Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

  “Tribal?” I whispered to him, trying to ignore the shaking just beneath my own voice. “Are you telling me we’re trapped in a dark underground maze with a motherfucking werewolf?”

  He shook his head in the darkness. “No. With two of them. Were-somethings, anyway.” He sniffed the air. “There’s something…wrong with them.”

  No fucking kidding, I thought. They just slaughtered our librarian, and now they are stalking us in the darkness. Unbidden, my mind filled with all the crime scene photos Cloves had shown me. Edward Knight, Amanda Bishop, Simon King, how mangled and torn they had been. And the students at the Jenner Institute. The boy with the mincemeat face and that perfect untouched baby-blue eye peeping out of the flesh. Was this the killer? Or rather, were these the killers? Tribals after all? And now they had us cornered down here in the dark.

  Something moved out of the shadows between the arches, a piece of darkness, ragged around the edges, moving slowly and deliberately towards us. Twin flickers of yellow as eyes caught our light.

  The beast was huge. Larger than any animal I’d seen. Sleek black muscles bunching under short, ragged fur as it glided bonelessly from shadow to shadow.

  “That’s not a wolf,” I breathed, my body involuntarily taking a step backwards and bumping into the table behind us.

  “Panther,” the vampire breathed. “Were-panther”

  “It’s big. That’s…that’s a really big cat. What do we do?” I tried to wrench my hand out of his grasp, I don’t know why, I just wanted both hands free. I guess any barrier, even a flimsy fleshy one, is better than nothing when faced with the prospect of being ripped apart. It’s not like I have any hidden ninjutsu moves.

  “Stay behind me,” Allesandro said urgently, stepping in front of me, so I was staring between his shoulder blades. He was taller than Oscar, my panicked brain decided to inform me. Funny how your mind works in moments of sheer terror.

  Another growl, low and long and somehow…pleased. It came from our left. As my head whipped in that direction, I saw another of the beasts, the tremendous, dark, sleek cats, leap out of the shadow to land on top of a reading table, the overhead light incongruously flickering on. Its fur was patched and ill-kept. Its tail matted. Like the first, it was also larger than any other natural animal I’d seen.

  “I don’t think you can stay between me and both of them,” I said urgently. “New plan please, Galahad.” A bubble of nervous laughter escaped. I suddenly felt like a very large ball of tempting yarn on legs. I forced myself not to look down at Hope Nelson’s severed head again.

  Was there another way out of the basement? There was no way we would make it to the stairs. Both monsters blocked our path, their muzzles baring yellowed teeth. Again the stench of matted fur and sickness rolled over me.

  “I’ll keep them busy, you run,” he said. “Take the book.”

  “You can’t take both of them,” I said, stepping away from beside him. “They’ll tear you to pieces. How exactly are you going to keep them busy, getting stuck in their throats?”

  “I have fangs and claws too,” he grinned, not taking his eyes off the beasts. “I’ll give as good as I get, although your concern for my wellbeing is duly noted, Doctor.”

  I really wanted to not die in a musty library archive basement, I cannot stress how much, but I also didn’t want Allesandro to die either. Irritating, manipulative and patronising as he could be, he was still the only vampire I trusted…kind of. “There’s something wrong with them,” I said. They were circling us, getting closer all the time, as cats stalk birds, toying with us. But the smell of these creatures, and the shining sweat in their fur, the patches of foam and spittle on their muzzles suggested something even more sinister. Were they rabid? Some form of were-mange?

  “They’re just beasts,” the vampire said, trying to keep them both in sight, turning and keeping me behind him as best he could. Every muscle in his body seemed tensed, coiled. “I’ve handled worse animals than these two.”

  The Tribal to our left leapt down from the tabletop silently, its massive paws raising a thin cloud of dust from the stone floor. And then it stood up on its hind legs, very slowly.

  I’d never seen a Tribal before, in full beast-form that is. My first encounter therefore was horrifying. It’s very disconcerting when a jungle cat which already looks as though it has just dragged its carcass from the lowest depths of hell suddenly stands up like a person in front of you. It was tall beyond belief – it just kept going.

  At it stood, its muscles rippled underneath the fur, its form bulging and contorting like a bag of roiling snakes. What was revealed was not the soft and oft-tickled underbelly of a friendly kitty, even a huge killer one, but the torso of a man, dark hirsute abdominals, a shelf of thick chest, deeply scarred, and above the thick neck, a monstrous face, a nightmare middle-ground between man and beast. It no longer resembled a cat of any description. Its dark wet muzzle had extended, its bared fangs yellow and dripping, grinning at us demonically.

  The other Tribal, still on all fours and looking mostly like a panther, tilted its head back and forth, looking questioningly up at the other.

  “Get ready,” Allesandro said to me urgently.

  “For what?” I hissed. The dark, naked half-man took a tentative step toward us, long clawed feet scraping on the floor. Its wickedly-clawed fingers were twice as long as a human’s. “Evisceration?”

  He smiled in the dark, maniacally. His lips didn’t move. In my head, a calm and intimate whisper. “Run.”

  Shapes moved in a blur, the motion so fast I was unbalanced, almost knocked off my feet.

  Allesandro was no longer by my side, a pale streak, he had leapt toward the shifter looming over us with vampiric speed, barrelling into its solid chest. With animal reflexes, it had tried to anticipate this. He didn’t knock it to the ground, but it staggered backwards, stumbling against a shelf, sending an avalanche of books clattering to the floor. The creature let out a roar, deafening in this enclosed, echoing space, and great arms came up to claw at the vampire’s back.

  I ran.

  Skirting the table, and leaving the reassuring glow of the lamp, I plunged into the darkness between the arches, the overhead lights too slow to provide any useful light, just a disorientating strobe in front and handy trail to follow behind. I ran between the stacks into blind darkness.

  It was much darker that I thought. A crash rang out behind me as the vampire and Tribal tumbled to the floor, and in panic I ran shoulder first into a solid book stack, making the shelves judder.

  Grabbing the wood with one hand, my free hand still clutching the Voynich manuscript to my chest, I skittered along the length of the bookcase, feeling my way hastily like a blind woman, trying to lose myself in the vaulted arches, to put as much distance and as many turns as I could in this underground space between myself and the monsters.

  A deep, angry growl behind told me more than I wanted to know. The other Tribal was in pursuit.

  I dragged books off shelves behind me, hearing my own breaths come in ragged and unfamiliar gasps. A flimsy obstacle I know, but that thing – unless it had morphed like the other into Panthro the musclebound lion-man – still had four legs as opposed to my two, and was faster than me. Every little obstacle, even scattered books, helped.

  Hope Nelson would not have approved of my misuse of library facilities. Then again, given her fate, maybe she would.

  I hit a stone archway, my eyes finally adjusting in the darkness. I could make out pale outlines here, the vaulting ceiling above us, the labyrinthine stacks forming a maze around me. Somewhere a few rows over, voices, animal and angry, raised in wordless struggle. God knows what was happening to Allesandro. I pictured him in my mind’s eye, his back torn to bloody shreds, the Tribal’s great jaws clamping down on his shoulder, splintering collarbones like chicken drumsticks in its teeth. The thought made acid rise in my throat.

  He can handle it, I told myself forcefully, ducking beneath an archway and stumblin
g on. I was desperately trying not to lose my orientation in the basement. I had to retrace our steps, where had the stairs been? If I could make it to the stairs, I’d be up and out. I could get help. I could get away. Rule number one of survival, know your exits.

  Something slammed into the other side of the bookcase I was running past, making me scream. A snarl blasted me as the Tribal creature stalking me thrust its head through the shelves, scattering books as I flew backwards, out of the reach of its snapping jaws.

  I stumbled, falling on my backside, but recovered well. The creature was trying to force its bulk through the shelves, jaws snapping wildly, teeth flashing in the dark. Its massive head and shoulders were too large to fit. I could smell its scent, the sickly sweet smell of rot and madness. It was surely only a matter of seconds before it realised that it could come around the side or leap the stack itself.

  Scrambling to my feet, I turned my back on the beast, and ran, deeper into the archives. A howl of frustration pealed out behind me. From elsewhere, echoing against the stones, a scream of pain, deep and agonised came. Not an animal.

  “Allesandro?!” I yelled. My voice echoed back to me. Where was he? Where was the other? He didn’t answer. I turned a corner into an open space, almost colliding with a reading table, setting the lamp wobbling as I thrust my arms out to stop myself. It fell, bulb smashing in the decorative glass shade. The sound was oddly humorous, the soft pop of the filament. More stacks continued beyond this table, and at the end of their length, in the corridor of books, the outer wall of the basement. Plain, well fashioned stone, and a sliver of light. The stairs! It was the most welcoming sight I had ever laid eyes on.

  I plunged into the stacks, racing along the corridor of ancient scrolls, manuscripts and books. My Parka flapped around me, unbearably heavy and cumbersome. I heard the rattle of furniture behind me, and knew that my pursuer, the demon on my heels, had leapt onto the table I had just left. I didn’t look back. What was the point? I could barely see in the dark, and I knew what lay that way. Death. My eyes were fixed instead desperately on the light at the end of this tunnel, my one chance to escape and reach the stairs.

  More loud bangs and howls from elsewhere in the darkness, a Tribal’s throaty cry of anger and pain.

  It was oddly reassuring. It meant that somewhere in this room, my vampire was still causing trouble. If the Tribal was hurting, Allesandro was still in the game.

  I flew for the end of the corridor, to the archway of stone which was my salvation, hearing the fast clack of skittering claws behind me, the panting heavy breath of the hungry creature bearing down on me, throwing its bulk clattering against the shelves either side as it gained. I could practically feel its breath on my neck, and as I ran, adrenaline pumping through my legs in a cold rush, the skin of my back shivered with gooseflesh beneath my coat. The anticipation that at any second, jaws or claws would tear into me, sinking deep into my flesh like daggers, and then the weight of the cat-thing, crushing me to the floor.

  Oh Jesus, let me get out. And I was there, I could make it. My arms wrapped tightly around the manuscript, I reached the end of the stack, the outer stone wall of the library, and plunged into the space between the archways.

  I rebounded off nothing, hard. Smacking my head on thin air, as though I had hit some shuddering, invisible force field. I fell backwards, away from the arch. Dazed and shocked. Landing heavily on my back on the flagstone floor, my skull cracking hard against the stone, enough to make white light flash in front of my eyes and knocking the air from my lungs.

  I pushed myself into a sitting position, staring at the archway in dazed confusion. What the hell had happened? And then I saw. This was not the exit. The archway was glazed, perfectly clear, with thick protective glass. I had run headlong into it.

  Hope had told us, as she led us down here, many of the arches used to be closed, metal grilles, now replaced with clear glass, to protect the books down here, restrict airflow, to keep things safe and tight. She had been so proud of it. So much more modern.

  I whipped my head around. The Tribal was behind me, no more than four paces away, its wide shoulders low, filling the spaces between the bookcases, blocking any retreat. It had stopped. It hadn’t pounced on me. Evidently as surprised as I was to find my way blocked, and its prey sprawled invitingly on the floor.

  I stared around desperately. There was no other route for me. Nothing at my back but the thick glass arch, and beside it, the stone wall of the cellar. I wondered briefly if I could smash through. It seemed thick, like bulletproof glass. The warm wet feel on my face told me that my nose was bleeding. I was still seeing stars.

  The beast took a leisurely step toward me, and I scuttled back on my rear, kicking my legs out toward it. Scattering books and feeling the cool, unhelpful stone of the wall at my back. Why didn’t it attack? What was it waiting for?

  The were-cat leered at me and, twitching and rolling its great head on its thick neck, it slowly stood, rising onto its hind legs, body twisting and cracking as muscles and bones rearranged under the fur.

  Front legs became thick arms, reaching out either side to grasp the bookcases for support, helping it heave itself upright. Muscles bunched and swelled, growing like matted watermelons as the thing became bipedal. Its face elongated into the nightmarish muzzle I had seen on the other, lips peeling back from red wet gums as gritted yellow teeth pushed forward. Its torso writhed as it morphed into the semblance of a monstrous human.

  That’s what it was waiting for, I realised. The hunt, the chase, that was faster, better as an animal, but the kill itself? It wanted to be more aware for that. A flicker of intelligence in its deep set eyes confirmed this as it completed its transformation and a giant, black-furred abomination stood swaying and panting before me. Its skin was shiny with sweat and dense, foul hair.

  Distantly, I thought I heard Allesandro calling my name. He must only have been elsewhere in the basement, but it didn’t matter. Wherever he was, he couldn’t get here in time. He may as well have been a million miles away.

  I was going to die.

  The Tribal stepped decisively toward me, reams of thick spittle sliding from its maw, dripping down its chin. It was panting heavily. Anticipation of the kill. It took another step, and then suddenly faltered.

  Something had whooshed past me, like a bird in the darkness. I had felt the air move by my arm.

  The Tribal stumbled back a step, and slowly lowered its huge demonic head, to stare at its own stomach in confusion. I followed its eyes.

  There was a crossbow bolt, black feathered, sticking obscenely from the thing’s abdomen. The thick shaft buried half-deep. Brackish blood was already welling around it.

  The beast looked deeply confused, as was I. Another two, soft swift noises, and two wet thuds, and there were now three bolts: two in the stomach, and one in the chest.

  The Tribal stumbled backwards again, arms grabbing at shelves to steady itself, shattering the wood with its strength. Its head whipped up to me, a look of rage and accusation levelled at me.

  I stared back, speechless. It wasn’t me, I almost said.

  From low behind me, which was impossible, as the only thing behind me was the wall, a man’s voice said, “Come with me if you want to live.”

  I blinked, and looked behind myself. The wall, nothing more. But my eyes travelled down. Where the wall met the floor, there was a grille, looking for all the world like a storm-drain. I hadn’t seen it in the dark. The grille was open, and leaning out of it, crossbow levelled like a soldier balanced over the edge of a trench, was a smiling man with long blonde hair.

  “Sorry,” he apologised. “Always wanted to say that. Old movie, before your time. Never mind.”

  I stared, dumbfounded at the man emerging from the hole in the floor. He was wearing a red jacket, which was utterly filthy, as though he had been crawling through sewers. His face was likewise smudged and spattered with dirt, but he looked as happy and serene as a child at a circus shooting range.
Hardly as though there was a demonic bloodthirsty were-panther standing not ten feet from us. I knew his face.

  “Y…you’re,” I stammered.

  “Chase, yes, we’ve met before, darling,” he nodded. “Look, we can catch up in a little while, but really I do have to insist you come along. Unless you want to stay and play cat and mouse with Tiddles here?”

  He disappeared into the darkness. What was down there? A tunnel? A way out of here? I didn’t care. Chase Pargate had just shot a monster three times with a crossbow after popping out of the ground like a demonic grinning gnome. I would file this away for future questioning, but priorities! All I cared about in this moment in time was getting through that grille.

  “They won’t stop it,” he called out conversationally, a disembodied voice in the darkness below. “Just a distraction really. It’ll take about a minute to heal, then it will be all ‘rip and rend’ again. You might not want to be around for that. They like to play with their food, and that one’s a male, if you follow me.”

  I dropped to my stomach, crawling on my hands and knees into the dark low opening. It didn’t occur to me until later that Pargate could have chosen that moment to put a crossbow bolt through my skull had he so wished.

  “You’re the thief,” I said, reaching ahead into the unknown blackness of the void. It was even darker in there than out in the basement. And a narrow fit.

  Hands grasped my wrists in the darkness, making me flinch, and he pulled me through. My bulky parka caught on the grille, the fabric tearing noisily.

  I tumbled weightlessly into darkness, Alice down the rabbit hole, landing after a short drop in what felt like around two feet of icy rank water.

  “That’s a bit rich,” Pargate’s voice came from the blackness, sounding put out. Hands reached out and helped me to stand. How could he see anything in this? “Considering you were there to steal too. Talk about the pot calling the kettle. I think you’re just mad at me because I got there before you did.”