Jackaby (Jackaby #1)(57)
Swift’s casual steps had brought him to the spot where his cane had landed. He stooped to pick it up, not presenting even the slightest defense, his back still wide-open. I caught the treacherous glint in his eye as he leaned down slowly, wrapping his fingers around the metal rod. Charlie took the bait and threw himself toward the commissioner in one powerful bound.
In a flash, Swift had pulled the broad hand grip from the cane and thrown it aside, revealing a long, flat blade on the end of the shaft. The metal cane was braced and waiting for its target before Charlie could stop his own momentum. It lodged itself in the hound’s right side, piercing clean through and out his back, just below his shoulder blade. Charlie bellowed in pain and sank onto the iron pike.
Swift stood and sauntered around the beast’s head, tutting softly to his victim. Without warning, he grimaced and kicked the glistening metal with a sharp clank where it protruded from Charlie’s hide. “Bad dog!” he yelled.
Charlie whimpered and shuddered. His whole body was shivering, his paws twitching.
“A few inches to the left and you’d be finished, you mangy mutt. Now I have to put you down myself.”
And there they were, not twenty feet from my stunned stupor. The horrible, grotesque form of Commissioner Swift knelt over Charlie’s soft, bloody head. He was drawing his claws down Charlie’s cheek in a sickening caress, savoring the kill, and Charlie had abandoned resistance. I wanted to scream or run or . . . or anything, but I was just a foolish girl, lost in the woods, and this was not one of the adventures in my books.
Books. Jackaby’s books still lay where they had fallen on the muddy roots. My shaking fingers found the closest leather spine, and they let fly before my mind had even considered the decision. The hefty volume turned slowly through the air, the pages whipping slightly as it spun like a wounded bird toward the commissioner’s grisly face. I was twenty feet away from my target. The book landed at fifteen. The commissioner paused to raise an unimpressed eyebrow in my direction.
I scrambled until I had found another, and heaved harder. Swift did not bother to flinch as it sailed wide over his shoulder, but he raised his head to fix me with an arrogant, somewhat scornful look. “Do you mind?”
The last volume was dead-on, and I thought, for a fraction of a second, that it might connect. I’m not sure what I expected a bit of leather-bound paper to do to the horrifying commissioner when a two-hundred-pound hound could hardly leave a mark. As the projectile neared, though, Swift’s hand left his victim’s throat and caught the book with a snap. Carried by momentum, the little sinker from Hatun’s line sailed free of the pages in his grasp and caught the commissioner squarely in the forehead. We both glanced down as it rolled to a stop in the dirt a few feet away, then looked back to meet each other’s eyes.
Swift’s face flushed with anger, his eyes narrowed to menacing slits, but his voice remained icy cold. “I was right in the middle of this, but if you absolutely insist”—he dropped the hound’s head and stood—“I suppose I can make time for you. Ladies first, and all that.”
He stepped over Charlie’s limp, bleeding body and strode toward me, not bothering to rush. Like his asymmetric face, the rhythm of his gait was now distinctly uneven. His left leg, still strapped in the brace, swung stiffly, creaking and clinking with each bend. His right swung free, but those iron shoes still clanked their own beat, muffled by the soft earth. As he drew near, that smell, the sickly sweet coppery smell, came with him. He was dripping with blood, and none of it his own.
Hatun’s premonition had come true. Just as she had warned me not to, I had followed Jackaby into the forest and to my demise. My heart hammered against my ribs, I shook, and my whole body felt clammy. My breath was ragged and too fast. Above me, Swift seemed to be enjoying my frantic last moments, sneering his crooked, broken-glass smile as he drew to a stop before me. Jackaby would not give the bastard this satisfaction, I thought. What would he do? Keep his calm. Keep control. I willed my heartbeat to slow and took a long, deep breath.
“It’s a lucky thing for you, Commissioner,” I managed with great effort, “that politics are not a lady’s domain, because you have lost my vote.”
The sound that came out of the ghoulish figure may have been a throaty laugh or a wet growl, but I did not have time to decide before his wicked claws buried themselves in my chest. The wave of pain hit me with a . . .
BANG!
For the second time that night, Swift was knocked back, spinning to the earth and away from me. As the terrible talons pulled away, my chest felt as though it had caught fire. Through a haze of intense pain and adrenaline, I half imagined Charlie had once more risen to my aid—but, no. The commissioner was alone, struggling to his feet, and the great hound lay where he had been skewered, barely breathing.
BANG!
Swift hit the ground again, and my eyes traced their way to the figure marching across the clearing, a pistol fixed steadily on the commissioner. My vision swam, but there was the bulging coat, the draping scarf, and that ridiculous knit cap.
“You were right, Miss Rook,” called Jackaby. “There are a lot of ways that people use lead.”
My chest throbbed with hot pain, and my vision was darkening, but I smiled up at the detective.
“I would still prefer to have done the thing properly, with a solid coat of the stuff,” he continued, his voice so casual he might have been discussing afternoon tea, “but given the circumstances, a few bullets should slow him down long enough to see the job done.” He stood directly over the commissioner, who was writhing on the ground, and pulled a small leather volume from his coat. He fixed the weapon on Swift’s chest as he read aloud.