by Peter Oxley
We huddled in the shadows of Mark Lane, peering round the corner at the Tower’s dark, imposing hulk. “Are you sure this will work?” I asked, looking down at the manacles round my wrists and ankles.
“Unless you have come up with a better idea in the past few minutes,” said Pearce, “this is the plan we are going with.” After one final examination of the traffic on Great Tower Street he turned to address his men.
“I will say this one final time,” he said. “As soon as we step through those gates there is every risk that we could be accused of committing treason. If any of you wish to walk away now, I will not hold it against you.”
There was silence among the 50 men all standing in the alley. Sergeant Jones cleared his throat. “All due respect, sir, but we go where you go. And hang the consequences. Sir.”
Pearce nodded, a proud smile flashing across his face before being replaced by his familiar stern focus. “Very well. You have your orders. ‘A’ group: with me.”
Pearce and I headed for Great Tower Street, a group of 20 soldiers swiftly forming around us. The remainder melted into the various streets and lanes dotted around the Tower, waiting for the agreed signal.
I looked up at the Tower and then at the pitifully few soldiers escorting us. “Should we not have brought more men?” I asked Pearce.
“Any more would have raised suspicions. Now be quiet and try to look evil and demonic.”
I glanced sideways at him. “Is that a joke?”
I had been pleasantly surprised at how quickly Pearce had welcomed me back, although that all made sense as soon as he told me what had happened in my absence. My head had spun as I thought about Maxwell being kidnapped by Gaap, let alone the return of Andras, and for a moment I feared that I would lose all control. Paradoxically, it was the thought of Kate being in the hands of Morley that gave me the focus I needed; we had to get her out of there before he had a chance to do anything irreparable to her.
While Pearce had told me his tale, Lexie and Joshua had appeared and lingered in the doorway, staring at me. “It’s all right,” I said, “I won’t bite.”
“Is it really you in there, Mr Potts?” asked Lexie.
“It is,” I grinned. “Good to see you both again. At least some of us managed to not get captured or transformed. Without Maxwell, you are probably our only hope of finding the portal.”
Lexie puffed out her chest in pride. “And we have managed to do just that.”
“Really? You are sure?”
“With circa 80 per cent certainty, we have identified the only logical location,” she said.
“Only 80 per cent?” I asked, trying not to sound too worried.
“Don’t worry,” said Joshua. “For Lexie, 80 per cent is actually really high. It is there, we guarantee it.”
“Well—” started Lexie.
“It is there,” grinned Joshua. “I would stake our reputations on it.”
Lexie pouted and then nodded brusquely, muttering something under her breath.
“So… Nonsuch?” I asked.
“No,” said Lexie. “It would appear that that was a red herring. The real location is here.” She pointed to a map, at a point just north of St Albans.
“A red herring? But why would Max do that?” They shrugged and so I continued, putting the mystery to the back of my mind for the time being: “Well, the good news is that it is not too far away. Although we will have to make a detour first.”
The huge gates swung open as we approached the Tower of London, revealing a couple of redcoats standing guard. They stiffened to attention when they noticed Captain Pearce.
“I am bringing this demon into custody,” said Pearce. “We need to place it in a secure cell at once.”
The two soldiers looked uncertain and were about to send inside for orders, so I made a show of rattling my restraints and snarling at my captors. Sergeant Jones hit me hard across the back of my head and I subsided.
“We need access straight away, Private,” said Pearce. “I am not sure how much longer we can keep this creature contained.”
They nodded, glancing warily at me and then darting out of the way as we passed them. We went through the archway and over the bridge, through another archway and then into the passageway between the inner and outer walls. I turned my head slightly towards Sergeant Jones behind me.
“Ouch,” I muttered.
“Had to make it look realistic, sir,” he said, a hint of amusement in his voice.
“Shush,” said Pearce through gritted teeth. “You all know your roles; wait for my signal.”
A pair of officers approached us, accompanied by two of Morley’s black-coated Witchfinders. I looked around, weighing up the number of troops that I could see. A dozen were dotted around the courtyard while probably the same number looked down from windows and walkways above us.
“Why have you bought that creature here?” asked one of the Witchfinders.
“I thought that Mr Morley would be interested in examining him—it. Where is he?”
“He is currently conducting an interrogation.” My heart quickened at these words as the man continued: “I am not sure why he would be interested in this creature. Why not just kill it and be done?”
“The creature’s name is Augustus Potts,” said Pearce.
The men looked at each other. “Bring it this way.” They turned and led us towards the Bloody Tower. Pearce pushed me forwards and half the men followed behind, the remainder staying in the courtyard with Sergeant Jones.
I made a show of stumbling up the rough stone stairs, keeping a wary eye on our surroundings as we made our way down the cold passageway. It was lit by torches flickering in brackets at shoulder-height, giving the impression of us stepping back in time to the Middle Ages.
We came to a thick door and watched as one of the Witchfinders fumbled with a ring of keys. At a nod from Pearce, his soldiers casually milled around so that they surrounded our small group. Pearce checked his pocket watch and grunted as the door swung open. “In there,” the Witchfinder said, stepping aside to let me pass. His eyes widened with alarm when he turned to notice ten gun barrels pointing at his head.
“Please,” said Pearce, gesturing into the room. “After you.”
The Witchfinders and their soldier escorts stumbled into the pitch-black room, followed by the rest of us. A quick-thinking soldier grabbed a torch from outside the room and used it to light the dormant ones inside, providing stuttering illumination to the square windowless space that was scarcely big enough to fit us all in.
“What is this treachery?” demanded the first Witchfinder as I freed myself from the manacles with a satisfyingly sharp snap of my wrists.
“A slight change of plan,” said Pearce. “A young woman was brought here a few hours ago. You will tell us where she is. Now.”
“We will not assist anyone who consorts with demons,” the man spat back. “You will hang for this, Captain.”
He and the other Witchfinder displayed the blind hatred of the truly devout; there was little chance of us getting a helpful answer from them in the short time we had available. I looked at the two soldiers who had accompanied the Witchfinders, and they were shuffling uncomfortably as they scanned the room.
“Sergeant,” I said to the nearest one. “Do you know who this is?”
“I do, sir. Captain Pearce, sir.”
“And do you know who I am?”
“I think you might be Mr Augustus Potts, sir. I’d heard you’d turned demon.” He forced himself to look at me. “You might not remember, but I fought alongside you in the clearances of Holborn, sir. Both of you.”
Pearce turned and approached the man. “I remember. Clinton, isn’t it?”
The man nodded, his cheeks flushed and his eyes wide. Not for the first time I marvelled at Pearce’s powers of recall, given the sheer numbers of men who must have fought and died in his company over the years.
“Sergeant Clinton,” continued Pearce, “I accept that what
we are doing here is extremely irregular, but these are desperate times. I have strong reasons to believe that Witchfinder General Morley’s actions are not in the best interests of the country. Who are you reporting to at the moment?”
“We were put under the command of Mr Morley, sir.”
I shook my head as Pearce continued. “Are there any officers here?”
“No, sir. They were all called away, sir.”
“Then I am the ranking officer here. Do you accept my authority?”
The Sergeant glanced at the Witchfinders and then nodded, straightening to attention. “Yes sir.” The Private next to him followed suit.
“Very good. You and your men are now under my command. You will help us retake the Tower from the Witchfinders. We should hopefully find that my Sergeant outside has managed to persuade your men in the courtyard to also join us. But first, we need to know where the young girl was taken.”
“Miss Thatcher, sir? We knows just where she is, sir. Beauchamp Tower, sir.”
The Witchfinders in the other parts of the Tower had offered little resistance, especially once the remaining Fusiliers from the Tower’s garrison rallied to our cause. We burst into the Beauchamp Tower with weapons raised; Pearce and I both keen to be first through the door. Two Witchfinders immediately inside the room turned and charged at us, one of them firing a pistol at me. I heard Kate scream and dispatched my attacker with a swift blow to his head, sending him slumping unconscious to the floor. I looked down at my body, relieved to note that the man had panicked and poorly aimed his weapon.
“You,” snarled Morley, standing in front of a table on which lay a shivering Kate. Her clothes were torn and I could make out a number of wicked-looking instruments placed around her. The sleeves of her dress had been torn away and her left hand was covered in blood, with a nasty-looking burn further up her arm.
“Morley,” I said, fighting the urge to murder him where he stood. “Let her go.”
“I do not take orders from the likes of you.”
I shook my head, trying to control the rising fury at what he had done to my friend. “This ends now.”
“I could not agree more,” he said, grabbing a long blade from the table at his side. “Abomination!” he yelled as he lunged at me.
I parried, forced backwards by the ferocity of his attack. Again and again he stabbed and slashed at me with an almost animalistic intensity, his teeth bared and eyes flashing as he focused his entire being on killing me. Once again I had a strange feeling of viewing our exchange from outside my body, seeing the righteous man fighting the terrifying demon, knowing that I should instinctively side with humanity but also that things were no longer that black and white, if indeed they ever had been.
My thoughts slowed me and he managed to dodge inside my defences, scraping his wicked blade down my arm. I spun away, putting a hand to the wound that burnt with red-hot pain. The sword throbbed in my hand, runic symbols glowing, and I finally realised the pointlessness of holding back my demon side. Doing so had nearly killed me once before. I glanced at Kate; if Morley bested me once again, what would happen to her and the others?
I could feel the pull of the sword, the swirl of the runic symbols scrolling and circling but held back as always by my own stubborn determination. The effort of keeping that potent force in check was causing me harm and stopping me from focusing on what I needed to do. With a deep breath, I let go.
There was a buzzing like a million angry wasps burrowing through my arms and into my brain, consuming me, changing me, making everything so very clear.
I looked down at the human and saw how weak and insignificant he was. How dare this insect harm me?
I charged forwards into the sea of red.
My first blow shattered Morley’s blade, the second snatched the remnants of the weapon from his hand. He spun away and I kicked him hard in the legs. As he fell to one knee I followed up with another foot to his face.
He fell onto his back, his face a bloody mess as he laughed at me through broken teeth. “I knew it. Once a demon, always a demon. Your evil must be wiped out.” He glared at me defiantly as I raised the sword above my head, ready to strike. “Do it,” he spat. “I will be a martyr to show the true nature of your vile kind.”
He stood for everything I hated: the sheer, bigoted ignorance that came with a single-minded belief that there was only one true path. That anything different to him was subhuman and did not deserve to live, and that anyone who thought otherwise was likewise damned. To wipe him off the face of the Earth would not be a sin; if anything, it would enhance humanity, the surgical removal of a malign influence.
I glanced round to see that Pearce had managed to free Kate from her bonds and was busy wrapping a length of cloth round her damaged arm and hand. Kate was watching Morley and I, her face blank as she waited to see what I would do next.
“Do it!” Morley shouted.
I looked back at him. It was what he would have done if our situations were reversed, because he believed that it was the only path he could take. To offer mercy would be to acknowledge that it was not as simple as pure good and evil, that there were shades of grey in between.
I lowered my sword. “No.” I stepped away. “It is over, Morley. You lose. And we still have a job to do.” I turned to Kate. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” she said, rubbing her wrists. “He gave me a fright and a few scratches, but that’s all. You like roughing up girls, do you?” she asked Morley, who had shuffled back into a corner, spitting out globules of blood and eyeing us warily. Then she turned to me and punched me, hard, in the arm.
“Ouch,” I protested. “What was that for?”
“For keeping secrets from me, for not telling me about what was happening to you. For not trusting me to understand.”
I stared at her. “But… I thought… aren’t you a bit horrified by…?” I waved my hand at my face.
“At first I was pretty shocked, yeah,” she said. “But you’re our Gus. You’re one of us. I thought we were a team.” She waved away my stuttered apology. “Save it for the ride to St Albans. I expect you to do some serious grovelling.”
I nodded. “We should get going.” I started towards the door and then halted when I saw the looks on their faces. “What is it?”
“Gus,” Kate said gently. “You’re… back?”
I looked down at my hands. Even in the half-light I could see that the runic symbols had suddenly retreated. I put my hands to my face, feeling nothing but normal skin and bone. Tears sprang to my eyes. Surely this was impossible? I had given in to my demon side and surrendered all of my moral restraints, given up the last vestiges of my humanity. And yet finally I was human once again.
I started to laugh as I remembered Byron’s words, urging me to let go of my resistance to the sword’s influence and my fearful, pointless stubbornness of losing myself in the process.
Kate and Pearce were watching me with bemusement. “It’s finally happened,” she said. “He’s completely bloody mad—gone to Hanwell with no return ticket.”
“No,” I said. “I’m fine. I’m not sure I’ve ever been better in fact.” I looked down at Morley. “What shall we do with him?”
“I can think of a few inventive ideas,” said Pearce. “But I do not want to stoop to his level. We should leave him here, to be dealt with when all of this is over.”
“Why?” Morley spat at me. “Why don’t you kill me?”
I took a deep breath. “Someone very wise pointed out to me not too long ago that, just as not all humans are bad, the same applies to demons. Including me. I could have killed you back in Portsmouth and again just now. At first I thought that was because I was holding back my demon nature, but even when I let go of it…” I shrugged.
“I do not believe you,” he said. “This is just more trickery. The demons only care for one thing: to destroy peoples’ lives. You have been tainted by them and must be stopped.”
I was surprised to see tears run
ning down Morley’s cheeks. Kate walked over and squatted next to him.
“Whatever they did to you, or your family, you ain’t going to make it better by doing all this,” she said. “Bad things happen. Yeah, a lot of the bad stuff recently has been the demons’ fault, but don’t forget that we can do more than our fair share of pointless evil without any help from that lot with the horns on their heads. I’m not saying we’re perfect, but we’re trying to save the world here, whatever you might think. And we really need to be in St Albans doing that right now. You could fight with us if you really want to do some good.”
He shook his head. “I answer to a higher power,” he muttered.
“Hmm,” I said. “About that. I believe that the Queen is being influenced by Gaap and the other demons; all the better to sow fear across the country, turning everyone against all demons so that there is no chance of us being able to build a force against the invasion from the portal.”
“Damn lies,” hissed Morley.
“Really?” I asked. “Then how was it that you always seemed to know exactly where to be? The Pooka tavern? When Andras was with Kate?”
He stared at the floor. “I was given orders by an intermediary.”
“What did he look like?” asked Kate. “This intermediary? About so tall, glasses, thinning hair, bit dodgy-looking? If so, you might have had a run-in with our old friend the fake Dr Smith. Who’s really the demon who nicked Maxwell and brought back Andras.”
Morley stared down, mute, while Pearce nodded to me. “It does seem logical,” he said. “The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Divide and conquer.”
Morley shook his head. “If the Queen is working for them, then how do you explain her taking the army up to St Albans?”
“The army’s gone to St Albans?” asked Kate.
“Maybe all is not lost,” I said. “We should go and join the—”
“Wait,” said Pearce. “This makes no sense. I met General Gordon only a few hours ago and was given the distinct impression that nothing was happening. If they were mobilising troops to stop a demon invasion, surely everyone would have been summoned?”
