Gaslight Grimoire_ Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes - Barbara Hambly [71]
The cave man paid us no heed, leaping toward Moran and snatched up the weird rifle.
“Under normal circumstances, I’d sooner deface the Mona Lisa than destroy such an ingenious instrument,” he, astonishingly, said to Holmes and then smashed the weapon against a boulder.
Moran uttered a wet rattling groan, coughing up blood. I immediately went to his side, but there was nothing I could do. The spear had pierced his left lung, narrowly missing the heart by less than an inch. He would be dead in a matter of minutes.
Holmes and our shaggy champion studied each other for a moment in silence. Jessica was pale as a ghost, and even Lord Roxton’s bronze complexion had become ashen. Then, the savage’s piercing blue-grey eyes fell briefly upon each of us.
“Sherlock Holmes … but why…?” he mused aloud to himself, then slapped an enormous hand against his naked thigh. “Of course! This is about my steel, isn’t it? I doubt they sent you here out of concern for my health. The war-mongering bastards.”
He nodded at Lord Roxton.
“Obviously you still know your way around, Roxton. Full marks, you damned old campaigner. Delighted to see you.”
Next, his eyes narrowed at Jessica, who’d started to tremble slightly.
“No keeping you away, was there?” he said almost reproachfully, then smiled. “You get it naturally, I suppose. Remind me to describe the peculiar sub-species of living pseudosuchian that I discovered, as yet unknown even in the fossil record. I think you’ll be very interested.”
Finally, he bowed to me, formally as any English gentleman might.
“Ah, yes,” his smile brightened. “Dr. Watson, I presume?”
Only Holmes was left unfazed and still capable of speech.
“Forgive me, dear fellow, I’d forgotten that the two of you never met,” he said as if in the normalcy of a London street. “Allow me to present Professor George Edward Challenger.”
He stood before my eyes, yet I could hardly believe it. Challenger, the man we’d come to find had not only survived — but had even thrived in this terrible place.
Challenger’s surprisingly amiable smile abruptly vanished. I was startled and disturbed to see him literally sniff the humid breeze.
“Starved as I am for human conversation,” he spoke with some haste, “I’m not the only hungry biological entity upon this Plateau. The blood-scent of the slain sauropod, and this wicked son of a bitch, is luring—”
Before he could say another word, a horrendous creature, more terrible than the most nightmarish dragon of myth, leapt suddenly from the green-black jungle, pouncing upon the saurian carcass with a meteoric impact. I would dream, in a cold sweat, of this forty-foot long scaly demon in the years that have followed this adventure. It was an Allosaurus, the Challengers later explained, although both scientists conceded the animal was considerably larger than its fossilized kin. Perhaps best described as a composite of bipedal crocodile and a wingless bird of prey, the fiend’s grinding, snapping jaws towered twenty feet, or more, above the ground. In hideous rips and gulps it swallowed whole masses of meat and bone half as large as a London cab.
As can well be appreciated and understood, all of us ran for our lives — not daring even the quickest backwards glance. We couldn’t help but hear Moran, still barely alive, wailing one last shrill and piteous scream of terror.
A hellish death, even for such an evil man.
As for we who survived, our only thoughts were of our balloon and the safety of the skies above. I’m certain that even Holmes relished the notion of leaving this wretched place.
Two months later, the secret formula for Professor George Edward Challenger’s super-steel had reached the battlefields and the tide of the Great War turned to Britain’s advantage. It was amusing to Challenger and to Sherlock Holmes that they both had