Her Dark Curiosity

by Megan Shepherd

  His big fingers drifted to his shirt’s nape, where he fumbled with the small buttons.

  “Let me help you,” I said, undoing them for him. He groaned in pain as I slid the shirt off his hunched shoulders. I tried to look away to protect his modesty, but I couldn’t help glancing at the bullet wound.

  My stomach lurched. The wound was bad enough—it certainly would have killed me—but it was his deformities that stole my breath. His rib cage was swollen on one side, shrunken on the other, his shoulders lopsided but powerful, dark hair covering every inch of skin. These deformities weren’t the results of an injury—they were the results of Father playing God.

  I closed my eyes, his shirt clutched tightly in my hand.

  Never again.

  Montgomery came from the kitchen with some fresh bandages, and I stepped back to give him room. He pulled away the rest of Balthazar’s shirt, examining the wound, not flinching at the deformities. “I don’t know how you are still standing, my friend. You must have the strength of an ox.”

  While Montgomery stitched him up, I stared out the window, too stunned to think. I could still feel Dr. Hastings’s hand on my ankle. See Isambard Lessing’s eyes gouged out. Smell Newcastle’s flesh burning.

  Mrs. Bell’s cleaning crew would find them in the morning. I could imagine the thin cleaning girl frozen in the doorway at the sight of such carnage. The police would eventually find the laboratory on the subbasement level. Even though we’d destroyed the journals, it would be easy enough for the police to deduce that the King’s Club had been practicing illegal scientific experimentation. The newspapers would love the scandal. The entire city would love it. And with Newcastle dead, no one would ever know of our hand in it.

  I vaguely heard Elizabeth and Lucy talking, though in my exhaustion their voices were only bits of words like carriage and manor and one repeated only in hushed tones: murder.

  They were talking about me. They were talking about fleeing the city. Another word found its way to my ear.

  Edward.

  I looked down at my hands, still coated with chemical residue and blood. Some of it was Newcastle’s. Some was the creatures’. Some belonged to Balthazar.

  My gaze turned to the cellar door.

  We both know any creature of my father’s is fated to die, I had said in the laboratory, about the water tank creatures. But did that mean Edward, too?

  I felt Lucy’s hands on me, followed by a warm cloth wiping my face and hands. “They’ll soon find that scene in the smoking room and raise the alarm. You have to leave, Juliet, in case there’s any way they can trace it to you.”

  “I want you to go to my estate in Scotland,” Elizabeth said. “It’s listed under a cousin’s name who resides on the Continent, so they won’t be able to trace it back to either of us. I’ll ride with you tonight just as far as Derby to make sure you leave the city without trouble, then we’ll part ways and I’ll return here to do what I can to cover our tracks. I’ll meet you at the manor in a fortnight.”

  Her words were a distant echo. I kept staring at that cellar door, thinking of the boy chained below. He had few days left before the Beast consumed his humanity. Not much time.

  “You must leave tonight,” Elizabeth insisted. “You’ll have to change clothes. It’s a three-day journey, if the weather holds.”

  My eyes shifted to Montgomery, then to the little dog curled by the cellar door, tail thumping, knowing his master was trapped below. For a few seconds we all stared at the cellar door, each alone with our secret fears and thoughts.

  “Elizabeth was right before,” Montgomery said at last, though hesitation filled his voice. “The humane thing to do would be to kill him mercifully.”

  Lucy let out a sob.

  I grabbed Montgomery’s arm, pulling him to the window, where we could speak privately. “You’ve wanted a family for so long. A brother. I know it isn’t the same, but—”

  “That is why I’m doing this,” he answered in a whisper. “I’d feel no regret killing an enemy; only a brother I could bear to put out of his misery mercifully, given the alternative of watching him turn into a monster.”

  “You aren’t thinking through this. We still have a few days; there’s still time to work on a cure. There must be ways to synthetically replicate the effects of malaria in the bloodstream. Elizabeth will have medical supplies at her estate.” I squeezed his hand. “Don’t give up on him, not after what we’ve learned.”

  It was as much for Montgomery’s soul that I pleaded. If Montgomery did this—killed the closest thing he had to a brother, after killing all the island’s beast-men—that kind little boy I’d once known might be gone for good.

  “I don’t know what else to do.” His voice broke. He had just stitched up his best friend, and now we were debating the fate of a young man who shared his own blood.

  I eased my grip.

  “We can give him the rest of the valerian all in one dose,” I said. “And sedate him if the Beast starts to emerge. We’ll bind his hands as a precaution. The professor had an old set of shackles in the closet upstairs.”

  He sighed, and I knew I had won him over.

  When we told the others our plan, Elizabeth looked apprehensive, but she didn’t argue. Lucy wrung her hands in relief.

  Montgomery rubbed his forehead as he turned to me. “Balthazar won’t be able to drive the carriage the entire time, not with his wounds. I’ll need to be up front most of the time. When I am, you must keep a pistol aimed at Edward every second of the trip.”

  I nodded. My head was racing with the thoughts of draughts, serums, elixirs I would try. What I felt for Edward wasn’t love, not like with Montgomery. But in a way Edward was also dear to me, because he and I weren’t so different at heart.

  “I’m coming too,” Lucy announced.

  My head jerked to her. “You can’t. You’ve a life here.”

  “A life? My father was one of those men. He knew what they were doing, and he supported it. You wouldn’t go home after that, so you can’t tell me I should.” She was standing very close to the cellar door, throwing it little glances, and I had a feeling her decision had as much to do with the boy in the cellar as anything else.

  I turned to Montgomery for help, but to my surprise he just wiped his tired face with a cloth. “You know better than anyone what it is to have an immoral father,” he said to me. “Let her come.”

  The room still felt unnaturally cold, or maybe it was the chill in my blood. I looked at each of them, settling last on Montgomery. My heart clenched. Even if I turned out to be a terrible wife, he would still love me, always forgive me, always be the boy who had pushed a sullen little girl around in a wheelbarrow to make her smile. There was good in each of them, good still in this harsh world, and it blew a small bit of warmth into my limbs.

  “Tonight, then,” I said. “All of us.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  MONTGOMERY GAVE THE HORSES fresh feed and water before the journey, work that was second nature to him. Lucy packed as many extra blankets and coats as she could find. Had she always had this practical side to her, and I’d never noticed? It wasn’t until everything was packed, the horses’ harnesses checked one last time, that I slipped down the basement steps to the cellar with shackles in hand.

  Edward was awake, in his human state, though his muscles twitched under his skin like eels beneath water. He fingered his pocket watch anxiously, running his nails along the seam as though he would open it, but he never did. He wouldn’t meet my gaze.

  “We’re leaving, Edward.” His gave no indication of having heard, and I felt for the syringe of valerian in my pocket. “You don’t have to worry about the King’s Club any longer. We made certain that the entire city will know what they’ve done, once the police…” I cleared my throat. “Once the police find the bodies.”

  His head jerked up at this. “What did you do?” he asked.

  I hesitated. “It doesn’t matter, but the police might trace it to us, so we’re
headed north to Elizabeth’s estate. We’re taking you with us.”

  He laughed, cold and harsh. “Ah, Juliet, you’d best leave me here.”

  My hands curled against the bars. “You wouldn’t have abandoned me, and I’m not going to abandon you.”

  He didn’t answer, and I unchained the door and cracked it open. He’d used all his strength to fight against the Beast these final few days, and it showed in the sag of his limbs and the lines of his face. I didn’t dare step closer, not yet.

  He shook his head. “It will be finished for me soon. The Beast will take me over completely, and he’ll do terrible things. You’d do better to kill me now.”

  “Don’t give up, Edward, please.” I stepped forward hesitantly and reached out a hand to touch his shoulder, but his eyes went to my silver ring. For a painfully silent moment, the ring was the loudest thing in the room.

  “Lucy told me about the engagement,” he said at last, bitterly. “I suppose congratulations are in order.”

  “You always knew I loved him. I never lied about that.”

  “Yes, but it isn’t you he loves in return. It’s the idea of you. A fantasy.”

  “How is that any different from you? You claim to have fallen in love with me from a photograph. But I’m not a fantasy, Edward—I can be heartless and cold and stubborn, just like my father. Montgomery will come to accept that, in time.” I swallowed, covering the ring with my other hand. “Lucy adores you. She knows what you are and still loves you. If you’d only spare a thought for her…”

  “Has Montgomery told you the truth yet?”

  The secrets. In all the chaos, it had been easy to disregard what Edward had told me about Montgomery keeping secrets. With the engagement, I had assumed everything was right between him and me, or at least would be once we were out of London. But now a thorn of doubt dug itself into my palm.

  Edward coughed a humorless laugh. “He hasn’t. I didn’t think so, or else you wouldn’t be so quick to marry him.” He leaned closer, jaw set hard. “Ask him about Moreau’s laboratory files on the island. About the ones you didn’t see.”

  I felt caught between desperate curiosity and fear. “If you know something,” I started, “then you must tell me—”

  “Juliet?” Elizabeth’s worried voice, coming from the top of the stairs, interrupted me. “Are you down there alone with him?”

  My fist tightened over the shackles. I leaned out of the cellar door and called up to her, “There’s no cause for alarm. He has control of himself for the moment.”

  Elizabeth stood at the top of the stairs, musket in hand, silhouetted by the kitchen light. “I have something for you.” She started down the stairs and I climbed up to meet her halfway, where she extended me a sealed letter. “Since I’m only going with you tonight as far as Derby, I’ve written you a letter of introduction to Mrs. McKenna, the housekeeper, and explained I’ll be joining you in a few weeks. I should warn you, it’s a large manor, quite remote. There’s a village five miles away, but it can be difficult to reach when the moors flood. The servants are all a bit out of practice with polite society. You’ll find some of them rather strange, I think.”

  “I’ll be quite at home then.” I tucked the sealed letter into my bodice. “I’ll bring Edward up in a few moments.”

  She nodded, and I returned to the cellar. Edward was being strangely quiet. A small metal object gleamed on the floor next to his hand.

  I crouched down to pick up the pocket watch he was always fiddling with, open now, only where the clockwork should have been was only empty space.

  “There’s no clock—” I started.

  He took it from me and closed it in one snap. “You wish me to join you? Very well. Let us be gone from this place.”

  His voice was heavy, almost a mockery of himself, as he held his wrists out. I closed the shackles around his hands guiltily, wishing we didn’t have to treat him as a prisoner, angry at the Beast for making it necessary. I uncapped the syringe of valerian and injected it into his arm. He winced as the drug wove its way through his system, causing his body to shudder. I was relieved that his eyes, when they met mine, had cleared at least briefly.

  I helped him to his feet, but he paused at the door. “It isn’t that I don’t care for Lucy,” he said. “There is much to admire. But Juliet…” He paused. “Ah well, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  I twisted the ring on my finger anxiously as we made our way up the stairs, through the kitchen, and toward the waiting carriage. He was being strangely quiet again, and a premonition that something was wrong itched at the back of my neck and made me throw sidelong glances at him in the gas-lit courtyard.

  His face was the same; no sign of the Beast. What was it about him that had changed? He came with me too easily, as though he’d given up, content to be a puppet pulled along at my feet.

  Montgomery locked the townhouse behind us, then climbed into the driver’s seat with a bandaged Balthazar. Elizabeth was already inside the carriage with the professor’s cuckoo clock in her lap, the best thing she had to remember him by. Lucy sat next to her with Sharkey, a bit of twine tied around his neck as a leash. His tail thumped at the sight of Edward. We climbed inside and, after our tap on the roof, Montgomery started the carriage.

  He drove the horses with haste. Elizabeth clutched the clock, lost in her own thoughts. I marveled that she was so willing to help us, until I remembered that without the professor she had no family save me, her new ward, and that family meant much to her. Neither she nor the professor had spoken at length about their deceased relatives. Only that they’d been Swiss by ancestry but Scottish by birth, descendants of an illegitimate line of unscrupulous scientists not so unlike my own father. Maybe for this reason, Elizabeth saw a younger version of herself in me as well.

  Edward coughed, pulling his coat tighter the best he could with his wrists bound. Lucy rested a hand on his knee but then frowned and slid closer to touch his forehead.

  “Edward, you’re burning up.”

  “A fever. That’s all.”

  I studied him in the faint light as we bounced over the streets. Sweat poured down his brow despite the cold night. He doubled over, coughing harder, a deep rattling that came from too far down in his chest. Even Elizabeth seemed unsettled.

  “Edward… ,” I started.

  He squeezed his pocket watch and coughed more, starting to shake. I inched forward and took his hand in mine, feeling for his temperature. He was sweating all over.

  “My god, Edward, what have you done?” I whispered.

  His fist tightened over the watch and I ripped it from his weak fingers, inserting my fingernail into the seam to open it. What had he been keeping in here, in the space meant for a clock? All those times he’d toyed with it, I’d thought it nothing but a bauble.

  I lifted it to my nose—odorless. On closer inspection, I found a faint trace of white powder. The watch fell from my hands and clattered on the floor.

  Arsenic.

  My heart stopped. My breath stilled.

  The horses were moving faster now; we must have left the city center for the open roads of the country. It didn’t matter how fast they moved, or if we turned around and rushed to a hospital. There was no antidote for this poison.

  “Why?” I whispered. Neither Elizabeth nor Lucy had seen the powder, and for a few moments the poison was a secret only Edward and I shared.

  He doubled over again. “You know why. Someday soon, the Beast would take control. He’d kill one of you. You’ve protected this city tonight in your way; now let me protect it in mine. I’ve tried to end my life a dozen times, but he was always too strong—until now. I’m becoming him, but he’s becoming me, too—he can no longer prevent me from taking both our lives.”

  I fell back against the cushions, stunned. I wanted to argue. I wanted to scream. I wanted to do anything but sit on this soft carriage seat in my fine coat and watch him die.

  Lucy gasped as she realized what had happened. “St
op the carriage!” she cried.

  But neither Montgomery nor Balthazar, outside in the wind, heard her. Lucy screamed as Edward convulsed and fell onto the bottom of the carriage.

  “Now it’s done,” he coughed. “The worst of your father’s creations, finished.”

  “Edward, no!” I collapsed next to him. “It didn’t have to be this way. I would have found a cure.”

  He convulsed again, pressing a hand to his head as though it ached, the skin around his eyes and mouth turning dark.

  “Elizabeth, help him!” I pleaded.

  She set the clock aside and felt his pulse, brow furrowed. The carriage hit a rut and the cuckoo clock tumbled to the floor with a crash of gears and squawk of the wooden bird. Squawking and squawking, each time the carriage jostled. Furious, I reached over and ripped the back panel off, clawing at the gears until they came loose in a terrible mess and the squawking stopped.

  “There’s no cure for as much as he’s taken,” Elizabeth said, releasing Edward’s wrist. For the first time since I’d known her, she looked lost. “He’ll be dead before we reach Derby.”

  Lucy wailed everything that I wanted to but couldn’t express. I slumped to the bottom of the carriage amid the wreckage of the clock. I picked up the little wooden bird, thinking of the professor, how I’d failed him, too. There was an inscription I’d never noticed before, written on the underside of the bird in German.

  Für meine Lieblingskusine Elisabeth, VF.

  To my favorite cousin Elizabeth, VF.

  The clock was an heirloom, the inscription a century old. It wasn’t this Elizabeth then, and the V must stand for a different Victor. I started to toss the bird back into the wreckage of the clock, yet at the last minute paused and looked at the inscription again.

  I turned to Elizabeth as a strange sensation grew in the corners of my mind. Elizabeth and Victor von Stein—they must have been named after ancestors of the same names. I pieced together everything I knew of the von Stein family, from those nameless portraits, the journals in German, even the ancient doll in the nursery stitched together by the hands of a long-ago surgeon.