Taynor Creek was built up with narrow dark houses even before the Revolution and was a striking harmony of external and internal. Here people rented tiny, almost devoid of light, apartments - they were already able to pay for some kind of shelter, but were not yet ready to give more than two monnas a week for it. Along the houses the wind blew rubbish, somewhere a cat was yelling, competing with a baby, a janitor, without much hope, ran ршы broom along the sidewalk. The shutters in most apartments were tightly closed - the tenants preferred not to delve into what was happening around, firmly following the principle "The less you know, you sleep better."
Brannon glanced across the street. There was a pharmacy, several shops with unappetizing food, there were fences that covered the warehouses; several narrow dead-ends and alleys branched off from Taynor Creek. Peggy was attacked in one of them.
"Does anyone from your list live in these three entrances?"
Byrne consulted his notebook.
"Yes. Seven suitable men."
"The best view from these windows. Not far from the alley where Peggy was dragged."
He stopped in front of number five. Two dozen policemen were dispersed along the street, with two more blocking both ends.
"Let's start from here."
Byrne coughed.
"Sir, I hope you understand that this is a very shaky assumption. The maniac could have a dozen other reasons to attack Miss Sheridan here."
"For example, what kind?"
Byrne found it difficult to immediately list them, but found another excuse:
"He's unlikely to keep the kidnapped girl here, much less Mister Longsdale."
"Yes," Brennon agreed, "but the less holes we leave for this rat, the better."
He went up to the porch and grabbed the knocker. Byrne held his hand before Nathan knocked.
"Sir, are you sure we're ready to meet him?"
Brannon released the knocker. The detective was right. If a maniac was able to dump even Longsdale, then what can we say about them, mere mortals?
"Let me, sir," Byrne gently pushed the Commissar away from the door. "If he grabs you, it will be very bad. And this... strike so as to immediately knock out, if that."
Brannon nodded, lifted the collar of his coat and walked down the steps. However, as soon as Byrne knocked on the sign on the door, Nathan shouted at him sharply. The detective turned around. Finnell hurried to the Commissar, and Byrne jumped off the porch. Finnell handed the Commissar a note. Nathan unrolled it and recognized Gallagher's handwriting.
"I interrogated the worker, " the detective wrote. "His name is Matt Dayton, the address is Honor Square, 3. He does not remember anything, except that he and his wife went out to stroll through the stalls in search of food for dinner. There someone approached them, and everything - as cut off. Has already come to his senses in the department. The guys caught his wife, Ann, in Saint-Rose - she wandered around there for several hours. Let your second consultant look at them - suddenly he will fish out what?"
Brannon snorted so hard that the cops looked back at him. The second consultant, of course! Damn it, the damned pyromaniac was useful only at the request of his restless, capricious soul, and Nathan was sure that if Gallagher ripped Redfern away from his amulet now, he would only learn a dozen hitherto unknown curses.
"Or he will turn into some kind of crap," Nathan thought darkly, estimating the limits of Redfern's capabilities. He, frankly, did not look human. He behaved, in any case, worse than the faeries from village tales.
"Tell him that he can't," the Commissar told Farrell. "The second is busy. What's with Gallagher and the witnesses?"
"Said that is dull, sir. Three who saw the carriage gave written evidence. Here are descriptions of the carriage, horses and coachman. Dwyer is still combing the ruined block, but it's empty for now, sir."
"Kintagel," Nathan said, involuntarily remembering what he saw there twenty years ago, after the shelling, "not a bad place to hide both the girl and the consultant."
But something prevented him from jumping for joy and rushing there to save the unfortunate victims. It was too easy. Of course, the maniac could not have known that Peggy will take into her head to follow up Longsdale, but Kintagel, damn it, right in the middle of town! Around a lot of residential buildings and a herd of townspeople. There, in the end, the monastery is close by - does a maniac really decide to arrange bloody rituals where he can be prevented at any moment? Before that, he carefully hid, leaving only corpses.
"Shall we go there, sir?" Byrne asked. It is impossible to drag two prisoners into a residential building unnoticed. But still... still...
"Go back to Gallagher," the Commissar ordered Finnell. "Let him wait for results from Dwyer. Give the Daytons to Raiden for questioning. Savvy? Let's trot, Put your best leg forward."
"And we, sir?" Byrne asked.
"We'll knock on the door," Nathan said through set teeth. "Remember: this parasite cannot handle more than three at a time. As soon as someone starts to behave strangely - to hit the stool on the head, to and into the carriage. Even if this someone will be me. That's it, go."
None of the housekeepers were happy with the police visit, and even a search warrant for everything that was possible did not improve their mood. One of the housekeepers sent the boy to the owner of the houses, but now the Commissar did not care. After all, if the owner personally showed up for questioning it would only make the tough police life easier.
Each house had three entrances of five floors. In the fifth, attic, the poorest huddled, in the first one apartment was occupied by the housekeeper, there was his office and reception. Byrne immediately laid his paw on all the ledgers and accounting papers. The police split into pairs and began to methodically walk around apartment after apartment. The Commissar caught the housekeeper of house number five and ordered him to provide the keys to three apartments, inhabited by short, thin men who had moved in over the past six months. Calling Kelly and Hughes, Nathan went up to the third floor and began to tour the suspects. Something made him look right here, and not rush headlong into Kintagel, but Brannon still could not tell what.
As Nathan walked out of the first apartment under the sizzling gaze of a skinny bank clerk, Byrne came up to him. One of the policemen who searched the second floor was walking with him; behind was the indignant housekeeper.
"Sir, there's something strange in number eight," Kane said. "Can you take a look?"
Byrne handed the Commissar a tenant register. A certain Mark Stilton moved into apartment number eight ten weeks ago. The number of suitcases and boxes that the single man brought with him was amazing.
"He took them out later," the housekeeper said peevish. "They took up space and annoyed the tenants, and we gave him an apartment on the condition that he would not keep his boxes here."
Number eight was a small apartment with three rooms. One, the smallest, was set aside for the bedroom, the other, larger, for the living room, and the third tenant could furnish to his liking. And Mr. Stilton's liking was very strange.
At first glance, it was a cozy, modest library, lined with unusual mementos, with windows overlooking Taynor Creek, almost exactly to the pharmacy. The strangeness was not striking, but it was worth looking closely at these souvenirs, reading the names of the books, as well as moving the carpet and looking at the regular polygon on the floor, filled with symbols and words in an unknown language...
At the sight of the polygon, the housekeeper almost got hit.
"Parquet!" the guardian of cleanliness and order cried. "Just look what he did with the parquet! He... he carved this muck right into the tree! And so deep! I'll deduct from him for laying new parquet!" then the manager's gaze fell on the wall. "Oh my God! He painted the wallpaper with white paint!"
"Damn it," Byrne muttered, staring at the collection of skulls on the shelf. They were marked with the signatures "Muscles", "Skin", "Cartilage". In the rack, Kane found and showed the Commissar several sets of surgical instruments. Having painted the walls white, the tenant wrote formulas on them with charcoal, sketched out sketchy images of skeletons, arms, legs, muscle frames. In the corner of the jar lay glass eyes, in a box on the window Brennon found a set of wax ears. The books were divided into two parts - works on anatomy and physiology and some treatises in Latin and other languages unknown to the Commissar.
"Can you read it?"
Byrne glared at the fat volume that lay on the table by the chair. The detective managed to study for a year at the Faculty of Law, even before the revolution. Perhaps the meager remnants of Latin still lingered in his memory?
"Something about death. Dead... Necromorphia... dead forms... or changes of the dead?"
"Clearly. So we found his nest."
"Who is he?" the voice of the housekeeper soared to the heights of the treble. "Is he a criminal? Killer?"
"And how did he introduce himself to you?"
"Chemist," the housekeeper licked his lips. "He worked at the university. Every day he went to work, paid regularly. I didn't think he'd arrange it here!"
"That's what he hoped for," Brannon assured him. "Describe this Mark Stilton."
"Uh... well..."
"Hurry up!" the commissar shouted. "Have you never seen your tenant in the face?"
"Well, it... it is so... so unmemorable. Such..." the housekeeper pondered. "He is small, thin, like a child in a man's suit. His hands are so small... the hair seems to be brown, with gray... well, dark, at least. Eyes... eyes... um..."
"One? Two?" Byrne refined mockingly. The housekeeper fearfully squinted at his scar:
"Two! Two! But the rest... he may be forty, or maybe fifty. Well, thirty-five for sure. Voice..." here the housekeeper thought deeply. Brannon, though he dreamed of punching him in the head so he could think faster, waited in silence. "And I don't even remember that he was talking..."
"But did you communicate with him somehow?"
"Somehow, yes, but..." the housekeeper wrinkled his forehead. Kelly appeared at the door.
"Sir, the gentleman from a cafe is asking you down there. Well, which is the second one..."
"Shake something meaningful out of him," the Commissar told Byrne, and hurried down the stairs.
Redfern was waiting in the hallway. The police did not let him into the apartment or the manager's office, and, naturally, the pyromaniac was annoyed and angry.
"What the hell are you doing here?" He hissed at the commissar.
"I work here."
"You have nothing else to do? Margaret was kidnapped a few hours ago, before this time was enough for murder."
"We found his apartment. He rented an apartment as Mark Stilton."
"Oh!"
In the pyromaniac's exclamation satisfaction and for some reason joy mixed, although why should he be happy? He stared hungrily at Brannon with that searching gaze of his, but the Commissar flattered himself by the fact that Redfern's face showed not only interest, but also respect.
"I want you to look around his apartment. It's full of crap..."
"Find a consultant and you will order him," Redfern cut him off. "I found something too. More precisely, I will find it," and took out his hand from his pocket. On a long chain a boat-like amulet swayed with an ampoule in the center and a green crystal-tipped front.
***
"W... what?" Dumbfounded Margaret stared at the consultant in disbelief. "What will you start?"
"Die," Longsdale repeated. "I cannot be killed, but when the hound is not around for too long, dying begins. Coma."
"B-but why?" Miss Sheridan whispered and squeezed his hand: the consultant was trembling. The large palm barely fit in her hands, but now he seemed no stronger than a consumptive patient.
"I don't know," he replied. "I didn't have time to tell your uncle... He promised me to find out... to find out..." his head bowed to his chest, and his hand went limp. Inside Margaret something skipped a beat. She didn't even think how much strength he had spent protecting her. But she didn't know!
"Oh, please," the girl hugged him, sat him down, put his head on her shoulder. "Please, Mister Longsdale! Sorry, I didn't know..."
His eyelids lifted heavily and Margaret cringed. The consultant's gaze was tense and fixed, like a doll.
"Why did you protect me like that?" The girl said sadly. "If you had warned, I would... I would have come up with something!"
"It should be so," Longsdale said after a long pause. "I must."
"What must? To whom?"
"Must protect. You are human and I must protect you."
"And you?" froze, the girl squeezed out. "Aren't you human?"
"I don't know," Longsdale said slowly. His eyes closed again. Margaret overcame a shiver and put her hand to his forehead. It was cold and clammy with perspiration, a bluish mesh of veins showing under the pale skin. The girl sniffed and swallowed back tears. She will not have enough strength to lift the consultant to his feet and lead him away. But she can't sit and do nothing!
"Go away," suddenly Longsdale said quietly. "Hurry up before the maniac returns."
"I can't leave you here!"
"Why?"
"Because," the girl said through set teeth. She picked up the shawl, brushed it off, rolled it up and tucked it under the consultant's head. "I'll find your hound. Can you tell where it is?"
"Here," Longsdale said after a pause. "Somewhere in this building or nearby. But how do you find him?"
"And what, he does not respond to the nickname?"
"He has no..."
"You could have come up with it in so many years," the girl got up and carefully crept closer to the body lying in the cell. "And he can't help us in any way?"
In surprise, the consultant even raised himself on his elbow and asked incredulously:
"Do you want to interrogate him?"
"Well..." Margaret bit her lip. "Honestly, if he remembers anything, then this is the easiest way to get the hound back to you."
The girl bent down and shook the man by the shoulder. He looked terrible, but he was still breathing.
"No," the consultant suddenly said; Margaret turned around. He listened to something sensitively, leaning on the wall. "They're coming here. Leave now!"
"But you... how are you..."
The consultant got up.
"Do not worry. They can't hurt me."
"But..." Margaret wanted to say that they had already succeeded, but Longsdale grabbed her by the elbow, hissed "Hurry up!" and pushed her towards the stairs leading into a wide corridor.
"I'll find the hound," the girl whispered quickly, picked up her skirts and ran away. She ran up the steps, jumped out into the corridor and immediately pressed herself against the wall, listening to every rustle. There was indeed the sound of footsteps from afar, but Margaret could not make out how many people were walking towards her. Since there was nowhere to retreat, she began to tiptoe forward, now and then looking around for cover.
"Autonomous spells," Miss Sheridan remembered of Angela's guidance, "are good because they do not require constant supervision and frequent infusion of forces. They pull them out of you on the sly. So do not get carried away."
That is why she had to sneak in the dark, without a fire ball, but soon a faint yellowish light dawned ahead. Oh, she'd better learn the invisibility spell! But the Guardian angel finally responded to the ardent plea of his ward, and after a quarter of a yard in the corridor wall her hand suddenly fell into some hole. At first Margaret was numb with horror, then she warmly thanked God for this niche, and only ducking into it, she realized that it was another narrow offshoot, with three steps down. The girl hastily dived into the darkness and backed away until she touched another wooden door.
"But what if?" the hope fluttered inside. Margaret fumbled with her hands on the wood, felt for the bolt, under it - the lock and passionately called into the keyhole:
"Hound! Hey mister hound, are you there?"
Not a sound in response, not a rustle, not a whining... The girl hid in a corner and tried to merge with the stone. The steps approached; now she was sure that there were at least three or four people.
"God, how will he deal with them?!"
A pale face with bluish veins, feverishly burning eyes, trembling hands appeared before her again. The golden light of the lanterns licked the walls. Margaret closed her eyes. Without a word or stopping, the kidnappers passed by. Miss Sheridan had never felt such relief in all seventeen years.
She cautiously slipped out of her hiding place and, now and then looking around, ran to where these people came from. Soon furious screams came to her, and the girl increased her speed, lifting her skirts to indecent. Finally, ahead of them, Margaret spotted a staircase and flew up it like a squirrel up a tree trunk. The sun's rays barely made their way through the dirty round window on the landing, but the girl almost burst into tears anyway. The sun! Day! God, finally!
She pulled the door, but it was locked. However, the desire to finally break out of this vile cage turned out to be so strong that Margaret almost easily broke it with the help of motus and jumped out into some long, not too wide room. A row of narrow windows stretched along the wall opposite, behind which could be seen columns and trees.
Instinctively, Margaret rushed to the windows, to the light, breathed in the old dust deeply, coughed and remembered about the hound.
The girl rubbed a hole in the dust on the glass, but saw nothing but trees and snow. It's a forest or a park — it's not clear ... Looking around, Margaret found another door in the far corner of the room, ran up to it and was surprised to realize that the lock was unlocked. The girl cautiously peered through the crack and went out into the spacious, albeit dusty hall. On the left, she again saw the windows - this time large, arched, and in the middle - a high double door. Opposite the doorway in which Margaret was standing was another one of the same kind, crisscrossed with boards.
This is some kind of pavilion, Miss Sheridan thought in surprise. But why is it empty? Where can a no-man's pavilion be in the city? One path beaten in the dusty hallway led to the room Margaret had just left; the other went straight, to the doors opposite the entrance. The girl walked toward them, wondering tensely what the appearance of these three or four men meant. If the maniac sent them, then where is he? Why isn't he trying to capture her or Mr. Longsdale? Will he dare to start some kind of magic ritual in broad daylight?
The doors were locked, and Margaret with a sigh thought that such a practice in the use of telekinesis Angel could not arrange for her at all desire. However, at the thought of motus, the girl felt sick. She had never conjured so much and monotonous before. She felt the lock and considered burning it out with tepidus ignis. At least some variety...
She was just starting to concentrate on the small ball when a heavy stomp from behind the doors burst into her thoughts. The girl immediately jumped away and almost involuntarily shouted "Flamma magnum!" As for magnum, she didn't work out very well - the fireball turned out to be the size of a baby's head, but so hot that the peeled wallpaper on the wall smoldered. The stomp, rather similar to the jumps of a large animal, suddenly broke off, and at the same moment the door bounced with a crunch on its hinges under a powerful blow from within. Margaret yelped and held the ball in front of her. There was an angry roar, and the next blow knocked the door out of the frame. In a fountain of chips, dust, and plaster, a huge red hound rolled head over heels into the hall. Fragments of a lattice were entangled in its shaggy fur, and broken chains dangled around its neck and legs.
"Oh my God!" Margaret squealed and, forgetting about any common sense there, rushed to the beast. "Thank God! Found it!"
The hound jumped up, and the girl, falling to her knees, grabbed his powerful neck with both hands and buried her face in his mane.
"Oh my God!" A choked sob escaped her. "My God, finally!"
For some reason, it didn't occur to her that the angry hound might bite her. The hound dumbfounded said "Woof?!", nuzzled the girl's shoulder and carefully hugged her with his paw. Margaret trembled. Finally, she felt safe! Finally, at least someone!.. Huge, strong and dangerous! She snuggled up to the hound. Tears made the hound's hair stick to her face, but Margaret didn't care. She clung to the hound with all her strength and stretched out on the floor.
"Woof," the hound finally said and patted her with his paw. "Woof! Frrr!"
With a sob, the girl pulled away from the beast and wiped her face with her hand. She was still shaking a little, but how did she feel better! The hound ran his big hot tongue over Margaret's cheek and poked his wet nose into her neck.
"Let's go," the girl whispered and got up, leaning on his withers. "Mister Longsdale needs us."
The hound nodded, inhaled noisily and grinned menacingly. Margaret groped a spiked collar in the depths of his fur.
"My poor, poor," she muttered, squeezed this muck and hissed "Motus!" The collar snapped and the girl flung it violently into the corner. That would be to hit this rubbish in the maniac's face, right with thorns! The hound rumbled gratefully and rubbed its warm side against the girl.
The room with narrow windows was empty, and there was still no one on the stairs or in the corridor below. The hound sniffed the steps, glanced inquiringly at Margaret, and crossed the threshold. The girl drew the fireball to her and, swallowing, followed. She would never have been left here alone
As they descended, Miss Sheridan saw a bright light at the end of the corridor, pouring from the narrow branch where she had left the consultant. The girl pressed her hand to her pounding heart. What does it mean? Did he defeat them? Or did they beat him? The hound kicked up the hair on the back of his neck and growled dully. Margaret sat down next to him and whispered:
"He said he needed you."
"What am I doing," the girl thought with longing and continued:
"Go to him, help him. I'll distract them."
The hound turned its head and looked at her intently and intelligently. His eyes burned like dark gold beads.
"I can. I can hold out. True."
The hound touched her hand with his nose and rushed forward in long leaps.
"Hey!" Margaret shouted; her exclamation echoed down the corridor and bounced off the walls. "I'm here! Help me or something!"
Three men rushed into the corridor. The first held a lamp in one hand, a pistol in the other. The hound knocked him off his feet, rushed past the others and burst into the branch. The fallen man, shaking his head dazedly, somehow got up on all fours; his face was burned and scratched by fragments of the lamp, but he did not seem to feel pain. The girl pushed her fireball forward, which had already spread into a blot. It lazily flew towards the three kidnappers, gradually spreading in the air like scrambled eggs in a frying pan.
The first one got up and walked towards Margaret. He passed through the fire and did not even flinch, although the flames made his oil-soaked clothes burn. The girl recoiled with a squeal. The man, turning into a torch, stepped to her, held out his blistered hands and said nothing.
"No! No, no!" Margaret shouted and darted back. "Get out! Do not come to me! Not..."
He grabbed her arm.
"Motus!" The girl screamed. "Motus!!"
He was thrown back, but Margaret fell because she didn't have time to break free. He knocked down one of the kidnappers, but released the girl's hand. Miss Sheridan crawled to the stairs, her eyes fixed on the men. They approached her like clockwork dolls, and one of them had already taken a balloon out of his pocket.
- Ignis! - Margaret pointed to the balloon and threw herself face down into the corner, covering her head with her hands. Something blazed hot, and hot, sticky, viscous liquid spilled on the girl... and this smell...
"Oh my God!" she raised herself, leaning on her hands. Someone grabbed her across the waist, lifted her and threw her over his shoulder. Margaret moaned weakly and twitched in the arms of the kidnapper. The second, bleeding and staggering, approached her. And that burned one... she froze, and suddenly desperate fear gave way to burning rage. How long can they mock her like that?!
"Jack up you!" the girl flared up in a rage and kicked the one who grabbed her with all her might in the stomach. The man staggered. With a wild hiss, Margaret clutched her fingernails into the face of bloody man. She aimed at his eyes, but her fingers slipped through the blood and had to dig into his cheeks. The burned man caught her by the hair, wound it around his arm, and with pain the rage finally flooded her mind.
Margaret snarled the first spell she remembered, kicked one of the bastards, and clawed at the other's face. The air became hot; the burned freak pulled her off the shoulder of the accomplice, threw her to the floor and covered her mouth and nose with his hand. Margaret let out a ferocious howl and sank her teeth into his palm. Someone kicked her in the side; from pain she gritted her teeth so that someone else's blood flowed into her mouth.
"Razor!" it sounded imperiously in the corridor. The burnt one screamed first. He rolled off Margaret and, without ceasing to yell, began to convulse. The bloody guy also collapsed, as if knocked down, howling hoarsely. The third was rolling on the floor and high, shrieking.
"Ad somnum!"
The screams stopped. Margaret, trembling, crawled away from the three and finally looked up at the consultant. He stood in the middle of the corridor, stroking the hound's withers, stepped over the bodies and grabbed the girl in his arms. He lifted her so high that she looked down at him, straight into his eyes - bright blue, shimmering, sad and ... and the girl saw something else, from which a lump suddenly rose up to her throat. She touched his face, wrapped her arms around Longsdale's neck, touched his hair, which was thick and soft.
"Margaret," Longsdale said fondly, dropping the girl lower, as if nursing like a child, and kissed her. It was short, this kiss: Margaret only had time to feel the warmth of his lips and how his hands closed tightly around her. And then he put her on the floor, not taking his eyes off her. The loving and soft expression on his face was suddenly replaced by a tense: pupils widened, lips compressed, cheekbones and jaw were petrified, as if Longsdale was struggling with himself, trying to cling to the elusive something. His face went numb, he blinked slowly and stared uncomprehending at the girl. Margaret froze, barely realizing this sudden transformation. Longsdale still supported her, looked around the scene of the carnage and said:
"Ah! Not bad."
The face, and the voice, and the tone - everything had changed, and if it hadn't been hot on her lips, she would never have believed ...
"Come on," the consultant said in a businesslike manner. "You should be sent to a safe place."
The girl helplessly looked at the hound. He looked at her with a deep human longing.