A Cold Legacy

by Shepherd,Megan

  All his mad plans about acquiring the journals and selling the science seemed like an afterthought now. He turned to the wall, breathing heavily. In a way, I understood how he felt. My best friend was dead. After that, did anything matter?

  “Juliet,” Montgomery whispered. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

  Radcliffe’s men still stood around us with rifles aimed. I could tell Montgomery wanted to fold me into his arms, but we dared not. Radcliffe still faced the wall, arms braced against it, shaking his head back and forth.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes off Lucy’s body. So many people I loved had died. I’d buried too many of them. We’d brought Edward back, but his fate was unknown now. If he lived, I couldn’t imagine what he’d do when he learned about Lucy. I looked up at the tower where I’d brought him back at her insistence.

  “The tower,” I whispered, more to myself than anyone else. “Montgomery, if I could take her to the tower . . .”

  “No.” Montgomery’s eyes flickered with warning. “Don’t think like that.”

  But Radcliffe had turned from the wall and was looking at me with wide eyes. He’d heard me and put together what I meant. “The tower,” he repeated, and looked toward the window that showed Elizabeth’s equipment. He swallowed. “Elizabeth’s laboratory. That’s it, isn’t it, Miss Moreau? You can bring her back with Frankenstein’s science. She doesn’t have to stay dead.”

  “It’s impossible,” Montgomery said. “It’s ungodly.”

  “I didn’t ask you, Mr. James.” Radcliffe’s light eyes were fixated on mine. “We understand each other, don’t we, Miss Moreau? We can both have Lucy back.”

  My mouth felt dry. I pressed a hand to my head. “I don’t know.”

  “I do.” He grabbed my arm, dragging me toward the house. “You will bring her back, or I’ll slaughter everyone in this household. Bring my daughter’s body,” he called to his officers. “And keep a gun on Montgomery James. Lock him in the cellar until this is done.”

  I twisted to look behind me, where one of his men walked Montgomery with his hands clenched behind his head. They dragged us inside the foyer, where the electric lights stung my eyes.

  “You there, housekeeper,” he ordered McKenna. “Show my associate to the cellar where we can lock up Mr. James. Miss Moreau, you and I are headed for the tower.”

  He dragged me toward the stairs, while an officer carried Lucy’s lifeless body behind us.

  “Juliet, wait,” Montgomery called. I paused just long enough to meet his eyes. A million things could be said between us, but he chose only one. “Remember what I told you. You aren’t your father’s daughter. You choose your own fate.”

  The words sank into me deeper with each step toward the tower. The world around me seemed dim despite the electric lights. Only my thoughts blazed. For so long I’d fought against the idea of turning into my father, only to accept it with a feeling of inevitability. Was I now to uproot all my beliefs once more?

  I clutched Jack Serra’s water charm, wishing for magic when I knew none existed.

  We reached the landing, where the portraits of the von Steins and the Ballentynes of old seemed to whisper to me, but what they wanted, I wasn’t certain. The only thing I was certain of was Radcliffe’s steel grip on my arm, my best friend dead, and Montgomery’s final words.

  You choose your own fate.

  At the top of the tower, Radcliffe kicked open the laboratory door. The smell of roses met me, and my stomach clenched to think of Elizabeth’s and Hensley’s ashes on the wind.

  “Put Lucy there,” Radcliffe ordered his mercenary, nodding toward the surgical table.

  He released me, knowing there was nowhere I could run. He started to pull out the books on the laboratory shelves.

  “You won’t find Frankenstein’s journals in here,” I said. “Elizabeth hid them. The staff doesn’t know where.”

  He steadied me with a cold look. “I shall make you tell me, Miss Moreau, but you have more important work at the moment.” He brushed a hand gently over Lucy’s hair. His eyes scanned over the tools, the metal trays and utensils. “I trust you have everything you need.”

  I glanced toward the window desperately, wanting to buy time. “Lightning. I can only perform the procedure if there’s a strong enough electric shock.”

  He pushed back the curtains. “The rain hasn’t stopped. It’ll only be a matter of time before a storm strikes. That should give you time to ready the body and prepare for the procedure. I’ll return soon.”

  “Wait! I can’t do it on my own. I need Montgomery. He’s a surgeon.”

  Radcliffe gave me a withering look. “And so are you.”

  He slammed the door shut.

  I tore a strip of cloth from my dress and plugged the keyhole so the prying eyes of the officer standing guard couldn’t see.

  A steady drip drip drip started behind me, but I didn’t dare turn around.

  I only stared at that door. Radcliffe wouldn’t open it again until he heard Lucy’s voice. But if I brought her back, he would know Frankenstein’s science was possible. He would tear the house apart until he found the Origin Journals, and he’d sell the research to unscrupulous men who would bring back countless dead bodies, perhaps even Henri Moreau’s. And yet this was Lucy. I couldn’t imagine life without her. With the exception of Montgomery, she’d been the only person in my life who had stood by me through the scandal. She’d defied her own parents to sneak to the park with me and sip stolen gin and giggle over boys, as though I was just a regular girl. She was my tether to the real world. She was my best friend.

  How could I not bring her back?

  Slowly, dread tiptoeing up my spine, I turned toward the surgical table. The drip drip drip continued. It was blood running off the side of the table, pooling on the stone floor and rolling toward a metal drainage grate. With trembling fingers I peeled back her blood-soaked coat.

  The bullet had struck her in the center of the chest, just below the two little freckles she’d used to think looked like a constellation. It must have grazed the right ventricle of her heart, explaining the profuse bleeding. It would require removing the bullet, stitching up the torn ventricle, setting the broken ribs, and sealing the wound.

  All within my skill. It wouldn’t take but an hour of careful attention. My fingers already twitched to pick up a scalpel and begin the work that came so naturally.

  My feet felt warm, and I looked down to find her blood had seeped into my slippers. I shrieked and kicked off my shoes, throwing them across the room, scrambling back into the corner of the laboratory.

  I watched the line of blood slowly weaving among the flagstones toward me.

  This wasn’t a patient. This wasn’t a specimen.

  This was Lucy.

  I balled my knees in tight, trying to calm my breath, looking at the pale curve of Lucy’s dead hand hanging off the table. Henri Moreau wouldn’t have hesitated to reanimate her. If Montgomery hadn’t told me the truth, I’d be reaching for the scalpel even now.

  But my father wasn’t in my blood. He wasn’t even my father. He was just a stranger’s skeleton on a faraway island. Which left me alone with the body of my best friend and a thousand unanswered questions, but only one mattered:

  What should I do?

  I glanced again at the scalpel on the floor. A wild idea entered my head. There was one way to spare me this terrible decision. I could take the scalpel, make two quick slits, and let my blood pool on the floor with Lucy’s. I could join her in whatever dark place of peace she was in now.

  I crawled toward the scalpel slowly, picked it up, and pressed it lightly against my wrist, just to test the feel of it. A person would bleed out in ten minutes, but lose consciousness in two. Two minutes and it could all be over. Radcliffe wouldn’t find the Origin Journals in Elizabeth’s secret hiding place. Frankenstein’s science would end. Lucy would still be dead, but I’d be with her, at least.

  I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood, ta
rt and salty.

  Was I ready to die?

  With an anguished cry, I threw the scalpel across the room. I pushed to my feet and paced to the window, throwing it open and breathing in fresh air mixed with rain. In the distance, thunder rumbled.

  Below, in the fading light of the house, I could just make out the barn. A lumbering figure moved slowly along the exterior wall of the courtyard. It was Balthazar, who must have snuck away from Radcliffe’s men and was now headed to the barn to take over Lucy’s role sheltering the little children.

  Balthazar hadn’t been made with a purpose, but he had found one.

  If he could, then I maybe I could, too.

  I wasn’t a madman’s daughter. I wasn’t a Moreau. I wasn’t a Ballentyne either, not in my heart. Before, I had feared I’d be left with nothing and no identity, but now I realized it left me stripped free of shackles. For the first time in my life, I could make my own decisions, unbound by the shadow of my father. From now on, every thought, every word, and every decision was my own to make.

  Starting now.

  I turned to the table. Father wouldn’t have hesitated to bring Lucy back, but I wasn’t my father, and it was time I started making my own decisions.

  IN DEATH, LUCY LOOKED older than seventeen. There was a darkness around her eyes that made me imagine what she’d look like at twenty, thirty, forty. She would have been a good wife and a good mother. Maybe in a different life she’d have married Edward and had children of her own playing Catch the Huntsman in the hedge maze behind her house.

  I brushed a strand of dark hair from her face, smoothing the wrinkles from her eyes. Her body still held the lingering warmth of life.

  I could give you back that life, I thought. I have the power.

  It wasn’t long ago that Edward had been strapped down to this same table. I’d been so convinced at the time that bringing him back was right. It had been my father’s ghost urging me on. Now, no voices whispered in my ear, no urges compelled my hands to act. I took a damp cloth and dabbed away the spots of blood on her face and chest.

  “I could give you back your life,” I whispered as my voice broke. The cloth shook in my hand as a rise of emotion swelled.

  It was time to make the first decision of my life that was truly mine and not influenced by my father. I had the power to cure death, but what had new life brought to Hensley, or Frankenstein’s monster, or Edward? Only more pain.

  I couldn’t shake Montgomery’s words that there was only one life, and we must live it well. When you can never die, he had said, do you ever really live? Lucy’s life had been short, but she’d lived it well. She had chosen her own fate, bleak though it was.

  I closed my eyes and listened one final time for voices. For my father’s, for my mother’s, for Elizabeth’s. There was only silence, and in that silence, I let my own voice speak.

  The whisper was quiet, but it was there.

  A tear rolled down the side of my face.

  “I could bring you back,” I whispered again. “But I won’t.”

  A sob hung in my throat. I leaned over her body on the table, crying against her bloody dress. All these tools and books had held such meaning for me once, when I had yearned for Father’s approval. Now I understood that such science never came without a steep cost. Pain. Suffering. Loss.

  “I’m so sorry, Lucy. I can’t do it. No more experimentation. No more ends justifying the means. No more screams in the night. I’m not like my father.”

  With a deep breath, I wrapped the coat tightly around Lucy’s body, hiding the wounds the best I could, and carefully dragged her body off the table. I set her on the floor, sitting upright with head slumped as though she’d fallen asleep. There was a hard object in her pocket; I took it out.

  A box of matches, empty now. She must have taken it to light a small fire in the barn to keep the girls warm overnight.

  An idea worked its way into my head. I couldn’t get to the Origin Journals, but I could make sure Elizabeth’s personal notes and experiments never fell into Radcliffe’s hands. I began to open the books with a wild madness. I tore out the pages, crumpling them, stacking volumes. Outside, thunder cracked closer. I studied the coming storm with a grim determination. Lightning could bring a body back, yes—but it could also destroy.

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” I whispered. “I have to break my promise.”

  A creak from the eastern wall caught my attention. It came from the drainage grate that drew Lucy’s blood from the room. It must be some of Hensley’s rats crawling in the walls. They would burn if they didn’t get out in time. My heart pounded, but there was nothing I could do. Their fate was their own, just as for the rest of us.

  I poured Elizabeth’s vat of sterile alcohol over the books and papers. Four generations of women protecting this knowledge, passing it down, and it would all end tonight. As much as I admired what the von Stein women were trying to do, I no longer agreed with them.

  In my careless hurry, alcohol splashed on my dress.

  “Blast.” A a crack of lightning lit up the sky. Any moment lightning would strike the rod and all this would go up in flames—and my soaked dress with it unless I found a way to escape.

  I peered out the window, but the four-story fall was too dangerous. That only left the door, which was locked and guarded by one of Radcliffe’s armed officers. More scurrying came from the grate, and I thought of those poor rats trapped in the walls. I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t save Lucy.

  I couldn’t even save myself.

  They say a sort of peace falls over you when you know that you’re going to die. I had seen enough people die to know that wasn’t true, and yet as I watched the storm grow closer, I did feel a strange calm. It was a letting go of the determination that had kept me alive this far. It was the acknowledgement to Death that he had won, and I was a fool for thinking I could defeat him. I’d cheated him enough for one lifetime.

  I sank to my knees in the puddle of blood and alcohol. I’d killed so many people, including the man I thought was my father. If this was the trade I had to make to keep this science lost to time, then I was ready.

  Montgomery was right. We only had one life. One chance to make the right choice. And this was mine: to burn with the rest of Ballentyne.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  THIRTY-NINE

  WITH MY HEAD BURIED in my arms, waiting for the moment when lightning would strike, I didn’t notice that the scurrying sounds had changed into footsteps.

  “Juliet,” came a hushed whisper, “are you there?”

  I jerked my head up. Montgomery’s voice sounded like a ghost.

  His hands reached out from the grate.

  “Montgomery!” I scrambled to the grate, threading my fingers through the bars. “I didn’t think there was a passageway to the laboratory.”

  “I still have the map.” He held the crumpled old paper to the light. “Radcliffe’s men locked me in the cellar and I managed to make my way into the passages. There were markings on the map that indicated a passage once existed here, but it had been boarded up. I was able to break through. Now we just have to get you out.” He tugged on the bars, but they didn’t give.

  “Listen to me!” I clutched the bars. “There’s no time for that. You have to get out of the walls. Get out of this manor, now. Tell all the servants to flee.”

  Lightning crashed closer this time, and I shrieked. Montgomery at last noticed the bonfire I’d built of books of journals and soaked with alcohol. His eyes went wide. “What have you done, Juliet?”

  “What needed to be done,” I said. “You were right. The science is too dangerous to exist. Once lightning strikes, the fire will burn the entire house, including Frankenstein’s journals.”

  “Are you mad?” he said. “It’ll burn you, too!”

  He pulled at the bars, muscles straining. I pushed
on his hands, trying to pry them off the bars. “Just leave me. Go!”

  A crash came from behind me. I smelled the ozone a second before I saw the spark. The entire room vibrated just as it had before, a humming coming from the metal equipment, and Montgomery grabbed my hand through the grate a second before the lightning rod pulsed.

  A spark flashed. The alcohol caught. The room erupted in flames.

  I screamed and covered my head with my hands. “Get out of here, Montgomery!”

  I tore away from him, scrambling to the far wall as a wave of heat struck me, and threw open the window to let out the billowing black smoke. The servants and Jack Serra’s troupe would see it and know to get out of the house, but that still left Montgomery in the walls. He might not get out in time.

  “I’m not leaving you here.” He pulled on the grate with all his strength, but it was useless. Only Edward might have had the strength, but for all I knew Edward was still unconscious—or worse.

  I hugged myself into a ball, terrified of the painful death that would come. A scraping sound came, and incredulously, stone dust crumbled down from around the metal. Before my very eyes, the grate began to tear out of the stone. Montgomery let out a groan, pulling the bars even harder. I blinked in shock. It shouldn’t have been possible. I had heard stories of normal humans developing incredible strength in times of crisis, people able to lift huge amounts or run for miles with a broken leg. Such strength never came without a cost. Sometimes it could even kill a person.

  “Montgomery, stop! You’ll hurt yourself!”

  But he didn’t stop. Muscles straining to the point of giving out, he pulled on the grate until it tore out of the wall with a clatter.

  “Climb through!” he yelled.

  It took my brain a moment to comprehend that he had actually done it, before I scrambled toward him and crawled through the hole. I collapsed onto a grimy stone floor. It was cool to the touch, covered with dust and cobwebs. Everything was a strange kind of dark, like the world had been cast in shadows. I sat up, struggling for breath.