House of Corruption (23 page)

The candle’s wick caught the flame.

Something large breathed above them.

A ledge surrounded the stone chamber ten feet up, pocked with ancient metal grates where smaller shafts diverted fluids from other chambers. Huddled there, crouched, two bright blue eyes appeared. Beneath them opened a lupine muzzle smeared with blood, lips stretched back to expose red, rubbery gums above crowded fangs. Muscles tensed in its heavy back, rippled down its powerful forearms.

Grant scrambled at the buttons of his longcoat, to his belt, sliding his Colt from its holster. The werewolf leaped from the ledge, swatting at Grant with a claw, and the pistol discharged with a tremendous
crack
. Rats scattered in all directions.

The beast went wild at the lightbulb-flash of gunpowder—it stumbled back against the tunnel wall, claws scraping stone. It scratched at its head and arms, drawing blood, thrashing, howling, tearing at the air and its head and the stones at its feet. There lay countless dead rats, bitten, tore into pieces, blood flicked along the walls in tiny sprays. Their blood congealed all along the thing’s fur. The beast redoubled its anger and struck the walls and floor like a gorilla, screaming with its deep, wild bass rising into a furious echo.

The men did not move.

The beast screamed again, scratching at the ground, looking to Grant, then Savoy, and back to Grant. It snap-snapped its teeth, shook its shaggy head and, with a cry, raced down the left tunnel. In five steps it dropped to all fours and loped into the dark. A minute passed before the men reminded their bodies to move, to think.

Grant expelled a heavy breath. “It’s true.”

“You see him now,” Savoy said.

“Can’t mistake those eyes,” Grant said, nodding. He bent, hands on his knees, face drawn as if to vomit. “How the hell do these things happen?”

Savoy hurried after the beast. Grant started to protest and resisted, keeping his pistol in hand. Ahead they heard the thing running, growling, then an angry cry and a grating sound of crashing and squealing metal. They ran a long way down a straight corridor, until the tunnel turned sharply into faint, rising light. At its end lay the ruin of an old and rusted gate. The beast had torn through it like paper.

They entered a basement of fitted stone with a curved ceiling, filled with boxes of powdered mortar and paint buckets and wooden scaffolding, the tools of extensive restoration. They hurried up a staircase into a chamber of yellow stone. Fading frescos of ancient saints adorned the walls, while alcoves held statues worn away into smooth nubs.

“St. Victor’s,” Savoy said. “I knew it.”

Screams led them to the left. Savoy and Grant ran into another chamber to find an old woman on the floor in a heap, crying out in German. More voices of alarm erupted ahead, as men and women scattered in panic from the creature that ran through the church like a rabid dog. The two followed the cries through a foyer and emerged outside into fresh air. The inky water of Vieux Harbor stretched ahead, the city glowing around it with hazy streetlamps. They had emerged onto the front porch of St. Victor’s Abbey, an austere church with high crenellated walls overlooking the harbor.

A woman’s shriek pealed up the street to their right. They managed half a block before Savoy’s pace slowed to a trot, then a walk. He doubled over, wheezing.

“Call the police,” Grant said.

“They’ll...shoot him down...like an animal.”

“He
is
an animal.”

“Please,” Savoy gasped. “This wasn’t...not
now
. Not...yet.” He coughed. “Please. Please do something.”

“What could I possibly do?”

“I do not know,” Savoy said. “Do
something
.”

The animal ran with an air of confused defiance; on the one hand it loped confidently along the dark city streets on its hands and feet, the muscles of its back shifting like cords under its taut hide. Yet as it passed from shadow to shadow its angry muzzle caught the air, its ears stiffened. When a carriage rambled in the distance or a horn bellowed from the harbor it twitched, its attention taken first here, then there.

It accelerated, using its long forearms to pull it forward. It paused at a street corner, its head considering both directions.

Behind it, Grant pursued. He hissed out breath with each stride, ignoring the pain in his arches as he ran after the thing.

He followed the beast onto the street
Rue Sainte
, as it crossed the road and turned, he noted with irony, onto another street named
Rue de la Croix
. The beast ran quick but erratic, snapping its jaw at anything that caught its attention: the rush of a crowd of pigeons, the panicked flight of a pedestrian, the snap of a flag in the stiff wind.

The beast turned right when Grant hoped it might turn left, running straight into the glare of streetlights and the noise of the wide
Boulevard de la Corderie
. It emerged into a knot of men and women in their coats and umbrellas and mufflers; the women shrieked as the creature sailed over the sidewalk and into the busy street.

An immense coach-and-four materialized; the driver grasped the reins as the creature leaped across its path. The horses’ hooves clattered and scraped against the bricks. The coach swerved. It struck the beast against the shoulder, sent him sprawling with an audible howl, and slammed against the curb. The right wheels jumped up and the coach leaned straight into a streetlamp. Glass popped with a spurt of gas-fueled flame. The horses jerked the coach across the opposite flow of traffic. Carts and coaches and hansoms became chaos, voices shouting and cursing, women crying, whistles blowing.

Grant wove his way across the street. The beast had regained its feet and reached the far side of the boulevard. It skirted a tree-lined promenade and fled down the smaller
Rue d’Endoume
, beneath shopkeeper signs and iron-wrought balconies, past plastered tenements and tightly-packed shops. Here the streetlights were gone and the dark came in great swaths, hiding doors and alleys and details.

Grant kept the thing in sight—barely.

More than once he considered letting the thing go. He thought of that drafty cell at Parish Prison and he knew that
yes
, Mister LaCroix had been right, he felt an obligation to help because he’d been spared the hangman’s handshake, and
yes
, he had been tempted to slip away in the night and never look back.

Now here he ran, following this abomination for no other reason than he said he would. This was not the wild running of a frightened, mindless animal. He had hunted enough predators to know—

It’s caught a scent
.

The beast snuffed, rose to its hind legs, and made a hard left. It ran along the tenements for half a block then, with a sudden leap, caught the bottom rung of a fire escape and scrambled up the ladder. From stair to landing the beast worked its way toward the top floor. Grant came to a stop at the ladder’s base, incredulous.

That’s it
, he thought.
I’m done.

The beast reached the uppermost window, smashed through the glass, and crawled inside. There came a shriek—a woman—a crash, and the sudden wail of a baby.

Dang it.

Grant gripped the rung of the fire escape and pulled himself up, running step after step up the spiraling iron framework. Gasping, legs burning, he reached the top and sucked in a breath. From beyond the broken window came heavy breath, the wake of foul musk, and a wild scuffling. Crashing and snarling erupted. The baby cried louder, followed by a sound like tearing cloth.

Grant slipped through the broken window. He entered a kitchen. There was no icebox, but a coal stove sat next to a sink piled with dirty dishes. He removed his pistol with his right hand and grabbed a serrated knife with his left. He would shoot the thing between the eyes if he had to, kill any damned man or beast that would harm—

—
Emily?

He entered a parlor with a patched sofa and ottoman and dirty lampshade. The werewolf hulked in the middle of it, tearing apart a white, lacy shawl. A trembling young woman, clutching a baby, cringed on the sofa. When she moved, the beast snapped it teeth and she shrieked, clutching her crying child tight against her chest.

She saw Grant, and screamed.

The beast struck at Grant like a wild dog. Grant plunged the knife into its shoulder, burying the blade down to the bone. With his other hand he raised the pistol; the beast caught him by his face and wrist, shoving both hard against the wall, keeping the weapon away. Grant struggled. The werewolf lifted him off the floor. Grant did the only thing his mind suggested—kicking the beast between the legs—and the animal shuddered. It tossed him across the room.

He struck the wall hard, and collapsed. He did not get up.

The beast jerked the knife free with a spurt of dark fluid, licked it, and tossed it aside. It considered the woman and child. It snarled at Grant with another loud
clack
of wet teeth.

“
Mon bébé
!” the mother cried. “
Ne nous faites pas mal!
”

The beast looked at her, at the pieces of torn shawl at its feet—then it shuffled into the kitchen, through the broken window and back into the night.    

***

Kiria passed beneath shopkeeper signs and balconies, past plastered tenements squeezed tightly together. Her heeled boots clucked along the deserted street. Why did she walk this far? Was it her anger, her need to walk free her feelings, the fear of being alone in a vast city, the need to lose herself so someone might take pity on her?

You’re acting like an insolent child
.

She hoped to hail a cab, something, not exactly sure where the road might lead but knowing she was heading in the wrong direction. She would backtrack and return to the wider street she had crossed earlier. Using the shining shape of
Notre Dame de la Garde
as her landmark, she guessed the hotel lay on the far side, and that meant she should have turned left a while back instead of straight. There were busier lanes in that direction, and many large fountains and shops still open, and there
had
to be a telephone somewhere, though it occurred to her the
Hotel Vauban
did
not
have a telephone, so why in the bloody
hell
did they—

She stopped short.

A misshapen, shadowy figure appeared in the distance. Its appearance sent electric charges into her legs, sent her heart to racing. She could see its cloudy breath with each exhale. The shape turned toward her.
Stray dog
, she told herself.
That’s all, that’s all it is, and you’re all worked up you silly, prattling thing, and what a tongue lashing I’ll give those thoughtless men when I
—

The animal stood on its hind legs.

Oh God
.

Long, sinewy arms ended in claws, the glow of its wide eyes watching her. She remembered the stink of the jungle and the smell of whisky, the scream of her father’s voice. She remembered, hidden in the greenhouse, watching her father, watching when she was supposed to be upstairs, watching as his eyes held the same reflection like an animal skulking the night.

Father?

She ran, blindly. She did not look back. She could not breathe, could not scream. She heard the thing’s nails as it scraped on the pavement closer, getting closer, accelerating into a run. It would leap upon her. It would tear out her throat and, when she fell, claw open her breast and eat her heart. Lap up her blood. Bite out her eyes. She would still be breathing as it tore her skin into ribbons, feasting upon her with the last seconds of her life. She had seen such things, seen them,
seen
them,
felt
them when she saw her father, knew it was only a matter of time before it would be
her
throat—

The heel of her boot snapped.

She fell, hands flailing, as she struck the curb with an audible cry. She rolled to her back, ignoring the tears in her eyes as she saw the beast running at her there,
there
, its mouth open to tear her. She scrambled backwards across the sidewalk, pressed against a tenement wall. No one could help; no one would see her die. Her composure, her false bravery—gone in a swelling of panic as she shrieked before she realized:

“
Reynard!
”

It flinched. The beast stumbled backwards, struck a pile of rotten crates and sent the lot crashing into the street. It thrashed at the wood, barking, its claws raking along the dirty flagstones. It scratched at its head and pulled out tuffs of filthy white hair. Copious amounts of blood splattered its shoulder. It shook with a tremor and great drops of mud and sweat and blood fell like raindrops.

She forced herself to stand. Blood stained her palms, registered at her knees and ankles and elbows, inside her mouth. As she regained her feet the beast lunged, snapping with a furious growl, retreated, pushed forward again like a mastiff at the end of a chain. She pressed against the wall. She had seen such things from hiding places, from distances, from the confines of her dreams, but this—

Reynard’s blue eyes met hers.

She saw him reflected there, recognized his gait and swagger. She saw the man like a flimsy veil draped over a bestial frame and, for a moment, felt no fear but pity. Her heart swelled with emotion; unlike her father and his raging passions, Reynard LaCroix was little more than wind and bluster. Friends dead, sister stolen, dragged across the world only to suffer such a thing?

“Reynard,” she said.

She realized she was crying.

I’m sorry.

The beast wagged its head and fell back to the far side of the street. Claws scraped brick, left gouges across the wall in jagged strips.

“Please do not hurt me,” she said.

It stopped shouting. It stood there, mouth and nostrils steaming with bellowed breath. It regarded her for the longest second of her life. With a snap of its jaw, it huffed a heavy exhale and fled, racing down the street into the dark.