Doctor Who: Virgin Missing Adventures [020] - The English Way of Death by Gareth Roberts

Author:Gareth Roberts
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426204664
Publisher: Doctor Who Books
Published: 1996-04-13T22:00:00+00:00

Part Three

They were lifted off their feet and sent spinning over and over

7

The Domain of Zodaal

Woodrow climbed the bare staircase slowly, heart thudding, eyes bulging with fright. The setting evinced all his half-formed doubts about Julia’s scheme. Here, with the stench of death and decay on all sides, it seemed to him that nothing could be concealed from the gaze of his master. What if he confessed that the Doctor was alive, and told Stackhouse that Julia had forced him to lie? The thought died instantly.

The vile, brain-eating monster would take the barest hint of treachery as an excuse to indulge its hunger. And, he reminded himself desperately, there was still time for the real Doctor to triumph and by some means save them all. He abandoned that line of thought as, with a heavy tread, he stepped on to the top landing. The eerie green glow seeped from the open door at the far end, coupled with the hideous stentorian breaths of the king of the undead. He took a deep breath and took the last few steps of his agonized journey.

As ever, Stackhouse sat in his high-backed chair, his face turned to the shadows. Without moving he said simply, ‘Woodrow.’

‘I’m here, sir.’ There was an ominous silence. Woodrow hesitated on the threshold, convinced that his master had already divined his secret in some extraordinary and unnatural way. Trying to keep his voice neutral, he asked, ‘All is well at Jasmine Street?’

‘Woodrow,’ Stackhouse repeated. ‘Come closer.’

It took all of Woodrow’s remaining strength of will to hold his ground. ‘Sir, I don’t understand.’

‘Approach.’ Stackhouse’s manner was unreadable. ‘You will approach.’

Woodrow obeyed, inching towards the chair. Stackhouse remained still as death, the patterns in the gas cloud that surrounded him curling and reforming constantly.

His eyes opened, their glow fiercer than ever, the pupils completely obscured by the field of pulsing energy within.

Woodrow screamed once and sank to his knees as if in supplication. His hands sprang up automatically in a gesture of prayer and he babbled, ‘No, sir, it wasn’t me that lied to you, she forced me, it was all her idea, I tried to stop her, I…’ The words simply dried on his throat as a thick tendril of the vapour reached out like a living thing, divided in three, and invaded his open mouth and his nostrils. He felt as if three long, sharp knives had been driven into his head. Desperately he tried to pull away, but his body was locked fast and his limbs refused to respond.

‘The Doctor is still alive,’ Stackhouse said. ‘I can sense the power of his living mind, undimmed.’ He moved slightly in his chair, extending one of his short legs and kicking Woodrow’s frozen body over on to the hard wooden boards. ‘I should have known better than to trust a living human. Your kind squirm and wriggle over this world like maggots infesting a rotting carcass. Soon the great feast will clear the Earth before its immersion in cleansing fire.

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