Night of the Heroes

by Adrian Cole

  The human part of Cradoc was repulsed by the thought, but the Mire-Beast had fundamental needs. And right now, it needed to get to water and away from the streets. It looked around the courtyard, finding a grille. Bending to it, he listened again. Thirty feet down, running water. A fast flow, following the storm. Ideal.

  With one easy movement, he wrenched the grille free and tossed it aside like a sheet of plastic. It skidded across the courtyard. The oval opening was no more than two feet square, but the creature eased itself, feet-first into it, its body morphing to accommodate it. As the Mire-Beast lowered itself, it heard something approaching from beyond the courtyard.

  He could smell them. They were people, but no ordinary people. They had a strange stink about them, not quite the reek of death, but that of decay, of something rotten, not normal. As it slid from view, the creature’s last view was of two men, rounding the wall into the yard. They wore long coats and odd hats that dipped over their faces. Men, yet not men.

  Then the Mire-Beast was working its way quickly down to the torrent below. As it descended, it heard a voice above it, harsh and commanding.

  “Let it go. You cannot follow it there.” The voice, Cradoc realised, was also out of context, because it was Oriental, Chinese as far as he could tell. But he had no time to deliberate: the rushing waters of the sewer received him and in seconds he was speeding along beneath them, borne like a huge seal beneath the structures overhead.

  Cradoc’s mind and sensations were now submerged beneath those of the creature, the body that housed him. It luxuriated in the cocoon of water, even though it was thickened with waste, polluted and soiled. He struck the sides of the pipework as it wound and bent its way onwards, but the creature’s body was immune to such things. He could see nothing, arrowing on in utter darkness. Part of him wanted this to go on without end, shrinking Cradoc’s persona into a compact ball, almost unconscious of its plight.

  But the mad race did end. The water level in the pipe dropped, becoming no more than a fast stream, knee-deep, debouching into an even bigger tunnel, the brickwork masked under layers of muck and tangled root. The Mire-Beast rose to its knees. The darkness was still total, but even above the sharp stench of the waters, it could smell earth and vegetation, little more than a mile ahead.

  It slipped into the larger flow and let it carry him. Before long, grey light suffused the tunnel ahead and even by this poor glow, it could see its surroundings clearly. Up ahead, the sewer broke out beyond the city, though the mouth of the tunnel was barred. The creature swam to the bars and gripped them. They were rusted, inches thick and set only six inches apart. No human could have budged them, not without cutting tools.

  But the Mire-Beast tore away several of the bars as though they were made of damp cardboard. Cradoc could not resist the surge of pleasure he always took from the exercising of these superhuman powers. Perhaps it was this pleasure that helped chain him to the body of the creature.

  He pushed through the hole he had made and went out into the open air. He could see pale moonlight, though the moon itself was almost smothered in clouds, the last shreds of the storm’s thunderheads. By this pallid light he followed the line of the rushing sewer’s flow to where it met a narrow river. Looking around, he sensed that he was outside the city walls. There were fields here and deep swathes of forest. None of it was familiar, but it was a vast improvement on the confines of the place he had left.

  Taking cover in a tall mass of undergrowth, the creature again tasted the air. The stench of drains was gone, replaced by the powerful essences of the land around. Rich, loamy soil, an abundance of trees, crawling with insect life. Smaller mammals, squirrels, foxes. Sleeping birds in flocks like leaves. And men.

  Here and there, dotted about the forest, the creature could sense them. Small packs, huddling like wolves for mutual strength. But they were as other men he had known. Their flesh smelled as it always did. Not the eerie scent of the men who had followed him in the city. He would know that smell again. It had been the smell of corruption, of evil.

  Cradoc forced himself to think, to impose himself on the wild side of his enforced nature. The beast fed on this sort of landscape, communed with it to such an extent that his personality waned under the strength of that bond. It was an effort to subdue it, given that it was such a natural thing for him, too, a throwback to the days of his remote ancestors.

  Who was the Chinaman? Part of some organisation that wanted to share the research? Big money involved, for certain. The man he had seen at the airstrip, the one who had pulled a gun on him just before the lightning had intervened, he was no scientist. He was a negotiator, a businessman. Maybe the Chinaman was his connection. So the Americans had sold out. Men who had once been Cradoc’s fellow researchers. They couldn’t handle it, couldn’t face up to the disastrous mistakes that had created the Mire-Beast. That must be it. Rather than go to their own masters and risk being discredited, their way of covering up their mess was to sell it off to the highest bidder. In this case, who? The Chinese?

  Cradoc’s mind raced. He had to find out where he was. The words of the Englishman at the hangar came back to Cradoc. People tend to keep away from our establishment. They know we don’t like being disturbed, he had said. That establishment may be somewhere near, but Cradoc knew that it was also possible that it was hundreds of miles away. He couldn’t be certain that he was still in England, but he sensed that he was. The earth, the trees, suggested it to the senses of the Mire-Beast. Although there was something not right about them. They had somehow changed. Mutated, almost.

  He realised he was very tired. It would not be wise to hang around too close to the sewer opening, just in case they did send a search party down it.

  He slipped into the river as easily as an otter and wriggled his way along its bed for several miles. Eventually he found a thick bed of reeds and a matted tangle of lilies that covered almost the entire surface of the river. Dawn had just broken as his eyes, level with the surface, took in his immediate surroundings. Fields, thick with grass, rose on either side of the river; beyond them, on their ridges, dark lines of forest ran on into the distance.

  The Mire-Beast slipped under the water and tucked itself into the bank, sheltered by its overhang, merging perfectly with it. Sleep came easily.

  * * * *

  Movement in the river woke the creature. The sluggish flow was disturbed by something, a large body, shifting itself from side to side, pushing up from the deep central channel of the riverbed.

  The Mire-Beast was alert almost instantly. Its eyes scanned the waters. They were silted, stained by the movements of the intruder, but not too much to impair the Mire-Beast’s view. The thing that had raised itself up from the bed was large, an elongated, tubular shape, with a blunt head and a narrowing tail. A serpent, but an abnormally large one.

  While the Mire-Beast itself would be indifferent to such a monster, Cradoc’s response was very different. Apart from a natural aversion to the thing, he couldn’t understand what it was doing here, in this otherwise rural setting. Okay, okay, it might not be England, but even so, this was a big serpent.

  Luckily it didn’t seem to be interested in him. It was breaking surface, apparently intent on dragging itself to the bank. The Mire-Beast eased itself away from the overhang and moved downriver slightly, sliding into the packed reeds. It came up out of the water into bright daylight. It had slept for an hour or two, enough to regenerate its energy. It edged itself into a position where it was well camouflaged, yet could still watch the serpent.

  By normal standards it was enormous, some thirty feet long and twice as thick around its middle as a man. Near the bank, it had opened its great mouth, displaying row upon circular row of sharp teeth, more like a giant lamprey than a snake.

  The Mire-Beast saw it as another life form, no more. But Cradoc was appalled. And his horror expanded when he saw what it was that had attracted the serpent’s attention. There was a man on the bank, no more than a few yards from that
gaping maw. Cradoc studied the man, who looked as incongruous as the creature bearing down on him. Dressed in ragged pelt trousers and an equally ripped shirt, he was about six feet four and must have weighed two hundred and twenty five pounds, all of it solid muscle. The one impression that went straight to Cradoc’s mind was that of a gladiator, for the man looked every inch a trained fighter, and indeed, he carried a sword. Longer than a stabbing sword, but shorter than a broadsword, it looked heavy, though the man wielded it with easy confidence.

  Cradoc drifted to the bank and shifted himself partly on to it, still well concealed. The man had turned away from the serpent, sensibly deciding not to be drawn into an unequal conflict with it. And for the first time, Cradoc saw the others.

  He felt his heart kick in horror. There were at least a score of them. The weird men he had seen in the city, with their long trench coats and hats. Here they had formed a semi-circle around the swordsman, as if they meant to drive him into the path of the serpent. Cradoc saw with deepening revulsion that they did not have human hands. Instead the shapes that writhed from out of their sleeves reminded him of some warped form of anemone, with wriggling tentacles in place of fingers.

  The Mire-Beast could smell these men, and it was the smell of decay, of something rotting. But there was more to the bizarre spectacle. The freakish men were not alone in their attempt to snare the swordsman. Three other shapes stirred, creatures with their bellies flat to the ground. Like huge wolves, they raised themselves up on their back legs. Yet their smell was not all wolf, but partly human. They reached out with claws that were not entirely claws.

  Cradoc felt a shock of recognition. Like him, the human part of them was trapped in another form, shaped by horror. Their eyes were human, but reddened with the killing fury of a wild beast.

  Only the swordsman was truly human. And they were going to kill him, or trap him. The serpent would attack him, but in so doing was driving him into the oncoming quasi-men. There was nowhere for the man to run to.

  The Mire-Beast rose from the reeds and on to the bank. It shambled forward, dripping water, looking like something that had been squeezed together from the mud at the river’s bottom.

  The Barbarian saw it at once. Yes, they will use anything in their power to drive me into their trap, he mused. But he was already committed to selling his life dearly. One more monster would make no difference. Yet a stir went through the ring of strange men. As one, they turned to face the thing that lurched toward them. One of the wolf creatures leapt for it, fangs barred. The Barbarian was puzzled, even more so as the river-thing swung back a limb and smashed the wolf-being aside as if it had been no bigger than a puppy. It rolled over, back broken, mouth working in a soundless snarl.

  Whatever plan the men had, it wavered in the face of this new development. The creature from the river was either not part of their tactics, or it had run amok. Behind him, the Barbarian sensed the oncoming serpent, but when he twisted to fend it off, it had dipped its great mouth towards the other creature. What followed made the Barbarian gape in amazement.

  The serpent caught the creature in its mouth, but the intended victim used those massive arms to pull and tear at the ring of teeth, ripping flesh and cartilage, while its huge, splayed feet pounded the lower part of the mouth. Teeth tore into mud-flesh, but if they did any immediate harm, it was temporary, for the mud-creature constantly reconstituted itself. The serpent did not. Its blood pumped from the terrible wounds. It swung the creature away from it, shaking its head furiously to be free of it. At last it spat out the mud-creature, which rolled to its feet unsteadily and gazed with blazing eyes at the crouched wolf-beings. Amazingly, it was unharmed.

  One of them sprang for it, but again it knocked it aside with frightful ease. Then it turned its gaze on the rooted Barbarian. It opened its long gash of a mouth, but no sound came out. The Barbarian, however, knew intuitively what it was trying to impart to him. The river. It wanted him to leap into the safety of the river.

  The serpent dipped its bloodied head for another attack, but the mud-creature snatched at its lower jaw and wrenched it, snapping cartilage, ripping flesh aside with unbelievable strength. A moment later the huge head of the serpent had sagged down on to the bank, the creature mortally wounded, no longer a threat.

  The men were closing in, though wary of the mud-creature. It covered the Barbarian’s retreat. Gods, he thought, what choice do I have? This thing is trying to aid me! With a last glance at the closing men, he sheathed his blade and dived into the river, plunging down into its cold but welcome embrace. Somewhere behind him he heard a muffled sound. The mud-creature had followed him. It was only then that it occurred to him it might have its own grim reasons for doing so.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Prophets’ Guild

  “I warned you that toying with the occult would lead to disaster,” grumbled Jameson.

  “Toying?” Reverence’s sharp-lined face was partially obscured by the poor light. “My dear Jameson, one does not toy with the occult. The use of psychic energy is an exact science.”

  “Is it,” the doctor muttered. “Then where the deuce are we, Reverence?”

  “Consider the evidence of your senses, Jameson. Take each in turn. Close your eyes. What can you smell?”

  “The usual smog that hangs over London at night.”

  “Ah, but that is where you are wrong!” Reverence closed his eyes dramatically and took a deep breath, savouring it as if tasting wine, pronouncing sentence upon it as if addressing a gathering of connoisseurs. “It is manifestly not the usual smog. There are certain foreign elements in it. A unique pungency. As with the taste of this noxious air.”

  “Well, I’ll allow that it is uncommonly strong.”

  “And what does the night tell your ears?”

  Jameson automatically listened to his surroundings. “It’s very quiet. But as I estimate the time to be about four in the morning —”

  “Hist! Did you catch that? There! Again.”

  Jameson scowled. “A hound? Not that strange a sound for the city.”

  “There it is again. Did you not think it had a perversely deep note?”

  “Really, Reverence, you’re colouring your view with our experiences on a certain previous adventure, are you not?”

  “Not at all,” said Reverence, holding up a hand for silence. In the middle distance, the sound of an animal came more clearly. “That is no domestic dog.”

  Jameson frowned. “I apologise. You are right. But I rather fancy it’s not a hound at all. In fact, if this were not a city, I should say that it was more in the nature of a wolf’s howl.”

  “Ah. Your judgement in these matters is, as always, reliable.”

  The sound came a last time, both men straining to hear it clearly. “Yes, I’m sure it’s a wolf, but it is no ordinary one.”

  “As with the fog. So, what have your eyes told you about this place?”

  Jameson looked about them. They had taken temporary shelter in a narrow alleyway that opened on to a wider street, where Jameson imagined carriages could move up and down with relative ease during the daylight hours. Several flickering gas lamps lit the street and faintly etched the facades of the buildings opposite them. These appeared to be residences that one would expect to find owned by the wealthier factions of the city, with their large windows and slightly extravagant Doric columns. Jameson said as much.

  “What about the railings?” said Reverence. “Does anything about them strike you as odd?”

  Jameson peered across the street at the railings outside each house, the long track broken only by the broad steps up to each lavish door. “Apart from the curious pattern —”

  “Precisely! I do not profess to be an expert in such matters, but I have to say that I have never seen the like before. It is a style unmatched in the London with which we are familiar.”

  “That leaves the sense of touch. I didn’t notice anything odd about the bricks or the walls.”

  “And the
air itself? Does it not inspire a degree of unease?”

  “Yes, I suppose it does —”

  “And what of your intuition, Jameson? The sixth sense that you so steadfastly try to disregard?”

  “You know my views on that.”

  Reverence smiled mirthlessly. “Indeed. So — what are your conclusions?”

  “Clearly something is wrong. London is —”

  “London!” Reverence snorted. “I think, Jameson, you are approaching the problem from entirely the wrong angle. This is not London, or at the very least, it is not the London that you and I know.”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “I have read of such things. I treat them with scepticism, caution at the very least. Far too many cranks capitalise on such theories. But my very blood reacts to this place. Let us look for more evidence.”

  Jameson was about to respond, when Reverence’s hand firmly pressed him back against the wall, into the masking shadows. The detective put his other hand to his lips, his eyes fixed on the street. Jameson heard soft footfalls and in a moment a lone figure came into the light. Dressed in a closely fitted but immaculate dark suit, it paused just outside the brightest part of that halo, turning to look directly up the alley where they were secreted. Even in the wan light, they both caught a glimpse of the thin face. The man was Chinese. Furtively, the figure moved on down the street.

  “Do you think this a coincidence?” breathed Jameson.

  “I think it would be unwise to presume so. Come, we must follow.”

  Jameson knew that there was no arguing with the detective when he was in this frame of mind and so, waiting until the figure was out of sight, they slipped from their hiding place and went down the street like shadows. Somewhere behind them, they again heard the deep-throated howl of the wolf.

  The street led into a more major thoroughfare and even at this time of night, one or two Hansom cabs were in evidence, horses snorting, their hooves clattering on stone. Reverence was determined in his pursuit of the figure, which appeared to have a definite destination in mind. Some way along the broad street, which Jameson endeavoured in vain to identify, a wide flight of steps led up to a grand building which had the looks of a hotel and one of some quality.