Doctor Pratt…
By then he knew as well as the other scientists did that as long as her crystal heart stayed intact, her body would always regenerate. She would never die, no matter what they did to her. No matter what wrath and suffering they brought upon her in the name of discovery. Finally, her heart refused. It went dark and would regenerate no more. Once it was clear that his experiments with it would take him no further, Pratt gave her heart to the Temples as a gift. And there it sat, no more than a chunk of white stone, for years, until…
Iris’s body began to convulse as the Helios held her, not letting her go.
This next scene was one she’d seen many times.
Muscle latching onto bone. Flesh layering over muscle. Nerves humming. The agony of a body forming once again, growing around a heart of white crystal. Her crystal heart that had laid dormant for many years to stop the experiments had been taken to the South Kensington Exhibition and sensed the Helios somewhere nearby. Her heart felt the Helios’s energy—energy that also lay deep inside the heart itself—and knew it was away from danger. Knew it was safe. And so she regenerated—regenerated at the same time the Helios turned on.
Waves of energy interacting, communicating. The reaction was explosive.
After she’d awakened inside a room filled with Egyptian artifacts, she looked into the eyes of a young Adam Temple. He gazed up at her in fear, in awe. And he asked her a simple question: Madame, tell me… are you… a goddess?
But to protect this new woman, newly regenerated, her heart chose not to regenerate the memories of the pain that had come before. So this woman knew not who she was. She knew not of the horrors she’d wrought upon civilizations. The cataclysms borne from her hands in her other lives.
She did not know that she had been reborn to begin her work anew.
As the cataclysm known as Hiva.
45
HER HEART KNEW THE HELIOS. Now, as she came in direct contact with it, her heart released the memories it had been holding inside. Jinn and Max tugged with all their might as the energy of life and memory gushed into her—through her. Iris felt her hands peeling from the machine, painfully as if her skin was ripping. Soon she lay flat upon the floor. Her mind emptied of thought, her body of feeling.
It wasn’t until she heard heavy breathing that she drew herself up and looked behind her to see Jinn and Max frozen to the spot, their eyes wide. She did not need to ask. She already knew from their expressions.
Just by touching her, they’d seen everything. The life and memory that had gushed into her and through her had flowed out of her and into them.
The cataclysm known as Hiva. The planetary cataclysma.
Hiva.
The end of the world.
It was her.
Iris lifted her shaking hands and grasped her head. Through the vast emptiness within her, a howl escaped from her lips, so empty and frightening it made the two jump. A sharp pain rocketed through her skull as she slammed her forehead against the floor again and again.
“Iris!” Jinn yelled, running to her. “Iris!” He lifted her up and squeezed her against his chest, enveloping her totally. “Iris. Forget what you saw,” he pleaded. “Forget it all. None of it was true. Do you hear me? You’re Iris. You’re still Iris. You will always be Iris. My Iris!”
She couldn’t stop. Her cries, the memories of pain and death. The terrible truth of her purpose. The cataclysm. The end of the world. The worlds she had ended before.
Max. Max didn’t move, didn’t even look at her as Jinn lifted her to her feet and dragged her toward the iron gates.
But Uma would not let her leave.
The massive machine that blocked the iron gates had been crafted into the shape of a monster. Made of metal, brass, and iron, its bulky frame looked like nine different mythological beasts sewn together by a madman. Iris could distinctly see a large, snapping beak, a dragon-like head, and two bent metal legs reminding her of a stork on water. Spinning gears moved the two long gun barrels that could have been mistaken for arms. Uma mounted the giant beast like a horse, using two levers to maneuver its clunky frame.
“This is one of my recent prototypes,” said Uma, and Iris could see a burlap sheet discarded by the walls. “I call her Nava. A technological creation owing to the white crystal’s energy source, though I don’t think the Crown was too happy with my design when I showed them. I, however, find it suits my tastes perfectly.”
Indeed, inside the belly of the beast was a chunk of white stone spinning by some kind of force field inside the steel cage. The stone gave off a dull, white light as it whirled.
“I don’t have anything against you, Iris.” Not in the least comforting coming from a woman aiming the barrels of guns at her from atop a mechanical monster. “In fact, I admire your boldness. Tricking me when we first met, risking your life to find out this hellish place’s secrets. You remind me of myself.” She trailed off thoughtfully. “Unfortunately, for me, my research takes precedence over everything. And though regrettably I don’t know what the Helios showed you, it’s clear as day that to complete my research, I need you. So. No. Leaving.”
Iris thought of Doctor Pratt’s black eyes and burned to her core. “Everyone wants a piece of me, don’t they?” But then her lips curved into a lopsided smile. “Shame I can’t die.”
Uma raised the machine’s guns. An empty threat.
“Go ahead.” And within her, nightmares of pain became dreams of vengeance. “Let’s see if you can make me fall.”
The guns fired, round after round, Gatling-style. Iris saw the sparks as she ran toward the great beast, her fists ready. In a flash of anger, Iris dug deep inside her, summoning that monstrous power she’d used on James in the Crystal Palace, on so many others in the past. She could feel the power there waiting for her to burn her enemy to ashes.
But she couldn’t do it. Just as she managed to touch the power, a wave of pure panic struck her, freezing her to the spot. Uma aimed.
And then Iris blinked.
Soon she was tumbling off to the side, out of the line of bullets, in Max’s arms.
“Let me go!” she screamed, beating his chest, and to her surprise he did. He looked at her like he never had before.
With fear. Not for her, but of her.
A stream of fire burst from Jinn’s mouth, causing Uma to nearly slip from the mechanical monster in her attempt to dodge. It would have been a nasty fall to the floor, but she hung on by a hand to the brass rung of a ladder.
“That’s quite enough.”
Iris’s blood ran cold as the iron gates slid open. In walked Doctor Pratt with a fleet of researchers behind him.
“When I saw James’s remains, I knew I’d be seeing you again, Iris,” he said. “I hoped.” When he lifted his hand to rub his white beard, her fury erupted. The cuff links of white stone on his sleeve. She remembered now. They were hers. Maybe not her heart. But it was because of her that the white crystal existed. They belonged to her.
“Iris!” she heard Jinn yell, but it was buried by her own screaming. She ran toward him, ready now, truly ready to kill him, to make him pay for everything he’d done to her. Her blood pounded in her ears, the tears flying from her eyes.
But when Adam stepped through the group of researchers, his gun pressed against the side of Pratt’s head, she stopped, utterly confused.
“Alas, it seems there’s been a mistake,” said Doctor Pratt, unperturbed. “I didn’t know you were under Lord Temple’s wardenship.”
“Indeed, she is a ward of the Temple family.” With his free hand, Adam straightened his black tie underneath a pristine white shirt and gray vest. “And as a ward of the Temple family, she can’t be held in this place against my will.”
His will. His will…
Doctor Pratt’s beady gaze slithered toward him. “Ah. Is that so, Lord Temple?”
Adam grinned amicably. “It is indeed, Doctor Pratt.”
A silent but deadly battle of wills bristled bene
ath the friendly banter. But in the end, Doctor Pratt lowered his head.
“It would turn into somewhat of a mess if we went against the esteemed Temple family’s wishes.” Doctor Pratt cleared his throat. “Then, I suppose it’s decided. We will release the subject according to your wishes.”
For now. Iris could almost hear the words upon his lips.
“What about the other two volunteers?” one researcher from within the group asked.
Adam smirked and lowered his gun. “Oh, you can do what you want with them.”
“No!” Iris screamed, rushing to him and grasping his black jacket. “You can’t! You can’t take them from me!” Her knees buckled, but she kept herself upright, her head pressed against Adam’s chest. “I won’t let you people take any more from me!”
“It was a joke,” Adam said. Very simply.
“A joke…” Slowly, as if in a trance, Iris raised her head. She gazed at him. At the boy whose family had once owned her crystal heart. The crystal ornament Carl Anderson had mentioned. “You disgust me,” she whispered.
“I told you to wait,” he whispered back into her ear. His hot breath made her shiver. “That no good would come from you rushing into the truth. Everything in its own time.”
“Everything in its own time,” Iris repeated with a half-crazed grin, swaying on her feet. “Like the end of the world.” Her laughter sounded too polite to her own ears. Almost as if she were humming on her way to the apothecary to buy Granny’s medicine. She laughed until she finally collapsed into Adam’s arms.
46
THE NIGHTMARES SANG TO HER. Like children, they jumped on her chest. She whimpered and fidgeted underneath the bedcovers, wishing them away, as if those cruel things would soften at the sight of her tears.
“Iris,” came a soft voice somewhere just beyond the darkness. “Iris…”
She pried her eyelids open and found herself resting in a soft bed underneath extravagant mauve-colored bedcovers made of silk. Next to her, in front of a chestnut night table, sat Adam in an oak chair.
“You’re finally awake,” he said softly.
Iris understood. This was his residence at 19 Melbury Road. The same room she’d been in after she escaped from Coolie. Her body was cushioned on the grand bed by many pillows, ribbons, and flounces, but it didn’t make her feel any more comfortable. Marble-topped cabinets to her left lined the corner of the wall, tucked in behind the dark gold curtains blocking the evening light and the sounds of the horse hooves and carriage wheels on the streets below. Strange to hear them again after she felt as if she’d been trapped in another world.
Iris tried leaving her bed, only for her feet to feel weightless upon the soft-loomed rug. She collapsed back onto the bed.
“How long have I been asleep?” she asked Adam without looking at him.
“All day. It’s half past nine. The final round of the tournament will start soon.”
She must have missed the official Wilton’s show, but she already knew what the instructions were: a fight to the death. It would begin at midnight inside Cerberus. She fell back, her body leaden, her eyes only half-open from drowsiness.
“Max and Jinn?” She pushed the half question out of her throat.
“Max has been roaming London since last night. Jinn, on the other hand…” Adam stood up from his chair and leaned against the door. “He hasn’t left the front steps of my home since we brought you here. He didn’t even struggle when they wouldn’t let him inside. He must still be out there now. Waiting for you.”
Max… Jinn… The horrors they had witnessed inside the Basement. What were they thinking now? What did they think of her? She couldn’t stop the worry squeezing her chest.
“Adam.” Iris chose her words carefully. “Did you know that I could kill like that?”
“Iris…”
She couldn’t stand it—that expression of concern, of empathy. He had no right. “When I feel people’s life force—their anima—if I concentrate hard enough, I can use it to burn them alive.” Except the last time she tried to use her powers, that flash of extreme panic had stopped her. She wondered if it was a blessing in disguise. “Is that what you were training me to become?” She squeezed a pillow to her chest, her nails digging into the fabric.
“Iris, I—”
“Sensing the life in others.” The rims of her eyes stung. “And using that ability to destroy them!” She tried to step off the bed but collapsed to the ground.
“Just like you’ve done to many civilizations before ours, as my father hypothesized.”
Adam walked over to her and, gathering her up in his arms, placed her back on the bed. “I wanted to keep you right here,” he said. “Right here away from that violent tournament so you could slowly learn… slowly awaken those gifts. Slowly.”
“Everything in its own time.” Iris felt as if she’d been given an anesthetic. “Slowly awakening me to become a beast.”
“Not a beast,” Adam corrected, and he grabbed her hands softly. “You’re not a beast, Iris. You are the cure for this world. You are our salvation. Divine.”
“A goddess?” Iris repeated the same words he once spoke to her as a child. “A god of death, maybe.” Her voice choked up with emotion as she considered it fully, and a sense of dread slipped into her, carried by the air from the cold window draft. “A monster.”
“Never a monster.” The back of Adam’s fingers were soft, warm. “You’re our light, Iris.”
“I’m the cataclysm!” Iris stared at the silk sheets without seeing them at all. “The cataclysm to bring an end to the world.”
The words sounded mad as they sprang from her lips. And yet she knew it to be true from deep within her crystal heart. The visions she’d seen…
Adam wiped the sweat from her forehead. “And as such, you are the way for all mankind. Not the Crown. Not the Committee. You.”
She looked up at him, terrified to see his beautiful face so serene. “That’s the secret you wanted to keep from both the Committee and the Crown at all cost,” she whispered. “The secret you murdered over. The reason you want to find your father before anyone else does. Not that the end of the world is coming. The Committee already knows that.” She remembered the maniacal glint in Benini’s eyes. “But only your father knew what form the cataclysm would take. That’s why he went to the Dahomey village. His research. He realized I was the Hiva.”
“Yes.”
“You killed Neville Bradford. You had Carl Anderson killed even while we were inside Bellerose’s home.”
“Yes. To protect you.”
A moment of silence passed. Adam was too close. She could feel his back against her arm, but she couldn’t move. Her stomach churned as she tried to calm her breathing.
If the secret of her identity was indeed in John Temple’s journal, then Bosch would find out just as soon as Uma finished decoding it. And she already seemed well on her way to the truth. It was only a matter of time before Iris had a target on her back.
“When I awoke again in South Kensington ten years ago, you were waiting for me,” Iris said.
“I brought your heart to your bones,” Adam said. “I read my father’s research. I thought I could awaken you that way. Bring you to life.”
A schoolboy with unruly black hair, sapphire eyes, and a suit far too adult for him. A little baron in training. A boy just starting his adolescence gazing up at a wondrous creature: a goddess of death reborn.
“After your heart went dormant, Doctor Pratt gave it to my grandfather, an old friend, once he thought there was nothing further he could learn from it. A Cambridge souvenir. He had no idea. But I knew. After I read my father’s research, I knew. Or at least, I thought I did.”
Iris gripped her chest, feeling her crystal heart pumping inside her.
“Without your heart, Cambridge University donated your bones to Paris’s Museum of Man for one of their exhibits. And the museum lent them for viewing at the 1874 South Kensington International Exhibition. That
was where I tested my theory. I thought I could rejoin your heart to your bones and bring you to life once more. But that’s not what happened. You didn’t need your bones. Just your heart alone—and the Helios. Indeed, right before my eyes, you exploded into life once more.”
Her revival along with the Helios’s operation. One crystal’s energy speaking to another. The resultant explosion had created the Fanciful Freaks.
Jinn. Max. Cherice. All those whose lives had changed forever. Because of her…
Iris grasped at her chest once more. She couldn’t breathe. An electrical pulse shivered painfully through her body. It wouldn’t stop.
“It’s okay,” Adam said quickly, his hand on the small of her back. “Breathe. It’ll pass.”
His words, his touch were comforting and yet terrifying all the same. She wanted to push him away, cry in his arms. Her mind was a mess of contradictions. But there was one thing she knew for certain: “You. Pratt. The Crown. The Committee. You’re the savages,” she whispered. “You’re wicked. So, so wicked.”
“The whole world is wicked,” Adam said. “That’s why you exist.” Adam grabbed her shoulders and forced her around. “This world is evil. I’ve known it since the moment my family was murdered so pointlessly. You are needed, Iris. We need you.”
Iris’s lips parted; her eyes budded with tears. “To end it?”
“The global eclipse was a sign that the end was near. It signaled your rebirth. The Committee wants to escape into another world, but for that they need the Moon Skeleton to open the gate. My father has it with him. That’s why I need you to find my father, Iris. You need to find my father, find the key, and destroy it.” He squeezed her hand tight. “Then there’ll be no escaping your judgment. And the wicked men and women of this world will fall.”
Was this the truth she’d been searching for? Iris pulled her hand from his grasp and stared back at the young baron in terror. “You’re mad, aren’t you?”
The Bones of Ruin Page 46
