The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(64)

‘Is that the best you can do?’ Kipps called. ‘Lavender water? Pathetic!’

‘I have to agree,’ the skull said. ‘That’s the most wussy weapon I’ve ever seen.’

I grasped the neck of Kipps’s jersey, pulled him sharply down behind the chair. The watery substance was eating into the wallpaper, making it bubble and foam; small bits of plaster dropped in wet gobbets to the floor.

‘Possibly a bit of acid in there too,’ I said.

‘Nice!’ the skull said. ‘They’re totally insane!’

Kipps and I took hold of the armchair, driving it forward, sending it forcefully into Geoffrey. He gasped in pain. The funnel popped; a vial of acid ricocheted off the ceiling and burst nearby. Elsewhere in the room someone screamed. I had time to hope it wasn’t Holly. And now here came the tiny wrinkled woman, firing her gun indiscriminately. A bolt of blue stabbed straight through the chair and out the other side, and my hands tingled with an electrical charge. I let go of the chair. Running low, I rushed the woman, striking her around the waist, bringing us both to the floor. Her grip on the gun was loosened; I sent it flying from her hand.

Shadows moved nearby. I looked up: there was Harpoon Man, struggling to load another dart into his weapon. There too was the secretary, vertical at last and bearing down on me. And there was Lockwood, who stood directly in his path, in the centre of the smoking floor. He had his rapier in his hand. The secretary gave a cry; he slashed downwards with his claws, finger-knives raking at Lockwood’s head. Lockwood moved balletically aside; his rapier struck them away. He kicked out at the nearest stilt leg, sending the secretary skittering away to collide with the other man.

Beneath me, the tiny woman was wriggling frantically, snarling and spitting. ‘Criminals!’ she shrieked.

‘Maybe,’ I said, punching her in the jaw, ‘but at least we’re not lunatics, like you.’

And so it was that the members of the Orpheus Society discovered a curious thing. It was understandable that they were a little grouchy; what with that and their superior firepower, they’d probably assumed they would win the day. But crazed as they were, they couldn’t match the ferocity that now erupted from all four of us. I’d never punched an old lady before; I didn’t have any problem doing so now.

In a way, they were unlucky, for our reaction didn’t really have a lot to do with them. It had been building in us for days, ever since George was hurt. Our anger needed an outlet, and here were some senior citizens in armour trying to kill us. That pretty much fitted the bill.

During the next few minutes we notched up many firsts. There was Lockwood, slicing off the secretary’s metal fingers from first one gauntlet, then the other. There was Kipps, grappling with Geoffrey, pulling at his beard and upending him. As the man sought to rise, Kipps stuck his rapier straight into the motor of his opponent’s funnel-gun, so that it exploded in a ball of pulsing light. And there was Holly, dodging the savage blows of the tweedy woman; leaping across to the giant wooden globe and shoving it over so that it pinned her to the floor.

Me, I’d got up, retrieved the discarded electrical gun and switched on the dial. The tiny woman in silver armour had likewise struggled to her feet. She rushed at me, shrieking. I flicked the trigger, sending out a jolt of electric current that blew her straight through the nearest wall in a shower of bricks and plaster.

Geoffrey lay unconscious beneath the smoking, twisted coils of his brass funnel. Harpoon Man, however, had readied his gun again. He levelled it at Kipps. Holly screamed a warning. Kipps ducked; the bolt shot over his head. I hit the man with another blast from the electrical gun that sent him back into a chair and the chair back into a bookcase. It toppled over, burying him.

The skull uttered whoops of glee. ‘This is great. You’re just as bad as them! Worse, in fact. They don’t know what’s hit them!’

And the tide of the battle was turning. The tweedy woman had wriggled out from under the globe. She fled for the door. So too did the secretary, hissing and clanking on his stilts, swinging his clawless metal hands. They arrived at the door at the same time, and fought to be the first through. Lockwood and I walked after them, he with his rapier, me holding the gun. Out into the corridor we went, towards the landing, stepping over the dust and debris and scattered bricks; also the unconscious body of the tiny woman, which was lodged half in and half out of the wall.

The fugitives reached the landing at the head of the stairs. As the woman turned to go down, I caught her with a bolt of electricity that sent her through the banisters and out over the stairwell to land on a chandelier. There she swung, senseless and dangling, in a mess of crystal shards and smoking tweed.

Here too the secretary made his final stand. Perhaps with his stilts he couldn’t easily descend the stairs; perhaps his desperation had turned to defiance at the last. Either way, he turned and held his ground as Lockwood approached, calm and remorseless, rapier at the ready.

‘You’ll die for this!’ the old man cried. ‘She’ll make you pay!’

He swung out blindly with an arm. Lockwood moved to the side and sliced with his sword. He chopped neatly through the right stilt leg. The secretary toppled over the ruined banisters and kept going, out and down. He missed the chandelier; anyway, it was already taken. A moment later there was a heavy impact on the stairs below.

Silence in the house of the Orpheus Society. The gun in my hand was emitting a gentle hum. I switched it off, let it fall to the floor. The chandelier and its occupant swung steadily round and round.