by Peter Oxley
“Did you really think that you could get away so easily?” he asked.
I held my hands out empty at my sides, my sword safely in its scabbard at my back. “I do not wish to hurt you, Morley,” I said.
He laughed. “I, on the other hand, have no such qualms,” he said as he charged at me.
I stepped aside, using his momentum to push him down to the ground as he passed. He skidded on the mud and rose with a snarl, raising his truncheon to point at me.
“I heard that you are trying to resist your true nature,” he sneered.
I frowned at him. “How did you…?” I began, but he had already rushed at me once more. I darted aside from blow after blow, marvelling at how quick the man was. His hatred had given him a power and ferocity that I found hard to withstand, even in my heightened state. I fell backwards under the onslaught, his eyes boring into me as he swung his weapon again and again.
I knew I should fight back, that I was being hamstrung by not returning his blows. Indeed, if I brought my strength to bear on him then I could have easily ended the fight. But I could not bring myself to hurt him. To raise my fists against a human, regardless of who that was, would surely cement my place in the demon fraternity as an enemy of mankind. And if I killed a human then surely all would be lost; even one as odious and misguided as Witchfinder General Morley.
I batted aside another swing from his truncheon and then felt a sudden wet tightness in my side. I looked down to see a knife protruding from the flesh just above my hip. Morley tensed his arm and the long sharp blade twisted sickeningly slowly inside me. I staggered back, my strength rapidly draining away, and despite my best intentions threw a fist at Morley. He flew across the street and landed against a wall, sliding down to the ground.
I held my hands to my wound, desperately trying to keep the blood and organs inside as I staggered away. I needed to find somewhere safe, somewhere I could rest and sleep… sleep seemed so very, very attractive at that point.
A part of me pleaded with my body to keep going, knowing that to stop would be to die. But a greater part of me no longer cared.
Chapter 26
Flashes of sound, a scramble and clatter, some whispered words.
A face swam into view, a young girl, so sweet and innocent. She should not be allowed to show such pain and sadness on her face, not one as young as her.
Darkness, then a memory. Where had I seen her before? A street corner… my brother’s maid… what was her name? Milly?
“My friends needed someone to play with,” she said. “So I killed her.”
Too young for such vicious thoughts.
I heard my own voice from far away: “Your friends. Who are they?”
“Why, you’ve met them already,” the child—was it Milly?—said, standing the doll up. “They talked to us in the sitting room. They’re outside right now.” She moved the doll in a slow dance and sang gently under her breath to the tune of ‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’: “Will you will you play with me, will you will you stay with me…?”
The song echoed round my head and I screamed a scream with no sound, my limbs unable to move.
My eyes fluttered open, the sunlight painful as it seared my vision. I groaned and rolled over, wincing at the sharp, stabbing pain in my side. With a shock, I remembered the fight with Morley and the wound that I had sustained, a wound that surely should have been fatal.
I looked down to see my shirt and trousers stained dark with blood that had dried into a hard congealed mess. I stared at it. This alone surely indicated that I had been out for more than just a few hours. Probably more like days I thought, as my stomach started to rumble.
I looked around. I was in a small, dark hut that was probably an outhouse although it looked like it had not been used for quite some time. The wood on the walls and roof was rotting away, with slats leaning on each other for support like drunks at closing time. The floor was covered in a soft grey muck that I did not care to examine too closely, although thankfully I was lain on a large piece of cloth.
The door opened and a tiny figure slipped in, shutting the door quickly behind her. She was a small girl, probably no more than eight or nine years old, and she stared at me through a face that was streaked with dirt.
I held out my hands in as unthreatening a manner as I could manage. “Please don’t be alarmed,” I said. “I won’t hurt you.”
“I know that,” she said. “You told me. ‘I’ll never harm you,’ you said. Although my name’s not Milly or Kate. I’m Sal.”
I grunted as I worked myself into a sitting position. “Pleased to meet you, Sal. I’m Gus.”
She grinned and shook my hand in a proud mimic of an adult greeting before placing a dirty cloth bundle on the ground in front of me. She opened it to reveal a hock of bread, a lump of hard cheese and a slab of nondescript grey meat. Next to it she placed a chipped mug filled with beer. The sheer weight of my hunger overtook any resistance and I grabbed at the food, stuffing it into my mouth.
She watched as I ate, squatting down on her haunches in front of me. “I wasn’t sure what sort of scran you liked,” she said, “so I grabbed a bit of everything.”
“This is all great, thank you,” I said through mouthfuls of gristly meat that at that moment tasted better than the finest cut from the best Westminster chophouse. I met her gaze, noting the innocent curiosity in her bright blue eyes. “Are you not scared of me?”
“No,” she said. “You said I shouldn’t be.”
“But I’m a… I look like this,” I said, gesturing at my face with a clawed hand.
“So?”
“But everyone’s afraid of demons.”
“Are they?” she asked. “Why?”
“Well… demons harm people, kill them.”
“But you don’t.”
“No…”
“I saw you fight that man in the street. You could have killed him but you never.”
I remembered hitting Morley hard, sending him flying against a wall in my desperation to get away. I hadn’t checked on him, but the force of such a blow could easily have broken a man’s neck. “Didn’t I?” I asked cautiously.
“I saw him limping away a bit later. Mind you, he didn’t look too happy.”
I grinned despite myself at the thought, relieved that my conscience could be clear in that respect at least.
“So not all demons are bad,” she said. “Or at least you’re not.”
I frowned. “But many are,” I said. “You should be careful; you were lucky with me but you might not be so lucky next time.”
“But you said all demons want to kill people. That was a lie.”
“I… suppose it was. But sometimes you just need to be careful.”
“Yeah, you said that. But not all demons are bad, just like not all people are bad.”
I nodded at the truth in the words, grinning as I realised I had been outsmarted by a child, and not for the first time. I marvelled that she could be so much more open-minded than a town full of her elders. But then again, if the way she thought was mirrored in others of her generation then maybe there was hope for us all. Perhaps the bigotry of the Witchfinders would not spread as easily as I had feared.
Not all demons are bad, just like not all people are bad. The words ran round my brain, tantalisingly simple. I had always assumed that to give in to my demon side would be to descend into vicious, mindless depravity, but what if it didn’t have to be that way? “I like the way you think,” I said.
“Like I say, you didn’t do for that other bloke. Why’s that then?”
“Because…” I frowned. “Because it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. He is a bad man, but he believes what he is doing is right. You cannot simply kill people because they do not agree with you.” My head started to swim with the implications. “Or demons either, for that matter.” I thought of all the demons I had killed over the years; how many of them had been truly bad, if such a concept existed? Had I been so wrapped up in our crusade that I had been
blinded by the certainties of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, not stopping to think that there were shades of grey in the demon world as well as ours? My experiences with the Pooka had laid to rest any thoughts that all demons were simply evil and bloodthirsty. After all, if every demon was evil then what hope did that leave for me?
The memory of Byron and Kingdom swam into my mind. “I had some friends who were trying to stop some bad men from burning down a tavern. Friends like me, good demons. Do you…?”
“There was a big ruckus the night I found you, down by the docks in the Pooka quarter. Lynch mob, folk called it.”
“What happened?” I asked. “Did they get away?”
“By the sounds of it, yeah. Both sides gave as good as they got. The demons seem to have got the message though, pretty much all of them have cleared out of town. Apart from you, of course.”
“When did… how long have I been asleep?”
“Two days, give or take.”
The words were like a splash of icy water. “I have to get moving,” I said, grunting as I pulled myself to my feet.
“You had a pretty nasty gash in your side,” she said. “Things like that would stop a man dead. But then you’re not a man, are you?”
I pulled up my torn, bloody shirt to examine the knife wound. It felt tight, but I knew that caked blood could often cause that sensation. I used some of the beer to soak the crusted scab, peeling it away to reveal perfectly healed skin.
I looked up at Sal and grinned. “No,” I said. “I think I’m rather more than that.”
I was not so naïve as to believe that Sal’s faith in demon-kind was reflective of the rest of humanity and so I was keen to be as inconspicuous as possible as I made my way back to London from Portsmouth. However, I had already lost two days, time that could prove fatal if Gaap’s plans had been allowed to advance unchecked, so I could not just travel at night. Nor could I waste time on roundabout routes avoiding thoroughfares and the general population. I therefore had to risk travelling in broad daylight along the London–Portsmouth road or by train.
As one last favour to me, Sal managed to find me a hooded cloak that served to hide my features, as well as a freight train that was heading directly into London. We sneaked up to the side of the tracks, keeping to the undergrowth as we approached a particularly inviting-looking open carriage.
I patted her on the shoulder. “Thank you. For everything. I wish I had some way to repay you.”
“You could take me with you,” she said, turning those big eyes on me.
“I am sorry, but what I have to do is far too dangerous for a young lady like you.” I gave her shoulder a squeeze. “But I will come back and repay you for your kindness. When all of this is over I will take you up to London. I promise.”
She frowned at me. “I could help.”
I smiled. “I owe you my life, and I am not going to repay that favour by risking yours.” The train whistled and started to move. I watched it build up speed and then gave her a hug. “Thank you again. I will be back: promise.”
The train had gone past us and was building up enough speed to satisfy me that Sal had no chance of running after it. I burst out of the cover of the bushes and sprinted along the track, catching up with the open carriage and vaulting inside, rolling onto a pile of hard wooden crates. I peered back to see the retreating figure of Sal standing by the track.
I pushed my way as far inside as possible so that I was hidden from view and then lay back. I resolved to make the most of the journey time by getting as much rest as possible, so that I could enter the fray strong and refreshed. That was assuming that there was still some form of battle to be fought. I wondered where Byron, Kingdom and the rest of the Pooka had gone; my memories of the night of the battle outside the tavern were still muddled, and I could not decide whether their standing by me was a sign that they would continue to take the fight all the way to wherever the Fulcrum was or whether they would simply retreat back to the Eternal Mines as they had planned. Of course, if they had been badly beaten by Morley’s lynch mob then they may have had little choice but to run away.
I cast the thought aside. There was no point wasting my energies on unknown quantities. More pressing was the question of how I would get myself back in the game. Based on our conversations before I had left, Nonsuch seemed to be the most likely location for the Fulcrum and I wondered whether I should make that my first port of call. It was certainly a more attractive option than braving the crowds in London. But if the battle had yet to be joined there, then I would most likely find myself alone in an empty field.
I settled on my brother’s laboratory as the best first step: at the very least, Maxwell could point me in the direction of where the battle was. In the meantime I would keep my ears open for anything that would indicate the commencement of hostilities. I had a feeling that the impact of Gaap’s plans would be felt over quite some distance.
There was also the question of how effective I would be in battle. While my body had recovered as rapidly as ever, the memory of my beating at Morley’s hands was a raw open wound. I wondered why I had been so reluctant to fight him. I owed him nothing, and indeed I despised everything he stood for. Yet still I was unwilling or unable to inflict even a proper injury on the man. Every time I thought of our confrontation I pictured the scene as though I were watching from afar, seeing a demon with sharp teeth and claws squaring up to a man almost half his size. Even though I knew that the demon in that scene was on the side of right and the man’s motives were questionable, seen in this light my instincts were still firmly on the side of the human.
I was certain that I would not be paralysed by the same morals when it came to confronting Gaap and the Almadites, but my encounters with Byron and the other Pooka had muddied my thinking when it came to the question of whether or not demons should be eradicated on sight. I cursed. It had all been so simple once. But then again, if demons were incapable of salvation then where would that leave me?
This circular argument kept me preoccupied for much of the journey to London and I was no closer to an answer when I arrived than when I had left. Even though I knew that it was a nonsense to think of all demons as irretrievably evil, I could not bring myself to permanently align myself with them. I was still a human, surely, regardless of how I looked. Wasn’t I?
As the train slowed to come into the station, I jumped down and ran away to safety, half-expecting a hue-and-cry to be raised against me at any moment. I was lucky and managed to slip away unnoticed, vaulting a wall and then joining the throngs of humanity in the street beyond as they made their way through their ordinary lives. I pulled the hooded cloak up over my head and kept my eyes downcast.
For once I was eternally grateful for the natural instincts of the Londoner when it came to other people: that is to act as though no one else existed beyond themselves and anyone they happened to be with. While in other cities a strange figure trying to look inconspicuous would at least attract interest, in London it was almost considered bad form to enter into conversation or even eye contact with a person that one did not have to. Any initial fears of being spotted and harangued as a demon diminished rapidly as I walked through the London streets, my hood covering my features and scarcely a glance being sent in my direction.
By the time I turned onto the busy madness of Trafalgar Square I was marching proudly, my head and hands still obscured by the cloak but cutting a confident figure nonetheless. Just before Whitehall I turned into Spring Gardens and then cut left so that I was in the narrow street running behind number 24. I dashed down the street, keeping myself low and close to the wall that ran along my left-hand side. Without pausing to catch breath or realise that what I was doing was probably foolhardy to say the least, I leapt over the wall, landing in a crouch in the small yard on the other side.
I looked up into a forest of gun barrels pointed at my head. Yes, I reflected, that was indeed a very stupid thing to do.
Chapter 27
I was pushed rou
ghly against the wall, a dozen rifles trained on me as my cloak was torn away and my sword removed. I held out my hands and stammered my innocence but was rewarded by a buttstock to the stomach. I let the soldier think he had hurt me, all the better to hopefully put them at their ease.
“I need to see Maxwell Potts,” I said. “I am his brother.”
“Yeah,” sneered one soldier, “and I’m Florence Nightingale on me tea break, mate.”
“Wait,” said an officer, frowning at me. “Just keep it here.” He ran into the house, leaving me with the group of young soldiers. I looked around at them, seeing naked fear in the way they stared at me and handled their weapons. I recognised a few faces from previous engagements and realised with relief that I had stumbled upon Captain Pearce’s Company.
I tried a smile, then realised from their reactions that as far as they were concerned I was baring my teeth at them. I tried a different tack to put them at ease. “Pleasant weather we are having, eh? For the time of year I mean.” I turned to a Sergeant. “Jones, is it not? How is the wife?”
He took a step towards me. “If you dare to threaten—”
“Stand down, Sergeant,” a voice barked from the doorway. I looked up to see Captain Pearce walking towards us. “Gus, is that really you?” he asked.
“Captain,” I grinned. “It certainly is. Sorry about running out on you fellows back at Nonsuch, but I came over a little queer.”
He peered at my face and then nodded. “You had us worried back there. But I am glad to see you now; assuming, that is, you can be trusted?”
“Of course I can,” I said. “I am still the same person deep down, or at least I think I am. One thing is for sure, though: there is a grave threat posed by the demon Gaap that we need to stop post-haste. I want to get back in the fight. Take me to my brother and N’yotsu and let’s put an end to this madness.”
Pearce took a deep breath. “Gus,” he said softly. “There are some things you need to know first.”
