Authors: Axel Blackwell
The man hauled Anna up out of the water by her shoulder. She wailed, an involuntary cry of pain that dwindled to a sob.
“You’re my ticket out of here,” he rasped into her ear. “I didn’t bargain for any of this. You people are deeply cracked.” He dragged her backward into a recess below the staircase.
“We’re just gonna sit here and watch the show. Both sides seem to want you. God only knows why. Don’t look like there’s much left of you.” He coughed a harsh laugh, the stubble around his lips scratching her ear. “But, no matter. We’ll sit back an’ see who wins. I’ll trade you for a ride off this god forsaken rock.”
Anna’s vision blurred, her legs wobbled.
I must stay awake. I must not faint
.
Breathe, breathe, think, breathe and think…
The chaos outside continued to intensify. Rumbling detonations chased each other across the storm swept sky. The column of rain falling from the bell tower scintillated with the reflected lightning, making it look like a solid pillar of light. The wailing bell and the screaming wind fought to be heard over the thunderclaps.
Fire now had a firm grasp on Dolores’s pyre. Reddish flames licked at the damp straw. Thick black smoke rolled upward as flames contended with the mix of kerosene and seawater. Moisture slowed its progress for now, but the higher the flames climbed, the farther from the water, the faster they would move. Dolores, herself, still held that awful rigid pose, fingers curled to claws, back arched against the chair, eyes rolled into her head.
I have to reach her. I have to get away from this man.
But the mercenary clamped down on her shoulder the second she twitched. Anna whimpered. Her knees failed and she slouched against her captor. He wrapped his other arm around her waist and hoisted her up.
“Where you going? Huh?” he asked. “Go out there and you’ll be dead in four steps. I’m a trained killer an’ I sure as hell ain’t goin’ out there. Best you just stay here with me a while.” He tugged at the collar of her dress, then yanked it down on the right side. The coarse fabric across her back ripped. “Damn,” he chuckled, “looks like you already got a back full of buckshot. Bet that smarts like hell, huh? I’m surprised you’re still on your feet.”
Anna was surprised as well. Her breath came in quick little gasps. Her heart throbbed in her temples, behind her eyes, in her shoulder. She decided that, for the moment, maybe she didn’t really need to be on her feet. She slouched against the mercenary, letting him support her full weight.
He didn’t seem to notice at all. He poked at her shoulder. An agonizing
zing
burst from the spot, pain welling up in her shoulder and radiating outward, white hot wires running down her arm, down her legs, all the way to her toes.
She screamed and lurched into the mercenary. He was a solid stack of muscle and withstood her lunge as easily as if he had been a stone pillar. The strength drained out of Anna. She wrapped her arms around his waist for support.
“Whoa, take it easy,” he said. “You lucked out, girly. Have a look.” He extended his hand in front of her face. Her blood covered his outstretched index finger. On the pad of that finger rested a flat silver disk. It looked like a bloody button.
“Just a ricochet, if that had hit you square, it wouldn’t have flattened out,” he said. “And it woulda sunk a lot deeper. You got five or six more. Want me to dig ‘em out for you?”
“No,” Anna whimpered. “Please, no.”
Fresh flurries of pain washed across her back and shoulder, radiating from the wound. She clung to his heavy belt. One of his hands was wrapped around her waist, the other still held the bit of buckshot before her face.
“Well, okay then,” he chuckled. “Stop wriggling. Let’s just see how this plays out. I’ve always wanted to see a witch burn.” He paused, then added, “Stand up.”
Anna tried to pull herself up, clinging to his belt. A thought was forming in her mind…
Something about the belt.
Something about his hands.
And the throbbing in her temple.
Her temple, where he had pressed the gun.
His hands, one around her waist, the other in front of her face. No gun in either.
He must have holstered it
.
It’s on his belt. It’s got to be
.
She found it as soon as the thought materialized, a mass of steel and leather on his hip. Anna wrapped her fingers around the handle as gingerly as she could.
“Stand up, I said!” He flicked the flattened pellet into the water, grabbed her with both hands and jerked her upright. Anna held tight to the pistol. As he pulled her to her feet, it slipped smoothly from its holster and dropped, the weight of it nearly yanking her arm out of its socket. The mercenary failed to notice, the roughness of his motion covering the smoothness of hers.
“Now stand still and watch the show,” he rasped. “It’s about to get good.”
His pistol dangled between them. The mercenary gazed out of their nook, enraptured by the chaos in the rotunda. Anna forced herself to slow her breathing. She fidgeted her fingers and thumb against the revolver as she had seen the singing trio do with their guns.
Thumb the hammer, pull the trigger.
Anna had never fired a weapon, never even held one before today. A western novel had been among the books she stole from McCain’s office, a gunfighter story. The hero, Tumbleweed Tom, thumbed the hammer and pulled the trigger, and the bad guys dropped. Sometimes, Tom would
fan
the hammer, if he had to drop lots of bad guys. Anna had no idea how to fan a hammer, but she had seen the chanting woman thumbing the hammer of her revolver and guessed she could manage that.
Pulling the trigger shouldn’t be too hard either, just a gentle squeeze according to Tumbleweed. The difficulty would be aiming the gun. Even lifting it seemed near impossible at the moment. She knew bullets had lead in them, but it felt to her as if the whole gun was made of the stuff. And the mercenary held her firm with both hands. He would break her in half before she escaped his grasp.
Just wait, Anna. Just hold steady
.
Move when the time is right.
She stared out into the rotunda. Joseph had moved away from the stairs, heading for McCain. He was slowing down, weakening. The magic truly was draining away. The head that had been hanging earlier was now gone.
It’s probably bobbing just below the surface of the water, snapping at any ankle within striking distance.
He continued to fight, but less ferociously. The goons assembled against him also appeared severely worn. Perhaps half a dozen remained. They retreated in a formation, a kind of defensive array, around McCain. Rather than killing Joseph, their purpose now seemed to be the safety of their mistress.
Heavy smoke billowed up from the pyre. The restless air pulled it this way and that, sometimes veiling Dolores, sometimes revealing her. The flames had not yet reached her, but sweat rolled down her red, rigid face. Fire crawled slowly over the kindling. The base of the heap smoldered as the water boiled and steamed. Smog hung in a low curtain around the rotunda.
Movement on the balcony caught Anna’s attention. She snapped her head up to see Donny standing at the rail by the door to the kitchen. His eyes flicked this way and that, half glazed in astonishment, searching the battlefield below him. Searching for her.
“Friend of yours?” the mercenary asked. He sounded amused.
Anna nodded. Hot tears sprung at the corners of her eyes. Her two voices simultaneously cried,
Run away, stupid boy!
and,
Donny, help me!
Donny cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted into the rotunda. Anna couldn’t hear him over the roar, but she knew he was yelling her name, over and over.
“Bold little bastard, ain’t he?” the mercenary said.
Anna felt a slight twinge of hope, might have even smiled if she had any smile left.
“Ain’t that Hattie McLane’s flintlock he’s got shoved down his britches?”
“It isn’t Hattie’s anymore,” Anna said, feeling a little bit of steel returning to her nerve.
The mercenary laughed out loud. Then hammered the back of her head with his palm. “I told you not to talk.”
Anna’s knees buckled, but the man caught her and held her up. “If you’re gonna talk tough, little lady, then you sure as hell can stand on your own two feet. Besides, I think you might wanna watch this. Looks like your little buddy’s ‘bout to get himself killed.”
Anna looked to the empty balcony where Donny had been, then frantically scanned the rest of the upper level without seeing him. She spotted him on the stairs, picking his way through the fallen witch-hunters. He grabbed a large knife someone had dropped, then continued his descent, eyes focused on Dolores.
“Why, he’s a regular swashbuckler,” the man laughed. “What do you suppose he thinks he’ll do with that knife?”
“Look, mister, that door he came through, that’ll take you out of here,” Anna said. “You said you wanted out. That’s the way, right there, and nobody’s close enough to stop you. Let’s make a run for it.”
“Shut up,” he said in a low, flat voice, grinding his hard thumb into the wound on her shoulder. “I told you, I wanna watch the witch burn.”
Anna writhed under his thumb, gritting her teeth, trying not to scream. A cold sort of numbness crept down the length of her arm. Her muscles there went slack. She feared she would drop the revolver if he pressed much longer. When he finally did relieve the pressure, he left his thumb on the spot, an implied threat. Anna decided that if she was to have any use of the gun, she needed to do it now.
Tumbleweed Tom popped into her mind again. He’d had a fat sidekick, a character whose only purpose was comic relief. Anna couldn’t remember his name, but she did remember his limp. Much fun was made of the fat sidekick because he had shot himself in the foot.
It’s already aimed at his foot
.
If I shoot his foot, I bet he’ll let go. Then I can aim it at his head if he still comes after me.
She pressed the pad of her thumb against the hammer’s ridged spur and applied pressure. The hammer didn’t budge.
“Aw, hell!” the man said. “What’s he want with her?”
Anna looked up. Donny splashed across the room toward Dolores. A thickening haze of steam and sooty smoke rose from the pyre, swirled in the restless air. Donny reached the heap in a few wet bounds. He circled it, frantically searching for a clear path to Dolores. Something tripped him. He pitched forward, stumbling over some submerged object. Anna feared it was Joseph’s other head.
Instead, when Donny rose, he held one of the buckets Elizabeth had used to douse Dolores. He stuffed the knife into his waistband, opposite the pistol, and used both hands to slosh a bucketful of water onto the fire. Impenetrable white steam engulfed him. He disappeared into it. A second later, another plume of steam billowed up from where Donny had been standing.
“God damn him!” the mercenary muttered.
Anna pressed harder on the hammer, squeezing her fingers and thumb together with all her might. The hammer rocked back just a hair, its spring incredibly tight. She pressed harder until the spur dug into her thumb, pressed harder until it felt like it was going to tear the skin off. Still, the hammer barely moved.
“Seize that child!” McCain shrieked from the other side of the room. “Make him stop!”
Her goons ignored the order, instead maintaining their defensive circle around McCain. Joseph stood between them and Dolores. His left side drooped. Several of his remaining limbs dangled limply. But each time one of the witch-hunters advanced on him, he effectively beat them back or struck them down.
Anna looked back to the burning heap. Flames leapt up one side, finally reaching the drier tinder. Donny stood on the other side, enveloped in smoke, having cleared a path through the flames. He fumbled with the gag, the leather belt that held Dolores’s head to the chair. After a moment of working ineffectively at the buckle, he drew his knife and cut the belt away.
As soon as the gag was gone, Donny yelled into Dolores’s face. Anna heard him this time. “Where’s Anna?”
Dolores’s mouth moved, but she did not answer Donny. Her lips raced, chanting.
Donny shoved her shoulder, shook her chair, and yelled again, “Dolores, where is Anna?”
“Ain’t that sweet? He’s coming to find you,” said the mercenary. “Better hope he doesn’t, for his sake.”
Smoke and haze clung to the air, so heavy now that Anna could no longer see to the balcony, or the other side of the room. Screams came to her from the area where she had last seen Joseph, but the veil of smog concealed him and the witch-hunters.
Anna tugged at the hammer. She felt the trigger slide backward under her finger when the hammer moved.
It’s a double action!
another little tidbit from Tumbleweed Tom.
The trigger will cock the hammer, but you have to pull it really hard
.
She slipped her middle finger into the trigger guard along with her index finger and squeezed, squeezed, pressing the hammer with her thumb.
Up on the pile, Donny sawed at Dolores’s ropes. She was moving now, rocking forward and back in quick, jerky spasms. Her head nodded with her chant, flipping her hair back and forth. Donny hopped this way and that as he hacked at the ropes, trying to keep the flames off his feet. Whenever his footwork brought him face to face with Dolores, he screamed, “Where is Anna?”
Anna squeezed the trigger while wrenching the hammer with her thumb. The revolver was huge, a big gun for a big man, and its springs proved too tight for Anna’s small hand. Try as she might, the hammer would not cock.