The Lazarus Engine – Chapter 12
The Mausoleum
The cemetery behind Vane Manor was a city of the dead. Gravestones leaned like crooked teeth. Angels wept over moss-covered tombs. And at the center, behind an iron gate rusted shut, stood the Vane family mausoleum.
Thorne used Pound’s key. The lock turned with a sound like a bone snapping.
The gate swung open.
Inside, the air was cold and dry. Not the damp of decay—the chill of preservation. Gas lamps flickered to life as if expecting them. The walls were lined with marble niches, each containing a coffin. But at the far end of the chamber, something else waited.
A glass coffin.
Inside it, a body. A man, middle-aged, dressed in a black suit. His hands were folded over his chest. His eyes were closed. And his chest—his chest was open. A brass engine sat where his heart should be.
“Victor March,” Thorne whispered.
Gray stepped closer. “He’s preserved. But the engine isn’t ticking.”
“Because it’s not complete. This is the prototype. The one that killed him.” Thorne touched the glass. “Charlotte has been coming here. Visiting him. Talking to him. Keeping him ready for the final engine.”
Around the glass coffin, other bodies lay on stone tables. Each had a brass engine in their chest—but these engines were smaller, cruder. The failed experiments.
“These are the Order members who volunteered,” Gray said. “The ones who wanted to be resurrected.”
“They died for nothing,” Thorne said. “March couldn’t bring them back. He could only stop their hearts and preserve their bodies. They’ve been here for years, waiting.”
“And Charlotte wants to be the one to finally wake them.”
Thorne turned from the glass coffin. On the wall behind it, someone had written in chalk:
“The third winding brings the dead to life. The third winding requires a living heart. The third winding will happen at midnight. At the Royal Institute. Dr. Thorne will provide the heart.”
“She’s not hiding,” Gray said. “She’s announcing.”
“She wants me to know. She wants me to be afraid.” Thorne pulled out his pocket watch. “She wants me to run. So she can chase.”
“Then we don’t run. We walk. Straight into her trap. But we bring Pound’s counter-measure. We bring every resource we have.”
Thorne looked at the body of Victor March. At the empty engine in his chest. At the peaceful expression on his face.
“He’s not dead,” Thorne said. “Not really. As long as Charlotte believes she can bring him back, he’s alive in her mind. We have to break that belief. Show her that death is final.”
“How?”
“By letting her try. By letting her wind the engine. And then—by showing her that nothing happens. That her father’s heart will never beat again.”
Gray’s face was pale. “That’s cruel.”
“It’s mercy. The hardest kind.”
They left the mausoleum. Behind them, the gas lamps flickered once, then went dark.
And inside the glass coffin, Victor March’s hand twitched.