This Monstrous Thing(60)

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.