God Save the Queen (The Immortal Empire) (8 page)

Val and I didn’t speak the entire drive to Lambeth Road. I sat in the passenger seat of his vintage Triumph motor carriage and watched parts of the city go by, blurred by the increasing rain. The carriage was lower to the ground than its horse-driven counterpart, and it was a rich auburn colour, with cream wheels turning beneath metal arches. The long snout was curved, narrowing toward the front where the wide headlights sat like startled eyes. To be honest, I was surprised that my brother had his precious baby out on such a wet, thankless day. He usually treated it as though it was made of sugar.

Rain didn’t just fall from the sky, it stomped down like the feet of a child in the middle of a tantrum, spraying up around the tyres as we raced across roads that were a mix of cobblestone and modern ashphalt. The city was grey; it looked as though a giant hand had dipped the spires and stone in pewter. It was exactly the kind of day it should be when you got news of your sister’s suicide.

Alleged
suicide, I corrected myself as I dry-swallowed the
supplements Val had forced upon me after telling me I looked feral. He had plenty of his own script left, so I didn’t mind taking a couple.

My brother had his A-cylinder plugged into the Triumph’s audio system. The small metal tube stored hundreds of songs on its internal memory – a vast improvement from the wax cylinders used a century and a half ago. Like so many other blokes I knew, Val had a thing for electronics, and he liked to play loud music when he drove. Today he had the noise at a decent volume – I could still hear the rain on the roof. I only half-listened as Sid Vicious warbled a slightly off-key, yet strangely melodic version of “Luck Be a Lady” from the Frank Sinatra tribute album he’d released last month.

I couldn’t get Dede out of my head. I still didn’t believe she was dead, but a lump of dread sat like cement in the pit of my stomach. What if I was wrong? What if all the trust I put in my instinct and blood was nothing but ego?

“Did you ring Vardan?” I asked, rejecting the doubt in my mind.

Val didn’t take his eyes off the road. “Avery did on the way to find you.”

“How did he take it?”

He shot a dry glance in my direction. “How do you think? He was stunned, just like the rest of us.”

I may have imagined the slight barb in his voice, but I ignored it regardless.

It took us almost half an hour to reach our destination. The Triumph was fast, but traffic was heavy, the road stuffed with motor carriages much like the Triumph, horns blaring and engines revving. It never failed to grate upon my nerves. I was more accustomed to Mayfair, where horsedrawn carriages were more the norm, and motorists were much more relaxed.

Eventually, we reached our destination. Of course there were no open parking spots on the street when we arrived – all the pay posts were taken. Fortunately Val had brought his Scotland Yard permit, which he placed on the dash so it was visible through the windscreen. Normally I would have teased him for such a cheeky abuse of power, but not today.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said to me as I opened my door, umbrella in hand.

I looked at him and didn’t feel any conflict between my head and my heart. That was how I knew I was doing the right thing. My gut was another matter – it rolled and churned as though trying to digest itself. Just the sight of this place was enough to make me want to puke. “Yes I do.”

We braved leaving the dry warmth of his carriage at the same time, both of us as protected as our gear allowed. We ran together through the opening in the wrought-iron gate topped with lengths of metal twisted and formed to spell out the name Bedlam. Water splashed up my boots as I hurried up the paved walk to the impressive columned portico.

The asylum formerly known as New Bethlehem Hospital didn’t look like a house of the damned. It wasn’t dark and monstrous, falling down upon itself. In fact, it was quite the contrary – a fact that only served to make it all the more intimidating. It was a long, sprawling red-brick building with white trim and a dome on top. Three storeys high, it had to have six dozen windows along the front of either wing – most of those were barred.

“Almost looks like a country house, dunnit?” Val remarked, his words echoing my thoughts.

“Mm.” It was as much conversation as I could offer through my clenched jaw. My palms were beginning to sweat and there was a hot, prickling feeling in my torso. When we reached the shelter above the steps, we stopped running.

And then my feet didn’t want to move at all. I stood there, just beyond the rain mark on the stone, frozen like a fucking statue.

Val shook the water off his umbrella and turned to me. “You coming, Xandy? Xandra?”

I blinked and met his gaze. The pins and needles inside me had grown insistent. I could feel them in my head now. “I need a little help, Fetch.” That was what I’d called him when we were still in the courtesan house, so long ago now that I didn’t even remember how the moniker had come to be.

His face softened and for a moment I thought he might actually break down, but he came towards me, holding out his hand. “Then I’ll help you.” He didn’t just mean at this moment, he meant inside as well, and I loved him even more for it.

I’ve always prided myself on being a bit of a kick-arse, confident – perhaps overly so – in my ability to fight and win. There wasn’t much that scared me other than goblins – and you had to be a special kind of stupid not to be afraid of them. Even then, Bedlam terrified me more.

Because I honestly believed that one day I would be an inmate here. This was where I would die if some Human League zealot, whose mission was to ensure that humans were the last race standing, didn’t take me out first. This place was my destiny. Sounds like bollocks, but I felt it in my bones.

“You’re going to break my fingers,” Val whispered as we crossed the threshold into the awful place.

I eased up on my grip, but didn’t let go of his hand. I wasn’t even embarrassed – that’s how freaked out I was. Inside we found ourselves in a small but impeccable foyer, separated from the rest of the building by gates and a security station. Val was right: if it weren’t for all the tech, this place would look like a country house, right down to the oak panelling, ornate plaster ceiling and Axminster carpet.

There must be good money in madness.

We were greeted by halvie guards, both in black trousers and red frock coats with “
ASYLUM SECURITY
” stitched on the left breast. Val and I flashed our respective official identification. Neither guard looked terribly impressed; they simply nodded and gestured for us to move on to the hounds – machines fitted with sensors that smelled the person walking past the “nose” posted on either side of the frame. It could tell in a few seconds if a visitor had a weapon, drugs or anything else that might be considered dangerous.

I’d left the Bulldog at home, but Val had to give up his handgun. They told him he couldn’t take it inside, not unless he was there to arrest someone.

Fortunately, lonsdaelite had no odour, so the dagger hidden in my corset didn’t register. I wasn’t about to sashay on into Bedlam without some kind of weapon beyond my own hands and teeth. Although I was fairly certain I could chew my way out of this place if necessary.

“Are we done?” I asked, standing toe to toe with the rougher-looking of the two guards. “We’d like to see if a body in your morgue is our sister.”

The guard’s eye twitched. What do you know, a hint of remorse. “We’re done. My associate will escort you to the morgue.”

The guard who’d searched Val led us to the lift. Behind us I heard the other bloke radio ahead to let them know we were coming. I stepped inside the antique cage, turning so I faced the front. The guard inserted a key into the control panel, turned it and pressed a button marked “B”. The gate crept shut and the floor beneath my feet shifted, dropped.

The morgue was underground. It was a well-known fact that London, nicknamed the “Necropolis”, was built on graves ranging
from pre-Roman times to historically preserved plague pits to nineteenth-century tombs. Dig deep enough almost anywhere in the city and you’d find bone fragments of some kind. So it seemed only natural that this place associated with death should, like the pits and ancient graves, keep its dead like a dirty secret, buried deep.

There was a bit of a draught – I felt it along my hairline where my skin was damp with perspiration. The place made my flesh creep, my breathing shallow and my heart race. Silly to be so afraid of somewhere I’d never set foot before, but I was. A little fear was a good thing – it made you sharper – but too much made you a wreck. Made you weak.

I was not going to let this pile of stone and madness make
me
weak.

The lift jolted to a stop, wavering beneath our feet before stilling enough for the gate to jerk open. The corridor was dimly lit, with a low ceiling and a worn floor that looked shabby compared to the maintained grandeur of above stairs. I stepped out into the unknown at the same moment as our escort, looking right and then left. We were totally alone – the only sound the hum of the grainy lights.

“This way, please,” the guard said, setting off down the shorter part of the corridor on the left. Val and I followed without looking at one another, him with his hands behind his stiff back, me with mine curled at my sides. The guard’s shoes made soft clipping sounds as he walked, but Val and I moved as silently as ghosts, as we were trained to do.

At the end of the corridor was a scarred metal door with an obscured window and the word “MORGUE” in chipped black paint. The guard punched several keys on a security pad to the left of the door, and when the light turned green, he twisted the knob and led us in.

I went first. Now that I was here, I was determined to get this over with as quickly as possible so I could get the hell out again.

I walked into a sterile-looking room – all white with surgical green and stainless steel. The overhead lights were bright, flooding the room with artificial brightness. The concrete floor was dull, sloping downwards to a drain in the centre. I smelled formaldehyde, the charcoal-coppery scent of scorched blood, the faintly musky-sweet odour of burnt spinal fluid and charred meat. My stomach churned as my throat tightened.

Val reached out and took my hand. I squeezed his fingers.

A man in a lab coat came out of a room in the back. He looked to be part Indian, with thick, wavy black hair and a spine so straight you’d think it was made of steel. Pale blue eyes regarded us from behind square-cut glasses. “Inspector Vardan?”

Val stepped forward and offered his hand. “Yes, and this is my sister Alexandra. Thank you for seeing us.”

He nodded, not a hint of expression on his handsome face. “I’m sorry for the circumstances.” He sounded about as sorry as someone returning a bowl of cold soup. “If you will come this way, we can get this unpleasantness over with.”

Val and I exchanged a look as he walked away. “His empathy is overwhelming,” I remarked drily.

My brother’s expression was strained, but his green eyes held a flicker of warmth. “Manners, Xandy.”

I shrugged, and followed the doctor. Any other smart-arse remarks I might have made disappeared under the lead weight that seemed to have settled in my stomach.

The doctor stood beside one of the walls of refrigerator units. When we approached, he opened one and pulled out the slab. The body on it had a black sheet over it – it wasn’t a sign of mourning; it was because black didn’t show stains like white. A little consideration to the family, I supposed, and to the laundry.

Pale eyes flickered from Val to me. The doctor held my gaze a little longer than necessary, as though looking for the answer to something in my eyes. I didn’t blink, but I arched a brow.

“I apologise for this,” he said, looking away from me as he took hold of the sheet. “There’s nothing I can say to make it easier for either of you.”

Val gave a quick nod. “We appreciate that.”

The doctor hesitated just a moment, as though girding himself against the sight of what was beneath that sheet. I took those few seconds to do the same. Then he peeled back the fabric.

Black. Cracked. Monstrous. The thing on the slab didn’t look like a person at all. It looked like something out of a movie – a prop. It smelled real, though. Too real. But it didn’t smell like Dede – though that didn’t prove anything. Burnt didn’t smell like anything but burnt.

I looked away from that face that was no longer a face, a surreal kind of detachment taking hold of me. The corpse was the right size to be Dede. It was obviously half-blood, given the sharp but small fangs in its gaping mouth where the gums had receded, shrunk. It even had her ring – the Vardan signet – melted on to her finger.

“It’s her,” Val whispered hoarsely.

I shot him a sharp glance. “We don’t know that.”

“Xandy.” He took my arm and pulled me aside. “It’s Dede. You know it and I know it.”

I didn’t know it. One thing I did know, however, was that this “doctor” was watching us closely – too closely. He was listening to us as well, even though he pretended to be very interested in his clipboard. Someone wanted us to believe this poor soul was our sister – and they’d done a good job of selling it. Only not quite good enough.

“Whatever you say, Val,” I murmured, turning away to examine the body once more. Dede was a natural copper-head – hair the colour of a brand-new penny, and just as shiny. But there wasn’t any hair left on this poor thing.