CHAPTER THREE MONSTERS AND LACE
ORIENT EXPRESS
KINGDOM OF ROMANIA
I jumped to my feet, scanning the area outside the train, and Thomas did the same. Sunlight tarnished the brassy world in sinister shades of gray, green, and black as the sun rose past the horizon.
“Stay here with Mrs. Harvey,” Thomas said. My attention snapped to him. If he thought I was going to simply sit back while he investigated, he was obviously more unhinged than I was becoming.
“Since when do you believe me incapable?” I reached past him, tugging the compartment door with all my might.
Blasted thing wouldn’t budge. I kicked my traveling slippers off and braced myself, intent on ripping it from its hinges if necessary.
I would not stay trapped in this beautiful cage a minute longer, no matter what was waiting to greet us.
I tried again, but the door refused to open.
It was like everything in life; the more one struggled against it, the harder it became.
The air suddenly felt too heavy to breathe.
I pulled harder, my too-smooth fingers slipping over the even smoother gold plating.
My breath hitched in my chest, getting caught in the stiff boning of my corset.
I had the wild urge to rip my underthings off, consequences of polite society be damned. I needed out. Straightaway. Thomas was beside me in an instant.
“I do not… think… you… incapable,” he said, trying to wrench the door open with me, his leather gloves affording him a bit more control over the smooth plating.
“For once, I’d like to be the hero. Or at least pretend to be.
You’re… always… saving… me. One more tug on the count of three, all right? One, two, three.”
Together we finally heaved it open, and I thrust myself into the hallway, not caring what I looked like as a crowd of passengers stared, and slowly backed away from me.
I must have appeared worse than I imagined, but I couldn’t worry about that yet.
Breathing was much more important. Hopefully no one from London society was traveling in this car and would recognize me.
I bent over, wishing I’d gone with a corset-free gown, as I dragged in uncooperative breaths.
Whispers in Romanian reached my ears: “Teapa.”
“?epes.”
I drew in another quick breath and stood taller, immediately recoiling when I spied the very thing the passengers were transfixed by, their faces drained of color.
There, between the narrow corridor and our door, a body lay slumped over. I’d have thought the man was intoxicated if it weren’t for the blood leaking from a large chest wound, staining the Persian rug.
The stake protruding from his heart was a glaring indication of murder.
“Saints above,” someone uttered, turning away. “It’s the Impaler. The story is true!”
“Voivode of Wallachia.”
“The Prince of Darkness.”
A fist clenched around the area near my heart. Voivode of Wallachia… Prince of Wallachia. The title rolled inside my mind until it landed on history lessons and staked itself to the area where fear lived. Vlad ?epes. Vlad the Impaler.
Some called him Dracula. Son of the Dragon.
So many names for the medieval prince who’d slaughtered more men, women, and children than I dared to think of. His method of killing was how he received the surname ?epes. Impaler.
Outside the Kingdom of Romania, his family were rumored to be devilish creatures, immortal and bloodthirsty.
But from what little I’d learned, the people of Romania felt very differently.
Vlad was a folk hero who’d fought for his countrymen, using any means necessary to defeat his enemies.
Something other countries and their beloved kings and queens did as well.
Monsters were in the eye of the beholder.
And no one wanted to discover their hero was the true villain of the story.
“It’s the Immortal Prince!”
“Vlad ?epes lives.”
has the immortal prince returned? The newspaper headline flashed across my mind.
This truly couldn’t be happening again. I wasn’t ready to be standing over the body of another murder victim so soon after the Ripper case.
Examining a cadaver in the laboratory was different.
Sterile. Less emotional. Seeing the crime where it occurred made it too human.
Too real. Once it was something I’d longed for.
Now it was something I wished to forget.
“This is a nightmare. Tell me this is a horrid dream, Cresswell.”
For a brief moment, Thomas appeared as if he longed to take me into his arms and soothe each of my worries. Then that cool determination set in like a blizzard descending the mountains.
“You’ve stared Fear in its nasty face and made it tremble. You will make it through this, Wadsworth. We will make it through this. That is a fact more tangible than any dream or nightmare. I promised I’d never lie to you. I intend to honor my word.”
I couldn’t tear my gaze from the growing bloodstain.
“The world is vicious.”
Undeterred by the watchful passengers around us, Thomas brushed a lock of hair back from my face, his gaze thoughtful. “The world is neither kind nor is it cruel. It simply exists. We have the ability to view it however we choose.”
“Is there a surgeon on board?” a dark-haired woman around my age cried out in Romanian. It was enough to yank me free of despair. “That man needs help! Someone get help!”
I couldn’t bear to tell her this man was past assistance.
A man with rumpled hair clutched the side of his head, shaking it as if he could remove the body with the force of his denial. “This… this… must be an illusionist’s act.”
Mrs. Harvey poked her head into the corridor, her eyes wide behind her spectacles. “Oh!” she cried out. Thomas quickly escorted her back to the bench in my compartment, whispering soft words to her as they went.
If I hadn’t been so stunned, I might have screamed myself.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time I’d come across a man who’d been murdered only minutes before.
I tried not to think about the corpse we’d found in a London alley and the raging guilt that still gnawed at my insides.
He’d died because of my wretched curiosity.
I was a gruesome monster wrapped up in delicate lace.
And yet… I couldn’t help but feel a buzzing sensation under my skin as I stared at this body, at the crude stake. Science gave me a purpose. It was something to lose myself in other than my own mad thoughts.
I took a few breaths, orienting myself to the horror before me. Now wasn’t the time for emotions to cloud my judgment. Though part of me wished to cry for the slain man and whoever would be missing him tonight. I wondered whom he’d been traveling with… or traveling to.
I stopped my thoughts right there. Focus, I commanded myself. I knew this was not the work of a supernatural being. Vlad Dracula had died hundreds of years before.
Muttering something about the engine room, the passenger with the disheveled hair ran off in that direction, probably to have the engineer stop the train. I watched him weave through the gaggle of people, most of whom were struck motionless by horror.
“Mrs. Harvey fainted,” Thomas said as he exited the compartment and smiled reassuringly. “I have smelling salts, but I think it’s best to leave her until this is…”
I watched his throat bob with emotion he was suppressing.
I chanced indecency—figuring the crowd was preoccupied by the corpse and not my lack of discretion—and gripped his gloved hand in my own quickly before letting go.
Words needn’t be said. No matter how much death and destruction one encountered, it was never easy.
Initially. But he was right. We would get through this. We’d done it several times before.
Ignoring the chaos breaking out around me, I steeled myself against the abhorrent image and divorced myself from my emotions.
Lessons on tending a crime scene Uncle had instilled in me were now body memory—I didn’t need to think, simply act.
This was a human specimen in need of study, that was all.
Thoughts of the blood and gore and unfortunate loss of life were doors that closed simultaneously in my brain.
The rest of the world and my fears and guilt faded away.
Science was an altar I knelt before, and it blessed me with solace.
“Remember,” Thomas glanced up and down the corridor, trying to block the body from passengers’ view, “it’s merely an equation that needs solving, Wadsworth. Nothing more.”
I nodded, then carefully removed my top hat and swept my long cream skirts behind me, folding away any extra emotions along with the soft fabric.
My black and gold lace cuffs brushed against the deceased’s frock coat, its delicate structure a horrible contradiction to the rough stake protruding from his chest. I tried to not be distracted by the blood splatter across his starched collar.
While I checked for a pulse I knew I wouldn’t find, I flicked my attention up to Thomas, noticing that his normally full lips were pressed into a thin line.
“What is it?”
Thomas opened his mouth, then shut it as a woman peered out from the adjacent compartment, a haughty tilt to her chin. “I demand to know the meaning of—o-oh. Oh, my.”
She stared at the man heaped on the floor, gasping as if her bodice were suddenly restricting all airflow into her lungs. A gentleman from the adjacent booth caught her before she hit the ground.
“You all right, ma’am?” he asked in an American accent, gently slapping her cheek. “Ma’am?”
An angry cloud of steam hissed as the train screeched to a halt. My body swayed one way, then the next as the great force of propulsion stopped—the corridor chandelier clinking madly above. Its sound made my pulse race faster despite the sudden stillness of our environment.
Thomas knelt beside me, gaze fixed on the newly departed as he steadied me with his gloved hand and whispered, “Be on alert, Wadsworth. Whoever committed this act is likely in this corridor with us, watching our every move.”