Wild Boy and the Black Terror (34 page)

“I only realized at Buckingham Palace,” he said. “When Lucien threw those drawings on the fire.”

“The artist’s sketches? What have they got to do with anything?”

Nothing. And everything
. “They were
ink
drawings.”

“So?”

“Prendergast opened the Queen’s parcel and threw the wrapping on the fire. Moments later he was screaming. That wrapping only had one thing on it – an address written in black ink.

“And then there’s that other question: Why did the killer save Clarissa at Lady Bentick’s house?” He looked at Clarissa. “Why did he slip you that note? I didn’t know. I couldn’t even study it.”

“Cos I threw it on the fire, like it said.”

“Exactly. You threw it on the fire, and a minute later Marcus and Lady Bentick got the terror. And in Oberstein’s shop, the guard took that card from me, the card with Malphas written on it by the killer. The guard threw it on the fire, and then Oberstein got the terror too. That
card
had the poison on, just like the wrapping on the parcel and the note the killer gave you at Lady Bentick’s house.”

“It was the ink!” Clarissa said.

“The ink,” Wild Boy said. “That was what burned. That was the poison that made the black smoke. That’s what’s in all these barrels.”

He stepped closer to the suspects. He felt his heart racing, the pulse in his neck. “After I realized that, only one question mattered. Who had ink? Who, this whole time, carried a pot of it everywhere he went, saying he was writing notes?”

Dr Carew stepped back. Lamplight gleamed off his broken spectacles.

Wild Boy followed him, hoping he didn’t look as scared as he felt. “Only, you was really covering them pages in poison, weren’t you, doc? You threw them on Oberstein’s furnace, causing that smoke to come after us in the tunnel.”

Dr Carew moved away through the hanging chains.

“You were in India when all that evil happened,” Wild Boy said. “Only, that was sixteen years ago. You’re a young man, doc, maybe thirty? So you’d only have been fourteen back then. Oberstein said Lord Dahlquist was a family man. Had a wife. Ain’t that so, doc? He had a wife and
son
.”

Dr Carew backed up against the statue of Malphas. The demon’s tarpaulin wings stretched and snapped. Its claws swung on their chains.

“You truly are a special mind,” Dr Carew said. “You and Clarissa have solved everything.”

“Except for
why
.” Lucien’s grip tightened around his pistol. “Why did you do it, Carew?”

“Why…” Dr Carew whispered.

He looked up at the demon statue. His face was pale and twisted, as if being pulled from different directions. “Because I am a Dahlquist,” he said. “I am my father’s son.”

“Your father was a killer,” Gideon said.

“
You think I do not know that?
” he yelled, his voice suddenly so loud it shook the chains. “I saw! I saw, just like you. I saw everything my father did in that cave. He made me watch. He forced me to watch! I lived with that memory, suffered from it like a disease. He tarnished my name. My mother, my dear beloved mother who never harmed a soul, took her own life from shame. But I would not!”

Spencer moved closer, heavy steps shaking the barrels. He breathed so hard that his words came out in broken gasps. “If you hated your father,” he said, “then why did you not become someone better?”

Dr Carew stared at Spencer’s face: the glistening, unhealed evidence of his father’s evil. “I tried,” he said. “God knows I tried. I trained as a doctor. I wanted to help people, to make up for his cruelty. But I could never escape him. He was always there, haunting me. I wanted to know why he did those evil things. I had to understand. So I concocted a poison that would bring him back to me. A way to speak to him.”

“The terror,” Clarissa said.

“Yes, my terror. I controlled the dose so it would not consume me. Just enough to see my father and talk to him. But I could not stop it. He wouldn’t go away.”

Tears streaked down Dr Carew’s cheeks, cleaning lines through blood and sweat. “I was always so scared of him. I could never fight back.”

“He still talks to you, doesn’t he?” Wild Boy said. “In the maze, that didn’t sound like you. It was him, talking through you.”

“Yes, those were his words. I could see him there, standing beside me. He made me collect the stones, to reunite the Black Terror and give his demon power. He made me act out his curse. He is always with me. There is nothing I can do, just as I could do nothing all those years ago in his cave. I am too weak. I am his Servant, as he is the demon’s.”

The man was crazy, destroyed by his own past and drugs. But there was anguish in his face, too. Something good remained in Dr Carew. A light flickered somewhere inside.

Wild Boy slid a hand in his pocket, felt the syringe. He remembered the royal physicians’ advice. Aim for the neck, the big vein called the jugular.

“You can still help us stop this,” he said.

The doctor’s eyes widened. “Yes, my blood. A cure… It could work.”

He turned and looked at something beyond the statue, something visible only to him. “Father?” he said. “What should I do?”

The answer, whatever it was, was short and decisive. When Dr Carew turned back, the light inside him had gone out. There was only darkness.

He reached into the furnace and brought out the four diamonds. The jewels trembled in his hands, catching the lantern light. Their reflection beamed blackness at his twisted, pale face.

When he spoke again his voice was soft and distant, carried away by the wind.

“I am a Dahlquist,” he said. “It is in my blood.”

He turned and fled.

37

“
C
larissa! Clarissa, wait.”

Wild Boy thrashed his arms, pushing away the chains that swung from the factory girders. He heard Clarissa cry out in pain, and fear sucked the breath from his lungs.

Brushing back his hair, he looked up into the derelict building. Iron beams criss-crossed the dark, where the factory floors had been removed. He saw Dr Carew move across one, a tightrope walk with a deadly drop. Clarissa limped after him, chasing the killer to the narrow gantry fixed to the wall, then up a spiral staircase to the next floor of beams. It looked as if she’d sprained her ankle. Wild Boy called to her again, but if she heard she wasn’t stopping.

Clarissa didn’t have the syringe. If she caught the killer she couldn’t get his blood for the cure. But something deeper than that scared Wild Boy. He feared what would happen if she
did
catch Dr Carew. Might Clarissa become a killer too?

He ran up the stairway to the gantry fixed to the first-floor wall. To follow Clarissa he had to cross one of the beams to the next staircase. They were all barely a foot wide and gleamed with frost.

He took a few steadying breaths and stepped onto one of the beams. His bare feet trembled as he began to shuffle across. It was a straight drop, thirty feet to the factory floor, where he could see Lucien and Gideon coming after him.

He had to move faster.

He charged along the beam and leaped to the gantry at the end. His jump was too short though, and his leg dug into the platform’s metal edge. Pain shot up his thigh and a roar came from his mouth. It felt as if he’d been bitten by a wolf.

Gritting his teeth, he hauled himself onto the gantry. Blood gushed from a cut above his knee so deep he could see glistening grey bone. He rolled over and screamed into the darkness.

Get up. Keep moving
.

He pressed a hand against the wound and rose to his knees. Clanging footsteps rang from above as Clarissa chased the killer higher into the factory. Wild Boy had to keep going, but the only way to the next flight of stairs was by crossing another beam. He’d never make it with his leg wound.

He tried to stand, but his injured leg buckled and he collapsed again. A basket of bricks sat a few yards away, tied to a chain to be winched to the ground. He crawled to it and, leaned his back against its side. The basket scraped towards the edge of the platform. Wild Boy pushed harder, but the effort brought on another flash of terror. It was the poison, still affecting his mind.

He was under attack again. Crows swooped. Claws flashed. Augustus Finch came across one of the beams, gliding like a ghost and grinning hideously. The factory filled with the cruel laughter of the fairground crowds.

Wild Boy curled up beside the bricks. “No…” he said.

And then, “NO!”

His cry was so loud, it drove the visions back into the darkness. He wouldn’t let them stop him. He had to fight.

He pressed harder against the bricks. They slipped over the edge of the gantry so suddenly that he almost fell with them. Recovering, he rolled over and grasped the chain rattling up on its winch.

As the chain rose it lifted him from the platform and up into the darkness. He clung on tight as he went through the cat’s cradle of beams, bashing against one and then another on the next floor. Blood slid down his wounded leg and dripped from his foot.

He saw Clarissa hobbling up a corkscrew staircase. Dr Carew stumbled along the gantry above. The doctor turned and hurled the black diamonds at Clarissa, slowing her down.

Below, the basket of bricks crashed against the factory floor. The chain jerked to a stop, almost throwing Wild Boy off. Pain rippled up his arm as he clung on, swinging in the dark. He was ten yards from one of the gantries. He kicked his good leg, swaying the chain. With his free hand, he pulled the syringe from his pocket.

He had one chance.
One chance
.

Dr Carew ran along the gantry.

Wild Boy swung the chain harder, carrying him closer.

He let go. Momentum threw him to the gantry, and he landed on Dr Carew. As the doctor fell back, his head cracked against the wall. His spectacles fell from his face, and blood spurted from a gash on his forehead. His eyes rolled as he slipped in and out of consciousness.

The pain in Wild Boy’s leg was excruciating, as if a spear had been driven into his thigh. He wanted to curl up and scream, but he forced himself to keep moving. Gripping the syringe, he scrambled over the doctor. He tore away the man’s necktie, but it was too dark to see his veins. He had to try and hope. Aiming the needle, he thrust it into Dr Carew’s neck.

He pulled the plunger but no blood came out. He cursed, jabbing the syringe again, harder.

The pain roused Dr Carew back to life. A ferocious animal roar came from his mouth, with a spray of spit and blood. He tried to slide away, but Wild Boy clung on tighter, refusing to let go. He had to hold on and wait for Clarissa.

Then the killer did something unexpected.

Launching forward, Dr Carew dived through one of the factory windows.

Two things flashed through Wild Boy’s mind. The first was that he and Dr Carew were about to plummet to their death. The second was the hope that Gideon and Lucien would be able to distinguish between their blood and still save Marcus.

But instead of falling, he thumped onto the boards of the scaffolding that crawled over the outside of the factory. His wounded leg struck the wood. He let go of the killer.

Wind lashed the wooden beams, threatening to tear the scaffolding from the wall. The clouds had begun to part. The creaking structure gleamed with ice in the moonlight.