Red, White and Blue (Book Two of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Forty Four: Pinpoint Clarity

When Manda had rushed off to help Sam, Jack found himself all alone in the wreckage of the nightclub, clutching the black arrow. It was his new best-friend, and he adored it. Unfortunately, there was nothing much to do with it now, because his gargoyle had been shouted into submission by the old man, and was now lumbering to the back of the room to snap at the heels of any remaining bystanders.

He wasn't worried about Sam. He had seen him stand up to Professor Burgess. There hadn't been much skill in it, but he had still been terrifying. There was something horrific about a man who just kept on getting up, no matter how many times you knocked him down.

Besides, the old man with the grotesque tan was still standing in the doorway, and he was the key to controlling the gargoyles. They were just the monkeys; he was the organ-grinder.

And he was watching Jack with a cautious, quizzical expression, as though he'd seen him before somewhere, but couldn't quite place him.

Jack turned, and was about to hurry through the broken glass to the doorway, when a strange feeling – a moment of pinpoint clarity – suddenly made him stop. 

Maybe it was just the broken glass and the smashed crockery underfoot, but everything seemed to turn sparkly. Hundreds of fractious points of light poked in at his eyes, as though he had wandered into the glass laboratory. He was conscious of something extra behind his eyeballs – something alien and expanding.

For a moment, it didn't make sense. He staggered on for a few paces, like a man who'd had his head lopped off but hadn't realized it. He kept his eyes fixed on the old man in the doorway, until other images began to overlap him – of the last time he'd seen Ellini at the gates of Lucknow, looking back at him while Robin led her away.

There was blood soaking into her deep red sari, and Robin's face was a mess of scratches. The two of them were blurring in and out of focus as he tried to master some kind of anger. 

When Jack opened his eyes, he realized that the pressure of these images had forced him to his knees. He was kneeling in the broken glass, with his hands pressed over his eyes. And the doorway which had contained the organ-grinder was now empty.

But it didn't matter, because realization was crashing over him in horrible, beating waves. Now the misery of those last few months in India – which he still remembered, but hadn't been able to explain until now – made a horrible, inexplicable sort of sense. The fact that he had drunk himself into oblivion, had thrown himself into the much-greater oblivion of Myrrha's bed, had rushed off to die an honourable death at the Delhi Cantonment – it could all be traced back to this memory.

But he didn't understand it – that was what made his head pound and his vision blur. Knowing the cause of the misery didn't explain anything! If Ellini had left him for Robin, then she was everything that book said she was, everything Alice and Violet had been warning him about. He could understand that he'd been angry at her betrayal, but why had it made him want to kill himself? 

He supposed he had been in love with her, but he couldn't feel an atom of that now. All he could feel was bewilderment, humiliation, and a heart-pounding sense of claustrophobia. 

He had thought for so long that she was different. How could he have been so taken in? 

And if she wasn't different – if she really was the manipulative temptress from Helen of Camden – then none of it was real. There was no struggling part of him that she was keeping alive with her dark, wholesome presence. He was the barbarian warlord – washed-up, swaddled and caged, a scientist's lapdog taking pills for a living. 

Everything was exactly as it appeared. The whole world was constricting in on him. 

He staggered out of the door, without any idea where he was going. There was no plan, just an anger that kept him lurching through the streets, looking for the edge of his cage – if only so he could rattle the bars and howl. 

***

Even with the cold, and the pain, and the water in his eyes, Sam fought to stay conscious and see what was happening on the bridge above him. 

He saw his Constables hauling on the end of the chain – he saw them dragged forward by the gargoyle's weight until they smashed into the parapet. One of them even tumbled into the river beside him. The heavy splash obstructed his view for a second, but by the time the air cleared, the men on the bridge seemed to be getting the upper hand – bracing their boots against the parapet and hauling like a tug-of-war team.

They kept pulling, but the bridge held firm, and the gargoyle was eventually dragged off its feet. Sam could see its clawed legs dangling above him. Even over the rush of water in his ears, he could hear its terrified shrieks and the agitated flapping of its wings.

You could almost feel sorry for it – especially since it was now hanging by its neck and nothing else. Sam tried to raise himself up to give instructions, but just ended up with a mouthful of water.

But, as it turned out, his officers didn't need instructions. He saw them hook other chains around the creature's wrists to try and redistribute the weight, so it didn't throttle to death – although whether it could throttle to death, without Alice to do the throttling, was a matter for debate.

A hand reached into the water and grabbed Sam's collar. It was tiny and didn't have the strength to drag him up, but it seemed very determined – it was pulling his collar so tight that it was almost choking him – so Sam took pity on it and hauled himself out of the water.

When he flung himself, panting and shivering, onto the pier, the hand still hadn't let go of his collar. It seemed to have seized up in shock. Sam rubbed the water out of his eyes and followed the hand to its source.

Manda's face was white. It made her freckles stand out starkly. Her jaw was clenched with terror, but when she was finally able to wrench it apart, she shouted at him – as though he was the one who was being slow.

"You're wasting time!" she snapped. "Stop playing with them. We need Alice – she's the only one who can kill them."

Sam groaned and slumped over on the decking. He could handle having his head wrenched off by a gargoyle, but not by Alice Darwin.

Manda hauled him up again. Apparently, she thought he had slumped down because he was injured. And perhaps he was injured, but it all seemed very far away at the moment.

"I'll get her," she said, a little more softly. "You – you look after Ellini."

Sam, with as much dignity as he could muster, dragged both of them to their feet. "I have two more gargoyles to catch," he said, motioning towards the creature chained to the bridge. There was no more flapping and struggling. Perhaps it was the iron – or perhaps it had just given in to the terror that had been sapping its spirit from the moment it came in. "Besides, Ellini's gone."

"Jack knows where she is!" Manda protested.

"Jack's gone."

Manda whipped round and stared into the murky interior of the club. The floor was heaped with broken furniture and smashed glass, but Jack was nowhere to be seen.

"Oh, that's not good," she said, in a small voice. Then, for some reason, she looked down at the skirts of her dress. "That's not good at all."

***

Thank you so much for reading! Please give this chapter a vote if you've enjoyed it!