All this she saw in an instant, in the flicker of an eye, crouched on the edge of the roof, before the creature was gone, sliding into the baggage carriage, gone.
Marlowe! she thought in despair.
She was too late. He’d found him. She came down heavily, heart pounding, and burst into the mail coach, looking for the child. Everywhere was a mess of torn papers and crates strewn all over the floor and shelves knocked sideways and her eyes scanned it all quickly and then at the rear of the car she caught a glimpse of a small figure and she caught her breath.
It wasn’t him.
It was a woman. And not the female detective from the circus either, the one who’d taken Marlowe, who’d promised to keep him safe. This woman was middle-aged, dressed in black widow’s weeds, badly shredded now, her arms and face carved savagely up. She’d been cut in the belly and in the chest and her soft face was bloodied beyond recognition. Brynt kneeled beside her, hands hovering anxiously, afraid to touch her. The woman was still breathing, but faintly. Brynt glanced around the coach. There was a second body, several feet away, arms flung wide. The mail clerk’s body. But no sign of Marlowe.
She turned her head grimly.
She glared in the direction the creature had gone.
* * *
Alice stared behind her, the roof’s wind in her ears, tearing at her grip, threatening to throw her off-balance.
Jacob Marber still hadn’t moved. He hadn’t got to his feet, or struggled forward, or tried to leap the gap, anything, he just half kneeled there with his dead eyes fixed on her and his head down against the wind. It was exactly like, she thought suddenly, in dread, as if he were waiting for something. Or someone.
“Miss Alice!” Charlie shouted from up ahead. “Miss Alice, hurry!”
She didn’t know how she did what she did next. But she scooped up Marlowe in her arms and got to her feet and ran into the wind, her boots banging over the wooden roof, one shoulder turned forward to cradle the little boy from the roaring.
She ran the length of the railway carriage and didn’t stop at the gap but leaped at speed between the carriages and landed skittering on the roof of the next carriage. Charlie was already there, reaching for her, helping her up. She glanced back.
Jacob Marber was standing now, walking slowly forward. He was thin as a shadow, all dark. He seemed not to jump between the cars but simply to step off the edge of one and come down on the side of the other. And Alice saw something else, something worse.
A long white hand had appeared, over the lip of the roof, beside Jacob Marber. Then a second. It was the litch. It dragged itself onto the roof, and then she saw the two of them together, nearly identical, one hairless and gray as a worm, both monstrous, both cruel.
They didn’t glance at each other; they gave no sign or word. It was as if they just knew. Jacob Marber stood with his arms at his sides, that eerie dense smoke streaming out behind him. And crouched at his side, on all fours, spiderlike, malformed, Walter Laster glared. Shirtless, barefoot in the freezing wind. Walter was impossibly pale, his face and torso stained with blood. He opened his mouth, showing long swordlike teeth.
Alice looked for Charlie. He had his hands over his ears, staring in absolute terror.
“No no no no no,” he was murmuring. She could see the shape of his lips but couldn’t hear anything over the wind.
And that was when the litch—Walter—started forward.
He crawled slowly at first, lightly, as if the wind were nothing to him, as if scrabbling along the roof of a speeding train were nothing. Alice could see his long claws taking purchase, the quick sparks as he drove them into the iron runners fastening the eaves in place, scrabbling forward. She pushed Marlowe behind her, took out her Colt Peacemaker, kneeled for balance.
Walter came on, faster and faster, like a sinister white hound.
She cocked the hammer.
She’d unloaded on this creature’s master and had no effect and she didn’t think bullets would work on Walter either. But she’d be damned if she didn’t try. She knew she had to wait until he was dead close. She’d get only the one chance. Her heart was steady. She took aim.
He was closing the distance rapidly, and she could hear now the scrape and click of his claws as he threw himself forward. Jacob Marber stood back, as if transfixed, just watching. Alice relaxed her breathing.
The creature leaped suddenly, fast over the gap between the carriages. But before it could come down on the other side, while it was still, somehow, in midair, something snagged its foot, and it twisted on its side, and then swung wildly, powerfully, backward, to smash onto the roof of the carriage it had just come from.