It took my brain a moment to comprehend that he had actually done it, before I scrambled toward him and crawled through the hole. I collapsed onto a grimy stone floor. It was cool to the touch, covered with dust and cobwebs. Everything was a strange kind of dark, like the world had been cast in shadows. I sat up, struggling for breath.
“You inhaled a lot of smoke,” Montgomery said. “It’s making you sick.”
I clenched my hands over his, squeezing tight. “I told you to run.” I coughed. “To save yourself. It’s impossible, what you did.”
His fingers brushed back my tangled hair, damp with sweat. “Love can sometimes do the impossible. You’re mad if you think I would have left you there to die.”
I pressed my lips against his. The sound of fire spreading through the manor roared in the distance, and the stone under our knees was warming, but I needed to feel his lips on mine. If we only had one life, then I wanted to live it right.
Something crashed in the house, jarring us out of the kiss. His arm tightened around my back. The muscles of his biceps shook strangely from the superhuman exertion; I needed to get him out of here and treat him properly before his muscles gave out completely.
“Come on,” I said. “We’re not out of danger yet.”
I grabbed his hand and pulled him away from the burning tower. Smoke was already seeping into the ceiling of the passageway. We moved faster, and I tripped over a brick and fell against the wall, flinching. The dust was disturbed here, and I looked closer at the uneven brick. I’d tripped over it before, with Hensley.
“We’re by the library!” I said. “That means this passage leads down to the tunnel that goes outside, the same one I used to escape the Beast.”
The roar of the fire was getting louder. It took me back to another time, another fire, one that roared into the island night. Father had died in that one. Maybe I’d die the same way, fated to end up like him.
No, I reminded myself. We choose our own fate.
Montgomery coughed. Smoke was so thick that it was hard to make out his face even from a few steps away. We kept low where the air was still breathable and descended stairs, sliding more than climbing, until the temperature lowered. The stone walls here were blessedly cool. Our feet splashed in the flooded basement.
“There it is!” I spotted a low wooden door that led to the outside. But when I turned around, my smile faded. One glance told me Montgomery’s superhuman strength was failing. There was only so long a body could do the impossible.
“The south garden is just beyond this door,” I urged. “It’s jammed—we just have to push through. Don’t give up yet, Montgomery.”
He nodded. I counted, and on three we both poured the last of our strength into that wooden door. It slid open an inch, then two, and at last wide enough to crawl through.
A cold wind bit at me as rain stung my face and mixed with tears of relief. Montgomery came through the passageway behind me. I clenched my hands in the mud, wanting to collapse into it.
Laughing with exhaustion, I crawled over to him. His hand tightened on mine as his eyes closed. I rested a hand on his chest, enjoying the steady beat of his heart and knowing that everything would at long last be all right.
“We’re safe now,” I said, brushing the rain from his face. “We made it.”
The sound of a boot scuffing came through the rain, and I had just enough strength to look up. Radcliffe’s fair blue eyes stared at me. He aimed his pistol at my head.
All the joy drained out of me.
“Miss Moreau. Where, may I ask, is Lucy?”
ANGER FLOODED INTO ME. I pictured Lucy’s body in the tower, slumped against the wall as though sleeping. Dead by her own father’s hand.
From the other end of the courtyard, a crash came as flames exploded through the upper windows of the tower. Smoke billowed into the dark night sky.
“She’s already gone,” I said, coughing. “Burned in that fire along with all of Frankenstein’s equipment and journals.”
Radcliffe’s face went slack as he stared at the smoke that consumed his daughter’s body. There was loss there that I was sure my father had never felt, and for a moment I felt pity for this man I hated. But then he turned to me with a furious growl.
“Get up!” He dug the pistol against my forehead. When I stumbled, he wrenched me to my feet, digging the pistol in harder.
“Pick him up as well,” Radcliffe ordered to two of his men, nodding at Montgomery. Worry spiked in me again. Montgomery was flat in the mud, streaked with rain. Radcliffe’s men tried to lift him, but he was much larger than both of them, and they could barely lift his chest. His eyes were closed.