The Heartless City Read Online Free

taste in his mouth, but he forced himself to endure a few more gulps before stopping to breathe. He hated gin, hated its sour burn and rancid taste, but it was the most effective medicine for his affliction.
    Ever since the grave mistake he’d made a fortnight ago, Elliot had been able to feel the emotions of those around him―feel them in the marrow of his bones, as if they were his. His father had called him “thin-skinned” and “sensitive” all his life, but now he was more than sensitive; he was an open wound. The feelings of a passerby had the power to incapacitate him, even when the person in question was feeling something good. Once, when he was in Limehouse in the early morning hours, he passed a prostitute performing her services in an alley, and the fusion of her crippling shame and the customer’s blind desire was so repulsive and overwhelming he vomited in the street.
    Such an affliction would surely be detrimental in any place, but London was an ocean of terror, sorrow, and desperation. The fear and grief Elliot knew before seemed a fairy tale now; no physical blow or injury could ever match the pain he’d found in other people’s hearts. Even the servants who lived in the clean, bright safety of Buckingham Palace―people whom he’d previously regarded with the level of interest he held for the furniture―pulsed with fear, burned with anger, and ached with longing and grief. Perceiving the secret burdens of those around him was painful enough, but
feeling
their collective misery was unbearable.
    After a cough, he raised his hand and took another drink, sickened again but also calmed by the growing feeling of numbness, which spread through his veins and rose up through his skin like a coat of armor. Nothing could blot out the feelings entirely, but alcohol helped; it dulled the edges, softened the impact, diluted the potency. Drunk, he was slow and useless, but clear-headed, he was exposed.
    Perhaps the only trait he retained either way was cowardice.
    Slipping the flask back into his vest, he spit the taste out onto the cobblestone street and hurried on. When the alley opened up at Euston Road, he took a left, keeping close to the shadowy, padlocked buildings as he walked. The largest and most noticeable was King’s Cross station, which towered over the street like a massive, empty tomb.
    It seemed extremely wasteful to leave such a grand place untenanted, but Elliot understood why the city refused to convert it to something useful. The station was a symbol of hope that the quarantine would be lifted, that a cure would be discovered and London restored to its former glory. No one wanted to think that trains would never pass through it again, so it would remain a vacant relic wrapped in locks and chains.
    The security was necessary not only to keep out homeless vagrants but also fugitive Hydes. A countless number went undetected, since anyone―except for women, for whom the monster-inducing drug was inexplicably fatal―could be an infected Hyde, but those who’d been discovered hid in careful, moving nests in order to avoid being captured and executed. Common belief was that most of them lived in the tunnels of the abandoned underground railway, which even the police were often too afraid to enter.
    The sky behind the stagnant clock on the station’s tower was dark now, and snow was starting to fall in ashen clumps through the smoky air. Elliot shivered, which meant the gin was doing its job too slowly, so he took another swig and trudged up the street to
La Maison Des Fleurs
.
    He and Cam had come here a month and a half ago for “St. Cambrian’s Day,” which was what Cam called his birthday since it fell on St. Valentine’s Day. The music hall was larger and grander than most, but not elegant. Every inch of the place was drenched in its gaudy flower theme: light fixtures shaped like tulips, wallpaper crammed with garish blooms, waitresses with “floral” names in tawdry petal-pink