‘That the best you can do?’ I gasped. ‘I’m busted, knackered and rattling to all hell. Best chance you’re gonna get, and all you can manage is this? Pathetic…’
Coyle responded with a left hook to my jaw that nearly knocked me into the next life. ‘Gonna fuckin’ kill you now. Then I’m killing her,’ he panted, and dived on me, sending us both crashing to the floor. I managed to roll on top of him, and pummelled him with everything I had left, until his whole face was painted scarlet. All the while he was raining blows on my head and chest, roaring curses that became less and less intelligible with each breath, and doing his best to finish me.
Coyle fumbled amongst the fragments of shattered glass and grabbed the remains of the oil lamp, now nothing more than a brass base with a few jagged shards still attached. He wrapped his bloodied fist around it and brought it up to smack me hard across the temple, and I knew that I wouldn’t last much longer now he’d found his weapon of choice. I slumped backwards, stunned, and he used the opportunity to throw me onto my back.
‘You ever heard of foreplay?’ I spat a fine spray of blood over him as I spoke, and realised he’d managed to knock one of my back teeth out.
‘Dirty bastard! Fuckin’ AIDS all over my face!’ Coyle raised his hand, and this time he held the broken lamp like a dagger, with the slivers of glass pointing at my throat. I twisted my head to the side as he brought his improvised knife down and sliced my cheek open. He lifted his hand again, and this time I knew he would cut my throat, and I didn’t have the strength left to stop him.
All I could think was that I had been so close. I’d been an hour away from leaving this shithole, and now the great, hulking, stinking son of a bitch was about to take everything away. I wanted to be with Lilith, and feel the warmth of Spain begin to thaw my aching bones, and I wanted a life where I could wander down a street hand-in-hand and buy a beer with her whilst we watched the sun set, and every other dumb, trite cliché that came with being happy.
‘Not. Fucking. Fair!’ With my last iota of strength I grabbed Coyle’s wrist as he made his move, and kicked out so that we fell against each other. Now I was above him again. I twisted the lamp in his hands even as he roared with incoherent rage, and fell on top of him, spent, as the longest fragment of glass plunged deep into his right eye. I left him screaming like a snared rabbit and scrabbling on the flagstones, and dragged myself over to Lilith.
The whole chamber was filled with choking black smoke now, and the wooden timbers in the roof were beginning to smoulder as the flames leapt from the remains of the bed. My chest burned with each breath, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep going, let alone Lilith.
I loosened the straps at her wrists and we tumbled to the floor. I had to hold my fingers to her lips to see if she was still breathing; I couldn’t see straight from the smoke and the battering I’d just taken from Coyle, and the desperate little gasps she was making didn’t fill me with any hope. I pulled her near-lifeless form towards me as though I could keep the smoke and flames from touching her just by holding her close, and shut my eyes. Numberless stars sparked behind my eyelids as Lilith slid her hand into mine and gave it the gentlest squeeze.
*****
My first thought was snakes, which didn’t make any sense at all, but the incessant, deafening hissing could only be snakes. Then I was covered in freezing mist, and someone threw a sheet over me and I was coughing hard enough to bust a lung and Henry bloody Masterson was screaming in my ear as he ran past me with a fire extinguisher to keep the flames at bay for a few more precious seconds.
‘Oh, you daft, reckless young bugger.’ Sergeant Ed bent down. ‘Come on, lad – time to get out of here before the whole place goes up, eh? Henry reckons this blanket’s fireproof, but I’d rather not put it to the test.’ He lifted me up and I tried to fight him off, but I was too busy coughing up my ring.
‘Lilith…’ I gasped.
‘Henry and Nat have got her. It’s fine. It’s all going to be fine. The air ambulance has been scrambled for the pair of you – didn’t think either of you would come out of this one particularly well. Now do me a favour and keep still, will you? Those steps are going to bloody ruin my knees.’
‘I can make my own fuckin’ way…’ I began, and then the darkness closed in, soft as velvet. I was vaguely aware of Ed catching me as I fell, and nothing more.