And he gripped the revolver harder.
Two things had happened in the days after finding the girl that made Coulton believe what followed him was real. The first was at the base of the inn stairs when he turned back suddenly, having forgotten a list of supplies he’d wanted, and as he hurried back up the stairs he’d brushed something with his shoulder. He’d stopped and reached out a hand into the emptiness while the landlady, below, peered up at him, expressionless. The second was a murmuring in the corridor outside his room, in the dead of night, a low urgent muttering the words of which he couldn’t make out, just as if he were overhearing one side of a conversation. He rose catlike and quick in his nightshirt and drew back the screen and stepped out into the moonlit hall. It was empty.
He didn’t tell Jacob. If something invisible was stalking them, it could overhear anything at any time. But he began, from that moment on, to think about how to confront the monster.
His plan was simple. He had two desirable outcomes. The first would be the killing of the thing. But even if he only enraged it, provoked it, so that it revealed itself to him, that would be a success. He needed to know what it was.
And so he sat in the weak orange lantern light, waiting. He was afraid and it wasn’t a feeling he was used to and he didn’t know what to do with it.
An hour passed.
Nothing came.
And then, suddenly, somehow, it was in the room with him.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. “I know you’re here,” he said grimly, into the stillness. “I can hear you breathing, like.”
Silence.
He grunted, closed his eyes. He was forcing his talent, making his flesh denser, thicker, incredibly powerful. His heart was going fast, the familiar suffocating feeling coming over him, as if the walls were leaning in. He didn’t think his strength would be equal to the drughr’s, not if the old stories were even half-true, but he had his revolver too and when had a drughr been shot in the face by a Colt at close range and walked away? He was breathing fast. He could feel the cords in his neck as he turned his face sidelong to listen.
“I been asking myself,” he said quietly, “just what it were, haunting me all these weeks. Aye, I known you was here, even shipboard, when we was sailing out of Singapore.”
His eyes swept the room slowly.
“And then we had our little moment on the stairs. Thing is, if I can touch you, then so can a fist. So can a bullet. You take my meaning?”
And that was when he saw it. A faint smudge of dust on the floor, entering from the dark corridor, coming nearer. Footprints. Passing the opened traveling trunk, passing the small writing desk with its bottles of ink. He felt a quick horror at the sight and he fought it down, wondering just how massive the thing could be, what it was he was confronting. What did it want? He was careful not to move.
“Thing about being invisible, now,” he said, keeping his voice steady, “is it don’t mean you ain’t there. And if you’re there, you ain’t somewhere else.”
He raised his eyes and looked directly at where the drughr stood.
The footprints froze. He saw the thing shift slightly, as if turning to peer behind it, and he understood in that moment that it knew he’d seen it, that it had walked into a trap, and he launched himself with all his force and speed directly at where he supposed it loomed. As he leaped, he knocked the paper lantern and it swung crazily back and forth, casting a wild moving shadow over everything. And then he struck, and felt his fist connect, a glancing blow only, and he was spun off sideways and crashed through a paper screen, tearing it down around him as he fell.
He was on his feet again at once, coughing, whirling about, trying to see where the drughr had gone. He’d lost his revolver. The dust was all kicked up into the air, floating downward. But he could see no outline or shape of the figure in the haze and he feared it had escaped.
Then his eyes came to rest on the steamer trunk, shoved sidelong against a beam. A slow noise came from inside it, almost like a groan. He hesitated only a moment. And then without thinking he jumped forward and slammed the lid shut, locking it fast, and then he stepped back and stared through the descending dust.
All was suddenly still. He could hear now the landlady hurrying through the inn below, starting to come up the stairs, pausing halfway up. But his glare was fixed on the trunk, silent, still. His blood was pounding.
It wasn’t possible, he thought, it just wasn’t possible. You couldn’t trap a fucking drughr in a steamer trunk. Could you?
And just then, as if in answer, the lid thumped sharply, twice, and then a furious drumming started up from inside it, and Coulton doubled up his fists and took an involuntary step back.
Fuck me, he thought.
* * *
Before the first man in that mob had lifted his club, even before Komako could drag her sister by the wrist back, out of reach of his anger, the Englishman had stepped smoothly through the rain with his long black coat snapping at his knees and his silk hat dropped in the wet alley and raised his fists in challenge. Komako saw his eyes. They were black, the whites gone, the irises filled with darkness.
“Stay behind me,” he said grimly.
She knew the superstitions of these people, knew they believed in demons and evil spirits, and knew they feared the cholera was a mark of witchcraft among them. She knew this, and she knew how they’d always looked askance at Teshi, and she was afraid.
She had one protective arm around Teshi’s shoulders. Her sister seemed dazed, half-asleep, wholly unaware of the danger they were in, her face still dialed toward the bodies under the canopy. The mob was thickening. There were bakuto among them now, holding knives, their loaded dice in little pouches at their throats. Twenty, maybe thirty faces glared out at her, and when she turned her head she saw others had blocked the way they’d come. They were trapped.
And then the first man lifted his club and swung it in a long whistling arc through the rain and Jacob somehow twisted and caught it in his ribs with a terrible crunching noise. Komako winced, hearing him grunt in pain. But his hands were gripping the shaft of the weapon and he spun the smaller man sidelong off him, into the alley. He turned the club in his fists and rose to his full height and then, incredibly, he roared, there was no other word for it, he roared like a bear into the dark rain, a sound of absolute fury that made all there hesitate and shrink back.
“Go, Komako! Go!” he shouted.
But she couldn’t, there was nowhere to go. An old woman came forward, an ancient woman in a shabby yukata, her robe hanging wetly from her, and she leveled a crooked finger at Teshi. A hush fell over the mob.
“Her,” she whispered. “It’s her, it’s the demon child.…”
A ripple went through the mob. A voice from the back shouted something, then a second voice. A brick landed near Teshi, a rock struck Komako in the chest. The mob was gathering its courage, its anger rising again.
“Jacob!” she cried out. “We can’t—”
But then he was beside her, sweeping Teshi up over one shoulder, striding through the rain toward a dark shop front and kicking the door down and dragging Komako forward with him, into the gloom. He stood in the doorway, a tall bearded figure of rage, and glared out at the gathering crowd.
Komako hurried through. The shop was just two small rooms, front and back, and there was no other way in or out. In the darkness she could smell something awful. The back room was filled with the cholera dead.
“We’re trapped,” she cried. “Jacob! We can’t get out!”
Jacob just shook his head. “We only needed to be out of the rain, Ko. We only needed to be dry.”
She saw him take off his gloves. The dust. He meant to use the dust.