The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [56]
After a few paces he turned aside and ducked his head, avoiding the invisible lintel of an aperture that opened into a side chamber. And there, a new sound arose in response to his arrival. A shifting, a movement, a rustling. He stood quite still, and bodies brushed against his legs, pressing close. With unhurried precision he loosened each finger of the glove on his right hand and pulled it free. He reached down.
Matted hair greeted his touch. Coarse fibres crusted with grime and worse things. He ran his hand down the line of the backbone, then lifted it and stretched his arm further into the dark. A cold, dry tongue drew its rough surface over the palm of his hand, and he dipped his fingers to let it curl over the back of them. There was a crust of dried blood upon the harsh lips that couched that tongue.
“Be still, little brothers,” the man said, his voice gentle. “Be soft. I’ve something here for you.”
From an inner pocket of his coat came a scrap of material. A sleeve, torn from a shirt. He squatted down, holding the rag stretched between his hands, extending his arms so that the beasts could gather round it, and press their noses to it, and taste it.
“Do you have it?” the man whispered. “Do you have what you need?”
He balled the sleeve up and pushed it into each of the three mouths that opened, one after another, to greet it. He pressed its fabric against teeth.
Dim and distant sounds reached in, the creak of muffled wheels on cobbles, the tread of hoofs sheathed in cloth. The man rose to his feet, and folded the shirt sleeve away into a pocket once more.
“Your carriage is here.”
The shapes that shared that dark hiding place with him grew more urgent in their movements. Claws scraped on the floor.
“Hush,” he hissed, nothing gentle to his words now, nothing but the crack of the whip. “Not a sound, or it’s to the fires with you. The flames and oblivion for any who betray us.”
And they were still at that, cowed.
The man retraced his steps and opened the door to peer out into the night. A cart was drawn up on the street beyond the low archway, its driver already pulling back heavy canvas sheets to reveal the cages it carried.
The man turned back and spoke into the blackness of the undercity, where his beasts waited.
“Come, then. There’s work to be done tonight. It’s not far. Not far at all.”
Quire was torn from sleep by a pounding at his door. His waking was so abrupt and violent that for an instant he was bewildered, wondering what the noise was. Then the door shook again, beneath repeated blows, and he was scrambling to haul himself up out of the bed.
“Who’s there?” he called, but there was no answer.
He snatched his trousers up from where he had dropped them on the floor and clambered into them, almost toppling over as he hopped briefly on one foot. He pulled on his boots. The cold leather was not pleasant against his bare feet. He heard a heavy tread on the stair outside.
It was not quite fear that was in him, but it was something close kin to it. He shrugged his long coat on over his naked shoulders, and took hold of the door handle. Before he lifted the latch, he thought better of such incaution.
He unhooked his police baton from the belt draped over the back of a chair. He held it ready as he carefully lifted the latch and let the door come open just enough to give him a view of the stairway. Nothing but darkness there, a faint shaft of moonlight falling from a tiny window. But he heard those footsteps again; down below this time, retreating hurriedly.
“Who’s there?” he shouted again angrily, and began to descend the stairs.
He went cautiously, concerned to ensure that no ambush awaited him in the gloom. That was answered soon enough by ear, rather than eye: the slap of shoes on cobblestones told him his visitor was out of the stairwell and into the close.
Quire followed, but still did not rush. He saw a figure, difficult to make out clearly,