The Iscariot Sanction by Mark Latham Page A

was happening.
    In another instant, the creatures had barrelled into the yard. Men fled, or tried in vain to wrestle with the monsters, which were now so smeared in gore that they resembled red-skinned demons. If the factory workers did not know otherwise, then they probably thought the creatures were the very hellspawn from the Rift.
    John did not stay to witness the terror he had wrought. He ran as fast as he could—little more than a limping jog—towards the stables. A man stepped in his path, and John struck him with the wrench, knocking the labourer to the ground. A creature gained on them, and upon hearing its snapping jaws and guttural grunts behind him, John spun around with the tool, cracking it into its sloping, malformed head. The monster let out a low, keening howl, and pulled itself along the ground towards John, its oversized jaws gnashing, and its noxious breath steaming in the winter air. John smashed the wrench into the head of the blasphemous thing, again and again, until he was as gore-smeared as the thing itself.
    He looked up. More men were racing past him towards the courtyard. John hazarded a look back over his shoulder. Across the courtyard, from the shadow of the factory, strode a tall, thin, figure in black. With imperious sweeps of his arms, the grotesque creatures retreated from their half-devoured victims, like chastised hounds shrinking from a stern hunt-master. What mysterious power this Majestic held over the foul beasts, John knew not. And he did not intend to stay and find out.
    By the time John had found a dray horse, led it from the stable and hauled himself onto its back, a gang of workers had almost reached him, with a hue and cry and demands for vengeance. That their master had brought such misery upon their fellows was evidently lost on them. John spurred on the horse, barging through the mass of bodies. He stole a look over his shoulder, and saw the Majestic striding towards him, porcelain face twisted into a bestial snarl that was too much like the pale-skinned beasts for John’s liking.
    With another kick at the horse, John was away through the great gates of the factory, and onto the road that twisted through the black forests.
    Cold air filled his lungs. John knew he had to return to London as soon as he could. The Majestic—whoever or whatever he was—posed a threat greater than John could have imagined. He thought of the beasts in the subterranean lair, and of the strange liquid in the workshop—most definitely etherium, the most dangerous substance on earth. He had to tell Sir Toby all that he had seen.
     
EXTRACT FROM THE KEYNOTE SPEECH OF DR. WILLIAM CROOKES, ROYAL SOCIETY, 1873
    There were many who doubted my own assertions that Catherine and Margaret Fox were possessed of genuine psychical ability, and that doubt extended beyond the point of all reason, when science had clearly illustrated the truth of the matter. We can now look back on the events of September last, however, with utmost certainty. Those events have become called, in the popular press, ‘the Awakening’, and this is as apt a name as we of the Royal Society could hope to coin.
    We now know that approximately ten per cent of the population of England, and some smaller proportion of people around the world, were in some way affected when the woman known colloquially now as Kate Fox performed her infamous séance by royal appointment. The proportion of those affected was higher still among those in attendance, although thankfully Her Majesty the Queen appeared unharmed by the procedure. In revealing what she called her ‘spirit familiar’ to an unsuspecting public, Kate Fox inadvertently widened the Rift, with a twofold effect.
    First of all, the number of adverse psychical phenomena involving the Riftborn more than trebled worldwide. So-called demonic possession of vulnerable personages became almost commonplace—an alarming trend that escalates daily. Secondly, in a somewhat violent mass