Chapter 126: Bleeding Out

“All right. I’ll end it. Move the blade.”

Mara’s voice was quiet enough that Gascoigne turned toward her. Rook tried to speak, but blood caught in his throat, reducing the effort to a wet breath. He watched her lift one hand from the dressing, his blood gathered beneath her fingernails. Gascoigne kept the axe-shovel against his jaw for another moment before drawing it away.

Mara lowered her gaze to the chain around her wrist. Rook could do nothing but watch as she held it loosely between her bloodied fingers.

“I release you, Rook. The contract is over.”

The links brightened beneath her sleeve. Light traveled along the chain connecting them, revealing each link before it began coming apart. There was no sound as it loosened around her wrist and slipped through her hand, disappearing before it reached the floor. Rook felt the connection leave him, and Gascoigne smiled as some of the tension eased from his face.

“You can make a contract with me.”

“No.”

The answer came immediately. Gascoigne’s smile faded a little, but he lowered the axe-shovel and nodded. He made no attempt to change her mind.

“As you wish. We can discuss where you want to go once we’re clear of this place.”

A pale face appeared around the entrance before he could say anything else. Gascoigne turned as the creature began pulling its shoulders through the opening, striking its mouth with the iron head of his weapon. The lower jaw broke beneath the blow. He drove it backward with the shaft, then kicked it from the narrow footing outside.

It vanished below the ledge, followed by the rattle of falling stones. More cries rose in the distance while Gascoigne tucked the gun beneath his coat and gathered his belongings. He slung the bag over his shoulder, secured the rolled blanket, and picked up his lantern. Before leaving, he placed the clean linen beside Rook, followed by the metal cigar case.

“Best keep quiet. Enjoy your smokes.”

Rook watched him straighten. His own hand lay useless beside his hip, close enough that his smallest finger almost touched the tin. Gascoigne held a hand toward Mara, ready to lead her outside.

“Come.”

“Wait.”

She took the clean linen and crouched beside Rook again. Her coat brushed the side of his coffin as she moved closer, placing herself between him and Gascoigne. She replaced the soaked dressing with several folded layers and pressed them against the wounds, keeping her eyes on his face.

“Get better. Then come find me. We’ll make the contract again.”

“Mara…”

“I mean it.”

Gascoigne called her name from the entrance. She stayed another second, long enough to set their dented lantern beside Rook’s knee, then stood and wiped a bloody palm against her coat. Rook watched her follow Gascoigne outside and disappear around the rock.

For a while, he could still hear their footsteps. A loose stone rolled beneath a boot, and something knocked faintly against Gascoigne’s weapon. Then those sounds disappeared among the cries spreading across the mountain, leaving Rook alone with the lantern and the things Gascoigne had decided he could afford to lose.

His gaze settled on the cigar case. His last smoke, apparently. That explained the generosity. Gascoigne had left him alive, exactly as promised, after firing a blunderbuss inside a stone cave and announcing the presence of fresh prey to everything within hearing distance. There would be no shortage of creatures willing to finish what he had started.

Rook drew a careful breath. Pain spread beneath the dressing, reaching around his ribs and deep into his belly.

Three hundred years of watching hands, checking weapons, and keeping clear of strangers, and he had allowed a man to shoot him from so close that the barrel had nearly touched his coat.

He had watched the axe and stepped inside its reach, certain that getting close would give him the advantage.

Then the bastard had pulled out a gun.

Who the fuck was making blunderbusses in the Underworld?

Shotguns, pistols, and whatever else somebody had apparently decided to assemble while Rook spent centuries carrying sharpened iron around in a box.

The worst part was that he had been throwing thunder charges across a bridge the day before. The existence of a firearm should not have surprised him this much. His eyes moved toward the edge of his coffin, and beneath the anger and pain came a sharp, unreasonable greed. He wanted one.

There was room for it. He could move the spare blades, perhaps remove something he rarely used, and fit a short gun quite comfortably along the inside of the lid. That assumed he ever managed to open the fucking thing again, which was becoming less certain with every drop of blood leaving his body.

The fresh dressing had already darkened. A thin stream escaped beneath its lower edge, followed a fold in his coat, and dripped onto the stone between his legs. He could feel warmth gathering beneath his clothes while his hands grew cold. Mara had pressed the linen down so carefully that he had not wanted to tell her how little it would accomplish.

Bandages helped with cuts, torn skin, and wounds the body understood. Covered flesh and restrained bleeding gave it a familiar recovery to follow. His body remembered wounds closing beneath a dressing and the eventual moment when the cloth could be removed.

It had never recovered from a load of lead tearing through its chest and gut. There was no remembered morning when he had unwrapped the linen and discovered those holes had healed. What came easily were images of people falling when guns fired, blood spreading across floors while someone pressed cloth against wounds that refused to close.

His flesh seemed to remember those things very well. And those memories would do the opposite of healing if he focused too much on them.

He tried to move his hand, but it remained where it was. A pellet sat near the edge of one wound, partly concealed beneath the dressing, while dozens more remained somewhere deeper inside him. Whether the paralysis came from the damage or something Gascoigne had done to the shot, his limbs would not obey. He was going to bleed to death against his own coffin unless the Abominations reached him first.

His gaze returned to the cigar case. Its open lid displayed the contents, and he could smell the tobacco beneath the gun smoke and blood. Gascoigne had left no matches or lighter.

Even if Rook somehow managed to get a cigar into his mouth, he would have to sit with it unlit between his teeth while something chewed through his legs.

“Motherfucker.”

The word emerged faintly and accomplished nothing. Rook repeated it anyway, then fell quiet as something scraped outside. A small stone clicked against another, followed by the slow, uneven sound of weight dragging across rock. The creature Gascoigne had knocked from the ledge might already be climbing back, or something else had reached the entrance.

Rook tried to pull his legs closer. They remained stretched across the floor. His scythe lay beside him, partly beneath his coat, but even reaching it would do him little good. He could not stand, there was barely room to swing from where he sat, and his chest was steadily emptying itself onto the stone.

He looked at the pouch secured to the side of the coffin. A thunder charge would be quicker. Inside a cave this small, the blast might kill him before he had time to feel much, and perhaps bring down enough of the roof to leave less for the creatures outside to swallow. Afterward, he would have to hope a Beacon took him.

Perhaps the Forty-Second, if it still stood, or the little light beneath the Skyraisers. He might even wake beneath the repaired Beacon of the Seventy-Second and discover that the Underworld had found another way to waste his time. Wherever he returned, he would still have to make the journey back.

He pictured the Hollow Road, the dark ground and forests between the landmarks he knew, then the chasm and its miserable bridge. All of it would have to be crossed again to retrieve whatever remained of his coffin. He could already imagine finding it split open beneath the rubble, with half his weapons missing and the others blasted into places he would have to crawl through.

Meanwhile, Mara would be somewhere beyond the mountains, walking beside a man with a shotgun. By the time Rook reached this cave again, they could be days away. He stared toward the entrance until a small movement beside his hip pulled his attention downward.

His fingers had twitched. The movement was slight enough that he wondered whether he had imagined it, but when he tried again, his index finger bent. His thumb followed. Rook held his breath, unwilling to waste the opportunity wondering why his hand had suddenly begun answering him.

The pouch hung close to his hip. He dragged his fingertips over the stone until one caught its loose edge, then used the weight of his hand to pull it toward him. His arm barely moved, and pain sharpened beneath his ribs. He waited for the worst of it to pass before working a finger under the flap.

Two charges lay inside. Rook stared at them, remembering the three he had packed in the watchtower after the bridge. He had checked them before closing the coffin, then checked the pouch fastening again before leaving. He pulled the flap wider, but nothing had slipped beneath the others.

For several seconds, the blood dripping onto the floor seemed unusually loud. Then he remembered Mara crouching beside him, her coat brushing the coffin while she replaced the dressing. Her body had blocked Gascoigne’s view. Rook turned toward the entrance just as a thunderous boom rolled across the mountains.