The Diabolical Miss Hyde (44 page)

O
UTSIDE, THE BOILING SKY TORE ASUNDER.

Blinding light flashed on windows, and streetlights popped dark. Thunder crashed, so close that the current zinged Eliza's tongue and her ears throbbed. Wind howled down New Bond Street, dragging leaves and hats and other refuse in its wake. The few brave folk who were out scuttled for cover.

A pair of horses bucked, snapping their traces with no one to calm them. A parked electric carriage crackled bright with over-voltage, and
bang!
the coil exploded, blue current arcing over its metal frame. Above distant rooftops, forked lightning struck the new clock tower on the Palace of Westminster, setting it alight.

The aether-bright wind sharpened Eliza's senses like a drug, burning her sinuses clear. She struggled to hold down windblown skirts. Lafayette grabbed her elbow. “I don't fancy getting fried,” he yelled. “Let's ride.”

Next to them, a bay mare tossed her head and rolled her black eyes. She'd already halfway broken her harness, the wooden shafts cracked to splinters. Lafayette drew his saber
and sliced through the leather lines,
swick! swock!
He sheathed the blade and vaulted onto the mare's back. The horse wheeled and kicked in protest, but he held on with hands and thighs. A bizarre feat of balance and skill.

“Show-off,” she muttered, but the sound was ripped away by the wind.

He wrapped the broken reins around one hand and reached down to her as the horse snorted and curvetted. “Madam,” he yelled.

Eliza gripped his wrist, and he hauled her up in front of him, catching her around the waist.
Smack!
Her backside banged painfully on a harness buckle. The horse squealed and bucked, threatening to tip them both off.

“Hold on, if you don't mind terribly,” called Lafayette shortly, as the world rocked and he fought to bring the horse under control. “I believe I'll need both hands.”

She obeyed, wrapping her arms around him. Beneath her, his thighs strained to keep him in his seat. His heartbeat was swift and even. His breathing was controlled but exhilarated. He was warm, strong, talented, confident to the point of easy recklessness. Everything that terrified her.

And everything Lizzie longed for.

The revelation struck her momentarily dumb. “Uh,” she said lamely, struggling to recover her wits. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Lightning lit his grin devilish, and the wolf glimmered in his eyes. “Madam, I charged the field at Samarkand, outnumbered ten to one beneath a barrage of enemy guns. I can surely cope with a blushing embrace from you.” And he wheeled the mare around to run.

Clattering hooves, swirling wind, crashing thunder. Roof tiles and thatching blew free. Carriages lay overturned or abandoned, debris tumbling along deserted streets. The air whipped taut and angry, ready to crack. Eliza's hair prickled with static, and her nose stung with the sparkling scent of ultimate power.

Her belly ached, and she realized she was laughing. It was good laughter, from deep inside. The way Lizzie laughed.

By the Houses of Parliament, rioters' barricades lay deserted. The black Thames raged, whipped to froth. As they hurtled across an eerily empty Westminster Bridge, she risked an upwards glance. The storm illuminated Lafayette's visage with a weird, almost fey radiance. Sweat and raindrops glittered like tiny gemstones in his hair. He spared a moment to catch her eye, and his lips formed a word she couldn't hear. “Madwoman.”

“Headed to the right place, then,” she called back, as they dashed off the bridge and plunged into darkened Lambeth. The streets were eerie, howling, trees swaying and groaning. Lightning sheeted above domed Bethlem, licking the wicked spikes on the wall with fire.

The gate lay ajar, unattended. Lafayette skidded the horse to a halt in the windswept courtyard. The whinnying mare's hooves clattered, but she kept her feet. Eliza jumped down, and he jumped down behind her. The horse snorted and sidestepped, unsure what to do.

Briskly, Eliza tugged her skirts into place. “How invigorating,” she said coolly, but she knew her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed.

“Thank you. Ah,” he added, forestalling her protest with a grin. “Allow me my shining moment, if you please. There's no chance you can pretend that wasn't a compliment.”

“I was referring to the horse, but by all means—”

Lightning lashed again, closer, and the air strung taut on a human scream that echoed on after the thunder. Eliza and Lafayette looked at each other and sprinted for the door.

Inside, a zoo raged. The lights had gone out, and howls and screeches pierced the dark. Someone sobbed. A woman whooped in a high-pitched witch's laugh. Glass shattered, metal screeched, wood banged and split.

Through the archway, beneath the leering naked statues of Mania and Dementia with their contorted marble muscles. Their dead eyes followed her, splashed in stormlight. Eliza took the stairs three at a time, grabbing her damp skirts, heedless of bared ankles. The place seemed deserted, filled only with noise that shrank her skin cold. On a night like this, the keepers had likely fled for their homes. Left the lunatics to their madness. They'd clear away the mess in the morning. Easier than listening to these insane, godforsaken sounds. Stand here too long, and you'd go mad, too.

If she wasn't already.

Eliza and Lafayette reached the first landing, where the wards peeled off left and right. On the men's side, a malformed man banged his bulbous head into the floor, grunting with each bloody smack of bone. On the women's side, Annie the pig girl clawed at the bars, weeping. Blood dripped from her snout. “It weren't me!” she howled. “Not this time. I never.”

At her feet lay pretty Miss Lucy's severed head.

“Good God.” Lafayette's expression was grim. “What is Fairfax doing to these people?”

“Upstairs,” yelled Eliza. “His new laboratory, where he performs the treatments.”

“Lead on.”

Ahead, a single gaslight still flickered, a cruel will-o'-the-wisp, leading the way to treasure or ruin. Another flight of stone steps. That scream again, ragged like torn silk; the echo of rough-edged laughter. On the second floor, a long corridor stretched, lit only by stray lightning and the eerie bruised aura of storm clouds.

Ahead, the door to Fairfax's laboratory loomed, a double edifice of steel-banded wood. Light glimmered under the door.

Lafayette flexed his fingers, eager. “Sword or pistol?”

“Excuse me?”

He drew his weapons, one in each hand,
slice-snap!
“On second thought, don't answer that. This is more your size.” And he tossed her the pistol.

She caught it. It fit smoothly in her palm, pleasantly heavy. She tested the spring lock,
click-clack!
and the purple coil made a satisfying
buzz
. “Are you certain I won't shoot
you
?”

“I'll take my chances.”

“Brave of you.”

“Yes, well. I'm a cursed ex-army monster-hunter moonlighting as a Royal Society investigator, not an ornament.” He flexed his fingers around his saber's grip. “Shall we?”

Eliza edged up to the door. Pushed on it. It wasn't barred. Softly, she gripped the cold iron-ringed handle and turned.

Inside, a dim anteroom stretched into the gloom. Wild laughter—or was it screaming?—echoed. Somewhere, a rat scuttled.

Cupboards and shelves lined the walls, stacked neatly with bottles of chemicals, pipettes and retorts, apparatuses for operations and blood transfusions, a case of surgical instruments, a whetstone for sharpening knives. Drugs in glass ampoules, buckled leather garments, hoods and shackles, hoop sticks and whips and electric stingers. Metal rattles, whistles, a set of bongo drums, a gleaming silver trumpet, all designed to make noises a patient in restraints could not escape.

Lafayette made a disgusted face and mimed smashing the lot of it. Eliza shuddered in agreement and crept on. At the end, a doorway led into the laboratory proper. Her nose tingled with acid, phosphorus, sulphur, the tang of aether.

Softly, she padded up and peered inside. Gaslights gleamed on broken plastered walls and exposed pipes. As if the room was not yet renovated. The ceiling vanished into cobwebbed darkness. Opaque shutters were fitted tightly over the windows. In one corner hunkered an empty whirling chair: a wooden seat pinned to an apparatus that forced it to spin at the turn of a wheeled handle. A square porcelain bath lay sunken deep into the floor, a single dark plughole in the bottom. An ice bath, empty for now.

Ice,
thought Eliza distantly.
He has an ice machine. That's how he's preserving the parts.

In the center, partially hidden by a black rubber screen, an angular aetheric generator hulked on a wheeled trolley. Beside it, a wooden bed frame. Curly wires hung suspended
between them. Electricity crackled and popped, and she could smell singed skin . . .

In front of the generator capered the tall, sticklike figure of Mr. Fairfax. Fiddling with levers and dials, steel-gray hair swept back, immaculate white collar and charcoal tie. His shirtsleeves were neatly rolled up, and dark wire-rimmed spectacles protected his eyes from aether flash. He rubbed his hands and twirled a dial meticulously, peering close to ensure accuracy.

On the bed frame, laughing like a demon, squirmed Mr. Todd.

Eliza halted, chilled yet burning. Cruel wire bound his bleeding wrists to the frame. He wore the same clothes—like a photograph, forever trapped in what he'd worn that night in Chelsea—and his shirt was even filthier now, stained with bloodied sweat. A broad leather band wrapped his temples, flattening his wild crimson hair. Fine filaments of wire protruded from the leather. As Eliza watched, Fairfax tightened a screw where the electrodes pierced the leather, then flipped a lever on his console.

Blue fire crackled along the wires. Mr. Todd's body arched, bound at wrists and ankles, a grotesque puppet with the strings yanked tight. Every muscle contracted, strained beyond endurance, for surely no one could endure this for long. Not even Mr. Todd, a man more used to strangeness and pain than anyone she'd ever met.

Fairfax flicked his switch again, and Todd collapsed, gasping bloody laughter.

Eliza reeled, momentarily blind.
Drowning Ophelia, floating in black water. A sliced wisp of her own hair, drifting to her
shoulder. A whisper burning her ear, smooth steel glittering in her palm. Let me show you . . .

“Hurt him again and I'll melt your face off.”

Her own voice shocked her to consciousness. Six feet from Fairfax, pistol aimed at his head. The pistol's coil buzzed alight, primed, the trigger snug in the curl of her finger.

Lizzie?
She was breathing hard, barely in control. The rage charring her soul felt all too real.
What are we doing? You awake?

Never me,
returned Lizzie stoutly.
But you go right ahead. Hang the felons, burn 'em, let the surgeons chop 'em up. That's different. I don't care what your Mr. Todd's done, he don't deserve this. No one does.

Fairfax tugged off his dark glasses and smiled that fragile smile. “Dr. Jekyll, how surprising. Is there a problem?”

“Step away from the machine.” Her voice was steady, in control. “Now, Mr. Fairfax. Or so help me, I'll shoot you where you stand.” More like something Lizzie would say. But she didn't need Lizzie, not now.

Not when Mr. Todd lay bleeding.

Todd coughed. He couldn't turn his head, not in that evil leather contraption, but he was laughing again. Shrill, wheezing laughter that grated. “How about it, Fairfax?” he rasped. “A duel to the death? I know where I'd wager.”

Eliza circled, keeping Fairfax in her sights. “Move,” she ordered again, gesturing with the weapon. Something didn't seem right. She couldn't see any other apparatus, body parts, Victor's horrid machine. But she didn't dare look away.

Fairfax edged away from the controls. Outside, lightning crashed, and lunatics howled in far corridors like beasts.

“Capital,” announced Todd. He spat out another mouthful of blood and smacked his lips. “Most excellent. Now, if someone could kindly unwire me—”

“Not so fast.” Lafayette tickled Todd's throat with his sword point and winked. “Nice shackles. Do they hurt?”

Todd glared up at him, cross-eyed. “You again. Honestly, Eliza, the company you keep. Strangely enough, lapdog, no, they don't. Forgive me if I'm a whisker more concerned about the wires he's jabbed into my brain. Now, if you don't mind—”

“Todd, be silent,” snapped Fairfax. Sweat beaded on his impeccable forehead. “Put the pistol down, Eliza. What's this about?”

“You know what it's about.” She steadied her shaking grip, but indignation scorched her blood. How she longed to fire, watch him burn and scream and suffer for what he'd done. “Where is she?”

“Who?”

“Lady Fairfax.”

His face darkened. “How dare you?”

“Brain in a jar. Severed body parts. Where's the machine?”

The storm raged, glimmering brightly in the crack between the shutters. The anteroom door clattered, and William Sinclair burst in, carrying a load of glass pots and rubber tubes. His hair was damp, his dark coat spotted with rain. “I say, Mr. Fairfax, this transfusion kit is not the one we . . .” He halted, nonplussed. “Good God. Eliza, what on earth is going on?”

“Will, stay back,” Eliza warned. “Put that down, whatever it is.”

Will obeyed. His equipment clattered into a pile on the floor.

Lafayette backed away from Todd, sword leveled. “It's getting awfully crowded in here, Doctor. Make it fast.”

Fairfax frowned. “Eliza, are you quite well? You look fevered. What's this machine you're speaking of?”

“Victor's animal electricity machine,” she insisted. “The one that brought Madeleine Jekyll back to life.”