The Immorality Engine (20 page)

The silence resumed. There were no sounds other than the incessant patter of raindrops and the hissing crackle of wet wood and paintwork going up in flames, as the hansom went alight in the aftermath of the explosion. It took only moments for the whole thing to be engulfed, and Bainbridge felt the ferocity of the blaze from where he was lying on the ground only a few feet away.

Then: footsteps, voices, getting closer. There were two of them. Both men. Bainbridge gripped his cane. He wasn’t about to go out like this. He lay back, feigning death, his eyes open only enough to tell when his assailants were near. The footsteps grew closer, but he still couldn’t see the men they belonged to.

Not yet, Charles. Don’t show your hand.

He waited until he could sense the two men standing over him.

“I think he’s still breathing,” one of them said in a gruff voice.

“Best finish him off, then,” replied the other. “Let’s toss him in the wreck of the cab. The flames’ll soon eat him up. It’ll make it harder for the police to identify him later.”

One of the men poked Bainbridge in the side with his booted foot, and then stooped closer, looking for signs of life. Bainbridge could smell his sour breath. It was pungent with gin. This was not a man of distinction; more likely a hired ruffian.

Just a moment. Just a moment longer …

Bainbridge suddenly whipped his cane up and around, bringing it down heavily across the man’s skull, hard behind the ear.

Bainbridge rolled, using his momentum to shove the collapsing body of his attacker hard to the left. The man crumpled to the cobbles, immediately unconscious. But Bainbridge wasn’t quick enough to get away from the other man’s boot, which struck him in the gut. Bainbridge sputtered and tried to roll out of the way, but another blow caught him across the jaw, and his head snapped round, his mouth filling with blood.

Bainbridge kicked out, hard and low, his heel catching the other man in the knee and causing him to howl in agony and topple backwards. Bainbridge wasn’t sure if he’d managed to break his leg, but he’d done enough damage to give himself a few moments to scramble to his feet and appraise the situation. He spat blood. His jaw was throbbing and he thought a tooth might be loose. No matter. He could worry about that later, he hoped.

His first attacker was still out cold, lying facedown wearing a cheap brown suit. Beside him was the bizarre weapon he had used to rain incendiary missiles down upon the hansom. It was a large brass cylinder with a padded shoulder harness and a crank on its side that was clearly the firing mechanism. There was a set of crosshairs on the side of the barrel and a second cylinder—a loading tube—fixed into the main body of the gun at a forty-five-degree angle. It was effectively a shoulder-mounted cannon, the ammunition propelled not by gunpowder but a hand-wound mechanism that flung the explosive devices through the air towards their target. It was a remarkable weapon, and Bainbridge hoped he’d never have to face one again. He considered trying to use it against the second man, now that his colleague was unconscious, but thought twice: He risked blowing himself up if he fired it incorrectly.

For now, he needed to move before the second assailant reached him. Bainbridge decided to round on him, hoping to gain the upper hand. He adopted his old boxing stance, which had served him well through so many years and so many brawls. He hoped it would serve him well now, too; he felt battered, bruised, and utterly exhausted, but he knew he couldn’t outrun his opponent, so his only chance was to stand his ground.

The other man was slowly regaining his composure, flexing his leg. He was a swarthy-looking fellow, a career criminal of the type Bainbridge had learned to spot a mile off. Well built, dressed in a stained suit at least a size too big for him—probably taken off the back of a corpse—he was hired muscle, paid to do a job without asking questions. This was a contract job.

Bainbridge circled around his attacker, looking for an opening. He saw it a moment later and rushed in, jabbing at the man’s face. The other man sidestepped neatly, wincing in pain as he transferred his weight to his damaged knee. “You’ll pay for that, old man,” he barked.

Bainbridge didn’t rise to the gibe. Instead, he came on again, three punches in quick succession, this time striking the man on the jaw. Bainbridge’s opponent reeled for a second, then rounded on him.

A sweeping roundhouse punch caught him fast and hard in the side of the head. He stumbled, nearly tottering into the flaming hansom just to his right.

Bainbridge tried to back away from the brute while he fought off his disorientation, but the other man was relentless, rushing forward to deliver another solid punch to the gut. Bainbridge tried to block him, but he was too slow. He doubled over, this time catching the man’s good knee in his face. Blood sprayed in a wide arc as his nose burst.

“With the compliments of Sir Enoch Graves,” the man said, chuckling.

Bainbridge slumped to the floor. Enoch Graves. So the Bastion Society was behind this.

Baubles of light were dancing before his eyes. He struggled against the encroaching unconsciousness that threatened to overwhelm him. Darkness limned the edges of his vision.
No! Not like this. I won’t go like this
.

Bainbridge felt around him, looking for something, anything, he could use as a weapon. Nothing. His fingers scraped against the wet cobbles. Where was his cane?

The man’s boot came down hard on Bainbridge’s hand, and he yowled in pain as it was ground into the stone. He looked up into the face of his attacker. The man was glaring down at him with a brutal sneer, his face lit by flames from the burning carriage. Rainwater ran in trickling rivulets down his cheeks.

Every fibre of Bainbridge’s body ached. He groaned as he tried to scramble away.

The man spat at him. A fat gobbet of spittle landed on Bainbridge’s face, and the chief inspector flinched involuntarily as it struck home. “That’s it, old-timer. You’ve caused me enough trouble already. It’ll be easier on us both if you just lay back and accept the inevitable.”

“Not likely,” Bainbridge managed to croak as his foot came up, striking the other man hard between the legs. The man creased, releasing Bainbridge’s crippled hand from beneath his boot.

Bainbridge rolled away, coughing and hacking. Casting around, he saw his cane lying on the ground just a few feet away. He scrambled for it, reaching it just as the man struck him hard across the back of the head with a balled fist, causing him to slump facedown upon the cold, wet ground.

Weak and in pain, Bainbridge fumbled with the cane beneath him. Holding the cane’s shaft in one hand and its crest in the other, he gave it a sharp twist. The man had grabbed him by the feet and was dragging him backwards, facedown, towards the shell of the burning cab.

Bainbridge allowed his body to go limp, to give his attacker the impression that he’d given up and stopped his struggling. Beneath him, however, he felt the shaft of his cane beginning to unpack itself. Long wooden strips clicked out of their housing and slid into position, forming a spinning cage around the upper shaft of the cane. Bainbridge felt it building up momentum, the shaft humming and fizzing as the chamber generated a fierce arc of electricity, a lightning cage of deadly blue light contained in the shaft of the now-deadly weapon.

He held it tightly beneath him, allowing the charge to build as he was dragged unceremoniously across the cobbles. The heat of the flames was close and ferocious, and he knew he would have to act soon.

Bainbridge heard his attacker grunt with the effort of hauling his dead weight. The man slowed.

Now was his chance.

Using the man’s grip on his ankles as a pivot, Bainbridge pushed himself up into the air, twisting his body around and thrusting down and out with the bladed tip of his cane, deep into the other man’s belly.

The man wailed in shock and surprise. He immediately released Bainbridge’s feet to pull at the embedded cane that now protruded like a spear from his guts.

But it was too late. The cane discharged its electrical payload and the man shook as the electricity coursed through his body, leaping and dancing with the sheer power of the charge. He opened his mouth to scream, and blue lightning arced between his teeth. His hair rose comically, maniacally from his scalp, crackling with static energy. The air around them filled with the grotesque scent of burning meat.

Seconds later, the charge in the cane finally spent, the corpse crumpled backwards to the ground, striking the cobbles with a wet thud.

Exhausted, Bainbridge clambered to his knees. Rain lashed at his face and caused the flames to spit and hiss beside him. He wobbled, near delirium, and issued a low moan. His breath was coming in ragged gasps. He glanced over at the first man to ensure that he was still unconscious, and realised too late that the flames had spread to the shop front, and that the strange projectile weapon the men had used to bring down the cab was now lying amongst a pile of burning crates. He staggered to his feet. He had to get the ammunition away from the flames. Had to—

There was a deafening explosion, and everything went black.

CHAPTER

18

Veronica peered over the lip of the building at the twenty-foot drop and pondered, not for the first time that day, whether Newbury was utterly insane.

They’d come from Chelsea an hour earlier, after collecting an array of equipment from Newbury’s home—lock picks, some small blades, an old revolver—to make a reconnaissance of Packworth House, the home of the Bastion Society. She’d never seen Newbury carry a gun, and she wondered what it was about the Bastion Society that had him spooked enough to arm himself with one now. She hoped he wouldn’t find cause to use it.

Scarbright, dressed in his immaculate suit, had been waiting at the house with a note from Bainbridge. Newbury had read it swiftly in the drawing room before showing it to her. Its contents were minimal, but spoke volumes:

Newbury,

Someone is moving against the Queen. Continue with the Sykes matter without me.

Yours,

Charles

The note had been scrawled in haste; Bainbridge’s handwriting was scratchy and rushed. This, then, was no small matter. It was unlike the chief inspector to be harried. Scarbright confirmed that the note had arrived by courier a little earlier in the evening, meaning that Bainbridge was too busy to call on them in person. This had sparked an hour-long debate between Veronica and Newbury regarding how to proceed. Newbury had considered calling off their plans for the evening and heading over to the palace to assist Bainbridge with whatever was going on over there, but Veronica had remained insistent. She’d argued that they needed to push forward with their pursuit of the Bastion Society. If Amelia’s horrific vision of the terrible things to come—not to mention Newbury’s own predictions—had anything to do with the attacks on the palace, then they needed to work out if the Bastion Society was somehow involved. Bainbridge, Veronica assured him, could handle the Queen.

Besides, by that point, Victoria would already have called in an entire armed garrison to fortify the palace. If she needed Newbury, she would already have sent for him.

All of that was true. But Veronica couldn’t deny that her sister’s plight had played a large part in her steering of the conversation. Amelia needed her. If storming the Bastion Society could provide the answers as to what Dr. Fabian was doing to her, and perhaps even the key to extracting her safely from the Grayling Institute, then Veronica would not be swayed. At that point, she’d already decided that if Newbury had insisted on rushing off to help Bainbridge, she would have continued to execute their plans alone. She wasn’t about to allow the matter to be swept aside—not for Newbury, not for the Queen, not for anyone.

In the end, however, Newbury had reluctantly agreed, and they caught a cab across town, stopping a few streets from Packworth House so they might approach the building more surreptitiously on foot.

Now, they were perched on the rooftop of a neighbouring building, looking down at a balcony a storey below, across the other side of an alleyway.

Newbury came over to stand beside her, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Veronica. I’ll ask you again: Are you sure you want to go through with this?” He sounded concerned, as if he were willing her to say no.

She nodded. She’d done worse, risked her life in more perilous endeavours. All the same, the notion of leaping across from one building to the other very much filled her with dread.

In the preceding hour, they had performed their reconnaissance of the entire building, and short of marching up to the front door and announcing their presence, they could see no better way into the premises. The balcony appeared to be unguarded, and the locks on the French doors would, Newbury assured her, be relatively easy to pick.

Veronica looked at the drop again, and her stomach lurched. Newbury went in for this sort of thing much more than she did. In fact, he seemed to relish it, if his zeal in sizing up the void between the two buildings was any indication. It wasn’t that she wasn’t capable—she’d proved that time and time again, particularly during the matter of the Persian Teardrop, when she’d spent much of her time hopping about on the rooftops of Paris, trying to recover the stolen jewel. No, it was more that she’d much prefer to operate with her feet firmly planted on the ground.

Still, at least the rain had abated. The ground was still wet, but they’d been able to avoid the worst of the downpour. She only hoped the balcony itself wouldn’t be too wet for a safe landing.

She was beginning to feel the chill. She turned to Newbury. “Let’s get on with it, Maurice,” she said, again lapsing into the familiar.

Newbury nodded. “Yes, let’s.” He straightened up, took three or four steps back from the lip of the building, and then dashed forward, leaping off the edge, arms cartwheeling as he hurtled through the air.