by Doug Johnson
Lazarus sneered. “Just spit it out, already. You want money? You want me to help your band? You’re going to blackmail me? What?”
“Nah, ‘fraid you missed your chance on that.” He pulled his puffy, glistening face away from Lazarus and reached down to pick something up of the floor. Neither Lazarus nor Kitty had noticed its presence, though in this case ignorance may have been preferable.
Dylan rose back up with the pruning loppers in his hands.
“Watching you has given me ideas… curiosities, if you will.”
He stepped behind Kitty and spread the lopper handles to open the hooked blades.
“What are you doing?” Sian asked him. There was a noticeable quaver in her voice, but once again she was ignored.
“How would it feel to clip her little neck? Just snap!” He scissored the loppers open and shut. The blade-on-steel sound was nauseating given the context. Kitty screwed her eyes shut.
“I can show you,” Lazarus said. “Mentor you.”
Kitty scoffed. Dylan stepped around her and stood between his two prisoners. “I told you… It’s too late for that.”
He punched Lazarus, snapping his head back. His face went numb and began to swell up instantly. Lazarus was dazed. Dylan opened the loppers again, and when Lazarus brought his head back upright, Dylan shoved one of the blades into his mouth like a carbon steel tongue depressor. Lazarus could smell the oil and earth on them; his mouth flooded with saliva drawn by the sweet vinegar tang of metal that danced over his taste buds. The flesh of his cheek was pinched between the hooked blades. One squeeze of the handles and it would be sliced back to the jaw hinge.
Dylan’s muscles flexed and Sian intervened with a tentative shove.
“What the hell are you doing?!” she shouted. The blade grazed Lazarus on the edge of his mouth and blood began to trickle from the torn skin. Dylan slapped her hard across the face and her hand flew to her cheek. It was hot to the touch.
“Oh, luv… I’m sorry!”
Sian burst into tears and ran from the room. After a few seconds of embarrassed indecision, Dylan pitched the pruners to the floor and hurried out after her without saying another word.
Lazarus and Kitty watched them go, and with only their ears left to monitor the spat, turned back to face each other. For now, the enmity between them was gone, replaced by a shared dread over the world of shit they both now found themselves in.
“You said people get caught because they don’t have a plan,” Sian’s muffled voice floated in from the hallway.
“I have a plan,” Dylan argued back.
“You gonna share it with me?” Sian asked. “Cos this isn’t the plan you told me.”
Kitty leaned close and whispered to Lazarus. “You know what we have to do.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“You can’t,” Kitty answered. It was the first thing she’d said all night that he actually believed.
Dylan escorted Sian back into the room. She wiped the tears from her eyes. “I promise you, this will all work out,” he told her. His voice was soft and consoling now. He’d kept his ass out of the fire.
“Yeah?” she asked, wanting very much to believe.
Dylan kissed her tenderly. “Yeah.”
He picked the loppers back up and headed toward Lazarus with them.
“Now!” Lazarus yelled.
Kitty stood up, hunched over with the chair strapped to her back, and threw herself at Sian.
Dylan swiveled between Kitty and Lazarus. Adapting to unexpected complications and making strong decisions off the cuff was not his forte. He chose Kitty.
“Leave her alone!” he shouted. He raised the loppers with the intention of clubbing her good and hard with them, but Kitty whirled around as the blow came down and the chair absorbed the impact with a split down the middle.
Lazarus heaved himself onto his feet and drove his head into the small of Dylan’s back. The butt sent him sprawling to the floor and the loppers flew from his hands.
Kitty slammed the chair against the wall and it broke apart at the split.
“Hurry!” Lazarus shouted at her.
She pulled herself loose from the ropes and grabbed the loppers. Two snips later he was free of his binds as well. He turned around just as Sian came charging back.
“Behind you!” he yelled.
Sian threw a flailing barrage of claws but Kitty managed to spin away from the attack. Lazarus grabbed a spray of Sian’s hair straw and flung her against the wall with a crunchy slap. She bounced off, and despite the hit, she came away flashing a smile at Lazarus.
Creepy, was his first thought, but a half second later he realized it wasn’t him she was smiling at, anyway. It was Dylan. He rushed Lazarus from behind and crushed him into another sweaty headlock. Lazarus thrashed in vain but Dylan had too much mass on his side. Within seconds Lazarus felt himself going light-headed. He couldn’t breathe.
There was a part of Kitty that entertained leaving him there in that odorific chokehold to get what he deserved. She knew she could outrun them, but her legs weren’t moving. Hadn’t she come here to see this fuckstick get his due? Well, that’s what was happening, wasn’t it?
Take “yes” for an answer, Kitty.
It happened almost without her even being aware of it. She picked up a stout leg from the broken chair, took a sure-footed step toward the grapplers and smashed it across Dylan’s upper back where she could see the outline of his spine through his shirt. Dylan’s hold on Lazarus disintegrated and he lurched forward onto his knees with all the poise of a Rock’em, Sock’em Robot.
Sian let out an ice-pick of a scream and charged, but Kitty grabbed the now blue-faced Lazarus by the wrist and yanked him out of the room. She managed to slam the door shut before Sian could reach it and jammed the chair leg horizontally into the frame, wedging it under the knob. The door rattled as Sian tried to open it from the other side, but the wedge seemed to be working for now. Whether or not it would hold Dylan was another story.
Lazarus scanned the floor and spotted another shattered chair spindle. He picked it up and jammed it under the horizontal wedge to make a “T” shape. He gave it a kick at the bottom to force it further and it spring-jacked the door up a half-inch or so in the frame. It would buy them some time.
Back inside the room, Dylan got to his feet and slowly straightened out his back. Kitty had nailed him and the pain shot through his bruised spine like a bolt. He didn’t know it yet, but one of his vertebrae was cracked. Sian practically hung off the doorknob with all her weight trying to open it, and Dylan lumbered over to help.
So much for plans.
CHAPTER 14
Lazarus and Kitty staggered toward the servants’ staircase while Dylan’s screams of frustration bellowed from behind them. The improvised wedge was holding.
Dylan hoisted up the top of the ruined table and slammed it down on the inside doorknob. It snapped off completely and the knob on the far side fell off and dropped to the floor with a dull clang while Lazarus and Kitty slipped up the staircase.
The door exploded open with a crack as piercing as a rifle shot. Dylan stormed out, loppers in one hand and a reluctant Sian in the other. He took a quick survey of the empty hallway and shoved Sian toward the next door.
“Check the rooms. All of them. Look in, under, around and on top of everything.”
Upstairs, Lazarus stumbled toward the front door and stopped in front of the Queen Anne cabinet. This time, he didn’t reach for the stun gun on top, however. He opened the doors and rummaged inside. Kitty stepped up alongside and eyed him with great interest.
“I’m going to get you, you bastard!” Dylan’s muffled voice came booming through the floor.
Lazarus fumbled around the back panel of the cabinet. His fingertips brushed over two empty hooks.
“No!” he hissed.
He flung papers and magazines from the cabinet in clenched handfuls, spilling books and junk out onto the floor with complete disregar
d for the noise it made. Kitty’s eyes tilted up to the top of the cabinet. She spotted the stun gun wedged against the wall, and while Lazarus continued the search for his own mystery item, she reached up and grabbed it.
“Come out, come out wherever you are!” Sian sang downstairs.
Lazarus felt around an empty shelf. “Where are you?” He reached all the way to the back and discovered a small gap between the shelf and the rear panel. His fingers flicked the edge of a metal loop. It was a key ring, and it had fallen into the gap. He tried to pry it out with his fingernail but there was not much to work with. What he really needed was a guitar pick.
Kitty stepped silently up behind him. She stared at his neck and caressed the stun gun in her hand. Her thumb brushed back and forth over the trigger. Her heart was racing. She could put him down and let Dylan finish whatever sick fantasy he thought he wanted to fulfill. She could remove herself from the equation and still pencil in the answer. Dylan would take the fall.
And she could watch.
Downstairs, a door slammed and Kitty almost screamed. She hastily tucked the stun gun into her belt. Lazarus freed the key ring and yanked it from the cabinet as he spun around, quite shocked to find Kitty right in his face. Her chest was heaving, her face flushed. Lazarus felt a demon tooth sink in. He felt the flame of its venom, then the numb of its reason. A single word burned into his psyche like a brand, and he bit his lip hard to make it go away.
“Come on,” he said. He grabbed Kitty by the wrist and they slipped out the front door, but he couldn’t make the word go away. It would recede, then return like the tide. It always did, no matter how hard he tried. He wanted to whisper it in Kitty’s ear. To see the expression on her face, that look of confusion and the fear that came with it. He wanted to say it out loud, but it wasn’t the time. He couldn’t say it out loud, so he thought it. Again and again and again… Ripe... Ripe…
Ripe.
“Hey, mate. It’s just a joke!”
Dylan stood at the front door and called out into the courtyard while Sian rifled through the cabinet and scattered papers in the entry hall. He stepped out onto the walk and looked out into the dark.
“What was he looking for?” Sian asked from the hall. She couldn’t make heads or tails of the random crap. Dylan’s eyes settled on the Fiat about twenty yards away.
“I was just being a bit of a monster cos you didn’t want to hear my band!”
He crept toward the car while Sian watched from the doorway. He peeked in the windows. The front seat was empty. So was the back. He dropped to the gravel and looked underneath. Other than a growing oil puddle from a leaking transmission case there was nothing to see.
Lazarus and Kitty cowered in the shadows of an alcove on the southwest side of the house right outside the upstairs kitchen. Across the croquet lawn sat the carriage house, but they were only a few strides from the circular drive and Dylan was creeping around with God-knew what else from the tool shed.
“Come on, mate. I just wanted to scare you.”
Footsteps crunched closer on the gravel. Lazarus held his breath. He took Kitty’s hand in his and locked his eyes on the carriage house.
Dylan peeked around the feathery branches of an overgrown yew hedge. “The more you make me look, the worse it’ll be for you!”
Sian called from the front door. “Come on, Dylan. Let’s just go! The car’s right there.”
The open patch of croquet lawn lay beyond the hedges, and Dylan crept along the house toward it, hugging the nooks and crannies of the façade. He approached a bump-out and could see the kitchen’s high cabinets and coffered ceiling through the windows.
“Hah!” He leaped around the corner and frowned at the empty alcove Lazarus and Kitty had occupied moments earlier.
It was empty because Lazarus and Kitty were now crouched by the wisteria trellis at the corner of the carriage house. A heavy padlock secured a welded steel chain that looped through the handles of a pair of large, wooden swing doors.
Lazarus produced his key ring and quietly slipped one of the two keys into the lock slot. He turned the key and the locking mechanism tumbled open with a sharp snick. Lazarus winced at the sound and Kitty glanced around nervously. He slid the chain out through the handles.
“Hurry up,” she whispered.
“Shh.”
He opened the doors just enough for them to slip through. Lazarus brought the chain in with him and set it down on the interior floor to muffle the sound. Kitty slipped in behind him, and once they were both inside Lazarus pulled the cover off the carriage house’s sole occupant, a silver-blue 1963 Aston Martin roadster.
“Nice,” Kitty admired.
“Being rich has its perks.” The door hinges squeaked in protest as Lazarus climbed behind the wheel and Kitty slid into the passenger seat.
He produced the second key on the ring and turned the ignition. The tired battery labored to crank the engine.
“Come on, come on.” The twin-carb straight-six roared to life. “Yes!”
The carriage house doors exploded open and the Aston Martin tore away, rounding the corner of the house and spraying gravel in its wake. The headlights flipped on as it careened around the circular drive, nearly sideswiping Dylan’s Fiat. Kitty craned her neck searching for Dylan and Sian, but there was no sign of either of them.
The car fishtailed as Lazarus cut the wheel and left the roundabout. He punched the accelerator up the main drive and gunned it, racing along a stretch of straightaway flanked by open fields. A long drainage ditch paralleled the road on the right-hand side.
The thought of leaving the invaders alone in his home made his skin crawl and his fingers draw into hooks around the Aston’s wood-rimmed steering wheel, but Lazarus needed time to think. He needed to regain control. If he wanted to preserve the world he’d built (and he most certainly, desperately did), he needed a plan. That world was hanging by the thinnest of threads. It was the light bulb lost at sea. More than anything, he wanted to turn around, abandon the car and walk to his garden where he could sit beneath the weeping branches of the Worcester Pearmain. The garden would speak to him. It always did.
He cut the wheel and rounded a tight bend. The Aston’s bubbly headlights were fairly weak by modern standards, and Lazarus had to squint to make out what he saw ahead. It was Sian.
She stood in the middle of the road holding something in her hand. Reflex prompted Lazarus to hit the brakes.
“Why are you stopping?” Kitty asked. “Run her down!”
The car skidded to a halt eighty feet in front of Sian. The straight-six idled with a throaty growl. Sian stared daggers at them through the windscreen. Lazarus sneered back. Kitty grinned.
Lazarus slammed into first gear, popped the clutch and floored it. The back tires chirped, spinning for purchase and the car shot forward. Sian stood defiant.
The distance between them closed rapidly and Lazarus felt his smile begin to falter. “Move, you stupid cow!”
Sian raised her arm and the Aston’s headlights revealed a brick in her hand. Kitty’s brick. She reared back and launched it at them. Lazarus cut the wheel but the brick slammed into the windscreen. A cracked spiderweb erupted over the laminated glass. Lazarus couldn’t see a damned thing.
The car fishtailed and Sian sidestepped to the left as it sped past and veered off the road to the right, bucking its unbelted passengers and nose-diving into the muddy trench with a blunted crash. The impact drove them both forward in their seats. Kitty’s head slapped the shattered windscreen and Lazarus was slammed chest-first into the steering wheel. It pushed a hoarse groan from his lungs and filled them instead with the shooting pain of a drink gone down the wrong pipe.
It took him a good thirty seconds to cough away the impact and catch his breath, but once he did, Lazarus reached for the door. He had to rock it a few times, but it finally creaked open and he tumbled out into the wet grass on the embankment. He dragged himself to his feet and Kitty crawled out the open door too, dazed an
d bleeding from the head.
Lazarus stumbled into the adjacent field and started across. There was simply no other choice. They’d get nowhere without a car. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw Kitty limping along behind him. Beyond her, Sian had begun to follow them. She hopped across the ditch and up the other side. Lazarus turned his sights ahead and kept moving in the direction of the house.
“Dylan will catch you,” she called out. “You might as well give up.”
“You don’t sound so sure,” Dylan answered.
Kitty tried her hand at negotiation. “We can all just pretend this never happened, Sian.”
There was a pause. “Dylan knows best,” Sian said.
Lazarus took another glance back. Sian was closing the gap. “You said it yourself, Dylan’s not following his plan. You’ll get caught.”
“You’re the one who’s caught! We know who you are and what you’ve done!”
Lazarus spotted the lights of the manor house ahead. “You have no idea who I am or what I’m capable of,” he said with such low and detached flatness that it made Kitty shiver. For a moment, she considered turning around and joining Sian, but with a sickening epiphany, she realized something…
She didn’t want to.
Lazarus grabbed her hand and broke into a run.
“Dylan!” Sian shouted ahead. “They’re coming your way!”
Lazarus and Kitty sprinted across the field and emerged from a screen of trees behind the carriage house. Kitty was bruised and dizzy. She tripped and stumbled to her knees, but Lazarus grabbed her arm and pulled her back up to her feet. They jogged to the driveway roundabout and saw the front door standing open. Dylan was nowhere in sight.
“Come on,” Lazarus urged her. They ran for it with every ounce of endurance they had left. Their feet pounded the gravel and they raced up the brick path toward the door. Luck was not on their side, however. Timing was everything.