Renegade (13 page)

I shrugged at Abberline. “I was on my way to work, and I was curious. Half of London was already at the gates, and my uniform allowed me to get past.”

“Are you still working at Whitechapel Hospital?”

“That is none of your concern, Inspector.”

“You are rather out of the way of Whitechapel, are you not?”

Another available carriage approached.

“If you’ll excuse me,” I said, stepping toward the cab as it came closer.

“Miss Sharp!” This time he grabbed my elbow in a firm grip.

“Inspector,” I hissed at him angrily. “Let go of me.” This was impertinent. Low, even for him.

He bent close to my face and I smelled his odor of orange tea, of cigars, of his stale office where he spent far too many hours. “Can you tell me if this means anything to you?”

He held out a notebook. It contained a sketch of the chalice, with
A Posse Ad Esse
written around the symbol.

My blood froze in my veins. “Where did you see that?”

“Does it mean something to you?” he asked, suddenly more interested. His brows pushed together.

Jerking my arm away from his grip, I stepped into the carriage.

His eyes narrowed. “What do you know, Arabella Sharp?”

I felt my gut twitch a bit.

“Good day,” I said, slamming the carriage door. Once inside, I felt my hands trembling violently. I took several deep breaths. How much did Abberline know? I shuddered, knowing that if he investigated much further in this direction—he would be a dead man.

Ten

S
eraphina dashed her easel against the wall. She hissed, and her heartbeat tripled. She knew she had to get control before a transformation came on. She did not want to split apart the gown she wore, nor one of her last remaining painting bibs.

A dark oil-paint droplet slid down the partially finished face on her wrecked canvas like a black tear. She had been painting her keeper’s face. But, as with so many other portraits, she had lost the inclination to finish it.

Where was he? He had been gone too long.

She paced in worried agitation; this was his longest absence from her. It had now been almost five months with no word from him. She uttered a guttural growl somewhere deep inside, not believing that he could leave her alone this long—he knew how restless she became. He hadn’t been away this long since the Conclave’s experience with Caroline. And now, there was that daughter … In Seraphina’s loneliest times, she waited like an eager child for him to bring her blossoms of news and images from the world of humanity. This restlessness was dangerous for her. Max knew this.

Yet again, she wondered if Robert Buck still sought a cure. She always felt like Robert and the others never forgave her for coming into being, and for the troubles she had caused for them in those early days.

She tossed aside her paint-stained bib and strode to the menagerie. It was time to feed the animals.

While she gave the herbivores their bins of grain, the carnivores their rodents, or rabbits, or chilled meats, she struggled with the suffocating sensation that she had been abandoned—that something was wrong. And she couldn’t forget the fierce argument that she had had with her keeper before he left her last.

In the same way that she could sniff whale migrations approaching her region, which incited her to chase the young gray seals to safer waters; in the same way that she, while floating in the ocean depths, could extend her webbed fingertips ahead, predicting in the currents the coming of cooler waters, she felt—she sensed—that something was amiss. Her hunger for human blood could be satiated as long as Max continued to connect her to the outside world through his visits. But now she felt her hunger rising.

She tossed four struggling rats at her Komodo dragon. He ate them whole, in about four minutes.

The women.

Max had never again talked about Caroline, after the Conclave had offered Caroline the elixir those many years ago, except to tell her that Caroline had refused their offer. Seraphina knew what this meant for the woman. The Conclave’s offer hadn’t really been a choice from the start.

Seraphina considered her last conversation with Max, that cold evening this past November. He had brought the animals and birds from the Conclave’s London home to her, along with more food and supplies.

“Tell me what’s happening … ” she had said, after helping him unload the crates and supplies. She remembered the cold feeling inside her as the wind whipped at her hair. They had struggled to bring the animals inside, especially the caged spider monkeys, who were panicked amid the stormy blasts.

Max had said nothing. But instinct, the best part of her part-beast existence, rose immediately. She lowered her voice. “It’s another woman, isn’t it? You have made the offer to another woman?”

He had smiled, and his eyes—so feral, like her own—glistened leopard-like. He wiped some sea spray off her brow. “Yes.”

Seraphina growled. “But you know that the last one didn’t end well. You had to kill her, did you not?”

“We did. Eventually. But this is her daughter. Same gifts as the mother, in fact. Extraordinarily psychic. With the elixir, she’ll likely be like me.”

Seraphina felt the burning jealousy rising within her. Caroline and now her daughter—these women could share her keeper’s gifts, his mind. They had powers that she would never have. She would always only be his pet. The useful, dutiful pet of the Conclave. She tried to repress her memories of her mortal life, a life when her hopes and ambitions had been as wide as the seas.

“When did you ask her?” she hissed.

“The Conclave made the offer to her a few nights back. She’ll accept.” He smiled cryptically in the darkness of her great hall. “I’m not anticipating any problems. We have some leverage, and she truly cannot refuse us.”

Seraphina did not know what possessed her. But her rage was too much. She growled and flung herself at him. Her transformation began. She felt the venom flow into her fangs, her nails become longer, sharper. She had never done this—in the entire eighty years that he had been her caretaker, she had never transformed to attack him.

Within a second, he had her pinned against the cold wall, her back pressed painfully against the marble. He had his hand on her throat, cutting off her blood supply and air. Possibly because of this, her transformation ceased midway. Several of her half-finished portraits collapsed around them. His eyes blazed in anger, and the pain was crushing, both in her throat and the back of her head. She became dizzied and feared she would lose consciousness.

“What is this, Effie? You would bite the hand that feeds you?”

The clatter of the portraits must have disturbed the animals. She heard the monkeys squealing from the menagerie. Petey roared from his cage.

The pain in her lungs became intolerable. She gagged, tried to remove his grip, but it was too tight. He glared at her, only pressed her harder against the wall. The beast within her fought to come out; it rose to the surface in hideous bubbles. If he did not release her, and she could not transform, she felt as if she might die.

“Please,” she croaked. “Please, let me go.” She began to see flickering lights in her peripheral vision.

She knew he was the Conclave’s assassin. That he had horrible means of carrying out their will. But he had never attacked her like this. She hated and loved him in that moment, and she wept. He had never abused her in this way, and yet … yet … she had never attacked him in this way, either. Even amid her pain, she felt a flush of shame rise within her.

“Remember,” he whispered in the darkness, his face inches from hers, “the only reason you are still alive is because of me.” Then he flung her to the floor and she exploded into her beast form, splitting her gown to pieces. She felt herself cry, and curled into a ball. Feelings of abandonment overwhelmed her rage and anger, and she fainted.

She had awoken, in human form, where she had fallen—on the floor of the great hall in the main part of her home. Her keeper must have released Petey from his cage, for the tiger was curled near her, his warm tongue licking her face. Sunlight shone down the main stone steps of her home in a great white stream. The stone door to that stairwell had been pulled away. He was preparing to leave her.

Seraphina had sat up, wiped her eyes, and moaned. The back of her head throbbed and her neck ached. Then the sunstream darkened and she saw Max looming above her. He smiled and kneeled down beside her. His smile was affectionate but not kind, and certainly not repentant. It was a distracted smile. He had a scent for that new woman, and he desired to return to London in haste, to return to the newest Conclave member.

“Effie.” Carefully, he had lifted her naked form and carried her back to the bedroom. He laid her on the bed.

“You are leaving?” she asked amid her tears.

“For now,” he said, covering her with the blankets—pale green silk sheets like the waters around her island.

She had been silent, biting her lip. If she asked, he might answer her.

“What is her name? The girl? You can tell me her name, at least.”

He looked down at her, his eyes glinting. Casually, he ran his fingers through her long hair, playing with her locks, his fingers gently wiping away the perspiration about her face.

“Arabella Sharp.”

“She looks like her mother?” Seraphina wanted an image in her head. An image of the woman who would be with the Conclave in their travels, in their work. Who still had the potential to do remarkable things.

“Exactly,” he said. “Same blood-red hair.”

Seraphina sighed and rolled over in bed. She would be silent now.

“Goodbye, Effie.” He bent, kissing her cheek. She had heard him leave her room, ascend the stone steps. Then, when he closed the door, darkness enshrouded her once again.

That was the last time she had seen him, back in the cold, windy autumn.

Returning her thoughts to the present, she watched the Komodo dragon roll lethargically in his enclosure. She hissed again, her rage surfacing. Who
was
this girl? Who was Arabella, that she could make Max neglect his duties to her, Seraphina, his only constant love. She pictured the girl as her mother in the photograph—the curly long hair, the dark eyes. She imagined Arabella Sharp alongside Robert Buck on his journeys in the Amazon and the Congo, collecting specimens. She pictured her alongside Julian Bartlett in his London hospital. That had been her dream—to be one of them. That had been her dream before everything went terribly wrong.

She thought of how she had wrecked her painting. She could not control her rumblings any longer and, in a fit of rage, she burst out, ruining yet another gown. The bloodlust was too much. Her desires were as uncontainable as salty sea spray.

She leapt into the water and swam away.

To search for answers.

To eat.

Eleven

I
felt myself tremble all the way to New Hospital. Where would Abberline have seen the Conclave’s symbol? I wondered if he had seen it in the rubbish of the Montgomery Street house. I wondered briefly if he had seen it on the Conclave members’ corpses after the fire. But the bodies had been charred almost beyond recognition by the time the fire was put out. In fact, the
Times
had stated that the morgue couldn’t confirm the identities of the men inside the house. Scotland Yard had simply made the assumption that they were Bartlett, Buck, Perkins, and Brown, and the newspapers never indicated that foul play was involved.

I tried to repress these thoughts when I arrived at New Hospital. Unfortunately, I didn’t meet Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson until later in the day. But the time flew by as I worked alongside two very young physicians in the prenatal unit, Doctors Hettie Davis and Rachel Carmichael, who had been expecting me.

When I finally met Dr. Anderson, she was on her way to examine a young boy. “I do apologize for not being available earlier. I have been so busy,” she told me. She was very tall and thin and wore spectacles, and had her brown hair, which was streaked with gray, pulled tightly back in a knot away from her face.

She walked quickly down the halls of New Hospital, and I nearly had to run to keep up with her. “You are of special interest to me, Abbie Sharp,” she continued, “having been mentored by Dr. Bartlett and Dr. Buck. Their hospital is very similar to ours, and my students and I have attended some of Dr. Bartlett’s seminars. He is extraordinarily brilliant.” Her face shadowed a bit and she shook her head. “That fire … such a tragedy. They had done such great things for the Whitechapel district.”

I averted my eyes; we were rapidly approaching another ward.

“But, nonetheless, now you have Dr. Siddal and Dr. St. John. I haven’t been to Whitechapel Hospital since they took charge, but I know that Dr. St. John is especially competent. He was recently here inquiring about some of our vaccination practices. Ahhh … ” she said as we entered the next ward, where a little boy waited for us with his mother. “It is young Nicholas.” Her eyes sparked a bit in my direction. “Abbie, you may take this one if you would like.”