The grail of clockwork and death

Chapter X

“Jayson?” Dakoda breaths out hot tears streaming down her face as her heart aches as her mind whirls trying to make sense of the situation.

“Dakoda,” He simply replies with a hint of a smirk. His hands in his pockets and his demeanour calm and collected.

“But… Mother and father… Everyone assumed you were killed! I fought for years! Told them otherwise, I was sent to the asylum! Because they all thought the trauma of losing my whole family had caused me to lose my mind!” She screams as she stood glaring at her elder sibling with a look of pure hatred. Her hands clasp into fists as rage courses through her, memories of her time in the asylum flashing through her mind causing a tremble to run down her spin at the thoughts of the dirty cell-like room which they had locked her in ‘for her own safety’. Her face softens and she looks down, her eyes start to water until eventually, tears are dripping down her face and into the muddy dirt of the alley ground. The sudden realization of the events of the past few months hitting her like a steam-carriage. Many of her friends, family and acquaintances were now dead, all the others would be fairly much the same had she not stopped her brother's evil doings.

“Why?” she sobs. “Why did you have to kill everyone?”

“Because I had no choice, they would have done to you what they did to her!” He screams back. After glancing at the look of petrified terror upon Dakoda's face his shoulders slouch forward and he sighs. Fiddling with whatever he could to keep his nimble fingers in motion he looks away from her.

“They… It had to be done… I had no choice,” He whispers with a trembling voice.

“What in the name of Hell would warrant the murder of six people!” Dakoda hisses in anger.

“Nine,” was his almost inaudible reply. Dakoda gives him a strange look for the mumble.

“Nine?” she repeats slowly, taking a cautious step towards him she blinks back another round of tears which threatened to spill “NINE?” she yells, furious. Once again taking up her habit of pacing Dakoda breathes heavily while trying to wrap her head around the new information.

“Who?” she demands quietly as she comes to a stand still just slightly further away from him. After a weary pause and glance in her direction, he answers.

“Lady Roberts…” Jayson breathes out, “I'm not happy that she had to die, But She caught me at a time which I could not risk being exposed,” he whispers

“I… I had a suspicion that the circumstances of Lady Roberts death were strange… but,” Dakoda mutters biting her lip. Once again glaring

“Who else?” she asks quietly. Jayson avoids her gaze and keeps his eyes low while his hands fidget with the button holes of his coat.

“WHO ELSE DID YOU KILL!?” Dakoda screams pulling the knife free from her belt and throwing it at a crate beside them in order to relieve some of the anger and tension from in her veins. After calming down slightly she stomps up to the weapon and yanks it free so not to leave it within reach of her brothers grasp.

“Mother and father…” he mutters weakly as though embarrassed.

“What?” Dakoda asks pausing to hear his confirmation, with wide eyes and slim hopes that she did not hear what she thought she had heard. With a slight scowl and eyes, narrow Jayson looks up at her.

“I killed our parents, to save you!” he hisses. Running her hands through her hair causing it to take on a dishevelled appearance she starts to pace around.

“Our parents… you killed… so… I was right, when I told Inspector Keeland it was murder I was right,” she mumbles almost incoherently. With thoughts racing and pieces seemingly clicking into place as all her repressed memories of the night come storming back bursting down the walls she had barricaded in her mind.

“Why…?” she whispers. Jayson takes a step closer to her only pausing when she pulls her gun back out and aims it between his eyes.

“I am assuming… that if you have been watching me since the first murder… You know how well I can aim,” she whispers harshly with narrow eyes. Her hands, for the first time all night, as still and motionless as a statue.

“Yes I do, hence why I am no longer moving,” he replies with an attempt at a smile and his hands slightly raised in a surrender. Dakoda snarls before warily observing her brother, he had aged well from what she could tell, no grey hairs, a relatively handsome appearance. She assumed had he not turned into a psychopathic killer then he would probably settle down and married a nice young lady by now.

“Why did you do it? She enquiries as her thoughts suddenly turn to Virgil, her beloved Virgil. Jayson sighs and cautiously moves to sit down on one of the creates.

“Because, Mother and Father were the leaders of their little ‘group’ although if you ask me it seemed more like a cult,” he mutters sourly. “You may not remember but we use to have a different maid each week, I got suspicious of that. When she disappeared, that was when I started watching out for things that seemed odd or out of place. Like all the medical journals in father's study, or the hushed tones they would use whenever someone would come in, the exchanges of money… everything they did seemed so strange. They were watchmakers, How many other watchmakers earn as much as our family did?” He explains frantically in a rushed tone, Dakoda noted that he was starting to sound like one of the patients she had to meet at the asylum, rambling on about all sorts of strange conspiracies and making stories that seemed to make almost no sense. But on the contrary, Dakoda realized with a slight start that what Jayson was saying was true, Their parents had done all that he had just said, And they always had been and still were the only family in London to earn this much money for their timepieces, Dakoda had always assumed that was to do with the quality of craftsmanship, but even she had to admit she had thought on multiple occasions that her parents must have overpriced some pieces in order to keep up their ‘noble’ lives. One of the many reasons she had such little staff working for her at home was because even with the amount she makes from her clocks and timepieces she could never actually afford to comfortably hire and house any more than the servants she already had.

“Judging by the expression you have no argument against these claims now do you?” Jayson chuckles.

“Even If they did overprice some of the items in the shop, or sell faulty timepieces at regular price...or anything along that line, That was no excuse to kill them, no excuse to steal not only my childhood but my happiness in past, present and future times…” she whispers avoiding his glaring gaze.

“I had no intention of making you unhappy, Everything I did, I did it to protect you, to keep you safe and happy,” Jayson mutters distraught by the idea of her implications of sadness.

“Did it to make me happy? To protect me?!” she scoffs with her nose crinkled up in disgust

“You killed our parents then ran away and abandoned me when I was eight years old! And I have left a child, and orphan with a title who would ramble on about murder and such because I could not face the idea that it had been because of a robbery went wrong or a kidnapping which resulted in their death because they got in the way! I was sent to an asylum because they thought I had lost my mind! And now all these years later you return and you murder my friends, acquaintances and my fiance! Just when I was starting to get over it all, to move on from my past! You come back and tear that small hope of happiness away from me!” she screeches tears streaming down her cheeks from her puffy red and irritated eyes.

She turns to him snarling

“But it's ok! Because you never meant to hurt me! Or to leave me alone and unprotected!” she hisses.

“I am sincerely sorry, Sister Dearest,” Jayson frowns. Within seconds Dakoda had dashed forward till she was only a hairs breaths away from him, pulling him down to her level by the lapels of his coat she stares him dead in the eyes, with a blind fury flaring from her own.

“Sorry, Does not bring them back! Not mother or father, not Lady Roberts… Not Virgil... Sorry does not undo that which you have done!” she furiously snarls grinding her teeth in anger. Taking a step back Jayson narrows his eyes at her.

“Why would you want it undone?! They were evil!” he hisses. “The things that they did would have given you nightmares!”

“Might have, They might have given me nightmares or restless nights if I had actually known what in the hell it was that the did! But I do not and I was not even aware of it until now so you are asking me to accept what you have done on the basis that had I ever found out what this evil activity they were partaking in! That it would have given me nightmares!?” she shrieks

“I have saved you from the possibility of that happening, although now I suppose I must explain it to you,” he sighs

“Saved me? You think you have saved me from nightmares of what might have only possibly caused me nightmares!? Everything you have done has caused me nothing but pain and trouble! I can not sleep at night without the paranoid feeling of waking up to another sight such as my own mother and father laying in a pool of their own blood, I can not celebrate the day of my birth without having horrible memories of that morning! Every night when I go to be I remember the time I spent in that bloody Asylum! Their deaths tormented my whole life and then just as I was finally starting to recover and get better! Just as the pain was fading and the scars healing?! you come back and kill everyone else!” she screams he hand subconsciously brushing over the scars on her thigh as her heart grows heavy for a moment.

“You say you were saving me from a nightmare, but truly you have only dragged me deeper into one,” she whispers harshly. Turning slightly to the body of Lord Watson, his skin now a sickly pale and his eyes open and staring at them as they argue. Jayson stands still and silent just staring at her with a look of sadness.

“Do you know how many corpses I have seen? Since that night?” Dakoda mumbles.

“How many?” he questions in reply. She turns back to him and frowns.

“More than and respectable young woman should ever have to, mother and father, Virgil, Lord and Lady Smith, Lord Thompson, Lord Watson?! And not to mention all those who died while I was in that asylum? If you truly want to know how your actions have ‘saved me’ then just think about that, and think about the fact that on numerous occasions I have wished to be in their place, bleeding out on the floor, or strung up with rope… perhaps they had been right to send me to that horrid place because I will admit to you know, brother, all the deaths which I have witnessed because of you, are the reason my mind is in shatters,” she whispers as her eyes start to water again, surprising her as she had thought she was well out of tears to cry.

Jayson looks at her heartbroken by hearing her say such things,

“You can't possibly mean that You can't truly wish a fate so horrible and shameful as suicide upon yourself?” he asks softly his eyes also visibly glistening with tears.

“The only thing stopping me from doing up till now was Virgil After You killed him the only thing keeping me alive was the need to catch you and bring justice to my fiance,” Dakoda says coldly. Glaring at him she pulls out her revolver and aims it at him

“So I suggest If you prefer that I let you live long enough for Detective Inspector keeland and the rest of Scotland Yard to come and take you in, you stop talking so cryptic and making silly excuses, Tell me exactly what they did that made them deserve this!” she sneers.

“I will tell you, But I'm going to have to apologize in advance, sister dearest, it will have to be the short version, I think your friends from Scotland yard are almost here.”