His mouth dropped and I risked the slightest shake of the head, feeling a crack along my neck as the wax Stoker had applied so carefully gave way. Wilfred nodded once, then apparently thought better of it, wincing and sliding into a huddled heap upon the floor. He would be no help to me—and in fact would constitute a hindrance, wounded and vulnerable as he was—but I felt a surge of purpose in knowing he still lived and would be looking to me for protection.
“Almost there, my dear,” Eliza called, and I realised how far she had slipped into madness to have addressed the Beauty thus. She was not, had never been, a simple scientific experiment to Eliza. The waxwork was something more, and I might have pitied her had this obsession not turned her into a monster.
The train rocked to a stop, but the screaming of the engine did not abate. In the reflection of the glass, I saw flames leaping from the open furnace. In her haste, Eliza had apparently shovelled in every last bit of coal, stoking the fire to hellish heights.
She came towards me, and with almost superhuman strength, wrenched the lid from the casket. “Finally,” she said in a voice rising in triumph. For a moment, she rested her hand upon my cheek. “My god, you are warm! What have they done to you?”
She put a questing hand to my chest. As soon as her flesh touched mine, I knew the masquerade was finished. She reared back, her voice harsh as her grip tightened upon me. “You have a heartbeat,” she accused. “You are not my specimen! What have you done with her?”
I opened my eyes then and with a savage thrust, drove the heel of my palm into her nose. I heard the crunch of the shattered cartilage—most satisfying—and she dropped to her knees, howling in pain. I meant to leap from the casket in one smooth motion, but the garment I wore had become entangled with my nether limbs. I fell heavily onto Wilfred, who gave a low, agonised moan of such torture, I feared his soul had left his body.
Before I could get my feet under me, Eliza reached down, blood pouring from her nose and onto my face. She clouted me once, sharply, upon the temple and more of the wax cracked, falling in shards and revealing my face.
“You!” Her voice was the snarl of a cornered cat.
I blinked, dazed, and reached into my décolletage for my stiletto. She slapped my hand away, sending the weapon skittering along thefloor of the train, but before she could land another blow, I lifted my foot and drove my knee into parts unmentionable—a fiendish trick, and almost as effective upon a woman as a man. It purchased me a moment’s reprieve, and I might have made an escape, but I could not abandon poor Wilfred. He lay on his back, mouth agape and making the most terrible noises I had ever heard from a human being. His eyes were unfixed and glassy.
I had little time, I realised. I was physically fit and skilled in various means of self-defence, but Eliza was driven by her mania and was desperate. She took up the poker meant for stirring the coals in the engine, and advanced, arms outstretched, lips curled back in fury.
I edged away from her, wrapping my right hand in the folds of my robe as I moved. She did not close in swiftly, meaning instead to torture me a moment with the knowledge that I was about to die.
“Where is she?” she demanded hoarsely. “If you disguised yourself to look like her, you must know where she is.”
She moved a step forwards and I retreated the same distance. “If you kill me, you will never discover her whereabouts,” I told her.
She flicked a glance to Wilfred’s recumbent form. “I could always revive him and make him tell me. Before I kill him.”
“He doesn’t know.” Another step forwards for her, back for me. We were moving in a dance of death, locked together, our steps patterned perfectly and Eliza always in the lead.
“You’re lying,” she hissed.
“I am not, as it happens. But can you afford to take that chance?” I asked. “Imagine never seeing your great experiment again, Miss Elyot. The idea of her is what sustained you all these years, isn’t it? And now you’ve come so far. Could you really bear to lose her again?”
“You will tell me,” she said. “I could force you. Iwillforce you. And it will not be pleasant. You must know what I did to her. I shall do thesame to you, only I imagine it will be infinitely worse if I begin the process whilst you’re still alive.”
It was too gruesome a fate to contemplate, and I had had enough of her games. I drove my wrapped fist into the casket, shattering the nearest pane and neatly catching one of the broken pieces before it dropped. She lunged at the same moment I brought my arm up, and I caught her just under the chin. Stoker would no doubt have claimed it a lucky blow, but I knew enough of anatomy to have chosen well. I was not fortunate enough to strike a major blood vessel; there was no fount of blood or pulsing gore to win my freedom. But there was a sudden gush of ruddy wetness and she stopped, clapping a hand to her neck and staggering slightly.
Without waiting for her to regain her strength, I raced to Wilfred, looping my arms under his and dragging him from the train. He roused under the effort—I confess, I may have, in my haste, bumped his head upon the floor a time or two—and managed to get his own feet under himself. I supported him as he heaved his bulk forward.
“Hurry, Wilfred,” I urged. “We haven’t much time. She is coming!”
Behind us, Eliza was on the move, hand still clasped to her neck, shirt and fingers stained with her own life’s blood. It was a dreadful sight, one to strike horror in the heart, but it was not enough to stop her entirely. On she came, muttering threats in a low and rasping voice.
We had just gained the platform when Eliza staggered to us, giving Wilfred a mighty shove that drove him to the floor. Half carrying him as I had been, I would have been borne along with Wilfred, but Eliza reached out a gore-stained hand and pulled me back, wrapping one arm around my throat as she jammed the pointed edge of the poker into my side.
“Eliza!”
Halfway down the stairs in front of us stood Julius Elyot. At the sight of him, Eliza bared her teeth.
“You will not stop me, Julius,” she told him. “Not this time.”
“Eliza, what have you become?” he asked, his expression bereft. “How could you do that to Ambrose?”
“How could I not?” she demanded. Her grip did not loosen as she raged at him. “The pair of you took everything from me. Do you know what I could have become if it were not for you? Always thinking you knew best! But you didn’t, Julius. You were nothing to me.” She fairly spat the words. “You were so envious of me, you couldn’t bear to see my success so you destroyed it.”
“Success!” Julius descended a step. “Eliza, you were in the grip of madness. Ambrose and I did not understand it at first, and for that we are to blame. And when we did understand it, we permitted it to go on far too long.”
“Permitted. Who are you to permit or deny me anything?”