Fortress of Ephemera: A Gothic Thriller (21 page)

“I'm superfluous to him. But you know where the coins are. Or rather, you know the code to locate them with.”

“He may very well risk killing me anyway. Or Noah.” I inched my eyes above the top of the crate, revolver in hand now.

“But why?”

“Because with one of us dead, it makes it easier to recapture the survivor.”

“Ah,” she said. “ 'Divide and conquer.' ”

“An especially apt strategy now, when the numbers on his side are dwindling. When he's outnumbered, for all intents and purposes. One mate dead, another tied up at the moment, and the last very likely incapacitated.”

Willie had stepped beyond his lantern light somewhere, yet I saw a dim shadow that I took to be him with his head down, reloading a bolt into his crossbow. I braced my forearm against the edge of the crate to help steady the revolver, sorely tempted to fire into the murkiness.

“Can you get a clear shot?” she said.

“Not really.”

“You've only six bullets, remember.”

“And Noah only three. Where do you think he's gone to?”

“No idea. But I'd be worried if I were Willie.”

“Noah!” I whisper-cried. But there came no response.

The room brightened suddenly. A sconce on the wall by the snooker table had been lit, presumably Noah's doing. The shadow I'd taken to be Willie proved not to be the case, but I could see the robber from the waist up now, plain as day. He'd moved behind the catapult sling.

“So that's how you want it!” Willie called. “Fine! Come out and play!”

Noah scampered back to us, bent at the waist. “The more light,” he said, “the better it is for us, considering we have the guns.”

“Right, you are,” I said.

“I'll take my aim over by the fireplace. We can triangulate him that way.”

“An excellent notion,” I said. “But first, tell me about that crossbow.”

“Its major weakness is it takes time and a good deal of strength to reload. But its aim is true, and the bolts can penetrate armor from two hundred yards at a distance. So if you think this crate will protect you, it won't.”

“But does he know that?”

“He does if he's noticed that the bolt he fired at you earlier isn't sticking in the wall, but went right through it.”

“How much ammunition does he have?”

“Enough that we needn't bother trying to waste his shots.” He turned to go.

“Wait.” Miss Buxton gripped Noah by one of his skinny calves to prevent him from rushing off. “It would seem we have the upper hand at last. But please don't kill this man. There's been enough bloodshed for one evening.”

“That all depends, Miss,” he said, “on what he gives me to shoot at.”

“What a fine thing you are,” I said to Miss Buxton as Noah hurried away. “Your mercy knows no bounds. But I'll have to agree with Noah and make the kill shot if I have no other.”

“A woman is not a
thing
,” she said.

I held my tongue and took aim at Willie from behind our crate. She popped up beside me, her head and shoulders exposed above the top of the container.

“Get down,” I whispered.

“In a moment.” She reached an arm inside the crate.

“What are you doing?”

“Arming myself, of course. Just in case.” She extracted a maul, also known as a war hammer. It was a two-foot long handle with a sharp spike at the end of it. If memory serves, it had been used in medieval times by foot soldiers, primarily to attack and unhorse riders in battle.

Another bolt from Willie's crossbow sailed into—and through—the wall near where Noah had taken up his position. The crossbow appeared heavy and awkward in the robber's hands as he reloaded. He had to place his foot on the weapon and use some sort of tool to wind the bow back into firing position. I had a clear shot at the side of his head as he worked, but I heard steps to my left, and when I swung my gaze in that direction found to my great surprise the robber Brady staring back at me from the door we'd used to enter the armory. I swiveled my torso in his direction and fired the gun at his midsection.

At the same time, Miss Buxton let out a scream and threw herself against me from behind. Her jostling diverted my bullet into the doorframe. Brady disappeared into the hallway. I returned my gaze to Willie, who'd finished reloading by now and had taken aim at me. I ducked below the crate.

“We'd better find a new hiding place,” I said, “given this crate might as well be made of construction paper.”

No sooner had we scrambled away than a bolt shook the crate and the wall behind it on a journey through and out of the room and—for all I knew—through and out of other rooms and into the street outside or perhaps an adjacent building.

We took up a new position of cover behind the snooker table. It hid us from the door to the hallway in case of Brady's return with some sort of weaponry he'd scrounged up.

I took a peek above the table's surface to ensure that Willie had not advanced, nor changed locations. He hadn't, and I was fairly certain that he hadn't spotted our new locale either.

My ribs were aching again, my breath growing ragged. I dropped onto my buttocks to rest. Miss Buxton sat down beside me.

“Brady,” I whispered. “How?”

“It . . . it must be my fault. That candle I'd left for him out of pity. He must've placed his hands over the flame and burnt through the twine.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Though it would've been a difficult trick with his hands behind his back. The flame could've easily gone out.”

“But it didn't, I suppose.”

“It would've been much easier with a knife.”

“But he didn't have one. You searched him. Gave his knife to me.”

Noah fired a shot. I sprung to my knees and peeked above the table. I could see only Willie's backside now as he hunched behind the catapult. I dropped my head below the surface.

“Is he hit?” she asked.

“Can't tell. I don't think so.” I turned to her. “Hand me that buck knife I gave you in the wine cellar.”

“Why? There must be fifty daggers within your reach on that snooker table.”

Our eyes met. It's rather phenomenal how much information two faces of different genders staring back at each other in close proximity are able to exchange in less than a millisecond—even without the requirement of it all being true. She saw suspicion in my eyes, I'm sure, and I saw shock in hers before a crushing sense of betrayal wrote itself across her full visage. My own face by this point radiated guilt, I've no doubt. Resignation fell upon her as she reached for the knife in the pocket of her mink.

No, not the knife. And her resignation proved to be a ruse—the latest in a long night of them. What she reached for was her maul. Before I could react, she'd raised it above her head by the handle and driven the huge spike at the end of it so deeply into the center of my right foot that it pinned my appendage to the floor beneath.

The pain commenced with a bright flash across my vision, as if a lightning bolt had penetrated through the ceiling. In my anguish, I didn't even notice that I'd dropped the revolver. I was cognizant of my own writhing and that I couldn't move my wounded foot and not much else, excepting my own howls, until I heard Noah call out my name.

“Trenowyth!”

The world returned to me then, one might say. I was on my back. I turned toward the sound of Noah's voice. He approached, bent from the waist. Miss Buxton was approaching him in the same manner from the opposite direction, now gripping a dagger behind her back that she must've snatched from the snooker table. I sat up, intent on stopping her, but having been pinned in place, I could only lunge in her direction before I fell on my side.

Where's that revolver?

There! On the floor!

But it's out of reach!

I called to Noah. “It's her! She's—” I couldn't find the right words, so incapacitating had pain and surprise become.

“We've had an accident,” I heard Miss Buxton say as she met up with Noah. He scurried past her toward me. She turned around and crept up behind him, dagger raised.

“Watch out, Noah!” I called. “Behind you! It's her! She! Shoot her!”

Noah turned back at my warning just in time to take the dagger in his chest.

Eternity Beckons Another

The dagger was buried in Noah up to the hilt. He'd fallen onto his back near enough to me that I was able to place my head directly above his, but only in the manner in which we viewed each other upside down. Miss Buxton, or whomever it was who'd taken on that alias, stood triumphant a short distance away, the revolver in one hand, the flintlock pistol in the other.

“Elizabeth,” Noah said and coughed blood.

“Not to worry, Sir,” I told him. “I owe you my life. Several times over. And I will repay you through your sister. She will survive this night, I vow it.”

“Would you get a load of this one,” Miss Buxton said to her colleague, Willie, as he arrived from across the room, crossbow slung over one shoulder. “He's such a blowhard, you wouldn't believe.” Willie halted beside her, heavy work boots at odds with his female swimsuit.

Blood seeped from the corner of Noah's mouth now. Miss Buxton set the guns on the snooker table before yanking the dagger out of the old man's chest. Noah spasmed as a result.

“You bitch!” I said.

“About time you caught on.”

“You are a vile aberration of womankind.”

“Am I? Or is it women aren't as different from men as you think?”

She extracted the notebook that Noah had lodged between his chest and his union suit. Its pages had been sliced by the blade of the dagger, bloodied by the wound. She leafed through the codes, assessing the damage, I suppose.

“Brady!” Willie called out. “C'mon out, man! It's over! We've nabbed 'em!” He stepped behind the woman to follow the turning of the pages from over her shoulder. “I hope you know what you're doing, Cora.”

“I had no choice. They had the guns. You ought to thank me for saving your hide.”

“But the coins!”

She flicked a glance down at Noah. “This one's no great loss, believe me.”

“But we could've made him talk.”

“Not a chance, Willie. Haven't I just spent hours with that queer old geezer? And I'm telling you, he's paranoid beyond help, he's crackers. He was
never
going to lead us to the coins. Now this one”—she pointed to me with the dagger—“he can be persuaded.” She dropped into an unladylike squat and, with the tip of her bloodied blade, tapped my chin. “Can't you, Love?”

Brady stepped through the doorway. “Give us a kiss, Lass!”

Cora sprung from her squat, tossing the dagger away. She raced over and leapt upon Brady so that her legs straddled him around the hips, and they kissed with the passion of long-separated lovers.

“At last the act is finished,” she said, having come up for air. “I could barely stand to hear myself speak any longer.”

They kissed long and hard again before Brady eased her down to the floor. “You were grand, though, Cora. Sounded so posh. Just like your mistress.”

“The stuck-up whore,” she said.

Without warning, Willie pried the spike of the maul free of the floor, then yanked it free of my foot too. Pain ushered my consciousness from the room again and dropped it deep inside a black pit somewhere.

When my mind climbed out of the pit and wandered back to my body's location in the armory—however long it'd been away—the woman kneeled before me. She'd removed the shoe to my punctured, broken foot and had begun to staunch the bleeding with a cloth scavenged from who-knows-where.

Noah wheezed beside me. His respiration had quickened. His skin had begun to pale. His forehead I found cool to the touch and yet wet with perspiration.

It could only mean that he was bleeding out internally. The knife had entered the heart or else one of the major vessels supplying it. I'd tended to men dying in this manner before. Only minutes remained before—.

Suddenly, Noah gripped my head with both hands and pulled it down close to his face.

“Fifth page,” he murmured before releasing me.

“I think I understand,” I said, taking hold of his hand. He nodded.

“Fifth page?” Willie asked. “Is that what he said?”

“The codebook?” Brady asked.

“Of course,” I said. “He just told me where to look to find the location to the coins. He's offering you the oldest coins on this Earth—or twenty million dollars—in return for his sister's life. She's old and blind and she's never been in the same room with you, nor heard your voices. She's no threat to your gang whatsoever.”

By now Miss Buxton had wrapped my foot tight in a fresh cloth. She cinched it and stared at me with a smirk. “Are you that big a fool? And would trust our word even now?”

“What choice have I? Take the bargain before he goes, and I'll carry it out. Otherwise, you might as well finish me here beside Noah.”

“All right, Mate,” Brady said.