Jacaranda (The Clockwork Century 6)

Everyone turned to look at the frantic woman, out of pure surprise.

Even the Ranger turned to look, and he shouldn’t have.

George raised the gun, and hardly aimed it. He pointed it, that was all—and he pulled the trigger twice. A third time. And he would’ve gone for a fourth except that something stopped him, a blur of motion shaped like the nun, more or less. She was on him before anyone could or cry out, or gasp.

The padre ran to Horatio Korman.

One bullet had blown his hat off. One had caught him in the temple, and then it was over before he hit the ground.

He didn’t hit it immediately, but joint by joint, he folded. He fell. He didn’t drop the gun, but he didn’t fire it, either. His hand lay beside his hip and the empty holster, a solid grip still lingering on the piece.

The padre gently pried his fingers free, and slipped the weapon into his own hand, and then into the pocket of his cassock. He said a fast, breathless prayer in Spanish and closed the Ranger’s eyes, then retrieved the old man’s hat and placed it across his face.

That’s how fast it’d happened.

Faster than a blink.

When Juan Rios finished his prayer and sat up, he was struck by the sudden feeling that he wasn’t alone now—and that was ridiculous, because of course he wasn’t alone. The stunned bystanders scarcely breathed, scarcely cried. They were as silent as a photograph, so it was something else he heard…at the very edge of his senses, just under the rampaging noise of the storm outside. Something else wanted his attention.

He exhaled, and listened.

He heard only the rain and the trembling sky.

He listened again.

Violetta was behind the counter with her mother and sister; Frederick Vaughn cowered behind one of the sofas; the Andersons clutched one another on the floor beneath the coffee table; and one by one, or two by two, everyone had taken cover except for David McCoy, who had passed out from the bleeding.

He wondered where Sister Eileen was, and like magic, she stood up to reveal herself. She’d tackled George to the floor and rendered him either unconscious or restrained—he didn’t know which, because he couldn’t see him. Two of the candles had been knocked over and extinguished, and a third was guttering.

The light was all but gone. The Ranger was dead.

And overhead, the storm was not finished yet—it had not quite given up on its prey, and the hotel was not yet satisfied that it must stay put on Galveston Island. But when the padre listened he heard beyond the ruined wings and the barricaded doors that some peak had been passed, and the hurricane’s power waned.

The raindrops were only as big as grapes, and the thunder was only loud enough to make his teeth shake. The lightning came only twice a minute, and the seething, screaming wind had lost its highest notes.

“It isn’t over,” the nun whispered.

Juan Rios Looked at her. He saw eyes that were as round and gold as doubloons from a galleon, and he saw a shadow of a shape—an outline around her that looked in profile like it was not human, though it might have been once. He recognized the shape, and crossed himself. He understood what the vortex had meant by “afflicted,” and he marveled at her tenacity…and wondered if he ought to.

She was not even breathing hard, and there was blood on her hands. Perfectly ordinary hands, dainty like her feet. Petite, like that small bow of a mouth with just a smudge of dried blood left beside it on her jaw.

“It isn’t over,” she said again.

“But it will be. The hotel will stand until morning. The storm was not enough, but we were.”

“And those doors. Something about them…”

An enormous crack of thunder assured them that the hurricane had life in it yet, but the next roll suggested that it was moving along all the same. Everything dimmed by bits and pieces, by a quieter howl to the maelstrom…by less and less rain, clattering against the windows that remained.

It dimmed into the silence that eventually followed, after the last candle had burned down to a puddle and a piece of ash.

By dawn, it was only raining.

Without a word, without opening the fire doors to return to their room or collect any of their belongings, the survivors unbraced the entrance doors and left for the ferries, or for the Strand—if any of it still remained. There was no chatter of plans, no whispering about the police, and no idle questions about what would become of the hotel now.

No one cared. All anyone wanted to do was escape, and when the sun came up, everyone who was still alive…did.

The padre and the nun remained behind long enough to close and lock the front doors behind themselves; and using some paint they’d found in a storage closet, they scrawled a great warning across them: CHOLERA, KEEP OUT.