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Back Cardinal Black Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. Title Page
  2. One: Into the Storm
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Two: London Calling
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Three: The Malignant Seven
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Four: Squirrels and Cats
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-One
  37. Thirty-Two
  38. Five: Revelation
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. About the Author

In another instant the vice admiral’s face had become a distorted bloodmask. He fell back out of the coach, but he did not go down nor did he make any sound. He began to stagger back and forth beside the landship, shaking his destroyed hand to which the mangled bomb of a pistol had melded. Matthew watched him as he took one arm with the other and seemed to want to tear it off, so fiercely did he wrench at it. Then he did fall to his knees, and his gory face turned to behold the man who was coming toward him, the specter of approaching death.

Julian Devane stood over him.

Lash’s mouth worked but no sound emerged. The remaining eye still held its red fire of both hatred and a refusal to plead for life. He puffed his chest out, and Julian caught the shine of his medals in the leaping firelight.

He brought up his pistol, cocked it, and put it against Lash’s head.

Lash pushed the gun away with his good hand. The vice admiral grinned, as blood ran from his nose and down into his beard, and his eyelid in the gruesome face began to fall to half-mast.

Julian put the gun against Lash’s head once more.

Lash spat blood at Julian and made a noise that might have been a laugh.

Matthew saw Julian hesitate … still hesitate … and then the bad man stepped back. Clutching his left side as if to hold his entrails in place, he hobbled to the coach. Julian croaked, “You’re driving. Get us out of here.”

“What happened to Black?”

“Gone. I think I hit him. But when the smoke cleared … gone. Get up there, Matthew. Firebaugh, I can still hurt you. Hear me?” Julian kept his grip on the fearsome pistol, and though his face was dead white and sweating even in the cold and his voice was a harsh whisper, he was yet enough threat to keep the doctor at bay.

As Matthew shook off his own pains and weariness in the cold and got the team moving, he looked back to see Samson Lash still on his knees in the snow. Did the vice admiral fall at last, as Matthew took the coach around the curve to pass the burning barn and the house where the Autreys lay dead?

He wasn’t sure, but he did not look back again.

Thirty

Thirty

Night and the wind. The horses, exhausted, had slowed to a walk and would not be urged to go any faster. The driver too was exhausted, and he clung to the reins as if fearful of falling asleep and toppling from his perch, which was true.