The bullet grazed the animal’s side. At the same time, the werewolf’s leap brought it down on top of Ulysses as the dandy hurled himself against a sleeping berth door, the lock giving way under the sudden impact. Ulysses fell into the cabin as the elderly couple occupying it sat up in bed in shocked surprise. He met their terrified stares as they clutched each other in fear.
“Begging your pardon,” he said, scrambling to his feet again.
In the corridor there was the sound of Nimrod’s pistol discharging and Ulysses turned as the werewolf yelped and staggered backwards, the hall carpet rumpling beneath its feet. However, the shot had barely slowed the monster’s rapid advance, let alone floored it.
The narrow confines of the corridor did not make a good fighting arena. There was barely room to swing a cat, let alone a finely-balanced rapier. Ulysses turned and tried to run, Nimrod assisting him, dragging him clear.
A great claw tore the walnut panelling clear of the wall beside them. Stumbling back through an open carriage door, Ulysses slammed it shut. A second later it was ripped from its hinges.
Pulling its huge bulk through the doorway, the monster fixed Ulysses with the black pits of its horribly human eyes and another blood-chilling growl bubbled from within.
“Nimrod,” Ulysses said in a low voice as the werewolf stalked closer, “we’re going to hit it with everything we’ve got. Understood?”
“Understood, sir.”
“Then let’s do it!” Ulysses screamed and they both opened fire, sending a hail of bullets in the monster’s direction until their pistols clicked empty. But as the gun-smoke cleared, Ulysses could see nothing but the wreckage of the broken door and dull electric light reflecting back from the myriad diamond crumbs of glass.
“Where’s it gone?”
“Did we get it, sir?” Nimrod asked. There were glistening spots of black amidst the diamond shards littering the carpet at his feet.
“We hit it, but did we do more than that? That’s the question.”
Gunfire echoed along the passageway from elsewhere on the train. Startled shouts and anguished cries joined the choir of snarling, howling lupine voices.
Ulysses warily stuck his head around the jamb of the ruined door and saw the bodies strewing the passageway. He wondered how many had been slain in the brief attack.
He scoured the passageway with anxious eyes as he strode back along the corridor towards his berth, fearing that at any moment he might see Miranda amongst those lying there, arms and legs at unnatural angles; or Miss Wishart’s dead eyes staring up at him accusingly.
With an ear-splitting crash, the hulking werewolf re-entered the carriage, feet-first, through a window.
As it landed in the passageway between Ulysses and his manservant, Nimrod turned, his gun already trained on the monster, even though there wasn’t a chambered round ready within the breach. The monster reacted just as swiftly, lashing out with a clawed hand that smacked the useless weapon from Nimrod’s grasp.
But Nimrod had bought Ulysses the time he needed to get in a counter-attack of his own.
Rapier blade in hand, he leapt in under the werewolf’s guard, a massive paw striking his chest, lifting him off his feet and sending him crashing through a broken compartment door. Yet, the tip of his blade had found its mark.
Yowling in pain, putting a paw to its eye socket, the werewolf sprang and hurled itself back out through the shattered window, bowling into the tight-packed drifts of snow.
As soon as he could pick himself up from amongst the wreckage of the cabin, Ulysses was there at the window, peering out after the lithe shape as it bounded away.
The train had left the narrow pass and was now heading towards a ravine, spanned by a rickety-looking bridge. To one side of the train, the black wall of a cliff face rose up into the darkness, while on the other the snow-covered ground fell away to the white water that tumbled through the gorge beneath.
With the dull crump of an explosion, fire blossomed in the darkness, bathing the train and the snowy crags in hungry orange flame as the bridge exploded.
Pulling his head back inside the carriage he turned to Nimrod, eyes wide. “We have to get off this train!”
He didn’t wait for a response but turned on his heel at once and scrambled on along the corridor, past the bodies of those slaughtered by the wolves. The offal smell of an abattoir had taken hold, the stink of death now permeating the place.
In no time he was at the door to the compartment shared by the child and her governess.
The claw-marks gouged into the walls, the splashes of blood on the covers of the bed and the curtains flapping in the night wind blowing through the glassless window told him all he needed to know.
Miss Wishart and the child were gone.
Ulysses was at the window in a second. He could see other wolf-like shapes running from the train through the darkness, disappearing between the trees. Two of the fleeing monsters were running on their hind-legs only, each one carrying a body in its arms.
“There they are!” Ulysses yelled.
He was preparing to climb out of the window as, eight carriages away, the locomotive – its driver and fireman already dead – powered off the end of the severed track and plummeted into the gaping chasm beyond.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Company of Wolves
AS THE STEAM engine left the track, Ulysses and Nimrod found themselves thrown together, and then they were falling. The floor became the wall, the wall became the ceiling, and Ulysses and Nimrod crashed down amidst slivers of broken glass and rags of shredded curtain.
Picking himself up as quickly as he could Ulysses offered Nimrod his hand.
“Quick!” he said. “Give me a leg up, will you?”
Putting one booted foot in the stirrup offered by Nimrod’s hands, Ulysses pushed himself up and grabbed the doorframe above him, before pulling himself into the crawl space of the passenger corridor.
The carriage continued to judder and vibrate as it ground inexorably along the rails towards the precipice.
Ulysses reached down into the cabin and pulled Nimrod clear of the devastated sleeping compartment.
Between the two of them, they managed to manoeuvre Nimrod into a position whereby the older man could grab hold of the lip of the door. From there – still possessing the same upper body strength he had enjoyed during his days as a bare-knuckle prize-fighter – Nimrod was able to haul himself up into the inverted passageway.
They made their way back along the corridor, heading towards the rear of the train at a crouching run.
Emerging from the broken window ahead of Nimrod, a kick of adrenalin gave Ulysses the last ounce of strength he needed to pull himself out of the train as he saw the edge of the precipice rapidly approaching. The carriage suddenly slewed sideways as it caught on a twisted rail.
“Go, sir!” Nimrod shouted.
Ulysses didn’t need to be told twice. Flinging himself from the train, he landed hard on compacted snow the impact and the shock of cold leaving him breathless.
A second later he heard the thud of Nimrod hitting the ground to his left, as the carriage upended and dropped into the frothing waters of the cascading river.
ULYSSES LAY WHERE he had landed, listening to the hollow, booming sound of the last few carriages plunging into the stygian depths of the ravine.
Hearing someone shuffling through the snow towards him, Ulysses opened his eyes as his manservant shook him by the shoulder. “Sir? Are you alright?”
Ulysses became aware of the dull throbbing around his right temple and put a cautious hand to the tender spot. His fingers came back smeared with blood.
“As I’m ever likely to be. Besides,” he said, wincing as he smiled, “could have been worse.”
“But what of Miss Wishart and the child?” Nimrod asked.
“They’re alright, for the time being at least. After all, they’re alive.”
“But how can you be so sure they’ll stay that way?”
<
br /> “Because those monsters weren’t messing around. I didn’t see that anyone else had been taken. They came here with a malign purpose of their own. If the wolves had wanted them dead, they would have torn out their throats on the train and left it at that. No, there was something strangely coordinated about their attack. And the bridge blowing like that was hardly a coincidence either, was it?”
“No, sir.”
Ulysses looked at Nimrod darkly. “But what would werewolves want with prisoners of any kind? More especially, what would they want with a little girl?”
Ulysses staggered over to the edge of the precipice, as close as he dared, and stared down into the abyss at the steaming wreck far below.
“No-one else was meant to survive that,” he said.
“But what could be so important about Miss Wishart and the child, that someone would go to all this trouble and commit mass murder, just to cover up their kidnap?” Nimrod asked, joining his master at the edge of the gulf.
“I’m beginning to think that my suspicions were correct,” Ulysses muttered as he considered what he had learnt so far from his study of Gallowglass’s journal.
“Sir?”
“Come on, old boy,” Ulysses said, turning from the precipice and striding back along the length of the track. It was strewn with all manner of detritus from the wreck – packing cases, clothes, lampshades and shreds of cabin furnishings – that had been thrown from the carriages as the train slewed off the end of the broken bridge into oblivion. “The hunt is on!”
THE TWO MEN moved at a steady pace as they trudged on through the snow, wrapped in furs that they had managed to recover from the train wreck. Their shoes and socks were sodden, their feet numb.
“What are they waiting for?” Nimrod hissed, shooting wary glances to left and right, seeing the moonlight reflecting red from the eyes of the circling wolves.
“Who knows? Maybe they’re waiting for the cold to finish us off.”
Ulysses had heard tales told of the skin-changers of the European heartlands. They had been practically hunted to extinction in many areas during the witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries, but it was claimed that there had been a resurgence in numbers as a result of the 1914-18 War and Hitler’s punitive action two decades later during the Second European War of 1939-45, when the German powers had capitalised on the lycanthropes’ natural abilities, deploying them as the perfect shock troops and undercover infiltrators.
Once considered supernatural monsters, demons in another form, current thinking had it that the extreme form of lycanthropy that wrought such a change within the host at a physiological level, like true vampirism, was actually an inherited genetic mutation. Having become stable long ago, a sufferer was able to infect another via a transfer of bodily fluids.
Considering how the beast they had encountered on the train had seemed to shrug off the damage done by their bullets, Ulysses found himself wondering whether werewolves really were resistant to bullets, as folklore claimed – unless they were silver ones, of course – or whether it was simply that their unnatural constitutions and accelerated metabolisms allowed them to recover more quickly from injuries that would drop a man.
Following the tracks left by the pack had been straightforward enough. In places there were signs that the animals had been moving on all fours, but in others the clawed footprints of a wolf took on the marked stride of something that moved on two legs.
Before they knew it, their roles had been reversed. The hunters had become the hunted and the wolves had revealed themselves..
With the wolves still circling, herding them through the snow-blanketed forests, they came at last to a natural bowl in the landscape, utterly devoid of trees, a white arena bathed in moonlight.
It was here that the wolves made their move. As the huge animals slunk from between the trees, Ulysses and Nimrod moved to stand back to back. Nimrod’s numb fingers unholstered and primed his pistol while Ulysses unsheathed his rapier in one fluid motion, the tempered steel singing as it slipped free of its scabbard.
“If this is it, sir, there’s something you should know,” Nimrod stammered through rattling teeth.
“Don’t worry, old boy, it’s not going to be the end.”
“But if it is, sir...”
“This is not the end, Nimrod. Quicksilver and Nimrod deserve a less ignominious end than this. We deserve to go out in a blaze of glory, you and I, not as a frozen meal for a pack of mangy dogs!”
“But, sir, our situation is truly desperate.”
And Nimrod was absolutely right; there was no arguing with that fact.
One werewolf had been bad enough. Against a whole the situation did appear to be unsalvageable.
“A blaze of glory it is then.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Battleship Potemkin
“DO YOU HEAR that, sir?” Nimrod hissed.
As he stared into hungry red eyes, Ulysses heard the thrumming purr of approaching aero-engines.
The wolves had heard it too. They tensed and glanced upwards, some even taking slinking steps back towards the tree-line.
Gliding into view over the spear-tipped tops of the trees, the dirigible looked like some great whale, a black shadow against the midnight blue, blotting out the stars as it passed over the clearing. Ulysses was reminded of the vessel that had rescued the murderous Dr Pavlov from his clutches, just in the nick of time.
The pitch of the engines changed and the airship came to a halt over the clearing. With a rattling clatter, a rope ladder unrolled, swinging wildly.
Ulysses wondered who their rescuer could be, but no matter who it was, it seemed better to make the most of the opportunity and worry about such minor details later. As the trailing end of the ladder came within reach, he grabbed hold.
“Nimrod, go!” he commanded.
Nimrod did as he was ordered, keeping hold of his pistol as he began to ascend the wobbling ladder.
Realising that they were about to lose their prey, the wolves made their move, the alpha male launching himself out of the pack.
The rifle-shot rang out across the clearing and the leaping beast tumbled to the ground a few feet shy of Ulysses. It lay there, its chest heaving as blood oozed black upon the snow. For a moment nothing – no man, nor wolf – moved.
Then another of the huge black beasts threw back its head and howled before charging the dandy.
Ulysses hurled himself up the ladder after his companion. He tried to ignore the snarls and scuffling sounds of wolves snapping at his heels as they tried to leap up after him.
Then a sudden weight pulled the ladder taut, almost throwing him off.
Ulysses forced himself to keep climbing despite the biting cold that was, even now, leeching the strength from his body.
A shot rang out and the ladder went slack. With that, the airship began to climb, the frustrated snarling and barking of the wolves receding below him. Ulysses climbed the rest of the way up and struggled over the lip of the gondola door, hauling himself into the cabin. He remained where he was for a moment, paralysed by cold, until Nimrod helped him to his feet.
At the wheel of the dirigible stood a figure lost in the depths of a thick fur coat.
“Agent K, I presume?” Ulysses said.
The pilot spun the wheel to port, steering the zeppelin away from the clearing and setting it on an easterly bearing before turning to greet her passengers.
She lifted the thick-lensed flying goggles from her face and regarded Ulysses with those familiar aquamarine eyes, as a stray tress of blonde hair caressed her cheek.
“Greetings, Mr Quicksilver, if we’re going to be formal about things,” Katarina Kharkova said. “Welcome to the Potemkin.”
“You saved us, why?”
“Come now,” Agent K chided. “I thought that manners were what made an Englishman.”
“Very well. Thank you Agent Kharkova for saving our bacon. So, what I want to know now is why, on this occasion, you have chosen to save us,
rather than leave us to die.”
“As I told you before, we are on the same side. But you are right, I could have just as easily left you to die considering that is how you treated me and my men at Tsarskoye Selo.”
“Then it would appear that I must apologise.”
“Apology accepted,” she said, fixing him with those piercing eyes of hers once more. “Mr Quicksilver, you are a man who knows all about duty, are you not?”
“Of course.”
“Then you will also understand where I am coming from. I am an agent of the Russian Imperial Crown and I too am a patriot. And it is because I love my country that I was tasked with watching the Firebird.”
“But why? Wasn’t she one of yours?”
“Because, as I am sure you already know, she was not all she appeared to be. She was not only a prima ballerina, she was also in the pay of one of our own blue bloods who was trying to get his hands on a biological weapon.”
“Get his hands on what?” Ulysses thought again of the notebook and the phial secreted in a jacket pocket, not two inches from his nervously beating heart.
“His power and wealth is – it would appear – not enough. Like many of those granted great power his hunger for more is insatiable. This individual is prepared to go to great lengths to get what he wants.”
“And the Firebird was working for him?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Which is why I was so surprised to find you making contact with her.
Katarina distractedly brushed the loose strand of hair from her cheek and Ulysses noticed the thin scar that had not been there the last time he had run into her.
“What happened to your friends, by the way?” he asked.
“The machine-man–”
“That’ll do.”
“– killed them all.”
“And where is this machine-man now?”
“I do not know.”
“How do I know that you’re telling me the truth?”
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