Infernal Devices - KW Jeter [55]
These and similarly cheerless ruminations were interrupted by the dog Abel. His ears pricked up, and he started from his doze; in a trice he had scrambled into my lap the better to unleash a volley of furious barking against the window, his front paws pattering on the glass.
"Jesus H. Christ." Scape had been apparently asleep behind his dark spectacles; they rose for a moment up on to his forehead as he rubbed his stiff face. "What the hell's all the racket about?"
Beside him, Miss McThane burrowed her shoulder deeper into the corner of the seat, in a futile attempt to escape the sudden noise. "Shut your goddamn dog up, Dower," she muttered unladylike.
"Abel… I say–" I grasped the thin collar that his former master had bestowed on him and tried to pull him back from the window. "Calm down, old boy."
A small gap at the top of the window had been left open for ventilation during the journey. With renewed determination, Abel wedged his sharp muzzle in the space and howled even more vigorously.
"You know – I think he's seen something." I positioned the side of my face against the window, the better to view behind the carriage. "Something out there."
This pronouncement brought Scape sitting bolt upright, his irritable fatigue forgotten. Miss McThane lifted her head as well, her eyes widening.
Scape leaned forward, balancing himself with one hand against the opposite seat, and joined me in my scrutiny of the night unrolling behind the carriage's progress. We had been travelling out from London for such a time that dawn was no more than one or two hours away; already the darkness had thinned sufficiently to bring a thin grey outline to the black tracery of country hedge and tree.
The shapes of cloaked riders moved against those, keeping pace with us.
"Shit," muttered Scape. He had lifted his spectacles in order to discern the silhouettes following us; the slight radiance of the stars produced a slow tear from the corner of his overly sensitive eyes. "It's that friggin' Godly bunch."
"Them again?" Miss McThane sounded peeved. "How'd they find out about us coming here?"
He adjusted his spectacles to their original position. "Beats me – must have an inside line somewhere. Maybe ol' Bendray's butler or somebody is working a double."
"Godly bunch?" I echoed. "Who are they?"
"Never you mind." Scrape lowered the window and shouted to the driver: "You wanna pick it up a bit?" The whip snapped in response and the carriage jolted harder in the ruts as Scape began rummaging through the pockets of his coat. "This'll take care of those suckers."
I saw that he had extracted a bulky cap-and-ball pistol of considerable antiquity. "Watch it with that thing, will ya?" said Miss McThane. "The last time–"
"Yeah, yeah," said Scape irritably. Part of the gun's mechanism had fallen off, and he screwed it back into place with his thumbnail. "Don't worry." To me: "Slide over."
Restraining the still-agitated dog, I moved aside. Scape took his position, bracing his arm against the sill and squinting over the top of the pistol. A dull click of metal against metal sounded when he drew the trigger.
"Shit. All this friggin' rain." He banged the pistol against the inside wall of the carriage as both Miss McThane and I cringed in the opposite corners. As soon as he pointed the pistol out the window again, it went off with a deafening report and burst of flame.
"Chinga tu madre." Scape nursed his singed hand with his mouth. The several pieces of the gun had flown out of his grip. "Son-of-a-bitch."
The shot had seemed to cause no damage, the bullet having gone slanting into the muddy road. Its noise, however, had managed to inspire our horses to greater effort. Peering out the window, I saw that our ghostly escort had wisely fallen back as well.
Scape nodded with satisfaction when I pointed this