A Dark Heart (26 page)

Fyodor had roused himself enough to sit beside her, a troubled expression
twisting his human side as he watched the girl struggle internally. He looked
like he wanted to reach out and soothe the girl with a touch, but held himself
back, a helpless spectator to her agony.

At last she gave a feeble shrug. “I don’t want Hector to die, or the
others, even that dreadful Mr. Percy,” she whispered. Then her eyes went bright
with unshed tears. “And I don’t want to die either.”

“It will hurt,” Rowan said.

An understatement. The Bonding had been excruciating.

“And you’ll not age until my Heartsblood wears off. Your illness will
return, but I make no promises to Bond you again,” he gritted out, as if every
word cost him a little bit more of his soul.

Helen just nodded her acceptance, bowing her head.

Still, Rowan made no move to go through with it, just stood there looking
a bit lost.

“Please,” Hex cried. “Please save her. My
son
is out there, and I
cannot lose him. I cannot lose either of them.”

Rowan gave a shuddering sigh as Hex’s words penetrated his stupor. “I’ll
do it,” he murmured. But he fixed Bartholomew with a look so devoid of warmth
she shivered. “But after you tell us where they are, you’d better start to run.
For if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”

Bartholomew believed him – the wisest thing he’d done all day, in Christiana’s
opinion.

WHEN Elijah
came back to the world, he was lying on a cold, damp metal surface, his body
burning from the inside out and his head spinning in dizzying circles. Flashes
of light pierced through his cloudy, unfocused vision, and the hollow sound of
rushing water and an occasional echoing human voice reached his ears. If not
for the intense pain radiating from the jab in his neck, sizzling to the end of
every nerve in his body, he would have sworn he was in a dream, or at the very
least higher on morphine than he’d ever been before. He certainly felt that
same boneless lethargy and sensual disorientation that came with a high dose of
the drug, but it was more intense than anything he’d ever experienced. And it
had never hurt so much. It was as if someone had pumped millions of tiny scorpions
into his veins.

It was a struggle to raise his head from the cold steel surface, much
less sit up, but he did so by increments, pausing whenever a wave of nausea
swept over him. He finally managed to slump against a row of bars at his back
and closed his eyes, willing the world to stop spinning. When he felt a little
steadier, he opened his eyes and tried to take in his surroundings, though it
was like viewing the world through a cloudbank, all of his senses distorted.

The sound of rushing water was the hardest thing to reconcile, since he
saw no evidence of it in the large, cavernous tiled passageway, aside from a
drip or two of damp that leaked from the algae-covered wall at his back. He
recognized the tile and the shape of the chamber from his nightly jaunts
through the city. They were in an old, abandoned section of the Metropolitan
Railway’s underground tunnels. The only illumination nearby came from an
occasional feeble electric light along the perimeter, but a cluster of gas
lamps magnified by giant mirrors stood in the center of the chamber a few meters
from where Elijah was caged.

It slowly dawned on him that the dark metal bars at his back surrounded him
on all sides, even overhead, penning him in like a specimen in a zoo. And he was
even slower in realizing he wasn’t the only one inside the cage. A figure lay
slumped beside him, face down and unmoving. He cautiously leaned over the
figure and lifted a tattered cap, revealing short hair browned with grease, and
a face stained with grime. It was Percy, dressed in the same sort of rough
street clothes she’d worn years ago as Percy the Pinch, and looking extremely
worse for wear.

He placed his hand over her lips and felt the faint tendrils of breath
against it. She was alive, but only just, and beneath the muck, her face was a
study in black and blue. She groaned in pain and shifted, and it was enough to
dispel some of the fog from his mind. He screamed inwardly at himself to snap
out of it, but his body was not responding. Whatever they had given him had
utterly stolen his strength. He made out a few leeches guarding the cage, and a
dozen or so stationed throughout the chamber. The entirety of O’Connor’s
vampiric force, if he had to guess – the ones he kept fully blooded, at
least. There were certainly more than he could ever hope to fight his way
through, especially in his current condition.

He finally shifted his attention to the center of the room where the gas
lamps illuminated the strangest looking contraption Elijah had ever seen.

Brightlingsea’s device. He was lucid enough to deduce that much.

It dwarfed everything in the chamber, clearing the thirty foot domed ceiling
by no more than a few feet. Thick bands of what looked like silver curved
outwards in spherical loops from two giant brass wheels set opposite one
another at a diagonal angle. The wheels seemed to be suspended in the air by a
pair of narrow metal beams jutting out on each side, reminding Elijah of the
curve of a spider’s legs. The interior sides of the silver spherical bands were
studded at even intervals by small, multi-faceted objects that sparkled
whenever they caught the flickering light of the mirrored gas lamps. It took
Elijah a while to realize that those sparkling objects were the diamonds Hex
Bartholomew had been stealing all over the city. Hundreds upon hundreds of
them.

The brass base of the device was a cylindrical platform, with more thin
silver bands inlaid into it, like the growth rings of a tree. The entire
contraption was set off the ground on sturdy metal legs, with a small
glimmering golden ball dangling down from the center. Thick metal cables ran
out of the strange ball and trailed across the stone floor a short distance to a
large object that was rectangular in shape and about the size of a coffin. It
was crafted out of wrought iron and reminded Elijah of the old potbellied
stoves people used in his childhood before radiators came along. Numerous brass
knobs and dials, along with glass-covered gages, covered the surface of the
object, and every now and again, steam issued from vents along its sides as it
hummed with life.

But whatever was inside the giant black metal box producing that steam was
definitely not coal or wood. As Elijah focused his muddled senses on it, he
realized that was where the almost deafening sound of rushing water was originating.
Only the more he listened to that humming, pulsing whir of noise, it sounded
less like water and more like the sound of a heartbeat – if a heartbeat
were amplified about a million times over.

He was beginning to have a very bad feeling about that black box.

An older, birdlike man in rumpled tweed with thick, goggle-like
spectacles and wild tufts of white hair hunched over a panel of the black box with
a wrench in hand, attempting to adjust one of the countless dials. The man was
so completely absorbed in his work he didn’t seem to even notice the two men flanking
him, watching his every move with impatience.

But Elijah sure as hell noticed them. He could hardly ignore the two
monsters from his worst nightmares. The shorter, florid-faced man with the paunch
was O’Connor, and the blond giant next to him was unmistakably Stieg Ehrengard.
Elijah’s dread rose when he finally identified the shape sitting at a small
table near the two men as Hector Bartholomew. The boy was as engrossed in
scribbling away on the blank paper stacked in front of him as the white haired
man was in the black box, and just as oblivious. But O’Connor hovered just
behind the boy, touching his shoulder and hair every now and then, as if he
couldn’t resist. It was enough to make Elijah nauseous again.

Percy stirred next to him, dragging herself up beside him with a small
groan. Her face, now that he saw all of it, was even worse than he’d thought.
Both of her eyes were already swelling up, and her bottom lip was split wide at
the bottom. She looked him over a bit vaguely.

“You’re alive,” she whispered, wincing from the sting of her split lip.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded hoarsely.

“Followed them when they took you and the boy,” she answered. “Didn’t get
very far before I was noticed, though.”

He managed to shake his head in exasperation, but only barely. “Idiot,”
he croaked out. “Look at you!”

“Looks worse than it is,” she whispered, but it was a lie. She was in
terrible shape. She studied the activity on the other side of their prison, her
shoulders stiffening when she recognized O’Connor and Ehrengard. But her
attention shifted to the white haired man. He weaved in and out of the tangle
of long, thick wires connecting the roaring black box to the rest of the
device, cursing loudly in a foreign language Elijah couldn’t quite identify.

“That man … who is that man?” she demanded, suddenly energized, leaning
forward and clenching the bars on their cage.

“Don’t know,” Elijah said.

The white haired man scurried over to Hector and peered over the top of
his goggles at Hector’s work. Amber flashed in the gas lamps, and Elijah would
have gasped if he had the energy.

“But he’s definitely an Elder,” he said. “Do you see his eyes?”

“I’ve seen him before,” she said, turning to Elijah with a stricken
expression. “I’ve heard that voice, when I was a child.”

Elijah didn’t know what to make of the revelation. “Well, he works for
Ehrengard, whoever he is,” he said.

Their whispered conversation must have carried over the hum of the black
box, because O’Connor suddenly turned in his direction, a broken-toothed grin
spreading across his dissipated face.

“Ah, Laddie, you’re awake at last!”

Elijah shuddered at the sound of the man’s voice.

O’Connor’s expression filled with mock sympathy. “Feeling poorly, are we?
Would have thought an opium eater like you would have appreciated our special
cocktail.”

“What did you give me?” he forced out hoarsely.

“A heavy dose of the plummest raw opium in the city, with just a touch of
Elder blood for added burn. I have found it works a treat on the more unruly of
my employees.”

Elder blood. No wonder his body was sizzling.

O’Connor smirked at Elijah and threaded his fingers through Hector’s thick
red hair as a deliberate taunt. The lad, his attention completely riveted on
his work, didn’t even seem to notice, but the action made Elijah so angry he
could barely breathe. Elijah climbed shakily to his feet, unwilling to sit in
front of O’Connor, and clasped the bars in front of him. At his full strength,
they would have been nothing to bend, but he was as weak as a kitten at the
moment, barely able to support his own weight.

“Stop fondling the boy,” Ehrengard snapped, looking O’Connor over with a
sneer of disgust. “And take his latest work to the old man. I want this
completed as soon as possible.”

O’Connor stiffened and retracted his hand from Hector’s hair. With a
scowl, he snatched several sheaves of paper Hector had discarded and took them
up to the birdlike man, who was so startled by the interruption he dropped his
tool. After a wary glance at O’Connor, the man took the papers and studied them
over the top of his goggles.

Ehrengard turned his attention to Elijah. “So you’re the lad who nearly gelded
Nicky all those years ago,” he mused, coming nearer to the cage, studying the
scar on his face. Elijah could feel Percy stiffening at his side, but she kept
silent. “I see you bear my mark as well.” He frowned. “You caused me a great
deal of trouble back then, Inspector. I had to Bond our friend Nicky to save
his unworthy life that night.”

Elijah’s guts twisted with that revelation. He’d always wondered when
Ehrengard had turned O’Connor, and why.

“So you’ve no one but yourself to blame on that score, Inspector,”
Ehrengard continued. “I couldn’t let him die that night, unfortunately. You
forced my hand, though I have to admit O’Connor has had his uses.”

Elijah rolled his eyes.
Such drama
. If Ehrengard was trying to
break him through guilt, the man was failing miserably. He couldn’t summon up
one iota of remorse over stabbing O’Connor in the ballocks all of those years
ago. He’d do it again. And again. Ehrengard, not he, was responsible for all
that followed, for all of the lives O’Connor and his men had taken.

“If you loathe his company so much,” he managed to rasp, “then what are
you doing with him now?”

Ehrengard smiled without an ounce of humor. “Insolent, aren’t you? Have
you not realized you and your friend are in a cage, Inspector, and entirely at
our mercy?”

Elijah shook his head. “
You
didn’t want me here. O’Connor did,” he
said.

“Correct. It seems Nicky is anxious to renew his acquaintance with you
once this business is completed,” he said, gesturing vaguely in the direction
of the giant wheeled monstrosity behind him. “And I’m inclined to let him have
his fun. He has served me well the past few months, other that contretemps with
Bartholomew, of course.”

Elijah had no desire to renew any acquaintance whatsoever with O’Connor
– his very soul shrank against the thought of what O’Connor had planned
for him. But he refused to panic, despite his helplessness. He refused to lose
hope. He had to find a way out of this mess, find a way back to Ana.

He tried to focus on Ehrengard’s words. “And what business is it?” he
asked. “What is that thing?”

Ehrengard’s smile widened predatorily. “That
thing
is a
revelation. The key to the universe, Inspector.”

Elijah had to roll his eyes again at the man’s insufferably hyperbolic
speech. Really, it was too much to endure on top of the poison coursing through
his system. The man had far too high an opinion of himself. “You’re bloody
worse than Brightlingsea. And a hack to boot. Your key to the universe is not
even yours.”

Ehrengard’s smile faltered, his expression hardened into something cruel.
“I see you’ve been talking to the Duke.”

“He wants his plans back, and whatever that … contraption is. He is
concerned you’re planning on blowing up the city.”

Ehrengard laughed at this. “Nothing so inelegant, Inspector, I assure
you. I plan on making Brightlingsea’s contraption work.” He gestured towards
the birdlike man fluttering about the device, making adjustments. “I have the
brightest scientific mind in Europe at my disposal. With a little
encouragement, he’s been quite happy to lend his expertise to the endeavor.”

Elijah didn’t bother telling the man that the plans he had used to
construct the device were wrong to begin with. He doubted he’d be believed anyway.

“And with a little …
encouragement
, the boy has been most helpful,”
Ehrengard continued. “Bartholomew said he was some sort of savant, but I was
reluctant to believe it until I saw for myself. All of the information that was
on the missing pages was stored in his head. Very soon the device will be
complete.”

A high-pitched boyish scream followed by a stream of foreign curses echoed
across the room, and Elijah focused his attention beyond Ehrengard’s broad
shoulders. Hector had risen from his table and had found his way under the
giant device, clutching the dangling golden ball as the white-haired man
attempted to coax him away. But Hector was having none of it. Elijah’s stomach
sank for the boy as O’Connor moved to intercede. The white haired man, for all
he was an Elder working with Ehrengard, didn’t seem to want to hurt the boy,
but O’Connor would have no such compunction.