The Iscariot Sanction (6 page)

He forced himself upright, stifling a cry as pain flashed through his body. In his groggy state he swore he could still feel where Lillian had kicked the back of his legs; but he dismissed the fancy almost at once and realised his present injuries were all too real. But he moved; his limbs responded, and he slowly dragged himself to his feet. He hadn’t broken an arm or leg, he was sure, though the pain in his ribs made him certain he hadn’t entirely escaped fractures.

His primary concern now, however, was the darkness. The hatch through which he had fallen was gone, covered over or closed. In any case, John could see no light, not even the reddish glow of the sky, and that was a worry. Had he been moved somewhere else while unconscious? Or had he been sealed in here? The former was the lesser of two evils. John had escaped worse scrapes, he was sure. But if he had been locked in… why would anyone do that? Leaving an agent of Apollo Lycea to his own devices, even if half dead, was a mistake more than one villain had found costly in the past.

John cleared his thoughts, focusing past the stabbing pain and throbbing of his head. He could smell damp earth and mould, and the faintest whiff of coal-smoke from the smelters. In fact, now he concentrated, he could hear the distant reverberation of machinery. He reached out until he touched a wall—rough stone, cold and slick from slime and calcium deposits. He was sure he was underground. He searched himself—the spring-loaded concertina device that held his knife was still flapping about his wrist, broken, but the knife was gone. He unhooked it and cast it aside. He still had his wallet, a few of the papers he had taken from the office—though some had been dropped during the fight—a concealed derringer and four bullets, his lockpicks and, mercifully, his matches.

There was no way he would have been captured and not searched. So they had left him where he had fallen, and sealed him in. To confirm this suspicion, he struck a match. Squinting in its sudden flare, he saw a rough-hewn passage stretching into gloom in both directions, and the splintered wooden hatch above him, now covered with something black and solid-looking. Metal brackets were embedded in the wall beneath it, suggesting that a ladder had once led into the tunnels from the hatch above, in the manner of a tavern cellar; but there was no ladder there now.

John saw that there were lights set into the vaulted ceiling of the long corridor—many of them covered in cracked and dirty glass, and each connected by lengths of thick cabling. Electric? If this was a delivery tunnel for the warehouse, then it wouldn’t be unheard of, yet he could see no switch.

As the match began to die down, John saw its light glint off something metallic nearby, and stooped quickly to snatch up his knife. As he did so, the match went out.

The returning darkness heralded something altogether more worrying. A distant screech echoed through the corridor, carried on the foul breeze. John’s blood ran cold. He lit another match, and in its yellow flare he saw a grey-painted box on the wall nearby, with a wooden handle jutting from it. He limped to the box, and threw the lever, giving no heed to caution. Better to know the danger, and to face it head on, than to be attacked in the dark.

The junction box fizzed and hummed. There were a few loud pops and a faint smell of burning, which John guessed were fuses overloading, but whatever circuits survived buzzed to life. Along the corridor, which John now realised was far longer than he’d thought, at least half of the lights that adorned the vaulted ceiling flickered with a dull yellow glow. Some grew brighter, while others flickered intermittently, throwing sections of the passage into brief illumination and then into pitch dark. One grew painfully bright for a few seconds, until finally it went out with a loud bang, showering the corridor briefly in orange sparks. John shielded his eyes.

The great dream of the Intuitionists…

He started.

Something moved in the distance. Concealed by the cascade of sparks—or perhaps startled by it—a pale form scurried away, spider-like, into the shadows at the far end of the corridor. The scratching sound came again, this time from the other direction. John wheeled to meet it. There was nothing there but a hundred yards of tunnel.

He wheeled again as a bestial hiss echoed from the opposite direction. This time a long, gangrel shadow slipped across the far wall momentarily, before melding into the embrace of a dark tunnel and vanishing altogether. More clicks, snarls and hisses ebbed and flowed from all around, at first jarringly near, and then more distant.

Yes, the only reason any villain would leave an agent of Apollo Lycea down here was if there were something even worse waiting in the darkness.

* * *

‘This is not a place to linger at night,’ Arthur said.

The Dials were alive with colourful characters and more colourful language, and the stench of beer was strong in the air. Sir Arthur and Lillian attracted more than the odd queer look as they squeezed through the press of bodies congregating outside taverns and doss-houses.

‘We’re not lingering,’ said Lillian. ‘We’re here with purpose—and no man may hinder agents of the Crown.’

‘Tell them that,’ muttered Arthur, trying his best not to make eye contact with three burly ne’er-do-wells as he sidestepped between them and the two brawling women who they were jeering at. He hurried after Lillian, thankful that the sharp exchange of hard slaps between gin-addled wenches provided more entertainment than a toff in a fine suit, for now at least. As a rule, he knew, the lower orders would not accost a gentleman, nor a lady so long as she was chaperoned. But with each passing hour such conventions were less assured. As surety against inconveniences such as pickpockets and hawkers, Arthur formed an idea deep in his mind, focusing on it until it became a talisman, projecting outwards until its influence took hold of the folk who scurried back and forth on their low business.

I am no one. I am invisible.

It was a charm, a simple one. It was enough to allow Arthur and Lillian to pass by the dullest of wits without drawing too much attention, and to allow them to vanish into the crowds before a light-fingered urchin could attempt to dip into their pockets. It was not enough, however, to attract the other kind of attention that Majestics often inspired; the predations of the things beyond the veil. Or, at least, Arthur hoped it was not.

Lillian led the way confidently, as though the seven indistinguishable roads of the Dials, with their spider-web of passages and side-streets, were as familiar as her home in Kensington. Sir Arthur did not wish to know how; rumours persisted that Lillian trained for her missions ceaselessly, risking life and limb alone on dangerous streets, often in disguise, to keep her reflexes and awareness sharp. She would stop at nothing to prove herself the equal of her more celebrated brother, and even her father.

They hurried past boarded-up shops with signs proudly proclaiming ‘rag and bone’, ‘first-rate ironmongery’, ‘fine kitchen wares’ and ‘live birds and rabbits for sale’, outside which haggard old sots lifted their skirts for passing strangers while wiry louts brawled on the cobbles. The air was ripe with the sour stench of urine; of days-old silted gutters; a dog’s corpse so far lost to the rot that even the snipes hadn’t touched it.

Finally, thankfully, they came upon the chandler’s shop, closed for the night. Under the gaily painted candle-shaped sign, in the doorway, a pair of shameless souls fumbled about beneath a tattered overcoat. Lillian did not stop to pass judgement, instead making her way up the narrow alleyway to the left of the shop. A sallow-faced drunk, urinating while whistling ‘Sally in my Alley’, was quickly moved on by Lillian’s best withering glare, the tune dying on his lips.

In the twisting narrows of Seven Dials, Sir Arthur could not trust to his powers alone; he felt more at ease once he placed a hand on his revolver, transferring it from the holster at his breast to his jacket pocket.

Unlike the streets they had left behind, the alleyway was dead quiet, almost unnaturally so. Ahead, it twisted and turned several times before reaching the next street of the great confluence of the Dials, while overhead a wood-panelled bridge adjoined the flats above the chandler’s shop and the next-door chophouse; or perhaps it supported the two structures, for they leaned into each other like companionable drunkards. A small window overlooked the alley from the bridge, and judging by the foul-smelling slime that ran over the alley’s flagstones, it was used mainly for ejecting the contents of chamber-pots from the meagre dwellings above. Lillian pointed to the window, and Arthur nodded; someone may have seen something, though finding that someone and persuading them to talk would not be easy.

Along the alley, narrow doorways peeked from brick walls—cellar entrances and back doors, and some that must have led to sheltered yards. All were padlocked, or had iron gates fastened across them to keep away opportunistic burglars.

‘They may not have stopped here,’ Lillian said. ‘They could have cut across to the next street.’

‘There’s one way to be sure,’ Arthur replied. Lillian nodded, and delved into her clutch bag, withdrawing a small, greying handkerchief that smelt faintly of rosewater.

Arthur removed his gloves and took the cloth, his other hand outstretched to the darkness, his eyes closed. It had belonged to the girl, and if the unfortunate had ended up the same way as some of the other wretches who had been stolen from the streets of late, the physical link to her would at least lead Arthur to the body.

He could feel Lillian watching him, and blocked out the distraction as best he could. He channelled his thoughts and feelings inward, through his arm, into the cheap handkerchief and back, drawing the very essence of the girl into himself. Arthur took a deep breath, filling every fibre of his being with the etheric vibrations left behind by the girl.

She is dead.

Arthur opened his eyes and looked about. Time had frozen; the alleyway was utterly still. Motes of red dust, which went almost unnoticed in the day-to-day, hung in the air, stationary, glowing like tiny embers. They came from the fire in the sky, and Sir Arthur Furnival had learned some of their mysteries; these particles connected all things, living and dead, and through the use of etherium—what some naively called ‘Crookes’ Nectar’, after its discoverer—he could find anyone or anything by following their trail.

Ahead of him, Lillian Hardwick stood stock-still, a statue of a woman with the colour drained from her, as it was from everything. Everything, that is, except the crimson sky overhead and the glowing particles that fell from it like red snow. The fire in the sky was the only thing that moved, and in this half-life it was more vibrant than ever, clouds of liquid flame billowing and mixing with the firmament like blazing oil atop a lake.

The vividness of the vision came from the etherium. Arthur had known he would be called upon; it was why he was sent. He had injected himself with a single, tiny phial of the stuff in the cab en route to the Dials, despite Lillian’s protests. He had his own orders.

Arthur looked down at himself, at his hands through which the glowing red fire pulsated as the etherium coursed through his veins. It linked him to the energy all around, to the power that was now manifest across the globe, but most tellingly in London. With a great, concentrated effort, he harnessed that power, pulling himself from the faded, frozen tableaux, and stepping from his own body like a moth emerging from its cocoon. He turned back to his own physical form, still and grey, arm outstretched, fist clenched tight around the handkerchief.

Behind his body stood Molly Goodheart.

The apparition wore a simple pale dress and worsted shawl. Her eyes were black orbs, cold and dead. She did not really stand there, but floated inches from the ground, feet hidden by the orange mist that covered the flagstones. Arthur looked down at his own feet rather dumbly, and saw the same. He was as incorporeal now as she.

The ghost of the prostitute drifted past Arthur, passing through his body, through Lillian and onwards along the dark alleyway. It was longer, more twisted, and yet more claustrophobic now than it had been moments earlier. The brick walls seemed to bend inwards, creaking like trees in a forest, forming warped tunnels that branched away in all directions. This was an illusion. Sir Arthur focused again, and the alleyway restored itself to some semblance of normality, albeit a cold, darkened one in this twilight world between worlds. Molly Goodheart’s ghost drifted onwards, shimmering silver in the gloom, twitching and jerking occasionally, no doubt as she struggled to remember that she was no longer flesh and blood.

Arthur followed the spirit along the narrow passage. He would have to be quick, he knew; too long spent away from his body would dull his senses, and leave him open to attack by the Other. He strained his ears to listen for danger. In this realm, the sounds of lost souls reverberated through every stone, were carried on ice-cold breezes, and were felt in the bones. They sounded like muffled cries travelling through water, indistinct and rumbling. But there were other things, too, in the dark realm that Majestics called the ‘Eternal Night’. Chittering, clawing things, native to the void, that were drawn to intruders as to a candle in the darkness. The Other. When these things came, the wise Majestic must flee back to his body, for no amount of etherium could defeat them. To face the Other was to court disaster; to allow gibbering entities ingress to the real world, where only blood would sate their hellish appetites. And so Arthur stayed alert, his mind concentrated on the mission, and his senses stretched outwards, sensitive to the merest danger.

Time flowed differently in the Eternal Night, if indeed it flowed at all. No matter how hard he focused, Sir Arthur could not tell how long he had spent following the spirit. The alleyway seemed to stretch into for ever, and though his feet did not really tread the stones, Arthur began to feel exhausted, as though he had drifted on the orange mist for a lifetime. At last, when he had almost forgotten why he had come to the other realm, the spirit stopped. Arthur saw with growing dread that she was changed; her dress was covered in blood, her arms and face dripping with it. She was barely recognisable.