Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Rain had stopped falling over the slate rooftops and crockery chimney pots of London by the time the arriving tour sorted itself out at the Time Tours Gatehouse and departed via carriages to hotels, boarding houses, and rented flats—a British word for apartment that one of the guides had needed to explain to her. Jenna Nicole Caddrick sat hunched now in a rattling carriage, listening to the sharp clop as the horses, a teamed pair of them in harness, struck the cobblestoned street with iron-shod hooves in a steady rhythm.
She shivered and hugged her gentleman’s frock coat more tightly around her, grateful for the first time that she was less well endowed than she’d have liked through the chest, and grateful, too, for the simple bulkiness of Victorian men’s clothing, which helped disguise bulges that shouldn’t have been there. Jenna huddled into her coat, miserable and scared and wishing like anything that Noah had come through with her. She hadn’t expected London to be so cold or so wet. It was only the end of August here, after all; but the guides back at the gatehouse had told them London’s entire summer had been cold and wet, so there wasn’t any use complaining to them about the miserable weather.
Miserable was right. The ride jounced her sufficiently to shake her teeth loose, if she hadn’t been clenching them so tightly. The air stank, not like New York, which smelt of car exhaust fumes and smog, but rather a dank, bleak sort of stench compounded of whatever was rotting in the River Thames and coal smoke from hundreds of thousands of chimneys and horse dung scattered like shapeless anthills across the streets and a miasma of other stinks she couldn’t identify and wasn’t sure she wanted to, either. Everything was strange, even the lights. Gaslight didn’t look like electric light, which was a phenomenon all those period-piece movies hadn’t been able to capture on film. It was softer and yellower, adding a warm and yet alien color to everything where it spilled out across window sills or past half-closed shutters.
What the jouncing, jarring ride was doing to Ianira Cassondra, folded up like last week’s laundry and nestled inside an enormous steamer trunk, Jenna didn’t even want to consider. They’d cushioned her with blankets and fitted her with a mask for the oxygen canisters supplied in every hotel room in Shangri-La, in case of a station fire. Every hotel room stocked them, since TT-86 stood high in the Himalayas’ rarified air. Ianira had clung briefly to Marcus, both their faces white with terror, had kissed her little girls and whispered to them in Greek, then she’d climbed into the trunk, folded herself down into the makeshift nest, and slipped on the oxygen mask.
Noah had been the one to close and latch the lid.
Jenna couldn’t bring herself to do it, to lock her in, like that.
She’d wanted to call in a doctor, to look at the nasty bruise and swelling along Ianira’s brow where the Prophetess had struck her head on the concrete floor. But risking even a doctor’s visit, where questions would be asked, meant risking Ianira’s life, as well as risking her whole family. And Noah and Jenna’s lives, too… She clenched down her eyelids. Please, Goddess, there’s been enough killing, let it stop.…
Jenna refused to let herself recall too acutely those ghastly seconds on the platform high above the Commons floor, when Ianira’s trunk had teetered and nearly fallen straight off the edge. Jenna’s insides still shook, just remembering. She’d have blamed the baggage handler for being a member of the death squad on their trail if the man hadn’t obviously been a long-time station resident. And the guy had gone back to the station, too, in a state of churlish rage, which he wouldn’t have done, if he’d been sent to murder Jenna and Ianira. No, it’d just been one of those nightmarish, freakish near-accidents that probably happened every time a gate opened and too many people with too much luggage tried to cram themselves through a hole of finite dimensions and duration.
Don’t think about it, Jenna, she didn’t fall, so don’t think about it. There’s about a million other things to worry about, instead. Like, where to find refuge in this sprawling, sooty, foul-smelling city on the Thames. She was supposed to stay at the Piccadilly Hotel tonight, in her persona as Mr. Benny Catlin, up-time student doing post-doctoral work in sociology. “Benny” was supposed to be filming his graduate work, as part of the plan she and Carl had come up with, a lifetime ago, when the worst terror she’d had to face was having her infamous father find out she planned to go time touring.
Carl should’ve been the one playing “Benny Catlin,” not Jenna. If Noah’d been able to go with her, the detective would’ve played the role of the non-existent Mr. Catlin. But they had to split up, so Jenna had exchanged identification with Noah. That way, the female “tourist” using the persona she and Carl had bought from that underworld identity seller in New York would cash in her Britannia Gate ticket, then buy one for Denver, instead, leading the Ansar Majlis on a merry chase down the wrong gate from the one Jenna and Ianira had really gone through. With any luck, Jenna and the Prophetess would reach the Piccadilly Hotel without incident.
But they wouldn’t be staying in the Piccadilly Hotel for long, not with the probability that they’d been followed through the Britannia Gate by someone topping out somewhere around a hundred ten percent. Jenna knew she’d have to come up with some other place to stay, to keep them both safe. Maybe she should check into the Piccadilly Hotel as scheduled, then simply leave in the middle of the night? Haul their luggage down the back stairs to the hotel livery stable and take off with a wagon. Maybe vanish into the East End somewhere for a while. It was the least likely place any searchers would think to look for them, not with Jack the Ripper stalking those dismal streets.
Jenna finally came up out of her dark and miserable thoughts to realize that the carriage driver—a long-term Time Tours employee—was talking steadily to someone who hadn’t been listening. The man was pattering on about the city having taken out a whole triangular-shaped city block three years previously. “Demolished the entire length of Glasshouse Street, to cut Shaftesbury Avenue from Bloomsbury to Piccadilly Circus. Piccadilly hasn’t been a true circus since, y’see, left it mighty ugly, most folks are saying, but that new Shaftesbury Avenue, now, it’s right convenient, so it is…”
Not that Jenna cared a damn what streets were brand new, but she tried to pay more attention, because she was going to have to get used to living here, maybe for a long time. Longer than she wanted to think about, anyway. The carriage with its heavy load of luggage passed through the apparently blighted Piccadilly Circus, which looked perfectly fine to Jenna, then jolted at last to a halt in front of the Piccadilly Hotel, with its ornate wrought-iron dome rising like the bare ribs of Cinderella’s pumpkin coach. The whole open-work affair was topped by a rampant team of horses drawing a chariot. Wet streets stood puddled with the recent rain. As Jenna climbed cautiously down, not wanting to fall and break a bone, for God’s sake, thunder rumbled overhead, an ominous warning of more rain squalls to come.
The driver started hauling trunks and cases off the luggage shelf at the back of the carriage while Jenna trudged into the hotel’s typically fussy Victorian lobby. The room was dark with heavy, ornately carved wood and busy, dark-hued wallpaper, crowded with breakables and ornate ornamentation in wrought iron. Jenna went through the motions of signing the guest register, acquiring her key, and climbing the stairs to her room, all in a daze of exhaustion. She’d been running ever since Luigi’s in New York, didn’t even want to think about how many people had died between then and now. The driver arrived on Jenna’s heels and waited with a heavy load of luggage while Jenna unlocked her stuffy, overly warm room. A coal fire blazed in a hearth along one wall. The driver, puffing from his exertions, was followed in by a bellman who’d assisted the driver in lugging up the immense trunk where Ianira Cassondra lay safely hidden. At least, Jenna hoped she was safe inside that horrible cocoon of leather and brass fittings. When the bellman nearly dropped one end, Jenna’s ragged temper exploded again.
“Careful with that!” It came out far more sharply than she’d meant it to, sharp and raggedly frightened. So she gulped and tried to explain her entirely-too-forceful concern. “It has valuable equipment inside. Photographic equipment.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” the uniformed bellman huffed, gingerly setting down his end, “no wonder it’s so heavy, cameras are big things, and all those glass plates and suchlike.”
“Yes, well, I don’t want anything in that trunk damaged.”
The Time Tours driver gave Jenna a sour look. Clearly he’d been on the receiving end of too many tourists’ cutting tongues. Driver and bellman vanished downstairs to fetch up the rest of the baggage, making short work of it. Jenna tipped the hotel employee, who left with a polite bow, closing the door after himself. The driver showed her how the gas lights worked, lighting them, then turning one of them out again, the proper way. “If you just blow it out, gas’ll still come flooding out of the open valve. They haven’t started putting in the smelly stuff yet, so you’d never even notice it. Just asphyxiate yourself in your sleep, if you didn’t accidentally strike a spark and blow yourself out of this room.”
Jenna was too tired for lectures on how the whole Victorian world operated, but she made a valiant effort to pay attention. The Time Tours driver was explaining how to summon a servant and how to find “Benny Catlin’s” rented flat in Cheapside, across the Holborn Viaduct—whatever that was. Jenna didn’t know enough about London and hadn’t been given a chance to finish her library research for the trip she and Carl had planned to make. “We’ll send an express wagon round in the morning, Mr. Catlin, help you shift to your permanent lodgings. Couldn’t have you arriving at the flat this late in the evening, of course, the landlady would have a cultured fit of apoplexy, having us clatter about and disturb her seances or whatever she’ll have there tonight, it’s always something new…”
A polite tap at the door interrupted. “Mr. Catlin?” a man’s voice inquired.
“Yes, come in, it isn’t locked.” Yet… The moment the driver was gone, Jenna intended locking the door and putting a small army of little up-time burglar alarms she’d brought with her on every windowsill and even under the doorknob. The door swung open and Jenna caught one glimpse of the two men in the hallway. Jenna registered the guns they held faster than with the driver. Jenna dove sideways with a startled scream as the pop and clack of modern, silenced semi-autos brought the driver down with a terrible, choked sound. Jenna sprawled to the floor behind the bed, dragging frantically at the Remington Beale’s revolver concealed in her coat pocket. The driver was screaming in pain on the far side of the bed. Then Jenna was firing back, bracing her wrists on the feather-ticking of the mattress to steady her hands. Recoil kicked her palms, jarred the bones of her wrists. The shattering noise of the report left Jenna’s ears ringing. But one of the bastards went down with a surprised grunt and cry of pain.
Jenna kept shooting, trying to hit the other one. The second shooter had danced into the corridor again, cursing hideously. Smoke from her pistol hung like fog, obscuring her view of the doorway. The wounded driver, gasping with the effort, managed to grab the leg of a nearby washstand. He brought the whole thing crashing down across the wounded gunman’s head. The crockery basin shattered, leaving a spreading pool of blood in its wake. Then bullets slammed into the wallpaper beside Jenna’s head. She ducked, doing some swearing of her own, wet and shaky with raw terror. Jenna fired and the pistol merely clicked. Hands trembling, she fumbled for her other pre-loaded revolver.
The driver, grey-faced and grunting with the effort, was dragging himself across the floor. He left a sickening trail of blood, as though a mortally wounded garden snail had crawled across the carpets. Jenna fired above the man’s head, driving the gunman in the doorway back into the corridor again, away from the open door. Then the driver was close enough. He kicked the door shut with his feet, hooked an ankle around a chair and gave a grunting heave, dragged it in front of the door. Then collapsed with a desperate groan.
Jenna lunged over the top of the bed, scrambled across the floor on hands and knees to avoid the bullets punching through the wooden door at head height, and managed to snap shut the lock. Then she grunted and heaved and shoved an entire bureau across the door, toppling it to form a makeshift barricade. The door secured, Jenna dragged the driver’s coat aside. What she found left her shaking and swearing under her breath. She didn’t have time, dammit… but she couldn’t just let the man lie there and bleed to death, could she? It was all Jenna’s fault the man had been shot at all. She stripped a coverlet off the bed, managed to tear it into enough strips and pieces to form a tight compress. She had to yank off her gentleman’s gloves to tie knots in the makeshift bandages.
“What in hell’s going on, Catlin?” the driver gasped out, breathing shallowly against the pain.
“Long story,” Jenna gasped. “And I’m really sorry you got dragged into it.” She ran a distracted hand through her cropped and Macassar-oiled hair, felt the blood on her hands, wiped them on the remnants of the coverlet. A pause in the shooting outside indicated the gunman’s need to change magazines or maybe even guns, temporarily stopping him from turning the solid wooden door into a block of swiss cheese. Jenna bit one lip, then scrambled across the floor on hands and knees. “Look, I can’t do much for you. I’ve got to get the hell out of here. I’m really sorry.” She handed the driver a pistol scavenged from the dead gunman. Then Jenna retrieved the Remington she’d emptied at their attackers and wished there was time to reload it, but the gun was so slow and difficult to load, she just shoved it into the waistband of her trousers beside the partially loaded one.
Then she wrenched up the nearest window sash and let in a flood of relatively fresh, wet air. It stank, but coal smoke smelled better than the coppery stench of blood and burnt gunpowder in the room’s close confines. Jenna glanced down, judged the drop. Even with Ianira, she ought to be able to manage it without injury. Maybe ten feet. She opened the trunk, barely able to control her fingers. Holding the trunk lid open with one hand, she dragged Ianira up out of the protected cocoon in which she’d traveled. The Prophetess was fumbling with the oxygen mask and bottle, clumsy and slow from the cramped confines of the trunk. Jenna tore them loose and dropped them back in. “Trouble,” she said tersely. “They hit us faster than I expected.”
Ianira was taking in the blood, the corpse on the carpet, the wounded driver. Her eyes had gone wide, dark and terrified. She had to lean against Jenna just to remain on her feet, which terrified Jenna.
“What the hell—?” The driver was staring. “Who’s that?”
Jenna gave him a sharp stare. “You don’t know?”
“Should I? Been living in London for the past eight years. Haven’t been back on the station in at least seven…”
If this guy didn’t know who Ianira Cassondra was, Jenna wasn’t about to tell him.
“I’m going to lower you out the window,” Jenna whispered tersely, so her voice wouldn’t carry beyond the door. “Hold onto my wrists tight.” Ianira climbed over the sill and held onto Jenna’s wrists with enough force to leave bruises. Jenna grunted and shifted her weight, swinging Ianira out, lowering her as far down along the wall as she could reach. “Now! Jump!”
Ianira plunged downward, staggered, landed. “Hurry!” the prophetess called up.
Jenna climbed cautiously across the windowsill, carefully balancing herself, and inched around until she was facing the hotel room. Bullets had started punching through the stout wooden door again. The gunman was shoving at it, too, trying to break it down or splinter the lock out of the doorframe. Thank God for solid Victorian construction, plaster and lathe walls and genuine wooden doors, not that hollow-core modern crap.
“Sorry, really,” Jenna gasped, meeting the driver’s bewildered, grey-faced gaze. “If he gets through that door, shoot him, will you? If you don’t, he’ll kill you.” Then she scraped her way down until she was just hanging by her fingertips and let go her hold on the window. Jenna shoved outward slightly to keep her face from bashing against the wall on the way down. The drop was longer than she expected, but she landed well. Only went to one knee, jarring the soles of her feet up through her ankles. When she straightened with a pained gasp, her legs even condescended to work. Ianira grabbed her hand and they stumbled toward the carriage.
And the gunman charged out of the hotel’s entryway. Gun in hand, he was heading for the window they’d just jumped from. But he hadn’t seen them yet… Jenna dragged her loaded gun out of her waistband again, cursing herself for not holding onto it, and shoved Ianira behind her. The gunman saw them just as Jenna fired. She managed to loose off a couple of shots that drove their pursuer back into the hotel while smoke bellied up from her pistol and hung in the air like wet fog.
Jenna didn’t wait for a second opportunity. She turned and ran, dragging Ianira with her, unable to reach the carriage without exposing them both to fatal fire. Ianira couldn’t run very fast at first, but found her stride as they whipped through an alleyway, dodged into the street beyond, and gained speed. “Is he still back there?” Jenna gasped, not wanting to risk a wrenched ankle despite a driving terror that she would feel a bullet through her back at any second.
“Yes… I cannot see him… but he still comes, not far behind…”
Jenna decided she didn’t want to know how Ianira knew that. She cut down side streets, running flat out, then heard a bullet ricochet off the wall beside her. Jenna shoved Ianira ahead, whirled and snapped off a couple of wild shots, then ducked down another street with one hand around Ianira’s wrist. They wove in and out between horse-drawn phaetons and heavier carriages, running flat out. Drivers and passengers shouted after them, stared open-mouthed and hurled curses as horses reared in surprised protest. Then they were running down yet another street, dodging past the biggest greenhouse Jenna had ever seen.
They were nearly to a columned portico beyond, which offered better cover, when something slammed against her hips. Jenna screamed in pain and fright. She crashed to the ground, trying to roll onto her back. Jenna jerked the gun around, fired point-blank into the gunman’s belly—
And the pistol clicked over an empty chamber.
She’d shot it dry.
“Run!” Jenna kicked and punched whatever she could reach, scrambled to hands and knees, saw Ianira racing for the shelter of the portico. Shadowy movement behind the columns suggested someone watching. Please God, let it be someone who can help. Jenna gained her feet, staggered forward a single stride. A hand around her ankle brought her down again. The glint of a knife caught her peripheral vision. Jenna kicked hard, felt bone crunch under the toe of her boot. The gunman screamed. Jenna rolled frantically, tried to free herself as the bastard swung the knife in a smashing blow toward her unprotected belly—
A gunshot exploded right above Jenna. She screamed, convinced she’d just been shot. Then she realized she wasn’t hit. A stranger had appeared from the darkness. The newcomer had fired that shot, not the man trying to murder her. The bullet had plowed straight through the back of the paid assassin’s head. The hit-man who’d hunted them through the Britannia was dead. Messily dead. The explosive aftermath left Jenna shuddering, eyes clenched shut. Blood and bits of human brain had spattered across her face and neck and coat. She lay on her side, panting and shaking and fighting back nausea. Then she looked up, so slowly it might’ve taken a week just to lift her gaze from the wet street to the stranger’s face. She expected to find a constable, recalled a snatch of memory that suggested London constables had not carried firearms in 1888, and found herself looking up into the face of a man in a dark evening coat and silk top hat.
“Are you unharmed, sir? And the lady?”
Ianira had fallen to her knees beside Jenna, weeping and touching her shoulder, her arm, her blood-smeared face. “I…” Jenna had to gulp back nausea. “I think I’m okay.”
The stranger offered a hand, calmly putting away his pistol in a capacious coat pocket. Jenna levered herself up with help. Once on her feet, she gently lifted Ianira and checked her pulse. Jenna didn’t like the look of shock in the Cassondra’s eyes or the desperate pallor of her skin, which was clammy and cold under her touch.
The stranger’s brows rose. “Are you a doctor, sir?”
Jenna shook her head. “No. But I know enough to test a pulse point.”
“Ah… As it happens, I am a medical doctor. Allow me.”
The down-timer physician took Ianira’s wrist to test her pulse, himself. And the Prophetess snapped rigid, eyes wide with shock. The Cassondra of Ephesus uttered a single choked sound that defied interpretation. She lifted both hands—gasped out something in Greek. The doctor stared sharply at Ianira and spoke even more sharply—also in Greek. While Jenna was struggling to recall a snatch of history lesson, that wealthy men of society had learned Greek and Latin as part of a gentleman’s education, the physician snarled out something that sounded ugly. Naked shock had detonated through his eyes and twisted his face.
The next moment, Jenna found herself staring down the wrong end of his gun barrel. “Sorry, old chap. Nothing personal, you know.”
He’s going to kill me!
Jenna flung herself sideways just as the gun discharged. Pain caught her head brutally and slammed her to the street. As the world went dark, she heard shouts and running footsteps, saw Ianira’s knees buckle in a dead faint, saw the stranger simply scoop her up and walk off with her, disappearing into the yellow drizzle.
Then darkness crashed down with a fist of brutal, black terror.