The Nightmare Detective

by K Childs

  He paused, mouth twisting around a thought, but then his eyes narrowed and he closed his lips.

  I smiled demurely and motioned Simmons and Hardigan to follow me. The Professor had remained unscathed, miraculously, through all the insanity.

  We found one of the squaddies that had arrived with Puttick. The constable had some room in his cab, but we waited almost an hour before he drove the three of us back to the station.

  The Superintendent was asleep, and I stole into my office with no intention of waking anyone.

  I told Hardigan. “Professor, you ought to find a hotel.”

  Hardigan pulled his jacket on over his shoulders and straightened himself. “I say, do you know what time it is?”

  “Too late to book into a hotel, Inspector,” Simmons

  murmured.

  “Alright, but we’ll be a long while still, Professor. Please, at least have supper.”

  “I ate a few hours ago.” He sat down and placed the wooden sword-box on the floor.

  I pulled out the correct form for the incident and tossed one at Simmons. “We’re writing this now, before Puttick has time to mess with the events.”

  “You think he’d do that, Inspector?”

  “Simmons, do you remember when you and Bryce were hoping for that transfer, I took you, and Bryce lost his arm because Puttick ordered him to stick it into the Dryad’s tree?”

  Simmons sat down and licked his pen. “I hope Ben’s caught up with the Duke. You got separated during your escape?”

  Changing the topic, I said, “What were you and the Duke doing at a damned brothel?”

  “We were out drinking see, and we noticed it on the way back to the home. It’s been right lovely staying in a stylish house—all them pictures on the wall.”

  Simmons loved art. He wasn’t very eloquent about it, but he did have impressive taste. He spent free time to attend art galleries and had even saved up enough to buy a few pieces from local artists.

  I nodded. “Any trouble?”

  “You kidding? Ain’t slept a wink in two days, Ma’am.”

  That probably explained the irritability. “Good.”

  “I ain’t used to being awake so long. It’s not good for the body.”

  “We make sacrifices for King and Country.”

  Simmons gave me a look, as if he was pretty sure I had slept while I’d been incarcerated. He wasn’t wrong. We wrote by the slim gas lamp on my desk, making haste where normally such reports took a good deal more time.

  Later still by the time we finished.

  I placed the reports in Caudroy’s in-tray in his office and waved Simmons over. “Get some rest. Send Constable Marcus to replace you at the Duke’s.”

  Simmons scrawled out the address for the hotel the Duke was supposed to be staying in and passed it to me. I called up the late-night cab that the Agency kept around for situations such as this.

  While Hardigan and I waited for the cab, I hefted the weight of the sword in my hands. Heavy, unwieldy, I didn’t think I could do much with it.

  “Professor, I’m afraid I’m going to have to drop you at the Duke’s hotel while I go on to his apartment. Sergeant Ben Wallace is there, and God willing, the Duke had the sense to retire there for safety. Sergeant Wallace will need you to tell him what you can about the research you’ve done on dragons.”

  “Why are you going to the Duke’s house at such a late hour if the Duke won’t be there?”

  “There is something I need to confirm. A last piece of evidence, as it were.”

  Hardigan looked worried, but I put on a fresh jacket and walked us briskly as I could downstairs. My knees and middle ached from all the running and wheezing I’d been doing, and I was ready to crawl. My feet felt as if I’d stuffed rocks into my shoes and as battered and scarred as I was, I hardly presented a neat face.

  The cab arrived precisely on time and we boarded it.

  We stopped at the small hotel Ben had selected for His Grace’s safety. It was cosy, old and no lights shone from the outside. A good cover. I got out of the car with Hardigan. I didn’t want this to take too long.

  “Ben will probably be awake,” I told him, leaning over to sign the slip that the driver handed me. He was on retainer with the Agency, but this meant that using his services had to be signed off.

  “Is that him?” Hardigan asked.

  I straightened, glancing at who the professor was pointing at. It was nearing dawn, too late for anyone to be out and about.

  It wasn’t Ben. Two men in neat suits came toward us; they had stepped out of a clanking, clicking vehicle ticking like a clock. Another one of the clockwork beasts running on steam or electricity. Neither man was small; they were uniform in their matching gait and attire. Black gloves, hats, coats and sharply shined shoes, fresh out of the military, short haircuts each. They might have been brothers but for the man on the left was blonde and the man on the right was ebon haired.

  They didn’t speak. Instead they stepped between myself and Hardigan and grabbed me around either shoulder.

  I started, throwing myself down and wriggling out of a grip that hadn’t quite asserted itself and then wrenching away. “What the Devil do you think you are doing?”

  “Come with us, Ma’am,” Blondie demanded. He and his partner moved violently toward me once more; faster, harder than before.

  Ebony grabbed my shoulder and tore my coat as I peeled away. Anger flashed on his face and he drew a baton from his side, swinging at me.

  I took the blunt of the baton and staggered with the force of the hit.

  Blondie grabbed me in a bear-hug, lifting my feet off the ground, despite my shriek, and wrapping his massive hands around my arms. A woman of my small size and insignificant muscles was at a disadvantage in wrestling.

  A hand clapped over my mouth. I bit down and wriggled—professor Hardigan brought his wooden case down on Ebony’s head—shouting loudly.

  The dark-haired man drew a gun from his pocket next, levelled it at the professor. “Back off or I shoot you, old man.”

  Hardigan froze.

  Blondie hissed, wrenching his bleeding hand from my mouth, and then his fist collided with my jaw.

  Red lights exploded around the world.

  I was dazed. I’d never been hit so hard in the face. It hurt more than I had expected, and I lost what little traction I had.

  The next moment, I was thrown into the backseat of a car.

  They slammed the door closed and slid in while I was still trying to get my wits about me.

  Blondie slid into the seat next to me, grabbing my ankle as I thrust my leg out to hit him in the chin. My boot didn’t even clear his fist.

  I pulled on the Ether, fire rolling out of my fingertips now; shadows fell out of Blondie’s hands, closing around the flame and smothering it. A Tenebrologist.

  Not good.

  He punched me again. Hard.

  I hit the side of the car door as the vehicle roared around a corner and my stomach lurched. Blood trickled down from my nose, smearing across my mouth and dripping from my chin. Any law enforcement in such circumstance knows there is a good probability of being killed when thugs nab you off the street. Fighting as hard as I could now might be my only chance at escape shortly.

  “Settle down, or I’ll have to hurt you, bitch.”

  I snarled and turned to him, blood smearing across my cheek. I drew up Ether and made a blade, a small knife for a confined space.

  I stabbed at Blondie; he was faster. A fist hurtled across the small space and smacked the back of my wrist so hard I lost all feeling in the limb. He caught the knife, then stabbed it through my hand and into the seat of the car.

  It didn’t hurt at first; my blood was up and I was focused on survival. But the sudden shock did force me to pause for a beat or two. Pain came later—I tasted blood on my lips. Copper filling my mouth from the blood pouring out of my nose. The dull throb of the broken nose was
spreading across my face, making my eyes water and the world waver in and out of a crimson haze.

  The pain that spread up my hand to my shoulder to my head was enough to drown that out.

  “Jesus, Anthony,” Ebony said. He was watching us in the backseat, but not helping.

  “She bit me, Greg.”

  I was struggling to breathe. Clamping down on the pain was one thing, but I didn’t know what these muggers wanted. I needed to get out of the car. “What do you want?”

  Greg shook his head, although I could barely see the motion. “We been hired to get you, that’s what we done. Sit still and we won’t have to smack you around again.”

  “Who hired you? Where are you taking me?”

  Anthony backhanded me into the door again and I fell silent, watching my blood drip from the window.

  There was no traffic, and we left Piccadilly. We were approaching Somerstown—the University College was here—where clankers did their research and investigations into the mysteries of steam and clockwork technology.

  I took a moment or two to gather myself. What I was about to do would hurt and I needed to be ready for the shock and the pain.

  I waited, pensively, watching the dark streets, until I saw the outline of the University College rising out of the apartments and buildings like a beacon.

  The car slowed as we came to a turn.

  I released the knife, melting it back into the Ether. Freeing my hand from the seat, I slammed my good arm into the door, pulling the handle sharply. The door swung open and I jumped out.

  The men shouted.

  I hit the ground rolling, my arms curled and legs pulled in.

  The impact jarred me, pain flaring through every sense down my back, and I rolled like a wheel. Charlie and I had once tumbled down hills like this as children, and I let that instinct guide me, curling into a ball and rolling until the momentum of the car dispersed.

  I was battered and bruised, but everything was working when I staggered to my feet. The car screamed to a stop, skidding in the dark just ahead of me.

  My body hurt more than I wanted it to, and my coat was ripped and torn. I wiped blood from my mouth and lumbered to the sidewalk. A few seconds later, I got my feet working again and started running.

  I could hear them yelling, and a gun barked in the night; the bullet hit the wall a few metres from me.

  I ran.

  Anthony and Greg, kidnappers extraordinaire, were not far behind me. They’d lost any advantage they might have had with their longer legs and the natural athleticism that I sorely lacked. Instead, I had a small head-start.

  I needed to lose them.

  I ran to the University of London since it was the only landmark I knew. I’d been here once, giving a lecture on criminal activities in the Dreamscape to a room full of bored students.

  They had night-guards, and I might be able to find somewhere to lose my pursuers.

  This was an unusual tactic for an enemy to employ. I would have thought a dragon would attack me directly; maybe it was Coates’ friends from Aber—or Puttick. I had not been expecting anyone to be following the cab from the Yard.

  The main entrance to the College was a grand, Roman-pillared affair. Gas lamps were fitted in the ground, and they lit up the place with a warm, stately glow. I didn’t try the main doors; they’d be locked at this time of night.

  Instead I ran over gravel and pavement, weaving between trees and a smaller building to keep my pursuers from getting a clear line of sight so they could shoot me.

  My lungs squeezed with pain, chest burning and vision wavering red and black like a strobe.

  I couldn’t hear anything outside of the pained hiss of air winding through my lungs—nothing helped—no matter how much I inhaled.

  I saw the building I wanted up ahead: the clankers’ workshops. An enterprising individual had carved a giant gear out of stone to mount as the mouth to their wing of the University. Built just before the war, the place was new, and the professors complained that the students and clankers were awake at all hours of the night—they never locked the doors.

  I grabbed the door and threw it open.

  The workshop was huge, a warehouse of grinding gears, twirling gyros and the occasional flash of lightning that had been caught in glass bowls. The clankers used either the heat of the lightning on metal to power their inventions, or steam, whichever they were feeling like at the time.

  I saw a door marked production room and threw myself that way, it opened and led into a factory floor.

  Blue light flickered from lightning globes at irregular intervals. For a moment I stopped, standing against the closed door and staring at the factory in front of me.

  It was the stuff of nightmares.

  Bodies hung from hooks: limp, dead, naked.

  The lightning flickered and I stared at this fresh horror. Bodies along the walls, standing, fallen, leaning. They each had a globe of lightning at their chest.

  The lightning flashed again, and I saw blank, wooden faces.

  Dolls.

  They were making hundreds of clockwork dolls.

  Mother of God, clockwork people.

  I heard the door to the workshop open and I inhaled. I couldn’t stay here. I didn’t have anything to bar the door and I needed to hide. At least for a little while.

  There was another room, a small platform separated it from the production line.

  I jumped up on the conveyer belt, slipping over it and climbing the ladder that lead to the platform faster than I’d ever climbed anything in my life. I stepped inside the little room, searching for a spot to hide.

  There were more clockwork monsters in here too, legs removed, heads at odd angles. This was the repair office. In the corner, a clothing closet big enough to fit in. I closed the closet door and placed men’s shoes over my feet, the old jacket on a hook I turned and twisted so it was facing outward.

  My ribs, chest, back all burned. My breathing, intense and laboured; surely that wheezing noise wasn’t me. I struggled to control it, exhaling as slowly as I possibly could, but each inhale was a harsh, broken noise.

  Below, the workshop door opened. The creak of the hinges in the echoing silence, deafening.

  I held my nose, slowly getting my breathing under control, listening at a level of alertness I had never felt before.

  I needed a plan if they found me. I should have been carrying a shock-stick from the office. I hadn’t remembered to get one. I’d gotten sloppy. It might be about to kill me. I didn’t want that to be the official report: ‘Died because she was too stupid to get a good weapon to defend herself.’

  One of them was a Tenebrologist; even back-alley bastards were worth their weight in gold. Hired muscle. Had to be. They weren’t anyone reputable, that was for certain. I weighed up the list of people who had the sort of money to hire a mercenary or dirty hand willing to go against the Yard.

  I drew in the Ether, pulling it into me, and called up another knife, this one longer, serrated. I didn’t want to get stabbed with this one. I would kill for a gun right now, but guns have more moving parts, far too complex for me to create on the fly like this.

  I couldn’t hear them moving or doing anything below. For a second, I wondered if I had imagined the door opening.

  Had I merely heard a chain creaking or an arc of lightning sizzling inside its globe? I wasn’t sure. The uncertainty gnawed at me.

  Most nameless horrors from the Dreamscape let you know they were there, ever lurking just out of eyesight—the sounds, the smells, the touch of something coming to gobble up children was something you could track.

  I was used to a very different class of monster.

  The sweat on my skin began to cool, the sound of the lightning in its containers provided a steady hum.

  The hum abruptly died. Smothered.

  I closed my fist around the blade. My right hand, numb and cold—hopefully just with adrenaline, but I suspecte
d I was in trouble with the hand.

  I tensed in the closet, my thoughts narrow and clear. When the blood was up, everything seemed very simple and easy to see one’s way.

  The closet door swung open violently.

  I lunged forward, knife first.

  Anthony of the blonde hair took the blade in his gut. I put all my bodyweight behind the thrust, driving the hilt into his mass and then slicing him open, gutting a fish.

  Sound returned to the world and he fell to the ground,

  gasping, groaning.

  I turned to the room, looking for Greg.

  I didn’t see Greg. What I saw was the wrong end of a bat.

  It came whooshing through the air and I heard a cracking noise. I didn’t feel anything at all, and the world went dark.

  I woke up in a great deal of pain.

  “Double it, lady,” a man hissed.

  “I paid you the full fee already.”

  Being knocked unconscious does not send someone into the Dreamscape. It is the closest that I have come to self-contained sleep, as I could not avoid the Dreamscape any more than I could avoid breathing. Hardly restful, being unconscious is terribly bad for the human brain.

  “Anthony is dead; you hired us for an easy job.”

  My right side was a line of fire and bruising. A torn leg muscle, I was sure of it, and I still couldn’t feel my hand. I couldn’t breathe through my broken nose and I was pretty sure that my head was bloated and swollen. Coupled with my newly formed scar, I had a suspicion I did not make a pretty portrait at present.

  Coins clinked.

  My arms were tied.

  I was bound to a wooden-backed chair. My vision was blurry, and I couldn’t see out of my right eye.

  There was a simple table in front of me, rough-sanded and stained from pots and bright sauces infecting the wood with heat.

  Sitting opposite me was Anne Montagu. She wore a dinner dress: sleek, clinging velvet and fur. She had a cigarette in a holder and her eyes fell to me. Her lip twitched, the hint of a sneer.

  We were not in a nice parlour or kitchen. The walls were a dull white, faded bricks, and the floor was covered in dirt. A broken milk crate sat in a corner. Two men covered in muscles and looming in one corner glared at me. Greg of the black hair left through the only door in the room.