Tenfold More Wicked

by Viola Carr

  “But . . .” Remy was stunned. Lost for words. Gutted.

  “I’m dying, baby brother. Stop pretending I’m not. Do you think I’ve stayed alive this long from bed rest and brandy?” That vintage Lafayette smile, stained strawberry red. “Don’t you remember the war? To hell with surrender, eh? I’m merely adjusting my strategy.”

  Eliza darted her gaze, seeking options. No weapons within reach. Nothing. “But . . .”

  “Come, you’re an articulate woman. Say it after me: the Queen is dead. The flagship’s history, and so is the war effort. The Skyborne Corps was our last hope, and now no one will have faith in it. When the new regime comes, I’ll be part of it.” François laughed, and spat at the upturned painting, landing a crimson blob on the Queen’s face. “Why should that be immortal, while I rot? Die pretty, or live as a monster? I’ll take the monster any day.”

  His eyes glittered, maniacal, the last throes of his sickness. She’d seen it before. Not a peaceful death. She had to talk him down, or they’d all perish. “So you used Quick’s paints? A portrait . . .”

  Another bloodstained laugh. “Foolishness doesn’t suit you, Doctor. The paint only freezes the subject in time. What good’s that, for a dying man? Immortalized with my lungs rotting? No. I want life. And that’s where you come in! The day Remy told me you existed, I recognized your name from your father’s infamous experiments. Think I’d let that opportunity slip?”

  “My elixir,” she breathed. “You want . . . No, it won’t work. All it does is drive you mad.”

  “I’m aware.” A satisfied smile. “Why do you think I’ve had Quick experimenting on you?”

  Her jaw dropped.

  “Come, did you imagine it a coincidence he should appear now? You’ve been a most obliging subject. Your little brass pet, too. Did he survive my infiltrator? Tell him it was nothing personal. I only wanted to monitor your responses to Quick’s potion.”

  Her blood boiled. She’d nearly died. Claw his mad eyes out, pin his fragile body to the floor, yell I’m not some weak female, hear me? I was engaged to a wolf-man and courted by a razor murderer. Think you scare me?

  But he did scare her. She didn’t want to die pointlessly, unmourned. And her fear only stoked her anger higher.

  “You horrid man,” she snarled. “You can’t experiment on people without their consent. It’s unethical!”

  He jabbed his sword point harder, bending her awkwardly so the window sash dug into her spine. “Easy to moralize when you’re young and healthy. Show me your principles when you’re dying by inches.”

  “But we’re all dying by inches, François.” If she’d learned one thing—from the Chopper case, Edward Hyde’s madness, Sheridan and Penny and their rotted souls—it was that you couldn’t cheat death . . . or hell.

  “Only because we’ve no option.” He licked bloodied lips. “Down to business. Mr. Finch, my compliments. On the bench you’ll find a bottle of Professor Quick’s silver-colored potion. Be so good as to fetch it.”

  Eliza’s mind stumbled. Lizzie’s potion? What good would that do?

  Finch cleared his throat. “My dear fellow, I must warn you. Unless you’ve already undergone the transcendental process, the effects could be fatal.”

  François coughed, spattering bloody flesh, and his sword hand quivered. “On the double, Mr. Finch, if you please. A pity if this blade should slip and kill her. I do get so very weary.”

  “Steady on, eh? No need for violence.” Grumbling, Finch retrieved the bottle. The silvery liquid writhed, possessed. “Welcome to it, you foolish boy.”

  But François just grinned. “Oh, it’s not for me. Mr. Finch, you’re accustomed to administering medication. Do the honors, if you please.”

  Eliza’s knees shook. She’d be gone. Eaten away by greedy Lizzie, just an unwanted memory. Trapped forever in that glassy nightmare of hell. “No. I can’t go back there.” Her pleading tone—a child begging not to be punished—sickened her. But she couldn’t help it. “Can’t we come to an arrangement?”

  “Not you.” François jerked his chin towards Remy. “Him.”

  Remy blinked, shocked from speechlessness. “What?”

  “The wolf,” said François, and laughed at Remy’s reaction. “You never could lie to me, brother. I’ve known since you returned from Calcutta with that preposterous fiction about your wife. Jungle brigands didn’t kill her. You did. And who knows how many others?”

  All Remy’s color had drained, his eyes just gray ghosts. “You’ve no idea what you’re asking.”

  “Oh, I do. You know, I watched what you did the other night, in the moonlight. All that blood, Remy. But it’s a risk I’m willing to take. And you’re always so sickeningly well. Can you even recall when last you were ill? That creature makes you strong, and I want it.” He smiled in half-remembered affection. “You never could deny me, brother.”

  “Listen.” Desperation, born of grief. “The curse is a crippling disease. Contracting it nearly killed me.”

  A familiar arch of eyebrow. “Hardly seems a worry.”

  Remy stuttered. “But . . . I can’t change here. I’ll kill you all—”

  “I’ve no time to argue.” François’s ruined voice trembled. “Understand? I’ve no time. Anything’s better than a useless death.”

  “Is it? How about living every day in terror that you’ll hurt the ones you love?”

  “Good God, you’re insufferable. I’d kill to have your perfect life. For years I’ve longed to swap places. Well, now I can.” François coughed, his eyes unpleasantly red-rimmed. “Drink it,” he whispered hoarsely, “or I cut your lady’s throat.”

  Eliza’s heart broke. Not Remy, trapped in that hateful, screaming emptiness. She’d die first. “Remy, you don’t know what it’s like there. You can’t.”

  Remy just smiled, strangely gleeful, and grabbed the bottle from Finch’s hand. “Don’t waste your concern on me, Eliza. Forgive me.”

  He thumbed off the cork, and drank.

  Eliza yelled in anguish. Finch gaped. François grinned.

  Remy shuddered, muscles twitching. His fist spasmed, crushing the bottle to bloody shards. And he changed.

  He screamed in ragged agony, and it deepened to a growl. His limbs contorted, clothes stretching and tearing over swelling muscles. Fibers snapping, sinews quivering impossibly tight. His knee joints broke and popped backwards. Golden fur sprouted, rippling down his lean frame and bristling at his hackles. Claws erupted from his bleeding fingertips. His jaws stretched and elongated, and wicked saber teeth knifed from his gums, soaking his wolfen chin scarlet.

  “Marvelous,” breathed François, transfixed.

  The wolf snarled on all fours, claws raking ruts in the floorboards, a quivering bundle of rage. His fur sparked with static. His bristling tail twitched. But still his eyes drilled into François’s. Chilling, famished, yet bright with sorrow. Not flat and golden like a beast’s, but uncanny sky-blue.

  Eliza froze, not daring to glance away. She’d no expectation that he’d recognize her. “Marcellus, run.”

  Finch jigged, fisting his hair. “But—”

  “Now. You don’t want to see him lose his temper.”

  Shamefaced, Finch scuttled out. Now they were only three.

  Remy arched his furred spine, sparks crackling. François lowered his sword and beckoned with a triumphant smile. “Here, boy.”

  Eliza didn’t dare move. She’d never felt so helpless.

  Remy crouched to spring . . . But he didn’t attack. He curled his neck and howled, raw and anguished, and the floorboards shook with his torment. The beast had already eaten its fill under the full moon. Now it was bewildered, out of kilter, its instincts befuddled.

  He didn’t want to kill his brother, any more than he wanted to kill her. But the hunger was mighty.

  François sighed. “Very well. Let’s do it the hard way.” Swift as a serpent, he grabbed Eliza and hurled her out the window.

  Eliza screamed, lurchin
g into empty space. Wolf-Remy roared, and leapt.

  But François’s fingers clamped on her bodice, arresting her fall . . . and Remy skidded to a halt, claws digging up splinters. “Not so fast,” warned François coolly. “Kill me, and she’ll fall. Even if she survives, that bloodthirsty mob will tear her apart.”

  Furious, Eliza flailed for a grip, missing the sill by a whisker. Suspended, inches from death in the quivering grip of a madman.

  Pop! Stitches in her bodice began to break. Blood lurched in her skull, pounding. Below swam the rioting crowd, bristling with rage and brandishing weapons. François had it right. The fall mightn’t kill her . . .

  “Remy, don’t.” She scrabbled for her stinger, but it was lost. Lizzie, help me!

  “Gently, baby brother. A simple wound is all I require.” François’s voice was hypnotic, soothing, as if he calmed a frightened horse. “You’re the expert on inflicting pain. You know how much a human body can hurt. Must I torture her to make you obey me?”

  Her flailing wrist banged a hard lump in her skirts. Something in her pocket . . . Her groping fingers closed on ivory.

  In the madness, she’d forgotten Mr. Todd’s gift.

  She unfolded it, ping! Such a sweet melody. Steel flashed, a beacon in the sun.

  Her courage quailed. She’d shot Lady Lovelace. But this was François. Could she, even for Remy’s sake? Slaughter his brother without due process, bathe in warm living blood? And then fall to her own grisly death?

  Remy would give his life for her. Almost had, in that rusted dungeon. I’ve already failed to save one woman I cared for, he’d said. Just hold me, and don’t look down.

  He’d never agree to this. Never acknowledge her debt to him. For keeping her secret. For Todd. For everything.

  Forgive me, Remy, she whispered silently. But I need to make this right.

  Her fingers tightened on the razor. She inhaled one last breath . . . and Lizzie howled, and exploded into life.

  The change takes us fast. A breathless scream, aching flesh stretching, eyes boggling fit to burst. My hair springs wild, my chest inflates, invigorated with the lightning scent of that exploded skyship. Alive. As if I’d never gone away.

  I struggle, hanging in mid-air by a fistful of corset above this rampaging mob, and I realize I’m seeing through her eyes. The world’s livelier, somehow, bathed in different shades. Wondrous, more beautiful . . . but also more frightening.

  I can’t let her do this alone.

  I ain’t just the unwanted stepchild. She needs me, to do the things she can’t—and to swallow the guilt, too, like sweet fairy absinthe. Because without me, it’d kill her.

  But I need her, too. To keep me from sliding into endless darkness.

  I’m the shadow in her heart, the rotting portrait of her soul. But I’m more than that. I ain’t just half a person. We’re two people knotted into one. And for good or ill, we can’t be undone.

  This is what I’m for.

  “Let me up,” I growl, “or I’ll open your throat.”

  François shows bloodied teeth. Mad, star-glitter eyes. As utterly off his rocker as Mr. Shadow. “Why, hello, Miss Hyde. Would you really slaughter a sick man? You and I aren’t so different. I just want to live. Is that so wrong?”

  “You bet it is,” I snarl, and slash. Right to left, a glittering razor arc.

  With a curse, François springs away. But I clamp my fist on his coat, and like it or not he drags me with him, and I thump to the dusty floor, out of danger.

  He staggers. A thin crimson thread paints his throat. It brightens. Widens. Gushes bright blood.

  He chokes, incredulous. Blood runs faster, soaking his shirt. The coppery stink of it—fresh, arterial, Mr. Todd’s precious crimson—is flowers on the air, delicious predator’s perfume.

  And Remy’s control shatters. He roars, muscles coiling, and leaps.

  He collides with François. Growling, slavering, fangs tearing flesh.

  I don’t look. I just run. Lurch out onto the landing, slam the door. Fall into Marcellus Finch’s arms, and listen through my weeping to the snarling, choking, rending sounds of death.

  A DEEPER SHADE OF NIGHT

  IN THE SUMPTUOUS UPSTAIRS DRAWING ROOM, ELIZA sighed and put her book aside. Treatise on Dissociative States and Disorders of the Nervous Mind. She’d recovered the torn pages, pieced it back together. But her concentration danced, fickle like windswept leaves. Her mind kept stumbling over burning skyships and dead queens, finding its way to squalid Newgate where a man had waited to die.

  Sun poured over the richly dyed Bombay carpet, shining on the rosewood tea table. Her cup was long cold. Hippocrates jumped onto the chaise, nosing at her skirts, and she petted him absently.

  Lizzie peered out the window, impatiently twitching the velvet drapes. “Dullest book ever,” she grumbled. “Jesus in a jam jar, I’m snoring over here.”

  “Get your own book, then, if you’re so clever.”

  Lizzie tossed her hair, jaunty top hat teetering. “From your library? Never a rum tale among ’em. All medicine and science and dead old Greek bastards. Nothing happens.”

  “Historians,” protested Eliza. “Really, Lizzie, not everything needs to be a penny gaff melodrama.”

  “Don’t it? Where are the good books? That Varney the Vampyre, for one. A rollicking good yarn. Always waking up in graveyards and bumping off ripe maidens and woe is me. Proper tragic hero, he is.”

  “I’m sure.” Eliza eyed Hipp dubiously. “Perhaps we could both use a walk.”

  “Walk!” squawked Hipp, bouncing. “Motion! Make greater speed!”

  Lizzie flounced her scarlet skirts. “’Bout bloody time—”

  “Can I come?” From the doorway, Remy flashed a smile. Weary, but still dazzling. Half dressed, scarlet coat slung over his arm. His bruises had faded, just a shadow under one eye.

  By the window, Lizzie smirked. Transparent again, just a light-speckled shimmer. Eliza flushed. She knew Lizzie wasn’t real, of course. Sometimes, she just . . . forgot. And always, when she remembered, she was gripped with sadness. As if her best friend had departed on a long and perilous journey.

  Eliza cleared her throat. “What are you doing here?”

  “This is my house. Attendance is customary.” Remy hovered in the doorway. Waiting for permission?

  She still thought of it as François’s house. But François was dead. And nearly a week later, Remy still muttered and cried out in his sleep. “I mean, what are you doing up? I recall prescribing strict bed rest.”

  “You did. But I can’t stand it anymore.” Remy bent to pet Hipp, still moving gingerly, as if he ached all over. “And laying eyes on your fresh and lovely face has already improved my condition no end.”

  She eyed him sternly. “Is this how we’re to proceed? You thwart my every command, then charm me into forgiving you with clownish flirtations?”

  “Precisely my plan. Is it working?”

  “It could be worse.” She hesitated. “How are you feeling?”

  “Sore,” he admitted. “I can still taste those vile concoctions Finch forces down my throat. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was trying to poison me.” Mr. Finch had restored Remy, with the help of that icy pink remedy and a lot of luck. Not an easy transition. The wolf had resisted, digging in its claws and howling to be free. It wanted life.

  “Remy . . . I haven’t had the chance . . . I’m so sorry about François. I don’t know what to say.”

  A shadow darkened his face. “I’d rather not speak of it, if you don’t mind.”

  Eliza swallowed. Crimson rivers, ragged flesh, that awful rending sound . . .

  “But on that subject,” added Remy softly, “I owe you an apology. I told you I couldn’t let a killer go free. I meant it. And that includes me.”

  Her heart whispered, uneasy. Newgate Prison had burned in the riots, and in any case, the chaos meant the authorities—whoever those were, with the Mad Queen dead and the Philosopher the new Reg
ent for a half-witted, underage King who slobbered and gaped—whoever was in charge, they had more urgent things on their minds than arranging a hanging.

  And in her pocket lurked a letter from a certain froggy-fingered bailiff, detailing where she might—if she chose—pick up a certain collection of sketches and an unfinished oil painting. The bailiff had commandeered them, a favor in return for Quick’s vexatious lawsuit. She hadn’t yet retrieved the collection. Maybe, she never would.

  But Mr. Todd was lost. A ghost. Denying your dark side couldn’t absolve you . . . but Remy was different. Wasn’t he? “I’m not listening. It was self-defense and that’s that.”

  “But—”

  “François wasn’t himself, Remy. He attacked you. He attacked all of us.”

  A pause. “But—”

  “There you are, then. And stop saying ‘but.’ I’m not a goat.”

  He bit his tender lip. “I once promised I’d never hurt you, do you remember?”

  His ring hummed in her pocket, accusing. She hadn’t put it back on. Hadn’t insisted he take it back either. “Please, don’t say it—”

  “I must.” Gentle, earnest. “I can’t keep that promise. You saw what happened. The moon isn’t the only thing that awakens this creature. What if it happens when I’m not expecting it? I can’t trust it. Not now. Not ever.”

  All that blood, François had said. It made her shiver. But whatever Remy had done was as much her fault as his. She couldn’t just walk away. “I know you’re trying,” she insisted. “Those candles, that incantation, or whatever it was? Don’t lose heart, Remy. Mr. Finch is optimistic for a cure. When the next full moon comes . . .”

  He didn’t need to speak. He’d already tried spells, amulets, medicines. When the next full moon comes . . . what?

  She cocked hands on hips, a defiant Lizzie-like gesture. “I won’t hear of it. We have the cage. We’ll triple the locks if necessary. And we’ll keep trying until the thing is done.”

  “But—”

  “Ah.” She cut him off with an upraised finger. “Doctor’s orders. Think you’ll be rid of me so easily? And don’t even think about turning yourself in,” she added, “or other such gallant foolishness. No matter that your secret died with Lady Lovelace. You’re still under enough suspicion at the Royal as it is.”