Strange Beasts

by Susan J. Morris

“What can I do for you, Miss Harker? I’m afraid I don’t have long⁠—there’s apparently a glaistig sleeping under my desk, getting wet goat everywhere⁠—but I’m yours until we get there.” “I’d like to put in for the Paris case,” Sam said at once, not even bothering to ask why he might have a half woman, half goat in his office. “As a field agent.” Mr. Wright choked on his crumpet. “The Beast attacks?” Sam could sympathize: the Paris case wasn’t exactly breakfast fare.

“Still, you’re a researcher, and a promising one at that. Why on earth should you want to abandon that for the field?” If she were honest, Sam didn’t. She loved the library. It had more the feeling of a temple than any earthly office. Fanciful scenes from myth leapt across the vaulted ceilings, heavy bookcases lined the walls, and disturbing oil paintings of queens bathing in blood and gods devouring men hung between them in gilt frames. Sam could spend reverent hours in the stacks, combing the archives for obscure references by the flickering light of gas lamps, surrounded by that comforting old-book smell and the memories of lazy summer afternoons spent hidden among the towering shelves.

“Smelled?” Mr. Wright burst out laughing. “Miss Harker, your passion is to be commended, and I know from your reports that you have a fine set of senses, but you’re no Baker Street detective. You couldn’t possibly learn anything from the way someone smells⁠—” Sam smiled. “I can smell you have a mistress,” she pointed out, and Mr. Wright shut his mouth. “You wear a wedding ring, but your suit smells, quite strongly I might add, of jasmine, gardenia, and wild roses⁠—scents that represent romantic trysts, secret love, and pain mixed with pleasure.” Sam was cheating, of course. Some of this she’d noticed, but the wild roses bit? Not even a bloodhound could distinguish that much. The particulars of the lady’s perfume were something she’d gathered from the whisper network of women who did the dull work of the Society⁠—cleaning, sorting, archiving, delivering coffee⁠—all without ever being noticed, as if they were some tame variety of ghost. Sam was a researcher after all; she’d done her research.

“What do you know of her?” Mr. Wright asked. “She’s a field agent and an Oxford-educated chemist, specializing in supercritical fluids, though she recently published a paper on liquid chromatography. I, ah”⁠—Sam chose her next words carefully⁠—“I hear she’s very clever.” What she’d actually heard was that Dr. Helena Moriarty, when faced with a man who wouldn’t stop harassing her, had taken up beekeeping, distilled the queen bee’s scent, and slipped it into the offending man’s shaving cream. After that, bees had swarmed him⁠—impossibly finding him no matter where he went, wriggling and squirming through cracks and keyholes, air vents, and chimneys. It was enough to drive a man mad. They just want to be friends, Dr. Moriarty was said to have echoed back at him. For indeed, he was only stung two or three times. Needless to say, he left her alone after that.

“You mean for me to spy on her?” Sam blurted. So this was why he’d let Sam on the case. Hel had been right. She glanced over Mr. Wright’s shoulder at Hel again, who winked at Sam, though she couldn’t possibly have heard. Told you so.

If the Society’s library was like a temple, its war room was something else entirely. Sam had only ventured inside once before, when she’d located a rare tablet on trolls, which Mr. Wright had requested for an expedition he was leading into a remote forest in Norway, and she hadn’t been allowed to linger. Even on the very morning she left for Paris, Sam felt like an imposter, as if the room itself might smell the books on her and refuse her passage.

Ghostly predawn light fell from a glass dome onto a bed of wild roses, garlic, wolfsbane, and sage. Behind the floral display, there was a heavy table of scarred mahogany, covered in maps and diagrams, scrolls and calendars, both esoteric and mundane. A veritable armory covered the burgundy-and-gold walls: stakes hewn from mountain ash and ornate holy crosses, bolts of blackthorn dipped in all manner of poisons, knives edged with silver, and great iron chains. Apothecary cabinets crowded the room beneath them, their hundred tiny drawers brimming with exorcism salt, skeleton keys, silver bullets, and anything else a field agent might require. This was where every hunter in the Society prepared for whatever may come. Now it was her turn. She could scarcely believe it.

“It seems like you have it all figured out.” Sam was beginning to feel quite unnecessary. “On the contrary, I missed the tears,” Hel said. “Was it something about holding his hand? Do you need to touch things to get these feelings of yours?” Sam tamped down on a flutter of apprehension. Hel was just teasing, she told herself. That was something normal people did⁠—unlike, say, holding hands with a severed arm, lacing fingers like lovers do. “I could smell the salt,” Sam said. Life, she’d found, was easier when you could slip inside the stories others told themselves about you⁠—when you didn’t challenge them or their views about the world. “I have a very good nose. Ask Mr. Wright about it sometime.”

“You came back.” Sam stumbled out of the ring of fire over the charring remnants of the horse. “I half thought you’d run off on me⁠—” Hel turned to her and smiled crookedly. “There you are.” She drew her revolver and fired. Sam flinched as the bullet popped past her ear. Turning slowly, Sam saw a man rolling in the heath, clutching his calf and screaming as his brethren⁠—six more men, bristling with armaments⁠—scattered in all directions. Hel holstered her revolver, striding over to the man collapsed in the heather. “You bitch!” the man sputtered. “Fetch our medical supplies, will you, Sam?” Hel said, not taking her eyes off him. “This man’s been shot.” “Y-yes, of course.” It wasn’t until Sam had plucked the small black bag of first aid from the carriage and was heading back that she noticed something she hadn’t before: gouges on the grindylow’s back. Marks around its neck and ankles, as if from a spiked collar and manacles. Burnt flesh on its back: a brand of ownership in the shape of a barghest, a monstrous black dog.

By the time Sam handed Hel the medical bag, she was glaring at the man so fiercely he actually flinched. “Why did you attack us?” Sam demanded as Hel cut the trousers away from the bullet wound. Sam handed her tweezers. “You all right in the head?” the man said. “That was a grindylow that attacked you, not⁠—argh!” Hel stabbed the tweezers into the sea of his flesh, fishing for the bullet. “I’d answer her question if I were you,” Hel advised when he stopped screaming. “All right, all right!” he panted, his shirt damp with sweat. “Word was there were a couple of wealthy, um . . . ladies coming this way. Large travel trunks, no men. It was an easy job, of course we took it.” “Was it?” Sam said acidly, and Hel gave her an amused glance. The bullet tinkled as it hit the pan. “No!” the man said miserably, and then screamed as Hel poured iodine over the wound. “Right, well, do your fellows a favor,” Hel said as she expertly packed and bound the wound, “and let them know never to trust whoever told you about this job again. Are we clear?” “Yes, ma’am,” he managed. “Good. Now get.” Sam scowled after him as he staggered after his “friends,” but to her surprise, he didn’t try anything. “So, you have some bite after all,” Hel said. “I was beginning to think you were applying for sainthood.” “Those men tortured and enslaved that poor grindylow and tried to murder us with it!” Sam exclaimed. “I should think the use of teeth well deserved.” “No doubt most men feel differently.” Hel laughed.

“Well, that’s just a security hazard,” Hel complained of the secret tunnel. “There weren’t even any guards.” “It’s not very secret if you post guards,” Sam pointed out. Unsurprisingly, what guards had been on-site the night before hadn’t seen anything, and were remarkably unalarmed about the potential invasion of rogue mistresses. In fact, they seemed to find the whole affair rather amusing. As if a mistress couldn’t also prove a murderer⁠—or whisper word to one. She would hardly be the first spy to sharpen an assassin’s aim. “It’s foolishness,” Hel grumbled. “If security by obscurity doesn’t work for vampires, it’s certainly not going to work for the Senate, whose members are severely lacking in the Suggestion and Hypnosis departments.” “Unless, of course, some of them are vampires,” Sam said. Though that was unlikely. The world had gotten much better at detecting vampires in the aftermath of her parents’ Transylvanian affair. “They could at least invest in a lock.”

“Whyever shouldn’t he?” Sam said. “He’s Arsène Courbet,” the woman had said, as if it were obvious. “He only works on canvases that will be displayed in the right places. Even if you could afford him.” Sam was a little offended. “And how do you know I’m not such a canvas?” The woman had just shrugged. “I haven’t heard of you, for one thing. Your dress is démodé⁠—too structured, you can’t see the natural body⁠—you’re wearing a Catholic saint medal, which is probably why, and you’re definitely not French. By which I mean stop trying to speak the language, it’s embarrassing, I’m embarrassed for you.”

Sam was very good at playing normal. But that didn’t mean she knew what it was like. Sometimes she wished she did. That the biggest problems she faced were predatory men and not monsters. Then again, Sam could simply shoot the monsters. Or rather, Hel could, and Sam could shout encouragement. It was generally frowned upon to do the same with men.

“Officer Berchard said you might be coming,” M. Rossignol said, and he creaked the door wide enough for Sam and Hel to slip through. The folks in the crowd craned their necks, trying to get a look, but the man shut the door tight behind them, locking it. “I wasn’t sure I believed him.” “Does he lie often?” Sam ventured. “No,” M. Rossignol said. “It just seemed too unbelievable. A couple of Englishwomen come all the way across the Channel to look at French corpses? It sounds like the start of a bad novel.” “American and Irish, actually,” Sam put in, remembering the change it had worked on Officer Berchard. He raised his shaggy brows. “Oh, well then, why didn’t you say so? That’s completely different, isn’t it? Everyone knows how much American and Irish women love corpses.” Hel raised an eyebrow right back at him. “There are a number of women waiting outside to see these corpses.” “Of course,” M. Rossignol said, waving for them to follow him deeper into the morgue. “But they are French. These are their dead.”

“Hel, I don’t think this bread has a message in it,” Sam managed, the bread’s magic leaving her feeling overwarm. It was a ward. She knew it like she knew her own name, even if she couldn’t explain why. “I think he’s trying to protect the Auclairs from the Beast.” Which, given that Clotilde might very well be the Beast, was ironic, to say the least. “With . . . bread?” Hel demanded incredulously. But the old man scowled, crossing the distance to rap Sam on the head with his cane. “Ow!” Hel’s revolver was in her hand in a second. “Try that again.” “Foolish girl! None of that, not out here,” the old man said sharply, ignoring Hel entirely. “In front of my good Catholic neighbors. And for a moment I thought you might be smart.”

“I didn’t tell you. So tell me now: Why did you need to know about Parisian suits? You showed next to no interest in the victims’ suits in the morgue, so it’s not about how they were murdered, and you don’t wear men’s suits, so it’s not on account of your wardrobe.” Hel grimaced. “I can’t. It’s not safe.” “No one was ever safer for being kept in the dark!” Sam argued. “The darkness doesn’t mean the monsters are gone⁠—it only means you can’t see them coming.” “If you knew, in this case, you’d make an exception.” “Easily enough said, when you won’t tell me,” Sam said tartly. “Would you rather I lie?” Hel asked. “Of course not⁠—” “Yours isn’t the only life at stake!” Hel burst out.

“Ah, so this was none of it true?” Cyprien said to Sam, dismayed. “This was all just for . . . what, directions? You could have just asked, you know.” “And what, you would have told me?” Sam said tartly. “Ah, no,” he said, flashing a grin. “It’s only I was falling for you a little. And that’s embarrassing, when you were only after one thing, after all⁠—and not the one thing I was hoping for.” “You were not,” Sam protested, blushing. “It was as much a game to you as to me.” Cyprien winced theatrically. “And here I thought you wouldn’t break my heart!”

“How could I say no to the opportunity to spend more time with you?” Cyprien said. He swept up Sam’s hand, circling his fingers on her palm. “And, chérie, should you change your mind⁠—” “She won’t,” Hel said flatly. Cyprien chuckled, letting her hand go. “Well, you’ll know where to find me.”

There was that soft shush of movement again. Sam whirled, but there was nothing there. “What was that?” Sam said, but it came out as a whisper as she shuffled backward, eyes darting as they tried to look everywhere at once. “I told you, it’s just rats⁠—” Cyprien started. And then Sam looked up. “Hel!” Sam shrieked. Hel and Cyprien turned just in time to see Sam tumble backward, foot catching on the tangle of bones, as a hairy tentacle, fat as a baby’s arm and glistening, shot through where Sam’s head had been a moment before. Hel spun, firing her revolver, and the tentacle flinched back from Sam. But it didn’t retreat. Instead, it lashed out at Cyprien, the tentacle snaking up his leg to kiss his thigh. Cyprien had just enough time to say, “Oh, fuck.” And then he was being dragged backward into the dark. He clawed desperately at the stone floor, but there was nothing to catch, and then the ground was bones that came away in his hand, a foretaste of the feast he’d become.

“We have to go back!” Sam started toward the collapse, but Hel was still gripping her wrist and held her fast. “We have to help Cyprien, he’s under there⁠—the carcolh, it grabbed him, I couldn’t stop it, and now he’s⁠—” “Dead,” Hel said. “He can’t be dead!” “It’s generally what happens when two hundred tons of rock fall on you.” “I saw his hand. It was, he⁠—” Sam couldn’t finish that thought, not without remembering the way his body had crumpled. The way she’d hesitated. A real field agent wouldn’t have hesitated.

“Why . . . was there . . . a preserved wolf . . . in that vat?” Sam panted. The mutilated wolf hadn’t been in the wood-block prints in Der Wolfssegner. Sam would have remembered that much. Hel raised an eyebrow. “You can’t wait until after we’re done running?” she said, the words coming easily, as if they hadn’t been running forever. “Abso . . . lutely . . . not!” Sam said, leveling Hel with her best glare. “I don’t know.” Hel looked troubled. “The mutilations were exactly the same as on the victims. That can’t be an accident. Some sort of compulsion, perhaps?” “You think he’s changing . . . the recipe?”

“I can’t do this,” Sam said, panic threading her voice. Hel might be fine with hauling her own body weight up hundreds of feet. Hel was brilliant at things involving monsters and bullets and biceps. But Sam’s biceps were almost entirely decorative. “There has to be another way.” Hel stepped into the basket, hooked an arm around the rope, and leaned out. “Come here.” “I, what⁠—” Sam took Hel’s hand and to Sam’s surprise, Hel pulled her stumbling into the basket with her. The basket was clearly not meant for two⁠—it creaked and swayed pendulously, Sam tightening her fingers in Hel’s sweat-slick shirt, but it held. She felt the basket jolt as Hel pulled on the rope. The basket rose by inches. The walls of the throat-like passage were so close she could have leaned out and licked them. “You’re going to have to help,” Hel grunted. “The heaviest thing I’ve lifted in years is a dictionary!” Sam babbled. “Then pretend I’m a dictionary.”

“You might learn why.” Sam hesitated⁠—that was a good reason. Sam bit her tongue against the curse that came to it. She really had been spending too much time with Hel. “You’re right,” Sam admitted. “Of course I’m right,” Hel said cockily, “it’s me.” “Keep going if you want me to stop,” Sam said tartly, and Hel gave her that crooked smile. “I’ll do it, but if I⁠—if something goes wrong . . .” “I’ll pull you away before you go too deep,” Hel promised, glancing over her shoulder out the open door, where Eulalie tore into the wild boar with her silver-kissed knuckle knives. “Quickly now. We don’t have much time.”

Sam wished her father were there. He never said much when she was upset. Not like her grandfather, who’d spin her stories; her brother, who would try to make her laugh; or her mother, who’d comfort her. But whether Sam was nine or nineteen, her father would mix her a cup of hot cocoa and sit with her on the back porch. Just . . . sit. Jonathan Harker knew not all horrors could be talked away. That sometimes, you just had to sit with them, until you could bear it.

Sam felt a surge of gratitude. “Hel⁠—” There was an answering squeak, and Sam’s eyes widened. “What,” Sam said, “was that?” “Oh, right.” Hel reached into her long tan coat and pulled a rat out of her pocket. “I almost forgot.” “A rat!” Sam exclaimed. “Does the hotel know?” Hel raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know, were you planning on informing them?” “Tell me you didn’t just bring that in from the sewer,” Sam said. “No, wait⁠—don’t. I don’t want to know.” “Hardly.” Hel snorted as she let the rat run up to her shoulder. “He’s courtesy of the Golden Dawn. We know mistresses are being transformed into the Beast by way of an unguent⁠—we just don’t know how. I thought it best we test on something that wasn’t one of us. The Golden Dawn assures me this rat has been ritually prepared to react to alchemy in the same fashion as a person. We should be able to test whether it was Clotilde’s perfume or lipstick that held the unguent. I should have a cage somewhere around here.”

“That still leaves the matter of tickets.” “There is one box available,” Sam said reluctantly, remembering the rumors she’d heard. “Or rather, it’s reserved for someone less . . . corporeal.” “Box number five,” Hel said. Seven years ago, a stagehand had been found hanged in box number five. It was rumored that his ghost had cut the line on the seven-ton bronze-and-crystal chandelier, sending it crashing down from the auditorium ceiling, killing the concierge who dared seat people in his box. It had been reserved for the phantom ever since. “We’d have to appease the phantom. We don’t have time to discover what binds it here. Can you get us access?” Sam thought about it. They needed someone with connections. Someone who held sway with Tout-Paris. “Arsène Courbet,” Sam breathed. “Who?” Hel said. “The perfumer,” Sam explained. “He creates perfumes for the brightest stars of the city and stage. He has connections everywhere. I bet he could get us in.” “Why would he help us?” Hel frowned. “I, um . . .” Had Sam imagined the connection between them? She might have, she allowed. But she hadn’t imagined the perfume he’d given her. “I got the impression he wouldn’t mind my company again, in more . . . private circumstances.” “You have a date?” Hel exclaimed. “When did you have time for that?” Sam’s cheeks heated. “It’s not a date! I just, Arsène and I⁠—” “Oh, Arsène, is it now⁠—” “Don’t tell me you’re jealous,” Sam said, her flush deepening.

“Are you ready?” Hel murmured, eyes locked on the room. It appeared empty, but Sam knew that to be a trick. Ghosts could go unseen when they willed it⁠—and often when they didn’t. Sam nodded, not trusting her voice. She’d never appeased a ghost before. “Should I⁠—” Arsène began, but Hel had entered the room. Sam shrugged at Arsène helplessly and went after Hel. After a beat, Arsène followed. The mirror frosted as they passed. Hel knelt on the floor, pulling her gloves off with her teeth and producing a knife from one of her hidden pockets. With neat, precise cuts, she freed a few of the objects Sam had sewn into her skirts. Sam turned to the mirror. Tentatively, she reached out with a fingertip and drew a word: hello. A handprint appeared in the frosted glass, obliterating the letters. Sam looked up into the mirror to see a man behind her, his mouth opening inhumanly wide, beetles skittering⁠— Hel flung a handful of salt from her pocket. The ghost splintered into fragments of shadow, with a shriek Sam was fairly certain was only in her mind until she saw Arsène wince. “She has enough men haunting her, thanks,” Hel said irritably. Arsène cleared his throat awkwardly. “Find someone else.”

“You surprise me, M. Courbet,” Hel admitted, standing. “Most men would have called that witchcraft.” “I’m pragmatic, Mlle Moriarty,” Arsène said. “I’d rather not be eaten by a ghost. And I’m glad to have improved your opinion of me, as I suspect it is necessary if I wish to see Mlle Harker again.” Sam blushed. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Hel said dryly, pulling his attention back to her. And she tossed him a book of matches. “Now, whatever you do, don’t let those candles go out.” “Who, me?” Arsène said, his eyebrows rising. Hel had that effect on people. “What are you going to do?” “Sam and I are going to stop the Beast.”

“I thought I heard voices,” the caretaker said, looking around the room with narrowed eyes. “Did you?” Sam said innocently, holding the hairpin behind her back and standing as nonchalantly as she could. “You should ask the doctor about that.” The caretaker scowled.

“Van Helsing was going to send you to prison for attempted murder,” Hel said, as if this were something Sam should already know, as if she were a piece on a chessboard, and this simply the most logical move. And Sam began to realize that Hel might be incapable of recognizing why Sam was upset. Hel shrugged. “It was easier to break you out of here.” “By letting me think that either I’d broken or you’d betrayed me to Van Helsing?” Sam burst out. “Why didn’t you say something?” “What are you talking about?” Hel looked honestly confused. “I gave you the look.” “The look?” And then it sank in. That unreadable expression after she’d said I appreciated your trust. The meaningful look before she’d handed Sam off. “You can’t express all that with a look!” “Can. And did,” Hel said.

“When we get out of here, I’ll understand if you want to go home.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Sam said. She was sore at Hel, not done with her. “I’m not going anywhere.” Hel drew a deep breath through her nose and let it out. “Good.” “I’d like to go somewhere,” Mme Frossard put in. “Preferably out of here.”

“Why are you helping me? I betrayed you to Van Helsing. I used your radiotelegraph to contact a source in my father’s home, I got you committed⁠—” “I’m still mad about that,” Sam admitted. To be honest, mad was an understatement. “But I understand why you did it, even if I’d rather you had told me⁠—both times, using words. And I believe in us. I believe in you.” Even if you don’t believe in yourself.

Sam unlocked their hotel room, eager to change into something a little less institutional, and swung open the door⁠—only to slam it shut again. “Hel!” Sam whispered urgently. Inside had been a woman tied to a chair. A woman with scandalously short dark hair and one of Hel’s crimson ties for a gag. Her sultry brown eyes had been molten. “Why is Mlle St. Laurent tied up in our hotel room?” “I told you we wouldn’t have any trouble finding her.” “You just left her there?” Sam said incredulously. “While you went about the whole business of rescuing me?” “I may have been slightly upset with her at the time,” Hel allowed. For what happened to Sam, she realized. It was almost sweet, except for the part where it was still absurd. “You can’t just tie people up in your hotel room and leave them there!” Sam said. Even if they were murderers. “If I hadn’t tied her up, she might be halfway to Spain by now,” Hel said. “I needed her to stay put while I broke you out of the asylum.” “Someone could have come in and seen her!” “But they didn’t,” Hel said, opening the door.

“You know he’d have blamed me, if he’d opened that door!” Sam said. “Now there’s an interesting question,” Hel mused. “Who does Van Helsing hate more at this point, do you think? You or me?” “It’s hardly a competition!” “Not with that attitude, it’s not.” Hel snorted, and she looked at Évangéline, who glared back at her.

Taking her little silver-and-iron knife, Sam cut a strip of cloth off the man’s suit, infused with that same fir scent. Then, careful to hold it at its end, she dropped it into Heathcliff’s cage. Curious, Heathcliff ran over to it at once. No sooner had his nose touched the cloth than he started quaking and squealing, his bones shifting, fur shivering out of his tail, his mouth sprouting more teeth, until Sam and Hel were staring, disbelieving, at the tiniest, most furious wolf. The beastly Heathcliff squeaked in rage and tore the strip of fabric to shreds with his teeth.

“There’s too many,” Hel said. “We don’t have time to check them all.” “Then it’s a good thing we don’t have to,” Sam said, realizing even as she said it that it was true. Hel frowned. “What do you mean?” “The perfume he made for the victims⁠—it’s a French euphemism for death,” Sam said as she scanned the titles. Rimmel’s Book of Perfumes, The Call of the Wild, The Migration of Birds . . . “He murders the men he accuses of indulging in the sin of lust with their own mistresses. And he tried to convince us the alchemist had been murdered by his own creation. Which means Arsène won’t have chosen just any book for his key. He’ll have chosen something poetic.” At last Sam’s eyes fell on a slender volume she’d almost skipped right past. A book of myths entitled The Riddle of the Sphinx. Perfume, he’d said, is like the riddle of the sphinx: she has a dawning, a noontide, and a twilight. “It’s this one!” Sam said, plucking the book from the shelf. “I’m sure of it.” “Well done. I’ll read. You search.” Sam flipped through the book as Hel called out the numbers from the opera house murder, piecing together the message, number by number. Where⁠—the⁠—dead⁠—sleep⁠—Dutch⁠—man⁠—in⁠—snake⁠—skin⁠—boots. “Van Helsing,” Sam said. Trust Van Helsing to have boots so notorious that even Hel’s brother had heard of them. “That tip this morning,” Hel said. “He’s headed to the catacombs.”

“What are you reading?” Sam asked, nodding to the book peeking out of Hel’s coat pocket. “A book,” Hel said. “One would think you’d have seen one before. Being, as you are, a researcher.” “I’m in recovery,” Sam returned primly. “Is it about the case? I think I⁠—hold on!”