Descendant (23 page)

“If you want it, Duca, you’ll have to come get it.”

“You think I won’t?” Without hesitation, Duca stepped through the doorway into the darkroom. I shouted, “
Now, Terence!
” and Terence held up the silver mirror and pointed it directly at Duca’s face. Duca turned toward Terence with obvious irritation. Terence was shaking with fright but he managed to hold the mirror still enough for Duca to see its own reflection.

From where I was standing, I couldn’t see what Duca could see in the mirror—its own face, as it should have appeared, if it hadn’t been transformed into a
strigoi mort
. Corrupt, centuries-dead, and heaving with grave-worms. Duca seemed to be confused at first—not understanding what it was looking at. But it slowly raised its hand toward the mirror like somebody recognizing a long-forgotten acquaintance and as it did so it realized what Terence was showing it, and it was shaken to the
very core of its self-belief. It bunched up its shoulders and let out a harsh roaring scream, and shook its head wildly from side to side.

It was almost a mythological moment: when the beast catches sight of its own reflection and realizes what it really looks like. That was my moment, too. I looped my silver whip right over its head, and pulled it down to its waist. Then I lifted its coat and crunched the claw right through its vest and its shirt, into the muscle of its back, just below its rib cage. Duca screamed even more furiously as I wound the whip around its waist, trying to pinion its arms.

“
Lights, Terence!
” and Terence switched off the lights, so that the darkroom was swallowed in black. Duca ducked and thrashed and struggled, and even though I had managed to lash both of its elbows against its sides, it was incredibly strong, and it was pulling at the whip so furiously that I wasn’t sure that I would be able to restrain it.

“
Hammer and nails! Quick as you can!
”

Without warning, Duca dropped to the floor, so that I had to drop down beside it to keep my grip on my whip. My eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness now. The faint glow from the flashlight on the workbench was just enough for me to be able to make out Duca’s glittering eyes. Duca itself would have been totally blind. But its blindness didn’t prevent it from twisting and wrestling and trying to bite me.

The only sound in the darkroom was scuffling and grunting and cursing, and the clatter of our shoes as we kicked against the cupboards.

Terence held out my hammer and two nails. I dropped
my whip and tried to reach out for them, but Duca abruptly rolled over on to its side, trying to unwind itself.

“
Hit it!
” I shouted.

Terence pushed his way past me and flailed at Duca with my hammer. The first blow hit the floor, but the second struck Duca on the shoulder, and the third caught it just above its left ear, with a hollow knocking sound. Its head abruptly fell backward, and it stopped struggling, although it kept twitching and jerking as if it were suffering an epileptic fit.

Terence gave me one of the crucifixion nails. I positioned it over Duca’s right eye and held out my hand for my hammer. Duca’s eye was closed but I had no qualms about driving the nail through its eyelid. I had seen what Duca had done—how many innocent people he had killed. This was for Ann De Wouters, and everybody else that Duca had murdered during World War Two. This was for my mother.

“Oh, God almighty,” said Terence.

I lifted the hammer high, trying to keep the nail steady. As I did so, however, Duca suddenly rolled over again, and then again, until he reached the opposite wall. I made a desperate grab for my whip, but it snaked out of my hands, and Duca began to stalk up the wall, completely horizontal, until it reached the ceiling. Then it turned itself around and faced us, although it was still virtually blind. The light was too dim even for us to see it clearly, but there was no mistaking the contempt in its voice.

“I have escaped such people as you so many times before, and I will escape you, too.”

“Don’t bet on it,” I told him, and took hold of my whip, which was still embedded in Duca’s back. I yanked
it with both hands, as hard as I could, hoping that I could drag Duca down from the ceiling. But I heard a sharp tearing noise, and the claw came free. As I later found out, all I had pulled out was a bloody lump of muscle and a triangular piece of silk from the back of its vest.

“
Terence!
” I said. “
Mirror! We have to start this over!
”

But at that moment, Duca reached into his coat pocket and took out something cylindrical. As Terence reached for the mirror, Duca tugged the end of the cylinder and the darkroom was suddenly filled with intense white light—so bright that Terence and I could see nothing at all. I took three steps backward, shielding my eyes. Although I was blinded, I could tell by the magnesium smell and the sharp fizzing noise that Duca had set off a handheld marine flare—ten thousand candle-power, at least. It dazzled us totally, but it gave Duca the extra light he needed to see.

I hauled out my gun but the light was so intense that all I could see in front of my eyes were dancing scarlet amoebas, and Duca was so quick that I didn’t stand a hope in hell of hitting it. I heard it leap from the ceiling, and the next thing I knew it pushed me squarely in the chest, so that I stumbled backward over my Kit. It twisted the gun out of my hand and threw it aside. Then it tore open the front of my shirt, and pulled the wheel from around my neck, breaking the chain.

“Thank you for my property,” it breathed, and its breath was actually chilly, like an open icebox. “Now you will get what you deserve for stealing from me.”

Through the glare, I saw Duca take out a broad-bladed knife. I had never let a Screecher get the jump on me before, ever, but I suddenly realized that I could die
here, with my heart cut out, and my guts lying all over the floor. I felt like a skydiver on his thousandth jump, who discovers that his chute won’t open.

“You think you’re going to live forever?” I asked it. “Whatever you do to me, you’re not going to see another winter.”

Duca pointed his knife at my throat. “There is a war here. There is always a war. On one side, the living. On the other side, the eternals. You can never win, for all of your religion, for all of your so-called morality. For all of your piety.”

It pulled my shirt open even wider. “Maybe now we can see what you are made of.”

It prodded my navel with the point of its knife, and the pain made me jump with shock. But as its drew back its elbow to stab me, it tilted backward. I heard struggling and swearing. Although I was still half-blinded, I managed to roll over and pick myself up. The flare had almost burned out now, but in its last flickering moments I could see that Terence had thrown himself on Duca and dragged it to the floor. They were hitting each other and grunting with effort.

I stood up, and hauled out my gun. “Right there!” I shouted. “Hold it right there!”

But Duca was too quick and too strong. It dragged Terence up off the floor, and swung him around in a circle, so that he was standing between us. By the sputtering light of the flare, I could see that it was holding its knife across Terence’s throat. Terence was staring at me in panic.

“Now I am going to leave you,” said Duca, its voice hoarse with effort. “But in case you are thinking of showing me any more of your mirrors, or opening any more of
your Bibles, I am going to take this fellow with me, for my security.”

“
No!
I’ll let you go, I promise you. You can walk out of here and take your wheel and I won’t do anything to stop you. Just don’t hurt him, OK?”

“Do you think I believe you? I know who you are. I know
what
you are.”

“I’m coming after you, Duca,” I warned it. “If you so much as scratch him, I’m going to make sure that you have the most agonizing death that any Screecher ever suffered, and that’s a promise.”

“
Jim
—” choked Terence, but Duca pressed the blade of his knife right up against his Adam’s apple, so that he couldn’t say any more.

“Just stay calm, Terence,” I told him. “Do what Duca tells you, and you won’t get hurt.”

Duca smiled. “Who are you to make promises on my behalf? We shall see what happens to your friend when it happens.”

With that, it pulled Terence back toward the darkroom door and opened it. Then, with unbelievable speed, it dragged him off along the corridor toward the stairs. It was like watching a flickery old black-and-white horror movie.

I ran after them, but before I could even reach the head of the stairs I heard the front door slam, and I knew that they were gone.

I clattered down the stairs and into the street, but there was no sign of them. I saw a black saloon pulling away from the curb on the opposite side of the road, with a puff of exhaust, but I couldn’t make out who was driving it.

I needed a man-trailing dog, and I needed it fast. But Terence had the keys to the car and without the keys I couldn’t get access to the radio-telephone to call for assistance. The counterintelligence corps had trained me how to fire a whole variety of weapons from crossbows to bazookas, and how to break down a reinforced door using explosives, but they had never taught me how to hot-wire a car.

I looked around. Only about thirty yards along the road, on the corner of Allenby Avenue, stood a lighted red phone booth. I panted my way up to it. Inside, chattering and laughing and smoking a cigarette, there was a plump-faced girl with a ponytail. She was wearing a pink skirt with so many net petticoats underneath it that it practically filled up the whole booth, and a white back-to-front cardigan, and pink popper beads. I rapped on the window and mouthed, “Are you going to be long, honey? I have an emergency!”

She opened the door and a cloud of smoke came out. “What’s the matter with you, mate? I’m talking to my boyfriend!”

“I have an emergency. I really need to use the phone.”

“I just put three bob in. Go and have your emergency somewhere else.”

I took out my wallet and pulled out a ten-shilling note. “There. You’ve made seven bob profit. Now can I use the phone?”

I called MI6 control. As it happened, Charles Frith was still in his office, and the operator put me directly through to him.

“Captain Falcon? You were lucky to catch me, old man. What’s the latest? Mission accomplished, I hope?”

I told him what had happened. He listened in silence. The only time he interrupted was when he said, “A
flare
?”

“Just because the
strigoi
come from a bloodline that’s over three thousand years old, that doesn’t mean they’re not technically sophisticated. Duca turned the tables on us completely. It blinded us, and at the same time it gave itself all the light it needed to see in the dark.”

“Well, look here, I’ll get in touch with Inspector Ruddock and get him to start looking for Mitchell right away. As for a dog, perhaps Miss Foxley has recovered sufficiently to help you out. She’s nearest, after all. If she’s still hors de combat, let me know right away, and I’ll arrange to have another dog handler sent down.”

“OK . . . I’ll call you when I get to Miss Foxley’s.”

“Good man. By the way, a Mrs. Rosemary Shulman has been trying to get in touch with you, from the Home Office. She rang two or three times, so far as I know. Daphne’s got her number.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Captain Falcon—”

“Yes, sir?”

“You
will
keep a very low profile, won’t you? I’ve had the press hounding me all day. Sooner or later, one of the buggers is going to find out what we’re up to.”

“Yes, sir.”

I hung up. The girl with the petticoats said, “About bloody time, too. My boyfriend’s probably left me for somebody else by now.”

“A terrific-looking girl like you? He’d have to be nuts.”

“Oh,” she said, flattered, and giggled.

I went back into the
South Croydon Observer
building and collected up my Kit. The building was dark, and it echoed, and it smelled strongly of burned-out flare. I was reminded of World War Two, searching through bombed-out apartments for signs of Screechers.

When I had reassembled my Kit and shut the case, I went back outside to flag down a black taxi. I asked the cabbie to take me to Jill’s house in Purley, which was only about five minutes away.

“I’ll be glad when this bleedin’ ’eat lets up,” complained the cabbie, with a skinny cigarette dangling between his lips. “Makes me feet swell up like bleedin’ balloons.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“Then there’s all this Korean Flu going around. People dropping like bleedin’ flies. That’s all because of the ’eat, if you ask me, and they say that next year’s going to be even ’otter. Do you know what I was readin’? By the year nineteen-seventy-nine, the ’ole of England’s goin’
to be like the Sahara desert, and we’ll all be ridin’ around on bleedin’ camels.”

We reached the Foxleys’ house and I asked the cabbie to wait. The Foxleys were obviously at home, because the drapes were drawn and the living room lights were on, but the house seemed unusually quiet. I couldn’t even hear a TV.

After a few moments, however, Mr. Foxley opened the door, holding Bullet by his collar.

“Captain Falcon!” he blinked. “We weren’t expecting you, were we?”

“No, you weren’t. But we have a crisis on our hands, and I was wondering if Jill could maybe help us out.”

Without hesitation, Mr. Foxley shook his head. “I’m sorry, Captain, but Jill isn’t very well at all. She’s been in bed since yesterday, and we’ve had the doctor around twice.”

“Do you know what’s wrong with her?”

“She’s very feverish. The doctor thinks it might be Korean Flu. He’s given her something to keep her temperature down, but I don’t think she’s out of the woods yet.”

“I’m very sorry to hear it. The problem is, I desperately need a tracker dog.” I looked down at Bullet, who was straining so hard against his collar that he was wheezing. I thought:
I’ve seen how Corporal Little handled Frank. I’ve seen how Jill handles Bullet. It can’t be too difficult to manage a man-trailer. They go running off on their own most of the time
.