The cannon exploded magnificently in a hail of sparks and a great burst of white smoke. The men rose immediately and ran forward; the caisson had crumbled, and the little cannon pitched cockeyed to the floor, half- cracked, but it had bravely held the charge and effectively delivered its freight. The double doors hung off their hinges, splintered to matchsticks and not a moment too soon; they could hear that blighted, festering gurgle as the creatures on their tail closed in.
'Let's get the hell out of here,' said Sparks.
They ran to the doors, kicked the vestigial wreckage out of their way, and climbed over the chains that had secured its other side, where a flight of stairs led up and away to freedom.
'Go on ahead,' said Sparks, stopping on a landing at the foot of the stairs to tear another strip from his shirt.
'Whatever are you doing, Jack?'
'I don't particularly fancy this bunch chasing us down the streets of Bloomsbury, do you?'
Shadowy black shapes moved toward them through the dispersing clouds of smoke.
'Go on, I'll catch up to you,' said Sparks, uncorking a second vial of explosive and pouring it out onto the floor.
'He says go, we should go, guv,' said Larry, tugging on Doyle's sleeve.
The first shapes were nearly at the doors.
'My revolver, please, Jack,' said Doyle, standing his ground.
Sparks looked at Doyle as if he'd gone insane, then pulled the gun from his belt and tossed it to him. Doyle calmly aimed and emptied all six chambers at the advancing figures, eliciting some memorably inhuman howls and knocking the leaders of the pack a few feet back from the opening, allowing Sparks just enough time to finish pouring the nitro and lay out the long shirt strip from the puddle back toward the stairs.
'Run!' shouted Sparks.
Larry yanked Doyle up the steps as Sparks lit the fabric with the torch and sprinted after them. As they made the turn at the landing, Doyle looked back and caught a glimpse of the lead creature as it lurched into view at the foot of the stairs: tall and impossibly wasted, gaunt, spidery limbs waving spasmodically, hair and teeth in a decayed face held together by rotted linen, pinprick red eyes lit with venomous intensity. That's what Doyle thought he saw in the split second before the entire basement disappeared with a disequilibrating boom: The explosion obliterated sight and sound. Walls crumbled, smoke shot everywhere, obscuring everything. The stairs beneath their feet undulated like piano keys.
Pushed by the momentum of the blast, the three men threw themselves through the nearest, door. Their torch extinguished by the rush of air, they lay in darkness on the cool marble floor, stunned, ears ringing, trying to recapture their wind; it was as if they'd been struck massive blows to the head and solar plexus. Time passed. They stirred, tentatively at first, a low moan escaping from each, but with the tintinnabulary ringing in their ears, they were unable to hear themselves.
'All in one piece?' asked Sparks finally.
He had to ask twice more before the question registered. They blinked repeatedly and looked at each other like amnesiacs, testing their extremities, amazed to find them still in working order. Although nothing felt broken, Doyle couldn't find a part of his body that didn't feel pummeled. The monster came rushing back into the eye of his mind as if he were adjusting a refocusable lens. He realized he still gripped the purloined sword: His fingers felt as if they'd grown into the handle; he had to use his free hand to pry them off. The men slowly helped each other to their feet, and it was just as well they couldn't clearly hear the painful groans the effort cost them.
Doyle looked back warily at the double doors. 'Think that's done for them, then?'
'Bloody well better,' said Larry, trying to coax a kink out of his back. 'I couldn't fend off an evil baby armed with a rattle 'bout now.'
'That was the last of the nitro, anyway,' said Sparks.
'Is that what you were doing at your flat, Jack, cooking ni-troglycerin?'
Sparks nodded.
'I'm glad I'm not your neighbor.'
'That last lot was a bit too vigorous on the volatile side, I'm afraid.'
'If it put paid to those bleedin' rag-heads, you'll hear no complaint from me,' said Larry.
They felt around in the darkness until they found their torch. With some small trouble facilitating the use of his fingers, Larry dug out a match and struck it on the floor. The torch flared and revealed their location; an empty marble antechamber, more reminiscent of the museum's public rooms than the strange place from which they'd come. Behind them hazy motes of smoke issued from under the still-swinging doors.
'Let's find a proper exit,' said Sparks.
They turned and were about to take their tottering leave when the doors behind them swung open. They wheeled stiffly, steeling themselves for combat. But what crawled through the door to confront them was not an angry host of the undead, or even a single intact opponent; dragging the crushed head and half a torso of one of the creatures doggedly forward was a single, clutching, mutilated arm. A line of ashen sludge trailed behind the seeping wreckage. The face worked its loose and shattered jaw, as if trying to summon some thousand-year-old curse. The thing in its surviving form was more loathsome than formidable, but the eyes were still powered by the same malevolent fire. 'Jesus,' said Doyle, backing away. 'Persistent bastards, ain't they?' said Larry. Sparks took Doyle's saber, strode forward, and with one decisive stroke beheaded the ruined monstrosity. The creature
froze; the light faded from its eyes, arm and torso collapsed as the head rolled harmlessly away. Larry ran forward and booted the head through the open door like a football.
'He scores!' shouted Larry. 'Wickam over Leicester, one to zed in extra time! Wickam takes the Cup!'
Doyle knelt down to inspect the wreckage; what little had been left behind was already sifting into a quintessence of dust. Nothing about the decrepit leavings suggested any life force had animated those dry and dusty cells in the millennia since their original tenant had slipped its mortal coil.
'What do you see, Doyle?' asked Sparks, kneeling beside him.
'The remains are completely inert. Whatever energy or spirit that directed this thing is gone.'
'What sort of energy?'
Doyle shook his head. 'I'm sure I don't know. Something alive but not living. Puts me in mind of the gray hoods.'
'Energy isolated from spirit. A form of will without mind.'
'Black magic then, is it?' asked an oddly chipper Larry.
'Words we could put to it, I suppose,' said Doyle. 'For categorization, if not understanding.'
'No disrespect, guv, but wot you want to understand an unholy creepin' terror like that lot for? Be glad we got the better of it and move on, that's how I look at it.'
'We should move on in any case,' said Sparks, rising. 'The explosion should have awakened the soundest sleeping guard in the empire.'
With Sparks leading the way, they left the antechamber by way of a corridor that held the greatest promise of an exit.
'Wouldn't want to be the watchman happens across this mess on my go-rounds,' said Larry. 'Put me right off my kip.'
'I could do for that scotch about now, Larry,' said Doyle.
'Pleasure, sir. Get ourselves home first. Never had to break out of a museum before,' said Larry, begging the question of how many times he'd been required to break into one.
'I'm quite sure you're up to the task,' said Doyle.
Larry was indeed up to the task. One judiciously bro-ken window later, they were back on the street and quickly across it to the safety of Sparks's apartment, where they administered themselves a full measure of vintage single-malt from a beaker on Sparks's bench and settled in for what little remained of the night. Doyle assessed their injuries and pronounced them relatively intact, if not a great deal the worse for wear, and fit to travel, which Sparks stated as their task for the following day. Without even the energy left to inquire as to where tomorrow might carry them, Doyle fell swiftly into a thick and leaden sleep.
The next evening's newspapers would be dominated by rip-snorting accounts of an audacious criminal attempt to grave-rob the British Museum's priceless Egyptian reserves. In their eagerness to gain access to the
