by Mark Hodder
"Your escape route." He smiled, his pink eyes glinting, the vertical pupils narrowing. He moved away from the exit. "Go! Run!"
Algernon Swinburne looked at the albino curiously. What was he playing at?
He scrambled to his feet and began to walk toward the door. Oliphant continued to move away, giving the poet more and more space.
"Why?" asked Swinburne.
Oliphant remained silent, the smile playing about his face, the eyes following Swinburne's every step.
The poet shrugged and increased his pace.
He was less than four feet from the portal when Oliphant suddenly sprang at him.
Swinburne shrieked and ran but the albino was phenomenally fast and swept down on the little man in a blur of movement, grabbing Swinburne by the back of the collar just as he was stepping across the threshold and yanking him backward.
Swinburne flew through the air, hit the ground, rolled in a spray of rainwater, and found himself lying exactly where Brunel had dropped him.
Oliphant cackled; a cruel, vile noise.
Swinburne staggered to his feet. "Cat and mouse," he said under his breath. "And I'm the bloody mouse!"
THE TRAIL
When we adjust some element of an animal's nature, a quite different element alters of its own accord, as if there is some system of checks and balances at work. What we cannot fathom is why the unplanned changes seem entirely pointless from a functional perspective. I an baffled. Glalton is baffled. Darwin is baffled. All we can do is experiment, experiment, experiment!
- from a NIGHTINGALE
Sir Richard Francis Burton arrived at the Squirrel Hill Cemetery and quickly found the area where the loops-garous had been feeding. Graves had been torn open, coffins ripped apart, and putrefying corpses shredded and gnawed at, left scattered across the wet mud.
Even though, while in Africa, he'd become fascinated by the notion of cannibalism, Burton actually possessed a deep-seated fear of the ghoulish. Anything connected with graveyards and corpses unnerved him. The many cadavers he'd seen, and even accidentally trodden on, in the East End had filled him with horror; Montague Penniforth's ravaged carcass had sickened him to the core; and now this! His mouth felt dry and his heart hammered in his chest.
At his feet, Fidget growled and whined and pulled at his leash.
Burton squatted and took the dog's head in his hands, looking into the big brown eyes.
"Listen, Fidget," he said quietly. "This damned rain has probably washed away the scent but somehow you have to find it. Do you understand? My friend's life depends on it!"
He took from his pocket a pair of Swinburne's white gloves and pressed them against the basset hound's nose.
"Seek, Fidget! Seek!"
The dog yelped and, as Burton stood, started to snuffle about enthusiastically, moving in an ever-widening circle. Repeatedly, as he came close to the scattered bones and lumps of worm-ridden flesh, he let loose a coughing bark-wuff./-which Burton guessed indicated not the odour of the corpses but the scent of the werewolves. This could be useful, for if their musk was that strong, it would be easier for the dog to follow them than Swinburne.
Ultimately, this proved to be the case. Fidget led him to an area of the cemetery where, even after the rainfall, it was obvious that a struggle had taken place. Deep grooves showed where boot heels had been dragged through the mud and around them were the many footprints of loups-garous. Then all indications of Swinburne's presence vanished and the paw marks trailed away toward a collapsed section of the graveyard's wall.
"They picked him up and carried him," muttered Burton.
Fidget was gazing at him with an apologetic expression. Swinburne's trail had vanished.
"Don't worry, old fellow, the game's not over yet!"
Burton pulled Fidget over to the gap in the wall, stepped through, crouched, and pushed the dog's nose into one of the werewolf paw prints.
A deep rumble sounded in the basset hound's chest and his snout wrinkled in disgust.
"Follow!" ordered Burton.
Fidget whined, gave a yelp, and pulled his master back toward the cemetery.
"No! Wrong direction! That way! Go!"
The hound stopped, blinked at him, looked back along the trail, turned, and started away from the wall.
"Good dog!" encouraged his new master.
Dragged along behind the excited hound, the king's agent descended the hill, skirted a long fence, and passed into a rubbish-strewn alleyway that ran between the backyards of terraced houses until it emerged onto Devonport Street. Fidget turned to the right and raced along, down the inclining road and across the main thoroughfare of Cable Street toward the Thames. Burton was astonished at the dog's assured manner. The rain had been falling for hours, yet enough of the werewolves' scent remained for the remarkable hound to follow.
People milled about, many turning to stare at the man and the small basset hound; there were yells and catcalls but Burton barely noticed, so intent was he on his quest.
Reaching the bank of the river, they turned right again, following the course of the Wapping Wall. The terrible reek of the city's artery assailed Burton's nostrils and turned his stomach, yet Fidget kept on, his nose able to separate one stink from another, pushing aside the distractions, focusing only on that which he'd been ordered to follow.
With the horrors of the Cauldron seething around them, they pressed on in a westerly direction for nearly two miles until London Bridge hove into view in the distance. Across the road, Burton spotted the end of Mews Street and the boarded-up pawnshop where he'd met with Paul Gustave Dore.
Past the docks and the Tower of London went the man and his hound, and down a set of stone steps to a narrow walkway that ran alongside the contaminated waters of the Thames. The stone surface was slick with slime and, though the rain had abated somewhat, the muck squelched beneath Burton's tread and footing was precarious. One slip and he could end up in the river!
They passed into the gloom beneath London Bridge and there Fidget stopped and snuffled at the base of a narrow wooden door upon which a notice warned "Strictly No Entry." Burton put his shoulder to the portal and pushed. With a deep grinding noise, it scraped open, revealing a square chamber.
The king's agent reached into his coat pocket, withdrew a clockwork lantern, and gave it a twist. The flame flared into life inside it and the sides of the device spilled light into the room. It was completely empty but for muddy paw prints on the floor which led through a dark archway in the opposite wall. Urged onward by the dog, Burton pushed the door shut and crossed the chamber. Beyond the archway, stone steps descended into darkness. He followed them.
The deeper he went, the damper it became, until the stone walls were literally running with water. After many minutes had passed, he finally came to the base of the stairs and here found a corridor cut through solid rock, its floor hidden beneath filthy water, with three thick pipes running along the lefthand wall. Gas mains, he supposed.
"You'll not sniff out their trail here," he muttered to Fidget, "but this is the way they must have come, so we'll press on. Here-up with you!"
He bent and hoisted the basset hound up into his arms, then moved down into the cold water. Two steps he descended until he reached the flat floor. The liquid swirled around his knees, filling his boots and clogging his nostrils with the putrid stench of rotting fish.
Droplets fell from above, hitting the water with echoing and strangely musical plops.
He waded along the narrow tunnel, his lantern ticking in his hand, casting its fitful glow on the streaming walls and metal pipes, which shimmered and glistened in the light. Soon there was total darkness ahead, total darkness behind, and Burton experienced the same sensation he'd had when rising through the fog in the rotorchair: that he was moving but going nowhere; that this journey had no end.
He pressed on.
He was under the Thames, that was obvious, and the thought of that great weight above terrified him. He'd never been good with
enclosed spaces. Bismillah! What he'd give now for the endless plains of Africa or the evershifting desert sands of Arabia!
"Why did I agree to this?" he whispered into Fidget's ear. "Serving an Empire whose actions I deplore, in a country I can't call home?"
Fidget whimpered and rested his chin on his master's shoulder.
Eventually, and quite unexpectedly, the tunnel ended at a Hight of stairs.
Breathing a heartfelt sigh of relief, Burton stepped out of the water and ascended. He came to a room in every way identical to the one at the other end of the subterranean passage, and, setting Fidget onto the floor, he pushed the hound's nose into a paw print.
"Follow! There's a good boy!"
The dog crossed to the door opposite the entrance to the stairs and looked meaningfully at Burton, as if to say, "Open it!"
The famous adventurer did so and stepped out onto another slimecovered walkway. He was still beneath London Bridge but now on the Southwark side. He snapped off his lantern and shoved it into a pocket.
Fidget led him up onto Tooley Street, where he was met with a scene of utter devastation. This part of London, the Hay's Wharf area, had been completely destroyed by a disastrous fire back in June. Its warehouses had burned for two weeks, and even now, three months later and with the rain falling upon it, the wreckage was still visibly smouldering. To the east, almost as far as the eye could see, lay a ravaged landscape; a black wasteland sprawling beneath a dirty haze that even the rain couldn't wash away.
Burton winced. This was a painful sight, for among the warehouses had been Grindlays, the place where he'd stored the bulk of the Oriental manuscripts he'd spent so much of his Army pay on while in India, plus trunks filled with Oriental and African costumes and mementoes, and a great many of his personal notebooks.
It had all been consumed by the blaze.
He remembered with grim amusement how the clerk at Grindlays' head office, upon seeing his distress, had asked, "Did you lose any plate or jewellery, sir?"
"No, nothing of that nature," had replied Burton.
"Ah, well!" exclaimed the clerk, looking much happier. "That's not so bad then!"
Fidget tugged at his leash.
They turned westward and followed the river as far as Southwark Bridge before then turning inland. With his nose close to the ground, Fidget pulled the king's agent into a bystreet and from there into the depths of the borough.
Burton could see that the route the basset hound was following would probably be quiet at night but now it was past midday and the streets were thronged with citizens going about their business. Pushing their way through the crowds, the man and the dog passed through alley after alley, out of the borough and into Lambeth, through Lambeth and on to Vauxhall, until they finally emerged on Nine Elms Road. Here, the scent trail veered off the highway and through a hole in a wooden fence. It continued ahead, running parallel to the thoroughfare, and already Burton had an idea of the destination, for the sky in front of him was broken by four tall chimneylike structures.
Swinburne couldn't stop laughing.
His entire body hurt. He was bruised and lacerated and every injury was sending a thrill of pleasure coursing through his nerves.
Laurence Oliphant was being driven to a blind fury. He'd thrown down his sword cane, removed and dropped his jacket, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and was now setting about the poet with unrestrained viciousness.
Oh yes, he was going to kill the little man, but he'd be damned if he'd make it easy for the redheaded pipsqueak! No, a long, slow, terrifying death, that's what Swinburne was going to get.
So again and again he allowed his prey to reach that temptingly open door, and again and again he pounced on him at the last second and hurled him back into the courtyard.
And Swinburne laughed.
Oliphant circled the poet, grinned diabolically, swooped in, and struck. Swinburne spun into the air and thudded onto the ground, his clothes shredded, the skin beneath ripped.
He dragged himself along, a ragged, bloodied mess, his eyes wild, his giggle becoming a gurgle as blood streamed from his nose and split lips.
In four long strides, Oliphant was at his side.
"What are you?" gasped Swinburne. "One of Nurse Nightingale's foul experiments?"
"Shut your mouth!"
"What did she do to you, Oliphant?"
"She saved me."
"From what?"
"Death, Swinburne, death. I overindulged in opium, became an addict, and slipped into a coma in a Limehouse drug den. Miss Nightingale rescued the functioning parts of my brain and fused them with a humanised animal."
"What animal?"
"My white panther."
"Ah, that explains it!"
"Explains what?"
"The lingering odour of cat piss I smell every time you come close."
Oliphant emitted a ferocious hiss, grabbed the poet-one hand clutching the back of his neck, the other his right thigh-lifted him, whirled around, and flung him high into the air. Swinburne smashed into the base of a wall, dropped, rolled loosely, and lay still, his green eyes level with the ground, watching the albino's feet approaching.
Through bubbling blood, he croaked:
"Thou hast conquered, 0 pale Galilean;
The world has grown grey f -om thy breath;
We have drunken from things Lethean,
And fed on the fullness of death."
Oliphant bent over him. "Run, little man," he whispered. "Run for the door."
Swinburne rolled onto his back and looked up into the wicked pink eyes.
"Thank you," he mumbled. "But I have it in mind to lie here and compose a poem or two, if you don't mind."
"I mind," answered Oliphant. He grabbed the poet's throat and yanked him up. Then he lifted him off his feet, fingers tight around the skinny neck, and watched with interest as his victim's face began to darken.
Swinburne kicked and struggled, clutching at his assailant's wrists, but couldn't break free.
He caught sight of something over Oliphant's shoulder and suddenly relaxed, hanging limply.
Somehow, he managed to smile.
Oliphant looked at him in wonder.
A deep, commanding voice rang out: "Drop him!"
The albino whirled.
Sir Richard Francis Burton stood just inside the gate. He had picked Oliphant's swordstick up and held it, unsheathed, in his hand. At the adven turer's feet, a small dog backed toward the door, stepped through, and hid behind it, peeking out at Oliphant.
"Burton," breathed the albino.
He let go of Swinburne, who slumped to the ground and lay still, quietly chuckling.
"Come here, you bastard," snapped the king's agent.
"I'm unarmed," revealed Oliphant, walking forward with his arms spread wide.
"I don't care."
"That's not very gentlemanly."
"There are many who claim I am not a gentleman," noted Burton. "They call me Ruffian Dick. At this particular moment in time, it's a title I intend to live down to."
He suddenly sprang at Oliphant and thrust at his heart. The feline man twisted and jumped back, the point of the rapier catching and slicing his shirtsleeve.
"I'm too quick for you, Burton!" he panted, then, lightning fast, ducked down, pounced in, and swiped at the adventurer's thigh with his sharp talons.
Burton predicted the move and caught the albino's hand in his own.
"My reactions aren't bad either," he said.
His grip tightened and bones crunched.
Oliphant screamed.
Burton dropped the rapier and sent his fist crashing into the albino's jaw.
"And I think you'll find that I'm stronger."
With his left hand mercilessly breaking the bones in Oliphant's right, Burton set about pounding his opponent's face to a pulp. Blood spurted as the panther-man's nose snapped and flattened. Canine teeth broke. Skin tore.
Burton was thoroughly scientific about it. He revived the box
ing skills of his youth, choosing where to strike with a cold detachment, timing his blows to perfection, measuring the damage to ensure that the albino suffered every crunching blow without slipping into unconsciousness.
It was more than punishment; it was torture, and Burton had no qualms about it.
As the beating continued, Fidget cautiously stepped back in through the door and began to skirt the wall toward Swinburne. Glancing repeatedly at his master, he padded around the edge of the big rectangular space then crept in until he reached Swinburne's feet. He sniffed at the blood-spattered boots, pushed his nose into the too-short trouser leg, then bit the skinny ankle.
"Yaargh!" screeched the poet.
Burton turned, and in that unguarded second, Laurence Oliphant ripped his mangled hand from the explorer's grasp and, with a sudden thrust of his legs, propelled himself away. He rolled, leaped to his feet, and sprinted to the huge doors of the power station. Perfectly balanced, they swung open at his touch and slammed shut behind him.
The king's agent, who'd instantly thrown himself after the albino, crashed into the doors, pushed them, pulled them, and realised that his enemy had escaped.
He hurried over to Swinburne and shoved Fidget away.
"Are you all right, Algy?"
"Bloody ecstatic, Richard."
"Can you walk?"
"I thought I could, then that blasted dog bit me!"
"Idiot. It was just a nip. Come on, up with you."
He slipped his arm beneath the poet's shoulders and heaved him upright. There was barely an inch of his friend that wasn't smeared with blood.
"I have to get you seen to as quickly as possible," he said. "We need to get this bleeding stopped."
"It was marvellous," gasped Swinburne. "I took everything he dished out! Was that courage, Richard?"
"Yes, Algy; that was courage."
"Splendid! Absolutely splendid! Oh, by the way, John Speke is in there."
Before Burton could reply, a howl echoed from the other end of the courtyard.
"Werewolves!" breathed the king's agent. "We've got to get out of here!"