Burning Lamp (28 page)

“The
Ameliopteris amazonensis
you mentioned?” Adelaide asked.

“Yes,” Lucinda said. She studied the metal canister. “It has some unusual psychical properties. It appears that Hulsey has used it to produce a sleeping gas.”

“The question,” Caleb said, “is who the devil is the bastard working for now?”

“Someone from my world, it appears,” Griffin said. He contemplated the canister. “I questioned the two intruders who invaded my household. They have been in business as a team for a number of years. They were convinced that they were working for someone in the underworld, not in society.”

“Hulsey would require a fully equipped laboratory to produce the gas and the crystals,” Caleb said.

“In my world there are very few who could or would finance such a project,” Griffin said. “And very likely only one man who might also have a personal interest in such paranormal weaponry.”

Caleb smiled faintly. “You mean, only one man other than yourself?”

“Yes.” Griffin looked at him. “It appears that Luttrell has broken the Truce. That implies that something has happened to make him believe that he is now in a position to take the risk of attacking me.”

Lucinda was clearly baffled. “What Truce?”

Caleb did not take his attention from Griffin. “Mr. Winters refers to the Truce of Craygate Cemetery, I believe.”

Griffin was amused. “Jones and Jones is more in touch with the politics of my world than I would have guessed.”

“In your world you are a legend,” Caleb said simply. “So is the Truce. Legends have a way of making themselves known even to outsiders.” He frowned. “You are convinced that Luttrell is a talent?”

“I have had some dealings with the man,” Griffin said. “There is no doubt about it. Why do you think that Scotland Yard has never been able to get close to him?”

“For the same reason it has never been able to identify the Director of the Consortium,” Caleb said. He looked at Lucinda. “You see what happens when men of talent become criminals, my dear?”

“Yes, indeed,” Lucinda said. “They are remarkably good at the business.”

Griffin waited politely, as though he had no interest in the discussion.

Caleb turned back to him. “Well, Winters? Will you assist us in locating Basil Hulsey?”

“I have no great interest in Hulsey,” Griffin said. “But it is clear that I will have to do something about Luttrell. At the moment, the two problems appear to be connected.”

“How do you propose to stop Luttrell?” Caleb asked, obviously fascinated. “By all accounts his organization is second only to your own in terms of power.”

Griffin looked out the window at the fog-shrouded park.

“Cut off the head and the snake will die,” he said.

 

 

 

“FOR PITY’S SAKE, GRIFFIN, I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU VOLUNTEERED to destroy Luttrell and his entire organization for Jones and Jones,” Adelaide said.

“I’m not doing this as a favor to Arcane,” Griffin said. “Luttrell broke the Truce when he sent that pair to grab you.”

It was just after one in the morning. They were in the anonymous carriage he used to move around London. Jed was on the box. The light of a full moon infused the heavy fog with an eerie internal glow that reminded Griffin of the Burning Lamp. He felt the hair stir on the back of his neck.

It had taken only a day to obtain the first serious response to the offer that he had put out on the street, but he knew the clock was ticking. It would not take long for Luttrell to pick up the rumors.

“Luttrell will surely be prepared for you,” Adelaide said. “You are one man, not an army.”

“Sometimes one can do what many cannot. I seem to recall a very industrious social reformer who took down entire brothels from the inside with her Trojan-horse strategy.”

“That is not the same thing at all,” Adelaide insisted.

“Yes, it is. Just on a slightly different scale. But you can stop nagging me about it, at least for now. I’m not going to kill Luttrell this evening. My goal tonight is simply to meet with a man who wants to sell me some information.”

“I don’t like this.”

“Well, I’ll admit, it isn’t the way I would normally choose to pass the evening hours either,” he conceded. “I would much prefer to spend them with a bottle of claret and you in front of a fire.”

As if we enjoyed a real home together,
he added silently. He immediately pushed the entire notion into the place where old dreams go to languish. If nature were kind such phantom yearnings would simply be extinguished in that misty limbo. But he had learned long ago that nature was never concerned with kindness, only with life and death, and not always in the right order.

“Promise me you will be careful,” Adelaide whispered urgently.

She did not understand about promises, he thought. One never made them unless one was absolutely certain that one could fulfill them.

“I fully intend to return in short order,” he said instead. “If I don’t come back in a few minutes, Jed knows what to do.”

“Don’t say that,” she snapped. “I want your word that you will return safely.”

He leaned forward, brushed his mouth across hers and cracked open the carriage door.

The familiar rush of energy that always came with the prospect of danger swept through him, heightening all of his senses. He moved off into the moonlit maze of narrow, crooked streets. At the corner, before turning into an alley, he stopped and looked back.

The carriage was only a shadow in the fog. He could just make out Jed’s wiry frame lounging on the box. Adelaide was invisible in the darkened interior of the cab. But he knew she was watching him.

Watching him as if she truly cared for his safety
. The safety of a crime lord.

Social reformers, he thought. They had no common sense at all.

 

 

 

THE CHILL OF DEADLY ENERGY WAS SO FAINT AS TO BE ALMOST undetectable. Adelaide’s first thought was that the temperature had dropped a few degrees. Automatically she pulled up the high collar of her gentleman’s overcoat.

The trapdoor in the roof of the carriage was propped open so that she could speak to Jed.

“Are you getting cold up there, Jed?” she asked softly. “There’s a blanket on the seat. Would you like it?”

There was no answer. Until a few minutes ago, she and Jed had been conversing, sparingly to be sure, but in a comfortable fashion. They shared something in common, after all, a deep concern for Jed’s employer.

Another thrill of ominously cold energy ruffled her senses. Like an odor one had smelled long ago, it aroused memories.

“Jed?”

He did not respond.

She rose, knelt on the seat and reached up through the open trapdoor to tap Jed’s arm. When she touched his sleeve, an electrifying shock seared her partially heightened senses. Jed was rigid on the box, as stiff as though he had been frozen in place.

She gasped, and yanked her fingers back, as one would from a hot stove.

But in the next heartbeat, her intuition was shrieking at her. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jed was near death, that he
would
die if she did not counter some of the awful currents icing his senses.

She removed one glove, set her teeth together, heightened all of her talent, and reached up through the opening again. She caught hold of Jed’s stiff arm. The heavy fabric of his coat muffled some of the force of the killing energy but not much.

She tugged on his arm and managed to drag his hand behind his back so that she could reach it. She stripped off his thick glove and interlaced her fingers with his own. His rough palm was as cold as a grave.

The waves of energy shooting through Jed flooded her own senses, chilling her blood.

The pattern of the currents had grown more warped and distorted over the years but she would have known them anywhere. Mr. Smith was stronger now, she thought, much stronger than he had been that night in the brothel.

But she was more powerful, too. At fifteen her talent had still been developing. She had been in the early stages of learning how to control and manipulate dreamlight. Tonight she fought for Jed’s life with the full strength of her mature, refined power.

The cold was beyond anything she had ever known. It swirled straight through her, freezing her from the inside. No fire could warm her. The waves of icy energy were unrelenting. The only way to escape was to release her grip on Jed’s hand but that was the one thing she would not do. If she let go of Jed he would be swept away into the killing currents.

She pulsed hot dreamlight energy directly into the icy waves in a desperate effort to disrupt the pattern. Her view was limited by the narrow opening of the trapdoor but she knew that the killer was standing somewhere nearby. Psychical energy could not be projected beyond a radius of fifteen or twenty feet at most. Nor could it be employed at such a violent level for long. A few minutes, Adelaide thought. She only had to hold on to Jed for a few minutes.

Jed was living through a soul-shattering nightmare. She had no choice but to live through it with him.

 

 

 

THE BODY LAY IN A POOL OF YELLOW LANTERN LIGHT. SO much for the information that he had come here to purchase, Griffin thought. But at least the murder explained the rising tide of unease he had been experiencing since leaving Adelaide in the carriage. At first he had told himself that his senses were naturally on edge because as long as she was in danger he did not like to let her out of his sight. Now, he realized, his intuition had likely been warning him that something had gone wrong with tonight’s project.

He stood in the densest shadows of the alley, drawing the darkness around himself, and studied the sprawled figure. It was clear that someone else had gotten to the would-be informant first. But sometimes the dead could still talk.

He waited another moment, his senses heightened. The restless unease was still twisting through him. If anything it was growing stronger.

He had come here tonight to collect the information he needed to keep Adelaide safe. He must not lose focus.

There were no traces of energy in the atmosphere to indicate that the killer was still in the vicinity. It was impossible to perpetrate such an extreme act of violence and then immediately disguise the psychical reaction. Even when a murderer enjoyed his work, his energy field remained hot for a considerable length of time afterward. In Griffin’s experience the truly soulless killers were the ones most excited by the act. He supposed that in some freakish way, it made them feel more alive.

Satisfied that he was not about to walk into a trap, he pulled a little more energy around himself and went forward. He moved cautiously into the lantern light and stood looking down at the body for a moment, searching for signs of a wound. There were none.

He crouched and went swiftly through the dead man’s pockets. There was a folded sheet of paper. In the weak light it appeared to be a list of ingredients. There was another paper in a different pocket, a receipt this time. He could just barely make out the firm.
S. J. Dalling, Apothecary
.

The sense of impending disaster was growing stronger by the second. He could no longer attribute it to the dead man.

Adelaide
.

He turned and broke into a run.

When he emerged from the alley he saw the carriage. It was little more than a shadow in the fog but nothing appeared amiss. The horse was restless, however. The beast was shifting in his harness and tossing his head. Jed was on the box but he made no move to calm the uneasy horse.

Griffin drew his revolver and plunged forward, heart pounding with the overwhelming rush of urgency. He was vaguely aware that the night seemed colder than it had a moment ago.

There was no response. That was wrong; Jed could surely hear him from this distance.

It was Adelaide who responded.

“Smith is nearby,” she shouted from inside the carriage. “Somewhere out there on the street. He’s trying to kill Jed.”

He heard the desperation in her voice and suddenly he understood everything, Jed’s unnatural stillness as well as the chill across his own senses. He searched for the source of the cold sensation and found it almost at once.

The icy energy shivered from the dark mouth of a nearby alley, not more than fifteen paces from where Jed had parked the carriage. A fist-size ball of crimson light blazed in the darkness. Griffin used the blood-red glow as a beacon to acquire a focus on his target. He sent out a torrent of nightmare energy.

A violent storm of psychical fire flashed in the shadows when the two fields of energy collided. But it was no contest. Griffin could tell that Smith had already begun to exhaust his own senses. The red crystal abruptly dimmed and winked out.

The sensation of cold evaporated. Griffin heard footsteps pounding away down the alley. He fought the urge to go after his quarry. He had to get to Adelaide.

He raced back to the carriage and yanked open the door. In the shadows he could see Adelaide crouched on the seat. Her arm was extended through the trapdoor, gripping Jed’s hand.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes.” Her voice was flat, as if she was utterly exhausted. “And so is Jed. At least I think he is. Oh, Griffin, he was so cold.”

She released Jed’s hand and started to crumple.

Griffin vaulted up into the cab and caught her just before she collapsed onto the floor of the carriage. She was fever- hot in his arms, burning with dreamlight energy.

 

 

 

SMITH WAS TREMBLING SO VIOLENTLY WITH REACTION AND exhaustion that he could barely haul himself up onto the hansom cab. He managed to give the driver his address. Then he leaned forward and rested his feverish brow on his folded arms. The driver would assume he was just one more drunken gentleman on his way home after an evening spent with a mistress.