The Girl With Ten Claws (The Adventures of Benedict and Blackwell)

by E. Earle

  “Forever,” he purred.

  Rino smiled sickly and then slowly raised his arm, the gun pointing directly at Benedict and me. “Demon cat!”

  Ben was a flash of sun as he pounced through the air, the sound of the gun like a thunderclap as it ripped through the atmosphere. He landed on Rino and raged war on his face, ripping, biting and scratching as Rino took another step back.

  It was his undoing.

  His balance lost, Rino waved his arms and in that moment, our gazes locked. The whites of his eyes showed the true terror of a man knowing he was about to die as he fell, taking Benedict, my truest friend, with him.

  Chapter Nine

  It took the longest moments of my life to realise that I was being held back by Brynn. His voice thundered through my eardrums as I screamed and bit at him to let me go. His arms held me tight around the waist as my nails ripped through the cliff top attempting to get to the edge.

  “Ben!” I screamed. “Ben!” And over and over again.

  Suddenly there wasn’t enough air- there would never be enough air. My ribs threatened to break as my vocal chords stretched and expanded, willing someone to help me.

  Brynn held me to him as he called the police, our sandwiches discarded on the floor as he gave them our location.

  “Ellena, he’s gone,” Brynn was hushing in my ear, slowly rocking me. “He’s gone.”

  I shook my head, not believing it. I had lost him once; I couldn’t survive losing him again. Not Ben.

  Police flooded the area within minutes, an ambulance pulling up and paramedics attempting to pull me away from Brynn. I refused to be seen by anyone.

  “Please Miss, it’s ok now,” a blonde woman in her forties said to me, her eyes crinkling in sympathy. “Let us clean you up.”

  But I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be cleaned up. I wanted someone to bring Ben back.

  “I should have grabbed him,” I sobbed into my hands. A policewoman rubbed my back, misunderstanding me.

  “You couldn’t have stopped what happened,” she said in soothing tones.

  I don’t know how, but they managed to sit me down on the floor wrapped with a blanket holding a cup of tea as police buzzed around me, cordoning off the area. The townsfolk were down within seconds, the hype humming around me as their voices washed over my skin. They were held back near the entrance of the museum, not close enough to hear me or see me, but my skin prickled just knowing they were there.

  Brynn knelt before me and held my bloody hands in his. Had I cut them? One was bandaged and badly swollen. I flinched, remembering punching Rino.

  Brynn took a deep breath, his face white. “I can’t get hold of your folks,” he said. “I think your mum said they were going for a walk- Jack said they should be back any minute now.”

  I just stared at him, not knowing why it mattered.

  “It’s over now.” He reached forward and held my face in his hand. “Rino- he’s gone. You don’t have to worry about him ever again.”

  I frowned. “Where is he?”

  Brynn’s face flickered in concern as I stood up. Realising my intent to walk to the edge, he shook his head and held my arm. “No, Ellena.”

  “You don’t know that he’s gone!” I snarled. “He could have gotten away!”

  Brynn’s hand on my arm tightened as he held my other one. “No, Ellena,” he said slowly. “The police have him.”

  I don’t know how I managed to rip myself from his grip, but he was swearing as soon as I lunged over the edge. A flash of a pale broken figure on jagged rocks flashed in my vision just once before I was wrenched away.

  “Ellena!”

  I fell to the floor in stunned silence. “Oh God…”

  Rino was dead.

  Brynn was talking to the police officers for a while before paramedics finally convinced me to sit inside the ambulance. Apparently he had seen Rino fall off the edge once Ben jumped up at him as he was walking out of the porch. He had managed to run across just in time before I threw myself over to get Ben.

  “We’ll need to take a statement from each of you,” I heard a police officer say, his voice travelling in the midst of the now howling wind.

  The weather had turned with the events, but I couldn’t feel the cold. I had been wrapped in another blanket and I shrugged it off. I didn’t want to be comfortable. I didn’t deserve to be comfortable.

  I had lost him.

  The wind grew louder, its voice yowling louder every minute. I covered my ears as tears started to fall again.

  My heart stopped for a second, the tea falling from my hands as I leapt up towards Brynn.

  “It’s him!”

  Brynn looked down at me in shock, the police officer taking a step back in surprise.

  “What is?”

  “The sound!” I beat on his chest, my voice a mere rasp as I tried to explain. “Listen!”

  Brynn took a breath and ignoring the bemused glances of the police around us did so. He frowned and turned slightly. “Go back to the ambulance,” he said slowly as he stepped towards the edge.

  I didn’t move a muscle as Brynn crawled to the edge, the wind too strong to be trusted. The confused faces of the people surrounding me didn’t matter, nothing mattered but this.

  Brynn shouted something and then shuffled back. I was there within a second, the cold stone hard against my belly as my head swung over the edge.

  “Ben!”

  Golden eyes looked up at me from a ledge fifteen feet down from a huddled little ball of orange.

  My heart filled up then with so much love I thought it would burst. Hands pulled me back for a final time as I fell back in a ball of relief, Brynn and the police now calling for the local animal rescue team.

  “He is one lucky cat,” I overheard a policeman say.

  “So am I,” I smiled.

  It was over. It was all over.

  I held Ben tightly in the back of the car after refusing to go into the ambulance to the hospital. I was sick of the white walls and scent of disinfectant.

  I breathed in Ben’s scent, his fur slightly damp from the sea spray. He had been shaking when the animal rescue team brought him back up and had leapt into my arms as soon as his claws touched the ground.

  It didn’t matter that Rino’s body was lying dead, bloody and broken at the bottom of the cliff. Plankton could eat his miserable wet flesh for all I was concerned.

  I had stared into the barrel of his gun for the second time and survived. There was a media frenzy as soon as we got to Craggy’s, forcing us to close up for the day. Brynn was furious at the reporters outside our window and called out the police to remove them. Everyone wanted to know about The Girl With Nine Lives as they had started to call me now. I had survived obstacle after obstacle it seemed, and the public wanted to know how such destruction could follow someone around.

  My parents were shocked as soon as they pulled up from their trip, and I swear my dad would have been taken into custody if Brynn hadn’t stopped him from punching a reporter.

  A strange wave of peace had settled over me, even though everyone was running around frantic around me. The world seemed to melt away as I held Ben in my arms, the fire cracking next to me and a blanket wrapped around us both.

  “Ellena,” my dad said, red in the face after the events being retold by a police officer, “you could have been killed!”

  I nodded simply. “I could have,” I said. “But I didn’t.”

  My mother knelt at my knees, worry and concern etched into every line in her beautiful face. “Ellena,” she breathed. “You have to leave this place.”

  I saw Brynn flinch at her words and awkwardly look away. My eyes settled back on hers and I shook my head. “I’ve fought too hard, mum,” I said. “It’s over. We won.”

  My mother looked to the police officers as if for help but they just shrugged their shoulders.

  “It is a relief now the offender is out of the picture,” the Sergeant said honestly. “Your daughter won’
t have to worry about him looking for her anymore. We found his car a mile back- it belongs to the man whose body we pulled up from the shore a month or so back.”

  His words made me go cold and I saw Brynn sit down at the news. “How long has he been here?” Brynn asked.

  The Sergeant crinkled his nose and bobbed his head about in thought. “Hard to say- but at least since the body has been found.”

  I held back the temptation to throw up right there and then. All this time Rino had been here, watching my every move, observing Gabriella and Olivia as they plotted to find Old Marley’s treasure hoard.

  “We believe that the offender was holed up in one of the victim’s holiday lets,” the Sergeant continued. “It could be that the victim recognised him and Rino decided to get rid of him before he reported his whereabouts.”

  “Holiday lets…” I breathed. Too many images were spinning in my head and I shook them free. “What about Vincent?”

  Brynn stood at the mention of the man who claimed to be his friend. “Have you found the scumbag?”

  “The metropolitan police in London are looking into it as well as our own officers,” Sergeant Matthews explained. “But it’s unlikely he will be hanging about in London- and even if he was still there- there are a million places to hide.”

  “That’s not exactly comforting, Sergeant,” Brynn near growled.

  They continued to talk, and as their words flowed, my eyes started to droop. Ben purred in my lap, and as each breath passed, his purring became louder and louder until it eventually drowned out every sound in the room.

  I slept.

  We tried to piece together the past month’s events over the next few days. We wondered what Vincent’s motivation could have possibly have been, but no matter how much we argued about it, we couldn’t come to a conclusion.

  “So you didn’t see what was in the box?” Brynn asked me when I told him that Gabriella had paid him off with something.

  I sighed. “I’ve already told you- no, I didn’t see anything.”

  Brynn swore under his breath, but it was ok- my parents were still at Craggy’s with my sister. Brynn and I needed some time out away from my family just to breathe finally without them trying to convince me to move to the Midlands or Australia.

  My phone had rung several times since Rino had fallen from the cliff, with a number I recognised as Calloway’s (I had deleted it). Refusing to answer, I continuously put my phone on silent to avoid any questions from anyone.

  We were in Brynn’s mother’s pub having an afternoon lunch. It wasn’t that busy today, which was comforting to know that I wouldn’t have to answer everyone’s questions. People had started to treat me a bit differently since the cliff incident. Rumours had started to circulate that I had pushed him from the cliff but Brynn told me to ignore them.

  “You’d be well within your right if you did, Ellena,” he said when I brought it up. “It’ll pass.”

  I didn’t answer him, knowing he was right. The village would find something new to gossip about and I would soon be old news. The police had been sceptical at first when I told them that Ben had caused Rino to fall over, but after Brynn’s statement confirming my words and the fact that Ben had to be pulled up halfway down the cliff face gave the constables some pause for thought.

  Usually events like this ruined my appetite for months afterwards- but I had worked really hard to get my body to a healthier weight after the trauma of hospital, and the burger lying before me did look delicious.

  Brynn flashed me a pleased smile when I finished and I found my mood lifting. Food really did change everything.

  “You fancy a drink?” Brynn said standing up.

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to touch alcohol for a while. “Lemonade will be fine, please.”

  Ben agreed that giving up alcohol for a while was a good idea. I needed every positivity in life at the moment and drinking (although in the moment felt great) at night when I was alone reduced me to some of my darkest moments.

  Not knowing why, I stood up as Brynn started to walk away. He paused, seeing my anxiety at being left alone and gave a shoulder a slight squeeze.

  We walked to the bar just as some tourists strolled through the door. They yipped as something darted past them and gazed in surprise as it jumped onto one of the barstools.

  I smiled. “Get stuck outside did you?” I said, stroking Ben’s chill coat.

  He shoved his head into my hand in answer and put his paws on the bar. The barmaid turned around and nearly jumped in surprise at seeing Ben.

  “You again,” she said in a false stern void putting her hands on her hips. “Well, I’m going to have to see some I.D.”

  “How old is Ben anyway?” Brynn asked me.

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know what to tell you.” Ben was eight years older than me, but how could I explain that to Brynn?

  ‘Oh yeah- my cat came back from beyond the dead to hang out with me, so he’s pretty old. Did I mention he can talk?’

  No- a truthful explanation wasn’t going to do anything but send me to the funny farm.

  “By the way, Brynn- your mum left a box of Old Marley’s stuff for you out the back,” said the barmaid wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “Do you want me to go get it?”

  Brynn raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Yeah, ok.”

  “I didn’t know Old Marley used to come here,” I said.

  Brynn shrugged. “He used to drink here with my dad years ago.”

  An uncomfortable silence stretched between us at the mention of his father. Brynn mentioned him so rarely, but it seemed as though he was slowly opening up about him. I knew one day he would tell me what happened- but it would be when he was ready.

  The barmaid returned with a surprisingly small box and heaved it on the bar in front of us. Ben sniffed at it curiously and then sneezed.

  Brynn pulled it towards him in curiosity. “When did he leave all this?”

  The barmaid Tracey rolled her eyes. “You know what he was like- in and out, in and out.” She sighed then and put a hand on a cocked hip. “You know, I’ve always felt bad about the day he was attacked. He came in here with all this junk, dumped it in the back and then I chucked him out for being drunk and disorderly.” She shook her head sadly. “If I had just kept him in here, he wouldn’t have been attacked by those hooligans.”

  My stomach flipped at the memory of finding him bloody and broken in the museum, beaten up by his rich brother’s thugs and his precious antiques stolen. A smile soon overrode that when I thought of Brynn and I breaking into Patrick Marley’s property to get it back.

  “What’s happened has happened,” I told Tracey. “There’s no point thinking like that.”

  She sighed and pushed the box further away in distaste. “Well, whatever is it there stinks,” she said.

  She was right. It was an old wooden box with faded lettering covering the sides. It looked ancient, and ready to crumble at any second.

  “There’s seaweed in there,” I said, wrinkling my nose.

  “He brought a load of rubbish with him off his last boating trip,” Tracey said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were crabs still inside. He’d gone on about how he’d just been to see the pirates. You know what he was like with stuff like that.”

  A corner of Brynn’s mouth quirked up. “He was always obsessed.”

  I was frowning. My hands reached out for the box and I pulled it away from Brynn. “Pirates…” I murmured.

  “Ellena?”

  I picked up the box and walked to a quiet corner of the pub where no one was sitting. I started to rummage through the box not knowing what I was going to find.

  “What are you doing?” Brynn asked, narrowly avoiding stepping on Ben as he jumped up next to me.

  “Don’t you get it?” I said. “All this talk about pirates- Pirates Peak- the fact that was where Old Marley stashed all of his stuff…Pirates Peak are the pirates he kept going on about!” I gingerly picked up a lo
ng piece of seaweed and pulled it away from some old tankards.

  “Yeah but there was nothing there,” Brynn said running a hand through his hair impatiently.

  “Exactly- Old Marley moved it.”

  “What?”

  “He moved it the day he was attacked- dumped it here and then went to the museum.” My voice was coming out in a rush now, overcome with excitement. “That’s what Olivia and Gabriella were after- they thought we knew where the stash was after they saw the diamond necklace. That’s part of whatever Old Marley was hiding away!”

  Brynn sat down suddenly and started pulling out more objects from inside. “So, what? More diamonds?”

  We pulled out an old telescope, some broken bottles, a leather tube, some papers covered in mould, some medals and a half full bottle of rum.

  “Well where is it?” Brynn asked the disappointment evident in his voice. “This is just a bunch of junk…”

  “I don’t know…” I murmured, the papers cold and damp in my fingers. “There’s nothing really of value in here- except from maybe the medals…”

  Brynn shrugged. “Maybe he hid them somewhere else then.”

  We left the pub quietly, trying to cheer ourselves up with a couple of cakes from behind the bar. Going through Old Marley’s stuff had brought back painful memories for the both of us, and I think we both felt bad that we had discarded his box of possessions as nothing but junk. He had obviously kept this stuff for a reason.

  Another week passed and still Olivia was never found. The police insisted that she would have needed hospital treatment if she had escaped the waters that night. It could just be that her body would turn up in the next couple of weeks, and maybe I should avoid the beach for a while.

  Brynn stood next to me whilst we received this news, and I was only glad that my parents were still upstairs packing their bags so they wouldn’t hear. That was the last thing I needed.

  They had finally gotten it into their heads that I wasn’t going to come back to Australia with them- no matter how much they insisted they would buy my ticket. Yes, a holiday would be really nice right now, but with the opening of the museum in a couple of weeks, I couldn’t afford to up and leave everyone at the moment.