Tenfold More Wicked (25 page)

                       
I did.

                                                                        
Your eager slave,

                                                                        
Odysseus Sharp

               
P.S. That thieving Italian deserved to die. Pity someone got there before me. Ha ha! Did you see Eve, my princess? She has your face. But are you the lady, or the serpent?

Chilled, she dropped the letter. It bore no stamp. Hand-delivered. Had he visited in broad daylight?
A gift. At that establishment you visited yesterday . . .

All the air sucked from her chest, and she grabbed her skirts and ran.

She sprinted all the way, stumbling over gutters and in front of speeding carriages, shoving aside startled pedestrians. On Tottenham Court Road, a crossing sweeper cursed at her, kicking scattered horse dung. She dodged, nearly upsetting a clockwork valet, who clacked and screeched, “Stop! Thief!”

At last, she skidded to a halt at Hare's Funerals.

Bloody sunset splashed the dusty shop windows. A small crowd jostled and muttered. “Down in front!” “God spare us, I've never seen anything like . . .” Eliza shoved to the front, fighting for breath.

A police constable with mutton-chop whiskers stood on duty, silver buttons brightly polished on his long dark blue coat. “Sorry, madam. Shop's closed. Police business.”

Frantic, she teetered on tiptoe, trying to see, but the black drapes were drawn. “What's happened? Is everyone all right?”

But she knew. That rude clerk had
handled
her. Made ill-mannered remarks about women in unsuitable professions. Certainly hadn't treated her like a lady.

Her head whirled like Mr. Hyde's carousel, sickening her. Her knees buckled, and she gripped the constable's shoulder.
Oh, God . . .

He steadied her. “Move along, madam. Nothing to see.”

She trailed away listlessly. Dusk had crept in, and a man with a tall matchlock lit glass-boxed gaslights atop wrought-iron posts,
pop! pop!

Mr. Todd had killed the clerk. Slashed his throat, drained his life. She knew it, the way she knew two and two equaled four.

But as she slowly headed for home along Great Russell Street, dodging commuters and rattling carts, her heart protested, a swift bitter ache. Todd wrote strange letters, but always poetic. Brimming with romance and wide-eyed wonder.

This latest one was wild. Scribbled in a fever.

Eerie giggles burst out. A bewildered gentleman tipped his hat, and Eliza only laughed more. A fever of what? Lunacy? Todd was
mad
. She'd gambled, and she'd lost. She dreaded the next morning's paper, the headlines.
Messy, I'm afraid . . .

“No point wailing about it now,” retorted Lizzie, slinging her arm around Eliza's shoulder. “The greasy lecher had it coming. But what are we gunna do about it? And who'll be next? That's the question.”

Eliza shoved her away. “Have you no compassion? That man likely had a family who depended on him.”

Lizzie tweaked Eliza's nose. “None too bright, are you? Don't you see what it means? Todd's following us about! Prob'ly lurking in the shadows right now with a hard-on, sniggering at us.”

Eliza whirled, heart racing. Was that a footstep? A snatch of dark laughter?

No one. Just the usual domestic comings and goings.

She walked on, a guilty itch in her veins. Her boots drummed accusations on the muddy sidewalk.
It's my fault. My fault. My fault.
People upset and insulted her every day. If all were in danger . . .

Her guts watered. What if Todd had watched her kiss Remy Lafayette?

“Oho,” crowed Lizzie, “now we're getting to it!”

Stubbornly, Eliza shook her head. “Todd must protect his new identity. He wouldn't attack people connected with his old life. Besides, he's been free for weeks. What's he waiting for?”

“Your bloody letter, that's what.” Lizzie swung upside down from a lamppost, flashing her scarlet garters. “Acting up for your attention, ain't he? He's off his rocker. You won't never find no sense in it.”

Eliza shuddered, disturbed. Cocky, handsome Captain Lafayette, who irritated other gentlemen merely by existing. Todd had nicknamed him “lapdog.” Few managed the last word in conversation with Remy. Hostility had bristled between them from the moment they'd met at Bethlem.

Then again, indirectly, Lafayette had helped Todd escape. A favor for a favor?

Despairing, she halted, where the British Museum's lofty columns smothered her in thick reddish shadows, and rubbed her aching eyes. What to do? She'd no time for this. Already she'd one crafty killer to apprehend. And lest she forget, Lafayette had planted a
spy
in her house. He wasn't the friend he'd pretended to be.

Should she act as if nothing had happened? Write to thank Todd for his gift? Scold him, she was most displeased and would he mind terribly not doing this again?

Inevitability clanged, an executioner's death bell in her bones. She'd swum far out of her depth. Time she abandoned
her squeamish half-measures. Either adopt the courage of her convictions, and
treat
the man, or turn him in to the police . . .

“Are you even listening?” Lizzie prodded Eliza in the chest. “It's too late. We need to get Todd before he gets
us
. Let's kill him and be done.”

“Don't be ridiculous. We're not murderers. We don't take justice into our own hands . . . Wait.” Her nose twitched, and spidery feet clattered up her spine. “What's that?”

Lizzie frowned. “D'you smell smoke?”

Eliza shoved her way out into Oxford Street, dodging drunks and night carts and hurtling velocipedes. A coach and pair swerved around her, their liveried driver cursing. In the midst of noisy traffic, she searched the cloud-streaked sky.

The moon lurked below the horizon, splashing leaden rain clouds with silver. But a malicious red stain flushed the horizon. The gritty air rang with shouts and distant gunfire. Acrid ash coated her tongue, and above rooftops and chimney pots, beyond the pointed silhouette of St. Giles's steeple, an evil smoky specter clawed the sky.

Seven Dials was burning.

Lizzie wailed, and gripped Eliza's throat with invisible hands, and with an excruciating
crack!
of bone and sinew, she
changed
.

B
Y THE TIME I GET THERE, GREAT EARL STREET IS
full of Enforcers.

Dozens of 'em, brass limbs and white masks reflecting the growling flames . . . but flesh glistens, too, grafted with wire and rivets, sweat-slick and mottled with impending decay. Bloodshot eyeballs, human limbs with bolted steel joints, half a face stretched over an angular metal skull.

The new models, part man, part machine. They think quicker, move faster . . . but they're all under the command of one massive full-brass monster, all machine and no remorse. And behind it, strutting to and fro with gunmetal skirts gleaming, is Lady Lovelace. She surveys the carnage, thin lips eagerly parting . . . and damn it if she don't fix that filthy red eye on me, and
smile
.

Zzzap! Zzzop!
The Enforcers fire electric pistols, arc-flash blinding blue. People fall. Charcoal dust clogs the air. Smoke billows from the bonfire that once were the brewery, amidst broken iron struts and crumbled brick and the thundery stink of aether.

This is what you get for defying the Philosopher. I want to claw my eyes, scream at Eddie till my lungs bleed raw that I told him so . . . but I want to scream with laughter, too. This fight's been coming a long time.

At the seven-way crossroads, a wailing gaggle of
weird
folk drags an Enforcer to its knees. It takes ten of 'em, but they rip the pistol from its hand and shoot it in the face.
Crrack!
Blue lightning explodes down its brass frame into the earth.

It don't scream. Ain't designed to make sound. The stretched skin of its face melts and bubbles, exposing cogs and a glinting quartz crystal. A whistle crescendos, and
boom!,
the thing explodes, taking five or six blokes with it. Brass splinters and fleshy gobbets fly . . . and beyond lurks the tall silhouette of a man in uniform.

Dusted in ash, sword and pistol drawn. He's got more brass machines with him, little four-legged ones running in a pack like hounds. They're herding folks away from the fire, making them wail and holler and scarper into the dark.

“Remy!” I stagger up, panting, for I'm wearing Eliza's dress and I can't breathe right.

He wipes his smudged face with a forearm. “Lizzie, go home. This will only get messier.”

Across the way, Lady Lovelace orders a fresh barrage of Enforcers into the fray. Folk scream and scuttle every which way. I grab Remy's red-coated arm. I can smell him, gunpowder and steel and dark wolfish fever. “She can't just burn everything. Stop her!”

“I can't,” he yells, over the thunder of a building falling in the next street. His pack of brass dogs scatter and wheel.
“This is what I do, Lizzie. I play the Royal's games. I save whom I can.”

“But not us.” My throat squeezes tight. We always knew his loyalty's divided, forced down a forked path by the monster inside him. He ain't never made it no secret. And his best intentions don't hide the fact that he's our enemy.

He's everyone's enemy.

Fatigue bruises Remy's eyes. Sweat slicks his face, drenches his dirty hair. His exhaustion glows, that wolfish fever eating him from inside. Tomorrow's full moon's already dragging him under. “I can't defy her openly. If she finds out about me . . .”

My body burns. I want to scratch bloody ruts into his skin and sign my name.

But I can't. Because I know what he means. And the fear lurking in his raw blue gaze slashes at my heart.

If Lady Lovelace finds out about
him
. . . why, then she'll find out about
us,
too.

Remy knows the Royal's dungeons better than most. He knows what they'll do to him to make him betray his precious Eliza. And he knows he can't withstand it. No one can.

This—the carnage, the bonfires, the screams that rip the sky ragged—this is how far he'll go to protect her.

“Would you do it for me?” My voice is hoarse with smoky dread. “If it were only me, would you . . .”

Remy pushes knotted hair from my eyes, with the hand holding his pistol. Hot metal stings my cheek, exquisite, so wishful I ache. “Go home, Lizzie,” says he, and leans in to kiss my forehead.

Before he can land it—before my fickle woman's heart can forgive him for loving her and not me—I turn and run.

Across Great Earl Street, the Cockatrice is burning. Flame licks up the walls, the windowsills, the eaves. Heat blows my hair back. The brick wall next door crumbles, crushing part of the pub's roof . . . and whoever were standing beneath it.

I charge, leaving Remy and his brutal world behind.

The riot's impenetrable, thrashing elbows and punching fists. Rocks fly, old-fashioned iron bullets sing. An electric pistol crackles next to my ear, standing my hair on end. Burning yeast clogs my lungs, my bladder aches, I need to piss . . .
Doinng!
Something pointy clocks me in the temple, but there ain't no room to fall. The staring fellow squashing my shoulder is dead, neck broken, body held upright by the crush.

At last, still reeling, I reach the flame-stuffed door. That grinning figurehead's just a charred lump. I shield my eyes, but the heat drives me back. “Johnny, for God's sake . . .”

Long fingers wrap my elbow. “Lizzie. Here.”

Dizzy, I fall into his arms. He smells so good, sweetness and light, and my bruised heart aches. For all I mistreat him, I'd miss the fairy-arse tosser like breathing. “Bugger me dead,” I pant, “thought you was . . .”

“And leave you for all them other unworthy rapscallions? Never.” Johnny's all sooty, his strawberry coat singed, but still pretty as they come. “Jesus, what the hell are you wearing?”

I shove him. “You can bloody talk.”

“Arseholes burned down my pub,” he adds, as if I might've missed it. “Right bollocksed up my drinking time, and all.”

Three-Tot Polly and Strangeface Willy hold hands, coughing. Willy's cabbage head is bruised, his claret-colored coat burned ragged. At their feet, that little legless bloke has peeked up his last skirt. He sprawls flat on his trolley, limp fingers begging.

Weeping Jacky Spring-Heels is bounding about in his dirty unmentionables, flailing skinny elbows like a grasshopper gone mad. Johnny shushes him with an absent cuddle. “Peace, Jacky. Hush, now.”

Jacky moans, raking his snot-plastered hair, and I want to moan along with him. Fetch water . . . but from where? No point, with the roof on fire and flames roaring from the upstairs windows.

Guilt stabs me. I could've stopped this. Should've tried harder to convince Eddie to hear the Philosopher's bargain. Would've . . . but secretly, part of me
wanted
this fight. And why? For no better reason than to laugh at others' misery.

Funny thing is—and who knew?—it ain't all about
me
.

Johnny's staring at the hellfire ruins of his flash house, perplexed. Folks is dead, everything he's got is burning. Still, he raises a smile for me, and it lights his wonky face like starshine. Screw me raw, but I want to beg his forgiveness, promise now and forever that his precious heart is safe with me.

Somewhere, my selfish soul howls like a banshee at the injustice.
It ain't fair. He ain't my problem. I never asked him to love me.

But I've made him my problem, with my careless games. He's my responsibility, sure as Todd is Eliza's. I've always scoffed at her wanting to
help
that red-haired loon, but if I thought a compulsive throat-slitter were my fault—if I knew
it, the way I know Becky's murder is on me—would I just wander off and forget it?

Or would I try to fix it, no matter how hopeless it seemed?

I swallow, fearful. “Listen. About Becky . . .”

Whooping laughter cuts me off. Eddie Hyde, clambering atop a pile of smoking rubble. Hat missing, half his coat burned. An Enforcer's pistol's alight in each hand, and he's shooting at anything that shimmers.
Blam!
He fires at Lady Lovelace. Misses, apparently, because he curses and fires again with t'other hand. “Die, you blackguards! Burn the Enforcers! Rip their stinking brass legs off!”

His wild stormlight gaze settles on me. “Lizzie, how do?” he cries. “Come give your papa a kiss. Ha ha ha!” And now what he's yelling don't make no sense. Not a foreign tongue. Just gibberish.

Part of me aches to be up there with him, set fire to my enemies, burn this ugly world to ash . . . but at the sight of him prancing and hooting, no better than one of Eliza's witless patients in Bethlem, my guts curdle. Like Finch said: he ain't two people no more. He's only Eddie, the bad half of a once good man. Finch's frosty pink poison? It ain't curing him.

And it won't cure me.

If I suppress Eliza, will my brains rot, too? Will I lose my reason and end in some shit-stinking asylum, eating lice from my hair and imagining I'm the Queen?

Johnny cocks a brace of gunpowder pistols, and offers one to me. “To hell with it. Already drunk all the good gin anyways.”

The pistol grip's warmth is bitter comfort. Finality settles over me, a weighty cloak of doom. I ain't a praying girl—never
thought much of them what blames their problems on others—but I whispers one now.
Don't let me rot inside like Hyde. Let me die first. Amen.

Distant thunder rumbles, and I flash Johnny a reckless grin. “Well, I never. You and me, dying dressed and sober. Who'da thunk?”

“My darlin', the night is but young.” Johnny plants a kiss on me, fierce and breathless—because Johnny
sees
me, bless his fairy arse, and maybe now, I see him, too—and we sprint howling into the fight.