The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack - Mark Hodder [164]
A pistol shot detonated somewhere behind him.
"No, man!" came Trounce's cry. "Take them alive!"
A terrible scream echoed across the field.
Something howled triumphantly.
"Werewolves!" yelled another voice.
More pistol shots sounded.
Something burst into flames.
A fist clouted the side of Burton's head. He reeled, recovered, and hit back, his knuckles crunching into his enemy's mouth, breaking teeth. The man went down and Burton stumbled over him, falling onto all fours.
"Burton! This is your doing!" hissed a voice.
He looked up, straight into the insane eyes of Spring Heeled Jack. With his captors distracted, the stilt-walker had managed to untangle himself from the bolas and netting and now crouched, ready to leap away.
"I told you not to interfere-but I'll stop you, Burton!" snarled the bizarre figure. "I'll stop you!"
Burton lunged at him and went sprawling as Edward Oxford launched himself high into the air. The king's agent rolled onto his back just in time to see the stilt-walker vanish. His view was suddenly blocked as a loup-garou came swooping down upon him. Reflexively, he swung his rapier up, catching the beast in the throat. Its heavy weight slid down the blade and thumped on top of him. Talons ripped down his upper right arm, slicing through the material and the skin beneath.
The creature went limp. Fierce heat began to emanate from it.
Burton quickly heaved it aside, stood up, and stepped back.
The werewolf exploded into flames.
Men were fighting all around him, the battle now spreading across the field.
Loups-garous slunk through the crowd, pouncing and tearing with their teeth and claws.
He saw, in the near distance, Laurence Oliphant easing a sword out of a man's stomach.
The air throbbed.
A huge flying platform slid over the tops of the trees, a wall of steam bubbling out beneath it, enveloping the battleground.
Doors opened in its sides and ropes were thrown out.
Men came sliding down into the swirling vapour.
The Technologists had arrived.
We're outnumbered! thought Burton.
Edward Oxford landed in Green Park on Sunday September 8, 1861. It was eleven thirty and the night was bitterly cold and misty.
He was near the trees at the top of the slope. Next to the path below, he could see a tall monument on the spot where Queen Victoria had been assassinated.
Ducking into the gloom of the trees, he stood and considered. Where would he find Sir Richard Francis Burton?
He couldn't recall where the man lived nor the location of the Royal Geographical Society. There was, however, the Cannibal Club above Bartoloni's Italian restaurant in Leicester Square. He remembered reading about that place and the eccentrics it attracted. He knew that Burton went there regularly.
Not long ago, the prospect of visiting Leicester Square without the protection of augmented reality would have filled him with dread. Now, though, he was so numbed by the preposterous environment in which he was trapped that he felt almost immune to it. An illusion. A dream. It was nothing more than that. He wasn't even sure why he had come here, and hardly cared. He clung to the only things that made sense to him, despite their patent absurdity: he had to get to the Pipkiss girl; there was only one night on which to do it; and the famous explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton had arranged an ambush to stop him.
Oxford didn't realise that opposing forces were battling over him. His broken mind latched on to just one thing: in order to have supper with his wife on February 15 in the year 2202, he had to stop Burton from interfering on September 30 in the year