Better the Devil

by Mike Wild

  It came again.

  Ravne held the Lamp of Alhazred at arm's length before him, peering towards the edges of the circle of light it gave out, and noticing as he did that the oil of the lamp was beginning to run below the halfway point. He cursed his own carelessness. That was hardly surprising after the odyssey he had taken and he should have been more observant. He knew there was no way for him to replenish the supply down here and if he didn't find the girl soon they were going to be making the majority of the long journey back in the dark.

  But which way had the scream come from, even assuming it was her? In this labyrinth, it was almost impossible to tell.

  He moved forward in what he thought was the right direction, slowly, cautiously, listening hard for a repeat of the cry. But there was none. Then suddenly the edges of the lamplight began to contract and he frowned, automatically slapping the glass in the hope he could somehow boost its range. But he shouldn't have needed to yet - why was the lamp dimming already?

  He realised that, actually, it wasn't. What was causing the contraction of the lamplight was nothing to do with the oil, but the fact that the rock passageway had simply closed and lowered around him. He was at a dead end.

  Ravne turned and looked back, confused. There had been no other passage leading away from the last part of his descent. In other words, this was it. He had, figuratively speaking, reached the source of the Styx, the bottom of the bottomless pit, the end of the line.

  There was nowhere else to go.

  The scream came again. Where are you, dammit? he thought. Where? Was it possible that on his way down he had somehow missed the girl?

  No, wait. There was something. Unevenness in the edge of the pool of light, where it seemed to spread beyond the confines of this small cave. It was a rent in the rock wall.

  Caught on the side of it was a torn piece of clothing.

  Ravne plucked it away and sniffed. Reanimate. No doubt about it.

  His nose wrinkled, though not as a result of the cloth. Reanimates tended to perfume their bodies to disguise a semi-necrotic odour that was impossible to shift, and there was a definite perfume here. The wrinkling had

  that seemed to be coming from beyond the rent... from the direction of the screams?

  Ravne ducked through - a tight squeeze even for him - and found himself in an ascending natural passageway that had presumably once been formed by a shift in the surrounding rock. He began to climb and found himself passing through strata that ranged from black rock to brown, and then to an orangey colour that his limited geological knowledge suggested might be sandstone, but that equally might not be. As he rose, though, he began to pay less attention to the colour of the rock and more to that of the oil burning inside the lamp of Alhazred.

  It turned from yellow to blue to brown.

  His canary was dying.

  Physical, spectral or atmospheric, there seemed to be something toxic ahead. Something very bad.

  Nostrils assailed by the foul odour from earlier, Ravne proceeded warily, ready to turn back at the first hint of nausea or of dizziness. But as foul as the smell was, it seemed not to be intrinsically harmful. It even began to ring vague bells of recognition in his head.

  But why, under London, was he reminded of the smell of concentration camp ovens, the crematoria of countless innocent dead?

  Ravne emerged from the passage at last, and he knew. It appeared that the upward incline had, in fact, returned him near to the surface, but by the look of his surroundings inside the perimeter of the Capek Construction site seal that had blocked his way before he had encountered the ripper. It appeared also that he was not in the main part of the site, but in some kind of annexe to it. It was this annexe from which the screams had come.

  Ravne was not prone to nightmares, but he was looking at one now, an image that he fully admitted put his own extensive catalogue of imaginative killings to shame.

  It was what the hunters had done with their prey.

  Right in front of him, their limbs amputated, the stripped bodies of ten reanimates revolved slowly on flame-backed upright skewers like human kebabs. Their skin slowly bubbling, their body fats dripped into collection pans below. Those that had cooked longer dripped blood.

  Ravne stared into their whitened eyes, allowed his gaze to pass from one to the other down the line - to the last.

  Her amputations freshly cauterised, mouth open in a final scream, the young girl he could only imagine was Elizabeth stared blindly back.

  Why, Ravne thought? Why would somebody do this to them?

  Then shadows loomed.

  The hunters had him, too.

  Chapter Twelve

  Urban legend had it that in a basement room of a certain office block in the City, hidden behind a filing cabinet, there was a door that led to the past. A long-disused London Underground platform where the chocolate machines took pre-decimal money and posters advertised long-forgotten products and classic films.

  A ghost station.

  Brand knew that many such ghost stations had vanished from the map over the years - Down Street, Spring Grove, Bull and Bush - and while some of these had been reopened as tourist attractions, others, like the one behind the cabinet, had simply been forgotten.

  He had no doubt that the urban legend was true, because he was walking through one such station.

  Fascinated, mouth wide, he could not understand why the others ahead of him seemed to be taking it in their stride.

  Other things on their minds, he supposed.

  "So let me get this straight," Hannah said to Verse. "The woman's dead?"

  "Three hundred years or more. Find that a problem?"

  "Hell, no. Just getting up to speed."

  Verse nodded. "Mary told me she was one of the first to be contacted by the group that operates down here, kind of like that French resistance underground railway thing during the war, or the network for slaves over in the States. Poor woman died of smoke inhalation in a fire that destroyed her tavern, and spent the next two centuries under the whip of some lord who'd taken a fancy to her on some country estate down in Kent, literally."

  "Bastard. But now she runs this gig with this other guy - Farrow?"

  "Since the original leader was taken by these so-called hunters."

  "Yeah. About them. Any thoughts on who? Or why?"

  "Wouldn't surprise me if Capek's involved. But as to why... maybe Ravne will find out more while he's poking around on this "errand" Farrow sent him on."

  "Ravne," Hannah repeated. "Can't believe he's still alive. Let alone that we've ended up down here with him."

  "Gotta be more than coincidence."

  Oh yeah Hannah thought, and mouthed a single word to herself: Popeye.

  "Say somethin', doll?"

  Hannah shrugged. "No... nothing. Forget it."

  Verse regarded his partner steadily. He knew Hannah would elaborate if she felt it worthwhile. He changed the subject.

  "You've had a look in your eyes since we met up again. It's your murderous look. It wouldn't be McMurder, by any chance?"

  "On my watch, no one abandons their own."

  Verse nodded. "Laudable sentiment. Sometimes difficult to live up to."

  "You and I would never..."

  "I know that, but we are not he, are we? The man is a throwback, we have to live with it."

  "Are you telling me I should turn the other cheek, Father Verse?"

  Verse clenched his fists and cracked both sets of knuckles. "Actually I'd have loved nothing more than turning both of his - hard - but after coming to and making for the woods, I was in no state for a dust-up. Had to be content with scaring the shit out of him instead."

  "Oh?"

  "It's coming... it's in the trees!"

  "Hah! So what was the offer that was difficult to refuse?"

  "The kilted cretin was actually on his mobile to Kostabi when I reappeared, demanding his pay to date. No idea what the bossman said, but I think Ness needed a change of pants as quickly as h
e changed his mind."

  Hannah smiled, then frowned. "You ever wonder which is the more dangerous - the work we do or the guy we work for?"

  "All the time, babe. All the time."

  Chapter and Verse continued to follow Mary's lead, as did the others, and after a couple of hundred metres or so they veered into tunnels that left the old underground line behind. They were obviously getting closer to the Dead of London's makeshift sanctuary, because Mary advised them to be wary of traps that had been laid ahead. As she guided the group past them, Verse studied them with an appreciative eye. Jury-rigged, as by necessity he supposed they had to be, the well-hidden selection of snares and spikes and stone-fall hazards was nevertheless equal to those he had laid himself to stop the Palo Mayombe in the jungles of Mozambique.

  It was a level of protection that graphically illustrated how afraid these people were.

  He moved on and then froze in response to the sudden echoing snap! of one of the traps from back down the tunnel. His first thought was that Brand - no doubt drooling over the discovery of a tin of powdered egg or some such - had blundered into it, but then he saw that the academic was actually standing near to him, as were all the others.

  Shadowed shapes moved a hundred metres back.

  "It's them," Mary said. "Quickly, we have to hide."

  Hunters, Jenny Simmons realised with a snarl. Her first instinct was to go on the offensive and take them out, but the calculating infernal inside her said she knew too little about them yet and consequently it was too early to show her hand. Chapter and Verse, and Ness had obviously decided the same, and so reluctantly she joined them, Brand and the dead woman, hiding beyond the bend of a large conduit in the tunnel wall.

  Together with the others she watched as a group of uniformed and body-armoured men walked slowly past the front of the hiding place, each of them night-visored and carrying automatic weapons that they swung ahead of themselves in slow, searching arcs. More disturbing were the tazers and micromesh nets slung at their waists. These were the hunters, all right, and they were hunting with expensive, state-of-the-art stuff. What was more, their financier was clearly evident from the logos stitched onto their sleeves.

  No surprises there. CapCon.

  One of the men stopped and stared suddenly into the side tunnel. Everybody pressed themselves into the shadows of the wall. For a moment they thought they'd been found, but then the man shrugged and moved on ahead with the others.

  "Are they heading towards the sanctuary?" Brand whispered.

  Mary slithered down to the end of the conduit, looked out, and shook her head. "They've taken the right fork and we're to the left. But even if they had gone left, our entrance is heavily camouflaged."

  "It may still only be a matter of time," Verse said. "We'd best move on."

  Mary nodded and guided the rest further into the tunnels. They were darker and smaller now, and so littered with junk that whatever purpose they had originally been excavated for seemed to be beyond practical use. The deeper in the group went, the quieter it became, but the quiet served only to enhance a noise that began to be heard apparently from every dark recess in the walls.

  There was no mistaking the sound. Things were grunting in the shadows.

  "Sewer pigs," Mary said. "The older systems run by here. Don't worry, they won't attack. They don't like our... sorry, they don't like my smell. It's wrong."

  "Sewer pigs?" Ness exclaimed with a mixture of incredulity and a shiver of disgust.

  Hannah picked up on the uncharacteristic display of weakness from the man. Looked like Ness had a thing about pigs, like Verse had his about sheep. "Every city has its urban myths about creatures finding their way into their sewer systems," she explained, rubbing salt into his wound, "either by accident or dumped, in many cases, by callous owners. They are reputed to thrive in their new eco-system, to live off our waste, then to breed, to mutate into more cryptozoic creatures. There are the giant alligators beneath Los Angeles, for example, elsewhere overgrown armoured piranha with paralysing bites, snakes the length of trains, and cats than can swallow you whole. Maybe its just something about you Brits, but - as Henry Mayhew mentions in his London Labour and the London Poor - you got the pigs: big, angry pigs."

  "Cats that can swallow ye whole," Ness scoffed, ignoring the latter. But he swallowed anyway. "Aye, an' there'll be dogs with eyes like saucers, too, ah suppose." He spat on the floor, barely missing her boot. "Sewer pigs, my arse. They dinnae exist."

  Oh, they exist all right, Hannah Chapter thought. I'm looking at one.

  The group moved on, and Ness convinced himself that it was for reconnaissance purposes that he described a number of slow pirouettes, turning perfect circles with his knife poised, ready to strike.

  It was thus with some relief that he found that Mary Henderson had led them at last to the main chamber used by her people. But she cautioned him from entering immediately, pointing out more of the makeshift traps they had encountered on their journey protecting the chamber's threshold, this time including a heavy and gruesome swinging spiked affair made of sharpened tube sleepers that was currently suspended in the shadows of the tunnel roof. She deftly neutralised the trigger, guided Ness and the others through, and then re-sprung the trap.

  As the motley group entered the chamber proper, dark eyes turned on them with suspicion, and as Ravne had before them, each reacted with surprise at the number of pairs there actually were. Brand in particular goggled at the underground community and, as he wandered amongst them, nodded to the individuals as socially as he could considering his awareness of their condition.

  Ness was a little less restrained. "Wha' the fook are youse starin' at? We ain't the walkin' worm food."

  "These are the friends of Solomon Ravne," Mary said, wisely changing the subject. "The ones our mutual friend guided here?" She moved away from the group to stand by the side of Marcus Farrow.

  "Business associates," Hannah corrected firmly. "Ravne has no friends."

  "His choice in part, but mainly ours," Jenny added.

  "I'm glad to hear that," Marcus Farrow responded, "because otherwise we might have had... issues." The joint leader of the group let the veiled threat hang in the air, but, when Jenny returned his stare utterly unfazed, smiled at her, his preternatural senses at work. "You are not human."

  Jenny transformed for just enough time for a brief exchange. [And you are not wrong, but at least you didn't call me a satanic squatter or it might have been we who had... issues. What have you done with him, anyway?] Baarish-Shammon added, [Our Mister Ravne?]

  "I have sent him down below."

  [Fff. Disappointing. He likes going down.]

  Marcus smiled again, admirably unimpressed by the demoness. "I doubt that he is liking this, but it was a necessary rite of passage for him."

  [He agreed?]

  "I threatened to slice off his hands and feet."

  [I see. And will we be seeing him again?]

  "I don't know. It could be dangerous."

  Baarish-Shammon's eyes flared with pleasure. [I think I am beginning to like you.]

  As the demoness transformed back into Jenny Simmons, Brand motioned Farrow to the side. The academic didn't give a second thought to the fact that he was confiding with a dead person, because the chaos of the past two days had somewhat inured him against strange turns of events, but there was one question he needed an answer to. "I want to thank you for providing us with this shelter," he said, "but there was a man, last night, back where we came from. He was... just like you, and he gave me this." Brand produced the crumpled paper from his pocket. "Who is he?"

  Farrow smiled. "As Mary said, a mutual friend. One who saw that we were in trouble as much as your people. Also one who believes that we can help each other out of it."

  Brand stared, disappointed not to get a clearer response, but if these people wanted to respect each other's privacy who on Earth had the right to question it?

  "You believe the rippers are connected
to the hunters?"

  "I believe they are linked to the same problem, yes. I believe also that you are beginning to suspect what that problem is."

  Brand nodded. "Do you have a map?" he asked.

  The academic gathered Mary and Farrow, and the others around a makeshift table in the centre of the chamber. This was the first chance he'd had to explain his theories since his discoveries at Exham, and he needed all to listen.

  "1944," he said. "The Ministry of Defence - in fact, the Ministry of Defence and Department Q - are allocated funds for a top secret project that is expected to be one year in development. I do not yet know what the nature of that project was, but central to its success is the acquisition of a certain piece of land."

  "Which piece of land?"

  "Right here," Brand said, jabbing the map.

  "I know that place," Hannah said. She looked at Verse. "Visited it with the big guy, once. They call it the Albion Quarter."

  Verse nodded. "It's an anomaly in the city, the only prime real estate in the heart of London other than obvious landmarks and listed buildings that's remained fundamentally unchanged since the end of the war. Apparently it's protected from any kind of outside development by royal charter or government decree or some such."

  "By a whole raft of protective and exemptive dispensations," Brand confirmed. "Granted to the wartime owners of the quarter and then in perpetuity to its trustees in return for unspecified services to the Crown."

  "Actually, Quarter is something of a misnomer," Verse added, "because the buildings that make up the estate only cover a little under two acres, hidden by modern office complexes not even visible to passers-by, but the term is used in deference to the fact that the area is unique as an area of the city, all but independent of it for half a century."

  "A bi' like Pimlico in that film?" Ness said.

  "Except that Pimlico belonged to France."

  "Aye, bu' nobody can touch 'em, right?"

  Brand nodded. "Even the Metropolitan police need ministerial permission if they wish to conduct investigations at the site."