Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [133]
No, that couldn’t be right. Why not? His mind was a fog.
She stepped in front of him, waving her arms to attract the vehicle’s attention. It swung towards her and she immediately darted away from Christopher, leading the monster away from him.
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He called after her but she didn’t reply. His vision started to blur and darken, he fought the blackness, willing himself to focus: he didn’t want to die while he could still see her.
For a moment she stood on the low wall of the roof, silhouetted against the dark orange of the night sky, facing the vehicle which was hurtling, hungrily towards her. It made a jump for her and then, for a moment, all Chris could see was the outline of the London taxi cab suspended in the air against the skyline of the city. And then it dropped out of the sky, plummeting towards the ground below.
The silver spear crashed into the glass sphere, and it shattered, spraying shards of glass everywhere. The green fire which burnt inside flared when it was exposed to the air in the cavern. It exploded upward, bathing the faceless creature’s head in intense emerald flames. The creature made a guttural wail and its doughy flesh melted, dripping like porridge down on to its scorched tunic.
The Doctor rolled neatly out of his dive and turned to face Moriah. ‘Oh very clever,’ he barked. ‘Very honourable.’
‘I have my queen now, Doctor. What use have I for honour?’
Moriah was distracted by Petruska beginning to move in his embrace. ‘What is it, my love?’ he asked, smoothing her long, dark hair with his hand. She flinched from his caresses, squirming in his embrace. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘I do not believe it. What is happening?’
The Doctor stood, motionless. His blue eyes burning brightly beneath his heavy brow. ‘She’s expressing her true feelings for you, Moriah.’
‘Are you responsible for this, Doctor? Have you instigated this deception?’
Moriah threw his bride down on to the ground. ‘Why?’ he howled. ‘Why can’t I have her back?’
As if in answer, Moriah’s veiled brides began to drift out of the shadows in the cavern to welcome their new sister into their ranks, as they had welcomed all of the Petruskas before her.
‘Because your wife is dead,’ the Doctor said, calmly. ‘Long dead.’
‘Then you will join her.’ Moriah reached out with one of his large hands and grabbed hold of the Doctor by the throat.
The Doctor struggled against the alien grip, never once taking his eyes off Moriah.
Jack tried to intervene, tried to pull one of Moriah’s huge arms away. The Doctor winced when he saw Moriah casually bat Jack away with the back of his free hand.
Moriah lifted the Doctor off the ground. ‘I shall have the pleasure of ending your life before I leave this place, Doctor. And one day I will find my queen.
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If I have to kill a thousand people, I shall have her.’
The Doctor’s eyes bulged as he felt his windpipe begin to collapse. He’d used up all his tricks, all his plans. He didn’t have anything tucked up his sleeve. His aces were all spent, his trump card played and lost, and his friends were either hurt, had deserted him, or were dead.
Sometimes, Roz, the monsters just refuse to fall into their own traps. The thought made him smile somewhere deep inside of himself. He looked into Moriah’s eyes, and only felt pity for the huge man.
The world went dark.
It took Chris twenty minutes to stagger down to street level from the roof.
His head was thick with shock and he had to keep stopping to rest to prevent himself from blacking out.
All that remained of the taxi was a thick black smear which ran across the pavement. Lying within it, coated in a layer of slime was the body of Gordy Scraton, and a blank-faced mannequin dressed in a suit two sizes too big for it.
Chris ignored the dead thug. He knelt in the black jelly by the mannequin that had once been Patsy. Her featureless body was twisted and broken by the fall. He wiped her blank face clean with his hand. He stayed like that until the ambulance came.
Above him, on the wall of the Top Ten