The Apollonian Case Files

by Mark A. Latham

  ‘But who?’

  ‘If it were not so impossible, so wretchedly impossible, I would hazard a guess,’ John said, solemnity threatening to overwhelm him. He could not admit his suspicions out loud. He could not admit them to himself. It was absurd. ‘As it stands, we need to gather our men and get aboard that ship. Our enemies have a head start over us, and God only knows what havoc they wreak even as we stand here.’

  ‘John?’ Jim was hesitant.

  ‘This was a distraction,’ John said. ‘We were brought here to tie up all of the loose ends of our new Artist’s plan. Elsbet has been sent to safety, probably out of the country. De Montfort was to kill me, or we were to kill each other. You, the other agents… you were sent here to get you out of the way, but also to ensure Tesla’s equipment would be delivered to its destination. Those “gifts” the celestials gave us were little more than a Trojan horse. I don’t think she really cared what happened to the vampires, as long as we were detained long enough here.’

  ‘Long enough for what?’

  ‘I think she is heading for St Katharine Docks. I believe she plans to open a gate to the Otherside, beneath London, and we have paved the way for it.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Friday, 6th October 1893, 2.45 a.m.

  THAMES ESTUARY

  The Daphne had made good time, and was signalling the Coalhouse Fort on the north bank of the Thames. For the last half an hour, John had stood alone on deck, trying his best to make sense of everything. Jim had explained Miss Furnival’s status as a refugee from the Otherside, and how she had come in search of de Montfort. Miss Furnival, for her part, had barely spoken a word since they had boarded. When she emerged on deck and made a beeline for John, it came as some surprise. She stood beside him at the gunwale, looking out across the broad Thames, lights reflecting from its black surface. Even now, even though they had fought side-by-side, John had little wish to speak with the American. Jim was right – he really wasn’t one to give his trust easily. He cursed himself inwardly, and cursed Jim for getting the measure of him so astutely.

  ‘I’ll take one of those cigars, if you’ve got any left,’ Miss Furnival said. She turned her eyes from the river.

  John smiled despite himself, shook his head at his own foolishness, and offered a cigar. She took it, and he lit it for her. She should have looked ridiculous smoking it, but somehow her casual manner and boyish dress made it seem perfectly natural.

  ‘Not very ladylike,’ John said.

  ‘You mean the pants, or the stogie?’ she grinned. ‘Perhaps they just don’t breed fine ladies where I’m from.’

  ‘You mean America, or…’ John stopped himself from saying it, and tensed. He found himself thinking of another woman he had met from the Otherside. An assassin, with a strength and martial prowess the equal of any man he’d ever known.

  ‘I knew her… your sister,’ Miss Furnival said.

  ‘What?’ he asked, realising he had drifted into some bitter reverie, and now snapping back to reality.

  ‘Not really your sister, but you know what I mean. She and my Uncle Arthur were close. They were together when she… when he was killed.’

  ‘Lillian Hardwick was not my sister. She was a murderess. She was the cruellest creature I have ever met.’

  ‘It wasn’t always so,’ Miss Furnival said. ‘I was only a girl when I first met her, visiting England for the first time. She was nice. Pretty. I think the death of my uncle changed her, in more ways than one. I think she loved him, you know?’

  John paused. ‘Was she not too young for him?’ In many ways he had no wish to learn anything about his imposter family, and yet he could not deny that he had often wondered about Lillian; what had made her so callous, and whether there was anything of the sweet girl he had known in the real world in her.

  ‘Uncle Arthur isn’t quite as old as he looks. But yes, many people thought so. Her father especially – the real one, not your… oh, this is confusing. Look, I hardly knew her, but I looked up to her because she was an agent. An agent! Can you imagine what it’s like being a tomboy, growing up on an old plantation, riding trails with cowboys, and then being told one day you have to go to England and dress like a lady and marry a rich gentleman? Of course you can’t. But Lillian Hardwick, well, she sure bucked the rules, so why couldn’t I?’

  ‘You sound like you admire her,’ John said, suspiciously.

  ‘I think we’re kinda alike, her and me. All alone in the world, but not ready to stop fighting just yet; it’s just that maybe we’re fighting for different reasons. What happened to her wasn’t fair. What she became isn’t who she was meant to be. I think she made a lot of wrong choices after my uncle died, and maybe it was easier to let them eat her up than try to atone. Does that make sense?’

  John hung his head, and took a deep breath. ‘It makes all the sense in the world.’ He rolled his shoulder, wincing at the pain. The cold had almost made it seize up.

  ‘It’ll take some time to heal,’ Miss Furnival said. ‘That’s how he got into your head, you know. De Montfort. I can only guess what that was like.’

  ‘I’ve had worse,’ John said, though he was not certain he meant it. He remembered all too clearly the things de Montfort had whispered in his mind; the things that creature knew about him that no one else in the world knew. Almost no one. ‘This de Montfort… he killed your uncle? And this is why you hated him so?’

  ‘It was something more.’ Marie turned away, staring out over the river, exhaling a plume of cigar smoke. ‘He was partly responsible for… well, for everything. For the world – my world – toppling over the brink.’

  ‘How?’ John could scarce believe that the petty revenant he had fought on Osea could have done so great a misdeed.

  ‘He tried to hold Britain to ransom. He found the means to create other wampyr – to transform humans into vampires for the first time in two thousand years. And not mindless ghouls, but true vampires – powerful nobles, even stronger than he, and twice as cruel. He threatened to unleash a plague of vampirism upon the world, and when he was opposed he attacked London. In doing so he killed the world’s most powerful Majestic, the only woman capable of holding the Riftborn at bay. From there on, everything went to hell.’

  John took a moment to make sense of it all. ‘Did de Montfort succeed? At creating more of these… “wampyr”, I mean?’

  Miss Furnival looked at John, and there was sadness in her eyes. Or perhaps pity. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ah. The “Iscariot Sanction”,’ he muttered. John felt gooseflesh rise as a memory forced itself upon him, unbidden and unwelcome. He thought back to when he had encountered Lillian Hardwick three years prior. The woman who was his sister in another reality, a mockery of sweet Lilly. Had she not moved with exquisite grace? Had she not displayed great feats of strength and speed? Had her eyes not sparkled in the night like distant stars?

  The death of my uncle changed her, in more ways than one.

  ‘How’s the hand?’ John asked, desperate to change the subject.

  ‘I won’t be sewing needlepoint anytime soon, but I can still pull a trigger.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s all you will need it for in the hours to come. Did you keep my rifle for me?’

  ‘In the hold. Say, why do you have a Winchester anyhow? It’s a fine weapon, but not the gun of an English soldier.’

  ‘I’m ashamed to say it is the fulfilment of a boyhood wish, Miss Furnival. An affectation I have indulged. My father…’ John cleared his throat. ‘He bought me many books when I was a boy; that is, before he ruled that they were filling my head full of daydreams. He came by a stack of your “dime novels” once, and a big map of the Americas. I used to dream of life on the plains, where a man could ride free and carve his own destiny. And like you, I was instead forced into a very different life. A life of duty, military service, and managing tedious financial affairs.’

  ‘So I guess you know what it’s like… to not belong?’

  ‘You
could say that. Would you return home, had you the chance?’

  ‘I always wondered if I’d go back, once de Montfort was gone, but now… I don’t know what’s left. Maybe I’ve been fighting so long that I don’t have anything else to do once the fighting is over. On the Otherside there’s always a war, just to survive.’

  ‘And if you do not survive?’

  ‘Maybe that’s not so bad. I mean, as long as you do what you got to do. Figure I’ve played my hand, now I’ve just got to cash my chips.’

  John nodded at that. ‘Jim… Captain Denny… he was trying to save you. He thought he was doing you a service. You know that.’

  Miss Furnival’s colour rose. ‘Maybe I didn’t need saving.’

  ‘Not from de Montfort, no. But from yourself? You are reckless, Miss Furnival. You are too driven by your anger, and if you are not careful, it will be the end of you before you can take your revenge.’

  ‘And if Ambrose Hanlocke was here now, would you counsel him so? You men seem awful concerned for my wellbeing, all things considered,’ she said.

  ‘Not really. I just don’t want to be killed as part of your death-wish.’

  She scowled at John, and then her eyes softened. She laughed. ‘You know what, Colonel? I don’t think we are so very different after all.’

  ‘Oh, I think we are very different indeed, Miss Furnival, though perhaps not quite in the way I had imagined.’

  They stood in silence for a while, watching the gaslights of Gravesend and Dartford blink into view, yellow stars revealing themselves as finally the sloop left behind the thinning mist and steamed along the river.

  The hatch opened behind them, and Denny appeared, looking more than a little awkward when he saw John and Marie together.

  Miss Furnival stubbed out her cigar. She rubbed at her arms and shivered. ‘Well, much as I’d love to stand out here and gas all night, it’s a mite cold. And I reckon you boys need to talk.’ She nodded to John, and took her leave, pausing before she reached Jim.

  ‘Colonel Hardwick,’ she said. ‘I think you would have made an excellent cowboy, for what it’s worth.’

  John smiled to himself. Having an Othersider as an ally would take some getting used to, but if indeed Sir Toby had trusted her… He gritted his teeth. He had almost forgotten about the old man. He wondered how much Sir Toby had known about this predicament. John had known for a long time that the Order was experimenting with more Otherside equipment than they told the common agent. He knew also about the etherium, although de Montfort’s revelations had shocked even him. But a gate? Would Sir Toby really have sanctioned the building of a gate? And to what end? It had more the stamp of Cherleten. And James Denny, John reminded himself, was Cherleten’s man.

  Jim took Miss Furnival’s place beside John at the gunwale. ‘You and Marie have reached an understanding, then?’ Jim asked.

  ‘Marie now, is it?’ John raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought you hated Othersiders to distraction?’

  Jim looked away. John knew that was mean. He offered Jim a cigar as some inadequate way to atone, but Jim refused it, and so the two men stood in silence for a time.

  ‘What’s on your mind, Captain?’ John said, when Jim’s dithering had become unbearable.

  ‘Are you going to share your theory?’ Jim said.

  John took a draw on his cigar. ‘What about?’

  ‘You know very well. The Artist, or, rather, the imposter. You know who she is, don’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s not what you said earlier.’

  ‘What I said was that I had a theory, but it was impossible. Therefore, my theory is irrelevant.’

  ‘You said something else earlier, too. Well, not tonight – back in Kent when I came to get you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You said…’ Jim hesitated. He looked nervous. ‘You said that you would have taken Elsbet from the Nightwatch, had you anywhere to take her where she would not be found. That seems to have worked out rather well, all told.’

  John turned to Jim in disbelief. ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘Just that… I don’t know. You’ve been away a long time, old boy. You’re involved in whatever is happening now, more than anyone can guess. And you’ve been rather ahead of the game up to now.’

  ‘How? I was almost killed on Osea. I walked into a trap.’

  ‘I do not think it was a trap for us. It was a trap for de Montfort. You know Carr said he spotted some gypsies on the road to the coast, with a Charrington’s Ale wagon amongst their caravans. Anyone you know?’

  John sighed. ‘As it happens, yes, although the men in question have no love for me. If it weren’t for that celestial, I’d probably have had a knife buried in my gut by the roadside. They took Elsbet, and I’m not sorry they did. But if you are suggesting collusion… Good Christ, what has the Order done to you? Are you now as cynical as me? Trust me when I say it is no way to live.’

  ‘It wasn’t the order that taught me to trust no one. It was you.’

  They held each other’s gaze for a moment. It was not in John to back down, and he saw the same stubbornness in Jim. But everything John had seen, and what he suspected, made him wonder if this hostility was worth the trouble. There would be plenty of that ahead, and John needed an ally, not another adversary.

  ‘I am not your enemy, Jim,’ he said. ‘It is not my place to pass judgment on you for your mistakes, to offer forgiveness, or anything else. I would wish that you extend me that same courtesy, for are we not both haunted by the ghosts of our pasts? And we can never escape their judgment, can we? I have come to think, however, that perhaps their presence could become more tolerable if… if they could be faced with a friend.’

  Jim’s hard face at once transformed into an expression of surprise, and John could well understand why. He had made himself a man of uncompromising standards, unsentimental and ruthless. He knew this. And in doing so, he realised he was not simply manipulating Jim, but he believed what he was saying. John surprised himself as much as he surprised Jim when he realised he truly did need a friend. And what a fool he felt that he had so long denied himself this simple truth.

  ‘I…’ Jim struggled for words. He looked deeply affected by John’s sudden attempt at burying the hatchet. ‘We’ve been through a lot, old boy. And that’s just tonight.’ He smiled. John returned it; the old James Denny, always ready to lighten the mood whether or not it was called for. ‘Maybe it’s best that some things remain unsaid,’ he went on. ‘Just as it is best they remain in the past, where they belong. You’re right, John, we’ve both erred. Maybe I forgot that I owe you my life.’

  ‘No, do not reconcile out of obligation. I would not have escaped de Montfort had you not come back for me, so we are even on that score. It was good to see you disobey orders, though. I was beginning to think you were too much like me.’

  Jim laughed. ‘So was I. Perhaps we may both yet be redeemed, if we deserve it.’

  ‘Redemption is for romantics,’ John said. ‘I’d take a little justice over redemption right now.’ John was wary of talking more, lest memories be recounted, and old wounds reopened. He exercised his shoulder again, and called up to the foredeck. ‘How long before we reach St Katharine’s?’

  ‘Less than half an hour, sir,’ an ensign replied. ‘Coming up on the Isle of Dogs now.’

  At those words, John felt as though he had swallowed a block of ice. Sure enough, the sloop was already bearing around the Greenwich Peninsula, and before them the East India Docks stretched from the elbow of the Thames to the banks of the Isle of Dogs itself; and the isle was dark, silent and ominous. The last time John had been there was when he had slain Tsun Pen.

  They pushed on through the inky water, London opening up before them, vast constellations of lamps, which would burn through the night even though only rogues were about to benefit from them. John gazed north, and squinted as something caught his eye. He frowned; every yard the ship drew closer to their destination brou
ght something disconcerting clearer into view.

  ‘Ensign, what is that?’ John pointed across the banks of Rotherhithe, at something on the northern horizon. Though all of the East End and the City was obscured still by the protrusion of Greenwich, something was clearly amiss. The ensign at once took up his telescope, and muttered, ‘Good Lord,’ before handing it to John.

  For one, heart-stopping moment, John saw movement against the sky, and in his mind’s eye he saw the great, claw-like shadow of the Otherside, reaching up to the heavens. He shook away the vision of the thing. This was no terror from the Rift, but smoke. Black, roiling smoke, towering over the city, creating dark pillars against an indigo sky, blotting out the stars. Only as they passed Rotherhithe, and the glow of Limehouse revealed itself, could John even begin to pinpoint the source of this disturbance. Or, rather, sources. He counted five great black plumes, rising hundreds of feet into the air. Three were close together, near the centre of London. Two were closer, not far ahead of them in fact, either side of the scaffolded silhouette of Tower Bridge. He did not need to see it to know that St Katharine Docks were ablaze. And now the ringing of distant bells began to drift towards the Daphne. An uncommon number of people moved about the banks of the Thames on either side, like little black ants scurrying from a flooded nest.

  The ship’s own bells began to ring; a great, monotonous warning. Men appeared on deck within seconds; Miss Furnival followed. The ensign pointed out the smoke to the ship’s mate, who in turn shouted for Captain Abrams.

  They were too late. London was under attack.

  * * *

  ‘Blimey, the bloody Navy are ’ere now.’ The red-faced policeman paused at the edge of the Daphne’s gangplank, holding his ribs, panting heavily.

  ‘Captain Denny, Apollo Lycea. What’s happening here, Constable?’

  ‘A what now?’ the policeman asked between ragged breaths.

  ‘Never mind.’ Jim looked at the blaze, the fire tenders, the debris. Flames licked from the windows of the Apollo Lycea facility, which to most people was simply the office of a shipping company. A great rent in the side of the building now billowed with acrid smoke. It was as though the Othersiders were back.