Blaze, p.4
Blaze, page 4
“As many of you know, we were not allowed to meet this afternoon at Grace Hall,” Mrs. McPhee said.
The gathered ladies booed.
The plump little woman held up her hand. “Lord Spenlow doesn’t want us to meet.”
The crowd booed again.
“And why is that?” she asked, leaning forward.
Abruptly she straightened and puffed out her chest. The little medal pinned there bounced slightly off her bosom. “Could it be that he’s afraid of a few women?”
The crowd hollered in response.
“Despite having lawfully paid for the space, we were removed. But do not think this minor inconvenience will stop us.”
“Come on,” Artemis said, pulling Phoebe closer.
“We have found a new home,” Mrs. McPhee continued, nodding to an assistant who began to hand out fliers. “A place where we will continue to meet until our demands for equality are met, despite what Lord Spenlow and his ilk would prefer.”
The crowd cheered, although there was also a smattering of boos and unpleasantries. The small crowd had quickly grown in size and it was clear that not all of the attendees were supporters of the cause.
Artemis took one of the flyers. Emblazoned across the top was the WSPU motto: Deeds, not words. Beneath it was a call to action and new meeting time.
“Look, it’s tomorrow night,” she said. “We should go.”
Phoebe glanced at the paper. “Nine o’clock in the evening? Are you mad?”
Artemis sighed. Phoebe was near and dear to her heart, but she acted like a child sometimes. Not that Artemis blamed her. If it hadn’t been for Artemis, who knows how little of life Phoebe would have enjoyed. And besides, going out at nine wasn’t so very bad. Nothing interesting happened until at least ten. At least that’s what she’d heard.
She was about to remind Phoebe of that fact when she noticed that the crowd had grown far larger as the speaker had gone on. It quickly became evident that many were not there to listen but to make trouble. A man yelled out something Artemis couldn’t make out, but whatever it was made Phoebe blush. Tension began to vibrate through the crowd like a living thing.
Miss Gorst’s high-pitched voice cut through the noise. “Miss Phoebe!”
Phoebe was jostled by someone and looked at Artemis, fear in her eyes. “I think we should go.”
Another person bumped into them and Artemis had to agree. Things were getting out of hand. Quickly.
“Miss Phoebe!”
Phoebe clamped onto Artemis’s hand and started to weave her way through the thickening crowd toward Miss Gorst. They’d barely gotten past half a dozen people when they were pulled apart.
Phoebe looked anxiously back at Artemis as she was swept from view.
“It’s all right. I’ll catch you up,” Artemis called out.
The crowd seemed to close ranks then as if they were all of one mind. Artemis spun around, looking for another way out. What she wouldn’t give to be tall right now! She was barely five foot four, and all she saw was a wall of humanity.
Someone moved aside then and she shot through the opening but ran headlong into someone’s back.
“Oi!” he said as he turned around.
He held her arm as if to steady her, but his grasp lingered for far too long. A disturbing smile creased the man’s face.
“Well, ’ello.”
Her skin began to crawl. The only thing worse than being trapped in the crowd was being trapped in here with a man like this. She tried to turn away, but he refused to let her go.
“Unhand me,” she demanded.
Her directive did not have the desired effect. The man’s smile grew, revealing a crooked set of yellow teeth.
“Let’s not be ’asty.”
When he pulled her closer, she planted a hand on his chest to shove him away. Suddenly, a burning sensation spread across her palm. Her fingers glowed orange and then red.
What is happening?
Tendrils of smoke filtered up from the man’s clothing where she touched him. He looked down at his chest with the same awed expression she knew she must have had, then yelped out in pain and shoved her away. She stumbled into someone else but could not take her eyes off the man’s chest. It was smoldering.
The burning sensation faded, and along with it something she couldn’t quite identify—a feeling of power, unbridled power, and something dark, something terrifying. The residual energy tingled in her hand; she could still feel the dying embers of something she couldn’t put a name to. It was so real, so raw, that it frightened her and made her shiver.
The man patted at his chest to put out the fire that her touch had ignited. He looked at her again, this time not with surprise but with something akin to hate. She’d never seen anything like it. His face didn’t change, and yet everything about him did. It was his eyes, she realized. They were looking at her with unadulterated malevolence.
His expression and what had happened was so surprising—she’d set a man on fire with her touch!—that she stood there insensate for a moment.
“You’re the one,” the man said with a covetous smile.
His voice sent shivers down her spine, jolting her back to her senses. She shook her head, unsure of what she was denying.
The man was mad; she had to get away from him.
Somehow, she managed to squeeze through the crowd when he took a step toward her. Spurred by fear, she pushed and wedged her way through until she found Phoebe and Miss Gorst anxiously waiting for her just outside of the mass of humanity.
“We need to go,” Artemis said as soon as she was with them.
Miss Gorst pursed her wrinkled lips. “I quite agree.”
Phoebe looked at Artemis with concern. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said, though she didn’t feel that way in the slightest.
Turning back to look at the crowd, she saw the man who’d accosted her appear at the edge of it. He looked at her, and she at him, and he smiled again.
“Come along, girls!” Miss Gorst commanded.
Artemis fell in with Phoebe as they hurried away from the scene.
She glanced over her shoulder to see if he was following her, but he seemed to have disappeared.
She looked down at her hand, unsure of what had just happened.
“Are you sure you’re all right? Did you hurt your hand?” Phoebe asked.
Artemis looked at it again. It looked perfectly normal. No burns or marks.
“I’m fine,” she said, but deep down inside she knew she was anything but.
Chapter Three
“’E’s gonna kill us.”
Alvie picked his way through the thick undergrowth that ran along the edge of Swains Lane. He held a branch back for his friend, repeating his warning.
“Grey’s gonna kill us. Well, not kill us, mind you, but you know wot I mean. End us like.”
Bert did know what he meant. This existence wasn’t much, but it was better than the life he’d had before. He’d been a costermonger in Billingsgate. Worked all day and half the night for tuppence. Then Mr. Grey found him and everything changed. He Changed.
He was grateful he hadn’t been turned into a vampire. Bert didn’t like vampires. They were so … uppity. For creatures that couldn’t go out in the daylight, they certainly acted like the cock of the walk.
You can have em, he thought. Give me shades any day. Shades were regular blokes like him. Salt of the earth. You could have a pint with a shade. Vampires wouldn’t be caught dead in most of the places he frequented.
“’E ain’t gonna be pleased,” Alvie muttered.
Bert frowned at the thought as he paused near a young dogwood tree and then turned to glare at Alvie.
“Well, then maybe you shouldn’ta let that bloke get away, should ya?”
“’E was slippery, like an eel,” Alvie protested, wriggling his hands in the air to emphasize his point.
Bert grunted. Mr. Grey wouldn’t care about their excuses. He needed to be fed and this was his last meal before his rising.
Alvie looked at him pleadingly, begging him to say they would be forgiven.
Bert shook his head. Alvie was a right idiot, but he’d been Bert’s mate since they were lads, since way before the Change.
He clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Maybe ’e won’t notice when ’e wakes. Hmm?”
Alvie grinned and bobbed his head. “Yeah, right. Won’t even notice.”
Bert hoped he was right. He took off his cap and glanced up at the moon. They didn’t have to worry about it. Yet. Running a hand through his thinning hair, he sighed and put his cap back on.
“Come on.”
Highgate Cemetery was large and complex, especially for the likes of Bert and Alvie, but they’d been here often enough over the years that they barely got lost at all anymore. They left the dense undergrowth, emerging onto a series of paths that wound their way deep into the woods where thousands lay buried. Marble angels and towering obelisks filled small clearings. Pale silver birches stood along the edges catching the moonlight like broken crosses, and gravestones rose out of the dark earth.
Moss climbed up the sides of elaborate mausoleums while brambles and braided ivy started to reclaim others. Even though it was midnight, the light of the moon was bright as it cut through openings in clusters of oak and willow trees.
Dry leaves crunched beneath their feet as Alvie and Bert made their way toward Edwin Grey. They’d been coming for the last twenty years for the feeding. Tonight, they were empty-handed.
They’d found a perfectly good meal, too, a mudlark no one would miss. In decent enough shape, good meat on his bones, so to speak, but then Alvie’d done let him slip away. Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference in the end. Bert had missed his fair share of meals in life and a few in whatever this one was. If they were lucky, Mr. Grey wouldn’t even notice when all was said and done.
But they were never lucky.
Until tonight, it seemed.
“Shh,” Bert said, trying to stop Alvie from going on about the Rovers again. They had more important things to worry about than football.
“Wot? I think they got a chance this year.”
“Shut it.”
Thankfully, Alvie did. Taking him by the arm, Bert led him to a small copse of holly and they knelt down behind it.
Two boys and a girl walked into a clearing just ahead. They weren’t more than fifteen years old, but one of them would have to do.
“Oh, a ginger,” Alvie said, nodding toward the red-headed boy. “I ’ear they taste better. Kinda like cinnamon.”
“Shhh.”
The lads bumped shoulders as they said something to each other that the girl couldn’t hear.
“This looks good,” the taller of the two said. “What do you think, Peg?”
“It’ll do.”
Bert chuckled under his breath. It certainly will.
Out in the clearing, the group sat down on the ground at the mouth of a large mausoleum.
“Wot are they doin’?” Alvie whispered.
Bert had a good idea, and when one of them took a large candle out of a satchel, he knew he was right.
Séance.
If they only knew what really went bump in the night.
One of the boys lit the candle and placed it on the ground between the three.
“Ready?” the girl asked. The ginger snickered and the girl hit him on the arm. “The spirit won’t come if you don’t concentrate, Brick.”
“Right. Right. Sorry,” the boy said and cast a smirk at his friend. “Not every day ya try to reach out to the dead.”
“We need to hold hands,” the girl told them and the boys obliged.
The girl closed her eyes and tilted her head back. “Oh, departed spirits, hear us! We call to you from the other side. Hear our plea.”
One of the boys snickered again, and the girl opened one eye to glare at him before resuming her chant.
“Spirits of the past, move among us. Follow our light and show yourselves.”
They waited, but nothing happened.
Alvie glanced over at Bert. They both loved this part. They’d caught children performing séances before in the woods before and it always ended the same way … with a little help.
“Spirits of the past, show yourselves. Give us a sign.”
Bert was no mage, but the Change had given him a few tricks. He focused his energy on the candle. Even from here, he could feel the warmth of it. Slowly, the flame grew larger and larger.
“Oh my God,” the ginger said. “Look.”
They scrambled back from the flame as it continued to grow bigger and higher.
Next to Bert, Alvie giggled, breaking Bert’s concentration. The flame faltered but Bert got a handle on it again. This next part took a lot of focus, but he could do it.
“It’s just a … something caught in the flame is all,” one of the boys said.
The candle slowly lifted from the ground and hovered in the air.
“Bloody—that’s not … Let’s get out of here!”
The three jumped to their feet and started running. When the ginger lost his footing and fell, the others didn’t stop to help him. The red-headed boy scrambled to his feet, glancing in horror at the candle still floating in the air, then ran after his friends.
Bert released his hold on the candle and let it fall to the ground, the flame blinking out as it hit the earth.
“That never gets old.” He loved seeing them run.
He turned to his friend. “All right, Alvie. Don’t let this one get away.”
Alvie nodded and took off. The lad didn’t have a chance. Alvie might not have had all of his dogs barking, but one thing he could do was run. He’d been the fastest boy in Pottery Lane; the Change had only made him faster. Alvie was nothing more than a dark blur as he caught up to the boy and cold-cocked him on the back of the head. By the time Bert caught up to them, Alvie was already dragging the unconscious boy by the ankle back toward him.
“Very nice. Is ’e alive?”
Alvie nodded. “Made sure of it this time.”
“Good.” Bert grabbed boy’s other leg, and together they pulled him toward their destination.
Edwin Grey’s grave was marked by a large weeping angel. Mr. Grey thought it was funny. Ironic or something, he said, but the joke was lost on Bert.
They dragged the boy onto the loose earth above the grave. The boy began to rouse and Bert knelt down next to him. Alvie had done his part. Now it was his turn.
“Don’t worry, lad,” Bert said. “It’ll all be over soon. Shhh.”
He put a finger to the boy’s lips and whispered a short incantation.
The boy’s lips moved but no sound came out. Panic blossomed in his eyes. He tried to move, but found he was held in place by invisible bonds.
Bert pulled a coin out of his pocket and placed it on the boy’s chest. Then he stood and took a step back. The sounds of the forest fell silent.
Slowly, the dirt beneath the boy began to tremble and quake. Then the boy began to sink, little by little, as the earth swallowed him whole. His eyes were wild with dread as the dirt covered his face and soil filled his mouth caught in the midst of a silent scream.
Finally, he disappeared completely, pulled down into the earth. The ground above the grave trembled for a few more moments and then stilled.
Alvie’s stomach gave a loud grumble. Embarrassed, he put a hand over his belly. “Sorry. Always makes me a bit peckish.”
Bert shrugged. “Fancy some chips?”
Alvie grinned. “Lovely.”
Bert clapped him on the shoulder and the two turned away from the grave.
“But not O’Malley’s,” Alvie said. “Too greasy.”
“What about Deke’s?”
“They’re all right, I guess.”
“You guess? Best chips in town.”
“Don’t be daft.”
Behind them, the grave of Edwin Grey glowed an unearthly red until falling back into darkness.
Chapter Four
Artemis jabbed a piece of roasted potato with her fork, pushing it across her plate and back again. She couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened at the park yesterday. Fire. She’d set that man’s vest coat on fire. With her hand. That was not normal.
Across the table her father was lost in his own thoughts. She wanted to tell him what happened but … didn’t. She told herself it was because she didn’t want to worry him. He was worried about something and she didn’t want to add to his problem, whatever it might be. But she also didn’t tell him because it frightened her. Frightened her in a way she couldn’t quite understand. Putting that into words would have made it real, and she wasn’t quite ready to do that yet.
Besides, she had other secrets. She was going to that suffrage meeting tonight. She knew her father would never approve, not in his current mood, but she was going. And, hopefully, Phoebe was, too. After a great deal of cajoling, Phoebe had promised to sneak out and join her. It was silly that either of them had to resort to such intrigue. It wasn’t as if they were going to an opium den or something. What sort of rational society forced women to sneak about in the first place? She should have the basic right to arrange her day or evening as she saw fit without having to stoop to such things. Unfortunately, that was the way of the world right now. All she could hope was that Phoebe didn’t renege on her promise. She was far too used to following the rules to break them very often or very well.
Perhaps tonight she’d manage to do so. Artemis certainly hoped so. After yesterday’s events she wasn’t keen on the idea of going out alone.
She pushed her piece of potato over a carrot like a prison escapee over a wall. It fell into a puddle of gravy on the other side, and she shoved it away.
“Don’t like the food?”
Artemis looked up at Mrs. Perry, who had come in to check on them as she always did mid-meal.
“No, it’s fine. Good.” Artemis stabbed the potato again with her fork, popped it into her mouth, and chewed with a smile.
Mrs. Perry gave her a shrewd grimace. Thankfully, she also knew her well enough not press. Instead, she turned her attention to Artemis’s father.
