The Immorality Engine (21 page)

“Maurice!” Veronica exclaimed, her hands involuntarily going to her mouth. Her heart skipped a beat.

And then he was over, landing on the balcony with a thump. He skittered on the wet tiles and lost his balance, ending up on his backside. He stood, hauling himself up with support from the railings that ran around the edge of the balcony, and dusted himself off. He looked up at her ruefully. “Are you coming?” he called.

Veronica rolled her eyes. She was about to ruin a perfectly good blue dress. She reached down, kicked off her shoes, and flung them at Newbury, who, surprised, managed to throw his arms out just in time to catch them before they struck him hard in the chest. Then, hitching up her skirts, she followed Newbury’s lead, pacing back four or five steps before charging forward, hopping up onto the stone lip of the building and propelling herself off the roof. She sailed through the air in a smooth arc, coming to land adroitly a couple of feet away from Newbury. He reached out to steady her as she found her balance. Her heart was thumping in her chest, but she felt exhilarated. She looked up at the building behind her. God—had she just done that?

Newbury handed her the shoes. “Let’s hope we can get these doors open, or we really are stuck now,” he said, with a grin.

Veronica slipped her shoes back on as Newbury fished around in his pocket, eventually producing the lock picks. They consisted of a bundle of fine metal rods, wrapped in a roll of black velvet. He dropped to his knees, carefully examining the lock on the French doors, running his fingers over the various tools as he tried to select the appropriate size and shape.

“Have you—?” Veronica began.

“Shhh!” he chided.

Ignoring him, she reached out and tried the door handle. It turned easily, and the door creaked open. “—tried the handle?”

Newbury laughed, getting to his feet. “Oh, very good, Miss Hobbes.”

She shrugged. “Why would anyone lock the French doors on a second-storey balcony? Logical, really.”

Newbury shrugged. “In case someone decides to jump across from a nearby building with plans of breaking and entering?” he replied smartly.

They both grinned. Veronica peered through the opening.

The room beyond the French doors was shrouded in darkness. Veronica gestured for Newbury to remain quiet and slowly edged the door a little wider, wincing as the hinges squealed loudly in protest. She inched forward, stepping carefully over the threshold, listening intently for any sounds of movement or occupation from within. The coast appeared to be clear. She crept into the room, beckoning for Newbury to follow her.

Inside, silhouettes loomed out of the gloom, impressions of furniture and other, indiscernible shapes. Bookshelves, a desk, a tall lamp stand: everything she would expect to find in a typical gentleman’s study. The place seemed relatively normal. Or so she thought until she saw the thing on the wall. She nearly cried out in fright when she caught sight of it: a stuffed lion’s head mounted on a wooden plaque above the desk. It was frozen in a magnificent roar, its teeth bared, its glass eyes gleaming in the reflected starlight from the windows. A trophy, she realised, of someone’s conquest in Africa. It was morbid, egotistical, and entirely unnecessary.

Newbury came up behind her. He leaned close, his voice barely above a whisper. “There’s the door.” He pointed over at the opposite wall, where Veronica could just make out a crack of light seeping in under the frame. “Wait here and I’ll take a look.”

He slipped past her, avoiding a settee in the centre of the room near the desk. Veronica watched as he slowly turned the handle, easing the door open a fraction of an inch so that he could peer out into the hallway beyond. Bright light slanted in through the crack, casting Newbury in sharp relief.

He glanced back over his shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “It’s all clear.”

Newbury stepped through the door and Veronica followed.

Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the harsh glare of the gaslights she encountered on the other side. She found herself in a hallway, a long, carpeted corridor with five or six other doors radiating off it. A fabulous array of paintings adorned the walls, the work of romantic artists such as Waterhouse and Millais, each depicting scenes of Arthurian knights rescuing fair maidens or charging into battle, or else landscapes of a green and pleasant England, the ramparts of ancient castles in the distance. These were visions of an England that had never existed in anything other than the dreams of a few fantasists, or in myths and legends, passed down through the ages. But here they were everywhere, lining the walls, as if the members of the Bastion Society considered them windows through which to glimpse the glorious past, the secret bygone age of chivalry and magic. Veronica had to admit they did evoke a certain mood, a sense of longing for the romance of a time that never was.

She glanced down the corridor at Newbury. He was testing the doors to see if any of them were unlocked. One of them was, and without hesitation he swung it open and disappeared inside. Veronica rushed along the passageway after him on her tiptoes. Farther down the corridor she could discern the low, monotonous hubbub of many voices chattering away, accompanied by the clinking of glasses and the clatter of cutlery and china. She guessed this was from the level below, the great hall in which they had spoken to Enoch Graves during their last visit to Packworth. It was clearly far busier tonight. She wondered if it was another of their banquets.

Veronica was just about to turn into the room into which Newbury had disappeared when he reemerged, shaking his head. She shrugged, and he motioned her farther down the corridor. They tried each of the doors, finding only one other unlocked.

In here, Veronica found a bedchamber of sorts. There was a small cot in one corner, along with a gentleman’s wardrobe and chest of drawers. Another painting hung on the wall—a knight, clad in shining plate armour, aiding a redheaded maiden to dismount from her steed.

Veronica gathered that the Bastion Society would see symbolism in these paintings, that their members looked to these chivalric heroes of old for their inspiration, their code. She wondered if that was really such a bad thing. Surely it was preferable to the sort of devil-worshipping cults they usually had to deal with?

They left the bedchamber and tiptoed cautiously to the end of the corridor. Here, the noise from the hall below became a dramatic cacophony. It was impossible to distinguish any of what was being said due to the sheer volume and intensity of the chatter, the number of voices talking at once.

The corridor terminated in a wide balcony that circled the entirety of the upper level. Numerous corridors branched off from this central terminus at regular intervals, and a grand, sweeping staircase joined this upper floor with the great hall below.

A waist-high stone balustrade formed a neat parapet that enclosed the balcony, enabling people on the upper level to look down upon the proceedings below. Thankfully, no one seemed to be making use of the balcony at present. Veronica supposed they were all too busy enjoying the festivities with their comrades down below.

Newbury edged towards the parapet as quietly and slowly as possible. He dropped into a crouch behind it and peered between the balusters at the hall below.

Veronica, anxious to know what was going on, dashed quickly across the open space and dropped to her knees just beside him. He looked up at her in surprise, raising one eyebrow as if to enquire what she thought she was doing, and then appeared to think better of it and returned his attention to the men below. Veronica smiled and did the same.

There must have been a hundred men in the hall, perhaps more. It was difficult to tell with so many of them moving about, bustling from table to table, conversation to conversation. They were all dressed in identical attire—dark grey suits and matching bowler hats, each with a red sash tied around their left arm. Each sash bore a different three-figure number, marked in white. She wondered what the numbers could be for. Was it some sort of pseudo-militaristic code?

The men were sitting—mostly—around large circular tables, enjoying what looked to Veronica like a mediaeval feast. Huge platters of roast meat sat in the centre of every table. The whole thing looked like an exercise in gluttony, and the manner in which the men were attacking the meal, feeding themselves with their fingers, stuffing the greasy meat into their mouths, made Veronica feel queasy.

Servants in black suits and white gloves, like the butlers and waiters they had seen during their previous visit, flitted about amongst the tables followed by bizarre eight-legged automata.

Veronica had never seen anything like them. They were waist-high, with multijointed legs and a skittering gait that reminded her of the assassin device that had attacked her and Newbury at her apartment. She fought to repress a brief shudder. These were much larger, and there were at least ten of them running about between the tables, bearing trays stacked high with empty plates and glasses. They were a kind of self-propelling trolley, she realised, each one assigned to a different waiter, who loaded the machines with the remnants of the feast and sent them scuttling back to the kitchen.

She spotted Enoch Graves standing before the fireplace, laughing and carousing with another man. Like the others, he was dressed in a grey suit with a matching bowler hat. His red sash was adorned with the number
001
—indicating his prime position within the strange society, she supposed—and he was still wearing his dress sabre strapped to his belt.

Veronica turned at a gentle tap on her shoulder. Newbury motioned for her to move away from the edge of the balcony. Veronica did so, and he shuffled along beside her.

Veronica stood, keeping her back to the wall, just out of sight—she hoped—from anyone below who might be looking up in her direction. A quick glance at the staircase told her they were still alone.

Newbury stood beside her and leaned in, so close that she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. “Let’s take a look at the hallway on the other side,” he whispered, pointing across the open space at a corridor across from where they stood. They’d have to work their way around the balcony to get there. Together they crept along it, keeping themselves out of view of the people below. The noise of the festivities meant that they could travel swiftly without risk of being heard, so it was only a matter of moments before they were turning down the corridor Newbury had pointed out to her.

More paintings lined the walls here. Veronica realised how much money must have gone into furnishing the house. Each painting must be worth hundreds, if not thousands of pounds. And the banquet wouldn’t be cheap, either. Where were they getting their funds?

Newbury tested the handles on one side of the passageway while Veronica did the same on the other. More bedrooms, more locked doors. They were clearly in some sort of dormitory area, the place where members of the society could take rooms in times of need or inebriation. Some of these rooms appeared to have been recently inhabited, with beds that had been slept in and small piles of belongings on the bedside tables. Others were empty and disused.

The corridor terminated in another door. Veronica realised that the layout of the house must be symmetrical such that the room in front of her corresponded to the study they had used to gain entrance to the house. She tried the door. It was unlocked.

Expecting to find either another bedchamber or another desk, Veronica swung the door open and stepped inside. The sight that greeted her, however, was so grotesque that she immediately rushed back out into the corridor and retched. She leaned both her hands against the wall, hoping to soak up some of its strength, trying her utmost not to swoon.

The room was full of bodies.

Newbury rushed to her side. “Veronica!” he whispered urgently. “Are you unwell? What’s the mat…” He trailed off as he glanced up and saw, through the open door, the same harrowing vision of Hell that had sent her running from the room.

Naked human bodies hung from the ceiling on row after row of meat hooks, like carcasses in a butcher’s shop, a forest of white, damaged hides. The bodies were once men, but they had been so brutalised, so mutilated, that they no longer resembled anything but hunks of pale, bloody flesh.

The stink emanating from the room caused her to retch again, and this time she couldn’t hold back her vomit, a thin, watery stream that splashed on the maroon carpet by her feet. She wiped her mouth and looked apologetically at Newbury, but he was still staring in shock at the contents of the dimly lit room. Mustering her strength, she moved to stand beside him.

“I recognise some of them,” Newbury said, his voice tremulous. He approached the door, hovered on the threshold for a second, and then went inside. Frowning, Veronica followed.

Newbury walked amongst the hanging dead, his expression switching from repulsion to fascination as he examined the corpses in more detail. Flies buzzed around the victims’ heads in thick black swarms.

“These are ritual killings,” Newbury said, his voice echoing. Veronica realised for the first time how big the room really was. There were probably a hundred flayed bodies in there, each of them hanging from the ceiling like fleshy stalactites. The windows had been blacked out with thick drapes, and the only light came from a bright electric strip that arced across the ceiling, humming with power. There was no furniture in the room, other than a small table bearing various implements of torture: a hammer, a saw, a whip, some tongs. The sight of them threatened to turn Veronica’s stomach again.

She glanced up at the pale face of one of the corpses. The sallow, sunken eyes and the manner in which the jaw hung loosely open, clearly broken, suggested many, many hours of torture had been enacted upon the victim before he was finally killed. She noticed that the man’s torso had runes and magical symbols carved on it. She examined another. This one had been tattooed with similar markings. Yet another had a large pentagram branded into his back, just below the shoulders. She could see what Newbury was getting at. Ritual killings. It seemed the Bastion Society was a lot more sinister and dangerous than either of them had imagined.