The Diabolical Miss Hyde (26 page)

Blind, she stumbled in her captors' grip. Where was she? Who had her? How long had she been traveling? She couldn't remember. She clutched for her bag, but it was lost. Hippocrates was lost. Everything.

Dread watered her muscles cold. She opened her mouth to yell, but only a garbled groan came out.

Distant street noise filtered through. They dragged her struggling up stone steps and inside. A heavy door slammed. She was trapped.

Her stomach knotted. Was this the Tower? Lafayette had turned her in at last. Damn him.

Her teeth clenched, fury all the hotter for its impotence. Typical, that he'd walk away and leave the dirty work to
someone else. Despite his brash façade, the man was a coward. She should have known he wouldn't have the guts to face her.

But her chest ached with bitterness. She'd thought he valued her skills. Respected her as an equal.

How deplorably, stupidly
female
.

Up another stair, her boots slapping on wooden boards. Hinges creaked. She was unceremoniously dumped in a soft upholstered chair. The bag was ripped away, and a door clicked shut.

Candlelight stung her eyes, a fire's warmth on her face. Clean coal-scented air, a hint of floor wax, the tang of fresh-brewed tea.

She blinked, and the world reappeared. A man's library, sparsely furnished, drapes covering tall twin windows. Desk in the corner, her sofa on a Turkish rug before the fire. All four walls covered in glass-fronted shelves stuffed with books. A tray of tea steamed on a small table. On the marble mantel, below a framed seventeenth-century portrait, a pearl-faced clock steadily ticked. A quarter past five. She'd been out for hours.

Eliza stared, befuddled. An odd torture chamber, to be sure . . .

“Oh, I'm not in the business of torture, Dr. Jekyll.”

Her head jerked up. She hadn't noticed him. Hadn't heard him move. Yet there he lingered, in the mantel's shadow.

“Though I've servants who are,” he added, stepping into the light. “Perhaps you've met a few.”

Slim, not especially tall, wearing the smart coat and gloves of a gentleman. Neither old nor youthful. Rather, ageless. Long hair, curling to his shoulders in the antiquated fashion,
not gray but colorless, as if the pigment had drained away. His skin looked brittle and held a similar translucent cast.

He studied her with timeless eyes the color of rain. Bottomless, like staring back into a ghostly past.

Eliza smoothed her skirts, wary like prey. “Where am I, sir?”

“The Tower.”

Her pulse skipped. “Then this is—”

“Of course.”

“And you are . . . ?” Her gaze flicked back to the old picture above the fire. The man seemed familiar. He put her in mind of Finch's Pharmacy, the dusty likenesses of the Royal's long-dead heroes on the wall, Boyle and Halley and . . .

Oh, my.

That imperious gaze, cast aside from the viewer, as if he'd already noted everything interesting about you and moved on. The arrogant tilt of his mouth, his proud nose, the dark blue coat and pale, unfashionably long hair . . .

“Come, madam, think it through,” said the Philosopher impatiently. “I don't have all day. We've business to discuss.”

Eliza's heart fluttered, awestruck. To meet the great Sir Isaac himself, face-to-face . . . But impossibility thudded in her mind, obliterating all else. “You . . . you died more than a century ago,” she stammered. “Everybody knows that. They held an enormous funeral, there's a monument in Westminster Abbey . . .”

“Yet here I stand. What a marvel.”

“But . . . how?”

“What are you, a schoolmistress? Don't weary me with questions to which you know the answers.”

At her baffled expression, he gave a sepulchral laugh. “Come, did you expect any less? I've injected poisons and jabbed needles into my eyes in my quest for truth. Upon whom should I have tested my
aqua vitae,
if not myself?”

“You succeeded,” she said numbly. “You found the elixir of life. Where everyone else had failed for centuries. Did you transmute matter, too?”

“Spare me your thick-headed nonsense.” He stalked before the fire, and the coals flared brighter, as if absorbing unseen energy. “I proved there is no
God,
madam. Life is no miracle, for it can be trapped in a bottle and absorbed at will. A
little
more perilous a question than turning lead into gold, wouldn't you say? Now, shall we get on with business?”

“But . . .” She stumbled over her words, struggling for coherence. “If you know that alchemy works, why persecute it? Why destroy the very thing that keeps you alive?”

A nasty grin. “Oh, I'm not destroying it. I'm keeping it out of the hands of the mob. Science and magic are weapons. Look what happened in France when the rabble decided they knew best: a perfectly good revolution spoiled by buffoonery and superstitious bunkum. I can't have just any fool on the street meddling with my dangerous toys. Who knows where it might lead?”

“But the new science belongs to us all,” she protested. She wanted to be sick. She felt betrayed. Deceived. Lied to. “You can't stop people from experimenting because you're afraid of what they might find.”

“But I already know what they'll find. A clockwork heaven with no one winding the mechanism—to which I alone hold the key.” He caught her glance, and smiled. Properly, this time, and it made him look young again. “Oh, I'm not in the
business of burning down churches, Doctor. At least, not without help. You should see some of the submissions we get at the Royal. Now
that's
the stuff of revolution. There's one called ‘On the Origin of Species' that particularly suits my purposes. We'll see some fun when the world hears of
that
.”

The Philosopher linked hands behind his back, with a theatrical sigh. “But egad! My wide-eyed wonder lures me astray once again. Shall we proceed? I have a job for you.”

“Job?” she repeated stupidly. Potions, mad science, unorthodox gadgets. He cared nothing for them. Just using it all for his own bizarre power games.

“The man who controls you. Where is he?”

She struggled to think quickly, all too aware that in that department he outclassed her. “What? Who? No one ‘controls' me—”

“We can begin the unpleasantness whenever you like.” That same impatience, a man weary to the core of explaining himself to lesser men. “The fellow who claims to be your guardian. Where can I find him?”

Her blood spiked cold. “You mean . . . A.R.?”

“Is that what he calls himself? Amusing. But yes, I mean the King of Rats.”

Her mind tumbled, a rock in a bottomless crevasse of denial.

The strange elixir. A.R.'s curious disappearances. The smell of alchemy that always surrounded him. His mysterious jaunts into the Holy Land . . .

“But this King of Rats is a myth.” She mustered her wits at last. Dissemble. Lie. Put him off the scent. “Why on earth would you imagine my humble guardian to be he? What evidence have you?”

“I have my spies. This King and his foul inbred brood cringe in their stinking hole and plot against reason and liberty. I require . . . how does one say it? An ‘inside man.' Or woman, rather.”

Spies.
He meant Lafayette. Surely, the captain had been following her after all . . .

Sudden and fierce loyalty burned in Eliza's heart. A.R. had done her no evil. He'd supported her all her life. She wouldn't give him up to this power-twisted genius. Not without good reason.

Such as . . . the fact that A.R. might be a murderer?
No one wants a scene . . .

“My guardian always comes to me,” she burst out, improvising. “I don't know where he lives.”

A sharp smile. “Find out.”

“Why?” she countered swiftly. “You've plenty of minions. Get them to do your dirty work.” Minions like Lafayette, who'd betrayed her mercilessly at this horrid man's bidding. What a gullible fool she'd been.

“In that vile part of town, amid trip wires and poisoned deadfalls? Where the mortality rate of my agents has been uncomfortably high? I think not.” Sir Isaac sat opposite her, crossing his legs and carelessly arranging his coat skirts. Absently, he twined one finger in his hair, a shy young man's gesture that belied the cunning gleam in his eyes. “Besides, you're a scientist. Show me
your
evidence. If your guardian is not the King of Rats? Prove it.”

She faked a laugh. “I've better uses for my time, sir. Fairy tales don't interest me.” But her treacherous blood itched to know the truth, and she suppressed a curse.

“The point yet again escapes you. Allow me to explain.” He poured tea into a pair of china cups, holding the lid on the pot with a scarred fingertip. Unwilled, she recalled Henry Jekyll's hands, marked with cuts and chemical burns. An experimenter's hands. “I make the rules here. Not Her Majesty. Not the Prime Minister, nor those witless clowns in the Commons. And I will silence this King of Rats, madam, as I have silenced princes and upstart so-called scientists before him.”

“I'm sure,” she muttered. “Poisoned by sorcerers, indeed. Do that yourself, did you?”

A knowing grin. “A necessary evil. The Prince Consort had the Queen's ear. Dangerous, but in the end a fool. This King of Rats, I fear, is the first but not the second, so I'm sorry to say he cannot be suffered.”

His damnable arrogance made Eliza bold. She was already in his power. Nothing more to lose. “And who are you to decide who may or may not be suffered, sir? I don't recall anyone putting you in charge.”

“And at last, we reach the point.” He replaced the teapot and fastidiously wiped his fingers on a napkin. “This is not France, and this King of Rats is certainly no people's champion. We will have no revolutionary nonsense here—until it's
my
revolution. When blood runs in English gutters, madam, it shall belong to bishops and sorcerers and anyone else who dares to defy the truth.
My
truth. Do you understand?”

She nodded mutely. There seemed little to say.

“Excellent.” The Philosopher dropped in a cube of sugar and stirred. “Now, either you'll do as I command, and give me this King of Rats, along with his plans, by . . . shall we say, Sunday next?” He tapped his spoon against the cup's rim and
placed it on the tray. “Or you'll spend your few remaining hours stripped naked in a freezing dungeon before I burn you alive alongside every misbegotten wretch who's ever had the ill fortune to be your friend.” He offered her a steaming cup and smiled politely. “Tea?”

T
HREE HOURS LATER, AND I'M STILL BLOODY ANGRY
.

I'm lurking in a doorway's shadows, peering out at the arc-lamps and gleaming windows of Tottenham Court Road. Waiting for my quarry, and he's taking his sweet time.

I'm antsy. I can feel that fat greedy moon's pull, lacing fire through my blood an hour before he even rises. My fingers itch to punch someone, to wrap around my sweet steel sister and jam her deep into some fat aristocratic throat.

Damn that creaking old bastard. I wanted to hurl that scorching cup of tea into his eyes and watch him scream. But Eliza just sipped and sat there, tight and anxious, waiting for it to be over so she could rush home and decide what to do. Turning over options, making plans.
Thinking.

Well, screw thinking. Lizzie don't care about no lecherous old guardian or King of rot-bleeding Rats. She wants to act. And it's just a pity that even I can't sneak into the god-rotted Tower. Because if I could, I'd murder that crumbling relic of a scientist in his sleep and piss on his corpse. Put an end to the whole fucking thing with one slice of my blade . . .

Still, part of me wonders if there's a reason why that mean old bonehead don't die. A sneaky, bitter reason in a shiny black bottle, some dark
aqua vitae
that ate away all the nice parts of him and left
that
.

If in years to come, Eliza will . . . fade. Dissolve, like a weary ghost, to haunt no more. And there'll be only me.

The back of my neck prickles, a premonition. I poke my head around the doorjamb. There he is. My prey. Lafayette, out of twig once again in the same dirty coat and hat. Curse him for turning us over to his masters, even though Eliza's done her damnedest to be his friend.

He'll pay for that. This time, I won't be weak and girly. This time, he's mine.

Lafayette glances about in purple twilight. Lamplight shadows his face, pale and damp as if he's falling with a fever. He tugs his hat brim over his eyes, and then he's off at a quick clip towards the Euston Road.

I stroll into the street, tossing my cloak over my red skirts, and follow.

Marcellus Finch, see. The crafty old bean's playing both sides, and when Eliza got home, a telegraph was waiting for her, with the address of Lafayette's lodgings.

This time, she'd the wit not to fight me. I'm our courage, see, and I'm better at this part—the sneaking-around-in-the-dark part—than she is. A tiny gulp of elixir later, and here I am.

Finch enjoys his funny little games. So I'll play, this time. I'll find out what Lafayette's up to, mark my words. And then, maybe I'll march back to Seven Dials, winkle Mr. A. Rat-King Esquire from whatever stinking coal-hole he's skulking
in—Rats' Castle, indeed—and ask him what the golden fuck's going on.

The street's thronging with rich folk, strolling in the cool evening, in wide skirts and frilly bonnets and neatly tied cravats. I saunter by, winking at the gentlemen, and the ladies poke their noses in the air and pretend not to see me. They're all too canny with the fancy whores who screw their husbands up and sideways, naughty French tricks and spankings and wild abandon, when all they get is the pox and a few rigid fumblings in the dark.