Things Half in Shadow (51 page)

No sign of life was evident as I surveyed my surroundings. No workers. No Claudia.

The only indication that I wasn't alone was the sound of hurried footfalls coming from somewhere above me.

Tearing my gaze from the machinery, I noticed a ladder to my immediate right. I climbed it, finding myself on a wooden catwalk that ran between two of the turbines. One direction led to more churning equipment. The other moved inward, skirting the wall of the channel I had just emerged from.

In that direction, I caught a flash of soaked skirt disappearing around a corner.

At last, I had located Claudia.

I gave chase, hurrying around the corner. Claudia was just ahead of me, now climbing another, higher ladder. I caught the ladder a few rungs below her, arms straining to grasp one of her feet and yank her downward. But she eluded my grip, lifting herself effortlessly to another rung just out of reach.

The ladder led to another catwalk, higher and narrower than the first. Claudia scrambled onto it and turned left without hesitation. She easily knew her way around this place.

I could only try to keep up, heaving myself onto the catwalk. We were near the top of the waterworks by that point, with most of the machinery far below. It was still loud, though, and still fogged with steam. Ahead of me, Claudia burst through a wall of it, momentarily vanishing. I followed, catching sight of her again as she climbed yet another ladder.

This was a shorter one, leading to a nook nestled at the very top of the building. Claudia reached it in no time at all. I climbed it slightly more slowly, my whole body aching. Above me was the sound of more machinery, humming away. I also heard Claudia talking to herself, chanting something in Latin.

“Gloria enim Praediti. Gloria enim Praediti
.”

Reaching the top of the ladder, I peered into the room. It was larger than I expected, stretching a good twenty feet in width. A hole in the roof revealed a patch of night sky and winking stars. The walls of the room weren't visible, thanks to stacks of small wooden boxes that rose from floor to ceiling. What I didn't see was any more machinery. Odd, considering how loud it was in there.

Claudia continued her chant as she grabbed one of the wooden boxes and smashed it to the floor.

A black cloud burst out of it, rising for a moment before breaking away into smaller pieces.

Bees.

Hundreds of them poured out of the box and scattered everywhere. They crawled along the walls, flitted off the ceiling, flew like wind-whipped leaves.

“Gloria enim Praediti,”
Claudia continued to chant.
“Gloria enim Praediti.”

She smashed another box. Then another. More clouds of bees swarmed the room. Some of them flew away through the hole in the roof. Others swooped down toward me on the ladder.

Mostly, they crawled all over Claudia. Dozens were in her hair, burying themselves in its strands. More gathered along her shoulder, her neck, her face.

“Gloria enim Praediti. Gloria enim Praediti.”

Two more boxes hit the floor, the wood splintering, the bees joining their brethren. Instead of fighting them off, Claudia welcomed them, opening her arms as if to embrace them. Bees had covered one side of her face—a writhing mask of yellow and black.
Claudia urged them forward, pushing them toward her mouth and nose. Some crawled inside her nostrils. Others entered her mouth, buzzing in and out of her open lips.

The room had become so thick with bees that I was forced to retreat down the ladder. I swatted them with one hand while clinging to the rungs with the other. Just as I ducked out of the room, I spied Claudia holding one more box. The bees had mostly covered her, leaving only her hands and a bit of forehead untouched.

She raised the box over her head, the bees inside it trickling onto her scalp.

She gave one final cry,
“Gloria enim
Praediti!”

Then she threw the box to the floor, letting the bees that poured out of it fully engulf her.

I
t took no time at all for the bees to reach me as well. I was halfway down the ladder when they swarmed around my head and crawled over my arms. I tried to shake them off, instead losing my grip on the ladder and tumbling the rest of the way down.

I landed hard on my back, the catwalk beneath me shimmying from the full and sudden force of my weight. Despite the pain that now pulsed up my spine, I continued to move, crawling backward as fast as I could. Part of my haste was to get away from the bees, which stubbornly insisted on following me. The other reason was to get off that catwalk, which continued to buck and sway.

When I reached the curtain of steam I had passed through earlier, the bees at last retreated. That gave me the opportunity to stand, although my fall had left me sore and weary. On my feet again, I hurried through the slip of steam to the ladder on the other side of the catwalk.

I descended the ladder to a lower, more stable walkway. This was the one that overlooked the channel from which I had entered, the water below quiet and still. I continued back into the heart of the waterworks. The machinery there still moved at full speed—an army of gears and pumps and turbines working with ceaseless purpose. Water sloshed in all directions as jets of steam shot across the walkway.

One such column of steam contained a silhouette of a man crossing the walkway in the opposite direction, the mist holding his shadow a moment. The darkened form shimmered slightly before being released as the man finally emerged.

I sucked in a deep, horrified breath, finding myself face-to-noseless-face with Corinthian Black.

He halted just beyond the curtain of steam, one hand in his pocket. His other hand was outstretched, palm forward, as if he was trying to prevent me from coming closer, although I had no intention of doing so.

“Claudia is dead, I suppose,” Mr. Black said.

His voice contained neither accent nor nuance. It was a flat plain of a voice, and all the more frightening for it.

“I think so,” I replied. “I can't tell if you're happy or sad about that.”

“I am . . . indifferent.”

“How did you know we were here?”

“I was waiting in my carriage outside the Pastor residence. I saw you enter. When neither you nor Claudia emerged, I knew where to find you. This is where I told her to go in the event she was discovered.”

“Did you also instruct her to kill herself ?” I asked. “For that's what she did.”

Mr. Black's lips twisted into a cruel smile. “She knew what she was getting herself into.”

“And what is that, exactly? Surely, you had her kill Mrs. Pastor and Sophie Kruger for a reason.”

Corinthian Black, hand still in his pocket, took a step forward. Alarmed, I looked for a place to escape, finding few satisfying options. The path behind me led only to the ladder and unsteady catwalk above. To each side of me were watery pools filled with hissing machinery.

I was trapped.

“They died because they were stubborn,” Mr. Black said. “They died because they refused to acknowledge the full power of the Praediti.”

“Who are they? Are you their leader?”

Mr. Black barked a slithering, mocking laugh that caused the skin surrounding his gaping nostrils to quiver. “I merely serve a higher power, Mr. Clark. As do my brethren.”

Fear stabbed at my gut, sharp and frigid. “How many more are there?”

“Scores of us,” Mr. Black replied. “With many more joining us all the time. Those who refuse are dealt with in the same way as Mrs. Pastor and the Kruger girl.”

“But what about me and Mrs. Collins? Why did you try to kill us?”

“Quite simply, Mr. Clark, because you know too much.”

“But I don't know anything,” I said. “I'm as ignorant as the day Mrs. Pastor was killed.”

“You know enough,” Mr. Black replied. “Enough to make you a threat to our cause.”

At last, he removed the hand from his coat pocket, revealing the knife that had been hidden there. He lifted it close to his face, as if trying to study his reflection in the flat of the blade.

“I acquired this knife many years ago,” he said. “From someone else who knew too much. In fact, he's the one responsible for
this
.”

He gestured to the gaping nostrils on his face, his breath still hissing out of them.

“He thought cutting it off would deter me. It did, for a time.
But I returned. And I killed him, using the very same knife that removed my nose. This knife right here.”

Without wasting another second, he rushed toward me, blade aiming for my stomach.

I leapt out of his path, jumping off the walkway and into the pool of churning machinery. A turbine was right in front of me, with long, steel arms that pulled water deeper into the building. The turbine's movements formed waves that almost made me lose my balance. It was only through the grace of God that I remained standing and, with one unsteady leap, cleared the turbine's arms.

A second turbine lay in front of me, moving at the same speed as the first. Behind me, I heard a splash as Corinthian Black entered the water. I allowed myself a quick glance over my shoulder, seeing him confronting the turbine I had just cleared. The knife remained clenched in his fist.

I tried to jump over the sloshing arms of the second turbine. This time, I wasn't so lucky. My right boot caught on one of the moving arms, which sent me flailing over the machinery.

I fell facefirst into the pool, mere inches from a massive wooden waterwheel that stretched to the ceiling. It rumbled just beyond my head, and for a moment I thought I was going to be either crushed beneath it or scooped up and carried skyward. I only managed to avoid those fates by twisting my body under the water and rolling away from the rotating monstrosity.

Pushing off the floor, I managed to get to my feet again. Looking behind me, I saw that Mr. Black had cleared the first turbine and was now attempting to do the same with the second. All that separated us was a single turbine wheel and its iron arms pushing back and forth through the water.

Behind me, the twenty-foot-tall waterwheel continued to roll, blocking me. My first instinct was to try to duck through it to the other side. But the waterwheel—a wide and heavy thing—had too
many support spokes to do so. Not that it mattered much, for beyond it was nothing but a stone wall.

I spun around again, seeing Corinthian Black leap over the turbine's arms. He landed in the water a few feet to my right, lunging toward me with his knife raised.

Helpless, I pivoted and grabbed the edge of the waterwheel. My hands slipped an inch or so before my fingers caught one of the wheel's blades. I gripped it with all my strength, a slave to its powerful roll as it lifted me off my feet.

I continued to be swept upward as Mr. Black surged ahead, the knife slicing thin air. The blade struck the outer rim of the waterwheel, right near my knees. The tip sank into the wood, the motion of the wheel jerking it upward and away before Mr. Black had a chance to pry it out again.

While he leapt against the waterwheel in a vain attempt to retrieve the knife, I let go and dropped to the water a yard or so away from him. My goal was to escape the same way I had come, jumping over both turbines and back to the walkway. Mr. Black, however, was too quick and determined to let me do that. He turned away from the waterwheel and slammed into me, sending us both tumbling sideways into the drink.

I thrashed in the water, trying to kick him off me, but he was too strong. Shockingly so. I found myself helpless in his grip.

He scrambled on top of me, hands grasping my throat. His face pressed close to mine. Hot, stinking breath hissed through the twin holes where his nose should have been. His eyes locked on my own, angry, fierce, and confused.

As he stared at me, emotion flickered over his deformed face. Recognition. A dawning realization on his part that I couldn't begin to understand.

“Columbus Holmes?”
he said in an awed, surprised voice.

His fingers were still tight around my neck and it took all the breath I had left to ask, “How do you know who I am?”

“How are you still alive?” he asked. “All of us thought you were dead.”

“Why would my fate be any concern of yours?”

Corinthian Black smiled again—a rictus grin that struck fear into my very soul.

“I don't think I'm allowed to answer that,” he said. “You'll have to ask your mother.”

In one swift and startling motion, he shoved my head underwater as his grip tightened around my throat. I struggled beneath him, thrashing my legs and swinging my fists. Yet the more I fought, the weaker I became. Mr. Black was too heavy, too strong.

Inches above my face, the water's surface was an undulating veil through which I could only see his narrowed eyes, open mouth, and wide, flaring nostrils.

All the while, the breath was being squeezed out of me. Gurgling sounds erupted from my constricted throat. My heart, beating wildly not a minute earlier, had started to slow. A bubble of pain formed in my chest, growing and expanding until I thought it would break right through my rib cage.

By then, all the fight had left my body. My legs went still, ignoring my desperate desire to keep them moving. My arms dropped to my sides. In that moment, I knew I was going to die. The life was going to be choked right out of me in a pool of water, just like my mother.

I thought of Annalise Holmes just then. As my body weakened further and the pain in my chest grew, I wondered if this was how she had felt right before her death. Did she fight for her life, as I had tried doing? Did her limbs grow numb with the same ferocious speed? And, most of all, did she think of me in her final moments, as I did of her?

Not wanting to end my life gazing up at the noseless face of Corinthian Black, I was about to close my eyes. My sight had already dimmed. Darkness was approaching from all sides.