It was Reed, still semivisible from the smeared ink powder. "You know what they say, Yank. Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer."
FOURTY NINE
M's Fortress
While in his excessively muscled bestial form, Edward Hyde had never before felt intimidated. Now, however, he started back from the huge and monstrous thing that Dante had become. The lieutenant's metamorphosis left him in a horrific form that would have made even a prehistoric carnivore tremble.
His face still rippling and writhing from the agonies of the change, the Dante-beast loomed up, and up— then he struck. The blow he landed knocked his opponent backward across the mezzanine. Hyde slammed into a wall, smashing whole stone blocks into gravel, and fell to the floor, stunned and drooling.
The Dante-beast lumbered forward to pummel him again.
After Captain Nemo had sent the freed scientists fleeing with their hostage family members, he rushed back to the pillared mezzanine to help his fellow League member.
In his Nautilus, Nemo had seen awesome sights that few men alive had witnessed: sunken cities, undersea mountains and volcanoes, a horrific giant squid. But when he saw what Dante had become, he froze in disbelief.
The Fantom's lieutenant was now twelve feet tall, tremendously deformed, engorged with muscle and sinew. His spine had twisted, as if unable to support so much power and fury. His face, no longer even remotely human, was swollen with popped blood vessels and spiny facial hair that grew like a forest of bristles.
Hyde struggled to his feet just in time to meet Dante's next charge. The larger beast-man stormed at him. The force of his roundhouse punch sent the League member careening into a thick support pillar. The stone column cracked, teetered, and fell, bringing down a precarious arch. Hyde fell amid a shower of stones and rubble that blocked the exit passage.
A thick arm knocked the heavy blocks away, and Hyde hauled himself out of the rock pile. The Dante-beast immediately waded toward him and began his merciless assault once again.
Though he was being battered to a pulp, Hyde broke the attack and swung a powerful uppercut. "Come on, then, if you fancy a ruckus." The blow slammed the Dante-beast back into a structural column, toppling it and collapsing another section of the ceiling.
As Hyde continued to advance, Nemo joined him, a wicked scimitar held in his right hand, his left raised and ready to assist with the fight. Despite his martial arts skills and the curved blade, the captain looked absurdly small in the company of the two behemoths.
Hyde stopped him with an outstretched hand as large as Nemo's head. "No, no. Leave this to me." He cracked his knuckles. "This will be my pleasure."
Reeling to his feet again, the Dante-beast charged at Hyde. Hyde ran back at him. They looked like two stampeding rhinos.
On one voyage when he had visited mysterious Japan, Nemo had seen a match of enormously fat Sumo wrestlers. Although this colossal struggle brought back the memory, that contest had been a mere child's game in comparison.
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.
FIFTY
M's Fortress
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 bl
ade 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.
FIFTY ONE
M's Fortress
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, knowin
g 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.
But as Quatermain straightened, knowing he had made the right choice, Moriarty sprang at the old adventurer and plunged Quatermains' own Bowie knife deep into his back. He twisted the hilt, grinding the blade farther into the hunter's lungs, questing for his heart.
With a disbelieving gasp, Quatermain dropped to his knees. Sawyer ran to him, distraught to see his mentor fall, torn between attacking the Fantom and staying beside Quatermain.
"I thank you for the game." Wiping his bloodied hands on his trousers, Moriarty dashed over to where a wide crack in the tower wall offered escape. Carefree, he jumped out into the open sky, soaring high above the ground.
With an angry shout, Sawyer rushed to the crack, seized the edge of the broken stone, and pushed his head out into the cold daylight. He expected to see the evil mastermind falling to his death at the base of the fortress.
Instead, Moriarty sailed gracefully toward a safe landing far below, his black cape extended into a wind-resistant barrier, billowing out like the skin of a flying fox.
"Not… over… yet," said Quatermain.
Sawyer turned to see the deeply wounded hunter staggering toward him. The Bowie knife still protruded from the middle of his back; his shirt was soaked in blood. But he'd had the strength of mind to retrieve his elephant gun. He cradled Matilda in his hands.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Page 21