The Daemon Device Read online

  There were men in long black coats like policemen, but they, too, wore goggles and leather caps. But more importantly, they were armed, standing at attention at the two doorways. Private guards.

  He glanced around the room. He flicked a glance along one wall where strange, pale long coats hung on its tiled surface, but a sense of unease rippled over his skin. For when he looked a second time, he gasped. Not coats. Far more dreadful than that. It was a long row of naked men and women hanging by what appeared to be meat hooks.

  He gritted his teeth to tamp down the scream deep in his throat. He jerked his head away, trying to excise the vision of all those bodies, but he couldn’t. It seemed to be burned upon his retinas.

  When he forced himself to look again…he almost felt relief when he concluded that they were corpses. They were so very pale and lifeless. And no blood, for surely there would have been pools of it below them. He glanced further and noticed that some seemed…loose. Like an old dressing gown. And with horror, he realized that they were mere skins. The skeleton and innards removed carefully from the flesh, and only leaving the hair on their heads, the mustaches and beards on their faces. The people skins hung with shoulders drooped and faces elongated with emptiness. No skull filled the empty flesh, no muscle warmed the sunken cheeks. He had no words for the sight of it.

  The world tilted until he put a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes. The sights, the smells…it reminded him all too well of his time in the Otherworld, a nightmare he’d just as soon forget.

  When he took a breath and opened his eyes again, it was no better.

  The white-coated men had gathered close and were looking down at something on a cart with wheels before a marble slab.

  It was a cube—no more than two feet square—made of metal, with riveted edges in brass. The cube was opened on the side facing him and suspended in its center was what looked like a human heart. It was glossy with moisture and held in place by several spirals of wires. One man flipped a switch on the side of the cube and a piston on the top began to move up and down. Faster and faster it went, with smoke coming out of the top from a small brass stack. As the men bent toward it, watching, the heart…began to move. At first, it merely twitched, then a shock of current seemed to shoot through it and it pulsed. And then, it began a regular contraction of a heartbeat.

  The men exchanged glances and nodded their heads. They turned to watch it again. Leopold wasn’t certain what exactly he beheld, when the cube seemed to shimmer, to be clouded by a blurring veil. A strong light shone behind it, creating a halo. Then, slowly, slowly, the whole contraption—cube and piston and heart—simply vanished from view and the light along with it.

  Leopold jerked back with a sudden burst of magic. He put a hand to his head and shook it out. What had happened? Something caused that explosion of power that made the cube vanish…or had the vanishing cube caused it?

  The men applauded, the sound muffled from their vulcanized gloves. One man off to the side wrote some notes on a clipboard. They were cheered but then seemed indifferent to what Leopold could only imagine was a superb magic trick, as if they had fully expected that to happen. They obviously had, for they leaned in close to one another, talking low and gesturing wildly, and exchanging notes.

  The men then rolled away the now empty cart, and they all dismissed that amazing happenstance to turn their attention to the marble slab as if the remarkable sight of a singular beating heart disappearing before their eyes was only the prelude to something else.

  Leopold kept to the shadows and crept further in, positioning himself to be able to hear and see. The men below finally parted and lying on the cold slab was a young woman in a white, silken dressing gown. She was completely insensate if not already dead. Her auburn hair flowed freely over her shoulders and over the side of the table. The men brandished flashes of bright silver and Leopold realized that they were knives and other implements of the surgeon: long tapering blades and fearsome serrated knife edges.

  There were other metal tables with trays and white porcelain pans. There were beakers, flasks, and retorts with colored liquids standing by, and something with vulcanized tubes snaking down out of a large bottle hanging upside down on an iron stand.

  Leopold clutched the Webley tightly. The woman! What could he do? The poor devils on the hooks were lost, but was she to suffer the same fate? He cast about desperately. Was there time to summon help? But from whom? Not the police. The beastly, expressionless men had made certain of their secret doings by using this abandoned place, far from any Peeler’s beat.

  One of the men, perhaps the head surgeon, spoke louder among the murmuring. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Shall we begin?”

  Chapter Eleven

  LEOPOLD ADJUSTED HIS grip on the revolver. This was rather more than he bargained for. How on earth was he to save that woman?

  He scanned the room. Too many of them for him and his Webley. Especially with those armed guards and the surgeons holding knives and saws. He couldn’t possibly hold all of them off with his one pistol. He reached out with his senses, searching for tendrils of magic. Yes, there was magic. The cube with the heart had somehow released it, but could it be trusted?

  Large coronas that served as gas lighting were suspended by ropes and pulleys, tied off down below. If those were to fall they would disrupt the proceedings well enough. Closing his eyes, he sought the magic once more. This was not the safe magic of Eurynomos and his ilk, but the fiery unpredictable magic of the cube and the heart, and of those little better than beasts. Imps and others had been here. He felt them. He knew if he accomplished it with their uneven magic he wouldn’t have enough strength left to save that woman. He’d have to do it the natural way, then. Climb up to the rafters above and saw through the ropes.

  He moved to the end of the catwalk and found a metal ladder attached to the wall climbing up into the dim rafters. He reached up and curled a hand around a high rung and hoisted his foot to step up onto the railing, when a hand closed over his shoulder.

  He reacted by snapping his elbow behind him into the soft tissue of his assailant. He heard a whoosh of air and the clatter of a person stumbling back. Looking over his shoulder he gasped.

  Mingli Zhao held her stomach and panted, eyes glittering up at him.

  “What the devil—” he whispered.

  She held up her hand for silence and peered over the side of the catwalk. When she regained her breath she approached him, but he took a step back. “What are you doing here?” he hissed.

  “The same thing you are doing here, I imagine,” she said with a breathless whisper.

  “You must leave immediately. There is great danger.”

  “So I see.” She peered over the side again, eyes narrowing. But she showed no revulsion, no shrinking as other women would.

  “Look here, Inspector. I know you think you can do some good, but you really don’t know what you are getting into…”

  “They have to be stopped but not like this.” Her eyes traveled up to the chandelier and back down, as if she had read his very thoughts.

  Leopold glared at her, shaking his head. “I don’t want you to be in danger.”

  “I’ve been in danger before. Don’t worry over my sensibilities, Mr. Kazsmer. What matters is saving that woman.”

  “Which I was about to do until you interfered.”

  “And if you had dropped that chandelier on them how could you possibly have saved her? It would have landed on her as well.”

  “I can divert it with my… I have my ways. Do you really think this is the proper time to argue?” He turned, grabbing for the ladder again. She yanked him back and he whirled. “Stop grabbing me!”

  “Not until you listen to reason. We can come up with another way.”

  “And while we are busy talking about it…” He looked down again. The head physician was lecturing, casually gesturing toward the skins hanging on the wall. “We are wasting time.”

  Mingli cocked her head. “If you
would only stop to listen to me…”

  “You haven’t said anything worth listening to. And I would suggest you stop following me. You don’t know half of what is transpiring.”

  “Perhaps I do.”

  He turned again and she grabbed him a second time, but this time when he whirled on her, the sole of her boot came in contact with his chest. Before he realized what was happening, he landed hard on the catwalk, she flipped lightly into the air…and suddenly straddled him, holding him down.

  She crouched down over his body, inches from his face. “I don’t like being ignored,” she said, breathing harshly on his lips.

  The effect of her breath, the scent of her—not exotic as he had imagined, but perfumed like any other English lady; lilac, he surmised—the strength of her thighs squeezing his flanks…oh God, her thighs!

  He struggled to rise, but her remarkable strength kept him in place. She put her hands on his shoulders, pressing them into the uncomfortable metal of the catwalk. “You will listen to me. Are you listening, Leopold?”

  Her lips were inches from his. It had been a very long time since he had been this close to a woman. Jaelle. Jaelle had teased him like this and he had embarrassed himself. Jaelle, who was now dead in such a dreadful way. Oh God! Was her spirit with her ancestors? Did he even believe in such things?

  Yet all he knew right now was the feel of Mingli’s breasts pressed against his chest, her thighs surrounding him, the taste of her breath. Of course he wasn’t listening to her. He could only hear the thrumming of his own blood rushing in his ears. Eyes intense, she kept his gaze mesmerized.

  “Leopold, we don’t have to rush in with guns blazing. For heaven’s sake, we aren’t Americans.”

  “Not…what?”

  There was a change in her expression. Her eyes softened and she settled over him. “Magic,” she said inches from his lips. All he needed to do was lean upward and taste them. Had it really been that long since he had kissed a woman? Since he was fifteen? Since Jaelle?

  She was speaking. He could feel it, but he didn’t want to listen. He wanted to reach up. He wanted…

  “Magic,” she said again, like a purr. “Can you really perform true magic?”

  “Yes,” he mumbled. He wanted to tell her, wanted to impress her.

  “I knew it,” she said.

  What? He blinked, eyes focusing. Blast and damnation! What had he done?

  He pushed hard and she tumbled back. He didn’t want to think about the flash of ruffles and pink ribbons beneath her skirts.

  “You…you…temptress! You Jezebel!” he hissed.

  “You idiot!” Much to his surprise and discomfort, she yanked up her skirts, higher, higher, revealing her slender and shapely leg in its pale stocking while layers of ruffles hid the other mysteries from view. Wrapped around her thigh was the incongruous leather strap of a holster. She pulled a gun—the make of which he did not recognize, with a glass bulb where the cylinder should be—cocked it and aimed it at his head. “I’m not asking you again. Perform some sort of magic as a distraction so I can get that woman out of there. Do you understand me this time?”

  He felt like an idiot. He gathered himself and slowly rose, brushing off his coat. He reached for the tendrils of magic, even as scattered as they were. Bringing up his reddened face he gave a curt nod.

  She offered an acknowledging nod, held her gun barrel upward close to her body, and rushed away on her tip-toes down the catwalk making no sound at all.

  He straightened his coat and breathed erratically. A formidable woman, was Mingli Zhao. And unusually strong. In future he must not underestimate her.

  He gave her time to get below, though he wasn’t certain what she was going to do in a room of white coats and heavily armed guards. Why did he let her go? What gentleman would? But she had ordered him to do his magic in a most compelling manner, and so he concentrated on gathering it. Closing his eyes, he clutched the catwalk rail with both hands, pulling the magic toward him. It had a metallic taste, a smell like sulfur, but he felt it invigorate, imbuing his limbs with energy and strength. This magic came from a place he didn’t want to think too deeply about, and in many ways, it felt…wrong…but it was there for him to use nevertheless, and he balled it up in his gut, drawing it in like smoke from a meerschaum.

  As always it made him slightly light-headed, and when he opened his eyes, pupils blown wide, he could barely see for all the iridescent lights dancing before his sight, like sparks from a campfire. His hands flew from the railing and stretched out before him. The power churned upward from his belly, seethed through his arms, and blasted out of his fingertips in a roar.

  The cohorts below looked up and by their startled frightened faces, Leopold knew that they thought the roof was caving in on them. He had created the illusion of cracking beams, falling glass and plaster, of collapsing walls. Like insects, they quickly scattered with screams and shouts. Even the head physician tore away from the others, scrambling so fast to escape that he shoved some of the men aside.

  Leopold buckled but caught himself on the metal railing before he went over the side. Panting, he looked down and saw Mingli lift the woman the men had abandoned in their haste to depart.

  My God, he thought as he watched Mingli hoist the woman over one shoulder and hold her gun with the other hand while she hurried away. That woman is uncannily strong. He stored that information away for later perusal.

  He glanced toward those poor creatures hanging like beef in a butcher’s shop and toward the others, like coats left in a cloakroom. He was certain that this had the Otherworld all over it. How else could he have marshalled his magic? Had that cube with the heart been sent to the Otherworld? Had it opened a gate? No wonder his magic had surged.

  He dared not call the police in to investigate. He had to decide quickly. Half-heartedly, he gathered the remnants of the magic, closed his eyes, and willed the poor devils and what remained of them to disintegrate. They started crumpling into gray dust from their feet upward, and finally fell into several piles of ash that swirled in tiny cyclones along the floor until even their ashes were no more.

  He sent up an unconscious Hebrew prayer and turned away.

  Taking a breath to steady himself, Leopold ran down the catwalk to the little door. On this side of it was a large seal with a Viking helmet and the words “Order of the Valkyrie” curved around it. There were runes and pentacles in the background of the round seal. He took it all in quickly, wondering at it, before he got himself down the ladder and met Mingli at the warehouse’s front entrance. She was waiting in the shadows, making certain that all the “doctors” had fled.

  “That was amazing,” she told him, eyes shining. “The roof. I almost believed it myself.” She looked back and he followed suit. The cascading dust and beams dispersed, leaving the roof in the same state as they had found it. No beams were scattered upon the floor, and the great crashing noise had fallen again to silence.

  It had been a good conjure but it had taken a great deal out of him to do it. “Let me help you with her,” he said to hide his embarrassment. He took the insensate woman from Mingli’s shoulder and held her against him. He patted her face but she could not be roused.

  “She will have to go to hospital,” he said.

  “I’ll fetch a cab.” Her smile shone brilliantly. “You wait here.”

  He very much disliked her ordering him about, but the memory of her breath and feline form entwined around him shut him up as she left to bring transportation.

  He didn’t wait long.

  She arrived and with the help of the cabby, they got the woman inside the cab’s interior and were riding hell-for-leather toward the nearest hospital in Bloomsbury. He paid the cab while Mingli explained to administrators about the girl and soon she was whisked away by hospital orderlies.

  “I told them I suspected drugs,” said Mingli, “but I don’t know what kind. It might be as simple as opium.”

  “But who is the poor thing?”
/>   “We won’t know until she awakens. I told them to contact me at once and that she was not to leave. And now. I must gather a trustworthy team to take those…those bodies to the laboratory.”

  “Oh. I thought it best to get rid of them.”

  Her head snapped toward him. “You what?”

  “I…I used the last of my magic to…to dispose of them, leaving no trace.”

  “You utter fool! That was a clue! Evidence! You meddling, arrogant fool!”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t stand the thought of those poor creatures just…hanging there.”

  “But we could have used them. Dissected them to discover their purpose and from whence they came.”

  “Which was exactly why I gave them a burial of sorts. They had already been used abominably. To be exhibits in another surgery theatre… No.”

  “That wasn’t your decision to make.”

  “And yet I made it.”

  He raised his chin. She was frowning with a most foul temper making her tremble. All at once she sighed, releasing all the tension. Throwing up her hands she turned from him. “You and your noble nature. Now we’ll never know. You do realize that the Ripper tried to skin his victims, remove their faces.”

  “No. I…I didn’t know that.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know.” She pressed her fist at her cinched waist. “And now there’s more research to be done. Well, there’s nothing for it. We’ll need help. Let us return to the Yard.”

  He felt he shouldn’t argue, even though he had other matters to attend to. They could wait, he supposed. And all the while, riding toward Scotland Yard in a hansom cab pressed against her, he tried not to think about her…herself pressed against him on the catwalk, about those ruffles and ribbons…and a slim view of her thigh as she retrieved her gun.

  When the cab stopped in front of the Yard, he hadn’t even noticed until she pushed him to get out. She paid the cabby before he could reach for his coins and ushered him forth with a stern expression.