Doctor Who_ The Sleep of Reason - Martin Day [105]
Fitz crumpled to the floor, his face and hands splashing red.
194
James turned back to Liz, still held in his vicelike grip. Liz caught sight of something moving beneath his skin, a concentration of darkness and shadow at what looked like a ragged animal bite just below his throat.
James straightened his shirt as if to hide the bite. ‘Who first?’ he asked again.
‘First for what?’ Liz managed to mumble through the pressure of James’s fingers.
‘For the flames!’ said James, as if that explained everything. He let go of Liz, striding across the room. Liz watched the others, both patients and staff, shrinking back from James, perhaps in awe of the ease with which he had disposed of Fitz. Or perhaps, as Liz had done moments ago, they recognised that James was not on his own – that some huge, overpowering evil presence went with him, watching over his every step.
James strode up to Joe and Susannah. Joe tried to step in front of the cowering Susannah, but James knocked him to the floor with a single stiff arm. James dragged Susannah to her feet, and pulled her across the room, towards Liz and Trix.
Towards the ever-growing wall of fire.
‘How about this one?’ asked James. ‘This whore, this bitch, this cheap slapper.’ He shrugged, as if apologising for his language. ‘I am merely reflecting back what I see in your mind. Why shouldn’t she be the first? The first to have her energy sucked away from her screaming psyche even as the flesh burns away from her bones. The first to become part of the next generation of the Sholem-Luz.’
‘Nobody should have to die like that,’ said Trix.
James casually smashed her to the floor. ‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ he said quietly.
‘James,’ pleaded Liz. ‘You’ve got to fight. . . You’ve got to fight this thing.’
James stared back at Liz, impassive at her plea and the mention of his name. Whatever had influenced him seemed to be in complete control. Liz noticed that one of his arms seemed to be hanging oddly in its socket, as if he had dislocated it in one of his brutal attacks. He was a mere puppet of the Sholem-Luz – and Dr Smith had said that they could never be reasoned with.
The fire had expanded rapidly. A couple of pews were just beginning to burn now and the room was filling with smoke. Joe and the others had crawled and staggered to the far end of the chapel, concentrating on their own survival, concentrating on trying to stay alive that bit longer, on trying to breathe through the thick fumes.
Only Liz and Susannah stood with James, mere inches from the flames, with Fitz and Trix seemingly unconscious on the gently warming stone floor.
195
‘I could hold her head in the flames,’ James whispered. ‘That would be good.’
Laska ran from the brooding darkness of the mausoleum to the shocking freshness of the night air. At first her only thought was to get back to the Retreat and away from the creature; she had no idea how much longer the thing might slumber, especially if her conscious mind was concerned with the activity of running, not forcing herself to remember, by sheer force of will, some random scraps of happiness from her past.
However, a hundred yards or so beyond the mausoleum, Laska stopped.
What if Dr Smith reappeared? What if the dog didn’t come out after her?
She looked around, eyes straining against the darkness, ears alert for the slightest noise, but could sense nothing, either from the direction of the Victorian mausoleum, or from elsewhere.
She waited as long as she dared, until it became clear that neither the dog, nor Dr Smith, were about to put in another appearance. There seemed nothing for it, but to head for the Retreat.
And it was as she turned that she noticed the smoke billowing from a ground-floor window.
Instead of following through with his threats James hurled Susannah to the floor, like a child spitefully bored of a favourite toy.
Her animosity now replaced by an all-enveloping fear, Liz bent down