Whitechapel Gods (17 page)

The hound paused and dipped its head. From deep inside its silvery, steel-sheathed ribs, Oliver heard a ticking—like someone tapping a wooden spoon on a large pot. After a few moments of overlap, they began to tick one to the other, then the other to the one. Back and forth: a conversation.

Oliver squinted hard at the pair. For an instant, the hound seemed to have a human face, indistinct and blurred, like a botched daguerreotype. The face tilted and changed, shifting into and out of expressions that Oliver could not quite identify. Jeremy, as well, took on an aspect far more human seeming. It was something in his bearing, in the gestures made with his front two legs.

The conversation ended, and for a long moment the two stared at each other. Then Jeremy dropped to all six legs again, and the hound turned and slunk out of the light. Jeremy Longshore ticked a few times and scuttled back over to settle beside Oliver’s shoe.

Oliver remained perfectly still until the hound’s receding footsteps passed into the distance. Then he lowered his rifle and breathed.

“You’re a handy fellow,” Oliver said. Jeremy clicked. “Remind me to stop thinking that Tom is crazy.”

Oliver considered the mechanical animal winding around his feet. Tom hadn’t had time to train the thing to do what it had just done. Jeremy himself was different from his kin.

“Can you lead me to Phin and Tom?” Oliver asked, thinking it was worth an attempt.

Jeremy clicked and buzzed, then started off at a fair clip into the darkness.

“Slow down!” Oliver called, and limped after.

The creature led him on a chase past tumbled beams, ruined buildings, and pits of dank slime. The rotted underworld passed through the arc of his lamp, fading into view from illuminated mist and seeping back into the absolute shadow of Shadwell Tower that flanked him and loomed always over his shoulder.

He scrambled along as best he could, hobbling on his ankle as the pain swelled with each step. He called out again and again for Jeremy to hold back, but the little creature tore ahead, hell-bent on whatever goal it had chosen. It escaped the range of his lamplight as they entered what might have once been a public square; the constant jumble of beams, debris, and upturned chunks of roadway gave way to an unbroken succession of tightly fitted bricks.

The pace wore on Oliver’s lungs. Even through the mask, the air was coarse and heavy with particulates. The heat, unnatural even for Whitechapel, provoked an unending sweat that beaded and ran down his neck, slick and sticky in the oily air.

Panting, Oliver finally halted the mad dash. Holding his breath and his nose, he carefully lifted the mask and splashed some water in his mouth. It tasted of ash, but calmed for a moment the tickle in his throat and the rampant thirst drying out his lips and tongue.

Out in the dark, the skittering of clickrat legs faded.

No use trying to follow now.

He set himself and his rifle gingerly down on the brick and rubbed at his ankle. He scanned his surroundings and made out nothing beyond the flickering lamplight but for a far-off glow. It might have been a hint of the bright lights of Aldgate.

If so, then that way was northwest, where Bailey’s crew would be heading.
And since I couldn’t possibly trace my way back to the stair…

Oliver wiped his goggles, chewed a piece of jerked beef, and put some more oil in his lantern. After a few minutes’ rest, he struggled back to his feet and began walking. For twenty or so steps the bricks rolled beneath his feet, unchanging. Then he came to a low wall of concrete, topped with a twisted and rusted wrought-iron fence: too tall and too uneven to climb. He unhooked the lantern from his belt and lifted it up. The light cast dancing doppelgangers of the fence on the wall beyond. Something twisted and fled as the light struck it.

I hope that was Jeremy,
Oliver thought, knowing it wasn’t.

Oliver tilted the light farther back, revealing the façade of a building reaching high above the fence’s top. Mortar had worn away between the blocks used to build it, leaving deep black slashes on its pale surface.

A sudden scuffing sounded from behind the fence. Oliver hefted his rifle to face forward in one hand, then leaned into the fence and panned his lamp back and forth. The gap between the wall and the building seemed devoid of anything, including debris. A sparkle caught his eye at the far right of the lantern’s light.

Red?
He took a few strides down the wall to the right.

Red and yellow and purple and blue, a jumble of colours glowing in the flickering light. It resolved itself into the shape of a stained-glass window.

It’s a church,
he realised, then smirked.
A white chapel.

He panned his lantern upwards, revealing an arched top to the window, a peaked roof, and hints of a steeple at the light’s farthest edge. This was not a church as he knew them, as little decrepit buildings constructed from scrap and tolerated by the cloaks so long as they stayed that way. No, this church was a magnificent structure, designed to stand out from the city around it, bold and proud. It was a piece of that London spirit that Hews and Bailey always went on about. Oliver felt a welling of uncomfortable emotion: some mixture of pride, longing, shame. What was he supposed to feel at this sight? London wasn’t his city. England wasn’t his home.

Maybe it could be.

When the clacks sounded behind him he knew it was already too late to run. He hooked his lantern to his belt again and wrapped both hands around the express rifle. He took a deep breath, held it, let it go. Then he turned.

Faces: brass eyes, steel teeth, iron bones, and long snouts. Shapes: canine and simian, some hunched parodies of human, even sporting a few last remnants of flesh and hair. Not a sound from any of them, nor breath disturbing the air.

Oliver’s own breath and heartbeat suddenly became thunderous.

The circle was tight against the wall on either side. He counted seven hounds, maybe two dozen clickrats of varying composition, a legion of Frankensteins behind that had once been men, fading shadow over shadow to the edge of the light. None of the clickrats sported the silver colour of Jeremy Longshore.

He fitted his bandaged hand around the stock and curled one finger on the trigger. The barrel shook wildly.
Hold together. You’ve been in worse spots than this—remember the battle in Marlow Square?

Only that had been Boiler Men, and Boiler Men were slow. One might run away.

Oliver risked a glance over his shoulder. The fence might be scalable, if he abandoned his pack and his rifle.

The dogs could leap it, or might simply bite through. No good.

Oliver skipped his eyes back to his grim audience. There had to be a route of escape. He noted two gaps wide enough to run through, assuming the hounds held still. He could maybe hold them off with the rifle…

All of them? With the clickrats and…those ghastly things?

His breath began coming in staccato pulses. There had to be something else. Could he toss them some meat maybe? Or…

One bloody stick of dynamite.

With numbing slowness he shouldered out of his pack and slipped it to the ground. He knelt and reached inside. The dynamite slipped into his hand as if it had been waiting for him. The matchbox he clasped between two fingertips.

His eyes never left the horde around him. The snouts and muzzles and bared skull teeth began to shift, taking on more human features. They became rounder and softer, a shifting image of translucent flesh over the metal beneath, like a trick of the smoke, a trick of the light, the unhinging of a tired mind. A chill touched the air.

Hold together,
he thought, repeating it like a manta.

Oliver set the butt of the rifle on the ground and leaned the barrel against his leg. With his left hand, he slid the matchbox open, then plucked a match out with his right.

One toss. How many could he catch in the blast?

The metallic heads continued their stares unbroken. The phantom images dipped as one, as if in prayer. The air grew cold.

Oliver laid the match head against the edge of the box.

A wind cut across the square. Yellow-green mist began collecting in the empty space between Oliver and the hounds. It lapped at the stones and the feet of the creatures, seeping into cracks and between toes and claws. Oliver stayed the match, retreating back against the fence. The yellow mist, blackening as it swept the brick, began a steady undulating pulse, propelling itself along the stones like an inchworm.

The ground began to boil.

Oliver stuffed the dynamite in his pocket and leapt for the fence. His injured hand landed on a rough-edged slat of iron that tore into the bandages. He wrapped his other arm into a tangle of bent crossbars and held himself up by the sheer strength of fright. His legs kicked for purchase, scuffing the edge of the low wall.

Below, the square suddenly became a seething lake of black-yellow pus. Bubbles churned to its surface and burst, spraying up into the air. Tendrils of yellow mist snaked up beside Oliver’s face, then swept over him with a rank odour of decay. They got in his nose, his throat, his ears.

And something crashed through into his mind.

Not this time, by God!
Oliver released one hand and grabbed for the dynamite, and at once the world evaporated.

He was hanging above an endless sea of filth: blood mixed with oils, ashes, white and yellow ichors, and pus. Above loomed a sky of towering grey fingers, their steel ends lancing into the ocean. Bodies swam the seas, drowning, choking, flailing, bloated and pustulant.

Oliver hung from nothing, having lost all perception of his body. He clawed with no hands at the iron fence he knew to be there.

A figure came walking across the ocean, stumbling over the roiling bubbles. He wore an oversized long coat, speckled with additional pockets, which the spurting filth did not seem to touch. He fixed Oliver with startling blue eyes.

“You’re Oliver Sumner,” he said.

Oliver clung to the invisible fence, still trying to secure his feet.

Who’s asking?

“My name is Aaron,” he said. “Aaron Bolden.”

Could I trouble you for some assistance?

His slight smile flattened. “I’m not sure how.”

Perfect.
Oliver gave up on his fingers and tried to will himself to stay above the frothing liquid.
You’re
the
Aaron, aren’t you? You know, Hews and Bailey speak very highly of you.

“For watching, perhaps; for intelligence. I haven’t had much luck with action, I’m afraid.”

Hews mentioned that you had certain faculties of sight.

“And so I do.”

What do you see?

“Do I see you hanging off a fence, you mean? Yes, you’re there.”

With a mental sigh, Oliver concentrated on loosening his grip.

“No, no. Don’t drop down,” Aaron said hastily. “It isn’t real, but it may still harm you.”

How do you know that?

“I…” A sudden jolt of pain stole across the man’s face. “Grandfather Clock…hurt me. The noise wasn’t real, not in the auditory sense, but it was still…I remember my bones breaking.”

Oliver looked up and down the man’s limbs. Aaron followed his gaze.

“It’s strange, I know, that they’re intact now. Though I’m not quite dead and may thus retain a bit of myself.”

Bailey said they’d hooked you to the Chimney.

Aaron’s hands began to tremble.

“I…true…though I…” He inhaled, still shaking. “I should not be alive. A thousand times I should not be alive.”

You seem quite alive to me.

The small smile returned.

“A conclusion drawn from observation. I suppose I can accept that.”

Oliver looked around, seeing no visible means of escape. He realised with some relief that his sense of smell did not appear to be working, nor could he feel fatigue in his clinging arm, nor nausea in his gut from the vile sights. The sloshing and moaning of the ocean’s prisoners echoed undiminished by distance.

Where are we, Aaron?

“We are inside his mind.”

Whose mind?

“The third one,” he said. “Not the Lord, not the Lady. Someone else.”

I would hope I heard you wrongly.

“Except that you heard perfectly.”

Aaron began to pace beneath Oliver.

“I have gathered through my limited observation of him that he is an exile of sorts. He hates the Lord and Lady so powerfully…” Aaron’s eyes flickered almost closed. He tilted his head as if craning to hear a sound Oliver couldn’t hear. “They’ve done something to him, I think, to hurt him, to cause him pain. That’s what all this is.” He swept his arm to indicate the sea. “His pain.”

And those?
Oliver said, casting his glance at the moaning souls slipping between the waves.

“They are those of us who have been claimed by the downstreets, and the machine disease.”

You know that?

“He…showed me.”

Has he claimed you as well, then?

The man’s face fell. “I don’t know.”

Oliver thought for a moment as Aaron stood caught in his melancholy.

Would he help us, do you think, Aaron?

“Help us? This is not some Titan that can be bribed.”

You said he hates the Lord and Lady. Well, if Bailey does his job, we will have what we need to kill Grandfather Clock, but we may need help with Mama Engine. We haven’t even begun to look at how to deal with her.

Aaron hunched his shoulders and glanced out across the ocean. “He hates
us
too, Oliver.”

Then we’ll have to deal with him as well, won’t we?

Aaron sucked in a breath. “He could very well have heard that.”

Talk to him. Offer him an…an agreement. Between him and myself. Let him know we have common enemies.

“Are you certain about that?”

No. It may turn out to be the most fool thing I’ve ever attempted, but it’s prudent to keep your doors open.