Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(30)

The distant reach of space, that would be closer to what I mean.

? ? ?

As of late, I have pondered the great astronomers and their great debates. I have heard the arguments on both sides, and I feel that they wildly miss some larger point—that these are only the same things our ancestors asked, when the church told them to stop asking. The question is no longer, does the sun revolve around the Earth? The question has become, does the universe revolve around our solar system? Or our celestial neighborhood? Or our galaxy?

Stupid, stupid, stupid—this insatiable demand to be at the center of something.

Better to stay on the fringes, I say; rest on some outer ring or spiral of some small, insignificant corner of the infinite. And if we are very lucky, and if there is a greater space than infinity to hide us, then perhaps the terrible things on the other side of our universe will never take notice of us at all.

Unless they are summoned by the likes of the idiot reverend, and his idiot followers.

Fine, then. We have their attention. Perhaps I can persuade them to lose interest. It’s really all I can hope for.

? ? ?

I followed after Lorna with slow, quiet steps—my pants raised up above my socks so that I could follow her by the chilly vapor that trailed her, without stooping or drawing unwanted attention to myself. I used no light, and I kept my weapon the same simple piece I used at the start of this awful string of missions.

(I did not wear black, but a dark brown that served well enough to conceal me in the shadows. It also did a fine job of hiding any bloodstains or spatters; in the evening, even under the brightest streetlights, no one would know the difference. Black might have been more thorough, but men who wear black are up to something. Or that’s the popular assessment.)

The small hairs on my legs prickled and perked, dusted by the slick, icy mist.

It was colder and colder as I grew closer and closer—the very opposite of the children’s guessing game. The stuff felt thicker and almost difficult to wade through, and I could see it so vividly (almost a shining black, almost a slick color that glinted, though there was no light at all). I watched it, and I listened for Lorna.

I smelled her cigarette smoke, and only noticed it as an afterthought.

I turned a corner and there she was. Smoking, leaning, her eyes closed as if her head ached and maybe it did. What a happy day, if I could do her the kindness of freeing her from such headaches, such a life. No, not happy. No, I was only lying to myself, and I don’t know why. It didn’t make the task any more pleasant, and it wasn’t the lies that made it easier. It was easier due to simple practice.

She heard me, and then she saw me.

She sniffed a coil of smoke up one nostril, smoke so white compared to the smoke around her legs. It was higher than that, I saw—now that I stood almost near enough to touch her. It had scaled her thighs and it settled around her hips, a pernicious fog that must’ve made her customers shudder.

I wondered, could they feel it? Could they see it? Or is it only me? I had never yet had anyone else to ask, so I had no other experience to compare mine with.

If she felt, or sensed, or was bothered by the weird shadow, she showed no sign of it.

“You’re not one of the rail boys,” she said. Her voice was rocks and cinders, raked together after a fire.

“No. Not one of them.”

“Then what do you want?”

Could she see me, beyond a mere outline of a man? Could she tell that I reached slowly toward my jacket, to get a firm grip on the axe handle? “A moment of your time.”

“Can you pay for it?”

“Of course.” I nodded. And then, I don’t know why, but I blurted it out: “I want to know about the black fog that follows you.”

She sucked on the cigarette, a hand-rolled affair that was sloppily, lumpily created. The tiny burst of light showed her eyes going wide; then they settled back down to suspicious slits. “You’re drunk.”

“No. And you’re lying, I can see that now. You know it’s there. You know what’s coming.” Such conviction I felt, just from that split moment of a reaction, when I asked her. She might not have known what it was, but she knew it was there. I couldn’t tell if she was afraid of it or not. I couldn’t tell if she was afraid of me.

She dropped the cigarette and it fizzled to extinction upon contact with the pooling wet shadow that surrounded her shoes. We were in darkness again, but I knew that she didn’t need the light any more than I did. She made some shifting gesture that I couldn’t see, but it was fast.

I made some shifting gesture, and maybe she couldn’t see it. But I was fast.

The axe was in my hand and I hoped—and suspected from experience—that she would turn away and run, but that’s not what happened. She lunged for me! In her hand she had a weapon, too. It was a blade, the slender, sharp sort the Italians prefer for their violence, if the papers can be believed. (They can’t. I know they can’t, but I read them anyway.)

She only winged me, catching a slice of my jacket. She struck again and cut across my knuckles, but it wasn’t deep, it was only hot and painful—because she caught me on the down stroke of my own fierce swing. Too weak or too slow to deflect me, I’d hit her, but the hit went lower than I liked. It caught her in the neck, somewhere between her collarbone and her throat. Soft tissue. Messy stuff, and gruesome to wound . . . but not enough to stop a determined enough victim.