Corday shrugged. “Let us see … no different when you asked twenty seconds ago, or the thirty other times before that!” he sarcastically jibed at the man who possessed the same annoyance of a housefly.
McCann hissed angrily at him, anyway. “God damn you to hell, you prissy little red coat!”
Corday stopped his work on the safe and looked at the lean man with disdain. “That is the best you can come up with to insult me? Bloody colonials. I cannot believe we fought a war to keep you as part of the empire. Good riddance, if you ask me.”
McCann’s face reddened with rage and he yanked the man to his feet by the back of his collar. “Nobody asked you, limey bastard!”
Corday struggled to get free of the man’s grasp. “Unhand me!” he screeched.
This only got McCann to look at him with utmost anger and distaste. “I’m not standing around here holdin’ a light for you when something is happenin’ with my friends up there,” he said, using his other hand to seize Corday’s shoulder none to gently. “Now, you and I are gonna kite on out of here and find out what’s going on! Once it’s settled, it will be time for safecracking!”
Without effort, he shoved Corday towards the door.
***
Davenport edged a little closer, and as he stepped into the room, he noticed a weapon identical to the one Cassie held hanging next to the door. He reached over and tore it from the wall. He shifted it back and forth between both his hands before raising it defensively. He slowly pushed the pike close to Cassie’s pike, and then tapped the point of hers.
Cassie had regained her focus, and her strength was returning through the adrenalin of beating Tate, a man who had nearly been the one to, at long last, claim her life. She was happy that this was going to be a regular fight to the death, not a crazy cannibalistic fight. Drawing a breath, she knew this was where the training Lijuan had given her would come into play. She started her movement feeling free as well as clear. Light on her feet, she began to dance around a bit unknowingly to Davenport, finding her range.
She used her left foot and short-stepped back, and then she darted forward, as she aimed her pike at Davenport’s stomach. He quickly blocked it with his pike, but he wasn’t ready for her to use the back end of the handle. Cassie swung the blade part towards the ground, and as she did, she used her left hand to press down on the handle, and with her right hand that was in the back, she took it off the long handle and let it pass by her hand before she put it back on in the handle’s downward movement. She then struck Davenport on the bridge of his nose. He stepped back as this hit surprised him. With the handle still facing him, she pushed it forward and hit him in the chest.
Feeling both hits, he reeled for a moment, but quickly gathered himself and swung wildly at her. She easily dodged the attempt and swung the pike around. With the blade facing him, she swiped at his fingers that were exposed as he was holding the pike.
Davenport felt the blade become one with his skin. He knew his fingers were bleeding, but as he gripped the pike’s handle, it fell. He then looked in astonishment to find all his fingers, except his pinky were gone. A second later, a pain fell over him such as he had never experienced.
Cassie too was in shock. She saw his fingers lying on the floor—a testament to how effective the tool had been back in the day, stripping blubber on the deck of a Boston whaler. She drew backward, watching the man go hysterical, still holding the pike before her in defense. His scream was one of pure anguish.
“Ahhhhh! What the hell!! Bitchhhhh!!!”
He shook his destroyed hand in the air, staring madly at her as his screams filled the air, echoing down the staircase to the others below. Cassie smiled, having overcome her shock.
“You missing something?” she asked with her head cocked to one side.
Davenport, with his left hand, grabbed the pike and swung again wildly at her. She started to see the same crazy look in his eyes as she did in Tate’s. That was a clear sign she needed to wrap this up quickly. He charged her, and she tried to use her pike to stab at him, but he brushed it away and as he reached her, he pushed her, slamming Cassie hard up against the wall, causing her to nearly lose her grasp on her weapon. He threw a punch with his right nearly fingerless hand, and the bloody stump connected, hitting her in the right eye, quickly reintroducing the ringing in her skull. She pushed the man away, but as she did, he threw another punch, but this punch was sloppy, and he hit her open handed. The blood from his hand splattered all over her face.
Davenport’s blood was in her eyes and on her lips, giving her the acrid taste of blood. She wasn’t even sure if it was his or hers. She brought her pike up, held it with both hands, and pushed him away, and as she did, he tried to swing his pike once again. This time around, the swing was slow and messy. She ducked, and as she came back up, she pushed her blade into his shoulder. He fell back and as he did, he collided with the glass aquarium that was full of whale oil; the wooden end of his pike punctured the glass as he fell to the floor, a deluge of whale oil soaking him thoroughly.
They both looked at each other as he laid there on the floor, breathing heavily. Cassie suddenly heard more footsteps approaching the room. Davenport also heard the men and knew it would be a good distraction. He saw a gun that laid on the floor near the broken display case. He recognized it as Tate’s gun. He stayed still, wanting Cassie to forget him and worry about whoever was approaching.
Cassie tightened her grip on the pike. However, she was tiring again and wanted this fight to be done. She wasn’t also sure how much longer she could go on. With grim determination, she moved closer to the door and as soon as McCann charged through it, she vaulted towards him with the pike extended, her ears echoing with her own banshee scream as she drove it deep into his stomach. Before he could even scream, she reversed her momentum and pulled the blade out of his abdomen and jammed it into his chest. He fell down amid shrieks of pain.
Corday was the next to feel the wrath. He was standing rooted still in shock, in the doorway, looking at McCann writhing on the floor. Cassie neatly flipped the pike around and with no effort, pile drove him with the blunt end directly into his forehead. He hit the floor stiff, knocked out.
Cassie then saw Davenport moving around. Her aim was at him again. She started to bound over to him, but the dying McCann had a different idea. He grabbed her foot as she tried to step forward, sending her crashing to the floor. Her head was the first thing to strike the floor that was made of the same polished teak decking of a sailing ship. She nearly blacked out, as her head reverberated against the planks. She tried to re-focus, but it took a second. When she did, she noticed Blake’s lighter lying next to her head.
Her mind started to race again, and as she came back to real time, Cassie quickly grabbed it and raised her head off the floor. She looked up and saw Davenport holding a gun with his good hand, and they had a stare off. Through a haze of pain or delirium, she did not know which, he was grinning madly and swinging the gun back and forth, perhaps thinking he had the upper hand. She flicked the lighter then, smiling mischievously. The flame caught his attention and clarity burst back upon him. The gun stopped swaying and became rock steady in his hand, as he aimed squarely at her chest. Before he could pull the trigger, though, Cassie tossed the lighter, landing it just short of the whale oil.
Davenport forgot the gun for a second and jumped back, his feet splashing the whale oil, sending out a wave that surged towards the still burning lighter as if high tide was going out. He froze once he realized what he had done, and a second later, as the whale oil ignited, his body became a pyre on two legs. Cassie watched as the flame quickly engulfed his whole whale oil soaked body. He dropped the gun and began to beat madly at the flames engulfing him, but it was too late and they were everywhere on his person.
Davenport ran in a circle then, his arms wind milling before crashing through one of the French doors that led to the balcony near the harpoon. Blind to anything but the fire, he hit the balcony railing, screa
med once as he went over and looked like a meteorite falling from the sky as he impacted with the soil, his neck snapping and killing him instantly.
***
Marla watched as Davenport’s fiery body landed with a thud. The woman whipped her head around, seeing that Connor’s face had turned white watching his friend perish. Her head whirled again to see Thornway rooted in disbelief. They all looked up and saw a battered, bloodied but triumphant woman looking down on them over one of the planters.
“It’s over, Thornway! My nursemaids are all dead and the safe cracker out of commission! You need to surrender and start thinking about getting yourself a good lawyer,” Cassie said with some pomp and pride.
Connors began to struggle to his feet, wounded, shaking and seemingly ready to fight too. “You bitch! You killed all my friends! You’re dead! You hear me? Dead!” he yelled as much as his tired and wounded body would let him.
Cassie shrugged as if she really couldn’t care less about what he had to say to her.
“I’ve heard that plenty before! Don’t try anything foolish, Connors. Give it up and you’ll at least stay above ground, unlike your fellows!” she said. Somewhere deep within her, she wished he would listen to her and let things slide so that she didn’t have to take yet another human life.
“It’s the last thing you’re gonna hear! I’m gonna kill you with your own two guns I took from Thornway’s office!” Connors said with a determination that would have been impressive if it didn’t seem stupid at the moment.
He withdrew them as he leaned himself against the back of the carriage and raised them to fire. While he had been pulling out the guns, Cassie had stepped to the side behind the whale gun on the swivel.
“Looks like I’m going to get a firsthand demonstration of Papa Ephraim’s final invention, after all,” she said under her breath, as she saw that there was nothing she could say to convince the man not to be foolhardy. She swiveled it around and pointed it down, pulling the trigger. There was a blast and the gun hurled a three-foot harpoon through the air that passed right through Connors’ chest and buried itself into the back of Thornway’s carriage, pinning Connors to it. The man’s blood splattered onto Marla, who let out a banshee shriek.
A panicked Thornway turned and ran around the side of the house. Cassie, seeing him, also spied a rope dangling from the side railing that overlooked an ornate fountain below. Looking down, she could see the rope ended in a bucket submerged in the fountain—its purpose clear to her that Blake used it to easily bring water up for the flowers. It was now going to be put to good use in another fashion.
Losing no time, she shinnied down the rope. Racing past the carriage, she paused long enough to slug Marla into unconsciousness and then scooped up her guns from where they fell from Connor’s dead hands and charged around the side of the house.
At the back of Corky’s estate in the moonlight, she dashed down the huge sloping grassy lawn leading down to the dock on the lake. Thornway was just casting off in a canoe when she tore onto the dock, so she aimed her guns not at Thornway in the rear, but to the front of the canoe and unloaded all twelve shots in rapid succession. The canoe instantly began to rapidly fill with water through the perforated bow and sank in record time. Thornway struggled to make it back to the dock where Cassie helped haul him up the ladder.
“What did you go and do that for? If you wanted to make an escape, you had a carriage right there!” she jested mischievously.
Thornway had nearly drowned and was now coughing up water. He looked pathetic with his hair matted to his head because of the water.
“Forgive me if I wasn’t thinking clearly. I just saw you roast a man and skewer another; two things I never expected to see in life,” he said with his cheeks glowing bright red.
Cassie beamed and patted his hand. “Friend, you are about to see a whole mess of things you never dreamed of seeing when you do a stretch in prison. Thing is, though, it’s not going to be the stuff of dreams … more like nightmares. Oh, and the accommodations there will make your empty house look like that there Ritz hotel.”
Thornway seemed to shake his head in disbelief, arguing more with himself than with anyone else per se.
“This will never stand! I shall never go there!” he grumbled.
Cassie found humor in the comical manner in which he was shaking his head. “Save the bravado and the bluster, Thornway. You’ve licked your last stamp. You’ll be getting a change of address to Claymore Prison soon enough.”
It was not a guess. Cassie knew that she would make sure of it.
***
As she bound Thornway with some rope she found in the boat house, she couldn’t help thinking of her friendly rivalry with Lijuan. When she told her sister of the fight in the whale room, she doubted Lijuan would be able to match that for a long time to come. As she pulled the knot tight, she could not know Lijuan planned to do some boasting of her own.
With Thornway secured, she paused for a moment to wash the blood from her face in the serene waters of Lake Bliss before returning to the foyer of Corky’s manor house. The man stood at the base of the stairs, holding her dress.
“Thaddeus? Is he dead like the others?” he mouthed in a dazed surprise.
Cassie shook her head. “No sir. Tied up in a neat bow until we can get a sheriff,” she said with a small bow.
“Here …”
She took her dress as he threw it and pulled it on, unaware of the silently appreciative and admiring eyes as they followed her movements.
“Thank you. Sorry about the damage to your house,” she said with a small apologetic smile.
“It’s I who should be thanking you, so don’t worry about the house! It can be repaired. I was able to stamp out that fire with a blanket.” Cassie looked at him appraisingly. The man may have had his limitations, but he had overcome them to save something that had mattered a great deal to him. Without warning, they suddenly heard a noise from above.
“That would be the loose end I came to tie up,” Cassandra said with a sudden call back to herself.
“He was still out cold when I finished putting out the blaze and came down,” Blake said. Cassie perked up as they heard Corday’s footsteps in the hallway running towards the top of the stairs.
“Could you possibly just lean on that wall for a moment?” Cassie asked with a polite smile.
Blake looked puzzled, but nodded and put his hand up against the wall. Cassandra took his crutch and as Corday came running down the stairs, she easily slid it between the railings and tripped him, sending him sprawling down to the bottom, once again unconscious.
Blake stood there with open mouth and a big look of surprise on his face that refused to leave even when she slipped him back his crutch.
“Again, just who the devil are you, really?” he asked, still aghast from what he had just witnessed.
“Just a lady who wanted to come to town and sing a little song,” Cassandra said in a hoarse voice, suddenly feeling the need to sit down. She wearily allowed herself to slip to the floor, the exhaustion catching up with her as she finally permitted herself to feel the fatigue.
CHAPTER 19
* * *
The dust from the tunnel explosion was just settling, but enough remained in the air to give off an eerie halo around the few lanterns that had not been toppled from the blast’s shockwave. Of the three occupants in the cave, it had been the two men that had been knocked off their feet. Lijuan, knowing what she had planned had braced herself by seizing a hold of a stalagmite that jutted out of the ground by the edge of the water. It was the same one she and Dutch had playfully swung around before hurling themselves into the pool so early in their lives.
Lijuan said nothing as she walked over and plucked up her hammer. The two shocked men were now on their feet. Franks could only stand in mute silence, his brain trying to process what had just happened. Pat Winston, on the other hand, was reeling from the gravity of the Chinese half breed’s actions. He ran his fingers through h
is hair and then turned to stare at her.
She looked over to him, fully aware that if the saying about looks being able to kill were true, she would be awaiting a pine box. The man’s glare didn’t bother her at all. The only thing on her mind was whether she had gambled correctly. Who knew what the conditions would be like after close to twenty years?
Winston suddenly seemed to regain his sense as he screamed, “You fucking bitch! You god damn yellow bitch!”
Lijuan face was one of mirth now, happy with the turn of events.
“It’s going to take a lot more than words to hurt me. I, however, can deliver plenty of hurt with this.” She began tossing the hammer from her left hand to her right hand and then back again.
“Try me and find out.”
Winston was furious and he was not making any effort to hold back anymore.
“I’ll do more than that! I’ll wring your neck until those slanted eyes pop right out of your head!” he snarled.
Winston charged at her, but Lijuan was already swinging her hammer. A second later, she landed a shattering blow to his left knee cap and he dropped to the floor, howling in pain and shock.
Lijuan shuddered slightly at the scream of the man, but she gathered herself together and said with boldness.
“Consider that as down payment for what you did to that man from Galveston, a poor soul who just wanted to treat himself to a little fun after a lifetime of hard work. Something I know a lot about, not to mention the hell you put both of the Huangs through.”
Winston looked up at her through clenched teeth.
“Why? Why would you do that? Why would you do it to yourself?!”
Suddenly, they both momentarily were distracted by Franks who spoke at last.
“We’re trapped … trapped behind all that rock. We’re all gonna die in here.”
“There’s proof for you that you got all the brains in the Franks family.” Lijuan cheered.
Wilde-Fire: Wonder Women 0f The Old West (Half Breed Haven Book 1) Page 25
