Story: "Daredevil - Part 5 - The Race for Glory"

Napoleon, a survivor from the Mutiny of the Bounty, and a demonic killer in the cobblestoned streets of Toulon, 1793.

This is Part 5 of the story.
If you haven't read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4 yet, please start there.

THE RACE FOR GLORY

TOULON, NOVEMBER 1793

The corpse was half immersed in the fountain outside the inn, eyelids open, blue eyes staring.

“Antoinette!!! Non!” Beatrice was in the fountain, shaking the corpse by the shoulders, then cradling Antoinette’s head in her arms, wet blonde hair spilling all around.

“Beatrice!” The upstairs window flung open, and Esperanza’s head poked out. “What is going on?”

“Antoinette, she is dead. Dead! Oh, Mon Dieu, her throat is slit, she is … butchered … it’s horrible!!”

Esperanza screamed.

Her head disappeared from the window, and less than a minute later she was outside, by the fountain, with Destine by her side, both of them still arranging their clothes. Tarun and Zajac joined some time later. Jean and Freund were already in the fountain, comforting Beatrice while gently examining the corpse, without making it apparent that they were doing so.

And then, suddenly, it was as if the whole of Toulon had heard the screams and decided to investigate. The innkeeper had evidently woken half a dozen nearby merchants, and within minutes, a crowd of at least thirty onlookers from the general neighborhood joined the melee, along with three British soldiers, swaying drunk after a long night carousing. Finally, two gendarmes from Toulon’s peace-officer force made their way over to the horrible scene in the fountain.

Lamb and Naboleone stood just on the outskirt of the crowd, quietly observing, not wanting to even look at each other.

How could this be? Not an hour ago, they had dumped the corpse in the harbor, and here she was, the heavy cannonball still tied to her ankles in that improvised sling made from the nightshirt. Naboleone’s nightshirt.

Naboleone grabbed Lamb by the lapel of his coat, whispering intensely. “How this be?”

“Well, how the hell should I know?”

“She … we … throw in water.”

“Yes, we most definitely threw her in the water.”

Naboleone pulled Lamb away from the scene. Lamb didn’t mind, welcomed it, in fact. He didn’t really want to be anywhere near that body, that wet blonde hair, those piercing blue eyes, dead eyes, and besides, he was not one for crowds, hemmed in by others, an aversion he had nursed ever since the horrible, overcrowded open-boat journey after the mutiny on the ‘Bounty’.

Naboleone’s lips were drawn back from his perfect white teeth in an ugly grimace, monkey-like. “This not do nothing to our plan! Nothing. Nothing of nothing. Not important. Not important!”

“As you say.” Lamb shrugged. But he thought … no, this is important … vital … this madness. Antoinette had slipped from his hands, from his and Naboleone’s hands, into the night, into the harbor, with a heavy cannonball tied to her ankles. How could she then be back on dry land, semi-dry land, in the fountain outside their inn? It was inexplicable. It was, something … unnatural.

“I will not, not, not let this stop me!” Naboleone’s eyes were wild. In his race for glory, he was monomaniacal, and everything, even this, was filtered through the narrow pinprick keyhole of his personal ambitions.

“I am on your side.” Lamb lowered his voice to a calm, soothing register. “I meant what I said up in your room earlier. The Antoinette situation is over. I don’t know how she ended up there. Someone must have fished her out. Perhaps someone saw us, perhaps this is their way of sending us a message, perhaps they plan to blackmail us. I don’t know, and I don’t care. We will deal with it, as the situation presents itself. In the mean time, we push forwards. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” Naboleone visibly relaxed.

“Now, I need some fresh air. Some time to sort things out in my mind.”

Lamb walked away from Naboleone, down towards the harbor, down towards the center of Toulon.

And as he walked, he began to feel a strange sensation, an unpleasant sensation … a pressure inside his skull, inside his chest. His blood throbs in his ears, his heart racing fast, like the way he would sometimes feel after battle. It’s as if he’s filled up with something so vast, so immense, far too large for him to contain it, something that stretches him, like a drum-skin, something that wants out. Images in his mind, unreal, at the same time so vivid it’s more than real, like concentrated reality, the way of it, the way things really are, if only we could see, like paintings come alive. Horrible creatures, half men half beasts, horns, hooves, teeth and claws, ripping, tearing, chunks of flesh, blood, flames, open mouths screaming without a sound. Then, cool, dark water, and Antoinette, sinking, weighed down, phosphorous-shiny strands of blonde hair floating, angelic, all around her face. Her white arms — abruptly ending at the wrists, no hands — spread wide, as if offering an embrace, like wings, like a crucifixion. Finally touching the ocean floor in the harbor, the cannonball first, then one foot, then, in a slow folding and unfolding of limbs and torso, her whole body settling, stirring up a cloud of sea-bottom sand that dissipates into the dark water. Then her eyelids flutter open, revealing her piercing blue eyes.

He came back to full consciousness, realizing that during this waking, meandering dream state, he had walked, and walked, and walked, he did not know where, he did not know for how long.

Well it couldn’t have been that long. The sun was still barely over the horizon, the morning fog rolling in heavy from the sea. Lamb could see only a short distance ahead, adding to his sense of being disconnected from reality, lost in limbo.

Then, as he rounded a corner, he came upon Christiane, recognized her tall, slender form, her red hair a sudden splash of color in the white fog. She had not noticed Lamb, and he pulled back a bit, quietly watching.

She was speaking, and with some intensity, gesticulating, though the echoes off the brickwork buildings and cobblestone-paved streets muffled her voice so that Lamb could not make out the words. She was speaking to a man, actually two men, one standing close, and one standing further off in the white mist. At least this second figure seemed to be a man, the shape of a man. Lamb could only see a blurry outline, a dark smear in the white.

Then the first figure steps closer to Christiane, and Lamb sees that it’s Jean. The thick black beard, the long hair, the broad shoulders, the powerful build. Yes, it is Jean.

A noise, piercing the silence, behind him. A cough? Or just a distorted echo?

When he turns back, Christiane, her red hair, her slender shape — gone.

Jean, his long hair and beard, his solid squat shape — gone.

And the other man, the unknown, the black smear — gone.

There is only the white fog, rolling in from the sea.

— END PART 5 - TO BE CONTINUED —

Click here to go to Part 6 of the story.