Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(47)
“Tessa?”
“Von Drome, Clifford’s wife. If you ask me, it was the reason he undertook the study of these diseases and the search for cures. When they’d first married, she’d contracted something strange up in the forests of Lindrethool where they’d gone on their honeymoon. The symptoms of the disease showed themselves years later.”
I took the picture from him and beheld a lovely young woman whose upper body, stomach to breasts to neck was covered with a fine white down. Her pupils were pure black.”
“It finally killed her some years back when that poor daughter of theirs reached her teen years. A damn shame. Not to mention her father being murdered just a couple of years later.”
“She’s been coming here lately, hasn’t she, Vienna Von Drome?”
“Yes, I let her in to look at her father’s things. Why not, what could it hurt? I’ve known her since she was a girl.”
“Does she speak to you?” I asked.
Stokes smiled and shook his head. “Not a word.”
A half hour later, I was sitting in the Lyceum café, sipping a cup of chocolate, and studying the daguerreotype of Vienna’s mother. The place was empty, and I could see through the floor-to-ceiling windows that the snow was angling down. I heard the wind howling. The next thing I knew, there was a small mittened hand upon my jacket sleeve. I looked up. It was Meralee. She leaned over, out of breath, and dug into her coat pocket. A moment later she was flattening a piece of paper on the table. I lifted the cup of chocolate and handed it to her and told her to sit down and rest. I picked up the paper and read it. Jallico had scribbled me a note. At the top there was a drawing of the triangle with a circle above it and a circle below it, precisely the image we’d seen created by the flock of starlings during one of the murmurations. Beneath that was an address—62 Marfal Street, old town.
“Can you show me where it is?” I asked the girl.
She nodded, threw back the rest of the chocolate, and we were off. I flagged down a coach outside the Lyceum, and we hopped aboard. It was a relief to be out of the stinging snow. I offered the driver a tip if he could hurry but he told me that the cobblestones were slippery and therefore treacherous. He told me he’d go as fast as he could but the cobblestones were slippery and therefore treacherous. The red-haired girl was good to her word and brought us to a small side street in the old town. I had the driver pull up a few yards away as to retain the element of surprise. The buildings were close together in that area, and the streets were like narrow canyons that cut through them, hardly enough room for two small coaches to pass side by side. I got out and paid the driver. Then I paid Meralee and told her to stay in the coach, head back to the center of the city. She asked if I might need her later, disappointed that she was no longer part of the investigation. It was obviously too dangerous for me to allow her to remain. I saw her off down the street and then pulled my pistol and approached the house.
It leaned slightly forward out over the street. Its shutters were chipped and splintered as was the door. Green paint was faded or curling. On a wooden plaque screwed into the face of the house next to the letter box there was a figure, rendered in fading chalk—a triangle with a circle above it and one below. I didn’t knock but tried the knob. It wouldn’t budge. I kicked it in with little resistance from the flimsy lock. I peered into the dark, and my heart started to pound. “This is all wrong,” I remember thinking. I’d given orders for him to wait for me if he came upon something. The snow came down harder, the sound of the wind confused me. All I could manage to think was, “It’s the season for killing.” I stepped into the darkness.
I stood with my gun raised, waiting for my eyes to adjust, relieved, at least, to be out of the storm. A minute passed and then I heard something knock against the floor upstairs just above me. Slowly, I groped around and by lighting a match I was able to find the stairs. Retaining the element of surprise in an effort that involved climbing stairs was difficult. I breathed shallowly and tiptoed one step at a time. Although I’d just come out of the frozen afternoon, I was already sweating. The worn steps cracked and popped like an old man’s spine. The tension built to a breaking point and to relieve it, as I reached the top step, I called out for Jallico. A loud groan emanated from behind a closed door at the left end of a hallway. I suddenly had a purpose and moved without a second thought.
I kicked that door in as well. It swung back, and I stepped into a large room lined with bookshelves. Straight ahead, I saw no one, but as I turned the corner into the room, I went into shock. My training and my experience should have directed me to pull the trigger, but instead the hand holding the gun fell limp at my side. Jallico was slumped against the wall, his face in bloody shreds. His shirt and coat were ripped away and his torso was cut from top to bottom, a gaping cavity of gore. I saw rib bones and intestines. Leaning over him was someone, no, something, with a large serrated blade in one hand and a raw piece of dark bloody meat in the other. It ripped off a piece of the spleen with its sharp teeth, the blood smearing all over the long white hair on its body and head. I needed to stop seeing what was before me. I lifted the gun to obliterate the sight and saw Jallico’s eyes move and his mouth open. Instead of firing on the Beast, I shot my assistant in order to spare him. The creature shrieked and leaped at me like a cat, swiped the gun from my hand by raking the flesh off my wrist. I was slammed against the wall with such force that I momentarily lost consciousness.