Betrayal

Betrayal Part 6

The following night, Lucy found herself back on the doorstep of Portland Row.

She felt strangely nervous. When she had walked out two weeks earlier, it had been with the firm expectation that she would never step foot inside again.

Her heart was thudding loudly in her chest. Finally, after waiting a few more moments, Kipps reached around from behind her and rapped on the door.

George opened it almost immediately, like he'd been waiting for them.

"Holly's downstairs with Flo getting things ready,'' he said in hushed tones. Lucy didn't know why he was whispering. They'd waited until midnight, when Lockwood had gone out for the night.

Then they had sent Edith around to Kipps' place to alert he and Lucy. They had quickly made for Portland Row, while Edith had gone to fill Inspector Barnes in.

They had argued over that part of the plan, but Lucy was adamant. If anything went wrong, they needed someone else to know that Lockwood wasn't responsible.

According to George, Lockwood would likely stumble in just before dawn and fall straight into bed.

They hoped his inebriated state would mean Kipps, George and Flo would be able to subdue him without too much trouble.

Then they would take him down to the basement, where Lucy and Holly would be waiting to bind him to a chair with iron chains.

After that, they were essentially winging it.

Lucy followed the boys down the hall, coming to a stop outside a familiar door. Kipps and George shared a glance before carrying on into the kitchen, leaving her to enter Lockwood's room alone.

She felt the anger bubble in her chest as she looked around. If she had not believed the possession story before, this would have been enough to convince her.

Where Lockwood, her Lockwood, had been neat and orderly, with his suits hanging in a row and his books stacked with precision in alphabetic order, this new Lockwood was anything but.

The floor was littered with discarded clothes and towels, empty liquor bottles, and crumpled cigarette packets.

The bed where Lucy had once brought him trays of breakfast after he was shot was unmade.

Feeling mutinous, she strode across the room and yanked open the bedside table drawer.

There, just as Holly had said, was a tatty old navy and grey scarf Lucy recognised as her own. It had been one of her favourites, and as she picked it up carefully, she caught a whiff of her perfume.

The small seed of hope grew just a tiny bit bigger.

She unwrapped it, found the silver necklace, and secured it around her neck.

It felt right against her skin, a weight she hadn't even realised she had been missing.

"I just hope it works,'' she muttered under her breath as she left the room without a backwards glance.

Downstairs, the mood in the basement was grim.

A chair had been placed in the centre of the room, beside a heavy pile of iron chains.

The others were sitting on chairs that had been brought down from the kitchen, formed in a circle around the centre chair. Each of them was decked out with a rapier and enough kit to destroy a cluster of Visitors.

Their arsenal made Lucy nervous. If they couldn't get through to Lockwood, if they couldn't bring him back....there was only one other option. One too terrible to even think about.

Lucy took the empty seat directly in front of the centre chair, in between George and Holly.

Over the next couple of hours, they mostly sat in quiet contemplation, buried in their own thoughts. Flo and George occasionally murmured to each other, too low for the others to hear.

Kipps checked his watch at regular intervals, a frown wrinkling his pale forehead, while Holly busied herself by writing a shopping list for their depleted supply stock.

As for Lucy, she sat in silence, trying to quell the panic threatening to overwhelm her.

'Please let this work, please let this work, please let this work,' she chanted over and over in her head. She was starting to wish she had brought the skull along. As annoying as he was, at least he would have distracted her with an argument or snarky comment.

Finally, Kipps checked his watch one last time and then stood up, stretching.

"It's 4am,'' he announced, and George and Flo stood up as well. That was their queue to head upstairs and wait to ambush their erstwhile leader.

They clambered up the stairs, leaving Holly and Lucy to return to their thoughts.

Just as Lucy thought the waiting was becoming too much to bear, she heard the faint sound of the front door opening above them.

She and Holly shared a nervous glance, and then went to stand behind the centre chair.

The sounds of a brief scuffle drifted down, and a few moments later, there was a series of thuds and the basement door was kicked open.