Page 26 of The Book That Held Her Heart

Kerrol growled and Yute translated, “It seems you have company.”

Squinting down the unlit street with the last streetlamp to her rear Anne could barely make out the Hoffman sign, but now that Kerrol mentioned it, the clump of shadows beneath the sign could very well be a tight knot of people gathered at the door.

Even as she slowed to a halt, a match struck ahead of them, the glow momentarily illuminating a bowed head, someone else’s arm, a third person’s coat. And then, with almost surreal slowness, instead of dying away, the flame wrapped itself around something the size of a fist. A torch like the ones the soldiers carried in the night parade. In the pool of its glow maybe nine or ten men…no, at least one of them was a woman. A jeer went up, all of them focused on something beyond the bookshop’s windows.

“Grandfather!” Anne started forward, terrified, but not for herself. “They must have seen my grandfather!”

A huge hand closed over her shoulder, arresting her progress with a low accompanying growl. Anne opened her mouth in protest but the blast that followed was nothing of hers. The sound of falling glass filled the aftermath, tumbling into the street from the window beside the one broken the week before.

“Grandfather! They’ve shot him!” She fought to free herself, and failed.

“No,” Yute said. “That came from inside.”

And as he spoke, one of the men outside staggered backwards and fell into the road.

The innocent believe that there are boundaries over which our kind will not step. The complacent understand that there are walls of decency and conscience safeguarding our daily lives. Thick stone walls mortared with faith.

One Step to Hell, by Albus Saint

Chapter 13

Anne

“Grandfather!”

Anne’s scream was lost in the general outcry that filled the void as the gunshot faded. Some members of the crowd went to their knees beside the fallen man, tending him in the road. Many others took to their heels, while newcomers came from both ends of the road at a run. Lights went on in nearby flats above the offices that lined the street. Even as she drew breath Anne couldn’t help wondering at how violence close up made people back away, but at a distance they rushed towards it.

Those ignorant of the danger were saved from a rapid re-evaluation of their courage by one of the women in the thinning crowd shrieking, “He’s reloading!”

At which point the most emboldened of the mob began to climb in through the broken window, whilst another man kicked out the board from the neighbouring window, creating a less hazardous entrance.

The ten or so people rapidly swelled to a couple of dozen, and still Kerrol’s implacable strength kept Anne from rushing to her grandfather’s aid.

Anne turned to demand that Kerrol release her, resolving to bite his hand if he refused. Even in her distress, with no room for thoughts other than those surrounding her grandfather’s well-being, she was shocked to notice that the hand that so easily engulfed her upper arm had only three fingers—seemingly by design rather than through some amputation.

“That’s one of Oanold’s men.” Yute blinked in surprise.

Anne looked back towards the shop. The people had dragged someone out. A soldier, but not in a uniform she recognised. One of the men following him out was carrying an odd-looking rifle. The word “spy” rang out. A Jewish spy! It made no sense whatsoever. Who would come spying in army uniform, carrying a rifle? But the crowd devoured the suggestion and multiplied it.

“We should leave.” Yute turned towards the side street they’d arrived by.

“Let me go!” Anne tried once more to free herself. “My grandfather’s in there!”

Yute paused to stare at her. “What makes you say so?”

“I…” Shouts from the crowd distracted her. Angry cries, jeering, shouts of “hang him!”

“If he had arrived and found you missing, and you had not yet returned, would he sit and wait for you, or believe you might be in trouble and go to search for you?”

“He…” The thought of her grandfather out in the febrile town, looking for her, asking questions of the very sort of group that had gathered outside the shop, filled her with horror.

“Where would he think you might go?” Yute asked.

“To Nana Hoffman’s.” If Anne were in trouble she would go to her great-grandmother’s house. Her great-uncle, two uncles, an aunt, and four cousins all shared the matriarch’s roof.

More shouting echoed down the road. Kerrol drew her into the shadows of the side street. “Take us there then, and perhaps we will catch him.”

Anne nodded, though why these strangers should risk themselves further on her behalf she wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to abandon the shop either, but a glance that way showed the foreign soldier being beaten to the ground and kicked.

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