The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [178]
Damian groaned at the motion, then fell silent.
Holmes gathered up the three guns, handing me one, slipping the second into his pocket, and laying the third near the dead man's hand. Then he wrapped two corners of the blanket around his fists, and waited for me to do the same.
We dropped our burden once, and a second time, I fell. Damian cried out that time, but we were far enough from the lamp bobbing in our direction from the nearby farmhouse that the farmer wouldn't hear.
And, thank God, the man had no dogs.
The End and the Beginning: When the stars are in
alignment, and the ages look down in approval.
When his masculinity prepares to act, and his feminine
nature is ready to receive. At that moment,
the Work is ready for consummation.
Thus Testifies a man.
Testimony: Part the Greatest
WE MADE IT TO THE HOTEL. WHILE HOLMES STOOD winded just inside the back door, I tucked my agonised hands under my arms and conducted a quick survey of the ground floor, finding an inner storage room in which a light would not show outside. I hauled the brooms and buckets out and replaced them with cushions, and we staggered through the dark hotel with our half-conscious burden. While Holmes was undressing his son, I went in search of the hotel medical kit.
I came back to find Holmes standing above the sprawled figure, frowning at the wound. It looked terrible, but Damian was breathing cleanly, which meant no broken rib had entered a lung, and the seeping blood indicated that no major blood vessel had been severed.
“Is the bullet still in there?” I asked.
“It's travelled along the ribs, probably broken a couple of them, and lodged around the back, under his arm.”
“You're not going to perform surgery, Holmes,” I warned.
“It's buried fairly deep in the muscle,” he more or less agreed. “I shouldn't want to be responsible for having damaged the use of his right arm.”
As if hearing the threat to his painter's hand, Damian stirred, then gasped.
“He doesn't seem very heavily drugged,” I said.
“He's a big man, and Brothers may not have wanted to risk knocking him out too early. He might have carried an unconscious Yolanda, but not Damian.”
“Bugger, that hurts,” Damian said in surprise then went slack again.
“I'm going to find the child,” I told Holmes. “Should we try and get some coffee into him?”
“It might be simpler to transport him unconscious.”
I ignored the proposal. Instead, I passed through the kitchen to set a kettle on the gas cooker.
I found Estelle in an upstairs room that was dimly lit by a burning candle. Her small body lay in a tangle of bed-clothes. She was not moving.
In an agony of trepidation, I crossed the floor to bend over her still figure. Seconds passed, and my heart failed at the thought of telling Damian—but then she made a tiny sound in the back of her throat and followed it by a childish snore.
My legs gave out and I had to sit down on the unmade bed beside hers. Slightly dizzy, I dropped my head in my hands and sat listening to her breathe, hearing the precious air go in and out of her throat. I didn't know if this was Holmes' granddaughter or not, but in truth, it no longer mattered: Damian loved her, therefore she was ours.
It took some time to recall the heating kettle and the waiting men. I sat up, studying the tiny, limp form. I shouldn't be surprised if Brothers hadn't given her a dose of the Veronal as well.
The thought of the dead man finally roused me to my feet. I left the sleeping child and went to the next room, where I found signs of Brothers. Unlike Damian, whose clothes were scattered about the room he shared with his daughter, Brothers had packed his bag, ready to leave.
When I opened the bag, I saw two passports. I picked them up, checked again to make sure Estelle was still sleeping, and went downstairs.
I made coffee and took it to the inner room, where Holmes had managed to sit Damian up and rouse him into a state of groggy semi-consciousness. The coffee was thick