He would have to come back to deal with unfinished business.
He lowered himself into the pit of rats and bones.
The rats scurried over his shoes.
Their whiskers bristled and brushed up against the thin cotton of his socks.
He felt their noses push at his ankles and kicked them away only for more of them to come at him, drawn by his warm blood. He stepped back, feeling one of the rodent’s spines crack beneath his heel. He tried to tell himself it was better than the alternative—better than breaking the brittle bones of his dead friend. Every inch of his skin crawled. He could kick out at them all day and all night, they would just keep coming, he realised. He needed to ignore them and concentrate on the metal grate.
He crouched down, allowing the rats to bush up against his knees and thighs.
It was all he could do to ignore them for a few moments, but that was all he needed. The grate might have been enough to hold Napier, but it couldn’t withstand more than a few seconds of the ice cold his gift subjected the metal to before the bolts anchoring it to the stone fractured and the weight of the grate sheered through them.
Brannigan Locke crawled on his hands and knees into the sewers.
It was pitch black.
The only sounds echoing up and down the endless tunnels were the chittering of rats amplified over and over until they mutated into the sewer’s own orchestra, each layer of squeaking and splashing and all of the millions of subtle sounds of darkness playing out some insane cantata.
He was more than half a mile away from the river, meaning at worst he had to crawl half a mile in absolute darkness tormented every step of the way by the rat chorus.
Locke had been wrong.
This was his own personal hell.
Chapter Seventy-Five
Millington felt them before he heard them.
He turned away from the window and walked into the middle of the room. The crates offered reasonable cover, but he wasn’t about to lead whoever it was out there to Dor’s body, so instead he strode confidently into a splash of moonlight and waited for them to show themselves.
He was trembling but refused to show it.
He stuffed his hands into his pockets.
He would have traded gifts with Napier right then; to be able to fade into the shadows and disappear would have been a blessing. But The Art didn’t work like that. His talent was his talent, the only way he could tap The Art. He couldn’t do what Dorian did when he communed with the dead, and despite the fact that he could ”talk” to the animals, neither could he draw a great, shaggy beast out from his primeval self to rage as McCreedy could.
He made his hands into fists, digging his nails into his palms hard enough to draw blood.
Footsteps echoed slowly up the stairwell, faint by the time they reached him.
Instinct demanded one of two reactions: fight or flight. No matter how much he wanted to run, there was nowhere to run to, and if he was being honest with himself he was sick of running. A strange sense of calm settled over him with that realization. He took his hands out of his pockets, slipped off his jacket and loosened the cufflinks of his starched white shirt. He rolled the cuffs up and loosened his cravat, discarding it, and then undid the button at his throat, not caring that he got blood on the white collar. He clenched his fists once, twice, three times, and then looked up to see Crayford walking toward him. The Villain King stopped short of stepping into the shaft of light but the moonlight still caught and played with the fake pearls stitched into his clothing. In another light the effect might have been comical, but standing there with a length of iron piping pillaged from the shipyard construction below in his hand, the effect transcended humour. Crayford looked like an avenging dark angel.
He wasn’t alone.
He could see them back there, just too far into the shadows to know for sure who they were. Not that he couldn’t guess. Where one Villain King went the others were sure to follow. That was just the way they were. Utterly untrustworthy, focused upon weakness and exploitation.
He counted the darker shadows.
Eleven.
Twelve counting Crayford.
One of their number was missing.
He couldn’t tell who, not for sure, not while the shadows still protected them.
”You don’t want to do this,” Millington said, the confidence in his voice surprising him.
”Oh,” Crayford drawled, flexing his fat fingers. He was the epitome of the bloated villain, but the fat man was anything but incompetent. Indeed, it was his very unique competence that allowed him to glut on the good things in life. ”I think I do.” There was pork grease on the pearl buttons down the front of his coat as it strained over his ample gut. The moonlight revealed the web of blood vessels that spread out from his bulbous nose across his cheeks. Along with the man’s waxy complexion, they were, Millington knew, the tell-tale markers of a rather unhealthy liking of alcohol. Not that it would help him now; Crayford was very obviously stone cold sober and in full charge of his faculties, more’s the pity.
The others came forward into the light.
They moved as one, as though on silent command.
He scanned their faces: Penge, Kilburn, Acton, Blackwell, Hockley, Mortlake, Coram, Lancaster, Goodman, Whitehall, and at the back, Devil’s Acre.
Only Arnos was missing from their number.
That gave him one answer. If nothing else, this was a coup. For all his protestations in the Conclave, Crayford had made his play for power and used the turmoil to do away with Arnos.
”So you’re the King now, Crayford?” Millington said, half way between question and declarative.
”That I am, young sir, that I am, but don’t go expecting me to stand around gabbing with you all night. There’s killing to be done and an entire city just waiting to be won,” and to the others, ”Sort him out.”
Millington didn’t move as they spread out, quickly closing off every possible angle of escape. They didn’t seem to grasp the fact that he had no intention of running. He didn’t take his hands from his pockets. ”I’m begging you,” he said, without so much as a hint of submissiveness in his voice. ”Please don’t do this.”
”Behold the great Gentlemen Knights of London, brothers, frightening isn’t it? To think we’ve entrusted the safety of our city to these craven fops and dandies. Well, it’s about time we put a stop to that. Do him.” Crayford barked, and his cronies jumped to do his bidding.
”There’s a difference between cowardice and compassion,” Millington said, lowering himself to one knee as though about to offer his hand, and lowering his head.
”Christ, you’re pathetic. Stand up and take your licks, man. At least have the balls to make some sport of it. Don’t grovel and scrape like a bloody dog.”
Millington looked up then, his eyes feverish, piercing. ”How funny you should mention dogs,” he said. ”It’s almost as though you can read my mind.” He growled deep in his throat then, a hideous animalistic sound that shouldn’t—couldn’t—possibly have come from a human mouth.
Outside, streets away, the dogs began to bark.
Penge turned uncertainly to look at Mortlake, as though he couldn’t quite believe the two weren’t somehow connected.
”Oh for God’s sake, do I have to do everything myself?” Crayford grunted and heaved his ample girth two steps forward, moving into the moonlight proper for the first time. ”Just kill him and get it over with.”
Devil’s Acre cracked his knuckles and pulled a switchblade from his deep pockets.
Crayford smiled. ”At least one of you worthless crooks is a man of action. I was beginning to despair.” Crayford’s smile was crooked and gap-toothed.
The barking was closer. It wasn’t one dog. It was a pack. Strays. A scavenger pack. The barks echoed throughout the draughty floors of the warehouse, louder and nearer by the second.
The blade glinted silver in the moonlight.
Devil’s Acre turned his wrist in a tight
arc, whipping the switchblade from left to right across Millington’s eye line.
Still he didn’t move.
”Maybe our coward has grown some balls in the face of death?” Crayford observed. ”Well good for you. At least you can die like a man.”
In answer, Millington threw back his head and cawed harshly, again and again. If the growl had been inhuman, the caws that escaped his mouth were purely avian.
Devil’s Acre froze, looking to Crayford for guidance. The fat man was clearly reaching the end of his tether. His eyes widened, the web of red veins turning almost purple as anger threatened to get the better of him.
Something hit the window.
And again.
And again.
The glass trembled in its frame.
And again. And more, faster, like the roll of thunder.
Before he could say anything, the windows all along the façade of the warehouse imploded in a shower of glass and black feathers. Ravens streamed in through the broken windows, cawing and shrieking as they battered at everyone and everything inside the room. More and more of them poured into the warehouse, more than the tight confines could hold. They flew into each other and into the crates, veering frantically as they sought to avoid collision. Wings hit wings, hit faces and bodies. It was chaos.
Millington didn’t move.
He didn’t need to.
He was the only one the ravens didn’t batter with their assault.
He cawed again, raucous this time, calling the birds to war.
Devil’s Acre threw his hands up before his face as first one then another and another and another raven dove straight for him, tearing at his cheeks and nose and ears and eyes with their sharp beaks. The switchblade fell from his hands. It disappeared in the barrage of wings and feathers.
”I begged you,” Millington said calmly. It didn’t matter. No one could hear him over the cacophony of screams and wings.
And then the dogs arrived, transforming the warehouse into a slaughterhouse as they tore into the Villain Kings with tooth and claw.
Still Millington didn’t move.
Not until it was over.
Not until the last of the Villain Kings lay dead at his feet. The ravens took up perches around the beams and rafters while the dogs lapped up spilled blood.
”I begged you,” Millington said again. His breathing was fast and shallow, panting. His eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped forward, sprawling across the concrete floor.
The animals watched over him until dawn.
Chapter Seventy-Six
”Get behind me, girl,” the man with the broken sword yelled at her. His voice barely carried over the tumult of wings and breaking glass. She couldn’t hear properly; every sound was dampened down to near silence and dragged out as though he head was filled with molasses.
Emily looked around, the ground beneath her spinning, saw the wolf convulsing on the ground beside her, the bronze lion, and remembered it coming to life in Trafalgar Square and following it, but everything after that was gone. She didn’t know where she was, only that she was on her hands and knees and it felt as though a thousand tiny blades of ice had been rammed through her skull and deep into her brain.
Her entire body shivered violently.
She crawled a few feet, then stopped, her head dropping, and retched. Her stomach heaved but there was nothing to bring up but icy bile.
She looked up, bile clinging to her lips.
The world around her wept.
It took Emily a long moment to realise the tears were nothing more than the rime of frost melting from her eyes and blurring her vision.
The man shouted again, brandishing the broken sword ineffectually. In his other hand he held what looked like a pistol, but unlike any pistol she had ever seen. It was pointed at the face of another man. And then she saw the trail of ice that went from her feet in a fragile arch to the back of the man where it had already encased most of his spine and was spreading and thickening by the second, and as it did the brittle cracks in it widened, but without weakening the ice tomb, rather becoming a second skin.
She couldn’t see his face.
She didn’t need to.
She knew that he would have two: the real face, the one he had been born with, and this new second face of ice.
She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew.
She knew.
”Move girl!” the man shouted, shattering the spell that bound her like so much more of the ice that encased her feet. She lashed out, kicking and struggling against the last of her bonds, until she was free, and dragged herself the few feet across the soaking ground to huddle behind him.
”Touching,” the man with his back to her said, only it wasn’t a man’s voice at all. It was brittle, icy, dripping with cruelty and very definitely female. ”But we both know it’s all bluster now. Your toy’s every bit as broken as your sword. All of your fine gentleman friends have abandoned you, but isn’t that always the way? Only the servants remain faithful. Isn’t that the working man’s tragedy? Tell me, do you really think you can defend yourself let alone the girl? The earth trembles in the wake of Father London and you aim to stand there with a broken sword and a broken gun? Are you really that,” she seemed to struggle to find the word she was looking for. Finally she settled on the most obvious, ”stupid?”
And even as she mocked her protector, the ground trembled beneath her. For a moment Emily feared that it was going to crack open and she was going to fall endlessly head over feet into the abyss, for surely the way the world had turned and turned she was on her way to Hell? But it settled and she was still there.
”Girl, I want you to run,” the man said. ”I want you to run as far away from here as possible, and I don’t want you to stop running. Get out of London. She’s right. I can’t protect you. Do you understand?”
She did.
And what was more, she trusted him.
But she couldn’t leave him because as long as she was there the voice was wrong, he wasn’t alone.
”What are you waiting for, girl? Run!”
Emily tried to stand. She barely had the strength to get her feet under her never mind use them. She shook her head, and immediately regretted it. ”No,” she managed. One word. It was all the defiance she could muster. The lion came to her side, offering its body as support. She leaned on it, surprised by the warmth coming from beneath its bronze surface. Her head pounded. ”I can help.”
”Don’t be foolish,” she didn’t know who said it, the man with the broken weapons or the man with a woman’s voice. Something was happening to her. The pounding inside her head intensified, matching the rhythm of her blood.
”Precious, she feels some kind of loyalty … you can take the girl out of the scullery but you can’t take the servitude out of the girl.”
And then she heard another voice, one she had heard before. Just once, the night she had run from Bedlam. It came like a breath of wind against her ear, causing the fine hairs across the bay at the nape of her neck to prickle and rise. ”Her ghost lingers …”
Emily turned around but there was no one close enough to have whispered in her ear. She pressed her fingers to her temples. She felt the heat of her hand against the ice-cold of her head, and beneath that heat, the slow trickle of wetness down from her fingertips to her palm, and from her palm down her wrist. She thought for one sickening moment that it was blood, but it wasn’t. It was the Ice Queen’s residue.
Her body was purging the last lingering traces of the possession, forcing the ice from her system. Her ghost lingers … did that mean that while those last traces remained there was still a conduit to the intelligence that had invaded her? Was it possible? She pressed harder at her temples, squeezing the moisture out through her weeping pores. She stumbled but the lion was there for her. It looked at her, opening its mouth wide as though to roar, and snapped its teeth closed.
Her ghost lingers …
But she wouldn’t be once the las
t of her ice was purged.
And she knew with chilling certainty that once the ice was gone so too was their only chance of beating the Ice Queen. She had no idea where that certainty originated, but she would be a fool to doubt it.
Beside her, the lion roared.
And she felt herself falling again, only this time there was nothing to catch her.
She didn’t feel the ground as she hit it; she was away, inside her head, following all of these thoughts and memories that weren’t her own. They were vile, bitter, angry and all-consuming. They felt so wrong inside her that Emily knew they had to belong to the ice. They were separate to her own, but for all of their strength they didn’t prevent her own memories swarming back to engulf her. Suddenly she was hit by the image of the bedroom on the top floor of the lodging house, the tapestry and the fire, and then the water freezing around her feet and rising up her legs. The memory ceased to be hers long before the ice reached her head. Over and over and over the thought ”I am coming, my love!” blazed within her mind. Her breath turned shallow, sharp, as she struggled to catch it. She couldn’t pull her fingers away from her head; it was as though the last of the ice had fused them in place.
The world ceased to exist outside of her head.
That one thought, ”I am coming, my love!” was more powerful than all of the others and stood at the root of all of the anger and rage … and that, she realised, was what drove this woman: love. Misplaced. Twisted. But love just the same. It was all there inside Emily’s mind, but it was fading even as she found it. Albert, her consort, her husband, her life, and all of the things she had done to bring him back to her. The depth of the woman’s rage at the injustice of world was staggering. It spanned worlds, such was the intensity of it. Spanned worlds and broke them, she realised, as the ground shivered beneath her again and Father London’s huge feet crushed out more lives, and ground down more buildings like some fairy tale giant.
London Macabre Page 32
