A Scandal in Battersea Read online

  No!

  But the weight was off her shoulder and Neville had launched himself after the blade, intercepting it just as it reached the top of its arc and clamping his beak on it firmly. Before she could blink, he landed heavily back on her shoulder, proffering the sword. She snatched it back just in time to intercept another spider. She kept a tighter grip on her sword this time; out of the corner of her eye she caught Agansing’s technique, and copied it as best she could with her single blade.

  Sweat plastered her hair to her head and ran down the back of her neck. The monsters had lost their fear of the light, and the only things to their advantage were that the creatures didn’t attack like a pack would, in a coordinated fashion, and that at least half of them were stopping to feast on the remains of the ones the humans had killed. In fact, some were running off with pieces in their maws, and others were fighting over the grisly remains.

  But there seemed no end to the things. And that green beacon of safety seemed just as far away as ever. She was too frantically busy to think about fear, and yet fear knotted up her insides regardless. Her arms and legs felt as if her bones were made of lead, and she panted with effort. I don’t think—we can keep this up.

  Her arm ached horribly. Neville snapped and stabbed at the things with his enormous, razor-sharp beak—in the case of the spider-things, seizing a leg, and with a vicious twist of his head, snapping it right off. In the case of everything else, stabbing out eyes when he could, and leaving deep, bleeding gashes when he couldn’t. But even he was wearying. She wanted to check on everyone else, and she didn’t dare take her eyes off the monsters for so much as a single glance. They were still moving forward, but at one hard-fought pace at a time. She was pretty sure she had been hit, but the things had some sort of venom that numbed where they struck, so she couldn’t feel the pain of her wounds. That might be the most dangerous thing of all. They could bleed to death from a hundred wounds and never realize what was happening until it was too late.

  Suddenly, Mary Watson called out something in a high, clear voice. Again, Nan didn’t understand the words, but they were clearly not meant for her.

  There was a low, muttering growl overhead, and all of the monsters froze, looking up in startlement and fearful silence.

  “Hold on to each other!” Mary called, “Birds, take shelter with the girls!” and Neville suddenly shrunk to his normal size. Nan had just time enough to grab him from her shoulder and tuck him inside her tunic, then link arms with Agansing and John Watson, when the tempest struck.

  A wild, fierce wind dropped down out of the dark sky, nearly sucking the breath from her lungs. She heard Selim gasp, but had no time to think about what might have made him utter that sound. The whirlwind buffeted them and came close to knocking them down—but that was nothing to what it was doing to the monsters.

  As the little sun hung serene and unchanged above John’s head, not moving an inch from its position, the brilliant illumination showed that outside their huddled group, braced against the tempest, the wind roared around them in a clockwise circle, and two feet outside their group it was ten times stronger. It picked up the spiders and carried them up into the starless sky as they shrieked in terror; it sent the rest of the creatures tumbling about head over heels as they tried in vain to hold on to the rubble or the more solid bits of wreckage standing up in the rubble. Neville tried to bury himself in her armpit as the circle of wind expanded and howled with a voice like a great, thundering church organ. As it grew, the area in which they stood grew calm, an “eye” of uncannily still air, like that of a typhoon. And once the wind had established that “eye,” it strengthened yet again, and Nan could scarcely believe her eyes as she watched it sending monsters smashing into the rubble and the sides of buildings. The vortex kept expanding until it was hundreds of yards wide. Nan stared at the whirlwind surrounding them in utter fascination—and as she looked up at the top of it, she thought for a moment that she saw a huge, fierce eye made of wisps of cloud and light and darkness looking down at her out of it. Fierce—but somehow, she was not afraid of it. Then it vanished, and she wondered if it had just been a trick of the light or of her imagination.

  The last of the monsters was scoured from the rubble, and the moment that happened, as quickly as it had spun up, the tempest stopped. The wind dropped to nothing; a few bits of debris, mostly sticks ripped from the dead trees, or possibly detached spider legs, fell straight down out of the air, clattering onto the piles of scattered bricks and stones. The profound silence that followed made her ears ring.

  “Run,” said Sherlock, sounding uncannily calm. “Now.”

  They ran. Karamjit supported Selim, who seemed to have fared the worst in the fight. They stumbled from weariness. Nan’s breath burned in her lungs. Her side was on fire, and her numb fingers could barely keep hold of her sword, but they ran. And they kept as tightly together as they had been during the fight. Now fear flooded over her, giving her a last reserve of strength to keep running. There was only room in her mind for watching the road lest she fall over something. They ran toward that wonderful green glow, and just as Nan was sure she couldn’t run any more, she looked up to see the portal a mere ten yards away, with Puck still holding it open. They flung themselves through; Nan and John were the last through; she landed on her knees on the carpet of the blessedly warm and familiar study, and Puck pulled himself and his staff back.

  As soon as he did that, the Celtic Warrior faded, and she was only Nan again. Her sword vanished. Her clothing reverted to her jacket and skirt, in somewhat battered and torn condition. Neville squirmed out of her jacket, jumped down to the floor, and sneezed.

  The portal closed with an audible snap. She felt blood trickling down the side of her face from a wound in her scalp she hadn’t felt, and suddenly turned in panic to the others. Were they all right?

  Just as she turned, “Selim!” cried Memsa’b rolling a prone Selim over on his back, and there was blood all over the front of his coat, soaking through it. John went to his knees beside Selim, tearing open his coat and shirt to show a gash in his stomach that was pumping out blood so fast—too fast—

  Nan uttered a cry of despair.

  “Move, Doctor,” Puck snapped, and shoved Watson aside without waiting for him to obey. Kneeling beside Selim, his eyes closed in concentration, he held his staff crosswise over the wound, stretching the length of Selim’s body.

  A brilliant burst of green light erupted from the staff. Half-blinded, Nan looked away and shielded her eyes for a moment. The light was so intense she could see it right through her eyelids! But her panic cut off as if someone had blown out a lamp; for a moment she smelled flowers and thought she heard birdsong, and the cut on her head—all her aches and pains—faded away.

  The light died, and she opened her eyes, and when she looked back at Puck and Selim—

  Puck stood up at that moment, and stepped back, grounding his staff on the carpet, expression both stern and exalted. Like a . . . a defending angel, Nan thought, a little dazed. Like St. George, or the Archangel Michael. And there was no sign of Selim’s wound, except for the blood caking his clothing.

  “Great Scott,” Watson breathed.

  “I am the Oldest Old One in all England,” Puck said. “And I will not let a fellow warrior fall to those—things. Not while there is life in me. But—” he continued, with a lifted brow. “He will still need you, Doctor. I cannot replace the blood he lost, and you must tend him for fever and watch him for infection.”

  Memsa’b looked up at him with Selim’s hand in hers, and tears coursing down her face. “You have saved the life of our dear friend. I can never repay—”

  “Fiddlesticks,” Puck interrupted, looking like the old Puck again, losing that exalted look. “Let there be no talk of repayment. Get him to his bed and return, for what there must be talk of is what happened, and what must happen next.”

  Staff was summone
d. Selim was taken to bed. The rest of them—except for Puck, who remained in the study—dispersed briefly to their rooms. Neville and Grey were exhausted and subdued—and very cold, so Nan and Sarah tucked them into their sable muffs to warm up.

  That was when Nan started to shiver. She looked over at Sarah and realized her friend was shivering, too. “I’m chilled to the bone,” she said aloud. “I think we all are.”

  Sarah draped a couple of blankets over chairs by the fire. “Nan, there’s blood in your hair,” she said, looking at Nan in shock. Nan put a hand up to her head, and it came away sticky.

  “I can’t feel any wounds,” she said. “But I know I had one—” She looked down at her arms and pulled her skirt up to look at her legs. Her stockings were slashed to ribbons, and the sleeves of her jacket were cut in three places. “I think Puck must have healed all of us, not just Selim.”

  She cleaned up where the wound had been. They bundled themselves into warm, clean clothing, draped themselves in the blankets, picked up the muffs and headed back to the study, where they found pots of hot tea and curry and rice waiting. The others must have been just as cold as they were, for everyone turned up draped in blankets or shawls. And they were all as hungry as tigers, even Puck. Without any regard for manners, one and all, they practically inhaled the food, and then sat nursing mugs of hot, sugared tea in their hands.

  “I think we had best get what we remember down on paper immediately,” Sherlock advised. “Once we have that . . . we must see what we can make of it.”

  “I’ll take notes,” Memsa’b volunteered.

  “We’ll ward the room,” John Watson said, grimly. “I’ll be damned if I want another hole into hell opening up here again.” He and Mary did incomprehensible things around the edge of the room while Memsa’b gathered up a notebook and pencil and sat down at Sahib’s desk where the lamp was.

  One by one, they went through everything they could drag out of their exhausted memories. When they were finished, they all sat in silence for a very long time.

  Finally Nan spoke up. “If it’s coming here . . . why hasn’t it come already?” she asked into the quiet. “It can open those portals—so why hasn’t it just come through one?”

  “Likely because it can’t,” Puck spoke up at last. “These things have rules, though I’ll wager Holmes doesn’t believe that. It can reach in here briefly, take prey and drag it back, but it can’t just come here. It has to be invited. And invited in a particular way.”

  “A magic ceremony of some kind—” John Watson hazarded, and Puck nodded.

  Since this was completely out of Nan’s purview, she half listened with one ear, with Neville in his muff, cradled in her lap, while trying to put together both sides of the puzzle—the abductions, and the pronouncement from that thing in the other world. King? Priest? A little of both. It had talked about Our Communion, and said that “the pure” would enter into it. But it spoke about this “Communion” as if it already existed. So what could it be? And why had it had girls taken from here then sent back mindless? If all it had wanted to do was rip their souls out of them, why send them back? If she had learned anything from John and Mary about magic, it was that magic was costly in terms of energy, and making a door between two worlds must have been fantastically costly. So why send them back?

  And there was something about “the pure” that kept nagging at her. The thing had taken Arthur Fensworth, and had not removed his soul. Could it have been taking other people all along? Fensworth had spoken of seeing other humans. Had Amelia’s visions been a view into that other world right at the time when those people were taken? And if so, why had they not had their souls taken? Why had they been left to scavenge and hide in the ruins? What was the difference between Arthur Fensworth and those girls? It couldn’t have been that he was male; he had said he had seen women and children coming to “feed.” It had to be something else. . . .

  Was it that they were “pure” and he was not?

  Her eyes widened. “John,” she said, slowly, into a pause in the other discussion. “The girls at the hospital—are they all virgins?”

  John Watson looked at her for a moment, mouth agape, ears reddening. “Ah . . . I . . . er . . . I cannot speak for the three newest, but . . . ah . . . yes, the first three are. . . .” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

  “Well, I can speak for the other three, since I examined them closely,” said Holmes, without a hint of embarrassment. “They were.”

  “That thing back there . . . it talked about how the ‘pure’ would become part of its ‘Communion.’ And that’s certainly one difference between them and Arthur Fensworth.” She raised an eyebrow. “Also between them and those other people he saw in the ruins, coming to feed.”

  “By Jove,” John Watson said. “I think you might be right. But . . . why?” Then he shook his head. “Never mind that. There’s six of them. It said it was ‘about’ to come across into our world. That means it can’t yet . . .” He turned to Puck. “You said it has to be invited, probably with a magic ceremony. Magic ceremonies often need odd numbers of participants; three, five, seven, nine or thirteen. What if he can control these girls on this side? They could invite him!”

  “So . . . the obvious thing would be to separate them,” Nan pointed out. But Holmes shook his head.

  “If he can control them, all he needs to do is open one of those portals wherever they are, call them across, and make another anywhere he wants to put them,” Sherlock pointed out. “He doesn’t care if he drops them down on the Downs in midwinter and they die of exposure, as long as they invite him across before they drop dead.” He shook his head. “If we want any warning before he crosses, if we want any control over where he crosses, we need to have them together.” His lips compressed together into a tight line.

  “Sherlock,” Nan said slowly, thinking about those terrible mobs of monsters that had nearly killed them all. “You are talking as if we have any chance at actually stopping them when they come over. We barely made it out of there alive, and we nearly lost Selim—and they weren’t trying to stop us, not really. That thing intended for some of us, at least, to escape; it said as much. So what are we supposed to oppose it with?”

  “The White Lodge—” John began, then dropped his head in his hands. “—won’t be of much use. Not against an army. Except for Fire, and perhaps Earth, our Elementals are not well suited to combat.”

  Sherlock got an odd expression on his face, one that Nan couldn’t read. “We keep saying ‘him’ and ‘it.’ What if that thing is . . . a queen?”

  John blinked at him. “You mean like Her Majesty?” he asked, looking confused.

  “No. Like a queen bee,” Holmes corrected. “Or an ant. That thing’s behavior—it seems to control all those creatures over there without any obvious means of communication. We are surmising it can control the girls as well. That it spoke of taking the ‘pure’ into a kind of hive mind suggests more queen-like behavior. Watson, what happens when a queen ant decides to take over another queen’s nest? Never mind, you probably don’t know. She sends in her warriors and kills the other queen, then enslaves the rest of the nest.” He paused. “So what do you think will happen when this queen discovers there is another queen on this island? I think we only saw a handful of the thing’s warrior ants tonight. And I suspect that queen can hatch out as many as she needs to. If she establishes a foothold here—the first thing she will do, as soon as she learns of a rival’s existence, will be to eliminate that rival.”

  “She’s probably hatching out more monsters right now,” Mary Watson agreed, despondently. “She’s very close to making her invasion—and that might be why we weren’t overwhelmed by monsters as soon as we appeared. Why hatch out a hungry horde until you need them?”

  “How in the name of God are we supposed to stop them?” Sarah asked.

  “I . . . don’t know,” Sahib replied.


  Gloom settled over the entire party. Neville crept out of his sable muff and into Nan’s lap, huddling there like a cat and making unhappy muttering noises while she stroked him. She glanced over at Sarah and saw that Grey was doing the same thing.

  “I don’t suppose Lord Alderscroft would be of any use in acquiring a few troops and a Maxim gun or two, would he?” Sahib asked. “There will be a limit to how large a portal that thing can create. If we can destroy enough of them, we may be able to stop them until magicians can destroy the portal.”

  “Until it moves the girls and makes a portal where we can’t find it,” Sarah pointed out, bleakly. “And if we . . . if we were to murder the girls, it would just create more of them where we can’t find them.”

  John shook his head, though whether that was denying that the girls should be killed or at the impossibility of stopping the thing from creating more of the “Communion,” Nan could not tell. “Alderscroft is not the problem with getting Maxim guns and troops. Explain to me how we are to frame this for the government! How do we convince them this is a genuine threat? This is the greatest Empire on Earth, and our armies have faced vast hordes of enemies—now tell me how we convince them that a paltry couple of hundred monsters and a thing that can siphon souls away is any kind of a threat that the White Lodge cannot handle? Because I believe it is, down in my bones, but I am blamed if I can think of a way to convince anyone else!”

  Nan petted Neville and tried to make her mind quiet while it persisted in running in frantic circles like a cornered mouse. But all she could think of was that John was right. She was sure they could convince Alderscroft, and he could summon the White Lodge, but the White Lodge was composed of magicians who normally set their powers against purely magical threats. When faced with a horde of those monsters pouring through a portal they could not close, what would they do?