Page 55 of A Vocation of Violence
No answer echoed back from beyond the gloom.
Could Jack the Ripper have found me? Could this be his punishment for the hours spent in Aramis Night Horse’s bed?
The reek of iron and despair hung heavy in the air, a tangible curtain of dread. Yet beneath it lingered something else—a scent almost lost to the olfactory din. The faint, familiar tang of chemicals used in my postmortem sanitation work teased at my senses. Ammonium hypochlorite. Sodium bismuth. Creosote? It held a twisted irony, that the very agents used to erase the evidence of death might well be my key to life.
Though my senses were sharp from fear, I could see very little, and had no clue from which direction the scents originated.
It wasn’t the first time in my life I’d been bound, but I couldn’t remember ever feeling so frightened. So certain that I was closer to death than I’d ever been. Close enough to shake his hand.
Perhaps even steal a kiss.
The staccato rhythm of approaching footsteps resonated against the cold stone. I strained against the darkness, but its oppressive weight bore down on me like the lid of a coffin.
Shadows coalesced into the form of a man, and Oswald Drumft emerged from the dimness like a specter born of my most harrowing nightmares. His eyes, frostbitten chips of disdain, locked on to me with a predator’s focus—a raptor eyeing its next kill.
“Fiona Mahoney. For a name that holds no political strength, no family fortune, no nobility or great accomplishments, it is certainly spoken often in the halls of power.” Drumft’s voice slithered through the darkness, and the devil’s glare examined me like I were a stain he needed to wipe off his shoe. “I find it arouses me that fear tarnishes your otherwise defiant visage.”
I fixed him with a steely gaze, one honed by years of hiding my true self beneath layers of necessary deception.
“Is it fear you see, Herr Drumft?” My voice was steadier than I felt, the words wielded like blades. “Or perhaps it is disgust for the man who boasts of his conquests in and out of the bedroom, yet trembles in the presence of real men?”
His eyes flared, and fleshy, ever-damp lips parted in a maniacal smile. “Fear?” he echoed, drawing out the word like a caress, “Women are but trifles, Miss Mahoney. True power lies in subjugation. There is no man nor woman on this isle who holds power over me, but I delight in bending the will of others to my own desires.”
“Desires,” I spat, tasting the venom in it, “born from what? A hunger for control? A deep-seated loathing for yourself and your monstrous deeds? There’s a place in hell for men like you, Drumft, and you’ll be sent there soon enough.”
“Monstrous?” His laugh was devoid of mirth, a hollow sound that reverberated off the stark walls. “You speak of monsters, yet you work for the Syndicate.”
“Not by choice,” I hissed, deciding I would not use what might be my final words to explain myself to the likes of him. “Vivienne, Lena, Claudia. How many other women have you crushed beneath your boot?”
His lips twisted into a grotesque semblance of pride. He circled me, a predator reveling in the scent of terror, each footfall a measured torment. “Vivienne had convinced me she was a perfect flower in my garden, when in fact she was a weed. Fodder for vermin, to be rooted out and exterminated. As for Lena… Yes, well, she was a necessary sacrifice. England must purge itself of filth, mustn’t it?”
I held fast to the steel within my soul. If survival demanded a chess match with the devil himself, then let the game begin. For every move he plotted, I vowed to counter; for every horror he promised, I would rise indomitable. In this dance macabre, I was no mere pawn—he would find the queen had teeth.
“You truly are a cretinous creature!” I cried.
“Flattery will get you everywhere, dear Fiona.” His leer deepened. “Now, I heard whispers that you were at Scotland Yard claiming that you’d retrieved something from the theater where I left Lena.” He stood at attention before me in his complete diplomatic regalia, his high collar sporting a gold oak pin on the left of his throat as if to advertise the absence of the right.
Why did a Prussian diplomat have ties in Scotland Yard?
My mind raced as panic gnawed at my resolve. The pin, a symbol of his rank and sin, was indeed in my possession—the one thing that could place him at the scene of Lena’s murder. “If I give it to you,” I said, desperation seeping into my tone, “will you let me go?”
“Let you go?” A laugh, dark and forbidding, erupted from him. “Oh, no, my dear. Whether you return it or not, you will die. If you produce the pin, I’ll be merciful. If you are prone to defiance, well… Your end will not be as swift as Vivienne’s, nor as merciful as Lena’s.”
I glimpsed movement behind him: a shadow detaching from darkness, forming into the shape of a man—his lackey.
“Dieter here will see to that,” Drumft said, nodding toward the hulking figure who stepped forward, a glint of metal in his hand.
I searched the recesses of my terrified mind, frantically clawing for an inkling of a plan. My life, a threadbare tapestry of loss and vengeance, depended on the cunning that had saved me more times than I dared count.
“Think carefully, Miss Mahoney,” he continued. “Your silence could be…detrimental to more than just your own fragile existence.”
His words were calculated, designed to pry into the crevices of my resolve. Yet my thoughts flitted to the others who might beensnared by his vile machinations, or already had been—Darcy, Jorah, Croft, Aunt Nola, Mary, and even baby Tegan. Was this man a threat to them all?
“Your threats are as empty as your soul, Drumft,” I retorted, though the effort cost me a tremor in my voice I could ill afford. A lie, albeit a necessary one; his threats were far from empty, and we both knew it.
“Bravery or foolishness?” he mused aloud, his footsteps a measured patrol on the cold stone floor. “I wonder which you possess in greater measure.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “it is not terror that moves my tongue but a resolve you cannot fathom.”
