“I doubt that very much,” she said. She tested the weight of the valise, grateful for the heavy books that had made carrying it so inconvenient during her visit to San Francisco. She turned to the boy. “Don’t be afraid, mein Junge. I will help you.”
A large, dirty fist thrust itself into the air before Johanna’s face. “You better help yerself.”
“I generally do,” she said. “I’ve dealt with worse than you.”
He stared at her, as if she’d gone quite mad. Most of the denizens of the surrounding neighborhood must run in terror of this bully; he wouldn’t be used to defiance. He had surely never faced those cursed by true madness. She had. And though her heart was beating hard and her hands were sweaty inside her gloves, neither madman nor bully would see anything but calm competence in the visage of Dr. Johanna Schell.
Calm competence was usually enough. It reduced hostility in the vast majority of the patients she’d dealt with in her father’s private asylum. Even the most unruly of the residents had learned she was no frail girl to be intimidated.
This man was not one of the majority. He stepped close enough that his breath washed over her face in a nauseating cloud. “Looks like I’m gonna have to teach you a lesson… Doctor,” he sneered.
The weight of the books in the valise was much less comforting than it had been a few moments ago. Johanna calculated the best angle of attack. Striking at his face was out of the question. His genitals, however…
“Run, boy,” she urged the cowering child. “Run for help.”
“Run, an’ I’ll kill you,” the man said. “You hear me, boy? Ye’re gonna stay and watch.” His attention turned to his son just long enough. Johanna swung the valise. It connected. The ruffian grunted in pain and shock. He staggered and flung out his arm, hitting Johanna across the temple. She fell, dazed, as he pulled a knife from the waistband of his trousers and lunged for her.
The knife never reached its goal. Out of the shadows of the nearest alleyway, a dark shape flashed in front of Johanna and seized the bully’s wrist. Johanna pushed up onto her elbows, struggling to make sense of what she witnessed.
She couldn’t. The shape—the man, whose face remained only a blur—moved too quickly. He flexed the drunkard’s arm back at an impossible angle. The knife spun into the dirt.
Now it was the bully who crouched, mewling in fear. The boy had already fled. Johanna’s deliverer bestowed as little mercy as the bully had shown his own son. His fist struck like a piston, driving the drunkard onto his back. A second blow followed, and then another.
“You’ll kill him!” Johanna shouted, finding her voice. “Bitte—”
The avenging angel stopped. Johanna caught a glimpse of gentleman’s clothing that had seen better days, a body lean and tall… and eyes, their color indistinguishable behind a glare of absolute hatred.
The bully had met his match. This phantom would kill him, without remorse. He reached down to finish the job.
Johanna scrambled to her feet. “Please,” she repeated. “Don’t kill him, not on my behalf. The boy is safe. Let him go.”
She had no way of knowing why the phantom had attacked, if it were for her sake, or the boy’s, or some unknown motive of his own. But he paused again, and in that moment Johanna heard the choked sobs of the child she’d thought safely gone. He watched from the corner of a shack, his fist in his mouth, his bruised face white as a beacon.
“For the boy’s sake,” Johanna said, holding out her hand in supplication. She backed away until she stood beside the boy, reached out to gather him against her side. “Please. Go.”
The man straightened. Again she glimpsed his eyes, enough of his face under a stubble of beard to recognize what might have been a kind of coarse handsomeness. Then he hunched over, blending into the shadows. His prey gave one last squeak of terror, a mouse left half-alive by the cat. And the avenger leaped back into the alley from which he’d come.