Gaslight Hades (The Bonekeeper Chronicles #1)
Grace Draven
CHAPTER ONE
For the last time, Lenore gazed at her father’s coffin, draped in black velvet and topped with a spray of everlasting flowers. Her mother’s doing of course. Arthur Kenward would have hated the frippery, but Jane Kenward was adamant that no expense be spared, and the bouquet had been ordered and delivered for the funeral. Lenore found it repulsive. The flowers were as lifeless as the body resting beneath the coffin lid.
She did her best to ignore the ache in her chest. The weight of it had pressed against her breast bone for almost a week; her own silent grief at her father’s passing. She already missed his good-natured company, the frantic workings of his mind, so filled with ideas and creations that his inventor’s hands couldn’t build them fast enough. He’d enlisted her help in his work since she was old enough to hold a wrench. Much to Jane’s frozen disapproval, teatime was often spent in discussion of Arthur’s latest improvement to a submersible’s navigation system or a modification to the rudder of an airship in the Queen’s dirigible fleet.
“If you’ll step back, miss, we’ll cover the grave.” The undertaker indicated the sextons waiting nearby with their shovels.
Lenore blew the coffin a kiss and moved far enough from the grave to stay out of the sextons’ way but still keep a close eye on their work. She recalled her mother’s waspish indignation when Lenore refused to leave after the initial interment.
“You cannot remain here alone! You’ll accompany me to our carriage this instant.” The black feathers on Jane’s hat quivered as the woman shook with outrage.
Lenore’s blithe disregard of her mother’s ire made the feathers flutter even harder. “No. You are welcome to return home and see to our guests, Mama, but I’m not leaving here until I know Papa is properly interred. I won’t have some thieving resurrectionist digging him up before the earth around him is even settled.”
Unwilling to engage her recalcitrant daughter in an argument in the midst of mourners and guests, Jane had flounced away in a huff. Lenore expected she’d be subjected to a fiery tongue lashing when she returned home. She didn’t care.
The undertaker had instructed one of his coachmen and carriages to remain until she was ready to leave. At the moment, he kept an eagle-eye on the sextons, making certain the grave was properly covered and suitably bricked.
Lenore kept her own vigilance but couldn’t quell the worry and fear. The resurrectionists were snatching bodies these days before the grave diggers had even put away their shovels. She only hoped the work involved with quietly unbricking a grave in the dead of night might deter the thieves.
When the sextons finished, Lenore nodded her approval and requested a moment’s privacy. They and the undertaker tipped their hats and left to wait nearby.
The pea soup mix of fog and coal smoke thickening London’s air washed in a tide through Highgate Cemetery. Through the enveloping murk, Lenore glimpsed another burial close by. Minister and family, friends and business associates, professional mutes in their mourning cloaks; they all reminded her of a murder of crows.
Many in that crowd watched her in return, their features pinched in disapproval. Despite the fact that the Royal Sea and Air Navies regularly sent women to fight alongside their male counterparts against the horrifics that sometimes broke the Guild Wall, a young woman alone and unchaperoned anywhere, even in a cemetery, still raised the disapproval of many. The temptation to offer up a rude gesture almost overcame Lenore. Nosy, gossiping biddies far more concerned with a breach of social etiquette than the exodus of a loved one from the world.
She turned her back on them to offer a final prayer over Arthur’s grave when chaos erupted amongst the gathering. Much swooning and fearful cries ensued, and Lenore gawked in amazement at the sudden transformation from somber gathering to milling circus.
“Merciful God, what is that thing doing here?” A portly gentleman pointed a trembling finger at something behind her.
Alarmed, Lenore spun and peered into the murk for a glimpse at what captured every one’s attention. A lithe shadow passed along the walls of lichen-covered crypts, gliding over the brown grass of late winter before finally halting near the winged statue of the archangel Raphael. Like her father, Lenore was not of a fanciful bent, but she imagined feathered wings fluttered away from the angular darkness.
More fearful cries sounded through the cemetery. She paid them little heed, stunned by the sight before her. It was rude to stare, but Lenore couldn’t help herself. She’d never thought to see a Guardian. At least not this close.
All the fears one held of the dark had gathered together and stitched themselves into the shape of a man. Rumor had it that Guardians weren’t human, having lost their claim to the appellation in the notorious Dr. Harvel’s crazed experiments. Lenore ignored most gossip, but this rumor carried the weight of truth.
Still as a scarecrow, the Guardian stood between the stone angel and a stately crypt, oblivious to the crowd gaping at him with open-mouthed horror. The sinuous fog intermingled with his long hair, both white as a shroud.
His apparel was nothing like one might see on the streets of London, worn by commoner, aristocrat or even one of the more eccentric airship captains. Lenore doubted such garb was worn by anyone except a keeper of the dead. Ghastly and sharp, it encased his tall form in black armor reminiscent of an insect’s carapace.
As if he heard her thoughts, the Guardian turned his head. The group of mourners fled en masse, including the clergyman, leaving the grave abandoned. Even the undertaker and his minions sped for the cemetery gates.
A gaze, so eerie and unlike any she’d ever seen in a human face, pierced her mourning veil. The sclera of his eyes was black as were his irises, his pupils an impossible contrast of white pinpoints as bright as a lightning flash. That long stare bore into her, stripping away layers of black crape, crinoline, flesh and muscle until it reached her soul and dissected it with pitiless scrutiny.
Lenore’s stomach tumbled to her feet, and she swayed. Except for the silent dead, she was alone with this creature. She crushed the folds of her skirt in one hand and prayed she wouldn’t faint.