Chapter 49: Prison City [Part 3]
She didn't know why she was apologizing — but the simple act of seeing Evelyn appear in the mist made her think about everything. She was hurt, once again on the edge of a breakdown, and had simply been about to push forward despite it. Even after Evelyn and Victoria had advised her to calm down, here she was again…
Was this the reason everything always ended so badly? From the moment she arrived in this world and took Bonnie's place, things had done nothing but get worse. She knew this was part of an outlaw's luck — things could go very well or very badly — but with her, it always seemed to go wrong.
And now what was left? Crying like a child in front of the people who had reached out to her even in difficult circumstances? She felt like she was throwing a tantrum just because nothing was going the way she wanted.
Lady pulled her hand back — Bonnie hadn't taken it. She looked at Evelyn, hoping she could do something. Thieving Cat didn't hesitate to take one more step forward. While Victoria remained sternly silent, the outlaw Bonnie had grown so close to crouched down, took off her hat, and ran her hand gently through Bonnie's hair.
That warm hand — with a few small calluses across its surface — was just as comforting as it had been that night at the circus. There in the thick mist, her racing heart settled down. Her crying faded out.
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And even as Scaramuccia fled from the coyotes and Bonnie suffered the consequences of the mysterious Prison City, something that could only be called sinister was taking place inside the church. Sheriff Marcus sat in one of the many pews, holding in his hands the same charm that Rosa wore around her neck. His eyes stared into the distance, glowing faint with their color — but then they shifted right, then left. He was tracking something with his gaze.
At the church entrance, Sunday and Rosa watched the man do his work, whispering about it as though a Hunter's senses wouldn't be more than enough to hear them.
"I can't believe the sheriff was here all along and you had no idea, Father Sunday."
"Rosa, I wasn't in the church early in the morning. How was I supposed to know this man would show up out of nowhere? On top of that — why didn't you tell me sooner?! For the love of God, sometimes you are impossibly stubborn."
"I told you many times. But you don't listen to me. You never do."
The old man couldn't argue with that. He sighed and accepted the defeat. Right then, Marcus let out a brief laugh that drew both their eyes. With a calm gesture, he lifted the charm into the air — it came with a fine silver chain that coiled around his forearm. That was the Assimilation Frame.
Rosa's expression turned slightly envious at the sight of the object in the sheriff's hands.
"He uses the Frame far too well," she said.
"Amplifying his Ballad's abilities suits him. It would suit anyone, don't you think?" Sunday answered with a knowing look at Rosa.
She quickly looked away, embarrassed. That brought the old man's gaze back to Marcus, who had closed his eyes and was pressing the charm tightly in his fist. Outside, the mist grew so thick it could be seen seeping in through the small windows in the far corners of the building, carried on a soft, cold current.
The candles lighting the room trembled in response to the shift in the air, and every resident of the city felt a chill run through them. Some looked out their windows — though they couldn't see any mist or coyotes running through the streets. But from the eyes of the one being hunted, all of it was real — hidden inside the black mist.
He looked more desperate than before. Even exhausted. He had been running from the sheriff without stop since the previous night, so the fatigue came as no surprise. The shadows around him, the dark mist, and the voices were all beginning to dim as a result. He couldn't even hide inside someone else's house — those canine puppets would be waiting for him there.
It was only a matter of time before that man managed to catch him. Even so, Scaramuccia made one final attempt. He ran with everything he had toward the farthest end of the city, where the mist prison ended in a perfect, straight wall rising to the sky.
He stopped in the middle of the street and breathed deep. Then he threw himself at the wall where the mist ended. When his body crossed through to the other side, hundreds of thousands of hungry coyotes were waiting for him, watching with an eerie calm, their unsettling white eyes staring back.
The nearest one growled and stepped forward.
The jester's breath caught. For a few seconds, he looked at all those creatures staring right back at him — hungry predators waiting patiently for whoever would become the prey.
Scaramuccia stepped back, his jester's shoe scraping softly against the ground. Unconsciously, step by step, retreat by retreat, he moved back inside the prison. The mist flooded his field of vision — and so did a feeling rooted at the deepest part of his heart: his own cowardice.
A growl. A step. A bark. The other coyotes had caught up to him. They lined up side by side, ready to attack. Scaramuccia looked at them over his shoulder — confused, exhausted. His teeth ground together, his fists bled. He opened his palms, and between the glittering paper, his two daggers appeared.
The expression on his face, buried in the mist, was erased by his purple eyes — which blinked once, into nothing.
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After telling the others what had happened with Scaramuccia — and after Evelyn wrapped the wound on her leg over her clothing to keep it from bleeding further — Bonnie leaned against the wall and looked out at the mist.
"You can all see it too, right?"
"You mean the sinister fog that no one else around us seems to be able to see?" Evelyn said. She was clearly going for a joke — but noticing that Bonnie wasn't in the mood for it, she sighed and went on. "I had Cat keeping an eye on you in case something went wrong. When I saw the mist appear, I got Victoria and Lady — but by the time we came to get you, the jester showed up and saved you himself."
"I see…" Bonnie answered.
Victoria leaned back against the wall. Drinking from her flask, she looked out toward the edge of the alley and said:
"This is Marcus's doing. Only he could pull off something like this. He's always been good with traps — especially when supernatural powers are involved. That jester has no chance. Once you're caught in that man's trap, there's no escaping his teeth."
Lady glanced at the wound on Bonnie's leg and added:
"He uses something similar to what Evelyn uses."
"Except a thousand times better," Thieving Cat cut in. "And if we can see everything that's happening, that means we're trapped in here too."
'Trapped here… Scaramuccia didn't even have time to rest. Which means if those coyotes come looking, they'll probably go after us too. On the other hand, now I understand why those people watching from their windows didn't try to help me. From their perspective, I was just some lunatic fighting by herself in the middle of the night.'
This "prison" only affected followers of the Ballads. Maybe Marcus hadn't accounted for the possibility that other Desert Ballad followers might be in the city — which made Bonnie and the others an unexpected variable in his plan. That wasn't good, and it affected them directly.
'Since we're caught up in this, we won't be able to leave the city until Scaramuccia is captured and the Sheriff decides to lift the mist and call off the coyotes. To make that happen, maybe we should… No, I can't do that. That's not who I am…' she thought over the course of several long seconds, until those thoughts made her frown. 'But he's to blame. I can't afford to let someone else be the one who catches him.'
So she got to her feet. The others looked at her with expressions of genuine confusion.
"I think I'm going to keep going with this. I need to catch Scaramuccia. I'll deliver him to the Sheriff myself."
That was the only way.