Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [107]
Expecting at any moment to feel the weight of a cougar on his back and the agony of its claws ripping through his flesh, Sherlock stepped forward, towards Balthassar.
The thin man wasn’t expecting that. He flinched backwards, still cradling his left arm, but Sherlock reached out with his throbbing left hand and ripped the red leech from behind Balthassar’s ear. It tore free with some resistance. Blood spattered on the shoulder of Balthassar’s white suit; black in the moonlight.
Balthassar screamed: a high, thin noise of distilled rage and shock.
The giant red leech was squishy and wet in Sherlock’s hand. Before Balthassar could do anything, before the cougars could spring, Sherlock bought his knife up and sliced it in half. It writhed and twisted, leaking Balthassar’s blood into his palm. He turned, each hand holding a part of the leech, and threw them at the two cougars that were advancing towards him.
Given their reaction earlier, on Balthassar’s veranda, he had thought they might turn and run in terror, but they surprised him. The cougars snapped the halves of the leech out of the air as if they were titbits thrown as treats and swallowed them whole.
They continued to advance on him.
No, not on him. Their eyes were fixed on Balthassar.
Sherlock moved slowly to one side. The cougars ignored him, and continued moving towards Balthassar.
It made a strange kind of sense. The man who had dominated them was injured, weakened, and the leech that they feared was gone. Whatever power Balthassar had over them appeared to have been broken. They had the power now. He couldn’t hurt them.
Balthassar backed away. The rocky edge was behind him. He said something in the language he used to control the cats with, but they ignored it.
Sherlock watched, his mouth dry and his heart pounding. Balthassar took another step back, hands raised to ward the cougars off, but his right foot ended up past the edge of the rocky overhang, over empty air, and he fell, screaming, into the darkness.
The cougars stood there for a moment, looking over the edge, and then, without looking at each other or at Sherlock, they padded away, into the hills.
Sherlock stood there for a while, getting his breath back and letting the pain in his shoulder subside. It didn’t seem broken. At least that was something.
The cougars didn’t come back.
Eventually he went over to where his horse was cowering and calmed it down, stroking its flanks until it stopped shivering. Then he pulled himself up into the saddle and continued his journey, down the slope that led to the grasslands.
At the bottom of the slope he found Balthassar’s body. It lay, twisted and broken, in a flattened area of grass. The leeches had vanished from his face. Presumably they had left to seek other prey the minute his blood had stopped pumping through his veins. Not necessarily a logical decision, but an instinctive one.
Sherlock must have fallen asleep on the ride back, because the next thing he knew the horse was trotting through the outskirts of town and there was a blue blush on the horizon. He left the horse tied up outside the stable and headed for the hotel. He could pick up his deposit later.
There was nobody in the dining room when he walked in. He headed up to his room. Nobody tried to stop him. He almost expected someone to leap out and attack him, or something to leap on to his shoulders when his back was turned, but there was nothing. Everything was peaceful and calm. He let himself into his room and slipped beneath the covers. It was as if nothing had happened. It was as if he’d not left the room since he’d first entered that morning, after the long trek across the grasslands from