The Heartless City (3 page)

London, 1903

nyone watching might have suspected Elliot Morrissey was about to commit a crime. He was slipping through the shadows of the alley like a bandit, moving with speed, but careful not to draw any attention. No one was there to see him, however; that was the point of taking the alley. For the last two weeks, he’d stayed as far from people as he could get.

So why am I on my way to a bloody music hall?
he thought, though of course he knew the answer: As always, it was for Cambrian.

His best friend and near brother had begged him to end his self-imposed seclusion and come out tonight, and though Elliot, like most people, usually found it hard to resist Cam’s contagious energy, this time he had given in for a very different reason. When Cam had twisted his handsome face into a miserable scowl and flung his body over the edge of Elliot’s bed in mock-despair, Elliot hadn’t laughed in spite of himself like he usually would. Instead, he’d turned away, gripping a chair and trying to breath, because beneath Cam’s playful façade was a pool of icy fear―an overwhelming, marrow-deep concern for his friend’s wellbeing. And Elliot hadn’t seen it in his eyes or heard it in his voice; just as he had for the last two wretched, agonizing weeks, he had
felt
the fear himself.

As if it belonged to him.

Beyond the filthy, ever-present haze of yellow fog, the sun began its descent, bathing the city in sooty shadows. Even from the moderate seclusion of the alley, Elliot sensed the people around him scurrying off the streets. Only two groups of Londoners would dare to venture out now: those who were wealthy enough to afford a weapon or bolted carriage, and those who were desperate enough to provide the services the elite required. Technically, a Hyde could transform at any time, but for whatever reason the change seemed to happen more at night, and those who couldn’t protect themselves from the vicious, heart-eating monsters had to hurry to shelter once the sun began to set.

But even people with money, like Elliot, were never safe. Owning a gun was one thing, but killing an active Hyde was another. The massive, bloodless, black-eyed creatures were practically immortal when they were in their monstrous state. A shot to the heart or a stab wound to the lung would heal within moments; the only way to stop them was to entirely dispatch their brains. A Hyde could either be killed by a well-placed bullet to the brainstem or by the surer, but often more difficult, act of decapitation. One of Elliot’s father’s students at St. Thomas’s Hospital carried a katana his grandfather had purchased before the quarantine and claimed he’d used it to sever the heads of more than twenty Hydes.

Elliot wished he remembered more of the city before the disaster. He’d only been four when the epidemic broke out thirteen years ago. When she was alive, his mother had told him stories about “before,” painting scenes of a thrilling, vibrant, bustling metropolis as clearly and as beautifully as her watercolor landscapes. But now, Elliot found such images difficult to conjure. It seemed to him that London had never been more than a desolate prison, and that he had never known anything but restlessness, longing, and grief.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, however, his stomach flooded with shame, a feeling that clung to him like the stench of the Thames on a mudlark these days. He was one of the most fortunate people in all of London. The Hyde outbreak had left the city half as populous, but the quarantine had doubled the number of people in poverty. The docks were closed, the trains shut down, and the underground railway completely abandoned; hundreds of jobs were gone and thousands of people were destitute. Never before had the gap between the rich and the poor been so wide, and Elliot sat at the very top of the city’s social ladder. He lived in a place that was clean and well guarded, that bloomed with electrical light. His home was a palace―literally.

His home was Buckingham Palace.

Cambrian’s father, Harlan Branch, was the Lord Mayor of London, a yearlong position he had held for over fourteen years now. When Parliament and the royal family abandoned the city for York, they left the former capitol entirely in his hands. His move to the palace was meant to last until a cure was discovered―until the threat had passed and Queen Victoria could come back. But the queen had died, no cure had been found, and King Edward seemed no more inclined to return than his mother had been.

Elliot lived at the palace because his father, in addition to teaching medicine at St. Thomas’s, served as Harlan Branch’s own personal physician. He’d had the job since Elliot and Cam were little boys, back when the two of them had dreamed of one day becoming their fathers. Cam―bright, charming, and loved―would certainly succeed in becoming a brilliant leader someday, but Elliot had destroyed his chance at a future in medicine. He longed to tell Cam the reason why, to finally let down his guard and share his burden with his friend. Keeping a secret from Cam was like cutting the air off to one of his lungs, but suffocation was preferable to the shame of telling the truth.

A figure passed through the shadows at the end of the alleyway, and Elliot paused and slid his hand inside his overcoat. He wasn’t reaching for the pistol holstered beneath his arm―the figure was much too small and moving too slowly to be a Hyde―but rather for the flask of gin pocketed in his vest. He’d downed a hurried glass before he left the palace grounds, but it wasn’t going to be enough to withstand the crowd he’d soon face, or to persuade Cam he was cheerfully on the mend.

Steeling himself, he lifted the flask and took a hasty swig. The liquor seared his throat and left a poisonous taste in his mouth, but he forced himself to endure a few more gulps before stopping to breathe. He hated gin, hated its sour burn and rancid taste, but it was the most effective medicine for his affliction.

Ever since the grave mistake he’d made a fortnight ago, Elliot had been able to feel the emotions of those around him―feel them in the marrow of his bones, as if they were his. His father had called him “thin-skinned” and “sensitive” all his life, but now he was more than sensitive; he was an open wound. The feelings of a passerby had the power to incapacitate him, even when the person in question was feeling something good. Once, when he was in Limehouse in the early morning hours, he passed a prostitute performing her services in an alley, and the fusion of her crippling shame and the customer’s blind desire was so repulsive and overwhelming he vomited in the street.

Such an affliction would surely be detrimental in any place, but London was an ocean of terror, sorrow, and desperation. The fear and grief Elliot knew before seemed a fairy tale now; no physical blow or injury could ever match the pain he’d found in other people’s hearts. Even the servants who lived in the clean, bright safety of Buckingham Palace―people whom he’d previously regarded with the level of interest he held for the furniture―pulsed with fear, burned with anger, and ached with longing and grief. Perceiving the secret burdens of those around him was painful enough, but
feeling
their collective misery was unbearable.

After a cough, he raised his hand and took another drink, sickened again but also calmed by the growing feeling of numbness, which spread through his veins and rose up through his skin like a coat of armor. Nothing could blot out the feelings entirely, but alcohol helped; it dulled the edges, softened the impact, diluted the potency. Drunk, he was slow and useless, but clear-headed, he was exposed.

Perhaps the only trait he retained either way was cowardice.

Slipping the flask back into his vest, he spit the taste out onto the cobblestone street and hurried on. When the alley opened up at Euston Road, he took a left, keeping close to the shadowy, padlocked buildings as he walked. The largest and most noticeable was King’s Cross station, which towered over the street like a massive, empty tomb.

It seemed extremely wasteful to leave such a grand place untenanted, but Elliot understood why the city refused to convert it to something useful. The station was a symbol of hope that the quarantine would be lifted, that a cure would be discovered and London restored to its former glory. No one wanted to think that trains would never pass through it again, so it would remain a vacant relic wrapped in locks and chains.

The security was necessary not only to keep out homeless vagrants but also fugitive Hydes. A countless number went undetected, since anyone―except for women, for whom the monster-inducing drug was inexplicably fatal―could be an infected Hyde, but those who’d been discovered hid in careful, moving nests in order to avoid being captured and executed. Common belief was that most of them lived in the tunnels of the abandoned underground railway, which even the police were often too afraid to enter.

The sky behind the stagnant clock on the station’s tower was dark now, and snow was starting to fall in ashen clumps through the smoky air. Elliot shivered, which meant the gin was doing its job too slowly, so he took another swig and trudged up the street to
La Maison Des Fleurs
.

He and Cam had come here a month and a half ago for “St. Cambrian’s Day,” which was what Cam called his birthday since it fell on St. Valentine’s Day. The music hall was larger and grander than most, but not elegant. Every inch of the place was drenched in its gaudy flower theme: light fixtures shaped like tulips, wallpaper crammed with garish blooms, waitresses with “floral” names in tawdry petal-pink dresses.

As he stepped inside the oily light and yeasty warmth of the crowded hall, Elliot wished again that Cam had chosen a gentlemen’s club. In dim, quiet rooms reserved for men of the upper crust, he’d only be exposed to clouds of cigar smoke and self-importance. Music halls were crowded, bright, and worst of all, filled with women, whose rivers of fear ran so deep he felt he might drown inside them. He’d already known their lives were more precarious than his own, as they were prey not only to Hydes but also to fiendish men, but he’d never truly understood the horror of living that way, of always feeling like hunted game in a world that didn’t care.

But Cam, unburdened by Elliot’s knowledge, found gentlemen’s clubs to be boring. Five years ago, his father had closed every theatre, opera, ballet, museum, and symphony in London, declaring them all superfluous drains on the city’s meager resources. Music halls were the only “artistic” entertainment left, and Cam was starved for aestheticism and desperate for the arts.

At the moment, a bevy of chorus girls were dancing on the stage. They were dressed in daffodil-yellow tights and bustled skirts so short they exposed the fullness of their thighs. Their bodices were nothing more than corsets lined with beads, and when they kicked their legs in the air, they exposed bright purple drawers. As they danced, they sang a bouncing song called “Get Away, Johnnie.”

I’m a flirt as you’ll discover,

All my sweethearts I can tease,

When I stroll out with my lover,

Don’t I like a gentle squeeze.

Elliot sighed for Cam’s sake.

This was London’s “art.”

Bracing himself, he pressed through the heady haze of smoke and feeling, dodging bursts of heartache, yearning, and unbridled lust as he passed. He’d arrived early on purpose, knowing Cam would choose a place up front in the heart of the crowd, so when he spotted an empty box hanging high above the stage, he rushed toward the rickety steps in the back and started climbing.

From below, it had seemed the entire second floor was unoccupied, but when he reached the top, he discovered two waitresses on their break. They were huddled at a grimy table, rubbing their feet and crouched over two dark pints of weak-looking stout. Their shoulders and arms were deflated from hours of carrying heavy trays, and their petal-pink dresses looked sallow, pinched, and too small for their frames. Elliot wondered how long they’d been working, and if those pints of stout were the only supper they’d had tonight. The gin had started to work a bit, so their stale fear and hollow dejection wasn’t overwhelming, but when they lifted their heads and saw him, a sudden rush of desperate hunger flooded the air between them.

It wasn’t lust, though Elliot now knew women could feel that, too, contrary to what his father and friends at St. Thomas’s had told him. The waitresses’ yearning, however, was not for his looks but for his wealth, for the safety and protection that came with silk hats and silver cufflinks. Swallowing hard against the borrowed burn of their desire, he closed his eyes and walked away from the pair as fast as he could. Once he reached the empty box, he collapsed in a chair at its table, removing his hat and coat and then running a hand through his sweat-damp hair.