Laurie King - The Language of Bees

My eyes were met by a nightmare scene worthy of Hieronymus Bosch. A confusion of leaping flames and shadows was punctuated by yells and curses, then another shot, but when my eyes cleared from the blow, they were drawn to the fire that licked down the top of the stone towards the man who lay there.

My gun flew into the night as both hands reached out to drag Damian's uncontrolled body away from the flames. I dumped him on the ground and slapped at the burning shoulder of his overcoat. Once it was out-a matter of seconds-I sprinted, still crouched, to the prow of the altar-stone, where two men wrestled for control of a gun.

I jumped to hit the weapon hard with my fist, knocking it onto the altar stone, but Brothers' elbow slammed hard into my chest and sent me flying. I rolled and regained my feet, and saw Holmes stretched over the stone for the gun.

But Brothers was not interested in the revolver. His arm was moving and he took two quick steps forward, holding in the air a knife with a curved blade, gleaming and vicious in the leaping fire-light. I opened my mouth to scream a warning as I gathered myself to jump, but I knew I would be too late, long seconds too late, because the arm was flashing down towards Holmes' exposed back.

A third shot smashed the night. The descending arm lost its aim; metal sparked against stone. The knife made a skittering noise as it flew down the altar, followed by a coughing sound and the slump of a heavy body.

The flames were already beginning to die, and I drew my torch to shine it on Holmes: He had a cut, bloody but shallow, on the side of his face. Then I turned it on Brothers, and saw the bullet hole directly over his heart, and blood staining his thick overcoat near the hole.

With one motion, Holmes and I stepped clear of the altar, and saw Damian, lying where I had left him, gazing with surprise at the gun in his hand-my gun, I saw, flown from my grasp as I jerked him from the flames, fallen to the ground where he lay. His hand drooped, recovered, then sank to the ground, followed by his chin.

Holmes rolled Damian onto his back, and pulled his son's overcoat away: blood on the right side of Damian's chest, a hand's width and growing. Holmes ripped away the shirt, and exhaled in relief: The bullet had missed the lungs, and might, if we were lucky, have avoided the major organs as well.

“He needs a doctor,” I said.

“Estelle,” Damian muttered through clenched teeth.

Holmes didn't answer me.

“Holmes, we have to get him to a doctor.”

“If we do, he'll be arrested.”

I met his eyes, aghast. “You don't intend…”

“Let's at least take him to the hotel where we can see the extent of the injury. We can decide after that.”

“Holmes, no. I'll go to that farm and see if they have a telephone-see, there's already a light on upstairs, they'll have heard all this-”

He reached for the pile of blankets. “We can use one of these as a stretcher.”

“You'll kill him, Holmes!”

“Being locked up in gaol will kill him.” Holmes stared at me in the dying light of the flames; I had never seen such desperation in his face. “Are you going to help me, Russell, or do I have to carry him?”

We worked the blanket under Damian's limp weight and dragged him free, then Holmes stuffed the other blanket around him. “We don't want to leave a trail,” he said.

Damian groaned at the motion, then fell silent.

Holmes gathered up the three guns, handing me one, slipping the second into his pocket, and laying the third near the dead man's hand. Then he wrapped two corners of the blanket around his fists, and waited for me to do the same.

We dropped our burden once, and a second time, I fell. Damian cried out that time, but we were far enough from the lamp bobbing in our direction from the nearby farmhouse that the farmer wouldn't hear.

And, thank God, the man had no dogs.

WE MADE IT TO THE HOTEL. WHILE HOLMES STOOD winded just inside the back door, I tucked my agonised hands under my arms and conducted a quick survey of the ground floor, finding an inner storage room in which a light would not show outside. I hauled the brooms and buckets out and replaced them with cushions, and we staggered through the dark hotel with our half-conscious burden. While Holmes was undressing his son, I went in search of the hotel medical kit.

I came back to find Holmes standing above the sprawled figure, frowning at the wound. It looked terrible, but Damian was breathing cleanly, which meant no broken rib had entered a lung, and the seeping blood indicated that no major blood vessel had been severed.

“Is the bullet still in there?” I asked.

“It's travelled along the ribs, probably broken a couple of them, and lodged around the back, under his arm.”

“You're not going to perform surgery, Holmes,” I warned.

“It's buried fairly deep in the muscle,” he more or less agreed. “I shouldn't want to be responsible for having damaged the use of his right arm.”

As if hearing the threat to his painter's hand, Damian stirred, then gasped.

“He doesn't seem very heavily drugged,” I said.

“He's a big man, and Brothers may not have wanted to risk knocking him out too early. He might have carried an unconscious Yolanda, but not Damian.”

“Bugger, that hurts,” Damian said in surprise then went slack again.

“I'm going to find the child,” I told Holmes. “Should we try and get some coffee into him?”

“It might be simpler to transport him unconscious.”

I ignored the proposal. Instead, I passed through the kitchen to set a kettle on the gas cooker.

I found Estelle in an upstairs room that was dimly lit by a burning candle. Her small body lay in a tangle of bed-clothes. She was not moving.

In an agony of trepidation, I crossed the floor to bend over her still figure. Seconds passed, and my heart failed at the thought of telling Damian-but then she made a tiny sound in the back of her throat and followed it by a childish snore.

My legs gave out and I had to sit down on the unmade bed beside hers. Slightly dizzy, I dropped my head in my hands and sat listening to her breathe, hearing the precious air go in and out of her throat. I didn't know if this was Holmes' granddaughter or not, but in truth, it no longer mattered: Damian loved her, therefore she was ours.

It took some time to recall the heating kettle and the waiting men. I sat up, studying the tiny, limp form. I shouldn't be surprised if Brothers hadn't given her a dose of the Veronal as well.

The thought of the dead man finally roused me to my feet. I left the sleeping child and went to the next room, where I found signs of Brothers. Unlike Damian, whose clothes were scattered about the room he shared with his daughter, Brothers had packed his bag, ready to leave.

When I opened the bag, I saw two passports. I picked them up, checked again to make sure Estelle was still sleeping, and went downstairs.

I made coffee and took it to the inner room, where Holmes had managed to sit Damian up and rouse him into a state of groggy semi-consciousness. The coffee was thick enough to stimulate the dead, much less the merely sedated. I pressed a cup into Damian's good hand, waited to see that he was not about to drop it, then pulled the passports out of my pocket and handed them to Holmes.

One was for a British citizen named Jonas Algier; the other was for the same person, but included his young daughter Estelle.