Bishop turned and Cobra struck.
The outlaw had the bayonet in his hand. He brought it up from down low to drive it into Bishop’s guts. Bishop, still coming around to face the killer, pulled his belly out of the way. The blade slashed past him, just past him, catching a hunk of his jacket, carving a deep gash in the leather.
Bishop was nearly on tiptoe, off balance. Still, he managed to drive his elbow into Cobra’s mutilated cheek. The blow didn’t have much force behind it, but the outlaw’s wounds were still raw. Cobra let out a quick shriek. He staggered back, clutching the place where his left eye had been.
But Bishop lost his footing. He stumbled. His legs tangled over one of the boxes on the floor. He fell, crashing down on top of the box, rolling off it, smacking shoulder first into the wooden boards.
A manic rattle of thunder wiped away every other sound. Bishop—his movements hemmed in by the stacks of boxes, his heart all fear and rage, all panic and a vicious fury—twisted onto his back as fast as he could, trying desperately to see the next attack.
He saw—he got one good look.
He saw Honey. She was pressed against the wall. She had one hand up as if for protection. The other was still holding the flashlight, letting it droop, forgotten, in her fingers. Bishop could see her elegant, chiseled, ivory features shiny with sweat. Her lips were parted, her breath came quick, her eyes were blurry with excitement. All her attention was inward, alert to her own sensations, the thrill of it all.
Cobra was in front of her. He had just recovered from the blow to his face, was just steadying himself to locate Bishop on the floor. The light from the flash came up from under him and cast him in a weird play of clarity and shadow. For that one moment, in that dancing glare, Bishop saw his face, what was left of his face. The right side was as it had been, all intact. The remains of his thin lips were twisted upward there, and the angular crags rose from the sharp point of his smile to the sharp point of his widow’s peak. His hair was in disarray and spilled down over his brow, and through it stared one piercing emerald eye.
The other side of his face was raw flesh, ripped asunder, gouged out and only half-repaired by whatever renegade sawbones had kept him alive. Black stitches wove through the red underskin, and something that had once been his other eye was now a red-black hole. His grin, his whole expression, his outward self, appeared to fade here into gory nothingness—and yet even that nothingness crawled with living hatred as he brought the bayonet to bear.
The rattling thunder rose and crashed. Cobra rushed at the fallen Bishop. Honey let out a sweet, sharp cry. The Maglite slipped from her fingers, hit the floor, went out. For a single instant, Bishop saw Cobra driving the bayonet down toward him. Then nothing, there was nothing, no light at all, pitch darkness.
Blind, frantic, Bishop scuttled back wildly. His head struck the wall behind him. His hand went out and found a stack of boxes. With a fierce heave, he toppled the stack over, sent the boxes flying in the direction he’d seen Cobra last. He heard them hit the oncoming body. He heard Cobra grunt. By then he was already twisting his body away, pulling his legs up, fighting to get his knees under him, pushing off the floor with his hands to get to his feet.
He staggered upright. Cobra grabbed him. The oudaw’s groping hand found his shoulder and clutched leather. Bishop knew the blade was coming at him but he couldn’t see it, couldn’t see anything. He spun in the outlaw’s grasp and drove his shoulder into black space. He felt himself connect with Cobra, hard. He felt Cobra go down and he went down with him, grappling with the invisible adversary, waiting for the driving point of the bayonet to come for him out of the black nowhere.
Cobra and Bishop crashed into the boxes, then crashed to the floor. Cobra was still clutching Bishop’s jacket. Bishop pulled away with all his might, desperate to get clear. He rolled free. He jumped up. But Cobra was up, too.
The outlaw must’ve slashed out blind. This time, he managed to bring the blade slicing across Bishop’s front, so close that Bishop felt the whisper of it on his naked throat. Then the edge of the thing sliced through his right shoulder and the coal-blackness went blood-red with pain.
Bishop let out a growling scream. His rage flared and his panic flared and he wanted to bust up everything. He felt the point of the bayonet snagged in his jacket. He found Cobra’s wrist with his left hand, clamped it fast. The pressure dug the bayonet edge back into Bishop’s gashed shoulder, and the detective screamed again as his whole body became one shattered nerve.
Then, with the force of his agony and anger, he pistoned his stiffened hand into the darkness, knowing where Cobra’s face should be. The blow struck home. He felt a ferocity just like joy as his fingertips buried themselves in the mutilated flesh.
Cobra let out a wild, high howl. His body twisted violently. At the same time, the pain became too much for Bishop and he lost his grip. Cobra spun away from him and vanished again in the pitch-black.
Bishop crouched low, peered hard into blind space. His shoulder throbbed and burned and he could feel the blood coursing out of it. He tried to keep from sobbing with the searing pain, tried to keep his breath as quiet as he could so Cobra wouldn’t hear him. And he listened, listened with his whole furious self, trying to place Cobra by the sound of his ragged, agonized panting.
But he was lost now, disoriented. He had no idea where he was standing in the room. A swirling vertigo was making a slow whirlpool in his head. He wavered where he stood. He knew if he could just stay alive another second, maybe two, his eyes would adjust. He’d see the window, the door, maybe even make out the shadowy shape of his adversary.
But Cobra also crouched in the dark, clutching the bayonet, waiting for the same moment. And as Bishop scanned the nothingness, searching for him, he realized it was Cobra who had the upper hand.
Bishop was crouching there, listening, peering. He heard Cobra breathing, moving. He heard his own heart pound. He heard the rain lashing at the window. He heard the wind lashing at the rain. By those sounds, bit by bit, he became aware that the window was just behind him, just off his left shoulder. He realized that if Cobra got into the right position, he—Bishop—would be visible: a silhouette against the window, against the slightly lighter dark of the night outside.
At the same instant the thought occurred to him, he knew it had happened: Cobra had found him. He heard the outlaw’s breath catch on a grunt of effort. He heard the scrape of Cobra’s boots as he rushed forward. For one terrible instant, he knew Cobra was charging at him, invisible, hurtling out of the blackness, impossible to see.
Then lighting struck again. The room flickered with a long, stark silver flash. In the momentary strobic glare, Bishop saw the monstrous face, maimed on one side, twisted on the other like the mirror of his own rage and hatred. It went white and black and white and black in the lightning and it was almost on top of him—then it was gone in the darkness.
Cobra roared and drove the bayonet at Bishop’s body. Bishop, having seen him, was able to pivot out of the way. He caught hold of the outlaw’s neck as he flew past. He hurled him headlong into the window.
The glass exploded into the night as Cobra crashed into it. The furious storm exploded into the room, washing Bishop’s face with rain. Bishop, still turning, was alongside the outlaw now, clutching his neck, bracing his forearm against his back. Before Cobra could even start to struggle, Bishop used all his weight to drive him downward.
The outlaw’s face smashed full force into the bottom half of the broken window. Over the rising wail of the wind, Bishop heard the thick, wet, unmistakable noise of sharp points driven into flesh.
Cobra never screamed. He just gagged, just thrashed and spasmed under Bishop’s weight. Bishop heard the bayonet drop heavily to the floor. Cobra’s body twitched and then went still.
The wind blew the rain in. The rain pattered against Bishop’s leather, ran down. Bishop let go of Cobra’s body. It slid off the windowsill and collapsed at his feet.
Bishop stood up, breathing hard. That was the end of it.