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"I ain't no weed," she muttered, quoting the girl who delivered their milk every morning. "And if you tell me to stay here, well, then, same t'you, wiv brass knobs on..."
Noah frowned. "You're picking up the slang pretty well, aren't you? But that doesn't make you a match for a thing like Lachley. He's a bloody dangerous bastard. Stay behind me."
"No argument, there," she muttered.
Marcus found a stub of candle in a battered tin holder beside the bed and a wooden box with matches, printed with the trade name Lucifers. Marcus lit the candle and handed it to Noah, who led the way down the narrow stone steps. Marcus pocketed the matches and Je
"What kind of place is this?" Je
"Sewer tu
"Hsst!"
At that sharp sound from Noah, Je
"Bloody bitch!" A man's voice echoed through the sewers, fierce with some nameless rage that left the tiny hairs along Je
The woman was sobbing out, "Don't kill me, please, I won't tell anyone you're the Ripper, please, just let me go home!" The woman's voice, clearly British, shook on a wild note of despair.
"That is not Ianira," Marcus breathed.
"What time does the gate go?" Lachley's voice...
"I don't know!"
"What time was it when you came through, then?"
A choked-off cry of pain floated through the sewer tu
She screamed again, high, ragged. The sound cut off hideously. Je
Someone was moving through the sewers toward them, splashing quickly through the water. For a long, horrible moment, Je
Je
Light sprang up, yellow and warm and glorious, revealing ashen faces. Je
"He closed a door of some kind," Noah mused. "Perhaps another trap door. We'll try to find it and see if he's hidden Ianira down here with his other captive."
A cross-tu
"Well, blow me for a game of soldiers..." Noah muttered.
The low-voiced exclamation brought Je
"An iron door! Locked tight as a drum."
The low door had been set back into an alcove. Clearly, John Lachley had come from behind that door. Je
"We'll have to make do with a lockpick," Noah muttered. "I've cultivated the habit of carrying a set, during the past three years. With your father's killers on our trail, we've occasionally needed a fast entrance into a hiding place. Fortunately," the detective fished into a coat pocket, coming out with a set of burglar's tools and crouching before the door, slipping them expertly into the keyhole, "Victorian locks are generally large, clumsy, and easy to open." Marcus held the candle close to the lock, giving Noah the best light available. The lockpicks scraped and scratched inside the iron door, then something grated and clicked.
"Got it!"
The sudden silence was thick with tension.
The heavy door swung noiselessly open, which spoke of constant oiling and maintenance in this damp environment. Surprisingly, the room beyond was not dark. Gas jets in the floor lit a scene from someone's private version of hell. Je
"Oh, my God!"
Somebody had spilled a great deal of blood in this room. And pieces of at least two fresh corpses had been stacked up beside the door like cordwood. Arms, legs, gobbets she couldn't readily identify. And two severed heads, a dark-haired man's and a blonde-haired woman's. They rested on a work bench which stretched beneath cupboards along one long wall, sightless eyes staring at the door, faces set in ghastly expressions of terror and agony. White robes hung from a hook set into the bricks. Dark brown stains were visible across the sleeves and front. A stone pedestal that looked very much like an altar stood in the middle of the room. On top was another severed head, its flesh and hair still rotting off the bones. From what little remained, it looked like it had once belonged to a young boy, a teenager. An enormous tree trunk, with many of its major branches intact, took up at least half the space. Iron brackets and bands held the tree together where it had been sawn apart to get it into the room. Ianira, hands bound above her head, hung naked from an iron hook set into one enormous branch, limp and unconscious, her ribcage barely lifting with her shallow breaths. Gas jets at the base of the tree shone across her skin.