The Society of Dread (16 page)

‘I lost all contact with Detective Sergeant Cripps. Only one man made it back with me. We
had no choice but to leave young Wickland behind.’

His own words made him shudder. It was a confession of utter failure. There was a silence.

Lord Gold nodded. ‘The Candle Man is not afraid of the dark, Fairchild. Left down there, or otherwise, he fights for me – for us. Have no doubt about that.’

Fairchild’s face was white.

‘They took us by surprise, sir. Smothered us. We couldn’t use the eradicators for fear of blasting one another.’

Lord Gold turned from his map to face the colonel. ‘Is the second wave ready?’ he asked without emotion.

‘Ready to go, sir,’ Fairchild replied. ‘Are you sending them – I mean, us – straight back down there?’ His voice quivered with the faintest trace of emotion.

Lord Gold ran his eye over the report on his desk.

‘I’m sending no one,’ he said. ‘You are free to do as you please.’

‘Sir?’

‘Proceed, colonel, as you think best. You are my second-in-command and have my complete confidence. You are free to do precisely what I want you to do.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Fairchild replied, a little puzzled.

Lord Gold rose and walked with Colonel Fairchild to the door.

‘Ask yourself this,’ he said. ‘What would Lord Gold do?’

Fairchild nodded, a little blood returning to his baby-like face. ‘Yes, sir. You would want me to lead the reinforcements, now that the enemy have shown their strength and revealed their tactics.’

‘Excellent,’ Lord Gold smiled. ‘Then all is going according to plan. I don’t know why you felt compelled to interrupt my meditations.’ He gave a patient smile. ‘They are most important, you know.’

Colonel Fairchild saluted and made to leave, but Lord Gold held him with a steady gaze.

‘Do not fear, colonel. Victory will be ours,’ he said. ‘I am certain of it.’

Fairchild looked troubled for a moment. ‘Should I send a squad to search for young Wickland?’

Lord Gold eyed the colonel with amusement. ‘You think he must be dead, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘But I believe otherwise. I’ve studied the old Scotland Yard files. Young Theo is a Candle Man,’ Lord Gold said with an almost poetical air. ‘Not the original Victorian hero, but of true Wickland descent. He is the Keeper of the Flame; the bearer of an ancient power that cannot, that
will
not be killed, no matter what.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Very good indeed.’ Lord Gold smiled. ‘Wickland will be all right,’ he said slowly. ‘He will do precisely what I want him to do. As will you.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Colonel Fairchild.

‘Launch the second wave,’ Lord Gold said, returning to the shadows of his room.

‘You are mad, bad and crazy,’ grumbled Skun, peering down the low, flooded tunnel. ‘Taking me to dangerous places.’ There was a loud plop in the
water ahead and the smoglodyte sprang up on to the wall.

‘Dangerous for others,’ Theo said, ‘but not for us.’

I hope,
he added to himself. He didn’t really have much choice, he reflected. The crelp armies were all around. In order to get to safety and find a way to get help for Chloe – and for Sam and Magnus – he had to take the only other available route out of the network.

The water was getting deeper and it stank. Theo waded through it grimly. Skun crawled along the ceiling above him.

‘This way!’ Theo said. The route he and Chloe had used to escape the Dodo, after their first encounter the previous November, was coming back to him. Back then, he had seen so little of the outside world that every new tunnel, every dripping passage had been a source of wonder to him. The many stages, junctions, bridges and stairways of that journey were deeply impressed upon his memory.

Turning a narrow bend, both Theo and Skun
jumped as a bat took flight from the roof above them and vanished, squealing, in the dark. Theo could see Skun’s little heart palpitating in his transparent smoglodyte chest.

‘Candle Hand!’ whispered Skun, scowling. ‘Truly you are the terror of legend to drag a poor smoglodyte this way!’

The smog sprang on to an iron pipe and scuttled along it as nimbly as a squirrel. ‘Stirring up trouble,’ the creature added darkly.

Theo almost smiled, despite their peril. As if they weren’t in the midst of trouble already.

Theo stopped. They had reached the circular hatchway he remembered. He raised his fist and struck it,
tip-tap-tip.
For a breathless moment nothing happened, but then there was a hiss of air and the circular doorway opened inwards.

‘Come on.’

Bedlam broke out as they stepped through. Theo cried out as an enormous tiger bounded towards him. Shrieking filled his ears and birds circled his head in the darkness above.

‘A trap! A trap!’ shrieked Skun, diving back for the door, only to be snatched in mid-air by the beak of a giant condor.

‘Teratom!’
Skun whimpered. ‘Don’t eat me – I’m disgusting!’

‘Bring them here!’ rasped a thick voice.

Theo’s legs were knocked out from under him as a powerful beast charged him from behind. Then he felt a pair of huge jaws lightly close around his middle, gripping him with surprising gentleness.

Theo stared ahead and saw an immense human shape crouched in the centre of the dimly lit chamber. It was the man Theo had come to see – a hulking, twisted figure in a shabby, pinstriped suit, antiquated cravat and stained brown waistcoat. That familiar, grotesque head turned towards him, with its great hooked beak for a nose and cavernous eyes, ringed with scaly ripples of skin.

‘The Dodo!’ gasped Skun, dangling upside down from the beak of the great
teratorn.
‘Still alive! Why are the worst rumours always the truest?’

Next to the Dodo, Theo could make out the enormous, shadowy hulk of some stricken creature. It was a mass of fur, fully five metres long, sprawled across the floor.

The Dodo suddenly arose, his nose scenting the air. ‘The stink of smoglodyte!’ he murmured. Then he turned and stared towards Theo as the tiger dropped the teenager to the floor. ‘And the smell of Wickland blood,’ he added.

Theo climbed to his feet.

‘Sir Peregrine,’ Theo said brightly.

The Dodo would have appeared a diabolical figure to most people, a hideous old man in his dark lair beneath the city, surrounded by creatures long thought to be extinct. But to Theo, this peculiar gentleman had been an ally – a friend in his battle against Dr Saint. And he was one of the few people alive who had known the original Candle Man. Theo felt strangely at ease in the Dodo’s presence, despite the foul stench that accompanied him.

‘We came for your help,’ Theo added.

‘Help indeed?’ the Dodo rumbled, turning his great head this way and that to scent the new arrivals. The grotesque figure resumed his seat on an upturned crate, next to the enormous creature lying on the filthy floor.

The Dodo stroked its slow-breathing stomach with a stiff, disfigured hand, like the talon of a giant bird.

‘It is too late for help,’ the Dodo sighed, a self-pitying note in his voice.

Theo looked around the underground chamber. He knew from his previous visit that they were about three hundred feet below Sir Peregrine’s medical practice, in a quiet square just off the famous Harley Street.

The first time Theo had stumbled upon the Dodo’s underground zoo, it had been full of exotic creatures, stamping and shuffling in the dark. The enclosures had all been locked and the feed and water well maintained.

Now the chamber was in disarray. Many cages were empty, their doors open or broken off
their hinges. The Dodo, once so formidable, now appeared a broken man.

‘Excuse my rude welcome,’ the Dodo said, turning to Theo, one hand still laid upon the side of the immense, ailing creature. ‘We have been attacked – and I expected your arrival to mean more of the same,’ he said.

‘We have been attacked too,’ piped up Skun, wriggling free from the beak of the immense bird that had picked him up. ‘By you,’ he pointed out tartly, ‘and by the hideous crelp.’

‘Ah,’ reflected the Dodo, his eyes glazed over, as if he could hardly be bothered to see out of them. ‘So that’s what they are.’

‘Tell us what happened,’ said Theo, drawing closer to the old man.

‘Unknown to myself – at first,’ said the Dodo, ‘my relic rooms were being raided, by someone – by something – that was fond of taking bones.’

‘Yes, bones!’ Theo blurted out. ‘That’s how they start – taking dead things.’

‘Indeed,’ the Dodo remarked, frowning at Theo’s
interruption. ‘I see you are quite the expert on them already. Well, at first it was merely a curious puzzle. Then last night, my beloved zoo was raided by these crelp – this species of malevolent vermin. I did not arrive in time to prevent this horror . . .’ he gestured all around at the empty cages, the stricken beast before him.

‘Giant Tree Sloth,’ Theo said softly.
‘Woolcombe’s Bestiary of Post-Diluvian Extinctions,
page one hundred and sixty-two, figure four.’

‘Marmaduke,’ the Dodo sighed heavily. ‘I called him Marmaduke.’

Theo noticed now that the immense furry stomach had stopped rising and falling.

‘You are too late to help, as ever,’ came a stern female voice from across the chamber.

Theo was astonished to see a beautiful woman, tall, with long, dark hair, striding across the room in a long, swishing lab coat – the only bright, clean thing in this place of muck and misery.

‘You may have heard of me,’ the woman said haughtily. ‘I am Lady Ursula Blessing.’

‘Lady Blessing!’ gasped Theo. He had heard rumours and tales of this woman, and how she had disappeared during the great battle last November.

‘Everyone in the Society of Good Works thinks you are dead,’ Theo remarked.

‘I was taken prisoner by Sir Peregrine here,’ she said with a tight smile. ‘But I have since stayed on – out of choice – to look after him.’

Theo frowned. Chloe had told him about Lady Blessing, and he didn’t trust her one bit. She swept over to the strange group and loomed over Theo with a superior air, as if she, not the Dodo, owned the place.

‘Sir Peregrine has told me that the original Candle Man was often in the habit of turning up too late to be much use to his friends. So if you and your vile little crony –’ here she grimaced at Skun – ‘cannot help, then perhaps you’d be good enough to clear off.’

Theo did not clear off. He scowled at Skun, who had been poking the immense dead tree sloth.

‘Who says we can’t help?’ Theo said, an idea beginning to come together in his mind. ‘We can stop this from happening again. We know what’s going on. We know the enemy and how to stop them.’

The Dodo turned his enormous head to study Theo, the slightest spark in his sickly eyes. Skun nodded his head excitedly and began springing from foot to foot. Theo remembered Skun’s proposal of a couple of days before and spoke with sudden conviction.

‘We’re here to suggest an alliance!’

‘T
he smoglodyte delegation is ready to begin talks,’ announced Skun grandly. They had withdrawn to the Silurian Room: the Dodo’s secret meeting chamber. A table made from a section of fossilised redwood tree dominated the room and colourful geological maps decorated the walls.

Skun was happy, because the Dodo had placed a foul-smelling pot of toxic smoke in front of him.

‘That’s better,’ Skun sighed. ‘The clean air up here in the human world was killing me.’

‘Anyone else with any special requirements?’ Lady Blessing asked sourly.

Theo shook his head. He was anxious to proceed. ‘We mustn’t waste any time in helping Chloe – and all the others.’

‘No time is being wasted, I promise,’ the
Dodo replied. ‘Since your arrival restored hope to my heart, I have sent out my spies – Hairless Transylvanian bats mostly – to scour the tunnels and glean information about crelp movements. In a sense, we are on the attack already.’

The Dodo leant forward to study Theo’s face. He raised his eyebrows, affecting surprise. ‘Not much of an improvement,’ he sighed. ‘You are still the unhealthy specimen you were when I examined you last year in my other persona as Dr Peregrine Arbogast. Have you been getting regular exercise, fresh air, climbing trees and such like?’

‘No,’ said Theo. ‘After my battle with Dr Saint, the police doctors made me spend a month in bed. Pretty much the whole of December, in fact.’

The Dodo nodded. ‘Never mind. You are the Candle Man. Life burns bright in you. One day,’ he added, ‘you will master your gifts fully and assume the entire power and mystery of the Candle Man. On that day, you must remember your promise to free me from the hideous immortality I suffer – and allow me to live out my
remaining term of mortal life.’

Theo nodded. He didn’t really understand the Dodo, but he knew that the peculiar man demanded and deserved great respect.

‘I’ll do my best, sir.’

‘I have realised,’ the Dodo said, ‘that this world is not made for everybody. Some are allowed to enjoy it – nature’s golden creations, the lion and the cockroach. For others – the simple-minded sea-cow, the ponderous panda and yes, the dodo, we are just in the way. Clumsy obstructions to creation’s great procession, just waiting for somebody – or something – to clear us out of the way and improve the world with our absence.’

Lady Blessing gave Theo a tight smile.

‘Cheerful old relic, isn’t he?’ she said. ‘Can we get on, now? I’m dying here.’ She edged her seat as far away from Skun and his smoke as possible.

‘An alliance, then,’ the Dodo rumbled, looking from Theo to Skun. Skun did not know how to sit on a chair and was now perched awkwardly on its back.

‘This morning I was defeated, desolate,’ the Dodo said. ‘Attacked by marauding creatures from the earth’s depths. They vanished into the darkness as swiftly as they came, cruel, numberless, impossible to defeat – or so I imagined.’ He looked hard at Theo.

‘They are not numberless . . . yet,’ Theo said. He went on to tell them of his adventures, from arriving in the network to going down into the Crypt with Dr Pyre.