Her Dark Curiosity (The Madman's Daughter 2)

The creatures in the tanks might have been created in an ungodly way, but their little bodies were warm with life. Each weighed perhaps twenty-five pounds, not so different than holding Sharkey in my arms. The liquid within the tanks wasn’t water, but rather a viscous chemical bath that clung to my leather apron and dress. As we laid the creatures out on the table, fluid dripping off their drenched fur and onto the floor, my heart twisted.

Sometimes you have to embrace the darkness to stop it, I reminded myself.

On the island, Father’s ratlike creatures had been hairless, but these had a line of fur down the spine thick as quills. The creatures’ eyelids were nearly translucent, showing a web of threadlike veins above eyes that would soon open for the first time. I dried the creatures with a towel as tenderly as if I was giving Sharkey a bath. Damned though they were, I couldn’t bear to abuse them any more than they already had been.

As soon as I’d finished, Montgomery showed me where to inject them at the base of their spines, explaining how the central blood system was separated from the brain and spinal column by a membrane.

The syringe trembled in my hand.

It was me—not Father—giving life now.

I set the needle at the base of the first creature’s spine, counting the vertebra. The tank’s fluid had kept their skin soft and thin, revealing rivers of purple veins beneath the surface. I pierced the skin gently and worked the needle until it hit the spinal sac. It was thicker than I’d imagined, and I had to thrust my hand to puncture it. Then I depressed the lever, breathing life into the thing on the table.

“The next one,” Montgomery called over his shoulder, while he gathered all the notes and journals and plunged them into the viscous tank water to destroy them. “Hurry, before the stimulant starts to wear off.”

I finished the injections. The creatures looked so strange, caught in this half-life. Bodies so perfect and yet breathless, pulseless, waiting in stasis for that one spark to set off the reaction that would start their hearts.

We carried them up two flights of stairs to the King’s Club smoking room, where we worked by candlelight. Among the taxidermied wildlife, a few more motionless bodies wouldn’t be noticed. I set the last one on top of the mantel, the focal point of the room, where I hoped Newcastle would be standing when the creatures first woke.

This is for the professor, I thought with grim satisfaction.

Montgomery used his knife to pull away the electric wiring from the walls. He knew a thing or two about electrical systems, and showed me how to make certain both the positive and negative wires touched the creatures’ flesh.

We worked in silence, so when I heard a rustle of clothing behind me I nearly jumped.

Lucy stood in the doorway, Balthazar behind her, the two of them silhouettes in the dark hallway. Lucy’s hand reached for the electric light switch.

“Don’t!” I cried.

Her hand hovered above the switch. “It’s dark as night in here with just those candles. What on earth are you doing?”

I rushed over to her. “My god, don’t touch the lights! What are you doing here, Lucy? We were supposed to meet back at the professor’s.”

“I had to know what you were planning,” she said, as she looked around the room, not yet noticing the few extra animal bodies among the rest. “I’m involved in this too. My father—”

“Is out of town,” I interrupted. “He won’t be affected by what we’re doing, at least not immediately. Once he returns and learns that the King’s Club has been exposed, he’ll be the first to denounce his association with them.”

“You’re exposing them? How?”

She tried to see what Montgomery was doing on the mantel, but I pulled her into the hallway. “What time is it?” I asked.

“Around a quarter till nine,” she said. “I delivered the letters. Those three men should be here shortly.”

“We’ll need to clear out.” I peered back into the room. “Montgomery?”

“Twenty seconds and I’ll be finished,” he answered.

I pulled Lucy to the storage room directly across the hall, empty now save a stack of chairs. “We can hide in here,” I said. “Balthazar, come.”

Montgomery finished and locked the smoking room, and then we piled into the storage room and closed the door.

“Juliet . . . ,” Lucy started.

“Shh. If they hear us, this will all be over.”

A few painfully long minutes passed. Balthazar’s chest was at my back, and the feel of his solid strength gave me relief. Lucy pressed closely to my side.

“What the devil is that smell?” she hissed, sniffing the wet spots on my dress that were soaked in the creatures’ tank water. At the same time, I heard the groaning hinges of the main courtyard door and whispered for her to be quiet. We all held our breaths.

It wasn’t long before footsteps sounded in the hall, then the low voices of two men talking. From the slips of conversation I could make out, they weren’t happy about being called upon on Christmas Day. I heard them rattle the doorknob of the smoking room across the hall, but neither had a key.

After another few minutes more footsteps came, brisker than the rest, and Inspector Newcastle’s familiar voice said, “Isn’t Radcliffe here with the key? He’s the one who called this bloody meeting. Never mind, I have mine somewhere.”

My gut wrenched. I squeezed Lucy’s hand, wishing she hadn’t come. The the sound of a key turning in the smoking room door came, followed by footsteps filing into the room.

I stared at the crack of light beneath the storage room door. It suddenly glowed brighter as someone within the smoking room must have flipped on the electric light.

For a few seconds, the four of us waited, breathless. We were pressed together so closely I couldn’t tell whose hand was brushing mine, whose elbow was in my back.

I closed my eyes and thought of a jungle far away, a father I’d once idolized.

“What the devil?” a sharp voice came from outside.

“Now,” I yelled.

Montgomery threw the door open, and he and I raced across the marble hall. The smoking room door had been left cracked, and as I reached for the knob to slam it closed I saw flutters of movement: the startled face of Dr. Hastings, Isambard Lessing twisting to look behind him. My eyes met those of Inspector Newcastle—his blue, cold, calculating eyes—an instant before I slammed the door.

One of the King’s Men threw himself against the door, but Montgomery had already twisted the key. Balthazar slid his rifle through the handles to blockade them in. For an instant, there was only the sound of someone desperately twisting the doorknob, back and forth, back and forth, and then a sudden silence.