Elementary by Mercedes Lackey

Author:Mercedes Lackey
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-12-02T16:00:00+00:00

London Falling

Ben Ohlander

I stepped down from the darkened doorway that looked across to the rooming house that my brother had given as his London address. His lodging proved a decrepit thing, all over crumbling brick, fly-specked curtains, and piled garbage. It squatted in the thick gray fog, flanked by an aging warehouse and a pawnbroker whose cracked shop window displayed nautical pieces of unknown provenance overlaid by a thick coat of dust.

The rooming house fell far below my brother’s accustomed standards, a clear sign that he was down on his luck. His preferred prey, the widow of means, had become a wary beast in New England. His presence in London suggested he was attempting more fertile ground, where his quarry might be less bounded by attorneys and male relations who read newspapers.

The noisome stink of the thoroughfare hung in my nostrils and blotted out the view around me, restricting my sight to narrow tunnels, dimly pierced by the Whitechapel gaslights. A single flame danced a moment some yards away before failing, startling me. I absentmindedly reached out, my mind easily coiling around the gas, containing it, and feeling the tiny particles within rub and chafe as I constrained them. I added some small energy until the lamp glowed brightly, and flame returned. The casualness of the act, one I had performed a thousand times before, settled me and calmed my nerves. The dank, fog-enshrouded streets reminded me too greatly of the tunnels beneath Dr. Holmes’ hotel, where I had too rashly ventured and only barely escaped.

The memories of the terror as I had been trapped and tormented washed over me. I closed my eyes, and my gorge rose in my throat. I desired nothing else but to flee back to Massachusetts and my beloved woods. The Campania was still in port, and I might yet escape the stinks and closeness of the streets.

Steeling myself against my anxieties, I touched the rough paper of my brother’s telegram. I need you. Come at once. Six words graven into my mind. My brother, so prideful, to be brought so low as to make a naked appeal spoke more to his distress than the terse message. He had been the stronger of us, both physically and in his Mastery of our Art. I had been perhaps the quicker to learn and more deft in application, but the weaker in pure force. I, like others less endowed, served as an object of his derision. My rush to join him served both to protect one whose blood I shared, and also the thought that I might yet prove myself worthy in his eyes. How could I not rise in his esteem if I were the instrument of his salvation?

The thought of gaining estimation in his eyes lent me a courage badly shaken by my time in Chicago, though I confess I drew also reassurance from my father’s pistol. The weapon, a heavy horse pistol, proved an object of special contempt in my brother’s eyes. He had never understood why Father, a Fire Master and our teacher, kept the thing.

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