The Serpent's Daughter

by Suzanne Arruda

  Like a Spanish bull, de Portillo didn’t go down easily. Sam’s element of surprise gone, de Portillo fought back with ferocity and the advantage of having little conscience. He lashed out with his right foot and kicked Sam on his right shin with the intention of cracking a bone.

  “You’ll have to do better than that, man,” said Sam as he took the blow without so much as a wince of pain. “It’s hard to break an oak leg.”

  De Portillo, now thoroughly enraged, roared with anger and charged Sam. Sam met the rush and braced both hands against de Portillo’s shoulders. Whatever advantage de Portillo had in size and anger, Sam had more than gained with Jade’s good-bye kiss. When the Spaniard pushed Sam over backwards, Sam took the fall with his left foot firmly planted in de Portillo’s gut. The lighter American used his enemy’s momentum and pushed up and over, before rolling off his shoulder to one side.

  He heard de Portillo land with a heavy thud, the side of his head hitting the fountain’s marble rim. Sam sprang to his feet, ready to launch himself on top of the fallen man, but the Spaniard didn’t stir. Sam’s tanned, angular face paled as he worried that the man was dead. He hadn’t intended to kill him, just knock him senseless. Then to his relief he saw de Portillo’s chest rise and fall. Good. He’s still alive.

  He was in the process of deciding what to do with him when Bachir ran in. Sam swiped his unruly forelock out of his eyes and to the side. “Help me here, Bachir,” he said in his muddied French.

  Bachir took one arm and Sam the other and, together, they dragged de Portillo to an empty room similar to the one the guard was in, and bolted the door on him.

  “Where is Jade’s mother?” Sam asked after they had de Portillo safely squared away.

  Bachir rolled his eyes like he’d never met anyone quite as exasperating as Inez. “Jade,” he answered.

  Sam laughed. “Two peas in a pod.” But his laugh was cut short as he remembered he didn’t know where Bennington was, and so consequently where Jade had gone. He grabbed Bachir by the shoulders and faced him. “Do you know where they went?”

  Bachir nodded. “El Badi. Come.”

  The old flintlock went off with a loud, pulsing whoomp that nearly muffled the pop from Bennington’s little Derringer. Jade didn’t need to hear the return fire, though, to know to duck. She had seen the hatred that quickly replaced Bennington’s initial shock at seeing her free. But even then the flintlock’s recoil took away the necessity of ducking by knocking Jade on her backside. She hit the ground, rolling. The return shot passed over her head.

  Bennington’s face writhed in pain and as the lead ball clipped his hand a high scream erupted, a scream that Jade could barely hear after the flintlock’s low percussive jolt in her ears. Bennington’s little pistol flew from his grip and clattered into an empty pool on the other side of the aisle. Jade heard it plunk into water. Pool’s not quite empty, she thought as she turned onto her knees.

  When Jade got to her feet she realized she’d dropped her own flashlight. It must have landed on the switch, because it went out. Bennington’s light was still on, its glow hazy in the powdery smoke that belched from her pistol’s muzzle. Jade scrambled to her feet as Bennington retrieved the light from the ground. He pulled the amulet from Mohan’s dead fingers and ran deeper into the ruins, leaving Jade engulfed in darkness.

  Most ears would have lumped the nearly simultaneous gunshots as one shot with an echo. Inez had more familiarity with firearms. She heard two distinct reports; the deep, booming pulse of a black-powder weapon and the shorter pop of a small-caliber pistol. Who fired first? Inez didn’t think Jade had carried a pistol, especially not one of those little pocket-sized models, but she might have taken the guard’s flintlock. That meant Jade had fired first. It also meant she was out of shots unless she had a brace of pistols.

  Inez hesitated by the gates into the ruins and listened for the sound of a groan or anything that indicated someone wounded. Nothing. But that was no relief. It might mean her daughter was dead. Impossible. Isn’t it? Somehow Jade always seemed indestructible, surviving throws by unbroken horses and bulls, falls off roofs and out of trees, and one fistfight with an older boy who made the mistake of saying that girls couldn’t shoot straight.

  Inez’s fear for her daughter rose to a panic. She ran into the ruin in the direction she’d heard the shots and tripped over Mohan’s corpse.

  It took several minutes of blinking before Jade’s eyes lost the afterburn from the flintlock’s flash. She hoped it was worse for her enemy, but didn’t count on it. In the meantime she tracked by sound, listening for any footfalls. Bennington would first put distance between them, but Jade knew that once the noises stopped she needed to be more cautious. Bennington’s gun might be down in a watery pit, but that might not be his only weapon.

  As she crept along, that vision from her dream tickled her brain again. It made a little more sense now. After all, Mohan kept saying he had promised the amulet to “her” and not to Bennington. Jade surmised that it was Lilith who originally bought Mohan’s supply of stolen bracelets. He probably told her of this wonderful silver amulet and took it, intending to sell it to her. So if Lilith was behind the initial theft, she’d essentially sealed Mohan’s doom even if she were hiding safely away on a ship disguised as Bennington’s aunt. But as logical as it sounded to Jade’s head, her gut reaction was that it was all wrong.

  Jade’s left knee ached fiercely and she threw a glance to the star-studded sky. Okay, rain’s not imminent. That means someone’s trying to kill me. She almost laughed. Tell me something I don’t know. She started to take another step and hesitated. Maybe the knee could be useful after all. Maybe it would hurt less if she were farther away from Bennington. In other words, she could gauge the pain and play a game of “hot and cold” like children did.

  Right, and get killed for making a wrong choice. She decided to find out if Bennington had another gun. Jade groped around on the ground until she found a handful of broken stones and brickwork. She tossed one somewhere in the direction she’d last heard any noise. No one fired. She tossed another a few yards in front of her first throw. This time her efforts were rewarded by the scuffing of leather soles over stone pavement. Bennington was headed towards an open arch on the other side, exiting the courtyard. Jade followed, careful to avoid the sunken pools around her.

  The pain increased at the arch entrance. I’m getting warmer. What if Bennington was waiting on the other side? Jade pulled the guard’s curved blade and gripped it in her right hand, hilt facing forward, the blade paralleling her forearm with the unsharpened edge against her skin. She took a step towards the arch. A stabbing pain in her left knee held her back. Can’t wait here forever. Taking a deep breath, Jade mentally readied herself for an attack on the other side, and darted through the arch, shrieking like a banshee to unnerve her opponent.

  A suggestion of movement to her right caught her eye, a shadow within a shadow. She wheeled, keeping her knees bent and ready to dance off to either side. Bennington’s flashlight flared on, its beam hitting Jade’s eyes. The light burned painfully in her fully dilated pupils, and Jade fought the urge to shut her eyes. Instead, she kept her fists up in a boxer’s stance and focused at the ground in front of her. The decision saved her life.

  The new afterburn image on her retina reduced everything directly in her line of vision to a black hole. That meant she never saw Bennington’s feet. But as long as she used her peripheral vision, she could see the blade driving down towards her left. Her left arm swung up, blocking the blow by pushing up against Bennington’s right arm. His left hand still aimed that blinding beam at Jade’s face. Her right hand shot out and twisted clockwise as she dug the tip of the curved blade into Bennington’s right elbow.

  Bennington screamed and the flashlight flew out of his grasp, spinning like a top. With each spin its light cast an eerie bit of illumination on the scene. The effect played tricks on the mind. First Jade’s opponent stood in front of her, then two feet to the l
eft in a herky-jerky motion from one spot to the other like a poorly crafted nickelodeon movie. Her mind wanted to predict the next move, but Jade knew she needed to rely on sound again for those brief flashes of information. Finally the light came to rest in a stand of overgrown weeds.

  As Jade’s vision returned to normal, she could see Bennington’s stance more clearly. She took in the long knife, its four-inch blade dark with Mohan’s blood. Something about the knife as it came at her before had looked very familiar. That’s my knife! Bennington must have taken it from her when she was first captured. Be danged if I’m letting him stab me with my own blade. Bennington shook his injured left arm, trying to regain its use. His face contorted in pain and rage. Then his hand made a jerking movement towards a low jacket pocket. Jade felt her pulse quicken. It will call to you. So that’s where the amulet is. It didn’t stay there. Bennington pulled it out and slipped it into a more secure side trouser pocket.

  “Hand it over and I’ll let you go,” Jade said.

  “You’re a terrible liar,” hissed Bennington. “And I don’t intend to let you go.”

  Bennington lunged forward, slicing at her side. Jade parried the move, pushing his blade away. Then with a flick of the wrist she exposed her dagger’s sharpened inner curve. She jerked her hand back, slicing at Bennington’s forearm. Unlike her own knife, which she kept well honed, the dagger had a poor edge. She succeeded only in ripping the coat sleeve.

  It was time to get serious. So far she’d only defended herself, but Bennington clearly intended to kill her as he had Mohan. Jade didn’t plan to kill Bennington, but she needed to come to grips with killing in self-defense. Still a dead prisoner couldn’t be questioned, couldn’t help her prove her innocence. She ran through her options, her mind flipping through all the fighting advice her father’s chief wrangler, Dody Higgins, ever gave her.

  “Hamstringing ’em’ll keep ’em from runnin’ but not from fightin’. If you can’t get their knife, you best take care they can’t see straight. Head wounds bleed something fierce.” Well, she thought, it had worked with the guard. Why not here?

  A stray sound came from the courtyard on the other side of the archway, as a dislodged stone clattered into one of the empty pools.

  “Your cavalry arriving, perhaps?” hissed Bennington.

  “Only the jinni,” Jade replied. “They want their amulet back.”

  One of the resident cats, startled by the noise, dashed between them. “There’s one now,” said Jade. She took advantage of the momentary distraction to slice at Bennington’s face.

  He screamed again as the blade slashed up from his nose and over his left eye. It was in the high-pitched outcry that Jade found the answer to her dream’s confusing images.

  “Give it up, Lilith. You’re not going to get away this time.”

  Inez fumbled around Mohan’s corpse, looking for some sort of weapon before she went to Jade’s defense. Blast it. Didn’t this man at least carry a knife? Then she remembered. He was a prisoner. They don’t let prisoners carry knives. A rock. That would be something. She abandoned her search of Mohan and inched around on her hands and knees, feeling for a decent-sized chunk of stone or wall.

  She moved slowly, aware that she could easily tumble into a pit if she wasn’t careful. Her right hand brushed against something cold. Metal. A gun? A knife? Her fingers gingerly followed the shape in case it was a knife. No point in slicing her own fingers grabbing for a sharp blade. But this object had no sharp edges. It felt tubular.

  A flashlight! Jade wouldn’t have left it behind on purpose. Maybe Bennington dropped one. Either way, it was something to keep. She could at least find her way around in this desolate place, and it felt heavy enough to serve as a cudgel. Her fingers found the switch and slid it forward. For one brief fraction of a second, the empty courtyard lay exposed before her. Then the light died just as Inez heard a shrieking battle cry.

  “So you figured it out, did you? Clever bitch.” Lilith Worthy spat as a trickle of blood ran over her false mustache and lips. Blood flowed freely down over the left eye, but she could still see with her right.

  Jade watched Lilith’s shadowy form circle her, looking for an opening. She kept one eye on the woman’s blade, the other on the rest of her. So far, Lilith had shown some skill with a knife, not at all what one would expect from a proper, upper-class English widow. At least it might have surprised someone else, but Jade had long known that Lilith’s sedate role as Olivia L. Worthy was a facade.

  “You won’t live to tell anyone, though,” the woman said in a husky growl. “You’ve harried me too long. You don’t deserve to live.” She lunged again towards Jade, but with her vision rendered two-dimensional, she misgauged the distance.

  “That’s right, Lilith,” said Jade as she dodged the attack, letting her opponent wear herself down. “Your little empire is in ruins. So is all this because I’ve broken up your drug trade? Or is it because I foiled your plans to be Empress of Abyssinia?”

  “You witch!” Lilith spat, another spray of blood arcing out. “You think you hurt me then? My empire, as you call it, is hardly destroyed.” Her voice rose in pitch and quivered with more than rage. An edge of despair crept in. “You took my son from me. My son! First you killed him, then you destroyed his good name by finding that bastard half brother.” She punctuated the last word with another stabbing charge.

  Jade sidestepped again, but this time she took a slice at Lilith’s leg, cutting the edge of the pocket along with some skin. A bit of silver chain dangled out. “I didn’t kill David, and you did more to destroy the family honor by having your husband murdered.” As she spoke, she tested Lilith’s skill by feinting with her dagger. Lilith responded by swiping at Jade’s quickly retracted hand rather than moving towards her more exposed side.

  Jade’s move wasn’t perfect, unfortunately. With only starlight and the faint glow of Lilith’s fallen light to see by, she also misjudged her distance. She sliced into air rather than flesh, but it confirmed her growing suspicions about Lilith’s training. The woman knew a little about how to fight with a knife. But she only fought with the knife. She didn’t see beyond it. Jade, on the other hand, had learned from the ranch hands back home and knew a few more tricks involving elbows, knees, and a fist. Time to take care of that other eye.

  “Think you have me now, do you? Think again.” Lilith continued circling Jade, looking for an opening. “Still trying for that amulet?”

  Jade took a few steps back till she heard something grit-tier than weeds under her boots. She kicked out at Lilith with her left leg, then quickly dropped low as Lilith jumped to Jade’s right, avoiding the kick. Jade was ready for the move. She sliced at Lilith’s left thigh, this time penetrating the bottom of the pocket and deeper into the leg. In the meantime she grabbed a handful of pebbles and dirt with her left hand.

  Lilith didn’t even cry out as Jade’s dagger made this fresh gash. Her rage seemed to make her inured to pain. “You’ll have to do better than that, lovey,” she hissed. She caught the amulet with her left hand as it spilled out of the pocket.

  “Give me the amulet, Lilith. It can’t mean anything to you.”

  “It’s mine. It has power. I can feel it.” She gripped the knife more tightly and waved it around, making pretenses at another strike. “Does it give protection? You want it to protect yourself from me? Is that it?” She stabbed at the air in front of her, making certain Jade couldn’t get in too close.

  “I already know the magic phrase for protection against vermin like you, Lilith.” She tossed the handful of gravel at the woman’s face with an open hand. “Here’s five in your eye.”

  Inez waited for a moment after the light went out, committing everything she’d seen to memory. If she followed the inner wall, she would avoid most of the sunken spots. Most of them. There seemed to be another, smaller pit at each corner. But she needed to hurry. She could hear Jade and Bennington fighting on the other side of the archway. With any luck, they would be so
intent on each other that they wouldn’t hear her approaching. If she could get in close, she could hit Bennington from behind with the flashlight. She shook the flashlight in irritation and was rewarded when the beam reappeared. Fearing it wouldn’t last much longer, she turned off the switch and proceeded in the dark as before.

  She stumbled on a pile of debris, sending a stone clattering to the ground. It scared one of the feral cats, which tore off through the archway with a parting hiss. “Aya, sons of biscuits,” Inez muttered under her breath as she grabbed for her stubbed toe. Just then she heard a scream of pain from the other side of the archway. Jade? Inez forgot about her foot and made double time for the arch and her daughter.

  Lilith threw her hands up to block the sand and grit, but in doing so she left herself wide open to attack. Jade switched her dagger to her left hand and charged in, swinging the blade to distract Lilith’s attention. Then she drove a hard right fist at Lilith’s diaphragm. The blow should have disabled her opponent, doubling the woman over in a gripping pain as she gasped for breath. But Lilith had also retreated several steps from the flying debris. Jade’s punch merely grazed the woman’s midsection.

  Still blinking madly in an effort to clear her right eye of grit, Lilith swung her blade down towards Jade’s neck. Jade anticipated the attack, having discovered that Mrs. Worthy still saw her knife as her only weapon. She grabbed Lilith’s wrist and pushed her arm back, twisting as she held on. Slowly she drove the arm up, then Jade suddenly reversed herself and pulled, using Lilith’s forward push to bring the arm all the way down and around to Lilith’s back.

  “Drop the knife,” Jade ordered. She jabbed Lilith’s right elbow with her dagger. “Drop it now.” The knife fell at Jade’s feet. She heard someone else coming from the arch and hoped it was Sam. “Now give me the amulet.”