The Anubis Gates

She’d pressed against the right-hand wall as they went past the place where she knew Horrabin’s corpse lay—and she nearly screamed when a startlingly deep voice spoke to them out of the darkness.

“This is not a place for people, my friends,” it said.

“Uh… right,” squeaked Jacky. “We’re leaving.” She heard a heaving and thudding—and several metallic clinkings—and when the voice spoke again, it was from over her head. “I’ll escort you,” it said heavily. “Even dying from the pinpricks of the clown’s little men, Big Biter is a protector few would care to cross.”

“You’ll… escort us?” asked Jacky incredulously.

“Yes.” The thing sighed ponderously. “I owe it to your companion, who freed my brothers and sisters and me and gave us the chance to revenge ourselves on our maker before we died.”

Jacky had noticed that the thing’s voice was not echoing, as though they stood in a room instead of a tunnel.

“Make haste,” Big Biter said, moving forward, “the darkness is hardening.” The peculiar trio made their way to the stairs and plodded up them. At the first landing Coleridge wanted to rest, but Big Biter told him there wasn’t time; the creature picked Coleridge up and they continued.

“Don’t hang behind,” their escort cautioned Jacky.

“I won’t,” Jacky assured it, for she realized that now there was no sound or echo from the corridor they’d vacated, or even from the flight of stairs they’d just ascended. What was it, the eyeless Sisters had said to her half a year ago? The darkness is hardening, like thick mud, and we want to be away when it turns as solid as the stones… we mustn’t be caught forever in the stones that are hardened night! Jacky made sure she matched Big Biter’s pace, and was glad he moved so quickly.

When they finally got to the top and stepped into the bright torchlight of the kitchen hallway in Rat’s Castle, a couple of Carrington’s men took a step toward them, then took two steps back when they saw the creature that was carrying Coleridge in its heavy arms. Jacky looked up at Big Biter and almost recoiled herself.

Their escort was an amphibious giant, with long black catfish tentacles around its face like a caricatured beard and hair, and eyes like glass paperweights, and a pig-like snout, but by far his most striking feature was his mouth: it was a twelve-inch slash across his face, which he could barely close because of the rows of huge teeth in it. He wore an ancient coat, the front of which was shredded and wet with red blood.

“These vermin won’t interfere with you,” Big Biter said quietly. “Come on.”

He set Coleridge down and walked with them to the front door. “Go now,” he said. “Quickly. I’ll watch until you’re out of sight, but I’ve got to get back down the stairs before the darkness hardens completely.”

“All right,” said Jacky, gratefully breathing the relatively fresh pre-dawn air of Buckeridge Street. “And thank you for—”

“I did it for your friend,” rumbled Big Biter. “Now go.”

Jacky nodded and hustled Coleridge outside and down the dark street.

* * *

They’d made it back to Hudson’s Hotel without mishap, and when they’d gotten into Coleridge’s room Jacky had flopped him onto the bed. The man was asleep before Jacky had gotten to the hall and gently closed the door behind her. She’d seen the laudanum bottle on the bedside table, and she believed she understood now why Carrington’s restraining measures had proven ineffective on the elderly poet. How could Carrington have known what a tremendous tolerance for opium Coleridge had developed?

Then she had walked down to the Thames, by the Adelphi Arches where the subterranean tributary emptied into the river, on the chance that Ashbless, or whatever remained of him, might emerge from the tunnel.

The sky was a bright steely blue in the east now, and a tattered string of clouds above the horizon had begun to smolder and glow. The sun would appear at any moment.

There was a turbulence in the water in the still deep shadows below the arches, and Jacky glanced down just in time to see a ghostly, semi-transparent boat surge out. As it emerged into the dawn grayness it became simultaneously incandescent and more transparent, and it receded away toward the eastern horizon at such a speed that Jacky was momentarily certain it was only a hallucination born of total exhaustion; but a split second later she became aware of two things: the first red sliver of the rising sun had appeared over the distant London skyline, and a man was splashing about in the water a dozen feet out from the bank, having apparently fallen through the ghost boat when it became insubstantial.

Jacky leaped to her feet, for she recognized the man, who was now swimming a little dazedly toward shore.

“Mr. Ashbless!” she shouted. “Over here!”

* * *