Chapter 55
Chapter
“What do you mean, you?”
Edgar’s lips twitched. “Isn’t it obvious? I plan to become a witch.”
I stared.
“Thanks to Henry’s research, we have strong evidence to support our hypothesis,” Edgar said briskly, “that witchery is a byproduct of natural phenomena. But we’ve never been able to test it properly.”
“You want to use that,” I said slowly, nodding toward the megalosaurus skeleton, “to, what? Create a natural disaster?”
“Exactly,” Henry said. “Ed and I believe we will finally be able to generate a sufficient power with a living manifold reliq.”
“To what—birth a volcano? Trigger a tsunami?” I scoffed.
Henry smirked. “We thought we’d start smaller. With a classic.”
“A good old-fashioned lightning strike,” Edgar said. He cleared his throat. “Lucy, dear, I know you’re awake. How much did you hear?”
I yelped in surprise as Lucy flinched.
She sighed and straightened. “Most of it, I think. You were talking about Mother when I woke.”
Edgar drawled, “Oh, don’t bother with magic. I’m sure you’ve already realized the sedative numbs your power. Just a precaution.”
Henry’s eyebrows shot up, but I don’t think Edgar noticed.
Lucy stood, and we clung to each other, squeezing tightly. Her hair was still matted and red around the bandage, but she was breathing steadily, and her eyes were alert.
“The boys have gone mad,” I whispered.
“I can hear you, you know,” Edgar said crossly. “You’re a very loud whisperer, Mary. And mad or not, I very much hope you’ll both join my cause, once you understand what’s at stake.”
“You drugged us!” I said indignantly. “Why would we ever help you?”
“Because when this works, and the world is remade, we’re going to need to be united. That’s why I wanted the four of us to be all together.”
“Ed,” Henry began slowly, “wait. What exactly are you saying?”
“I’m saying that a window of opportunity has been opened, my friend.
Thanks to Lucy, and her Prometheans. But also thanks to you and your Society.
There are manifold reliqs in play now, and the Prometheans are ready to strike.
London is destabilized. Teetering on the edge of chaos. We can’t miss the window.”
Henry inched closer to me, his hand fumbling for mine. Despite my anger, I clasped it, even as dread swelled in my chest.
“I suppose I am saying”—Edgar pursed his lips—“that the plan has changed.”
“Mary,” Henry said slowly, pressing a thumb into my palm. “Run.”
But I was too slow. We all were.
Henry barreled toward Edgar, who sighed and muttered something that sounded like, “Alalare lusdi.”
My feet were suddenly leaden, so heavy I couldn’t lift a toe. I cried out, flailing and nearly pitching forward.
“Sorcery,” I breathed. It was a stupid thing to say, but I said it nonetheless.
Henry shouted in fury as Edgar dodged his straining arms.
“Really, Henry, you’re overreacting.” Edgar tsked.
“If I want to change things—really change things, forever, for good—this is the only way. This is how I make reliqs irrelevant. How I render the slicks unnecessary. Give power to the powerless. You do see that, don’t you?
Luce? Surely you, at least, can understand. ”
“I…” Lucy wouldn’t meet my eye. “How would you do it?” Her voice was a whisper.
“Lucy, no!” I gasped. “You can’t possibly support this madness!”
“Earthquake,” Edgar said eagerly. “I’ve done the analysis. Earthquakes have the highest witch conversion rate with the lowest casualties.”
I laughed. I didn’t know what else to do. All of this was so surreal, so absurd. “What’s that? Hundreds? Thousands?”
“Stop this, Ed,” Henry said sharply. “You’ve gone too far already. This isn’t what we planned!”
“You’re right. This is what I planned.” Edgar’s eyes were hard as he wagged a finger. “You are a competent scholar and a fine industrialist, but we both know you’ve never been a visionary. Too easily distracted.” He looked pointedly at me.
“You bastard,” Henry spat. Every trace of his usual control had vanished, and his face was raw with pain.
“Do you know what they say about you, Ed? Awkward. Arrogant. Odd. It’s only his father’s money and title that bought his career, they whisper.
And every time, I came to your defense. He’s brilliant, I’ve always said.
You just don’t understand.” Henry gave a choking laugh.
“I didn’t need your pity,” Edgar snarled, then collected himself, drawing up straight. “And as much as I truly want your support, Henry—yours, too, dear sister—the only one I really need is Mary. So, Mary? What do you say?” He held out a hand.
“Don’t. Don’t touch me.” My lip curled back. I squared my shoulders. Now was the time to be brave. To be the woman my friends had always imagined me to be, and not the one I was. “I’ll never help you raise that beast. You’ll have to kill me first.”
Edgar sighed. He looked over his shoulder. “I was afraid you’d say that. Mr. Farnsworth? Can you bring in our other guests, please?”
The door opened, and the old man shuffled inside, pushing a bound and gagged pair before him. Buckland and Elizabeth.
“I sent word that you were in dire need,” Edgar said. “And, nobly but predictably, your friends rushed to your aid.”
“Oh, God—Farnsworth, you’re better than this,” Henry called urgently. “Let them go.”
Farnsworth ignored him. He pushed William Buckland to his knees before us. Buckland’s eyes were wide with terror, or perhaps fury. But Elizabeth Buckland wept openly, the sound muffled by the strip of cloth between her teeth.
“Elizabeth.” Lucy’s voice was raw. “Edgar—please. Please, no. Let them go.”
“That’s up to Mary now,” Edgar said solemnly, as he loosened Buckland’s gag.
“Don’t do it,” Buckland gasped, when the gag fell around his neck. “Mary, you can’t.”
Edgar unsheathed a knife, his face grim, and held it under Buckland’s throat—close, but not so close that Buckland could reach it if he decided to be a martyr.
Horror thrummed through my veins, rushing to my heart. My ribs felt too tight.
“You wouldn’t,” I breathed.
“I would,” Edgar said.
My teeth chattered and clacked. Edgar was a good man—or he had been, once. Would it be enough? Could I risk Buckland’s life on it?
“It’s up to you, Mary,” Edgar said softly. “You know your part.”
I swallowed. I could try to play along. Maybe then I could at least stall for time; try to give Lucy and Henry a chance to come up with a plan.
“Look, even if I wanted to help you, I can’t resurrect something so large,” I said quickly. “I tried to resurrect an ichthyosaur, and that failed miserably.”
“Ah,” Edgar said. “Except that would have been at Henry’s house, isn’t that right? And Ajax would have been at Palmanaeus.”
Edgar nodded toward Mr. Farnsworth, who picked up Ajax’s cage and brought it to me.
“If my theory is correct, then you don’t have to be touching your living reliqs to use them. But you have to be close. You’ll need to be near Ajax, in particular, for large workings. See, when you resurrected him, you made Ajax—”
“Oh. He’s a familiar,” Lucy whispered.
I wish I could be certain that the flutter under my breastbone was dread. I wish I were sure that it was terror, and horror, and not some thin measure of excitement, as I walked toward the megalosaurus with Edgar at my heels.
Edgar flipped a switch along the control panel, and the steam engine began to turn with a whir.
“Now we begin,” Edgar said. Serum bubbled and roiled around the gray bones.
Whatever I was going to do, I had to do it now. Only, now that the moment had come, I couldn’t think of anything. I’d planned to distract Edgar, somehow. Maybe give Lucy time to do…something. But now my mind cleared of everything but marvel and awe at the megalosaurus.
Its long jaw—the size of my leg; its teeth—as long as my finger; its legs—like tree trunks. Its skull, the great hollow holes like enormous black eyes. It would have been a carnivore.
A predator. A monster.
The kind of beast the others fled, whose every step shook the earth. I thought of the power in those limbs, the sheer strength in that jaw, hunting, tearing, ripping. I could see it, roving the fern-covered hills, trampling bracken under its three-toed feet. I could—
Edgar grasped my wrist and slammed it onto the skull of the megalosaurus. I gasped. Ajax screeched.
I understood now what I was doing, as I reached for the pterodactyl instinctively and drew magic from him in spirals of warm gold. I didn’t mean to.
The wheel-like gear, suspended in parallel above the serum vat, began to turn with a mechanical whir.
Blood and serum raced along the glass and copper tubes strung between the seven white pods and looped back through the central dangling hook at the center of the wheel.
Some other mechanism kicked in, and metal chains rose slowly from the vat, dripping black serum over the great skeleton as they pulled taut in a net of linked steel.
Below these layers of coils and gears and chains, in the pit of black tar, the bones of the megalosaurus moved together. Joints popped into sockets, enormous vertebrae arranging themselves in a neat curve. Tendons and veins coiled like vines on a trellis, knitting over and between the bones.
The metal chains stretched over the back of a long, rising neck, and the soft tissue followed, then the green-gray flesh, and the megalosaurus tried to stand. Buckland always theorized it was a quadruped, but I think it’s actually bipedal.
That’s how I realized my brain was in shock. The creature, pinned under the straining net of metal, opened his jaw and roared.
Lucy slammed into Edgar, taking him to the ground.
“You absolute idiot,” she hissed, as she pinned him with an arm to the throat. “Mother would be ashamed.”
Henry wrested the knife from Farnsworth, who fell against the wall. He cut Buckland and Elizabeth free.
And the megalosaurus writhed against its chains. It gnashed its great teeth. It roared, and it was like a tiger’s—deep and shuddering in a way that pulled every hair on my arms to stand.
The nostrils were huge black pits at the end of a massive jaw, and the sharp teeth below curved like blades.
Those were teeth designed to rip at flesh.
To tear at muscle. Saliva strung between them like spiderwebs, drops raining from its jaw as it gnashed in fury.
I’d known, in theory, that megalosaurus was an enormous creature, but my brain could hardly comprehend the reality; if it rose up on those curved back legs, the beast would be at least twice my height.
The people in the pods should have been screaming as the monster woke.
They should have been pulling the tubes and wires from their flesh and running for their lives.
But the faces around the Loom were still vacant.
Maybe it was for the best they were drugged; I could imagine at least a few would have suffered heart attacks if they were conscious.
“This is for Mother,” Edgar choked out.
I hesitated, trying to decide what to do. Whom to help.
I ran to the pods, to one of the old men, wincing as my arms plunged into the sticky, viscous serum. I ripped the needles from his veins and left the tubes floating atop the black liquid. The wheel overhead stuttered.
I ran to the next pod and did the same, then a third. The machine hitched and whirred as it slowed.
I grinned in triumph.
Crack. One of the chains snapped. The great tail whipped around, narrowly missing my head as I ducked.
The beast thrashed and roared. It was still crouched, held low by the chains, but they were bulging, straining now. It shook its head and struck out with the fingerlike claws of its short front limbs, toward the wrestling Murrays. If those claws caught flesh, Edgar and Lucy would be torn in half.
“Mary!” Henry was in my ear, grabbing my shoulders. Another chain snapped, and the tail whipped again.
Mr. Farnsworth, now wobbling at Henry’s heel, wasn’t so lucky this time. He was caught in the midsection by the swing, tossed hard against a metal stand anchoring the pods. He slumped to the ground, blood pooling immediately from his temple.
“No!” Henry shouted, but I had no pity to spare for Mr. Farnsworth. I snatched up Ajax’s cage and dashed aside as a clawed arm swept through the chains.
Lucy cried out, and I spun back to the Murrays. Edgar had escaped Lucy’s hold and was scrambling toward the megalosaurus.
“Mary! The beast is breaking free!” Buckland shouted, grasping my elbow.
It was true. Chains snapped across the creature’s straining neck and spine. Black serum poured over the edges of the vat in shining waves as it thrashed.
“Those people in the pods,” Elizabeth exclaimed. “We have to get them out before it crushes them!”
“You do that, then,” I snapped. “I’ll stop Edgar. Buckland—with me?”
“Always,” he said, and we ran together toward the megalosaurus as it rose and roared.