Illusion (Asylum for the Mechanically Insane Book 1) Read online

  Emily straightened. “I’m not jesting, Doctor. I have no desire to see you locked away. You are a talented scientist with much to offer. I’m merely making sure that I am well-provided for, and that my participation is rewarded appropriately.”

  Tipping his head to one side, he surveyed her, making her feel like a specimen under his magnifying lenses. “I suppose I should have expected no less. Pity though. You were a good fuck.”

  He reached for his jacket and shrugged into it. “No money, dear Miss Warren. Not a penny. No marriage, and now—I’m sure this will come as no surprise—no job either.”

  “I mean it, Doctor. I will talk.”

  “I’m sure you’ll try.” He turned for the door, then paused and looked back over his shoulder at her. “But you’d be foolish, since I have much more evidence that you kidnapped, murdered and then disposed of that young girl’s remains.” He smiled. “I can prove that you removed her face first, too. A few tiny peepholes in the right places, one of the latest daguerreotype systems and you have…” he waved his hands in an imitation of a magician producing a rabbit from a hat, “…crystal clear evidence. Did you really think that there was no surveillance here? That nobody was watching? Did you think I wouldn’t find that stupid bit of jewelry? That’s long gone, you fool. And it wouldn’t have been near enough to cast suspicion on me.”

  Emily’s jaw sagged. “I don’t believe you. You wouldn’t…it was all for you, you bastard.”

  “Well, it is the truth. I don’t care if you believe it or not.” He shrugged and swung back to the door. “And it was all for the science you stupid chit. And for my prestige as a scientist. I can’t help what you thought would happen between us. You were a convenient fuck.” He stopped and turned once more. “And no virgin, either. So don’t pretend to be outraged. You wanted it as much as I did.”

  He frowned for a moment. “Come to think of it, you’d be a handy whore to have around when I get the urge. Nobody knows if I’ll want my wife more than once or twice. Arranged marriage and all that sort of thing. Oh well. We’ll see how it goes.”

  A red haze of fury all but obscured Emily’s vision as she stared at him, so smug, so sure of himself. So fucking superior…

  He’d ruined her, and now he could have her arrested and executed with just a word in the right ear. It should have been easy to persuade him to give her something—anything, to cover the cost of what she’d done. She’d have kept her mouth shut. He should have known that. But now he expected her to be his whore?

  Nothing she had done meant a damn thing.

  Without thinking, she grabbed a thick glass stirring rod and raised it high, a shining spear in the hand of a spurned warrior woman.

  “You rat. You fiend from hell. You bloody fucking bugger…” But she was too late.

  “Jesus.” He rushed from the room in a panic, and the door slammed in her face as she reached it, ready to plunge her makeshift weapon down through the place where his heart should have been.

  But she froze when an icy hand closed around her upraised wrist from behind, and locked it in place.

  “No…” A chill shot up her spine. “No, it can’t be.”

  But it was.

  Emily tried to turn, but her hand was held immobile and rigid. She could just manage to twist her neck and see the magnificent face she herself had affixed to the skull...

  …Of Galatea.

  The only sound was Emily’s panicked breathing; there was no hiss of energy through the length of tubing snaking from Galatea’s ankle. There should have been. Under no circumstances should she have been able to move without it.

  But she had. And now she was forcing Emily toward the door, firmly, irrevocably. Emily tried to twist, to dodge, to break free—nothing worked. Galatea was as strong as the forged iron and porcelain of her bones and skeletal structure.

  Finally, face squashed against the door, Emily waited. Surely now she’d be freed and Galatea would let her go.

  But no, the creature simply put her other hand on the back of Emily’s neck and forced her head hard into the solid iron.

  “Ouch,” cried Emily, her nose nearly cracking. She managed to turn away, scraping her cheekbone on a rivet, feeling the blood start to trickle down toward her chin. “Stop. Galatea, stop. You’re hurting me.”

  Nothing worked. There was still an unearthly silence, even when Galatea finally released Emily’s hand, only to remove the glass rod from it.

  “Let me go, you monster. Free me. I order you.”

  It was hopeless. Emily was pinned by one cold hand, struggling, and trying to injure Galatea with both of hers. But no matter what she did, punch, rip at the silken skin, kick with her boots, nothing broke the vice-like grip of that hand at her neck or the growing pressure up and down her back.

  And then she felt it.

  She wasn’t sure at first, but then it became more noticeable. A touch on her spine from just below her corset. A sense of being poked. Then a sense of being poked very hard and her skirt tore beneath the inexorable pushing of the tip of the glass rod.

  Galatea was moving ever closer now, pressing not just her hand but her whole body up against Emily with the glass rod between them. It had reached skin and Emily screamed frantically as it continued its journey, stabbing her and careening off her spine into her internal organs.

  She screamed until she had no voice left, the agony claiming her sanity as, after long moments, the glass finally hit the iron door and shattered into a million tiny blades of torment. Emily was alive still, skewered through the gut and being squeezed between an inhuman monster and a four-inch thick slab of iron.

  She vaguely felt the warm flow of her own blood soaking her clothing as it gushed from her belly, and registered the flexing of her rib cage as it was pushed, pushed, crushed even more. She couldn’t survive this…it was…

  The snapping of her own bones sickened her. Her breath caught.

  Oh God…please…pleeeeeaaaasssee…

  Emily’s final scream went unheard, for Galatea had no ears.

  She simply stopped moving forward as the warm body exploded into a shower of blood, internal organs and bone fragments. Much was constrained inside the leather corset, which oozed what was left of Emily Warren from each end. The stench of ruptured bowels meant nothing to a creature with no sense of smell.

  The head, lacking any support, lolled helplessly, the face no longer pretty or appealing, but horrid in its final expression of abject and complete terror.

  None of the mutilated atrocity made a difference to the beautiful monster. Her self-imposed task apparently complete, Galatea turned and strolled back to her place, heedless of the blood now dripping profusely down over her perfect skin, or the gore she left in her footprints. Her expression had never altered, never betrayed a thought or a response to her actions. She seemed unaware of what she’d done.

  Perhaps that was true. Perhaps there was no awareness there, just a malfunction of circuitry, a surge of power whose source was unreliable and dark in nature.

  Certainly she was not aware that her stride was faltering, nor was she aware when one leg locked and she toppled to the marble tile. She just stared at nothing, and let her limbs fall where they may.

  That which had been Emily Warren was strewn over a door, most of the wall, some of the ceiling and about twelve square feet of laboratory floor.

  That which had been created as Galatea was more neatly arrayed in one tidy pile of arms, legs and naked body. A woman who had fainted? Or recently been fucked on the floor, perhaps. That would have been the consensus of those who found her. Until her head was turned to reveal her face.

  It was sliding away, down over one ear, tearing free of the skull, bursting the eyeballs, drooping monstrously down…down…

  Emily’s work had indeed been for naught. And the last remaining part of Miranda Fielding ended up as a vile and bloody mess of flesh in the center of a pristine white marble tile on the floor.

  Chapter 9

  Port
ia awoke alone. The staff, such as it was, occupied well-proportioned rooms on the first level, well away from any risk of interference either from or with the science taking place elsewhere in the facility.

  The room was made for two females, but the other maid had been called to the main house very early, to assist in a large reorganization of furniture. Since there was upward of twenty bedrooms in Harbury Hall, let alone countless other salons, parlors and whatnot, Portia was not surprised.

  She was simply grateful and had dozed a little since she’d slept barely at all and still had an hour or so before she needed to be anywhere.

  Her mood alternated between bitter tears at the almost certain knowledge Miranda was gone and stunned disbelief at the discovery of the heir to Harbury, naked, suffering some kind of dreadful experiment. Both emotions had to be kept internal. She wanted no questions about why she was weeping, that was certain.

  As far as Miranda was concerned, nothing and no one could have convinced her sister to remove her most precious locket. It wasn’t broken, as far as Portia could tell, which added fuel to the fire of grief burning low in her belly. She clutched it tightly and sobbed, admitting that she’d known this would be the end result even as she began her masquerade.

  Although she’d never mentioned it to a single soul, Portia had experienced more than a few odd moments of what could only be called precognition. She refused to believe she was psychic, having a practical attitude toward such matters. If she could see it, she would accept it. If she could prove its existence without a doubt, then she would also accept it.

  But there was too large a margin for error when it came to things like knowing something would happen before it did. When she was seven, she’d known Old Martin the groom would pass one night. And he did.

  But he was also eighty-four years old, so it wasn’t any kind of a surprise, just a coincidence.

  There had been a few more “coincidences”, and she’d learned to pay attention to them, even if she said nothing about them. Thus it was that she’d set off on this quest determined to find out what happened to Miranda. She realized that she’d known at the outset she wasn’t going to rescue her.

  That knowledge settled heavily into her heart. She was going to have to deal with her loss and her grief soon because it was a burden she could not hide for long.

  But the matter of Devon Harbury fought for her attention and for the time being she let that override her pain. It was deliberate, for she could not accomplish anything if she indulged herself in debilitating sorrow. That would come, but she must try and conceal as much as she could for now.

  The first thing would be to contact him if she could.

  As she dressed, she tried to recall his appearance and match it to the Devon Harbury she’d met before.

  He was still dark haired. Which meant his eyes were probably also still dark. She huffed at her own stupidity as she buttoned her shirt. The Devon she’d seen last night was shaggy haired, though, much like a dog left out in the rain. He’d smelled a bit, sweaty and musky, not terribly unpleasant, but obviously not freshly bathed either.

  So he was a prisoner of some sort, for reasons yet to be discovered. Could he be insane? That would explain much—the quiet announcement of his death, the passing of the estate into the hands of Randall and Alwynne Harbury, whose claim was certainly legitimate.

  Nobody would raise objections and the Harbury name would remain untarnished by the taint of madness. If one disregarded the rumors about Lord Harbury, of course. But deformity did not always indicate mental degeneracy, whispers over the teacups notwithstanding.

  Portia completed her toilette with the simple apron issued to servants, along with two shirts and two skirts. Petticoats were considered an unnecessary luxury for maids. A warmer blouse and skirt would appear when the weather turned to winter.

  She knew the routine, since it was established procedure in the Fielding house as well, although on a smaller and more informal level. Her mother’s maid Bessie had two petticoats.

  Veering away from those thoughts, Portia began to plot. Her daily schedule had been pinned to the back of the door, and she read that she was to start by cleaning up the small dining room and washing, drying and putting away the dishes.

  This would be after the scientists had breakfasted, and the room was vacated. If that took longer than normal, she was free to take a quick turn outside for some fresh air, or begin cleaning any of the vessels left in certain places in the laboratories.

  Her own sustenance would be at the discretion of the cook in the laboratory kitchen.

  With Miranda’s locket firmly attached to a ribbon inside her chemise, and well hidden from view, Portia ran her brush through her short locks and decided to first check the dining room and see if it was already empty.

  It was on the first floor so within moments she was nearing the servants center with it’s dining area, parlor, sitting room for the maids and the housekeeper, and kitchen areas.

  The conversational hum told her all she needed to know. There were still people dining, drinking tea, and starting their day with what smelled like a lovely breakfast.

  So she bypassed that area and headed directly for the kitchen.

  “’Allo, luv.” A friendly voice accosted her as she entered.

  She looked around. “Hallo?”

  “Over ‘ere.”

  A quite rotund gentleman sat in front of a table, contentedly chopping potatoes. “You must be the new ‘un.”

  “Yes sir. I’m Mary.” Portia bobbed a little curtsey.

  “Well, I’m ‘Enry. I does the cookin’.”

  “Nice to make your acquaintance, sir.” Portia dipped again.

  “Oooh, ain’t you the fancy one.” He chuckled. “Never mind, luv. I kinda likes it, you curtseyin’ an’ all. Want a cuppa?”

  Smiling, Portia was about to respond when another very small girl poked her head around the door. “Hey, Mister ‘Enry. One o’ them gents left his book up ‘ere. What’ll I do wi’ it?”

  “Shit.” He blushed. “Pardon my French, Miss Mary. They’re always leavin’ sumpin’ ‘ere, absent minded buggers the lot of ‘em.”

  “A scientist was it? From down on the seventh level?” Portia threw the questions out there with mentally crossed fingers.

  “Yes, Miss.” The girl nodded. “Got it right ‘ere, I ‘ave.” She held up a small book, possibly a notebook.

  “Why don’t you let me take it, dear?” Portia became her mother. “I have permission to go down to the labs. I was cleaning there last night.”

  The girl nodded enthusiastically. “Oooh, thanks Miss. I ‘ates it down there. Don’t go if’n I don’t have to.”

  “Give it to me then. I’ll take care of it.” She glanced at the cook. “Think that’s all right, Mr. ‘Enry?”

  “Right nice o’ you, dearie. I’ll have that cuppa ready for you when you get back.” He nodded in approval.

  “I’ll be off then.” Portia hurried away.

  This was an unprecedented stroke of luck, she knew, but best not to risk losing it. Instead of taking the lift down to the seventh floor, she turned a corner and found the old stone staircase. It wasn’t used much from the looks of it, but she sped downward, clutching her book, certain she wouldn’t run into anyone else until she reached her goal.

  The door at the bottom gave her a few moments pause, but with a little effort she pushed it open, thanking heaven that it didn’t scream in protest.

  The corridor was murkier than she’d expected, given the strong light present above. It took a moment or two for her vision to adjust, but then she saw the doors…six down each side of the corridor, numbered sequentially. She’d missed so much of this last night, thanks to first night nerves and the stunning discoveries she’d made.

  It was quiet, if one disregarded the gentle hum she’d heard before, so she silently moved down, trying to glance through the small windows to see who was within. They were cells, without question. The doors were thick metal, the w
indows riveted solidly and the massive bolts testified to the nature of the rooms.

  She paused as she neared the end. There was something…

  A sound, no…a whisper.

  Not even that, more like a feather flicking across something low at the back of her head.

  She paused outside door number eleven. Yes, there it was again. She peered inside, but there was barely enough light to see a few steps inside the door.

  Stuck for a moment, she placed her hand against the glass, almost as if it would call whoever was within.

  Astoundingly, it did.

  She jumped a foot in the air as a face suddenly loomed out of the darkness within—and there he was. Devon Harbury.

  Staring right at her.

  *~~*~~*

  Alwynne had her thumb halfway to her mouth before she recalled that she no longer gnawed on her nails when troubled. For an instant the taste of the lye her mother had rubbed over her child’s hands soured the back of her throat.

  Then the anxiety returned, in spite of the lack of a nail to chew. What the hell was Randall doing?

  She tapped her fingers on her teacup. She’d finished her breakfast earlier but he’d eaten nothing, fidgeted while she drank her tea and then taken himself off, saying there were things he needed to work on. Usually that meant trying various chemicals, and either sleeping or screaming for most of the morning.

  This would all take place in his private apartments, of course. So any resulting noise would be lost to the thick walls of the ornamental turret he’d turned into his chamber.

  She was used to that. But today something had made her uneasy. She wasn’t sure what, only that the look in his eye—one she’d come to recognize—boded ill for her. Not that he’d touch her, of course. He hadn’t ever laid a hand on her in anger, and had stopped coming to her bed almost five years ago now. There were times when she missed that, the warmth of a strong body holding her at night. She knew she slept better when her naked back was against male flesh, and strong arms locked her protectively against a firm chest.