The Wolfman (34 page)

She screamed, but the cry was nearly lost beneath the weight of the music and other noise. The people around her glanced at her, and at the hairy thing moving among them, and smiled.

Robinson Crusoe leaned close to shout in the ear of Sir Galahad. “Bloody good costume, don’t you think?”

Galahad, a city banker with a long nose, sniffed disdainfully. “Hardly looks real, does it?”

The Wolfman kept moving toward the stage, its eyes glazed with fascination. He bumped into people and pushed aside a waiter with a tray of canapés. When the entire tray of roast baby new potato with caviar and
crème fraîche
chive mash tumbled into the lap of the Third Earl of Rosse, everyone at his table leaped to their feet in outrage.

The Earl’s nephew, a rich merchant, grabbed the Wolfman’s arm.

“I do say, sir,” he began with loud indignation, “your manners are quite disgus—”

That was the last thing he ever said. The moment the merchant touched the Wolfman’s arm the spell of the music was broken. All at once the inner call vanished and was entirely replaced by the unyielding compulsion of the hunt. The Wolfman lashed out with incredible speed and ferocity, clamped his powerful hands on the merchant’s upper arms and snatched him off the ground and then clamped his jaws around the man’s head. Bones cracked, skin split and gore showered everyone around.

The screams this savage action invoked were not lost in the din, and they did not go unnoticed.

In his fury the Wolfman had bitten down so hard and so deeply that his fangs were locked into the hard bone of the merchant’s skull. It snarled in frustration and rage, shaking the man’s body to try and tear itself free. Despite the dreadful wound, the merchant was still alive, and he screamed and beat furiously at the monster, but each of his blows carried less force. The Third Earl gaped at the spectacle playing out inches from where he sat, his face spattered with hot blood.

The revelers scattered as fast as if a bomb had dropped in their midst, everyone running madly in every direction with the blind urgency to be anywhere but where they stood. Those who did not move fast enough were knocked down and trampled by lords and ladies as panic ruled the moment. People screamed in terror at what they had seen and in pain as they were buffeted and battered underfoot. Notable men shoved women out of the way; a visiting duchess yanked her daughter’s
hair to clear the way for her own escape; a highly regarded Member of Parliament collapsed into a blubbering heap, too frightened even to flee.

The Wolfman, unable to tear its fangs free, bent forward and bit down hard, crushing the bones in its powerful jaws, and then it reared back and tore the entire crown of the merchant’s skull off. The man collapsed to the ground, dead and limp, and the Wolfman howled with triumph.

On the stage it was the same, as the orchestra flung down their instruments and dashed for the edges of the rostrum. One hearty cellist grabbed his instrument by the neck and swung it like a war hammer so that it splintered across the monster’s broad back, and a moment later he was dead, his broken body discarded among the abandoned instruments.

Alone and forgotten in the mad surge, the soprano held her ground and tried to understand what her remaining senses told her. She heard screams and the stampede of people, and she heard a growl that sounded like a wild animal. None of it made sense.

A
BERLINE HEARD THE
first screams a second before the revelers began surging out of the conservatory in a mad rush. He ran toward the entrance, but it was like wading into a crashing tidal surge. Bodies buffeted him, people tried to shove him back to clear a path for their own escape, desperate women clawed at him in their terror.

By the time Aberline and his men reached the doorway, the floor of the conservatory was already awash in blood. Aberline stepped inside and raised his pistol,
trying for a clear shot, but there were so many damned people . . .

T
HE WOLFMAN TURNED
in a slow circle, enjoying the flight of prey, but when it saw the soprano standing there it narrowed its eyes. This one was not acting like prey, and the Wolfman sniffed the air for the telltale scent of another predator. But no . . . all it smelled was fear and it growled quietly as it took a step toward her, its lips curling back from its teeth as it opened its mouth to take a bite.

Then suddenly it was knocked sideways by two hard punches to its shoulder. The Wolfman spun, snarling a challenge, but there was no enemy at hand. There was a loud
pop
and a third impact drilled fire into its chest and the creature saw a man standing twenty feet away. Fire erupted from the man’s hand and there was more pain. The Wolfman recognized this enemy and it tensed to spring even as the four bullet wounds closed and vanished.

F
RANCIS ABERLINE STOOD
his ground and continued to fire at the monster even though he could see that the bullets were doing little real harm.

The bullets distracted the creature from the blind woman, but the creature did not fall. How in God’s name did it not fall? Aberline fired his last shot as the creature tensed for a leap, and then the air was filled with the firecracker bursts of a dozen shots as a wave of bobbies came pelting into the conservatory.

“Kill the bloody thing!” bellowed Aberline as he dug fresh bullets out of his coat pocket.

A fusillade of bullets struck the Wolfman, driving it back from sheer impact and drenching its clothing with fresh blood, but it did not fall. It did not even flinch.

But it did not like the shrill bleat of the whistles.

The creature roared a challenge and then spun and leapt over the buffet tables and smashed through one of the glass walls. The exploding glass tore a thousand jagged cuts in the monster’s hide and bullets tore the heaped food to fragments, but the monster was gone.

T
HE WOLFMAN LANDED
on the sidewalk outside of the conservatory. It crouched low and stared around, momentarily overwhelmed by the noise and movement. There were hundreds of people on the streets. Gentlemen and their ladies out for an evening stroll, street vendors by the dozen, street urchins dashing in and out of the crowds, corner musicians, and others, crowding the London intersection. Scores of carriages and coaches rattled along the cobblestone streets, and a clunky steam-powered omnibus trundled along, every seat filled and people hanging onto side straps.

The noise was painful. Screeches and squeals and shouts. Women shrieked, horses whinnied in fear, men yelled in fright as the creature stalked slowly into the center of the square. A blind beggar pulled off his black glasses and stared at the monster, and then he turned and bolted faster than his own dog could follow.

The driver of the omnibus was the last person in the square to understand what was happening. People suddenly started running across the street, heedless of the big machine. The driver jerked the lanyard for the shrill steam whistle and he emphasized the warnings with a string of curses that would have shamed a dockhand. No
one paid any attention to him and he swerved and swung the wheel to avoid committing mayhem.

And then something impossible reared up directly in front of the omnibus. A thing from a nightmare, with tall tufted ears and a face from Hell itself. The Wolfman hissed at the big machine and the driver jerked the wheel hard to one side, but in his panic he swung it too hard. Mass and momentum, and the weight of all the passengers, were against him and the omnibus canted sideways, two of its tires lifting off the ground. It paused for a moment, balanced on the other wheels, and then there was a loud
snap
as the front axle collapsed and the whole mass of it fell sideways even while the omnibus was still moving forward. It crashed down with a thunderclap and slid along the cobbles past the monster. A dozen passengers were crushed under the weight of the whole crowd falling sideways and down. Everyone screamed in confusion and pain, and the Wolfman had to leap atop the bus to avoid being crushed. It landed on a side window and before the bus had stopped sliding the creature began pressing its face against the cracked glass. It could smell the fear of the mass of writhing people inside. The window cracked more, dropping pieces inside. The Wolfman thrust its hand in through the jagged hole, ignoring the teeth of the broken glass, reaching, stretching to grab an arm or leg or throat.

Then suddenly the whole window caved in and the Wolfman pitched headlong down onto the wriggling tangle of trapped passengers. It landed with a howl of surprise and anger. This was not a hunt, this felt like a trap. Panic flared in its heart and the Wolfman scrabbled to right itself, inadvertently tearing flesh with its claws as it fought to get out of the confined space.

Then the bobbies burst from the park, Aberline at the forefront, all of them firing at the creature as it crawled out of the overturned bus. Whistle bleats filled the air. Still confused by the sudden confinement, the Wolfman turned and fled down an alley on the far side of the fallen omnibus.