Chapter 4
Rolling fog swallowed the docks and dug its way into Ezra’s bones. He was early.
Sometimes, he hoped Jem wouldn’t show up.
It would let them both off the hook. When Ezra ran from the Gendarme, it was straight into the bowels of London.
He’d had no plan except to survive. And to forget.
He spent weeks holed up in the seediest of doss houses before eventually being tossed into the street.
It then became a game of hide and seek with his former colleagues, his opium-addled body somehow managing to find its way to the Canem Club and Maddog Pierce.
There were worse places to be, like destitute and hungry.
Or dead. He had a roof over his head, a job that didn’t pay much, but it was a job that came with benefits money couldn't buy. Maddog had an agreement with the Gendarme. As long as the violence remained tempered and the crime kept to the shadows, he’d stay off the radar and out of trouble.
Maybe it was that knowledge, lurking somewhere in the back of Ezra’s drug-fucked thoughts, that led him to the most feared gangster in the Credges.
Ezra wasn’t the same man he used to be. The more time he spent with Maddog and the more he came to understand the inner workings of the slums of London, the more he recognised the changes in himself.
The old Ezra wasn’t fond of violence, and now he beat people shitless.
The old Ezra would never have visited the skin market, desperate for human touch, no matter if it was paid for and impersonal.
The old Ezra didn’t run his mouth or carry a chip on his shoulder.
The old Ezra had been both respectful and respected, with ambitions, drive, and honour.
He’d had friends, but something inside him broke when they turned on him and accused him of betraying his oath.
The motto of the Gendarme was ‘to serve,’ and by choosing not to send witches to their deaths, Ezra was committing treason.
He couldn’t give a fuck about what any of them thought anymore—except Jem.
Jem was the bridge between the two Ezra’s. He could be vulnerable with him, let down the barriers he’d been forced to build. But that wasn’t always easy. He was hardening as a result of the life he was leading. Being vulnerable with anyone else in this new world would see a knife between his ribs.
Ezra yawned. He should have stayed in bed with the redhead.
There was something familiar about her, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
He ran a finger over his bottom lip. She’d bitten him hard enough to draw blood, and dug her nails into him as she came.
Afterwards, she rolled away, burrowing under the blankets.
She hadn’t told him to get out, letting her silence speak for her, but he’d still waited until she’d fallen asleep before he left.
‘You look like shit.’ Jem stepped out of the shadow of the nearest warehouse. His eyes scanned the docks—wary—like always. ‘Please tell me you haven’t—’
Ezra managed a smile. ‘No opium, I promise.’
‘Have you slept, Ez?’
‘Not really,’ Ezra replied, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
‘The girl from the skin market again? I’m not sure why I’m surprised,’ Jem mumbled, spying Ezra’s lip. ‘You let her take a chunk out of you?’
‘No pain, no gain. And it wasn’t her. She was a redhead, in case you’re wondering. Natural, I might add.’
‘I wasn’t wondering.’
‘I found this one in a pub—your sister’s to be precise,’ Ezra said. He usually avoided Lira. She was another link to the past. She’d looked worried when he’d followed the woman from the pub.
‘I didn’t know you frequented The Lion.’ Jem sounded surprised.
Ezra shrugged. ‘I don’t.’
‘She recognised you?’
‘She did.’
‘She won’t say anything.’
Ezra’s muscles tensed with the reminder of why they met like this in the first place. ‘I know, and on the basis of that statement, I’m going to assume they’re still looking for me.’
Jem nodded. ‘Keep your head low, Ez.’
‘I can’t get much lower than the Credges and Maddog Pierce.’ Ezra didn’t bother to hide the bitterness in his voice from Jem.
‘Since no one has been able to find you, the job of dragging your arse back to face His Majesty’s justice has been given to Tobias.’
Ezra sighed. ‘Fuck.’
Why did it have to be Tobias? The man hated him as passionately as Ezra hated being stuck in the filth and shit of the Credges with a target on his back and a false accusation attached to his name.
‘I see he’s been made Captain. He must be thrilled.’
Jem’s eyes widened. ‘You saw Tobias? When?’
‘Yesterday. I went for a walk like a normal human being and ended up watching him and Jonas drag a death witch from an alley. She was only a kid. What happened to her?’ He didn’t tell Jem how close he’d come to being dragged from that alley as well.
Jem’s expression was grim. ‘Ez, you know as well as I do what happened to her.’
Ezra kicked at the ground. She’d be swinging by tomorrow morning, that tiny neck snapping like a twig. ‘Fuck the Gendarme,’ he muttered.
‘Don’t draw any attention to yourself,’ Jem said firmly. ‘I mean it.’
‘Bit difficult at the moment,’ Ezra began. ‘There’s a big fight and—’
‘For fuck’s sake, Ezra,’ Jem snapped. ‘Refuse.’
‘You know what happened to the last person who refused a request from Maddog, don’t you?
’ Ezra asked hotly. ‘Believe me, I’d love to.
My fucking hands hurt from the bloody bar fight that Hernan, the idiot, started three nights ago.
You think I like beating people senseless?
I never told my new employer who I was, but he seems to know anyway and gets some kick out of ordering me about. What am I supposed to do, Jem?’
Jem sighed. ‘This is shit. I’m sorry, Ez. This is so shit.’
Ezra didn’t have the luxury of choosing what he would or wouldn’t do for his new boss. If he could leave London, he would, but the Gendarme watched the roads in and out of the city, so he was stuck, at least for the moment.
‘How’s work anyway?’ he asked.
Jem blinked. ‘You have never, in over a year, asked me about work.’
‘I’m asking now.’
His friend glanced at the river. ‘There was a body a few mornings ago.’
‘A body in the Credges—who’d have guessed? Knife fight? Bullet wound?’
‘He’d had his chest ripped open and his heart removed,’ Jem said. ‘Enough detail for you, Ez?’
‘Who would do something like that?’ Ezra frowned. ‘That’s rough, even for down here.’
Jem smiled. ‘You bored? I didn’t think you missed the Gendarme.’
Ezra snorted, then cleared his throat. ‘Why do you come here, Jem?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jem paused. ‘Could be that despite being a pain in my arse, you’re my friend.’
Ezra gave him a weak smile. ‘Thanks.’
Ezra really didn’t like fighting; but he was, unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, good at it. Fights were held in the basement of Maddog’s club, and tonight, it was filled with smoking, cheering men.
The ring was a timber platform in the middle of the room. There were no barriers separating the fighters from the spectators. Sometimes, a boxer ended up sprawled on his back in the middle of the crowd and was hauled upright and thrown back by eager hands.
Ezra, stripped to the waist, made his way to the ring, rolling his shoulders to release the tension from his muscles. His hands were still tender, one of the knuckles probably broken.
Pain was a strange thing. Some people did everything they could to avoid it, some accepted it as part of the life given to them, and some, like Ezra, enjoyed it. Almost a year ago, with opium clouding his brain, Maddog threw him in here, and Ezra learnt something about himself.
He liked being hurt.
Part of him thought he deserved it. That it was punishment for failing to do his duty, for letting the others down.
Part of him relished being hit, seeing the bruises blossom on his skin the next day.
But part of him liked it, and he’d never realised that part existed, not until that night.
Each drop of blood meant something to him.
Each punch he took was a reminder that he was living, because the dead can’t feel.
He climbed onto the platform, glancing around at the crowd, noting the eagerness and the bloodlust on their faces.
That surprised him as well. His old job had been to protect people, but seeing these faces and their chilling anticipation of what was to come made him think that maybe people didn’t need protecting.
After that first night in the ring, Ezra saw things differently. He started to understand that maybe he wasn’t the only one looking for an escape, one that only pain and blood could give.
It was self-destruction, but it was one of the only things he had left.
Ezra’s opponent was broad-shouldered, tall, his body a lot bigger than Ezra’s wiry frame. The man’s backer was a bowler-hat wearing gent standing close to the ring, hissing words of encouragement to his fighter.
The bigger they were, the harder Ezra had to hit them.
He flexed his fingers, then held out his hands as one of Maddog’s girls wrapped his knuckles in cloth.
She gave him a wink and stepped away. Ezra swept his gaze over the crowd again.
A woman’s face caught his eye. There weren’t usually women down here.
She was standing a few rows back, blonde hair glowing in the dim light.
She smiled at him, and then, her face changed.
Her features flickered in and out of focus and for a moment, her blue eyes were black, her lips lost their colour, and her rosy cheeks melted into the sickening pallor of death.
Ezra took a startled step back.
‘Up to scratch.’ Hernan was Master of Ceremonies tonight.
He was wearing a top hat, scraps of red hair sticking out from underneath it.
With his boozer’s skin and bloodshot eyes, he looked ridiculous.
Ezra wanted to laugh, but couldn’t. Heart hammering, he searched the crowd for the blonde woman, but she was gone.
Hernan put his face close to Ezra’s, so close that Ezra could smell the whiskey on his breath. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you? Toe the line, Tarrenfire, or Maddog will have both our heads, and I’m sure as fuck not going to lose my job because of a little shit like you, so—’
Ezra punched Hernan in the teeth. He staggered back, then laughed, wiping his bloody mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Toe the line,’ he bit out.
Ezra did as he was told. Blood was pounding in his ears, and his knuckles throbbed.
In the back of his mind, he was aware of the last-minute bets.
Maddog’s urchins were moving through the crowd, slipping scrawny hands into pockets.
If anyone had worked out who Ezra was, no one called out.
Perhaps they didn’t care. The Gendarme never bothered the upper class—with food always on the table and a steady income off the backs of the working class, those people never found themselves down on their luck.
They got their kicks out of coming to the Devil’s Credges for the evening.
Ezra had seen those smartly dressed men in the skin market and the doss house.
He’d seen them step around a woman dead on the street.
They ignored the orphans with their dirty faces.
Their carriages left behind mounds of horse shit that no one cleaned up.
They averted their gaze as they passed the cadging houses, the reform schools, and the workers calling for their rights on street corners.
He scanned the crowd. The woman was there again, at the back, her skin like death and her eyes a pair of black holes in her skull. Those bloodless lips curled.
Hernan rang the bell and the next thing Ezra saw was stars. Most boxers aimed for the soft parts of the body, not wanting to break their knuckles, but his opponent obviously had no care for his hands, smashing his fists into whatever part of Ezra he could get.
Which was a lot.
He wasn’t sure how long it lasted, but in the end, he was on his back, blinking up at the lantern above him, hypnotised by the graceful way it swayed. Hernan’s grinning mug appeared in Ezra’s vision. He was swaying as well.
‘While I can’t deny that was the most satisfying thing I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness, the boss wants a word. Up.’
Ezra was hauled upright and dragged from the ring. The pounding in his ears didn’t stop and everything was moving, even when he was dumped into one of the fancy chairs in Maddog’s office and the man himself was standing before him, arms folded.
‘Well,’ he said after a moment, ‘that went spectacularly to shit. What happened?’
Ezra shook his head. ‘I got distracted.’
‘By what?’
‘By … I don’t know.’ He rubbed his jaw, his fingers coming away bloody. Maddog made a noise, then handed him a cloth. Ezra dabbed at his face. ‘I can’t see,’ he said. His vision was filled with a dull, red blur.
‘You’ll be fine,’ Maddog assured him, pressing a glass of whisky into Ezra’s throbbing hand. ‘Drink up.’
Ezra peered at him suspiciously. ‘Why aren’t I dead? I thought you’d kill me.’
‘I want to, believe me. You lost me a lot of money,’ Maddog said. ‘What did you see, Ezra?’
Ezra licked his lips, tasting blood. ‘I saw … no, it wasn’t real.’
It can’t have been real.
‘What did you see?’ Maddog repeated. He perched on the edge of his desk, watching Ezra with undisguised interest.
‘There was this woman and her face flickered, like a lamp about to extinguish itself, and for a moment, I thought …’ Ezra paused, draining the whiskey. ‘It was her face, but it was wrong somehow. As if she was dead and had been for a while. The flesh was hanging from her bones, and her eyes …’
‘Were black,’ Maddog finished.
Ezra blinked. ‘How did you know that?’
‘They’re called Familiars. They’re servants of Asmael. Familiars are still human, but they’ve given over their souls to the Fallen One.’ Maddog said it so casually that Ezra was certain it was a joke.
He laughed uneasily. ‘Right. Well. I’m off to bed.’ His head was spinning, his ears ringing. ‘How do you know what those things are?’
Maddog’s face was as hard as it usually was. ‘None of your business.’