Old Habits Die Hard.

Chapter Three.

“I do fear this may be one of the many countless times in which we have led ourselves into a spot of bother.” Gabriel looked out of the carriage window as it trotted along, pulled by a horse on its way back into the heart of London town. Gabriel slid his hand along the front of his stomach and placed it firmly across it as the coach slid side to side like a boat on stormy seas.

He was referring to the many elaborate schemes that Kathryn and he had pulled off. Had it been exposing someone, ruining someone’s career or life, or luring someone seductively or what ever eccentric scheme the pair would have concocted.

”Have you no faith in me?” Kathryn sat politely opposite him dressed in another evening gown; less elaborate than the dresses people wear to take a walk in with their thick embroidery of fist sized jewels on them. It was made comfortable and easily to move around in. The top half; baring her shoulders and neck as usual, of the corset was black and lacy like smoke, and the bottom billowed out like mist and less agitating than the heaps of material others carried around below their waist.

”Oh yes, we most certainly are doomed. That is what you ask me every time we get into trouble like fools.” Gabriel gave her a certain humourless smile, and looked out across at everyone walking in dresses, and suits with walking sticks and umbrellas and closed the boards over the small window to block them out. Seeing them, made doing this much easier.

”I do enjoy, Chorley, how you act like you won’t jump with me when I say to do so. It’s why you’ve put on many of costume, many disguises, and of many personalities. You enjoy this every bit as I do.” Kathryn cocked the window back open with her foot and her leer travelled out to the rich folk walking along the gardens and enjoying workless days. “And the more we act like us, and follow our desires, the less we are like them.” Her eyes narrowed as she watched through the window; itself displayed like a frame around a painting of all the things they liked and disliked on the other side.

Gabriel rubbed the phantom pain on his side. “That corset was awful to bear and was a once off, and a once off only. Never again!”

Kathryn turned her eyes to him and gave him a wide smile that others would see as vicious and Gabriel would see as sarcastic. “You said that about the Geisha costume.”

Gabriel shuddered at the memories in which that night had unfolded, and Kathryn let out a laugh of her fond ones.

 -

They stopped in front of the hospital, both of them staring up with their mouths parted and holding each others arm as people filtered in and out of it. Gabriel had just cast a quick glance at the basement windows hidden in complete darkness; the windows painted with slick black oil which was where the dead lay, unpermitted to rest just yet.

He raised his eyes upwards towards the roof of the building; which was thin and tall with purple shutters on the window, and looked at the Gargoyles beginning to creep their way down from the top of the building towards them. Yes, Gabriel thought, what a nice message to give someone newly arriving to Mercy Hospital. Have Gargoyle demons cling to the top of the building, searching for new prey of souls to snatch within this gothic building.

”I think we are maybe a little way too over our own heads, and possibly gotten to big for our boots.” Gabriel muttered, trying very hard to pull his eyes from the watchful stone demons staring back at him.

”Nonsense” Kathryn replied unaffectedly and pulled him towards the door. “Absolute nonsense. Our heads are regular perfect sizes and shapes and the boots fit perfectly and do not hurt the feet to walk in.”

She pulled him to the door, as she’d led on so many other adventures which ended in the heat of the sun finding them wherever they were as dawn broke before them the morning after. Unbeknown to them, there would be no sun to follow this adventure. Only the harsh obscurity of black and grey would follow.