Ripper (25 page)

The door frame cracked a bit as the men outside pushed against it. They would be through at any moment. There were no windows in the gallery; I backed up against another door at the far side of the room.

Then the gallery door burst open and I faced them across the room, the knife poised in front of me.

“You killed my mother.” My voice quivered and did not sound like my own. I shook with rage.

“She had a choice, Abbie. A fair one.”

“Did she
?”
I spat. “What, join your group or die? The same choice you're offering me? What kind of choice is
that
?”

“It was an offer,” Marcus Brown said, taking a step forward. “Off the table, now that you've killed John.”

“Stay where you are!” I warned him, before turning my attention back to Dr. Bartlett.

He laid one hand on Marcus Brown's shoulder. “In a minute, Marcus. Your mother,” he continued, turning to me. “With her gifts, once she took the elixir, might have been anything.”

“What? As your immortal
love puppet
?”

A chilling coldness overcame his expression. I suspected that my statement affected him more deeply than John Perkins's death had. His response came out severe and cold, as if he were issuing my own execution order. “No one can live, knowing the secret. It is part of the rules—four centuries worth of rules.”

My mother might have been just another casualty to them, but to me she meant something. They had not seen her suffer and die. They had not loved her as I had. They had robbed me.

Robbed me of too much.

Dr. Brown pushed past Dr. Bartlett. “Miss Sharp, this has gone too far. Stop this foolishness. Drop the knife and surrender to us.” He spoke kindly, politely, even as he was crossing the room to kill me.

The great politician. The murderous politician.

The politeness infuriated me, and I decided that their gentlemen's rules were at an end.

“Your Conclave can go to fucking hell!”

I slung the knife forward. It stuck hard in Marcus Brown's heart.

Without wasting another second, I plunged through the door behind me, locking it. I found myself in yet another gallery lined with cases, a door slightly ajar at the far end.

I needed another weapon.

Trying to ignore the shouts, and then the great thuds against the door, I ran toward the cases.

In these cases there were no weapons, only rows and rows of shrunken heads: the skin was dark, leathery, obviously stretched and then boiled. The eyes had all been sewn shut. The hair on the heads was all different colors—blond, black. I swayed as I saw a streak of auburn locks. In my horror, I tried to tell myself that Robert Buck had collected these heads from gravesites around the globe. But I knew of his anthropological curiosities, of the people that the Conclave had killed over the years. I swallowed as I contemplated how far Robert Buck's experiments might have gone over the centuries.

There was nothing in this room to help me, so I ran toward the other door. Along the way, I threw myself against the cases, crashing them to the floor in the hopes that the mess would stall the Conclave.

Running into the next room, a laboratory, I slammed and locked the door behind me. There were no more escape routes. I would have to face them in here.

I began flinging open cabinets, looking for a new weapon. Test tubes and fluids crashed around me. In the darkness, I slammed into the dissecting table and my hip throbbed in pain.

I heard their voices and the sound of crunching glass. Robert Buck and Julian Bartlett were in the gallery.

My odds would be better if I could create some sort of diversion. A large vat of formaldehyde caught my eye.

As I heaved it toward the door, I spilled half of the vat's contents. The formaldehyde spread across the floor quickly. I dumped the remainder of the contents along the edge of the floor and across the surface of every countertop, taking care to keep the solutions off my skirts.

Just as I grabbed the nearest Bunsen burner, Robert Buck and Julian Bartlett broke through the door. Buck slipped immediately, falling, just as Bartlett braced himself on the slick floor. His eyes met mine as I lit the burner and tossed it onto the ground near me. I then leaped into the dry, middle part of the laboratory. Flames shot across the floor and up the countertops. The laboratory would be engulfed in flames within minutes, and then the house.

Julian Bartlett shouted something to Robert Buck and started to fight the fire. Buck, standing again, grabbed me hard as I ran past. I kicked him sharply in the ribs but could not disengage myself. I fought hard against him and we fell together, tumbling out into the gallery.

Shards of glass crunched under my back and cut into my arms as we rolled across the floor. I tried to ignore the shrunken heads that kept bumping against my body, focusing instead on keeping Buck from pinning me. He slammed my head hard against the side of one of the felled cases. Then once he was on top of me, he put his hands around my throat, choking me. Flickers of light began to appear in my peripheral vision. I was losing consciousness.

I dealt a mighty kick upwards into his sternum, and heard a crack. That was enough. He released his grip and I slid out from under him, dizzy but standing.

Heaving and choking, I stumbled out of the room as smoke began pouring out from the laboratory, engulfing the galleries. I hoped that Dr. Bartlett had been overcome by the flames and smoke. That would leave me just Robert Buck to kill until I could find Max.

Buck stood up and I ran from him into the first gallery, ducking, trying to keep my head away from the smoke.

Pulling the bowie knife from Brown's body as I ran out of the gallery, I almost tripped over Perkins's body at the top of the stairs.
The handcuff keys.
Keeping an eye out for what was behind me, I struggled to get the keys unhinged from his belt. My hands trembled and I felt myself crying as I fought to free them. Buck would be upon me anytime.

“Abbie
Shaaaarp
!”
I heard him roar from the gallery, just as I freed the keys and ran down the staircase.

There was no time to free William and Simon—there were at least thirty keys on the ring and I had no idea which, if any, would work on the handcuffs. I certainly didn't want to lead Robert Buck to them, so I ran in the other direction, into the drawing room.

Large sheets covered all the furniture. All the fish aquariums were now gone except for the jellyfish globe aquarium, which rested upon a large cart with wheels. The top had been removed.

Venomous. Can kill someone within minutes.

I still had the knife, but an easier means of killing Buck occurred to me.

Pushing all of my weight against it, I rolled the giant globe aquarium on its wheels toward the side of the entrance to the drawing room. Then, standing on a chair, I steadied my breathing and waited. I heard the stairs creaking. He was coming.

I held my breath as I placed my back against the aquarium. Timing would be everything. Then, if this didn't work, I still had the bowie knife.

I focused on the silence, listening for Robert Buck's breathing as he approached the room.

The second he entered, I threw my back against the aquarium. With a great crash, it toppled over, emptying its contents onto him. I would have fallen along with it, but I grabbed a nearby window curtain, catching myself just in time.

I leaped off the chair and stood nearby, watching, the knife ready in case this didn't work. Robert Buck was screaming and thrashing on the floor, his spectacles falling off. Jellyfish clung to his body. His neck began swelling immediately, turning red and then purple as he suffocated.

Smoke poured down the stairs. He was dead. Julian Bartlett, if alive, would have come down the stairs by now. I started to maneuver past Buck's body, careful of the jellyfish, to get to William and Simon.

Then I heard the crashing footsteps upstairs and a voice calling for Robert Buck.

Julian Bartlett was still alive.

I also heard roaring flames as he ran down the stairs. The fire had spread. Then a bullet hit the wall behind me. Bartlett had seen me, and he had a gun.

Sprinting back into the drawing room, then through the French doors into the hothouse, I found myself enshrouded in early morning darkness. The fountain was empty and the place absolutely silent. There were no shrieking monkeys, no flying birds.

I ran fast past the fountain into the forest, knowing that I had to take cover before he caught up with me.

I was not a moment too soon. The hothouse doors slammed open just as I reached the trees.

Once in the wooded area, I planned an ambush. If I could take him by surprise, kill him quickly, then free Simon and William, we just might make it out before the house burned down.

The tree nearest to me had a thick branch about ten feet off the ground. Silently, clenching the knife blade in my teeth and plunging the keys into my right boot so that I would not lose them, I climbed up.

I heard his footsteps. He was closer than I had thought. I eased further out on the branch.

He stood directly underneath me.

He had been my supervisor, my mentor. But now, as Mother's murderer, he had to die. Slowly, silently, I removed the knife from my mouth and clutched it hard.

I inched forward a bit more. Dropped.

But he stepped aside and spun around, aiming the revolver at me as I hit the ground painfully. I rolled sharply to one side just as the dirt exploded in the spot where I had been.

I stood and charged at him with the knife before he could fire again. But with frightening ease, he caught me and spun me against him, holding my body and my wrists in a vice grip. Before I could take another breath, he had taken my knife and placed it against my throat.

I struggled, but he held me too tight.

“It has come to this.
This
.”
He pressed the knife harder.

He seemed calm, calm even though I had killed the others, calm even though he was about to kill me now.

“You've created quite a mess for me, Abbie. Ruined so much of what I have worked for four hundred years to build. They are gone now.”

It was a cool reproach, yet stern and controlled as if he lectured a child.

“You know, Abbie,” he whispered softly, soothingly, in my ear, “I thought Caroline Westfield was extraordinary, that she wanted to do extraordinary things. But she disappointed me and turned out to be sadly ordinary.”

“
You …
”

“Hush, Abbie.”

In that moment, I felt overwhelming panic. He had immobilized all of my limbs, had me locked against his body. I had come so close to surviving, to saving William and Simon. If I died now, they would both die, very soon, in the fire.

I almost choked as the vision washed over me. Julian Bartlett's touch, my emotions, must have triggered it. I saw my mother's face, as she stood in front of the Conclave in that meeting room—the same room where I had been. I saw the sharpness in her expression, her defiance. She had just refused the elixir.

The vision, a split-second lightning flash, left.

Mother's face had done it. I had to finish this.

With a crazed burst of energy, I threw Bartlett off me, snatched the knife from him, and kicked him to the ground. I had knocked the wind out of him, but nonetheless, I placed my boot hard on his chest.

“No, Julian. Mother
was
extraordinary.
You
,
on the other hand—”

I cut his throat.

“—Are just
too old
.”

He died without another word, those unfathomable eyes finally lifeless.

When I reached the drawing room again, smoke had already poured down the stairs and through most of the first floor. It was hot, difficult to see. The smoke burned my nostrils, my throat. My fears rose for Simon and William. Covering my nose and mouth with one hand, I crouched low and hurried through the drawing room, careful as I stepped around Robert Buck's body.

The floor creaked above me. It could collapse at any moment. The fire had spread so quickly, and Montgomery Street was so empty, the house would likely be burnt to the ground by the time the fire department arrived.

I reached the large doors to the ritual room and pulled away the first bolt. My hand trembled as I tried five different keys in the lock. None worked. After ducking to the floor to gulp fresh air again, I stood, tried the next key, and thanked the gods of luck that it worked.

As I burst through the doors, I saw that although the room was smoky, the doors had sealed away most of it.

“Abbie!” William yelled. “Bloody hell, you're alive! I heard the gunfire, the yelling. Then the smoke came.”

Smoke was now filling the room.

“I have the keys, but
dammit
,
I have no idea which one—”

I screamed when I heard a ceiling collapse somewhere on the first floor.

“One of the keys is a bit shorter than the others, with a small notch on the top,” Simon said coolly. “That's the one to the cuffs.”

I found it.

“Thank you, Simon, you're amazing as always.” I unlocked the cuffs.

“Hurry!
Hurry
!”
I yelled, although I hardly had to say that. William grabbed me, pulling me hard out the doors, Simon just behind us.

The heat was unbearable now. My eyes burned, watered. I tasted ash. Fortunately, once we made it to the hallway, the front doors were immediately in front of us.

We broke through them, into the embrace of the early morning air.

Twenty-seven

T
he house burned quickly, to ashes, after we left. Because of the fast-moving flames, and because of the isolation of the street, the fire department in fact did not arrive until it was leveled. Simon, William, and I watched from the distance, just to make certain. In the end, even the hothouse was no more.

It was almost three o'clock in the morning, and still very dark, when we arrived at Christina's house. She had returned from New Hospital already, and we found her sitting in her parlor, Hugo at her feet. She was pale, ghost-white in fact, and I saw her hand tremble as she raised her steaming teacup to her lips.

“He was here. Wasn't he?” she asked.

I sat beside her on the sofa while William and Simon sat across the room.

I nodded.

“I just arrived and found her in the bed.” Christina wiped a tear away from her eye. “She has no living family. No friends but us. We can bury her on our plot.”

None of us said anything for quite a while. Then she finally looked up, focusing on us for the first time. I knew we looked a sight. All three of us had torn clothes; we were dirty, covered in ashes. The front of my dress had come open again, and I saw, in the firelight of Christina's parlor, that I had dried blood smeared across my dress and on my hands from the killings.

“How very rude of me,” she said shakily, standing up. “You all look terrible and exhausted.”

After she brought us tea, she expressed her regrets.

“I never really believed Gabriel's story of the Conclave. I should have said something when you began working at the hospital, William. But truly, I thought it was nonsense. You have been in such danger.”

We immediately told her all that had happened. How they were all dead now except for Max. How, except for him, all evidence of the Conclave was now destroyed.

“And Polidori's papers?” Christina asked.

“Robert Buck took them from me just as he and John kidnapped us at gunpoint. I'm sure they burned with the rest of the house,” William said.

“Mary and Scribby?” I asked him quickly. “Were you able to find them?”

William nodded. “Easily. I actually found them returning from somewhere, only blocks from Miller's Court. Max would have killed them, too, if they had come back any earlier. I convinced Scribby that he did not need to see the mutilated body of his sister; they should be on their way back to Ireland. They have a lot of unanswered questions for us, of course. But I convinced them to leave immediately—that Mary's life depended upon it.”

I shuddered. The mess in that bed would be forever burned into my mind.

“And what about Max?” Christina asked.

“He told me that he had business to deal with.” I told them about how the jellyfish aquarium had been on wheels, how of all the animals and birds were gone from the hothouse.

“They might have planned on moving abroad again,” Christina suggested. “That was one of the ways they apparently kept their immortality secret. They've been in London now several decades without aging. It would have been about time to move on.”

“I think it's likely that Max has left London, taking the animals somewhere,” Simon said. “But when he hears about the loss of the elixir, of the deaths of the rest of the Conclave, he will be furious.”

“But he's free. The Conclave is gone. He doesn't have to work for them anymore,” William pointed out. “There's a chance he might move on, leave us alone.”

“You're being naïve, William. You're forgetting the minor detail of the elixir.” Simon spoke irritably. “He hadn't had his ritual yet. He needs it every year to maintain his immortality. We just robbed him of that.”

Simon was right.

“We don't know when Max might be back,” I said quickly. “We'll have to stay on alert. And when he comes back, we'll deal with him. But I'm not going to live in fear.”

“Neither am I,” Christina said. “He might be back tomorrow. He might be back next year. We'll be prepared, but life has to go on.”

She took another sip of tea, and I saw the quick glance she snatched at the Polidori portrait. We sat in silence for several minutes, a heaviness weighting the air.

Christina lent me a dress and I cleaned up in preparation for returning to Kensington. There was no way I could return to Grandmother's with my dress torn open and blood smears everywhere. I dreaded the upcoming weeks with Grandmother; that morning, especially, new arguments over my plans to attend medical school and William and Christina's continuing presence in my life were battles that I did not feel like having. They would be best saved for after I had had at least a full night's sleep.

While Simon readied the carriage for us and Christina had Perdita's body taken away, I had a single stolen moment with William. As soon as we were alone in the parlor, I embraced him.

I was shocked when he pulled away.

“What happened between you and Simon in my absence?” he demanded.

At first I thought he was joking; then, I saw from the angry shine in his eyes that he was not.

I couldn't lie. “It doesn't matter. I had made you no promises.”

Then I felt angry. Annoyed that after everything we had been through in the last day and night,
this
was his concern.

We stood for a few minutes in angry silence, alone in the parlor in front of the Polidori portrait. I felt frighteningly, deeply in love. But the realization that love was faulty smacked me hard. I knew Mother had loved me, but our relationship had had so many cracks, so many mysteries. Grandmother loved me, but she was still fierce, controlling. Annoying, in fact.

Why did I expect William to be flawless?

Still, I didn't have to tolerate his absurdities.

I sighed and shrugged, turning to leave the parlor.

But then he pulled me back, snatched me to him. Kissed me. With his jealousy still present, the kiss was possessive as well as passionate. All thunder and sharpness. And there, in Christina's parlor, amidst the faint odor of must and bird feathers, I embraced him back and eagerly returned the kiss.

“Abbie!” Grandmother shrieked angrily as Richard let Simon and me into the house. From the front hall, I saw breakfast still laid out in the dining room, only half-eaten. Amidst Grandmother's cries that I was “selfish,” “rude,” and “improper” for putting her through so much following a funeral, I felt my stomach growl and my mouth water at the smell of hot bread and bacon. My hunger nearly overwhelmed me in that moment. As I kept my eyes on Grandmother, I tried to ignore a small exchange between Simon and Richard—Simon silently pushed some banknotes into Richard's hand; Richard pushed Simon's hand and the money away and shook his head. My curiosity about Richard rose a bit. I would have to ask Simon about him later.

Meanwhile, Grandmother was still lecturing me so sharply that my ears rang. After the previous night, I had no fight left, so I merely continued with the apologies. Then I felt myself flush in frustration when Ellen arrived on the staircase landing to watch the scene.

It was only after his odd exchange with Richard that Simon finally stepped in, speaking to Grandmother in his most graceful voice. “It was an emergency, Lady Westfield. As I told you last evening, they were short-staffed and Christina was desperate for help. Abbie's generosity saved us last night, possibly saved patients' lives.”

Grandmother could never resist Simon, and I felt myself smile. Simon was a smooth liar for a priest.

“Well … ” She stammered for a minute, obviously embarrassed at her earlier rage. In spite of everything, I wasn't angry. The “mugger” attack upon me several weeks ago, and now Mariah's death and funeral, had been difficult for her. In spite of Simon's contrived excuse for my absence, I knew that she had dire fear of me being too far away from her. I was all she had left in the world.

With great effort, Grandmother forced herself into a more composed and polite state. “Simon, you must stay for breakfast. I insist.”

He stayed. I had never appreciated a morning in Kensington so much. And I ate like a ravenous beast.

I went to bed early, in the afternoon in fact. The moment I got back to my room, I thought of my mother. I had experienced such complex feelings for her: Loyalty for her in the face of the Conclave. Frustration, anger even, that she had not prepared me to confront her past in London. She had known that Max would come for her one day, that the Conclave would likely draw me to them.
Why had she not said anything?
But as I lay there in bed, I thought long and hard about what she could have done. What she could have said that would have helped me, prepared me more for the Conclave. I had no answer.

I fell asleep quickly, and slept soundly and without nightmares. Still, at some point, I dreamt about a real occurrence from the summer I turned sixteen. It had been one of the hottest and driest Dublin summers ever; the entire summer, I had felt sweaty and sticky. In the dream, dust swirled through the street and I felt a coat of grit in my teeth and hair.

Surrounded by a crowd of youth, I was in an alley, knife-throwing at our wooden targets. I felt the handle, the blade. It was the last round of our competition—if I made this shot, I won. I focused, inhaled. Every other noise from the alley, from the street, sank to nothingness in my head. I had practiced at home, practiced even in this alley, until calluses formed on my right palm.

The sling, the hit. And then I realized that I had hit the target.
I had won.
This was the last round in our competition, and out of everyone, I had won. I felt elated. There was no real reward, other than added respect from my hard-to-win Dublin friends. But it was a great triumph for me. After the praise ceased and the hits on the back stopped, as the crowd dispersed and everyone went back to their parents' houses, I retrieved my knife and turned to leave the alley.

I saw Mother standing at the alley entrance.

The dusty, sun-streaked air made her appear hazy at first, and then clearer. She wore the prim governess dress that never quite seemed to suit her. A dark cloud cut through the sky above, shadowing her face as we stared at each other. I feared she was angry at me. I was late returning.

But an odd flash of contentment, then splendid approval, washed over her face.

“Time to go home, Abbie,” was all that she said.

As I woke up, in the periwinkle glow of dawn, I knew Mother had done what was best—she had left me alone. The education she had given me was all that I needed before my return to London and subsequent fall into unknown waters. She had taught me to think critically and to be open to new ideas. The Conclave was like nothing I could expect or imagine, and my survival depended upon my learning and adapting along the way.

This wave of understanding washed over me, and I felt peaceful. Soon I fell back asleep and did not wake up until late morning.