Steam & Sorcery Read online

  “Penny! Suze!” Wink started to run to the girls, then halted as Tommy grabbed her arm.

  “Coppers are here. Bye, guv.”

  Merrick turned to look, just as both children and George disappeared into the shadowy corners of the cavernous warehouse. Figuring he owed them, he didn’t say a word, just turned to the inspector who rushed in with a force of six uniformed officers behind him. “The ringleader is tied up outside. Did you find him?”

  “Haverston.” The gray-haired inspector with bristling mutton-chops said the name as if it was a curse. “Bastard.” Inspector Jack Dugan had worked with Merrick before, so he didn’t look surprised when he walked up to find two sets of vampyre remains and two subdued human henchmen. Apparently George or one of the children had coshed both men unconscious before they’d fled.

  One of the uniformed men, a youngster Merrick didn’t recognize, moved up and cocked an eyebrow at Dugan. “Are we sure he isn’t one of the villains, Inspector?”

  Dugan nodded. “More sure of him than I am you, lad. Sir Merrick, this is my new assistant, Constable Liam McCullough. McCullough, meet Sir Merrick Hadrian.”

  The younger man’s eyes widened—he’d obviously heard Merrick’s name.

  Merrick held out his hand, his nostrils twitching. Werewolf. He remembered that an Earl McCullough had fought alongside his father in Ireland, at the battle against rogue shapeshifters where Aldus Hadrian and five other Knights had been killed. Yes, they’d been aided by several werewolves, as well, but Merrick had never quite gotten over his distrust of the lycanthropes.

  McCullough took Merrick’s hand, bowing slightly. “Sir Merrick—our fathers were…acquaintances at one time, I believe.” So he was the son of the earl. His uniform was custom-tailored, his boots top of the line and his accent crisp and educated, yet he seemed deferential to Merrick. Clearly he knew about the Knights. Merrick’s estimation of the young man rose slightly.

  Dugan glowered. “Well, you toffs can discuss that over tea and cakes on your own time. Now let’s take care of these girls, shall we?”

  Chapter Two

  Westminster, London, the following evening

  “Now I’ve got you, girl.”

  The voice whispered gleefully at the same moment as a large hand clamped down on Caroline’s left breast. The voice was that of her employer, Mr. Willis Wemberly. At the same instant her brain registered that fact, her body reacted of its own accord. Her booted foot stomped down on the arch of his dress pump-covered extremity, while her elbow slammed back into his solar plexus, causing him to expel his breath in a loud whoosh. Before she could get herself under control, she’d spun on her heel, dislodging the offending hand and smashing her fist into his reddened, bulbous nose. Blood spurted, crimson and viscous, over the starched white linen of Caroline’s shirtwaist and an angry bellow assaulted her ears.

  Caroline backed away from her employer, upsetting a Chinese porcelain urn as her derriere impacted the hall table. The crash of shattering china echoed in the wide foyer of the Wemberly’s fashionable townhouse, followed immediately by the clatter of footsteps running from several directions.

  Damn and blast, there was no way out of this one. She’d be lucky if she was simply turned off, and not handed over to the constables. Thank heavens she’d thought to take precautions this time.

  “Mr. Wemberly, whatever has happened?” Mrs. Wemberly’s shrill tones grated like lemon juice on a wound against Caroline’s senses. The lady of the house hurried to her husband, as quickly as her too-tight dancing shoes and even tighter corset would allow, while the butler and housekeeper hustled in with a mechanical whisk broom and some damp towels. The broom mechanism creaked and groaned as Mrs. Dennis, the housekeeper, used it to sweep up the broken porcelain.

  His hand clasped over his abused proboscis, Mr. Wemberly pointed at Caroline. “That…that…” Of course with his swollen beak, it came out more like “Dad…dad…” making Caroline work to suppress an utterly inappropriate grin. His last word, however, came out quite clearly, and wiped any trace of a smile from Caroline’s countenance. “Hussy!”

  Caroline bristled, though she should have expected him to blame her. They always did. Never mind that she’d never once given any of her employers the least bit of encouragement in a romantic direction.

  “It seems Mr. Wemberly has slipped and fallen into the console table,” Caroline said evenly. “I’m sure he isn’t seriously injured.”

  “Miss Bristol!” Mrs. Wemberly quivered in outrage as her husband roared his denial. “Do you care to explain this utterly unacceptable behavior?”

  Caroline sighed and shook her head. “Not at all. My conscience is completely clear. It is certainly no fault of mine that Mr. Wemberly has consumed far too much brandy and fancies himself irresistible. I shall pack my things and be gone at once.”

  “Levenger, summon the constables immediately.” Mrs. Wemberly spun and addressed the butler. “Please have two footmen restrain this…this…creature, in the meanwhile.”

  “I don’t think you wish to do that, Mrs. Wemberly.” Caroline kept her tone soft and almost pleasant. “Not unless you want me to take out an advertisement in the Times, detailing the times and places Mr. Wemberly has accepted money in exchange for revealing confidential information about his banking clients. The list is safely in the hands of a dear friend of mine, and she has instructions to publish it if anything happens to me.” Calling the head of the ladies’ book club a dear friend was a bit of an exaggeration, but the other woman had agreed to take out the advertisement if Caroline turned up missing.

  Wemberly narrowed his beady, watery blue eyes and glared. “You know nothing, you worthless tramp.” Again, it was more like nudding and dramb, but Caroline registered both the challenge and the insult with the lift of one eyebrow.

  “Don’t I? November fifth, at Lady Joseph’s piano recital. You gave Baron Rotherton the names of four companies in precarious financial circumstances. He handed you a large bundle of banknotes in exchange for the list. The baron subsequently managed to obtain controlling interest in each of them and was able to merge them into one rather more successful enterprise. Really, sir, if you’re going to betray your employers, you should be more careful not to be overheard. There are six other incidents on the list. All will be able to be verified, should they come to light.”

  After her first employer had nearly raped her, then had her hauled off in chains when his wife had come upon them, Caroline had learned both to defend herself physically, and to make sure she had sufficient leverage to be certain she’d never be arrested for defending herself again.

  Mrs. Wemberly swooned, and was neatly caught by Levenger, who handed her off to a footman to be taken up to her room. Levenger and Mrs. Dennis remained, both maintaining utterly stoic facades.

  “Whad do you wand?” Wemberly snarled.

  “Only what I’m owed,” Caroline said with quiet determination. “I’ll take this quarter’s wages in cash, if you please. I’d like a hackney summoned to take me to a respectable hotel as soon as my bags are packed. I do not expect a reference, but I also insist that none of this is ever discussed publicly. If anyone asks why I am no longer in your employ, the answer is to be the same one I shall use. We simply ceased to suit one another.”

  She cast a stern eye at the housekeeper and butler. “That includes the staff, if you please.”

  Levenger tipped his head in a civil nod. The butler was a reasonable sort, even if he did feel he owed his loyalty to his employer rather than to Caroline as the aggrieved party. “Of course. Mrs. Dennis, if you will send a maid and footman to Miss Bristol’s room?”

  Mrs. Dennis, who was fiercely attached to Mrs. Wemberly, and therefore had never approved of a young and relatively attractive governess in the house, nodded reluctantly. Turning to leave, she shot a glare over her shoulder at Caroline. “Be sure you don’t take nothin’ that don’t belong to you. Beckett will be watching.” Beckett, the footman, was her nephew, and had his own tro
ubles keeping his hands away from Caroline’s posterior.

  “Of course.” Caroline adjusted her spectacles which had slipped down her nose during the scuffle. Tucking a stray strand of straight blond hair behind her ear, she turned toward the stairs. “I shall tell the children I am leaving to care for an elderly aunt.” The two Wemberly boys were spoiled brats, of course, but they were only children, after all, and therefore deserved some consideration, unlike their deplorable parents.

  Spine held rigidly erect, she mounted the servants’ stair toward her room beside the nursery, where she began to methodically pack her minimal number of possessions under the wrathful gaze of Beckett, and with the more sympathetic help of Sally, the nursery maid. Then she sent Sally to wake the boys, while Beckett carried her trunk down to the waiting hack.

  Having said her goodbyes to her charges, she donned her cloak and hat before allowing Levenger to escort her out to the cab. Her gaze remained fixed entirely forward during the drive through the cool evening fog to the same unprepossessing hotel she’d used several times before. Looking back was always a waste of time and energy. So was crying. Caroline blinked back the tears pricking at her eyelids.

  She had enough money saved to exist for a short time in genteel poverty, the same state she’d known since her grandfather’s death just before her sixteenth birthday. For the last eleven years, she had lived at the mercy of others, and Caroline was more than sick of it. Regrettably, she had no choice in the matter. Starvation was an even less acceptable option. With that in mind, she’d have to begin seeking a new position immediately. Perhaps, this time, as a companion to an elderly lady—preferably one with no male relatives likely to visit.

  Wapping by daylight was nearly as unpleasant as Wapping by night.

  Merrick sidestepped to avoid the emptying of a slop bucket from an upper-story window, and only just managed to miss treading in a horse pile in the street. The mingled sounds of prostitutes soliciting business and vendors hawking meat pies was lent cadence by a blacksmith pounding an anvil somewhere nearby and the shouts of dock workers unloading a ship on the next street over.

  He’d spent the whole of Thursday night and a good bit of Friday helping Jack Dugan and his young werewolf constable sort out the business of the shop girls. The hired thugs had sung loudly, thoroughly implicating Haverston and admitting that the young women were to be auctioned among several Whitechapel brothels rather than being shipped overseas. When it came to human trafficking, most of England’s business was domestic, rather than international, despite what the penny news sheets would have one believe.

  Either way, the girls had escaped an unpleasant fate. Most of them had been welcomed home by their families, but one or two were orphans who had been replaced by their employers and were left with nowhere to go. That’s where Merrick’s aunt Dorothy had stepped in. She’d rallied her crowd of middle-aged bluestockings and found positions for each of the girls in her friends’ households. This hadn’t been as easy as it would have been ten years earlier. The advent of modern steam and clockwork machines made possible by Lord Babbage’s engines had reduced the need for human servants. Even while society slowly accepted women into the ranks of professionals, more and more working class young women were left with no choice but prostitution.

  Dorothy had recognized this at once and bullied her friends into hiring additional servants. Of course that meant Merrick had been forced to tell her the whole messy tale.

  Naturally, she’d chastised him for not doing something about the plight of the group of children who’d helped him—which he’d meant to do—especially given that one of them was a latent Knight, and that the vampyre who’d escaped had likely gotten a good look at two of them at least. With that in mind, he’d spent all of Friday night trying to find the urchins, which was like hunting for a specific drop of water in a very large pond. Wapping was full of street children, and the part of Merrick’s heart that hadn’t been hardened by a decade of hunting monsters, both human and otherwise, wished it was within his power to do something for each of them.

  He did, though, he reminded himself—every time he removed a vampyre or other predator from the streets, he was doing his part. Somehow, standing here in the middle of a narrow Wapping street, it didn’t seem like enough.

  Until one of the urchins tried to snatch his watch.

  Merrick neatly dodged the rather amateur attempt, but did manage to “accidentally” drop a handful of pennies and ha’pennies onto the ground as he did. Besides assuaging Merrick’s conscience a little, the coins kept the child—and two or three others—occupied while Merrick strolled into the Wigged Pig Tavern. The unprepossessing red brick structure was labeled by a painted wooden sign bearing a rather good rendition of a porcine barrister. When he’d gone into the neighborhood watch house with Dugan to talk to the local chaps, he’d discovered that this was the most likely place for a wily lad named Tommy to be found of an afternoon. Apparently the boy was not just a potential Knight, he was also a cardsharp. Merrick bet having heightened senses and reflexes came in handy for that enterprise.

  Cigar smoke and the sour reek of stale beer assaulted his nostrils the moment he entered the dim confines of the tavern, though they were more pleasant than the filth outside. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he took in the crowd—maybe twenty in all. Some were local merchants, stopping in for a bite of luncheon, while others were sailors, down from the docks on shore leave. There were also a few older men, engrossed in a game of draughts that was probably a daily ritual. A couple of doxies lingered in one corner, giving Merrick’s expensive coat a keen eye until he shook his head. He watched for a few moments while at one table in the front corner, Tommy steadily fleeced a pair of sailors in a game of cards.

  Merrick walked up to the bar and ordered a pint, then took it over and pulled out an empty chair at Tommy’s table. “Mind if I join you?”

  One of the sailors shrugged and threw his cards down onto the table. “You can ’ave my spot,” he grumbled. “I’m broke.”

  “Aye.” The other shoved his last ha’penny across the table to Tommy. “Might as well ’ave this now as later, lad. Ye’ve the devil’s own luck today.”

  “Thank’ee, gents.” Tommy shot a suspicious glance at Merrick. “Pleasure doin’ business wi’ ye.” Up close and in daylight, the boy’s features appeared even younger than they had in the dark. He was a handsome young man, sandy-haired with keen blue eyes, and features that were just now developing into the strong, sharp lines they’d obtain in manhood. He was tall for a street child too—once he was done growing, if he was well fed, he might match Merrick’s height, or even surpass it, though now he was still three or four inches under six foot, and far too lean.

  The sailors moved off as Merrick tossed a handful of coins on the table. Tommy shuffled the worn deck of cards. “What’ll it be, guv? Gin rummy? Five card draw? Vingt-et-un?”

  “Dealer’s choice.” Merrick settled back in his chair and sipped his ale. “How’re your friends doing? Run into any more vampyres lately?”

  “No.” Like Merrick, Tommy dropped his voice as he dealt out a hand of poker. “Girls are right glad to be home. Our thanks, Sir Merrick.”

  “You’re welcome.” Merrick studied his cards and absently discarded all but the pair of threes. “Tommy, have you ever heard of a group called the Order of the Round Table?”

  “Like in the old stories, King Arthur and that lot? I’ve ’eard some.”

  “Something like that.” Merrick was breaking one of the major rules of the Order, but it had to be done. “I’m talking about real life, though, not a children’s story. Perhaps your father may have mentioned…”

  “Never met the man.” Tommy took a drink of his own porter. He tossed one card from his hand and dealt three to Merrick, one to himself. “Mum claimed he was a toff, that’s all I know.”

  “And is your mum still alive?” Merrick glanced at his new cards and slid three pennies into the pot.

  “Nah, she di
ed years back.” Tommy matched Merrick’s bet before sliding another tuppence forward.

  Merrick called the bet, nodding. “Did your mother teach you to hunt vampyres?” While everyone knew about the undead, of course, most people tried to pretend they didn’t, just like ladies in genteel society pretended to be unaware of poverty or prostitution. It was simply considered polite to maintain the social fiction that such unnatural creatures didn’t exist, particularly since the blood-suckers tended to prey on the weak and the solitary. They hunted mostly in the narrow streets and alleyways frequented by the lower classes. The wealthy, who traveled armed and in groups, were generally safe from the relatively rare undead.

  “Nah. Picked it up here and there.” The boy shrugged and flipped over his hand. His straight, five through nine of spades, beat Merrick’s triple threes. Merrick tossed his cards down and nodded, acknowledging his loss. He’d almost missed the sleight of hand that had given the boy that last card. Almost, but not quite. He wasn’t ready to call Tommy on that just yet, however.

  “Bet you’re a natural at it,” he said as Tommy shuffled and dealt the next hand. “What about the others? How’d you come to work with them?”

  Tommy shrugged again. “What’s it to you?” He dealt out the cards, again cheating on the deal, as his own cards all came from the bottom of the deck.

  “I owe you—all of you.” Merrick picked up his cards. “And I think you have a special sort of talent for hunting certain creatures. I’d like to see you develop that gift.”

  Tommy cocked his head to the side. For a brief moment, his face was that of a typical youth, offered a tempting prize he was just a little too cautious to reach for. His hands went still, the cards in front of him lying untouched. “You offering me a job, guv?”