Chapter Six
The Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin (Baile átha Cliath)
Four Days Before Samhain
Sam hurried to the shattered window, squinting against the howling wind into the star-dusted night, Hel and Van Helsing close behind. The flame-shaped gas lamps guttered, drowning the streets in shades of mourning.
“There!” Sam pointed. In the heart of the storm, a dark shape was cut out against the flickering streetlight, struggling as it was pulled into the air.
A man, Sam realized, catching a glimpse of his horror-stricken face.
But something was terribly wrong, aside from the unnatural winds and the way the man was being funneled into the air.
His face, it looked almost . . . smeared.
A dark shape winged in front of him, so fast Sam couldn’t make it out.
“There’s something out there with him!” Van Helsing cursed.
Hel leapt onto the window ledge like a gargoyle, the cord from the curtains wrapped around her fist. The man drew even with her, his back arched, auburn hair streaming like blood.
“Catch!” Hel called, and she lashed out with the cord.
But if the man heard her, he didn’t move, that scream still emptying from his lungs, as if the wind were pulling it out of him along with his breath.
The cord kissed his palm and fell, ribboning into the dark. Hel cursed, pulling it up to try again.
But Van Helsing wasn’t waiting. He stood angled by the other window, squinting, his silk robe snapping around him in the tearing wind as he raised his revolver.
“He’s too high up!” Sam cried, catching his arm. He was ten feet above the ground at least. If he fell from that height . . .
“He’ll live,” Van Helsing said, yanking away. Sam stumbled into the bed. A shot rang out. Then another.
A second later, the wind died. The man fell, soundless, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
There was a muffled thud. Horror pooled in Sam’s belly.
The man had fainted, she told herself, the fall couldn’t have killed him, for then there would have been screaming or at the very least a whimper.
“Come on!” Sam turned to Van Helsing just in time to see him vault out the window, rolling onto the ground to break his fall. Hel followed, using the curtain cord to slow her descent. The rod tore off the wall with a shriek. Sam winced.
Honestly. She pulled on her slippers, gloves, and coat.
As an afterthought, she grabbed the camera.
Then she raced out the door, threading through the marble hall clotted with people and down the candlelit staircase with its gilt and lacquered rail, where she nearly barreled into Lord Lusk wrapped in a gold quilted robe and brandishing his fox-headed cane as if he’d drive the attackers away himself.
“Sorry!” Sam yelped.
But Lord Lusk barely heard her, sprinting out into the night, leaving Sam to hurry after.
A man was crumpled on the cobblestones beneath the puddled light of one of the Egyptian princesses, like a sacrifice to the gods.
The dark clouds parted, and for just a moment, Sam could have sworn the man’s brow shone with a luminescent sigil, like a third eye: two entangled crescent moons with a full moon set between them like a pupil .
. . Then just as quickly, it winked out, and the shadows returned.
Another vision.
Hel knelt by the man’s side, checking his pulse, angling the flat of her blade to catch his breath.
Far from the beggar Sam had expected, the man was exquisitely dressed in a tailcoat with gold-and-emerald cuff links—attire that wouldn’t have looked out of place amidst the gilded carriages that had courted the Shelbourne that evening.
Which begged the question: What was a man like that doing, running out into the night, alone and on foot?
Particularly when it was filled with monsters.
“John!” Lord Lusk rushed over, shoving Hel out of the way and kneeling, cupping his hands to the man’s face. “Mr. Enfield!”
“Is he . . . ?” Sam couldn’t bring herself to finish, her heart in her throat.
Hel shook her head.
The attack had happened right in front of them, and still, they hadn’t been able to save him, hadn’t even learned what it was that had done the murdering.
A horrible thought struck her then, that all the disappearances might in fact be murders, that the Viscount and the Duke might already be dead, their ghosts haunting the raths, their voices keening in the wind.
That they might be too late.
But she was getting ahead of herself. The other bodies hadn’t been found. It was possible Mr. Enfield had only died because of Van Helsing’s intervention. Because of their intervention, Sam allowed, grief and guilt tangling in her thoughts.
“Why didn’t you listen to me?” Sam asked Van Helsing, her voice breaking. Better he be abducted than this.
“The drop was only ten feet,” Van Helsing said hollowly.
If Sam were being honest, she had to concur: Mr. Enfield shouldn’t have died.
Hel and Van Helsing had both leapt from the same height without so much as a contusion, let alone a cracked skull.
And then there was the utter dearth of blood.
There wasn’t a drop outside its proper bounds, so far as Sam could tell—not spreading on the cobblestones beneath Mr. Enfield, and not spattered from whatever winged monstrosity Van Helsing had shot.
In fact, Mr. Enfield didn’t look injured at all. He might have been sleeping, albeit inadvisably, if it weren’t for the way his grey eyes wouldn’t stop staring, his pupils blown.
“He should have survived,” Van Helsing said.
“Hold your tongue,” Lord Lusk reproached, even as he brushed his fingers over the man’s eyes, closing them. “He’s not gone yet.”
Sam was startled into hope for a moment, before Hel murmured: “It’s for the priest. If you say a person has passed, they can’t receive their last rites.”
“Ridiculous superstition,” Van Helsing muttered under his breath. “You can’t lie to God.”
“Then it’s a good thing priests aren’t gods.”
Was this, then, the same ghost who had attacked Sam?
No, it couldn’t be. There was no sign of frost, for one, and the ghost who had come for Sam had been dispersed, for another.
She would be back, of course. Ghosts were not so easily released from undeath.
But it would take time for her to draw herself back together again.
No, whatever had attacked Mr. Enfield was something else entirely.
The same creature that had absconded with the Viscount and the Duke, if she had to guess. But then . . .
“It shouldn’t have worked,” Sam said.
Van Helsing’s brow knit. “What shouldn’t have worked?”
“Two bullets shouldn’t have been sufficient to drive off his attacker,” Sam said. Not when salt and the iron chain failed to safeguard the Viscount and the Duke.
“Only if you assume it’s the same variety of monster,” Van Helsing said. “He might have been attacked by something else.” If Professor Moriarty was behind it, it was possible. The monsters he kept were legion.
Hel snorted. “All of whom harness the gales to abduct their victims? Unlikely.”
“Something must have changed,” Sam murmured, searching Mr. Enfield for some sign as to why he’d been left behind and the others stolen.
Her gaze snagged on Mr. Enfield’s right hand, curled above his head, his hair caught on his ring, a geometric piece set with a square emerald.
If Sam could only touch it—let her skirt sweep over him, brush her ankle against his curled fingers—she might find out.
But even as Sam eased closer, Van Helsing was there, watching her with narrowed eyes.
Hands shaking, Sam knelt and pressed the camera to her stomach, as if that was what she’d intended all along, holding her breath to steady it as she snapped a photograph of Mr. Enfield. Only to frown. There was something odd about the cobblestones beside the body.
“Look here,” Sam murmured, pointing.
Hel knelt, brushing her fingers over the cracks, moss flaking away beneath her nails. Just like the moss on the tree in Saint Stephen’s Green.
“Your shot,” Hel asked Van Helsing sharply, “was it salt?”
Van Helsing shook his head. “Iron.”
But then, what had withered the moss? The shapeshifting pooka was said to ruin crops on Samhain, but that was still days away.
Spriggans summoned storms and blighted fields, but she’d never heard of one that could fly.
Then there were witches, who might do all three and be political besides; but if Mr. Enfield’s attackers had been a coven of witches, one of them would be limping from Van Helsing’s shot.
But Sam, of all people, knew better than to cry witch. It was not so long ago witches had been burned at the stake. Once the burning started, it was hard to put out the flames.
“Come, help me carry him,” Lord Lusk said, attempting to scoop Mr. Enfield up in his arms and falling back with a wince. His cane was not entirely ornamental, apparently. “Danny Fionnail’s is closest. We can talk there, once he’s been seen to.”
Van Helsing’s brow furrowed. “The pub? Surely we should call the coroner. Or at least a priest.”
“It’s the coroner’s law that dictates we go to the pub,” Lord Lusk said shortly.
“Cold storage,” Hel said by way of explanation, before helping Lord Lusk with Mr. Enfield’s shoulders, leaving Van Helsing to take up his feet. Either Van Helsing or Hel could likely carry Mr. Enfield on their lonesome. But the set of Lord Lusk’s jaw told them he was not for giving up this burden.
“But the curfew,” Sam said, picking up his cane. “Will they even be open?”
“They will be for me,” Lord Lusk said firmly.
The walk to Danny Fionnail’s was perhaps ten minutes, but it seemed much longer in the dark, the streets filled with the kind of emptiness that felt like a living thing.
Sam’s eyes darted as she picked the way back toward Grafton Street, flinching every time the wind rose to tumble leaves across the cobblestones or rattle branches against Georgian windows.