Mr Dutta,” he said, with a slight nod.

“Mr Shepel. What a surprise to find you here so late at night.”

“I could say the same to you.”

With a warning look at Alex, Dutta said, “Is this wise?”

“Wise or not,” Alex said, dropping into one of the armchairs next to the fire, “Shepel knows almost as much as we do about the ghoul situation. Although he probably wishes he didn’t.”

“I don’t wish anything so bloody stupid.” Josef crossed the room to take the empty chair on the other side of the fireplace. “Only an idiot would wish for ignorance.”

Dutta gave a chilly smile. “Are you sure about that? Ignorance is bliss, so they say.”

“They also say knowledge is power. And they’re right.”

Alex sighed. “If you’ve both quite finished, shall we return to the matter in hand? Dal, are we positive this Major Giles has been infected?”

“I haven’t seen the body myself, but Withers, our man on the ambulance train, said Giles was feverish and raving so badly they had to tie him into his bunk. He was dead before they reached Waterloo, apparently.”

Alex looked grim.

“You’re talking about a man bitten by a ghoul?” Josef guessed.

In the firelight, the silver pin in Dutta’s turban gleamed as he nodded. “He’d been stranded in no man’s land overnight before the stretcher bearers could fetch him back behind the lines.” His expression turned grim. “The ghoul had feasted on him.”

“That’s... I remember the screams at night.” Josef shivered, his mind turning back to those bleak months in the salient. “You could hear them even from the reserve trench. It was horrible enough, but I never imagined they were...”

...being eaten alive, wounded, dying, and alone in the cold dark.

“How could you imagine?” Alex said softly, reaching over to set his hand on Josef’s knee.

Startled out of his thoughts by Alex’s carelessness, Josef threw a panicked look at Dutta. He didn’t seem to have noticed the indiscretion, and Josef quickly crossed his legs, dislodging Alex’s hand.

“We can’t permit the body to leave London,” Dutta was saying to Alex. “Good Lord, Saint would skin us alive! And the last thing we need is one of the blighters setting up a nest in Brookwood.”

Alex looked up at that. “Is it? I can’t help thinking that a huge cemetery in the country would be a more natural place for a ghoul. In the past—”

“That’s your uncle talking,” Dutta said sharply. “And we don’t live in the past; there’s no natural place for ghouls in the twentieth century.”

Alex went quiet, his expression turned inward. Dutta lifted his chin in a way that suggested, I regret nothing .

Josef held his breath, waiting to see what would happen next.

After a moment, Alex said stiffly, “Well, there’s certainly no place for a ghoul nest in the London sewer system. That’s the salient point tonight.”

“Quite.” Dutta rose. “Come on, then. We’ll have to be quick; the body will be on the train to Brookwood in the morning.”

Alex nodded grimly. “All right.”

He turned a regretful look on Josef, but before he could apologise for leaving, Josef said, “I’m coming too.”

The words left his mouth almost without thought. But why not go? Somehow, he’d stumbled into the most incredible story of his life—of anyone’s life. Secret societies, monsters lurking in the sewers? He’d be a right bloody idiot not to find out everything.

“Absolutely not,” Dutta said.

Josef ignored him, but Alex was frowning too, shaking his head so hard a lock of dark hair tumbled over his forehead. Irritably, he pushed it back. “It’s not safe. And this isn’t your business, Josef. I can deal with—”

“Bollocks.” Josef sat forward in his chair, elbows on knees, and fixed Alex with a serious look. “Those bastards nearly killed me, twice. And now they’re skulking about in my city, under my streets, threatening my people. Not my business? Give over.”

“What Beaumont means,” Dutta said crisply, “is that you’re not a member of The Society.”

“Oh, piss off,” Josef snapped. “These things are attacking ordinary men; they’re infecting fucking soldiers at the front. They’re turning them into monsters! And you’re bothered about whether I’m in your bloody club?”

“He’s absolutely right, you know.” Alex looked up at Dutta. “This is his concern as much as ours. Of course it is.”

Dutta’s lips thinned, but he didn’t argue. He didn’t look pleased, either.

“In which case,” Alex went on, flashing a breezy smile that Josef didn’t buy for a moment, “we have an appointment with the London Necropolis Railway.”