Jackaby

by William Ritter

  Swift was practically vibrating. His eye twitched, and a dark vein had popped out on his temple. “You’re through, Marlowe,” he said through gritted teeth, and then took a step toward Jackaby and pronounced loudly, “That’s enough!”

  The commissioner’s booming, furious command was all but lost in the sound of everything, which had already been going all wrong, suddenly going terribly worse.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  One cry of alarm, and then another burst forth from the back of the crowd. The wall of uniforms surged, not parting fluidly as it had for the commissioner, but stumbling and shoving itself away from something on the far side. Even Swift, not accustomed to being ignored, looked more startled than angry as he attempted to identify the source of the disturbance. I stepped up onto a flower box to see what was happening just as a woman in a second-story window erupted into a sustained, throaty scream.

  The officers had fallen back, leaving a wide radius around Junior Detective Charlie Cane. He was doubled over, clutching his sides as a spasm shook his body. Something was terribly strange about his arms. They looked dark, and the texture was all wrong; then his leg buckled and he dropped to the ground. His head shot up, and I saw his face in the unforgiving clarity of the moonlight—only it was not the same gentle face I had come to recognize over the past two days on the streets of New Fiddleham. It was not the face of a man at all, but the feral grimace of a beast.

  I stood, transfixed, as my heart and stomach raced each other into my throat. Charlie’s legs looked broken, bending in places a man should not have joints, but still he rose, pivoted, and launched himself into a run down the cobbled streets away from the stunned officers. He stumbled and caught his fall with his hands, throwing himself back into his run so quickly he scarcely broke stride. He tore off his uniform shirt, and tossed it behind him, revealing stiff, dark hair now covering his torso. His whole body shook with another spasm, and again he stumbled, and again, until he was on his hands nearly as much as his feet. As he ran, those polished shoes clattered, empty, to the pavement behind him, the moon highlighting the sharp point of the toe. By the time the figure that had been Charlie Cane vanished into the billowing steam of an alleyway, it was not a fleeing man, but the form of a massive hound, bounding away on four great paws.

  The square was tensed in silence as the sound of the beast’s footfalls receded into the distance. First to break the stunned hush was the commissioner. The flush of anger had left his cheeks completely, and he was now as pale as a ghost, but he puffed himself up nonetheless and yelled, “Stop him!” His voice cracked just a little and he coughed. Then he found his voice and bellowed, “After him! All of you! I want that monster dead!”

  The crowd of uniforms hummed with building energy for a moment, like a pot about to boil, and then burst suddenly into frantic motion. Jackaby snapped out of his own surprise at last and hollered, “Wait! Stop!” It had all happened so quickly, I couldn’t tell if he was trying to keep the police from rushing into disaster, or if he was screaming after the creature . . . after Charlie Cane.

  I tried to move toward Jackaby, fighting not to be carried away by the tide of uniforms. I had to plant my feet firmly on the brickwork just to keep from losing ground as they sped after Charlie. The books were nearly knocked from my hands, but I hugged them to my chest as I weathered the storm. I glanced around, lost in the human current. The commissioner and Marlowe had vanished into the thick of the surge, but Jackaby was suddenly off his pedestal and beside me.

  “Quickly, Miss Rook!” he hollered, and pulled me into motion, the two of us sweeping along in the tail of the swarm.

  “But . . . that was Officer Cane!” I stammered.

  “Yes, and it is essential we catch up with him before this mob does. Everything’s gone all wrong. If we don’t move quickly, there will most certainly be more deaths tonight.”

  I swallowed hard. If people were going to die, then reaching the beast before the police would simply increase the likelihood those deaths would be ours.

  At the end of the street, the police force began to split. Someone up ahead was barking orders, urging the men to spread out the search and cover as much ground as possible. The pressing crowd of policemen thinned as I followed Jackaby, darting to the left and right down narrow New Fiddleham streets. A yell issued from an alleyway in the opposite direction, followed by the clattering of boxes and breaking wood. Two of the officers ahead of us turned and ran back toward the commotion, but Jackaby pressed forward. His hands moved about him while he ran, feeling the air as if tracing invisible lines of smoke.

  “Do you see something?” I panted.

  “He’s been this way. It’s fading too quickly—we need to hurry.”

  The chase took us out of the city center and toward the outskirts of town. We ran along the backside of several factory yards before the shrubs and bushes gave way to a grassy stretch spotted with birch trees. Away from the icy brickwork, my feet found purchase more reliably, and it was a little easier to keep pace with Jackaby as we cut across the sod. I even began to spot the telltale signs of the creature now. The moonlight sparkled on the tall, icy grasses, except in one long, dark path, cut like a scar down the center of the field. Something had carved a quick route through here, leaving a wake of bent and trampled plant life. As we hopped over a mud puddle, I spotted a giant, smeary paw print. I didn’t need to be a seer or a master sleuth to know we were headed in the right direction.

  The tracks took us along the edge of a stream, its banks lined with ice and slush, and ahead I spotted the familiar sight of Hammett’s bridge. I hardly recognized it at first, though it had been scarcely a day since we had met Hatun on this very spot. How different it had seemed then, with the funny little woman hanging her fishing line over the ice in full daylight. Now, with water churning past chunks of ice and foreboding shadows bleeding into more ominous darkness, the old woman’s superstitions about monsters lurking under the bridge seemed suddenly less benign.

  I pushed the idea away as we hit the bridge, not wanting idle thoughts of trolls gnawing on my bones to get in the way of my genuine, reasonable fear of being ripped to shreds by—I allowed myself to think it—a werewolf. I noticed that even in his haste, Jackaby still absently pitched a couple of copper coins over the side of the bridge as he crossed it. I guess he, like Hatun with her token fishing efforts, felt it never hurt to cover all your bases. An idea flashed through my head.

  “Jackaby, wait!” I skidded around the corner at the end of the bridge and stumbled down to the water’s edge, to the spot where I had first seen Hatun. I laid the old books to the side and peered into the shadows under the bridge. It was pitch-black beneath the little arch, but my probing fingers quickly found what I was looking for. For the briefest of moments I could have sworn I felt clammy fingers on my wrist as I pulled it free. “I just have to borrow this for a bit,” I assured the darkness. “I swear I’ll bring you a whole halibut if we make it through this alive.” My hand slid free, holding tight to the pole.

  Jackaby skidded down the slope to stop beside me. “What on earth are you doing?” he demanded. “We don’t have time to go fishing!”

  I laid Hatun’s fishing pole on the ground and fumbled with the knot, resolving after a few failed attempts to simply snap the line. I held out the pear-shaped metal sinker.

  Jackaby looked unimpressed. He looked, in fact, only more annoyed.

  “It’s lead!” I exclaimed.

  My employer’s expression did not improve. “What are we supposed to do with a thimble’s worth of lead?” he asked, his eyes darting back up to the path above us. “That little bauble could hardly coat his big toe! Tell me, Miss Rook.” He looked back at me. “If you could outrun the fastest man in the world, how significantly do you think three or four grams of lead around your big toe would slow you down?”

  “Not much,” I admitted. “But you never said how you intended to use it! There are lots of ways people use lead.”

  Jackaby shook
his head and began back up the path. I scooped up the old books and stuffed the sinker like a bulky bookmark into one of them as I scrambled up after him.

  “All you said was that lead could kill it. Shouldn’t it be silver, anyway? Isn’t it usually silver in the stories?”

  Jackaby pushed his way through the foliage ahead of me, pulling out a little collection of tinted lenses to hold up in the moonlight. He peered through a few of them before seeming to lock onto a path, which he followed with increased intensity.

  “First of all,” he responded on the move in a hushed voice, “I never said lead would kill him. It won’t. I only said it would help slow him down. Second, silver appears in the lore as a weapon against werewolves, occasionally witches, and, in one brilliantly odd legend, a Bulgarian tailor—but not against . . .” Jackaby froze, his head cocked to one side, and I thundered into him, almost knocking us both to the ground.

  “Not against what?” I whispered after we had stood still for several seconds. “If he isn’t a werewolf, then what . . . ?”

  “Hush!” Jackaby hushed me, clapping a hand over my mouth and listening intently.

  After another long pause I heard the rustling of something moving very quickly through the trees. It seemed to be ahead of us at first, and then fading back in the direction of the bridge, moving impossibly quickly through the brush. I thought it must be gone, and was about to speak again when a sudden, strangled cry cut through the forest. A gunshot rang out, and Jackaby burst into a run, his gangly legs hurdling bushes and vaulting him toward the sound.

  I leapt after him, catching a tree root with my foot and pitching forward. I had one arm loaded with books, and the other was too slow to catch my fall. My head thudded against a mossy stump and the forest flashed before me, bright and colorful. When I picked myself up again, I had lost sight of Jackaby. I tried to follow the sound of crunching branches for a few long strides, but it was useless. I was lost in the woods, totally and entirely.

  The clouds were thinning, at least, and through the thick cover of the trees, I could see sparkling patches of stars. The moon hung full and bright almost directly overhead, flooding the woods with light, but offering little help navigating. I crept forward, not knowing what else to do. Should I call for Jackaby? Would that only make me a bigger target? Should I hide?

  A flurry of motion nearby set my heart racing, and I flattened against a tree trunk as a uniformed officer careened through the bushes, slapping leaves from his face in a panic. It was O’Doyle, the brute of a policeman with the hawk nose, only he looked far less intimidating now. He was pale, dripping with sweat, and wheezing. He was running with his gun drawn, looking backward over his shoulder every other step. I called out, but he only fired his weapon in my general direction and kept moving.

  I ducked instinctively, though the shots were wild and high. I stayed frozen until he had disappeared into the woods, but I wasn’t going to stay to find out what had frightened him.

  I pushed through the brush as quickly and quietly as I could, following O’Doyle’s noisy flight. I was squeezing through a small copse of trees when those sounds abruptly stopped. Crouched in the shadows, I strained to hear anything. More gunshots sounded in the distance. I peered around the trees into a small mossy clearing and saw O’Doyle’s feet first. He was lying on his back in a pool of crimson that was spreading across the moonlit grass, but he was not alone. A dark figure crouched beside him, its back to me. Once more, my heart raced and thudded against my ribs . . . until I made sense of what I was seeing. The figure was not the creature—not Charlie. The beast was nowhere in sight.

  It was Commissioner Swift. He had slid down to one knee with his legs splayed stiffly, the iron braces only barely accommodating the position. His charcoal gray coat wrinkled as its hem brushed the ground. He had removed his hat, and from behind him I could see his graying hair and small bald spot as he bowed his head reverently over the body of the fallen officer. Contrary to his public bluster and bravado, his reaction to the grisly tragedy was heartbreakingly human.There came a shuffling of leaves in the nearby bushes, and I was jolted back to the reality of the situation. This was not the time to mourn. I crept toward Swift, doing my best to stay to the shadows, scanning the dark branches and creeping vines around us for any sign of the beast. “Commissioner!” I called in an urgent whisper. “Please, sir. It isn’t safe. The monster is close and still on the hunt.”

  The commissioner slowly slid his hat back on to his head. “You’re right. Of course, young lady.” His voice was quiet and very low. The red velvet of the derby was a grim echo of the pool spreading at his feet. Swift steadied himself on his cane and began to turn and rise, but with agonizing slowness. His leg braces squealed and clinked in objection to the motion. And then an alarm sounded in the deep recesses of my brain. The sole of the man’s shoe, to which the brace attached by little screws, was not stiff leather. It bounced the moonlight across my eyes like a polished mirror, and I saw that it looked like the flat of an iron, pointed at the toe and made entirely of metal. As he stood, the shoes sank heavily into the mossy sod, and the braces straightened with a soft clink-clink.

  The derby glistened and its brim dripped crimson as he straightened it, gradually raising his eyes to me. The hat cast a shadowy mask across the top half of his face, but his eyes cut through, bloodshot and full of venom and fire. A spray of dark red had splashed across his chin and up his cheek, and his lips parted in a wide, wicked, sharp-toothed grin. “Yes, right you are,” he said. “The hunt is still very much on.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I stumbled backward, the forest spinning around me. I turned to flee, but the commissioner was already beside me. I threw myself into a staggering run in the opposite direction, but he was there at once, moving with inhuman speed. Only the clank and squeak of his metal braces revealed that he was moving at all, and not simply appearing in each new location by magic.

  I nearly tumbled straight into him, but caught myself and froze, mere inches away. As I looked into the commissioner’s face, the glamour melted away. He looked as he had always looked, but my mind finally allowed me to see the features I had been forcefully ignoring until now. Above a grotesquely wide mouth full of too many sharp teeth, the bridge of his nose curved upward into a severe brow. His ears, which bent slightly under the brim of the hat, were pointed, and his skin was blotched and leathery. Hard, crooked cheekbones skewed the whole of his face in a disturbing angle. Most frightening of all was that horrible mouth and the jagged, bloodstained teeth—teeth that called to mind broken bottles and razor blades. He laughed, and his breath reeked with the coppery stench of the blood. He was a cat, toying with his prey before the kill.

  There could be no escape, but my feet pulled me backward anyway. I tripped, landing at the base of an old tree. Jackaby’s books fell from my hands to the muddy roots. Swift’s lip twisted up in a final, wicked smirk, and vicious, bloodstained claws extended from his fingertips. Done playing with me, the cat pounced.

  And so did the dog.

  Swift was in the air, his horrible fangs and claws arcing toward me, when the massive hound hammered into him from the side. The two slammed into the ground and rolled. Swift’s cane bounced away, his dark coat whipping and tangling around the shaggy brown fur of the beast. They ground to a stop, the enormous dog pinning the commissioner’s shoulders under two heavy paws. It growled and snapped at the commissioner, who snarled back and ducked away from the hound’s jaws. Swift’s legs squeaked once beneath the hairy creature, and then the massive hound flew backward, the heavy iron boots cracking hard off its ribs. The beast collided with a broad tree and thudded to the ground, letting out a very human groan.

  His handsome face had warped and vanished beneath the fur, but those warm brown eyes were still unmistakable. They were full of fear and pain and humanity as he shook off the impact and tried to reorient himself. Swift was up and behind him in seconds, claws out and teeth gnashing before the shaggy hound had even pushed it
self to its feet. The dog was moving far too slowly. Someone screamed, “Charlie!” and I realized it was me.

  The commissioner shot me a poisonous glance before lunging toward his target, but it was just enough of a pause for the hound to whip around, so that the attack glanced off his flank instead of striking his jugular. Three lines of red blossomed across Charlie’s shoulder. A few inches closer and Swift surely would have opened the hound’s throat.

  The two circled each other. Charlie moved stiffly, as though the first kick had bruised or even broken his ribs. He waited for Swift to launch the next attack.

  It came in a blur. The commissioner feigned a wide swipe with his wicked claws, but as Charlie ducked to avoid it, Swift kicked hard, catching his opponent solidly across the jaw. Charlie yelped in pain, and Swift cackled. He easily quickstepped around Charlie’s retaliatory bite, and came at the hound from the other side with another feigned slice and a brutal kick. This time, Charlie predicted the move, and he caught the commissioner’s ankle in his massive jaws and shook.

  The commissioner hit the ground on his back, flailing with one hand and holding his bloody hat on with the other. Charlie did not release him, growling through clamped jaws as he continued dragging his opponent back and forth across the ground like a human paintbrush. He had scrubbed the moss from a six-foot swath of earth when a loud ping rang the hound’s teeth like a dinner bell, and his head shot back. Swift hopped to his feet, bits of metal and leather straps hanging loosely at odd angles around his knee. He ripped the mangled remnants of the brace from his leg and glared at the great hound.

  His iron shoes dug into the freshly churned dirt and he waited, like a sprinter listening for the starting pistol. Charlie lowered himself, and his lips peeled back in a vicious growl. In a blur, Swift was behind him, and the dog’s teeth snapped at the empty air. Swift had carved a chunk out of the hound’s ear, and it bled dark ribbons through his shaggy coat. Again and again Swift darted around Charlie, piercing gashes and pounding kicks into his shaggy hide from every direction. Charlie spun and snarled and bit. He was keeping himself low, and protected from any serious wounds, but for all his ferocity, he was no match for Swift. It would only be a matter of time.