Another vision.
Hel knelt by the man’s side, checking his pulse, angling the flat of her blade to catch his breath.
Far from the beggar Sam had expected, the man was exquisitely dressed in a tailcoat with gold-and-emerald cuff links?—attire that wouldn’t have looked out of place amidst the gilded carriages that had courted the Shelbourne that evening. Which begged the question: What was a man like that doing, running out into the night, alone and on foot? Particularly when it was filled with monsters.
“John!” Lord Lusk rushed over, shoving Hel out of the way and kneeling, cupping his hands to the man’s face. “Mr. Enfield!”
“Is he...?” Sam couldn’t bring herself to finish, her heart in her throat.
Hel shook her head.
The attack had happened right in front of them, and still, they hadn’t been able to save him, hadn’t even learned what it was that had done the murdering. A horrible thought struck her then, that all the disappearances might in fact be murders, that the Viscount and the Duke might already be dead, their ghosts haunting the raths, their voices keening in the wind.
That they might be too late.
But she was getting ahead of herself. The other bodies hadn’t been found. It was possible Mr. Enfield had only died because of Van Helsing’s intervention. Because oftheirintervention, Sam allowed, grief and guilt tangling in her thoughts.
“Why didn’t you listen to me?” Sam asked Van Helsing, her voice breaking. Better he be abducted thanthis.
“The drop was only ten feet,” Van Helsing said hollowly.
If Sam were being honest, she had to concur: Mr. Enfieldshouldn’thave died. Hel and Van Helsing had both leapt from the same height without so much as a contusion, let alone a cracked skull. And then there was the utter dearth of blood. There wasn’t a drop outside its proper bounds, so far as Sam could tell?—not spreading on the cobblestones beneath Mr. Enfield, and not spattered from whatever winged monstrosity Van Helsing had shot.
In fact, Mr. Enfield didn’t look injured at all. He might have been sleeping, albeit inadvisably, if it weren’t for the way his grey eyes wouldn’t stop staring, his pupils blown.
“He should have survived,” Van Helsing said.
“Hold your tongue,” Lord Lusk reproached, even as he brushed his fingers over the man’s eyes, closing them. “He’s not gone yet.”
Sam was startled into hope for a moment, before Hel murmured: “It’s for the priest. If you say a person has passed, they can’t receive their last rites.”
“Ridiculous superstition,” Van Helsing muttered under his breath. “You can’t lie to God.”
“Then it’s a good thing priests aren’t gods.”
Was this, then, the same ghost who had attacked Sam? No, it couldn’t be. There was no sign of frost, for one, and the ghost who had come for Sam had been dispersed, for another. She would be back, of course. Ghosts were not so easily released from undeath. But it would take time for her to draw herself back together again. No, whatever had attacked Mr. Enfield was something else entirely. The same creature that had absconded with the Viscount and the Duke, if she had to guess. But then...
“It shouldn’t have worked,” Sam said.
Van Helsing’s brow knit. “What shouldn’t have worked?”
“Two bullets shouldn’t have been sufficient to drive off his attacker,” Sam said. Not when salt and the iron chain failed to safeguard the Viscount and the Duke.
“Only if you assume it’s the same variety of monster,” Van Helsing said. “He might have been attacked by something else.” If Professor Moriarty was behind it, it was possible. The monsters he kept were legion.
Hel snorted. “All of whom harness the gales to abduct their victims? Unlikely.”
“Something must have changed,” Sam murmured, searching Mr. Enfield for some sign as to why he’d been left behind and the others stolen.
Her gaze snagged on Mr. Enfield’s right hand, curled above his head, his hair caught on his ring, a geometric piece set with a square emerald. If Sam could only touch it?—let her skirt sweep over him, brush her ankle against his curled fingers?—she might find out. But even as Sam eased closer, Van Helsing was there, watching her with narrowed eyes.
Hands shaking, Sam knelt and pressed the camera to her stomach, as if that was what she’d intended all along, holding her breath to steady it as she snapped a photograph of Mr. Enfield. Only to frown. There was something odd about the cobblestones beside the body.
“Look here,” Sam murmured, pointing.
Hel knelt, brushing her fingers over the cracks, moss flaking away beneath her nails. Just like the moss on the tree in Saint Stephen’s Green.
“Your shot,” Hel asked Van Helsing sharply, “was it salt?”
