Roma thinned his lips, but he pulled the shoe away and shoved it back into the bag. “The point remains, Papa.” He shook the bag, letting the fabric swallow up the shoe. “Eight men clash on the ports of Shanghai—seven rip out their own throats, one escapes. If that one then proceeds to rip out his throat too the next day, does that not sound like a disease of contagion to you?”
Lord Montagov did not respond for a long while. Instead, he spun on his chair until he was facing the small window that overlooked a busy alleyway outside. Roma watched his father, watched his hands tighten on the arms of the large chair, his closely shaven head prickle with the faintest hint of sweat. The stack of letters had been momentarily abandoned. The names signed in Chinese at the base of many were familiar: Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Zhang Gutai. Communists.
After the Bolshevik Revolution swept through Moscow, the tide of that political wave had blown down here, to Shanghai. The new factions that rumbled to life some few years ago had been persistently trying to recruit the White Flowers as allies, ignoring the fact that the last thing the White Flowers would want was social redistribution. Not after the Montagovs had spent generations climbing to the top. Not when most of their common gang members had fled the Bolsheviks.
Even if the Communists saw the White Flowers as potential allies, the White Flowers saw them as enemies.
Lord Montagov finally made a disgusted noise, tu
rning away from the window.
“I wish not to be involved in this business of a madness,” he decided. “Such shall be your task now. Figure out what is occurring.”
Slowly Roma nodded. He wondered if the tightness of his father’s voice was a sign that he thought this madness business beneath him, or if it was because his father was afraid of catching the madness himself. Roma was not afraid. He only feared the power of others. Monsters and things that walked the night were strong, but they were not powerful. There was a difference.
“I’ll find what I can on this man,” Roma decided, referring to the most recent victim.
Lord Montagov wheeled his chair back an inch, then lifted his feet onto his desk. “Don’t act in haste, Roma. You must confirm that this shoe truly belongs to the man who died last night first.”
Roma furrowed his brow. “The last victim is being kept in a Scarlet hospital. I’ll be shot on sight.”
“Find a way in,” Lord Montagov responded simply. “When I gave you the order to obtain Scarlet information, you seemed to approach them with ease.”
Roma stiffened. That was unfair. The only reason why his father had sent him into Scarlet territory in the first place was because lord against lord was too severe of an interaction. If Lord Cai and his father had met and had their encounter end peacefully, both would have lost face. Roma, on the other hand, could defer to the Scarlet Gang without consequence to the White Flowers. He was merely the heir, sent out on an important mission.
“What are you saying?” Roma asked. “Just because I had reason to enter their burlesque club does not mean I can gallivant through their hospital—”
“Find someone to take you in. I have heard rumors that the Scarlet heir has returned.”
A clamp fixed itself onto Roma’s chest. He did not dare react. “Papa, don’t make me laugh.”
Lord Montagov shrugged flippantly, but there was something in his eyes that Roma didn’t like.
“It is not so absurd an idea,” his father said. “Surely you can ask one favor. She was your lover once, after all.”
Seven
In the span of a few short days, talk had started in the city. At first nothing except rumors: a suspicion that it was not an enemy nor a natural force bringing about this madness but the devil himself, knocking on doors in the dead of night and with one look, utter insanity was wrought on the victim.
Then the sightings began.
Housewives who hung their washing by the ports claimed to see tentacles skittering away when they ventured outside at nightfall to collect their things. A few Scarlet workers who showed up late to their shifts were scared away by growling, then flashes of silver eyes staring them down from the other end of the alleyway. The most horrific account was the story spread by the owner of a riverside brothel, speaking of a creature curled amid the trash bags outside his brothel as he closed up. He had described it panting, as if in pain, as if struggling against itself, half-cast in shadow but doubtlessly an unnatural, strange thing.
“It has a spine studded with blades,” Juliette heard whispered in front of her now, the story presently being passed from son to mother as they waited for food from the window of a fast-serving restaurant. The little boy was bobbing up and down in excitement, echoing words heard from a schoolmate or a neighborhood friend. The more deaths there were—and there had been multiple since the man in the burlesque club—the more the people speculated, as if just by speaking the possibilities they could stumble upon the truth. But the more people talked, the further truth slipped.
Juliette would have shaken the stories off as rumors, but the fear seeping into the streets was very, very real, and she doubted such a feeling would reach these heights without substantial backing to the claims. So what was it, then? Monsters weren’t real, no matter what Chinese fairy tales had once been taken as truth. This was a new age of science, of evolution. The so-called monster had to be a creature of someone’s creation—but whose?
“Hush,” the mother tried, the fingers of her left hand nervously twining through the beads on her right wrist. They were Buddhist prayer beads, used to track mantra, but whatever mantra the woman recited now couldn’t compete with the limitless enthusiasm of her son.
“They say he has claws the size of forearms!” the boy continued. “He prowls the night for gangsters, and when he smells the taint of their blood, he pounces.”
“It is not only the gangsters dying, qin’ài de,” his mother said quietly. Her hand tightened on the back of his neck, keeping him steady in the slow-moving line.
The little boy stopped. A tremor entered his sweet voice. “Mama, am I going to die?”
“What?” his mother exclaimed. “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.” She looked up, having reached the front of the line. “Two.”
The shopkeeper passed a paper bag over the window and the mother-son pair hurried off. Juliette stared after them and thought about the sudden fear in the boy’s voice. In that brief moment, the boy—barely older than five—had comprehended that he too could die with the rest of the corpses in Shanghai, because who could be safe from madness?