From the Deep of the Dark - Stephen Hunt

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      ‘They have been banned,’ the vicar muttered as the private investigator rustled the bag back out of sight. They started to climb up, an enclosed spiral staircase twisting around to the church’s upper level.

      ‘Your case, Mister Daunt?’

      ‘The mayor and the city elders have engaged my services. The current plenitude of bodies being discovered around the capital with an absence of bodily fluids is not good for trade, and it is all about trade these days, isn’t it?’

      Thank the Circle for that! So you’re not onto me after all. Charlotte breathed a silent sigh of relief, confusion about her role in his affairs replacing the blade of fear that had been sliding into her side. ‘You don’t believe in that nonsense the newssheets are printing do you? Vampires stalking the Kingdom?’

      ‘I have little choice but to believe in the corpses being found,’ said Daunt. ‘Boxiron and I have become quite the regular visitors at the public mortuary, have we not? As to the cause of the deaths, well, we shall see.’

      Charlotte stepped into the church’s infirmary, a number of clean white-sheeted beds lying empty apart from three occupied cots at the end of the hall, a little cluster of old but functional-looking medical equipment arranged in an arc around the bunks. As she got closer, Charlotte saw each bed held an identical-seeming girl a couple of years younger than Charlotte herself, their pretty brows soaked with sweat under long flaming red curls of hair.

       Triplets?

      She noticed they were tied to the bedposts, hands and legs restrained by leather straps, and they seemed to be mumbling in a unison so synchronized it was uncanny.

      ‘Who are they? What is it that they’re saying?’

      Daunt bent forward and wiped the sheen off the nearest girl’s forehead. ‘Meet the sisters Lammeter, daughters of this parish’s undertaker. When they got sick, a doctor was consulted who was left quite baffled by their condition. Supernatural forces were suspected, religious infection, so their girls’ parents brought them to the church to see if it could help. And as to what it is they are saying, that is rather the nub of the issue.’

      ‘They are possessed,’ said Boxiron, his metal bulk swaying slightly at rest. ‘They are talking in tongues. It is as if Radius Patternkeeper is riding them, Lord of the Ravenous Fire himself.’

      ‘Watch your words, steamman,’ snapped the vicar. ‘As a believer, I’m tolerating your presence here on sufferance.’

      ‘Yes, yes,’ said Daunt, raising his hands placatingly. He turned back to Charlotte. ‘Where we can even identify their ramblings, the dialects and languages being spoken are very old. I’ve been recording the words phonetically in the hope of having them translated.’

      ‘And what does this have to do with me?’ Charlotte demanded. ‘Do I look like a professor of ancient languages?’

      ‘In truth, you’re barely old enough to have matriculated, Damson Shades. But there are certain words that we do recognize. People’s names being shrieked out in the dark of the night. Your name, as a matter of fact. As well as Nancy Martense’s. Andrew Dunsey’s. Emma Osgood’s.’

      Those names sounded familiar. Charlotte raised an eyebrow inquiringly.

      ‘You’ll find them all laid out on the mortuary slab, Damson Shades. All very pale, as you would expect for a body totally drained of blood. Little more than empty sacks of flesh.’

       The newssheets. I’ve read those names in the Illustrated.

      ‘You’re the only name we’ve managed to trace who is still alive.’

      As he stopped talking, the three girls started shaking uncontrollably, and as one they began chanting: ‘Shades. Shades. Shades. Charlotte Shades. Mistress – of – Mesmerism. Mesmerism. Mesmerism. Shades. Shades. Shades.’ Charlotte recoiled physically at the unholy wailing, her name passing across the lips of these three restrained banshees. As quickly as it started, the noise fell away to be replaced by a guttural alien chanting, unknown words hanging in the air like intruders in the calm sanctuary of the Circlist church.

      Beneath Charlotte’s dress, the gem around her neck was burning cold again, just like it had been when she had met the mysterious Mister Twist and his pet thug, Mister Cloake.

      ‘That demon song,’ said Boxiron, ‘told us where we could locate you.’

      ‘I don’t suppose their rants have given you the name of the lunatic running around Middlesteel with a taste for human blood?’

      ‘I’m working on translating it,’ said Daunt, tapping an open notebook on a bedside table, full of shorthand scribbles of the girl’s mad ramblings, ‘with high hopes. In the meantime, I would like you to accept the protection of Boxiron. I would not be here if it was not for my friend’s rather direct methods, and I would like to offer his talents for your service also.’

       A copper’s bloody nark following me around while I housebreak into Parliament? I don’t think so.

      ‘That would not currently be convenient, Mister Daunt. I have professional obligations to keep. After I have fulfilled them, your metal friend may burn his coal outside my bedroom door if it suits you to do so.’

      ‘Please,’ Daunt pleaded, pressing his card into her hand. ‘Reconsider. The murderer –or murderers – behind this wave of slayings may be privy to your engagements. They could well be counting on you fulfilling them.’

      ‘I’ve been looking after myself for a lot longer than the Illustrated has been scaring the city with vampire tales.’

      Besides, there are plenty of thugs in the pay of the flash mob who can match any madman in town with their taste for blood, butchery and fancy knife work. Charlotte had to resist the urge to skip happily out of the room like a little girl, suppressing a sneer at the much-overestimated abilities of these church-trained meddlers. Read me like a book, indeed. Please. My body language couldn’t have been guiltier when I was hauled in here by that iron brute, and those three buffoons have nary a clue.

      Boxiron watched the young girl leave the church, his neck joins juddering intermittently as if he was inflicted by palsy. ‘She is only a child – she failed to take your warnings seriously.’

      ‘Oh, I think she took them seriously enough, old friend,’ said Daunt. ‘But not as seriously as she takes her living. Driven to it, wouldn’t you say?’

      ‘You read her body’s cues, didn’t you?’ said the vicar. ‘There wasn’t much she said that was true.’

      Daunt shrugged. ‘Yes indeed, I did read her. Still, she is old enough to decide to put her living before her life, whatever that living may be.’

      ‘You’d know all about that, Jethro.’

      ‘That’s hardly fair, Fidelia. I’ve been putting my mind to the best use I can, since the Inquisition revoked my parsonage and tossed me out of the rational orders.’

      ‘Do you still hear the old gods?’

      ‘Actually, not for some time now.’ Daunt glanced back to the three sisters, their synchronized ranting rising and falling with an almost hymn-like quality. At least, not directly. And not until I came back here.

      ‘Why didn’t you tell her what you’ve already discovered, you and that filthy book of yours?’

      ‘It’s the Inquisition’s bestiary,’ said Daunt. ‘Not mine. It’s merely on loan to me.’

      ‘Semantics won’t help the sisters recover.’

      Sadly, not much will. ‘One thing is true, however. Damson Shades certainly believes she can handle herself. Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Fidelia.’

      ‘I am sorry?’ said the vicar.

      ‘And

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