FOR TORI,

with all my love

PROLOGUE

The Foxhound

SIX HUNTING HOUNDS HAD PERISHED in previous experiments. Dr. Cornelius Hyde crouched in the cellar of his manor staring over his spectacles at Magnus, the last surviving hound. The iron cage was sturdy, its door locked tight, and the dog looked healthy except for his drooping head. He had survived the operation that replaced his skull, jaws, and teeth with metal, but the weight of it all was too much for him to bear for long periods of time. He needed strength and ferocity. Soon, Hyde hoped, these needs would be dealt with.

Hyde opened a hatch at the top of the cage and carefully attached a coiled wire to each of the bolts that extended out of the hound’s shoulders. The dog didn’t move. The doctor then connected the wire to a gyroscope sitting on a broken chair.

Hyde sat in another chair at a table. His smooth, ink-stained hands trembled as he jotted down: March 7, 1860, 7:35 p.m. Trial 7. He felt certain that this time the elixir would have the desired effect. He hadn’t slept or washed in days, having spent every hour measuring the elements precisely, mixing them, and boiling the compound in a glass beaker. He didn’t wish to see his favorite foxhound suffer with the same tremors and terrors that had consumed the other hounds as they succumbed to a slow, contorted death.

Hyde spoke hoarsely. “You are a good companion.” Magnus raised his head with some effort and wagged his tail. His master winced and ran a hand through his graying shock of hair. It had been months since he’d had it cut. “This is for science,” he explained tenderly. “Science. Mother Nature’s design has failed you, but mine will not.”

Magnus went on wagging. He was nine years old. His back was lean and well muscled, his front legs as straight as posts. The dog had always been loyal and even-tempered; not once had he snapped in anger. He had hunted alongside Hyde in the days when the doctor needed to feign interest in such folly in order to procure funding from lords and gentlemen. Their contributions enabled him to continue his research. Those days were well past.

The members of the Society of Science in London now treated him with scorn, accusing him of madness and tampering with the natural order, as though changing a creature’s chemistry and structure for the better was something beyond evil. Scientific heresy! they’d shouted. They cut off his funds. Half the scientists were members of Parliament. They convinced the government to declare his experiments a crime. A crime! The thought of those fat, arrogant politicians debating the value of his work enraged Dr. Hyde. He pictured them voting to outlaw his experiments, the Society of Science dullards nodding their heads.

“Fools!” he whispered. “Stupid, mindless fools!”

A few days after the vote, constables kicked open the door to his city home and confiscated most of his equipment. He fled to his country manor to conduct his experiments in the cellar. He scrounged for funds and was reduced to using the last of his inheritance and his remaining few beakers and compounds to carry out trials upon his own animals. Soon he would be dragged away to debtor’s prison.

Above him the floorboards creaked. He listened intently, ears buzzing. Until recently he would have assumed it to be his manservant, but Hyde had dismissed him a fortnight earlier. Could it be a constable? He waited for a full minute, finally deciding the sound was only the shifting of the house. It grumbled every time the weather changed.

Hyde picked up a flask of bloodred liquid from the table, the burned almond smell making him cringe. He’d been working on this tincture now for seven years. “For the sake of knowledge,” he said to the air.

He carefully filled the bowl in the cage. The hound stared at his master, his neck even weaker from the weight of his metal head, his tail limp.

“Go on, Magnus,” Hyde urged, his heart near breaking. “Drink. Drink your medicine.”

But the dog wouldn’t move. Hyde couldn’t help wondering if Magnus knew he was in danger. Over the past few weeks his keen ears had surely picked up the agitated barks, unearthly howls, and final whimpers of his brethren. Did he understand that he would be next? For a long time the dog watched Hyde, though he could barely hold his head up. He began lapping the tincture, his pink tongue rubbing on metal teeth. He kept