Marlowe switched on the charge of his pistol- an energy pistol, powered by the Aetherian mechanisms. "Stop there, Doctor."
One of the strange, mutated limbs whipped out and smacked Marlowe"s hand. The pistol skittered away, and Marlowe fell back.
Carlisle rolled toward him, preparing to climb on top of him, to crush or strangle him. Marlowe was pinned; he struggled to find a path of escape, but Carlisle"s sinuous limbs caged him. "Forget the problem of air compression. We can"t bring our atmosphere with us. Instead, we will travel through Aetherian s.p.a.ces ourselves! But to do that we must be like them. We must breathe like them!"
Harry realized now where all those tissue slides must have come from. No matter that he had killed thousands when his poisonous chemical bath leaked into the water supply of Woking. His crime had been more than mere neglect- mere neglect, ha. The chemical bath had been some sort of Aetherian concoction, the leak had been intentional, and he had managed to collect samples to a.n.a.lyze his results.
Harry looked around. To the right imagination, the laboratory was a ware house of weaponry. She went straight to the cabinet on the opposite side of the room, containing the flasks of acid and solvent, and the hypodermic needles and syringes alongside.
When she had what she needed and approached Doctor Carlisle, he stopped her with one of those horrid limbs, fleshy, covered with thorns, like some of the embalmed infants, like the images she had seen of the Aetherian pi lot. Merely placed it before her, waving the tip of it, while still hara.s.sing Marlowe.
"What are you doing, dear Princess Maud?"
"If you harm me, there will be repercussions," she said.
"Still hiding behind your brother"s trousers after all?" Carlisle said, laughing.
"Harry, do you see the pistol?" Marlowe called.
"Quiet," Carlisle said and slapped him. Marlowe"s head slammed against the floor and he groaned.
Harry jammed the needle into Carlisle"s mutant limb and rammed home the plunger, emptying a dozen cubic centimeters of hydrochloric acid into his bloodstream, or so she hoped.
Carlisle lashed out, and the blow threw her back. She fell hard to the floor and managed to scramble away, taking shelter under the table. From there, she could see Marlowe, lying on the other side. She crawled toward him, reached for him; he grabbed her hand and squeezed.
Carlisle had fallen and lay twitching. She didn"t know what she had expected- screaming, perhaps. Skin and fluids bubbling as the concentrated acid ate him from within, a.s.suming her attack had worked. But he simply lay silent, convulsions wracking his muscles. Foam collected at his mouth and dribbled down his cheek. His horrible pseudopod flopped like worms.
"What did you put in there?" Marlowe said.
She told him, and he hissed.
"I don"t know what I"m going to say to George," she said.
"It hardly matters. You were right, he was hiding something. I thought we would find a packet of notes. Not . . . not this."
"We should go tell the lieutenant," Harry said, crawling out from under the table, brushing off her gown. There was little dust; Carlisle had kept the place very clean.
Marlowe scrambled to his feet in time to offer her a hand up. She accepted and kept hold of the hand for an extra moment, for comfort.
"Give me a minute, if you don"t mind," Marlowe said, and went the cabinet of equipment. He started preparing a hypodermic and syringe.
"What are you doing?"
"I just want a sample."
"Marlowe-"
"We"ll tell the lieutenant. We"ll tell everything, and Doctor Carlisle and all his nightmares will be studied, dissected, and locked away to keep anything like it from ever happening again. But in the meantime, I want a sample."
He knelt by the dying Doctor Carlisle, inserted the needle in one of the pseudopods, and drew back the plunger to collect a syringe full of thick, yellowish liquid.
"Marlowe!"
He glanced sharply at her with a look of pleading. Don"t tell, let him have this, to continue with his own experiments. How else was Britain to win the war?
It wasn"t as if this was the only secret she"d be keeping. Her entire partnership with Marlowe was nearly scandalous. And since she wanted that partnership to continue, she would keep quiet.
Marlowe secured the syringe in a tin box which he slipped in a pocket, then retrieved his pistol.
"Harry," he said, pausing at the foot of the stairs. "Are you all right?"
"I don"t know." The hideous jarred infants kept staring at her. Her hands were shaking.
Marlowe reached for her. "Come. Everything"ll be all right."
She chose to believe him, and, hand in hand, they went up the stairs.
Carrie Vaughn is the best-selling author of the Kitty Norville series, which started with Kitty and the Midnight Hour. Her most recent books include Kitty"s Big Trouble, Voices of Dragons, Discord"s Apple, Steel, and After the Golden Age. Her short work, which has been nominated for the Hugo Award, has appeared in magazines such as Lightspeed and Realms of Fantasy, and in a number of anthologies, such as John Joseph Adams"s Armored, By Blood We Live, and Brave New Worlds, as well as in The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance, Fast Ships, Black Sails, and Warriors, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.
There is no Igor in Mary Sh.e.l.ley"s Frankenstein.
There"s also no Igor in the 1931 Universal Studios" Frankenstein, although there is a hunchbacked a.s.sistant named Fritz (whose shoddy work as a brain-s.n.a.t.c.her provides most of what"s monstrous about the shambling monster). It"s not until 1953"s House of Wax that we get the devoted a.s.sistant with that famous moniker. Somehow, cultural memory has married the hunchback and the helper and given us the iconic gofer: Igor, dumb as a post and twice as ugly, practically enslaved by his mad employer.
In our next story, Laird Barron gives us a whole new Igor. She"s not your run-of-the-mill lab a.s.sistant and she doesn"t have a hunchback. Oh, and she hates her boss. But when you"ve been created for your job, a career change takes more than just a new resume. It"ll take . . . genius.
BLOOD & STARDUST.
LAIRD BARRON.
Three years later, as I hike my skirt to urinate in a dark alley in the slums of Kolkata, my arms are grasped from behind. The Doctor whispers, "So, we meet again." His face was ruined in the explosion- its severe, patrician mold is melted and crudely reformed as if an idiot child had gotten his or her stubby fingers on G.o.d"s modeling clay. I can"t see it from my disadvantaged perspective, but that"s not necessary. I"ve been following him and Pelt around since our original falling out.
Speaking of the devil . . . Pelt slips from the shadows and drives his favorite dirk, first through my belly, then, after he smirks at the blood splattering onto our shoes, my heart. He grins as he twists the blade like he"s winding a watch.
"-and this time the advantage is mine." I laugh with pure malice, and die.
Storms unnerve me. I hate thunder and lightning- they make me jumpy, even in the Hammer Films I watch nearly every evening. Regardless of the patent cheesiness, it awakens my primitive dread. Considering the circ.u.mstances of my birth, that makes sense. Fear of the mother of elements is hardwired into me.
My nerves weren"t always so frayed; once, I was too dull to fear anything but the Master"s voice and his lash. I was incurious until my fifth or sixth birthday and thick as a brick physically and intellectually. Anymore, I read anything that doesn"t have the covers glued shut. I devour talk radio and Oprah. Consequently, my neuroses have spread like weeds. Am I getting fat? Yes, I"ve got the squat frame of a Bulgarian power lifter, but at least my moles and wens usually distract the eye from my bulging trapeziuses and hairy arms.
I also dislike the dark, and wind, and being trussed hand and foot and left hanging in a closet. Dr. Kob used to give me the last as punishment; still does it now and again, needed or not, as a reminder. Perspective is extremely important in the Kob house. The whole situation is rather pathetic, because chief among his eccentric proclivities, he"s an amateur storm chaser. Tornadoes and cyclones don"t interest him so much as lightning and its capacity for destruction and death. Up until his recent deteriorating health, we"d bundle into the van and cruise along the coast during storm season and shoot video, and perform field tests of his arcane equipment. Happily, those days seem to be gone, and none too soon. It"s rumored my predecessor, daughter numero uno, was blown to smithereens, and her ashes scattered upon the tides, during one of those summer outings.
Time has come for action.
My birthday was Sat.u.r.day. I"m thirty, a nice round number. By thirty, a girl should have career aspirations, picked out a man, that sort of thing. I stuck the white candle of death in a cupcake, said my prayers, and ate the d.a.m.ned thing with all the joy of a Catholic choking down a supersized holy wafer. Then I doused my sorrows with a bottle of Glenfiddich and watched a rerun of the late night creature-feature.
I"ve decided to record my deepest thoughts, although I"m young to be scribing even this outline of a memoir. Some bits I"ve written in spiral notebooks with ponies and unicorns on the cover.
We live in a big Gothic mansion on a hill outside of Olympia. We being Dr. Kob, Pelt, and me. Pelt came to the U.S. with the Master. The old troll doesn"t talk much, preferring to hole up in his backyard tree house and drink Wild Turkey and sharpen his many, many knives. I call him Uncle, although so far as I know he"s no more my uncle than the good Doctor is my father.
Dr. Kob"s workshop is the converted attic in the East Wing. He"s got a lordly view of everything from Olympia to Mt. Rainier. When he"s in his cups, he refers to the people in the city as villagers. That"s exactly how he says it- with a diabolical sneer. I think he reminisces about the Motherland more than he should. His skeletons are banging on the closet door. He just keeps jamming in new ones. I wager it"ll bite him in the a.s.s one of these fine days.
The house keeper, chef, and handyman stay in bungalows in the long shadows of the forest on the edge of the property. The gardener and his helpers commute daily. They tend the arboretum and the vast grounds. Yet despite their indefatigable efforts to chop back the vines, the brambles, and the weeds, the estate always seems overgrown. It looks a lot like the thicket around Sleeping Beauty"s castle in the cla.s.sic cartoons. Some rooms in the mansion leak during rainstorms. Like the grounds crew, our handyman and his boys can"t replace rotten shingles and broken windows fast enough to stay ahead of entropy that"s been gathering ma.s.s since 1845. There"s not enough plaster or paint in the world to cover every blister and sore blighting this once great house.
But Dr. Kob doesn"t care about such trivialities. He"s obsessed with his research, his experiments. Best of all, there are catacombs beneath the cellars; an extensive maze chock-full of bones. Beats digging up corpses at the graveyard in the dead of night, although he waxes nostalgic about those youthful excursions.
I"m careful in my comings and goings despite the fact Dr. Kob crushes the servants under his thumb and virtually saps their will to live. He imported most of them from places like Romania and Yugoslavia. They"ve united in tight jawed dourness and palpable resentment. None speak English. They"re paid to look the other way, to keep their mouths shut. They know what"s good for them.
I worry anyway. I"m a busy bee, fetching and toting for the Master; coming and going, sneaking and skulking at all hours. Capturing live subjects is dangerous, especially when you"re as conspicuous as I am. There can be complications. Once, I brought home three kids I"d caught smoking dope in the park. The chloroform wore off one of them, and when I popped the trunk he jumped out and ran into the woods, screaming b.l.o.o.d.y murder. Luckily, Pelt was sober enough to function, for a change, and he unleashed a pair of wolfhounds from the kennel. Mean ones. We tracked the boy down before he made it to a road. The little sucker might"ve escaped if I hadn"t cuffed his hands behind his back.
In unrelated events: A circus rolled through town one week in the fall; in its wake, consternation and dismay due to a murder most foul. An article in the Olympian doc.u.ments the spectacular and mysterious demise of Niall the Barker. The paper smoothes over the rough edges, skips most of the gruesome facts. The reporters in the know talked to the cops who know this: While hapless Niall lay upon his cot in a drunken stupor, some evil doer shoved a heavy-duty industrial strength cattle prod up his a.s.s and pressed the b.u.t.ton. His internal organs liquefied. A blowhole opened in the crown of his skull, and s.h.i.t, guts, and brains bubbled forth like lava from a kid"s volcano exhibit at a science fair. His muscles and skin hardened and were branded with the most curious Lichtenberg Flowers.
Sometimes I go back and watch it again, just to savor the moment.
Dr. Kob requires that we take supper together on Fridays. We sit at opposite ends of a long, Medieval-style table in the dining hall. The hall is gloomy and dusty and decorated in a fashion similar to Dracula"s castle in the Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee films. G.o.d, how I adore Christopher Lee, especially the young, B-movie incarnation. His soliloquy to carnal delights in The Wicker Man stands my hair on end. Dr. Kob doesn"t know anything about cinema or actors. He says there"s no television where he comes from, no theatre. That"s likely an exaggeration- the Master is fond of hyperbole. Read a few of his interviews in the Daily O and you"ll see what I mean.
Dr. Kob"s father was an eminent scientist until some scandal swept him and his family into the shadows. After his expulsion from what ever prominent university, Kob Sr. conducted his research in the confines of home sweet home. I think of the dungeons and oubliettes in those ancient Eu rope an keeps and feel a twinge of pity for the peasants moiling in the fields beneath the Kob estate. Ripe fruit, the lot of them.
Snooping about the Master"s quarters, I unearthed a musty alb.u.m full of antiquated photographs of Dr. Kob and various friends and relatives. Many feature the redoubtable Pelt. Has the hunter always been Kob"s henchman? Perhaps they are fraternity brothers or blood cousins. Today the good Doctor bears a strong likeness to Boris Karloff, which is also pretty much how he looks in his baby pictures.
On the other hand, the Pelt I know scarcely resembles the man posing with a pack of hounds, his curls long and golden, his bloodthirsty grin as sweet and guileless as Saint Michael"s own. What a heartbreaker (and likely serial killer) he was! One of the pictures is dated 1960. Now, he slumps over his plate and goblet. His hooked nose, his sallow cheeks are gnarled as plastic that"s been melted and fused. Oh, and he"s pot-bellied and bald as a tumor. It"s all very sad- he"s like a caricature of a Grimm Brothers" ill.u.s.tration. Maybe this is how Rumpelstiltskin ended his days.
"Mary had a little lamb," Dr. Kob says, and t.i.tters as he downs another gla.s.s of port. That Mary business annoys me more than he can imagine. He doesn"t realize I caught on to his stupid inside joke and its antecedent years ago. I read cla.s.sical literature, too, you pompous a.s.s. I"ve Melville, d.i.c.kens, and Chaucer in the bedside cupboard. And Sh.e.l.ley, that b.i.t.c.h. On the other hand, perhaps I should be grateful. He could"ve named me Victor or Igor.
"-Mary had a little lamb-"
"-then she had a little mutton," Pelt says in an accent so thick you"d need one of his pig-stickers to cut it. I don"t think Pelt likes me, our occasional drunken coupling notwithstanding. It"s not exactly easy to find a good screw in this pit. I wonder if Dr. Kob knows about Pelt and me. The Old Man is cagey- I wouldn"t be surprised if Pelt reported the results of our trysts as part of some twisted experiment like the Apted doc.u.mentaries that appear on PBS every seven years. Man, I"d love to get in front of a camera and monologue about some of the s.h.i.t I"ve seen. Yeah, there"s a frustrated actor in here. A frustrated nymphomaniac as well- sorry, Pelt.
Midday now and I taste the ozone; my joints ache. From the parapet of the attic tower I can see way out across the water to where the horizon has shifted into black. It"s coming on fast, that rolling h.e.l.l.
The trees start to shake. Leaves come loose and flutter past my face. This is going to be a hummer. My hair is already frizzing. High elevations are bad places to be at times such as these. This particular roof is even worse than most because of all the lightning rods. Well, they aren"t exactly lightning rods in the traditional sense. They serve other uses, primarily transferring electricity to the Doctor"s lab equipment. Like a good gofer, I"ve come to make certain everything is shipshape- the array is rather delicate and must be aligned precisely. There"s nothing more complicated about the job than jiggling a television antenna until the picture clears, but it has to be right or all h.e.l.l might break loose.
I make the adjustments and then retreat inside and head for the kitchen. One of the chef"s minions, a cook named Helga, fixes me cocoa and marshmallows. I"m sitting on one of the high stools, swinging my feet and sipping my hot chocolate when Dr. Kob comes around the corner, his usually slicked hair in disarray, his tie loose and shirt untucked.
"Mary," he says. "You double-checked the array, I presume?" He scarcely acknowledges my answer; his mind is already three jumps ahead, and besides, my loyalty is unquestioned. "One of my specimens expired last night- but all is not lost. My revivification project awaits!"
"Remember not to talk on the phone during the storm," I say. "I just saw an account of a woman who was fried doing dishes. Ball lightning exploded from the sink and set her on fire. It traveled through the pipes."
Dr. Kob stares at me, his beady eyes narrowed. He rubs his temples as if experiencing a migraine. "You"re watching the talk shows again. You know how I frown upon that, my dear. Less daydreaming, more physical exertion. Remind me to have Pelt a.s.sign you additional duties. Idle hands and all that."
"Sure, gimme a pitchfork and I"ll swamp out the stables."
"Never mention pitchforks again!"
"Or torches."
"Out! Before I lose patience for your belligerence. And tomorrow, take the rod into our lovely village for quality-a.s.surance testing. I"ve altered the design. It possesses more jolt than ever."
"As you command," I say sweetly. After he wanders off, I chew my cup and swallow it piece by piece. It kind of frightens me that my Pavlovian dread of the Doctor has ebbed, replaced by an abiding irritation. This is very dangerous. He"s a middle-aged megalomaniacal child- an L"enfant Terrible. We know what rotten children do with their toys, right?
He gave me a puppy, once. I loved her, and often imagined how she had crept into the caves of my ancestors to escape the cold and the dark. I accidentally broke the puppy"s neck. It"s probably a good thing he didn"t hand me the little brother I always wanted.
Some people mow the lawn, others take out the garbage, or walk the pooch. Among similar menial tasks, I kidnap and kill whomever the Doctor says to kidnap or kill. I enjoyed it during my formative years. My rudimentary self was a glutton for the endorphin rush, the ecstasy of primal release. As my brain evolved, I developed, if not a conscience, at least the semblance of ethics. The glamour has faded, alas, and now this, too, bores me to tears. Frankly, it"s about as stimulating as tearing the limbs off dolls.
Usually I do the deed with this device Dr. Kob invented that"s something on the order of an unimaginably powerful cattle prod. This prod is capable of emitting a charge much greater than the lethally electrified fences one might encounter surrounding a top-secret military installation. It fits in my coat pocket and telescopes with the flick of my wrist, like those baton whips cops use to pacify rowdy protesters.
There are two basic methods of killing with the rod. (Dr. Kob encourages ample experimentation.) I jumped out of a hedge and zapped the last one, a banker in a suit and tie, from a distance of six paces. He shuddered and dropped in his tracks as if shot. Sometimes the energy exits from the temple or forehead and leaves a small hole like a bullet wound. I prefer to discharge from beyond arm"s reach as a safety precaution, but it"s not always feasible.
The second method is rather awful. The rod is thick at the base and gradually tapers to a point the diameter of a darning needle. A few weeks back I ministered to those two pole dancers who made such a sensation when the cops discovered them. And h.e.l.l no, that particular job didn"t bother me a whit. I"m not altogether fond of the pretty ones, and when they"re haughty little b.i.t.c.h queens to boot . . . well, I consider it justice served. Anyway, their house mate walked in on the proceedings. I recognized him as a bouncer from the club where the girls worked- a powerfully built guy tattooed front and back, with head-to-toe chains and piercings, and yellow, piggy eyes that burned with a love of violence. He almost got his hands on me before I stabbed him in the chest with the rod and dialed up the juice. The force hurled him end over end into the wall, where he sprawled, limbs flailing grand mal style. His eyes sizzled like egg yolks and sucked into his skull; his teeth shattered, his hair ignited, and all that miscellaneous metal reduced to slag as his skin charred and peeled. I"m no weak sister, but the greasy smoke, its stench, always gets me. I ran to the window and puked into a flower box. Then I got the h.e.l.l out.
Dr. Kob wanted to hear everything, of course.
My lifelong fantasy about running away with the circus isn"t likely to pan out. I"m okay with that. I buy tickets when a show"s in town and make excuses to disappear for a few hours. Dr. Kob took me once when I was a child; for a while, he had this fascination with pretending I was his little girl. We went a lot of places during that happy period: picnics on the beach, the carnival, ice skating at the mall, and similarly nutty stuff. Nutty, because it was so d.a.m.ned out of character for the Doctor.
The circus is what sticks in my mind and I"ve continued to go long after the Doctor lost all interest in pa.s.sing me off as his ugly daughter. I"ve even convinced Pelt to come along a couple of times, but not since he got into a row with a gang of carnies and cut off three fingers of one poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Pelt"s an unpleasant drunk, to say the least.
A couple of weeks before my birthday, I"m scanning the paper and spot an advertis.e.m.e.nt for the impending arrival of the Banning Traveling Circus. Of such trivial things is treachery made . . .
This is a minor show, no Ringling Brothers extravaganza by any stretch, but it has elephants and trapeze artists and shiny women in leotards. One of the shiny women has long hair done in a single braid. A man dangles by his knees from the high swing, her hair clamped in his teeth as she spins below him with such velocity her limbs merge with her torso. The clowns zoom into the ring in their clown car, and the dancing bear wobbles in on his unicycle. Hijinks ensue. I clap, unable to contain my glee. It"s all so d.a.m.ned simple I could cry.
After the main show I wander the grounds, a paper cup of beer in hand, a blob of pink cotton candy in the other. I resist the urge to visit the freak tent, and always fail. It"s usually lame, and this collection is weaker than most. Crocodile Boy has a serious overbite, and that"s it. He"s from Georgia and works as a hairdresser in the offseason. No two-headed babies, no wolf men. The bearded lady is rather impressive, though. She"s a brawny, Bavarian la.s.s named Lila, who"d fit right in with the mansion staff. Her beard isn"t particularly thick, yet it"s immaculate and descends to her navel. Its point is waxed and gives her a sort of Mandarin vibe. She has the softest, greenest eyes.
She does her thing and it"s getting dark, so the crowds trickle back to the parking lot under the pall of burnt kettle corn. Lila, Edna the tattooed lady, and I are talking and they invite me to the "after the show get-together"; a bunch of them always do. They gather under some tarps pitched between their trailers and wagons. I meet Cleo the strongman (who"s definitely over the hill and suffering from chronic asthma), and Buddy Lemon and his wife Sri Lanka, the trapeze artists, and Armand, the guy who trains the lions and elephants, although I"m informed he sucks at both by Lila, who whispers that two of the lions have mauled people and Dino stomped on a carnie, all in the last three months. Judging from how fast Armand guzzles a bottle of corn mash, I suspect she may be on to something.