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

Chapter Forty Five: Wall-to-Wall Bitches

Dr Petrescu took the news that the Queen of the Demons had been resurrected in a way that any doctor would be proud of. He let out a long, slow breath that ruffled his moustache, then got out his equipment and set to work.

Danvers glanced at him whenever he could bring himself to tear his eyes away from the window. The doctor had rolled up his sleeves, and his forehead was smudged with blood from where he'd attempted to wipe the sweat from his brow. Every now and then, they would hear screams from the street below – or the strange, rattling howls of the gargoyle-creatures – and he would grit his teeth and bend over his work with renewed determination, as though he was trying to fight off the distractions.

Danvers hadn't watched the procedure very closely, but he believed the doctor had sewn up the gashes on Miss Cricket's arms and wrists. He had used chloroform to put her to sleep, but she still muttered ceaselessly, and once or twice, Danvers thought he heard the word 'Orpheus' pass her lips.

"It's the stories Ellini was telling her doll," said Dr Petrescu at last. He had a safety-pin clenched between his teeth, and was halfway through the act of tying a bandage. "First Vasilisa the Frog Princess, and now Orpheus. Is it possible that, when she was reconstructing the doll, she was reconstructing Eve by sympathetic magic?"

Danvers gave a small shudder, but pulled himself together. As the only Englishman in the room, he felt it was his duty to bring the conversation back down to earth.

"I really can't thank you enough for your help, Doctor."

"You can thank me if she recovers," said Dr Petrescu. "I really have no idea what I'm doing. I've never operated on a demon before."

"Well, she – she looks like a human being," said Danvers uncomfortably. "Do you mean to say her physiology is different?"

"You mean, does she have four hearts and a chest full of vipers? Not so far as I can tell. But there are lights under her skin. I've never seen that before."

He held up one of her arms. Everything below the elbow was bandaged tightly, but her upper arm was bare, and pathetically skinny. Danvers could see a faint tracery of blue veins under the skin.

And yet, beneath all that – submerged so deep that you could hardly discern them – were hundreds of little moving points of light.

No, perhaps that wasn't right – perhaps they weren't points, but patterns. They converged, combined and broke apart again, in a way that reminded him of the play of light on choppy seas.

"I mean, is that good?" the doctor muttered. "Is it like a pulse? She doesn't have any other pulse that I can identify – for all that she seems to need to breathe – so perhaps this is a substitute? It gets stronger and fainter like a pulse, although I have no idea how it manages to convey blood through her body."

They were silent for a moment. Danvers tried to surreptitiously glance out of the window without making it seem that he wasn't listening.

Eventually, the doctor said, "Did it ever enter your head that perhaps we shouldn't be saving her?"

"No," said Danvers, shocked.

"It entered mine, simply because most things do. But I must admit, not for very long."

***

Jack turned corners at random, trying to outrun his humiliation. Most of his surroundings were a blur, but he recognized the hulk of the University Church when he passed it. 

Hadn't he arranged to meet Ellini in there – in another lifetime, when he'd thought she was different? Would she be there now, waiting for him? Would it make him feel even the tiniest bit better to shout at her?

He changed direction so suddenly that his shoes skidded on the paving slabs, but he managed to right himself and reach the door without falling. All his movements were jerky. The anger was hot and heavy at his back, pushing him forwards. If he didn't move with it, he felt as if it would roll right over him and grind his bones into the pavement. 

He couldn't believe he'd been so taken in – he couldn't believe he had thought she was so different. What had he been thinking? He didn't even find her attractive! And everyone had warned him – Violet and Alice, even that Helen of Camden book. It was perfectly obvious, when you thought about it, that a woman who had been through everything Ellini had been through could only be a bitch.

But he didn't like the people who had warned him, that was the problem. Nor did he like the nasty, predatory way he found women attractive. He had thought Ellini represented something else. A breath of fresh air. But that air was now as stale and sour as the atmosphere inside a tomb. If his mouse was just like the others, then there was nobody different – or even interesting. It was wall-to-wall bitches everywhere you turned.

He eased the church door open, trying to steady his breathing. The mourners had retired for the night, but they always left the doors unlocked and the candles lit, in case some poor, bereaved soul wanted to come in and do their own crying.

But this was not what Ellini was doing. She was kneeling down before the steps that led up to the altar, hunched over something, muttering under her breath as though she was praying. 

The sight jabbed into Jack's eyes like a hundred tiny, red-hot needles. How did she have the audacity to kneel at an altar looking so innocent when she had been in league with Robin? How could she pray to heaven when she must have been in love with hell? And how was she still  – still – so intriguing to his eyes? Why did he want to stop breathing to make out what she was muttering, as if it was more important to understand her than to go on living?  

God, she had really done a number on him! It really felt as if he was teetering on a precipice – as if he could find or lose himself right now, depending on whether she looked round and smiled. 

But it wasn't real. There was nothing to find. He was the barbarian warlord and nothing else. 

The anger shoved him again, and he staggered forwards. Ellini was muttering too frantically to hear him approach. Her hair had come loose – or she had unpinned it – and it was spilling over her shoulders as she knelt.

As he got nearer, he realized she was leaning over a thick silver bracelet. His eyes were too blurry to take in the inscription on the band, but when he looked back – and his memories of that night would be oh-so clear and vivid – he could see it in his mind's eye. He could make out every letter, forming the word 'Unbreakable'.

He opened and closed his fists, still off balance with fury. Then he realized there was something in his hand. It had almost fallen out when he'd unclenched his fingers. The slick black arrow from the River Club. Sturdy, well-balanced and invitingly sharp.

The barbarian warlord knew exactly what to do with it. So he did what the barbarian warlord would have done. 

He gripped her hair in his right hand – only the faintest, fluttering warmth beneath his fingers now – and rammed the arrow through her chest.

***

Without appearing to regain consciousness, Miss Cricket lurched up, as though someone had been lurking under the bed, and had driven a knife up through the mattress and into her chest.

She sank down again, but her breathing was much more laboured now, and – if possible – her marble skin was whitening.

Danvers looked at Dr Petrescu, willing him to say something comforting and professional like, "Don't worry, that was to be expected."

Instead, he let out another long breath and said, "Oh, that's not good." 

***

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