Hidden Island Chapter 13, part 3 of 3

Hidden Island
Chapter 13, part 3 of 3

"Sterling!" A rough voice from outside yelled. "Sterling, get your ass out here!"

Will stood up, his mind racing. Janie pulled on her cassock again.

"If anyone found out I showed up at Mary's with Belita, they might be here looking for her," Will said.

"I'll get rid of them," Janie said. Her determined, poised, competent presence was back in full force when her arms pushed through her sleeves.

As Janie descended, Bella and Belita ran up the stairs toward the bedroom. The look on Janie's face had the other women pressing into the stairwell wall, letting Janie pass without a word. They glanced at each other, then ducked through the door into the room. Belita had grabbed her coat, hat, and weapon belt off the rack. "Smart," Will said when he saw her carrying them.

"This is my first time," Belita smirked.

Will beckoned them to the corner of the room next to the tallest bookcase where the old ladder was. "This is where the floor creaks the least." They all huddled in the corner, quiet.

Downstairs, Janie began opening locks.

"Where's Sterling?" the stocky man in the overlarge suid demanded. His whole head was a mess of angry bruises, and one of his eyes had a bloody ring around the iris. He stood directly in front of the door. He held a pry bar on his shoulder. Behind him were a dozen other men. Two of them were on horseback. They all carried heavy tools like weapons.

"Not that it is any business of yours, but he is not here," Janie said coldly, looking out from behind the chain lock she'd left secured. "Whatever you want, it can wait until morning." She started to shut the door, but the beat-up man put his boot in the way.

"Open the door," he snarled.

"I can't. The chain is in the way." Jaine looked at him like he was a grease stain.

"So get rid of the chain," the man explained slowly like he was talking to a dimwit.

Janie replied in the same slow tone. "I can't release the chain without closing the door."

"Well, I ain't movin' my foot," he sneered.

"It appears we're at an impasse," Janie shrugged.

"Like hell," he repeated. He looked over his shoulder. "Hook."

Someone handed him a large hook on the end of a thick rope. The other end of the rope was given to one of the men on horses. The man hung the hook on the chain length with his foot in the door.

Janie's heart sank. Still, she kept her control and poise. Danger was much easier than sex. "This is a terrible idea," she said flatly.

"Fuck you." The man stepped back and waved his hand past his head. The horseman behind him turned his mount in a tight circle and went the other way. The rope went taught. The horse leaned further. The chain strained and then popped. Janie flinched.

The man in the overlarge suit pushed the door open. Janie didn't fight him. She just stepped back.

"I am a Sister of the Magistrate," she said calmly.

"Sure, Sister, and I'm the Sultan of MA lahara," the bruised man snorted.

"Not seen," came a rasping, muffled voice from on top of the other horse.

The man in front of Janie looked behind him. The man on the horse had a massive blood-stained bandage that covered the lower left quadrant of his face and half his mouth. He was holding a hand to the bandage, obviously in a great deal of pain. His speech sounded awful.

"You're fucking kidding? She's Magistrate?" the man in front of the door asked incredulously.

The man on the horse nodded in a minimal motion. "Sterling assistant. Sposed to be Mashistrate."

"If you enter this building, I will be forced to act. The law will bind you," Janie said firmly.

"Ask me if I give a fuck." the bruised man laughed. "The Magistrate's got no power over us,"

"Move," the man on the horse said, trotting his beast closer. The bruised man in the oversized coat was shoved aside.

"What the fuck, Jakob?" the walking bruise sneered.

"Shud up, Cal," the bandaged man replied.

Janie suddenly found a pistol pointed at her.

"They go in," the bandaged man named Jakob rasped. "I'm not. Anything happens to them, I shoot you. Get out here."

Janie walked outside, stone-faced. She felt helpless, but she was not about to show them that. A dozen men flooded into the lighthouse.

"Why's it all fucking wet in here?" Cal Kidd asked. He and his brothers and cousins were standing in Will's library, wondering what they were seeing.

Turner Kidd looked at the significant gaps in the shelves. "Looks like some stuff's missing."

"Bullethole," one of the cousins said from the table. "Looks new."

Boots were tromping up the stairs.

"Half full steamer trunk in here," a Bill Kidd said from the office. "Wood stove is still burning. Hell, the kettle's still warm. He must have just been here!"

"Or his assistant was making tea," Cal sneered. "Don't be stupid. Just look for him."

"Cal! Get up here," a voice shouted from the stairs.

Cal took the steps two at a time, coming into Will's bedroom like an angry bull. "Fuck," he said, looking at the state of the room. "What, someone tossed the place already?"

"It's mostly clothes," Cousin Sammy said. "I think he tossed it himself. Grabbed what he needed and bolted."

"There's a bunch more wet clothes in here," his brother Victor said from the washroom. "Looks like women's clothes."

Cal stuck his head through the washroom door and looked at the pile in the tub. He hooked a multicolored dress with his pry bar and lifted it. It dripped a steady stream of water. "Who the fuck is this guy? What's he got a bunch of soggy girl's clothes laying around for?"

"I heard he's cursed," Sammy shrugged.

"I heard he summoned a demon at Mary's tonight," Cal's brother Victor said while he poked through the mess on the floor.

"That ain't what happened; I was there," Cal said. "He fucked a couple of whores, and then they...

I don't know, blew up or something."

"How do you know that's not how he summoned the demon?" Victor asked.

"Huh. Don't know," Cal said.

"Magic's weird," Victor said. He'd wanted to be a wizard when he was a kid. Most kids did at some point, but Victor tried. It didn't work out, but he was still the one the Kidd family went to when they wanted to know about magic. "It would explain all the water downstairs. Might be part of his curse."

Something flickered past the window, blotting out the starlight for a moment.

"Hey! Does anyone else see that? Cal asked. He stuck his head out the window and looked down, then up.

"What?" Victor asked.

"I thought I saw something outside. Like a shadow," Cal said. "Don't see anything now, though."

"Maybe a bird?" Sammy said.

"Think they can shapeshift into animals?" Victor asked.

"If they can, then this is pointless," Cal said. "So let's just assume they can't." He was rifling through Will's stuff at random. "What the hell?" he muttered to himself. "Why would he leave a bag of gold and jewelry behind?" He shouldered the bag. "At least tonight won't be a total waste."

"Isn't this what you said she was wearing?" Sammy said, holding up Belita's wet trousers.

Cal took them. "Sure is. There weren't many women wearing trousers. She was here."

"So he's probably with her," Victor said.

"They might still be here somewhere, hiding. Keep looking," Cal said.

"Not many places left to look," Victor said, pulling open Will's wardrobe. No one was inside it.

"Check up that ladder," Cal said.

"It's locked from down here,' Victor pointed.

"So? This guy's all tangled up in magic. He might be fucking invisible. Check everywhere. Touch everything. Kick shit around. We can't just trust our eyes," Cal snarled. He hooked the lock with his pry bar and tore the entire hasp off the wood with one firm yank.

Victor started up the ladder.

The three needed to fit inside more easily into their hiding place.

They climbed up the ladder, and Jack the Monkey returned to the room through the window to re-lock the hatch. Then, it climbed up onto the lighthouse roof to hide.

The top level of the old lighthouse needed to be more safe. The catwalk around the edge on the seaward side wasn't sturdy anymore. Part of it had broken away at some point. The whole light mechanism also failed years ago. At one point, the lens array was a marvel of precision craftsmanship. Brass fittings are in concentric circles with radial lines bisecting them and fitted with dozens of carefully formed ground panes of glass. It looked like a vast, multifaceted glass egg with large circular windows set into it all around its widest point. It used to turn. It didn't anymore.

Over time, the brass frame had severely corrupted, and the hundreds of glass panes that made up the lens were clouded over and stained.

Getting inside it was a tight squeeze. One of the arcing multifaceted panels was a door, but a small one. It was there so the lighthouse keeper could clean the inside. It was never meant to hold three adults.

The lamp had been hung from a chain inside. It was still half full of long-rancid oil. It weighed as much as Will did.

It had taken all three of them to carefully wrestle it off its hook and pull it out of the lens array.

They'd tossed it off the edge, hoping it missed, no one had seen it fall past the window, and that it didn't crash on the rocks below. They were lucky. It had only splashed, indistinguishable from the lapping tide.

Then they climbed inside and closed the door of the lens array behind them. Will was the tallest, so he was in the center. Plenty of room was around the middle of the variety, but it narrowed considerably at the top and bottom. Bella was pressed in behind Will, her chest against his back and her arms reaching under his and up to hold onto his shoulders. Belita was crouched, essentially sitting on the floor of the lens housing, on top of her coat, right between Will's legs.

She leaned back against the brass lattice, hoping it was still strong enough to support her, but the space was so tight that her head rested on Will's thigh. When he shifted, his erection sometimes bumped her in the head. Any other time that might have been amusing, but right now, it was just a strange footnote to the tense situation. The Captain's hat and belt were leaning on the lattice beside her in easy reach. Will was trying not to think about what a pistol shot would do to their ears if Belita had to shoot from inside the array.

The faint moonlight was being caught and amplified by the array so they could see surprisingly well inside it. Even with the glass stained and clouded over years of neglect, the engineering marvel was still doing its job, at least partially.

"Won't they be able to see us in here?" Bella whispered.

"No," Will said. "Remember how we couldn't see the lamp inside until I opened the door? The lenses are slightly concave. They're trying to throw the light out. It's hard to see through them even when they aren't covered in grime. With all the clouding, no one outside can see a thing unless we move around."

They could faintly hear the Kidd gang's conversation in the bedroom through the open window below them.

"They found your pants," Bella whispered. Her head was next to the one broken pane of glass, and she could hear better than the others.

"Didn't think to grab them," Belita whispered back, angry at herself.

"Me either," Will muttered. "Didn't think they'd care enough about the wet clothes in the wash basin."

"Sounds like they're being pretty thorough. They think we might be using magic to hide," Bella said into Will's back.

"Can we do that?" Captain Vex asked.

Bella blinked. "Well, kind of. Maybe."

Bella shifted a bit, trying to get comfortable. The two women tried not to brush against Will's burns. He had thrown a blousy black shirt on, but it didn't do much to protect his angry skin.

They heard the sound of the lock hasp breaking.

"Talk fast," Will said.

"Sex witch, remember. I might be able to do something, but I must gather energy. That's going to mean sex. Somehow," Bella whispered.

Without any preamble, Belita tugged down the front of Will's pants and engulfed his erection with her mouth. Will and Bella both inhaled sharply as the unexpected pleasure hit them both.

"Yeah, that'll work," Bella said.


To be continued