Gilded Hearts (The Shadow Guild Series) (29 page)

“Where are the archivists? The Guild Masters?” A hush descended around him. “We’re here to help.”

Piper stepped past him, making her way to the oldest-looking group of apprentices. “Stuart, what’s happened?”

The boy looked to the others before he threw himself into Piper’s arms. “Miss Smith, it’s terrible. The walls started shaking and the heat was unbearable. They’re all down in the archive room. The fans have stopped and they’re losing all the memories. They’re dying, I-I think… ma’am, there’ve been explosions. I think the building will blow up. “

“Shit.” Samuel hauled Jack with him. “We need to get down there.”

“Sir, the lifts aren’t safe. Some of them are still stuck, there are people trapped.”

Piper brushed Stuart’s hair from his eyes. “But there’s another way down. There are the stairs, the tunnels and hallways. We’ll be fine.”

None of the children spoke then, each looking at the adults, hoping for guidance. It wasn’t a surprise to Samuel that it was the children of the Archives who’d been abandoned, left to scramble in the dark.

“Timmons, bring Jack here. I want you to take these children outside and get them to safety. Wait for the reinforcement from the King’s Sentry and then lead them in. We’ll send a guide back to help you.”

“I don’t like leaving the two of you alone with him.” Timmons crowded into Jack’s face. “I can take him down a few pegs before you go.”

“Ah, isn’t that cute. The mutt defending his master.” Jack grinned. “Take your best shot.”

“Enough. Timmons, the children are your priority.” Samuel jerked Jack back, causing his brother to stumble. “You leave him to me.”

Samuel knew they couldn’t delay any longer. Piper took the lead, while he brought up the rear. The lights flickered as powerful blasts of steam pulsed through the pipes, only to hiss down to near nothing. With each successive level down, the sound of shouts grew, the vibrations of metal banging against metal reverberated through the stone floor.

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.” Jack’s laughter was hollow in the halls. “I told you it was dying.”

“Shut up.” Piper shot him a glare. “I’ve had just about enough of you.”

“Yes, yes, Pipsqueak. I’ll hush, hush,
hush
.”

Samuel smacked Jack on the back of his head. “We’re running out of time, Pip. How much farther?”

“Down one more flight and through a hall. We’ll pop out in the primary storage vault.”

The previous time Samuel had been in the room, he’d been struck by the ethereal glow of the memory vials. The colors had filled the room, illuminated the walls; it had been beautiful and disturbing.

But not as alarming as the darkened shroud that seemed to fill the cavernous room when they entered it now.

“My God, it’s so hot.” Piper walked ahead, her gaze locked to the ceiling. “The fans are broken.”

“Not broken. Stopped. Everything is shutting down.” Jack’s voice had lost its cocky edge. He sounded rapturous now, blissful. “Soon it will get hot enough and
kaboom
! The fires will burn and burn and burn. It will rush through the tunnels, the steam pipes, a chain reaction that will turn New London into hell.”

They stopped and stared at Jack. Samuel jerked his chain, pulling him closer. “What have you done?”

“What should have been done years ago. I’m ending everything. And you’ve brought me here to watch it, brother.”

Samuel had been so distracted by Jack that he hadn’t been immediately aware of the group crowding around the far edge of the room. Not until the group noticed him.

“This is your fault!” Master Ryerson rushed across the room, eyes wide and fists clenched.

“Master Ryerson.” Piper stepped between them, preventing the Master from reaching Samuel. “This wasn’t Sam’s doing.”

“You’re a bloody fool, girl. I told you never to come back.” He shoved Piper to the floor, only to stop dead when his gaze landed on Jack. His eyes grew impossibly wide. “No.”

Samuel wrapped his fingers around the chain and stepped closer with Jack. “Oh yes.”

“Ryerson, what is going on?”

The men and women who comprised the Archivist Guild circled around them. Samuel was surprised to see that many of them appeared confused, staring in polite horror at Jack. Master June stepped closer. “Who is this man, Ryerson?”

“Traitors to the guild, June. No one of consequence.”

June reached down and offered her hand to Piper. “Hello, Miss Smith. I wish our reunion was under better circumstances.”

“Me too, ma’am. This man is Jack the Ripper, the one responsible for killing the prostitutes in New London.”

“Why bring him here?” The man who’d spoken earlier joined them, leaning past June to glare at Ryerson.

Piper faced the entire Guild Master’s council, raising her voice to be heard by everyone. “We brought him here because Jack is one of ours.”

“That’s not possible.”

“No!”

“Never seen him.”

Ryerson backed away from them, and Samuel followed. No way in hell was Sam about to let him escape this. Not after all they’d been forced to wade through, the nightmare of memories and death. Releasing his hold on Jack, Samuel grabbed Ryerson by the arm, twisting it behind his back.

“No, you don’t.”

“Ryerson?” Master June moved in, her concern clear. “What did you do?”

“What I had to.” He struggled against Samuel’s grasp. “What I knew needed to be done.”

Master June’s gaze drifted to Samuel’s. He wasn’t sure what she saw in his face, but something in her expression changed as her attention snapped to Jack, then back to Ryerson. “No. Please tell me you didn’t?”

“There was too much at stake.”

“But not this.”

He was aware of Piper’s presence, heard her gasp of shocked realization, but Samuel couldn’t risk looking at her. He’d lose what little control he had on his tenuous emotions if he did that. “Ma’am, I’d appreciate it if you could tell us what exactly is going on.”

Master June beckoned Jack forward. “Come here, you poor thing.”

“Come into my parlor.” Jack shuffled forward as best he could. “I see poor Sammy-boy hasn’t put all the pieces together yet. Pipsqueak has, though. She’s a smart one. You better take her home and lock her up, Sammy, before someone takes her away.”

Put it together? How the hell could anyone do anything, deduce anything, when nothing made sense? Samuel found he couldn’t look away from Jack. The line of his jaw, his height, the shape of his eyes were all so blindingly familiar, because he saw them in the mirror every day. Jack had named them twins, and Sam believed it. But there was more, something more. The wheels of his mind spun, refusing to gain traction.

Jack had been toying with him from the beginning, putting thoughts in his head to drive him to distraction. There was something in the way Master June looked at Jack and himself that spoke volumes.

At Jack and himself, and at—

No.
Anyone but him
.

But Samuel couldn’t lie to himself anymore, couldn’t ignore the evidence in front of him. The two men almost side by side, their lean frames so similar, their lips curling in identical sneers. He hadn’t seen it when he looked at himself in the mirror, because Ryerson was old, and Samuel was too young to see himself in the face of an old man. But Jack was old before his time, the cadaverous skin drawn tight over his skull. The machine had drained the color, the pigment, out of not just his eyes but his entire body, but even with the dramatic difference in coloring Jack could have been Ryerson’s brother. But he wasn’t; he was Sam’s brother.

And Ryerson was their father.

Master June ran a hand down Jack’s cheek. “You poor dear. What have we done to you?”

Samuel expected Jack to attack the woman, bite or hit her in some fashion. He didn’t. It was as if the fight had been drained from him and he’d accepted his fate, whatever it might be. Before they were able to speak again, the pipes above them shook and a deafening knocking noise shook the room.

“What’s happening here?” Piper moved to the closest of the memory vial storage banks. “We are losing containment.”

Master June closed her eyes as she turned toward Piper. “We’ve tried everything. The machine is shutting down the Archives piece by piece. Within three hours we will have lost every soul.”

“We’re losing structural integrity as well,” one of the Masters added. “We need to evacuate everyone before it’s too late.”

“Nothing is more important than saving the Archives,” another insisted, and then the rest clamored to be heard over one another.

“The French are behind this! It’s a ploy to get us to abandon our posts.”

“We have to concentrate on the secure vaults. We can safeguard the most important memories if we just get them out in time.”

“I’ll die before I go!”

“Enough!”

All eyes turned to Samuel, and for the first time in his life he had the full and undivided attention of the Guild Masters.

“Which of you knew about him?” Letting Ryerson go, he stepped beside his brother. “Tell me, which of you agreed to the plan to breed a human being for the purpose of powering your blasted machine?”

Not a person answered, the silence unnerving when combined with the noise of the destruction falling around them. How could they not know? Be so blind to the inner workings of their life’s purpose that they didn’t question how it all functioned?

“No one? I find that hard to believe.” Pressing the buttons on his wrist strap, Samuel released the locks holding Jack’s neck brace in place. The heavy metal fell easily to the floor, taking the chain with it. “You are so concerned with the fate of the memories of the dead that you are willing to ignore the pain and suffering of the living. You have children upstairs terrified about what’s happening. They should have been evacuated long ago, not as an afterthought when the danger’s already imminent. You had two boys born and raised in this building for the sole purpose of being placed into the heart of a machine and slowly being driven mad, yet none of you admits even a suspicion?”

Jack didn’t move, but he watched Samuel with intense focus. “What are you doing?”

“Vindication.” It wouldn’t be enough, it could never make up for the years of suffering, for Samuel leaving him behind, but it would be something. “You took everything from this man. His childhood, his family. Me! You left him with anger and hate and fear. You turned him into the perfect weapon, made him as strong physically as he was unstable mentally, gave him the memories of all the dead to drive him further into insanity. The French wanted to use him to steal your secrets. Instead he killed for them, because there’s nothing left to him but madness and rage and death. The irony is that by taking him out of the machine they destroyed whatever chance they had at getting the secrets they wanted.”

June turned to Ryerson. “Is this true? Was this man in the machine?”

“Of course he was, June.” Ryerson’s laugh was every bit as chilling as Jack’s. “I was charged with keeping it functional and no one cared how I did it. I learned the ins and outs of it. The day I stumbled upon the room, found the man who’d been there for God knows how long, weak and dying with his Master already dead on the floor beside him, I knew what I had to do. I knew it was in my blood. I used the manuals there to keep the old one going while I found a whore and produced a child who would be intelligent and strong enough to take his place. The bitch even gave me a second, just in case.”

Jack hugged himself. “At least I always knew my purpose.”

“This is horrific.” June slapped Ryerson, drawing a bead of blood from his snarling lips. “I can’t believe you would do this, would take us back to this barbarism.”

“We already use the archivists as a conduit for the extractions. It’s not a stretch to accept that a human interface was necessary for the Archives machine as well. No matter what the official position was, the machine could never work properly without that component. There’s always been one. The program never stopped, it just went underground. You’re a child to think otherwise, June.”

Ryerson was Jack’s father, and he’d volunteered his own son for a life of torture and madness. He’d abused Samuel for years, punishing him for a sin of which he wasn’t aware. Samuel’s chest tightened and his head began to spin.

“But if you knew all along what was going wrong with the machine, if you knew and never told… it was you.” Piper stepped back. “Constantine didn’t find Jack by accident, did he? That was your doing, too, wasn’t it?”

“Always the clever one.” Ryerson balled his hands into fists.

Piper’s eyes widened and she swallowed hard. “You made sure Constantine took Jack, used him to bring down the Archives. Why? Why do all this?”

“It was my chance to leave. I was the last of my line, as far as they knew, and one of the few Masters left with the right blood type, the right ancestry to give myself or my children to the machine. They didn’t know I’d already done that, and they would have never let me go. But if the Archives were destroyed, I could disappear and no one would be the wiser.”

“None of this will matter if it all explodes. We need to shut the machine down.” Piper’s soft voice was nearly swallowed up by the loud wail of metal scraping against metal.