This Monstrous Thing

by Mackenzi Lee

  “Thou didst seek my extinction, that I might not cause greater wretchedness; my agony was still superior to thine, for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close them forever.”

  Frankenstein, I realized. He was quoting Frankenstein in the cawing oratory voice he used to adopt when he and Mary read Milton aloud on the shores of Lake Geneva, and birds scattered from the grass before him.

  Now it was the crowd scattering before him as his army advanced. A woman stepped backward on top of me and I almost lost my footing. Someone shoved me from behind. People were starting to run.

  The first explosion went off then. Somewhere in the back of the crowd there was a bang and a flash, and the screams multiplied. One of the market stalls had caught fire, sending a tongue of flame blazing into the air. Then there was a second bang from close behind me, and a gust of hot, sulfurous air hit me so hard I stumbled.

  And then everyone was running and coughing and shouting. It was hard to make out anything amid the noise, though I swore I could still hear Oliver reciting Frankenstein, like a scripture, at the top of his voice. The clockworks were shoving back at the crowd, pikes and hammers and fists ready for a fight.

  Though the haze, I could see blue-uniformed police officers streaming into the crowd. They had their rifles raised and were making for the tower, but the ring of clockworks held them off. Shots were fired. More people screamed. I saw a splash of blood in the river— washed away so fast it was like blinking away sunspots.

  My eyes were burning from the smoke and it was hard to keep them open. Ahead of me, amber flames were clawing at the air, jumping from one stall to the next along the garlands. I staggered forward and tripped over something. A body was sprawled at my feet, and blood was trickling into the cracks between the cobblestones. I stopped dead for a moment, too shocked to move, but I knew I didn’t have time to waste being afraid. Mary was somewhere in the crush. My brother was swearing vengeance against her book in her own words, and I had to find her.

  “Mary!” I called, not certain if anyone but myself could hear. I started to shove my way back, against the crowd and toward the clock tower base. It was a fight to not get sucked under and stepped on. The crowd was funneling toward the mouths of the streets and across the bridge, which was jammed up too tight for anyone to move.

  “Mary!” I shouted again, so loud I felt something tear in my throat. “MARY!”

  And, miraculously, I heard someone shout back, “Alasdair!” I turned. Mary was struggling toward me, scarf pulled up over her nose and tears streaming down her cheeks. She reached out. I snatched at her hand, just the tips of our fingers brushing, but the second time, I caught her and pulled her against me. Our arms tangled, and I held as tight as I could to her as we started fighting our way out.

  We were shoved sideways, away from the square and toward the clock tower. A line of policemen had formed a perimeter around one of the arches at the base; they stood shoulder to shoulder with their rifles trained forward, but they weren’t firing.

  “Out of the way!” someone bellowed from behind us, and Mary dragged me to the side as another battalion of officers pushed through the crowd, Jiroux in the lead. He threw up his hand and his men stopped, rifles raised, but silent.

  “Stay back or it goes up!” I heard someone shout, and it sounded like Clémence. In spite of everything, I stopped and turned back to look.

  It was Clémence, standing under the clock tower with her face illuminated by a blazing torch in her hand. She was surrounded by other clockworks, all holding firm as they stared down the police. In the light from her torch, I could make out barrels and crates packed in tight rows along the walls.

  Oliver’s men had packed the clock tower full of explosives.

  The police weren’t getting any closer, but they kept their rifles up.

  “Lower your weapons and back away!” Clémence bellowed at them.

  “Just shoot her!” one of the policemen shouted.

  “Shoot her and the whole tower goes up!” one of the clockworks behind Clémence hollered back.

  “No!” Jiroux screamed. “We can’t risk it. Do as she says! Lower your weapons and do as she says.” The rifle barrels began to drop. Jiroux set his own rifle on the ground and took a step forward, arms raised. Clémence kept her torch high but came out from under the tower to meet him.

  “I speak for the rebellion,” she called. She had to shout, and even then I almost couldn’t hear her. “We are led by Oliver Finch, the resurrected man. Your clock is running backward, and when it completes one full rotation, if our demand has not been met, our explosives will detonate and the heart of your city will be destroyed.”

  “What demand is that?” Jiroux called back.

  Clémence held his gaze. She didn’t look frightened. She didn’t look brave either. Just determined, like a girl with something to do. “We want Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, turned over to us for our justice.”

  Mary’s fingers clenched around mine.

  “We will not give an innocent life to appease you,” Jiroux called back to Clémence. “You will be stopped before you have the chance to act.”

  “We are capable of great damage, Inspector,” she replied. “So take whatever risks you want, but know that you will not get through. Any person who comes near the tower will be shot. We’ll only give passage to Mary Shelley.”

  Jiroux held her eyes for a moment, then turned to the line of blue coats behind him. “Empty the square!” he bellowed. “We need everyone out!”

  Most of the crowd didn’t need to be told, but the officers turned and began shoving the stragglers back toward the streets as fast as they could. I whirled on Mary and grabbed her by the shoulder. “You have to give yourself up,” I said. “Then we can get inside the tower and talk to Oliver.”

  She shook her head. “Alasdair, I can’t.”

  “We can make him hear reason. We can end this, please, Mary!”

  “Keep moving!” an officer shouted just behind me. “The square is being evacuated.”

  I didn’t move, but Mary was tugging on me. “Alasdair, we have to go.”

  “We can’t go, we have to get to Oliver!”

  “Keep moving, sir!” The butt of a rifle knocked into my back and I stumbled.

  Mary grabbed me before I fell. “Come on,” she said. She was leaving me behind and there was nothing I could do but follow, because suddenly she was the only chance of stopping this. As the crowds and the police pushed us out of the square, I looked up at the clock tower, hoping for one more glance at Oliver, but he was already gone.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  The streets were packed almost too tight to move. Everyone was pushing and shouting and coughing as the smoke from the bombs seeped through the streets, tripping over each other as they tried to get away from the square. Omnibuses were stopped dead, clogging the roads as people streamed around them, and I saw a carriage overturned, luggage spilled into the mud and wheels spinning slowly like some invisible hand was pushing them forward.

  Mary kept a tight hold on my arm, pulling me through the mob and away from the clock tower. “We can go to the villa,” she called to me over her shoulder. “It’s outside the city, we’ll be safe.”

  “Mary, we can’t leave.” I stopped, and rather than let go, she stopped as well and turned to face me.

  “The police will take care of it.”

  “No, Mary, we have to do something. We need to get to Oliver; you’re the only one who they’ll let through.”

  “We? Alasdair, he wants to—” A man smashed into her so hard she staggered into me, and I grabbed her before she fell. For a moment, she was still, forehead against my shoulder and her nails digging into my arm. Then she turned and dragged me sideways through the crowd. “Where are we going?” I called, but she didn’t answer, just
pulled me after her off the street and up the steps of Saint Pierre Cathedral.

  Inside, the cathedral was deserted. The sound of our footsteps carried all the way to the top of the dome before returning to us in whispers. “What are you doing?” I hissed at Mary as she led the way into a chapel off the aisle. A saint’s statue glared down at us from a raised dais in the center of the room, praying hands intertwined with the chain of a dangling pocket watch. Saint Pierre. Patron saint of clock makers.

  Mary sat on the pew in front of Saint Pierre and closed her eyes. I didn’t know what she was doing or what to say, so I just sat down beside her. My whole body felt like a loaded spring, tight and about to snap. I kept waiting to hear an explosion from the square, even though Clémence had promised an hour. I didn’t have a clue how loud it would be, or if we’d feel it from here. Maybe the whole street would go up with it, I thought. Maybe we’d die and never feel the blast.

  From beside me, with her eyes still closed, Mary said, “Do you remember when you kissed me?”

  I felt that blast. All the cold left me in an instant and I was hot with shame and furious that she dared bring that up, especially when there were so many other things conspiring against me. “I don’t want to talk about that now.”

  “It was at the lake, in the moonlight,” she said, like she hadn’t heard me. “The night before—”

  “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “That was the bravest thing I’d ever known anyone to do.”

  I didn’t think it possible, but my face got hotter. “Don’t patronize me.”

  “It was brave,” she continued, opening her eyes, “because you were scared but you did it anyways.”

  “I wish I hadn’t.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  I didn’t say anything, because she was right—I didn’t. I would have kissed her again.

  She reached out like she was going to touch me, but stopped halfway there, her hand raised and wavering between us. Then she said, “I’m not brave like you, Alasdair. I am not brave, and I am not good.”

  “You are,” I said, but she shook her head.

  “I’m not going to give myself up.”

  I closed my eyes. “Please, Mary.”

  “We could go,” she said suddenly, and when I opened my eyes again, she was staring at the doors. A pale sliver of candlelight guttered across her face like a scar, and for a moment she looked cleaved in two. “We could run, you and I. Right now, run away. Leave all of this.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You don’t owe Oliver anything,” she said.

  “We can go to the clock tower together,” I pressed on. “I’ll stay with you, every step. Never leave you.”

  “He wants to kill me.”

  “I won’t let him. I’d die before I let him.”

  She laughed, but it fractured halfway through. “Find a better thing to die for.”

  “Think how many men will die—”

  “The police will stop them.”

  “Then think how many clockwork men will die. They are Frankenstein’s Men—Frankenstein’s army, those are your words, Mary. You have ruined so many lives with your book—people are going to die if you don’t come with me and talk to Oliver. Can you live with that?”

  She swiped at her cheek with the heel of her hand. “I’ll be all right.”

  “How can you say that? You would never have said that two years ago. You would never have done this to everyone. To me.”

  “Yes, I would have,” she replied, and suddenly she sounded angry. “You don’t know me, Alasdair. We had a few months together and you have spent every moment since then creating some make-believe version of me in your head, but whoever you think I am, I am not. I am not clever and I am not brave and I am not good. I am not any of those things I pretended to be to keep you interested in me.”

  Footsteps cut through the silence, and we both turned to see a minister hurrying into the chapel, hands clasped before him. “You have to go,” he called, weaving his way through the pews toward us. “You can’t stay here. The police are evacuating the area.”

  Mary stood up. “We were just leaving.”

  “No, Mary, please.” I reached out for her hand but she snatched it away. The moonlight through the rose windows fell between us in pastel fragments. She didn’t look back at me as she turned and walked past Saint Pierre and the minister, straight through the doors and out into the swelling streets.

  By the time I followed, she was gone. Just like that.

  I broke free of the crowds of evacuees streaming away from the square and jogged in the opposite direction, back toward the clock tower. With or without Mary, I had to get through to see Oliver. Darkness and the lingering smoke from the explosions gave me good cover, but the police were everywhere and it was a tricky business staying out of sight. I managed to make it to the main road unseen, but four officers were patrolling the entrance to the square at its end, and it didn’t seem likely I’d get past them unnoticed.

  I was lurking in the shadow of an omnibus, weighing my chances if I made a run for it, when someone grabbed me by the collar and dragged me backward, off the street and around the corner. I tried to fight, but I was slammed against a doorway so hard my head spun. The man holding me pressed an arm against my chest to keep me in place, then raised his lantern, and as the beam fell between us I realized it was Ottinger. There was soot smudged across his cheeks, and a thread of blood was running from beneath his cap, but under it all, his glare was fierce. My stomach dropped.

  “What are you doing?” he hissed.

  “Let go of me.” I tried to shove him away, but with only one good arm, it was like trying to knock over a brick wall.

  “Get out of here,” he said, and suddenly he was speaking very fast. “There’s hardly anyone at the station; you can walk right in. Get your father and go.”

  I stopped fighting and gaped at him. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying you should run. You’ve been given a free pass out of the city, so get out before they find you.”

  “I can’t go.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because that’s my brother!” I cried, louder than I meant to. Ottinger glanced down the street; then his grip loosened. I slid free and faced him head-on in the pale beam of his lantern. “I have to get into the clock tower. I can talk to Oliver.”

  He shook his head. “No one can get through. Jiroux had his men shoot three of the clockwork sentries and then try to force their way in, but they were massacred. We have a girl from the clockworks who says they’ll let her pass, but she won’t go without Mary Shelley. That’s our only way.”

  “Mary’s gone,” I said, and the realization caved inside me all over again.

  “Jiroux’s been operating under that assumption. It doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t have turned her over. He won’t do anything that might be interpreted as compliance.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to put together some sort of plan, but my brain was a mess of stuck cogs, rusted and wound down and refusing to turn fast enough.

  Then I realized what he had said.

  “The police have a girl from the clockworks?” I asked, and he nodded. “The blond one? Clémence?”

  “I think so. They’re holding her in the square.”

  “Can you take me to her? She can get me through to see Oliver.”

  “She said she won’t go without Mary.”

  “She’ll take me, I know she will.” I saw the hesitation in his eyes and before he had a chance to say no, I pressed on. “I know you aren’t as thoughtless as them. If I can talk to Oliver, I can help.”

  “You truly think you can call him off?”

  I wasn’t anywhere close to certain, but doubt wouldn’t do me any favors, so I nodded.

  Ottinger held my gaze for a long moment, and then he nodded slowly. “All right, I’ll take you. Come on, stay close.”

  As we crossed back into the street, a low clang
echoed from the square, loud as a cannon blast. We both jumped and then turned in its direction. The clock was striking the half hour.

  Half our time was gone.

  The police had created a spotty perimeter around the square, using the abandoned market stalls for cover. The whole force seemed to be crouched behind the barricades with their rifles trained on the clock tower base, waiting for whatever would happen next.

  Ottinger gave me his cap. It was hardly a disguise, but it kept my face in shadow. “Walk like you know where you’re going,” he told me. “And let me talk if we’re questioned.” But no one stopped us as we skirted the square. Hardly anyone even looked our way. They were too busy watching the clock tower.

  The police had thrown Clémence in one of the stalls at the edge of the market, near the river. Ottinger unlocked the door, and as he pushed it open, I heard her say, “And here I thought you were going to let us blow a crater in your city.” I stepped past Ottinger and went inside. She was sitting on the floor with her back against a shelf of broken nutcrackers; she was smirking until she saw me, and then her face straightened. “Alasdair.”

  “Mary’s gone,” I told her. “She left the city. She’s not going to give herself up.”

  She blinked, and just for a second, a sliver of surprise blazed through her well-worn veil of defiance. Then she swiped her hair out of her eyes and said very calmly, “So we’re all dead.”

  “Not if you let me talk to Oliver. You’re the only one his men will let through, and if I’m with you, they’ll let me through too.”

  “They said it could only be Mary.”

  “Well then, we’re going to have to figure something else out, but I need you. You are the only way we can stop this.”