Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane [124]
He took a step towards me, his spiked tail swinging in readiness. In the midst of the spikes that constituted his face I could just make out two human eyes that gazed at me in bloodshot hatred.
Holmes walked past me. He was holding a length of iron pipe that had fallen from the ceiling.
'No,' he said simply. 'Watson is my friend.'
He lashed out with the pipe, catching Sherringford across his chestplate.
Pale pink fluid splashed out of a crack in the living armour. Sherringford staggered backwards and flailed at Holmes with his tail, but Holmes stepped out of the way and snapped Sherringford's wing with a short jab.
Sherringford fell sideways as the wing crumpled. He lowered his head for a long moment, then looked back up at his brother. There were tears in his eyes.
'The horror. . .' he said quietly. 'The horror!'
Holmes brought the pipe crashing down on the back of his brother's head, splitting it open and bending the pipe. A shower of sparks drifted down from the ceiling and lodged in the folds of his wings. Tiny flames began to flicker.
His other wing buckled beneath his weight, sending him sprawling.
I turned to Holmes. His gaze met mine.
'I had to,' he said.
I nodded.
'I know.'
Something exploded on one of the upper floors. Flames and drips of molten metal issued through the cracks in the ballroom ceiling. We left in a hurry, running through rubble-strewn corridors until we found ourselves in the deserted foyer of the hotel. Its fine antique trappings were wrecked.
We emerged, coughing and choking, into bright sunlight and ran across the road to a barricade where the Doctor, Ace and Bernice were waiting anxiously for us. Behind them, uniformed men watched the destruction.
They were pale and haggard, as if they had walked through the valley of the shadow. I glanced back at the hotel. Every window was a glimpse of hell. Nothing could survive that conflagration. Nothing.
The last thing I saw before I turned away was a tongue of flame licking up the flagpole on the hotel roof and setting fire to the Stars and Stripes.
Chapter 19
In which our heroes have breakfast in the ruins, and the Doctor makes a surprising offer.
There was, as is usual in Holmes's cases, no distinct finale, no crescendo and clash of cymbals to mark the end of the case. Rather, there was a long, slow diminuendo, a trailing off into silence. Even now, four years later, the case of the All-Consuming Fire still haunts us both, and yet it is that moment, as we wandered amid the ruins of San Francisco, that marks an end, of sorts.
We walked for a little while, the four of us. We were not heading for anywhere in particular. We just needed to get away from the scene of Azathoth's destruction.
The city was devastated. Cracks crossed streets and houses without any distinction. Many areas were in flames, or had been afire but were now charred and smoking. Whole streets had been blown up as makeshift fire-breaks, scattering bricks, twisted metal, items of crockery and personal items to the winds. One of those houses had been mine. In it I had wooed and won my wife. Now she was dead, and a part of me wished that I was too. I was tired. I was so tired.
We saw things as we walked that I cannot explain. At one point we turned a corner to find a group of Chinese men attacking a maddened bull with machetes. I wanted to intervene, but Bernice held me back. Later we had to hide from a group of soldiers who were firing indiscriminately at looters.
Later we found a quiet square on the edge of the city and sat there for a while, saying nothing and trying hard not to think. As we did so, a man started to sing in the sweetest, purest voice I have ever heard. His clothes were torn and covered in dust, but he did not seem to care, and neither did his listeners. Hearing him, I felt a small bud of hope flower from the ashes within me. Life went on. Life went on.
'Enrico Caruso,' the Doctor said eventually,