With a scream, I bring my hands together in a brutal clap. An implosion of liquid metal leaps up and collapses over Talus’s surprised face.
The impact compresses his skull and flays away part of his scalp. Scouring flesh, the metal courses over his skull and solidifies into a thin, quivering mirrored surface. Talus’s metal-coated mouth opens and closes in mute horror. Staggering backward, he falls sprawling onto his back, droplets of liquid metal spraying in shining arcs.
I toss down the brass knuckle devices and the remaining liquid falls back into the trough around Peter’s sleeping form.
It is quiet now. Just the sound of my harsh breathing as I round the table and Talus’s boots squeaking spastically over marble.
The avtomat rolls over and manages to crawl a few feet, a glittering trail of liquid metal dribbling from his nostrils and ears. His jaw is frozen in a silent scream. Frantically, he rakes fingertips over his cheeks and eyelids. Sightless and silent, his frozen face is strangely beautiful, like a Greek sculpture.
I pick up the relic where it has fallen and slide the chain back over my head. The weight on my chest feels like coming home.
Batuo’s mangled torso is sprawled on the floor. He has been systematically dismembered. Metal bones glint beneath sliced chunks of contoured plastic sheathing. I had so much to learn from him, and now he’s a ruin.
My fear and adrenaline flare into anger.
Following me in secret, sabotaging my research—not only has Talus destroyed my career, but he’s murdered his own kind. An incredible world exists, and he has been snuffing it out.
The damaged machine is on its knees now, in a praying posture, running fingers patiently over the metallic mask melted to its face. Sensing my attention, Talus drops to all fours, sweeping fingers over the ground, searching for his antique sword. I creep a few steps closer to the monster, and kick the gladius away from him.
He lunges, a knife appearing in his hand. Blind and deaf, he misses my thigh by inches. I fall, kicking my legs to scoot away from the still lethal machine.
Crawling to the gladius, I wrap my hands around the hilt.
Behind me, the once angelic-featured man is on his knees again. Now he is sawing at himself with the knife, slicing the flesh around the outside of his metal mask. I stand, dragging the tip of the heavy gladius. Talus drops the knife. Curling his fingers into the wound around his face, he pulls, flexing, prying his own face away from his skull. Just a machine, I remind myself.
I lift the gladius over my head, favoring my bruised rib, blade wavering.
A demonic scream fills the cathedral as Talus rips the mask away, flinging it into the shadowy heights. Faceless, Talus sets his eyes on me, wide and evil in skinless sockets, bits of pink skin stuck to the bluish carbon-fiber planes of his skull. The sculpted flakes of material are arranged like bones, delicate curves that manifest as a corpse’s grin. Now the machine is on all fours, crawling quick like an insect, still vomiting threads of shining liquid. He roars incoherently, lower jaw askew, a sluglike lump of tongue nestled between sculpted teeth.
Letting my scream join his, I bring the gladius down.
Talus jerks as if he’s been electrocuted, tearing the hilt from my hands. The blade slices through armor and flesh, sticking fast in the machine’s shoulder. Not slowing, the skeletal monster snarls and leaps at me, knocking me onto my back and clawing at my face.
“Whurm.” He coughs, tongue lolling over a lipless mouth. “Whuuurm—”
A woman’s arm closes around Talus’s neck, dragging him back.
“The spear,” says a familiar voice, grunting with exertion.
Smearing a forearm over my eyes, I see a flash of Batuo’s smiling face. The monk is grappling with Talus, hips off-kilter, a flayed piece of robe tied around his midsection to hold his guts inside. His right leg is completely naked, a different skin tone from his left arm. It might be a woman’s leg, a bit shorter and more slender than the other. The sockets where the limbs fit are visible. His right arm is also brand-new, harvested from the butcher’s shop of spare parts.
Half of Batuo’s broken spear lies near me. Snatching it up, I scramble back to Talus. The half-blind machine writhes under Batuo’s patchwork body, oblivious to me as I approach. With both hands, I drive the leaf-shaped blade into his armpit. Ribs crunch as the tip pierces, hitting the cradle housed deep inside his chest, connecting with the relic.
Talus finally goes still, pinned down by Batuo’s mismatched arms.
Eyes blank, the faceless man stares at nothing. The body is smeared with dried metal, shoulder sheared nearly in half, jacket ripped open in a dozen places. The red-tasseled spear juts out from under his armpit.
It would be pathetic if it weren’t so terrifying.
Batuo crawls away from the corpse. He tries to stand and can’t.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Oh no, June,” he says. “Not even close.”
34
LONDON SUBURBS, 1758
It is near dusk when the carriage stops at the end of a cobblestoned pathway leading to the estate I purchased sight unseen for Elena nearly a decade ago. The superstitious coachman refuses to go farther, has no business here, and advises me to turn around and return to London immediately. I ignore him, stepping out of the carriage and stretching my legs as he unstraps and unceremoniously tosses my luggage to the ground.
Without another word, he climbs onto the carriage and nudges his horses forward, wheeling away back to town at top speed.
Trudging over the muddy stones, I see the lawn is littered with water-stained crates I have sent back from India. They’re untouched. Each sagging crate contains treasures and precious materials, statues and furniture, and countless silver rupees.
The stone mansion looms out of overgrown gardens, flanks wreathed in mist, shutters hanging askew, and a rash of moss growing over its face like a port-wine stain birthmark. Hemmed in a neat circle of stone, the fountain before our door is clotted with dead leaves, a sculpture of the sea nymph Galatea sprouting from it, her features slick and shining with a scum of algae.
Stopping, I scan the discolored facade.
She is still here. She must be.
“Elena,” I call, hastening to the front door. It hangs open, the ornate wood bloated and blistered with rain. Peering inside, I see only a trash-strewn hall.
I was away for too long.
Entering, I feel the utter isolation of the place. The long road back to London that represented safety to me must have been claustrophobic to her. She saw all possibility of contact dwindling from this distance. Around me, the rooms seem to belong to a museum, shelves teeming with many of the artifacts I collected from India. Pieces of some opened wooden crates are scattered about. The dining room table is heaped with laboratory equipment and the remains of half-finished projects.