by Ilsa J. Bick
“Then it has to be Elizabeth,” Bode said. “What happened with her. That’s why Kramer’s so keen on keeping Elizabeth in seclusion, isn’t it?”
Meme nodded. “Where he has put her is … quite a different place from the rest of the asylum. It is all part of some kind of test.”
“Test for what?”
“I am not sure. It has something to do with”—Meme seemed to search for the right words—“the manipulation of energy. Kramer calls her the key. Some theory about the strongest piece being the actual entity or spirit or whatever that can access the devices. And he is in a hurry, too.”
Entity? Spirit? Piece, he recognized, though. It’s what Elizabeth calls her hallucinations. “Why’s he in a hurry?” Bode asked, then answered his own question. “Kramer must be afraid Battle will step in? Force him to give her up?”
“In part. Frankly, it has all sounded mad as hops. But,” Meme said, her mouth moving a grimace, “as Doctor is so fond of reminding me, I am only an assistant he may make or break. After overhearing about his interest in you”—she inclined her head at Tony and Rima—“I had to be sure that what they were talking about was real and not lunacy.”
Thank Christ, Kramer didn’t know about their little Emma here. Bode aimed to keep it that way. But Kramer calls for an Emma, and then Elizabeth goes nutter and we get ourselves a little girl. Which did beg the question of which Emma Kramer wanted.
“I thought that if you were real, it might explain what was happening,” Meme said.
“Why?” Tony asked. “What’s happening?”
“They have him,” Meme said. “The other Tony.”
“What?” they all said at once. “He’s here?” Tony said. “In Bedlam?”
She nodded. “And he’s dying … just like you.”
BODE
That Business with Doyle
“NO ARGUMENTS.” BODE dumped the last body into the pushcart. The sack made a dull puh when it hit a thick white mantle of new snow. The false dawn had faded and the wind was up, flinging large wet flakes to plaster faces, clothes, and hair. “I’m not happy, you taking these with you,” Bode said, watching as the cat leapt from Emma’s arms to mince over sacks and wedge itself into a convenient hollow. “You ought to cut and run.”
“I’m not excited either,” Tony said, stumping around to the front of the cart. “But we need as much food as we can grab. For that, we got to deliver our load. There’s method behind the madness, you know.”
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” Rima’s voice was tight. She gave the body Bode had deposited a hard, unnecessary shove. On the cart, Emma straddled her cat and silently repositioned the body, using one of their long pikes. “Because it’s not funny,” Rima said.
“I know that.” Tony was very calm for a boy who’d just heard his doppelgänger lay dying somewhere; might, in fact, be taking Tony down with him. “But assuming we do get off-grounds, it’s stupid to leave them. ’sides, if someone else comes looking and sees the cart, they’ll know Bode warned us. I’ll tell you what bothers me, too.” Having picked up his harness, Tony looked up from sorting leather traces. “The other Tony. Not right to leave him here. Who knows if maybe we can help? If maybe I can?”
“Oh no.” Rima shook her head. “Think, Tony. The closer we’ve gotten to the asylum, the worse you are. More nosebleeds. You’re weaker.”
“And vice versa.” It was Meme, who’d stood quietly by. “That is why Kramer was so keen on getting his hands on your Tony. He thinks that the doubles might even cure each other if he can perfect a serum. It is the same as that business with Doyle.”
“What business?” Rima asked.
“A long story, and all rather ghoulish, actually.” Meme shook her head. “Honestly, there are times I think Kramer is quite mad.”
“Oh, wonderful.” Sighing, Bode scrubbed fresh snow from his hair. “Rima’s right, brother. You need to lay down distance.”
“That’s just it,” Tony said. “I don’t think any place is far enough. So long as the other Tony is … in this Now? I’m cooked.”
“Unless he dies first,” Rima said.
“God, listen to yourself. He’s a person. Your other Rima … she cared what happened to him.”
“I’m not her, and Meme said that Rima’s … world? Her Now? It’s in ruins. So who knows what’s happened to her?” Sidling closer, Rima made a move as if to rest her palm on his left cheek, then checked herself. “You’re the only Tony I care about.”
“Can you help him?” Out of the corner of an eye, Bode saw Meme give him a curious glance. He wished he’d thought of this sooner, but it needed to be said. “Can you draw it?” he asked Rima.
Tony answered before Rima could. “I won’t let her. Now that we know about the other Tony, think of what it might do to her if he gets his claws in.”
“What are you all talking about?” Meme asked.
Bode sidestepped the question. “All right then. You three best get on your way. I’ve never been out that far, but once you’re past the criminal wings, there shouldn’t be anything else between you and …” His mind blanked. “Funny … name of the road’s on the tip of my tongue, but …” He shook that away. “Never mind. What I know is there’s open land and then trees, not very thick, and once you’re past, you’ll be closer to Battersea than if you went out the front.” It all sounded vague, as if he were making up a story on the spot. But he suddenly had no mental image of London at all.
“We should all leave right now,” Rima said. “You too, Bode.”
“Nowhere left to run that will be far enough,” Meme said.
“I don’t think I was asking your opinion.” Rima’s jaw clenched. “I appreciate you warning us, I do. But please do shut up now.”
“Here now,” Tony said.
“I don’t care.” Rima aimed a fierce glance at Bode. “Why? Why risk going back for her? She’s not one of us. We don’t know her. You owe her nothing.”
Bode made a sound as helpless as he felt. “Can’t explain, Rima. I know it sounds half rats, but I got to try.” Running might be the smartest thing. But I can’t. Saving Elizabeth is what I’m meant to do, why I’m here. Or was it that he was to save Emma? He didn’t know. Scared him how final it felt: as if it might be the very last thing he did.
“Once we get clear, how long you want us to wait at Battersea?” Tony asked.
“Until morning, I guess. If we’re not there, you three cut out. Get as far away from Lambeth as you can. Me, I’d go to the very limits of the Peculiar down south. Once you’re there, you might figure a way to either bypass it or get through. So go on now.” After wrapping Rima in a quick hug, he threw an arm around Tony’s neck and drew him close. “Stay alive, brother,” he whispered. “Be there as fast as I can, and then we’ll get out of here together, I promise.”
“You just hurry,” Tony said.
“Right.” He dropped to his haunches in front of Emma. “You have a care now. Stick with them, understand?” As her eyes pooled, he gave her a light chuck on a cheek. “No crying. Your face will freeze.”
She surprised him, throwing her arms around his neck. “There, there, it’s all right,” he said, tightening his grip around her shaking shoulders. She suddenly seemed so small, like a bird. “I’ll be fine.”
She gave his cheek a ferocious kiss, then said in a murmur only he heard, “Watch out for Meme.”
“I will,” he muttered back, touched that the girl could think clearly enough to care about someone she didn’t know.
BODE
Mission
1
MEME’S LANTERN WAS smashed beyond repair. In the storeroom, Bode unearthed an ancient nubbin of candle fixed in an iron miner’s pick, not that this meager flame did them much good in the wind and snow. Using their footprints, they navigated back by dead reckoning, a journey that felt like an eternity, though it may have been no more than a half hour before the gray bulk of the asylum glowered from the snow. They’d just crowded in through the ki
tchen’s back door when Bode turned to Meme. “Thank you. For coming, I mean. You didn’t have to.”
“I know.” Meme’s hair, frosted with snow, tumbled around her shoulders. Flakes clung to her lashes, and the wind had stung her cheeks ruby-red. “But they are your family.” Her mouth moved in a wistful wisp of a smile. “Sounds quite nice.”
“It is. I’d do anything for Tony and Rima. I’d die for them, if it came to that.” Looking at her made his throat tighten. “But what I mean to say is … after what happened in Kramer’s office …”
“It is all right.” Her dark eyes darted away. Snowmelt glistened on her shawl and made her lips gleam. “Let us not speak of it.”
“But I want to. You deserve a better friend than I’ve been. I’m sorry I didn’t help … no.” He put up a hand. “I know I said it before, but you took a risk for us. What I got to do for Elizabeth … it’s this pull, like I got no choice. You had one.”
“You do not know that.” Her eyes sought his again. “The … pull?” She pressed a palm to her chest and then to his. “I feel it.”
His heart shuddered under her touch. He remembered Kramer’s questions, the near-taunting quality of his tone. Meme had risked this for him. He looked down into the girl’s open face and thought, I could kiss her. He wanted to; the urge was a sudden ache in his chest; the tug of his attraction, a liquid fire in his thighs. Elizabeth, he had to help and protect. But with Meme, he might press his mouth to her chill lips and kiss her slowly and thoroughly until they warmed; draw his lips along her neck to linger over the throb of her pulse as she gasped and threaded her fingers into his hair; slip his hands beneath her coat and blouse and then … then her flesh. First his hands—roving, touching, stroking so lightly her back arched and strained to meet him—and then his mouth might feather her skin, the soft pillows of her breasts, his tongue pulling a moan from her throat, and then …
You are mad. “We should go.” Stepping back, he tore his gaze from hers, though not before he saw a flicker of some emotion: not disappointment or hurt but confusion, which was almost as bad. He felt a surge of self-loathing. What are you thinking, toying with this poor girl? But had he been? He thought of the thousand small signals and Meme, always and forever there, with a word, a slight touch. But he’d been so focused on Elizabeth, his … God, it sounded so stupid … his mission, he’d discounted them.
Worry about this later. Still, it was all he could do not to press her up against a wall, surrender to his desire and her need, and the hell with consequences.
“You ready?” he said.
“Yes,” and she even managed a small smile. “Always.”
2
THEY DIDN’T SPEAK again until they’d made their way down a darkened hall to the rear of the front vestibule and an iron door that opened onto wide stone stairs leading down to the first series of tunnels. As he socked in Graves’s skeleton, he said, “There’s something I been meaning to ask. Something about what Kramer said.”
“Yes?” The word was as void of expression as her face.
“Doyle. Kramer did something to him.”
“An injection. Yes.” After a pause: “He’s an addict. Kramer provided.”
Ah, well, that did explain Doyle’s raucous guts. A few times there, he’d have liked to die from the stink. For Kramer to go behind Battle’s back, circumvent the police, he must want something very badly. “Why? Kramer’s not exactly the charitable type.”
“No. But Doyle can lay hands on something Doctor cannot.”
“And what’s that?”
Her eyes were steady. “Bodies.”
PART FOUR
BLACK DOG
DOYLE
Madding Crowd
1
“MOVE ASIDE … police … make room.” Working his stout billy club in a steady tick-tock, Doyle forged a trail through the general crush of foot traffic and handcarts. The air was a stew of curdled smoke, thick snow, and the unintelligible burr of voices. Slicked by icy patches and fresh snow, the cobblestone road was treacherous. With the quake, whole portions had buckled and caved whilst others had been thrust up a good six, seven inches. The way was a positive horror. “Move along … police. Make way.” Tick-tock, tick-tock, right-left, right-left. “Have a care … police …” The crowd, only so many anonymous blobs, jostled and shouldered past. Why, you could run this same madding crowd past him night after night and he’d never know the difference.
Yes, but if not for Battle, would I know the way? What street is this anyway? Are we still on Lambeth? He didn’t think so. They’d taken turns, rounded corners, passed doorways and snickets and ginnels. Somewhere past the crowd, he’d the impression of hulking tenements, narrow alleys, crumbling fronts curtained behind snow and a thick gray veil through which no light of any sort oozed. These warrens, these passageways and secret back courtyards, were their own worlds. Who knew what creatures lived there? There was talk around the station: certain constables gone missing, never to be seen again. Anything could live in that soup, anything, and here he was, breathing it in. They all were. The Peculiar hadn’t smothered them, yet he felt its tendrils kneading his brain, poking and prodding the way you stuck your finger in a Christmas pudding to search for a silver coin.
Or perhaps it’s Kramer and his injection. Black Dog gave his arm a tiny nip. Think about it, how quickly your mood’s soured, how irritable you are. Touch a match, you’ll explode. Don’t you feel it? Kramer’s out to poison you.
He couldn’t deny how he felt: nerves jangled, entire body on alert. His skin fairly fizzed, like vinegar and bicarbonate. All of a sudden, he wanted to tear his clothes from his hot, flushed skin and race bare-arsed into the night. Let the fog and whatever waited inside take him and be done with it.
Stop, Doyle, stop. He ground his teeth until his jaw complained. What you thinking, you lunatic? He had to remain steady. Kramer wanted something only Doyle could procure. Cove wouldn’t cross him, not yet.
I didn’t say the drug doesn’t work. I’m suggesting that you’ve fallen for the oldest con in the books, poppet. Black Dog actually seemed sympathetic. Shoot you up enough to take the edge off but leave you chasing your tail until you make good.
No, that was ridiculous. All he had to do was tell Battle. But wait … no, he couldn’t do that either, could he? Then what was he going to—
“… mind, Doyle?” Battle, alongside, tap-tapping his shoulder. “Are you there? Is something the matter, Constable?”
“What?” He looked over, then realized that he’d gone on several paces. Turning, he found Battle, with his bull’s-eye lantern held aloft, giving him a curious stare. “Uh, no, sir.” Stop it. Focus. Do your job. He darted anxious glances right and left, his neck swiveling, tick-tock-tick-tock, trying to look at everything at once. “No. Just … thinking,” he said, finally. It seemed as good an answer as any. It was also true.
“Yes.” Battle managed to make it sound as if Doyle had decided to drop his drawers and relieve himself on the bare cobbles. “You’ve been preoccupied since we left the asylum. What’s on your mind, Constable?”
Too many people; hard to breathe. His face dewed with fresh sweat. The snow stinging his face actually felt good. Getting sick. He was distracted, feeling the pressure, this whisk of people brushing close, and the noise, this incessant burr of many voices and, beyond, the squall and creak of pushcarts. Another shiver grabbed his neck. Get back, wrap myself in a blanket, sweat this out. Suck his humbugs for the sugar; that would make him better, too. Then he remembered: he’d only the few left that he’d dropped in his coat pocket. Idiot, giving them away to that girl; you’re a fool! Well, he’d make do. Then what? Back to Kramer, beg for another shot? Then he thought, Kramer. Right. Come on, Doyle. Keep your eye on the prize.
“Well, sir, yes, there is something.” Having rehearsed this as he’d made his way off the ward and then down the long marble stairs to the asylum’s ground floor, he understood that what he said next had to flow naturally. “It’s that Mi
ss Elizabeth. A shock, how she came out of it. And her parents … I didn’t know any of that.”
“Well, you wouldn’t. It’s not your investigation or business to know.” Battle favored him with that copper’s dead-eye. “And? Come now, speak up. It’s cold, and I’ve not had my supper.”
Oh, riiiight. As if he had. But nooo, the great inspector had to be properly fed and watered at regular intervals like a damned nag. (God, he would gladly murder his own mam for a nice horse’s haunch.) “Right. Sorry.” What was wrong with him? “Ah … it’s nothing, sir. Not for me to say, that is. It just seems to me that—”
From the gloom, something suddenly shot to hook his injured right arm. “Fancy a bit of boiled leather, dearie?”
“What?” Jerking round, he looked down into the snaggle-toothed maw of an old hag, with a left hand made of tin and a huge divot carved from her skull just above the place where she ought to have a right ear. It looked as if a giant had taken a large, sloppy bite of bone and brain. “Christ! Get off me!”
“Now, now, no need to get upset.” Showing all three of her teeth to their best advantage, the hag said, “I asked if you wouldn’t fancy a nice mouthful ’a boiled leather.” The fingers of her good right hand tightened to claws on his arm. “Only a farthing.”
“God, no.” This close, he could see the pulse of her brains against a thin tent of grimy scalp. “Move on. Go back to your cart.” And sod Battle; they could talk once they were back at the station. Without waiting for the hag’s reply, he plunged forward, brandishing his billy. “Police! Move your bloody arse out of the way!” A startled cry jumped from the murk as his club met something soft. Man, woman; he didn’t care. Butting the person aside, he bawled, “Get your—”
“Doyle!” Battle grabbed the hinge of an elbow. “What are you doing, man?”
Touch me again and I’ll cave in your teeth. Then what Battle had said caught up with him. Blinking, he looked around and realized with a start of dismay that he hadn’t moved an inch. As far as he could tell, he was in the same spot as five seconds before.