The Undying Legion Read online

  Charlotte shook her head, a tremor in her voice. “Don’t you?”

  “Of course she does,” Simon confided with a wink. “Miss Anstruther is wonderfully clever.”

  Charlotte’s head turned to Simon and she slowly returned his warm smile.

  “He’s quite the charmer,” Kate told Charlotte in a light whisper.

  “He is also very handsome,” the youngster admitted in kind.

  “That’s the laudanum talking I’m sure,” muttered Malcolm from the back.

  Charlotte once again became apprehensive, trying not to look toward the dark shadow against the wall. “I’ll be good, I promise. I’ll try as hard as I can not to change. I’m not a bad girl.”

  Kate took her small hand in hers. “We know you’ll be good.”

  Malcolm stepped out of the shadows and stared hard at Charlotte. “How did you avoid me in London? How many of you are left?”

  The girl shrank back, almost burying herself in the blanket.

  Simon said, “Easy, Malcolm. She did help us by attacking her own kind at Bedlam.”

  “Yes, and they should’ve killed it for what it did,” Malcolm replied.

  Charlotte whimpered and caught her trembling lower lip in her teeth. “There weren’t many of us left, and we ran away from Bedlam when Gretta and Dr. White disappeared. We didn’t have a leader and we didn’t have wulfsyl. We were afraid.”

  Kate eased herself down onto the edge of the bed and held the girl. “She’s been nothing but truthful, Malcolm. Give her a chance to explain.” She wiped a tear off Charlotte’s cheek. “What about your parents, dear?”

  The tangled head shook again. “There’s no one.”

  Malcolm snapped, “It isn’t some unfortunate waif. And it isn’t a little doll to be played with. That is a murdering beast. It’s deceiving you until you drop your guard.”

  “I’m not a killer!” Charlotte shrieked. She shrank back immediately, her eyes becoming frightfully large again. She was trembling. “Please don’t hurt me.”

  Kate’s voice never once broke in its even tone. “We won’t harm you, Charlotte.”

  The girl shifted in the bed and the clang of the chain on her ankle made her start with a cry. She laid a small hand on the heavy iron shackle around her ankle and tugged. “Do I have to wear this chain like an animal?”

  Malcolm said, “You are an animal.”

  Charlotte’s trembling turned to horrific shaking. “Please … help … me! I don’t … want to … kill!” The last word devolved into a mangled snarl. The child screamed and flung herself back.

  “It’s changing,” shouted Malcolm, pushing past Simon with pistol drawn. “Get out of the way!”

  Kate stood fast, blocking him. “She needs help!”

  “I’m going to help her,” the Scotsman snarled. “I’m going to put her out of her misery.”

  Charlotte’s grip tightened on the chain and her face twisted in sudden panic. Her muscles locked in a rictus. Long canines began to emerge from her once-pretty smile. Fingernails thickened from flat into curved talons, and they sank easily into the linen and the mattress beneath. She screamed in pain.

  “Out now!” Simon slapped Malcolm’s pistol aside as Kate leaned toward Charlotte, desperate to calm the frightened girl. He took Kate’s shoulder and pulled her away. Simon nearly carried her out into the stone corridor even as she continued reaching toward the girl who lay quaking on the bed. Malcolm slammed the door shut. They heard the sound of terrible thrashing and howls from inside.

  Malcolm shook his head. “I’d say the laudanum was a failure.”

  Simon gestured up the short hallway leading to the stairs. “That chain should hold her. And I’ve warded this door to be sure. Let’s get some air.”

  They all emerged from the staircase into the library and Simon opened wide the French windows. The sun was climbing in the sky and bright light streamed in. The fresh air felt like heaven as they took deep breaths. Simon poured wine for them all, trying to remove the tinge of worry from his face, but he was sure he failed miserably.

  “She’s just a child,” Kate murmured. “We have to be able to help her. She has no one else. We can’t leave her to nature. I won’t have the world be that cruel.”

  “Your sentiments do you credit,” Simon said. “But you must realize, everything we know about her kind tells us that in her heart she is a beast. Not a child. She would kill any of us simply because that is all she can do.”

  Malcolm nodded in vigorous agreement.

  “I’m going to try.” Kate looked intently at both Malcolm and Simon. “Neither of you need to help if you don’t wish to. But I will make wulfsyl. I can help her.”

  Simon drained his glass of wine and set it down with an accepting shrug.

  Kate was excited and eager, but then suddenly seemed depressed and gave a weary laugh. “Well, in all this excitement, I almost forgot about Imogen. Excuse me.” She touched Simon’s shoulder with gratitude as she went out.

  When the door shut, Malcolm started talking immediately, “Do you seriously intend to let her keep that beast?”

  “How do you think I have the power to let or prevent her doing anything?”

  Malcolm exhaled roughly and ran a hand over his sleek black widow’s peak. “It’s an idiotic risk.”

  “It is.” Simon’s face was indomitable. He sat at a disheveled desk and threw one leg over the corner. He removed a golden key from his pocket and stared at it. “The unknown can always be a risk but could be well worth it.”

  “Just to give Kate a new project? Just so she feels like she can help someone?”

  “No.”

  “It would have been better if that thing upstairs had died,” Malcolm muttered as he slumped on a bench near the glowing hearth.

  “That thing is her sister.” Simon shot the other man a fierce glare. “And she poses no threat.”

  “Except maybe to Kate’s guilty conscience.” Malcolm pressed his boot onto a glowing ember that had popped from the fire. “But that thing down there is the enemy. You’re inviting a terrible nightmare.”

  “I’ll take additional precautions beyond chains and locked doors.” Simon smiled with an idea. “I’ll send for Penny Carter and ask her to provide us with something for a bit of extra protection. I’m sure she has something useful lying about that shop of hers.”

  “You can manhandle that werewolf now because it’s a juvenile. It’s inexperienced or it would have been long gone already, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. With time, though, it will develop its single skill: killing. It’s as inevitable as death.”

  “I believe otherwise,” Simon stated quietly.

  “Why? Why take such a risk when there’s a simple solution?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do. This group has made a commitment to use our knowledge and power to help those who can’t protect themselves.”

  Malcolm approached Simon. “Trust me, it can protect itself.”

  “Are we so callous and righteous as to simply say she is lost, and walk away?”

  “Yes.”

  Simon merely shrugged. “I won’t. And neither will Kate.”

  Malcolm leaned heavily on the desk. “Just admit it. You love the idea of having a pet werewolf. I see that gleam in your eye.”

  Simon looked up quizzically. “Have you no science in you, Malcolm? Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

  “No.”

  “Let me ask you, as the resident expert on these things. If Kate can create wulfsyl, will it control Charlotte’s transformations?”

  “I kill them. I don’t raise them.” The Scotsman shook his head and shrugged. “I’ve heard different stories, but they all hint that wulfsyl makes the lycanthrope more aware during its transformation. Whether that’s a good thing or bad, depends on your point of view. But I do know that once they take it, they can’t stop, like opium eaters. And werewolves who are separated from it go mad with rage.”

  “We best make sure we don’t run
out of it.”

  “It may wear the skin of a child. It may act like a puppy now because it hasn’t killed, but like any wild beast, there will come a tipping point. Think of a wolf. As a cub, it is all play and reaction, but once it learns to kill, it is never a cub again. All prey becomes food. All prey.”

  Simon’s tone remained firm. “Even wolves can be domesticated.”

  Malcolm slammed his hand down on the table. “It’s a monster, Simon! A monster!” He stared into Simon’s unmoved gaze and dropped his head. “Maybe your friend, Barker, was right to leave. If he knew anything, it was you. Maybe he felt if he stayed, you’d get him killed.”

  Simon bristled, dropping his feet to the floor and templing his fingers in front of him in an effort to quiet the pain those words caused. He struggled to keep his voice even. “Would you be good enough to compile a list of William Blake’s writings which use those four names that I might study?” He held Malcolm’s dark gaze but then purposefully turned to the sheets of runes on the desk, taking up a pencil. “You know what we’re about, Malcolm. If you don’t agree with it, I won’t hold you here. I didn’t stop Nick. I won’t stop you.”

  After a second, Simon heard angry mutterings about blood and stupidity, and the door shut as Malcolm went out. He threw down the pencil and slumped back in his chair.

  Deep shadows permeated the room in the east wing of Hartley Hall. What had once been a young woman’s bedroom was now a murky cage that stank of despair and anger. A milky white figure crouched in a ball trying to jam its body into the dark corner between a tossed bed and an overturned night table. It was hairless and its skin almost translucent. Veins and pulsing organs could be seen even in the dim gaslight. One of the figure’s arms was more machine than flesh and bristled with fierce filamentous quills from wrist to shoulder that rippled like a field of wheat. A dress that had been peach-colored was tattered and soiled.

  An inhuman eye, guided by gears and wires, shifted every so often as if in fear. Its other eye, more human though utterly colorless, remained focused on what it held with long, boneless fingers. It clutched a nearly human skull, the skull of a monster, of a homunculus, half bone and half construct. The white object dripped with useless wires and in the empty cranium was an apparatus for recording and playing back sounds.

  The figure’s left hand was shaped normally but bleached white. Its fingers were shoved into a gap under the jaw of the skull and manipulated a small gear inside. The jaw moved up and down in an imitation of human speech while its tinny voice grated through the stale air, repeating the same words over and over: “My sister has a gold key that our father made. It’s what you want. My sister has a gold key that our father made. It’s what you want.”

  Kate knelt beside the pale shade that was barely recognizable as her sister. She slipped a metal syringe into a brass case and snapped the lid shut. After more than a month of a regime that amounted to experimenting on poor Imogen, Kate no longer had any reason to expect a reaction to the injections. She had no idea if the alchemical concoctions she devised in her lab were playing any role in undoing the terrible damage wrought on Imogen.

  The horrific figure of Kate’s sister rested on top of a tangle of ripped cloth, a nest of sorts that Imogen had created by shredding all of the exquisite clothing in her closets, dresses and gowns that the young woman had once treasured. Kate listened with a pained expression to the thin recorded voice that was fully recognizable as her sister’s. She reached to take the horrible device that spoke only of betrayal. Imogen reacted wildly. Her mechanical arm grabbed Kate’s wrist and shoved her to the floor. A man darted in to assist her.

  Kate picked herself up. “It’s all right, Simon. She just doesn’t want me to take the skull.” She moved slowly, careful not to make any sudden moves and to keep her emotions in check, despite the wild pounding of her heart.

  Simon didn’t look convinced but deferred to Kate’s understanding of her sister’s mental state. Kate believed her sister would never hurt her intentionally. The girl was lost inside her own head, unable to speak. She had been that way since they had brought her back from Bedlam in this condition, terrified of the dark but desperate to remain hidden in the shadows.

  Kate knew she could reach her sister if she could get past the guilt that plagued them both. Imogen felt she had betrayed her sister to the madman, Dr. White. In fact, she had merely been a manipulated pawn, drugged and deceived into revealing secrets to White’s homunculus spy, her traitorous words forever preserved in the skull’s recording. Imogen was the victim here.

  Kate’s own culpability tore at her insides. She had labored against Imogen’s wishes to save her sister’s life after Dr. White’s horribly botched operation in that filthy chamber beneath Bedlam. White had known that Kate would never tell her secrets to save her own life, but to save Imogen’s, that was another story. The damnable thing was, Kate didn’t know the secret that Dr. White craved. The secret of the key. But White didn’t believe her, and he mutilated Imogen, transforming her into a horrible homunculus. Or at least partly transforming her since Simon and the team arrived to interrupt the procedure before White could finish it. Kate had acted instinctively and saved Imogen’s life by finishing the horrific transformation begun by the sinister White.

  It was the nature of the transformation that Kate couldn’t yet fathom. Something in White’s alchemy changed Imogen’s physical state—her muscles, her blood, her very being. He had hijacked her physiology. When Kate had attempted to remove the quills on Imogen’s arm, they regenerated even though they weren’t entirely organic. It was extremely powerful magic. Kate was nowhere near that level. At least not yet. She would never accept the fact that her sister was lost.

  Kate couldn’t tell if Imogen’s playing of the recording in the skull over and over was a plea to absolve her of guilt, which Kate did wholeheartedly from the first, or merely a pathetic desire for Imogen to remember how her own voice sounded. Both reasons broke Kate’s heart.

  She heard Simon shift closer as she approached Imogen once more.

  “Imogen, look at me,” Kate told her sister softly. Imogen’s mechanical eye darted, whirring and clicking to focus on Kate. The milky human eye remained fixed on the skull’s moving jaw as Imogen continued to turn the crank, forcing it to reiterate its foul words. Kate squeezed her hands together so hard her knuckles turned white. “I’m going to help you. By God. I’m going to help someone.”

  Simon sank slowly to one knee. “Imogen, a friend of yours wants to say hello to you.”

  His empty hands waved, trailing aether through the air, a green glow that cast them all in its enchanting aura. The mechanical eye readjusted. To Kate’s joy, Imogen’s head lifted to truly focus on what Simon was doing. Her hands stilled and the tinny voice from the skull stuttered to a halt for the first time in hours.

  Simon’s long fingers interlaced, forming a ball. Then he opened his hands to reveal a small, sleeping hedgehog cupped in them. The little animal ever so slowly unfurled and yawned. Imogen’s throat convulsed silently with either delight or despair. Kate wanted to believe it was the former. Simon carefully drew Imogen’s human hand away from the skull and set the tiny hedgehog in her palm. She watched the living creature curl placidly in her translucent hand.

  Imogen released the skull and it rolled a few feet away, lolling on its side to stare with empty sockets. Ignoring it, Kate observed her sister touching the quills of the hedgehog, whose little nose twitched wildly as it explored its new perch. Spindly fingers caressed the little creature. Kate reached for Simon’s arm and gripped it hard, her chest tight with barely restrained emotion. Imogen’s head rose again to stare at Simon. The more human eye leaked tears.

  Simon reached out to brush them gently away with a sad smile. “He needs someone to care for him. I’m rather occupied these days.”

  Imogen held out the hedgehog to him.

  He didn’t take it back. “He is safe with you, Imogen. I trust him with no one else.”

  I
t took a minute, but Imogen slowly brought the hedgehog close again and brushed her cheek against its prickly spines. The hedgehog crawled onto her shoulder and perched there with contentment.

  Kate swallowed back her own tears and smiled at her sister. Her free hand found Imogen’s biomechanical one and squeezed it reassuringly. To her amazement, Imogen squeezed back. Then Imogen pulled the hand free and picked up the skull once more. She reached into the jaw and started her ritual again: “My sister has a gold key that our father made. It’s what you want. My sister has a gold key that our father made. It’s what you want.”

  “Imogen,” Kate began, but her voice faltered. She rose with Simon and he guided her heavy steps through the overturned furniture out into the corridor. Kate shook her head but gripped his arm in gratitude. “Months of work, and all I needed was your hedgehog trick.”

  “Kate, sometimes one hears a new voice clearer.”

  “That’s why I wish my father were here. Imogen always heard his voice but never mine. I don’t know why she would suddenly decide to pay attention to me now.” Kate leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. Her massive wolfhound Aethelred looked up at her from his now usual spot near Imogen’s door. The dog thumped his tail twice and lowered his head again. “But there’s no reason to assume my wayward father will return to help me, after all these years. Is there?”

  Simon propped himself next to her. “No, there isn’t. But you’re not alone, Kate. And the only thing that hedgehog trick proves is that you shouldn’t hesitate to ask for help. I’m not just here in Hartley Hall to drink your father’s excellent wine.”

  She sighed and turned her head to regard him. “Thank you for that. Imogen does adore you.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Simon quipped with a dashing smile.

  Chapter 4

  Kate loved the starry night. It was rare for her to be out so late, especially recently since she was always locked away in her laboratory. Parties and social gatherings had never really been a part of her daily life past a certain age, but now they held even less of a place. A moonlight visit to a cemetery wasn’t common for her either, but it was a great deal more invigorating than a party.