Chapter Eighteen

I n the middle of the last century, London’s boneyards had been filled to bursting. When he was a boy, Josef’s father, who’d loved a gory tale, had terrified him with stories of rotting corpses falling through the walls into people’s cellars, or being dug up by stray dogs, or just emerging, rotting, from the mud when it rained.

Something had needed to be done, and so a ring of huge cemeteries had been built beyond the city’s edge—the most ambitious of which had been the London Necropolis in Brookwood, Surrey, miles away from London’s sprawl and accessed from the city by the ‘Stiffs Express’ running from Cemetery Station.

These days, the gothic station entrance loomed over Westminster Bridge Road in a gloomy tribute to those twin Victorian obsessions: death and railways. Many times, Josef had walked past the ornate iron gates, not yet sacrificed to the war effort, which guarded a grand stone archway large enough to admit a hearse. But he’d never been inside.

Tonight, or rather, this morning, because it was already past one o’clock, the lightless station building looked eerie and forbidding. And Josef was starting to regret his impulsive decision to join Alex and Dutta on their little adventure. London was darker than ever these days, what with the lights being dimmed in case of air raids, and while the darkness would probably help their housebreaking endeavour, it only added to Josef’s jitters. Every sound had him jumping out of his skin, expecting a ghoul to leap from the shadows at any moment.

“Let’s cross,” Alex said quietly, glancing along the empty street before heading over the road towards the station.

Dutta walked a pace ahead of Alex, and Josef followed behind, sticking close. “Do you know how to get in?”

“I have some ideas.” Alex eyed the iron gates. “Can you climb?”

“Over the gate? I’m not sure that’s a good idea. We’ll be seen—” Josef’s foot missed the kerb in the dark, and he stumbled over it.

Alex caught his arm, steadying him. “You do not have to come with us,” he said quietly, pulling Josef to a halt. In the night, his face was all shadow save the gleam of his eyes. “Dutta and I are quite capable of—”

Dutta snapped something at Alex. Josef didn’t understand the language, but he didn’t need to because Dutta’s meaning was clear: Stop fucking around .

Alex snapped something back at him, and they glared at each other.

Into the silence, Josef said, “I’m coming. Fuck’s sake, why wouldn’t I? This is the biggest story of my life.”

“One you can never tell without risking the asylum.”

Regrettably, that was probably true. Josef grinned. “Doesn’t mean it’s not a great story. Maybe I’ll write a novel?”

Alex smiled at that, and Dutta sighed. “Hell, Beaumont, can't I simply shoot him?”

Gradually, Alex’s smile faded, but his hand remained locked around Josef’s arm, fingers warm through the sleeve of his coat, and the longer Alex gazed at him with those penetrating eyes, full of secrets, the faster Josef’s heart raced.

At length, Alex looked away, dropping his hand from Josef’s arm. He cleared his throat. “You’re right,” he said briskly. “There is a risk we’ll be seen, so we’ll have to climb quickly. Are you ready?”

Josef eyed the shadowy gates rising into the darkness. Above them, carved into the great stone arch, were the words Cemetery Station .

Swallowing, Josef said, “Let’s do it.”

The ornate gates were easy to scale, though the iron was icy beneath Josef’s fingers, and to his ear it sounded like they made a hell of a racket as their boots struck iron and the gate squealed under their weight. He expected a police whistle at any moment, but none came, and they scrambled quickly over the top and down the other side. Josef jumped the last foot or two and landed with a soft huff of breath, Alex a moment behind him. Dutta was already disappearing into the darkness beneath the archway.

They turned to look at each other, and smiled, Alex’s teeth a flash of ivory in the dark.

“Come on,” he whispered, and they followed Dutta into the shadows.

Josef stuck close to the wall as the driveway led them into a tunnel that ran through the centre of the whole building. On the other side, the drive made a sharp left turn beneath a glass canopy built onto the back of the station. Glazed white brickwork gleamed ghostly on its wall, and the silhouettes of palm and bay trees lined the route.

“Fancy,” Josef murmured. He could imagine it in daylight, modern and elegant. Fitting, people would say, for the passage of the dead. Dignified and respectful.

And then he thought of the dressing station where he’d first met Alex, of the dead and dying left to rot. Of the corpses sinking into the mud of no man’s land. Where was their dignity? Where was their respect?

“Over here.” A row of doors lined the wall, and Alex was trying the handle of the first. It was locked.

Josef came to join him. “Is that the mortuary?”

“Maybe.” From his pocket, Alex produced something that jingled like a set of keys. Lock picks, Josef realised with surprise. Not that he should be surprised, but the idea of Lord Alexander Beaumont knowing how to jimmy a lock amused him.

There were a lot of doors, though, and it wasn’t quick work. They’d be here all night if Alex had to try them all.

From his pocket, Josef retrieved his hand torch. Maybe it was a risk, but he reckoned it was worth taking if it could save them time. Switching it on, he flashed it over the door.

Dutta hissed. “Idiot, turn that off!”

Josef ignored him. “Storeroom One,” he read on the small brass plate fixed to the wall next to the door.

Quickly, he moved onto the next door. “Storeroom Two.”

And so on, until, about halfway along the building, he read, “Mortuary—third class.” He stared. “Third class?”

“Giles was an officer,” Dutta said, as though Josef was stupid. “He’ll be in the first-class mortuary.”

Josef kept staring at the little brass plaque, but in his mind’s eye he was back at that dressing station again. There, the only distinction that mattered had been between the living and the dead. Third class? “Are they fucking joking ?”

Alex touched his shoulder. “I know, but there’s not much time. Come on.”

As it turned out, the first-class mortuary was only one door along, and after about twenty minutes of muttered cursing, Alex got it open, and they slipped inside.

Black as pitch, once the door closed behind them, and Josef had to force back the sudden panicking clutch of claustrophobia. Scrabbling at his torch, he switched it on again and swept the beam across the room. Like the rest of the building, it was modern and gleaming. On the far side were the drawers which housed the dead, enough to store six bodies until the next train ran to the cemetery. And on a table in the middle of the room sat three coffins, closed. Presumably, they were for those taking their final journey in the morning.

“He must be in one of these,” Dutta said, crossing the room quickly.

Josef followed, the hair on the back of his neck creeping up. Something was catching in his throat, a memory, or a hint of that dreadful death stench.

“What are you going to do?” he whispered.

Dutta glanced at him. “What must be done, of course.” In the dark, something gleamed dully in his hand, and Josef realised the man had drawn a gun.

“Does that work?” he asked. “Against a ghoul?”

“No,” Dutta said in that supercilious voice of his. “But it works against infected men, before they fully turn.”

“With luck, it won’t be necessary,” Alex said as he fished in his pocket and pulled out a handful of change, sorting through it and pocketing everything but a sixpence. “If we’re in time, a silver coin under the tongue will keep the infection from turning him.”

Josef looked at him. “And if we’re not in time?”

“Then we’ll have a fight on our hands.” He lifted his walking cane. “Hold this, will you?” he said and threw it to Josef.

It was heavier than Josef expected, a comforting weight in his hands. “All right then,” he said. “Get on with it.”

“Bring your torch,” Alex said as he moved carefully towards the coffins.

Josef followed on legs heavy with dread. Suddenly, powerfully, he did not want Dutta to lift the lids on those coffins.

“Can’t we just lock it inside?” he whispered as they drew nearer. “It’ll be buried tomorrow.”

“If burial could contain a ghoul, don’t you think we’d have collapsed the tunnels under no man’s land and dealt with the lot of them?” Dutta peered at the first coffin, his face oddly lit by the harsh electric light of the torch.

Alex said, more quietly, “Ghouls are at home underground—it would easily escape the coffin. And then it would thrive; cemeteries are their natural habitat.”

“Natural habitat.” Dutta gave a soft snort. “Shepel, bring the light closer.”

Josef did so, playing the beam over the lid of the coffin Dutta was examining. An ornate brass plaque announced the name of the Honourable Eleanor Woolsey-Banks. The second belonged to Thomas James Milton, OBE.

Josef’s heart kicked as he read the plaque on the third coffin: Major Anthony Asquith Giles. “That’s him,” he whispered.

Dutta only nodded, then bent over and pressed his ear to the top of the casket. Listening for sounds inside, Josef realised with a creeping horror. Straightening, Dutta circled the coffin, running his fingers beneath the lid, looking for the catch to unlock it.

Fuck.

The torchlight wobbled, and Josef realised he was shaking. He tried to take a steadying breath, but the death- stench was stronger now, and it caught in his throat, making him cough.

Alex looked over. “All right?”

Josef nodded, then realised Alex might not be able to see him properly, so he whispered, “Fine and dandy.”

His only answer was the click of the locking mechanism releasing. Dutta moved to the foot of the casket, reached over, and swung the coffin lid open. It moved silently, without the eerie creak Josef had been expecting.

Nothing happened.

Only silence.

Then a hand landed on his wrist, and Josef yelped, yanking his arm away before he realised it was Alex.

“Shine the light inside,” Alex whispered, guiding Josef’s shaking arm down towards the coffin.

He did so, teeth gritted against the sight to come. The creature from that afternoon was fresh in his mind, and he was expecting a snarling, slathering monster, leaping up to tear off his face.

What he saw was a tall, well-dressed woman lying on her side, limbs twisted awkwardly as if she’d simply been dumped in the coffin.

“Christ,” Alex cursed, spinning away from the casket.

Josef swung the light towards him. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s out. It’s in here somewhere.”

“What?”

“Back to back,” Dutta snapped. “Move. And give me the—”

“ Beaumont …” A sibilant hiss crept through the dark. “ We know you. We know your line. ”

Josef’s hair stood on end as he spun to face the sound, sweeping his torch in wide arcs. Nothing.

“And I know you, ghoul ,” said Alex. “I cannot permit you to remain here.”

A wet, wheezing sound—laughter?—filled the room and with it a wave of that dreadful, rotting stench. Josef gagged, burying his mouth and nose in the crook of his elbow.

“This is no place for you,” Alex went on. “Leave, return to the dark places you have known.”

“ You cannot stop us; we are many. ”

“I will stop you. I have stopped you. One of your kind is already dead by my hand.”

The ghoul hissed, the sound coming from Josef’s left and…up? He swung the torch towards the ceiling, flashing its beam over a desk, a set of tall filing cabinets—and above them, a wet gleam in the dark.

“There!” Atop the cabinets, something monstrous crouched. Once human, dressed in uniform, but with a face that seemed to shift between that of a man and that of…something other. Teeth like talons, eyes that eerie blue. And everywhere the stench of rot and death.

Horrified, Josef staggered back a step, knocking into the casket behind him and sending its lid slamming shut with a thick dead thump.

He froze. The room froze.

And then, with an inhuman scream, the ghoul launched itself from its hiding place and flew at Alex. They went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs, and Josef could hardly keep track of them in the dark. Dropping his torch, he waded in with Alex’s cane, hitting the creature—God, he hoped it was the ghoul—with the heavy weapon. It barely seemed to notice, and Josef realised in horror that it was intent on one thing only: biting Alex.

The shock of that lit a fire in Josef, fiercer than he’d ever known. With a yell, he launched himself at the ghoul, grabbing it by the shoulders and trying to haul it off Alex. Noticing him at last, the creature turned its snarling face on Josef.

Those teeth, like needles, bared, the sepulchral gleam of its eyes fixed on him. Josef scrambled backwards, too slow, and the ghoul was on him, bearing him down with a strength far beyond human. His head cracked against the floor, sending lights dancing across his vision.

“Josef!”

That was Alex, though Josef couldn’t see him in the dark. Couldn’t see anything but the creature. He punched and kicked. Somewhere along the way, he’d dropped the stick. Not that it mattered, it was too big in close quarters. Should have brought a fucking knife.

The creature lunged and clawed, jaws slavering, and Josef screamed as he tried to fight it off, jabbing his fingers at its inhuman eyes.

And then something whistled through the air, connecting with the side of the ghoul’s head, and it let Josef go. Knocked sideways, it scrabbled away, hissing in fury.

“Leave him alone, you fucker!” Alex bellowed, wielding the stick, sounding wild and furious and utterly unlike himself.

Someone—Dutta—grabbed Josef’s arm, and he scrambled to his feet, backing away from the ghoul.

His head thundered, vision tilting, and he staggered against one of the coffins.

In the dark, he was aware of Dutta watching Alex, who stood in a fighting stance, braced for attack, one shoulder of his jacket torn and bloody.

Shit. Josef’s head swam in sudden dread.

Then the ghoul hissed where it crouched, an unnatural, venomous sound as it leaped for Alex. But he moved faster, spinning away from it. As he spun, he took hold of his stick with both hands. Josef didn’t understand what was happening until half the stick went clattering to the ground and silver gleamed in Alex’s hand.

A sword.

A fucking sword .

With the elegance of a dancer, Alex allowed momentum to carry him right around, sweeping the sword in a wide arc until it sliced cleanly through the ghoul’s neck, sending his head tumbling across the mortuary floor to land in a grisly mess at Josef’s feet.

In the sudden silence, Alex’s breaths rasped. “Are you all right?”

Josef dropped his hand from the back of his head, ignoring the pain. “I—"

The unmistakable sound of a revolver being cocked stopped him. Looking to his left, he saw Dutta with his arm raised and his gun pointed squarely at Alex.

Josef stared. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“He’s been bitten.” Dutta sounded cold, emotionless.

Alex jolted in shock, staring down at his torn jacket as if he’d only just noticed. “No,” he said airlessly, “it’s not...”

“You have. I saw it bite you.”

“ Fuck .” With a clatter, Alex’s sword hit the stone floor as he scrabbled at the hole in his jacket. “Fuck!”

Josef’s heart did something peculiar, twisting in panic and pain. “Alex…?” It was barely a whisper, the word trapped in his tightening throat.

Dutta said, “Alex, close your eyes.”

“ What ?” Josef spun towards him again, his gaze fixing on that unshaking, unrelenting gun. “You can’t just shoot him!”

“I’m sorry,” Dutta said. “Truly. But he’d do the same if it were me.”

Suddenly, Josef couldn’t speak, or even breathe, his outrage overwhelming.

“He’s right.” Alex stood straight, stupidly brave, but Josef didn’t miss the suppressed terror in his voice. “There’s no choice.”

“There’s always a fucking choice,” Josef snapped, and in two steps he stood between Alex and the gun. He raised his hands, staring at Dutta. “Here’s your choice: let him go or see yourself named a murderer in the Clarion . I won’t spare the details.”

Behind him, Alex cursed, but Dutta didn’t react at all, and the gun remained steady. “Alex is already dead,” he said cooly. “His noble sacrifice will not be forgotten by The Society; don’t make this harder for him.”

“ Harder for him?” Josef growled. “Fuck this and fuck his noble sacrifice .” He spun around to face Alex, taking an angry step closer. “For God’s sake, don’t you want to live?”

Alex’s dark eyes were agonised. “Of course I do,” he said stiffly, voice rasping. “But I’m infected. I’ve been bitten...”

“Barely a couple of minutes ago.” Josef kept walking closer, his gaze holding Alex’s. “We must be able to do something.”

It wasn’t much of a reaction, but Josef didn’t miss the tightening of Alex’s mouth, the way his gaze turned evasive.

“We can ,” Josef breathed. “Fuck, we can, can’t we?”

Alex shook his head, brow creasing. “It’s not actually—”

“Step out of the way, Shepel. Do it now.”

Dutta’s voice came from right behind him. Josef stilled; he could almost feel the gun’s muzzle between his shoulder blades. His eyes locked on Alex. “And if I don’t?”

“I doubt anyone will miss you.”

That was probably truer than Dutta knew. Still, stiffening his spine, in every sense, Josef said, “I’m not going to stand here and watch you murder him.”

“Then leave.”

“If I leave, I’ll go straight to the Clarion . News of Lord Alexander Beaumont’s gruesome murder at the hand of his friend will shift a few copies, no doubt.”

“Josef, for God’s sake,” Alex growled.

Cooly, Dutta said, “You’re not making this any easier on yourself.”

“Or you, I hope.” Josef turned and found Dutta only a couple of feet away, his gun aimed point-blank at Josef’s head. In the gloom, the man’s face was entirely in shadow, his expression impenetrable.

He’ll do it , Josef realised with a thud of sick fear. He'll shoot me, then kill Alex .

And Alex won’t stop him .

Heart hammering, his vision narrowed, the world going dark at the edges until all he could see was the blind eye of that gun.

He didn’t want to die.

He didn’t want Alex to die.

He didn’t want to accept that those were his only fucking choices.

Fists curling at his sides, Josef prepared to fight. If he could duck beneath the gun, slam his head into Dutta’s belly, maybe he could wrestle the gun from his hand before—

“Lower your weapon.”

Josef spun around. Behind him, Alex stood with his Webley raised and pointed at Dutta.

“I mean it,” Alex said. “Dal, put the gun down.”

Dutta’s astonishment was visible in the uncertain wobble of his arm. “What the devil are you doing? You've been bitten. We both know how this ends.”

“For me, yes. Not for him.”

“For God’s sake, Beaumont, you heard what he said. He’ll go to the press.”

“I’ll handle that.”

Dutta didn’t lower his weapon. “Didn’t I tell you this would happen? I warned you in Poperinge. I told you he’d be trouble.”

Alex didn’t answer. “Josef,” he said, “come here.”

Josef didn’t move, frozen by the unblinking gaze of Dutta’s gun.

“Joe!” Alex barked. “Now.”

With his gaze fixed on Dutta, Josef backed towards Alex. As soon as he was within range, Alex grabbed his arm and pulled Josef behind him. To Dutta, he said, “I’ll handle this my own way.”

“Which is what?”

Alex didn’t answer, and Josef’s stomach pitched in alarm. What the fuck was Alex planning? If he thought Josef would let him put a bullet in his own stupid head, he could bloody well think again.

After a long pause, Dutta said, “I’ll have to tell Saint.”

“I know.”

Some silent communication passed between them before Dutta finally lowered his weapon. “Unfortunately, it will take time to clear up this mess.” He gestured around the mortuary. “It may be several hours before I’m able to return to Belgrave Square.”

Josef heard the controlled rush of breath leave Alex’s body, saw his shoulders relax as he too lowered his gun. “Thank you.”

With a curt nod, Dutta said, “Make what use you can of the time, but if it were me…” His gaze held Alex’s, bleak and dark. “If it were me, I’d want a swift end while I was still myself.”