Just as Ian guessed, the car turned into one of these entrances, marked by a particularly large weeping beech with rustling strands of branches that draped to the ground and spread out around it like a gown. The cabbie did as he was told, slowing to wait for a minute before making a sharp turn to follow, earning himself a clipped honk for his trouble. Here they ran into a small circular street that pooled before an already closing gate, the town car well ahead, already half way up the main drive. The cab could get him no further. He told the driver to continue along evenly and stop back on the main street. He paid and tipped the man and stepped out well away from the gate, behind the tree. The cab sped off again, no one the wiser.
Ian ambled along the sidewalk that ran outside the neighborhood and slowly lit a cigarette while he looked about. The main road led up to two of the larger estates. In an area of town where an apartment cost a fortune, these mansions sat on two and three full lots, obscured behind a wall of shrubbery. Ian focused on the largest. It sat grandly atop a small rise, overlooking the edge of the park. It was Edwardian, replete with thick stone columns and beautifully symmetrical. The high walls were accented in marble and covered here and there in lattices of bare vines that gave it a baroque feel. A tiered fountain bubbled in front of the carriage house. This had to be it. And sure enough, he saw the town car re-appear and then slow down, weaving towards it.
But then it sped up. Ian barely had time to curse before he was forced to throw himself inside of the shrub wall as the car looped back down the drive and out of the gate once more. Its engine roared as it shot out into the main street again, cruising down the block before turning sharply at the next corner.
The spiky greenery scratched at Ian and he swore loudly, dropping his cigarette. He popped out like a homeless jack-in-the-box precisely as the next wave of cars came by, and he heard at least one startled yelp from an open window. He swore again and picked bits of shrubbery from his hair and arms. He contemplated going back in for his cigarette before deciding against it, and took off running after them. He slowed near the corner. The car had stopped just down the street, in front of a stately old pub.
Ian scratched at himself and eased another cigarette from his soft pack. He flicked a hopping spider from his shoulder and lit up as he squinted in the distance. “Stopping in for a pint are we?” he muttered.
He saw Draden Tate holding open the door for Christina Stoke. Ian marveled that she found the ground at all, as upturned as her face was. Tate rolled his shoulders and looked around before following her inside.
Ian paused and inhaled, contemplating. On the one hand, going inside that pub was a terrible idea. A stupidly awful idea, really. It was a confined space on enemy turf, and the two of them were most likely regulars to be going in at a time like this. He could see it now: They would recognize him, tell the lads to hold him down, and Tate could brain him senseless while Stoke kicked him repeatedly in the balls and cackled like a little witch. On the other hand, anything could happen. “Anything” meant good things, too. Occasionally. And on top of that, Ian liked pubs. Even English pubs.
Ian took one last long drag, pinched off the cherry and flicked it into the tail end of the hedge, glaring at it for a moment. Then he calmly crossed the street and approached the pub. It had a quaint red door with matching red shutters and a deeply lacquered wooden awning. A sign above that read The Bull & Bush swung softly in the winter breeze. He held out his right hand, flat and still. That was encouraging. He held out his left hand, flat, but it refused to be still. His fingers twitched about as if ghosting to play the piano. Not encouraging. He grabbed his left hand with his right and forced it to quiet. “Stay with me you bastard,” he muttered. Ian patted above his waist for his gun. Still there. He unzipped his jacket and let it hang loose, then he opened the door and moved inside.
The inside was a sun-faded affair that smelled of dirty metal and years of cigarette smoke. The ceiling was low and covered in tarnished brass tiling that made it seem even lower. There were a fair amount of people scattered about and the low hum of conversations wafted through the air along with the clinking of glasses and the squeaking of chairs. Ian’s entrance went unnoticed and he moved quickly aside and to a corner. There was no sign of Tate or Stoke. This perturbed Ian. The pub was one large room. They should be here, screaming at the wait staff for a drink, or shoving aside the old men at the bar and causing a scene. He pushed back against the wall and took several slow breaths as he forced himself to really scrutinize the room: they weren’t at the bar proper, and they weren’t at the small, square tables just behind it. They weren’t at the section of booths to Ian’s right either, nor the second section back near the toilets. They weren’t in the corners of the ceilings, waiting to drop on his face like a spider in the night. They weren’t anywhere.
Worse, nobody was doing anything unusual. Old men were lazily hunkered over the bar, facing forward and speaking to each other out of the corners of their mouths. The barman pumped cask ale. A couple looked to be arguing in the booths near the toilets. Normal. As if two killers hadn’t just walked inside.
They had walked inside, hadn’t they? Ian scratched at his arm. Yes. Tate had held the door. They were here somewhere. Ian was jetlagged and hung-over but he refused to allow that he was hallucinating just yet.
That left the toilets. Ian watched the doors to the men’s and the women’s room for nearly ten minutes before he made himself cross the pub for a closer look. Nobody glanced at him. He made his way over to where a lone drinker sat in his own booth, morosely rotating an empty pint glass upon the table.
“Anyone in there?” Ian asked. The man started and looked up, but shook his head.
“No? Listen, you by chance see a big black fella come in here with a little woman?” The man eyed him blankly. “You’d know them if you saw them.”
Then, without a single word, the man stood and walked into the women’s room, brushing past Ian on the way. Ian stared after him for a span, thinking the fellow must either be very drunk or very lonely, before he realized his mistake.
He dashed inside after him and snapped out his handgun. He kicked in the stall door and found nothing but a running toilet. He turned to the broom closet just outside of the stall door and tried the handle. Locked. He cursed. This was twice now people had disappeared. If he was going insane, he needed to know it. He kicked the trashcan over and lodged it between the main door and the wall, then turned around and put his hand on his hip. He glanced in the mirror and scratched the stubble on his face. Only one thing left to do: he slammed his heel into the door of the supply closet just above the lock, and was bounced back. He backed up and ignored the noises now coming from behind the main door. He lashed out again and grinned stupidly when it snapped and swung back upon itself. Ian braced for gunfire and almost pulled his own trigger before he realized he wasn’t staring into a broom closet at all.
He was looking down a passageway, leading out and curving away into darkness. The shock made Ian recoil for a moment, as if the passage was a living thing, the closet door a gaping maw and the tunnel a throat that led down into the terrible bowels of England.
“Jesus Christ,” Ian said, crossing himself before turning away. He ran his hand through his damp hair and tugged at it in exasperation. The tunnel seemed to throb and breathed musty air upon him.
But there was no real alternative. He could wait in the toilets all night like a bad date, or he could see this through. He had but seconds to act. The sentry was on his way. Shaking his head, his gun held out in front of him like a charm, he ducked low and shot into the passage. It quickly dipped down and then cut sharply left, snuffing out any light that might have filtered in from the bathroom like a candle dropped in water. Ian staggered about in the darkness, his stomach in his lungs as his claustrophobia kicked in, and this time without a drop of booze to stave it off. He slowed his breathing and pressed the cold metal of his gun to his jugular to cool the blood rushing through his veins. He heard the scampering of th
e sentry up ahead, so he ran blindly.
The passage curved ahead, and he bounced off the wall with abandon. If he let the sentry get through, it was game over. They could easily trap him. Bar both exits and lock him up like a prisoner, throwing him stale crisps from the bar when they felt like it. Maybe the sentry had called ahead. Maybe he was already pinned. He thought he saw a flash of metal ahead and broke into a wild sprint. He caught up with him as the bright outline of a door appeared in the distance. The sentry turned to look behind just as Ian leapt, swiping at his legs with his gun hand. They both crashed to the ground, but Ian had the momentum. He scrambled to cover the man’s mouth with one hand and popped his temple with the butt of his gun. The sentry dropped his forehead to the dirt and lay still. After vigorously rubbing a charlie horse in his thigh, Ian checked the man’s pulse. Still breathing. Good.
He looked up at the door ahead. It looked ominous, a shimmering, distorted gateway, but at this point his options were either to move ahead, or to rot. He pressed against one wall as he scraped along, easing one foot in front of the other. Far from barred shut, as he’d feared, the door was actually propped open by a small brass statue of a regal hunting dog. Light filtered through from behind and reflected dully from its plaintive stare. Ian slowly reached out with his foot and tapped it once. Nothing. Although he wasn’t sure what he expected.
He didn’t blow through the door right away. He’d gotten into more than his fair share of messes by barreling through his problems with his gun blazing; a recent, ill-fated trip on an airplane came to mind, so he forced himself to consider his situation. There was a very real possibility that Tate and Stoke were behind this door. There was even the possibility that Alex Auldborne himself was behind this door. This thought swept all others from Ian’s mind. Ian envisioned him as clear as day: Alex Auldborne, with his reptilian gray eyes and his tailored vest and designer tie, stroking his gun in anticipation, nose slightly upturned as if to catch a whiff of himself. Well fine. That was all the consideration Ian needed. Far be it for him to keep the Master of the House waiting.
He kicked his way through the door and into the soft light of a massive study, or a small library, depending on one’s view. By now Ian so expected to see Auldborne that he found himself half shouting the man’s name. Auldborne wasn’t there. Ian snapped wild looks about the room, gun whipping frantically towards the far corners. He saw row upon row of thick, hardbound books stacked upon each other in towering shelves that creaked as if his look added weight. He saw an old chair in the corner next to a crystal bottle of amber booze. To his immediate right was a wide mahogany desk supporting only a marble pen holder and a few slips of paper. He registered all of this within seconds, and he was almost satisfied that not a soul was in the room when he felt the cold steel barrel of a revolver kiss up to the back of his skull.
“Hello, Ian Finn.” It was a voice you’d expect from a porcelain doll in a nightmare. “Delighted to finally meet you. Strange that it’s only now, considering you’ve wanted us all dead for some time.”
Ian snuffed and gritted his teeth. He hitched his head downward and let his eyes move over towards her.
“If I see your hands move, I’ll put a diode through your head. Then shoot your dick off for good measure.”
“Christina Stoke,” Ian said, as she slowly circled around his front, tracing the crown of his head with her snub-nosed .35, collecting beads of sweat as she went.
“Yes. You and I are going to have a little chat. I’ll be taking this.” She stepped into him, her eyes never left his face and her gun never left his temple as she plucked his weapon from his hand. She came very close, leaving no room for him to act. He could smell her hair, a scent like lavender and wholly out of place, and he also caught a whiff of gin. He never moved. He knew she’d make good on her threat. His gun held loosely in her hand, she stepped back to appraise him. She wore a crisp, tight white Oxford shirt, tucked neatly into a thigh-length pencil-skirt. He was struck by how small she was in real life.
“So you’re the wild Irishman. The one with the fast hand, yeah?” She waggled his gun in the air like a dried piece of meat.
“So I’ve heard.”
“I thought you’d be better looking.”
“You’re quite beautiful,” Ian said. It was the first thing that came to him, and he was completely honest. Her eyes narrowed and Ian thought he could physically feel the air cool around him. She allowed a narrow smile, her disgust thinly veiled.
“What did you think was going to happen here, Ian Finn?” She spat his name like a curse.
Ian was in a truth-telling mood. “I thought I was going to find Alex Auldborne, then kill him, then bring his body back.”
Stoke snorted. “Back where?”
“Back to where he killed two people. Back to answer for what he did.”
Stoke rolled her eyes. “What can a dead man answer for?”
“A dead man answers everything. Anything and everything.”
“Yeah? With what?”
“Silence.”
Christina paused. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Setting aside the fact that Alex would crush you with a look, what makes you think we’d let you get anywhere near him?”
“To be honest, I hadn’t thought about that. I didn’t think I’d run into any serious problems.”
Christina raised a thin eyebrow. “If I cared at all about you I might find that insulting.”
“If you don’t care about me, put the gun down.”
“No, you see, it’s because I don’t care that I have to shoot you. To let you walk out of here to pester elsewhere, to sully our city, it would be an embarrassment. It simply wouldn’t do.”
“Where is here?” Ian asked. He had to keep talking. Anything to take her mind off that trigger. Every second held something, some opportunity that he could use, or so he kept telling himself. His left hand started shaking again. He tensed it, but she saw. It was with effort that he stopped himself from cursing. Hopefully she thought his tremors stemmed from fear. She wouldn’t be entirely mistaken.
“You don’t know where you are?” she asked carefully.
“No. Is this a millionaire’s panic room? We do caves a little differently in Ireland.”
She pondered him. Pondering is better than shooting, he thought.
“I suppose you’d find out eventually. Once you woke up feeling like I split your head in half, that is. This is his house.”
“Whose house?”
“His house.”
And then her reticence became clear to him.
“I surprised you here,” Ian said, grinning.
“Do I look like I’m surprised? I’m the one with the gun, Irish.” She pulled back the hammer.
“You’re quick,” Ian said, nodding to himself. “That is for sure. Nobody denying that.” Ian inched closer to the desk, keeping his hands ramrod straight.
“That supposed to be cute? Don’t patronize me.”
“Where is Draden Tate?”
“You think I need him?”
“He’s not here, is he? It’s just you here, in this big house. All alone.” He had but seconds.
“Goodbye, Finn.” And as she spoke, Ian snapped his left hand out at the nearest object to him, the marble slate and pen holder, which he chopped forward with a whip-like force, all in one motion, just like drawing a gun. It flew absently towards the far wall, missing her by several feet, but it was enough to make her flinch.
Her shot was off by inches. It passed just to the right of his left ear and slammed into the books on the shelf behind him with the sound of a bird hitting a window. Ian was on the move before she could fire again. Stalling brought death. You had to move even if you had no idea where to go. The first thought that popped into his head was to dive over the desk, and so he dove over the desk.
He landed chin first on the floor and clacked his teeth together and it sounded like a car door slamming inside of his head. He
bit a dime sized chunk of skin out of his cheek and tasted blood, but there was no time to inspect. He rolled himself over, pointed in Stoke’s direction again, and leapt straight for her. Stringy as he was, Ian figured he still had a good three stone on her. He thought a woman of Stoke’s stature might shy away from a tackle. He was painfully wrong. She let out a feline growl, set herself, and lifted her knee directly into his face. The blow made a muffled, slapping sound, like beating a towel dry on a concrete wall. Ian’s head snapped back and only his forward momentum kept him from flopping flat on his back. Instead he pitched into Stoke’s leg like a barreling dog and knocked her off balance.
Ian’s vision was reduced to a watery soup of stars, but the same thought kept running around his head: keep moving. He rolled and scampered, flailing, hoping his hands connected with something before his face did. He smacked something hard with the top of his wrist and was rewarded with a shrill scream of frustration. His right eye pieced itself together enough for him to see that he’d hit her revolver, not away, but askew. Enough to buy another few seconds.
Stoke swiped him in the face with her free hand, her nails carving tiny, weeping gullies in his jaw. She slipped away from him and repositioned her gun as Ian reeled. He rebounded just as she swept to sight, and leapt once more. He took a glancing chop from the butt of the gun, but then his shoulder tagged her under the neck and both of them left the ground for a split second. Ian shifted all of his weight towards her in mid-air and when they came back down he slammed her bodily to the floor. All air left her lungs and she compressed like a paper sack. She clawed at both his and her own throat, as if confused at which threat to fight.
Ian was allowed a breath and a few blinks to find himself, and then ripped at her gun like it was a Christmas present. Even winded, she fought. Ian was amazed by her strength; she was all muscle, like a small shark. Already she was shifting her hips under him, writhing, trying to raise a knee and buck him off, but he hammered at her wrist and was able to yank the gun away from her. He immediately pushed down on her and leapt away, leveling the revolver back at her.
The Tournament Trilogy Page 48