twenty-eight

Alexei

Alexei floated all the way back to the club.

The euphoric feeling made his recovery speed up quite spectacularly, according to Peter, who had stayed behind when everyone else had left. But the next day, he too left, to attend to business that could not wait.

Alexei was completely recovered and completely delirious with hope.

And then, Poppy's brother showed up at the Hell Club.

Wilder showed him into Alexei's study, a green look of disgust and hatred twisting his usually calm face.

"What can I do for you, Wyatt?" Alexei asked him without looking up from the letter he had been writing.

He had seen the man plenty of times at the card rooms, and knew what he looked like: a bald, middle-aged, weak-chinned, sunken sort of person, quite unremarkable, who walked along with his shoulders stooped. Whenever he had sat in one of the card tables, his eyes had taken on that greedy sheen to them, giving him something of the look of a rat.

How Alexei did not leap up from his seat and plant his fist directly in the man's face, he never knew.

"It is Reverend Wyatt, actually," Poppy's brother drew himself up.

"It is nothing of the kind," Alexei murmured. "I find myself unable to revere you. Or, indeed, to respect you in the slightest. I should think that you must be thankful you do not find yourself flattened by my fist, as it were."

"My…my lord," the vicar stuttered.

"It's ‘Your Highness', actually." No, he couldn't hold it in any longer. Violence was emanating from Alexei's every pore. Give me strength not to kill him here and now.

"Well, Your Highness," the man sounded nervous now. Out of his mind with fear, actually. Good. "I am sure I'm obliged to you for not hitting me, but I…"

"The night is still young," Alexei interrupted. "Do not consider yourself safe. Tell me then, what has brought you to my door this time, if not game and frivolity, as per usual? Have another sister to sell like a bloody thing, mayhap?"

Poppy's brother swallowed with an audible gulp.

"Persephone seems to have gone missing again," he said, and Alexei sat up, immediately alert, forgetting everything else. "Is she here, by any chance? I wondered that she might have come back to…"

"She what?" Alexei spat.

"I can't find her anywhere," the vicar continued, cowering now. "Have you taken her again, Your Highness?"

"Let's see, have you lost her to me again?"

"I…I…"

Alexei stood up, looming over the man, and that was enough for the whole story to come out. Apparently, Poppy had gone out to work in her garden in the morning, and her brother had not checked on her until noon, whereupon he found her missing. Her garden tools were on the ground, as if she had been forced to abandon them quickly, without properly putting them away.

And her shawl was on the ground.

"I am out of my mind with worry," her brother was saying. "I have looked everywhere, and came here as a last resort, since I don't quite know what to…"

But Alexei was already out of the door, running.

…

"Wilder!"

He called for his friend, who was waiting close to the door, if not directly outside of it, eavesdropping.

"Need help killing the bastard?" Wilder asked hopefully.

"What? No, I—"

"Your Highness!" the vicar could be heard muttering from inside the office. He wisely did not make any attempt to follow Alexei.

"Wait a minute, the piece of scum is still breathing?" Wilder shoved Alexei aside to peer into the room. "I only let him in so you could murder him yourself, you understand. If you have qualms doing it, I shall be happy to finish the task myself."

"Will you shut up for a second," Alexei said, feeling the fear drain him of energy. Of blood. "Poppy is missing."

"What?" Wilder stumbled.

"She hasn't come here, by any chance, has she?"

"No."

Alexei pursed his lips to keep himself from screaming. He gave the order for a carriage to be readied.

"The only thing that has come here today," Wilder flung over his shoulder, as he left to tend to the horses, "was another one of those vile threatening notes."

Then he stopped short, one foot on the stairs.

"What did it say?" Alexei asked savagely.

"I barely glanced at it," Wilder admitted, "I have stopped giving them to you, my lord, they are so many."

"Let's see it."

Wilder hadn't yet fed it to the fire. They discovered it in the upstairs study. Alexei read it in single glance, but Wilder had to pause and grip the edge of the desk, because his legs gave out under him.

"You don't think…Surely not…" he mumbled incoherently.

Alexei grabbed his shoulder to keep him from falling.

"This is not time to fall apart, man," he said sternly. "If she has one faint hope, it's us. Let's go."

In their haste, the note fluttered to the ground, but Alexei didn't need it. Its every word was etched in his mind, as if it had been seared there by blood.

I have buried your seed.

More will follow unless you give us the Greek prince.

One for every week you do not comply.

Count your dead, my Lord Perlin.

Who knows that I call her my little seed? Alexei thought frantically as he sprinted up the stairs, walked out into the blue evening, and boarded his carriage. Everyone who has stepped foot in the club, that's who. I have made it no secret that I call her by that name. It could be anyone.

God help me!

He passed a hand over his face and it came up wet with tears.

"It said that he or they have buried her," Wilder was saying as he climbed next to him. "Does that mean…?"

"It's not literal," Alexei snapped.

It can't be. Dear God, don't let it be.

"Never took you for a praying man," Wilder murmured.

Alexei hadn't realized that he had spoken out loud. So be it.

"There is no point in trying to find out who wrote the note, who took her," he said, fighting to keep his grasp on clear, calm thought. "It's a nameless goon, a mercenary, an assassin. Those people hardly know anything, least of all who sent them. And we shall find it easier to kill them than extract any information from them."

"Much easier, I should think," Wilder grunted. "I shall find no hardship, I promise you, in killing that son of a—"

"Don't waste your energy on that," Alexei said, then he gasped as a sudden darkness threatened to overwhelm him. He took a deep breath, biting his lips together, and fought against nausea. The carriage rolled out into the street. "We will be better off going to Miss Wyatt's house first, I think, and finding out whatever traces she left behind. They will tell us more than any assassin will ever be persuaded to."

"I," Wilder said, "am losing my mind."

Which was not very helpful at all, but Alexei was hardly in possession of his mind either, so what did he know?

He tapped on the roof and yelled at the driver to go faster, although the horses were already galloping at breakneck speed. Even so, the moments it took to reach the vicarage seemed like eons.

The silence inside the carriage was thick like a fog, stopping his breath.

"Haven't seen Cerberus in days," Alexei murmured, because he didn't know what to say. He didn't know how to say ‘if she is really dead I shall die too'. So he spoke about the bloody cat.

"Is Cerberus a cat?"

"Indeed," Alexei nodded. "Blasted animal has run away, no doubt. Or gotten trod on."

"You've finally lost your marbles, have you?" Wilder said.

"You and I both."

Then he saw Poppy's little garden from the window, and he was already opening the carriage door and jumping down before the horses had stopped moving. Wilder was hot on his heels.

They jumped over the gate, their boots crunching on the old, hard snow underfoot.

"There!" Wilder cried, pointing to a spot a few yards in the distance.

The ground was dark and freshly dug there, the snow swept aside, and there were wilted roses heaped on top of the smoothed soil. A pair of scissors was flung carelessly among the thorns, and there were various other garden tools thrown about, as if someone had been working diligently on the neglected roses and had abandoned their work in a hurry.

Alexei knelt on the ground, his knees digging into the dirt, and pressed a hand to his chest. It hurt.

I won't survive this, he thought with sudden clarity. Someone took her from here, someone…She must have been so scared. So…

He grabbed his hair.

If I survive her absence, which I won't, I sure as hell won't survive thinking of her being taken like this. Being…

"Hey!" Wilder's hand was on his shoulder, warm and strong. "Don't fall. Don't lose your courage now, Alexei, come on. This is not for the faint of heart. We will find something, we will."

They were both on the ground now, on their knees, looking frantically around for a clue, for anything. It seemed to Alexei that he saw signs of a struggle, but he couldn't be sure that he wasn't imagining it.

I hope you fought, little seed. I hope you fought like I taught you. Like a fiend.

Some mark on the ground that looked like a violent step…A snapped branch with something that looked like blood dripping on its edge…A few crushed petals that stood apart from the rest of the rubbish, as if someone had clutched them in desperation, trying to get away…Yes, these might be signs of a struggle, or entirely made up by his own despair.

But there was no concrete evidence, nothing solid he could latch onto and give himself hope that she was alive.

"There is nothing," he said, too quietly to be heard by Wilder. "Nothing."

His voice was dead.

"Nothing," Wilder agreed. "Come on, let's go into the house. We seem to have misplaced the vicar anyway."

Alexei couldn't find the strength to pick himself up from the ground. His limbs had grown too heavy and his breath was coming too short for any kind of movement. I can't, he tried to say, but he was too tired.

The ground was swaying beneath his knees, the skies threatening to swallow him in their greyness.

He was really going mad, there was no question about it.

"I cannot bear this a moment longer," he murmured, coughing. "I am going out of my mind. Good God, it's as though the very ground is groaning."

"Is it?" Wilder replied from somewhere above his head. "If anything, it sounds more like it's meowing to me."

Alexei's eyes snapped to his.

"What. Did. You. Say."