Chapter 6
The beam of my lantern revealed a thing for which I had no words.
My mind flailed, trying and failing to make sense of what filled the doorway in front of me. It had four limbs, more or less, and a shape which overall suggested some perversion of humanity. But its naked body was horribly misshapen, the limbs of uneven length, the joints distorted. Thick, coarse skin covered it for the most part, but certain protuberances sprouted scales, and something horribly like human teeth jutted out of an elbow.
Its head was worse, however. Thanks to Christine, I’d spent many an hour bent over the art of ancient Egypt and its animal-headed gods. Those gods had a strange nobility and completeness to them. This thing seemed a mockery of the ancient deities. Its misshapen skull retained traces of humanity, but was hideously flattened and distended into an unmistakably crocodilian form.
Beady eyes fixed on me: blue irises punctured by reptilian pupils. Its jaws opened, the gape huge and lined with savage teeth, and it let loose a howl like something from the lowest pit of Tartarus.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, couldn’t do anything but stare. Had I been alone, it would surely have ripped me to shreds.
The roar of a revolver snapped me out of my paralysis. The hybrid thing jerked from the impact of the bullet, and slick, thin blood burst from its flank.
I threw myself to one side, out of the line of fire. Griffin strode past me: his coat flapping against his legs, emptying the chambers of his revolver over and over again into the horror facing him.
The impact of the bullets forced the thing back; it shrieked every time it was struck. The sound alone was enough to freeze my blood. But Griffin kept advancing, his face set, driving it back until the hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
The monster cowered at the end of the hall. A trail of thin blood covered the floor, but it wasn’t dead. Perhaps Griffin hadn’t hit anything vital or it simply didn’t obey the laws of nature and couldn’t be killed. When the gun did no more than click, it slowly raised its head, its blue eyes shining evilly.
“Damn it,” Griffin said, almost conversationally. “Whyborne, my cane, if you please.”
I snatched it from the floor where he’d let it fall and tossed it to Griffin, even as the thing surged back to its clawed feet. He caught the cane almost without looking, gripping it in both hands firmly before whipping out the sword concealed within.
“Whyborne! The stair, quickly.”
I’d been standing and gaping like a fool. At his words, I dashed for the stair leading down. Perhaps we could outrun it—
Griffin hadn’t followed. Instead, he stood blocking the hall, his sword swinging back and forth in a blaze of steel, fending off the creature.
“Griffin!” I shouted.
“Run!” he barked, even as the horror drove him one step at a time back to the stairs. “Damn it, Whyborne, get out of here!”
I cast about wildly. Surely there must be some sort of weapon, something I could use to defend myself and lend aid to Griffin. But I had nothing except for the kerosene lantern clutched in my hand.
The horror barreled into Griffin with bruising force. The blade of his sword sliced deep into its shoulder, bursting several scaly tumors and releasing a nauseating stench. With a roar, it backhanded him, tearing his sword free of its body and sending him sprawling against the rail.
I had to keep it away from Griffin. With a strangled cry, I rushed at it, swinging my lantern wildly in the hope of driving it back.
Instead, its serrated jaws snapped at me. I jerked back instinctively, and instead of closing on my arm, its teeth crushed the lantern in my hand.
Kerosene and fire burst forth. I’d already released the lantern, but the heat still scorched the hairs from the back of my hand. The thing staggered back, screaming in agony. The flames died almost instantly, but shards of glass and metal pierced its mouth, and whatever kerosene it had swallowed surely did it no good. With a final howl, it crashed blindly into the rail—then tumbled over, falling onto the pallets and crates below.
I turned to Griffin, but he’d already recovered his feet. By unspoken agreement, we raced down the stair, across the room, and out the door.
Griffin finally slowed on bridge where Front Street jumped the Cranch. The thick water of the river rolled beneath us, black in the night. He stumbled to a halt, leaning against the railing and peering over, hands shaking visibly. When he looked at me, his face had the haunted expression he’d worn when he’d glimpsed the symbol on the book and told me to run.
“It…it was real, wasn’t it?” he asked. His voice was rough, the words cracking beneath some strong emotion. “The creature…it was real? I’m not mad?”
What was wrong with him? Unsure what else to do, I awkwardly patted him on the shoulder. “There, there, old fellow.”
I expected him to pull away or shake me off, but he didn’t. Instead, my feeble attempt at comfort seemed to have a bracing effect. He blinked slowly and some of the color came back to his face. “It’s real,” he repeated. “All of it.” He lifted a trembling hand to his eyes, then let it fall. “Dear God. I wish I had been mad after all.”
“Er, yes,” I said. “But, Griffin, do you think you might tell me what the devil is going on?”
He finally met my gaze. “Yes. Let’s go to my house. You and I have a great deal to discuss.”
~ * ~
“Welcome to my humble abode,” Griffin said, unlocking the door.
We had walked to his home in silence. Griffin lived in an older part of town, modest but not run-down. The two-story house was small, set well back from the street with a tall hedge to offer privacy. No doubt some of his clients wished to maintain as much anonymity as possible.
While I scraped the slush and mud of the streets off my shoes, he went inside. A moment later, the soft glow of gaslight spread through the narrow entry hall.
“Please, make yourself comfortable,” he said, divesting himself of his overcoat and hat, and placing them on hooks near the door. I followed suit.
A door to my left opened onto a parlor. “Very nice,” I said, glancing at the rather formal-looking decor.
Griffin smiled, a bit ruefully. “This room is to impress the clients. Upstairs is my study. It’s far more comfortable.”
I followed him up the stairs. An extremely large orange cat bounded down as we went up, darting between Griffin’s feet and nearly tripping him. “Blast it, Saul, if you break my neck, who will feed you?” he groused good-naturedly.
The cat stopped to inspect my shoes. I bent down and offered a hand to sniff; apparently finding me to his satisfaction, Saul rubbed his big head against my fingers. I scratched him behind the ears and was rewarded with a rumbling purr.
“He likes you,” Griffin said from above me. “Saul’s an excellent judge of character, you know. If he hisses at a client, I refuse the case.”
I wondered if he was serious. “I wish I could have a cat, but the landlady doesn’t allow it.”
The stairs creaked under Griffin’s feet as he continued. Saul saw his master disappearing and dashed after him. Abandoned, I followed them to the second floor.
The study was located directly above the parlor; as Griffin had promised, it had a more informal, welcoming air than the room downstairs. An overstuffed chair sat close to the fireplace, and the mantel was cluttered with framed photographs, small watercolors, and other knickknacks. A large bookcase filled one wall, a couch opposite it. The spice of bergamot mingled with the warmth of leather and smoke.
A sideboard held several bottles and tumblers. Griffin paused long enough to stoke the banked fire to life, then poured a measure of brandy into a glass. “Would you care for a drink?”
“No, thank you.”
“Are you a teetotaler, then?” he asked.
“No.” I walked to the fireplace and held my hands to the flames, grateful for the warmth after our long walk in the cold. “I simply prefer to keep my wits around me.”
He took his glass to the chair and sat down. Saul hopped into his lap and curled up like a fluffy, orange throw rug. “You’re quite remarkable, Whyborne. Most men would want something to ease the shock of seeing…that.”
I shrugged at the compliment and glanced away. Whatever else I might be, remarkable certainly wasn’t it. I couldn’t imagine what he meant by such baseless flattery. “I take it you have seen…whatever it was…before?”
He closed his brilliant eyes for a moment; when he opened them, their look was dull, and he kept his gaze trained on the dancing flames instead. “Not exactly. Do you recall I used to belong to the Pinkerton Detective Agency?”
“Of course.”
“My last case…went wrong.” A bitter bark of laughter escaped him, and he tossed back the rest of his drink in a single swallow. “Which is a damned poor way of describing the hell I witnessed.”
He fell silent, his eyes far away. I drew close to his chair, then hesitantly touched the back of his near hand when he didn’t seem to notice me.
It worked; Griffin blinked, gave me a look of surprise, then sighed. “Forgive me.”
“If this is too difficult—”
“No.” He shifted in the chair, and I withdrew quickly to my position near the fire. “We were hired to find a missing girl. To make a long and tedious story short, we tracked her to a rented house in Chicago. My partner and I broke inside. The upper part of the house seemed normal, but we found a trapdoor beneath a rug in the parlor. We went down…down into the earth.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. “The basements, the vaults…God, some of them were ancient. The Brotherhood must have known the diggings were there and built the house on top of them.”
“I’m sorry—the Brotherhood?”
“The Brotherhood of the Immortal Fire. A secret cult made up of very powerful, very wealthy men. Their existence is barely even a rumor. I would never have known of them if not for the last case. Their symbol is a phoenix clutching an ouroboros.”
“The mark on the book we found,” I said, feeling a stirring of dread. Surely secret societies and the like didn’t really exist; such theories of conspiracy were simply the product of paranoid minds. And yet the haunted look on Griffin’s face said otherwise.
“Yes.” He hefted his empty glass and looked at it, as if some secret lurked in its depths. “We went down into the catacombs, hoping to find the girl. But instead we found things, the like of which I can’t even begin to describe. If I said they were gelatinous, and floppy, and had pseudopods and things which must have been eyes…but none of that is quite right.
“Two of us went into that basement. I’m the only one who came out. I told everyone what I’d seen, but of course it sounded like the ravings of a madman. The police raided the place, with a force of Pinkertons, but the Brotherhood had closed up shop. There were no monsters, no horrors. Just dank tunnels and brick walls. They said I’d broken under the strain. I was mad.”
The injustice of it made my chest ache. “I’m sorry.”
“The thing is…a part of me hoped they were right. If I was mad…well, surely madness would be the better option, wouldn’t it? Because if I’m not mad, if I really did see those things, then it is the world itself which is insane.”
“Griffin.” Feeling horribly awkward, I knelt before his chair. I wanted to take his hands, but surely the intimacy wouldn’t be welcomed. “These monstrosities, whatever they are, operate on principles of science. The world may be many things: purposeless, random, and filled with happenings we don’t have the means to comprehend. But the book you gave me to translate is filled with formulas. Methods. Repeatable experiments. The outcomes of those experiments may be horrific, especially as there is apparently more to them than superstitious twaddle, but they are still predictable.”
He looked at me as if he’d never seen me before. Then he smiled for the first time since the warehouse and let out a genuine laugh. “My dear Whyborne, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like you.”
I rose to my feet. “Forgive me,” I mumbled. I’d made myself look the fool as usual.
He rose as well, dislodging Saul, who mewed his displeasure. Griffin’s strong hands gripped my upper arms, compelling me to face him. “Don’t be ridiculous. With one sentence, you’ve given me more hope than I’ve had in the last two years.”
The firelight caught the blue and rust hidden in his green eyes and made them all but glow. Although his smile was not cheerful, it was at least hopeful, and the soft curve of his lower lip caught my gaze and held it.
God. If anyone here were mad, it was me.
“I-I only stated the obvious,” I mumbled.
“To you, perhaps.” He released me. Thankfully, because it put distance between us and removed the edge of dangerous intensity. I felt sorry for the same reasons. “Does the Arcanorum speak of things such as we saw at the warehouse?”
“Er, I’m not certain,” I said. “I didn’t pay as much attention as I might have, not expecting to actually encounter any of the things described within. I’ll rectify that tomorrow. The other book might help as well—do you still have it?”
Griffin’s expression fell. “No. I dropped it in my haste to draw my revolver.”
“Understandable, but unfortunate. No matter.” I knelt on the carpet and busied myself petting Saul, who had come to twine around my ankles. “What is our next move, as it were?”
“Our?”
I’d presumed too much. “Never mind. I-I’ll just leave it to the, ah, expert, then.”
“Whyborne?”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to help?”
I looked up and found him watching me with the oddest expression. As if I’d said or done something so unexpected he didn’t know how to react.
Instead of answering, I asked, “What happened to the girl? The one you’d gone to save?”
His mouth tightened with remembered grief. “We were too late. There was just enough left for her mother to identify.”
“And if it is within my power to prevent such a thing happening again, do you think I would simply stand by?”
He laughed, as he had earlier: soft and half-amused, half-surprised. “I see. But I work alone, remember?”
Since his partner died, at least. Had the man been more than a colleague, or even a friend? “I understand. I will translate the text, or any other you find, of course.” I bit my lip, uncertain if I should continue. It was a miracle he hadn’t laughed outright at my fumbling offer. If I pressed further, his good humor might easily turn to contempt or patronizing dismissal.
If it were only myself…but I had kept silent once before, and Leander had died for it. More was at stake here than my pride. At least one man had already been murdered; if Griffin were next, and I hadn’t at least tried…
“You asked me to come to the warehouse with you, and your reasoning was sound,” I said. “I know I’m not a man of action, or courage, or anything really useful. But now that I better understand what it is we face, I can study the Arcanorum. The next time we come upon a scene such as the one in the warehouse, maybe I’ll at least be able to tell you what they were about.”
I expected him to laugh, or even sneer. Instead, he hesitated, uncertainty in his gaze. “You said earlier you need an expert,” I cajoled. “You have one. Make use of me.”
He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple working. “Stand up, please.”
I did, even though it put me several inches above him. He held out one hand, and I took it.
“I could use your help,” he said, giving my hand a firm shake. “For this case, at least. Welcome aboard, Percival Endicott Whyborne.”