The List Of Seven (4 page)

Rolling to avoid the blow he knew was coming, Doyle felt the fist of the man to his left connect sharply below his shoulder blade. In one swift move, Doyle snatched the trumpet from the table and swung it viciously up and around, catching the man square on the side of the face. Blood spurted from a gash as he stumbled and fell to his knees.

"Villains!" Doyle shouted, galvanized. He reached into his pocket for the revolver when a heavy blow landed on the right side of his neck, paralyzing his searching hand and arm. He turned to see the Dark Man lift a leaded truncheon to strike again and raised his left arm to fend it off.

"Fool!" The voice issued from the medium. Grinning maliciously, eyes blazing, she swiftly rose straight up into the air above the table. Distracted, the Dark Man turned to face her, truncheon still raised. Doyle felt the hands of the wounded man grab him roughly from behind.

"You fancy yourself a seeker of truth?" the medium mocked him.

She held out her palms, the skin roiled and rippled with hideous subcutaneous congestion. When she opened her mouth, a flowing volume of gray aqueous vapor billowed forth from both mouth and hands. Suspended in the air, the vapor traced the outline and then filled in the image of a full-length frame mirror. As the surface of the mirror refined itself, the medium's reflection appeared in the spectral glass.

"Then behold my true face."

Out of the void behind her likeness in the mirror floated another form, dim and indistinct, which settled on and then imposed itself over the medium's reflection, pouring into it like water saturating sand, until all that remained was an en-

tirely new visage: a skull-like creature with red, runny, abscessed sockets for eyes, skin gray and in many places gnawed down to the bone, writhing pockets of black stringy hair sprouting from more than the usual places. Independent of the medium, who remained still, merely smiling, the creature looked down at Doyle and opened the spoiled cavity that served as its mouth. Its voice was the one they had been hearing all along, but it now came exclusively from the fiend in the mirror.

"You imagine that you do good. See what your good has wrought."

Two hooded figures moved out from behind the tapestry, moving so swiftly that Doyle had no time to react. One clouted Lady Nicholson's brother across the head with a dimly glimpsed weapon; the wound spouted crimson as he fell away. The other grabbed Lady Nicholson and drew a long, thin blade smoothly across her throat, severing the vessels, arterial blood pumping furiously. The cry in Lady Nicholson's throat died in a drowning rattle as she slumped out of sight behind the table.

"God! No!" Doyle screamed.

A demented cackle from the monster filled the air before the ectoplasmic mirror exploded in a loud report of light.

One of the murderers now drew his sights on Doyle and nimbly jumped up onto the table, poised to leap down and strike at him with the mallet that had splintered the forehead of Lady Nicholson's brother, when Doyle heard something whoosh by his ear: a shape, a black handle bloomed at the throat of the assassin. He stopped on top of the table, dropped his weapon, and groped blindly at his chin; a dagger had pierced the span of his neck, pinning the material of the hood, drawing it down over the eyes. The man staggered, then toppled over.

With a grunt, the accomplice holding Doyle fell backward and away; he was free.

An unfamiliar man's voice spoke urgently in his ear. "Your pistol, Doyle."

Doyle looked up to see the Dark Man turning toward him with the truncheon raised. Doyle pulled the pistol from his pocket and fired. His left knee shattered, the Dark Man bellowed and fell to the floor.

The shape was moving behind Doyle now, kicking the candelabra, extinguishing half the room's light. Doyle just had time to note that the medium had vanished when his attention snapped back to a blur of gray; the advancing rash of the second assassin. Still unseen, Doyle's benefactor overturned the heavy table, throwing the murderer back. Hands pulled Doyle to his feet.

"Follow me," the voice instructed.

"Lady Nicholson—"

"Too late."

Doyle followed the voice into the darkness. They passed through a door, down a corridor. Doyle felt disoriented—this was not the way he had entered. The door at corridor's end fell as Doyle's confederate kicked it open, oozing a crepuscular light into the space. They were still interior. Doyle could make out a tall, rangy profile, see the man's breath vaporize in the cooling air, nothing more.

"This way," the man instructed.

He was about to lead them through another door when a shape leapt from the dark with a feral growl and ripped into the man's forward leg. He staggered, crying out in shock. Doyle fired a shot at the dim shape of the attacking animal. It yelped and fell back, howling in pain. Doyle fired again, stilling its cries.

The man shouldered through the door. In the shaft of light that fell back through the doorway, Doyle saw the still body of the street urchin, crimson flowing from its wounds, jaws pulled back in a death grimace, exposing blood and meat in its sharp, canine teeth.

"Almost there," the man said, and they left the terrible house.

chapter four FLIGHT

HIS DELIVERER TOOK THE LEAD IN A HEADLONG DASH DOWN

the dark alley outside. Unable for the moment to see the wisdom of any alternate course, as he followed, Doyle strained to keep the man's flowing cloak in sight. They turned once, twice, and turned again. Seems to know where he's going, Doyle thought wanly, his bearings yielding to the rattrap rookery of shacks and shanties through which the man's path threaded them.

Breaking out of an alley onto a paved street, the man stopped short; Doyle's momentum carried him halfway into the street before the man yanked him back into the sheltering darkness. His grip was tremendously strong. Doyle meant to speak, but the man silenced him with a sharp gesture and pointed at the corner of an intersecting alley across the way.

Stepping around that corner into view was the surviving gray-hooded killer: crouched over, moving steadily, deliberately, eyes to the ground, a coiled predator tracking its quarry. What possible signs could it be searching for in the hard pavement? Doyle asked himself—and then, more alarmingly: How did it get here so quickly?

Doyle heard a whisper of steel on steel as his companion, face still obscured by shadows, sharp profile etched against the wall, drew from the walking stick he carried the base of a hidden blade. Doyle instinctively reached for his revolver. His friend's hand lay frozen on the butt of his rapier, as still as stone.

A carriage approached from the left. Four immense black stallions roared into view, clattering noisily to a stop on the cobblestones. The six-seat coach stood huge and black as pitch. No driver was visible. The man in the gray hood

moved to the side of the coach. A window slid open, but no light issued from within. The man nodded, but it was difficult to know if words were exchanged; nothing cut through the night but the labored sputtering of the horses.

The gray hood turned from the cab and looked directly into the alley where Doyle and friend were sheltered; both shrank back against the brick. The hood stepped toward them, stopped, and cocked its head like a hound tracing frequencies beyond human range. It stood like that for some time, the chilling blankness of the man finding perfect expression in the lifeless countenance of the mask. Doyle's breath died in his chest—Something's not right, he thought—and then he realized there were no holes for the eyes.

The door to the black carriage swung open. A short, strident, high-pitched trilling filled the air, halfway between a whistle and some less human vocalization. The gray hood instantly turned and leapt inside, the door slammed shut, and the steeds hammered the heavy carriage away, fog swirling greasily around the hole it carved in the mist.

As the clip of the hooves faded, Doyle's companion eased his weapon back into place.

"What the devil—" Doyle began, his breath bursting out in a rush.

"We're not safe yet," the man stilled him, voice low.

"All very well and good, but I think it's time we had a brief chat—"

"Couldn't agree more."

With that, the man was off again. Doyle had no choice but to follow. Keeping to the shadows, they stopped twice when the shrill whistling sounded again, each time at a greater remove, leaving Doyle to consider the disagreeable possibility that more than one of these hoods were on their trail. Doyle was about to break the silence when they turned a corner and came upon a waiting hansom cab, a compact cabbie atop the driver's perch. The man signaled, and the hack driver turned, offering a view of the ragged scar running obliquely down the right side of his face. He gave a brusque nod, turned to his horses, and cracked the whip, as the man opened the door of the moving vehicle and jumped aboard.

"Come on, then, Doyle," the man said.

Doyle followed up onto the stair, turning when he heard a

dull thump to his right; a long, wicked blade had just penetrated the cab door, its quivering razor tip mere inches from Doyle's chest. A shrill, insistent variation of the vile whistling filled the nearby air. Doyle looked back: The gray hood was twenty yards back, drawing another, identically vicious dagger from its belt as it sprinted toward him at improbable speed. With a prodigious leap, the hood jumped onto the running board of the accelerating coach, clutching for purchase in the open doorway. Hands pulled Doyle back into the cab; he scuttled to the far corner, digging for his pistol, trying to remember which pocket he'd left it in, when he heard the opposite door open. He looked up to see a flash of flapping coattail; his friend had fled, leaving him trapped in the cab with their relentless pursuer—where was his pistol?

As the hooded figure captured its balance in the doorframe and raised the weapon, Doyle heard the scuff of weight shifting on the roof, then through the open window saw his friend swing down into view and drive both feet into the open door, slamming it shut and rocketing the point of the embedded dagger completely through their attacker's chest. With a hideously muted mewling cry, the hood kicked and clawed ferociously at the invading blade, mauling its hands indiscriminately, then went suddenly and entirely limp, pinned to the door like a bug.

Doyle struggled to his knees in the jostling sway of the carriage and moved to the hooded man. Rough clothes. Hobnailed boots, almost new. Feeling for a pulse and finding none, Doyle was about to remark on the curious absence of blood when his defender reached in through the window, pulled off the gray hood, and tossed it away.

"Good Christ!"

A hatch pattern of symmetrical scars crisscrossed the stark white face. The man's eyes and lips had been crudely knitted up with a coarse, waxy blue thread.

Holding on from the roof, Doyle's companion reopened the door, and the body swung out with it: Suspended outside the rapidly moving cab, the corpse exhibited violent spastic movements as the coach bounced and jolted along. With a strong pull, the man drew the long knife back through the door, releasing the body from its attachment, and it fell away into obscurity.

In one deft move, the man pivoted into the cab, pulled the door shut behind him, and took a seat across from the stunned Doyle. He took two deep breaths and then ...

"Care for a drink?"

"What's that?"

"Cognac. Medicinal purposes," said the man, offering a silver flask.

Doyle accepted it and drank—it was cognac; exceedingly good cognac—as the man watched. Doyle saw him clearly for the first time in the pale amber light of the cabin lantern—his face was narrow; streaks of color painted his sharp cheeks; long, jet-black hair curled behind his ears. High forehead. Aquiline nose. Strong jaw. The eyes were remarkable, light and sharp, colored by a habitual amusement that Doyle felt, to say the least, was currently inappropriate.

"We could have that little chat now," the man said.

"Right. Have a go."

"Where to begin?"

"You knew my name."

"Doyle, isn't it?"

"And you're ..."

"Sacker. Armond Sacker. Pleasure."

"The pleasure I should say, Mr. Sacker, is distinctly mine."

"Have another."

"Cheers." Doyle drank again and passed back the flask.

The man unfastened his cloak. He wore black, head to toe. Lifting a leg of his trousers, he exposed the bloodied bite on his calf given by the feral boy.

"Nasty, that," said Doyle. "Shall I have a look?"

"No bother." The man took a handkerchief from his pocket and soaked it with cognac. "The puncture itself's not the worry, it's the damn tearing action when they prattle their heads about."

"Know a bit about medicine, then."

Sacker smiled and without flinching compressed the handkerchief tightly to the wound. Closing his eyes was the only concession to what Doyle knew must be extraordinary pain; when they reopened, no trace of it remained.

"Right. So, Doyle, tell me how you came to be in that house tonight."

Doyle recounted the arrival of the letter and his decision to attend.

"Right," said Sacker. "Not that you necessarily need me to tell you this, but you're in a bit of a fix."

"Am I?"

"Oh, I'd say so, yes."

"How, exactly?"

"Mm. Long story, that," the man said, more warning than excuse.

"Have we time for it?"

"Believe we're well clear for the moment," he said, parting the curtains for a brief look outside.

"I'll ask some questions, then."

"Better you didn't, really—"

"No, better I do," said Doyle, pulling the pistol from his pocket and resting it on his knee.

Sacker's smile broadened. "Right. Fire away."

"Who are you?"

"Professor. Cambridge. Antiquities."

"Could I see some form of identification to that effect?"

Sacker produced a calling card verifying the assertion. Looks authentic, thought Doyle. Not that that counted for much.

"I'll keep this," said Doyle, pocketing the card.

"Not at all."

"Is this your carriage, Professor Sacker?"