I was glad she hadn’t simply fallen through and left me frozen there for some indeterminate amount of time.
Evan soared back to me, giving me some more height, so I could safely land. I practically threw my wings back out of the way, reaching out with one hand for a handhold.
“Good-” the Behaim woman started.
An object came flying through the darkness, striking her in the temple. It might have been a bat, might have been a brick.
Her handhold gone, legs spinning out from under her as her body twisted with the force of the hit, she simply slumped to one side, slipped beneath the lowest shelf in a bookshelf, and disappeared over the brink.
“Wha!?” Evan spoke.
I was frozen, staring at the place where she’d been, the open space her body had passed through.
“No!” Evan said.
I started moving. Climbing. Hurrying to catch up with the others.
Aggressive. The Drains had been slow, patient, deliberate. The Tenements had been more like an adolescent, intelligent, but not above pulling the wings off of flies.
This was something else. There was fury. Chaos.
Was it the influence of those of us who were here? An echo of Molly’s anger, of the war in Jacob’s Bell? The demon?
I reached the staircase Rose and the others had gone up. Shelves lined either side, leading up to a set of dilapidated rooms I could only see the underside of. Planks loomed overhead, just low enough to be inconvenient, with books perched on them. More makeshift shelves.
I turned to look back, and I could see the gap, one half of the library on each side.
Though it was barely illuminated, I could make out the Barber, my eyes fixed a few feet to his left, while I scanned him with my peripheral vision.
He was muscular, with scar tissue covering much of his body, suggesting lash marks, the rest of his skin bruised and ulcerated.
His head, though, was covered. An animal’s head with a long nose, tufts of hair. I guessed it was a horse’s or a mule’s head, pitch black, with teeth bared, the eyes pale. Blood leaked from the base, trailing down his muscular shoulder and arm, all the way down to a pair of shears as long as my forearm.
The shears tapped against his knee. Tk. Tk. Tch. Two clicks followed by a sharper sound.
“Run,” Evan whispered. “Run, please.”
Tch. Tch. Tk. Tch.
The Barber hurled the shears.
I dodged, with Evan’s help. Going up the stairs wasn’t an option. Too slow, and if the shears were aimed at me, the walls on either side wouldn’t let me continue to move out of the way. I’d simply be throwing myself further along the shears’ path.
I headed left of the door, one wing out, spread, to produce the wind that would stop my movement, fanning air away and pushing me back the way I’d come, before I simply reached the one corner of the hallway and crashed into and through the bookcase. Knowing the abyss, I might have destroyed one wing in the process.
The weapon struck the frame of the doorway that led up the stairs, just a foot to my right. Had he adjusted, predicted the way I’d move?
For a heartbeat, I considered grabbing the shears.
Then I saw the Barber reflected in the gleaming metal. I swiftly backed away as much as I was able.
He tore his way free of the blade’s surface, and the entire hallway lurched with his weight as he set foot on the floor.
Bookcases toppled like so many dominoes, and the floor gave way, starting near the gap, the collapse gradually taking more of the hallway, steadily stealing away the rest of the floor.
He easily tugged the shears free of the wood, giving no mind to the floor or the bookshelves.
Passing through the door meant getting close enough to him that he could hug me.
I kept my eye fixed on the door, just to his left. When he took a step forward, moving toward my line of sight, I was forced to drop my eye, staring at the floor between our feet.
I’d inadvertently moved back, and my shoulders pressed against the bookcase behind me.
I couldn’t smell like I should’ve been able to, but the air was thick with the Barber’s presence. I could feel it winding its way through me, and the spirits that lurked within my body cringed and backed away, as if it were poisonous gas.
Tktk. Tch. Tch. Tch. His free hand opened wide, palm facing me.
The sharp sound repeated, over and over. He wasn’t striding toward me. He moved slowly. Almost relishing this.
I planted my feet on the ground and pushed. Bracing myself, pressing against the bookshelf.
It didn’t work. Everything here broke so easily, except the stuff that I wanted broken.
I lunged, running for the chasm, the open space, the gap.
“Blake!” Evan shouted.
He threw himself between me and the Barber.
If I’d had blood, it would have run cold. I swatted at him, trying to knock him out of the way, force him to not do what he was trying to do. I wasn’t successful.
Three steps in, my hand just finding my wing, gripping the part that I needed to grip to make the arm and hand a part of the wing’s mechanism, I was stopped.
The Barber had matched me in speed.
The shears had penetrated my midsection.
Evan flew around in front of me, perching on a shelf.
He’d helped me dodge. There was only so much he could do against something like the Barber. Getting me entirely out of the way had been too difficult.
So he’d nudged me. Put me in a position where the shears, wielded like a knife, had punched straight through the gaps in my body and out the other side, piercing the wood of a bookcase. Touching nothing.
“Um,” Evan said.
The Barber moved around, and I had to twist my head to the side to avoid looking at him.
A hand settled on the right side of my face. The heel of the hand touched my jawline, the fingers reached just over the top of my head. Calloused and otherwise scarred enough that the hard edges grated against the wood on the side of my face.
His thumb pressed against my chin, just below my bottom lip, and he squeezed.
Bone and wood cracked, both splintering.
The thumb moved to my cheekbone. His grip still iron, though in a less advantageous position for raw power, he squeezed once more.
I felt pain, and I suspected my eye socket was almost on the verge of shattering, the eye popping out.
Evan cried out, but I couldn’t hear over the bell.
Abyss, help me, I thought.
There was no aid. But my eye didn’t pop free. Bone beneath my scalp fractured instead, and I very nearly slipped free of his grip, the blood or other head-fluids making his grip less secure. A gorier version of soap in the shower.
He caught my neck before I could.
He pulled the shears free, and there was nothing I could do in the way of struggling.
Evan came for me. All I could think about were the shears, and a bird that was flying right for the demon that was wielding them.
My thoughts were noise and that noise sang in response to the bells. It was a reckless song, a mad song.
I reached up and I grabbed the shears. I held them partially shut with my one hand.
Evan veered around, and he dove.
Under the floor.
The butcher tugged, and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t keep my grip on the shears. I could only hope that I’d cost him precious time. Still gripping my neck, he twisted, and he stabbed.
The shears punctured the floor, all the way to the handle.
An aimed strike.
There were no signs as to whether he’d hit Evan or not, but Evan’s initial dive and movements hadn’t been ineffectual. He’d flown past and under the disintegrating floor, and accelerated the destruction, jarring it.