The Mesmerist

by Ronald L. Smith

  “STOP!” I cry out.

  “One for the master, one for the dame—”

  “Be still!” I bellow with all my might.

  And Emily crumples to the ground.

  There is a moment of silence.

  “Interesting,” Malachai finally says, looking at me. “You have power you don’t even seem to understand.”

  He takes a step forward. “Come to me, darkling. Come to me, and I will show you how to use that power.” He pauses. “The irony is quite interesting, isn’t it? To shelter Alexander and Cora’s daughter under my wing.”

  My blood boils.

  “I’ll never help you,” I say through gritted teeth.

  He chuckles, and it sounds like flies buzzing in a jar. He reaches into the folds of his jacket and withdraws a small glass vial. Liquid swirls within as he holds it up. “Yersinia pestis,” he says proudly. “The Black Death. England first saw it in the thirteenth century. Rats are the perfect vessel for transmission.”

  In my mind’s eye, I see the Rosy Boy, screaming from the vicious bite.

  “Even now, I have spread mistrust in the streets, blaming the foreigners and peasants for the sickness. Already they are at each other’s throats, like the dogs they are.”

  Hatred boils in my veins. He is a monster—​an evil, wretched creature.

  I think of smoke, a powerful white smoke that can choke the life out of the demon in front of me. Thought made material, Balthazar called it. If that is true, I need to think of a weapon—​something I can use to stop him.

  I close my eyes for a brief moment. Immediately I feel it—​a warm tingling at my forehead. In an instant, a trail of white smoke floats from my head to Malachai’s, but at the same time, a sharp pain stabs me in the stomach, like knives twisting in my gut. I bend in on myself, gasping. I feel as if I will die. My thread of smoke vanishes.

  “You have not the strength to compel me, girl,” he says.

  I’m not going to compel you, I swear to myself. I’m going to kill you.

  And then Malachai opens his mouth.

  I shrink back, for it opens wider than any human mouth should. And out of it pours a smoke so foul and thick, I feel as if I will choke.

  Open your mind to me, darkling, I hear inside my head. Open up and let me in!

  The smoke spills from his mouth and weaves its way toward me. It is full of wriggling shapes and red spots, and makes me think of disease and sickness, a terrible pox.

  “If you will not walk with me willingly,” Malacahi threatens, “you will walk by my side as an undead thrall.”

  He steps from the circle. I can smell his breath now, hot and coppery, even though he is several feet away. It has the rot of the grave about it.

  His smoke brushes my forehead, and pain sears my stomach again. I close my eyes, trying with all my might to remain standing.

  “I am going to take the power from your mind, girl,” he hisses. “It will leave you jibbering. Do you know what trepanation is? A small hole is drilled into the skull. Just enough to leave you babbling like the idiot you are, but forever.”

  A weak light pulses at the edge of my vision. I narrow my eyes to see Emily stirring on the ground. Her light is still pulsing, spilling around her small body. She reaches out a hand to Gabriel, who touches her fingertips.

  I hear a sound, faint at first, but steadily growing louder. Something is running—​something fast and heavy, with footfalls like drumbeats.

  Malachai turns away from me and peers down the tunnel.

  A shadow leaps from the darkness.

  A tremendous weight knocks me backwards. Sharp claws rip at my clothes. A ghoul! I reach out to grapple at the creature’s neck, but I don’t feel human skin. I feel … fur?

  I look up into wild yellow eyes—​eyes like an animal’s.

  But these eyes I have seen before.

  “Darby!” I shout. “Darby. It’s me. Jess!”

  The creature cocks its wolfish head. Does she know it’s me? Saliva drips from her teeth.

  Malachai’s smoke slithers away from my head and coils around the wolf’s body. He is trying to compel her.

  “Darby!” I shout again, struggling to breathe, for her weight is crushing me. “Your name is Darby. Come back to us!”

  The wild light seems to fade from her eyes.

  And at that moment, as if a clock has just chimed, she scrambles away and lunges at Malachai, knocking him onto his back. His cloud of smoke still clings to her wolf body, winding around her paws and muzzle, but Darby is not hindered. Her snapping jaws are just inches from Malachai’s throat.

  He is holding her at bay, pressing her neck with his thumbs, trying to keep her jaws from clamping down. I look around for a weapon, something I can use. Anything! But there is nothing. Gabriel and Emily rush to my side. Emily’s light is pulsing stronger than before. The cut Gabriel suffered is worse than I first thought. The wound looks deep, and blood runs down his face in thin rivulets.

  “What do we do?” Emily cries. She looks ready to rush in and lay hands on Malachai, but I pull her back. “No! It’s not safe! You could be slashed.”

  Slashed, I think. Like me. Not knowing if you will wake up one day with the skin of a wolf.

  Yet … if Darby is a wolf now, it must mean that I am not infected. If so, I would surely be a wolf too.

  Gabriel takes a deep breath, and a low sound comes from his throat. My heart races faster. My hands tighten into fists. A surge of energy pulses through my body. Light flickers at Emily’s fingers and the ends of her hair.

  Malachai throws Darby off, and she crumples against the tunnel wall with a sharp whimper.

  “Stupid beast!” he shouts, standing up. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and turns to me. His thread of smoke swirls from Darby and streams around my closed mouth. I feel it rising into my nostrils. I can’t breathe!

  Bloodcurdling screams ring through the tunnel.

  Ghouls with skull-like faces and red eyes appear from the shadows. They are coming to their master’s aid.

  “For Brân the Blessed!” Emily shouts, and charges into the oncoming horde. She is dancing between them, her hands a blur of motion, lit up as if aflame, and the ghouls burn like thin parchment at her touch, their corpses dissolving to ash.

  “Be at peace, darkling,” Malachai says to me. His smoke is curling into my nostrils. I try to breathe again, but my mouth opens and closes like that of a fish on land.

  I reflect on the idea of thought made material. I close my eyes and imagine a snake squeezing its prey.

  White mist flows from my head—​a long, bright cord, and at the end of it, five spiked tails fan out, just like my own lash. I reach up …

  And my hand closes around it. I can feel it. It is solid. It is real.

  I do not have time to marvel at it, but only to do one thing.

  Within you lies strength yet to be discovered. Like your father … and your mother.

  I grasp the ethereal whip and strike out.

  It curls around Malachai’s neck.

  Images immediately flood my mind. There is fire and smoke and pain and death. And rats. Always the rats. I am inside his head.

  My breath is returning to me. Malachai’s smoke is faltering, drifting apart in drops that look like blood.

  I hear a vicious snarl, and Darby leaps back into the fray, taking down a ghoul as she does so. The creatures scream and howl, bouncing from wall to wall with amazing speed.

  My ribbon of smoke is pulsing now with lines of green and red curling around Malachai’s throat. Tighter! I shout inside my head. Tighter!

  Every muscle in my body is strained with exertion, pushed to the limit. I feel it in my arms and legs, the back of my neck.

  Gabriel breathes in, his chest heaves, and then a shadow ripples behind him. I see a shape, outstretched from either side of his small frame.

  My mouth falls open.

  He lifts his arms, and I see something that shouldn’t really exist. A great sh
adow appears behind him.

  Wings.

  “Seraph!” Malachai hisses, his hands grasping at my ghostly lash.

  The ghouls cower in fear.

  “Go back, demon,” Gabriel commands. The shadow wings flutter, the edges rippling with fire.

  His voice is like rumbling boulders, like trees being wrenched from the very ground. He continues speaking—​the words coming faster, a torrent of sound that bears no resemblance to any human language.

  The tunnel is now bright with flashing light. Emily is breathing hard, resting with her back to the wall, entranced by Gabriel. The ceiling cracks. Shards of wood and debris crash to the floor, leaving an open hole above. I tumble and roll off the tracks as a plank falls and barely misses my head. I stand up again. My lash of smoke is still tight around Malachai’s throat.

  But then he is revealed for the devil he truly is.

  A serpentine tongue shoots from his mouth. It does not wind its way to me, but to Emily. She falls to the ground, grasping it with her small hands, unable to breathe.

  “No!” I scream.

  “Release me,” he croaks. A slow trickle of black blood oozes from his lips. Red veins appear in his eyes. “Release me, or the girl will die.”

  I look to Emily. The serpent tongue is curling tighter. Her hands are white-hot, but they do not seem to burn the long, slithering piece of flesh.

  Gabriel is singing now. Or is it the bells? I can’t tell. All I can sense is a pull throughout my body. I feel it in my stomach, deep down, like the tide coming into shore. He is calming me.

  The silver ship … in the faerie realm. Maybe I will go there and be at peace. I will hear Father’s song again.

  Gabriel’s shadow wings begin to glow. A radiance burns around him. His hair blazes with a golden light.

  I close my eyes and think of Mother—​not the mother with the polite smile and clear green eyes, but the one who lashed out with the whip at 17 Wadsworth Place. The one who battled the power of the dark for years. The one who died for me …

  I scream.

  At the same time, my lash burns a fiery red, and squeezes tighter around Malachai.

  His terrible tongue recoils, and Emily lets out a gasping breath. She collapses.

  Malachai falls to his knees. “The fire comes!” he wheezes. “The fire will still come!”

  In the distance I see a light moving quickly toward us. Hot sparks fly in front of it, dancing in the dark. I feel rushing air on my skin. The tracks beneath my feet begin to hum. My hair floats away from my face. It is closer now, and the sound from my dreams—​a terrible screeching and grinding—​rings in my ears.

  Only then do I realize what it is.

  Malachai rises to his feet.

  “Emily!” I cry. “Gabriel! Away from the tracks!”

  They look to me, and Gabriel drags Emily by her arms toward the tunnel wall.

  Malachai turns to look behind him.

  The train comes hurtling through the darkness. There is one last scream, and a terrible thumping sound, and then silence.

  I stand still. Struck.

  I do not want to look at what is left of him. The ghouls are all dead too, their ragged garments still sizzling. Darby slinks off and licks her wounds.

  I rush to Emily’s side. Her expression is calm, as if she is asleep. I take her by the shoulders. “Emily!” I cry. “Wake up!”

  She doesn’t stir.

  I brush the damp curls away from her face. “Emily, please! WAKE UP!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Song of Sadness

  Gabriel and I kneel by Emily’s body.

  I look to him for a brief moment. Wings? It can’t have been.

  He makes the sign of the cross on her forehead.

  “Emily,” I whisper, taking her hand, cold now. “Emily, don’t die.” Tears brim in my eyes.

  I will lose her, too. Like Mother. And Father.

  Gabriel begins to sing softly, and the words—​if they are indeed words—​fill me with a sense of peace. I hear the rippling of water far away, and wind whistling through treetops. Gabriel sings high, then low. A chorus of voices surrounds him, and it seems so real, I look around for the singers, but it is only the two of us—​and Emily, lying asleep, as if she will never awaken.

  Gabriel stops his song and leans close to her. He whispers in her ear.

  She opens her eyes.

  Without a second’s pause, I hug her to my chest. She feels as light as a child’s dolly.

  “Stop,” she says weakly.

  I loosen my grip. “What is it?” I ask, searching her face for injury. “What’s wrong?”

  “Bloody crushing me, that’s what.”

  I smile, relieved, and wipe the sweat from her face. Gabriel and I help her rise on unsteady feet. Her lips are dry and cracked. She still needs water.

  Gabriel is breathing hard. I think about what I have just seen and heard. What I think I have just seen.

  Wings.

  It must have been just a shadow.

  “I am an angel,” he says.

  I do not speak, only stare.

  “There are many of us,” he continues. “But we remain hidden, and show ourselves only in times of great need.”

  “The singing—” I start, without even thinking on what he has just said. “What is it? How do you do it?”

  Gabriel pulls out his little book and hands it to me.

  I take it, but remain transfixed by his face. I can’t believe it. An angel? It’s impossible.

  I shake my head and open the book.

  Marks and glyphs seem to writhe on the pages. They are symbols I have never seen before, some of them glowing with a faint golden light, as if they are burned onto the parchment.

  “It is Angelica,” he says, “the language of angels.”

  “You can read this?”

  “And sing it too. The forces of evil cannot stand the sound of pure love.”

  Pure love. “That is what gave me strength,” I say. “I felt it. In my body.”

  “Me too,” Emily says.

  I turn to her. “You knew this? About Gabriel?”

  Emily shrugs. “Sorry. He made me promise not to tell.”

  “Why?” I ask both of them.

  “If people knew,” Gabriel answers, “I would be sought out and praised. The Church would use me as a symbol. That is not my fate.”

  This makes sense, I realize. People would flock to him, a living miracle here on earth.

  I hear a moan, and I turn, on my guard. Another ghoul?

  But it is only Darby. She is herself again, lying naked and bruised. I look to Gabriel, who takes off his coat and hands it to me.

  I go to Darby and wrap it around her. Livid welts color her neck. She peers up at me, and I see the crooked teeth, the cold white scars.

  “Where are we, miss? Did it happen again?”

  “You’re safe,” I tell her. “You saved us.”

  She sits up. Her eyes are distant, nervously taking in our surroundings. “Saved you? Where am I? I remember a man. He had terrible eyes. Oh! He was ’orrible, Jess. Just ’orrible!”

  Jess. She finally called me Jess.

  “Shhh,” I whisper, and caress her face. “It’s all better now.”

  She wraps her arms around me and begins to cry.

  “Oi, wolf girl,” Emily calls weakly. “I think it’s time you joined our little club.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  An Afternoon in the Parlor

  Small fires burn in empty trash bins on the High Street, although it is now daybreak.

  There is no one in sight but for a few bobbies strolling the alleys. Shiny buttons run the length of their coats, and official badges gleam atop their tall hats. One or two of them look our way, but considering the state we’re in—​with our dirty, bloody faces and torn clothes—​they must take us for a band of guttersnipes.

  “Out of here!” they shout, waving their batons and blowing whistles. “The lot of you! Off
!”

  Several shops are completely destroyed, and broken glass litters the street. Vendors’ carts are overturned, their goods scattered and spoiled.

  I am supporting most of Emily’s weight as we walk, and Gabriel leads Darby, who is still quite dazed and confused. My cheeks burn from the cold, and my fingers are stiff and numb. None of us are dressed properly, seeing as how we rushed out of the house toward a fate we did not know.

  But we survived.

  And we prevailed. We stopped the evil that was Malachai Grimstead.

  Balthazar returns the next day, looking none the worse for wear. We are all sprawled in the parlor and have barely stirred since our return. Darby is curled up by the fire, which I find quite canine-like.

  “It’s done,” I tell him before he has a chance to ask. “Malachai Grimstead. He’s dead.”

  “Again,” Emily says.

  “Malachai?” Balthazar questions.

  “He was behind all of it,” I tell him. “From the very beginning. The letter M, the sickness, Mother—”

  My heart aches.

  We tell Balthazar everything: Malachai’s rats, his explanation of the word “darkling,” my visions of his past, and—​strangest of all—​the lash I created from my own thoughts.

  “Now there is no doubt,” he mutters, looking at me curiously.

  “No doubt?” I repeat. “Of what?”

  But he steers the conversation elsewhere. “Two moons,” he says, looking to Darby. “Two moons in one month.”

  I reach up to touch my scar. Darby had transformed once already. How could it have happened again?

  “It is the blue moon,” Gabriel says. “A full moon that rises twice in one month, written of in the ecclesiastical calendar.”

  I look to Gabriel, who is once again the small boy with dark curls and eyes, not the blazing figure I saw in the tunnel. He is an angel, I remind myself. An angel.

  Emily seems better now, after drinking several ewers of water.

  I am beyond exhausted, still reeling from the battle. The fire in the grate warms my aching limbs. But finally I ask the question that is weighing on me. “Where were you?” I ask Balthazar. “We needed you.” I know I am being rather blunt, but I do not care.