Helen gasped: the Ratcliffe Highway murders. Benchley must have forced Pike to hide his crime. Did Pike realise the man had been collecting blood for this very journal? For a Ligatus? Helen allowed herself a grim smile. All along Pike had been accusing Lord Carlston of helping Benchley make this godforsaken book, when in fact it had been himself.
The journal lay on the filthy floor, still open at the entry for Pike. In there somewhere must be a page for the Comte d’Antraigues. For her parents too. But she could only look in the journal once again; she did not have the strength for more than that. It had to be the Comte. Bracing herself, she picked up the heinous book and flipped the pages, feeling the impending violence build in her body. She passed Stokes, Ball and then … Comte d’Antraigues. She gave a hoarse, sobbing laugh. It was there; the information was there. The Comte would have his bargain and Carlston would have his cure. She dared not read it. Instead she ran her finger down the roughly sewn binding; the page should come out easily enough.
She gripped the paper close to the spine and tugged. It did not tear. Rather, the page was strangely immovable, and every drag upon it sent a sickening stab through her body as if she were ripping at her own innards. She doubled over, vomiting bright red blood, gasping with pain.
She tried again, wrenching at the paper, agony building through bone and flesh as she pulled. Understanding finally penetrated the heaving pain: the book was protected by its alchemy, irrevocably bound together, the pages never to be torn from the spine. She would come apart before it did. Her body convulsed, expelling more blood, the tears that streamed from her eyes not only from the pain of the grinding retches that rocked her body. No bargain. No cure. The pages could not be pulled from the journal and she could not give the whole journal — a Ligatus — to a Deceiver.
Distantly, she heard Lester’s chain chinking, Sprat talking, but her vision was grey, her body under siege, unable to do anything other than ride the pain through to its end.
She came to herself lying flat on the floor, panting, the closed journal a few feet away.
‘My lady,’ Sprat whispered, ‘Lester ain’t takin’ notice of me no more.’
Slowly Helen looked up. The madman was rocking to and fro on his haunches, all of his attention fixed on the journal between them. His lips curled back in a wet, yellowed snarl. He looked up at Helen. She saw the intent lock in his eye a second before he leaped.
She sprang, hearing Lester’s chain snap tight and Sprat’s yelp as he lunged. Filthy hands groped for the book, Lester’s swollen face a blur of scream and spittle an inch from her own. He slammed into her side and they rolled, arms and legs and chain entangled, the book sliding from the madman’s desperate grasp.
Helen snatched up the journal, the scratching energy surging through her mind as her hand closed around the soft green leather binding. Lester’s clawed fingers clamped over her own, their hands locked around the journal. He screamed, a deafening, rancid-meat screech in Helen’s ear. A sickly yellow light enveloped him, his flesh-and-bone body a shadow shape beneath it.
Helen gasped. The alchemy had conjured Lester’s sick soul. She had seen this kind of bilious light before, around the boy reclaimed in London. But that had been through a ritual; this power was coming from the journal. She could feel the loathsome energy stirring within it, using her as a pathway to reclaim the vestige in Lester. It howled and chattered against her mind as if called by the oily, dark nugget of Deceiver energy rooted deep within the light that surrounded Lester’s crown. Thick trailing tentacles writhed tightly through the glow of his soul, choking and warping him into madness.
Helen’s pulse pounded in her ears, every throb of heart and blood aligning Lester’s beat with her own. She pushed against his rigid body atop her, trying to throw his weight off, but it was as if they had been fused together. The howling grew louder in her head, built of blood and death, Deceiver and Reclaimer, innocence and murder. A dank metallic taste flooded her tongue and then the blood power rose: a roaring, blinding, searing light that swept from the journal through her and over Lester. A ravening force, boiling across his soul, consuming the dark mass of the vestige and its obscene tentacles, claiming the foul dark energy.
The power slammed back through Helen, back into the journal, ripping at her screaming soul, her mind loosening beneath the gibbering madness caught within it. She could feel the journal’s darkness clawing at her own sanity, dragging her into the howling blood and suffering of its pale rusty ink.
Sprat’s face above. Cracked lips. Watery blue eyes, all the whites showing. ‘My lady?’ A hand on her arm, shaking it gently.
In her mind, she formed the words, Do not worry, Sprat, but nothing happened. Her mouth did not open, the sounds did not issue. She felt a moment of distant concern at the failure.
Another face leaned over. A man. Wild black hair, swollen eye bruised blue. She groped for a name. Ah, Lester.
‘What’s wrong wiv ’er?’ he said. ‘Why don’t she move? Why is she starin’ like that?’
‘Don’t know.’ A warm hand touched her cheek. ‘My lady, say somethin’.’ Sprat’s face leaned closer. ‘You fixed Lester.’ She tapped her finger against her temple. ‘Got all his marbles. Just like that!’
Too much effort to listen. Easier to sink into the soft silence.
Three faces. Blurred.
‘What’s that she’s holding? A book?’
A woman, face too close. Thick black hair. Cleft chin. The name arrived, dragged from a distant place. Kate Holt.
‘You don’t wanna go anywhere near that.’ Sprat’s voice again, heavy with warning. ‘She said it’s made of blood. Murdered coves.’
Yes, she could still feel it, the scritch-scratch in her mind. The metal taste upon her tongue.
‘Is that what she killed my brother for?’
‘She saved Lester with it. I calls that square, don’t you?’
‘Watch yourself, girl.’ A sniff. Shrewd green eyes looking into her own. ‘I’m not complaining about the bargain. Still, she looks mighty morbid. If she’s going to die, I don’t want her doing it here.’
‘She ain’t gunna die.’ Sprat leaning over her again, all frown and ferocity. ‘We gotta get her back to her people.’
‘Ma, she’s right.’ Lester coming into focus, thin hand gripping Kate Holt’s shoulder. ‘Gotta do somethin’ for ’er. You don’t know what it was like. I was in the dark with this chatterin’ in my head and no hope.’
‘I saw what it did, love.’ Kate’s hand over his, patting away the memory. ‘Sprat, you know where she comes from?’
‘Surely do.’
‘Get Big Tom to put her into a hackney. Make sure she gets there.’
Get where? She tried to hold on to the question. It was important. But the balm of dark silence was calling her back.
The smell of horse and old sweat. Hands, big and efficient, rolling her onto a hard seat. Cold, cracked leather beneath her cheek. Her hat upside down on the scuffed wooden floor, amongst the straw and dirt.
‘We’re goin’ to 20 German Place,’ Sprat’s voice said. ‘Hop to it.’