The Strange and Deadly Portraits of Bryony Gray by E. Latimer

Author:E. Latimer [Latimer, E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tundra
Published: 2018-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

The next morning Bryony discovered that there was a very good reason that nobody except dead people rode in the backs of funeral carriages. The ride was unusually bumpy, seeing as there were no seats in the back, and she pressed her hands to the wide glass window, trying to brace herself. Her body ached from being continuously tense for the last ten minutes.

By contrast, she could hear Constantine whistling cheerfully up front. He’d been thrilled to drive the funeral carriage, exclaiming how very fashionable he would look perched atop it.

She didn’t think much of his taste, if she were honest. It was a huge, black coach—long and rectangular, to fit a coffin—with glass on all four sides. The walls were draped with heavy red curtains on the inside, and sharp red spikes jutted from the rooftop at all four corners. It was a wicked-looking thing, ornately threatening, and not something she’d like her dead body to be transported in at all, never mind her perfectly live one.

But it wasn’t as if they had a choice, and besides, there didn’t seem to be anyone to gawk at them as they rolled past. The crowd in front of Bryony’s house appeared to have moved on, leaving the street full of empty carriages and piles of burned and broken picture frames. Not only did it make it difficult to navigate with the carriage, but it was also eerie. The city seemed…abandoned.

Every street they traveled through seemed to be worse than the next. Most were in shambles, some crowded with overturned carriages and buggies, automobiles abandoned in the center, many with engines still running. In the market square the stands had been knocked over and the roads were crowded with bruised fruit and vegetables. More than one building along each road was in flames or just starting to smoke.

Down the next street and the next. There was only the odd person here or there, sometimes running, ducking from one upturned carriage to the next, and sometimes cowering in doorways and on balconies, trying to stay out of sight. The blare of sirens could be heard non-stop, even through the thick glass of the carriage, and Bryony’s stomach tied itself into knots as she pushed the red velvet curtains aside and peered out the window, pressing her face to the glass.

She kept a lookout for the painted monsters, but she didn’t really expect to see any. It looked as if they’d already been through. They seemed to be spreading through the center of the city, now most likely heading for the outskirts, the wealthier neighborhoods, which was exactly where their carriage was headed.

Neither Mira nor Thompson seemed to have much interest in looking out the windows. They were both white-faced and silent this morning. Last night, Mira had managed to find an old medical kit in the bathroom. The kit had been covered in a layer of dust, but it contained a roll of bandages, among other things. Constantine, who’d been awoken by Mira’s

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