Pax Britannia: Human Nature (21 page)

He felt the flash of prescience even as Nimrod gave a shouted "Sir!" Both told him that there wasn't a hope of him making the door before the beast clawed him to the floor.

He stepped swiftly sideways. The fireplace was next to him, the poker that he himself had used to stoke it before dinner, still protruding from amid the white-hot coals. Ulysses' right hand closed around the hot metal, a welter of scalding pain flared across his palm to join with the breath-catching agony of his broken fingers. At this rate they were never going to heal!

Adrenalin and an instinct for self-preservation helping him to put the pain aside, Ulysses swung the smoking tip of the poker in an arc, smacking the snapping Barghest across the end of its muzzle. The creature gave a piercing scream like a gin-trapped wolf and recoiled, the stink of scorched fur causing Ulysses to do the same, his nose wrinkled in disgust.

And that was enough for him to cover the last few feet left between him and the dining room door, throw himself through, and slam it behind him. He heard the latch bolt catch in the lock plate.

Three ashen faces and sets of anxious eyes stared into his.

With a crash the door shook in its frame as the beast slammed into it from the other side, panels splintering under the force of the impact.

"Move!" Ulysses shouted.

"Where to?" Hannibal Haniver spluttered.

"The kitchen!" Jennifer shouted, already beginning to move herself.

The old man said something but his words were drowned out by the savage barking of the dog behind them and the cruel sound of splintering wood as the Barghest demolished the dining-room door.

With Jennifer leading the way, the four of them stumbled, limped and ran for the kitchen passageway. The creature lunged through the shredded door panels, snagging the tail-end of Ulysses' waistcoat with a sickle-blade claw. Jaws snapping, it came no closer, its great bulk wedged between the ruptured boards.

Tearing free of its grasping paw, Ulysses herded the rest of them into the passageway. He knew that they had only been granted a moment's grace; in no time at all the Barghest would be upon them.

"Come on!" he urged. "We can't stop!"

Old man Haniver was gasping for breath as he managed something close to a run along the narrow tiled passageway. Ulysses wondered how Haniver's ill-health manifested itself. How was the old man's heart, say? He didn't want him dropping dead of a heart attack before he'd had a chance to bring the devil-dog to heel.

Then the animal was through; Ulysses heard the wooden tearing of the door as it came apart, and then the scrabbling of clawed feet on smooth tiles that paved the way to the kitchen.

Re-doubling his own efforts, he spurred them all onwards.

Ulysses was dimly aware of passing a darkened adjoining passageway to the right that ended at a descending staircase, and then he was entering the lamp-lit brightness of an immaculately-kept kitchen.

As he turned to close the door behind him he was faced by the appalling aspect of the brutally deformed Barghest as it bounded down the passageway towards him, its flanks scraping against the walls either side of the corridor as it closed the gap between them.

Ulysses slammed the kitchen door shut and, keeping his hands pressed against the wood, braced his body against it. The Barghest slammed into the door and Ulysses was pushed backwards several inches as the wood around the lock splintered.

Looking down he saw the tips of the predator's tusk-like teeth appear through the gap as the dog pushed against the door. Ulysses kicked out viciously, catching the dog squarely on the nose. There was a yelp of pain which transformed into a snarl of snapping rage. The dog pulled back, Ulysses assumed in readiness to ram the door again.

Desperate eyes scanned the kitchen for some means of barricading the door, and fell upon the tall wooden dresser to his left.

"Quick, Nimrod, the dresser." But his quick-thinking manservant already had his shoulder against the other end of the heavy piece of kitchen furniture, as the dog's second charge met with the sundered door.

With an agonisingly-shrill screech, like fingernails scraping across a blackboard, the dresser shifted, crockery shaken loose from its shelves crashing down onto the terracotta tiles of the kitchen floor, as Nimrod put all his weight behind it. The sliding dresser hit the beast squarely on the muzzle as it tried to push itself further through the widening gap. There was a meaty tearing sound, another protest of pain, and the muzzle was pulled back again, the solid piece of furniture sliding into place across the door, barricading them all inside.

Ulysses took in the strained, uncertain expressions of the others. But there was more to be read in their faces and the way they held themselves than just the heightened emotions they were feeling at present. He could see that Jennifer was in pain, the extra strain she was putting on her ankle obviously taking its toll and giving her a sickening pallor. If Jennifer looked like she was suffering, the old man looked much worse.

Even Nimrod was no longer his usual self, his eyes sunken within dark rings of shadow.

"Now what?" Jennifer asked, her voice almost a shout as the dog crashed against the kitchen door again, sending more of the teetering crockery on the dresser crashing to the floor.

His thoughts awhirl, Ulysses took a moment to consider their options.

"You don't know, do you?" the old man blustered, his words punctuated by great wheezing gasps.

Ignoring Hannibal Haniver, Ulysses focused all of his attention on Jennifer, who was propping herself up against the cold, porcelain basin of the kitchen sink.

"Is there another way out of here? Another door leading outside?"

"No," she replied, her voice betraying that she was on the verge of hysteria.

"We're trapped in here, aren't we?" the old man challenged. Part of Ulysses' brain understood that Hannibal Haniver's anger was born of fear and incomprehension, faced with such a dire predicament, but it didn't make him any easier to put up with.

There was another crash from behind the rocking dresser.

"Think, Jennifer," he pressed, "is there any other way out?"

"There's the scullery window, but that's probably too small." And then enlightenment dawned across her face, and the effect was like the sun appearing from behind the clouds on a rainy day. "But there are the back stairs!"

"That'll do," Ulysses said with relief, a nervous grin taking shape upon his own haggard features. "How do I get to them?"

"Through there," Jennifer pointed to a door on the other side of the kitchen.

"Right, that dresser's not going to hold forever, but just for now I want you to wait here," he commanded. "I'll be as quick as I can."

"What do you plan to do, sir?"

"Plan?" Ulysses laughed. "You know me, Nimrod! Since when did I ever have a plan?"

Then he saw the crestfallen expression on the face of Hannibal Haniver and saw the glimmer of hope fade from Jennifer's eyes and her face sagged in abject despair.

"I'm kidding! I'm kidding," he said, desperately wishing he could retract his last flippant statement. "I'm going to create a distraction."

He turned to Nimrod, meeting the butler's piercing sapphire stare. "As soon as you can get these two somewhere safe." He looked back at Jennifer. "We passed the stairs to a cellar on the way to the kitchen."

"Then what, sir?"

"Well then I'd appreciate it if you could see to giving me a hand with this wayward hound of ours."

"Very good, sir."

Ulysses turned and made for the door.

"Good luck, Ulysses," Jennifer said, the look in her eyes a confused mixture of anxiety, affection and even adoration.

"Yes, good luck, Quicksilver," Hannibal Haniver added.

Once through the door Ulysses entered a servant's passageway, finding the twisting back stairs directly in front of him.

He could still hear the shuddering crashes of the relentless beast throwing itself at the barricaded kitchen door as he made his way up to the first floor of the house. At the top of the stairs a short landing led to a narrow door which, in turn, led into an empty bedroom. Through that he entered a carpeted, oak-panelled passageway that ran past another bedroom, down a couple of steps and finally turned right onto the main landing, at the top of the central staircase of Hunter's Lodge. From here he could hear the scrabbling of the monster's claws tearing up the tiles of the scullery passageway as it tried to gain purchase, so that it might push its way through the kitchen door at last.

And as he had made his way through the house he had desperately tried to formulate some sort of a plan. If he could get back down the main stairs while the dog was still distracted, he could retrieve his sword-cane from where he had left it in the drawing-room and then at least he would have a fighting chance against the beast. Perhaps he could hamstring the thing before plunging his blade into the base of its skull.

He didn't think the beast's heightened sense of smell would detect that he had left the kitchen and was now upstairs, not after the mess he had made of its nose. Probably the only thing the creature could smell now was its own blood.

His heart in his mouth, he took his first step down the staircase. The stair cried out like a creaking coffin lid as he put his weight onto his leading foot, and he froze. Surely the monster would have heard that.

Then he heard the cacophonous crash of the dresser finally toppling over, every last piece of crockery still stored inside smashing to smithereens upon the hard floor of the kitchen. Ulysses realised that if he didn't do something fast, Nimrod and the others would all soon be dead.

"Here doggy-doggy!" he bellowed at the top of his voice.

In the silence that followed, all he could hear was the solemn ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway below, and the dub-dub dub-dub of his pulse, right at the centre of his head.

And then he heard the savage, wolfish snarling of the Barghest, the scrape of talons clawing up the floorboards of the hall below and his blood turned to ice in his veins.

For a moment he found himself frozen to the spot, two million years of evolution unable to erase the memory that for much of that time man had been the prey and not the hunter.

What have I done?
he wondered. The monster was coming for him and he had nothing to defend himself with. He had hoped to have had enough time to descend the staircase, at least retrieve his sword-cane from the drawing room before he had to face the beast again.

Another instinct taking over now, he went for his gun. But it was only when his aching fingers found nothing there in the holster under his arm that he remembered how he had lost it during his first run-in with the beast-dog.

And then it was there, at the bottom of the stairs, ruined muzzle sniffing the air, those massively mishapen jaws now missing more than just a couple of fangs. A moment later it caught sight of Ulysses, the darkly burning pin-pricks of its eyes narrowing with cold animal hatred.

His petrified muscles miraculously unfreezing, Ulysses didn't hang around to find out what the monster would do next. Turning, he threw himself through the door nearest to him, finding himself inside a bedroom - quite possibly Hannibal Haniver's by the look of things. He slammed the door shut behind him, knowing that it would only slow the beast for a second.

Eyes scanning the room for anything that he could turn into a weapon, Ulysses took note of a large, heavy-looking lamp on a bedside table, and even the table itself.

And all the time, at the back of his mind, bubbling away beneath his surface thoughts, he found himself wondering whether Jennifer was all right, and whether Nimrod was leading the girl and her curmudgeonly father to safety in the cellars beneath the house.

"I don't believe it!" the old man fumed as he took in the state of his kitchen, the terracotta tiles buried beneath a porcelain-white snowfall of broken china shards. "This is my home. My
home
!"

"Quickly, sir!" Nimrod hissed. "We have to go now!"

"Daddy, come on!" Jennifer urged, her voice strained with emotion, her eyes red from crying.

Picking his way over the carpet of broken pottery, taking care not to crunch any of it beneath the soles of his shoes - keen not to do anything to attract the monster's attention again - Nimrod led the naturalist and his daughter out of the kitchen, into the passageway beyond, and down to the cellars.

"I mean I've been hunting the thing my whole life and now that pompous idiot has brought it
here
, it's destroying my home! God damn it, its ruining everything!" old man Haniver went on, incensed.

"Hush, father!" Jennifer whimpered, from fear of the monster coming after them again, rather than from the pain of her ankle.

A loud crash reverberated through the house from the floor above: the monster must be hunting his master now, Nimrod considered, which would hopefully give him enough time to discharge his duties towards the old man and his daughter.

Leading the way, Nimrod helped Miss Haniver down the steps to the cellar. At the foot of the stairs she scrabbled with the key that had been left in the lock and opened the door.