The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray Read online

  Table of Contents

  PART ONE: THE LOST GIRL

  1

  PURSUIT ♦ THANIEL GETS A CRUEL SURPRISE ♦ FIRST IMPRESSONS

  2

  THE IRREPRESSIBLE MISS BENNETT ♦ MEET DOCTOR PYKE ♦ A NAME FOR THE GIRL

  3

  A WOMAN OF ILL REPUTE ♦ TURNING TRICKS ♦ AN UNHAPPY TWIST OF FATE

  4

  ALAIZABEL’S FEVER ♦ AN UNWLECOME OBSERVER ♦ A LETTER FROM DOCTOR PYKE

  5

  A RACE AGAINST TIME ♦ MAYCRAFT ♦ THANIEL GETS A SECOND CHANCE

  6

  CATHALINE’S ATTIC ♦ A RITE IS PERFORMED ♦ PLANS ARE MADE

  7

  A DISTURBANCE IN THE NIGHT ♦ THE FRATERNITY SHOW THEIR HAND

  PART TWO: STITCH-FACE

  8

  CHARITY STREET ♦ THE GREEN TACK MURDERS

  9

  THE CROOKED LANES ♦ GRINDLE ♦ CARVER MAKES A DISCOVERY

  10

  AN AUDIENCE WITH CROTT ♦ A DEAL IS STRUCK ♦ THE RAT KING

  11

  THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALISTA WHITE ♦ A CARRIAGE AT REDFORD ACRES

  12

  THE FIEND IN THE SEWERS ♦ A TRICK TO TRAP A WYCH-KIN

  13

  PERRIS THE BOAR ♦ ELISANDER AND SANDFORTH ♦ MAYCRAFT GETS A CALL

  14

  HONOUR AMONG VAGABONDS ♦ AN UNEXPECTED ALLY

  PART THREE: THE FRATERNITY ASCENDANT

  15

  A LADY IN DESTRESS ♦ THANIEL FIGHTS ALONE ♦ DISASTER STRIKES

  16

  VIGIL FOR THE DYING ♦ DESPAIR IN THE BELL TOWER

  17

  A GATHERING ♦ CURIEN BLAKE

  18

  THE GIRL IN THE WHITE SHIFT ♦ AN ILL MEETING

  19

  THE BEGGARS READY FOR WAR ♦ THE INEVITABLE ARRIVES

  PART FOUR: THE DARKENING

  20

  PORTENTS ♦ THE NIGHT MARE ♦ THE FIRST DARK DAY

  21

  AT STITCH-FACE’S MERCY ♦ THE SIEGE OF THE CROOKED LANES ♦ REUNION

  22

  THE WYCH IN ALAIZABEL CRAY ♦ THE HALLOW GHOUL ♦ THE PUPPETS SEE THE STRINGS

  23

  CALEDONIAN ROAD ♦ BENEATH THE CITY ♦ AN OLD ENEMY RETURNS

  24

  GENERAL MONPELIER ♦ LONDON BY AIRSHIP ♦ THE HEART OF EVIL

  25

  THE CATHEDRAL ♦ GUARDIANS

  26

  THE WYCH-DOGS ♦ PROPHECIES FULFILLED ♦ THE AMERICAN WAY

  27

  THE GALLERY ♦ GREGOR GAINS HIS FREEDOM ♦ THE TIDE COMES IN

  28

  PYKE HOLDS THE ANSWERS ♦ THE WYCH-KIN REVEALED ♦ ALL IS ENDED

  29

  AFTERMATH

  PART ONE:

  THE LOST GIRL

  PURSUIT

  THANIEL GETS A CRUEL SURPRISE

  FIRST IMPRESSIONS 1

  The airship lumbered low overhead, its long, lined belly a dull smear of silvery light in the fog as it reflected the gas lamps of the city beneath. The heavy, ponderous thrum of its engines reverberated through the streets of the Old Quarter, making the grimy windows of the tall, close-packed terraces murmur in complaint. Like some vast, half-seen beast, it passed over the maze of alleys and cobbled walks, too huge to consider the insignificant beings that travelled them—and finally it moved on, its engines fading to a dull hum, and then gradually to silence.

  There was a chill in the air tonight, a cold nip that had crept in from the Thames and settled into the bones of London. And of course there was the fog, which laid itself over everything like a gossamer blanket and softened the glow of the black lamp-posts to a haze. The fog came almost every night in autumn, as much a part of London as the hansom cabs that rattled around Piccadilly Circus or the stout Peelers that walked their beats north of the great river. Not to the south, though; not in the Old Quarter. That was the domain of the mad and the crooked and the things best left unthought of. The good people of the capital knew better than to remain there after the sun had dipped beneath the skyline; not if they valued their necks, anyway.

  Thaniel Fox listened to the quiet left in the wake of the airship. Somewhere distant, a rusty steamer sounded its horn as it made its way up the Thames. Beyond that, there was nothing but the soft hiss of a nearby gaslight. No footsteps, no voices, and only the dim whiteness at either end of the road, swallowing the cobbles and the weathered stone shops with stern placards above their doorways.

  “You mean to hide from me, then,” he muttered to his unseen quarry, before drawing a shallow golden bowl from his coat pocket, about the size of a biscuit. He crouched down to the cool stone of the pavement and, placing the bowl before him, he filled it with a dark red liquid from a small phial that he produced from another pocket.

  It would have been an odd sight for a passer-by to come across: a pale and stern-looking seventeen-year-old boy, hunched intently in the middle of the pavement on a foggy night. A wise man would not stay to inquire, for there were dangers in the Old Quarter that came in many guises, even with the Thames scarcely a kilometre to the north. But if he should stay, he would see the boy replace the first phial and bring out another one, this one full of clear liquid. Had he been close enough, he would smell the acrid stink of sulphur as the boy unscrewed the top, in which was set a small pipette full of the liquid. He would watch as the boy squeezed out a single drop into the bowl, and see the drop begin to fizz and glow bright white, a tiny ball of fury that slowly travelled to the edge of the bowl and remained there, nudging against the gold as if seeking to jump over it. And he would see it fade and die in a matter of seconds, before the boy turned to look in the direction that the fizzing drop had travelled.

  “There you are,” Thaniel said quietly. He picked up the bowl, dashed its contents across the road and replaced it in the pocket of his long coat.

  He headed off through the streets, walking warily along the cobbles, eyes and ears alert. Absently, he slid his pistol from his belt and held it ready as he walked. This close to the Thames, chances were good that he would run into nothing other than what he searched for; but it was dead men who took chances, or so his father said. And he should know. He cheated death so many times that people used to say Old Boney had given up on him.

  It was his father who’d taught him the trick with the bowl, too. Put a single drop of sulphur mixture in pigs blood and watch in which direction it travels. That’s where your target is. Crude, but it worked fine, if you knew what to mix the sulphur with.

  A sound rose out of the murk then—a high gibbering howl, rising to a crescendo and then fading a cry not human, nor bird or animal. Thaniel tried to pinpoint its source, but the mist baffled his attempts. But it was close, no doubt about that.

  He picked up his pace, accelerating to a jog. Down a narrow alley, where the houses leaned inward and no lights burned. He stepped over the slumped body of a vagrant, who lay unconscious in the shadow of a set of stone steps, reeking of rotgut and mumbling to himself as he stirred restlessly, plagued by nightmares. The man was taking his life in his hands, sleeping on the streets in the Old Quarter, but by the smell and look of him he didn’t have much life left anyway. Thaniel ignored him. This was London, and you either held on or fell by the wayside like that fellow had.

  Something moved at the end of the alley, where it met a narrow thoroughfare. Despite himself, Thaniel breathed in sharply, his knuckles whitening on the grip of his pistol as he halted. A wolf was poised there, watching him, frozen in the process of crossing the alley entrance. It held his gaze for a moment, amber eyes studying him in the murk; then it slunk away, dismissing him. Evidently, it had recently fed, and was not yet interested in another meal.
/>   Thaniel let out his breath softly, relaxing. Wolves were a hazard throughout London, even north of the water. They were rarer up there, of course, and usually ended up being shot, but while they kept breeding in the Old Quarter, they’d keep crossing the river at night. Not a few vagrant orphans and painted ladies had fallen victim to the hungry wolves of the city.

  He gave it a few moments to be on its way, then he hurried down the alley and onwards. Again, the gibbering, insane cry of his quarry sounded through the fog, very close now. It was going to ground, heading back to its lair.

  He’d surprised it out near Chadwick Street. It wasn’t the first time it had strayed out of its home territory. Two babies gone missing from their cribs, both the work of the thing he hunted. It was his job to make sure it didn’t happen again. Bad enough that a large portion of the city was deadly by night, and bad enough that the honest shopkeepers had to hurry back to their homes on the other side of the river before the sun went down; but when the creatures that stalked the streets started roaming beyond the Old Quarter, it was time to take action.

  The noise of his boots was swallowed up by the gently drifting murk as he headed towards the source of the cry. The shops had given way to dereliction by now, and ramshackle stone houses leered at him with broken teeth and jagged eyes. He ran over what he knew of his quarry, preparing for confrontation the way his father had taught him.

  It was a Cradlejack, of that he was sure. As if the missing babies weren’t enough, he’d already seen it when he chased it off back at Chadwick Street. They made their lairs in quiet areas, dark and sheltered from the daylight. Usually high up, because they climbed so well and it was safer—lots of escape routes. They never cornered themselves. The area around the lair tended to be scattered with rat bodies, which were their staple diet when they couldn’t get the flesh of a human. They were scavengers, back-stabbers, cowards; like weasels to birds’ eggs, they preyed on the defenceless young. They’d run if they could, but they’d fight if they had to, and Thaniel knew better than to underestimate wych-kin of any type.

  Thaniel slowed his pace, looking up at the tumbledown buildings that faded to black and then grey as they rose into the fog. A sign to his right read: E. CHELMTON, Broker and Purveyor of finest Tobacco. Over there, a grim accountant’s building frowned at him. The Cradlejack had fallen silent now. Thaniel had no doubt that it was close by, but where? He took out his shallow gold bowl once more and repeated the procedure he had executed earlier. His bearings renewed, he struck out in a direct line, across a courtyard flagged with cracked and chipped slabs; and on the other side he halted.

  “So this is where you’ve been hiding,” he muttered. He had a habit of talking to himself—or to his quarry—when he was on a wych-hunt alone. It quelled his unease. He was seventeen, and a wych-hunter. He’d been earning his keep since he was fourteen, and apprenticed for six years prior to that. He was good. But the things he hunted were more dangerous than any animal prey, and only a fool would think of them without fear.

  Before him was a tall picture-house, a triangular construction with a blunted nose that nestled in the V between two converging roads. Dark and brooding, it loomed over him like the prow of a ship, for he stood at the tip of the V, and it rose three storeys high. Its lower levels were boarded up entirely and most of its upper windows had been smashed. Once, it had held a cinematograph, a wonder of science that made moving pictures appear, and people from all over Europe had flocked to see it. Now it was just another casualty of the losing battle that the folk of London fought to keep hold of their city.

  It had to be here. It had all the hallmarks of a classic Cradlejack lair. And besides, his intuition crowed at him, you know it’s in there. Wych-huntings in your blood; isn’t that what Father always said? You’ve got the wych-sense just like he had. You just know.

  Thaniel scouted round the exterior of the building, but he could see no obvious way in. Not that it would make much difference to a Cradlejack; they were gifted burglars, with their long, spindly fingers and narrow, skeletal bodies, and a window was as good as a door to them. He tugged at the boards over the entrance, but they held fast. Undeterred, he headed over to the narrow house that nestled in behind the cinema, rubbing shoulders with the grand old building. The lock on the door had long since been broken. He pushed it open cautiously, the muzzle of his pistol poking carefully into the darkness that lay beyond.

  Nothing stirred.

  The room smelled musty, with a faintly sickly-sweet edge to it. Thaniel waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom and then stepped inside without a sound. The Cradlejack would run if it knew he was coming; his only hope of catching it lay in stealth. Quietly, he shut the door, and the chill darkness consumed him.

  He chewed his lower lip, senses straining to pick up a noise, a glimpse, anything that might warn him of the wych-kins presence.

  The interior of the room was a mess, he saw. Faint light struggled in through a single filth-streaked window—which miraculously had managed to remain whole—and by it he could spot the half-chewed and mangled corpses of rats and a few small dogs, strewn about the room. The smell that hung in the still air was of old blood and dust.

  Satisfying himself that the Cradlejack was not in the immediate vicinity, he pushed quietly onwards. The house had only a single downstairs room, with steps leading to the next floor. It had been a humble dwelling even before the dereliction of the Old Quarter overtook it; now it was crumbling inside and out.

  He ascended the steps into the waiting darkness above. Here, ragged cloth curtains had been left hanging over the pair of windows that allowed the muted gaslight glow inside. It was even darker than the last, and smelled of animal—a musky scent that made him gag as he crept up. This one was scattered with boxes and old crates, a hundred hiding-places, anyone of which might conceal the wych-kin he sought. Quietly, quietly, he stepped into the room. The night air seemed to exude menace, a cold deeper than the night chill that slipped through his nostrils and down his throat to cool his heart.

  A thump on the ceiling made him lurch in alarm, and he instinctively brought up his pistol.

  Upstairs. It was on the top floor.

  He crossed the room soundlessly, his pistol trained on the hatch at the top of a rickety ladder. It seemed a little lighter up there. For a moment, he fancied he saw something flit across the hatchway, but then it was gone, and he was unsure if it had ever been there at all.

  He pushed down the trepidation in his gut and put one hand to the ladder rung, the wood rough beneath his palm. His pistol aimed up the ladder, he crept slowly, silently, praying that the aged wood would not creak and give him away. Miraculously, it held his weight with ease, making not a sound. Up, up—each step seeming like a mile.

  He poked his head out of the hatch, gun peeping out with him. There were a few nauseating moments when he expected to be hit from any direction—he was sure to check up, as well—but nothing came. Cautiously, he ascended until his head and shoulders were in the room.

  It was a bedroom, the same size as the other two floors. A single bed stood aslant against one wall, its bedcovers long disintegrated into a cobweb of frail strands. More pieces of rat and other, less identifiable animals were strewn here and there, but the room was largely empty. Where the window should have been, a great hole gaped in the wall, allowing in soft wisps of fog and the glow from the lamp-posts. Thaniel clutched his coat tighter to his chest with one hand and climbed into the room. The Cradlejack was not here.

  Then what had made the noise?

  He stepped over the corpse of something pale and lightly furred, drawing closer to the hole in the wall and ceiling. What could have caused this, he had no idea. Shoddy workmanship, perhaps, causing the wall to collapse under its own weight? A stray bomb from an airship? Who could say?

  Peering out, he saw a wide, ornamental stone ledge that ran along the terraces just below their upper windows and across the flank of the picture-house. There, by squinting through the
drifting translucency of the fog, he could spy another hole, similar to this one, leading into the upper floor of that building.

  “Ah, so that is how you get in,” he said.

  He looked down. The fog prevented a clear view of the cobbles beneath him, a dozen metres below, but he did not think it would slow his fall very much if he should slip from the ledge.

  There was really no question of turning back, however. Not this close. He meant to rid London of one more wych-kin tonight.

  Treading with care, he stepped out on to the ledge, testing its stability by steadily applying his weight until he was certain it would not crumble. His pistol in his right hand, his left trailing along the wall for comfort, he moved slowly away from the safety of the hole and began to shuffle along the ledge. To his right, an ocean of fog waited, stirring hungrily. Beneath his feet there was scarcely twenty centimetres of granite and mortar holding him aloft.

  It came for him when he was halfway there. So deeply intent was he on keeping from toppling that he was a moment too slow in raising his pistol. A dark, scrawny shape, a flash of insane amber eyes and short, needle-point teeth, and then the roar of his pistol and the terrifying sensation of weightlessness as he knew his balance had failed him. For a moment that stretched into eternity, he hung above the fatal plunge to the street below; and then he fell.

  His hand snapped out, instinct driving him faster than thought, and before his rational mind had caught up, he had already grabbed the ledge with one hand. The jolt as his shoulder took his weight almost tore the muscles there, but it was enough to make him swing round so that his other hand could grab the ledge, too. Before he knew what had happened, he was holding on for his life above the fog-shrouded cobbles.

  The Cradlejack sounded its mad gibber as it disappeared into the house once more, knocking something over as it scuttled down the stairs, intent only on escape. Thaniel barely had time to feel the shock of his brush with death; he was already pulling himself up, cursing, his wiry but strong muscles lifting his light frame with ease. One knee, then another, and he got to his feet, shuffling hurriedly back along the ledge. He drew a second pistol from his belt as he reached the hole that admitted him back to the upper floor of the ramshackle house; his first weapon had gone spinning into the murk as he fell. Had he hit the thing? Probably not. But he would not let it run, either.