Ginn Hale - Wicked Gentlemen

My instincts urged escape. I could easily knock out the glass with Brown's chair and be out. But my instincts weren't paying me to be here in the first place.

I looked down at the street and wished I could see Harper. The second story only provided me with a view of roofs and the tops of a dozen or more hats. Below me people made their ways back home. Offices and shops were closing. It would be night soon. The darkness drifting in over the sky calmed me.

I decided to investigate Brown's office and the disturbing smell that hung in it. I took a deep breath and spread my arms out. As I blew the air out of my lungs, I slowly drifted up. I continued to rise until my head lightly bumped into the ceiling.

The air near the ceiling was rank. I nearly gagged, and when I opened my eyes, they stung. The tops of Brown's shelves were filled with rows of blue glass jars. Some were large apothecary jars; others were smaller, perfume bottles. All of them were filled with dark thick liquids.

I drifted closer to the jars. The smell was nauseating. I squeezed my nostrils closed with one hand and read the pieces of paper that were attached to the rows of blue bottles. One big container read, Strength Beyond Numbers: Abaddon. Another was marked, Power to Churn the Waters: Rahab. I frowned and scanned across the multitude of labels: Beauty, Wealth, Control of Fire, and even the Lordship Over Insects was cited, and a name written beneath that. Many of the bottles were nearly empty. But the one nearest me was completely full.

I picked up the small bottle, hardly larger than an ink vial. It was sealed with a waxed lid. Its paper label was crisp and white, still untouched by time. It said, Prophecy: Roffcale.

Holding the vial in my palm, I sank back down to the floor. I broke the wax seal and almost choked on the smell that seeped up. It was the same pungent scent that had pervaded the cell where Peter Roffcale had been murdered. Rosewater poured through the soured smell of his blood, urine, and shit.

Magic potions made from the bodies of Prodigals. Wasn't that what Sariel had said?

The door opened behind me, and I shoved the vial into my jacket pocket. I quickly turned to face the man who had entered the room. He was much taller than Brown, but just as muscular. His hair and beard were white, but he seemed youthfully fit in spite of that. His skin was tanned and flushed with a healthy glow. He smiled at me as if I were his favorite nephew.

"I'm truly sorry about the delay in meeting you, Mr. Sykes." The big man held out his hand. "I'm Albert Scott-Beck."

Out of habit I took his hand. He smiled even more brightly and didn't release my fingers from his tight warm grip.

"May I ask you a question, Mr. Sykes?" He was close enough that I could smell the blood and rose perfume on his breath. His fingers felt like steel shackles encasing my hand.

I remembered that the blue glass jar marked Strength Beyond Numbers had been nearly empty. I wondered how much of it Scott-Beck had running through his veins.

"Who sent you in here?" he asked.

His hand crushed brutally around mine. I slashed my free hand up and drove my long nails into the flesh of his throat. His skin was like horse hide. My claws barely cut into it.

In an instant, Scott-Beck stepped aside and twisted my hand violently. Cracking pain burst through my arm as a bone in my wrist snapped. He twisted my hand farther and I stumbled on my feet, dropping to one knee.

He kicked me hard in the chest. My ribs cracked inward. My lungs crushed in as the air was forced out of them.

"Who sent you, Mr. Sykes?" He was still smiling as if this had just been a friendly tussle.

"You're going to kill me whether I say or not, aren't you?" My voice was barely audible.

"Of course." Scott-Beck squeezed his fingers around my broken wrist. "But it's up to you, how I do it."

"Please, don't." I closed my eyes as if that would hold out the pain. "The man who hired me..." I carefully dropped the fingers of my free hand down into my coat pocket. "He didn't tell me his name, but he wore an anatomist's pin. He was blonde and young." I closed my hand around the vial.

"An anatomist?" For a moment Scott-Beck's attention shifted from me to the man who hired me.

I lunged forward, smashing the vial into Scott-Beck's groin. The delicate glass shattered and Scott-Beck howled in agony. I jerked my hand free of him and scrambled for the window.

A brutal weight slammed into my back and crushed me face down to the hard wood floor. I hadn't seen Brown come in after Scott-Beck, but I recognized the smell of him on top of me. I tried to twist out from under him, but his weight on top of me was immovable. He seized a fistful of my hair, jerking my head up. The tendons of my neck strained as he pulled my head back so that I was looking up at him.

"It seems that you still don't know how to answer a question properly, Mr. Sykes." Brown's face was flushed deep red. His expression was one of pleasure, almost arousal. He slammed the side of my face down into the floor. A deep explosion of pain and dizziness rocked through my skull. He pulled my head back up and slammed it down again. I fought against him. Brown threw his weight against my straining neck and my head cracked into the floor again.

My throat and shoulders spasmed with tearing pain. Blood welled out from the side of my head where my skin had split upon impact with the floor. My vision wavered as a ripple of darkness passed through my consciousness.

Brown lifted my face again, and this time I hung limply in his grip.

"What about it, Albert?" Brown asked. "Shall I split his little skull?"

"We want to know about the girl first." I heard Scott-Beck walk up on my left. "Ask him who she is."

"Well, then?" Brown shifted his weight on my back, rocking his groin against me as if I were a two-penny whore. "Where's the girl you've been working with, Sykes? What's her name?"

"I think it might be something like...Fuck You!" I could hardly think for the pain, but it didn't make me any more cooperative.

"Listen, Sykes. I can make you wish you were back in the Inquisition House." Brown pulled my head back a little more. I could see Scott-Beck out of the corner of my eye. He stroked his thick white beard and studied me. In my beaten state, I suddenly thought that he looked a great deal like a painting I had seen of Father Christmas. He considered me as if it pained him to see that I would be going down on his naughty list. "I don't know how far you're going to get with him—" Scott-Beck's words were cut short by a sharp rap at the door.

Scott-Beck walked back out of my view, but Brown remained on top of me. I heard Scott-Beck open the door.

"What is it, Tim?"

"There's a man from the Inquisition here." The secretary sounded slightly flustered.

"What does he want?"

"He says he's looking for a Prodigal named Belimai Sykes." The secretary's voice dropped to a whisper. "He won't go away."

"How inconvenient." Scott-Beck walked back to where Brown had me pinned. He dropped down beside me and took a firm grasp on my throat with both his hands.

"Lewis," he said to Brown, "you and Tim go down and get rid of the Inquisitor. I'm afraid that we're not going to have all the time we would have liked with Mr. Sykes."

As Brown rose off of me, Scott-Beck lifted me by my throat. I scrambled to gain my footing. Brown caught my arms and jerked them back behind me. Pain seared through my broken wrist.

"I was hoping to have a little longer with him," Brown said.

"Next time," Scott-Beck assured him. "Perhaps with the girl."

"Fair enough." Brown retreated back through the door with the secretary.

Scott-Beck sighed and then shoved me back against the desk. His expression was resigned, not even slightly perturbed. I knew from the sheer number of bottles on the shelf above us that he had murdered many Prodigals before me. If it had ever troubled his conscience, he was long past that now. Like the Confessors who had tortured me in the Inquisition, he was utterly at ease with himself and what he did.