The Clockwork Wolf (23 page)

Connell glanced down at me. “You needn't apologize to me, miss. I've no memory of it, and I came to no harm.”

“Nevertheless.” I curtseyed as low as the curb would allow. “Please forgive me, sir.”

“Stand by, Connell.” Dredmore took my arm and led me down the walk toward the delivery platform at the side of the building. “That was quite considerate of you.”

“I consider your driver a decent chap,” I said. “By the way, now you'll definitely have to drop those charges you trumped up against me.”

A guard stood leaning against a wall and picking at his fingernails by the platform, but as soon as he spied us approaching he straightened and adjusted the set of his hat. “Visitors go in the front, sir.”

“The mayor summoned me to inspect two bodies,” Dredmore told him. “It is a matter of some urgency.”

“Aye, sir?” The guard eyed me. “Surely not with your lady.”

“I'm milord's secretary,” I informed him in my best Middy accent. “Come along to take notes for Himself. Look alive, then, lad. We've not all day.”

The guard nodded and hurried to unlock the door, bobbing his head as we went in.

As we headed down the hall Dredmore gave me a sideways look. “I've never heard you speak in that fashion.”

“Ta, sir, I ain't always hobbed with nobs. 'Sides, plain speaking opens more doors than your fancy talk.” The smell of preservative made my nose wrinkle. “Hopefully Dez is on duty, or this might require the use of some of your particular talents.”

Inside the examination chamber we did find Docket's friend wheeling a body into a back room. He didn't see us until he returned, and then he scowled at me.

“Not you again.” His gaze moved to Dredmore. “Who's this?”

“My secretary, Lucien,” I said as I inspected the shrouded bodies still in the room. “Where are the two Wolfmen that were brought in from the Hill?”

“No.” Dez thrust out his jaw. “I'll not have any of your poking round here, ever again.”

“And why not?”

“Sister Bailey came down after that other one ran amok and near tore my head off about it.” He threw out his arms. “As if I'd known some bloody mage would
reanimate the creature the minute I turned my back.”

“No worries, then. You can tell her I barged in and found them myself.” I went to the first table and drew back the shroud. The elderly man beneath it looked entirely mortal and quite yellow. “Liver rot,” I guessed. “Too much wine, not enough women and song.” I went to the next table.

Dez beat me to it and put an arm over the shroud. “You'll not want a look at this one.”

I peeked anyway and grimaced. “Trampled by a horse, or hit by a carri?”

“Barnacle scrubber, got pinned between two boats.” Dez started to say more and then jerked the edge of the shroud back into place. “That's enough. You need to see a vicar, and talk to him about this fascination of yours with the dead. It ain't natural.”

“I have one over here, Charmian,” Dredmore said from across the room, where he had uncovered a hairy body with an enormous chest wound. As I approached the hair began to recede into the man's body. “The spell is still active.”

“Not anymore,” I said as I joined him, at which point the body transformed into its natural mortal state. “Dez, I need to look in his mouth.”

The morgue attendant muttered several more, vile words as he brought over a tray of instruments and thumped them down beside the body. “What do you think you'll see?” he said as he picked up a metal depressor and wedged it in between the body's snarling lips.

“That.” I nodded at the double rows of gleaming brass teeth.

“Blind me,” Dez breathed, peering at the Wolfman's ghastly choppers. “I never seen the like of it.”

“Can you tilt his head back?” I asked, trying to look behind the top row of brass fangs.

“He's too stiff now, but . . .” The attendant gnawed at his lip before he pushed the body to the edge of the table until the head hung over. “That should be enough to see something.”

I tilted my head to get a better angle. “There's something attached to the roof of his mouth.” I reached for a pair of narrow tongs on the tray and used them to extract a flattened pocket of thin hide. When I placed it on the table, blood began to ooze from it.

“You were right.” Dredmore regarded the extraction. “But why blood?”

I set down the tongs. “I don't know.” I saw the blood from the hide pocket creeping toward the dead Wolfman's arm, where a wound made an ugly gash across the flesh. On impulse I picked up the pocket and emptied it onto the wound.

A few moments later the three of us stared at the arm, which now appeared whole.

“Blood that heals,” I murmured, prodding the corpse's arm to be sure the wound had disappeared. “It can't be spelled to do it. It wouldn't work with me so close.”

“It can't be mortal blood, Miss Kit,” Dez said, and jerked his chin at Dredmore. “I wager he knows what it is.”

“There are tales about the healing qualities of Aramanthan blood,” Dredmore said. “But the bodies of all the immortals perished in the grove.”

“We'll have to assume that one escaped.” I regarded the arm. “Why would you attack women and then heal them with immortal blood?”

“To erase all evidence of the bite mark serves no purpose,” Dredmore said. “The women remember they have been attacked. Perhaps to addle them, or discredit them?”

“That can't be all. He's gone to too much trouble. All right, they grab them, they bite them, and then they assault them.” I studied the corpse for a moment before I took hold of the shroud and yanked it away from the lower half of the body. I expected to see the most private part of the Wolfman's body, but that lay covered by more metal and gears.

“Another one with a brass hat,” Dez muttered, and when he saw my face he reddened. “The last two had the same mech in their laps. Bit ridiculous, if you ask me. No woman would let them . . . oh, bloody hell.”

I refrained from commenting and walked round the end of the table to examine it from the other side. That was when I spotted an odd bulge in the Wolfman's jaw. “Lucien, come here.” When he did I pointed to the protuberance. “What is that lump?”

“A contusion.” He reached out and pressed his fingers over it. “No, it's solid. It feels as if there is something lodged inside his cheek.”

“Could be one of them mech teeth got knocked askew,” Dez said, and came with a smaller pair of tongs. “Here, I'll have it out.”

The attendant rooted about in the mouth until he latched on to something and extracted it. “Just a rock.”

“Don't touch it,” I said when he reached to remove it from the tongs. “This one is my specialty.”

I took the stone, which was a vile blackish green with patches of yellow, and turned it over in my palm. I hadn't held that many Aramanthan spirit stones, but I knew exactly what sort of power it contained—a sleeping monster, waiting to be placed inside a mortal body and awakened by a spell to take control of it.

Dez peered at it, and then took a step back. “That isn't just a rock.”

I found a specimen box, in which I put the spirit stone before I placed it in my reticule. “Will you check the other body for the same, please?”

Dez moved to another table and examined the body. “Nothing in this one. Perhaps it fell out during the struggle.” He gave me a troubled glance. “Miss, are you all right?”

“Yes, and I think I know where it landed.” It took another moment for me to collect myself, and then I removed my jacket. “I'll need you to do a bit of cutting now, Dez.”

“I can't remove those teeth. You've already seen the clockworks in the chest,” he pointed out, frowning as I rolled up my sleeve. “Sweet Mary, miss. Why are you all bruised up like that?”

“I was bitten by the second Wolfman.” I pulled a stool over to the table, sat down, and stretched out my arm. “Get a clean blade if you would, and something to bandage it after.”

Dez recoiled. “I'm not cutting on you. I'd never hurt a woman, and you've had enough harm done to you.”

“No, Charmian.” Dredmore loomed over me. “I won't allow it.”

I grabbed his hand and placed it over the spot where I'd been bitten, where the hard lump of an Aramanthan spirit stone now lay beneath my healed skin. “Either Dez takes it out, or I do.”

Dredmore's mouth thinned. “I will summon a surgeon—”

“—who will never believe our explanation and refuse to operate.” I shifted my gaze to the attendant's pale face. “I am immune to magic round me, not inside me. If the spirit is released from the stone while it's in my arm, it will possess me. It has to come out, now.”

“Miss, I can't. I can't risk it. I've never operated on a living person.” He swallowed. “ 'Sides that, I don't have nothing I can use to knock you out. The pain will be too much, you'll move, and then—”

“I won't. Lucien will help.” I glanced up at Dredmore. “He will hold me fast.”

His arm came round me, and he pressed my face against his chest for a moment before he released me. To Dez, he said, “Do you have what you'll need to clean and stitch up the wound?”

He nodded. “Carbolic and boiled thread. Miss Kit, you really can't move. Not an inch. And screaming won't be good, not while I'm at it. I'll lose me nerve.”

“I won't make a peep,” I promised.

Once Dez assembled the necessary items, Dredmore took hold of my wrist and elbow. “Look at me,” he said, and when I did he smiled. “You may call me as many names as you wish, as long as you keep watching my face.”

“That shouldn't be difficult.” I felt the cold edge of the blade. “You have a handsome—” I caught my breath as Dez began the work. “Countenance.” White-hot pain made me drag in my breath. “When you're not . . . glowering.”

“I must endeavor to seek more satisfaction.” As he felt me tremble he shifted the hand on my wrist, lacing his fingers through mine. “I have some suggestions as to how you might bring me to that happy state.”

“Naturally you would. You're a scoundrel and a womanizer,” I said through my teeth. “Far too wealthy and powerful. A rake incapable of reform. Lucien—”

“I know, love. Nearly there.” His eyes stayed on mine as he said to Dez, “Do you have it?”

“Yes.” Something bounced onto metal, and a cloth covered my blazing flesh. “A few stitches now, Miss Kit.”

I felt the stab of the needle and let out my breath before I dropped my head against Lucien's chest. “Nothing fancy, Dez, please.”

The pain eased, but I didn't look at my arm until he had finished. The size of the wound astonished me. “Hardly a scratch, when it felt like you were cutting me from palm to pit.” My gaze shifted to the stone he'd removed, an unimpressive dark azure pebble. “I wonder who you were,” I said to the rock. No doubt the spirit of some hateful immortal warmonger like Zarath, or perhaps someone even worse.

“We'll not pursue it,” Dredmore told me.

Dez bandaged me and gave me instructions to snip and pull out the suture threads once the wound had fully closed. “Until it does, keep it clean and wrapped.”

“We'll have to go for a drive by the bay later,” I told Dredmore once I added the blue pebble to the box in my reticule. “At least this explains why Lykaon wants the bite wounds to heal immediately—to keep the stones in place.”

“So that they might later possess the victims.” Dredmore had never looked more disgusted. “That heartless bastard.”

“I don't believe the women are the intended hosts. Lady Bestly wasn't possessed, and neither were Felicity or Janice.” I tightened my grip on the reticule. “I think their unborn children are.”

Dredmore gave me a bleak look. “They're all with child?”

“I shall have to check with Rina and see the other victims, but yes, I think they must be.” I turned to Dez. “Thank you for your help.”

“If that's what you're calling it.” He went to a stool and sat down, resting his face in his hands. “I've got to find another job.”

•   •   •

Dredmore directed Connell to take us to a remote hillside spot beside the bay, where I took great pleasure in emptying the box of spirit stones over the cliff and watching them plummet into the dark, cold water.

“Have a lovely nap for the rest of eternity.” For good measure I tossed the empty box and my reticule after them. “So how do we tell these women that they are carrying immortal children? ‘Sorry you were attacked, you're going to have a baby, and it's likely to take over the world'?”

“The unborn are not yet suitable for possession.”
Dredmore took hold of my hand. “In order to take over a body, the spirit stone must be first awakened by a spell. Only then can the Aramanthan be freed to enter and seize control of the mind.”

“That spell may have been cast already,” I pointed out.

“Even if Lykaon has released the spirits, these children sired by the Wolfmen have only just been conceived,” Dredmore said. “It will be several weeks before they develop enough to be overtaken.”

“All the victims will have to be checked,” I said as we walked back to the carri. “I have a list of their names and addresses at the office. I'll call on them and see how many have been used as vessels.”

Inside the carri, Dredmore instructed Connell to take us to my office building before he said, “If Lykaon spelled the Aramanthan spirits to bond with the unborn, then it may not be possible to safely extract the stones from the women.”

“Dez had no problem with mine . . . because the spell wouldn't work on me.” I thumped my good fist against the seat. “Damn. If we can't get the stones out of them—”

“—then it must be the unborn,” Dredmore finished for me.