"Leave him out of this. He's just a no-good street kid who knows he's got a roof over his head when he needs it. That's all."
Elsa began to scurry toward the kitchen, suggesting quietly, "Why don't I make us all tea?"
"Don't bother," Jake said. "I'm leaving."
The Professor stood to face the dying embers. "I had hoped for more from you, Jake."
"A lot of people do."
The Professor knew there was no point arguing. "Elsa, please fetch Mr. Stone the keys to Will's motorcycle."
Elsa did as she was asked, disappearing down the hallway to Will's room.
"Don't bother," Jake said. "I'd rather walk."
"It's 40 miles to the nearest town."
Elsa returned with the keys. Jake shook his head. "I'll walk. I wouldn't wanna feel obliged in any way. Like you said, you saved my life. Thanks. Maybe someday I'll return the favor. 'Til then, let's you and me call it a day."
"Very well," the Professor said. "Eden has a spare set of clothes in his room. He won't mind. Elsa?"
Elsa put the bike keys in her pocket and hurried off to fetch the clothes.
"The road only goes in one direction down the mountain. I wish you well, Mr. Stone. Please... take care of yourself."
Jake nodded, "I will. It's what I do best."
The moon had set early, and the night was cold and dark. Jake pulled Eden's thick parka around him and zipped it up tightly. He was walking along the middle of the road that led down the mountain from the Chalet. Crickets chirped, and the odd unseen forest creature scurried through the trees on either side of the road, but apart from that it was silent. Dark and silent. Nothing but the insects and the sound of Eden's boots—which were a little too snug for Jake's large feet—clomping along the road.
But then, another sound caught his attention.
It sounded like the distant drone of a car engine.
Jake looked down the road ahead of him. He could see nothing.
He glanced behind him, thinking perhaps Elsa was coming back to retrieve him. But there was nothing there either, nothing but a few dim lights still on up at the chalet. Elsa was probably still awake, no doubt worrying about the Professor. They seemed like good people, Jake thought to himself. There was no denying it. But Jake was a loner. He always had been, always would be.
He turned his attention back to the road in front of him.
That sound, that drone, it was still there. And it was louder now.
Jake squinted at the darkness ahead of him. There were no headlights that he could see. No lights at all.
And yet that sound was unmistakable. It was definitely a car engine. No, wait; it was the sound of two engines.
The noise grew louder quickly, still with no visible sign.
Jake decided to get off the road.
He moved swiftly into the forest at the side of the road and crouched low behind a tree, watching.
Suddenly, the sound took shape as Jake watched two sinister black cars speed by him, heading up the road, one behind the other, neither of them with their headlights switched on.
The moment they were gone, Jake hurried back out onto the road watching the cars journey up the mountain.
He knew the road led up to the chalet and nowhere else.
He knew immediately that Elsa and the Professor were in danger.
Jake started sprinting as fast as he could, back up the mountain road.
Elsa had already decided that with the troubles the Professor was going through there would be no getting to sleep tonight. She was sitting by the fire when she thought she heard a noise outside. It sounded like a branch snap. The Professor had only just retired, and he desperately needed his sleep, and the last thing Elsa wanted to do was disturb him with stories of suspicious noises. Besides, it was probably just a falling branch. It happened a lot out here.
Nevertheless, Elsa got out of her chair, tied her gown tightly around her thick waist and warily approached the window. She peered into the darkness but saw nothing.
That's when she heard a different noise, something much more alarming—the sound of somebody trying to break the lock on the door downstairs.
Elsa was in the Professor's bedroom within seconds, shaking him awake.
"Professor!" she whispered urgently. "Someone's trying to break into the—"
At that moment she heard the
pang
and
smash
of a window breaking somewhere in the house.
The Professor sat bolt upright.
Elsa was already rummaging desperately through the drawers of his bedside table. "Where's your gun?" she asked frantically.
"You know I don't believe in keeping guns in the house!"
"When someone's trying to break in and kill us, I do! And thank goodness, so do the boys!"
She grabbed the Professor's hand and yanked him out of bed.
Together, they hurried silently down the hallway and into Shane's room where Elsa closed the door behind them. She hauled open the drawers of his dresser and instantly found a pistol wrapped up in a pair of jeans.
At that moment, they both heard footsteps in the hallway.
Elsa grabbed the Professor's hand, glanced around, and then quickly and quietly packed them both into Shane's closet, pressing hard up against his jeans, jackets and cowboy shirts.
She shut the closet doors soundlessly and pointed the gun at the closed closet doors in anticipation, both of them holding their breath.
In the next few moments, the Professor counted not one, not two, but three pairs of feet treading as quietly as possible around Shane's room.
A fourth person entered the room.
Elsa and the Professor heard a hushed voice. "He's not in his room."
"Shh!" came the harsh reply, frighteningly close to the other side of the closet door.
Elsa's eyes bugged in terror.
She held the gun tightly in both hands, her finger pushing as hard against the trigger as she could manage without squeezing it.
Slowly, the door handle to the closet began to turn.
Elsa raised the gun higher.
The door handle turned as far as it would go.
Elsa shut her eyes tight.
The latch on the door clicked open.
Elsa pulled the trigger.
There was a loud
clack
!
But no gunshot.
No bullets.
Just the hollow clack of a trigger being pulled on an unloaded gun.
Elsa opened her eyes in horror.
At the same time, the doors flew open.
Four men in black robes stood facing them, all with guns. The man directly in front of them had a merciless, toothless grin and only one arm.
He laughed.
Elsa screamed, and before any thoughts of consequences had time to cross her mind, she raised her knee as hard and as fast as she possibly could and launched the one-armed man's balls straight up into his chest.
The man's laughter slid quickly up into a shrill squeal. He dropped to his knees, clutching his groin, at which point Elsa threw her empty gun at him as hard as she could. It conked him on the head and knocked him clean unconscious.
Elsa pulled the closet doors shut, grabbed the Professor and pulled him down to the floor of the closet just as the other three black-robed men opened fire.
Bullets shredded the closet doors above their heads as Elsa rummaged frantically for something—anything—on the floor of the closet that might protect them.
There were boots.
Stirrups.
Hats.
A belt.
A holster on the belt.
A gun in the holster.
Bullets in the gun!
As shards of splintered wood rained down upon them, Elsa opened fire, shooting bullets randomly through the closed doors until there were no more bullets left in the gun, and the sound of gunfire ceased completely, both from within the closet —and the room outside.
In the sudden silence, Elsa and the Professor both took a deep breath—the first in what seemed like minutes—and slowly, Elsa pushed open the doors.
To her utter astonishment, the three remaining assailants lay on the ground, dead, blood oozing from beneath their robes.
"Oh, Elsa," whispered the Professor sensing the carnage. "What have you done?"
"Oh, pish-posh! No time for lectures, Professor. We have to get out of here now!"
"Not without the stone tablet," he said.
Elsa clambered out of the closet, and then helped the Professor out.
Stepping carefully over the unconscious one-armed man and rushing from the room, Elsa and the Professor raced into the living room where Elsa grabbed the stone tablet, wrapped it in its cloth and slid it snugly inside her dressing gown pocket.
Then, she took the Professor by the hand, turned for the door and gasped.
There in the doorway, leaning to one side with obvious pain and angry determination on his face, was the one-armed man.
Elsa fired at him in vain, forgetting her gun was empty.
The one-armed man spluttered out a pained laugh and raised his own pistol.
Elsa and the Professor took a fearful step back with nowhere to go.
The one-armed man began to squeeze the trigger, when suddenly, there came from behind him—
"Hey! Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"
With a sudden scowl on his face, the one-armed man spun around, just in time for Jake's boot to collect him across the face.
There was a grunt and the man staggered backward, dazed.
He blinked fiercely, tasting blood, but managed to raise his gun again.
Jake threw another high kick, this time snapping the gun clean out of the one-armed man's hand.
The weapon flew across the room and landed directly in the fireplace. Like a swarm of hungry ants, the scorching red embers lapped the pistol up instantly, turning the edges of the metal a luminous yellow before the gun literally exploded, sending bullets, sparks and tiny ember fireballs across the room.
Elsa screamed, and she and the Professor ducked just as a fireball shot over their heads and slammed against the curtain.
Flames engulfed the curtain with a ferocious appetite, and then spread rapidly up to the ceiling.
Jake looked up and saw the flames. "No, no, no," he whispered to himself, shaking his head as the ceiling fully ignited. Just then, the one-armed man's fist smashed into Jake's jaw.
He reeled backward a step or two, regained his balance, and then retaliated with an upper-cut straight to his opponent's chin.
"Elsa, get the Professor outta here now!"
"We're not leaving without you," the Professor shouted over the roar and crackle of the flames, which were now climbing down all four walls from the burning ceiling.
"If you don't go now, none of us will be leaving here at all. Now do as I—"
Jake took another blow to the jaw before he could finish his sentence. He stumbled and fell into a chair.
Fiery chunks of ceiling began to fall and set fire to the floor. With a loud groan, a beam crashed to the ground, narrowly missing the Professor, whom Elsa pulled out of the way.
"Go!" Jake shouted at them.
Elsa didn't need to be told again. She seized the Professor's hand, and guiding him through the spot fires that had started all over the living room, she hurriedly led him down the stairs.
Another burning beam fell from the ceiling and shattered. The one-armed man seized the shaft of broken wood, burning at one end and suddenly charged at Jake in the chair.
Jake sprang from the seat just as the burning shaft rammed into the chair, at the same time swinging another punch at his opponent's face, and then a kick to his stomach. But the one-armed man responded by pounding Jake in the chest with the flaming beam.
The force of the blow knocked Jake flat on his back.
He heard a loud crack and looked up from the floor.
Directly above him, a huge part of the burning ceiling was about to give way.
Jake looked at the one-armed man. He was so focused on finishing Jake off that he hadn't noticed the ceiling about to collapse on them both. Instead, he loomed over Jake, laughing and raising his flaming beam high above his head.
Jake pulled himself up onto his elbows, poised, ready spring at precisely the right moment.
He watched the one-armed man's beam rise even higher over his head.
He watched the glowing cracks in the ceiling splinter and spread, cutting a jagged line like a crack in an iceberg that made its way almost all the way around the ceiling.
The one-armed man chuckled, still oblivious to the roof about to fall and announced to Jake in a thick cockney accent, "Time to die."
"You took the words right out of my mouth."
The one-armed man looked at him, suddenly puzzled.
Above them, the slab of ceiling gave a loud groan and a shudder, and tiny droplets of fire showered down upon them.
The one-armed man gasped and shook off the sizzling cinders before glancing up in alarm.
Jake seized his moment and sprang clear, landing on his feet and leaping for the stairs.
Before the one-armed could do so much as move an inch, the ceiling gave way and smashed down upon him in a fiery blaze.
The force of the crash threw Jake down the stairs. He rolled and tumbled and spilled onto the floor, bruised and charred but otherwise intact. He collected himself quickly, bolted for the door and raced out into the cold night to the sound of a motorcycle engine roaring to life.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw Elsa at the handlebars of Will's Ducati. The Professor sat behind her, holding on tight. She twisted the throttle, and then proceeded to jerk and jolt forward before braking fiercely beside Jake. "Get on!"
"Are you crazy?" Jake asked.
"Apparently so," the Professor said.
Elsa glared at both of them and said, "All the other keys are in there. Do you two have any better ideas?"
"Then let me drive," Jake said hurriedly.
Elsa shook her head and gestured over his shoulder. "No time!"
Jake turned and saw, to his shock and amazement, the one-armed man staggering from the door of the burning chalet toward one of the black cars now parked near the dark of the woods. He was badly burned and his robe was torn and smoldering, yet he still managed to open the car door and grab for a spare gun. He aimed it straight at Jake and let slip that evil, spluttering laugh.