Cherie Priest - Fiddlehead

The shot was loud in his ears, even against the violent orchestra of the windstorm. They were close together—only a door frame away, maybe arm’s length, and the space wasn’t tight. Still, it was like he’d fired inside a closet. A simple gunshot—the most familiar sound in the world—sucked all the air out of the space between them.

For a moment nothing happened. The tall man didn’t react except to hold perfectly still. Grant held still as well, his gun still raised. It flared warm in his hand, but the dry November storm cooled the metal as he held it. A small coil of smoke rose, then vanished as a particularly hard gust of wind shook the house.

The fireplaces moaned low and tunefully, like monks chanting a prayer.

The tall man’s uniform was dark, and it was now fully dark outside, so Grant could barely see the damp hole in his belly.

With slow uncertainty, the wounded man took two steps back, turned around, and reached for the handrail. He missed it, but held out one foot to step onto the stair below the stoop. His knee went crooked, and he fell forward onto the walkway that cut through the yard.

And the moment he hit the ground, someone in the darkness opened fire on the house.

Moving on instinct and years of training, Grant retreated and slammed the door. He shoved his shoulders against it, and felt that it was solid. It would withstand more than a handful of bullets before he needed to worry about its integrity.

His ears told him that there were three shooters.

No. Four.

The window to the right of the door shattered. Polly screamed. Mary came stumbling down the stairs in her dressing gown, her eyes huge and black.

Grant pointed at her. “Get back in your room!” Then he shouted at Polly, “Get down—lower. Crawl, goddammit!”

She swallowed her next scream and dropped to all fours, then scrambled upstairs after Mary.

Nelson and Gideon burst into the parlor, but they burst carefully, like men who knew better than to fling themselves into the line of fire. Grant was pleased by their caution. It spoke well of them.

“Down!” he gestured, and both men crouched. Both men also held firearms. Once more Grant fired off a wordless prayer to the Powers That Be, this time one of thanks. He had two soldiers, which was better than nothing. He’d been in tighter spots before. This situation wasn’t unfamiliar—it was only bad.

Bullets plunked against the exterior and whizzed through the window, crashing against fixtures and punching holes in the wallpaper.

“Wellers, how many doors lead in and out of this house?” he asked. More loudly than he would’ve liked, but now the storm had new ways to whistle, and the curtains flapped and shredded themselves on broken glass.

The doctor and the scientist crouched behind the staircase. “Three, including this one!”

“Is that all?”

He considered the house and its layout. “There’s the cellar door, and one from the attic to the roof—but those aren’t common knowledge, and I’m quite certain they’re locked.”

“I’ll keep ’em in the back of my head for now. As for the more obvious points of entry, I’ve got this one under control—you two go secure the others.”

Gideon scrambled across the floor and disappeared down one corridor. Wellers went back down the hall toward Lincoln, who surely had been secured and safeguarded in some fashion before they’d come running—Grant refused to think otherwise. In the meantime, he held his position behind the door. The gunfire slowed but did not stop altogether. It petered out and punctuated the weather. For one moment of light-headed battle hilarity, Grant thought of popcorn nearly finished in a pan.

He recognized this rush of energy and giddiness, shook it off, and ducked down low beneath the window, then up the other side, where he flipped the lever to turn off the gaslights. No one wanted bullets flying when the gas was working. Besides that, darkness was his friend.

The downstairs was pitched into a low murk, but nothing close to the wholesale midnight he preferred. Two electrical lamps shone on in the parlor.

He cursed the Lincolns for their embrace of technological progress, held his head low, and—keeping the front door between him and danger as best he could—scuttled back into the other room and yanked the switches on the lamps, noticing as he did so that the lights were off down the hall in Lincoln’s library. Only the glow of the fire spilled out past the threshold, and that was good.

“Abe?” he called, with as much volume as he dared.

“I’m fine. I dearly want to know what’s going on … but I’m fine.”

“Abe, you trust me?”

Without a moment’s pause: “I do.”

“I shot a man on your stoop, and his friends didn’t take it well: that’s what’s going on. Nelson and Gideon are securing the house. Mary and Polly are upstairs. Is there anyone else home?”

“No. There shouldn’t be.”

A volley of shots hailed from outside. When they paused, Grant kept as much cover as he could and smashed out the last of the glass at the bottom corner of the nearest window.

The outside lights still burned for the moment, but if the assailants had any sense, they’d rectify the situation momentarily. He couldn’t believe they’d left them alight this long. It was an amateur move. Maybe he hadn’t given the police force enough credit: Surely someone in an authentic uniform would know to meet darkness with darkness.

Keeping his head low, he peered past the curtains. The wind was cold and hard. It stung his eyes, but he didn’t close them; he gazed long and hard across the lawn, back and forth across the boundaries. A row of trees to the east gave cover to at least one man—he saw motion, a shifting of position from this tree to the next one, hopscotching closer. He waited for the man to dash for the next tree, and when he did, Grant fired a shot at him.

Between the distance, the wind, and his own precarious angle, the odds were against hitting him. But he was good—damn good—and managed to hit a trunk close enough to make the man dive back for his original position.

One more shot for good measure. Make the bastard keep his head down.

Three more bullets answered him, but nothing hit close to home. One more windowpane broke. That was a shame, but he’d figure out how to repay the Lincolns later. Maybe he could sue Haymes for the damages. The thought put a smile on his face.

Now, where were the rest of them?

A small orchard began where the lawn ended to the west. One or two men might be hiding there, easily. To the north lay the road, and on the other side of the road a ditch. Beyond the ditch, nothing but woods—all of them too far away to provide shelter for anything but a supernaturally skilled sharpshooter. No, the onslaught came from nearer than that.

He kept a wary eye on the lawn, until one bright assailant finally thought to shoot out the carriage lamps that lit up the sides of the house. It took him a few tries each, but a climactic shot took down the little lantern that illuminated the stoop, and now the playing field was more or less even.

Another bullet pinged inside the house, striking a tall clock hard enough to rock it.

Not much to be done about the windows and their frailty, but what about those curtains…? He wanted something heavier than the decorative cotton gauze. Something more like the blanket on the back of the couch in the parlor, come to think of it. Staying in a crouch, he went back to retrieve it, then used the door for cover as he hung it up over the window, blocking their view if not their ammunition.

But the window on the other side of the door was still a gaping hole in their defenses.

“Mister President!” Polly whispered. She’d snuck back down the stairs, her shape a doll-like shadow in the gloom. Only then did he realize how small she truly was.