Jack Daw Part Eight (Conclusion?)

Madame Brevity’s burned with a jaunty yellow flame, as if the flames were having a good time at their work.
The whores looked less amused.
They had been rousted out of their warm beds in the wee hours of the morning, told to get what they could carry, and hurried out of the building as the first flames started showing on the outside. Now the whole first floor was consumed, and the few people who had roused to help were incapable of stemming the blaze. Fortunately, there were no houses close enough to catch as well, but Madame Brevity’s was doomed.
At the beginning, the man who had rousted them up (an evil-looking one, to be sure) had dug like a madman, throwing pails of dirt to the girls, who had feebly shaken them out on the very edges of the flames. In fact, he had dug so vigorously that there had been a minor collapse near one of the foundations in the back, and he had ceased shortly thereafter.
He had also run inside, to get a few things out for the girls, and they had heard him banging around inside, only running out when the fire got so close to the door that he had to leave or burn. His fierce beard had been steaming when he came out, and the scar on his cheek was livid in the hot firelight. But he had been grinning, and he handed the stuffed doll he carried to a grateful whore with a nod.
And then he had stood and watched, for nearly a half an hour, while the house collapsed with shrill noises that sounded almost like screams…
*******
“That’s all I saw of him, Inspector Bentley. He had a big scar and a bushy black beard, just like I said. You couldn’t miss him. He was about your height, and he looked nice enough, before… before- ”
The whore couldn’t finish the sentence, and Bentley nodded distractedly and waved her out. She clutched a stuffed doll, half-soaked in blood, and it dripped a trail on his clean floor as she left. There it mingled with the mud and blood of 6 other whores and 4 concerned citizens that he had seen before her.
There was no doubt. All of the stories matched, and it had to have been the work of Jack Daw. Bentley smiled a grim little smile inside, but no trace of it showed on his face. Ludovico had taken him in once, but he would catch him, and there would be a reckoning. A reckoning, and then a hanging.
*******
Ludovico ran like he had never run before, but he could never run fast enough to escape his mind, and that was what hunted him now.

Flashes of it kept coming back to him.
Sneaking into Madame Brevity’s to set the fire, he had listened carefully and heard the very soft murmur of voices below. He had hidden bottles of oil in appropriate places, then set fire to the curtains that covered the back windows. There it would take a while to catch the rest of the house, if no one helped it along, but it would look impressive. He ran up to warn the whores and move them out, and on the way out managed to kick a few of the bottles over, towards the back wall.
Outside, he had made first to collapse the entry tunnel, knowing that what dirt he gave to the whores would be ineffectual. Once that was done he ran back inside to cover Sam’s Seaside’s internal exit, sliding a heavy couch over it, then nailing the couch to the door with a few well-placed swings. Then he had knocked over the rest of the oil and beat a hasty retreat as the whole place blazed up.
He knew that there was no way out for those below, and the thought gave him pleasure.

As he ran tree limbs beat at him, whipping him across the face and arms, but they had no more effect than would the punches of an underfed whore.
He ran, but the screams followed him.

When the roof started to collapse he knew it was over. There was no escape, and he knew the screams for what they were, coming from the trapped men below. But they were muffled, and he told the crowd that wood made strange snaps and noises when it burned. They soon enough cut off anyway.
After a few minutes more he decided that it would be good to leave before anyone started asking awkward questions, and he started to ease back through the crowd, but he was halted dead by a faint movement in the flames…

He no longer knew where he was, or cared. He couldn’t get the voices out of his head. The shadows around him grew longer and longer, and he stumbled, exhausted, into the deepening night…

The man with the cane stepped from the flames, and Ludovico’s eyes widened. He was untouched by the furnace around him, and his mask gleamed oddly in the light. He paused at the edge of the building, as timbers tumbled behind him and sparks blazed high into the air. His clothing was immaculate, as Ludovico had last seen him, and finally he stalked forward out of the fire… straight towards the part of the crowd where Ludovico stood.
Ludovico started to speak, to deny what was happening before him, he knew not what, but he was interrupted before he even started, as other figures stalked from the inferno. There was the one who had held his arms, there the one who had chuckled at his struggles. The man who had warned them all to the presence of Bentley’s guards held a nasty-looking hook with a bladed inner edge.
“Jack Daw,” they said, and nothing more.
“Jack Daw.”
Jack drew his blade, his short sword that had served him so well in so many fights before, but he could barely raise it against the terror that stalked towards him.
“Jack Daw.” The chant grated at his very being.
They surrounded him, mingling with the crowd, the too-silent crowd.
‘Magic,’ his mind gibbered at him, and then fled, shrieking.
Instinct took over.
He swung, wildly, at the figures around him. They were hazy and indistinct, but he swung nonetheless, and felt his blade bite into flesh.
Finally, there was shouting, and screams, but the chant continued.
“Jack Daw.”
He cut them down, and down, and down, but the chant continued.
“Jack Daw.”
He saw a doll, drenched in its former owner’s arterial blood, and he checked his swing at the last second.
Around him lay bodies, so many bodies. Whores, and civilians. But the criminals he had been trying to kill still stood, untouched... Indistinct. And the chant continued, though no living mouths formed the words.
“Jack Daw.”

He fled, into the dawn.

He fled, into the darkness.