Blood Royal Read online

  THE CRUST WAS coming away more readily now, Nimrod helping those freed by Ulysses’ exertions, clamber free onto the walkway of the gallery. The barely-conscious wretches seemed incapable of doing very much for themselves at all. Some mumbled their thanks, their words slurred as if they had only just woken from some interminable nightmare. Others began to cry. All of them huddled together helplessly, waiting to be told what to do.

  “Nimrod, get these people downstairs,” Ulysses instructed his manservant. “I’ll finish off here.”

  Nimrod herded the helpless, disorientated prisoners of the locusts towards the staircase; taking his position at the front of the line, flame-thrower sweeping the stairwell in front of him.

  Ulysses shot Jack a dark look as another portion of the larder wall gave way with a sticky crack.

  “Still here? Decided what you’re going to do yet?”

  “Wh-What’s going on?” came a half-conscious murmur from behind Ulysses before the vigilante could answer. The dandy turned and looked into the face of an unshaven, rough-looking rogue. The rogue looked at the dandy and the towering figure of Spring-Heeled Jack, his eyes taking time to focus. He screamed as cruel recollection returned and threatened to overwhelm his mind.

  “Monsters!” he howled. “The monsters are coming!”

  “Look, you’re alright,” Ulysses told the man, placing his hands firmly on his shoulders. “We’re going to get you out of here.”

  “You!” the vigilante said suddenly, taking a step towards the wretch. “I know you.”

  The man’s already drawn face suddenly turned even paler and he ceased his wailing.

  “Is he a friend of yours?” Ulysses asked.

  “No,” the vigilante replied. He lent forwards, bringing his face closer so that the man could see the demonic visage of his mask quite clearly. “You were taken at the same time as the girl.”

  “What do you mean he was taken with the girl? Oh, I see,” Ulysses said, as realisation dawned.

  “If it hadn’t been for you and your friends,” Jack snarled, “we wouldn’t be here now, especially not this poor child.”

  “Looks like it’s your lucky day,” Ulysses told the cowering kidnapper. “If Jack here had shared that little snippet of information before I pulled you free, I would have thought twice about saving you. As it is, you made your bed when you kidnapped my friend’s daughter; now you can lie in it. Whether you make it out of here alive or not is up to you. And if you do, I suggest that as soon as you’re clear, you start running – and don’t stop.”

  GUNNING THE TRIGGER of his Smith and Winchester, Nimrod doused the swooping locusts with another jet of burning naphtha. The giant insects made horribly shrill noises as they dropped to the ground, their wings weighed down with burning oil. Yelps of fear and shock came from the huddle of desperate wretches following him. But that last sweep of the flame-thrower had done the trick. It had cleared a way through to the Preacher and his party.

  The bodies of workers crisped and blackened in the intense heat. Eggs blistered and popped.

  Bringing up the end of the line, along with the vigilante and his precious cargo, Ulysses was momentarily taken aback to see the golem-droid standing there, amidst the rising flames, still carrying whatever it was it had brought here from the Old Bailey.

  Ulysses stared into the soot-blackened face of the Preacher.

  “We are ready,” the cleric said, with something like triumph in his voice. He regarded the line of shuffling prisoners, with surprise shaping his features. “It would appear you have been busy doing the Lord’s work too.”

  “Yes, we’re ready to leave,” Ulysses said.

  “Oh no, we’re not leaving.” The Preacher sounded almost surprised that Ulysses should even suggest such a thing. There was an unnerving gleam in his eyes. Despite the flames raging all around him, Ulysses felt suddenly cold. “No, what I mean is that we are ready to bring God’s divine retribution down upon the abominations.”

  “What precisely did you have in mind?” Ulysses asked, sure that he wasn’t going to like the answer.

  Amidst all the chaos, the smoke and the flames, the Preacher strode up to the towering two-ton automaton and put one hand to the tarpaulin.

  “Behold the instrument of God’s divine retribution, his bow of burning gold, his chariot of fire,” the Preacher said and tugged the tarpaulin free.

  Nimrod swore with uncustomary force.

  Jack stared at the object. ”Now that is impressive.”

  The Preacher raised his crucifix and kissed it.

  Ulysses’ face drained of colour. “Oh my God, no.”

  “Is that what I think it is, sir?” Nimrod said, not once taking his eyes from the iron sphere grasped in the golem’s hands.

  “Unless I’m very much mistaken,” Ulysses said, “I rather fear it is.”

  The two men regarded the spiked sphere, that proudly bore the misspelt mantra ‘Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord’ on its tarnished surface in bold strokes of red paint.

  “I know a bomb when I see one, and that’s one hell of a big bomb,” Spring-Heeled Jack said. “But where did it come from?”

  “It’s one of the devices used by the Darwinian Dawn during their attack on the Tower of London on the night of the Queen’s jubilee,” Ulysses said, taking a step back. He felt numb. “If you detonate that in here, the cathedral will be filled with Professor Galapagos’s gas and that which isn’t destroyed by the subsequent inferno will be reduced to a state of protoplasmic slime.”

  “I know,” the Preacher smiled.

  No wonder he had been so happy for his Children of the Catastrophe to attack the nest directly, and thereby create a distraction so that Ulysses and the others might search for the girl.

  This had never been about getting in and out again as quickly as possible, or alive for that matter. As far as the Preacher and his converts were concerned, this was a one-way suicide mission. They were martyrs to their twisted cause.

  “We have to get out of here,” Jack hissed, the unconscious girl still slung over his shoulder.

  “You have never been more right.” Ulysses regarded the anxious faces of the freed prisoners before him. “Back to the crypt, and quickly!”

  AS ULYSSES, NIMROD and Spring-Heeled Jack made their way back to the underground vault by which they had first entered the cathedral – their rag-tag band of survivors in tow – they thankfully ran into no resistance from the hive’s guardian whatsoever. Above them, the fire was spreading; setting light to banners and extravagantly ornamented woodwork alike with sacrilegious efficacy.

  However, on reaching the crypt it was another matter entirely. Nimrod had barely descended the steps before a pair of soldiers – their chitin armour tougher, their mandibles larger – caught up with them.

  Ulysses only just turned in time. He met the rearing charge of one with the grappling-gun held out before him. As the unnatural creature snapped at him, with jaws perfectly capable of removing his head with one bite, Ulysses clubbed the soldier around the head with the stock of the device. It reeled, recovered, and then leapt forward once more, determined to bring the dandy down this time. But before it could reach him, steel claws flashed before his face, and the locust’s head dropped onto the despoiled stone flags of the cathedral floor. Its body followed a moment later, twitching spastically, ichor dribbling from the stump of its neck.

  “Take her,” Spring-Heeled Jack said, as he swung the catatonic child from his shoulder and passed her into Nimrod’s outstretched arms and then turned to face the second soldier.

  The monster’s mandibles snapped shut mere inches from his face, as Ulysses, using the grapple-gun like a cudgel now, brought the metal barrel of the thing down on the beast’s abdomen. The dandy’s quick-thinking gave Jack all the time he needed to counter the locust’s attack.

  He kicked at the soldier’s head but the action didn’t lay the creature out. Instead it seemed to provoke the locust. Hissing like a cockroach, the over-sized insec
t reared up on its hindquarters, the shearing claws of its forelimbs raised, and then dropped again, putting all its not inconsiderable weight behind the attack.

  Jack slashed sideways with his left hand, his talons meeting the serrated edge of the monster’s own mutated locust-form and snagging into the steel-hard chitin. At the same time, he brought his right-hand up, his fingers bunching into a fist, and punched the razor-sharp tips of his other set of claws into the beast’s thorax.

  Internal juices spurted from the ruptured body cavity and Jack twisted his hand round, pulling his ichor-drenched fist free as the warrior fell backwards, its body jerking in a macabre dance of death.

  “Look out!” Ulysses yelled, suddenly barrelling into the vigilante and sending him flying into the splintered remains of a partially masticated pew.

  With a clattering crash, a pile of timbers and an assortment of organ pipes hit the stone-flagged floor in a welter of flames and an explosion of sparks.

  Picking himself up off the floor, Ulysses looked at the entrance to the crypt, now blocked by half a ton of burning wreckage and twisted metal. He could hear muffled screams over the hungry roar of the spreading flames.

  “Nimrod?” he called. “Are you alright?”

  “Yes, sir,” came his valet’s reply, from the other side of the crypt entrance. “No injuries sustained here. How are you?”

  “Chipper old boy, most definitely chipper. You go on ahead and we’ll catch you up as soon as.” Ulysses turned to the vigilante. “Where’s that droid of yours when we need it, eh? Should get this cleared in a jiffy, shouldn’t it.”

  “No can do, I’m afraid,” Jack said, already tapping at the control panel on his wrist.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s offline.”

  “What?” Ulysses raged.

  “The Preacher must have turned it off after it got here.”

  “What? How did he manage that?”

  “I guess somebody else around here knows almost as much about automatons as I do.”

  “Well can you shift that little lot?” Ulysses asked, taking in the burning wreckage blocking the crypt steps.

  “No. Can you?”

  “So what you’re saying is that we’re trapped.”

  “That’s how it looks to me.” The vigilante regarded him with the pitiless stare of his red-lensed goggles. “So where do we go from here?”

  “I have no idea,” Ulysses admitted, “but we have to get as far from the blast radius of that bomb as possible.”

  “I have an idea,” Jack suddenly announced. “Follow me.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Exodus

  SPRINTING UP THE stairs as fast as their suits would allow, Spring-Heeled Jack and Ulysses Quicksilver returned to the Whispering Gallery.

  They burst through the doorway – Ulysses remembering that on the other side of the gallery lay the door that led to the roof – only to be confronted by the sight of the kidnapper, cowering on the curving walkway, as if paralysed by fear, as another burst of hot incendiary light lit up the vaulted space below.

  “You still here?” Ulysses asked, surprised.

  “You left me here!” he screamed.

  “No, we left you with a choice. You chose not to come with us,” Ulysses pointed out as he and the vigilante advanced towards the man.

  “It was nothing more than you deserved,” Spring-Heeled Jack added.

  Below them the queen continued to squirm in fear as her subjects tried to gnaw her free of her cradle.

  Spring-Heeled Jack simply stepped over the wretch. But as Ulysses passed the kidnapper, the man shot out a hand and grasped hold of his ankle.

  “Help me, I beg of you. Please, take me with you!”

  “That all depends,” Ulysses told the man as he pulled his leg free.

  “On what?”

  “Do you think you can keep up?”

  FIRE SPURTED FROM the nozzle of the flame-thrower, bathing the advancing insects in the light of God’s vengeance. The Preacher turned and worked the trigger again, hosing another giant locust with holy flame.

  All around him his Children of the Catastrophe – their pitiful lives given new purpose now that they faced a martyr’s death – took the fight to the enemy, each playing his or her part to rid God’s house of Beelzebub’s spawn.

  But their success was already a foregone conclusion; the device had been primed and the countdown to Doomsday had begun. They were only marking time until God passed judgement on those damned souls who had been brought low by the apocalyptic deluge.

  Behind them, the droid stood motionless, the timer attached to the iron sphere ticking itself towards destruction.

  Thirty seconds remaining.

  “‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’”

  Another insect fell shrieking, the tongues of fire, like the Holy Spirit coming upon the twelve apostles at Pentecost, reflecting from the automaton’s glazed terracotta armour, making the droid look like God’s own avenging angel.

  Twenty seconds.

  “‘And the earth was without form, and void.’”

  And then the fuel supply failed. His purging of the unclean had drained it completely. Shaking off the flame-thrower’s shoulder straps he prepared to meet the oncoming enemy with his bare hands.

  Ten.

  “‘And darkness was upon the face of the waters.’”

  In a blur of buzzing wings a locust swept down from its perch within the vault of the cathedral roof. It hit the Preacher head on, with such force that it sent him flying backwards towards the droid. But before his body could hit the ground the insect snatched him from the air, holding him close with its claws.

  Five.

  “‘And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters!’”

  Four.

  The locust climbed higher, through the smoky miasma pervading the cathedral vault.

  Three.

  Spittle flying from his lips the Preacher bellowed his frustrated rage to the starry-painted heavens. “‘And the Lord said–’”

  Two.

  “‘Let there be light!’”

  One.

  A SWELLING BALL of crimson flame spread throughout the church with a whirlwind roar. Stained glass windows blew out in myriad explosions of sparkling diamond shards. Hundreds of the giant insects died instantly, crumbling to ash before the apocalyptic onslaught. Thousands upon thousands of eggs and grotesque larvae roasted.

  And after the fire came the gas, the flames carrying it higher and higher. Those among the hive not caught by the initial explosion succumbed to the toxic cloud, shrivelling and dissolving as each regressed still further down the evolutionary scale, until all that was left of them was a runny brown protoplasmic soup that fell onto the furious flames to boil away to nothing.

  SPRING-HEELED JACK AND Ulysses, with the crippled kidnapper in tow, stumbled as the shockwave of the explosion shook the beleaguered structure of St Paul’s.

  They threw themselves through the door that led to the roof stairs, the desperate wretch staggering after them, tripping over the threshold.

  After the brilliant intensity of the firestorm consuming the cathedral, it seemed unnaturally dark on the other side of the door.

  With barely a moment’s hesitation, the three fellow escapees set off up the rickety wooden stairs they found beyond.

  Every step they took – every twisting, turning flight of the stair, every landing they achieved – brought them closer to the roof of the cathedral and a way out of the hive.

  At last they threw open another door and emerged into the cool of the evening.

  The ruins of St Paul’s lay spread out beneath them, the dusky purple shadows of twilight giving way to the growing intensity of the flames consuming the building as the sun set behind the ever present pall of the Smog.

  Ulysses slammed the roof door shut behind them, and then looked for something he could use to keep it that way.

  Spring-Heeled Jack regarded t
he terrified kidnapper but didn’t say a word.

  The clattering rattle of an Overground train passing by only a few yards away abruptly reminded Ulysses of precisely where they were. The layout of this stretch of the Northern Line, that passed within only a few yards of the dome of St Paul’s, was one of the worst architectural atrocities committed against the city. An appalling example of how the pace of progress could completely fail to consider the impact such an eyesore would have on one of London’s most cherished landmarks.

  Ulysses could feel the parapet shaking as the train passed by; the encroaching night illuminated by the windows beneath them, alive as they were with a flickering glow.

  With a crash of a shattering brick and a rending scream of tearing metal the dome came apart behind them.

  Trailing tiles, bricks and splintered spars of wood, the locust queen hauled herself from the ruins of the roof and into the fading twilight.

  Ulysses and Jack made a dash for the far side of the parapet but the kidnapper was still turning to what it was that had burst through the dome as the monstrous monarch swept him up in her gigantic mantis-like claws. Raising his struggling body to her clicking mandibles, she pushed his head into her mouth and removed it with one clean bite.

  Casting the dead man’s twitching carcass aside, the mother of the hive stalked towards them.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Female of the Species

  ULYSSES’ MIND WAS awhirl. What did the Queen want? Was there a human intelligence at work within that mantis head of hers? Did insects harbour feelings of anger and revenge?

  Her monstrous majesty put her head on one side and regarded the dandy with the faceted spheres of her huge compound eyes.

  Ulysses took another step backwards and felt the parapet of the windswept stone balcony at his back. The wail of the curfew sirens rose in the distance, accompanied by the clanging of church bells, warning the wary to get indoors before the locusts went hunting.