Page 61 of The Journal of a Thousand Years
Only one of the doors on the landing was closed. She checked the other rooms, but all were empty. Alex stood to the side of the closed door, clutching his own gun. He signaled for me to stand back, then indicated that Willie should enter behind him.
She didn’t refuse, but she didn’t obey, either. She tested the doorknob. Finding it unlocked, she gently pushed open the door and peered through the gap.
“Gabe!” She shoved the door open and barged into the room.
Her loud cuss was like a punch to my heart.
Alex went to follow her, but got no further than the doorway. He put his hands in the air and swore, just as loudly as Willie. I turned to flee, but the click of a cocking gun stopped me dead in my tracks.
“You too, miss,” came a voice I’d never heard before. “Hands in the air where I can see them.”
I turned around to see Frank Alcott holding Willie and Alex at gunpoint. Behind him, a barely conscious Gabe sat on a rickety bed, strapped to the bedhead to keep him upright. His eyes were closed, and his face was as pale as his shirt, thrown over the back of a chair. A dented tin bowl was placed under his arm at the elbow. Blood dripped from a deep incision in his inner elbow into the bowl.
I ached to see him so vulnerable. But what truly scared me was his rapid breathing, and the fact the bowl was almost full. He didn’t have long.
CHAPTER 13
“Let him go!” I cried. “He’ll die if you don’t stop draining his blood.”
When Frank Alcott didn’t move, I tried to push past Alex and Willie to reach Gabe. Alex caught me, pinning my arms to my sides.
“Don’t,” he whispered in my ear. “We can’t lose you, too.”
Too.
I closed my eyes. I wouldn’t concede defeat. Gabe’s life was too precious. I loved him. I’d loved him from the moment I’d met him at the Royal Academy of Arts exhibition. I would do anything to save him.
But Alex was right. Rushing in would achieve nothing but a bullet in my head.
I opened my eyes, only to find myself staring into the barrel of Alcott’s gun. If there was a way to free Gabe and not sacrifice any of our lives to do so, I could not yet see it. I willed my mind to focus and not give in to the fog of fear and despair lurking at the edges.
Willie swore at Alcott. “Are you mad? You’re going to kill him!”
Alcott adjusted his grip on the gun. The former orderly didn’t look mad. Nor did he seem cruel. He looked like an ordinary man who was utterly convinced he was doing the right thing. “Stanley told me a man can lose a lot of blood without dying. He knows what he’s doing. He was a doctor before the war took everything from him.”
“He was a medicalstudent!” Willie snarled. “He wasn’t qualified.”
That appeared to be news to Alcott, but he didn’t lower the gun. “I am sorry, but I can’t let him go.”
“Why not?” Alex asked as he released me. “I just want to understand.” Compared to Willie, he sounded calm, and genuinely interested in Alcott. It was his way to lull a suspect to get them to lower their guard.
Alcott seemed relieved to have a chance to explain. “Mr. Glass is too important. His blood could be the key to unlocking the secret of his time magic.”
“That ain’t how magic works, you ignorant moron!” Willie cried.
Alex hissed at her to be quiet. She bit down on her lower lip in an attempt to stop it trembling. When her teeth released it, they left behind indentations.
“She’s right,” Alex told Alcott. “You can’t extract magic from a magician and transfer it into someone else along with the blood.”
“Stanley says it might be possible, but only testing the blood will give answers.”
“He’s not basing that on fact. Don’t believe him.”
“Itisbased on fact.”
“Gabe isn’t a magician, anyway.”
“Stanley says he is. He observed Mr. Glass in the trenches and realized he was saving himself somehow. Bullets and bombs didn’t hit him, or his friends. That was strange, but not thestrangest thing. You see, Mr. Glass would be in one spot then a blink of an eye later, after the bomb had gone off or the spray of bullets ended, he’d be somewhere else. Sometimes he’d even be in the enemy trench, having captured the Jerry shooting at them. No one knew how he got there. No one saw him move.”
