A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(45)
All was soon quiet in the coach. The horse ambled its way back to Battersea. Once in a while they met a coach not unlike theirs; in the universal fraternity of men who must be outside in wretched weather, the other coachman invariably nodded and touched his hat to Alexandre in sympathy, and Alexandre echoed the gesture. What would they think if they knew what I carried? he asked himself, and felt a thrill of excitement at getting away, literally, with murder.
And that was that. By the time he usually had a late supper, they were back home. Alf carried the girls under the cover of darkness into the house, and Alexandre took the second girl’s belongings up beside him on the box. Halfway to the stable, he pitched the carpetbag into the backyard of a place dilapidated enough that he knew whoever found it would take whatever was in it, and the bag itself, with no questions asked. A little farther along, he dropped the scarf-bundle at a crossing where, again, the first person to come along would snatch it up and carry it off. Alf’s stabling solution had been a good one; it was a place for both vehicles and draft animals of men who did all sorts of odd jobs. The care and feeding of the animals could be done by the customer or by the stablehands, if you paid a little extra, which Alexandre was happy to do. There were long, covered sheds with spots for wagons, carts, and old cabs and coaches. Alexandre’s story was genius; he gave the name and history of his mother’s now-dismissed coachman and stableman, except that in this version, he’d been given the horse and vehicle in her will, and he reckoned to pad out his savings by hiring himself out now and again. No one batted an eye at the story.
He backed the coach into its shed, unhitched the horse, and took it to its stall. He’d learned to do all of these things at his father’s insistence, as the price of having his own pony and cart as a boy. The old skinflint had even made him do all the feeding and mucking out, no doubt to spare himself the expense of a stablehand. He had burned with resentment as a boy whenever he’d been forced to do such menial work, but now, the skills were literally his salvation. The old man is probably spinning in his grave, knowing he is responsible for my carrying all this off so successfully. When the horse was unharnessed, the harness hung on a peg in the stall, and the horse put up under a blanket, he made his way to the front of the place. There were vehicles coming and going here at all hours of the day and night, and it was no trouble to catch a ride for a penny most of the way back to his flat with a carter on his way to collect night soil. By the time he returned, Alf had everything in readiness in the kitchen.
The girls were awake now, but tied up, with balls of cloth stuffed in their mouths and gags tied in place for good measure. The most they could manage were muffled grunts. Alf had them sat down in two of the kitchen chairs. Alexandre surveyed them with pleasure. He knew what they were expecting. He chuckled to himself.
“Good night’s work, guv,” Alf observed, rubbing his bristly chin. “Bit uv luck, that second one.”
“When fortune was so obliging as to provide her, I couldn’t see any reason to pass her by,” Alexandre smiled, as the girls shrank as far away from him as they could manage, their eyes huge and terrified above the gags. He regretted that the entity had specified it preferred virgins; that first girl was really quite pretty, and it was a pity he wouldn’t get to enjoy her and her terror. The very few times he’d paid for the privilege of “breaking in” a new girl at a brothel, the experience had been exhilarating.
“Shame t’waste ’em,” Alf observed, echoing his thoughts.
“More where they came from,” Alexandre replied. “And I don’t fancy the risk if you-know-what objects to us enjoying ourselves. Let’s give our guest what it wants. We’re both just lucky it was temporarily satisfied with that baby, Christmas Eve.”
“Roight ye are, guv,” Alf agreed. “Oi’ll take th’ feet. They’re kickers, they are. Yew take th’ ’ead.”
The girls did, indeed, kick, but Alf was far stronger than he looked, and he wasn’t even thrown off balance as they carried the girls, one at a time, down the stairs. Alf eyed the eerie pool of blackness in the center of the floor as they brought down the second one. “Oi’ll jest wait upstairs an’ make supper,” he said hastily, and made his way up, taking the steps two at a time.
Leaving Alexandre alone with the girls, now lying on the stone flagging of the floor, panting with fear, illuminated by a single lantern. Aside from that pool of shadow, the basement was strangely normal, just a cold, but not unnaturally cold, room, smelling slightly of damp.
All right, then, I have them here as it wanted . . . I wonder, should I repeat the invo—
The pool of darkness became a pillar of darkness, and the temperature in the basement plummeted abruptly. Muffled, strangled screams came from both girls—scarcely loud enough in the sudden silence to qualify as squeaks.
The basement had turned from a prosaic room to a freezing, silent, portico of Hell—not the Hell of the Christians, all fire and demons, but the silent, cold Hel of the Norse. Was that a clue? Was this thing Nordic? But what about—
The offerings are acceptable, said the voice in his head. And the darkness erupted into tentacles that seized both writhing, horrified girls and dragged them inside it within a second or two. It all happened so fast it took his breath away, and he was left gasping, cold fear closing around his heart. Remain, it commanded, when he started to back away.