Accursed (22 page)

“Colonel,” Nelson said.

Dunstan turned to face him. His features were distinct in the shadows. He had been handsome in life, his skin a bronze hue thanks to his mixed parentage. Dunstan’s father had been a wealthy English trader, his mother the beautiful daughter of a Bombay merchant of similar station. It would have been no simple thing for his Indian origins to go unnoticed at home, but abroad, he had been considered a vital asset to the governors general, able to immerse himself in both British and Indian cultures.

The colonel was generally an amiable sort. This evening, however, his expression was grim.

“Admiral,” Colonel Dunstan said. He nodded once. They had never bothered with formal salutes or anything of the kind, but their titles remained. “I apologize for having brought you to this place. Since my death, I have never once visited the repository of my . . . remains . . . and if the idea gives you a fraction of the trouble it does me, well, I can only beg your indulgence.”

Nelson cleared his throat and raised his chin. Though he could have manifested himself to appear as he had at any point in his life, he always chose to be seen by other ghosts as he had been at the time of his death. One arm. One eye. He had lost their mates in service to the Crown, and that was a source of pride to him. So it was that he could look upon Dunstan with only one eye, but he did so now with utter gravity.

“And you have my indulgence, Colonel. Your aid is ever appreciated. However, I confess that it
is
a bit unnerving, even to an old sea dog such as myself, to be so close to . . . well, you’ve already said as much. So if you’ll be kind enough to proceed, we can quit this place all the sooner.”

Dunstan motioned as though to smooth his uniform. It seemed an unconscious motion, and though there was no cloth there to be smoothed, the ether responded appropriately. Indeed, he was smoothing the fabric of his spirit.

“Come with me,” the colonel said.

Horatio followed, and they sifted themselves through stone and mortar and wood. Soon enough they were standing in a dark chamber, dank to all appearances, though they felt none of it. A black iron gate stood before them. Something had torn it apart, twisted the bars as though they were taffy, even cracked the metal in some places.

“They came through not far from here,” Colonel Dunstan said, chin up, hands behind his back, feet spread apart. “A portal was opened, surely through some dark sorcery, and most likely not performed by the demons themselves.”

Nelson nodded, examining the bars. “Do you have any idea what sort of demons we’re dealing with here? And what their purpose might be?”

“I have my suspicions. Come this way,” Dunstan said.

The colonel led him back the way they had come. Inside the main chamber of the cathedral, in sight of the High Altar, Dunstan showed him a stain on the stone floor. Candlelight threw shuddering shadows upon the walls, but there was no sight of any worshiper or minister. Merely that dark stain, where blood had seeped into the porous stone. Some poor servant had likely already been set to the task of its removal, but Horatio was certain the stain would never truly come out. It was more than blood. Dark magic had tainted the floor of St. Paul’s.

Only now, in the midst of that empty cathedral, did he feel the power of faith that vibrated in every stone. At last he realized what Dunstan was attempting to show him.

“Whatever did this . . . whoever is responsible . . . it wields powerful magic.”

“Oh, yes. Quite,” Dunstan agreed. He crouched and touched insubstantial fingers to the bloodstained floor. Where the blood lay, tainted by sorcery, his fingers actually came into contact with it. “Normally base, foul beasts such as Rakshasa would never be able to trammel upon sacred ground.”

Rakshasa.
Nelson had never heard the word.

“These Rakshasa are the demons you spoke of?”

“The legends are from India. Simply put, they are monsters. Some stories claim they have the ability to alter their appearance, but I have never seen proof of this. The few times I have encountered such horrific creatures, they have been hideous to behold.”

Horatio ruminated on this news for a few moments, and then he recalled where he was. Perhaps St. Paul’s
was
more than just a building. A ripple of distaste went through him, and he was seized with the urge to depart.

“You have my thanks, and that of the Protectors, Colonel Dunstan. I’m curious, however, about the Indian origin of these monsters. Another situation has arisen that seems to have ties to that colony, as well, and I’m forced to wonder if the two incidents might be related.”

The dark glimmer in Dunstan’s eyes was enough to quiet Nelson.

“Indeed, Admiral,” the ghostly colonel said gravely. “This is merely the latest such appearance. In the areas near the docks where so many former employees of the East India Company live in squalor, there have been several strange events in recent weeks. Rakshasa have been sighted, and there has been a mysterious stranger, a woman unknown to anyone, who wanders the streets late at night. Perhaps the legends of the Rakshasa are true, and she is one of them. Or perhaps she is merely a woman. My mother’s people are very superstitious.

“Yet there is still more.” Colonel Dunstan passed his hand through the air, and an ethereal mist swirled into existence, as if from nowhere. It spread in tendrils of gray fog. “Come. Let me show you.”

Nelson had seen much in his life, and far more since his death. Things that once would have been beyond his wildest imaginings. Towering demons that breathed the fires of Hell itself, insidious shades that possessed the minds and bodies of decent people, sorcery whose sole purpose was the twisting of human flesh, and worse. As a specter, at all times, he could sense the talons of true evil, disembodied things that made the minions of Hell seem like mere animals, scratching at the windows of the world, attempting to get in.

Albion itself had a living, breathing soul, like Aquitaine, Bavaria, and so many other regions of the world. This was the power of the natural world. But there were unnatural powers, as well, and their ultimate goal was to undo all that was right with the world, and remake it in their image.

So when Colonel Dunstan’s words began to echo in him, and a ghostly shiver ran through him, he recognized the feeling for what it was.

Fear.

Something terrible was afoot. It came from a distance, and they had only just begun to recognize the scope of its influence.

The solid world faded into the mist, and the two ghosts slipped into the ether once more. Together they drifted. Direction and distance had little meaning. Destination had far more to do with intent than navigation.

After only a few moments in that gray, malleable place, the mist began to clear again, and Nelson could hear the sound of the river.

The Thames.

He did not have to breathe, of course. His senses still functioned, but only because he required them. The stench of the river would have bent him over with the urge to vomit if such an act were still possible. He might retch, but there was no stomach, nothing to regurgitate. It was one of the rare times Nelson was grateful to be dead.

“That’s simply awful,” he muttered.

All of the filth from London’s industry fed into the river. The city’s sewers fed the Thames, as well, and the surface of the river was clogged with human waste. Nelson surveyed the water, and what he saw there disgusted him. He was a man at home upon the sea, and it wrenched something within him to have to bear witness to this atrocity. The Thames ought to have been London’s lifeblood, and instead it was the depository of her offal.

“Look there,” Colonel Dunstan said, pointing.

Only then did Nelson spot the tiny figures on the near bank of the Thames. His brows knitted and he drifted closer. At first the small things that crouched on the riverbank appeared to be toads, but the closer he drew to them the more he realized that they were not like any living creatures he had ever seen.

Their eyes were red and bulbous, tinged with yellow, as though they were blisters full of blood and pus. And when something skittered by beneath a wooden mooring, surely a river rat, the toads raised their heads, then gave pursuit, leaping into the water or under the mooring, moving as a group.

“Good Lord,” Horatio whispered.

Dunstan grunted. “Let us hope so.”

The ghosts floated to the river’s edge, though they kept well away from that rotting wooden mooring and whatever might have been going on beneath it. Supernatural creatures such as the things that had defiled the cathedral were quite capable of injuring a ghost, of wounding the substance of a specter. What was touched by sorcery might harm a spirit as easily as it could hurt a man. Even a minister.

There was something floating in the water, large and pale. At first Nelson thought it must be a corpse. There were enough river pirates, petty thieves, and other killers working the river and the wharves that it was not unusual to see a human body callously discarded in the Thames.

But then the thing moved, and dove beneath the surface, disgusting water churning above it. It came back to the surface a short distance away, its bulbous eyes shining in the faint moonlight. The putrid waste atop the river rolled with its deep passage and it swam away from them, upriver toward the London docks.

“What was—”

“The Rakshasa are not the only things to plague the Indian sections of London town,” the colonel’s ghost said, voice heavy with import. “There is disease, as well, of a sort no mortal physician is prepared to treat. Women who are infected are quickly swollen as if with child, ill with fever and covered in sores. In the end, they . . . give birth. Those toads you saw, Admiral. More than a dozen Indian women have borne such creatures, carried evil within their own flesh. They are tainted forever. The fortunate ones have died. There are easily that many more already infected, and who knows how many others will come?”

“And the men?” Horatio asked. “The men who are infected, what of them?”

The shadows of Colonel Dunstan’s features seemed to darken, and Nelson saw fear there.

“First they go mad, and become violent in their search for a woman with whom to mate. Then they are
changed,
” the ghost replied. “They undergo a terrible metamorphosis, their flesh contorted until they are no longer human. What you saw in the river a moment ago . . . that used to be a man.”

Like Frederick Martin,
Nelson thought.
Precisely like Frederick Martin.

And what of the earl of Claridge? Could he have been infected as well? Certainly, he is not a man of the slums. Yet . . .

“The Protectors’ experience with this has been limited. But if what you say is true, then this plague has begun to touch the nobility, as well. I am surprised these horrors did not come to our attention sooner.”

The ghost of Colonel Dunstan, this soldier who had lived his life with an English name and an Indian face, raised an eyebrow. “And why should you be surprised, Horatio? Is it so odd that the aristocracy would fail to notice the spread of evil in the slums to which they have always turned a blind eye? Why would it warrant their attention, until it arrived upon their own doorsteps?”

Nelson scowled, stung by the accusation.

“Have a care, sir! Only our long association prevents me from demanding satisfaction for that remark. The Protectors defend all of Albion, not merely the upper classes!”

“Really?” Dunstan countered, his form almost solid black now, causing him to blend with the darkness. “But you said yourself it only came to their attention when some lord or lady was affected. Indeed, Admiral, though I was born in Bombay, the home of my mother, I was guilty of the same sins until my death. Until I had the time and inclination to think about where I was really from.”

W
ILLIAM DIDN’T SIT
so much as crouch in the back of his carriage as it clattered along the streets of London.

He perched on the edge of his seat, features set in grim lines, and held the curtain aside so that he might gaze out the window. There was little enough to see this night, however. The fog made sure of that. It wasn’t the worst of its sort, not enough to leave a clammy filth upon every surface it caressed, but it was dense, and reeked of the choking exhalations of chimneys and charnel houses and the putrid excrescence of the distant marshes of Kent and Essex, far to the east. William breathed through his mouth as much as possible.

How Farris managed to navigate the streets—particularly the narrow, curving alleys that provided a more direct route to their destination—was beyond him. The man wasn’t a coach driver by trade, but a gentleman’s gentleman. Still, the Swift household had experienced a great deal of difficulty retaining the service of its staff just lately, so they’d had to make do with a curtailed household coterie. Farris had risen to the occasion.

He had performed so well as coachman, and was so unflummoxed by the terrors that regularly presented themselves in the company of his employers, that even were they able to find a reliable driver, William thought he and Tamara would be loath to use anyone else.