Her Dark Curiosity (The Madman's Daughter 2)

I stood on shaky legs. My body was weary with exhaustion, and yet despite everything there was a small, terrible thrill of pride. It burned in the dark part of my heart as brightly as gleaming copper.

“Take me to Balthazar,” I said.

FORTY-FOUR

WE LEFT INSPECTOR NEWCASTLE’S body smoldering in the shadows. The copper armor still glowed a deep red and smelled of burned flesh, an odor I wished to live my entire life without smelling again. By the time we returned to the smoking room, Balthazar was sitting upright with a makeshift bandage across his chest. He smiled when he saw me. I stumbled to my knees next to him.

“You saved my life,” I said.

“You’re so small,” he said. “One bullet would kill you.”

Love for this big man hitched in my throat as Montgomery patted him on the shoulder. “His pulse is strong. I’ve never known a man who could take a bullet to the chest and walk away from it. What do you say, my friend, can you stand?” With our help Balthazar lumbered to his feet, wheezing only slightly.

I led them as fast as Balthazar could hobble through the maze of hallways to an exterior door. Snow blew in, making wind eddies in the hallway corners, replacing the cramped miasma of singed flesh.

The empty carriage waited in the alley, tethered to horses that stamped impatiently in the cold. We helped Balthazar into the back, and Lucy and I climbed in with him as Montgomery mounted the driver’s seat and cracked the whip. The steady rumble of horse hooves was eerily soothing, and by the time we reached the professor’s brownstone, my wild determination had drained away and left me with the cold horror of what we’d done.

What I’d done.

Outside the carriage, church bells rang midnight. Christmas is over, I thought. A supposed day of joy. At the university I’d felt such an arrogant swell of pride to know I’d defeated Newcastle and Hastings and Lessing, and that the rest of the King’s Men would scatter. Such pride sickened me now.

Elizabeth was waiting for us anxiously when we arrived. Sharkey came running down the stairs, tail low as he wound circles between our feet while we helped Balthazar shuffle into the dining room. Elizabeth had already cleared the table and set out her medical supplies, anticipating we might need them, and now directed us while trying to keep Sharkey from tripping us with his frantic whining. I laid a hand on Balthazar’s swollen shoulder, wishing I knew how to give him my thanks. All I had were words, and words were poor payment for a saved life.

His big fingers drifted to his shirt’s nape, where he fumbled with the small buttons.

“Let me help you,” I said, undoing the buttons. He groaned in pain as I slid the shirt off his hunched shoulders. I tried to look away to protect his modesty, but I couldn’t help glancing at the bullet wound.

My stomach lurched. The wound was bad enough—it certainly would have killed me—but it was his deformities that stole my breath. His ribcage was swollen on one side, shrunken on the other, his shoulders lopsided but powerful, dark hair covering every inch of skin. These deformities weren’t the results of an injury—they were the results of Father playing God.

I closed my eyes, his shirt clutched tight in my hand.

Never again.

Montgomery came from the kitchen with some fresh bandages, and I stepped back to give him room. He pulled away the rest of Balthazar’s shirt, examining the wound, not flinching at the deformities. “I don’t know how are you still standing, my friend. You must have the strength of an ox.”

While Montgomery stitched him up, I stared out the window, too stunned to think. I could still feel Dr. Hastings’s hand on my ankle. See Isambard Lessing’s eyes gouged out. Smell Newcastle’s flesh burning. Mrs. Bell’s cleaning crew would find them in the morning. I could imagine the thin cleaning girl frozen in the doorway at the sight of such carnage. The police would eventually find the laboratory on the subbasement level. Even though we’d destroyed the journals, it would be easy enough for the police to deduce that the King’s Club had been practicing illegal scientific experimentation. The newspapers would love the scandal. The entire city would love it. And with Newcastle dead, no one would ever know of our hand in it.

I vaguely heard Elizabeth and Lucy talking, though in my exhaustion their voices were only bits of words like carriage and manor and one repeated only in hushed tones: murder.

They were talking about me. They were talking about fleeing the city. Another word found its way to my ear.

Edward.

I looked down at my hands, still coated with chemical residue and blood. Some of it was Newcastle’s. Some was the creatures’. Some belonged to Balthazar.

My gaze turned to the cellar door.

We both know any creature of my father’s is fated to die, I had said in the laboratory, about the water tank creatures. But did that mean Edward, too?

I felt Lucy’s hands on me, followed by a warm cloth wiping my face and hands. “They’ll soon find that scene in the smoking room and raise the alarm. You have to leave, Juliet.”

“I want you to go to my estate in Scotland,” Elizabeth said. “It’s listed under a cousin’s name who resides on the Continent, so they won’t be able to trace it back to either of us. I’ll ride with you tonight just as far as Derby to make sure you leave the city without trouble, then we’ll part ways and I’ll return here to do what I can to cover our tracks. I’ll meet you at the manor in a fortnight.”

Her words were a distant echo. I kept staring at that cellar door, thinking of the boy chained below. He had few days left before the Beast consumed his humanity. Not much time.

“You must leave tonight,” Elizabeth insisted. “You’ll have to change clothes. It’s a three-day journey, if the weather holds.”

My eyes shifted to Montgomery, then to the little dog curled by the cellar door, tail thumping, knowing his master was trapped below. For a few seconds we all stared at the cellar door, each alone with our secret fears and thoughts.

“Elizabeth was right before,” Montgomery said at last, though hesitation filled his voice. “The humane thing to do would be to kill him mercifully.”

Lucy let out a sob.

I grabbed Montgomery’s arm, pulling him to the window where we could speak privately. “How can you say all this after learning of your connection to him? You’ve wanted a family for so long. A brother. I know it isn’t the same, but—”

“That is why I’m doing this,” he answered in a whisper. “I’d feel no regret killing an enemy; only a brother I could bear to put out of his misery mercifully, given the alternative of watching him turn into a monster.”