Chapter 10
Apt Pupil
When Alex returned to Elsinore Academy the next morning, things had changed. And by change, I don’t mean that they were different from normal, only that they were normal from different. In the span of a single day, it seemed that everything had magically reverted back to the way they had always been.
For one, nobody paid any mind to Alex or the cheap car she came in on since today, she had walked from the Combermere estate. In the echoing school halls, she found students walking together, chatting the way they normally did, Principal McLeary finding and grumpily scolding at them the way he normally did, and the sound of the first bell blaring all across the campus the same way it normally did. All was as it had always been. As though the police had never stepped foot on campus the previous day, Tommy Hargrave was still alive, and Alex walked to school from her home like she always did. Elsinore had finally returned to its former self; a notion that Alex didn’t fully believe, but fully encouraged.
Six hours later, back in Pleasant Grove, Alex Frost and Lord Henry Combermere hid behind a row of bushes, eyeing the residence of the man that Alex had spied on last night.
“Things were better in school today,” said Alex, recounting the early morning’s events. “Amy and I got to talk again since, well, you know. She’s been doing a lot better since what Tommy Hargrave did to her.”
“Alexandra,” Lord Combermere shot in a low but no-less-brash voice. “Stop wasting time. Focus. What have you gathered about the prey?”
“In half an hour from now, he’ll go to bed,” Alex reported. “Approximately.”
“This is the man you want to kill?”
She gave an affirmative nod.
Lord Combermere looked around the empty setting, settled his eyes back to the man watching his television through the window of his shoddy home.
“Seems simple enough. And you say he lives alone?”
“There’s only one car on the driveway. He watches television by himself, and there’s only one name on his letterbox and mail.”
“And what name would that be?”
“Robert Savage.”
Robert Savage, as far as Lord Combermere could tell, was a man of horridly simple taste. He wore cheap clothes, drank from a bottle of cheap beer, and ate cheap, dangerously unhealthy food. He also didn’t seem to place much value in exercise, as he had thick, flabby arms.
“Not a very savagely looking man is he?”
“Maybe on pastry.”
To that, Alex could sense Lord Combermere’s lips barely twinge.
“So how do we do this?” Alex inquired.
“Never underestimate the lesson of experience. This is your hunt, Alex. I leave that in your hands. I’m only here to observe. To critique, if you will.” And in observing through the window, at the obese man blankly staring at his television, “You should probably start soon.”
She nodded in firm agreement.
At that point, it was up to Alex and her trusty bag of materials. She rummaged through them one more time to make sure she had all that she needed. Chloroform? Check. Knife? Check. Rope? Check. Duct tape? Check. Lockpick tools? Check. She zipped up the bag, went forth to hunt.
She couldn’t have snuck in through the window the same way she did the previous night. Her victim was still awake, and would likely see her if she made such an entrance. Given that, Alex resorted to plan B.
In less than a minute, the girl undid with the lock on the back door with her gadget of picks and tension wrenches. She snuck inside, tip-toeing every step of the way. In doing so, she had to avoid landing on the many obstacles on the floor. The familiar scent of the house sifted into her nose once again (though slightly more so now). The entire house, from the entryway to the living room, carried the smell of rotting sugar. Plastic soda bottles of every kind lay across the path, their liquid contents seeping into the carpet floor. Newspapers and magazines had also been strewn about in senseless disarray. In order to traverse without being heard, Alex had to mind her every step. And in the poor lighting of her surroundings, it was easier conceived than practiced.
In the end, she narrowly made it. She came close enough behind her prey that she could smell his rank body odor. Alex readied the chloroform. She dabbed the liquid onto a dry hand towel. Unfortunately, her face was much closer to the bottle than it should have been. Its potent scent sifted into her nose as she inhaled, causing a brief sensation of wooziness. Not enough to avert consciousness, but certainly, it was enough to make her land on the wrong foot.
Alex’s right heel crushed against a stray potato chip. Doing this not only alerted her prey, but it also made him furious.
“Who the hell are you?” he growled. And from his pant pocket, he brandished a pistol in front of her face. One that Alex never knew he had until it was a mere second away from ending her life.
A shot fired. Luckily for Alex, she threw herself on the ground just in time to avoid a bullet in between her eyes. But because of this, she lost her balance. The man was slow, to the extent that as he took aim again, Alex was already on her feet, wrestling his hand for control over the gun.
The effort was futile. The man was at least ten times stronger than she was, and so whichever way she tilted the weapon, the man forced it away with less than half the amount of effort. Her only choice was to make him lose his bearing.
With that, Alex sunk her teeth into the man’s neck.
He yelled. To further weaken him, she stomped on the man’s bare foot. He lost control of his firearm. Yet just as she was about to grab it from him, he regained his strength, pushed her as hard as he could against the wall. She was now much too far for a second chance at taking his weapon. The black eye of the pistol was already aimed to fire.
Lord Combermere appeared behind the man. Before Robert Savage could pull the trigger, Lord Combermere pierced his dagger into the man’s nape. He froze like a slab of stone, landed with a hard thud on his carpet floor.
“You still have much to learn.”
“I suppose I do.”
She was also beginning to suppose that this might not have been what she was cut out to do. She’d already made too many mistakes, scarcely got caught for them. If this went on for any longer, she knew that her luck would eventually wear out.
“Do not worry about it,” Lord Combermere touched her on the shoulder. “We’ll make this up later. The very fact that you survived an armed man twice your strength speaks volumes for what you can one day accomplish.”
“Are you sure?”
Lord Combermere looked into her eyes.
“Absolutely.”
From out the window, Alex heard a heavy commotion, followed by footsteps, followed by voices.
“It’s the police!” a voice shouted from outside. “We heard gunshots. Come outside now!”
“We have to leave,” Lord Combermere told.
Alex, who realized this night was a much bigger failure now than it had been just a few seconds prior, feigned her head in agreement.
“Quickly. Through the back.”
At this point, a thunderous barrage of feet thumped against the door, each kick loosening the lock.
Alex picked up the handgun on the floor. She and Lord Combermere made their way through the backdoor, climbed past the home fence only to come eye to eye with a policeman in uniform.
“Halt!” he ordered.
But that was all he had the time to do. In a swift, almost unseeable motion, Alex took aim of the policeman’s leg and fired. The recoil pushed her arms back, and the gun in between her palms turned hot. Within an instant, the policemen fell to the ground, writhing in pain.
“Finish him,” Lord Combermere instructed.
But Alex didn’t want to kill him. Not when she wouldn’t have the time to savor her kill. Not when she should have been running instead.
“Let’s go.”
A downed policeman would have slowed down anyone else that might be chasing
after them. Hopefully more so than a dead one. And though the distinct possibility existed that he’d seen their faces, she counted on it being too dark for him to make out anything definite. In fact, Alex herself had hardly been able to see the policeman’s face when she shot him. All she could attest to was his shape, his silhouette. The lighting in the avenue was much too poor. Hopefully it was all she needed to keep her identity intact.
For the better part of a minute, they sprinted as fast as their lungs allowed. Then Lord Combermere stuck his palm against the wall, leaned on it while he caught his breath.
“Come on,” Alex insisted. “We have no time.”
“I can’t,” he gasped.
They were on a dark alleyway. Alex could sense by the trembling ground that more police were on their way.
“If we both stay here, we’ll get caught.”
“I can’t go on any further.”
His knees were stiff, and his heart began beating so hard she could hear it.
Alex quickly studied every detail of her background, searching urgently for anything that could help her.
“There,” she said, pointing Lord Combermere to a dark, empty corner directly beside an open dumpster. They squeezed in between the garbage lid and the corner of a wall. There was space enough for them to fit, but that was all. They had to squeeze their arms together, duck as low as their backs would allow.
The dumpster was so foul, so horrendously nose-numbing that no amount of body odor or skunk spraying would have even come close to matching the fumes coming from the open lid. On top of spoiled and rotten food, it stunk to high heaven of dead animal carcasses from those who hadn’t the heart to bury their pets nor the care-to to have them cremated. And to make a bad matter worse, since the lid was open, crows and stray dogs had ripped every trash bag apart. This allowed every odor to roam free in the air, corrupt it with its toxic scent. If either Alex or Lord Combermere had souls, they would have caught the horrid stench emanating from the dumpster, and they would have considered hiding someplace else, or better yet considered getting caught. For this was the ultimate stench of all things rotten and dead.
However, since neither Lord Combermere nor Alex Frost had ever been born with souls, escaping the smell was hardly a concern. They could breathe in the smell around them, but they hadn’t the ability to tell if it was a bad smell or a good smell. If they could only understand just how horrid it truly was, they would have continued to run for miles on end rather than endure another second of such a putrid stink.
One might say that at that moment they were fortunate enough not to have souls, because in the end, it worked. The policemen left the alley none-the-wiser, and Alex and Lord Combermere were safe.