The Dead Hamlets: Book Two of the Book of Cross (12 page)

Neither of those things came to pass, though. Instead, Frankenstein just turned and grinned at Anubis. “Silly dog,” he said. “I will take your bones.” And the black glow faded away from his skin.

It seemed Victor had known a few secrets about the dead himself when he created his creature.

Anubis flicked the staff at Frankenstein, but it wasn’t another attack. It was a command. The dead rushed at Frankenstein then, swarming him like, well, like the walking dead in a graveyard.

Anubis took a few steps back toward the church and waved the staff at me, too. A line of the dead maybe a dozen strong broke off from attacking Frankenstein and put themselves in between Anubis and me. And between the church and me.

Anubis kept falling back, toward the church now. I was surprised he didn’t want to stay and fight. He was one of the Black Guard, after all. Even without all the dead at his side he would probably have the edge on Frankenstein and me. Then I realized what he was probably up to, and I cursed.

“He is going to secure Will from us,” I said.

“Victor says you must follow him now,” Frankenstein said, his blades flashing. “I will take care of this lot.” Then he disappeared from sight under a wave of the dead.

I didn’t have much choice. If Anubis could prevent me from raising Will and questioning him, I’d really have nothing to go on.

There was only the small problem of the dead in between me and the church.

I sighed and waded into them with the hatchet. When in a graveyard with the walking dead, it’s probably best to act like Frankenstein.

If I were a normal mortal, they probably could have stopped me with sheer numbers. A few of them could have held me down while they did whatever horrible things Anubis wanted them to do to me. Given what I knew of Egyptian burial practices, I probably didn’t want to find out what that was.

I used some more of the saints’ grace and moved among them like a deadly whirlwind. I struck off arms and legs with the hatchet. I spared their heads, though. Not because I felt some sense of misguided sympathy for them, but because I knew it wouldn’t slow them down any. Arms and legs, on the other hand. . . .

I leapt over the last of the dismembered bodies, the hands still clutching at me, and ran for the church. Anubis had already disappeared inside the front doors. Who knew what he was doing inside there?

I glanced Frankenstein’s way as I ran. I couldn’t see him under the seething mass of the dead, but I caught a flash of those blades still at work. And there did seem to be more body parts scattered about, so I figured he was still in fighting form. And if he wasn’t, I’d have to deal with that later.

Anubis had gone in through the doors, which meant I’d have to find another way in. The front doors of the church were almost certainly a trap. So I threw myself into the air and at one of the stained glass windows running down the side of the church. The man on the window looked like some saint or another. Maybe it was even one of the ones whose grace I’d fed on in the Paris catacombs.

I crashed through him, glass shards slicing my arms and legs and teasing a few curses out of me. I fell down into the pews on the other side of the window, which deserved a few more curses. None of my latest injuries felt fatal, though, so I stood up and brushed slivers of colourful glass from me and looked around.

I was in the middle of the pews. The one I’d landed on was cracked but had otherwise held up admirably well. The doors were open at the end of the church, and I’d been right about the trap. Four lines of black light surrounded the door frame, hanging in the air and forming a square that I would have run through if I’d followed Anubis. I didn’t know what would have happened then, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to find out.

I looked the other way and saw Anubis. He was standing by the stained glass windows at the back of the chancery that stretched from floor to ceiling. He was holding a coffin in his hands instead of his staff. The staff stood on the ground beside him, perfectly balanced. As I watched, Anubis threw the coffin into one of the windows, the one that depicted Christ on the cross looking down at a faithful follower. Like there had been any friends there that day.

The window didn’t break from the impact of the coffin. Instead, the coffin disappeared into the window. The glass rippled a little, as if it were water, but that was it. It kept on rippling even after the coffin was gone, which made it unlike the other windows surrounding it.

I also saw where the coffin had come from. Shakespeare’s grave. Anubis had ripped up the grave stones of Will and his family. They were empty now. There was only one coffin left, at Anubis’s feet.

“If you won’t come back and fight me like a man, then how about you fight me like a god?” I yelled at him, appealing to any sense of nostalgia Anubis might have. Which was admittedly a long shot, as the gods of the dead didn’t tend to be the sentimental types.

I knew what was happening. Anubis was under orders to keep Will’s body safe. Maybe he could have taken me and Frankenstein, with or without his army of the dead. But why chance it? If we somehow managed to win, then Shakespeare would be lost. So he was playing it safe and making some kind of escape. Exactly what kind of escape, I didn’t know. But I still had a shot at stopping it.

Anubis ignored me and picked up the other coffin. He shoved it through the window the same way he had the first one, and then that coffin was gone, too. Now Anubis grabbed his staff again and looked at me as I came down the aisle at him.

“Have it your way,” I said. “We’ll see which one of us is the better man thing today, and then I’ll just climb into that window and drag those coffins right back out here.” I wasn’t exactly sure how to do that, of course, but if Anubis had found a way into that window then there had to be a way out.

But Anubis wasn’t interested in fighting. He threw himself through the same window. The colours in the glass all turned black for a second, then faded back to their normal state. The rippling subsided.

I ran up the aisle, but I was too late. By the time I reached the window, it looked like all the others around it. As if there was nothing mysterious about it at all. I reached out and touched the glass but my hand didn’t go through it. The window felt like regular stained glass.

I looked back into the graves but they were empty. I grabbed a handful of dirt from the side of Will’s grave and tossed it up at the window where Anubis had disappeared. It struck the window and fell back to the floor of the chancery. There was a stain on Christ’s side now, though. The mark of my failure.

I took a few steps back, then ran at the wall and threw myself at the window after Anubis and the coffins. I crashed through to the outside, falling back into the cemetery surrounding the church in a shower of glass. The window was just a window again. Whatever door it had been for Anubis, he had closed it behind him after he went through.

I really hated the Black Guard.

I went back to help Frankenstein but found he was doing just fine. The dead surrounded him in pieces, still writhing and reaching for him and snapping their teeth and so forth. But they were more or less harmless to us now. He’d taken off his shredded coat and was leaning against a grave marker, stitching his left arm back on with a nasty looking needle and some thread as thick as a small rope. It looked like one of the dead had chewed off his arm, right above the tattoo of the woman riding a bomb, but he didn’t appear to be in any pain. He was even whistling a little tune.

“I need to bring you along with me more often,” I said. “I sure could have used you a couple of times in the past.”

Frankenstein looked up from his arm, smiling. The smile faded when he saw I was empty handed.

“Where is Shakespeare?” he asked.

“Anubis got away with the body,” I said.

“Then we will follow until we catch him,” Frankenstein said, standing. He put his coat back on and slipped the needle and thread into a pocket.

“I have no idea where he’s gone,” I said. “And we need to leave now. The rest of the Black Guard are probably already en route.”

“We have failed then?” Frankenstein asked.

I looked around the cemetery but didn’t say anything. I couldn’t admit it.

“You should let me stitch your wounds,” Frankenstein said, eyeing my cuts from the glass.

I just shook my head. What was the point? I’d heal on my own. But nothing would heal Amelia when she died again. Nothing would heal the pain I felt at letting down Morgana once more.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, making for the stone wall surrounding the place.

“I will stay and hide these away,” Frankenstein said, gazing at all the twitching body parts surrounding him. “Perhaps there will be something useful among them.”

I stopped and stared at him for a moment, then at the remains of the dead.

“We haven’t failed yet,” I said. “You’ve given me an idea.”

“You think these dead hold some secret you can use?” Frankenstein asked.

“Not these dead,” I said. “There is another. Although I don’t know if he’ll talk to me or not.”

“What did you do?” Frankenstein asked.

I shrugged. “I kind of killed him and then hid him away,” I said. “But it wasn’t really my fault.” That’s what I told myself anyway.

Frankenstein did that thing with his head, where he cocked it and looked like he was listening to someone.

“Marlowe,” he said.

“Marlowe,” I said, nodding.

“I wish you luck then,” Frankenstein said. He bent down and began to gather up the fallen limbs in his arms, like so much firewood.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll need it.”

And with that, I left the grave of Shakespeare behind, hopefully for the last time.

If you live as long as I do, things eventually come full circle. Most likely several times. Here I was trying to raise Christopher Marlowe from the dead when it wasn’t that long ago I’d helped to bury him. And, in a way, helped get him killed. Although I think Marlowe himself deserves the lion’s share of the blame for his death.

The official story about Marlowe getting killed in a tavern brawl is more fantasy than fact, as is usually the case with such things. But the people telling that story had good reason to make up a tale. The real story is simply too dangerous to reveal, not only for the person telling it, but also for the listener.

So make sure all of your doors are locked and your loved ones safe before you learn the truth of how Christopher Marlowe died.

It began with a knock on my door in the middle of the night. A knock like that was best left unanswered in the London of the 1500s, but curiosity has always won out over common sense for me. I rose from my bed, where I was reading the diary of a particularly deranged angel I had killed in Sweden the previous winter, and I opened the door wide to let in whatever was on the other side.

It was Marlowe, looking wet and miserable from the rain. And bloodied.

“Did you wander down the wrong alley again, or did a lover’s husband find you out this time?” I asked, stepping aside to let him in.

Marlowe didn’t come in, though. He remained on my doorstep, staring at me like I actually was the Second Coming.

“I have a horse for you,” he said. “Bring a weapon. Bring all the weapons you have. By the grace of God, they will be enough.”

“What have you done this time?” I sighed.

Marlowe swallowed and looked away, into the night. “I have unleashed Hell upon London,” he said.

Like I said, curiosity always gets the better of me, so I grabbed a few of my favourite blades and went out into the night after him. I still had the grace of that angel inside me, and I was feeling rather cocky. I didn’t have to change into street clothes because I slept in my street clothes in those days. A knock on the door in the middle of the night wasn’t an unknown thing to me in the London of Marlowe’s time.

He said nothing to me as we mounted up, and we rode too fast through the deserted streets to carry on any sort of conversation. Strike that—the streets weren’t entirely deserted. Soldiers ran here and there, their weapons ready, and horsemen patrolled with bare blades, searching for someone or something. A few of them reined in their horses when they saw us ride past and studied us with hard eyes, but continued on their way when they saw Marlowe. I knew whatever he had done, it was worse than usual.

He took me to his theatre. It was a small place, a mere quarter of the size of Shakespeare’s Globe. I won’t mention its name here, because it was erased from history after that night. And for good reason.

The area was surrounded by more soldiers: men in the uniform of the royal guard. They lowered their weapons a little when they saw Marlowe, but only a little. He was a servant of the Royals by this time, and there were rumours he had sworn some sort of blood pact of loyalty to them in exchange for . . . well, no one knew. As for me, I wasn’t on the outs with the Royals back then, although that would change by the end of the night.

And there was another man there, standing off to the side and watching the theatre. He wore a simple black doublet and stained hose. He looked like he’d been drinking all night, but it was more likely he’d been reading, for he carried a battered folio under one arm and a black quill in his other hand.

Out of all the men running around that night, he looked the least threatening. But he was the most dangerous of us all, for he was William Shakespeare. And he held no ordinary folio and quill. The Black Quill, for that was its name, was rumoured to be from the wing of a long-forgotten angel, whom even the other angels refuse to talk about. As for the folio, I didn’t know its true history, although I did know that men had fought and died over its possession.

“Surely you didn’t invite him?” I asked Marlowe as we dismounted. Will and Marlowe would hardly call themselves friends, despite the fact they were both playwrights. They were sworn rivals, after all, when it came to the stage and their other lesser known activities.

“He is the last person I would invite to anything, even my funeral,” Marlowe muttered. “But Will always knows when something like this has happened.”

“And when are you going to tell me exactly what’s happened?” I asked.

“Inside,” Marlowe said, nodding at the theatre. We strode for the entrance, going past Will without saying anything or even acknowledging his presence.

“How many times have I told you not to disturb things best left unimagined?” Will said, falling in with us. It wasn’t like we could have stopped him if we’d so desired. Not as long as he had that damned quill, anyway.

“This is not the time or the place,” Marlowe said.

“I cannot imagine a more suiting time or place to point out your own folly,” Will said as we entered Marlowe’s theatre.

Once inside, I saw that Marlowe had been right. He had unleashed Hell.

The theatre was full of bodies. Or rather, it was full of body parts. Arms, legs, heads and other bits lay all over the ground where most of the audience would have stood. More of the same draped the balconies of the box seats. There were a few bodies that were more or less intact, if you didn’t count slashed throats or gnawed-off faces. But they were in the minority. I tried to estimate the number of the dead, but it was impossible given their condition.

“A full house?” I asked Marlowe. He nodded and I winced.

“A first reading of my new play for a special audience,” he said. His lips were as thin as razors.

I knew the play he spoke of.
Doctor Faustus
, the tale of a man who sells his soul to the devil for forbidden knowledge. It was a subject Marlowe knew all too well, for when he wasn’t a playwright he was a demon hunter for the Royals. He was a real jack of all trades. But now it looked as if his two worlds had collided.

“A fine play,” Will said, looking around at the scene. “I followed its progress as you crafted it.” Marlowe shot him a look, but Will went on as if he hadn’t noticed. “It deserved a better showing than this,” he said. He looked unmoved by the grisly sights. Most bookish men would have fainted or soiled themselves in some fashion or another by now. But Will had seen his share of bodies before. We all had.

I walked through the pit of the theatre, stepping over pieces of what had once been people. I didn’t bother trying to keep my boots clear of the blood. That would have been impossible. I looked for some sign of a demon hiding among the dead, but I didn’t see any trace of its presence beyond the obvious signs to be found in the dismembered bodies.

“What happened?” I asked. “Something didn’t like the subject of your new play and tried to warn you off?” I glanced at Will.

“Oh, it wasn’t me,” he said. “I was rather looking forward to this play, even if I wasn’t invited to the premiere.”

“Just as well,” I said. “Or you may have wound up like the others.”

“Now you mock me,” Will said. “I am no mere player at the mercy of some greater author’s whims. You, if anyone, should know that.”

“I don’t think whatever did this is your typical author,” I said. And then I saw it. The book on the stage. I let out a long sigh and looked back at Marlowe.

“And that’s not your typical book,” I said. “Tell me you didn’t use that in the play.” But I already knew the truth. And Marlowe said nothing rather than lie to me.

I went up to the stage and looked at the book lying amid the blood and gore. It was stained so much I couldn’t see the title carved into the hide cover. Which was just as well. It was a book best not named, which was why all who knew it called it simply The Nameless Book. It was an appropriate enough description, given the horrors it contained had no names either, at least none spoken in the languages of the mortal and the sane. There were others like it—the Necronomicon is a popular one with those who have a death wish—but they were all mere shadows of The Nameless Book. It was the book to end all books.

I tore my eyes away from The Nameless Book before it could capture me and I turned back to Marlowe.

“Why?” I asked him. “Why in the name of all the heavens that once were would you use such a thing?”

Marlowe stared at the book on the stage. “Research,” he said.

“Research,” I repeated. I looked around the theatre turned abattoir. “Research.”

“I wanted the play to speak the truth,” he said. “So I put the truth into the play.”

I closed my eyes but it didn’t do any good. I could still smell the blood in the air. The air
was
blood.

“The actor wasn’t actually supposed to read from the book,” Marlowe said. “It was just meant to be a prop to be held and shown to the audience. For authenticity. But then James must have decided to improv a little.” Marlowe shook his head. “He only read for a few seconds. But that was enough to release a demon.”

And that few seconds was enough to end the world, at least for the people in the theatre.

“Tis more likely the book acted through him and forced the poor soul to read from it,” Will said, stepping up to my side and gazing at the book. I noted that he had tightened his grip on his quill. So there were some things that made even William Shakespeare uneasy. That was good to know.

“Some truths are better left unknown,” Will added, and I reluctantly agreed with him, although I didn’t give him the satisfaction of saying so.

“Surely that is a jest coming from you,” Marlowe said. “As if I don’t know the things you have done for your plays.”

“I have never had a premiere quite like this,” Will said, gazing about the theatre again.

“I was looking forward to seeing your play,” I said to Marlowe, “but I think it should be retired to an early grave now. The fewer people who ever hear of
Doctor Faustus
after this, the better.” Okay, so I’m not right about everything.

I scanned the balconies surrounding the pit. It was more bodies and body parts up there.

“Where is the demon now?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“It escaped in the madness,” Marlowe said. “That is why I came for you. You have a talent for tracking them.”

“What better to fight madness with than more madness?” Will said. To be fair, he had a point.

My eyes caught on one of the box seats. Specifically, my eyes caught on one of the bodies there.

“Is that . . . ?” I asked, and Marlowe nodded.

I sighed. “The Royals are going to have you drawn and quartered for killing one of their own,” I said. “And that’s just the beginning.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Marlowe said, glancing up at the box and then away. “The demon did.”

“Let me know how that explanation works out for you,” I said.

“We are wasting breath while the demon makes good its escape,” Will said.

“We have patrols searching the streets,” Marlowe said. “But they have turned up nothing.”

And they probably wouldn’t turn up anything either, I thought. Demons were hard ones to find when they wanted to stay out of sight. They could possess the body of anyone and hide in it as long as they wanted. Thankfully, their nature usually got the better of them and they eventually went on a killing spree. That wasn’t good for the people around them, of course, but it made them easier to find.

I turned to the theatre exit. “Let’s join the search then,” I said. “Before the creature makes it out one of the city gates.” It would be lost forever then.

“What of the theatre?” Marlowe asked, gazing around at the sorry audience for his play.

“Burn it,” Will said, so softly I almost didn’t hear the words. “Your theatre days are over.”

Marlowe looked at me and I nodded. “You must make it seem like a fire,” I said. “It’s the only way to account for all these deaths. No one else must learn of the book.”

Marlowe looked stricken, as if I had just delivered him a grievous wound. I suppose I had, in a way.

“It is my life,” Marlowe whispered.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, my friend,” I said, “but your life is over. It ended the moment he died.” I nodded at the body up in the box seat. “The best you can hope for now is a clean and honourable death.”

Marlowe took a moment and then nodded. “I will hide the book,” he said. “So no others wreak the same havoc I have.”

He started for the stage, but I stopped him with a hand.

“Burn it too,” I said. “If there is anything here that deserves the flame, it is that book.”

“I cannot,” Marlowe breathed, not looking away from the book. “The secrets it contains. . . .”

“Those secrets must be lost,” I said. “Or we are all lost.”

Will had the good grace to say nothing, although I knew he agreed with me.

I stood there, keeping Marlowe away from the stage, until he nodded. He took a torch from one of the holders on the wall, and touched it to a banner hanging from a box seat. The cloth took the flame immediately, and Marlowe moved on to the next one. Will walked back outside. I waited until the walls of the theatre were fully ablaze before I made my own way out.