Chapter 12 #5
In a flurry of bloodstained snow and black fabric, Victoria turned and ran.
She fled from the group, her boots slipping as she trotted through the snow, cradling the crow against her chest as if love alone might undo what had happened.
Above her, crows cried out, circling and shouting, their calls sharp and frantic as they followed her path.
Unsure if they cheered Victoria or chastised her, it became a terrible symphony of her pounding pulse and grieving caws echoing across the frozen land.
She reached the manor’s stable and with a loud whinny, found Mischief waiting, mounted her horse without pause, and urged the animal forward as fast as it would go. Tears burned behind her eyes, threatening to spill as the wind lashed against her face.
Today had been a mess. There now were two other people who knew of her secret, and one hated her.
She tightened her arm around the bird, not understanding why she cared so much about this stupid creature, other than that she knew it hadn’t deserved to die by Sophia’s hand and that, to her, it felt as though a strange, invisible thread bound her to its death.
Had she not fixed Sophia—had she not intervened—Sophia would have been unconscious, lying quietly in a carriage somewhere. She would not have been able to lift the rock. She would not have thrown the very stone that had ended this small, fragile life.
Victoria’s thoughts churned violently as the bird’s fellow Corvidae cawed loudly as they flew overhead.
How many times had her father saved someone like that? A murderer. A brute. Someone who had harmed another person. At what point did the responsibility end? If you saved someone who killed, were you then complicit in every death that followed?
Her tears streamed freely now, splashing onto the crow’s glossy, purple-black feathers. They darkened beneath the moisture, clinging together beneath her trembling fingers.
Was this God’s warning? Was he granting her a taste of the same moral weight he himself bore?
If it had not been for her hands, her skill, her intervention, would the harm have happened at all?
The explosive weight of that responsibility tore through Victoria’s skull.
“The Leyden jars,” she blurted, her voice ripped away by the wind whipping across her face as Mischief climbed the hill toward the castle in front of her.
Excitement ignited inside her, sharp and electric.
As she reached the last stretch of the hill, the buzzing in her veins became unbearable until she felt mad with passion. This was how she would make it right. She would test the resurrection for the first time.
She handed Mischief off to Thompson without explanation, gathered her skirts, and ran, the crow still cradled in her arms. At the front door, she hesitated, knowing she could not enter carrying a dead bird without Greta and Rosamond losing their minds.
She spun on her heel and sprinted for the side entrance, pounding on the door with frantic urgency. When her father didn’t answer, she tried the handle. Her father’s absentmindedness had saved her. The door was unlocked.
She shoved it open with her shoulder, muttering a curse for not trying it sooner, and darted inside. The laboratory was empty. Disappointed, she shouted for her father once, then again, before returning to the crow she had laid gently on the main table.
She had to work quickly. The resurrection had to be performed while the blood was still warm, still full within its veins, unless she planned on giving it more.
Her hands shook as she laid out the jars and apparatus. She strapped the bird down with leather restraints, uncertain of what state it might wake in—if it woke.
When it woke. When it woke, she corrected.
She ran up the stairs again, calling for her father once more. No response.
But she could not wait.
She returned and spread the crow’s wings wide, attaching the necessary wires and smurfithen tubes. Also being certain to add proteins and anticoagulants. Her fingers moved from memory, following the notes she and her father had labored over for years. After some time, she pulled the lever.
Lightning surged from the Leyden jars, racing along the wires and into the crow’s body.
Victoria adjusted everything carefully, watching, calculating.
She performed the pressure movements and injected the chemicals, doing her best to scale the dosage down for such a small creature, praying she had not overwhelmed its heart.
She realized with a start that she hadn’t actually checked for a pulse…
There was a small chance it could be unconscious and not dead.
She swore loudly, angry at herself for not checking so that she had a definitive answer. It was dead. She was sure of it.
The metallic stench of burnt chemicals and earth flooded the room.
Nothing happened.
The bird remained still.
She detached the apparatus and checked the body, dread blooming in her chest. “Nothing happened,” she whispered. “Why didn’t it work?”
Nothing.
Nothing happened.
How could nothing happen?
No. She was so close to figuring it all out.
She had to be. If she couldn’t bring back this bird, then how could she ever bring back the cadaver?
Her pacing grew erratic; her fingers tangled in her hair.
Years of work—perfecting the formula, galvanizing body parts, salamanders, everything—had failed. She had nothing left. No ideas.
She spun like a trapped animal, grief and panic colliding in a dangerous storm, thinking of the ominous silence of the chamber—and of her mother. Just like her mother, the crow would never be given another chance.
Her nails dug into her cheeks. What if the crows that followed and called for it outside were its children? she realized with a pained thought.
Then—
A sound.
A single, unmistakable caw.
Victoria froze.
Every nerve in her body locked as her eyes widened. Slowly, she turned.
The crow was moving.
Its head jerked. Its feet clawed against the table as it struggled against the leather straps. Adrenaline flooded her as she rushed forward, unstrapping it carefully and cradling its thrashing body against her chest.
It had worked.
Twenty minutes ago, the crow had been dead.
A wild, broken laugh tore from her throat as she held the bird, delirious with triumph. She ran upstairs, bursting into the hall as the crow cawed softly. Greta screamed at the sight of it.
“Where is my father?” Victoria demanded. “Where is he?”
In her frazzled movements, the crow had slipped free and flown to the large window in the entry area above the front door. She smiled with an odd, unbelieving, almost eerie tilt of her mouth as she watched the bird flutter and flap wildly at the window.
“Papa! Papa, where are you!” She quickly left the bird to find her father tucked away in a corner of the library. “You must come and see! I’ve tested our methods on a crow that Sophia killed.”
“What?” he said, looking up from a book.
“It’s in the entryway, hurry! You must see it! Hurry!” She grabbed his arm and pulled him into the front room.
The boom of a shotgun shattered the quiet of the house. Victoria and Alphonse rounded the corner in time to see Thompson, the valet, shooting the flapping black bird, sending feathers scattering as the crow fell lifeless to the floor.
“Don’t worry, sir, I’ve got the bird. I don’t know how he got in here. I will check the fireplace.”
Victoria collapsed, wrung out entirely from so many emotions in such a short span of time.
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Later, in the laboratory, they tried to bring the same crow back again.
It did not work.
Victoria stared at a small hole in the wall, completely distraught.
“Well,” Alphonse said gently, patting her shoulder, “at least we know now they are not immortal once brought back.”
“And that the resurrection will only work on the body one time.” Victoria nodded—it brought her no comfort at all as she looked to the chamber door where Innominatus waited for her.