Doctor Who_ Peacemaker - James Swallow [44]
Walking Crow’s words echoed in his mind, and Godlove spat against the rocks in anger, turning his frustration outward. What did that idiot redskin know? The device was a miracle, capable of bringing back men from the verge of death itself. A wild grin crossed his lips.
‘I have the Almighty’s power in my hand right here!’ Alvin Godlove shouted, and his words echoed away down the tunnels.
And just as the cure-all could bring life, he knew that it could show the other face of the same coin. There had been a few times, when he was alone and Walking Crow was not there to see it, when Godlove had let the device run free. At first he used it to shoot at trees or rocks, but that didn’t seem like enough. Then he used it on deer, on a horse; and there had been moments when he felt the cure-all pressing him to kill a man. He could feel it whispering in the corners of his skull, 108
stiffening his muscles and trying to turn his will against him.
It was only the greed, the constant promise of fortune and glory in the next town and the next that kept him sane. The stern preacher father who had whipped Godlove every night ‘to keep him humble’
had told the young Alvin that his sin of greed would be the ending of him – but in fact it was all that kept him alive.
At night there were the dreams, growing stronger, raging through him. The sights and sounds and smells of blood and death, fire and war. He felt as if his mind were coming apart, each day a battle to keep control. At first, the distractions of whiskey and women had helped, but the diversions worked less and less every day.
Now, spent and afraid, hiding here in the dimness, there was nothing he could do but listen to the whispering pressure in his mind, the spider-crawling compulsion inside his skull.
The thing is a curse. We should kill it. Walking Crow’s voice cut through his thoughts like a razor.
‘Perhaps he’s right,’ gasped Godlove, allowing himself to admit it for the first time. ‘Maybe. . . maybe I have reached the limit of my association with this object.’ But still his fingers would not unclench, and as he watched, the gun shifted and pulsed. The frame opened along its length and metallic cords ringed with bone exploded outward, flicking like the tongues of snakes.
Godlove did not have time to scream. The cables looped through the air and buried themselves in the meat of his wrist, boring through flesh and bone. He felt them forcing their way along arteries and veins, to his shoulder, out into his chest cavity, down into his stomach, up into his gullet. The only sound he made was a gasping rattle that gradually shifted in pitch and tone until it became a buzzing rush, like flies in a tin cup.
After a while, his mouth moved, tongue and lips flapping, air hissing in breathy gasps as something inside him flexed Godlove’s body as a man might shrug into a new jacket. The fact that he was still, to some small degree, alive inside the prison of his own skin made what happened next all the more horrible.
‘Con. Con. Control is taken.’ The words were chaotic and jumbled, 109
coming from a mind that was not used to communicating in such a crude fashion. ‘No. More orders from you. I. I am. I am in command now.’
Trapped within the walls of his own mind, Alvin Godlove started to scream.
Out of the corner of his eye, the Doctor caught sight of Martha and Walking Crow speaking quietly, but he was careful not to draw attention to the fact. Martha was savvy. If she learned anything, she’d find a way to let him know.
He rested his hand on the lip of his holster. ‘I know what you are and I know what you want here,’ he told the longriders. ‘I’m sure you thought you could do as you please, shooting up the place and terrorising natives whose only means of defence are crude chemical-ballistic firearms. . . But I’m here now. And any tactical advantage you thought you had is lost.’
‘Evaluation incorrect,’ drawled Tangleleg. ‘A single Time Lord, unarmed, ill-equipped. No threat.’
The Doctor returned a cold smile. ‘You go right on thinking that, then. That’s the problem