But at that very moment…
“Swish!” A force struck at Billy from behind.
Caught off guard, he was yanked to the floor.
The pain jolted his eyes open, and he saw a solid figure standing before him.
In one hand it held a tablecloth, sweeping it back and forth, and not one of those horrid leeches dared come closer.
Truly, one man could hold the pass against ten thousand.
A surge of admiration welled up in Billy.
This was what a real man should be!
Rebecca Chambers, worry in her eyes, kept her gaze on Ivan, the muzzle of her gun trained firmly on any gap the tablecloth might leave open.
That way she could back him up the instant he needed it.
And Ivan, standing in the eye of the storm, kept his gaze calm.
Whenever a leech tried to ambush him from some tricky angle, he blocked it in time with the cloth.
“Hiss!” The leeches feared the heat in the flames and let out shriller cries, but for all their effort they couldn’t break through the line Ivan held.
For a while the two sides stayed locked in stalemate.
Rebecca knew time wasn’t on their side.
The fire on the cloth grew larger by the second, and in half a minute at most it would reach Ivan’s hands…
Luckily, Billy was on his feet now and took a page from the same book, tearing another cloth off a nearby table.
Then he pulled out the lighter he’d found earlier in the train car and got ready to light it.
“Ah~a~a~” A hauntingly beautiful chant rose abruptly outside the window, in the storm-lashed, thunder-torn rain of the night.
The swarm of leeches facing Ivan suddenly receded like a tide, all of them turning toward the source of that song.
They crawled up onto the glass, baring their gruesome mouthparts, and cracks spread across the pane.
With a shattering crash, the glass gave way and broke across the floor.
Seizing the moment, Ivan ran to the window, dragging the tablecloth, and stuffed it straight into the gap the retreating swarm had left behind.
Raindrops fell and the flames died out.
Just then, lightning flashed and thunder rolled.
A man in a long white robe, his hair parted down the middle and hanging loose, stood bathed in the rainy night, meeting the eyes of Ivan and the others.
The swarm that had just left melted into his body like clay oxen sinking into the sea.
Billy frowned, his hand tightening on the cloth without thinking.
“Who is that?” No one could answer the question in Billy’s words.
Ivan only felt that the scene was somehow familiar, a memory named “leech” — he’d seen it, yet couldn’t grasp it.
On the far side, the man standing on the high slope to take “the children” home gave Ivan a long, deep look, then turned and vanished into the darkness.
Seeing the danger past, Rebecca lowered her gun and hurried to Ivan’s side.
Ivan turned his head to look at her and smiled.
Rebecca pressed her lips together and gently took his hand.
“Here, let me see.” Before Ivan could say a word, Rebecca had already laid his hand in her palm.
Seeing the charred marks on nearly all five fingers, her breathing lost its rhythm and her hands began to tremble faintly.
She lifted her head to look at Ivan, her lips pressing tighter, a sting rising in her eyes.
She dropped her head quickly and stroked his fingertips with her thumb.
“Does it hurt?” At that, Ivan’s other hand moved on instinct to touch his own face.
Rebecca felt the motion and stopped him at once.
“Don’t, it’s dirty.” Ivan froze his hand mid-air, but when he saw a tear track slide down the corner of Rebecca’s eye, he reached out on instinct to wipe it away.
Then he remembered how dirty his hand was, and it stopped halfway there.
To his surprise, Rebecca took his hand of her own accord and pressed it against her right cheek.
Seeing Ivan’s stunned look, she closed her eyes.
Beneath her long lashes, a smile rose from somewhere deep inside, carried the tears from her eyes, and turned them on those red lips into something sweet…
“Heh heh, didn’t expect that, did you~” After nuzzling into his palm, feeling that burning heat, Rebecca gently took Ivan’s hand.
“Come, sit down.” Ivan, his mind fuzzy, obediently sat in the chair as she told him.
Off to the side, Billy watched the scene in silence, his eyes softening, the corners of his mouth lifting on their own.
Rebecca crouched down in front of Ivan, took out ointment and bandages from her waist pack, and began tending his wounds.
Ivan’s gaze settled on her fingertips.
Her hands were light, light as if she were afraid of breaking something.
Whenever she sprayed the ointment on his fingertips or wrapped the bandage around the burns, her movements slowed even more.
So slow that Ivan felt a kind of itch — not on his fingertips.
It was somewhere in his chest he couldn’t quite place, like the tip of a cat’s tail had brushed across it.
Time drifted by slowly, and the itch made Ivan grip his trouser leg without thinking, let go, then grip again.
The rhythm followed each soft breath Rebecca blew across his burned fingertips.
She glanced up at him, her voice full of concern.
“It really hurts, doesn’t it.” Ivan shook his head, then nodded, then shook his head again.
Rebecca was a little confused.
“Pfft~” She laughed softly.
“Ivan, what’s wrong with you?” The words slipped out of him.
“Nothing, it’s just itchy inside, every time you blow on it.” After he said it, Ivan paused, as if he hadn’t expected to say such a thing.
His ears went a little red.
Rebecca paused too.
She lowered her head, looking at the last finger about to be bandaged.
The corners of her mouth curved up slowly.
She didn’t call him out on it, only moved even more gently, blowing on it a few more times.
And the tip of that cat’s tail in Ivan’s chest swayed all the faster.
“…” Some time later, the three-person team regrouped.
Billy walked up to Ivan, his expression solemn, his tone sincere.
“Thanks, brother.
I owe you my life.” Ivan said nothing, only stepped forward with a gentle look and patted his shoulder.
Feeling the gesture, even Billy’s stern face broke into a smile.
He curled his right hand into a fist and lightly bumped it against Ivan’s chest.
Then Billy picked up the briefcase resting by his feet.
“This is what I just found on the train.” He set the briefcase on the table and, facing the searching looks of the other two, pointed at its surface.
“Look here, there are two round slots.” Rebecca bent down and looked closely.
“You mean, if we want to open it, we have to find the matching items first?” Billy nodded.
“Right.
From the look of it, whatever’s inside is probably no simple thing.” Ivan stepped forward too now, studying the whole structure of the briefcase, lost in thought.
Then, as if something had struck him, his eyes lit up.
“Billy, you got a knife?” Billy couldn’t guess what Ivan had in mind, but the moment he heard the request he pulled a tactical dagger from his waist.
He handed it over to Ivan.
Ivan took the knife and pressed it against various spots on the briefcase, hoping to get a rough sense of what lay inside.
Seeing this, both Billy and Rebecca instantly caught on to his idea.
Sure enough, once the “blind men feeling out the elephant” was more or less done, Ivan brought the knife down.
“Riiip.” The blade sliced the leather open.
Ivan’s hand was steady, every line cut dead straight.
Before long, a square opening appeared before them all.
And the contents of the briefcase lay in plain view.