Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2)(206)

“Matthew will know I’ve been with you now.” I looked down at Hubbard’s hand. It was still wrapped around my wrist, transferring his telltale scent to my warm skin. “He’ll take it out on your son.”

Hubbard’s grip tightened, and I let out a soft sound of understanding.

“If you wanted to accompany me to Bedlam as well, Father Hubbard, all you needed to do was ask.”

Hubbard knew every shortcut and back alley between St. James Garlickhythe and Bishopsgate. We passed beyond the city limits and into one of London’s squalid suburbs. Like Cripplegate, the area around Bedlam was poverty-stricken and desperately crowded. But the true horrors were yet to come.

The keeper met us at the gate and led us into what had once been known as the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem. Master Sleford was well acquainted with Father Hubbard and could not bow and scrape enough as he led us to one of the stout doors across the pitted courtyard. Even with the thick wood and stone of the old medieval priory between us, the inmates’ screams were piercing. Most of the windows were unglazed and open to the elements. The stench of rot, filth, and age was overwhelming.

“Don’t,” I said, refusing Hubbard’s offer of assistance as we entered the dank, close confines. There was something obscene about taking his help when I was free and the inmates were offered no assistance at all.

Inside, I was bombarded by the ghosts of past inmates and the jagged threads that twisted around the hospital’s current tormented inhabitants. I dealt with the horror by engaging in macabre mathematical exercises, dividing the men and women I saw into smaller groups only to lump them together in a new way.

I counted twenty inmates during our walk down the corridor. Fourteen were daemons. A half dozen of the twenty were completely naked, and ten more were dressed only in rags. A woman wearing a filthy though expensive man’s suit stared at us with open hostility. She was one of the three humans in the place. There were two witches and one vampire as well. Fifteen of the poor souls were manacled to the wall, chained to the floor, or both. Four of the other five were unable to stand and crouched by the walls chattering and scraping at the stone. One of the patients was free. He danced, naked, down the corridor ahead of us.

One room had a door. Something told me that Louisa and Kit were behind it.

The keeper unlocked the door and knocked sharply. When he didn’t get an immediate response, he pounded.

“I heard you the first time, Master Sleford.” Gallowglass looked decidedly the worse for wear, with fresh scratches down his cheek and blood on his doublet. When he saw me standing behind Sleford, he did a double take. “Auntie.”

“Let me in.”

“That’s not such a good—” Gallowglass took another look at my expression and stepped aside. “Louisa’s lost a fair bit of blood. She’s hungry. Stay away from her, unless you’re of a mind to be bitten or clawed. I’ve trimmed her nails, but there’s not much I can do about her teeth.”

Although nothing stood in my way, I remained rooted to the threshold. The beautiful, cruel Louisa was chained to an iron ring set into the stone floor. Her dress was in tatters, and blood from deep gashes in her neck covered her. Someone had been feeding from Louisa—someone stronger and angrier than she was.

I searched the shadows until I found a dark figure crouched over a lump on the floor. Matthew’s head swung up, his face ghostly pale and his eyes black as night. Not a speck of blood was on him. Like Hubbard’s offer of help, his cleanliness was somehow obscene.

“You should be at home, Diana.” Matthew stood.

“I am exactly where I need to be, thank you.” I moved in my husband’s direction. “Blood rage and poppy don’t mix, Matthew. How much of their blood have you taken?” The lump on the floor stirred.

“I am here, Christopher,” Hubbard called. “You will come to no more harm.”

Marlowe wept with relief, his body racked with sobs.

“Bedlam isn’t in London, Hubbard,” Matthew said coldly. “You’re out of your bailiwick, and Kit is beyond your protection.”

“Christ, here we go again.” Gallowglass closed the door in Sleford’s stunned face. “Lock it!” he barked through the wood, punctuating his command with a thud of his fist.

Louisa sprang to her feet when the metal mechanism ground shut, the chains rattling around her ankles and wrists. One of them snapped, and I jumped as the broken length of metal chimed against the floor. A sympathetic banging of chains sounded along the corridor.

“Notmybloodnotmybloodnotmyblood,” Louisa chanted. She was as flat as possible against the far wall. When I met her eyes, she whimpered and turned away. “Begone, fant?me. I have already died once and have nothing to fear from ghosts like you.”

“Be quiet.” Matthew’s voice was low, but it cracked through the room with enough force that we all jumped.

“Thirsty,” Louisa croaked. “Please, Matthew.”

There was a regular splat of wetness against stone. With each splash Louisa’s body jerked. Someone had suspended a stag’s head by the antlers, its black eyes empty and staring. Blood fell, one drop at a time, from its severed neck and onto the floor just beyond the reach of Louisa’s chains.

“Stop torturing her!” I stepped forward, but Gallowglass’s hand held me back.