Page 138 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
“But I have an axe!”
“I’m perfectly capable with a sword. Please, get on the horse.” He slapped his thigh as an indication Léon should put his boot there, and Destroyer snuffled impatiently. “Fine.” With a small sigh, Léon swung his leg over Destroyer’s back, then reached a hand down for Henry.
Henry glanced over at Catherine, who remained there in her bloodied golden dress, just as though she didn’t see the least danger in the approach of the soldiers. He shot a desperate, loving look up at Léon. “I will always love you.” He whistled, and Destroyer responded uncontrollably.
He bolted towards an alley, but it wasn’t as though Léon hadn’t seen the possibility of Henry risking himself yet again. Before the animal could pick up speed, he leapt over his back and crunched down on the ground with incredible agility. “I cannot believe you would do that!”
Huffing out a frustrated breath, Henry grabbed his hand, pulling him for the shelter of the scaffold. “Can’t you? Really?”
“You’re too stupid to be true some days,” Léon sniped.
“Thanks, Ange. Every time you say it, I just find you more attractive.” He dashed behind a post. “We need those guns.”
“We don’t, actually,” said Léon. And he yelled up, “We’re clear! Mostly.”
“Get beneath me!” Catherine called down.
“What the hell are you doing?” Henry snapped. He ran for the stairs, but Léon caught him around the waist and dragged him backwards until they were directly beneath the guillotine.
“Go!” Léon yelled up.
“I have to get her down!” Henry struggled against him, but Léon held tight.
“Just watch.”
A tremor started beneath their feet, as if at the epicentre of an earthquake. It grew and grew and rumbled out in every direction across the square. Léon and Henry tumbled to the ground, but Henry was up fast, scrambling for the way out. Until what he saw between the planks froze him in place.
The soldiers, a great number now, swayed on their animals as the ground heaved. Some were thrown down, the horses stumbling to keep upright. Following their lead, Henry whistled, and others bolted. Almost all the riders dropped one way or another, due to the unceasing shaking or the animals.
The men raised themselves up, attempting to rally together, some fifty of them now, just a small portion of those who had gone to the square earlier that day. Confusion assailed them, and the only thing that made any sense in their befuddlement was the lone woman standing tall upon the scaffold, her fingers sparking blue at her side.
At the command of one of the officers, they raised their guns.
“No!” Henry cried, attempting to dash to her, as though he could stop bullets on her behalf. But Léon’s arms held him, then, as they always would.
The first shot went off, and the bullet returned directly to its owner, sunk straight between his eyes and deep into his brain.His was the fastest death. A volley of bullets flew, but with a raise of Catherine’s fingers, all fell swiftly to the ground with a clatter.
“What is she doing?” Henry uttered. “How did she learn this?”
“Souveraine,” Léon whispered. “They’ve been working together for months.”
“Souveraine can’t understand this. She can’t control it!”
“You don’t think so?” Léon’s head was close by Henry’s, and Henry felt the movement as his gaze shifted to a glistening off to their left.
How many Léon and Henry (but mostly Léon) had killed that morning could never be counted. They would have had to go by heads, given the many unidentifiable hacked pieces and entrails they left in their wake (particularly after Henry got his sword involved). Needless to say, the number was large, and therefore, the squelching, and the rolling, and the unprecedented horror was also enormous when those body parts began to congeal, to form themselves together in a gigantic blob that began to roll towards the soldiers.
They dropped their weapons. They fled in every direction as the writhing, pulsating horror of limbs and blood and screaming faces sloshed towards them. Whatever could be identified as hands reached out and grabbed anyone close enough, pulling them into the gore, silencing them forever in a suffocation of grotesquery.
“That’s horrific,” Henry whispered.
“Brilliant, isn’t it?” Léon grinned.
“You know,” Henry mused, “I did think she was holding on to some sort of trauma about that pit incident.”
“She seems to have found a way to work through it,” Léon reflected.
And so she had. That and the fear of the men who hauled her out of her cabin on the boat in the middle of the night whenthey sailed from England. The fear of a man who drugged her and tried to force her into marriage. The nightmare of prison and processing, of being condemned for a crime no one had any proof she had committed, which she’d only done in self defence.
