Wild Boy and the Black Terror (32 page)

He pulled one of the books out and dumped it on a table. Dragging a lamp closer, he leafed through the pages. It was a book of birds – alphabetically listed descriptions of species, with sketches of beaks, feathers, claws. Wild Boy turned the pages, searching for a particular entry.

“D … D… Here: ducks.”

“Wild Boy?” Lucien said. “Care to share your thoughts?”

Wild Boy whirled around. His eyes were wide and gleaming. “The killer’s cloak. The feathers on it are duck feathers. Only they’re from two different types of ducks; see, here.” He jabbed drawings in the book. “Neither of them live in London.”

“So?”

“So what are they doing on the killer’s cloak?”

“You mean, where are they from?”

“Exactly.”

“A pond?” one of the doctors suggested.

“An abattoir?” Lucien said.

“Yeah,” Clarissa agreed. “Somewhere they pluck birds.”

“No,” Wild Boy said. “The slaughterhouses are all out east, Smithfield way. We’re after something near the factories on the river.”

“If you know, Wild Boy, just tell us.”

Wild Boy didn’t know, but he had an idea. “How about a pillow storehouse?” he said. “Duck feathers are used in posh pillows that get loaded into warehouses by the docks. I used to see it from my window, back in the workhouse. Some pillows snag and tear open, spilling out feathers. If we find one of them warehouses near a factory that’s shut down … I bet
that
factory is the killer’s hideout.”

He slammed the book shut so hard that everyone jumped. A wedge of paper fell from Lucien’s coat – the artist’s ink sketches of Gideon and Dr Carew. Lucien picked them up and dropped them on the fire.

“Well,” he said. “How should we go about the search?”

Wild Boy didn’t hear. He stared into the fire, and the drawings going up in smoke. Suddenly his world was just those drawings and that fire. He felt as if the flames were inside him; a glow of satisfaction unlike any he’d known. Right then the last piece of the jigsaw fell into place, and the whole picture became clear. The feathers, the drawings, the ash rising up the chimney…

He flicked the book’s pages until he found a picture of a crow, and with a finger traced over the bird’s smooth, hunched shape. Thanks to those drawings and that fire, he knew everything now. Not just where the killer was, but
who
he was.

And he was gonna get him.

35

O
nce, at a fairground in Stepney, Wild Boy heard a priest describe the city of London as a spreading stain of sin.

The man, perched on a soapbox and bellowing through a speaking-trumpet, claimed that London was a godless place, where minds were as polluted as the factory-smogged air and almost everyone was guilty of one vice or another.

The priest’s rantings gathered a crowd; mostly drunk and, not being from London, they roared with approval and damned the eyes of everyone who was. Only a few objected, hurling oaths, “God-save-the-Queen”s and rotten vegetables, until the priest slipped from his soapbox and tumbled with a cry to the mud.

Hiding under a caravan, Wild Boy had been thrilled.

London
.

He should have hated the place. It was, after all, the city where he’d been abandoned as a baby and then locked up in a workhouse. But he couldn’t. Each time he returned, hidden in the back of Finch’s caravan, he watched the streets through cracks in the walls, wide-eyed with wonder. So much to see. So many people to spy on.

London
.

It had come to mean so much to him. And now it was under threat from the same person who had tried to take Marcus from him. The killer planned to act out Lord Dahlquist’s curse, spreading his terror across the city. Wild Boy couldn’t imagine it. A million screaming souls.

He wouldn’t let it happen. He, Clarissa and Lucien were in Lucien’s carriage heading to the demon’s lair.

The carriage jolted. Wind slammed against the walls as if an army was taking cannon shots at the cabin.

Outside, vagrants huddled under gaslights in a desperate attempt to glean warmth from their glow. Others sheltered in shop doorways. Wind swished the snowflakes so violently, it seemed impossible that any might settle. They
had
settled though, and so thick that the driver had to steer along tracks carved by other vehicles, turning only to dodge a night mail coach that had skidded across the street.

Their pace was maddeningly slow. Turning onto Westminster Bridge they waited for what seemed like an eternity for the toll man to open the gate. Factory chimneys rose from the opposite bank, dark giants belching fumes.

Lucien sat in silence across the cabin. His face, usually saggy and grey, had hardened into a lump of granite. He turned his pistol over in his hands, staring at the weapon as if the solution to all of his problems might be scratched on its barrel.

As if they’d fit.

Wild Boy remembered what Lucien said at Buckingham Palace about giving his whole life to the Gentlemen. And what had it come to? He’d failed in the worst possible way: the Queen had fallen victim to the terror. Surely no one was more determined than Lucien to catch the killer and get the cure.

The carriage jolted again.

Clarissa’s jaw clenched so tightly that her teeth ground together. The terror was still in her mind, but she didn’t fight it. Rather, she clamped her eyes shut, inviting more nightmares into the darkness. She was using the terror to fuel her rage, to give her courage to face the killer.

Wild Boy touched her arm. “Clarissa…”

She turned to the window. Her quick breaths steamed the glass.

They rode from the bridge into a warren of lanes that twisted among the riverside factories – the glassworks and soapworks, the brewers and candle makers. High walls blocked whatever moonlight might have reached the lanes, giving the area an eerie, nightmarish feel. Factory workers struggled through the snow, hauling barrels and boxes from dray carts. Coal barges dumped dusty cargoes at jetties along the riverbank. Snow fell through smoke and steam. The sulphurous smell of coal gas seeped into the carriage.

“Look,” Clarissa said.

The snowflakes against the window turned fatter and whiter, as if they had been scrubbed clean of the pollution from the chimneys.

No, not snowflakes. They were duck feathers.

Outside a factory storehouse, stacks of pillows were piled on a cart, to be transported. Several had been torn open, shedding duck feathers into the wind.

The carriage stopped. The driver banged on the roof.

“We’re here,” Clarissa said. She flung the door open and jumped out. “Come on.”

Wild Boy started to go after her, but Lucien grabbed his arm.

“We are here to get the cure,” Lucien said, tucking his pistol into his coat. “For that we need the killer’s blood. We must catch him alive, you understand?”

“That’s what I’m here for an’ all,” Wild Boy replied. He tore his arm free and leaped from the carriage.

“And Miss Everett?” Lucien called.

Wild Boy pretended not to hear and kept running. But he knew exactly what Lucien meant. That look on Clarissa’s face. This was her revenge. Not just on the person who tried to take Marcus from them, but against everyone who had wronged her. This was her chance to act out her anger. To let the storm break.

The factory rose above Wild Boy, a monstrous block of brick and grime and broken windows. Black smoke drifted from the chimney, even though the factory was halfway through demolition. Wooden scaffolding climbed the bricks where workers had begun to knock down the walls. Barbed wire around the doors reminded Wild Boy of the snarling teeth of Malphas. He ran faster, fear prickling the hair on his neck.

He scrambled through one of the broken windows and into the factory. “Clarissa?” he whispered.

Snowflakes settled on his hair. He looked up, surprised to see the night sky high above, where part of the roof had been demolished. All of the floors had been stripped away too, exposing the factory’s criss-crossing skeleton of iron girders. Chains and winches hung from the beams. Baskets of salvaged bricks sat in puddles of melted snow.

Somewhere across the darkness, a light glimmered.

“Over here,” Clarissa hissed.

He followed her voice, weaving through dozens of wooden barrels that leaked a thick black substance, slow and sticky like wax. The barrels were clustered near the source of the light: a huge industrial furnace. One of them was raised on an iron bracket, tilted so that its contents slid along a pipe and into a vat above the furnace. Inside the vat, the fluid boiled and bubbled, sending black smoke gushing up the factory chimney.

Clarissa pulled Wild Boy away from the smoke. “What
are
these?”

“It’s the poison,” Wild Boy said. “That liquid is what the killer burns to make the smoke.”

“But where’s the killer?”

Wild Boy crouched, pressed a palm against a lantern on the floor. “Still warm,” he said. “He was just here.”

Clarissa screamed in frustration. She turned to kick one of the barrels, but stopped. There was something in the darkness beyond them. Something large. It was moving.

Wild Boy picked up the lantern and struck the flint. Its circle of light was weak and trembling as he stepped closer to the moving object.