The Dark Archive (The Invisible Library Novel) Read online

  “Let’s block off the living quarters, then—just in case. The last thing we want is an inconvenient ambush from that direction. Or for an aggressor to make an escape.” Irene crossed to the air lock and placed her hand on the opening mechanism. “Lever which I am touching, bend sideways and out of true.”

  The heavy brass lever warped until she was sure no one—no one human, anyway—would have the strength to straighten it. She then listened at the air lock for a moment but could hear nothing from the other side—no shouts from trapped enemies, no cries for help . . . no unspeakable slithering. She’d seen a lot in her line of work.

  “Good work, Winters.” Vale paused at the other air lock. “I’ll open this one. Be ready for anything.”

  He pulled the lever, the air lock opened—and three men came bursting through. After anticipating everything and nothing, Irene was almost relieved at this frontal assault. They were moving jerkily, but with unexpected speed and ferocity. Irene stuck her foot out, tripping the beefiest one of their number. He sprawled on the floor and writhed unnaturally, like a broken toy. But the other two turned to face them.

  Their aggressors both wore naval uniform, as did the man on the floor. This close, Irene could see the ones facing them had smears of blood on their collars. Even more worryingly, silvery threads glittered in their irises and their faces displayed an inhuman slackness. Their mouths hung open and their heads were cocked oddly, like marionettes. One held a crowbar, and though the other was unarmed, his huge hands were clenched into fists, ready to attack.

  In the distance, Irene could hear the sound of running feet. Reinforcements? Or more “marionettes”? She had to assume the worst. She glimpsed Vale raising his cane, but her attention was on the man lunging towards her. With surprising speed, his hands went for her throat. She dodged and let him collide with the wall—but it hardly slowed him. He rose and barrelled towards her again, still moving like a puppet with hands outstretched. As she backed away, she saw a glint of metal at his throat. Something that bulged under the concealing fabric of his collar . . . and moved.

  Time to finish this. “Uniform trousers, fall and hobble your wearers!” she ordered.

  The two men crashed to their knees, joining their companion on the floor. Irene noted that none of the three were reacting with the modesty one might expect at such an exposure. And Victorians did have a reputation for prudishness. They merely thrashed in an effort to regain their feet. Even the one who went in for purple silk underwear.

  Vale’s erstwhile opponent was already rising, so Vale tapped him with his cane. There was a flash of electricity and the man screamed in pain, his back arching, before finally collapsing to lie motionless. Something rippled around the back of his neck, wriggling under his collar like a snake. Irene took a hasty step back.

  “What the devil is that? Can you do something about it?” Vale asked as he delivered shocks to the other two men. Both had shed the handicap of their trousers and were jerking to their feet.

  “Not without knowing what ‘it’ is,” Irene answered. The Language was a powerful tool, but to use it she needed the correct words. Mysterious object wriggling under that man’s clothing was insufficiently precise, as her mentor Coppelia might have put it. Irene smothered a smile, feeling a little giddy as the adrenaline of the fight faded. “But at least electricity seems to work.”

  “Indeed.” Vale was standing over the writhing men. “But my cane has a limited charge,” he noted, as the screaming died away.

  “Air locks, shut,” Irene ordered. As the remaining air locks closed, blocking any further attacks, she leaned forward to look at the unconscious men. Curiosity was prompting her to unbutton their collars to investigate what she’d seen—but her imagination was painting a vivid picture of something horrific. Irene wasn’t familiar with all the magical monstrosities that Vale’s world might or might not contain. Vampires and werewolves she knew about, but what else might there be? She couldn’t see enough . . .

  “Uniform jacket on the grey-haired man, unbutton and open,” she ordered.

  The jacket obeyed, peeling back like wrapping paper. The man’s shirt was stained with fresh blood. The thing that moved underneath it was two feet long, writhing and twisting like a length of cable.

  “Note the fresh wound on his neck,” Vale said quietly. “He appears otherwise uninjured. I fear it will not emerge on its own, whatever it is. You will need to undress him further.”

  Irene nodded. Such instructions from the upright Vale would be amusing—under other circumstances. “Shirt on the grey-haired man, unbutton and open.”

  As the buttons slid from their holes and the shirt-front parted, there was a flash of gleaming metal. Something leapt at her, and Irene took in burning blue eyes and dripping blood. She threw herself backwards, dropping under the creature as it sailed over her head. Vale’s cane flashed out to intercept but missed. The creature curved through the air before landing on the floor, skittering across it. It moved, Irene thought, more like a wood-louse rather than a snake—could there be claws or legs underneath it?

  And more to the point, how did she stop it with the Language? What should she call it—metal contraption? But that would shut down all the equipment in the room. “Vale!” she shouted. “Do you know what that thing is?”

  “No, but don’t let it get into the air ducts!” Vale answered. He advanced on the creature, his cane ready.

  “Keep it busy.” Irene edged sideways and picked up a nearby stool. She glanced back at the other two men, but no more creatures had emerged.

  The creature scuttled along the floor, hugging the wall and trying but failing to writhe into the machinery. Fortunately the panels were all well-sealed. Then it darted at Vale in a horrifyingly fluid rush of speed.

  Irene took advantage of the creature’s focus on Vale to craft a swift sentence. “Stool that I’m touching, pin down the moving mechanical creature,” she ordered in the Language.

  The stool tore itself out of Irene’s hand, upended itself, and slammed into the creature, holding it in place with the seat. Irene rubbed her forehead, wincing at a momentary pain. While it wasn’t a major use of the Language, it was imprecise and had drained her strength. The creature squirmed under the stool, metal legs scraping manically against the floor and leaving long scratches.

  “All right,” she said. “What do you make of it?”

  Vale knelt down to inspect it as thuds came from one of the air lock doors. Irene’s earlier work was successfully blocking their entry—for now. “Interesting,” he said, ignoring the noise. “I believe I do know what this is. It’s rather more advanced than reports I’ve read, though.”

  “Is it a device that controls human victims by invading their nervous systems?” Irene “guessed.”

  Vale gave her a hard stare. “Have you been reading my correspondence again, Winters?”

  “Now, why would I do that?” she dissembled.

  Vale’s eyes narrowed, but he eventually relented. “Yes—this contraption appears to be derived from the work of Dr. Brabasmus. But it is self-propelled . . . and rather larger than the doctor’s original designs for cerebral controllers. Those were barely the size of a scarab, and lodged at the back of the neck.”

  “What happened to the doctor?”

  “Murdered a couple of months ago, and his laboratory looted.” Vale frowned. “Now, what did he call them?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Irene saw a second creature’s head emerge from the neck of its host’s jacket. “Vale,” she said quietly, her eyes flicking towards the creature.

  Vale’s hand tightened on his cane. “Brabasmiators, that was it,” he murmured.

  Irene froze. That wasn’t even good English. Why did scientists have to create their own words, rather than use perfectly good existing ones? Did nobody ever think of the poor translators? In desperation she grasped for Vale’s earlier description.
“Cerebral controllers, deactivate!”

  The light vanished from the new creature’s eyes, and it and the one beneath the stool went limp. A third one stopped its disquieting wriggling under its host’s clothing. Irene gave a sigh of relief.

  Vale checked for a pulse on the nearest man’s neck, then the other two, and shook his head. He rose, dusting his hands off. “We have no way of knowing how many of the other men on this station are similarly controlled. Inconvenient.”

  “Just how important is this document?” Irene asked. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Under the circumstances, my hopes of you viewing it without prior bias are somewhat pointless. I believe there is a master criminal at large in London, Winters, a manipulator and emperor of crime. I also believe that he is responsible for the recent kidnapping attempts on you, the bullet which nearly hit Strongrock, the stabbing of Madame Sterrington . . . Lord Silver isn’t the only foreign spy in London. And I was informed that the French Secret Service had obtained some valuable information on our attacker, a letter which named very interesting names. Our agents had intercepted it and brought it here.” His eyes glittered almost feverishly. “This is our chance at some proof, Winters, finally. This is my adversary as much as yours. He is striking at all my contacts, all my . . . friends. But I need evidence.”

  “I see,” Irene said slowly. It made sense that Vale would be invested in this. But she didn’t voice her deeper thoughts. In high-chaos worlds, stories and their tropes had a tendency to come true—for both good tales and bad ones. Now London’s greatest detective had found a worthy adversary, a master criminal. If this were a story, the two of them would now be bound together—as closely as lovers—until one or the other was dead. She shivered. “Did you know about this before or after you accepted my invitation to Guernsey?”

  “Know about what?” Vale asked, scrutinising the scratch marks on the floor.

  “The evidence about the ‘emperor of crime.’” Irene was deeply, deeply irritated that Vale hadn’t mentioned these theories earlier, but it was unfortunately true to his character. He was the sort of person—the sort of detective—who wouldn’t mention his theories until he had evidence to back them up. Vale had Fae blood somewhere in his family tree, and at times he strayed unfortunately close to the archetype of the Great Detective—for worse as well as for better.

  “Shortly after you planned to visit Guernsey and I agreed to accompany you.” He turned to give her the full focus of his attention. “You believe it’s a trap?”

  “Either that, or our timing is extraordinarily unfortunate.” Irene nodded at the corpses. “What are the odds that we’d walk in just at the moment when they’ve been controlled and are attempting to kill intruders?”

  “If so, then we shouldn’t remain here any longer than necessary.” He experimentally flicked a couple of switches and scrutinised one of the viewscreens. “The submarine is still docked here. Be ready with that Language of yours, Winters. I have no desire to find out first hand what it feels like to be controlled by one of those creatures. You’ll have noticed the scratches on the floor come from the direction of the submarine air lock.”

  Irene nodded and stepped back, willing to let Vale take the lead—he was the one with the electric sword-stick, after all. She was an agent of the Library, an interdimensional organisation that collected books to preserve the balance of worlds. As such, she could use the Language to force reality to her will. But only if she wasn’t distracted by cerebral controllers.

  However, her stomach remained knotted with tension. If this was a trap, every moment they were down here was a further risk. And they were under the sea here. Even if Kai—dragon prince, colleague, friend, and lover—had a natural affinity for water and mastery over it, she didn’t. Being unable to speak due to drowning could be a great drawback when attempting to use the Language. This all made it an excellent location for an ambush . . .

  Of course. “Wait,” she said. “What aren’t we noticing?”

  “Clarify, Winters,” Vale said impatiently.

  “We come down here. We’re attacked. Our first impulse, so we could then get out as quickly as possible, would be to go directly to the submarine to collect the letter. That’s where you were supposed to meet your contact. If your reasons for being here have been discovered, are you sure we want to be that predictable?”

  “Cogently argued, Winters. Unfortunately, I need that letter.”

  “I know,” Irene countered. “I’m just trying to think like a master criminal.”

  “You hardly need to try, Winters.” But there was a certain affection to his words—he knew all about her frequent book thefts. “Hmm. My logical next step would be to radio the surface and report the situation. Let us see . . .”

  He indicated one of the consoles. “This is the one radio link to the surface. So if I were to think like a master criminal, this is where I would place my trap. Can you use your Language to deactivate any such unpleasant surprises?”

  Irene knew her mentor Coppelia would have approved. You only needed to be blasé once to be dead. “All explosive devices or dangerous traps, deactivate,” she ordered.

  There was a tiny but satisfyingly audible click from behind a panel.

  Irene and Vale shared a nod. He slid his fingers behind some edging on the right hand side, then pressed two buttons, and the panel swung open. Behind it was a narrow recess, carefully stacked with sticks of dynamite. A wire ran from the small stack, through a tiny hole drilled in the panel, and snaked towards the lever that opened the air lock. Positioned on top was a phonograph, loaded with a record and ready to play.

  Irene was disturbed. This was very elaborate. First the controlled men, now this dynamite—what next? “Those men that attacked us—in their condition, there’s no way they would have had the intellect to set this up.”

  “I agree.” Vale switched on the phonograph. “Let us see who is leaving us mysterious messages.”

  A click. The record began to revolve, and the needle dipped to touch it. There was a noise of rustling paper. “Good evening,” a male voice said. “Or possibly afternoon. I’m not sure what time it is where you are. But since you are listening to this and not dead, my congratulations to you, Peregrine Vale.”

  Irene’s fingers bit into her palms hard enough to hurt and the colour drained from her cheeks. She knew that voice. She’d killed its owner. “Lord Guantes . . .” she said in horror, staring at Vale. He was Fae—a manipulator and plotter who’d tried to touch off a war between the Fae and the dragons. That was why she’d killed him. Irene remembered, uncomfortably clearly, the feeling of the knife sliding between his ribs and the blood on her hands. There was no way she could have been mistaken as to his death.

  “Of course,” the recording went on, “like all things in this life, my congratulations are strictly temporary. You have caused me a great deal of inconvenience, and you are about to pay for it. Don’t bother looking for that letter, Mr. Vale. It has already left the premises. Which is more than you’ll do.”

  The blare of an alarm suddenly split the air. Irene spun round, trying to determine where the noise was coming from. Red glass shades slid over the ether-lamps, which flashed in a panic-inducing strobe.

  “According to my arrangements, that noise would be the base’s self-destruct signal,” Lord Guantes said helpfully. “I imagine your friends back in the town will have an edifying view of any underwater explosions. Goodbye.” The record clicked off.

  The alarm continued to shriek.

  CHAPTER 2

  Vale strode to the control panels, flipping switches with the certainty of a man who knew what buttons to press. Irene had to admire his thoroughness; very few men would memorise a subterranean base’s self-destruct protocols before venturing forth.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t pay off.

  Vale pressed his lips together in what Irene recognized as a s
ign of extreme bad temper. She decided it was time for her to attempt their salvation. “Self-destruct system, deactivate!” she ordered the air.

  Sudden silence fell across the room like a benediction, and the lighting returned to normal.

  Irene rubbed her forehead, not sure whether her incoming headache was due to use of the Language or the alarm. It had been very shrill. “‘Your friends back in town,’ he said. Lord Guantes didn’t expect me to be here.”

  “Your presence is greatly appreciated,” Vale said. But there was an undertone to his gracious words, something that suggested he felt somehow . . . cheated?

  I’ve stepped into his private duel with a master criminal, Irene realized. It feels like an intrusion, however much common sense tells him otherwise, and however much he hates the suggestion he might be affected by Fae archetypes.

  “Do we need to do anything to make sure that the self-destruct doesn’t, well, self-destruct again?” she asked.

  “We must assume that the entire control system is compromised.” Vale eyed the control panels with irritation. “And as you’ve just demonstrated, Winters, you can deactivate a trap with the Language. But the normal functioning of equipment—such as the self-destruct switch—might not seem like a threat.” He moved in closer, inspecting the phonograph. “Yes. There’s a wire behind here—once it finished playing, the stylus lifting off the disc triggered the signal to the self-destruct. He correctly assumed we’d play it to the end.”

  “So far he’s demonstrated an annoying ability to predict our moves,” Irene muttered.