The Apollonian Case Files

by Mark A. Latham

  Some moments passed before John realised what had happened. He staggered to his feet, helped Tesla up. He heard Jim’s voice from the other side of the debris, muffled.

  ‘Jim!’ he cried, before coughing up a lungful of brick-dust.

  ‘I hear you,’ came the reply. ‘We’re going to dig through.’

  ‘There’s no time, Jim. Go on ahead. Prime the explosives.’

  ‘No, not until there is no other choice.’

  ‘There is no other choice! Prime them. I’m going to finish this.’

  ‘John, what –’

  ‘There’s a gate opening underneath London, Jim. You know what that means. Tesla is with me, he can stop it. Prime the bombs. If we succeed, I’ll meet you at the sluice-gate. If we fail… you have your orders from Cherleten.’

  ‘Cherleten be damned,’ Jim called.

  ‘That’s the spirit! But I fear he’s right this time. Let me save you a tricky decision, Captain,’ John said, in his most commanding tone. ‘Go on ahead and prime those explosives. My last order is a simple one: if I do not make it out before you, do your duty and detonate those bombs.’

  Jim said nothing.

  ‘Captain Denny, every second lost is a second that the gate grows more powerful. You know what comes next.’

  ‘We hear you, Colonel,’ Marie answered for Jim. ‘We’re going. God be with you.’

  ‘And you, Miss Furnival. And you.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘We should not have let him go alone.’ Jim turned the key in the detonator control panel. The device within began to tick rhythmically, audible even over the relentless drone.

  ‘The colonel knows what he’s doing,’ Marie said. ‘I figured that much about him.’

  ‘He doesn’t even have the keys. How far can he get?’ Jim closed the panel and locked it again.

  ‘He seemed to suggest he knew this place better than either of us, though Lord knows how. Anyway, if he gets stuck, I’m sure he’ll head for the sluice-gate. He won’t just wait for the tunnels to flood. Now come on, where next?’

  Jim could not help but worry. ‘This way,’ he said. He led the way to a set of double doors as he sorted through the ring of keys. As he tried one in the lock, Jim frowned, and placed the palm of his other hand on the door.

  ‘What is it?’ Marie asked.

  ‘Still warm. We’re close to where they set off their explosion now. Just overhead. Alright, everyone, be careful – parts of the facility may be unsafe.’

  ‘Tell us something we don’t know,’ Carruthers quipped, drawing forced laughter from the others.

  ‘Very good. Now, brace yourselves.’

  The men with rifles pressed their backs against the wall opposite the door, and took aim. Marie cranked the Tesla pistol she’d retrieved from the stores. The other men positioned themselves either side of the doors, weapons readied, lanterns raised.

  Jim pulled the doors open. No one fired. He hurried into the room, lantern shining ahead of him, followed by the others, two at a time. Jim slipped on something, kept his feet, and shone the light down to reveal great smears of blood across the tiled floor.

  The room was large, mostly in darkness, save for the flickering of small fires here and there. Cupboards and tables were overturned; the floor was strewn with rubble and large pieces of mechanical equipment, mostly mangled and smashed. Amongst the debris, bodies lay scattered or buried, not all of them in one piece.

  Those tables that remained upright were still covered in machinery, large and small, some connected by chains, others topped in great rods coiled about with wire, all silhouetted in the gloom. On the right-hand side of the room, beams of reinforced concrete had half-fallen into the basement from above, twisted steel rods protruding from their sides like so much wickerwork. Wooden joists had fallen with them, and lay burning and charred atop piles of bricks. Smoke drifted hazily into the room, clinging to the ceiling like storm clouds.

  ‘Sir, over here!’ A Special Branch constable dashed across to a left-hand aisle, stooping to the floor, and Jim saw movement where he crouched. Someone was alive.

  Jim gave the order to secure the room, and was by the constable’s side in an instant. The policeman cradled the head of a gaunt man, face a mask of blood, light hair now red and matted. He groaned, and reached up to his saviours.

  ‘I know you,’ Jim said. ‘Amworth, isn’t it? What happened here?’

  ‘I… there was an explosion,’ the man said. ‘And then men came; soldiers. We hid. But… when they left… oh, God!’

  Jim placed a hand on the man’s shoulder and tried to hush him. ‘Do not worry, we’re here now. If the soldiers did not do this to you, then who?’

  The man grasped Jim’s arm, and stared at him, eyes wide. ‘Monsters,’ he hissed.

  Jim looked at Miss Furnival, who gritted her teeth.

  Jim frowned. ‘What were you doing here so late, Doctor?’ he asked. ‘And all these others?’

  The man took some heavy breaths, stertorous and croaking. ‘We were… told to report for… duty. All hands who… worked today.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Everyone who worked today was asked to report here, late at night?’ Jim was answered with a nod. ‘By whom? For what purpose?’

  ‘It is a matter classified,’ he said.

  Jim rattled the keys that were hung about his neck. ‘I am Captain James Denny,’ he said, ‘and Lord Cherleten has given me full jurisdiction. Now, explain to me what happened here.’

  Amworth considered this, and answered only reluctantly. ‘There was… a woman. She took a drug from us. You know it?’

  ‘Etherium.’

  Amworth nodded. ‘She used it. Too much… and she had power. Power over our subjects, and over us. She… said things. Showed me things. In my mind.’

  ‘Wait – your subjects? The Nightwatch?’

  Amworth nodded again.

  ‘The last time I saw you, Mr Amworth, you were attending the Nightwatch. But this… What exactly is it you do here?’

  ‘I… No. I cannot say.’

  Marie stood, and looked around the room with intense scrutiny. ‘I can,’ she said at last. ‘He’s not nurturing psychics for the Nightwatch. He’s testing them, to see if they can power a gate.’

  ‘What?’ Jim asked. But he only had to look at the shock – and fear – on Amworth’s face to know that Marie had hit upon the truth. ‘You’re stockpiling etherium. You’re using this equipment. This mysterious woman – she stole some of it, right?’

  Amworth nodded; he looked tearful.

  ‘And your “monsters”. What of them?’

  ‘They… they went after her.’

  ‘After her?’ Jim asked. ‘Were they with this woman, or not?’

  ‘No. They came from… there.’ Amworth pointed feebly towards a large bulkhead door, on the other side of the room. It was open only a crack, but it should have been sealed. ‘The monsters – some kind of degenerate inbreds, perhaps – they killed my team. After I was injured, I feigned death. I think perhaps they would have…’ his words tailed away into a spluttered, hacking cough.

  ‘Mr Amworth, that door leads to the lower levels, does it not? This woman surely came from the sluice-gate – she would have entered via the east door.’

  ‘She did.’

  Jim was starting to build a picture in his mind. A flash of insight struck him, and he hoped his instinct was wrong. ‘Mr Amworth, I am going to get you to safety, but first you must answer me. This is of the matter critical. This facility has been attacked tonight by several detonations. Did these monsters attack before or after the bombs went off?’

  Marie looked to Jim in puzzlement.

  ‘Before,’ he said. ‘They rampaged through the laboratory. Then the explosion… the facility shook, much was destroyed. Just as I thought… all was quiet… the woman came. That is when I knew my… sleeping Majestics, my lambs… were in grave danger.’

  Jim got to his feet. He had not quite pieced together the puzzle, but
what he guessed so far gave him more cause for worry than all the events of the past week combined.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ Marie whispered, looking furtively at the men around them.

  ‘You remember when I made those accusations against you?’ Jim asked.

  ‘This is hardly the time for apologies –’

  ‘No, you misunderstand. I accused you of being an informant. Cherleten and Sir Toby assured me that the Artist’s intelligence came not from you, or any other, but from the minds of the Nightwatch through esoteric means. But what if they were wrong? What if there is a man on the inside? Someone who oversaw the clearing of the weapons store? Someone who released vampires into the facility to kill those men who had performed those tasks before the bombs went off.’

  ‘Who could have done such a thing?’

  ‘That’s what I’d like to know. Maybe the answer lies down there.’ Jim nodded towards the vault door.

  ‘I don’t know, Captain. We’ve delayed long enough as it is, and with Colonel Hardwick and Tesla lost… Perhaps we should get on with the mission, and worry about traitors afterwards.’

  ‘Uncovering this traitor, should he exist, is the mission as far as I am concerned,’ Jim said. He knew he was becoming distracted by this new line of thinking, but he also had a feeling in his gut that he was right. He could not – would not – let it go.

  * * *

  John crawled awkwardly through a narrow vent, hot from exertion, shoulder prickling with pain as he dragged himself along on his elbows. An ignominious way to get about the facility, certainly, but a necessary one. Tesla grunted and groaned behind him. More than once John had to pause so the scientist could catch up, and urge him to be quieter.

  At last John reached the metal grille which he was certain fed into the small office beside the old evidence room. It had been some time since he had visited this part of the facility, and then it had been in much more formal circumstances.

  As he pulled himself up to the grate, knees and elbows scraping against rough-hewn bricks, he froze. He heard voices below, gruff. Chinese. John managed to signal Tesla to stop, and was glad that the Serbian heeded him. John held his breath, and eased himself forward an inch at a time, for fear that the dragging noise he made would alert whoever was below. The brickwork all around him seemed to resonate with the high-pitched hum, tuned to the key of another world.

  John peered through the grille. Two celestials stood in the room below, sharing a joke. One held a long pipe, which gave off a pungent aroma of the east. The second man stroked the hilt of a knife at his belt as if it were a much-loved pet. Two rifles leaned against a desk. There was a door behind the men, which led to a room that had long been off-limits, having been sequestered by Cherleten for some secret project or other. The door was ajar, but there was little to see from here but flickering lights.

  John squeezed an arm back to his belt and pulled out a knife. This was his best chance, if he was quick and quiet. He certainly could not risk a gun going off. He regretted now leaving his Winchester and cane-sword behind when he entered the vents, but he had been sure they would be a severe hindrance in the tight space. They were prized possessions both. It suddenly occurred to him that he had not asked Jim to take care of his dog should he not make it out of the facility. John pushed that thought aside; he could not be distracted now.

  John moved over the grate, as carefully as he could, pulling up his legs as much as he was able, and finally kicked down hard at the metal. He dropped through, landing harder than he would have liked. He briefly registered a look of shock on the faces of the two celestials, and threw himself at the nearest man, smashing him against the wall with his good shoulder. The second man withdrew the dagger from his belt. John spun away from the first celestial and slashed his knife hard against the throat of the second. The man dropped the dagger and fell to the floor, clutching his throat as if to stem the torrential flow of blood. The other man reached a rifle, but John was on him quickly. He grabbed the celestial from behind, an arm around the man’s throat, and stabbed upwards through the ribs and into the lungs. John kept his grip tight, his own wounded arm aching, but he maintained the hold until his enemy’s struggles ceased.

  John lowered the man to the floor. He grabbed a rifle, checked its load, and slung it over his shoulder. He wiped his knife, and retrieved the dagger. It was ten inches long, straight, ornate; bone-carved handle, bronze pommel. He tucked both into his belt and crept to the door. Peering through the gap, John saw two men wheel a huge chunk of strange machinery through the double doors at the far end of the room. Along the floor, weaving between dead bodies, thick cables trailed the room’s length, some of them sparking dangerously with electrical current, attached to all manner of generators, from familiar oil-fired contraptions that rumbled and rattled, to strange Otherside devices, which arced with power. Fewer than half the room’s electric lights were working now, and those blinked on and off fitfully. Whatever was drawing power from the generators appeared to be leeching energy from the entire facility; perhaps from the city beyond for all John knew.

  A guard swung open the double doors to let the men with the trolley pass. Even when John had been one of the Order’s most trusted agents, he had not been permitted access to this inner sanctum. Now, the locks were blasted away, and the enemy entered freely. Beyond the doors, an intense amber light flashed. Shadowy figures moved back and forth. And then the doors swung shut, leaving a lone guard. By the flickering light, John saw that he was a large man, light of skin, with fair, close-cropped stubble for hair. He wore a khaki shirt, sleeves rolled up to reveal bulging arms. A military man by his bearing, Russian by the silhouette of his rifle and the cut of his uniform.

  John remembered that the doors at the opposite end of the room led to a broad corridor, wide enough for heavy goods to be brought down from the docks. John expected most of the security would be stationed in the corridors, for there was only one way in or out of this area. John took a breath and calculated his approach. He knew of no vent that could take him past this point. He would have to tackle the guard and try to slip into the room beyond unnoticed. He had weapons enough; if the men inside were working, unprepared for a fight, he could feasibly cause considerable damage before they could retaliate. If the guards outside were alerted, however…

  ‘Psst!’ Tesla hissed from above.

  John had almost forgotten the Serbian. Tesla would make it difficult to infiltrate the area. With little choice, however, John helped Tesla down from the shaft, and quickly explained his plan.

  ‘Is there nothing in there we can use?’ Tesla asked, peeking through the door.

  ‘I have no idea,’ John whispered. ‘Do not wander off. As soon as I’m certain that guard is alone, I make my move, and I need you close.’

  John watched the guard, waiting to see if there was any further activity, and prepared to move out.

  The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He felt his breath misting on the air. John closed his eyes, composed himself, and then looked back into the office, past the puzzled face of Tesla.

  Elsbet stood in the shadows. Her hair clung glossy and lank to her pale, dead face. Her eyes were mercifully closed. John turned away, and shuddered.

  Without a word to Tesla, John moved out. He had no wish to stay in that office with the spirit. He had even less desire to consider once more if he was mad, and if the ghost of Elsbet was simply his own guilty conscience come to haunt him. He needed solitude and a plentiful supply of good Irish whiskey for those particular philosophical questions, neither of which he had the luxury of right now. And so he focused on the next best thing: the mission – on avoiding certain death once again.

  He stole around tables, benches and long units of shelving, staying close to the wall, stepping over debris and the corpses of armoury staff with sure-footed ease. Even were John’s approach not covered by the ululating sonic assault, he would have been silent as a cat on the hunt. He closed in on his prey, one step at a time,
eyes never leaving the target. He took out both knives. Stealth was his only asset now.

  John reached the end of a long bank of workbenches, and carefully set down the rifle. He had only ten feet to cover. The soldier looked on edge, holding his rifle just a little too tightly.

  When the soldier looked away, John closed the distance to his quarry, lightly, swiftly. At the last second, the man turned. He saw John too late, and almost fumbled his rifle in surprise. John stabbed the soldier in the gut, caught a blow to the shoulder in the process that jolted him to the core, before thrusting upwards with the Chinese dagger. The blade pierced the man’s throat, under the chin. The man’s eyes rolled back into his head, blood flowed over the hilt of the blade, over John’s hand, warm and sticky. John lowered the man to the floor before withdrawing the dagger with some distaste.

  John grimaced, and rolled his shoulder. Spots of blood were already seeping through the dressing. He wiped the blade clean, and considered how to approach the door.

  Behind him, someone clapped, slowly, sardonically. John’s blood froze in his veins. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had sneaked up on him.

  John spun around. A celestial stood only four or five yards away. His approach had gone unnoticed. John recognised the man at once. Xiang. The man who had defeated him at the gypsy camp. The man who had killed Bertrand.

  ‘You fight well, Agent,’ the celestial said. ‘Shall we see how well?’ He adopted a fighting stance, legs wide apart, body turned sideways to John, one arm outstretched in invitation to attack.

  ‘How the devil did you get here?’ John asked.

  ‘Ah, my mistress has her ways. Now, prepare yourself.’