Willing (16 page)

Chapter Twelve

“Girl, if you’re not gonna work, ye can’t stay here!”

Berty was fuming, her hair disheveled and a bit wild about her head. Constance sat in the small armchair by her bedroom window and played with the laces of her robe. She was in no mood for Berty’s scolding.

“As I recall, a certain mutual acquaintance paid you for my room and board for somewhere around two years, no?”

Berty stopped dead, closing her eyes.

“I will remain in this room, and I will feast as I please. I bear you no unkindness, Berty, but unlike the first time you and
Mr. Grisholm
tried to force me to take a man to my bed as rent, this time I’m a grown woman, and I refuse you.”

“You’ve got regulars, woman. They’ve been looking for you for a month! You’re just gonna leave em waitin?”

“There are plenty other girls that can take ‘em.”

“Damn it, you know full well that’s not how these lads work.”

Constance leaned over the table, testing the temperature of her tea. It was mid-afternoon, and despite her best efforts to ignore the calendar, tonight was the full moon, and she was feeling surly for it. Both Thomas and Gregory had returned to the Keg and Barrel to retrieve her on previous days, both receiving the same cordial refusal, along with a warning that Alisdair not come himself. Despite her wary nature, she was able to convey herself to both gentlemen, Detective Jenkins having not returned since her first night back. She’d missed the cool linens of the White parlor, the song of the birds in the garden. Still, she couldn’t risk causing suspicion amongst the local Police. If they were hunting a murderer, she didn’t want to give them any reason to turn their eyes toward Alisdair.

Stay away, she’d said. Stay away and stay safe.

“I’m sorry, Berty. I am not currently seeing clients. It’s as simple as that.”

“Ye can’t just take up space here, girl. The other girls won’t like it.”

“No, I’m sure they won’t, but that isn’t my problem, now is it?”

“Fer fuck’s sake,” Berty hollered and marched out of the room. There was a bit of snickering down the hall, which drew further bellows as Berty made her way down to the bar. Constance sat sipping at her tea, willing herself distracted.

Three o’clock. If she left with the footman now she would arrive before five in the evening. Yet, she’d warned the footmen to stay away. She would spend her first full moon in several months alone.

“Connie?”

Constance looked up to see Charlotte, her wild red hair pinned up as she stared from the doorway with crystal blue eyes. She hovered there like a child addressing an evil stepmother. It made her both sad and pleased, strangely. She wondered how frightening she would seem if she could still slam doors with a thought and a flick of her wrist.

“Yes? What do you need, love?”

“Octavia was askin for ye? Says she needs help getting a couple kegs from the basement.”

Constance raised an eyebrow. “And she needs me?”

“Aye. Says Mr. Poole is out for the night, and with Roger gone and Berty fumin -”

“She’s sending poor Octavia down to get the kegs, now? Christ. The girl is tiny!”

Constance stood up from her tea and sauntered down the hall to the stairs. The downstairs wasn’t overly crowded, but the early regulars were trickling in for drinks and company. Octavia was nowhere to be seen.

“Well, where is the fool girl?”

Charlotte pointed to the hallway behind the bar. “She’s already down there. She needs help bringin them up.”

“Of course she does,” Constance mumbled to herself as she marched down the stairs, shooting Berty a dirty look as she passed.  The air in the hallway was heavy, ceiling so low in some parts that she had to duck below beams to get through. She passed Roger’s old room, glancing in to see his coat still slung over the back of his chair. The bastard had clearly left it without much of a thought.

“Tavi?” Constance hollered down the stone steps, the sound falling short in the dank space. The stench of fermenting beer and long soaked dirt and stone floors lay dormant and dank, the stagnant air so thick it felt like moving through water. The beer mingled with the lingering sting of rot, the unfortunate creature that clearly died in the walls rather than taking his poisoned food back to his den. She waited for Octavia to respond, less than thrilled to be going down into the cellar, even in mid-afternoon.

“Down here!”

Constance sighed and made her way down the stairs, the first few steps near black in the cramped space. She reached the lower landing, its walls lit only by the yellow glow of a few candles along the wall at the far end of the cellar. The cellar was partitioned by tall wooden shelves, open on all sides and filled with kegs, all resting on their sides, fermenting away in the dank space. Some had leaked, some had outright exploded in the past, leaving the stink of old beer to saturate every surface. She made her way down one of the aisles between the high shelves finding an old table and several chairs, signs of the very card game that likely robbed Berty of Constance’s wages.

“Tavi, where are you? I don’t want to be down here, let’s get it upstairs and done with.”

Constance moved around the table, taking up a candle from one of the sconces and heading deeper into the basement. There were tales of these cellars that she’d heard over the years – tales of tunnels that led to the Thames, where drunk men could be snatched from brothels at night, dragged through the underground, only to wake up at sea, forced into serving as a sailor on one of Her Majesty’s ships. Constance held the candle out in front of her, waiting for Octavia to make her presence known. Constance turned into one of the smaller side rooms and felt the air shift like a punch in the face. She held the back of her hand to her nose, coughing at the sudden inhale of rot. Whatever vermin died in here, it died in legion. She pointed the candle into the darkness and found an empty room with dirty stone floors, a small crawl space door in the corner. It was open just a crack, a small collection of strange purple shapes peeking from within, like thick little sausages, just visible in the candlelight. She took a step into the room, the stench growing to near overwhelming. Constance felt her stomach turn, as much from the stench as from a sudden overwhelming sense of foreboding. The air was wrong. The place was wrong, heavy with some strange ill she couldn’t quite speak. She moved toward the tiny door, steeling herself against the knots in her belly. She let the candlelight dance across the thick, purple and gray shapes, reaching for the door as she recognized what they were.

They were fingers.

Constance tugged the small door open and lunged back, knowing well what she would find, and still screaming at the sight.

Roger’s rotting corpse was crammed into the tiny crawl space, his face gaunt now from well over a month of rot.

“Octavia!
Tavi!!”

Constance couldn’t fight the bile rising in her throat, turning for the darkest corner of the small room to be sick. She tasted her tea, the sugar and milk, the sour tinge of her belly, and beneath all of that, the sickly sweetness of rot. She heaved again, but nothing came as she moved swiftly out into the main cellar.

“Berty!” She screamed, hustling through the cellar, the taste of vomit and rot in her mouth. “Berty! Octavia!”

“I’d ask you to stop screaming, if you would.”

Constance dropped the candle onto the floor, throwing herself into the stone wall as though she might hide from the sound of the man’s voice. She turned in the dark to see a figure framed between the rows of shelves, his bowler hat still on his head.

“Tavi,” Constance whispered as Gregory stepped out of the shadows, holding a trembling Octavia against his chest, a six inch knife pressed mercilessly to her throat. She was sobbing as silently as she could, each quiver of her throat only digging the blade into her skin further.

“I’m sorry, Connie. I’m so sorry.”

“Shh,” he whispered into her ear, his tone like that of a lover.

Constance stifled a cry to see his familiar face. “What are you doing?”

Gregory smiled, and it was the first time she’d ever seen it. She understood why he refrained before now. A smile on this man’s face betrayed every ounce of madness a man could possess.

“I want you to come with me.”

Constance held her hands out before her, as though she could hold this revelation at bay, keep Octavia safe. “Will you let her go?”

He smirked. “Probably not. Though, I suppose I can always come back another time, can’t I?”

Octavia let out a sob and a new stream of crimson ran down the front of her throat.

“See, I can’t let her live. She’s seen my face, hasn’t she, love? Seen it many times.”

Octavia was beginning to cry freely as Gregory moved her closer to Constance.

“And she tried to warn you, didn’t she? Such a good girl. Tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen. Stupid whore. Too in love with money to see what was right in front of you.”

His tone was sickeningly calm, almost tender. Constance felt she’d be sick again each time she heard it.

“She’ll not tell a soul. Won’t you, Tavi?”

Octavia could only cry now. Gregory chuckled, the rhythm and movement of it drawing new streams of blood.

Constance’s mind was muddled with shock and denial. This scene couldn’t be happening. People don’t commit harm like this to others, not normal people. Gregory was normal. Gregory she knew. Yet, here he was slowly slitting her best friend’s throat.

Constance inhaled sharply, tears stinging her eyes as a revelation struck her. “You’re the Ripper.”

He smiled again, but made a tsking sound as he shook his head. “Please. Kelly is long gone. Moved on to America, if I recall. Man had a bit too much zeal for the job at the end there. Better off gone, if you ask me.” Gregory looked down at Octavia tear soaked face. “See, his problem was, he didn’t know when to pull in on the reins a bit ; take his time. I do. I think you girls should be far more afraid of me.”

“Run,” Octavia whispered only to be rewarded with a rocking of the blade against her throat.

“Shush now, child. I’m in a good mood. Change that and I will make it hurt.”

Constance stifled a sob, stepping toward him in desperation. He didn’t flinch.

“Please, I’ll go with you. I’ll do whatever you like.”

“I know you will.”

“Just let her be? Please!”

Gregory turned his nose into her dark hair and inhaled.  “She is a sweet thing, isn’t she?”

Constance glanced toward the stairs just a few yards away. She could make a run for it, scream into the tavern for someone to come and help. The muscles in her thighs tightened, readying herself to run.

“Ah, ah, ah. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

She stopped dead, turning to meet the madman’s gaze, her hackle’s rising. “There are men twice your size up there. You’re trapped. There’s nowhere for you to go.”

“You’re right. I am trapped here, but let me just share with you how the events of this evening will unfold, if I don’t return you to your dear Alisdair, shall I?”

The confidence of his tone startled her. She swallowed, unable to speak.

“You run for the stairs, call several large, chivalrous men down to subdue me, take me to jail, kill me, whatever their mood. I perish and all is well, yes? Yet, what you fail to realize is that later tonight, the ritual will occur with or without you and I, dear Constance. Your beloved Alisdair will perform his rite with some other girl, another ‘willing’ altar, and as usual, it will fail. And when it does, his dear circle will do as they have been planning for a year, now. They will take that backed up, chaste little cunt, splay him out on that altar of his and bleed him dry. And there will be no one there to stop them.”

These words hit her like a mallet, and Constance fell back into the keg shelves, uttering the only word that would come. “No.”

The shelf shifted from the force of her fall, causing the top heavy structure to rock, shift, and clamor like the slamming of an open door to hell as it toppled to the ground, spraying beer and splintered wood in every direction. In the chaos of that moment, Octavia loosed herself from his hold, sending the knife skittering across the stone floor as she rushed to Constance, helping her to her feet. Octavia tugged at her sleeve, begging her to move, but both Constance and the madman remained still, watching each other.

There was a muffled commotion upstairs. They’d heard the noise.

Octavia yanked at her sleeve, ripping it. “Come on, Constance!”

“You’re telling me this.”

It wasn’t a question. She knew well why, but shock seemed to be setting in.

Gregory smiled. “Because I’m giving you a choice.”

Octavia turned for the stairs, stopping halfway up as she met an approaching figure.

Berty appeared in the cellar, swearing and roaring as she caught sight of the mess, an inch deep puddle of beer flowing across the ancient stone floor like some biblical flood. Then she took a closer look at Octavia, pointing one hand at Gregory as she pressed her other hand to her wounded throat. Octavia moved toward the stairs, blocked by Berty’s massive size. The bigger woman bent down to the stained knife now muddy from the deluge of beer.