Story: "Daredevil - Part 7 - A Blow in the Dark"

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

This is Part 7 of the story.
If you haven't read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 , Part 5 or Part 6 yet, please start there.

A BLOW IN THE DARK

TOULON, NOVEMBER 1793

The killer walks hunched over, so that it is difficult to judge his height, one foot hesitating, an almost imperceptible limp, as if one leg is one-eighth of an inch longer than the other, or one foot is missing the distal phalanx — the smallest bone — of the little toe, something off, but just barely. The fog swirls around him, covers him. It’s as if the fog is a part of him, as if he is dressed in it, a cloak made of mist.

The tall, blonde woman in front of him, walking on unsteady feet, placing a hand on the wall to keep from losing balance, weaving, drunk, humming a little song to herself, wandering towards the small hideaway she shares with the other prostitutes, is blissfully unaware of the man behind her and his intentions.

She turns down an alley, and here, with the fog, the early dawn hour, the long shadows, she is suddenly in darkness.

The hands that reach for her neck are steady, not a tremor. The killer has done this before. So many times.

He quickly closes the distance between them, and before she can let out a cry, he is on her, one arm around her neck, the other covering her mouth.

Brutally, he slams her against the wall, head first, a blow in the dark, sudden, unseen. She slumps, unconscious, and he thinks he may have cracked her skull. But then she moans, eyes beginning to flutter open. She is alive.

Good.

It’s not as it should be, this game, unless she is alive. He leans over her, hand covering her mouth.

When her eyes open fully and she focuses, the first thing she sees is the knife.

* * *

“Surprise?” Lamb was intent on knowing. Exactly why was he in for a surprise? Was this a hint that he knew the stranger, the man in the fog? And if the man in the fog was the killer … then, did he, Lamb, know the killer?

The door to the inn flung wide open, and Tarun entered, Zajac close behind, the two men poking each other in the ribs with stiff fingers in some sort of childish game, wide grins, guffaws. They drew up chairs and sat down with Lamb and Jean, and Lamb was only just able to hide the knife, slip it back in its sheath inside his boot.

“You gentlemen up for a game of dice?” Tarun produced a leather cup and five dice made of bone.

Naboleone entered just a few minutes later, and joined them at the table, though he was quiet, brooding.

Finally, Freund arrived, out of breath, his hands shaking.

Lamb noticed, for the first time, that the tall, white-bearded man had a fairly pronounced limp.

Freund sat down at the end of the table, eyes blank.

Zajac turned to address Freund, but Jean put a hand on the bald man’s arm, shook his head. Zajac shrugged and turned back to the dice.

For the next half hour, the five of them played dice with hardly a word between them, while Freund sat separated from the others, eyes unfocused-staring. Naboleone was deep in thought, half in the game, half out, and often forgetting his turn until Lamb nudged him to pay attention.

The porcine innkeeper must have returned sometime in the thirty minutes they’d been playing dice, though Lamb could not exactly remember when. The fat man occupied himself scratching in a large ledger-book, only periodically looking their way. He kept the tip of his tongue pressed agains the corner of his mouth, in concentration, as his goose-feather pen formed the letters and numbers laboriously.

The only sounds: the faint scratching of the innkeeper’s pen and the clicking, bone on bone, of the dice.

Then.

The wailing, keening.

Once again, only a few hours since the last time, a woman is screaming: “Murder!” And they all rush out.

Antoinette’s corpse had been removed from the fountain, leaving only a few wide stains of dried, rust-colored blood, and there is no new corpse in the fountain, nor anywhere else in front of the inn.

Instead, they see Esperanza, running towards them. Screaming:

“They killed her. They killed Destine! She is dead. Butchered. Slaughtered. Come, come. Help me find the gendarmes, help me, help me. Oh, he is killing us all. He will kill me. He will kill Beatrice. Who? Who wants to do this? Who wants to kill us all?”

Wild-eyed, barefoot, disheveled, she finally reached the inn and collapsed against Lamb’s shoulder, her torrent of words swallowed up into an incomprehensible gurgling.

“Where?” It was Jean, putting his hand on Esperanza’s shoulder. “Where is she?”

Esperanza wailed. “She is cut. All cut up. Her skin, like ribbons. Oh, my God, my God, my God …”

“I know,” Lamb said, patting her back. “I know. Let us take care of her. You need to show us where she is, so we can take care of her.”

Esperanza raised her head, her eyes clearing, her back straightening. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. We must take care of her. My poor Destine. Come with me.”

They followed her, past the small shops, the shopkeepers just now beginning to setting out wares to draw the day’s customers. Lamb recognized several of the faces from the crowd surrounding Antoinette in the fountain earlier.

Down the dark passageway, Esperanza walked, barefoot, fast and determined.

And there she was, Destine. Or what was left of her. Her face was untouched. Her face and her hair. Everything else, as Esperanza had said, sliced to ribbons, the skin cut in thin strips, flayed from her body. And, just like Antoinette, she was gutted, sliced open from throat to groin, and this time, it looked to Lamb that the killer had removed some of the innards. Either removed, or rearranged. He didn’t want to look too close, but it looked wrong somehow, reversed, stomach and intestines above the lungs. What kind of sick …

Jean leaned over, closing Destine’s eyes, making the sign of the cross on her forehead with his thumb, his lips moving in a benediction. It seemed such a natural thing, as if the black-bearded, wild-haired man had once been a priest. Funny, with his big, thick-fingered hands, his wide shoulders, that squat, solid build, he looked a workman, an artisan, a fisherman, perhaps, but not clergy. Nevertheless, that quick gesture of the cross, the murmured benediction, yes, a priest, a man of the cloth.

Too bad it’s a wasted gesture, Lamb thought. All of this only ends in one, inevitable, eternally lost way.

The Devil was already making a meal of her succulent soul. The Devil would feast on her forever.

— END PART 7 - TO BE CONTINUED —

Click here to go to Part 8 of the story.