She felt the torrent of energy slam from her hand into Lowry, the shock flinging him back against the edge of the bed, the iron frame lifting and crashing against the stone wall. She staggered to one side, dropping heavily to her knees, the impact jarring through her thighs. The roar and dry clatter still surged in her veins, but muted like a storm heard in the distance.
Lowry groaned, his hand reaching for his throat. The large jugulars were swelling, thick and blue. He clawed at his neck, eyes widening beyond their lids, bulging from their sockets. The web of veins across his cheeks expanded into thick blue ridges stretching the skin. She heard an obscene wet pop and one of the swollen ridges burst in a spray of blood, peeling back the layers of flesh. He screamed, the sound suddenly cut off as he gulped wetly for air.
Helen scrabbled backward, her shoulders hitting the firm hold of the wall. She had seen this before. Deceiver energy. It was the way Benchley had died.
Lowry writhed across the stone floor, ripping at his chest, his mouth open in a silent scream. Blood seeped from his nose and eyes. His heels drummed upon the stone floor, a quicker beat beneath the sound of his shoulders and head slamming over and over against the stone. She heard the sound of teeth cracking under the locking spasm of his jaw. His whole body stiffened and lifted into an arched convulsion that snapped bone. He dropped back on the ground, eyes fixed, his final agony frozen into a death snarl upon his ruined face.
Helen gasped into the abrupt silence. The Deceiver energy had killed him. She had killed him. How?
She turned her hand. The cross was gone, her palm smooth as if the blade had never met it. Hammond was right: she stored Deceiver energy like Mr Volta’s stacks. But why had the energy forced its way out? Helen drew a shaking breath: the blood ritual. There was no other explanation.
She curled her knees up to her chest. Dear Mother of Mercy, if she had tried to make the blood bond with Darby instead of Lowry … No, she must not think of it. As it stood, it was bad enough. Lowry was dead and she did not know where he had put the journal. What if she could not find it?
She stared at his twisted body, her gaze sliding away from the peeled flesh. Perhaps he had lied. Perhaps it was hidden upon him somewhere.
She crawled across the floor, keeping her focus upon the opening of his jacket, away from the bulging eyes. The mix of blood and piss and hot split innards rose in a sickeningly acrid stink. Carefully she reached over his clawed hands and flicked back his blood-soaked jacket. There were no pockets in the sodden cloth. She clenched her teeth, trying to stop herself from retching. No journal. No bargain.
‘Glory!’ a voice said.
She spun around in a crouch.
Sprat stood in the doorway, eyes fixed upon Lowry’s corpse. The girl edged into the room, thin arms wrapped around her body, the faded dress bunched up past her bare ankles.
‘Did you do that?’ she asked.
Helen tried to say yes, but her voice was gone, lost within quick, shallow breaths that brought no air.
Sprat squatted in front of her, eyes solemn. ‘You all right?’ She reached across and patted Helen’s shoulder with one dirty hand. ‘All yer bits an’ bobs together?’
Helen gasped at the touch — God forfend, the energy! — but no torrent boiled up to fling the small girl across the room. She could still feel the Deceiver power within her, its distant click and moan, but it seemed to need a path of blood.
‘Don’t give his worthless carcass no thought, my lady, he deserved it.’ Sprat regarded Lowry with satisfaction, then wrinkled her nose. ‘Lordy, he reeks, don’t he.’ She scratched her grimy neck. ‘Looks like it hurt him. A lot.’
‘Yes,’ Helen finally managed.
‘Good.’ Sprat clambered to her feet, hitching her dress. ‘You lookin’ for what he stashed, ain’t ya? The book.’
Helen lurched forward. ‘You know where it is?’
‘Saw him put somethin’ in with Mad Lester afore you came.’
Helen bowed her head, almost overcome by the giddy wash of relief. Thank the Lord for small, inquisitive girls.
‘I need to get it, Sprat.’ She climbed to her feet. Shaky, but firm enough.
Sprat nodded. ‘Come on then.’ She snagged one of the lamps and led the way to the door. ‘I’ll get you past Lester. He’s all riled up right now, but he won’t hurt me.’
Shyly she held out her other hand. Helen took it in her own, the wrap of small sticky warmth fighting back the horror of the room behind them.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mad Lester was indeed riled up. Helen watched through the bars of his cell door as the wild-haired, dirt-encrusted young man paced back and forth, the chain attached to his thin ankle slithering and chinking along the dirt floor. He punched the air around him, both hands balled into fists. One eye was swollen half shut, the other wide and darting to all corners of his gloomy enclosure. Helen pressed her hand to her nose. Wafts of foul air — rancid meat and excrement — exuded from the shed, stirred up by the poor creature’s frantic perambulations and intensified by the warmth of the night.
Sprat lifted her lamp and stood on her tiptoes to see through the bars. She clicked her tongue. ‘Glimflashy, ain’t he?’
Helen searched her cant. Glimflashy: angry.
‘Always gets this way when his uncle goes in there. Looks like the blasted louse hit ’im in the face again.’
For a moment Helen did not know whom Sprat meant, then realised Lester’s uncle was Lowry. Or had been Lowry.
‘Where is the book, Sprat?’
‘In that box o’er there,’ she said, waving the lamp towards the chest pushed up against the far wall. ‘Hey, Lester,’ she called, her voice lilting into a gentle singsong. ‘It’s all right. Go sit yerself down.’ She held up the hunk of bread she had filched on their way through the dark, deserted kitchen. ‘Got this for ya.’
Lester kept pacing and punching, his breath wheezing gasps.
Helen looked back at the bawdy-house. The shutters of the two bedchambers above the kitchen were still open, the soft light from within reaching out across the yard and bringing a ghostly glow to the hanging laundry. Shadows flickered across the slice of wall visible through one window. The room was occupied. Someone could look out at any moment and see them.
Sprat dropped back onto her heels and glanced up at the windows that still held Helen’s attention. ‘It’s all right, my lady. No one will go near Lowry’s bolt-hole — we was all told to stay away. He won’t be found for hours, so no one’s gunna be lookin’ for yer.’ She gave a reassuring grin. ‘’Sides, no one’ll be able to see us when we’re inside wiv Lester. It’s where I hide all the time.’
‘Let us go in, then,’ Helen said. ‘Out of sight.’
‘You keep behind me, my lady. I knows you could kill ’im with one hand, but he’s all bovvered and he might try you. I’ll get ’im to sit down and be real quiet. He always listens to me.’
Helen lifted the heavy metal bar that secured the cell door and swung it around upon its hinge, the iron grinding into a soft screech. She held her breath, but no one came to the windows. Lester, however, stopped pacing.