Radcliffe was lying.
Fury swelled in me, along with determination. He wasn’t going to make a fool of me, not again. “You’ve missed your calling,” I said. “You should have been an actor, not a banker. I can’t imagine that a truly dedicated father would show up at the house that gave his daughter shelter with twenty heavily armed mercenaries and threaten her best friend. I was there for Lucy when you weren’t. She was terrified of you when she learned what you were involved with. She hates you. Now tell me why you’ve really come, or we can end this in bloodshed right now.”
For a moment, his face betrayed nothing. Those fair blue eyes seemed as icy as the rest of him. Then, slowly, he signaled his men to lower their arms.
“I wasn’t lying, not entirely. I do want Lucy back. She belongs with her family, in London, not living as an outcast up here in the wastelands. But yes, there is another reason I have come. It is a business arrangement that I want, and you see, I won’t take no for an answer. They are here to see to that.” He signaled to his men.
“What do you want?” I demanded.
“The only thing of value in that house, besides my daughter. Victor Frankenstein’s journals. Don’t look so shocked—I’ve known about them for years. Your father was the one who told me about them, in fact. He and Professor von Stein used to be friends. We were all students at the time. He borrowed from Frankenstein’s ideas to create his own science. You were his inspiration, Miss Moreau, but Victor Frankenstein’s research was the source of his skill.” He held out a hand, looking like his patience was growing thin. “Now, hand over the journals and release Lucy back to me, and my men won’t slaughter everyone in this house.”
I stood straighter. “Lucy isn’t going anywhere, and whatever my father told you about Victor Frankenstein’s science, he lied. There are no journals. They were long ago destroyed.”
He scratched his chin. “Miss Moreau, I’ve come too far to be lied to now. I have been laying plans to get my hands on those journals for the past ten years. I’m very aware that they exist. In fact, they are the reason I joined the King’s Club and pushed for them to seek out your father’s research. I knew eventually it would lead to the greatest research of all, the research your father based his own work on—Perpetual Anatomy.”
His confidence made my own waver. He wasn’t delighting in this, wasn’t relishing my fear. He simply wanted something and would stop at nothing. That terrified me most of all.
“Didn’t you ever wonder who within the King’s Club was devising these complicated plans? It certainly wasn’t Hastings, or that ambitious Inspector Newcastle. It was me whispering in their ears. I planned on hiring mercenaries to murder them as soon as we had our hands on your father’s research, but I didn’t have to. You did my dirty work for me.”
Images flashed in my head of that night in the King’s Club’s smoking room: clawed-out eyes, dead bodies dripping blood. My throat was so dry I could scarcely breathe. “Why is this so important to you? You aren’t a scientist.”
He gave a mirthless laugh. “Must you really ask an aging man why he seeks immortality? Though my interests are not purely personal. A vast number of people could benefit from a second chance at life. I believe your father’s carcass is still buried on that island of his, come to think of it. We made a pact, you know. If one of us were to die, the other would obtain Frankenstein’s science and reverse the situation. I’m quite certain that the great Henri Moreau and I could make a fortune off this research. A fortune I shall use to give Lucy every advantage, as she is entitled to. Now tell me which of us is more interested in her happiness.”
My hands shook like they belonged to some other body. I tried to reassure myself that his threats were hollow. Father’s body would be too decomposed to reanimate, and yet the fear of it, unreasonable as it was, left me so terrified I could hardly find my voice.
“Turn them over and I’ll leave peacefully,” he said. “Don’t, and my men will kill every living thing on the property and tear through the manor until we find the journals ourselves. You’re ruthless, Miss Moreau, and so am I. Don’t test me.”
The tension crackled in the air. From the stone gates behind Radcliffe’s men, Balthazar and Montgomery peeked out with their rifles at the ready. Overhead, the servants would be poised to fire. I knew McKenna would be damned before she let the likes of Radcliffe seize the manor that gave them all sanctuary.
It would be a bloodbath—but sometimes blood was the price to pay.