I held the blade to his throat. “Turn his power off, and raise mine now!”
“You asked for this,” he choked out.
My touch was canceling out Sebastian’s heightened power and protecting us. But if the same logic held, I wouldn’t be able to heal anyone, not without an increase in power.
I tore the dagger across Captain Goode’s throat.
“Do it or you’ll die,” I snarled.
Blood poured out of his wound. He tried to say something but the words came out raspy and unintelligible. He choked. The gash opened wider. He fell to his knees, stubborn, refusing to give in.
Then I felt my power fill me.
He preferred not to die.
Chapter 24
SEBASTIAN WAS GONE.
The floor was littered with bodies that were not getting up. Bodies that were happily dancing minutes ago but lay crooked and lifeless now. Captain Goode had waited until it was too late. The warmth of my power mixed with the feeling of sickness in the pit of my stomach as I knelt down to touch hands and heads, hoping for a spark of life to stir them. Behind me, Rose’s sobs came sharp and short, as if she didn’t have the breath to cry.
I held my knife to Captain Goode’s half-healed throat and pulled him and Rose toward the center of the room, stepping over legs and arms in suits and dresses.
“More. Give me more,” I demanded.
“Have … given … you … limit,” he rasped back.
I looked back to the bodies on the floor. No one moved. Every face was an awful, familiar one. That boy who barely knew how to dance, but wouldn’t let that stop him. The girl who always gave me the sweetest smiles during the Season, but never had anything to say.
Oh God, our parents. Rose pulled us down, kneeling over them, hoping they might be different. They had crept closer to us, farther away from Sebastian and closer to my power; maybe they weren’t as exposed. I stared into Mother’s open, vacant eyes as Rose grasped her hand, willing her up to her feet as if it were the simplest request.
“Mama. Please. I’m here, please come back,” Rose whispered to her.
Mother didn’t hear. Father was no different. He lay unmoving, his eyes closed. I turned away but there was no escaping the death around us.
Mae. Blue splotches all over her pale skin. Only this time, they refused to go away as I grasped her with my blood-covered hand.
Miss Grey and Oliver. Rose’s sobs turned even more panicky and I felt bile rising in my throat when I found them slumped and motionless, Miss Grey still trapped in the floor and Oliver beside her, his fingers bloody from trying to free her. Miss Grey’s arms were around him, her body half-covering his as though she had tried to shield him from death.
The darkest of rages flew through me and I turned, cutting at Captain Goode’s throat again, bringing him down to the floor with Rose. As he grasped his neck with one hand, I bent over, wrenched his handcuffed hand out, and slammed my heel against his wrist to break the bone. As it cracked, he screamed in pain, the only sounds echoing in the room, until I set my dagger on his skin and started sawing over his protests, trying to cut faster than my healing could fix it. The dagger sank deeper and deeper, my hand slick with blood as Rose shuddered against me, pleading. In a daze I watched the blade cut all the way through, and the handcuff slid off his severed hand.
I left Captain Goode to bleed out on the floor and pulled Rose up to her feet. I had to get her to a safe place. I clutched her tightly to me and brought her out of the ballroom, through the foyer, and out the front door … where I found Catherine covered in almost as much blood as I was—but animated and alive and so very different from the horrible ballroom.
She threw her arms around both of us and hugged us with all her strength, which seemed to grow by the second. “Oh, thank God you’re both all right. Something terrible is happening.”
And that was when I noticed the dark, lifeless street behind her.
My hold around her went loose and I flinched back. There were more bodies, scattered about the sidewalk and streets. Horses pulled carriages manned by unconscious, slumped-over drivers. Captain Goode hadn’t turned Sebastian’s power off.
“Oh God. He’s running through London now,” I breathed.
“Wh-what? Who—was it Captain Goode?” Catherine asked.
I hurried past her to the sidewalk, checking the street in both directions, searching for movement. With a sickening sensation, I realized the multitude of bodies to the left told me the exact path Sebastian must have taken.
Catherine’s hand grasped my shoulder. “Evelyn, what’s going on?”
I spun back around and clutched their hands. “Catherine … God help us, Catherine. Everyone—so many people are dead. Just please take Rose somewhere safe and hide. I’ll find you. I don’t know who else is aliv—” I swallowed hard against the panic that I knew would overwhelm me if I stopped to contemplate it fully.
“Rose,” I said, forcing her glassy eyes to mine. Her breath still came in tiny little bursts and I was sure she was moments away from fainting. “Stay with Catherine, I have to stop him. Wait somewhere safe and I will find you, all right?” I shook her a little, trying to get her to concentrate. “Rose! I will find you.”
She gave the smallest nod that I would have to take as confirmation that she would be well enough for the moment.
“Evelyn, wait! What do you mean? Where are you going?” Catherine called after me.
“I have to find him,” I yelled back, flying down the street.
As I ran along the awful path, bodies seemed to come to, people moaning and rising to their feet. My raised power seemed to be more potent than my touch had ever been. And these people had fortunately not been exposed long enough to Sebastian. But as I ran, dread still pounded through me. I didn’t know how this would ever end. He had a head start and I already knew there was no way I’d ever catch up to him in a dress and slippers.
Unless there was an abandoned police horse on the street corner, waiting for a rider to do some good.
I hurried over, doing my best to get to him quickly and calmly without startling him.
“Easy … horse. I need your help,” I said in a soothing voice as I grasped his saddle, stepped onto an upturned crate, and pulled myself up with a groan. My bustle poked into my back awkwardly and my skirts were at my knees but I was stable enough. With a tight grip on the reins, I ordered the horse forward, hoping I could learn the secrets of riding astride.
He was fast. As we flew through the dark streets, with only the moon and streetlamps for guidance, my heart stayed firmly in my throat and I prayed nothing would stop the beast and throw me from the saddle. But despite the risk I didn’t dare slow down. I could get up from any fall. I gave a gentle dig with my heels to encourage him to fly, steering around stranded carriages, aimless horses, and unconscious bodies so fast that they became blurs, but I heard shouts and turned to see people rising to their feet.
“Good, good,” I murmured over and over—a litany to keep back the dread, the sorrow, the knowledge that there were so many people who would not be rising again.
Soon, a jolt of familiarity ran through my body as I turned onto one thoroughfare in particular. I had ridden down this road before, months ago, when we had been searching for Rose. I didn’t need to follow the trail of bodies anymore. I knew where Sebastian was going. Dr. Beck’s old laboratory passed in a blur, the horse’s hooves clattering onto that wooden bridge where Sebastian had almost bled to death.
And there he was. Farther down, toward the center of the bridge. Around him, I saw carriages veer off course, drivers and pedestrians coughing, losing energy.
“Please, run!” he shouted at them. But as they doubled over he hurried toward the railing of the bridge, to the slight break in the barrier where nothing stood between him and the water.
I started to lift myself off my horse before he even came to a stop. Sebastian heard the heavy tread as he reached the railing, and his head shot up in wild panic. He held on
e hand up. “Stop!” he shouted. “Don’t come closer! I’ll hurt you.”
I leaped off the horse and stumbled from the momentum, but I climbed to my feet in the next motion, refusing to stop. I approached him slowly, hoping not to startle him. “It’s me, Sebastian. You won’t hurt me!” I said. His breath was coming in weak pants and I didn’t think any of my words penetrated the wild panic engulfing him. “Look at me. That monster gave me all the power possible. You can’t hurt me. Everyone here is safe. Come back over here. Please.”
He dropped his panicked grimace and instead his face became a skeletal picture of horror and pain. I was close enough to see he gripped the broken edge of the iron railing with trembling hands.
“Oh God.”
I was close enough to hear his whisper now.
“What have I done?”
“Sebastian, please, please, come back here,” I said, trying to keep my voice soothing and succeeding not at all.
He shook his head without hesitation. “This is all my fault.”
“No, you didn’t do this,” I said.
“I did, Evelyn. This horrific thing that I am … God.” He turned wildly, looking out over the half-frozen river. His feet were inches from the unfinished edge. “I can’t let this keep happening.… I can’t, I can’t.” He repeated it on a terrifying moan, wrenched from somewhere dark and desolate.
“This was Captain Goode,” I insisted, my voice coming too quickly, too harshly, and I forced myself to calm down, taking a slow step forward. “He did this. Not you. He heightened your power and he is the one who deserves every imaginable punishment.”
Sebastian looked down at the murky water of the Thames below. “It’s … still my power, my responsibility. I was still here for him to use. I let him kill everyone—”
“Not everyone,” I interrupted, sick with despair. I couldn’t lose one more person tonight. Not him. Please, not him. “I am canceling you out right now and all the people you passed on the way, I saw them get to their feet. You didn’t kill everyone.”
There was the slightest glimmer of hope. “At the ball—were you able to heal them?”
I wanted to lie. I wanted to wait until he was less panicked. But my momentary hesitation was enough.
The hope died and his lips let out a tortured groan. “H—how many?”
“There are survivors,” I said desperately. “I—Rose. Rose is safe.”
“Out of a hundred? More?”
“Sebastian, please…” I could feel my mind slow, the horror of the night slowly stealing over my body, a numbing cold ready to swallow me whole.
The traffic rumbled merrily by us, oblivious to our bubble of misery. Sebastian shivered in the unbearable cold. He gazed out at the city beyond, which looked bruised black and blue in the faint moonlight. His hair was disheveled, his lips quivered, and he felt so far away he might already be gone.
“This hideous thing, I thought it could be fixed.… I shouldn’t have come back. I should have stayed in the woods forever,” he said, his voice dead and flat. I could feel him shutting me out.
I shook off the cold, taking another step closer, to within an arm’s length of him, trying to find the words to reach him. To make him stay with me.
“I should never have trusted them and I’m so, so sorry. But this isn’t your fault. You have tried so hard. You have sacrificed so much to try and keep people safe.”
“And still I hurt them.” He glanced back and I looked directly into his eyes, saw his heart breaking as clearly as though he had pulled it from his chest and handed it to me. “Too many.”
“I know. I can’t imagine how much pain you are in.” I pressed myself against the railing, creeping closer to him along it, letting the chill seep through the folds of my gown. “This awful power … it should have turned you bitter and angry and cruel. But despite everything it’s done to you, you’re still kind; you care about others more than yourself. You’re good, Sebastian. You do the right thing as instinctively as I say the wrong thing. You make me better—you make everyone better.”
He shook his head tightly. “I don’t. I’ve killed so many—and I can’t hurt anyone else. This is the only way.”
“It’s not. I promise you. There is no cure, but there is a way to control this—I’ve seen it. It’s slow, but we will do it together. Day by day. And I will stay with you for as long as it takes.”
His chin trembled. Tears rolled down his jaw, dropping into the water.
“We can’t let him get away with this. And I need you to stay with me. I need you to fight alongside me, Sebastian. You are going to help so many people.”
He turned back over the water. His face was masked in the shadows. Our powers were so heightened they seemed to whirl together even without contact, so intertwined I couldn’t tell whose blood was running through my veins.
He let out a light breath and his hand left the railing. I didn’t know whether that was a good sign or a bad one.
I didn’t wait to find out.
I made a wild lunge, slamming myself into the railing, skidding closer to the broken edge as my fingers dug into his wrist, his weight almost enough to pull me after him. Rubble crumbled to the water below. His feet slipped further forward. “Evelyn!” My name was ripped from his throat and with a great heave I flung him back, slamming us down against the wood instead of into the dark waters on the other side.
I was stunned from the impact, from the heavy weight of him on me, from the overwhelming sensation between us. It brought fire and ice to my veins, it brought a scream and a whisper to my throat, it brought hope and despair to my heart. I pulled him up till his head rested on my chest and my arms went around him, holding him fiercely to me as he tried to push himself up.
“Let me go. Let me go.” He repeated the words desperately and I could feel his heart battering his chest as I clutched him harder. My mind whirred as the truth of the night overwhelmed us both. My mother. My father. Mae. Oliver. Miss Grey. All those poor people. My breath began coming in gasps but I could only hold on to him; there was no one else left to save. So I clung to the one person I could still help, the one I could not let die.
“Sebastian. Sebastian. Sebastian. I’m here. I can’t let you go. I can’t let you go.”
His body shuddered with huge racking sobs that shook us both. I held his face against mine, wishing I was big enough to cover him. To hide him away. I finally gave in to my own choking, breathless sobs and our tears mingled, running down our cheeks as we pressed together tightly, as though maybe, if we just poured enough of ourselves into each other, it could wash away some of the guilt and horror. His lips were near my throat and I didn’t hear but felt his muffled words through my skin. Felt the wretched truth that doomed any chance we had at happiness together.
“When Mr. Kent’s powers were raised … She said she loved me. And my—my last words to her were that my promise to her brother was to protect her, not marry her. That I loved … you. And she … I broke her heart. And then … then she fell—”
“No, that wasn’t your—” I croaked, my voice all but gone, pulling his eyes to mine, needing him to understand. “You aren’t to blame.”
And it was true. I meant it with every fiber of my being. Sebastian hadn’t come back on his own. He hadn’t put all his loved ones in danger. He hadn’t taken on the Society without fully understanding the consequences. He hadn’t chosen one life over a hundred others.
I had.
Epilogue
A LITTLE SMOKE STILL rose from the grand, broken house at 43 Belgrave Square. It had been two days since the mysterious tragedy, but onlookers still gathered across the street at all times to whisper about the “Belgrave Ball” in tones of horror and morbid glee.
Their whispers seemed to center around two topics of discussion. First, there were the words scrawled across the facade of the house. An angry tangle of red letters, some thickly painted, some fading, as though a quill had begun to run out of ink, or more accurately, blood. The metal
lic stink that mingled with the dead bodies proved it to be true.
“Must have been a monster.”
“It’s blood—I’m sure of it.”
“What’s’t mean, Ma?”
In the back of the crowd, hidden behind her veil, Rosamund Wyndham squeezed Catherine Harding’s hand and quivered as she read the words, over and over again.
We will find you
She knew exactly what it meant.
“That’s the fifth this morning,” a voice said behind her.
“Naw, seven.”
“You’re all wrong; I’ve been here since dawn and only counted six.”
“Can you even count past six?”
The other topic of discussion: how many bodies had been removed that day. Hospital men mixed with volunteers, carrying another shrouded body on a stretcher and dropping it into a waiting carriage. Even after two days, corpses were still being found buried under the rubble of the crumbled walls and collapsed ceilings.
“We shouldn’t have come here,” Catherine whispered.
“I just … I needed to know it was real,” Rose said numbly.
She needed to know that her home was truly gone. That her future had been ripped away by a man intent on destruction, a man with a power more terrifying than any she had seen yet.
Standing here, across the road, was the closest she would ever get to returning to her mother and father. After that one unsatisfactory, fleeting glimpse of them from across the ballroom, in the haze of her injury, as they collapsed to the floor. She still didn’t know whether she was hoping or dreading that she might see them one last time, being carried out on the next stretcher.
“Will you buy a flower for the dead, miss?”
A group of young girls took full advantage of the tragedy, trying to sell their flowers, white and still fresh in the early-morning air. Their thin faces were hard, stripped of youth. Rose shook her head, wishing she had a coin to pay them. But she and Catherine barely had enough, between the meals and the inn.
“Let’s go,” Catherine whispered.
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