This Monstrous Thing (19 page)

It may have been longer than that, but the pain set in then, sharp and sudden, and I swooned. Mary caught me before my head cracked against the floor, and we sank to the ground together. All the sound in the room seemed to funnel and close, flushing me into silence with a weight like a collapsing tunnel. I looked up at Mary. Her lips were moving, and I realized she was saying my name. “Alasdair!” She had one hand cupped at the back of my neck. “Alasdair, stay here with me!”

I wanted to tell her I wasn’t going anywhere, but instead I murmured, “Sorry.” It was the only thing I could think to say. I tried to sit up, but my head felt too heavy.
Mary pulled me up the rest of the way, then held me there with my cheek against her shoulder. She kept saying my name, like she had forgotten every other word she knew.

Oliver was still standing over me with his mechanical hand pressed to his forehead and his mouth contorting. In his good hand, his flesh-and-bone hand, he was gripping a pair of needle-nose pliers, blood sliding from their tip.
My
pliers, I realized, the set I’d left with him the last time I came. My pliers, and my blood.

Clémence alone kept her wits. She was at my side, wrenching her scarf off and pressing it to my shoulder. I didn’t know I’d made a sound until she said gently, “Shut it, I know it hurts.”

I could feel my heartbeat throb across my skin like an electric current as it worked to make up for the blood I was losing in hot waves. Pounding, pounding, pounding through my skull, against my eardrums, over every inch of me like I was a drumhead.

I didn’t realize it was more than my heartbeat until Oliver and Clémence both looked to the door. “What was that?” she said.

It sounded like gears and machinery, like some engine in the belly of the castle had woken, and it was getting louder. It was coming toward us. Oliver’s hand tightened on the pliers as he faced the door.

Then suddenly the room was full of people. Dark shapes flooded in, and I recognized their halting,
stiff-legged walk and blank faces. They were the automatons, Geisler’s automatons, six of them here and striding toward us. And in their midst was the inventor himself, Dr. Geisler, with the police chief Inspector Jiroux at his side, sweeping in like a storm in his greatcoat and black cornered hat. The sound of the gears grinding inside the automatons seemed magnified twofold by the room’s high ceilings, but I still heard Geisler say to Jiroux, “That’s him, Inspector. That is Frankenstein’s monster. The resurrected man.”

Beside me, Clémence swore under her breath; then her hand left my shoulder as she stood. I wanted to stand too—didn’t want to face them from the floor—but Mary was clinging to me, and I heard her whisper, “It’s all right now,” like she thought they’d come to save us.
It’s not all right
, I thought. It was not bleeding
all right
because there were the police and the automatons and Geisler and I had led them straight to Oliver.

Oliver may not have remembered Jiroux, but he recognized Geisler—I could see it in his stance. His shoulders rose, his knees bent. Then he said, dead quiet—which was far more frightening than his shouting—“Get away from me.”

Geisler took a step forward and raised his hands like he was approaching a feral dog. “We’re not here to hurt you, Oliver.”

“No, you’re just here to take me away and disassemble me in your laboratory.”

Geisler took another step. Oliver seized a chair from beside the fireplace and raised it like a shield. Jiroux reached for his pistol, but Geisler shook his head. “He’s not to be harmed.”

“So are you going to take me away?” Oliver called. “Or are you just here to kill me again and be done with it?”

My pulse spiked as Geisler turned back to him. “I did not kill you, Oliver.”

Oliver laughed, shrill and cold.

“And I am glad,” Geisler continued, “so very glad that you’re alive.”

Beside him, Jiroux growled, “Hurry up, Doctor.”

“Look at you,” Geisler continued, his voice rising over Jiroux’s. “You’re a marvel. A scientific wonder.”

Oliver’s fists tightened on the chair, and the leg in his mechanical hand splintered. “I am not your science, Doctor.”

“You are a threat to the safety of this city,” Jiroux interrupted.

“You know nothing about me!” Oliver cried.

“I know you are an unnatural creation, and an abomination,” Jiroux replied. “If you will not come quietly, we will use force.”

“He’s not to be harmed,” Geisler said again. He tried to
drag Jiroux’s hand away from his pistol, but Jiroux threw him off.

“I will do what needs to be done, Doctor.”

“That was not our arrangement.”

“What arrangement?” Jiroux snapped. “What power do you think you have here? You are a prisoner of the city.”

Geisler turned back to Oliver, his arms held out in front of him. “I swear to you, Oliver, you won’t be harmed.”

“You have no power!” Jiroux roared at the same moment Oliver shouted “Liar!” and flung the chair at Geisler, who ducked so it shattered against the wall. Geisler and Jiroux both shied.

Oliver tried to make a break for the door, but he had gone only a few steps before Jiroux drew his pistol and fired twice. The first shot went wide but the second struck Oliver in the chest with a
clang
and he was thrown backward into the wall. I cried out, but Oliver was back on his feet in an instant and running again.

Geisler knocked the pistol out of Jiroux’s hands and it skidded across the floor. “I told you not to shoot!” He whirled on the automatons. “Bring him to me!”

The automatons flickered to life and began to advance, stepping in front of Oliver and pushing him away from the door. I thought for a moment they had him, but then Clémence dodged into their path. One of the lead automatons made to bat her out of the way, but she threw up her hands before it could touch her. There was a flash of light and the
automaton slumped with its chin against its chest, arms dropping to its sides.

Clémence kept her hands up, and I saw the glowing plates on her palms. Pulse gloves. “Get behind me,” she shouted at Oliver, and flicked her wrists again. There was another flash, and two more of the automatons dropped. She tried again, but this time there was only a static flicker along the rims. She rubbed her palms together, fast and hard, but the automatons were closing in. Oliver thumped one in the chest and it toppled over onto its back. Another seized Clémence around the throat and lifted her off her feet. She grabbed it, her hands on either side of its skull, and pale light scribbled across its metal skeleton. It faltered, and she slid free.

Then its arm rose sharply and knocked her in the face. She staggered, hand rising to her cheek as the automaton plunged its fist into her chest with a clang of metal on metal. Her feet left the ground as she was tossed backward by the blow, and she hit the ground with a grinding gasp.
Get up
,
I thought, but she lay still where she’d landed.

It was Oliver against them now, Oliver backed into a corner and screaming like an animal. Everyone was shouting—Jiroux and Geisler and Oliver—and the automatons’ gears were jangling and it was so much noise.

I had too much blood gone by then to make sense of it anymore. The room was going cold around me, and time
seemed to be jumping around as if I were in a dream, seconds holding still, then leaping ahead with a burst, and my head was still pounding, heartbeat reverberating through me all the way to my teeth. I had to close my eyes because it hurt too badly.

From somewhere, leagues away it seemed, I heard Jiroux speak. “Sedate the creature
,
and be certain he’s properly restrained before we move him. Doctor, would you care to handle that?”

The gears in the automatons chattered as they moved, metal steps like gunshots against the flagstones, but Geisler’s voice was still audible over them. “We will come through this together, Oliver, you and I. I will protect you. Just trust me.”

I heard Oliver give a shout like a battle cry, and I opened my eyes again, just in time to see him tear himself from the two automatons that held him, slam Geisler into the wall, and bury the pliers in his throat.

Maybe that was what pushed me over the edge. I don’t know. But that was when I fell backward into Mary, and I was gone.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I
’d only blacked out once before in my life.

It was the beginning of the summer in Geneva, four days after I met Mary—strange I remember that—and the first day of Geisler’s trial. People from both sides had been picketing all morning, and when the proceedings at the courthouse ended, things started to get scrappy. The police had their hands full trying to keep riots from breaking out on every block.

Oliver and I had gone to see the trial, and we got sucked into some mess on the way home. The police came to break it up, and an officer thumped me with his baton when he passed and knocked me out cold. I remembered standing on the street, hearing someone running up behind me, and turning around. Then next thing I knew I
was waking on my straw pallet in the flat with my head pounding. It was dark, and Oliver was sitting beside me like he was keeping vigil. He had his hand on my wrist, fingers fit into my pulse point. He must have been waiting for me to wake up, but I didn’t move, so we just stayed like that, side by side, until the sun came up.

I didn’t dream then. I didn’t even realize I was out. It was like closing my eyes one moment and opening them somewhere else the next. It was the same way this time. Falling backward in Château de Sang, and next thing I knew, a pale, steady light was pushing its fingers under my eyelids and prying them open until they snapped. I gasped.

Sunshine.
I was awake and alive and there was sunshine, and Mary at my side with her cold hand against my cheek.

“Mary.” I tried to sit up, but her hand slid down to my chest and she pushed me back.

“Don’t strain yourself.”

I’m only sitting up
,
I thought, but then the throbbing ache began to rise in my shoulder. And I remembered everything. I twisted my head as far as I could and saw the wrap of white bandages around my collarbone and chest. Then the pain stabbed so hard that my vision blurred, and I closed my eyes.

“Here, drink this.”

I opened them again. Mary was holding out a mug.

“What is it?”

“Tea.”

The bitter steam curled toward me. “What’s in it?”

“Tea.” Mary glanced down at her lap. “Laudanum.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want it.”

“Alasdair, you need to rest. This will help with the pain.”

“I’m not in pain,” I said, then tried not to wince as I looked around the room. It was bare and institutional: whitewashed stone walls and a single barred window letting in the sunlight. There was a fireplace, ashy with coals, in one corner, as well as the bed I was in and Mary’s chair. At several spots along the wall, closed metal hooks had been drilled into the stone. “Am I in prison?” I asked.

“Sort of,” Mary replied. “You are in
a
prison. And there may be some chains involved.” Her eyes flitted down to my feet. A heavy iron manacle was locked around my ankle, its chain fastened to one of the wall hooks, keeping me in place. “And there’s a guard outside the door, so be careful what you say. But you haven’t been arrested,” she said, then added, “Not yet.”

“Hell’s teeth.” I scrubbed at my eyes, trying to force the fog to clear from my brain. “How long have I been out?”

“A day and a half, nearly. You were running a bad fever when they brought you here, and you lost a lot of blood.” She rubbed her hands along her skirt like she was trying to wipe something off them. “How much do you remember?”

“Too much. Geisler . . .”

“Is dead,” she finished.

The image of Oliver jamming the pliers into Geisler’s throat flashed before my eyes and for a moment I thought I might be sick. “And Oliver?”

“He got away.”

“He made it out?” I asked, and she nodded. “Bleeding hell—what about all the automatons? And the chief of police?”

“It was your friend, actually,” Mary said, her voice suddenly clipped. “What was her name?”

“Clémence.”

“Yes, Clémence. He got away with her.”

“God’s wounds.” I reached up for the bandages on my shoulder and began to tug them off, but Mary caught my hand. A tremor ran up my arm.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to see how good a prison surgeon’s sutures are.”

“It wasn’t a prison surgeon,” she said. “It was your father.”

I stopped. “My father? He’s here?”

“They brought him in to treat you, then took him back to his cell as soon as he was finished.”

“What about my mother?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“I want to see my father.”

“You need to rest,” she replied, some of the bossiness I remembered returning to her voice. “Sleep now, while you can. I don’t know how much peace they’ll give you once they know you’re awake.”

“I can’t sleep,” I said, finally succeeding in pulling myself into a sitting position with the assistance of the iron bed frame. “I need to find Oliver.”

“Alasdair.” Her hand caught mine, and she looked at me very seriously. I could feel the cold line of her wedding band against my skin. “They’re not going to let you go.”

There was a heavy thump on the door; then a moment later a stocky man in a blue policeman’s uniform entered. He looked from me sitting up in bed to Mary with her hand in mine, then cleared his throat. “I’m meant to collect Mr. Finch when he’s awake.”

Mary scowled. “He needs to rest.”

“Inspector Jiroux wants a word.”

“Well, the inspector can wait.” She glared at him, and he seemed to shrink a bit beneath it.

“I’m meant to bring him as soon as he’s awake.”

“He’s in no fit state—”

“I’m fine,” I said, and they both looked at me like they’d forgotten I was there.

The officer looked relieved as he crossed the room and unfastened the chain on my ankle from the wall. Mary stood up, scowling firmly at him all the while. “He needs rest,” she insisted.

“He said he’s fine.” The officer let the chain fall with a clatter. “Your clothes are under the bed,” he told me as he left. “Get dressed. I’ll be back in a minute.”

M
ary helped me into my shirt and tied a sling around my arm to keep me from tearing the stitches in my shoulder. My boots had vanished, and I had to walk barefoot beside the stocky officer as he led me down the hallway beyond the infirmary. He hadn’t undone the manacle from my ankle, and the chain dragged behind me, clanking against the floor.

The officer steered me into a windowless room and shut the door behind us. Patches of the dark walls were stained darker by something I didn’t want to think about, and there was a single chair in the center, ancient and gouged but sturdy looking. It was bolted to the ground.

I sat down on it without being instructed. The officer fastened the chain on my ankle to one of the bolts. “Sorry about this,” he muttered. “It’s procedure.”

“I don’t mind,” I said. I wasn’t planning on running.

It was only a few minutes before the door opened and Inspector Jiroux strode through, dressed in a dark greatcoat and tall black boots that made me sick with envy. He stopped in front of me with his hands behind his back. His salty hair was ruffled and his face was puffy and pale, as though he hadn’t slept properly. I felt a surge of satisfaction as I imagined him turning the foothills upside down for
Oliver and coming up empty.

Exhausted or not, when he spoke his voice was buoyant and strong. “Good morning, Mr. Finch.” When I didn’t reply, he added, “How’s your shoulder?”

“Fine,” I said.

“Not in the mood for pleasantries, are we.”

“I’d like to know what’s going to happen to me,” I replied. “That’s all.”

He watched me for a moment, his smile so tight it trembled. “How direct,” he said, then began to walk in slow circles. “I’m not sure if you remember, but I knew your brother before he died. Or I should say, I knew of him. He had a reputation among the officers. We arrested him once for brawling at some pub. Isn’t that right?” He glanced over his shoulder at me, and I nodded. “It took three men to bring him in. We only wanted him to pay for the damage, but he was so cheeky. Then he bit one of my officers, so we held him overnight.” He stopped before me, his hands still behind his back. “Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“You’re much calmer than him.”

“I’m not my brother.”

“That’s quite clear. Though, based on the incident two nights ago, I don’t believe your brother is your brother anymore.” He started to pace again, back and forth like a swinging pendulum. The cross on his watch chain bounced against his waistcoat with every step.
“When I first heard rumors of the resurrected man, I discounted them as fanatical ravings. I even read that book—
Frankenstein
,
isn’t that what it’s called?—and thought there was no chance any of it was real. No deed could be so unnatural as the resurrection of a human being with clockwork and circuitry.”

I made a noise before I could stop myself—something halfway between a laugh and a snarl.

Jiroux stopped again and glanced at me over his shoulder. “Are you a churchgoing man, Mr. Finch?” When I didn’t answer, he nodded and said, “No, I didn’t expect someone like you would be.”

Someone like you—
he said it without any trace of mockery. It sounded like he pitied me. I bit the inside of my cheek.

“But I hope you at least know the story of creation,” he went on. “
On the sixth day, God created man in His own image.
So why do you and the other mechanics who share your work feel that you can improve upon His design with the addition of clockwork pieces? Do you think you are equal to God?” He rubbed the gold cross between his fingers, then looked me dead in the eye. “The Bible is clear on the subject, Mr. Finch: men with mechanical parts and those who make them such spit in the face of the divine creator. And that’s damnation.”

I thought that was shit logic, from someone who’d never seen a body in broken pieces, but I didn’t dare tell
him so when I was chained to a chair.

“We have been unable to capture your brother and the young woman who assisted his escape,” Jiroux continued, “but we’re certain that when they left the castle, they returned to Geneva. Oliver Finch can’t be allowed to roam free in the city. He is a threat to the general safety and a rallying point to an already unruly subset of our population. If the public becomes aware of the presence of Frankenstein’s monster, it’s likely to cause a panic.”

“I don’t know where Oliver is,” I said, but he pressed on like he hadn’t heard.

“Our force has never dealt with anything quite like this before. Dr. Geisler told us your brother’s clockwork parts had given him some superhuman qualities that would make him hard to capture and detain, but I hardly expected—”

“Geisler didn’t know anything,” I interrupted, the venom rising in my voice.

“He led us to you and your brother,” Jiroux replied, and the corners of his mouth turned up. It might have been a smile, but on his face it looked like a sneer. “So it would appear he wasn’t entirely ignorant.”

Of course it had been Geisler who’d told them about us, just like Clémence had said he would. I cursed myself for not being more careful when we’d gone to the castle, not trusting that gut feeling that someone was following us. “There’s no special way to find Oliver,” I said. “He’s just a man on the run.”

“Well, now that we’re in possession of the Clock Breakers—”

“The what?”

“Geisler’s automaton soldiers. They were confiscated when he was arrested. He told us he called them Clock Breakers.”

A shiver went through me with the name. “You’re going to use them to catch Oliver?”

“Geisler informed us that he designed them specifically for capturing and restraining mechanical men, in case his own experiments got out of hand. But now that Geisler has left us, the Clock Breakers are the property of the police. I have no doubt they’ll be a valuable asset to our force, both for detaining your brother and for keeping the city’s clockwork population in line.”

I thought of Depace’s wagon outside the house the morning we left. It hadn’t been bodies in the coffins—it had been the automatons. Clock Breakers made for Oliver. “So what do you want from me?” I asked. “You’ve got your mechanical soldiers. What can I do?”

“The automatons cannot find your brother for us,” Jiroux replied. “Without your help, we have no sure way of locating him. In spite of your protestations, you know him better than we do.”

The wound in my shoulder throbbed. “I don’t know where Oliver is, and even if I could find him, he wouldn’t come easier because of me.”

“Are you certain?” Jiroux reached into his greatcoat and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper, which he held up for me to see. It was the leaflet that had been in my pocket—the illustrated clockwork man with the words
FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER LIVES!
above it. “We think your brother has taken refuge with the group of radicals who call themselves Frankenstein’s Men. They’ve been a thorn in my force’s foot for a few weeks, but we’re afraid that with your brother’s added support they may be inspired toward increased action. And it seems you’ve been in contact with them as well.”