Chapter 10 - The Fall from Grace
CLICK.
Vance pulls the trigger a second time, but the firing pin strikes a dud cartridge—a side effect of the gun sitting in the damp mountain air for years without maintenance.
Before Vance can clear the jam, Jax closes the distance.
His large, scarred hand shoots out, grabbing the barrel of the silver revolver and crushing the cylinder within his grip, rendering the firearm completely useless. With his other hand, Jax grabs Vance by the lapels of his pristine white surgical coat, lifting the tall doctor two feet off the floorboards as if he weighed nothing at all.
Vance kicks his legs frantically in the air, his gold-rimmed glasses falling from his face and shattering on the wooden floor. "Wait! Please! I have money! Millions in offshore accounts in Geneva! I can give you everything! I can heal you!"
"You can't heal anything," Jax says, his voice flat, terrifyingly quiet, and final.
Jax turns, carrying the gasping, screaming doctor toward the shattered glass window of the observatory dome. Outside, thirty feet below, lies the frozen stone courtyard of the estate, covered in sharp, jagged ice formations and deep snowbanks.
"Please!" Vance sobs, his hands clawing uselessly at Jax’s bare, tattooed arms. "Think of the science! Think of what we could achieve!"
Jax looks down into Vance’s terrified, tear-streaked eyes. For twelve long years, Jax had carried the crushing weight of guilt, believing he had abandoned his sister to a lonely, tragic death. Now, holding the monster who had taken her life, the weight doesn't disappear, but it transforms into a blinding, righteous fury.
"My sister’s name was Sarah," Jax whispers into the howling wind.
Jax steps up to the ledge of the broken window frame. With a single, explosive thrust of his broad shoulders, he heaves Dr. Arthur Vance out into the empty, freezing air.
The doctor’s white surgical coat billows around him like the broken wings of a fallen bird as he plunges down through the swirling snowstorm. A single, terrified scream cuts through the night air, ending abruptly with a heavy, sickening THUD on the frozen courtyard stones thirty feet below.
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Silence returns to the high roof of Blackwood Manor, save for the wild, relentless howl of the winter wind blowing through the broken dome.
Jax stands on the ledge, his bare chest wet with rain and snow, the blood from his cheek dripping steadily onto his thermal shirt. He closes his eyes, taking one deep, long breath of the cold mountain air, feeling the ghost of his past finally rest in the quiet snow.
