This Monstrous Thing (25 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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J
iroux face contorted with rage, cheeks flushing fever red. I kept my expression as blank as I could, though my mind was buzzing, trying to work out whether I’d given Oliver enough time to take the ladder down to the river. There were no police at the checkpoints or patrolling the borders—they’d all been at the clock tower or trying to keep the city calm. If he had moved fast, there was a good chance he was already gone.

“Where’s your brother?” Jiroux demanded. “Where’s Oliver?”

I didn’t say anything. A trickle of blood ran from my nose and dropped onto the floor, just missing the toe of his boot.

Jiroux struck me across the face. Starbursts erupted
over my vision and I bit my tongue hard enough to taste it. “Where is he, Finch?” he bellowed, his spittle joining the grime on my cheeks.

I looked up at him, struggling to focus, but still didn’t say anything.

He struck me again, so hard I was certain the chair would have tipped if it hadn’t been bolted down. My consciousness stumbled, and for a moment I thought I was going to black out. Through the fog, I heard Jiroux slam his fist into the wall with a screech of frustration. “Get him up,” he barked, and someone grabbed me by the collar and hauled me to my feet. “Get his father, then take them out back and shoot them both.”

My legs gave out at his words and I slumped against the officer holding me. He grabbed me before I fell, and the mechanical arm Oliver and I had stripped from a disabled Clock Breaker slid out of my coat sleeve and hit the ground with a clatter. I had no feeling left in either arm—one was numb from holding the metal arm in place, the other from the torn stitches still bleeding into my collar.

“Sir—” I heard the officer holding me up say, but Jiroux whirled in the doorway and cut him off.

“I don’t care which of you does it, Krieg, but there’s to be no record they were here. I don’t want to see either of them again.” And then he spun on his heel and stomped out.

Most of the officers followed. A few stayed behind,
watching me warily and glancing at each other like they were silently arguing over who was going to pull the trigger. “What are we—” one began, but the officer holding me—Krieg—instructed, “Go down below and fetch Mr. Finch.” When none of them moved, he snapped, almost as fierce as Jiroux, “Do it now.” Two of the officers departed, leaving Krieg and one other. My legs were still shaking, and I felt myself start to tip over again. “Help him,” Krieg grunted, and the other officer came forward and pulled me back up by my injured arm. Another hot surge of blood slipped free.

The officers unchained my ankles and led me down through the station and out into the alley behind it. They stopped in the splash of lamplight, each with a tight hold on me, and waited. The butts of their rifles knocked into the back of my legs as the officers shifted from foot to foot to keep warm.

After a few minutes, the station door opened with a gust of hot air and two officers appeared with my father pinned between them. As they dragged him forward, his eyes met mine, and I knew no one had to explain to him what was happening.

One of the officers reached for his rifle, but Krieg shook his head. “Not here.”

And suddenly we were moving again, and I was counting down the seconds left in my life like the tower clock running backward.

With Krieg half carrying me in the lead, the officers marched us through the network of connecting alleys behind the station, which were dark but for the moonlight and rank with piss and mud. I didn’t have a clue where they were taking us—I’d never seen this part of the city before. The only light came from the bare windows above us blazing with Christmas candles. Streets over, from what felt like worlds away, I could hear cheering, and the bells from Saint Pierre’s ringing like it was Sunday. People were singing. Carols and hymns rose above the wind in celebration that the city was still in one piece. Krieg had a tight hold on my arm, but he kept glancing in the direction of the noise, then down at the chains around my wrists. I stared at him, but he wouldn’t look me in the eyes.

They led us through a checkpoint and outside the city walls until we were standing at the edge of the lake. At our feet, the water lapped hungrily at the shore. I wondered for a moment why they’d brought us here rather than just finishing us off behind the station, but I figured it was probably easier to throw our bodies into the lake and be rid of them. A bitter wind snapped off the waves as one of the officers pushed me forward so that my face was toward their rifles with Father beside me. I shivered.

I am going to die here
,
I thought.

I wondered if it was a luxury, knowing the end was coming, or if it was better for it to knock you down out of nowhere, like Oliver crashing from the clock tower.
Everything felt like it was crashing—the waves behind us, the raucous carols mixed with laughter from the city, the sound of my heartbeat as it clawed at my chest. But then I thought of Oliver, alive and free, and it all quieted a bit.

I took a breath and closed my eyes.

The officers’ rifles clattered as they swung them off their shoulders. I waited to hear the shots or feel the pain or at least the impact. To feel
something.
But long seconds stretched to a minute, and nothing happened.

I opened my eyes. The officers were standing shoulder to shoulder in front of us with the butts of their rifles still on the ground. They were all staring at me. Then Krieg said, “You stopped the explosions.”

I didn’t know what would come out of my mouth if I tried to speak, so I just nodded.

He took a step forward, hands outstretched, and I flinched. “It’s all right,” he said, and I realized he was undoing the chains from around my wrists. When I was free, he unfastened Father’s too and tossed them into the water behind us. Their splash was swallowed by the waves.

Krieg turned to the other officers. “Gentlemen,” he said, and they all raised their rifles to the sky and fired once. I knew it was meant as a decoy, but somehow—madly—it felt like a salute.

Then the officers turned. They began to walk back to the station. And Father and I were left alone.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t get my breath back. I was standing there like I was made of stone, shaking and gasping and wondering how the bleeding hell I was still on my feet. More than that, how I was still alive. We both were.

“Alasdair.” Father’s voice seemed to come from far away. “Alasdair, we need to go.” I felt his hand on my arm. I think he meant to pull me toward the road, probably to run, but instead I turned and fell against him, my face pressed into his shoulder. After a moment, he reached up, and we stayed there for a while with my face in his coat and his hand on the back of my neck.

Far behind us, buried deep within the city streets, I heard the tower clock strike.

O
rnex was the first town across the French border, and it was where Mum was hiding at Morand’s boardinghouse. It was a few hours’ walk there on a clear day, but it took us most of the night to reach it. We had to cross the foothills to avoid the checkpoints at the border, which involved a fair amount of scrambling up rock faces slick with ice. The striped shadows from the pines made it nearly impossible to see where we were going, and I kept sinking into snowdrifts that I barely had the strength to pull myself back out of. It was the coldest I could remember being in my whole life.

I was stumbling more than walking by the time we
crossed into France and rejoined the road. My shirt was soaked through with sweat and blood and snow, and I kept swiping at my nose and coming back with fistfuls of scarlet. Father had a tight hold on my arm to keep me up, though he wasn’t much steadier than I was.

Ornex was a tiny town, and with dawn just beginning to bleed across the sky, it was nearly as dark as the foothills. We staggered through the streets for a while before Father spotted the half-timbered boardinghouse painted bright blue, with Morand’s name on the hanging sign. “Just here,” I heard him murmur. “Come on, stay awake.” I wasn’t certain which of us he was talking to.

Father dragged me up onto the stoop beside him and unwrapped his hands from my coat so he could hammer on the door. As soon as he let me go, I started to sink. “Alasdair—” He grabbed me around the waist, but instead of him getting me back up I dragged him down as well. My knees connected hard with the stones.

And that was how we were, tangled on the ground like unstrung marionettes, when the door opened. The faint light from a fire beyond felt like staring into the sun, so bright it made my vision blur.

“Finch! God’s wounds, how did you get here?” That was Morand’s voice. I felt his metal hand pulling me up, but I couldn’t see straight enough to stand—everything was tipped and darkening. Father and Morand were both
holding on to me, trying to get me on my feet, but then a wall of the warm, boozy air from inside hit me hard as a slap. All my strength surrendered, and I passed out cold.

T
his time, I had a sense of sleeping far longer than I should have. I knew there was something I had to do, some pressing reason for me to wake, but it was like being underwater with stones tied to my ankles. When I finally clawed my way up to the surface with a gasp, it took me a moment to make sense of my surroundings. I was in bed, in a tiny, bare room with no idea how I got there. I was still cold, but I wasn’t shaking anymore, and the pain in my shoulder had dropped into an ache. And sitting beside me, white hair glowing like sun-gilded snow, was—

“Clémence.” Her name left me in a breath.

“Good morning,” she said, and the corners of her mouth turned up. “You look gorgeous.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I blurted, “You’re alive.”

“So are you. That seems a bit more miraculous just now.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“I thought I was dead too, if it’s any consolation.”

“Bleeding hell, I left you. I should have gone back. I thought—”

“Alasdair, calm down. It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not, it’s not all right. I
left
you—”

“Alasdair, stop.” She put a hand on mine, and the
feeling of her skin—of her, real and true and alive—stilled me. “It’s all right,” she said gently, the softest she’d ever spoken to me. Something inside my chest unclenched, and I slumped backward again with a shaky breath. Clémence dropped her hand with a smirk. “Look at that. You’ve only been awake a minute and you’ve already worn yourself out.”

“How did you get away?”

“Oliver came back for me while you were putting on your show for the police and he brought me here. You only missed him by a few hours.”

I didn’t know who to ask about first, my parents or Oliver, but then, like an answer, the door opened and Mum entered, Father on her heels. “God’s wounds, Alasdair!” She didn’t cry or make a fuss, but she put her hands on either side of my face and held on for a long moment, like she was making sure I was truly there.

Father stood behind her with his arms crossed. He didn’t look quite himself yet, but he was standing steadier than before and some of the color had come back to his face. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“I’m all right.” I thought about sitting up as proof but decided that would be too exhausting, so I just stayed slumped against my pillow while he took my pulse and pressed a hand to my forehead.

“Your fever’s gone down. Do you think you could eat something?”

“How long have I been asleep?” I asked.

“Most of the day,” Clémence replied. “Happy Christmas.”

“Hell’s teeth.” I made a valiant attempt to sit up but barely made it to my elbow.

Father stopped me, but I wouldn’t have made it all the way if he hadn’t. “What’s wrong?”

“I have to go.”

“Alasdair, it’s all right,” Mum said. “We’re safe here for now, we don’t have to leave. As soon as you’re feeling—”

“No, I have to go. I have to find Mary.”

“Absolutely not. You’re not well,” Father said at the same time Clémence said, “What do you want with her?”

“It’s something I have to do. For . . .” I swallowed. “For Oliver.” Father didn’t say anything, and Mum looked at the floor. Father must have told her, but I wondered if she’d seen Oliver when he brought Clémence here. She didn’t say anything, but reached out for my hand, and I met her halfway. “Please, just trust me,” I said. “If I wait too long, I may not be able to find her again.”

Mum nodded, but Father kept his arms crossed and stared me down with his mouth set in a firm line. “You’ll be careful?”

“Always.”

“You’re not going anywhere for a few days.”

“I know that.”

“Your mother and I were thinking we might stay here
until things have calmed down. Help Morand.” He paused, then added, “You don’t . . . you don’t have to stay with us. But we’d like to know you’re all right.”

“I can do that.”

He gave a small
humph
,
then nodded shortly, and I knew that was as close to permission as I was going to get.

We talked for a bit longer, in a roundabout way where none of us actually mentioned anything that had happened over the course of the past few weeks. There would be a better time for that. The conversation wore me out, and after a while they left me to sleep. Mum kissed me on the cheek, then tugged on one of my curls. “You need a haircut, Alasdair. You’re getting scruffy.”