Prologue
In the indistinct, crepuscular streets of London, rain poured down and muddied the streets, sending the slush mud and gutter water down the cobblestone streets. Those without parasols hurried down the little cover down the streets, some merely raised their hoods and trolled through the downpour. A black carriage pulled by two palfreys came to a halt before the Bow street police station.
The Lord Solomon Ashford set a single foot outside onto the mud-slicked ground. A young lord of twenty-four years, black stained every inch of his frock coat, vest, trouser and tie save his white under-shirt. Declining to acknowledge the downpour soaking his clothes as he climbed the stained, white marble steps to the police station. When he stepped inside, Sol was met with a wave of sound. The blustering force desperately trying to put the pieces together of what was happening to London, trying to assemble the shit storm that was raging outside.
He removed his top hat and tossed it to a beyond-stressed looking apprentice that caught the hat as if he'd been shot, tossing his stack of papers into the air in a flurry. Sol ignored the officers at the reception desk and those that quickly retreated when they recognized him, muttering a low greeting and avoiding eye contact. He was accustomed to it, as he found his icy blue eyes made others, well, uncomfortable to say the least. He knew how it got under their skin, and Sol found he rather enjoyed it.
An officer, a senior by the look of him, a slightly balding man with only remaining tufts of black hair and his tie askew shuffled over to the young lord across the grand hall of dark wood and dim tapestry.
Without bothering to ask the sweaty mans name, Sol asked, "Could you be so kind as to lead me to see a certain detainee of yours?" Whilst adjusting the man’s tie for him and straightening his creased collar with black gloved and ring-crusted hands.
"D-detainee, milord?" The officer bumbled, clearly off-put by the handsome aristocrat being so close.
“Yes, sir. I believe his name is Egad Northwood.”
Nervous as to not upset him, the officer led him up the creaking staircase that wound up and onto the next floor. All the while, the young lord leaned his weight against his cane, the head being a glass wolfs head, snarling as Sol gripped it for support, a line down his side burning from the effort of the ascent. When Sol caught up the balding officer, he spied him talking with another, a youth by the looks of him that grudgingly gave up the ringlet of keys to the balding man, giving Sol a filthy glare. He strode past, leaving the hall, and Sol gave him his infamous crooked grin, his watery blue turning icy. At that, the youths expressing quickly became one of concern, and he hurried down the staircase.
The balding officer dismissed the two guarding the door to the cell and shakily handed him the keys with sweaty hands and left, leaving Sol all alone in the musty hall filled with dust mites floating about in the light of the lightning that flashed outside. Shadows of the black barred small window above Sol stretched across the hallway, sending shadowy stripes across Sol’s conflicted features. For a moment, the young lord was uncertain. This boy…this man would change everything. Sensing a crossroad, Sol rummaged through his coat-pockets and fished out a coin.
Let’s see. Heads, I take him in and explain everything….tails, I end him.
With that, Sol flipped the coin and watched it tumbled and spin through the musty air until…it landed on its side, perfectly balanced it sat frozen on the timber floor. It amused him, the thought that perhaps fate had intervened. Or gravity.
With a silver key, Sol unlocked the heavy wooden door and stepped into the small room with a desk littered with papers and a bin overflowing with such papers, facing directly to it was a row of bars, barring off the cell drowning in shadows that smelled of piss. His footsteps were light, but he made sure his cane met the wooden floor loud as it could, loud enough to capture the attention of the shadow in the corner of the cell, the one who’s eyes glowed an unearthly yellow.
The young lord sat in a wooden chair that was just a tad too close the bars, but not close enough for Sol.
“North?” Sol said simply, crossing a leg over the other and gripping his cane so much that his knuckled inside his gloves went white, his entire side burning. Of course, he didn’t reveal so much as a twitch nor bead of sweat to the man caked in blackened, dried blood before him. As Sol knew he would, Egad hadn’t a made single creak when he glided out of the shadows to stand before him, the only thing separating them an few inches of cold steel. He wrapped his hands around the bars, not an inch of visibly clear skin to be seen from the tips of his fingers to his elbows, the same crimson splattered across his black vest and perhaps once white undershirt. With those yellow eyes that Sol could never forget, Egad sized him up with an almost cat-like mannerism. As usual, he wore his coal-black hair tied back, two strips arcing around and framing his chiseled, roughly pointed face and strong cheekbones.
“You probably don’t remember me, I’d wager,” Sol muttered more or less to himself. Egad remained silent and still, blinking slowly, almost predatorily. Sol looked away for but a moment, and then looked back up to look him directly in the eye.
“What did you do?”
Egad lowered himself, slowly, never breaking his stare as his face became level with Sol’s.
“I murdered them."
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