Tenfold More Wicked (26 page)

C
ERTAINLY NOT. HAVE YOU BOTH LOST YOUR WITS?”
snapped Chief Inspector Reeve the next afternoon, in his cramped office at Scotland Yard, where weak sunlight dribbled in the high, soaped window. Letters and scribbled notes piled his desk, and stacks of boxed files teetered. Evidently, Reeve wasn't much for paperwork.

From the chair beside her, Captain Lafayette shot Eliza a “what-did-you-expect?” glance. A vicious headache thinned her patience. She'd had no sleep, and she hurt all over, as if she'd run twenty miles last night. Likely, she had. Overnight rain had reduced the fires in Seven Dials to smoldering black ruins, for the most part, but the city's scars would take a long time to heal. She'd come to, abruptly, staggering on her feet in some noisome alley, her dress smeared with blood and gunpowder. Her hair still smelled of smoke and uncanny sweetness.

She'd hurried to Quick's parlor on Piccadilly, intending to confront him with Penny Watt's tale . . . only to find the place much changed. Customers milling, the staff of polite young ladies administering lotions and beauty treatments, selling tonics and hair cream. The proprietor, one exotically made-up
Madame Rachel, had arched manicured brows in perfect bewilderment when Eliza asked for Moriarty Quick.

Round one to him. Perhaps he wasn't even real. She'd imagined his very existence, a drug-addled dream.

But when she'd returned home, hoping for a hot meal and a bath while she agonized over what to do next, she'd found a gilt-edged card dropped through the mail slot onto the hall floor.

Nothing printed on it. Just a scribbled signature and an address:

Silberman, M.D.

Le Caveau des Oubliettes, Covent Garden

A secret invitation. The implications—that dark, twisted lettering—made her shiver. Had Penny Watt left it? She didn't know. But unless she wanted to wait for Quick's bailiffs to toss her in the compter until she could miraculously conjure fifty-six pounds, it was her only lead.

“As I said,” she began again, showing Reeve the card, “I believe ‘Dr. Silberman' is the alias for a confirmed villain and transported felon named Moriarty Quick. I've a witness who'll testify—”

“I don't care if she testifies he's Attila the Hun.” Reeve rocked back in his chair, chewing a fresh cigar. Same ugly brown suit, shirt creased and collar stained. Perhaps he was sleeping in his office to avoid his overbearing wife. “This magic business is rubbish. A ritual killer? It's a burglar, I tell you, who's not right in the head. This Watt floozy is just crying wolf.”

Lafayette gave an ironic smile. “Miss Watt did describe illicit suggestions made under the influence of drugs. That's attempted indecent assault at the very least. Worth a few questions, isn't it?”

Reeve snorted. “More likely this Quick fellow bedded her, and she wants revenge. Maybe in your ivory tower, Royal Society, you've time to listen to wild tales of ravishment from witless chits too drunk to realize they were being duped by the oldest parlor trick in London. Spirits of the dead, indeed. At the Yard, we've real police work to do.” Pointedly, he returned to his letter-writing. “I forbid it. Now clear off, I'm busy.”

Eliza gritted her teeth, only thankful that Lizzie wasn't jumping out to throttle him. Fine. She'd investigate without permission, then.

She rose, Lafayette with her. “Thank you for your time.”

“Not a bit. Oh,” Reeve added, snatching the gilded invitation, “I'll take that. In case you take it into your head to pretend this meeting didn't happen.”

“But that's mine,” she protested. “I'll never . . .”

“Never get in without it?” Reeve grinned. “Last I looked, missy, you worked for me. Don't think I won't nick you for disobeying orders. What's more, I'll have you struck from the register of physicians for malpractice, and you'll never work a day in this town again. Clear?”

“Crystalline,” she snapped. “
So
glad I tried to help. Good day, sir.” She stalked out, and halted on the landing. “Oh, I almost forgot. Hippocrates? Fetch, there's a good boy.”

Hipp dashed back into Reeve's office.
Clunk! Clatter!
“Oi!” roared Reeve. “Give that back!”
Zzap!
Hipp's electric
coil flashed. “Aargh! You little brass bastard, I'll rip your springs out.”

“Oi!” taunted Hipp, and galloped after Eliza, the invitation spiked on one brass forefoot.

“Thank you, Hipp.” Eliza snatched the card and swept downstairs, a swirl of gray skirts and temper. She didn't check to see if Lafayette followed.

Outside in Whitehall, War Office errand boys ran in and out of Horse Guards bearing document cases and dispatches. Hippocrates gamboled happily in the warm sun, snuffling at horses' hooves and the brassy feet of clockwork servants. She'd reassembled him,
sans
that parasitic surveillance device, and immediately his behavior had improved.

She yanked angry skirts, hard enough to pop a stitch. A pity Reeve couldn't be
improved
so easily. Above the Horse Guards archway frowned a stern clock face, with a black splotch marking a quarter past two, the hour when, two centuries gone, Parliament had executed its own willfully incompetent king out of sheer exasperation. She sympathized.

Lafayette matched her stride, resplendent in the sun. “Did you expect better?”

“No, but being right doesn't make me happy.” The sunshine didn't cheer her up. It only made her head throb harder, and for once, she wished she carried a parasol. Her right hand ached, too, the dim legacy of clutching a pistol. Lizzie's exertions were bleeding over into Eliza's body.

On the corner, an ink-stained paper-seller yelled, in competition with a ballad-singer and a turbaned Sikh plucking a sitar. “Bodies pile up in St. Giles! French spies arrested! Fire still smoldering!”

“French spies, indeed,” muttered Eliza. As if the Royal hadn't been responsible. She didn't dare ask Lafayette how
his
evening had ended. “Thank you for backing me up, Captain,” she added, an afterthought. “You needn't have gone out of your way.”

“I take it you're planning to attend Le Caveau des Oubliettes in spite of Reeve?”

Triumphantly, she waved the purloined invitation.

“I wish you wouldn't. Quick already has it in for you, and a man who calls his place of business ‘the dungeon vault' doesn't strike me as easily reasoned with. If he truly has slaughtered two men for threatening him, do you imagine him thinking twice about hurting you?”

“Captain, I'm surprised at you. They told me you were some kind of outrageously daring war hero.”

“Flattered, I'm sure, but one thing I've learned from a dozen bungled campaigns is that there's nothing wrong with a tactical retreat.” Lafayette fiddled with his cuff, uncharacteristically hesitant. Good lord, was that a
fidget
? “And you know I can't come. Not tonight.”

She flushed, mortified. The full moon. His
cage
. In her obsession with the case, and Quick, and Todd, she'd half forgotten. “But how can I
not
investigate, when I know he's guilty? What if someone else was party to the blackmail, and he kills them, too, while I prevaricate? It's a matter of justice. I'll just have to go by myself.”

Aye,
said Lizzie sarcastically.
Same reason you refuse to turn in that crack-brained redhead. All about justice, you.

Lafayette sidled past a tiny boy pulling a cartload of unskinned rabbits. “Is that wise? Reeve isn't making empty
threats, you know. He'll have you struck off if he finds out. Is this really worth your career?”

“Pish. I'm not afraid of Reeve.”

“And as ever, my admiration for your energy undoes me. But might not a moment of pause be a survival strategy?”

Hot flushes swamped her, making her sweat and shiver, a sweetberry quagmire of conflicting suspicions. “Indeed it might,” she snapped. “Like burning Seven Dials in lieu of defying your precious overseer?”

Immediately, she regretted it. His chagrined expression punched her in the guts. “Fair enough,” he said mildly. “But know this: if Lady Lovelace decides to put me to the question, I won't be the only one in danger.”

Flashes of rusty cells beneath the Tower, sparking electrodes, blood oozing into rubber tubes. “I appreciate that, but I can't stop doing my job merely because it inconveniences me. Justice
is
inconvenient. That's the point.”

“I'm merely trying to—”

“Protect me? I suppose planting a spy in my house was for my protection, too.” Heavens, she'd intended to ask more politely. But his attitude hacked at her nerves, all the more maddening because her upset was perverse. He only wanted to help . . . didn't he?

Not a flicker. “Absolutely.”

Her jaw dropped. “You're not even
denying
it. Were you planning to tell me, or just let me bumble on oblivious?”

“You would have said no. I needed to do something. I'm on the trail of some bad people who aren't above hurting you to threaten me.” He didn't flinch. Didn't look away. “Miss Burton's more experienced than she looks. Her father is an ex
plorer. She's braved darkest Arabia since she was twelve. I need her, to watch over you when I can't.”

Eliza's throat parched. Was her indignation unreasonable? Were his intentions honest? Almost certainly. But it didn't cure the glitter-ugly ache in her heart. “I respect that you're trying to help, but do you know how patronizing that sounds? I can take care of myself, you know. I needn't be minded like a . . . a child.”

Like some weak female,
she'd almost said. Her head whirled, overheating, that familiar sickly sweetness muddling her wits into a pink mist. She'd thought him different. Special. But if this was how he truly regarded her . . .

“I don't intend any disrespect.” Softly, as if he knew any answer to be futile.

Her blood boiled, a cocktail of remorse and unnatural rage. “Don't you? That's all right, then. My mistake. Stop putting me on a pedestal, Remy. We're not married, in case you'd forgotten. And I'm not your dead wife.”

Silence.

Finally, Lafayette sighed, and his abrupt distance shocked her. Cold, like a stranger. “Forgive me, Doctor. You must do what you feel is right. It's none of my concern.”

Her chest constricted, a warm, salty sickness. Her words seemed unforgivably selfish and cruel. But she couldn't unsay them. And before she could apologize—or say something even more horrible—he bowed, and vanished into the crowd.

Such a little thing, that lost moment. Gone. Maybe forever.

She was being stupid. Unreasonable. Unscientific. All the things that drove her crazy . . . but she couldn't shed this maddening resentment, as if the world and everyone in it were
against her, and she had to fight back. She barely knew Lafayette. This episode only proved that. Why should she even care . . . no matter that he was . . . just because they'd . . .

Oh, to hell with it.

She stalked away, swallowing a Lizzie-rich curse. The sun peeked between fluffy clouds, and a bird chirped joyfully overhead. She wanted to wring its neck. The bright-natured gleam of passing traffic, the happy hiss of pistons:
everything
infuriated her. Her tongue tingled, a sinister strawberry spritz that murmured sweet chaos . . . and black certainty blotted out the light.

This pink remedy, her elixir, Moriarty Quick's tricks. They were rotting her wits. Tormenting her with the same burning rage that plagued Lizzie . . . and Eddie Hyde. All these ugly chemicals—this unshakable, impossible duality—would be the death of her.

But the alternative—to cease her medication altogether—was just as unthinkable.

Eagerly, Hippocrates flung himself at her skirts. “Doctor! Doctor! Doc-doc-doc . . .”

“Will you shut
up
?” She shoved him, hard.

Clunk!
Hipp bounced onto his head on the cobbles, brassy feet waving like an upturned beetle's. “Sorry,” he yammered. “Does not compute. Sorry . . .”

“Oh, Hipp.” Remorseful, she dusted him off, setting him on his feet. “I didn't mean it. Forgive me.”

But he just cowered, making himself small and blinking his red
unhappy
light.

Her mood blackened. Had she made a terrible mistake? Truth was, she'd very few friends she could trust. A pang of
dread stung her bones. Lafayette had trusted
her
. Let her into his solitary refuge. Asked for her help, though she'd been too stubborn to admit it. Tonight, he'd be at his most vulnerable. And she'd rejected him, precisely when he needed her most . . .

But her rebellious suspicions rattled, a clockwork with a broken cog. Lafayette had
spied
on her. In her own
house,
for heaven's sake. How could she meekly accept that? All he'd needed to do was ask first. Was she some frail creature, the weaker sex, to have such decisions made for her by a man?

“For sure.” Lizzie stalked beside her again, relentless. “Ain't scared you might like it, or nothing.”

“Shut up,” snapped Eliza. “I'm perfectly capable of investigating this ominous Caveau des Oubliettes on my own. I don't need anyone's help, least of all Captain Lafayette's. And certainly not yours.”

Determined, she marched towards the snarl of carts and carriages clogging Charing Cross, Hipp trotting resentfully at her heels. The fact that she
wanted
Lafayette's help—that she
liked
him, as if that were relevant to anything—was all the more reason to refuse.

A
T FRAGRANT SUMMER'S DUSK, ELIZA EMERGED
from the coal-stained Electric Underground into Covent Garden. The cobbled flower market bustled with basket-clutching servants, ladies perusing freesias and roses, gardeners unloading wooden carts heaped with blooms. Soon the moon would rise, but for now, sunset reigned, and above rooftops and smoke-stacks, the sky was painted a glorious shade of purplish red.
A cherry, or a double-white vermilion?
Mr. Todd would know the color.

Clutching her invitation, Eliza pushed her way through theater-goers and shoppers, match-sellers and pickpockets. Arc-lights crackled purplish glitter over coiffured ladies twirling lacy parasols, gentlemen in tailored coats dipping freshly brushed opera hats. Acrobats flipped, their ribboned hair tumbling, and a stilt-walker dressed as a Green Man teetered above, soft foliage dangling from his costume. Cigar smoke and perfume enriched the air, and somewhere, a fiddler pedaling a unicycle belted out a merry three-step tune.

The humidity made her sweat, but she didn't dare shrug off her mantle. Lizzie nestled in Eliza's chest, fighting her for
breath, an oyster stuffed into an under-sized shell. Furtively, Eliza fiddled with the laces behind her back. Lizzie's dress felt strange, conspicuous, a cherry velvet creation with ruffled skirts. She'd figured the class of people who attended these gatherings wouldn't wear drab colors, and besides, she didn't want Quick recognizing her easily from afar.

She'd examined her reflection in her bedroom mirror with trepidation and excitement. Her pale hair had glistened golden, her skin imbued with a strange glow. Her black hat was tilted to dip a veil over her bespectacled eyes. She looked . . . bold. Provocative. Would Remy like it? she wondered. Would Mr. Todd?

You still walk like a prissy schoolmarm,
muttered Lizzie as Eliza searched for the correct address amongst shops and theaters.
A trussed-up ham, that's what you look like.

“Helpful as ever . . . ah, here we are.” Eliza approached a little annex attached to a stately brick dwelling. Its windows glinted in the sultry sunset, drapes drawn. The big black door with its silver knocker loomed, forbidding. A plaque on the lintel proclaimed it to be P
RIVATE.

Nervously, she gripped her reticule. Inside nestled her stinger, fully charged, next to a phial of pink remedy and other medicinal odds and sods. She'd even brought elixir, lest she need in a hurry to
change
. She'd come prepared, even if she'd been forced to come alone.

Hipp had protested, but she'd left him behind, and without him, she felt oddly naked and unprotected. She spared a thought for Captain Lafayette, surely by now readying himself for a torrid night of confusion and chaos. Flesh shuddering, twisting . . .
changing
. She shivered. That awful cage . . .

But she'd her own problems now. Steeling herself, she knocked.

The door edged ajar. No greeting. Just a narrow black challenge.

She offered the signed invitation. An unseen hand snatched it, and after a moment, the door creaked open.

Inside, darkness smothered her. The door clunked shut, stranding her in utter blackness, with a dizzying scent like overripe wine . . . and then a candle flared, revealing dark green drapes and polished floors. That unseen someone thrust a white lorgnette mask in her hand.

She peered through the carven eyeholes. The person was gone. The place seemed deserted, just twin rows of candles beckoning her down a velvet-draped corridor.

Already, her head swam in heat-shimmered perfume. Her vision's edges smeared, telescoping, and from beyond, snag-toothed devils whispered to her, promising delights both exquisite and frightful. Breath seducing her skin, multiple mouths in her hair, unseen drums throbbing, louder, faster . . .

She staggered, unbalanced. Candles flickered, laughing at her. She felt drunk, irresponsible. Wild, to go with Lizzie's spectacular dress. A slow smile parted her lips. Do your worst, Moriarty Quick. If any black magic lurked here, she'd definitely give it a try . . .

Her heartbeat throbbed, a sluggish warning.
The air's drugged, you idiot!
hissed Lizzie.
Poisoned! This place is a fakement. Get the hell out of here!

“Eh?” Sleepily, Eliza pawed inside her reticule, fighting the temptation to inhale further. Elixir, warm. Pink remedy, frigid . . . At last, her fingers closed around a tiny glass phial.

Mr. Finch's invisible prophylactic against poison gas.

She thumbed the cork away—a tiny
hfff!
like a spectral laugh—and tipped the phial onto the inside of her mask . . . and just in time remembered that Finch had drained the substance
upwards
. Lighter than air. Fumbling, she swapped positions of mask and bottle, hoping she hadn't already wasted it.

She replaced the mask over her face, and inhaled, a faint scent of oranges. Another breath, and her fuzzy vision began to clear.
Doubles as a hangover cure and kills ants!
She stifled crazy laughter. She'd have to tell Finch his pet project worked . . . But for now—thanks to Lizzie's presence of mind, not her own—she was forearmed.

She crept further into warm dark. Shadows shifted, voices murmured. Red-gold firelight flared, and she headed towards it.

A vast room yawned, dizzily endless . . . but now that she'd sobered, she could make out dusty carpets, rotted red drapes, a once-ornate plaster ceiling with crumbling painted lunettes. A dingy theater, with a cracked wooden stage and tiered galleries . . . and a crowded audience of richly dressed gentlemen and ladies, all wearing the same white masks.

They luxuriated on moth-eaten couches, all in various states of undress. Discarded gloves and stockings littered the filthy carpet. Shirts loosened, corsets unlaced to expose glistening skin.

One plump fellow's face nudged her memory, and with a start she recognized the fat lord from Lady Fleet's entourage at the Exhibition.
Lord Montrose, Sir Wm Thorne . . .
Was this Sir Dalziel's infamous coven, then? All guzzled thick, meaty red wine from cracked goblets smeared with dust. Their
mouths and chins were stained purple, the color of rotten berries, and as they drank, they laughed.

In the pit below the stage, a fire roared, and . . . well, darker pastimes than drinking were being indulged. Noises slithered from the depths, moans and grunts, wet slobbers, the rending sound of tearing meat. Eliza couldn't resist a glance down . . . and shuddered, averting her gaze from writhing flesh, bitten skin, naked limbs contorted in agony.

Upstage, on a stool, in shirtsleeves and waistcoat, crouched Moriarty Quick.

He tended a glowing crucible that bubbled and spat over a hissing flame burner. That foul-smelling poison gas billowed, a noxious black smoke cloud that shimmered and dissolved to air.

Her mind raced. An unorthodox hallucinogen. Could it be the one she'd found in Dalziel's ashtray? Had Quick somehow made himself immune?

He tipped in a scoop of powder, releasing another cloud of gas. His yellow hair slicked his cheeks. His dissolute lips pursed, a singular expression. He didn't look manic or intoxicated.

He looked
bored
. As if this whole scam were far too easy.

But what
was
the scam, exactly? Clearly, these people hallucinated, the “hypnotism” of which Penny Watt had spoken. Illusory splendors, false pleasures. Fabricated horrors, also, those ethereal devils in hissing battle for their souls . . . but in the greasy shadows lurked creatures equally horrid, but
real
.

A dirty menagerie of monstrous folk, fey and fell, demented and deformed, with matted hair and sallow, warty skin. They shambled along aisles and sneaked under seats,
filching trinkets from dropped coats and purses, wriggling beneath skirts, invading loosened clothing with misshapen fingers and thirsty tongues.

On one chaise swooned a lady in green, and a hooting hare-lipped fellow unhooked her diamond necklace and licked it greedily, eyes empty but for hunger. A dwarf with some awful rotting skin disease wriggled into a man's discarded clothes, laughing as he disappeared inside. At that foul pit's edge, a lizard-skinned thing with grinning jaws peeled a young lady's drawers off. It writhed its spiked tongue over her soft thighs as it dragged her down . . .

Nauseated, Eliza gripped her mask tightly with sweating fingers. What a disgusting spectacle these pitiable creatures made. Likely their victims would be too embarrassed tomorrow to demand restitution, if they remembered anything at all. Quick and his freak-show carnival would escape scot-free.

No summoning, no deals with Satan. His “black magic” was just a cruel alchemist's trick.

Ignoble and humiliating, to be sure—but it hardly seemed worth killing for. Carmine's letter blurred in Eliza's memory, a candlelit scrawl without meaning.
He is a Traitor and Wicked beyond sense.
Wicked, certainly. But a traitor?
If we do not unmask Him everything is lost.
Over a few stolen jewels? It made no sense.

Ha! Some detective you turned out.
Lizzie's gleeful whisper taunted her.
Everything you thought you figured out so canny? Rubbish, the bleedin' lot of it. Not so clever now, is you?

But if Quick didn't kill Carmine and Dalziel, who did? And why?

Still, this dirty scam ought to be stopped, and Quick brought to justice. That much was clear. And those poor malformed creatures should be in a hospital, not treated like circus animals for Quick's twisted entertainment.

She discarded her mask, gripped her stinger, and edged closer to the stage. Quick kept stirring his crucible, his back to her, singing in his smoke-roughened tenor.

“I wept, and kissed her cold clay corpse . . . then rushed o'er vale and valley . . .”
He splashed rotting black goo into the mixture and stirred, rolling the crucible with long iron tongs whose tips glowed red hot.

Stealthily, she climbed onto the stage. Inside, Lizzie stirred, flexing spectral fingers, and Eliza's fingers flexed, too.
Yesss. This is going to feel goood . . .

“My vengeance on my foe to wreak . . . while soft wind shakes the barley,”
hummed Quick, flicking sweat from his hair.

Eliza stole up behind him. One step, another. Any moment, a floorboard would creak and give her away . . .

She dived.
Slam!
They collided, and hit the stage, jarring.

“Ha! Dr. Jekyll. I've been waiting for you.” He twisted on top of her like a snake, stinking of whiskey and those foul, decaying ingredients.

She struggled. He fought with a cornered rat's ferocity, grabbing her arms, kneeing for her guts, forcing her to the floor . . . and all the while, he laughed.

But Lizzie snarled bitter fury and
swelled,
filling Eliza's muscles with renewed strength.

She wrapped her legs around Quick, hurling him onto his back in a billow of red velvet. Jumped astride him, grabbed
his hair, and jammed her stinger under his chin. “Fiend,” she spat, in a shaking voice not wholly her own, “give me one reason I shouldn't kill you right now.”

Quick's eyes glittered balefully. He wriggled one arm free, scrabbling for his tongs and the red-hot crucible. Her thumb tightened on the stinger's switch . . .

Bang!
Electric lights popped on.

Eliza's skin wriggled. Her hair sprang loose and darkened, flesh crawling and
stretching
. Boots pounded down the aisles, bringing listless screams from Quick's wretched victims. Her head splits,
our
head, our eyes boggle and swell as if we're both seeing double. Half blind, we squint up together . . . into the grinning mustachioed mug of Chief Inspector Reeve.

Suddenly crushers close in, truncheons bristling, a net of blue-coated wrath. Between our thighs, Moriarty Quick chortles like a half-brained magpie. “Now here's a pretty problem.”

Eliza and I fight over breath, and I win. Quick ain't wrong. Bad enough that Reeve's arrested me on no evidence before. Fact is, the Royal could nail his arse to the wall for employing a heretic. If
she
pops out o' me, and he learns what he's unwittingly harbored? We'll never get out of whatever stink-mud hellhole he tosses us in.

“'Ello, 'ello,” cries I, “if it ain't Chief Inspector Nitwit!”

Reeve kicks Quick in the face. “Lads,” orders he, “arrest this skinny Irish idiot for murder. Knew that evidence of mine would be watertight.”

Eliza splutters in my chest.
I was wrong about Quick, you idiot. It won't stick! The real killer is still at large. You're making a terrible mistake!

I laugh at Reeve, mocking. Stealing our hard-earned evidence. Taking her credit, just as he done to Harley Griffin—but we had it arse-about. He's got the wrong man. Serves the thieving little rat turd right.

“And arrest this mouthy skirt, too,” adds Reeve, his triumphant grin setting my teeth a-tingle, “for disturbing the Queen's peace. That Royal Society prat's dirty bit of quim, eh? Don't think I've forgotten you, missy.”

Quick's laughing gaze meets ours, conspiratorial. He's bleeding, a tooth broken, happy as a drunken clam. Utterly off his rocker.

And with a snaky whiplash, he grabs his glowing tongs, and flings 'em.

Spoingg!
I go flying across the stage. Reeve swears. Constables yell and scatter. The spinning tongs hit a crusher in the face.
Ssss!
He screeches, clutching his raw-burned cheek.

Quick springs up, and upends the crucible, a river of molten red. Blinding black smoke chokes the room. The stage catches fire, flames chewing up the dry-rotted wood. The half-witted circus creatures screech and caper. The air fills with screams as half-clothed ladies and gents bang drunkenly into furniture or fall into the pit where scaly things munch and writhe.

Triumphantly, Quick bolts, but a pack of roaring coppers crash-tackle him to the stage, slamming his face into hot floorboards.
Crunch!
Blood splashes. Ow, did that hurt? So sad.