Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(111)

Even so, his words bit me with their truth. He was charming me again . . . not to win my affection, but to keep me from interfering. That charming, charming voice, with those charming, charming eyes . . . except they weren’t charming at all. They were dead inside, just like him.

I shook my head, and water sloshed roughly in my ears. I realized I was still holding my axe, but I’d let it sink. Its head was set upon the floor, and my fingers held it so loosely that I was in danger of dropping it altogether.

No.

I tightened my knuckles to clutch its reassuring handle, and lifted it up.

Emma lifted something up, too. The vial in her hand. She nodded at me, but I frowned at her—I still didn’t understand! What did she want me to do? Was that the toxin? Were those the vials she fiddled and fumbled with? Yes, I thought so. What else could they be?

“I won’t . . . go . . . with you,” she told him.

Zollicoffer was not confused or angry, only insistent when he looked back to her and said, “You will. You must. I would not compel you of my own regard, but Mother compels me. This is the order, now. And you will see, it is for the best.”

“To hell with you and your Mother.”

She threw the vial. It hit him without hurting him that I could see, but the stopper had been removed and the contents splashed against his neck—splattering him from chest to cheekbones.

He winced, blinked, and regarded her with bemused astonishment. “What sad little trick have you played, Doctor Jackson?” He reached for his shirt buttons and tugged them, opening the fabric to expose his chest as if to examine it.

“The only one I had,” she spit, and crumpled back to the floor.

He looked to me, as if I might explain.

So I did. In two steps I was past the table, and very near to him. I swung the axe.

He lifted an arm fast enough to deflect the blow, but the axe was heavy and my arm was strong; I caught him across the shoulder, missing most of the dampness she’d spilled upon him. He caught the iron head with his hand. It cut down, not too deep . . .

. . . but he withdrew, clutching at his fingers. The metal had burned him, or shocked him. He let go of the axe and pushed it away, trying to push me with it.

I ducked back, leaned to the side, and took another swing—not a great one, for I was off balance and we were in closer quarters now: between my sister and the table behind me, between the walls and the cooker with its opened cupboard and foul-smelling contents.

My next blow took him closer to the collarbone. It left a hard red dent in his flesh, but it did not cut him. What was he made of, now that he was no longer a man? His skin was tougher than leather!

He laughed at me, and pushed me back when I struck again. He grabbed at the handle this time; he was learning, you see. And he nearly jerked the weapon free, but I held on tightly and I would not let him shake me loose.

I kicked him and the leverage pushed me back, onto the floor on my rear, sliding and picking up splinters, picking up bruises.

“You can’t hurt me, little sister.”

“Yes, she can . . . now,” Emma panted.

He ignored her, and tended to me instead. He loomed over me, not quite close enough to hit. It was the most open target I was likely to have . . . his shirt was still open, wet with the contents of Emma’s vial. He was close enough that I could see the skin begin to bubble there, a tiny sizzling frisson that told me he could be hurt after all. That’s what it said, that raw little patch of burning skin: We have hurt him. The toxins—Seabury had inoculated us against their deadly effects, but this creature before me, he was vulnerable. Why, I did not precisely know. Patterns, I supposed.

But I could kill him. I only needed the strength (and luck, and timing, and divine assistance, surely) to make it happen.

I crawled up to a crouch, braced myself, and I hurled the axe as hard as I could, straight at his head.

My aim wasn’t perfect.

I caught him in the neck, and there—where the toxin was eating away at him, ever so slowly—his skin split beneath the blade.

No one was more astonished than I was, except possibly Emma.

No, not Emma after all. Emma did not see my blow, for she was unconscious. She’d slipped down to the floor, folded over like a ragdoll cast aside. Beneath her face, a dribble of blood and saliva pooled. Her gore-soaked hair was sticking to the floorboards, and her eyes were not quite closed.

But I couldn’t rush to her side. Not yet.

I was transfixed by the axe, even as he pulled it free of his skull and tossed it out of my immediate reach. He clutched the wound it left behind, and blood the color of tar squeezed out from between his fingers.

I grabbed at the table and used it to pull myself up, knocking it over in the process.

But then I lunged at Doctor Phillip Zollicoffer, who had once sent us friendly notes about crustaceans and cephalopods, and had mailed us a box of chocolates shaped like seashells at Christmas, and had murdered countless people, lost his mind, his humanity, his soul—if I could bring myself to believe in souls anymore.

I lunged for him because somehow, he had killed Nance, and in some way he’d killed me, too. What on earth was left for me without her? A sister who loathed me, and a daft doctor who only wanted to help? There was nothing left worth counting.

I lunged for him, and I caught him in the torso, where his skin was peeling, crackling, and turning black. The toxin was still working, still weakening him. I took it as encouragement. I needed some. I needed something other than the press of his horrible body, and the stink of his skin corroding before my eyes.