The Death of Me: A Tor.Com Original Read Online Free Page A

his hand as if the flesh was being laid open with a blade of frozen vitriol. He gasped with its suddenness and gripped the stricken hand with the other as he looked down at the open palm. What he saw first confused, then horrified him. His life line was shortening before his eyes, burning like a fast fuse across the skin. He could see the crease vanishing in a bead of boiling blood, leaving nothing but smooth skin behind it.
    He looked up: Jones had the drawer open, looking furtively at Cabal as he searched in it.
    Cabal reached for his bag, undid its strap and buckle in two fast twitches, shook it open.
    Jones had found what he was looking for, closed his hand around it.
    Cabal reached into the bag with his right hand, ignoring the pain. When his hand closed around the butt of his Webley, the cool wood and metal seemed to ease the burning. He let the bag fall, lifting the gun and thumb cocking its hammer at the same time.
    Jones had a knife, an ugly, large thing made of some crudely refined metal and placed in a lightly coloured wooden handle. The expression of panicked hope in his face dissolved as he saw the gun. He whimpered and Cabal shot him.
    The shot was placed to kill instantly and it could hardly miss at that range. Jones was dead before he even started to fall. By the time his head cracked against the floor, Cabal was already preparing his departure.
    He gathered up the particular materials he had come to buy, wrapped them in a large square of butcher’s paper, and packed them into his bag, placing the revolver upon the top of it in case it was needed in a hurry again. He strapped the bag shut and made as if to leave. Instead, he paused and looked back at Jones. Poor, paranoid, very dead Jones.
    At least, he assumed Jones was dead. He’d never heard of anybody surviving a Boxer .577 round delivered at close range to the interorbital space, but that wasn’t to say he should take it as a given. He stood over Jones and looked at the damage. On examination, it appeared very much like one could take death by Boxer .577 round delivered at close range to the interorbital space as a given. Cabal sighed. He disliked killing, doubly so when it represented a nuisance to him quite apart from the judicial ramifications. He was quite adept at running away from the police and bribing the few that lasted the course. The loss of Jones, however, made gathering the specialist materials Jones had been supplying quite difficult. Speaking of which.
    Cabal knelt and picked up the unwieldy knife Jones had made to attack him with. The blade was of some form of barely refined metal, certainly not steel. Iron? he wondered. But why? It wouldn’t hold an edge for long, it would rust easily, and it simply didn’t make much sense for anybody to…
    Suddenly reaching a conclusion can bring a bolt of pleasure or a stab of dismay. This was definitely the latter. Cabal reached into his pocket and found the small piece of meteoric iron he kept with him and held it alongside the blade. While not the most thorough of metallurgical tests, there was still an undeniable similarity.
    With a sinking heart, Cabal looked at his right palm. There was his life line, just as it had always been there. Of course it was.
    Cabal stood, placed the metal in his pocket, put the knife into his bag to lie alongside his revolver, and left Jones’s hat shop for the last time. He had killed once today in self-defence. He strongly suspected that he would kill again before the day was out, but this time it would be in revenge.
    *   *   *
    As anticipated, the train trip passed without incident. Also as anticipated, the walk home didn’t. As he walked past a small hillock topped by an old elm, he suddenly found himself in shadow. He turned expecting to find the black landau, the black horses, the black-clad coachman sitting and waiting. Thus, Cabal was not disappointed in most of his expectations. The coachman, however, was far more proactive than at their last