Christmas Blackout

by Maggie K. Black

  “Enough!” Tobias shouted. “Stop right this second! Nobody fights without my permission.”

  Yeah, that wasn’t about to work on Kodiak right now, Benjamin thought, no matter how much Tobias was paying him.

  From the corner of his eye, Benjamin saw Kodiak vault at him, landing on top of him. He grabbed Benjamin by the throat and began to squeeze. For a moment he could feel unconsciousness begin to overtake his mind. But this time he wasn’t about to go under. He leveled a swift, decisive blow to Kodiak’s jaw, followed by a second one that knocked the thug unconscious.

  Benjamin climbed to his feet. One down.

  Just a delusional madman to go.

  “I said stop! Hands up. Or she will die!”

  He turned. Tobias had Piper by the hair. Her dark mane was wrapped around one fist, while the other pressed a gun between her eyes.

  “Hands up! Now! You think you can take Charlotte away from me?” Tobias’s eyes bulged as he nudged Piper’s face with the gun. Compliant, Benjamin lifted his hands. The man had completely lost his mind. “Charlotte is mine. Forever. Aren’t you, Charlotte? You think she’d ever want a stupid, uneducated thug like you when she could have a real man taking care of her? A man like me?”

  Piper’s eyes met Benjamin’s for one agonizing second. A prayer whispered across her lips. Then her eyes turned to her captor. She met his gaze without flinching.

  “You found her here six years ago and you hurt her, didn’t you?” Piper said. “Then you went home and got on with your life, finding and hurting other women, all while the memory of what you’d done to her haunted the edges of your rapidly failing mind. But when you saw in the paper that The Downs was about to be renovated, at least part of you worried your dirty little secret might come to light. So, you manipulated people into finding out what had happened to Charlotte. How frightened you must have been. Knowing your mind was slipping. Knowing you couldn’t quite remember.” She leaned closer, ignoring the gun, until her face was inches from his. “Having fleeting, painful, panicked moments, remembering just what you’d done to the woman you claimed to love, having them bashing up brick and tearing up rooms looking for her. Her dead body.”

  “Liar!” Tobias’s outstretched hand flew toward her face. But she was too quick. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Piper broke free. She ducked under his arm and ran for the corner of the room.

  That was the moment Benjamin was waiting for. He leaped forward, like a professional tackle. Tobias’s weapon fired, seconds before it flew from his hands and clattered into the darkness. Benjamin knocked the would-be alpha to the ground.

  But the cry of pain that echoed behind him filled his heart with the sinking knowledge he’d been too late.

  The bullet had found its mark.

  Piper had been shot.

  He turned. “Piper!”

  She was down on the ground, pulling herself toward the fireplace. Blood seeped from her pant leg.

  “Go!” She grabbed the Christmas tree he’d made for her and used it to pull herself to her feet. “Take care of him. It’s just a graze. I’ll be okay.”

  “You really think you can escape and outsmart me this time?” Tobias crawled over to the table. “You think I wasn’t prepared? I tried to warn you. I’m the master of booby traps and snares. I’ve locked all the doors, Charlotte. I’ve destroyed the stairs. I’ve hidden explosives at the exits and wired the windows so if you try to escape you’ll die.”

  His eyes were wild, his gestures manic. He wiped blood from his face, then swept a candle up off the table and waved it over the woodpile that once was the stairs. Then he dropped it in.

  “You think I just broke your generator to keep you in the dark? I wanted the fuel to start a fire to smoke you out if you didn’t come to me. You can fight me until your energy fails. But trust me, there is no exit I haven’t thought of and no contingency I haven’t planned for.”

  But you never planned to face a man like me.

  And Piper’s no Charlotte.

  Smoke billowed and flames flickered from the woodpile that had once been the stairs.

  Benjamin spun toward Piper. She’d snapped off a hockey stick from the makeshift tree and slid it under her elbow as a crutch. She hobbled toward the fireplace.

  “Find a way out!” Benjamin called. “Whatever it takes. Don’t wait for me.”

  “You aren’t going anywhere!” Blood poured from Tobias’s chin. He pulled the small World War I grenade from his belt loop and waved it like a bone in front of a dog. “A warrior is always willing to die in battle and I will fight you with my dying breath.”

  Benjamin looked around. Fire rose from the pile of broken stairs. Flames raced up the long, lacy curtains and spread along the second-story balcony. Had Tobias really barricaded all the exits? Were there really booby traps and explosives? Could he risk it?

  “Tobias, tell me how we get out of here! None of us needs to die here.”

  “He’s a coward!” Piper shouted. “I suspect that grenade isn’t even real. Even if it is, he doesn’t have the courage to throw it!”

  Benjamin had also presumed it was fake when he’d seen Tobias with it at breakfast yesterday. But what on earth was she doing, taunting a madman who might be holding something explosive?

  “Go on!” Piper banged the end of her hockey stick on the floor. “If you think I’m Charlotte and you really want to prove I should fear you, throw it at me!”

  Tobias snarled, pulled the pin and lobbed the grenade. Piper caught it in the air with the hockey stick, slapped it to the ground and sent it spinning into the fireplace.

  Benjamin threw himself behind the sofa as he heard Piper call out his name.

  Her next words were cut off in a rush of falling debris and a scream that seemed to echo from all directions.

  A gaping hole in the floor now lay where the fireplace had been.

  Piper was gone.

  EIGHTEEN

  “Piper!” Benjamin ran for the hole that was once a fireplace. He looked down into the darkness. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay. I just lost my balance.” Piper’s voice floated up from the hole in the floor. “There seems to be a room down here. But I can’t get back up. It must be a fifteen-foot drop.”

  “Stand back. I’m coming to get you.”

  Tobias was half sitting and half lying beside the table. Flames climbed the curtains behind him and smoke billowed around him. The second-story balcony was now alight. Tobias pulled a tiny pistol from his ankle and struggled to load it with bullets. “We will fight to the death, you and I. It will be a warrior’s death and an honorable end to my life.”

  Benjamin shook his head in disgust. “There is no honor in murder. You can die if you want to die. I’d rather live.”

  He grabbed the remains of the Christmas tree, clipped the windup flashlight to his belt and wound the string of lights around his hand as a makeshift rappel rope to slow his decent.

  He slid backward into the hole.

  Darkness filled his eyes. Cold damp air seemed to press up against him. His feet hit cold stone and he struggled to maintain his balance. Then soft hands slid over his chest.

  “Benjamin.”

  He felt Piper before he saw her. Her face pressed against his chest, then he lifted her head and his lips found hers in a kiss.

  He slid one arm around her waist and felt her weight fall into his arms. “Are you hurt?”

  “A bit. But I’m okay.”

  The flashlight whirred to life in his hands. They were standing in a wide cellar. Dusty bottles of amber liquid filled racks by the wall. The remains of a body lay on a bench by the wall, clad in a university jacket and sweatshirt.

  Charlotte.

  “Charlotte found the speakeasy, and we found her.” A choke caught in
Piper’s throat. Benjamin’s arm tightened around her waist and held her close to him. “She must have been so desperate to get away from him she was willing to rob me if that’s what it took.”

  In her mind she created the scenario Charlotte must have faced years ago. “Tobias tracked her to The Downs and attacked her. She crawled in here hoping to hide and escape. She might have even been hoping that Dominic would decipher the star and find her. She probably didn’t realize her wounds were fatal until it was too late. I think Tobias suspected she’d found the speakeasy and died here, but didn’t know how to find it himself. Then when he read that we were planning to renovate the bed-and-breakfast, he panicked and realized her body might still be found, and there might be evidence on her that would point back to him.” She shivered. “Maybe there still is.”

  She sat back against the crumbling wall. Gently, Benjamin used his knife to slit the bottom of her jeans from heel to calf. Then he tore a strip off the bottom of his sweatshirt and used it to bind Piper’s leg wound. Thankfully, it looked as if the bullet had merely grazed her. “Can you walk?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  But still, as he helped her to her feet, the wince that escaped from her lips and how deeply she leaned into his shoulder told him that it hurt her to stand. Burning and broken floorboards tumbled through the hole behind them bringing the fire with it. It probably wouldn’t be too long before the entire floor above collapsed in. There was a lot of wood down here, not to mention flammable liquid.

  He scanned the darkness for a way out and found a small opening on the far side of the room. It looked like a tunnel.

  “Come on.” He strengthened his grasp on her shoulders. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Her eyes met his. “Where’s Harry?”

  “He’ll be okay. I left him in my truck with plenty of blankets and the door open, so he can jump out if he needed to. But The Downs is on fire. Once the flames reach down here, with all these bottles of bootleg liquor, the place will explode.”

  Her arm slid around Benjamin’s waist. They ran.

  The tunnel was dark and sloped downhill so steeply they could barely see. Walls pressed in on every side. The smell of smoke chased after them. Then they could hear the pop of bottles exploding as the fire reached the speakeasy. They kept running, until the ground sloped down so steeply they lost their footing and went into a slide.

  Right into a solid brick wall.

  They were trapped.

  * * *

  Panic thudded in Piper’s chest.

  The air wouldn’t last forever and there was no way back. No, they couldn’t die trapped here in the ground like this.

  Help us, Lord. Show us the way out.

  Benjamin shone the windup light in all directions. Above them he saw a shaft. He pressed the flashlight into her hands. “I’m going to try climbing. You going to be okay?”

  She nodded and leaned against the hockey-stick crutch. “Yeah, go ahead.”

  He started climbing, finding holes and ledges for his fingers and toes in the brick. Then he stopped. “There are some loose bricks up here. But I need something to dig them out with.”

  She braced herself against the wall and passed up the hockey stick. “Here, use this. It’s not going to be much use to me if we can’t get out of here.”

  She waited, breathing through the pain, as he started digging at the bricks with a piece of broken hockey stick. Then a dim light shone through the cracks.

  “Thank You, God!” Benjamin shouted an echo of the prayer filling her heart.

  The hole grew larger. Then soft white snow fell in toward them.

  “Where are we?” she called.

  “The barn. I’m pretty glad I smashed my truck into your chimney now. I think I might have busted us an exit.”

  He hopped down, grabbed Piper around the waist and gently lifted her up until she could crawl out into the snow. Then he crawled through after her and stood. They were beside the remains of the barn, back where Benjamin had saved her from Kodiak two days ago.

  The sun was beginning to rise over the tops of the trees.

  It was Christmas morning.

  Benjamin lifted her up off the ground and into the shelter of his arms.

  She slid her arms inside his coat and felt the warmth of his chest. “Thank you for coming back for me.”

  “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” The scruff of his cheek brushed her face. Then she felt his lips on hers, kissing her deeply.

  Smoke billowed through the snow above them. Emergency sirens filled the air and relief filled her chest. Someone must have seen the smoke and called the fire department. She prayed the heavy snow would keep the fire from spreading while the firefighters did their work.

  Benjamin carried her through the trees, up toward the house, holding her to his chest. She lay her head on his shoulder, safe in his arms.

  Lost in her thoughts she noticed the sirens had stopped. Another sound took over the air.

  Voices singing.

  “The thrill of hope. The weary world rejoices.”

  It was as if an entire choir was singing carols.

  “Can you hear that?”

  “Yeah.” His head shook in wonder “It’s unreal.”

  “For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn...”

  They followed the sound up the hill. Once they’d passed the tree line they saw the top of The Downs. The roof had caved, the turrets had fallen. But every nook and cranny of the building was covered in shimmering ice, as water blasted from the firefighters’ hoses. A frozen castle, it was the most beautiful, surreal sight she’d ever seen.

  One of the firefighters ran toward them. “Let me take her.”

  Benjamin held her close. “No, we’re good. Just point me to the paramedics.”

  He directed them around the front of the house.

  “Did you manage to pull anyone else from the house?” Piper asked.

  The firefighter nodded. “Three men. They’re on their way to the hospital now.”

  “Please mention to the paramedics that the overweight, middle-aged gentleman seems to be suffering from some kind of mental breakdown,” Benjamin said. “He’s violent but he’s not in his right mind and seems to be trapped in the past.”

  They kept walking. Piper leaned her head into the crook of Benjamin’s neck.

  “I know he hurt you terribly and murdered Charlotte,” he said, “but Tobias is still a very sick man. I hope the justice he faces is still mingled with some mercy.”

  Piper kissed his cheek. “I know, and I adore that about you.”

  Lord, have mercy on them all.

  They walked around the front of the house. Then she saw the carolers. Dozens of them were milling about in The Downs parking lot behind the emergency vehicles and police tape, singing carols and holding candles. They poured mugs of hot cocoa and coffee, and passed around muffins as they linked arms. Praying. Singing. Watching. Waiting.

  The sun had risen on Christmas morning. And the community had brought Christmas to The Downs.

  “It’s Piper!” One voice rose from the crowd. “Thank You, Lord!”

  “Aunt Cass!”

  Her aunt was sitting in a folding chair behind the line of police tape, beside the ambulances, Harry cuddled at her feet and Uncle Des by her side. Benjamin ran toward them. He dropped gently down to one knee beside Aunt Cass, holding Piper to his chest, and she felt her aunt’s and uncle’s arms slide around her.

  “You’re hurt,” her uncle said.

  “Nothing serious. A bullet grazed me. But Benjamin bound it. I’ll be okay.” She glanced back at the shimmering pile of wood that was once her aunt and uncle’s home. “I’m just sorry we couldn’t save The Downs.”

  “Sir.” Benjamin was by Uncle Des’s s
ide. “I have a boat. It’s not much. But if I can find a buyer for it, it might be enough to help give you a head start to getting back on your feet.”

  Piper’s hands grabbed his. “No, Benjamin. Don’t. That boat is your dream. You’ve been saving for it your entire life. You can’t give it up for me. I won’t let you.”

  His finger ran down along the side of her face and curled under the back of her neck. “But I love you and I don’t want you to lose your home.”

  “I love you, too,” Piper said, “and I don’t want you to lose your boat.”

  Uncle Des smiled. “Thank you for the offer, Benjamin. But whatever we do with The Downs now, it won’t involve robbing anyone of their dreams.”

  Then the old man’s eyes turned to Piper. “Your aunt and I had a very long talk last night after you left, mostly about our own dreams and the promises we made to each other. Your aunt Cass gave up her home in England to follow me here. I think it’s about time I make good on my promise to take her back home. We don’t know what shape that’s going to take, but now that The Downs is gone it really feels like the dream we thought we were chasing here isn’t going to happen. We’ll take a hard look at our finances, see what happens with insurance, contact some of your aunt’s friends and family, and try to move back. Now, before you argue, there are good doctors and hospitals in England, too, just like there are here, plus there’s less snow to get around so that will help.”

  Aunt Cass and Uncle Des were going to move across the ocean at their age? With their health problems?

  But any doubt Piper had in her mind was quelled when she saw her uncle take her aunt’s hand and watched the joy dance in their eyes. The elderly couple bent toward each other in a kiss like the one they’d shared thousands of times before.

  Benjamin picked Piper back up in his arms again and started carrying her toward the paramedics, Harry trotting along by his side. Benjamin’s mouth brushed over her hair. “I want our love to be like theirs.”

  So do I.

  “But wait.” She squeezed his arm. Benjamin stopped. “If my uncle and aunt move to southern England, I’m going with them. There’s nothing keeping me here in Canada. It’ll be a huge adventure for them.” An exciting once actually. She’d finally be able to see the country where she’d been born. “But they’re still going to need my help. If they move, I’m going, too.”