Transmuted (15 page)

I had no more taken a step back the way I’d come than every instinct I’d ever cultivated—the fog sense that them what lived in the drift all their lives tended to obey— screamed a warning.

At the same time, Hawke’s head lifted, a predator scenting something far more dangerous than the docile fragrance of prey. He moved as I did, and it was too late.

What Hawke presumed the intent of our assailant was, in fact, incorrect.

He leapt for me, to cover me with his body or push me from the path of whatever launched from the shadows, but it was not
me
the thing wanted.

The man-shaped thing collided with Hawke. His body folded upon impact, and the two rolled and tumbled, snarls and grunts and the wet sound of flesh torn peppering the fray.

I hit the ground, jarred from teeth to toes, and grabbed for the knives I’d forgotten hadn’t been returned.

I sprang to my feet empty-handed, though prepared to launch whatever assault I could.

Intention failed at onset of realization.

There
are
such things as defy reality; creatures, circumstances, truths that fly in the face of this world as explained by scientific certainty. Though I had seen with my own eyes the horrors wrought by the Veil’s twisted beastmen, though I was familiar with the precepts of alchemy that might fundamentally alter the course of nature as science knew it, I still laid eyes upon things in this world and flailed for description and logic.

Hawke might be likened a beast, in hunger and function, but never in form.

That what tore at his body now, long of limb and made of a tensile fury, was every aspect a beast. Yet it was not the black fur sprouted across lean shoulders, nor the claws gleaming with the fresh blood of the ringmaster that earned my most horrified of responses.

As Hawke crossed his forearms in defense, blocking the worst of the creature’s assault from his throat, the thing sat up, back arched in an arc, and splayed arms wide. He, for it was most certainly thus, roared bloody challenge to the market.

It echoed, but more than thunderous, it pealed—throbbed with something beyond human. Inhuman. None who heard this sound would mistake it for a simple animal.

Long black hair waved and bounced along the furred back. It had been plaited into a multitude of very tiny braids, each bound with a wooden bead. Skin as black as pitch had turned matte, like the soft under padding of a cat’s paws, and the white teeth bared in otherworldly fury were long as a canine’s.

Or, as was rather more likely, a lion’s.

Ikenna Osoba had not, as I’d assumed, perished in the fire I’d unwittingly caused. He had not fled to die, a shapeless mass of char and agony.

He had survived. Altered. Like the Ferrymen before him, he had become something beastly in every sense of the word. From features twisted by flesh seared to a scarred mass to the obviousness of his overly stretched carriage, there was little enough human left in him but that he operated on two legs rather than four—and this only an obvious matter of demand.

If I were to call upon
Eon
, a Trump still beyond my safe control, I knew that I would see within him a core of brilliant azure.

The same color that was Hawke’s own spirit, that legacy that gifted him with such power—and such a curse. The same foundation that the Veil had used to force such horror upon the Ferrymen.

I had forced this one.
I
had created my own beastman.

I and the Trump I should not have known.

Nausea, ragged furrows of it, welled up within me.

The night had become one surprise after another, revelation after revelation. The trek to the Underground, the cosh that left my head and face bruised and bleeding, the contest of strength and agility against Zhànzhàn, all of it had become one long strain.

Punctuated by the thunderous report of a long-gun fired over my head.

The lithe, alien form of the thing Osoba had become bowed, as though slapped back. His shriek scored inhuman claws through the lane as he rolled in bloodied tooth and claw, flung wide by bullet and Hawke’s own strength.

I turned my head, and it seemed as though I moved thick and slow as treacle. As though I were in a dream—those moments of bliss where all seemed brighter than it should and music underscored every flicker of an eyelash.

Yet there was no music. Only the howl of a creature driven to madness, like fingernails drawn over pocked iron, countered by the rolling avalanche of a voice pitched to carry—dark and deep, and booming.

The man who flanked me reloaded the Springfield he carried with a deftness that seemed out of place in his enormous hands. Ishmael Communion ordered the four Brick Street Bakers flanking him to give chase, sparing me a hard look from eyes black in color and tinged with yellow at the whites. “You fit, girl?”

Whatever had kept me standing failed me then.

I could never be proud of it. I certainly couldn’t say for certain what it was that drove me to crouch upon the street, every visceral instinct stretched to the breaking point, fold my arms over my head, and scream insensibly.

Or perhaps I
could
put name to it. Perhaps it was my sense of responsibility that I could not shake, the voice of my conscience that whispered Osoba’s presence—his form and ferocity— that was my doing.

Magnitudo
, I’d called when he’d near enough killed me in the Menagerie. The twelfth Trump, the symbol of strength and power. I had not
thought
so much as reacted, and calling upon a Trump to bolster my flagging strength had seemed appropriate.

While the oldest of texts suggested the Trump was symbolized by trees, the slaying of a lion—the gathering of its skin, and thus its power—personified the legend that fueled it. Slaying the lion, besting the lion prince; it was all metaphorically apt.

If there was no god of alchemical science, then there would be no god to laugh at the irony of it all.

The raw force I’d called forth during that skirmish had saved me. In so doing, it flung the whip Osoba had been into crates of abandoned serum—the same stuff that had twisted the Ferrymen.

I was not proud of it, but I
had
left him to burn. At the very least, I’d done nothing to help.

What fates had combined the aether of that serum with the twisted caricature Osoba had become were cruel indeed. Neither man nor wholly beast, his eyes sheened with a madness that stemmed from agony, from slavering fury.

And I was the weak-willed creature who folded at the sight.

My only conceit for the whole of this moment was that my weakness saved Hawke’s life—or at least the bloodied remains of his hide. Perhaps it was the sheer horror of my screams, so ragged they were as twisted blades shoved down my throat, that kept him from obeying whatever predatory instincts demanded he challenge the beast Osoba had become.

Perhaps it was Ishmael—blessed friend that he was; a London low gang leader who minced no words and toed no lines. He did not spare a hand for me, but stood over my insensible, huddled figure and thundered, “Cage!”

It was as near an order I’d ever heard him deliver to the once ringmaster the Bakers avoided out of respect.

Whatever it was they did around me, all I knew was that I could not protect myself. That I had no sense for it as I screamed and screamed, broken beneath the final straw that was my own responsibility.

That Ishmael did not lay a hand upon me was as much a matter of guarding our backs as it was ensuring Hawke’s ire did not rise.

Somehow, I knew it was Hawke who knelt before me. Hard, unforgiving hands gripped my shoulders, shook hard enough to rattle my teeth. Though I managed to seal them against another scream, I could not draw a breath.

“Cherry!” A harsh demand.

I had no breath to return a reply. No thought to form into words.

I must have cried. Where else would the wetness upon my face come from?

As I clutched at him, as the metallic tang of fresh blood filled my nose, he tore my grasp from his clothing, threw me over his shoulder.

The world tipped. The close confines of the lane went sideways.

“Hunting?” he asked, a curt demand.

“Aye,” Ishmael’s deep voice returned. “Two down. One left. Get her safe.”

“Careful. Osoba will not go easy.” With no other words spared between them, Hawke ran.

The last I recognized of my friend, he forged down the lane his Bakers had gone, tracking the murderous creature by whatever uncanny sense the men had learned in long years in the fog.

As a howl went up behind us, senseless and haunting, every bit as inhuman as it was terrifyingly close, my overwrought senses finally took leave.

I was no wilting miss to faint at the first sign of danger. It offended me on every level that my consciousness fled while Hawke played hero to the damsel I had become.

Chapter Fourteen

There were scenes that played out around me. At the end of it all, I couldn’t be certain what had been dreamed and what was true. There were images carved into my mind, fantastical things of twisted creatures swarming Ashmore and turned to so much ash and bone.

I heard a steady beat, strong and overly loud, masking the horrifying wail of things aflame.

And Hawke’s voice. Strained. Taut. A rasp on the verge of utter defeat—but what defeat, I could not ascertain.

There had been yelling. Anger.

Ashmore and Hawke.

And gentler refrains.

Maddie Ruth.

Surely I dreamt that, as well.

All of it came with the overwhelming impression of vivid color and a cacophony of sound; I hadn’t dreamed like this since the night terrors that stemmed from an overabundance of laudanum.

As I woke, the whole of my body twitching as though I would save myself a tumble, I was aware of two very clear matters.

The first was that I was in my own bed.

The second, comprised of several occurrences, was that my head ached fiercely, my nightdress was soaked through with sweat, and my mouth was as dry as dust.

A third circumstance made itself known with placement of a cool cloth upon my brow. “They say idiots don’t get fevers,” Maddie Ruth said, her round face and concerned brown eyes filling my vision beneath the edge of the cloth.

Her freckles, usually a source of entertainment when they winked in tandem with her smiles, now seemed as serious as the frown she levied upon me.

I reached up to pat at the cold cloth upon my brow. “What is this?”

“You’re an idiot,” she replied, firm enough for all it lacked in sting. “And you came down with a fever. Didn’t you feel it?”

In hindsight? Perhaps.

I closed my weary eyes. Among the various legacies my near lifelong obsession with opium had left me, a weaker constitution was one. I had never been prone to agues or fevers, not that weren’t caused by the opium itself.

I couldn’t say for certain what it felt like.

Was this the heaviness of my head?

The pounding that had filled it?

I struggled to sit, but Maddie Ruth knew me well. She braced both hands upon my shoulders and held me down, her loose brown curls draping into my face. “Stop it,” she ordered. “You cause a fuss, and Mrs. Fortescue will call for a physician.”

“Will he grant me laudanum?” I asked without thinking.

Maddie Ruth’s snort was every bit as accusatory as Zylphia’s silence, or Ashmore’s reproach.

There were none in this house who did not know of my weakness.

Only Maddie Ruth made light of it direct. “Most like,” she shot back, “and then you’ll be a useless wretch all over again.”

As though I had not been just that.

I subsided, for she was at present stronger than I.

Maddie Ruth had, for some time, entertained aspirations of becoming a collector. I had done all in my power to dissuade her from such a calamity. She was a smart creature, young in face and body but altogether too learned in mind. She could do better than the profession, and well I knew it.

Once, she had served the Menagerie as mechanical engineer—one of them what saw to the various mechanisms and machines that the pleasure gardens utilized. My friendship with her had made of her a target, and so Ashmore had plucked her from the Menagerie to serve as my companion during my convalescence.

With her help, and with Ashmore’s, I had achieved sobriety.

I had great hopes for Maddie Ruth, ones that did not include her gallivanting about as a collector. That this made of me the Fanny to her, well,
me
was something I struggled with.

She had the freedom to choose her own path. I simply refused to make it effortless for her.

Because there was no room in the house for her to reside comfortably, she had made her home somewhere different—with the Bakers, I assumed, or with similar friends. She visited frequently.

Her medical knowhow, learned in the Menagerie, no doubt salved Fanny’s concerns.

Again, it seemed I owed Maddie Ruth something.

“Because I know you’re going to think about it until your fever spikes again,” Maddie Ruth said with some briskness, “I’ll tell you everything I were told on your arrival.”

I cracked open my burning eyes, peering out from under the compress that seemed to warm rather quickly on my brow. “You are a saint.” My voice came raspy and rough. “How long was I delirious?”

“Ah.” Her eyes brightened with her smile, as cheeky as she’d ever been. “So you know you were delirious. That helps matters.”

“Oh, hush.”

“Can’t get it both ways,” she chided me, and sat with familiarity upon a chair I suspected she had grown comfortable with. “You slept for a full day, but you haven’t missed much.”

A full day? Alarm whispered through me. I struggled to an elbow. “Hawke?”

“Fine,” Maddie Ruth said firmly, once more pushing me prone. “It was a bit touch and go for a while.” When I blanched, she hurriedly added, “Because he’s a prat, not ’cos of his injuries.”

I blinked at this. “What?”

She took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. “His wounds are mending rather more quickly than is fair.”

Relief seized me.

“From what I gather,” Maddie Ruth continued, bracing herself on the side of my bed and cupping her chin in hands, “you went topsy-turvy in the brain, and Hawke lost his ever-loving mind. A fine pair you make,” she added dryly.