This Monstrous Thing(61)

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.




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 Chateau 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?”