The Honours (25 page)

Its three fellows skittered backwards. Lansley wrenched the poker from the convulsing body. Purple blood flecked the wallpaper like rain shaken from a brolly.

He turned to her. ‘What are you waiting for? Move!'

Delphine scrambled to get up, slipped. Lansley grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet. There were more creatures clattering down the corridor.

He dragged her into the room, slammed the door and slid a bolt across.

A bang sounded from the other side. Another.

She was in the chimera room. She saw her own pink face reflected in a multitude of glass cabinets. Her hair was heaped up on one side of her scalp and her chin was grazed. She winked. The battered girl in the reflection winked back.

In the centre of the windowless room stood Dr Lansley, dark blood soaking the sleeve of his tweed hunting coat. He was panting and shaking. In a corner, standing over a wheelchair with his back to her, was Mr Propp.

Propp turned slowly. His face was sunken and pale.

Delphine glanced at the wheelchair and saw that it contained not Lord Alderberen but the old lady with the bare scalp and fine white cowlick; the old lady she had watched sleep so many times. Under other circumstances, she might have felt surprise.

The old woman had a loose knitted woollen blanket draped over her legs. Her eyes were half-open but she was staring vacantly into the middle distance. Her lips were parted; her chin gleamed wetly.

Lansley's breaths worked up to a crescendo.

‘Well, they picked a bloody good time, didn't they?' he screamed, swiping at the air with his poker. Little spots of congealing blood studded the floorboards. ‘Fine, you said! Don't worry, you said!' For a moment, Delphine thought he was going to strike Propp.

His arm went slack.

‘What's going on?' she said.

Lansley glanced back at her over his shoulder. ‘Are you going to tell her what's happening, then? What you've done?'

Propp sighed with his whole body. He slipped a rough hand into the pocket of his waistcoat. He ran a finger across the length of his moustache.

‘Dr Lansley is right. I am at fault.'

‘Oh, that's bloody big of you,' said Lansley. ‘That's bloody magnanimous.'

Two sharp bangs rattled the door.

‘In truth, I am not sure how this has happened. For now it is enough for you to know it is not these creatures you should fear but their masters.'

The clicking noise was building, like a carpet of insects frothing over a jungle floor.

‘Professor Carmichael and Mrs Hagstrom are out in the Great Hall,' said Delphine.

Propp looked grave. ‘Then I fear they are beyond our help.'

‘Where is everybody?' she said.

Propp shook his head. ‘I do not know.'

‘Where's Mother?' She tried to feel panic, or love. ‘Where's Daddy?'

‘I do not know. I am sorry.'

Lansley rushed at her, reaching into his pocket. She raised her arms to defend herself. Something clattered to the floor at her feet.

‘Not much, but better than nothing,' he said.

She looked down. It was her pocket knife. She went to pick it up but Lansley dropped and snatched it and the point was at her throat. He met her gaze. He was so close she could see the thick brown fibres in his irises.

‘One stroke,' he said. She felt a breeze as he flicked the blade
from left to right. ‘Snick. Across the windpipe.' He turned the knife round in his hand, closed his leather-gloved fingers over the blade. He held it out. Delphine grasped the handle. Lansley did not let go. He took a couple of very deep breaths, huffing and puffing like someone lowering himself into a hot bath. He looked at her. ‘If you're going to use a knife, don't wave it around like a feather duster. Go for their throats. Remember. One stroke.'

He released the blade and walked away. She saw the seam of his hunting jacket on his unguarded back, felt the knife in her hand.

Lansley went back to passing the poker from palm to palm. He spoke to his reflection in the glass cabinet.

‘In a moment, Mr Propp and I will distract the vesperi in the hallway. I suggest that you use that opportunity to attempt an escape. If you stay, you will certainly die.'

She glanced at the door. The popping was rising to a crescendo.

‘Those things . . . are they from Hell?'

Lansley sniffed. ‘Not as you understand it.'

‘Where, then?'

Propp reached beneath his coat and slid the revolver from its holster. Delphine started at the drawn weapon, took a step back. Lansley was pacing.

‘We must haste,' said Propp. He broke the barrel and began chambering rounds. His hands were shaking. His fingers slipped and a cartridge rolled across the floor. Delphine stooped and picked it up. A .38 hollowpoint. Nasty. So his revolver
was
a Mark 4, after all.

Delphine pursed her lips. ‘Dum-dum rounds.' She tossed the cartridge back to him.

The men stared at Delphine.

‘We need to get to the gun room,' she said. ‘We can arm ourselves.'

Propp pushed the barrel up and the stirrup lock shut with a solid click. ‘We cannot stay here, this is true. We leave now or not at all.'

Lansley weighed the poker in his fist. ‘We'd never make it. Besides, Mrs Hagstrom has the only key.'

‘I've got one.' Both men gawked at her. ‘I've got keys to most of the rooms. I made copies.'

Propp smoothed his white moustache.

‘So. In this case I must entrust you with great responsibility.' He walked across the little beef-paste-coloured rug to the old lady in the wheelchair. ‘Take her. Get her away from house.' Then, apparently seeing Delphine's confusion, he added: ‘She is my sister.'

‘Are you out of your mind?' said Lansley. ‘It'll be hard enough escaping alone. You can't ask her to drag a wheelchair as well.'

‘So perhaps you think we should surrender? Hand child over?'

Delphine's chest froze.

Lansley glanced from the old lady to Delphine. He shook his head.

‘Damn your eyes. You were right all along, pompous oaf that you are. We can't negotiate. They're animals.'

Propp turned to Delphine with those huge grey eyes. Propp the Bolshevik. Propp the deceiver.

‘Will you help?' he said.

Delphine looked at Propp's sister in the wheelchair, pale and limp as a burst chrysalis. Her feet were propped on the wooden footrests inside mustard-coloured socks.

Bangs shook the door. It sounded as if the creatures – had Lansley called them ‘vesperi'? – had found something to use as a battering ram. The bolt was barely finger-width; already the screws were working loose. A few more blows and it would give.

‘What about my parents?' she said. ‘What about everyone else?'

Propp and Lansley exchanged a look.

‘We will do our best to find them,' said Propp. ‘Perhaps they flee already. But if you do not escape, everyone in house will die, I think.'

‘Why?'

‘Because vesperi will have what they came for. Once that is so, they gain nothing by letting us live.'

‘What
are
they?'

‘Beasts,' said Lansley, blinking rapidly. ‘Quick, tenacious. Some understand English. No real intelligence to speak of, but a rudimentary, savage cunning. Poor discipline. Given to cowardice. Beasts.'

‘I think . . . I think one attacked me in the woods once.'

‘What? When?'

‘Just after Easter. It chased me.'

‘I knew it!' said Lansley. ‘They've been watching us for months! Why the Hell didn't you say something?'

‘I did!
No one bloody listened!
'

BANG

The wood round the bolt splintered.

‘Look,' Lansley said, ‘we don't have time for this. You're right,' he was talking to Delphine, ‘the gun room is our only hope. With weapons, we can bed in, hold them at bay.'

‘No,' said Propp. ‘She must run. She cannot stay.'

Delphine fixed Dr Lansley with a hard stare. ‘I want to fight.'

Lansley rolled his eyes. ‘With the greatest respect, young lady, you failed to best an unarmed man in his late forties. I hardly think you will fare much better against waves of bloodthirsty skinwings.'

‘I will if I'm holding a twelve bore.'

The Doctor tipped his head back, regarding her down the broad slope of his nose.

‘Good. With that attitude you might just live through the next half-hour.' He turned his attention to the bat-winged chimp sitting on a branch inside its display case. ‘Propp's right, though. You can't stay.'

‘I'm not leaving.'

‘We don't need an extra gun – we can use the corridors as choke points, counteract their numerical advantage. What we need is for someone to fetch help.'

Propp laid a hand on his sister's shoulder. The old lady bleated dreamily.

‘She cannot escape alone. Please.'

‘I'm not abandoning everybody!'

BANG

The door coughed slivers of wood. The bolt jangled loose on its screws.

‘Can we
please
postpone the strategy briefing till we've worked out how to escape from this bloody room?' said Lansley.

‘Once we're out there it'll be too late,' said Delphine. ‘We need a plan.'

‘We have plan,' said Propp. ‘Doctor and I head for gun room. You take my sister, run.'

‘That's not a plan. I can't just stroll out the front door.'

‘Why not? Is quickest way.'

‘I'm dead over open ground. They'll run me down in seconds.'

‘We have no choice.'

‘Then we'll die.'

‘Will you
shut up
!' Lansley brought the poker down so hard it lodged in the floor. When he tried to pull it out, he levered up a floorboard.

Delphine looked from the gap in the floor, to the glass cabinets, to the locked door. She grabbed the Portuguese card table and tipped it onto its side.

‘Quick,' she said, stepping behind it. ‘I know this room inside-out. Do exactly as I say.'

CHAPTER 21

BEASTLY THINGS

T
he bolt housing broke from the door frame with the clean report of an icicle snapping. The door swung open. Delphine watched from behind the card table. Vesperi darted from either side of the doorway, forming a pack. Some clutched javelins, some small hooked knives. Others carried coils of black rope. She stared at their horrible grasping hands. Fur on their knuckles gleamed with the lustre of iced tea.

The tallest stopped, its huge ears twitching. Its snout was a snarl of dark cartilage ringed with rigid gills. She watched the quick in-out of its chest beneath its sleeveless quilted leather jacket, a chip of red glass winking on the breast. Slowly, Delphine became aware of a mass of bright eyes focusing on her. The clicking dropped to a murmur.

The tallest raised its chin. It spat a noise at her – a flat
puk
that ricocheted off the upended tabletop like a tossed bottle cap. She glanced at the empty ground between them: a few yards of bare floorboards, and that ugly pale brown rug, spread like a welcome mat. The scene floated ghostly and reversed in the line of glass display cases, bat-monsters superimposed over a scorpion dove, a unicorn. One of the cases stood slightly forward from the rest.

The tallest vesperi whipped a bootlace tongue across the yellow spines of its teeth. Its wings hung bunched and leathery behind it. She could feel her mind reeling against it, rejecting the evidence of
her senses, rejecting the earthy, oily musk wafting across the room. They could not exist, they did exist, they could not, they did.

The tallest vesperi took a step forward. Behind the card table, she tightened her grip on the pocket knife.
One stroke. Snick. Across the windpipe
.

The creature glanced about the room. The wheelchair sat empty in a corner. The creature clicked to its fellows. Warily, they advanced on the barricade.

At Delphine's knee, the old lady lay hidden in her blanket, nodding, gazing at her curled fingers. The clicking did not disturb her at all – she seemed soothed by it.

The tallest vesperi glanced across at the display cases, stopped short. At first, Delphine thought it was startled by the taxidermied monsters, then she realised: it could see Propp's sister reflected in the glass.

The creature squealed.

The javelin-bearers raised their weapons and the pack surged forwards. The dagger-bearers ducked and struck out in front. A vesperi flung its javelin; Delphine snatched her hand away and the javelin struck the tabletop, its shaft shattering on impact. A deliberately low throw. A warning.

The pack was dividing, preparing to flank the barricade. Propp's sister cooed with delight.

The dagger-wielders hit the tasselled rug and fell. Their chins thudded into the floor. Behind them, javelin-bearers stumbled into a depression left by the collapsing rug, which disguised a hole where Lansley had wrenched up the floorboards. As vesperi tried to pull themselves out, the rearguard blundered into them, trapping the frontline beneath a mound of struggling, flapping bodies.

The hole was shallow. It had halted the charge but already the vesperi were scrambling out.

Delphine stood.

‘Now!'

In the display cabinet, the unicorn shuddered. It slid forward till its horn struck the glass –
tink
. The fallen vesperi started at the noise. The cabinet whinnied. Too late they realised what was happening. A shadow fell across the pit. One vesperi managed to drag itself
clear before the great glass display case tipped, moaned, and bore down on the rest with a final cacophonous smash.

Gasping, greased with sweat, Propp and Dr Lansley stood in the gap left by the fallen cabinet. Propp raised his pistol and took aim at the one remaining vesperi. The monster lay on its backside, breathing in rapid fits. It saw the gun. Its short, downy throat tightened. It began crawling backwards, hooked wings scraping along the floor. Its ears had scalloped edges, as if they had been cropped. Delphine watched, horrified, fascinated.

‘No.' Lansley placed a hand on the barrel of Propp's pistol. He pushed it down. The vesperi shut its eyes and exhaled. ‘Save your ammo.' Lansley marched round the cabinet, glass crunching beneath his boots. The vesperi was unarmed. Lansley stood over it. The creature looked up at him with flinty little eyes, grasping a tin ankh fastened to its breast.

Lansley stamped on its leg.

Delphine felt the crunch. The vesperi rasped. Lansley swung the poker into its head and the sound stopped.

He turned. ‘Time to go.'

Delphine tried to stand and discovered that her legs were shaking. She frowned. The room whirled; she felt as if she were on a carousel.

Propp was beside her with the wheelchair.

‘Quick,' he said. ‘Help me.'

Delphine used the table to steady herself. She and Propp picked up his sister and sat her in the wheelchair. Delphine smelt urine, partly masked by talcum powder. Propp flung a loose-knit blanket over the old lady's head. ‘To protect,' he said.

Lansley had the poker raised; the spiked end was the colour of dead roses.

‘Remember, no detours,' he said. ‘We head straight for the master bedroom. Every second we're out there, we're exposed.'

Propp gripped the pistol in both hands and advanced on the doorway. His sleeves were rolled up and his throat growled as he breathed. Delphine glanced at her pocket knife and tried to believe she was ready to use it. Propp hesitated.

A vesperi peered round the lip of the door frame and he fired.
The report boxed her ears. When she opened her eyes a vesperi lay dead in the doorway, the skirting board pebbledashed with blood and skull fragments.

Delphine gripped the wheelchair handles and made herself think about guns. .38s were such a waste at this range. Far more punch than necessary, no spread – unless you counted the enlarged exit wound from the expanding tip.

It was as if Propp was expecting to face something far bigger than bats.

Lansley was at the door. He turned to Propp.

‘Hear anything?'

‘No. Go, go.'

Lansley stepped into the corridor and there was the
whumph-whumph
of wings and a tarry rag launched at his head. He jerked aside – the creature snagged his deaf-aid cable, pulling him off-balance. The wire went taut; the brick-sized battery slipped from its holster and clipped the vesperi's temple. Dazed, the creature slashed at Lansley and missed. Lansley clubbed its head into the wall and was still clubbing it when Propp grabbed his arm.

‘Enough.'

Delphine tilted the wheelchair's front casters off the floor, feeling the old lady's weight shift to the back of the seat. Her palms were slippery. She pushed the chair towards the doorway. From under the cabinet came rustling, pops.

Lansley gathered up the wire and his deaf-aid battery, fastened it back into the holster. Between breaths he was swearing.

Delphine stepped into the corridor. She looked both ways. Thuds and claps and shrieks came from far rooms. West was the long library. East led back to the Great Hall.

‘Ready,' muttered Lansley, and it was unclear if he meant it as a question, if he had meant to say it out loud at all. Delphine spun the wheelchair to face east.

A vesperi stepped from a doorway, threw a wiry forearm up over its muzzle. Propp shot. He missed. In the cramped corridor, the report was deafening. The creature recoiled. Propp fired again, hit it in the gut, blew a hole right through it.

He shouted something, beckoned for her to follow. Her ears rang; she felt as if she were underwater. Propp and Lansley ran towards the Great Hall.

She shoved at the wheelchair; after some resistance it started to move. The hardwood floor was slick with blood – she could smell it, loamy and clotting. Her bare toes skidded as she pushed the wheelchair and its passenger down the corridor, gathering momentum. Her throat was tight. Her legs felt floppy. Propp and Lansley had an exchange she couldn't hear; her ears were ringing from the gunfire. She felt sure a vesperi must be right behind her. She braced for the cold thud of a javelin hitting her back. God, for a shotgun.

Ahead, Lansley was shouting something – from his rhythm and intonation it sounded like a countdown as they approached the doorway to the landing. She saw the fluttering black shapes ahead. They were going to do this, they were going to charge into the storm, and Lansley was lifting his poker like a battle mace, and over the tone in her ears rose his guttural war cry, so pained and naked that it sliced through her anaesthetised dullness and her heart wanted to split down the middle and the only way she could stop terror from ripping her apart was to scream too.

One of the wheels thumped over something, maybe a body. She didn't stop.

Out in front, Dr Lansley charged onto the landing, his tweed jacket stained bruise-black up to the elbows. He cocked his head and a javelin flashed over his shoulder; another struck the stone balustrade beside him and splintered. Propp followed him; as Delphine reached the end of the corridor Propp flattened himself against a wall and aimed his pistol at a vesperi coming in to land a few yards away.

The beast's wings rucked like a paper fan snapping shut and it hit the plush red carpet in a sprint. Propp fired; the revolver bucked and the shot went over the creature's head. The vesperi whipped a dagger from its belt. Farther down the landing, two more vesperi landed. Lansley lashed at the air with his poker, driving back an assailant.

If they tried to make a stand here, they would be dead within a minute.

‘Keep moving!' she yelled.

As she ploughed out onto the landing with the wheelchair, she was no longer a little girl pushing an old lady hidden beneath a pale blue rug, but a tank commander advancing beneath an almighty barrage, bulletproof, thunderous. A vesperi raised its hooked dagger to gut Propp. She blindsided it; the wheelchair knocked it sprawling. Propp shot it point-blank. The chair's momentum carried her forwards; she could not bring it about in time and the left footrest whacked into the wall. From under the blanket, the old lady let out a yodelling howl. Delphine wheeled the chair back, twisted it to face the right way.

She heard a noise like a flag in the wind then a vesperi was upon her. Wings wrapped round her head, trapping her with hot huffing breaths that stank of creosote.

The pocket knife slipped from her grasp.

She drove a fist through the gap between the creature's wings and clutched at its back. Her fingers found the neck of its jacket. She tugged but its arms were locked round her head. Its fangs were a fraction of an inch from her eye; she pulled again at its jacket and the fangs snapped shut, peppering her face with spittle. She cried out and lurched forward, driving the vesperi back-first into the wheelchair handle. The vesperi croaked, unlocking its arms. She stepped back and it fell to the floor, winded.

She looked at it, then at the pocket knife beside it.
One stroke
. She grabbed the knife. The skinwing was on its back, clutching its throat, making a retching noise. She had to finish the job, otherwise it would rise and kill her.

Something slapped the base of her spine. She spun round, knife ready.

It was Lansley.

‘Follow us or die.'

He grabbed one of the wheelchair handles and helped her get it moving again. Propp appeared beside her, gasping, the armpits of his pinstripe shirt black with sweat. A smear of blood divided his forehead like a giant eyebrow.

Ahead, at the top of the grand stairway, two more vesperi readied
javelins. One had a weasel snout, the other a crush of folded cartilage. More vesperi circled beneath the white hollow of the hall's domed ceiling, waiting to alight. In the air, they were cumbersome abominations. She saw they needed plenty of room to land and especially to take off again.

The two vesperi lifted their weapons. Propp fired.

‘No!' Lansley called out to him too late. The shot went wide; she saw the puff of dust as it ricocheted off the balustrade. The vesperi flung their javelins at the wheelchair. Delphine dropped flat, tipping the wheelchair onto its back. She skidded on the carpet; the chair rattled as something glanced off a caster.

She scrambled to her feet and heaved the wheelchair upright, trying to ignore the old lady's whimpering moans. Propp thrust his revolver at the now unarmed vesperi and moved as if to shoot. The creatures turned and fled.

‘I must reload,' said Propp.

More vesperi were clambering up the stairs, thumping their wings for extra lift. Delphine glanced back and saw even more emerging from the corridor she had just left. The two groups exchanged trills and pops.

Down on the ground floor, there was no sign of Mrs Hagstrom or the Professor.

‘If wishes were horses, Ivan,' said Lansley. ‘For Christ's sake, come
on
!' He roared and lunged upward, batting a vesperi out of the air; it fell like a smashed kite, clipping the balustrade and tumbling to the chequered floor below.

She was less than halfway across the landing, not yet at the top of the stairs. The wheelchair was getting heavier and heavier. She could hear the old lady crying. Her legs wanted to crumple beneath her. Delphine dipped her head and dug her bare feet into the carpet. The wheelchair began to pick up speed. The faster it got, the harder it was to steer.

Lansley was at the top of the stairs, cursing, thrashing at anything reckless enough to get in his way. A javelin sailed past him, hopelessly wide; he turned to see where it had come from and a second caught him a glancing blow across the throat. He staggered with the force
of the strike; blood welled over his collar. He wiped a palm across the wound, grunted, looked at his soaking red glove.

On the stairs, several vesperi stopped and aimed their javelins at the newly stationary target.

‘Look out!' shouted Delphine. She spotted the earpiece of his deaf aid, swinging loose, cable caught in the crook of his elbow. ‘Look out!'

He did not even look up.

Propp hit him like an express train. Lansley's eyes bulged as the two men collapsed and a volley of missiles swished over their heads. Some javelins hit the carpet and bounced, some lodged in the thick pile, quivering. One went long and hit the portrait of Lord Alderberen's mother,
^*
spearing her through the abdomen.