“Where is Miss Kate?” the manservant asked.
“I don’t know.” Simon helped the man sit up. “What happened here?”
“It was Gretta, sir. She came, and there was no stopping her. We tried, sir. Miss Kate, Miss Carter, and I fought.”
“Where are they, Hogarth? I don’t see them here.”
“I’m over here,” came a voice from across the cellar. A shape moved under more wreckage. A small figure struggled up onto her arms. Penny wiped straw and splinters from her hair and put a hand to her head. “I feel like I was run over by a coach.”
Simon left Hogarth and struggled across to Penny. He studied her for grievous wounds. Dried blood caked down her face, but she had suffered no obvious terrible damage. He took her face and stared into her eyes. They were clear, or nearly so.
“What happened to Kate?” he asked. “Where is she?”
Penny looked confused. “I don’t know, Simon. She was still fighting when I went down.”
“Gretta took her? And Imogen.” He looked from Penny to Hogarth for confirmation.
The servant said, “She must’ve done, sir. The creature disabled me when she entered. I managed to rally, but she made short work of me, I’m ashamed to say.”
Simon stood with a groan of pain and started toward the door. “I’m going after them.”
Nick appeared in the doorway and put a firm hand against Simon’s chest. “Easy, old boy.”
He started to push by only to find Malcolm standing in the hallway. The hunter was covered in a mixture of blood and plaster from where the wall had collapsed on them.
“Damn it!” Nick shouted, grabbing Simon by the arm. “Will you stop and think. We’re dead on our feet. All of us, you included. If we go up against Gretta and her crew now, we will die.”
Simon pulled his arm free. “I must do something.”
“You’re smarter than this, Simon.” Nick stared intently at his friend. “Don’t play her game. You can’t win like that.”
“He’s right, Archer.” Malcolm spat blood on the floor. “You can’t catch them; they’re all well away. But we know where they’ve gone.”
Simon growled in desperation, “We have no idea what they might do to her while we sit here doing nothing.”
“We’re going after her,” Malcolm insisted. “But we must reload and staunch the bleeding at least. There are dead and wounded all over the house.”
Simon took a long breath. He nodded as if in understanding. Then he said, “Hogarth, can you find horses?”
“I’ll do my best, sir.” The manservant pulled himself upright, shedding dust and shards of glass.
“Good man.” Simon draped the bandolier over his shoulder. “All of you take one of Kate’s vitality elixirs, pack anything you can find that will kill werewolves, and meet me out front in thirty minutes if you’re able. I’ll be leaving for Bedlam then.”
Nick shook his head. “You damned idiot, you’re going to kill yourself.”
Malcolm watched Simon silently limp up the stairs. He smiled grimly, helped Penny to her feet, and led her out of the wrecked cellar.
Kate felt as if she were bogged down in a mire though she had no memory of how it had happened. She attempted to drag open her eyes, which were gummed with deep sleep residue. The area around her was mostly in shadow. A horrific stench flooded her nose and she gagged. Her coughing started a fierce ache in her skull. As she tried to lift a hand to cover her mouth, she found it wouldn’t move. Neither of her arms responded. Through the haze, she saw that her wrists were strapped down to the arms of a chair. There was also a broad strap around her chest, pinning her upright, and her ankles were bound tight. She was in a wooden wheelchair. The stench assaulting her was suddenly all too familiar. Her gut twisted.
She was in Bedlam.
She started violently. Her memory snapped back to Hartley Hall and the werewolves. She struggled wildly at her bindings, but they had no give at all. Fear pushed its way up from her stomach, but she fought to bring it back under control.
Her gaze swept around, squinting at medical equipment. A dull metal examination table sat in the middle of the dim room. Leather straps hung from iron rails that ran the length of the table. Black blood and desiccated ooze clung to them.
Kate felt sick. Her fingers fluttered, stretching as far as they could, but the buckles trapping her remained tantalizingly out of her reach. She glanced about for anything to cut through the thick leather. A knife or a scalpel. Then she saw a frail shape on the far side of the room.
“Imogen!” Kate whispered as loud as she dared.
Her sister stood in the corner, head hanging low on her chest, her hair a tangled mess obscuring her face.
“Imogen, help me!” Kate pleaded.
Imogen didn’t move although Kate could see the shallow rise and fall of her chest. She shouted her sister’s name, trying to shake the girl from her stupor, but to no avail.
A door creaked open and Dr. White walked inside, carrying a metal tray. Kate fought to keep her fear under control, breathing heavily through her nose, and stoking her anger instead.
“Why are you doing this?” she demanded, praying that perhaps he was also Gretta’s prisoner and working under duress.
The white-haired doctor didn’t glance at her. He merely strolled to a cabinet and set the tray down. He went about placing instruments upon the cabinet’s surface.
Kate’s fragile hope was dashed. There was no concern or compassion in his manner, only a clinical distance. It was the demeanor of someone who knew full well the true situation. Her face grew hard and settled. “What have you done to my sister?”
He continued with his deliberate work of arranging his instruments. Kate noted with alarm his tray carried vials of liquid and a syringe, as well as horrific-looking medical utensils including scalpels of many sizes and serrations. She swallowed hard. “You were behind her condition from the start. You were working with Colonel Hibbert.”
White regarded her with annoyance as if she had finally said something worth his time. “Please. Colonel Hibbert was merely a tool, and a flawed one. I used him to draw your sister into my hands. When he was no longer useful, I had him killed and I treated Imogen here so I could ensure she would do as I wished. She has been a tremendous help. You should be proud of her.”
“What did you do to her?” A horrifying thought occurred to Kate. “Did you perform surgery on her? Did you operate on her brain? Oh, God!”
“Don’t be silly,” he replied. “A few potions sufficed to turn her. Surgery is only reserved for my final experiments.”
“Experiments? You mean the homunculi,” Kate repeated weakly. Her wrists twisted cruelly against the restraints. The bindings bit deep into her skin, but she didn’t care.
White looked over his shoulder toward a milky white creature lurking in the threshold. Kate’s lungs emptied of breath in a sharp exhale. The thing bent its grotesque limbs to scuttle forward. Its protruding dewy eyes swiveled in her direction. It took several minutes before Kate trusted her voice, and even so, it sounded frail and frightened. “You made those creatures.”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why create something so horrible?”
“Because I can.” White smiled, then gave her a more elaborate answer though the first was perhaps the most truthful. “They are my eyes and ears outside this hospital. Over the years, I’ve become a trifle notorious in some circles as a master of alchemical biology, so I’ve taken care to occasionally alter my appearance and my name. No one would suspect a kindly gentleman doctor named William White.”
“You’re a mad dog.” Kate fought against her restraints with renewed vigor.
His hand slammed down on the table, making the steel instruments jump about with a clatter. His face darkened in a contortion of rage. Kate sat very still, not daring to move and incite his anger more. Several seconds slipped by as she waited in terror. Finally his age-specked skin slackened and stretched into a sickening smile.
“That’s q
uite rude.” White turned again to methodically reorganize his instruments. “I’m surprised at that statement coming from you. You are an alchemist as well. You should fully appreciate a life of scholarly pursuit. Perhaps your outlook is colored by our location. But you see, Bedlam is the perfect place for work such as ours. I am unencumbered and free to do what I wish to advance medical science.”
“What possible advancement could that creature offer?”
“Ah, I have made them useful in ways they never imagined. Each subject had a special quality that I could enhance. My science enabled their transformation from simple person to magnificent anthroparion. Through my surgical and alchemical skills, they became a miraculous blending of man and mechanics, embodying and disembodying the very spirit of man. One day such a thing will be the norm, and I will be renowned for ushering in a new era. You shouldn’t be alarmed by its appearance. The very act of creation is at once shocking and beautiful. Only through torment can they become something more than what they were. They become that which destroyed them.”
Kate paled in absolute dread. If she understood his mad ramblings, then each of the various homunculi were representations of how White had killed them: quills, spears, acid.
“That’s horrible,” she murmured.
“Birth is horrible from the perspective of the ignorant. Or the maid who must tidy up afterward.”
“What do you want with Imogen? Or with me? Surely there is nothing special about us?”
“You are mistaken. You possessed something very extraordinary.” He raised his hand to show the gold key dangling on its chain.
“That stupid piece of jewelry?” Kate tried to appear amazed and confused, but she instantly felt there was power in that key that she hadn’t been able to understand. “That’s what all this is about?”
“Being obtuse won’t free you from that chair. I know this isn’t a stupid piece of jewelry. We’ve been looking for this thing for years. Your father and a man named Edward Cavendish developed it decades ago. Cavendish died alone. We tried to run your father to ground but failed. Then we began to suspect he might have hidden the device in his house of wonders or with his living relatives.” White walked over to Kate’s sister, lifting her chin with a finger. Imogen’s eyes remained wide open and vacant. “Lovely Imogen fit my needs perfectly. So eager to escape her domineering sister. So eager to experience that which was forbidden by you. Colonel Hibbert gave her an enticing taste. A glimpse of her father’s world.”
The doctor stepped to a cabinet along one wall and slid back a panel. He removed a human skull. It had thin metal rods dangling from it, and Kate recognized it as the skull of the homunculus that she and Simon had destroyed at Hartley Hall. White held it up and examined it, fitting his fingers into a space near the jaw and manipulating something inside, as if turning a small wheel. The skull’s jaw began to go up and down, over and over, in a mockery of speech.
Kate heard a thin reedy voice emanating from the skull. It sounded familiar. Then she realized, with an incredulous shock, that it was Imogen’s voice. The skull was a machine for recording and playing back sounds. As the bare teeth grinned, she heard the skull say as Imogen would, “My sister has a gold key that our father made. It’s what you want. My sister has a gold key that our father made. It’s what you want. My sister has a gold key that our father made. It’s what you want.”
“Stop it!” Kate screamed, barely holding back sobs. She couldn’t have driven Imogen to this. She couldn’t.
White nodded contentedly and placed the skull on a countertop. “Thanks to Imogen, I have the device in my possession. So you will tell me how it works.”
“If your scheme was for me to talk, welcome to the end of your plan. I can’t tell you something I don’t know. If she told you I discovered the secret of how it works, she was wrong.”
“Please, Miss Anstruther, you’ll need to be a better actress for me to believe that your father would create a device that allows instantaneous translocation and leave it with you but not tell you how it works.”
“Instantaneous translocation?” Kate stared at the gold key. Her father, and Simon’s, created something so powerful.
“Stop playing stupid. You don’t do it well.” Dr. White approached the crouching homunculus as if it were a dog and placed a hand on its hairless head. He then walked toward Kate, with the thing shambling after him. She couldn’t help but shudder as it came closer and its appalling details became more pronounced, the milky skin, its mouth sewn shut with thick hemp twine.
Kate stammered as bravely as she could, “How do you dare do anything to me without your master here? Gretta wanted me alive obviously.”
“Gretta is hardly my master. At best, she is a junior partner. We were in the Bastille together. She’s useful, yes, but only for very specific duties. Clawing, biting, and such. I make wulfsyl for her, and she comes when I whistle.” The doctor waved the homunculus close.
Kate leaned back in the chair, desperate to get away. Never before had she felt so helpless. The white thing dragged its damp torso onto her legs. A long-fingered hand coated with a thick glistening slime slithered over her face, pulling at her skin, leaving a film. It reeked of decay. She didn’t cry out or scream for she had locked that down in her throat, refusing to give the doctor any satisfaction. Still, her terrified exhalations sounded loud and fitful as she tried to twist her face away.
“You’re far stronger than your sister. She started sobbing just at the sight of them. No matter.” Dr. White leaned over Kate and tapped her mouth with his finger.
Immediately the creature’s hand slipped down her cheek to cover her lips and nose. She thrashed wildly, but there was no means to get away. Viscous flesh from the thing’s palm pushed its way into her mouth. Her eyes bulged above the creature’s hand as her lungs fought. A minute went by, then two. Kate glanced frantically at her sister, who stood completely dispassionate at the traumatic scene being played out. Kate’s heart broke. Imogen! Kate bucked again, trying desperately to dislodge the creature, but failed. Her vision started to grey and her struggles weakened.
“Release her,” White commanded. Immediately, the homunculus slid away.
Kate gasped painfully, drawing in rough breath after rough breath, spitting out slime. Her chest ached. Her head hung as limp as her sister’s across the room. In her heart she knew Simon and the others were coming for her. They would! Simon would not leave her to this fate.
“You won’t…kill me,” she spat out. “And I can’t tell you anything.”
The homunculus crouched on the cold stone floor, one eye staring dully at her and the other stalk focused intently on Dr. White. It played a rubbery finger along Kate’s arm.
“On the contrary,” the doctor stated. “You will tell me all I wish to know.”
Kate’s heart pounded in her chest as he lifted a syringe with a long thick needle.
—
Nick wavered in his saddle, one foot flailing, having lost a stirrup again. He reined to a halt. Simon pulled his steed up sharply, his mount bouncing a bit after being given its head for a decent stretch of open ground. Simon’s color was pallid and he clenched his teeth in pain, but he said nothing. The rolling downs of Surrey spread out around them, broken only by trees gathered along streams. The cold night wind ruffled the horses’ manes and pushed the grass. The shrinking moon was barely bright enough to light their way.
A thunder of hooves followed them and another group of horses drew close. Malcolm was in the lead, riding a black mare, sitting a horse like a centaur, his hair flying out behind him. His horse carried heavy saddlebags and Penny bounced on the horse’s rump, clutching the Scotsman’s waist for her life. Hogarth brought up the rear, a silent, fearsome presence. A lively night ride in an early frost was not the best tonic for a group of people so injured, but they had no time. Thankfully, Kate’s elixir vitae had worked miracles in a short time.
Nick held the reins tight on his snorting mount. “Take it easy, Simon. We’re not
at our best.”
“You’ll need to be when we reach Bedlam.”
“But I don’t see why we couldn’t have taken my spinebreaker,” groused Penny, stretching her aching back. “This horse is intolerable.”
Malcolm was quick to answer. “Too noticeable. Besides, I’ve been a passenger in that infernal machine. Now it’s your turn.”
“We’re running out of time.” Simon gave his mount his head again. Nick’s colorful curse filled the space he had just left, but they all whipped their mounts into a gallop after him.
The pace he set was so furious, it took them less than three hours to reach the city. It was just past one o’clock in the morning when the spires of London loomed in the starlight ahead. A curse fell from Simon’s lips as he maneuvered around a broken-down flower cart. The owner raised a fist and shouted something after his horse bumped into the cart in its excitement, displacing more of his wares.
“Steady.” Nick kept his voice even to keep from fueling his friend’s fire. “Gretta took Kate for a reason. She won’t harm her till she gets what she wants. We’ll be in time.”
Simon and Nick rode side by side, fighting the flow around them. Nick turned in the saddle to ensure Malcolm and Hogarth were still in sight. Simon’s impatient actions agitated his horse, which continued to prance and toss his head at being kept in check. The grand majesty of Lambeth Palace appeared before them. They turned right onto Church Street and slowly fought through the thinning masses, the very people they were trying to protect but who now stood in the way. As they continued up the widening thoroughfare, Malcolm and Hogarth broke free from their entanglements and trotted up behind. Finally the road opened up and Simon reined his horse to a stop across the street from Bedlam sprawling behind its wall.
Simon stared through the forbidding wrought-iron gates at the grey structure. His face contorted with fury. He spurred his horse forward toward the gates. Nick raced after and grabbed the mount’s bridle.
“Simon!”
The horse pulled up sharply, its ears flat against its head. Nick was in danger of being bitten by the horse or receiving a right cross from the rider.
The Shadow Revolution: Crown & Key Page 22