Page 47 of No Man's Land

Supernatural or not, there had been nothingnaturalabout the man who had attacked him.

And the answers to who or what he was lay in this place of secrets, lay with Alex and perhaps with the man on the other side of that door. Stepping closer to it, Josef realised he could hear the low murmur of voices coming from the other room. He leaned closer still until his ear pressed blatantly against the door.

One voice, rising in volume, was clearly Alex’s. “...couldn’t leave him to die in the street!”

“Many men have been sacrificed in this war,” said another, waspish and older. “More than you can possibly imagine.”

“But this man is a…friend. Of sorts.”

“Afriend?” The other man sounded incredulous. “We are Winconians, Lord Beaumont, and we are on the front line of this conflict. There is no room forsentiment.”

Silence. After a long pause, Alex said, “To answer your question, he came here because I told him to. I gave him my card, and I told him the truth.”

A thump followed that announcement, the sound of an angry fist hitting a table, and a garbled exclamation Josef couldn’t make out even though the other man’s voice was loud enough that Josef pulled his ear from the door. “An outsider!” he fumed. “The founding laws of our society—”

“Were written a thousand years ago!” Alex had raised his voice, too. “It’s a different world now. People have a right to know what’s lurking in their city. Who are we to say they don’t?”

“Who are we?” The other man was shouting. “Weare the people keeping them safe!”

“Maybe they don’t need us to keep them safe anymore—”

“Oh, believe me, they do.Peopleare worse than the damned ghoul. They twist the truth and abuse it for their own gain.”

“But they’re changing.” Alex again, quieter now. “Surely we should change too?”

A snort, the sound of a chair pushing back. “People don’t change, I can assure you of that.Peopleare fearful, vain, cringing creatures no better now than they were when King William and your noble ancestor first set foot on our shores. And no better equipped to deal with the truth.” Footsteps, and then the voice was closer. Crisp and precise. “They used to drown witches in the Thames, and the only reason they stopped is because they stopped believing the truth. We will not—willnot—give it back to them.”

Into the silence that followed came a third voice—Dutta—who said, “It appears to be too late for that. Shepel is—”

“Right here,” Josef said, opening the door. Given that he was the subject of the conversation, he felt it was high time he joined in, and sod propriety. “Shepel is right here.”

As he’d guessed, the room was an office, or perhaps a small library because bookshelves lined all its walls. A grand mahogany desk dominated one end, Dutta leaning casually against the shelves to its right. Alex, who stared at Josef with wide, startled eyes, stood toe to toe with another man in front of the door.

That man was short, slight, and wiry, with a curiously ageless face and a corona of silver-gold hair. Dressed in a velvet smoking jacket the colour of red wine, he turned hard pale eyes in Josef’s direction.

“Wait until you are summoned,” he snapped.

“I don’t think I will.” Josef let the door close behind him. “Seeing as how you’re talking about me, I might as well be part of the conversation, don’t you think?”

Silence filled the room, and Josef was acutely aware of Alex and Dutta watching him, or perhaps watching the other man.

Eventually, the stranger spoke again, his voice very clipped. “Very well. Since you are here…” He shot a baleful look at Alex and walked around to sit behind the desk.

Alex visibly relaxed, and Dutta moved from his position next to the desk to take a seat in front of the small fireplace, stretching out his long legs.

His gaze touched on Josef, then moved to Alex. “I assume he wasn’t bitten.”

“Graves checked him.”

Their locked gaze held before Dutta nodded and Alex subsided into another chair with a sigh, pulling a packet of gaspers from his jacket pocket.

“Hehas a name,” Josef said. “It’s Joe Shepel. And you, I presume, are Subadar Dutta.”

The other man’s eyebrows rose in an expression of polite surprise so like Alex’s that Josef wondered whether they taught it at Eton. “Mr Dutta will suffice.”

“I see. ‘Subadar’ being a fraudulent rank, I suppose,” Josef said. “Just like ‘Captain’ Winchester over there. That’s a serious offence, by the way: impersonating an officer.”

“Don’t you ever stop?” Alex sighed, lighting his cigarette.

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