Holmes' hand was on my arm, gripping hard, warning me against premature movement. We had both stopped breathing as we waited for Brothers to put away the gun and take out his Tool, the sacrificial knife that had “moved” his hand too many times.
“That's good, Damian. Yolanda would be happy.”
His response was a wordless mutter, trailing off to nothing.
“Can you stretch out on your back?” Brothers asked, drawing again on the voice of reason. “Damian? Stretch out, please. Damian!”
We heard the sound of clothing against stone, but no words.
Still, Brothers was cautious. When he approached, he kept the gun on Damian until he was standing at the edge of the stone. Holmes' hand stayed steady on me, although he too had to be doubting himself, asking if Brothers wouldn't choose the sure way over the ritual purity of the knife. We hunched like wound springs, eyes fastened on the coat-tails that would move when Brothers put away his gun and reached for his knife-One forgot that Damian Adler was a soldier. I know I did, and certainly Brothers had. But beneath the sedative, hidden under the persona of a long-haired Bohemian painter, waited a soldier's instinct for survival. That Damian Adler now acted, using the only weapon available to him: the lamp.
Our first warning was a simultaneous shout and gunshot, followed in an instant by a crisp sound of breaking glass. A stream of fire poured itself down the supporting stones and across the ground.
Holmes launched himself through the edge of the flames at Brothers' legs, but the blanket he threw back tangled across my feet. It cost me two seconds to fight clear of the encumbering wool, by which time the flame had spread into a crackling sheet the length of the altar stone. I shoved away from the igniting paraffin, cracking my head painfully on stone as I scrambled to my feet on the opposite side of the altar.
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.
47
The End and the Beginning: When the stars are in
alignment, and the ages look down in approval.
When his masculinity prepares to act, and his feminine
nature is ready to receive. At that moment,
the Work is ready for consummation.
Thus Testifies a man.
Testimony: Part the Greatest
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?”