“Ha!” he exclaimed joyfully. “Brilliant!”
He pushed the pain in his leg from his mind and dragged the blanket toward him. The moment he got it close enough, he grabbed hold of the cover and pulled the keys to him. He couldn’t believe his luck! He unlocked himself from his bonds and grabbed the rifle propped up in the corner.
Bolting from the place was his initial impulse. Instead, he took precautions and checked before heading down the steps, the rifle raised before him. His heart thumped rapidly with adrenaline, as it had done during all his previous escapes. His exuberance was redoubled by the sight of the exit. Before he knew it, he was there, ready to dart out and run for the hills. He grabbed the latch, but it refused to turn.
“Bastard!” he shouted. “Open!”
He yanked on the latch a few times. He was on the verge of breaking the damn thing off. When he realized his efforts were rubbish, he looked around for another way out.
Volker snagged his attention as he rounded the staircase.
“You escaped faster than I thought,” the bugger praised him. “I didn’t have to wait long at all.”
A trap.
“Stay back!” Pierce warned, aiming the rifle at him.
Volker slowly advanced and Pierce pulled the trigger. There was a click and nothing more. The blasted thing was unloaded. He raised it like a club.
“Back!” he ordered again. “I mean it, knobhead. I’ll crack your bloody skull wide open.”
The albino raised the pistol he had hidden behind him.
“Shoot me, wanker!” Pierce dared him fearlessly. “I ain’t surrendering to you.”
Pierce had never been shot before. Otherwise, he may have refrained from saying that. Considering the alternative, however, he meant what he said about giving in to this madman. Those paper-thin lips of Volker’s stretched wide across his white face.
“Your remaining hope is precious.”
Pierce expected him to shoot, perhaps only to maim. At least Volker had only one shot. Pierce mentally prepared himself to fight once he got that single shot off.
The stealthy German didn’t shoot. Instead, he threw the gun at Pierce. Instinctively, Pierce ducked, giving Volker the opportunity to charge. Volker pushed him back against the door and began punching Pierce in the ribs in an attempt to get him to drop the weapon. The hits jarred Pierce as each strike reverberated painfully inside him. He managed to whack Volker once on the side of his face with the butt end of the rifle. Volker’s grip on him weakened and Pierce used the muzzle of the rifle to push him toward the stairs.
He slammed the maniac against the stair railing and pressed the rifle against Volker’s throat, trying to choke the man to death—or, at the very least, render him unconscious. Blood slid from the deep gash across the mad cocker’s cheekbone—the place where Pierce had struck him with the rifle. Pierce’s rage, backed by his basic survival instinct, boosted his might, surprising the ex-soldier.
Volker was unable to push the rifle off him and so kicked Pierce in the shin. That hurt more than Pierce expected it would, and the strike weakened him. Volker shoved the weapon, slamming it just above Pierce’s eyes. Everything went fuzzy. Pierce’s sight returned just in time to see Volker’s fist coming his way. It crashed across his mouth, knocking him sideways. Pierce stumbled before spying the pistol. Fighting through the pain banging against his skull, he dashed over to it. He expected the madman to be right behind him, but when he grabbed the weapon and spun around, Volker was standing in place, holding the rifle he had snatched away.
Pierce didn’t wait. He pulled the trigger, aiming to kill.
“Fuckin’ hell,” he cursed when the pistol, too, proved to be empty.
It became clear Volker had planned this just to toy with him. Volker rushed over and swung the rifle, whacking him across the head. The hit was so hard, it knocked him straight to the ground. He half expected his brain to spill out before his very eyes. Volker rolled him over with his foot and pressed it hard against his chest.
“Do you feel it, Landcross? The heartache of lost hope?”
The skull-crushing pain, throbbing like a Đông Sơn drum, hurt less than the crestfallen feeling when his heart collapsed with grief.
He gave Volker no answer, but Pierce now understood exactly what he was talking about.
Chapter Twelve
It’s You!
As soon as Pierce could stand from the blow to his head, Volker Jäger forced him back up the caged spiral staircase. He held a knife on Pierce. After having been stabbed in the past, Pierce wasn’t eager to have a blade through his back.
Volker re-shackled him to the cast iron stove before loading his pistol and then leaving, taking the keys with him this time. Pierce again attempted to lift the stove, but it proved just as impossible as before, especially after his scuffle. He had no choice but to wait for his impending brutal and painful death.
Hours ticked by and Pierce grew weak from having nothing to eat or drink, save for his own blood in his mouth. When the sound of footsteps rang in his ear, his heart palpitated faster. As he feared, Volker entered. He carried with him a cloth bag with items clanging together inside, and a few very large burlap sacks.
“I see by the despairing look on your face that you’ve been broken,” the albino remarked, dropping the burlap sacks near the table.
“Not broken, tosser,” Pierce retorted. “It’ll take more than what you did to accomplish that.”
The German snorted and placed the bag of items on the kitchen table.
“I thought much less of you, Landcross.”
“Why are you doing this?” Pierce asked. “What bloody game are you playing at?”
The madman perked up as if he’d been waiting for Pierce to ask. He smiled in a cold, reptilian way from over his shoulder and took off his coat.
“I lost hope once,” he said while unbuttoning his clothing. “It happened when my mother lured me over to embrace her.” He removed his shirt and vest. “As a small child, starving for affection, I naturally rushed into her waiting arms.” He neatly folded his shirt. “She enfolded me, and I felt safe—until I could no longer breathe.”
Pierce swallowed thickly as he watched Volker reach into the bag and bring out a hammer. He placed it, along with a handsaw he had also produced from the sack, on the table next to his folded shirt. “I tried pulling away. She only held me tighter. Mother knew what she was doing—eliminating the very thing that brought her shame. A child who did not appear like the others and had come from the very man she hated—my father.”
He laid out a hatchet beside the other tools, which had suddenly become more terrifying than simple building tools.
“Mother nearly succeeded in taking my life as she had my father’s. My stepfather intervened, fearing for his immortal soul and such. Something Mother never gave much thought to.” He turned with the hammer in his clutches. “He offered an alternative to murder and had me sent off to military school.”
He approached Pierce, making him jump. Volker crouched down near him and put the hammer on the floor. His white torso was hairless and chiseled like some barbarian statue. A barbarian, like Saith had said. Strands of his cream-colored hair hung over his thin face.
“I never saw either of them afterwards. I remember, though, Landcross, that dreadful feeling of losing hope.”
“What are you planning on doing?” Pierce asked out of fear and frustration.
“It depends. Can you pick locks?”
That took him aback. “Sorry?”
The albino picked up the hammer.
“Fuckin’ hell! Yes! Yes, I can fuckin’ pick locks,” Pierce shrieked.
“I thought you might. I’ve heard you are a good little thief.”
“I get by,” he stated, his breathing rapid and unsteady. “What does that have to do with anything?”
The door downstairs creaked open and footsteps marched up the stairs. Volker moved to the table, holding the hammer. He looked out the window, saying nothi
ng.
“Oi, Volker,” Saith said, entering while looking into the sack he carried. “I got the lock picking tools. Top of the line, they are.” He raised his chin and spotted Pierce chained to the oven. “What the feck is he still doing alive? I thought—”
The hammer came down atop Saith’s skull.
“Christ!” Pierce exclaimed in horror.
The body pitched forward and fell next to him. Pierce moved away from the scarlet pool quickly forming on the floorboards.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Pierce yelled.
The German grabbed hold of the body’s ankles and dragged it, still jerking, to the middle of the room. A thick, oily red trail followed. Another whack to the head with the hammer and the body went still. Pierce thought he would retch.
“Saith Cardoe served his purpose,” the murderer explained, searching through his victim’s pockets. “He found what we were looking for in the Collector’s home. Moving forward with him is no longer required since I have you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Cardoe was a good spy, but he is a terrible thief. He is not capable of breaking into such a well-guarded home.”
“And you think I can?” Pierce inquired.
Volker pulled a piece of paper from his victim’s pockets and unfolded it. “We shall see.”
“Why can’t you do this on your own?”
“I’m not an expert thief.”
His answer was too simple. Pierce suspected a deeper and more sinister reason.
He asked anyway. “If I do this, will you let me go?”
“Ja,” he promised while standing. “Your request sounds reasonable.”
He placed the paper on the table and picked up the handsaw and hatchet.
“Fuckin’ hell!” Pierce shrieked again.
He looked away but was unable to escape the sound of flesh and bone being sawed and hacked apart. It gave him plenty of gruesome visual images.
After a long and tormenting hour, the cutting finally stopped. Pierce glanced over to see Volker shoving a severed forearm into a burlap sack. The rest lay in a messy heap of chopped up parts.
He turned away once again. A little while later, Volker seized his wrist, making him jump. Volker unlocked a shackle and re-cuffed his hands in front of Pierce once the chain was free from the oven leg. The albino’s skin was painted red, especially his hands. Blood had smeared over Pierce’s own when Volker had grabbed them.
“You’ll have more on you soon, Landcross.”
Behind Volker was a butchered mess, a stew of blood broth and chunks of meat, diced up organs, and bone bits. Packaged inside the three burlap sacks were the pieces of the late Saith Cardoe.
“Get up,” Volker demanded. “Grab two of these.”
Blood had seeped through the burlap, leaving droplets as they hauled the sacks out and down the steps. Volker carried a sack in one hand and his indisputably loaded flintlock pistol in the other.
The sun was setting by the time they reached the short rocky cliffside overlooking the ocean. Pierce was tempted to dive in and make a break for it. But, the crashing waves slamming against the jagged rocks would easily ground him into chunks of fish food if he did. Volker dropped the soggy bag in front of Pierce, letting it join the others.
“Open the bags and throw the remains into the ocean,” he demanded.
Pierce gave him a wary look that prompted Volker to press the pistol against his head.
“Do it or there will be two bodies going into this ocean tonight.”
Pierce opened the sack filled with hacked human parts. A nauseating heat rose from his stomach, making Pierce nearly gag.
“Can’t I simply toss the bags in?”
His answer was a click of the hammer.
Sadistic bastard, Pierce thought.
As he tossed the pieces in, he wondered if butchering Saith was even necessary, or if Volker had done so solely out of viciousness. Clearly, having Pierce toss in the body, piece by piece, was another one of his brutal tactics.
When they returned to the lighthouse, Pierce’s stomach finally flipped upside down and he retched at the base of the stairs.
“You have not eaten or drunk anything since I caught you,” Volker remarked unhelpfully. “I’ll bring you food and something to drink.”
“Not hungry,” Pierce retorted, wiping the sick from the corner of his mouth on his sleeve.
After using the coat to wipe blood and now vomit off himself, he only wanted to burn the damn thing.
“If you want your freedom, then you must first complete your task. Doing that on a full stomach will benefit us both.”
Pierce honestly could not discern if Volker was being sincere or fucking with him again. Regardless, he didn’t argue anymore about it.
Volker re-shackled him to the oven, and his gut ached from the muscles trying to push something out that wasn’t there. He was only thankful Volker didn’t make him clean up the carnage off the floor. In fact, he simply left the mess there as if he intended for Countess Elizabeth Báthory’s maid to deal with it.
Volker left and returned with food. He allowed Pierce to sit at the table to eat. Pierce feared he’d continue his torment and bring him a rare steak, but it was only a bowl of fried cauliflower with cuts of pork. It still proved a challenge for him to chew, much less keep it down.
“What we are after is in the master bedroom,” Volker explained, pointing to an area on the map of the Collector’s house that Saith had drawn up.
“Are you sure it’s there?”
“Cardoe told me this afternoon at the park.”
“What about the Collector and his wife?”
“What about them?”
“I am not doing this if you’re planning on murdering anyone. I’m bloody well serious.”
Pierce didn’t know much about ol’ Abbott Brice other than what he’d read about in the papers, but killing someone over an item, no matter its value, wasn’t the way Pierce did things. Telling the madman that might just earn Pierce a flintlock ball—or a hammer—to the brain, and his own body chopped up into minced meat for hungry sea life, but murdering his way out of this wasn’t an option.
“You need not worry,” Volker reassured. “They are away in France.”
Pierce thought about it. He didn’t remember seeing the Collector while surveying the house, even though he’d only viewed one room while studying the place. With the couple gone, however, it gave Pierce relief, for it also saved him from a deadly debate with his captor.
“When do you want to do this?” Pierce asked.
“Tonight.”
That suited Pierce fine. He wanted nothing more than to leave the lighthouse.
* * *
As the hour grew late, the two set off for the house. Pierce led Volker to the rear deck. A tree growing alongside the deck offered the perfect ladder for the thieves. Before approaching the tree, Volker unlocked Pierce’s manacles with a stiff warning to behave or else.
They climbed and quietly clambered over the railing of the balcony. The door was locked, but Pierce made short work of it, thanks to the lock-picking tools Saith had provided. They entered a room lit by a single lamp sitting on a nautical table. It was a brass sculpture of an octopus, with parts of its arms sticking out through the glass tabletop as if it was water. The entire space was full of artifacts, such as a suit of Samurai armor, weaponry, Greek sculptures, Celtic tools, ancient pottery, and old musical instruments.
Just before they moved on, Pierce looked at the chess pieces on the fireplace mantel next to an antique African djinn sculpture. He started toward the chess pieces, reaching out slowly for them, when Volker’s leather-gloved hand seized him by the shoulder.
“Let’s go, Landcross,” he growled.
So close.
The whole house seemed to have a lit lantern in every room, no doubt for the footmen looming about. Pierce and Volker crept through the house of a thousand artifacts. Pierce could see why the retired archeologis
t was called the Collector.
In the kitchen were a handful of young footmen, chatting and drinking, as Saith said they’d be doing when their employer wasn’t looking. The intruders went upstairs to a door. It was also locked, which Pierce quickly took care of. The room was pitch-black, and the window drapes drawn. That didn’t seem to matter to Volker who shoved Pierce inside and shut the door behind them. The darkness prevented Pierce from seeing shite, yet his ears caught the sounds of struggling. A woman started to say something when she suddenly went mute.
“No,” Pierce gasped.
A match blazed and a lamp on the bedside table lit up.
Blood from mutilated bodies drenched the bed. They had entered the master bedroom where the Brice couple had been peacefully sleeping. Abbott had a pillow over his face, with many stab wounds in his chest. His wife, lying beside him, had a single deep puncture wound in the side of her head. Her fingers were twitching.
“Fuckin’ hell,” Pierce muttered, gripping his hair as he stared at them. “You lying bastard!”
“Keep quiet,” the maniac seethed.
Volker pointed his killing knife at the shelves attached to the wall over the headboard. “Go up there and bring it down.”
Pierce detached his eyes from the poor couple and tilted his chin upward. There were several things on the shelf, old artifacts that came from around the globe.
“Get what down?”
“That chest,” Volker clarified.
Pierce spied a golden chest set in the center of the shelves.
“Retrieve it and let us depart,” Volker demanded.
With a huff, Pierce slowly got onto the bed. He stepped delicately between the newly deceased couple. As he did, he looked at them with pity. With the chaotic life he led, danger was expected. At times, Pierce had also displayed brutality—and even vengefulness. But, what Volker had done to these unfortunate sods was beyond anything he could ever bring himself to do. This cold display also answered a grave question about the fate of his own life.
He stared at the gold chest in wonder.
Bounty Hunter Page 14
