aim it at the breast of John Ruthven as he emerged into the basement.
Ruthven stared at him, mouth open and eyes wide with surprise.
“I’ve come to kill you,” Quire said. “Or bring you away with me to give full confession of your crimes.”
Ruthven held a long rapier of a blade in one hand, a flickering oil lamp in the other. He stared back at Quire dumbly.
“My inclination is to kill you,” Quire said honestly, “but I might find a reason not to. I’ll surely do it, though, if you don’t put that wee knife down.”
Ruthven looked down at the blade, hefted it in his hand.
“You don’t think much of my cane-sword, then, Mr. Quire? I paid a hefty price for it, long ago. Never had cause to use the thing.”
He dropped it, and it rang upon the hard floor.
“Is Blegg here?” Quire asked. “Anyone else?”
Ruthven shook his head.
“I don’t know where Mr. Blegg is. I’m rather glad to find you don’t either, mind you.”
“What’s his real name? The name of whatever it is walking around in his skin.”
“Ha. You have come a long way in your understanding, Mr. Quire, but even I cannot tell you that. He is what he is, and it has no name that I know of. A force of Nature, or of Hell, or of the human soul. I don’t know. He exists, that is all; perhaps he was always done so, wearing one form or another.”
“Weir’s amongst them.”
“Very good. Yes, Major Weir’s amongst them. Until they burned him out.”
“Come away from the stairs,” Quire said, giving the muzzle of his pistol a twitch.
Ruthven complied, but there was nothing meek in his manner. He seemed to Quire undismayed by being under the gun’s shadow.
“I want to see what’s behind this door back here,” Quire said.
“Do you?” said Ruthven with raised, almost mocking, eyebrows. “The key’s on a hook beside you.”
Quire dared a glance, and sure enough a heavy iron key hung on a rusty hook in the wall within his reach, revealed now by the light of Ruthven’s lamp.
“Open it for me,” Quire said.
“I am thinking of leaving Edinburgh, you know,” Ruthven said as he pushed the key into the lock. “Perhaps travel for a while, and put all this behind me.”
He twisted the key, seeming to struggle, as if the mechanism was stubbornly resisting him.
“Would that not suffice to rid me of you, Mr. Quire? I would dearly like to be rid of you.”
“And I you,” Quire grunted, “but no, it won’t suffice. Not for what happened to Wilson Dunbar. Not for all that you’ve done.”
“Ah, well,” sighed Ruthven, and the key turned in his hand and he pushed the door open.
He stepped back, holding the lamp up high, and extended his arm to invite Quire in.
“After you,” Quire said.
Ruthven did as he was told, and Quire followed him into the room. He had only a moment to take in the extraordinary display that greeted him. Shelves of stoppered jars and vases; a table laden with curving, bulbed glass vials with tubes extending from them like a beetle’s legs, and with bowls and tumblers and burners; another shelf holding a row of skulls. Boxes everywhere. Two huge barrels, covered over with a sheet. On a narrow bench against the wall, three tall stacks of metal discs laid one atop the other, with burnished copper rods attached to them.
All of that was glimpsed in the barest instant, for the only thing Quire truly saw was the tall man standing naked in the corner, his skin puckered and loose, his big hands entirely covered in illegible inscriptions, a horizontal slit in his chest as if a knife had been put in there. And dead eyes, falling upon Quire as the loathsome figure turned to look at him.
“Tell it to stand still,” Quire shouted.
He kept the pistol on Ruthven, though he yearned to turn it upon this naked monstrosity.
“Tell it to stand still,” he shouted again.
“Be still,” Ruthven said, and for the first time, Quire caught the quaver of nervousness in his voice.
The dead man took a step forward, lifting its long arms. Making fists of its hands, great cudgels of skin and bone and slack flesh.
“Be still,” Ruthven said more urgently, edging closer to Quire.
The naked figure rushed suddenly forwards. Quire snapped the pistol round and fired into its chest. The shot was deafening, shaking the air of that confined space. Quire’s target was so close that the pistol sprayed hot powder across the pallid skin, and he saw the black, burned hole the ball made in it. The monster staggered slightly sideways, but did not fall, and made of its imbalance a smooth, reaching movement. It seized the rim of one of those barrels with both hands and swung it up and around. It shattered one of the shelves as it came, scattering a thousand broken pieces of jar, and a multicoloured mist and rain of their contents.
Ruthven struggled to get past Quire to the doorway, trying to barge him aside. Quire fell backwards, out into the passage, Ruthven on top of him. The barrel came down and broke against the frame of the door, erupting into its constituent parts and releasing a great gush of stinking liquid and the corpse it contained.
Ruthven flailed atop Quire. The lamp went from his hand and burst against the wall of the passage, its oil taking light and burning over the bricks.
Quire cried out and threw Ruthven off him. The naked man was flinging aside the sundered staves of the barrel, dragging at the corpse that had fallen from it, all to clear a path out and into the passageway.
Ruthven rolled and ran for the stairs. Quire went after him, a stride or two behind, his useless pistol still clutched in his right hand. The dancing light of the burning oil picked out the blade of Ruthven’s discarded cane- sword, lying on the ground at the foot of the stairs. Quire snatched it up, and paused, just for a moment, to look back. The creature came out into the passageway, stepping over the outstretched leg of the corpse. As it did so, the vile slick of fluid that had vomited out of the barrel reached the patch of flame-crowned oil.
Quire threw his arm across his face as blinding light and a great fiery howl burst forth. A shooting sheet of flame raced back into the room, flooded around the naked man. Who ignored it entirely and ran at Quire.
Quire sprinted up the stairs into the hallway. He could hear Ruthven pounding up the main stairs.
“Ruthven,” he shouted, but his voice was all but drowned out by a booming explosion down in the cellar that shook the floor and almost made him lose his footing. A blast of hot air and flaming embers blew out of the mouth of the stairwell, and he backed away.
The hulking form of his pursuer came reeling out into the hall, patches of thick, burning ooze adhering to its back. It crashed into the opposite wall. It was between Quire and the kitchens. He might have been able to reach the massive front door of the house, but if it was locked, or if he was slow in getting it open, he would be pinned there. He followed Ruthven, up into the heights.
To the very top of the stairs, beneath the glass ceiling of the skylight and the starry sky beyond it. Ruthven threw himself at Quire, rushing from a room off to one side, pinning his sword arm against him, scrabbling for a hold around his neck. Trying, Quire realised at once, to throw or tumble him back down the steps into the path of the creature he could hear thundering up behind him.
It was a desperate last hope on Ruthven’s part, for strong as he was, he was no match to Quire’s solid bulk and breadth. Quire cracked his pistol against the side of Ruthven’s head, opening up a messy gash across his temple. He raked a heel down the man’s shin and as he wailed, Quire shrugged, lifted and turned him about. He hit him again in the head, and Ruthven’s hands came loose. Quire threw him off, and back into the arms of the naked brute that came rushing up to catch him.
Quire backed up, sword at the ready, thinking for a moment that he would now face the two of them, and no doubt die. But the dead man was not saving Ruthven. It seized him by his upper arms, and held him up high as it advanced, and shook him. Terribly, like a furious child punishing a rag doll. Ruthven’s head flailed about. He screamed. He was swung against the wall, once, twice.
The naked monster, its back still afire here and there, the stink of its skin and flesh burning filling the air, looked at Quire and advanced on him. It still held Ruthven with one hand, holding him up as easily as if he were weightless. Ruthven hung limp and unmoving in that grip, his feet dragging over the floorboards. But his eyes were open, and alive, and Quire saw the horror and terror in them.
