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“The world is vicious.”
Undeterred by the watchful passengers aro
und us, Thomas brushed a lock of hair back from my face, his gaze thoughtful. “The world is neither kind nor is it cruel. It simply exists. We have the ability to view it however we choose.”
“Is there a surgeon on board?” a dark-haired woman around my age cried out in Romanian. It was enough to yank me free of despair. “That man needs help! Someone get help!”
I couldn’t bear to tell her this man was past assistance.
A man with rumpled hair clutched the side of his head, shaking it as if he could remove the body with the force of his denial. “This… this… must be an illusionist’s act.”
Mrs. Harvey poked her head into the corridor, her eyes wide behind her spectacles. “Oh!” she cried out. Thomas quickly escorted her back to the bench in my compartment, whispering soft words to her as they went.
If I hadn’t been so stunned, I might have screamed myself. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time I’d come across a man who’d been murdered only minutes before. I tried not to think about the corpse we’d found in a London alley and the raging guilt that still gnawed at my insides. He’d died because of my wretched curiosity. I was a gruesome monster wrapped up in delicate lace.
And yet… I couldn’t help but feel a buzzing sensation under my skin as I stared at this body, at the crude stake. Science gave me a purpose. It was something to lose myself in other than my own mad thoughts.
I took a few breaths, orienting myself to the horror before me. Now wasn’t the time for emotions to cloud my judgment. Though part of me wished to cry for the slain man and whoever would be missing him tonight. I wondered whom he’d been traveling with… or traveling to.
I stopped my thoughts right there. Focus, I commanded myself. I knew this was not the work of a supernatural being. Vlad Dracula had died hundreds of years before.
Muttering something about the engine room, the passenger with the disheveled hair ran off in that direction, probably to have the engineer stop the train. I watched him weave through the gaggle of people, most of whom were struck motionless by horror.
“Mrs. Harvey fainted,” Thomas said as he exited the compartment and smiled reassuringly. “I have smelling salts, but I think it’s best to leave her until this is…”
I watched his throat bob with emotion he was suppressing. I chanced indecency—figuring the crowd was preoccupied by the corpse and not my lack of discretion—and gripped his gloved hand in my own quickly before letting go. Words needn’t be said. No matter how much death and destruction one encountered, it was never easy. Initially. But he was right. We would get through this. We’d done it several times before.
Ignoring the chaos breaking out around me, I steeled myself against the abhorrent image and divorced myself from my emotions. Lessons on tending a crime scene Uncle had instilled in me were now body memory—I didn’t need to think, simply act. This was a human specimen in need of study, that was all. Thoughts of the blood and gore and unfortunate loss of life were doors that closed simultaneously in my brain. The rest of the world and my fears and guilt faded away.
Science was an altar I knelt before, and it blessed me with solace.
“Remember,” Thomas glanced up and down the corridor, trying to block the body from passengers’ view, “it’s merely an equation that needs solving, Wadsworth. Nothing more.”
I nodded, then carefully removed my top hat and swept my long cream skirts behind me, folding away any extra emotions along with the soft fabric. My black and gold lace cuffs brushed against the deceased’s frock coat, its delicate structure a horrible contradiction to the rough stake protruding from his chest. I tried to not be distracted by the blood splatter across his starched collar. While I checked for a pulse I knew I wouldn’t find, I flicked my attention up to Thomas, noticing that his normally full lips were pressed into a thin line.
“What is it?”
Thomas opened his mouth, then shut it as a woman peered out from the adjacent compartment, a haughty tilt to her chin. “I demand to know the meaning of—o oh. Oh, my.”
She stared at the man heaped on the floor, gasping as if her bodice were suddenly restricting all airflow into her lungs. A gentleman from the adjacent booth caught her before she hit the ground.
“You all right, ma’am?” he asked in an American accent, gently slapping her cheek. “Ma’am?”
An angry cloud of steam hissed as the train screeched to a halt. My body swayed one way, then the next as the great force of propulsion stopped—the corridor chandelier clinking madly above. Its sound made my pulse race faster despite the sudden stillness of our environment.
Thomas knelt beside me, gaze fixed on the newly departed as he steadied me with his gloved hand and whispered, “Be on alert, Wadsworth. Whoever committed this act is likely in this corridor with us, watching our every move.”
A serpent, a winged serpent, and a dragon, c. 1600s.
ORIENT EXPRESS
KINGDOM OF ROMANIA
1 DECEMBER 1888
That very thought had also crossed my mind. We were aboard a moving train. Unless someone had leapt from between one of the cars and taken off running through the forest, they were still here. Waiting. Enjoying the spectacle.
I stood and glanced around, noting each face and cataloguing it for future reference. There was a mix of young and old, plain and gaudy. Male and female. My attention snagged on one person—a boy around our age with hair as black as mine—who shifted, tugging at the collar of his morning coat, his eyes flicking between the cadaver and the people surrounding him.
