House of Corruption (31 page)

“After mother died, father was never the same,” she continued. “The curse used him up. He intensified his search for a cure, considered every option. He corresponded with great minds from around the world. After mother died I accompanied him to Europe in this pursuit: Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Geneva. Father discovered your existence somewhere along the way. We sought you in Provence.”

“How did you know?”

“I honestly do not know,” she said. “In London, we learned your family relocated to Canada. Edward suggested we continue the search while father returned to make the necessary arrangements.”

“You obeyed the counsel of your...valet?”

“Edward Tukebote became my father’s closest confidant. At least the Edward I remember.”

“But you knew.”

“The Edward whom I knew as a child and the Edward who accompanied me to America were two very different people. I could not see it at the time, but I knew it, somehow. Yet I never feared him.” Her eyes grew distant. “He was more than a valet. He supported me after mother’s death, helped me comprehend the full extent of father’s nature. I refused to believe what seems now very plain. I thought him an extraordinary man in the most tragic of times. He knew exactly what to say. He knew how much I needed—”

She stopped, suddenly.

“What is it?” he asked.

She inhaled a quick breath, tears forming around her eyes.

“Please tell me,” he said.

“I am weary,” she said. “Weary of secrets.”

She said no more after that.

The torch was nearly spent, a nest of stubborn coals. The two fingered along the tunnel walls to guide them, suppressing their terror, pressing onward until exhaustion forced them to stop. When they set themselves to the floor, Kiria fell asleep in moments. The dark came so complete Reynard could not see her, but smelled her sweat, hear the slow cadence of her breathing. He thought sure he could feel the beating of her heart in his throat. She moved, whispering a sad, childlike sound, and he reached out tenderly to touch her arm. She relaxed and returned breathing normally.

Still there
.

She trusted him here, of all places. He felt comfort at her presence, even if he could not see her. How could he harm such a lovely thing?

I’m so hungry
.

He bit down, cracking through the rind of his lip. Blood oozed and he sucked, reveling with the taste—

Then he spat it from his mouth.

Bloody weakling
!

He opened he eyes. How long had he slept? The torch was dead. He blinked, surprised that he could see the curved wall of the tunnel—faint, monochrome—and the sleeping body of Kiria breathing upon the floor, her black hair in tangled ringlets.

“Miss Carlovec,” he said.

“Yes.” She sat up, startled. “What is it?”

“Light.”

“I cannot see anything.”

He helped her to her feet. “This way.”

“How can you—?” She stopped. “Yes. I see. The dark never confounded my father. Are you—?”

“Not yet.”

“Close?”

He led her along with urgency. Fifty yards further she pulled from his hand as the tunnel brightened and details began to emerge. Soon she led the way. The tunnel turned a corner and ended at a gaping slash of a hole with rubble strewn about in haphazard piles. They passed through and descended a stair into a stone gallery with high, pointed arches every twenty feet. The walls had once been smeared with plaster, but time had flaked much of it into dust, the stone behind it exposed like old bones.

Frescos illuminated those few portions of plaster still intact, and Reynard knew neither the symbols nor the mythology painted there: rotund faces with large eyes and drooping earlobes; multi-armed figures with animal heads and sharp teeth. Suns, moons, and rivers flowed from one patch of plaster to another, only to be replaced with animals standing on two legs with curving swords in their claws. The clearest figure was a four-armed man wearing the toothy mask of a monkey, and in each claw he gripped a curved blade. Each blade ran with red paint.

Long, rectangular niches pocked the walls down the length of the gallery, and upon every stone bed lay a skeleton. Grave upon grave of ancient dead lay on either side. Other corridors branched off into darkness.

“Your grandfather mined the cliffs,” Reynard said. “Does this—?”

“Look familiar?” she said. “No. I never knew.”

They descended another flight of steps to stop at a metal gate. It was locked. Light blazed from the other side.

“And this?” he whispered.

Beyond the gate stretched an immense grotto, the largest cave either of them had ever seen. Oil sconces, set into the wall, burned with orange light. The gate was one of many such entrances along the uppermost tier; a dozen shallow, circular levels descended like an ancient amphitheater. At the bottom, three misshapen monoliths of stone, each at least twenty feet tall, surrounded a round pool of black water. Countless niches pocked the tiers at each descending level, some filled with dusty cobweb, others empty, but most contained more corpses.

Those on the highest level held little but chalky bone, yet with each tier downward the bodies told a history of decomposition in reverse: flecks of bone at the outer ring took skeletal shape two tiers down, then into bodies clotted with mummified tissue and ragged clothing two tiers lower. Those lying upon the bottommost ring, nearest to the pool and standing stones, were freshly dead native men and women. Their bodies lay bloated and rotten with moist decay.

“It was a dream,” she said, quaking.

Reynard too found his emotions sharpening, his chest heavy with despair. Into his mind came the drab colors of that alley in Chalmette, the sight of Bill Tourney’s shredded throat and that sickly fruit smell—

—
Blazes, but the smell!
—

The unclean sensation of death since the monks’ cellar, the dull, prickly feel that teased the Beast inside him—it came from beyond the gate, from the black pool between the standing stones.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Directly,” Kiria said, “beneath Carlovec Manor.”

31

Six natives forced Savoy and Grant out of the tower, prodded by spears. They led them through the ruins of Saint Dismas, the early morning already hot and glutinous with the muddy smell of the river. Those few items spared the fire—Grant’s rifle and the remains of their packs—were left behind. 

They reached a dirt road that led west through the jungle. The natives had long removed their snarling wooden masks and slung them at their backs, their dark faces painted with swirling black-dot tattoos that contoured the lines creasing their skin. They did not smile, did not speak. When Savoy’s pace slackened, a man nudged him between the shoulder blades with the butt of his spear.

Two hundred yards along they came upon the shell of a half-built village: storefronts and stables and half-planked, corrugated shelters, the skeletal remains of a town long abandoned. What was not shrouded with vine or moss was rust-brown and rotten and squealing. They passed through without stopping.

A half-mile further the jungle cast aside to reveal a broad, grassy hill surrounded by an ironwork fence. At its crest crouched an immense mansion—Carlovec Manor leered with shadow and climbing vine over brick walls and stone foundation like some hulking beast, its central tower branching into two wings with many windows. An even taller granite cliff rose behind the house, and from its lofty edge a waterfall cascaded into a pool or river they could not see. The manor seemed both new and ancient, European and indigenous, a monstrosity in the midst of the wilderness.

The natives nudged their captives through the gate and, as they ascended the hill, the building added windows, chimneys and tiled roofs, its arches craning to gawk. Savoy did not like it. It reeked of colonial pretension and old money, as if this aberration might alone conquer the jungle. The dirt road gave way to weedy flagstone, and they followed the driveway underneath the porte-cochere, up the front steps, and onto the porch. A native rapped heavily upon the massive oak door. He and the others took four paces back, leaving their prisoners alone upon the porch. Grant looked to Savoy, who looked to him—two unlucky salesmen forced to this imposing doormat.

The door opened. There stood a man in a smart black suit, regarding them with an air of stuffy indifference. He was thin and quiet and empty, like so many underappreciated servants in well-to-do homes. He did not seem to notice the natives.

“Ah,” he said with an accent. “You are expected.”

“If we refuse?” Savoy asked.

“Breakfast is served. If you please?”

The men took one last look at the natives at their back, and followed the butler inside. He led them down a short corridor into a foyer where a wide staircase climbed up more flights than they could guess. Mahogany walls and ornate wallpaper reminded Savoy of similar mansions found all throughout England, but he noted a Dutch influence in the linear angles of the paneling and a more Eastern touch by the rounded archways. The ceilings were high and crystal lamps were set into the walls every five feet; he did not see any pipes for gas, and the lamps did not appear to hold oil or candlewicks.

Savoy had to admit the house was impressive. Gaudy, pretentious as the Devil himself, but impressive. A fountain sat in the center of the hall, ten feet wide at its base, the marble of its upraised bowl cut so thin the water inside it splashed with a creamy half-light. A stone nymph poured water from an urn while another, an emaciated man twisted against the basin, reached up as if desperate to drink.

“
Tantalus at Juventas’ Cup
,” said a voice. Another man entered the hall. Savoy noted his resemblance to Kiria in his squared jaw and straight nose, but could not tell his age. One moment he seemed close to sixty; the next he carried himself much younger. “Sculpted by none other than William Carsbury,” he continued, “right down to the mirrored floor. Do you see? A most remarkable piece.” He considered the emaciated man’s tortured face. “I am moved every time I look upon it.”

“Mister Carlovec, I presume?” Savoy said.

“Do call me Wilhem, thank you,” he said, “and this is not the first time we have met, professor. You may remember my attending your lecture on lycanthropy at Cambridge, a year ago last August? I even asked you a question, one you were unable to answer to my satisfaction.”

“I regret I do not.”

“Your findings were naïve. You accept the folklore more than it warrants, especially if you stoop to Baring-Gould as a reliable source. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ as it’s said, ‘than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”

“I believe in what I see,” Savoy said.

“A curious philosophy for a man of the cloth.”

“Where is Lasha LaCroix?”

Wilhem smiled. “Please...Mister Grant, is it?...enjoy some breakfast.” He laughed at Grant’s grim expression. “It’s all right, my boy. All right. By the look of you it’s been a difficult night. Crumpets and sausage and eggs and all the coffee you can stomach. Jeané...” He motioned to the butler. “...See to it. Have him wash up, if you please.”

“Of course,” Jeané said. “Your coat, sir.”

Grant looked to Savoy, who nodded, and Grant followed the butler down the hall as he removed his overcoat. By the smell Savoy guessed the dining room was ahead and slightly to the right of where he stood. The scent of spicy meat and coffee was intoxicating. Wilhem led him to an open room on their immediate right—would they be taking their breakfast there?

They passed through double doors into a drawing room. It was designed, it seemed, for the sole purpose of exhibiting expensive
objects d’art
: decorative vases, rugs and framed mirrors, grim portraits, and statues of Greek and oriental design. The closed curtains bathed the room in diffused light, the air redolent with dust. Above the mantle hung a Remington shotgun, a single-loading Winchester, two German-made military pistols with handle clips, various knives of curious design, and a hundred-year-old Turkish Blunderbuss. A mounted boar’s head, a water buffalo skull and three ape skulls leered from their trophy plaques on the opposite wall.

Savoy sat down on a padded sofa. There were no trays of sausage, no pot of coffee. Wilhem offered a cigar and, when Savoy refused, lit one for himself with a puff of pungent smoke. He sat in an ornate chair across from Savoy, puffing and crossing his legs as if the two might discuss the pleasantries of banking.

“So,” Wilhem said. “Where is Reynard LaCroix?”

“He is dead,” Savoy said. “He and your daughter lie crushed in the basement of Saint Dismas’ chapel, thanks to those savages of yours.”

“They are not mine.”

“Does
she
command them?”

“Death is very subjective here,” Wilhem said. “You would be surprised at its frailty in this
oubliette
of the world. The locals can be…excitable. A far greater work is made manifest, professor. There are prices to be paid.”

“Including your daughter?”

Wilhem’s took a breath of smoke. A flicker of emotion crossed his eyes, indiscernible. “She should have remained in America.”

“We did not give her much of a choice,” Savoy said, “seeing your associate forced our hand. Do you know the true nature of that abomination? Why unite yourself with such a murderous—?”

“Mind your manners,” came a whisper.

Savoy’s words caught in his throat. Long fingers brushed along the nape of his neck like a spider, soft and menacing. Had she been there all the time, lurking in the shadows? Why did he not see her? The woman was as Grant described—if not more fair and terrible—dressed in a red silk faille with velvet trim that contrasted against her pale skin. Her red hair, pulled back in a knot, hung like a horsetail off her shoulder. She moved with a deliberate, bird-like menace, tainted with the faint scent of vinegar and roses. He felt very cold.

“Lucinda,” Wilhem said.

“You never told me our guests had arrived.”

“I did not wish to disturb you.”

“Posh.” She walked around the sofa, focusing on Savoy. “You must give credit to my children outside. They consider me sacred, you know. I give them a certain sense of...a sense of purpose. More tangible then wafers and wine, don’t you agree?”