Her Dark Curiosity (38 page)

“Your father did.” Montgomery stepped closer. “Say they’re banished, or let off with a light sentence. What’s to stop them from fleeing to an island of their own?”

“Don’t flatter them,” I answered, perhaps too harshly. “My father was a genius. Half of the King’s Club members are only pawns. Radcliffe was never a man of science; he just saw this as another investment. They don’t have the brilliance, nor the drive. If we expose them, their families will be shamed. They’ll lose their social standing, their credit. They’ll move on to some other, respectable scheme—investing in agriculture, promoting some new politician—and curse themselves for ever getting involved in my father’s work.”

I glanced at the water tanks before continuing. “The ones who are truly dangerous are the few who aren’t doing this for the financial advantage, but for sheer scientific hubris. There are twenty-seven King’s Men, but I gave Lucy a list of only three names: Inspector Newcastle, Dr. Hastings, and Isambard Lessing. The ones who are scientists, the ones who might dare to consider dabbling in Father’s realm again, the ones who would murder to get what they want, or experiment on humans—those are the ones who can’t be allowed to continue at any cost. Without those three, the others will scatter.”

Montgomery studied me very carefully. “What do you intend to do to those three?”

When I glanced at the water tanks as an answer, he grabbed my arm a little roughly. Ever since learning that Edward was his own blood relation, he’d seemed to stop thinking in such stark terms. In a way it was as though we had swapped places, he now more concerned with the gray parts of life, and me with the black and the white.

“You’re going to kill them, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Not necessarily,” I said, drawing a vial out of my pocket. “I only want to show them what they’re doing. I extracted this from Edward this morning while I gave him a shot of sedative. It’s twenty milligrams of his spinal fluid. Not enough to harm him, but enough to bring five of these creatures to awareness. We’ll lock the men and the creatures together in the smoking room upstairs.”

Montgomery’s jaw went very hard. “They’ll die.”

I tried to keep my voice steady, though my heart was fluttering with a dangerous kind of excitement. “Perhaps they will—that’s what they deserve. Or perhaps the King’s Men will be able to defend themselves. We have no idea what will happen, and that’s the beauty of it. Leave it up to nature. Survival of the fittest.”

Montgomery drew a hand over his face. “It’ll be a bloodbath.”

“All the better if it is.” I whispered the words, because such words were never meant to be spoken. “Imagine the spectacle in the newspaper. You know how the public hungers for blood—it’s why they’ve gone into such a fervor over the Wolf. The King’s Men control the
London Times,
but not the other newspapers. They’ll call it the Christmas Massacre at King’s College, or something with an equally macabre ring. No one in the city—the entire country—won’t know the truth about what they were trying to do.”

The blood had drained from Montgomery’s face, and yet he hadn’t left, nor had he called me mad and broken off the engagement. “And the creatures?” he asked.

I rested my hand on the nearest glass tank. “We kill them after it’s done. We haven’t a choice. We both know any creature of my father’s is fated to die either way.”

I tried hard not to think about Edward. Or Balthazar. Or myself.

Montgomery let out a weary sigh. “Hunting them down, just like on the island. I thought all that was behind me.”

“We’ll inject them with a large dose of stimulant that will stop their hearts after ten minutes. No hunting, no shooting. They’ll die quietly. That’s more mercy than the King’s Club would have shown them.”

He leaned on the worktable. “You have it all figured out, don’t you?” He looked over the creatures in the tanks, his blond hair slipping loose and veiling his face. “There must be some other way. If we just destroyed the specimens . . .”

“They’d make more.”

“We could warn the authorities about their plans for the paupers’ ball.”

“They
are
the authorities. Newcastle controls the police, and the members of Parliament have control over the military.”

He sighed, still unwilling to accept that my plan was the only option. “It makes me think of Edward, how I was so certain he had to die. Then I learned that we share the same blood, and it changed something. I’m so tired of killing, Juliet. Man or creature.”

I placed my hands over his, kissing each of his knuckles. “I wish there was another way too,” I said. “But I’ve thought it through. It has to be this.”

“You’ve never operated on one of these things. You’ve only seen it happen, and as I recall it was enough to send you running into the jungle in horror.”

“I won’t run this time,” I said quietly.

I could still see the hesitation written in the tense muscles of his neck. I walked over to the wall and took down two leather aprons. I slid one over my neck and cinched it at the waist, then handed Montgomery the other.

“I swore I’d never touch a scalpel again,” he whispered.

“You don’t have to touch a scalpel,” I said. “I’ve studied Father’s journal. I know every word he wrote about the procedures.” I held out the vial of Edward’s spinal fluid. “All we have to do is inject them with this material, and then stress the bodies with an electric shock. No cutting. No slicing. The electric current will weaken the cells to allow the material to permeate, which will bring them to life. We’ll awaken five and poison the rest, then throw all the journals and instructions into the tank water with them. The chemicals will destroy the writing.”

Montgomery leaned on the counter, studying the blood-red liquid in the vial. I would have paid dearly to know what was going through his mind. Did he think I was lying to myself? If he did, he was wrong. This had nothing to do with besting Father’s work, or even giving the King’s Men the cruel justice they deserved. This was about that family next door on Dumbarton Street, and the girls at Lucy’s teas, and Mrs. Bell and her cleaning crew. There was still beauty in the world, still innocence.

I squeezed Montgomery’s arm. “We can’t let them win. We’re to be married, and we’ve Edward, who’s practically your
brother,
and Elizabeth, who’s my guardian now. If you won’t do it for the good of the city, do it for them.”

His hand took mine, circled the silver ring. He spun it a few times, thinking, and then let my hand fall. He pulled the loose strands of his hair back into a ponytail and glanced at the chemistry equipment. “Go through the cabinets and look for a neural stimulant. We’ll need at least a hundred milligrams per creature to ensure their heart rate increases enough to give out after ten minutes.” His voice was flat, unemotional. He paused. “How exactly do you intend on transporting five ravenous creatures with claws and sharp teeth to the upstairs smoking room?”

I swallowed. “I have a plan for that. It sounds a bit mad, but hear me out. The entire upstairs was fitted with electricity within the last two years. They had to run the electric wires in external casings along the walls. It won’t be hard to expose a bit of wire. Enough to provide an electric shock if attached to living flesh.” I paused. “They won’t notice a few more animal bodies among all that taxidermy. Once they go in and flip on the lights . . .”

Montgomery looked torn between illness over what I was proposing and a strange sort of admiration. I swallowed back the part of me that was secretly thrilled by my plan.

Montgomery selected five of the healthiest-looking specimens, while I searched through the cabinets for a neural stimulant strong enough to kill the creatures after ten minutes. He handed me five needles.

Together, we brought to fruition the terrible plans of the King’s Club.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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FORTY-TWO

E
VEN WITHOUT SURGERY, THE
work was a grisly task.

The creatures in the tanks might have been created in an ungodly way, but their little bodies were warm with life. Each weighed perhaps twenty-five pounds, not so different than holding Sharkey in my arms. The liquid within the tanks wasn’t water, but rather a viscous chemical bath that clung to my leather apron and dress. As we laid the creatures out on the table, fluid dripping off their drenched fur and onto the floor, my heart twisted.

Sometimes you have to embrace the darkness to stop it,
I reminded myself.

On the island, Father’s ratlike creatures had been hairless, but these had a line of fur down the spine thick as quills. The creatures’ eyelids were nearly translucent, showing a web of threadlike veins above eyes that would soon open for the first time. I dried the creatures with a towel as tenderly as if I was giving Sharkey a bath. Damned though they were, I couldn’t bear to abuse them any more than they already had been.

As soon as I’d finished, Montgomery showed me where to inject them at the base of their spines, explaining how the central blood system was separated from the brain and spinal column by a membrane.

The syringe trembled in my hand.

It was me—not Father—giving life now.

I set the needle at the base of the first creature’s spine, counting the vertebra. The tank’s fluid had kept their skin soft and thin, revealing rivers of purple veins beneath the surface. I pierced the skin gently and worked the needle until it hit the spinal sac. It was thicker than I’d imagined, and I had to thrust my hand to puncture it. Then I depressed the lever, breathing life into the thing on the table.

“The next one,” Montgomery called over his shoulder, while he gathered all the notes and journals and plunged them into the viscous tank water to destroy them. “Hurry, before the stimulant starts to wear off.”

I finished the injections. The creatures looked so strange, caught in this half-life. Bodies so perfect and yet breathless, pulseless, waiting in stasis for that one spark to set off the reaction that would start their hearts.

We carried them up two flights of stairs to the King’s Club smoking room, where we worked by candlelight. Among the taxidermied wildlife, a few more motionless bodies wouldn’t be noticed. I set the last one on top of the mantel, the focal point of the room, where I hoped Newcastle would be standing when the creatures first woke.

This is for the professor,
I thought with grim satisfaction.

Montgomery used his knife to pull away the electric wiring from the walls. He knew a thing or two about electrical systems, and showed me how to make certain both the positive and negative wires touched the creatures’ flesh.

We worked in silence, so when I heard a rustle of clothing behind me I nearly jumped.

Lucy stood in the doorway, Balthazar behind her, the two of them silhouettes in the dark hallway. Lucy’s hand reached for the electric light switch.

“Don’t!” I cried.

Her hand hovered above the switch. “It’s dark as night in here with just those candles. What on earth are you doing?”

I rushed over to her. “My god, don’t touch the lights! What are you doing here, Lucy? We were supposed to meet back at the professor’s.”

“I had to know what you were planning,” she said, as she looked around the room, not yet noticing the few extra animal bodies among the rest. “I’m involved in this too. My father—”

“Is out of town,” I interrupted. “He won’t be affected by what we’re doing, at least not immediately. Once he returns and learns that the King’s Club has been exposed, he’ll be the first to denounce his association with them.”

“You’re exposing them? How?”

She tried to see what Montgomery was doing on the mantel, but I pulled her into the hallway. “What time is it?” I asked.

“Around a quarter till nine,” she said. “I delivered the letters. Those three men should be here shortly.”

“We’ll need to clear out.” I peered back into the room. “Montgomery?”

“Twenty seconds and I’ll be finished,” he answered.

I pulled Lucy to the storage room directly across the hall, empty now save a stack of chairs. “We can hide in here,” I said. “Balthazar, come.”

Montgomery finished and locked the smoking room, and then we piled into the storage room and closed the door.

“Juliet . . . ,” Lucy started.

“Shh. If they hear us, this will all be over.”

A few painfully long minutes passed. Balthazar’s chest was at my back, and the feel of his solid strength gave me relief. Lucy pressed closely to my side.

“What the devil is that smell?” she hissed, sniffing the wet spots on my dress that were soaked in the creatures’ tank water. At the same time, I heard the groaning hinges of the main courtyard door and whispered for her to be quiet. We all held our breaths.

It wasn’t long before footsteps sounded in the hall, then the low voices of two men talking. From the slips of conversation I could make out, they weren’t happy about being called upon on Christmas Day. I heard them rattle the doorknob of the smoking room across the hall, but neither had a key.

After another few minutes more footsteps came, brisker than the rest, and Inspector Newcastle’s familiar voice said, “Isn’t Radcliffe here with the key? He’s the one who called this bloody meeting. Never mind, I have mine somewhere.”

My gut wrenched. I squeezed Lucy’s hand, wishing she hadn’t come. The the sound of a key turning in the smoking room door came, followed by footsteps filing into the room.

I stared at the crack of light beneath the storage room door. It suddenly glowed brighter as someone within the smoking room must have flipped on the electric light.

For a few seconds, the four of us waited, breathless. We were pressed together so closely I couldn’t tell whose hand was brushing mine, whose elbow was in my back.

I closed my eyes and thought of a jungle far away, a father I’d once idolized.

“What the devil?” a sharp voice came from outside.

“Now,”
I yelled.

Montgomery threw the door open, and he and I raced across the marble hall. The smoking room door had been left cracked, and as I reached for the knob to slam it closed I saw flutters of movement: the startled face of Dr. Hastings, Isambard Lessing twisting to look behind him. My eyes met those of Inspector Newcastle—his blue, cold, calculating eyes—an instant before I slammed the door.