A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(85)
He was silent for a moment, then began to cough wetly. Alarmed, Nan glanced back at him. There was a trickle of blood coming from his mouth. Then he coughed again, and brought up several great clots of blood, turning his head to cough it into the dust.
She looked at John, who looked up at her, and sadly shook his head.
Fensworth groaned in pain, coughed once more, gasped “Save yourselves. This place is death,” and died.
John Watson laid the old man gently down, took out his handkerchief, and covered his face. He and Mary stood up; he brushed off his trousers and Mary shook out her skirts. Nan felt as if she ought to be sad, but she couldn’t seem to manage anything but rage or fear. Was this place meddling with their emotions? Or was it just that the poor man was a complete stranger and, right now, they were in a situation of great peril without a lot of emotion to spare for anyone else?
Poor old man. What did he ever do to deserve a death like this?
“Jolly old place this is, what?” John said sardonically. “Brilliant for holidays.”
Sherlock looked about, trying to orient himself. “Unless I miss my guess, this version of St. Paul’s is over there.” He pointed. “The streets seem passable, barring opposition. We have four swords, a spear, and fighting sticks among us. Will you magicians be of any use?”
“Limited,” Mary replied sadly. “Our power is mostly in our Elementals, and—” she shivered. “There’s nothing I know that I can sense, and I don’t think I would dare to try to call whatever passes for an Air Elemental here.”
“We’re not limited,” Memsa’b and Sahib said together, and glanced at each other. “And you can see the rest of our troupe is no weaker here than at home,” Sahib added.
“Wish I had my revolver,” John muttered. “I almost dropped it in my pocket before we left, but I didn’t.”
“The longer we stand here, the more likely opposition will form,” Karamjit pointed out, with inescapable logic.
“Our turbaned friend is right,” Holmes proclaimed. “Regardless of who is responsible for abducting the victims on our side of that door, the thing he is feeding is here. Cut that off, and we end this.” He looked each of them in the eyes. “If you are ready, we go.”
“Do,” urged Puck. “The longer we stay here, the worse our peril.”
With Selim and Karamjit in the lead, Nan and Holmes flanking, and Agansing and Sarah bringing up the rear, they moved out. “Fly?” suggested Neville, still on Nan’s shoulder. She glanced up at the starless sky, and shook her head.
“We don’t know what’s up there,” she pointed out. “It could be bigger and much meaner than you. I don’t want to risk you or Grey.”
“Rrrr,” he agreed. When Nan glanced back at Sarah, Grey bobbed her own agreement.
The were limited in what they could see by the amount of light cast by the orb floating over John’s head. Nan was just as glad. What was visible was bad enough.
The streets themselves were strewn with the rubble of utter destruction. Broken buildings hemmed them in on both sides, and they often had to climb over loose drifts of shattered brick and stone, but what was even more unnerving were the remnants of what looked like ordinary life. Furniture, kitchen things, even toys mingled with the rubble—and it appeared that the only plant-like material surviving was a sort of fungus that blotched these articles of everyday living, crept down the walls, and hung in grisly festoons from dead tree branches. Holmes tried wrapping some of that around a chair leg and setting it on fire, but all it did was emit a choking smoke, not create the torch he was hoping for. While there probably were rags of fabric here and there, the torn curtains they could see were well out of reach, and it seemed imprudent to hunt for bits of cloth when they could be ambushed at any moment.
There was a strange, bitter smell in the cold air that Nan could not identify. Just out of range of their light, they could hear skittering sounds in the wreckage, and occasionally see the red gleam of an eye. Those “hounds” were almost certainly following them, and possibly other things as well. Her heart was in her throat, and she almost wished something would attack, because the tension was nearly unbearable.
It was a good thing that Holmes had some idea where he was going, because Nan was disoriented and lost within minutes. Only by looking back and seeing the steady, healthy green glow of Puck’s beacon was she able to keep herself oriented at least to their escape route. The light shone even above the wrecked buildings, which eased one of her fears—that they’d get separated and be unable to find their way back. That green light must have been how Fensworth found them in the first place.
As they drew nearer to “St. Paul’s,” or whatever you would call this hellish analog, she realized two things. First, she was actually able to make out the shattered dome against the dark sky by the fact that it glowed, faintly, like foxfire. And second, that the skittering now surrounded them on all sides, and had been joined by faint snarls, panting, and chittering noises. Fear rose in her, overwhelming the Celtic Warrior for a moment, and leaving her feeling very small and very frightened. Then she took a long, deep breath between one step and the next, and the Warrior came surging back.
“We seem to have an escort,” Holmes said dryly. “I would give a great deal for one of those modern Maxim guns.”