Zoë Archer - Sweet Revenge

This was the place that had been his home, the place that made him. The streets were more his parent than his ma and nameless father had ever been.

He didn’t feel a sense of homecoming, skulking through the lanes and alleys of his old neighborhood. He felt only a cold, distant sense of anger, that anyone should be forced to live ten in a room, with the only water coming from a filthy old pump, and babies crying all night because their bellies were empty.

In a drab wool cloak, Eva kept silent beside him. Weak light from a gin palace spilled across her face. He looked for signs of disgust or shock in her expression.

There were none. He remembered that she’d been raised by missionaries, and had probably spent too many hours in places like Bethnal Green and Whitechapel. She already knew how low people could sink.

Still, her gaze was wary. That showed she was smart.

Two men stumbled out of the gin palace. Jack put out an arm to shield her from the drunkards as the men threw wild punches at each other. Too busy beating each other to notice Jack and Eva, the drunks took their fight down into the gutter. But the brawlers blocked the way.

Jack shoved them aside with his boot heel. They rolled away, still throwing punches.

Someone inside the gin palace laughed, a high, shrill sound.

“Keep moving,” Jack said in a low voice.

Eva hurried on, with Jack right next to her.

“I’ve studied maps of the area,” she said. “I’ve even been here before. But I have no idea where we are.”

“Don’t worry. I do.” He turned down a snaking alley. “The maps you’ve seen, they’ll never show you the real lay of the land. Streets are alive down here. Always twisting, never where you think they’re going to be.”

She stepped over a puddle of some unknown liquid. “So if they keep changing, how do you know where to go?”

“Got the same animal blood in my veins,” he answered.

They continued walking, passing three women who sat upon a stoop. A gang of almost a dozen children of all ages stood and played in the street. The clock might’ve chimed after midnight, but that didn’t mean young babes were snug and safe in their cradles. Three kids wearing only ragged shirts dragged sticks through the muck caking the road. When an infant started to cry, a small, thin girl scooped him up into her arms, trying to soothe him.

They all stopped and stared as Jack and Eva passed. Half the children ran after them, their hands outstretched. He made sure to keep an eye on the pack he carried. Little hands made the best pickpockets.

“Penny, sir? Spare a penny, miss?”

Jack reached into his pockets. There were two coins in there, and he had to save them for later.

“Here.” Eva pressed coins into the children’s open palms. The money disappeared right away. “That’s all I have, so none of you follow and ask for more.”

Like startled pigeons, the kids ran off, their bare feet slapping through the mud.

Eva watched them disappear into the darkness. “Hard to believe that we have homes lit by electricity, surgeries can be performed without the patient aware of a single cut of the scalpel, and so many other modern wonders, yet these children live as if it were the twelfth century.”

“Time don’t mean anything here,” he said. “Not politics or science or anything else. Only keeping alive from one day to the next. That’s the only measure.”

“It’s a goddamn sodding abomination,” she said with sudden, quick heat. “It’s a wonder anyone here survives childhood.”

“A goodly number don’t.” He kept to the shadowed side of the lane. Though it’d been years since he’d last walked down the streets of Bethnal Green, he was still known in these parts. His tracks needed to stay covered. “Them that do find a way to keep living, somehow.”

“Like you,” she murmured. “Not merely bare subsistence, but rising above it.”

He used to think so. Think that he’d dragged himself up from the gutter into a swell life. Clean, healthy, properly fed. Women in his bed when he wanted them. A job that put money in his pocket. What else did he need?

Something more than that, he realized. Something that made a difference past his own needs.

Bloody hell, these Nemesis blighters are getting inside my brain.

Not just Nemesis, but Eva. His body ached with wanting her. Yet it went beyond basic lust. Her drive, her backbone and daring. He’d thought someone could only feel greed for things—wealth, a fine carriage of one’s own—but that wasn’t so. You could be greedy for a person, too.

Right now, he needed his thoughts sharp. Trouble was cheap and abundant in this part of the city, especially for a wanted man.

“Down here.” He nodded toward a set of stairs that led toward a basement at the foot of a building. The blackness was even thicker at the bottom of the steps, making the door there barely visible.

Eva stayed close behind him as he went down the stairs and rapped the side of his fist against the door.

It creaked open, revealing a skeleton of an old man. His face looked even more skull-like as he lifted a low-burning lamp.

“One bed or two?” the old man demanded as he stepped aside to let Jack and Eva enter. “We’re almost all full up for the night. An extra bed’ll cost you.”

Jack dipped his head to keep from banging it on the low beams inside the long room. Shapes lined up in rows on the floor. Coughing punctuated the silence, and the mutterings of drunkards sleeping off their latest trip to the bottom of a bottle. Someone hushed a fussing baby.

He glanced at Eva beside him. Her mouth pressed into a tight line as she took in the dim, stale room and the two dozen people using it as their home until daylight. In all her visits to the slums as a missionary, she probably hadn’t seen places like this one.

Beds was a nice way of saying a mound of moldy straw and a thin, tattered blanket crawling with lice.

“No bed,” Jack said. “I want to know where the fight is tonight.”

The old man eyed him suspiciously. “Don’t reckon what you’re talking about.”

Jack held up a shilling. “The fight,” he prompted.

“Abandoned slaughterhouse,” the old man answered quickly. “A half mile from here. Want me to point the way?”

“I know it.” Jack dropped the shilling into the man’s bony hand. He and Eva turned to leave.

“Sure you don’t want a bed for you and your lady?” the old man cackled. “Nice an’ comfy for the both of you.”

Jack didn’t answer, escorting Eva back up the stairs. He’d sooner carve a portrait of the queen into his chest with a dull knife than have Eva spend a night here.

Back on the street, he guided them through a maze of alleys toward the old slaughterhouse.

“Did you ever sleep at a place like that?” she asked quietly.

“After my ma died,” he said. “Me and Edith spent more than a few nights there, or wherever had a few beds open. Usually didn’t sleep well, on account of the rats biting on my fingers and toes.”

She visibly shuddered, but at least she didn’t give him any pitying looks or try to say something consoling.

An empty yard surrounded the old slaughterhouse, where the pens used to be. The wood that made up the pens had long since been scavenged. The slaughterhouse itself was a large brick building, parts of its roof caving in, with tall wide doors through which the condemned animals once had been driven. The business itself had shut down when Jack had been just a tyke, but some of the old-timers remembered the way the terrified cows used to bellow before they met the knife.

Now, the sounds of men’s rowdy voices echoed around the yard.

As Jack approached the building, he cast a wary look at Eva. He’d no doubt she could take care of herself, but he was leading her right into one of the roughest, meanest places he knew. At the first sign of trouble, he’d get her out of there.