Page 122 of Summer of Sacrifice

“I haven’t the foggiest idea what he’s plotting,” Cal muttered. “Something isn’t right.” He looked from the flyer to the platform. “I’ve only seen that mechanism one other place.”

“I’m assuming you mean the very viper’s den we plan to break into momentarily?”

Cal nodded grimly. The deep underbelly of the Société de Guerre’s more sinister side.

Just then, the noise of the crowd began to taper off, all of those in attendance turning to give their full attention to the man taking his place on the platform. With grey hair and silver beard, paired with his dapper clothing, Seleste never would have guessed the man to be a brilliant surgeon. She supposed they couldn’t very well walk around in leather aprons splattered with blood like the butchers they were called, but she had to admit it was the image she’d had in mind.

Dr. James de Monfort raised both arms, spread wide in a congenial welcome to the crowd gathered there for him—for his beguiling demonstration. “Good day to you all, and thank you for coming to my Anatomical Peculiarities Symposium.”

The audience politely clapped as the air around them seemed to still.

“I have chosen this venue out of doors and under the open sky for my demonstration because it is not one for the faint of heart. In any case, I believe it is a moment that will alter History itself.”

Seleste’s pulse quickened. Logically, she knew it was just a turn of phrase, but it was hard to ignore, as it was the Sisters Solstice’s duty to alter History.

Cal was rigid next to her.

“First,” Dr. de Montfort called out, “I would like to demonstrate what the mechanism you see behind me was designed to do on a smaller scale.”

He motioned for someone off to the side, who approached carrying a limp, white object. The crowd inhaled sharply as one, realisation dawning on them. It was a dead rabbit. Several mothers clamped hands over their children’s eyes or turned and fled with them altogether.

“What we have done here,” Dr. de Montfort said intelligibly as he unbuttoned his shirt sleeves and began rolling them up, “is harness the power of fire, of lightning, to shock life into returning to the dead.”

Everyone stilled. Even the birds ceased their chirping.

The nameless assistant laid the rabbit on the wooden slat of the mechanism, and Dr. de Montfort approached. They all watched in fraught silence and horrified awe as he connected two prongs of some kind that looked, at a distance, like eating utensils into the rabbit’s flesh.

“Now,” The doctor’s voice rang out, his excitement and pride evident, “when I flip this lever, you will see History in the making!”

With a flourish, the lever was flipped, and two jolts of lightning shot into the rabbit. The stench of singed fur filled the charged air. And the rabbit twitched. The crowd gave a collective gasp.

Another flip of the lever, and the rabbit’s head swivelled. Murmurs broke out across the gathered, but Dr. de Montfort spoke over them.

“Life can be restored with this mechanism! Think of the possibilities! Ones that are already within our grasp!” He waved another assistant forward, who wheeled in a long wooden table, a form atop it, covered in a white sheet.

“No…” Cal breathed out.

The surgeon whipped the sheet off with a flourish to reveal a corpse. A startle went through the crowd in a wave, beginning with those closest to the platform—the corpse—and pulsing outward.

“Apologies for the less-than-ideal scenario for those of weak constitution,” de Montfort said as he pulled out a scalpel, “but it is imperative that we have a very fresh specimen. This man was brought to the morgue this very morning. A John Doe, I’m afraid. Died from an enlarged thyroid.”

Cal was as pale as the sheet that had shrouded the corpse. “Cal?” Seleste tugged at his cloak.

His face was stricken when he turned to her. “This is what I saw down there.”

“Beneath Société de Guerre?”

But her words cut off when the surgeon bent over the corpse and sliced down his sternum, a spray of blood splattering his white shirt and grey waistcoat. A lady next to them fainted, and several others gasped. Seleste could only think that he now looked more like the butcher image she’d had in mind.

As he used a bone saw and rib shears, shards of the corpse’s bones sprayed into the air. Finally, de Montfort set the tools aside, and the surgeon reached into the man’s chest cavity with his bare hands, pulling free a heart.

Glossy and dripping, de Monfort held the heart up before strapping it to his mechanism and inserting the small lightning rods. “Watch closely!” Without realising it, everyone scooched forward in rapt attention.

The surgeon flipped the lever, lightning burst, and the heart beat once. A preternatural stillness settled over the crowd as de Montfort pushed the lever back down, prepared to throw it again.

When he did, lightning shot into the dead organ again, and the heart pumped. And pumped. And pumped. Someone screamed, but Seleste was counting the beats as she knew most of the crowd was, too.

Thirteen. The heart pumped thirteen times before it stilled again.

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