Charles Todd - Wings of Fire

Before Rutledge could read anything more than light amusement in the man’s eyes, he’d moved, swift as lightning, without conscious preparation, like a snake striking without warning.

Rutledge, expecting it, dodged, but not quite fast enough. His head, jerked back by Cormac’s stiff forearm, hit the wall with a loud crack, and as light flashed behind his eyes, Cor-mac moved in to follow up with a blow that had the full force of his shoulder behind it.

Rutledge felt his knees buckle and his senses reel under the impact. He was nearly unconscious, Hamish fiercely yelling at him to hold on, when the third and final blow brought down a pall of blackness.

He awoke to block nothingness, lashed out in the primeval primeval fear of blindness, and realized suddenly that the lamp had been taken away and he was alone. A flash of lightning told him that he was in Stephen’s room, where Cormac had left him. He moved gingerly, and everything worked.

Shaking his head to clear it, Rutledge felt a wave of dizziness that threatened to send him back to his knees. Using the table’s edge to pull himself to his feet, he leaned on his hands for precious seconds, willing himself into full control of his senses again. The amazing thing, he told himself, dazed still, was that he was alive.

Rutledge stumbled across the room and in the next flash of light, saw his way through the door. Thunder rattled the windows behind him.

The passage was black but there was still a lamp in the drawing room to guide him down the stairs. He ran across the hall and looked through its door.

The portrait was there, but Cormac had gone.

Where had the man hidden his car? Or had he come by boat, as Rutledge had anticipated. It was the most silent, the most secretive means of coming and going unseen. But was it still there? The boat?

Swearing as the rising wind caught the big door when he opened it, Rutledge went out into the night, down the steps, towards the strand. Ahead of him was Cormac, moving through the darkness. Which meant that he, Rutledge, couldn’t have been unconscious very long.

Rutledge called out to him, shouting his name.

Cormac turned and lifted an arm mockingly.

“He wants you to come after him! That’s why he didna’ finish it in the house!” Hamish exclaimed. “Will you no’ stop and think, man!”

Rutledge said nothing, his eyes straining to follow the figure ahead of him. But Cormac was no longer taking the path to the beach; he’d veered off towards the headland, picking up his pace. Swearing again, Rutledge plowed on, the wind tearing at his face and his coat, pushing him sideways. His head seemed to split open with the pounding pace he’d set, but he clenched his teeth and ignored it.

At the headland, where it curved to its highest point, Cormac turned. In the lightning, his pale hair blowing in the wind, his shirt white against the black clouds beyond, he seemed to glow with malevolence.

“Lucifer-!” Hamish warned.

Rutledge saved his breath and ran on until he was within a few yards of the other man.

“The way it will look,” Cormac yelled, “you broke under the strain tonight. Unable to sleep, disoriented, you came out here to the headland to watch the storm, and in a wild moment of self-doubt, you went over the edge. Thunder brought back the guns, and guilt, and all the nightmares.”

“Did you kill Olivia? Or did she choose her own death?”

“Ah, Olivia. She mesmerizes you as Rosamund mesmerized me. I meant what I told her the weekend before. That I wouldn’t hesitate to tell London that she and Nicholas were lovers. The Lucifer poems created quite a stir. And I had the feeling another collection was coming out. That she hadn’t finished with me. I wasn’t sure I could ruin O. A. Manning, but I knew how to kill Olivia Marlowe.”

“How did she answer you?”

“She laughed in my face and said that she might welcome the darkness, if it brought me harm. And promised to burn any new poems. She’s been a sword in my flesh since I was twelve. We’ve been bound together like lovers, by the bonds of a mutual fear. But the tide’s turning and I have to go.” Then he said very distinctly, “They were not quite dead when I slipped into the house that night. I think she must have known I was there-”

The wind was snatching his words away, but Rutledge heard them and hated the man with a ferocity that was deep and cold.

Cormac, for a second time in his life, miscalculated.

This time Rutledge moved first, with such speed and anger behind it that he caught Cormac off guard and sent them both reeling back, then before either man could brake their momentum, over the edge of the cliff.

It wasn’t a sheer drop. It was rock eroded by wind and weather. It was clumpy grass and earth, punctuated by straggling shrubs and heaved outcroppings. A long and rough slope that took its toll on bone and flesh as they tumbled down towards the fringe of boulders where the surf crashed whitely. The noise rose to meet them, so mixed with the thunder that there was only an endless, deafening roar.

As Rutledge’s shoulder hit the slope, he grunted with the force of it, then forgot it as Cormac’s body slammed into his, nearly winding them both. They grappled for a hold as they rolled and slid, yelling, cursing, pure fury fueling flailing knees and fists. Rutledge tasted blood and salt on his lips and felt a warm wetness just under his ribs, where something had ripped through the skin. Cormac’s flesh was also taking a beating, but he was ignoring it with the single-mindedness of a lifetime.

Rutledge fought with the cunning and strength of the battlefield, the ruthless, unforgiving training of hand-to-hand combat. He found himself wishing fervently for a bayonet, a rifle butt, a weapon of any kind. He could feel if not hear the sucking in of breath, the grunts from the savage effort Cormac made to match him hold for hold, blow for blow. There was grit in Rutledge’s teeth, one eye was half closed, and his left elbow felt numb as they came suddenly to the end of the long, ragged slope and pitched with savage momentum into the cold, wild water, shocking both of them.

In his grasp Cormac went limp.

Rutledge heaved himself up through the rough sea and pulled the other man with him.

“You aren’t dead-I won’t-let you die!” he shouted, gasping for air, but Cormac made no response as his face came out of the water. “Damn it-you’ll hang yet!”

There was a dark smear across Cormac’s forehead where he’d struck rock under the water, laying open the skin. It was bleeding ferociously.

Now Rutledge was fighting the great rocks and the surf rolling in haphazardly before the wind, and the storm seemed to be tearing at the headland above, downdrafts sending a sandpaper of grit and dirt against his face.

He clenched his teeth with the effort, feeling his body tightening then tiring in the cold water, feeling the pull of the current and the edges of the rocks and the weight of the other body he was dragging after him.

Hamish was screaming at him, and he ignored it, concentration centered on keeping Cormac’s head above water even when his own sank and he seemed to swallow half the sea, unable to breathe, feeling himself choke and sputter. And start to fail. From somewhere in the whirling darkness he heard Hamish calling his name, forbidding him to die.

“Not now-not yet-by God, I won’t let you go this easily!”

Or was that what he was telling Cormac, over and over in his mind?

Panting and coughing, he broke the surface again, and brought Cormac with him. The other man’s weight seemed lighter now, as if he’d come to his senses again, yet he made no effort to swim or struggle.

Every muscle seemed stretched beyond its limit, but Rutledge kept one hand locked in the collar of Cormac’s shirt and with the other fended off the rocks as his feet and legs pushed and pulled and dragged them against the pull of the water, in the direction of the strand. The numbed elbow sometimes gave way and they both crashed into rocks, were washed high on the inpouring of heavy surf, and then were slammed back into the headland, but Rutledge refused to give up, sheer will keeping the two of them afloat. Water was everywhere, there seemed to be no end of it. He dug with his heels, bobbed, bumped, thundered into sharp edges, felt the bruising and lacerations on his back, and still held on.