The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (28 page)

Hyde and Dante collided like two locomotives, giving Nemo a ringside seat at
their gargantuan battle.

Standing over his bed, Dorian Gray turned from Mina's body. She lay sprawled,
impaled on the thin sword. Gray sighed wistfully. "You were so lovely."

"Why thank you." Mina stood and pulled the sword from her chest.

Gray whirled in disbelief.

"You stole my heart once a long time ago, Dorian. This time you missed."

She somersaulted from the bed and skewered Gray with his own rapier. The
energy of the impact drove him backward, and they hit the wall together. Mina
added extra force, shoving the point of the sword with all her vampiric
strength.

Then she backed away and dusted her hands, as if trying to wipe away the
contamination of his touch. Gray tried to move, squirming left and right, but
found that he was firmly affixed to the wall, helpless.

Mina ran to the other side of the room and snatched up his wrapped painting,
which still leaned against the wall. She turned it toward him.

"Mina," Gray said warily, then grew more frantic. He tugged at his cane-sword
to free himself, but to no avail. He was stuck like an insect pinned to a
mounting board.

With razor-sharp nails, Mina tore at the burlap covering. "You spoke once
before of wanting to atone, Dorian. You wanted to face your inner demon."

Gray's terror grew with each shred of cloth that she peeled away from his
painting.

"Well, here he is!" Mina exposed the entire picture of Dorian Gray.

In the painting, Grays face—barely recognizable as a corrupted version of his
youthful, handsome features— was wizened with age, leprous, oozing, swollen, and
rotted from the accumulation of decades of evil debauchery. It was a symphony of
horrors wrapped in an approximation of human form, carrying the weight of far
more age and poison and decrepitude than any one person could endure.

Gray was transfixed by the true appearance of his soul—the last thing he
would see. As he hung pinned to the wall by his cane-sword, his perfect,
youthful face began to crease and peel. He gasped, writhed,
screamed
,
while his body aged and rotted, until he took on the precise appearance of the
painting—its degeneration, the cracked and peeling texture.

Mina looked away, her face resolute, yet her eyes brimmed with regretful
tears. Dorian Gray withered and shriveled and finally died as nothing more than
a twisted mummy.

At the same time, the image on his portrait became younger, restored to the
likeness Mina remembered… and loved.

Nemo threw himself into the titanic battle between Hyde and the Dante-beast,
but the two mammoth combatants paid little attention to him. Dante knocked the
captain aside with an offhanded smack, then began to pummel Hyde again. The two
monsters had reduced the mezzanine to rubble. Rocks continued to fall from the
unsupported ceiling.

Though battered and bloody, Nemo remained determined. He drew a deep breath,
quelled the pain through direct mental effort, sprang to his feet, and dashed
back into the fray. He had studied philosophy and mental discipline, as well as
sophisticated fighting skills; he knew he was not as insignificant as the
Dante-beast seemed to consider him.

With a mighty blow, the Fantom's horrific lieutenant slammed Hyde through
another stone pillar. Nemo attacked Dante from behind, his scimitar flashing.
Each slash with the curved blade drew a thin line of blood— little more than a
shaving nick—but Nemo struck again and again. He scored the Dante-beast's tough
hide.

Although each individual stroke caused only the slightest of injuries and
pain, the captain knew it to be a subde technique, most often used for torture.
The brutal ancient khans had called it the "death of a thousand cuts." Now it
might be his only chance.

But before Nemo could wear down the enemy, Dante backhanded him. The beasts
massive hand was like a battering ram, and the captain sailed through the air
like no more than a leaf blown by a strong wind, his blue turban askew. Still
grasping his scimitar, he tucked his head and arms, rolling as he struck the
wall, and landed only partially stunned beside Hyde. They had both fallen into a
cold, disused ash pit.

Hyde picked himself up and flexed his bulging arms, searching for something
to hit. Grabbing a stone block that had fallen into the rubble around them, he
hurled it at the near wall.

Nemo threw off his pain and groggy confusion, then made a rapid assessment of
their situation. "We're trapped. He's too strong."

Dante continued to roar in his rampage. They could hear him crashing
closer.

"Too much elixir. He's burning through the formula at an accelerated pace."
Hyde shook blood and rock dust from his shaggy hair. "He'll soon change
back."

"If we have that much time left," Nemo said.

Suddenly, the Dante-beast's huge claw burst through the debris and snatched
Hyde's head and tried to crush his skull. Hyde roared and battered his
opponent's arm, scraping and scratching.

Nemo thrust with his scimitar and stabbed Dante's swollen, hairy hand,
plunging the point deep. The blade snapped in half.

Even so, the beasts unexpected pain gave Hyde the moment he needed. As Dante
reacted by hurling himself forward at his enemy, Hyde grabbed him. He plunged
ragged nails of both hands into Dante's flesh and used main strength to haul the
whole beast over his head. Dante snarled and thrashed, until Hyde body-slammed
him into the far edge of the pit with a sound like a cargo wagon crashing.

Knowing they could not fight Dante much longer, Nemo stumbled toward a low
opening at the far end of the ash pit. He peered upward and saw bright daylight
far overhead, illuminating thick layers of ice, frost, and long stalactites of
icicles encrusted on the walls of an old, empty chimney.

Their only way out.

"Hyde, come on!"

His weakened, brutish ally staggered—and Nemo realized that the unsteady
reaction was caused by more than his battle injuries.

Hyde winced, his face rippling, brow ridge convulsing, lips peeled back from
crooked, squarish teeth. "I'm done. I've burned through… the… formula… too." He
let out a yowl of pain and disappointment. His chest squirmed and spasmed in the
sudden throes of transformation. "Damn!"

Behind him, the Dante-beast struggled to get to his feet. He shook his
massive head and swatted shattered rock aside.

Nemo ran back and grabbed Hyde by the shoulders, helping him stumble to the
chimney. "Come, we can hide. Maybe escape." They staggered along, while Hyde
seemed to shrink in on himself, his body mass diminishing with each step.
"Hurry!"

All too soon, he had reverted entirely to the small, shaking form of Henry
Jekyll. He stood looking weak and forlorn, like a rain-soaked alley cat.

The Dante-beast charged at them.

Nemo pulled Jekyll with him through the fire hole into the ice-encrusted
chimney, just as Dante hurtled into the wall. The beast slammed into the small
fire doorway like a rampaging elephant, but only his monstrous head and
straining neck passed through. His enormous arms and shoulders could not fit,
though the force of the impact shook the chimney.

High above, a long, thick spear of ice snapped loose and fell, gaining speed,
glinting in the reflected light from the sky.

"Look out!" Jekyll cried in a thin squeak. He shoved Nemo aside just before
the icicle spike splintered into chips on the chimney floor.

"I thank you. I would have been killed."

Jekyll blinked, then smiled. "I'm glad that… I can be useful, too."

But the Dante-beast had also seen the thick ice spears on the chimney. He
ground his shoulders into the opening and thrust himself through, breaking part
of the doorway free. Inside, he reached up with one thickly muscled arm to grasp
a gigantic ice spike from overhead and pull it down. The Fantoms' lieutenant
loomed, filling most of the room, and shoved his long frozen lance forward,
intending to impale both trapped men in the confines of the chimney.

Nemo and Jekyll had no place to go.

Just then, on the factory level, the timers of all of Skinner's bombs finally
reached zero.

Inside the high keep filled with crates and torture implements, Quatermain
drove the mastermind back. Moriarty retreated, and the old adventurer snatched
up the Mongolian mace and pressed his attack, swinging the spiked ball.

M scrambled backward, desperate but not yet defeated. "You think you can come
in here and destroy it all?" He laughed. "I'll just start again, rebuild from
scratch."

"Is that supposed to convince me?" Quatermain raised the mace to smash
Moriarty. He had had enough of talking.

"There'll be another like me, Quatermain! You can't kill the future."

But Skinner's bombs could.

Thunderous detonations ripped through the foundry, the dry dock, and the
factory area. As floor upon floor shook and support walls collapsed, the whole
high keep fractured. Crates and rusty equipment fell in a jumble.

Quatermain and Moriarty were both hurled to the floor even as it split wide
open. The explosions continued.

A wave of fire and debris consumed everything across the factory floor. M's
black fortress exploded. Huge granite blocks coughed out. Flames reached huge
tanks of fuel, turning them into firebombs. Compressed steam tanks burst open.
Stored weapons caught fire and erupted with whistling shock waves.

Unprotected, the Dante-beast turned just in time to be impaled by red-hot
shrapnel. He slammed against the chimney and dropped his lethal ice spear, which
shattered on the floor.

The impact of the detonation snapped a further brace of ice spikes from high
above in the curving chimney. Stone blocks and heavy spears of ice cascaded from
high above onto the screaming Dante-beast.

Jekyll dragged Nemo to the center as deadly shards came crashing down along
the wall. They listened to the falling rocks, the wet sounds of slicing flesh
and muscle, the brittle crack of shattering bone. When the ice shower stopped at
last, the two huddled men opened their eyes.

"I… I can't believe we're unhurt." Jekyll checked his body for hidden
injuries. All that remained of his clothes were blood-smeared tatters.

Nemo gestured toward a part of the chimney wall that had crumbled open behind
them, exposing a small but convenient escape hole. "Yes, we are very
fortunate."

On the opposite wall, though, in the opening through which they had entered,
the less-fortunate Dante-beast lay trapped and mewling, impaled repeatedly by
slowly melting ice lances and heavy shrapnel. The wall above the doorway had
slumped down in a precarious collapse, dumping a thousand tons of stone onto the
beast's back.

The monster stared imploringly at them, its remaining bloody eye
desperate.

Just then the formula finally wore off, and Dante reverted to his human form.
The feral eye changed to the smaller, frightened eye of a dying man. His body
shrank into itself, and the fallen blocks shifted again, crushing him
entirely.

Nemo shoved Jekyll to safety through the escape hole as a mighty collapse of
the whole chimney generated a huge cloud of dust behind them.

Continuing explosions literally shook apart the tower room. One half of the
high keep broke away, then settled with a lurch several meters below the rest of
the chamber. Daylight and sparkling snow streamed through great cracks in the
stone walls, where all had been shadow.

Quatermain fell between a creaking torture rack and a set of long,
sharp-tipped iron rods. Moriarty got to his feet first, saw his opponents Bowie
knife lying on the floor, and lunged for it. Knife in hand, he stumbled through
dust and debris and snatched up his fallen silver mask and his leather satchel
of the genetic and scientific information that had given the members of the
League their special abilities.

Several thick wooden ceiling beams had already broken from the walls and
fallen into the chamber. With scrambling, slipping footsteps, Moriarty started
climbing to the high floor above, the top of the tower.

"Not so fast, M." Quatermain gripped a shaft of rusty pointed metal, which he
aimed like a spear. "You've lost."

Moriarty turned to see the threat, Bowie knife at the ready, and smirked
dismissively. "I've lost?" He jumped back down from the stairs. "Not yet. Not
nearly."

"I have you." Quatermain stepped over a fallen beam, pushing the rusty spear
closer to his nemesis.

M rolled his eyes in their sunken sockets. "Do you ever tire of being wrong,
old man? The League. Me. Skinner.
Wrong
." He sighed. "And wrong about
the young American, too."

"Sawyer?" A cold dread trickled like glacier water down his spine. "What
about him?"

"He's a bumbling fool, just like his friend Huckleberry Finn. What a
ridiculous name." Moriarty held up the retrieved Fantom mask where it gleamed in
sunlight that filtered through the crack in the tower. "Do you think him ready
and able? Ha! You didn't train him any better than you trained your son."

Quatermain saw Tom Sawyer reflected in the mask's mirrored finish—being held
in the doorway with a knife at this throat by the powder-coated head and
shoulders of Sanderson Reed. Sawyer struggled, but the knife pressed against his
jugular.

Quatermain paused, knowing he had no choice but to surrender.

Moriarty laughed in his face. The old hunter locked eyes with his nemesis. M
seemed utterly victorious, in spite of the explosions and the fortress crumbling
around him. Quatermain wanted to kill him right then.

Instead, he spun and hurled his makeshift spear dead into Reed's chest. He
missed Sawyer by a very comfortable inch. The invisible Reed writhed and wailed
in pain, and his half-seen form slumped into death even before the spear stopped
vibrating. The bureaucrats knife fell to the floor, and Sawyer broke free,
kicking his dying form for good measure.