The Constantine Affliction (35 page)

“Oh, well,” Pimm said. “If you insist.” He reached over to squeeze her hand, then slipped off into the dark, Ben following.

“Shall we?” Winnie said, and passed over one of the bangers.

“I am supposed to report the news,” Ellie said. “Not
become
it.”

“Ah, but there’s no better vantage point than the thick of things,” Winnie said.

Ellie had once shared that perspective, but she was reconsidering now. Give her a high place with an unobstructed view rather than a spot at the center of a melee any time. But Pimm was going to face a monster, so the least she could do was make some noise. At least she couldn’t
see
the thing. Hearing it was bad enough.

***

Hearing it was bad enough, Pimm thought, but seeing the monster was even worse, especially with it rendered in the horror-show green tint the monocle lent all things that passed before it. He’d told the others the beast was as big as an elephant, and that was true, but it didn’t
look
much like an elephant. It looked like a quivering mass of chicken fat shot through with dark structures like the branches of a tree—some sort of skeleton, perhaps, or nerves, or blood vessels, or something without analogue in the animal kingdom. The monster had no discernible eyes—or even a head, for that matter. Tentacles, or things that looked enough like tentacles to justify the name, sprouted from the mass at irregular intervals, waving like reeds whipped by inconstant winds. Worst of all was the fact that the monster looked
blurry
—Pimm could not focus on the beast, and continually had the sense that it possessed more limbs, more
mass
, tucked somewhere just out of sight, hidden around a corner that didn’t actually exist. The thing moved with a ghastly sort of undulation, leaving grotesque smears across the floor. Oddly enough, the beast had no discernible odor. Pimm supposed there must be some scientific explanation for that. Oswald could probably explain it. Pimm would be sure to ask him just before the man was hung for treason. Or perhaps Oswald would be beheaded. That was traditional, and if it was good enough for Carrington….

Pimm heard the
crack
of breaking porcelain and shut his eyes just before a blindingly bright flash of light burned the world orange even through his squeezed-tight eyelids. Ben, who hadn’t been prepared for that level of brightness, cried out in the dark behind Pimm. Even more disorienting than the light was the noise, the sound of a thundercrack resounding in the confined space. The beast made no sound—a scream would have been nice, some indication that it had been discomforted—but when Pimm opened his eye, he saw the creature lashing its tentacles wildly and smashing its bulk repeatedly into a pillar, clearly frenzied or disoriented by the noise. Pimm raised his pistol and fired, but he may as well have shot at a muddy embankment for all the impact it made. The beast paid no attention to the assault at all.

Pimm began to wonder if the men who’d “killed” this creature’s smaller cousins in the Thames had actually killed them at all, or merely hacked off pieces, leaving the rest of the beasts to submerge, still alive. Perhaps losing a tentacle for one of these creatures was no more traumatic than a man losing a fingernail or a lock of hair.

“What do we do?” Ben said, or at least, Pimm thought that was what he said—the ringing in his ears made it difficult to be sure.

“I don’t know,” he tried to say, and then the beast turned on him, lashing out with its pseudopods. The only reason Pimm and Ben weren’t struck down was because the beast’s limbs smashed into one of the warehouse’s support pillars first. They stumbled backward, ducking behind another contraption of metal and crystals and brass. Pimm cast around desperately for something he could use as a weapon. Fire? He had his flask, and while it would be a shame to waste its inflammable, intoxicating contents on an assault, perhaps he could improvise some sort of incendiary bomb—

Something flashed in his vision, on the far side of the creature—a long streak that looked like a spear, piercing the creature’s side. The beast stiffened, went entirely still—tentacles sticking up at strange angles—and then shuddered, its flesh rippling like the windblown surface of a lake, until it slumped. Its body began to collapse into itself like a melting snowman, and now there
was
a smell, of burnt meat and acidic chemicals.

Pimm rose, looked at Ben, shrugged, and made his way around the deliquescing mass of the great beast. Ellie and Freddy stood near the alchemical lamp and the remains of Carrington, chatting as amiably as if they were at a dinner party. “What did you
do
?” Pimm asked, his voice probably entirely too loud due to the ringing that continued in his ears.

“It was Ellie’s idea,” Freddy said.

“Oh, no,” Ellie said, blushing. “I only said I wished you had not discharged your cane—I wondered if an electric jolt might have an effect against such a creature. I know electricity can cause muscles to contract, to jerk, to spasm—and this thing seems nothing
but
a muscle.”

“But I
did
discharge my cane,” Pimm said.

Freddy nodded, then beckoned and led him to a third engine like the one Ben had destroyed. “Yes, but there’s other electricity in the world, darling. These things are rigged to run on batteries—more sophisticated batteries than any I’ve ever seen, I must say.” Pimm squinted, noting what looked like a metal urn, remarkably similar to the vessels he’d seen lining shelves in Adams’s workshop. “With a little tinkering, a great expanse of wire, and a bit of effort, I turned a length of broken metal into a harpoon. We attached the wire to the metal, let Ellie fling the spear, and once our weapon was firmly seated in the creature’s side—like sticking a finger in a pudding—I threw the switch.” She gestured, and Pimm saw the twisted filaments extending from the engine toward the monster’s corpse. “I expended the battery’s entire charge and ruined the engine, but I can’t say I mind.”

“Lucky thing he had more than one of these engines around,” Pimm said, thumping the side of the device.

“Oh, he needs at least three,” Freddy said. “The engines connect with one another, you see. One engine is nothing, just a point in space. Two engines connected, well, what good is that? With two points all you can make is a
line
. How are terrible otherworldly monsters supposed to enter our universe through a
line
? But with three points, you can make a triangle, and while that is not the traditional shape for a door, it proves sufficient to create a field these things can pass through. Assuming the engines are strong enough, you could move them farther and farther away from one another, and make a very
large
triangle… and, thus, let through very large beasts.”

“Carrington said these apparatus were smaller than the ones Oswald planned to use tonight,” Ellie said.

“We have to get to the Exposition,” Pimm said.

“We do,” Freddy said. “I think I saw one of these engines, you know, being set up for the event. I had no idea what it was—something magnetic, I would have guessed, some new technology Oswald had created to show off to his admirers. But Pimm… the device was far larger than this one. I don’t know where the other engines at the Exposition are positioned, what the dimensions of his portal are going to be… but it wouldn’t surprise me if he intends to turn all of Hyde Park into a door for these creatures to pass through.”

An Orderly Departure

“Y
ou threw the spear, eh?” Pimm said, falling into stride with Ellie as they walked out of the warehouse. The Queen, of course, led their procession, with Ben at her right hand—she’d apparently decided to adopt him as bodyguard, to the man’s obvious discomfort. He had his hands full lugging two of the batteries salvaged from the other arcane engines, too. Winnie had plans for them, apparently. She came along behind, seemingly lost in her own thoughts, probably mentally crafting devices of electric mayhem. “Well done,” Pimm said. “I suspected you had marvelously dangerous qualities from the first moment I met you.”

Ellie thought, not for the first time, how unfair it was that one could not suppress a blush. “Winnie insisted her aim was horrible, so I agreed to give it a try. It was no great challenge—the creature was as broad as a barn, and it had blundered close enough to the light for me to see its shape looming there.”

“I shall resist the urge to call you Queequeg,” he said.

Winnie laughed behind them. “You certainly know how to flatter a girl, Pimm!”

But Ellie brightened at the remark. “You’ve read Mr. Melville’s
The Whale
, then?”

Pimm coughed. “Well. Freddy brought it home, really. She has a passion for novels. I read
parts
. And only from the first volume. I confess the portions devoted to the particulars of sailing were only slightly less tedious for me than those passages devoted to theological musings.”

Ellie nodded. “I commented on the author’s longwindedness on the former subject in the review I penned for the
Argus
, but nevertheless, it is a worthy volume, with much of value regarding the subject of unhealthy fixations. You should never resist the opportunity to learn something new, I think. Pray give the story another look. We could discuss the text.”

“Just tell me if the mad captain ever caught his great fish?”

“I will not satisfy your curiosity. You’ll simply have to read it yourself.”

They emerged into the fading day, all squinting against the fog-dimmed sun. “Finding a cab in this neighborhood will be difficult,” Pimm said.

“Carrington brought us in a carriage,” Winnie said. “That horrible Crippen took the horses away somewhere. Oswald came separately—perhaps the carriage that carried us is still here?”

“I know where they keep the horses and such,” Ben said. “Around back here.”

They tramped around the perimeter of the warehouse, until they found a disreputable set of stalls, and the poor horses, still hitched up to the carriage. Ben looked around and pronounced the area deserted. “Will this conveyance suit Your Majesty?” Pimm said. “I’m afraid we will all have to ride together.”

“It will have to do,” the Queen said, and sniffed.

Pimm opened the door of the carriage, then backed suddenly away. “Ben,” he whispered, and Ellie stepped forward to peer into the coach.

“Crippler” Crippen was seated inside, leaning against one wall of the coach, quite asleep, a thread of drool running down his chin.

“Ah,” Ben said. “Allow me.” He put down the batteries, reached into the carriage, grabbed the ex-fighter by the ankles, and jerked him out of the carriage in a single motion. The back of Crippen’s head banged the seat, then the carriage floor, then the step, then the ground. Crippen squawked and waved his arms, until Pimm cocked his pistol and pointed it down at the man.

“Aw, Ben,” Crippen said, rubbing his head and looking up at the giant holding his ankles. “What’s all this then?”

“I’ve gone over to the other side, Crip,” Ben said. “I’ll have to tie you up, I’m afraid. Will you give us any trouble?”

Crippen sighed. “Even on my best day I never faced more than
one
man at a time in the ring, and never a fellow with a pistol.” He looked hopefully at Pimm. “Am I to understand you’re hiring help, sir? Sir Bertram pays me quite handsome, but I’m open to other offers—”

“I am afraid I have no positions in need of filling just now,” Pimm said. “We’ll just bind you and prop you in the stable, all right?”

“Just promise to send someone ’round to get me later, Ben,” Crippen said. “It’s been terrible cold nights, lately.”

Ben glanced at Pimm, who nodded. “Consider it done,” Ben said, and commenced to bind his old associate with a length of coarse rope he found dangling over the side of one stall.

Ellie drew Pimm aside. “That man attacked me with a knife. I understand we hope to avoid further violence, but to simply set him free—”

Pimm blinked. “Ah, no. I will indeed send someone to get him—but that someone will be a policeman. Probably best if we don’t mention that to
him
, though.”

Ellie laughed, relieved. “I should never have doubted you.”

“Oh, no. It’s always wise to doubt me. There’s no better way to avoid disappointment.”

***

Ellie had never expected to ride in a carriage with a Queen, and the experience was not what she might have imagined. The Queen was a querulous, portly man, after all, though undeniably regal. Winnie and Ellie sat across from Her Majesty, while Pimm sat up top with Ben, who was driving the horses across the city toward Pimm’s home. The opening ceremony at the Exposition was due to start in Hyde Park near sundown—some of the effects were meant to be more spectacular in the dark, or so the handbills promoting the event had promised.

Ellie worried they wouldn’t make it there before Oswald set his plan in action, but Winnie insisted they stop by her home first—“Unless you’d like to fight Oswald’s monsters with a walking stick and a pistol?” When they arrived, Winnie opened the carriage door herself—the Queen tutted—and climbed out, where Pimm was already waiting with the batteries. “This will take me a bit of time to prepare,” Winnie said. “You should go on to the park without me. Look for the devices, the ones made of brass and crystal, and smash them up. Destroying even one of them should be enough to prevent Oswald from opening his portal. With luck, you can stop the monsters from coming through at all. And if not… I’ll be along with weapons.”

“More harpoons?” Ellie said.

“Oh, I think I can do better than that. Remember the horrible engine we saw being assembled? Look for me in its vicinity. I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

“Perhaps Your Majesty would consent to stay at my home?” Pimm said, leaning into the coach. “There is no reason for you to go rushing into danger—”

“We are meant to
be
at this exhibition,” the Queen said, chins quivering with suppressed fury. “We intend to be in attendance, and to denounce whatever imposter presumes to take our
place
.”

Pimm closed his eyes briefly, which Ellie had already learned was a sign that he was attempting to calm himself down. He opened his eyes, smiled, and nodded. “Of course, Your Majesty. Your presence would be an honor.”