The Fall of the House of Cabal (33 page)

‘One thing, though.' The circle was tightening on the man. ‘Laying in provender can be a tad trying. One grows bored of rats, even in a delicate sauce.'

‘Hence,' said another, ‘our embrace of anthropophagy.'

‘Anfro-po-wot?'

‘Cannibalism, you stupid man.' They fell upon him.

They took no time at all to kill him, but they did not do so very elegantly. ‘Oh, steady on,' she heard one say. ‘Careful with the claret. Oh, Charles, you ass, it's all over my trousers now.'

‘Do stop complaining, Gideon. We're due a trip to Savile Row, anyway. We'll see what's on the peg.'

‘Speaking of wine, what shall we have with this creature when it's cooked? I rather wish we could catch more pigeons. I'm getting tired of red with every meal.'

Leonie had no idea what came over her. The sensible thing would simply be to lie low, let them gather up their kill, and leave. The sensible thing would be to avoid any sort of contact. The sensible thing was to accept that she couldn't help the man now, and attempting to avenge him would not resurrect him even if she succeeded.

The sensible thing could go hang. Besides, there were other considerations, other lives in the balance that night.

She leaned the shotgun by the far side of the door frame, took off her hat to loosen her hair and display it over her shoulders. She replaced the hat and took a couple of deep breaths while she steadied herself for the stupidly dangerous thing she was about to do. Then she opened the door and crossed the short distance to the stone rail of the raised portico overlooking the square. She made herself as noticeable as she could, but the men were too busy dressing their victim for transport to glance in her direction. Exasperated by how much trouble it was to bring unwanted attention these days, she gave what she guessed a girlish cry of horror might sound like.

The men looked up. For an endless moment it was as if she had somehow turned them to stone by her unexpected appearance. Then one found enough impulse to shout, ‘A filly!' which inspired another to cry, ‘I say!' another, ‘Tally-ho!' and suddenly it was like a Saturday evening in a restaurant visited by an Oxford University dining club.

Leonie gave throat to another squeal of feminine weakness at the sight of the six charging in her direction, and ran back indoors hoping against hope that she shouldn't have done the sensible thing, after all.

Her plan was simple in the extreme, and she hoped her pursuers were simple enough to play along. She shot the lower bolt on the door home; apparently when the gallery had been abandoned, the last curator had used the front door and so secured only the lock. The bolts had not been used and so had not been destroyed when Horst made his forceful entrance. Against six men, the solitary bolt wouldn't last long, but it wouldn't need to. She took the distinctive hat from her head and skimmed it across the floor to the eastern side, appeared briefly at the eastern window, ran off in that direction once she was sure they'd glimpsed her. Then she ducked under the window and headed west, snatching up her shotgun from where it leaned upon the door frame just as the handle was tried. She slid under the western window, and ran pell-mell off into the shadows of the west wing to hide. There she waited, her shotgun cocked and ready to shoot if they showed the discourtesy to find her.

She was barely in cover when the door took a battering and the bolt failed under an enthusiastic shoulder ram. The men poured in through the doorway in a moment and looked eastward, the direction they had glimpsed her moving. Lying in the gallery doorway was her hat, lost in her panicked flight from ungentlemanly frightfulness. Shouting, ‘Come on, girlie! We just want to say hello!' (although the ribald laughter at this implied saying hello was probably not their priority), the foremost led the others in that direction. Soon, Leonie heard the cry of discovery.

‘She's fainted,' said one.

‘Could've sworn she was a blonde,' muttered another.

‘However shall we wake her up?' said a third. There was more laughter.

‘I think I know how!' said the first. There was more laughter, much of the same note as the previous laughter, detached from humour and latched onto cruelty with a rusty needle.

In her hiding place, Leonie felt assured enough to re-engage her gun's safety catch, which for that particular weapon meant lowering the hammer to half cock to immobilise the trigger. ‘I bet you do,' she said to herself, and settled down to wait.

*   *   *

The brief search of the area to the north of Trafalgar Square had turned up little but more signs of an historical terror of a few months before, followed by a period of intermittent beastliness between the survivors of the catastrophe and something predatory that was presumably instrumental in that catastrophe. Cabal and Miss Smith looked at the surprisingly rare tattered corpses and held informed little chats about likely causes that would have horrified anyone in polite society. As it was, everyone in polite society seemed to have been done to death, so that was only a fleeting concern for them.

They rejoined Charing Cross Road along Bear Street and were soon back in Trafalgar Square. Cabal looked around for a moment and, seeing nothing untoward, was set to return to the Gallery. Miss Smith, however, stopped him and pointed towards the column. Around the base, dark shapes moved.

‘What are those?' said Cabal. He moved a little closer, taking the Webley from his bag as he did so. ‘Crows? At
night
?'

‘Not crows.' Miss Smith walked past him towards the creatures. ‘Those are ravens.'

The large birds ignored the two during their approach but for suspicious sideways glances as they gorged themselves on something. Cabal didn't like the behaviour of the birds at all. He had some experiences with wilful corvids (although coupling the term ‘wilful' to any member of the crow family might be considered tautology), and these examples seemed unusually self-assured.

When they were close enough to see it was a human body the birds were feeding upon, Cabal swore and ran forwards, shooing the ravens away. They refused to leave, spreading their wings and jumping at him and pecking. It took Miss Smith's intervention—wand drawn—to make them back away. Indeed, they did it easily at her behest. She said, ‘Shoo,' and they shooed to a few feet away.

Cabal knelt by the body to examine it. ‘Ach. It is a man. I feared it might be Miss Barrow. Hard to make out scale with those birds in the way, although this unfortunate was not tall.'

‘Did the ravens kill him?' Miss Smith gave the unkindness a hard look. The ravens did their best to look innocent of all charges, but failed despite actually being innocent.

‘I do not believe so. There seem to be stab wounds, and the corpse is partially disembowelled.' He frowned and looked up at Miss Smith. ‘
Post-mortem
. If I didn't know better, I would suggest the body was in the process of being field-dressed, as a hunter does with a deer.'

‘That's not the kind of attention we've seen given to the other corpses that we found.'

‘Men did this, and something distracted them away from their kill.'

‘The gallery.'

Both of them ran in a cautious trot north to the steps of the National Gallery, weapons in hand and at the ready.

*   *   *

Cabal and Miss Smith discovered the freshly damaged main door and entered expecting all manner of trouble. What they actually discovered was Leonie Barrow sitting on the edge of a bench in the foyer, her shotgun across her lap and her hat in her hands, looking aghast into the eastern galleries. They followed her gaze and saw immediately what was so absorbing her interest.

‘They deserved it,' Leonie said faintly. ‘They deserved it and worse. Just … I'm going to have to live with myself for sending them in there.'

The galleries were very different from how they had appeared when Cabal had led the expedition out. Now they were loomed in loose, floating skeins of fine black silk that billowed and flowed under the slightest breeze. Notable were cocoons of approximately man size dangling in the complex catacomb of web. With a solid
tack-tack-tack
of long, hard, pointed feet on long, hard, pointed legs making an awful mess of the flooring, Zarenyia stepped forwards from the shadows once more in demi-spider form, wreathed in smiles and sporting all eight legs. She turned a little to show off the rearmost.

‘Look!' she said with childish delight. ‘I've got new ones. I feel like a new woman!'

‘How did this happen?' Cabal's eyes flicked between Miss Barrow and Zarenyia, uncertain whom to address, but it was Zarenyia who answered.

‘Sweet Leonie got me some chaps to eat! Rough beasts they were, well-spoken but with vile manners. Still, they were all full of unrequited lusts.' She smiled darkly and her voice lowered. ‘Easy meat.'

‘“Some chaps”?' echoed Cabal. ‘There's a body out in the square. Is that—'

‘They murdered him, Cabal.' Leonie looked sickened and pale. ‘They were going to eat him. Not monsters, not like your normal fare. The sort of men you might see on the train and think nothing of. They were going to eat a fellow human being. And they thought it was funny.' She put on her hat and got to her feet. ‘I don't regret what I did. It's just … the sounds. I could hear them dying. Not sure I'll ever forget that.'

She turned and walked away. Zarenyia's happiness faltered. ‘Darling, it wasn't painful for them. It's a super way to go, really and truly. Look, I'll show you their faces, they all died smiling! Admittedly, some of that's the effect of being the teeniest bit desiccated, but most of it's sincere, really it is!'

‘They knew they were dying,' said Leonie over her shoulder. ‘They were terrified. All the physical pleasure in the world couldn't hide that.' She went through the doorway to the western galleries and was lost from their sight.

Zarenyia made a step to follow her, but Cabal stopped her. ‘Not now, Madam Zarenyia. I believe Fräulein Barrow would appreciate a little time to herself.'

Zarenyia looked down at him with incomprehension, perhaps even distress. ‘I don't understand why she is so upset, darling. She was the one who brought them to me. What did she expect to happen?'

‘Exactly what did happen. What is necessary is not always pleasant. You must be patient with Miss Barrow; she has a conscience, and they can be troublesome. I have one that is nowhere nearly as evolved as hers and, believe me, it is a dreadful nuisance.'

‘A conscience?' Zarenyia looked off in the direction Leonie Barrow had gone. ‘I've heard of those.'

*   *   *

Horst the vampire and Minty the ghost walked into Trafalgar Square a quarter of an hour later. Horst had offered to hold her hand, but she was too insubstantial for that to be in any sense practical, so instead he allowed his hand to hang open at his side, and she gripped it. He could feel a tiny hint of pressure and of a coldness across his palm when she did so, but no more than that. At least it was a gesture of trust, although in truth neither could have done a thing to harm the other even if they had wished it. Sometimes gestures carry a necessary weight that can be borne by nothing else.

Horst was talking. ‘So there are survivors? Living ones, I mean?'

Minty nodded. ‘Livers, yeah. But they're not nice. Anyone wiv any brains would've left for the country, what wiv everyfin' that were 'appenin'. Some people jus' don't wanna go, though. They 'ung around and fought each uvva instead. London's a mess. Like 'Ell, it is?'

‘I was in Hell just recently, as it happens,' said Horst conversationally. He looked at the louring buildings and the debris-cluttered streets as they lay beneath a malevolent sky. ‘Hell was rather nicer. And there are vampires like me?' Minty nodded. ‘Anything else I should know about?'

‘The deaders.'

‘Well,
we're
dead, if I was to play the pedant.'

She shook her head emphatically. ‘Not like us. Proper deaders. Dead people wot walk about.'

Horst's spirits sank. ‘Zombies?'

‘Dunno. Most people just called 'em deaders, while there were people still around to call stuff things.'

They had arrived at the steps leading up to the National Gallery's entrance. ‘Well, here we are,' said Horst. ‘My friends are inside. You're welcome to accompany me, but I can't guarantee that they'll be able to see you as I can.'

‘S'all right. Used to livers not bein' able to see me.'

‘The other thing is some of my friends are a little bit unusual. In fact, it's easier to say some of my friends are usual, as they are in minority.' Minty squinted at him. ‘Look, just don't be surprised or frightened by anything you see. They're good people. No, that's not true. One of them is a good person, and the others are a bit unusual, and not necessarily exactly what you might call “good”, per se, but…' He looked at her. She was still squinting at him. ‘They're all right, I think I mean to say. Come along if you want to meet them.'

She didn't say she did, but neither did she leave his side. The tiny hint of coldness remained across his palm.

They walked in and found everyone had decamped from the gallery's east wing to its west. A glance to the east demonstrated why.

‘Are those
bodies
?' he asked of his brother.

‘They are indeed. We do not have the capital to ourselves, and what survivors there are will not be winning any prizes for hospitality.' Cabal looked at how his brother was standing, particularly at the odd way his left arm hung away from his body. ‘Why are you standing like that?'

Without waiting for a reply, he took up his ubiquitous Gladstone bag, sorted through its contents, and withdrew a spectacle case. From this he took a pair of glasses with amber lenses. He put them on and peered at Horst's left hand and the space beside it.