Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [85]
Tommy didn’t bother with the heavy blue gloves this time. He knew a thing or two about handling cats. You could get yourself scratched pretty badly if you didn’t know the trick. All cats had a loose flap of skin at the back of their neck. This was a carry‐over from their time as kittens, when their mother would pick them up in her mouth and haul them around. It was a natural carrying handle and when you grabbed a cat there he automatically went limp and made no effort to resist. It was a deeply ingrained reflex, programmed since childhood. Once you had grabbed them there, they were completely docile.
Tommy reached into the cage, grabbed the black cat by the scruff of the neck and lifted it smoothly out.
No sooner was the cat free of the cage than it twisted its small triangular head and sank its fangs deep into Tommy’s wrist.
He dropped the cat and it hit the floor, then ran flat out across the laboratory, faster than any animal he’d ever seen. Tommy ran after it but the cat had already vanished around the corner into the annexe containing the photocopier and the water‐cooler.
And of course the annexe was dark. Tommy hadn’t replaced the light‐bulb yet.
He stood at the corner of the lab leading to the annexe, swaying with indecision. He had to get the cat but he didn’t want to go after it in the dark.
Tommy stared at his hand; bright red blood was flowing onto it from his wrist, pulsing at an alarming rate. The cat’s fangs had scored one of the tiny blue blood‐vessels that ran near the surface of the skin where the thumb joined the wrist. He was shocked at the volume of blood coming out of him. A distant part of his mind registered that there was considerably more blood here than had come out of number 417 during the clinical sacrifice.
From the annexe came the sound of the cat moving around. It was in there somewhere, but he knew that even if he looked around the corner he wouldn’t be able to see it in the darkness.
Blood was dripping off his wrist onto the floor, onto the hem of his white lab coat, getting everywhere.
Tommy was beginning to feel an emotion that was entirely new to him in the setting of the laboratory.
He was beginning to feel afraid.
* * *
Chapter 20
The house was in London, just south of the river. They found it after an hour of late‐night driving that brought them up from Kent onto the South Circular.
The Doctor sat patiently in the passenger seat as Benny drummed her fingers on the steering wheel waiting for a red light at an empty intersection. ‘I was doing this in New York yesterday,’ she said, checking the map on the Mercedes’ computer. ‘I’m not trying to impress you or anything. It’s just that if I suddenly start driving on the wrong side of the road, you’d better say something.’
‘I’m sure you’ll be all right,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’re very capable.’
‘Stop buttering me up. You know it works.’ Benny grinned and she pulled away as the traffic light changed to green, getting into the lane ready for a right turn. ‘Who is this Vincent anyway?’
The Doctor appeared not to have heard her. When he did speak a moment later he seemed to have changed the subject. ‘I don’t generally like weapons,’ he said.
‘Weapons?’
‘I don’t even like them as metaphors. I tend to think in terms of tools instead. But sometimes a weapon is the necessary solution.’
‘When?’
‘When you have a target that must be destroyed. This particular target was big. It was built on the side of a mountain. I went and looked at it and I contemplated a suitable weapon for its destruction,’ said the Doctor. ‘I met Vincent when I was trying to put that weapon together. That’s his house now.’
The Doctor leaned over and pointed it out to Benny. The sleeve of his old coat brushed her face and Benny caught a whiff of a pungent liquorice smell. ‘I’m glad you brought the pill with you. I went to a lot of trouble getting that.’
‘I was hardly going to leave it unattended,’ said the Doctor. ‘There’s no telling what mischief it might become involved