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.
A high-pitched animal squeal erupted, ungodly and terrible. I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood.
Lucy twisted her neck to stare at me. “Juliet, what have you done?”
“They would have brought this upon the city,” I said, desperate to convince her what I’d done was right. “They would have killed Edward to do it.”
Someone pounded at the door hard enough to nearly split the hinges. A lamp crashed. It was terrible, listening to those sounds. Terrible and satisfying, in a cruel way. I could only imagine the King’s Men’s shock of seeing their creatures suddenly animated, the confusion, then the horror. Another wail came, though from beast or man, I couldn’t be sure.
Lucy screamed as blood trickled beneath the door.
“Make it end!” she cried. “It’s killing them!” She threw herself against the door, pulling at Balthazar’s rifle.
“No, Lucy, don’t!”
Both Montgomery and I rushed forward, but it was too late to stop her. The rifle clattered and her hand twisted the key. She didn’t even have time to turn the doorknob before it was flung open by Isambard Lemming, blood dripping from his eye sockets, his chest already stained crimson. He collapsed in the doorway, dead.
None of us was prepared for the carnage inside.
FORTY-THREE
WHAT STRUCK ME FIRST wasn’t the dead man at my feet, nor the scrambling chaos within.
It was the smell.
A King’s Man—or perhaps one of the creatures—must have knocked over the liquor cabinet, because now the sticky-sweet smell of rum clogged the air, mixing with the odor of fresh blood, laboratory fluid, and the musk of wild things on the hunt.
I gagged as I reached to slam the door shut, but Isambard Lessing’s body was in the way. Balthazar stooped over to move the body but it was too late; one of the creatures was already hurling itself toward us, all glowing eyes and scrambling claws and a body that moved more like snake than rodent.
Lucy screamed again, diving to the blood-soaked floor. I grabbed the rifle and tossed it to Montgomery, but we hadn’t time. The creature was three feet away, two, and then it was on him. It let out a hideous cry and sank its long claws into his arm. I screamed and stumbled toward him, wrapping my fingers around the thing’s furry back to rip it off. Balthazar picked up the fallen rifle and slammed it into the creature’s head, cracking the skull again, and then again, until cranial fluid seeped onto my dress.
I dropped the dead creature, heart pounding, and stumbled backward until I collided with the sofa. Blood poured from the wounds on Montgomery’s arm.
“God help me!” a male voice called, though I couldn’t tell if it came from Dr. Hastings or Newcastle. I looked around as though in a dream—a nightmare—but there were too many bodies crawling on the floor, stumbling around the room, too many flashes of fur-lined creatures scrambling with glistening claws and teeth.
I’d had no idea what chaos five freshly awakened creatures could cause. For a moment, time was frozen. Lucy was pressed in a corner with arms braced over her head. Montgomery and Balthazar each fought with a creature, blood dripping from their arms, inhuman screeches filling the sticky-sweet air.
“My god,” I muttered.
I stumbled toward Lucy, over Isambard Lessing’s dead body. Dr. Hastings fell onto the leather club chair next to me, moaning as blood spilled from a deep gash on the side of his neck that turned his white undershirt crimson, before tumbling off the chair and landing near the fireplace.
I threw myself on the ground in front of Lucy, wrapping my arms around her, dragging her deeper into the corner. A broken bottle lay on its side that I grabbed as a weapon, heedless of how it cut into my palm. Across the room, Montgomery aimed the rifle at a creature he’d cornered in the fireplace. Balthazar dug his heavy knee into the backbone of another. The sounds of bullets filled the air, the dying cries of little creatures that should have never existed.
I had done this. I’d killed these men, I’d spilled this blood, just as a year ago I’d spilled Father’s. I tried to tell myself this was just as necessary, yet I hadn’t seen Father’s death. I hadn’t witnessed the carnage of his body torn apart, seeping blood like the dying body of Dr. Hastings by the fireplace.
Montgomery let out a final gunshot that echoed in the room. For a few moments there was the sound of moaning and wheezing little animal breaths, but no movement. Wherever the remaining creatures were, they were hiding. Montgomery raised a finger to his lips and started to crouch on the rug, but Lucy screamed suddenly as two creatures flew out from under the sofa. One went for the fireplace and Montgomery leaped up and fired his pistol, again and again. The other skittered on the ground toward us. Balthazar lifted a heavy foot and stomped on it, smashing it dead with a crunch of bone.