by Viola Carr
Atop the lampposts, lights burned, but it wasn’t the familiar gas flame. No, this was a queasy yellow shimmer, like a living thing trapped in servitude. On the stormy, broken-roofed horizon, smokestacks belched eerie fire, and in the sweeping auras of light beams, creatures flew and flipped, writhing their scaly tails.
She and Locke stumbled into a crowded square, and she halted, struggling to breathe the hostile air. Radiant heat seared, an ugly disturbance. And still that awful, all-pervasive groaning, eeeerghhh . . . as if the atmosphere itself thrashed to an agonizing death.
A row of wretched, manacled figures shuffled by, exhausted and bleeding. Most were cowed, eyes downcast. One man fought to escape, his shackled wrists raw. His frantic eyes shone wide. Strangled noises forced from his lips, which were glued together in a hideous squirming line. “Unngh! Unngh!”
“Don’t stare,” hissed Locke. “It’s a spell they use if you talk too much. Watch.”
The crowd in the square was howling, swaying, crushing around a raised platform where a bonfire leapt and crackled with no visible fuel. At the back of the platform stood a tall caped figure, face half-masked in black leather, surveying the scene. In front, another masked man raised a glittering curved blade.
Thwock! The blade crunched into a wooden block. A ragged man on his knees screamed, his severed hand rolling into the mud. Sobbing, clutching his bleeding arm, he scrambled away, and a lackey dragged the next man forward.
“My God.” Horrified, Eliza glanced at Locke. He was laughing, face gleaming with sweat, eyes wild.
“That’s what they do to counter-revolutionaries,” he yelled above the din. “At first they burned, like the Royal, but this is better. A man with one hand can still work.” He waved at the line of slaves hobbling by. “They need miners and custodians for the ghettos. And even monsters need to eat.”
“How did this happen? Where are the Enforcers?”
Locke flung his arm around her neck and inhaled deeply, relishing the aether-rich air. “No Enforcers. No soldiers. No police. Just sorcerers.”
“But the war—”
“The war’s over. Our army’s gone, the Royal too, and the Philosopher’s dead.” He stuffed his bloodstained scarf into his coat. “Trust me. I watched him die.”
Thwock! The blade fell again. The man at the back nodded with grim satisfaction. Masked in black over glittering white hair, with the Liberté du Sang cockade in his tricorne hat. One arm wore a black gauntlet, wreathed in crimson fire. The other hand hung bare, pale and strangely misshapen. Withered.
The same man Lizzie had spied in Soho, skulking about with Veronica Burton. But he wasn’t skulking now. No, he seemed to be in charge.
“That’s la Bête.” Locke laughed again, eerie. “That necklace he wears, with the silver moon? It lets him shift shape. They say he ate la Belle. Just got tired of her one day and munch, down she went. I tried to kill him, once. Lost the hand for my trouble.”
But Eliza barely heard. Alongside la Bête, chained on a creaking leather collar, crouched a huge golden wolf.
The creature arched its spine, fur bristling almost to the sorcerer’s shoulder. Powerful muscles coiled and quivered. On its collar shone another, identical glossy black-and-silver stone.
Eliza stared, horror crawling. Oh, no. No, no.
The creature’s furry ears pricked. Hungrily, it sniffed the air for scents . . . and fixed huge gleaming eyes on her. Not yellow eyes, like a wild animal’s. Brilliant blue.
The crowd swayed, threatening to sweep her away. She clutched at Locke, dizzy with despair, fighting to stay on her feet. Remy’s name tore from her lips, ripped out on rising terror.
The creature just stared at her, flat and empty. No human feeling at all.
The crowd thickened, a hell of thrashing limbs and clawing hands. A wild-eyed woman hurtled towards her, screaming unhinged nonsense. Eliza fended her off—and before her eyes, the woman was sucked into a roaring black vortex, her cries growing fainter as she shrank to a point and vanished.
Above it all, la Bête grinned, showing jagged teeth. And with a yell that was lost in the din, he set his slave-beast free. The wolf coiled quivering muscles, and sprang.
Locke swore a blistering oath. “The aether is disintegrating!” he yelled. “We must return to the machine or we’ll be stuck here like trapped rats.”
Eliza didn’t hesitate. They struggled off in the direction they’d come, the Remy-thing snarling and ripping flesh in pursuit. Locke swung at a man as they passed, fist crunching into jaw. The fellow toppled, and Locke snatched his weapon—an odd-looking pistol—and sprinted on.
Around the corner, back to the ugly pit that had been Ireton House. The machine glimmered, imbued with its own dark light. Around it, the air screamed—and jagged holes ripped it apart, as if invisible claws tore in from some black otherworld.
A ragged crowd engulfed the machine, climbing the rings, shaking the mechanism, prodding the electrics. One fellow grasped the wrong wire, and voltage lashed out, frying his hand to a black crisp. Others set upon him, gnashing teeth and clawing hands and shouting. “Idiot!” “You fool, you’ve broken it!” “Get off! It’s mine!”
The Remy-beast skidded around the corner, sparks showering from its claws. Dazed, Eliza sprinted towards the throng. The world and everyone in it had lost its mind. “Get away!” she yelled. “That’s ours!”
Locke just raised his weapon and fired, a shimmering shockwave like thunder. Booom! Broken bodies flew, a red mist. The remaining people screamed at the carnage and scattered.
Eliza screamed, too, at the horror of it. Stunned to the spot, brain unable to process. Lizzie would have cursed, fought, acted no matter what. But Lizzie wasn’t here. No courage. No heart.
Before her, the Remy-thing bared cruel teeth, blue eyes empty but for hatred.
“Vermin!” Locke yelled in fury, leaping like a long-haired insect spattered in gore. “The world’s over, get it? Why can’t you just DIE?”
The wolf crouched, ready to spring.
And Locke—laughing shrilly like the lunatic he’d become—flung her onto the bloodied brass stool, and dived in after her, dragging the lever down.
A GOD-ROTTED HERO
FALLING, SPINNING, BRASS RINGS WHIRRING, DISORIENTATION and stabbing pain. A glimpse of screaming flames, the earth torn apart . . . and whumph! The machine landed in the laboratory at Ireton House, floorboards cracking.
All was quiet. Just fluttering paper and the harsh scrape of her breath.
Locke leapt out of the machine, cackling like a witch. He ran to his instruments and started tinkering one-handed, wires and tools bouncing. The handgun in his belt—that ugly tool of death—clunked against the bench. Impatiently he tossed it aside.
Eliza clambered down, still in shock. Remy, that awful la Bête . . . and the amulet.
It lets him shift shape. The amulet wasn’t a cure. It was a drug, just like her elixir. An addiction. And Remy had embraced it. Surrendered to the darkness.
In the laboratory, everything seemed as before. The hovering lights, the roped body of the younger Locke. But the corpse’s face had turned a sick green, the smell of putrefaction thickening. “What day is this? How long have we been gone?”
Hippocrates crept from under the table, his happy light glimmering cautiously. “Doctor,” he muttered, grinding grumpy cogs. “Absence, fifty-four hours. Make greater speed.”
“Two days! But the election will be over. We’ll be at war. The Prime Minister . . . oh, my. Hipp, we must do something!”
Locke—the living one—ignored her, banging a hammer on the case of a magnetometer. “These levels are perfect. Aether collapse is imminent. A trap, you see! We’ll set a cunning snare! This infernal contraption will be our salvation after all.” He ran back to the machine, which had ceased to spin and whine, and set upon the crystals, wrenching them with various spanners. “A concerted attack! There’s power for, oh, half a dozen shifts. That should be enough.”
H
er guts squeezed cold. “Enough? Locke, what are you talking about?”
“We’ll appear at the same time, Doctor. Over and over. The same time! Create enough disruption and we’ll tear the aether apart, at the very moment when the sorcerers attack!” He laughed, and jammed his elbow on a button. Blue current zapped, and the machine started up again, brass rings whirling. He jumped inside, and cranked the spring levers tight. “Bloody shapeshifters, think they’re so clever. They never saw me coming.”
Horror-drenched images assailed her, of that ugly rift-torn night, the burning sky. “But won’t that—?”
“Kill them all?” Locke crowed as the rings swung faster, hissed louder. “Absolutely. Time and space will rip apart. I destroyed the world once, Doctor. I can do it again. And then everyone will be free.” A ghastly smile. “Including me.”
Her brain boggled, and she yelled over the noise. “But you can’t end the world to save the future! That’s insane!”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself.” A rusty voice, chopping the air like an axe.
Eliza whirled, her heart bruising her ribs. Now what?
Veronica Burton had descended the stairs. Now she stood on the opposite side of the machine, wearing a metal monster’s leer. “I’ve been waiting a day and a night for your return,” she gloated. “That machine’s mine, Mr. Locke. Now step away so I can shoot you.” She brandished her weapon—but it wasn’t the poison pistol. No. It was the horrible electric handgun Locke had cast aside. The shockwave weapon.
“Don’t shoot,” called Eliza, frantic. “It’s not safe.”
Locke laughed. “Safe. Listen to her. Burton, this is all your fault. I should never have let you in on the secret. God, I was so damned impressionable when I was young. To imagine I wanted you to like me. If you hadn’t sold us out to the enemy, none of this would have happened. But you do it, every bloody time.”
“Glad to hear I’ll succeed.” Veronica smirked, her lopsided face stretching. “La Bête will be grateful. He’s promised to make me one of them. I’d like that. I’m tired of being overlooked, Eliza. You know what it’s like. We have to be so much better than men to get ahead. If only your Captain Lafayette had obliged me when I asked him to share, I wouldn’t have needed to betray him. Always so damned honorable.”
Eliza faltered. Make her one of them? A disagreement about interrogations, Remy had said. Hadn’t mentioned his curse. “But aren’t you . . . ?”
“La Belle?” Mocking metal laughter. “I’d wondered if you thought that. Really, you’re too stupid for words. But no matter. Once I kill you both, no one in this corrupt Empire will ever know who caused their downfall. Now step away, Quentin.”
“Make me,” gloated Locke, spreading his arms wide. His missing hand glared, an ugly asymmetry. “Kill me, don’t kill me, I really couldn’t care anymore. But fire that in here and you and all your plans will burn in hell.”
Veronica laughed, a horrid metal scrape. “I’ll take that chance.” And she swung her weapon up.
Eliza charged forwards, but it was too far. She’d never make it. “Wait, stop—”
“Ee-e-e-EH!” With a heroic doinng! of springs, Hippocrates launched himself at Veronica’s face.
Crunch! His brass body slammed into her jaw like a bareknuckle boxer’s fist. Her head snapped back, and her hands flailed to protect her face, a half-forgotten human reflex—and the weapon dropped from her grip. She clawed for it, but too late. With a whoosh! and rrrip! of disintegrating aether, Locke and the machine vanished.
Veronica cursed, the syllables garbled, her bent jaw spitting sparks. Hippocrates cavorted, shouting triumphantly. “Boom! E-e-EH! Boom!”
Breathing hard, Eliza snatched up the gun and leveled it at Veronica. Her trigger finger quivered. How she wanted to fire. Blast her enemy to oblivion. Become Eliza Hyde, surrender to her tainted blood. Punish Burton for her hubris in thinking she could control any of this.
But Eliza knew how it was to be a slave to vanity. To imagine you could change the world. People had died for Eliza’s pride, bloodied victims who’d haunt her always. What wouldn’t she give for a chance to undo the death she’d wrought?
This wasn’t justice. And she wasn’t a murderer.
Shaking, she eased her finger from the trigger. “You’re under arrest,” she spat, “for treason.”
The hell you say.
Vengeance burns in my belly, and like a rubbery eel, I thrash and squeeze out. Squickk! My dark hair springs free, my body swells—and with Eliza screaming a sweet symphony in my ears, I grip this awful gun and fire.
Boom! The shockwave hurls me into an arse-backwards somersault. Wind roars in my hair, flinging Eliza’s muddy gray skirts over my head in the stink of scorched aether.
Finally, the wind dies, silence fading in. I scramble up, and survey the carnage. Holy hell. Broken tiles, twisted metal, leaping flames. A smear of red goo and tangled fabric that used to be Veronica Burton.
Over-voltage on a handgun, Remy said once. It isn’t pretty. Some science hocus-pocus on the rarified air of electrical fields and the destruction wrought by aether engines what don’t know their own good.
Ha ha! Teach you to set Enforcers on me, Burton. Treason, my arse. Burning’s too good, you metal-head scum.
The gun itself, well, it’s twisted and useless now. I toss it away. Pure luck the friggin’ thing didn’t blow my hand off.
Eliza yells, hammering inside our skull. What have you done? We must stop Locke! Get back to Henry’s, rebuild the machine, go after him . . .
Hmm. I frown, one fingertip to my chin. Yes. We could do that, Eliza. Save the world, get the girl, be a god-rotted hero.
But Miss Lizzie’s got fatter eels to skin. Flabby ones like Dodger and his fart-arsed gang, living it up in the Rats’ Castle on borrowed time. Juicy ones like Eddie Hyde moldering in Bow Street while the true Slasher runs free. Everything I hold dear—Eddie, Johnny, the Rats’, any hope that Eliza would ever love us for who we are—is already slipping through my fingers. Miss Lizzie, my friends, has nothing left to lose.
Liquid flames drip from the ceiling. Locke’s electrical equipment—what’s left of it—explodes, pop! and bang!, in the smoke. Her little brass idiot is already scrambling up the stairs and away, his store of heroics exhausted.
Time to go.
I leap the burning stairs by twos, and pause at the top for a last glance around. So long, Seymour Locke, you mouthy prat. Wherever you are, I hope it’s better than this.
But I doubt it. Ain’t no reasoning with a man who’s off his rocker. And deep in my darkest heart, where I’m bruised forever by Eliza’s hatred, all my despair flowing free . . . maybe I believe this black and bloody world deserves its end.
L’HUOMO DELINQUENTE
A QUARTER AFTER TWO, I NOD TO THE FLOP-JOWLED barkeep at the Magic Flute for another, stifling a yawn. “And one for yerself, Freddy. So no one saw nothing?”
Freddy the Pug pours, scratching behind one floppy furred ear. “Not that I heard.”
My gullet burns, rage worse than liquor. Four bleeding hours, I’ve been fishing for the squeak on the Slasher. Prostitutes, publicans in a dozen bars, mountebanks and crossing sweepers and fake beggars on the slam. No one seen nor heard a god-rotted thing. And Miss Lizzie knows why.
All night, in smears of shadow, I’ve glimpsed the Dodger’s sly hand. Not the whale-man himself, to be sure. But I can smell his influence, slick like oil on water. Handsome Tom o’ Nine is surely dead, likewise poor Fishy. If the bloody Sultan’s been bought, who else could be my enemy? At first, I went seeking Johnny—never mind our spat, not with so much at stake—but no one’s seen arse nor eye of him.
Johnny’s in lavender. And that bothers me.
I sink my gin, slamming the cup down with a fiery grin. “And what did you hear, Freddy? Charley Tee-Hee laughing his greasy nuts off while he nailed your arse over the bar?”
Freddy just shrugs, plump black nose glistening. “I owes Charley a pony. I don�
�t owe you shit.”
“Kiss my arse,” mutters I, and turns away. “And the pony you rode in on, Pug.”
I shove through sweaty bodies and clouds of liquored breath towards the door. The Magic Flute is your down-market flophouse, not so posh as Mrs. Fletcher’s, with clapboarded windows, grime-soaked floorboards, and not much privacy. But at least it’s dry, the girls safe from the freezing night. Better than plying your trade in grim gaslit streets with blood-hungry monsters on the prowl.
The bar and gambling house here below is seedy and humid. Arc-lamps sputter, aether smoke mingling with hash. I squash Eliza’s dirty skirts past a rowdy card game, where a big-nosed dwarf in a red bowler hat roars laughter and hurls down the ace of spades with one pudgy fist.
Opposite, a scrawny cove in a fop’s striped trousers curls a finger up his nostril, digging out a shiny prize. Told you so. It’s Nose-Picker, Dodger’s stinky arse-licker whose name I always forget. I flips him a two-finger salute, and he rolls his milky glass eye at me and eats the snot. Fucking class act.
A ragged little girl skulks from table to table, shyly offering drooping daisies for a penny to men who ogle and drool. The fire sulks, a sullen red glow. Up against the wall, an exhausted whore in faded green skirts filches the purse from a fat cove’s pocket while he’s grunting between her legs.
Suddenly, I feel sick. That’s what I’m doing. Glorying in stealing a few pennies, while the world has its way with me. I spy the empty half of a loveseat, not too rank with spit or puke or whatever else, and plonk my gray-skirted arse down with a despondent sigh.
Time’s a-wasting. Eddie’s life is forfeit. And I’m no closer to catching the real Slasher than before.
“Fine gin-soaked mess you’re in, Lizzie,” announces I to no one in particular, “and no mistake.”
The bloke with his back to mine leans over, offering me his bottle. Finely tailored coat, brushed hat. Too rich a gent for this dive. “Have one on me, miss.”