The Romulus Equation Read online

  Remus and Romulus fought tooth and claw, biting and slicing at each other. Again and again they pounded, slashed, punched and kicked, but the longer the fight continued, the more Romulus came to realise that reality was indeed a different story to mythology. In this battle, he knew that Remus would be the victor…

  As evenly matched as they were, Remus had submitted fully to his werewolf nature, crossed the line between man and beast, whilst Romulus was teetering on the edge, desperately trying to cling onto the shreds of his humanity. He could feel it with every punch, every gash and every strike. ‘Only someone just as monstrous as he is can destroy him,’ he had told the conjuror, and that was what he was being forced to accept. If Romulus wished to destroy his brother, to rid the world of his evil, there was only one thing that he could do. He had to surrender his soul.

  Howling like a maddened beast, he tore off his shirt and unleashed a furious assault against Remus. He pounded his fists upon his back, sending Remus to the ground, feet from the edge of the smoking abyss. Remus clawed at Romulus’s face as he pressed the attack. Bloodied arcs filled the air as the two beasts fought. The more ferocious his attacks, the more Romulus felt his control slip from his grasp. Remus’s claws pierced Romulus’s ribcage. The crime-lord roared with pain. An animalistic, primal roar like the true beast he had become. His features were more like Remus’s now. His beard was dripping blood, a wild glint in his yellowed eyes. With both men’s clothes torn to shreds, their lupine bodies were on full display. Their spines were arched, protruding lumps of muscles and bone pulsating, veins fit to burst in their necks, and their brawny bodies caked in the filth from the ashen gravel.

  ‘They’ll kill each other at this rate!’ yelled Quaint.

  ‘And us too if we are not careful,’ added Viktor.

  ‘Not yet! I won’t allow it. I need answers!’

  ‘Forget your answers, think of your life! Romulus is now no more a man than Remus. They will tear this place apart to destroy one another.’ Viktor snatched at Quaint’s face, steering the conjuror’s focus. ‘Cornelius, listen to me. Our plan has failed. We cannot get what you seek. Our only hope is to get out of this place!’

  ‘Run?’ boomed Quaint, batting Viktor away. ‘Not a chance.’

  Resolutely, Quaint threw himself into the fight. He landed on Remus’s back, pounding his fists into the man’s temples. Remus snarled – more in irritation than pain. He reached his burly arms behind his back and grabbed hold of Quaint’s clothes, throwing him off with ease. The conjuror smashed into Romulus in mid-pounce and the ensuing confusion of arms and legs gave Remus just the edge he needed.

  In a trice, he was upon Romulus, slashing wildly with his claws, tearing shreds of fur as if it were tissue paper. Romulus’s torso bled as he fell onto his back; writhing in agony he tried to push his intestines back into his stomach. Remus turned on Quaint then, his face rippling with rage. From somewhere he found an ounce of humanity to speak.

  ‘You wanted… the truth?’

  Quaint backed away, kicking against the ground with his heels. His face was gashed from his contact with Romulus and streaks of blood spilled down his cheeks.

  ‘Yes,’ he hissed.

  ‘Then I shall tell you why I killed Augustus.’ Remus snatched for Quaint’s neck and with incredible ease, he lifted the conjuror off his feet. He pulled him towards his maw, gnashing his fangs in anticipation. ‘As you lie a whisper from death.’

  Quaint gasped for air as Remus almost choked the life out of him.

  Viktor ground his teeth anxiously. He had followed his old friend this far and he was not about to give in now. Seeing Remus pull back his fist for the killing blow, Viktor could not bear to look. But then something struck him, a tale that he had heard from that hairy woman in the Black Forest. She had told him about her curse, and about the only thing that could kill her, the one thing that all werewolves feared more than anything.

  He tickled his fingers over his belt and slowly removed a shining dagger with an ornately decorated handle. This was the knife that he kept under his pillow, his favourite. It had been a gift from young Ruby Marstrand on the day that she had left his tutelage to begin her career with Cornelius Quaint’s circus, but more importantly, it was forged of purest silver. He had never used it in his act. It was of far too much sentimental value. But now it seemed that the knife had a very clear purpose, and for the first time since it had been bestowed on him, Viktor Dzierzanowski used it in anger. The dagger struck its target, embedding up to the hilt in Remus’s heart. As his hands leapt to the wound, he dropped Quaint, who crashed to the ground awkwardly. Remus flailed about wildly with his arms, hollering in pain – no, more than that. More than mere pain. Pain had a limit, a threshold, a point where it levelled out. This sensation went far beyond pain, beyond agony. He clawed at the knife, ripping it from his chest as a fountain of blood spewed out. With his vision impaired, he struck out at everything in his path – and unfortunately for Quaint, that included him, but he was still too dazed to move.

  Pushing his guts back inside his stomach, Romulus staggered to his feet and he threw himself at Remus like a battering ram, the force sending both of them toppling over the edge of the pit in a mass of thrashing claws and gnashing fangs.

  ‘No!’ yelled Quaint. He scrambled to his feet and leapt after them – only to be grabbed by Viktor and pulled back away from the edge. The two men fell to the ground. Quaint desperately tried to wriggle free, pushing himself along on his belly.

  ‘It is too late!’ roared Viktor. ‘They have fallen into the abyss.’

  Quaint clawed his way to the pit’s edge, staring numbly into the swirling black smoke at the bottom of the abyss. There was no sign of either Romulus or Remus. Into the volcano they had gone… along with his only hope of ever learning the truth about his parents.

  Chapter XXX

  The Jaws of Hades

  Quaint slammed his fists into the ground. ‘Damn them!’ His black eyes were fixed into the volcano as spits of white hot lava sprung into life through the smoke.

  ‘Remus and Romulus have fallen… swallowed by that volcanic beast,’ Viktor said, kneeling at Quaint’s side at the edge of the pit.

  ‘And so now we must follow,’ said Quaint.

  Viktor’s eyes flared. ‘For what reason, Cornelius? They are surely dead!’

  ‘We’ll know for sure once we get down there, won’t we?’

  ‘But how? I see no way down,’ said Viktor – quite relieved about it. ‘And I seem to have left my wings at home.’

  ‘We could try floating down with all your hot air!’ Quaint snapped, but then he noticed the wooden structure leaning over the pit with the chain attached to it and an idea immediately popped into his head, but he quickly discounted it for being far too risky. Then he had another idea, but likewise it was afflicted with a high probability of death, and so Quaint changed his mind back to his original (if only marginally less lethal) idea. ‘I know what we’ll do… we’ll climb down!’

  ‘Climb down, are you insane?’ Viktor was clearly against that notion. ‘That hole is hundreds of feet deep if it is an inch! It will take us hours to climb down. I cannot possibly do it, not with this ballast weighing me down!’ He clutched his portly stomach and gave it a wobble.

  ‘I’ll go first then,’ said Quaint, as he took a wide step out onto the structure’s platform, his balance wavering as he edged along the narrow plank.

  Viktor gnawed on his fingernails. ‘This is too much for me to bear.’

  ‘Viktor, stop dithering and get over here!’ he commanded the German, who shuffled himself reluctantly closer to the wooden structure, the boards complaining as he did so. ‘I think Romulus was right about this once serving a purpose for the foundry, so with any luck it will take us all the way down to the bottom of the pit.’

  ‘I am not sure that we have much luck left to spend,’ gulped Viktor, peering down.

  ‘I suppose we’ll have to find out then,’ said Quaint, grasping the chain
. He cursed, snatching his hand away. ‘Hot to the touch. We’ll need to wrap our hands.’

  ‘Here, try this,’ Viktor said, picking up Romulus’s discarded shirt.

  Wrapping the material around his hands, Quaint reached again for the chain, pulling it towards him. He gave it a sharp tug, testing its strength, and he looked around at the wooden structure the chain was attached to. ‘All right. I’m sure this should hold both our weights.’

  ‘Both?’ gulped Viktor.

  ‘Of course, both!’ snapped Quaint. ‘I need you, Viktor! We don’t have a damned clue what’s waiting for us at the bottom of this pit, and I need you by my side! But we’ll need to do it slowly.’

  ‘Ja, I am all for slowly,’ agreed Viktor, reluctantly wrapping the rest of the shirt around his hands. ‘But I do not like heights, Cornelius… especially those suspended above a volcano.’

  As if on cue, a blast of warm air hit them in the face from below breathed.

  ‘That thing does not sound too happy,’ noted Viktor.

  ‘Something tells me it’s waking up,’ said Quaint. ‘We need to hurry up!’

  ‘Hurry up? I thought you said do it slowly!’ cried Viktor.

  ‘I’m not sure we’ve got the time any more,’ said Quaint. ‘If that volcano really is stirring, I don’t much fancy dangling from a chain right above it, do you?’

  ‘Need you ask?’ said Viktor.

  ‘All right,’ said Quaint. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  ‘You first,’ said Viktor.

  Cursing under his breath, Quaint reached out and took hold of the chain. Giving it another tug for good measure, he stepped off the wooden platform. His weight caused the chain to sway violently, and he had to grip on for dear life as he began to spin. Thankfully, as he began to climb down, the chain’s swaying stabilised.

  ‘Climb on!’ he yelled to Viktor.

  Viktor reached out clumsily, but as his fingers brushed against it, the chain swung out just beyond his grasp. He cursed, snatching hold of it on the second pass. The delay had cost him valuable time. By this time Quaint was further down towards the cloud of black smoke that billowed out from within the volcano, and he could see the entrance to what appeared to be a tunnel of some sort. That must surely be where Remus and Romulus were to be found, alive or dead. He looked up the length of the chain to see Viktor swaying in a rather ungainly fashion above him. Time was of the essence and he could not afford to wait around.

  ‘Viktor!’ he called. ‘You’ll have to catch me up.’

  ‘Was?’ snorted Viktor. ‘Do not be an impatient fool, Cornelius! We do this together!’

  ‘I don’t have time!’ Quaint called back. ‘If I jump now I can make it.’

  Quaint muttered a silent prayer and let go of the chain.

  He crashed down first onto his feet and then onto his knees and elbows, and they embedded into the gravel on the edge of the tunnel’s mouth. The heat from the volcano whooshed up to greet him, whistling down the tunnel like a cat’s cry. Snatching a flaming torch from its fixture, he was suddenly taken by the walls. Their surface was as smooth as glass, and he could smell sulphur. His eyes drifted to the tunnel’s mouth where he had just landed. The rock had been fused to glass by years of extreme heat, which meant one thing. The tunnel was no mere tunnel. It was a vent of some kind, either a direct line out of the volcano or a direct line into it – either way, this was not the safest of places to stop and ponder the question.

  ‘Damn it, Viktor, what’s keeping you?’ Quaint muttered.

  A great rumbling groan emanated all around the tunnel and he turned to see an explosion of molten lava spurt up into the air, spitting flaming shrapnel around the mouth of the cave. Through the enveloping smoke he could see the lava below him, sporadic islands of rocks leaping up to the surface like bubbling water.

  He watched the volcano spring into life in spits and spurts, and already he could see an undulating sea of broiling lava beneath the broken surface. The rocks beneath his feet were already pulsing heat through his soles and within minutes it would reach the mouth of the tunnel where he stood.

  ‘Viktor!’ he called. ‘This volcano is going to blow any moment! You have to jump!’

  ‘Jump?’ Viktor boomed. ‘Cornelius, I could die if I jump from this height!’

  ‘Viktor, you could die if you don’t – now do it!’ ordered Quaint.

  Viktor cursed. ‘And you said this would be fun! I told you it would be the death of me, did I not?’

  The German swung his bulk as hard as he could, trying to gain momentum to steer the swaying chain towards the tunnel’s entrance, whilst simultaneously trying to shimmy his way down the chain as quickly as his nerves allowed him.

  ‘Just a little lower!’ Quaint called up.

  Viktor was just about to let go of the chain, when the volcano erupted again and Quaint was lifted several feet in the air. He stumbled for cover into the tunnel as a shower of lava hailstones rained down upon the spot where he had been standing only seconds before. Once the molten spits had cleared, he peered up through the smoke. His expression fell swiftly, for Viktor was nowhere to be seen.

  There was just an empty chain, swinging in the air.

  Another blast came from the volcano, and Quaint had to sprint to get out of its path as a great chunk of rock smashed down from the cave’s roof. Edging slowly into the cave, Quaint recommenced his hunt. Viktor’s loss would be yet another to add to Remus’s tally, and the conjuror was so looking forward to collecting his payment…

  Chapter XXXI

  The Thorn in the Side

  Within the glassy tunnels, Quaint had been walking for some time, his head awash with images of Remus and Romulus, mixed with flashes of pain in his temples whenever he thought of Viktor. The stout German was stronger than an ox, surely he was not dead. It was not like him to go out with a whimper.

  Quaint dreaded every step that he took deeper into the tunnel, as it rose gently into an incline. With still no sight nor sound of Remus and Romulus, it was becoming increasingly likely that they had fallen into the molten pit. He locked the thought away inside a strongbox at the back of his mind. Remus was not dead. He couldn’t be, not when Quaint was so close to learning the truth about his father.

  The conjuror stopped in his tracks as he noticed a dark shape standing in the middle of the tunnel just ahead of him. A flame of hope ignited in his stomach. Was that Viktor? Had he survived the volcano’s explosion after all? Quaint made his way towards the man – slowing his pace instantly as the face came into view.

  ‘How in God’s name—?’

  ‘I assure you, mon ami? God had nothing to do with it,’ said an all-too-familiar voice.

  Quaint fought the urge to vomit as it felt as though ice-cold fingernails scratched down the surface of his spine. His whole world began spinning in front of his eyes, his ears pounding, his heart thumping. He knew that voice. He knew it only too well, for it was the same one resounding in his nightmares. It was the voice of a ghost. It was the voice of—

  Antoine Renard stepped out of the shadows of the tunnel, his pale face scarred with hideous gouges of flesh. ‘Greetings, Cornelius. I trust that I have your complete attention?’ he said, chewing on every word. ‘This is a private matter, after all.’

  Quaint felt every muscle in his body tense. ‘I must be dreaming.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Renard. ‘I don’t think your imagination is this creative.’

  ‘How the hell did you survive Whitehall?’ demanded Quaint, referring to the last time that he had seen Renard alive. He had watched the current of the Thames drag him underwater. He had assumed that the devil had drowned, but he had not seen the body, only the tattered shreds of clothing rising to the surface. ‘How are you still alive, Renard?’

  ‘Let’s just say that not even death can kill me,’ said the Frenchman. ‘Now, as much as I would love to catch up on old times, I’m here on a little errand. You see, there’s someone that’s been dying to meet you,
and as the Baron seems to be otherwise engaged, I’ve been sent to escort you to her.’ He held up his metal hand and clenched the fingers. ‘Although… not without a little resistance on your part, I hope.’

  ‘Why can’t you just die?’ hissed Quaint.

  ‘You first,’ said Renard. ‘But not until after you’ve heard my message. In case you’re wondering how I knew that you were here, my mother was kind enough to inform me. She should be fairly uncomfortable by now, I should imagine.’

  ‘Destine?’ Quaint’s fists were shaking as they ached to make contact with Renard’s face. ‘You’re lying!’ he yelled – but his words carried no weight, for he was reminded of the All-Knowing One’s prophecy, that Destine would end up sacrificing herself so that he might live. ‘If you’ve hurt her I’ll—’

  ‘Save your posturing, Cornelius… she and your ape-man will remain unharmed as long as you cooperate.’

  Quaint scowled meaning from the Frenchman’s words. ‘Prometheus? He’s here too? Take me to them!’

  ‘All in good time, my dear Cornelius. The Hades Consortium has gone to great lengths to keep an eye on you over the years, remember? When we met again in Whitehall, I told you that although I may have been dead to you… you were most certainly not dead to me. Why is that? How is it that our paths crossed so frequently over the years, have you ever wondered?’

  ‘You share some of Destine’s clairvoyant gifts, I know that much. Why does it matter?’ And that was a very good question. Words were never Renard’s weapon of choice. He preferred to inflict physical injuries. ‘Get to the point. I don’t have all day.’

  ‘Avec precision,’ the Frenchman said, grinning gleefully. ‘But you had better restrain that temper of yours, Cornelius, or you will never hear the truth! But I don’t need to tell you. Soon you will see it with your own eyes.’