Chapter Thirty-Seven
"Norman," Ryan stated.
The friends were together again, Doc and Mildred recovered from the
attack by the woman. With the one-eyed man leading them, they'd
gone back through the dining hall, past the kitchen, toward the
main front door to the mansion.
"Norman!" Ryan repeated. "Let the boy go and you don't get
hurt."
The diminutive figure was wearing a flowing dressing gown of lilac
silk, belted in tightly at the waist. He was half carrying Dean,
who seemed to be coming around from his drugged sleep, and holding
a long carving knife to the side of the boy's throat. The front
door was partly open and he stood in the gap, almost completely
covered by Dean.
"Steady," Ryan warned. "Don't go doing anything foolish that we
could all regret."
"You've murdered Mary and Thomas. But Melmoth, out hunting, has
escaped you. He'll take his revenge for his brother and
sister."
Suddenly the funny little man wasn't funny anymore. There was a
lethal glint in his eye and steel in his voice.
Out of the corner of his good eye, Ryan noticed that Jak was no
longer with them.
"And Melmoth'll make me master of the village. So that I can pick
and choose anyone that takes my fancy. Power to rule. All
power."
Doc nodded, leaning on his swordstick. "All power corrupts, Master
Norman."
Mildred finished the quote for him. "And absolute power corrupts
absolutely."
Norman giggled. "Then I'm ready to be corrupted. Ready as I'll ever
What was ?"
Ryan had spotted something that whirred across the hall, like a
venomous dragonfly, something that reflected for a nanosecond the
gold light of the oil lamps. It struck Norman on the side of his
neck, just below the ear, hissing within inches of Dean's tousled
head.
For anyone else it would have been an absurdly hazardous throw. For
Jak Lauren it was easy as hitting a barn door at fifteen
paces.
The heavy-bladed knife had hit Norman precisely where it had been
aimed, so speedy and silent that the butler still had no idea that
he'd been mortally wounded.
"Something swine of stung me Hear raining. Outside the
door?"
Blood pattered on the stone flags, smoking in the cool night air.
Norman's grip on Dean had gone, and the boy had slipped away,
taking a few faltering steps to Mildred, who had moved quickly to
support him.
"Warned you," Ryan said.
Norman was down on his knees, still with the same almost comical
look of surprise on his pinched face. His hand finally touched the
taped hilt of the throwing knife that jutted from the severed
artery.
"Ah, a knife," he said slowly. "That was cleverclever of"
And he slid forward gently onto his face, like a swimmer entering
deeper water.
"How's Dean?" Ryan asked, while Jak quickly retrieved his knife,
wiping it on the pretty dressing gown.
"Fine Dad." The voice sounded slurred. "Tired and been sleeping and
had double-strange dreams of Can't remember."
"I'll look after him," Mildred said. "If Grand-daddy Melmoth's out
hunting, we'd best shake the dust of this place off our feet and
get moving toward the redoubt."
"What's the time?" Ryan asked, trying to angle his wrist chron to
catch the faded yellow glow of the lamps.
"Still well before half past twelve," J.B. replied.
"Doesn't time just race on by when one is having positively loads
of gingery fun?" Doc whispered, carefully avoiding dabbling his
cracked knee boots in the spreading puddle of Norman's
blood.
"Which is the best way?" Krysty asked.
Jak pointed out of the door to the right. "Go all way around, by
cliff top. Pick up trail."
"Where do you think Elric's gone?" J.B. queried.
"Probably trying to track down his big brother, Melmoth," Ryan
said. "Mildred's right. Sooner we make the next jump out of here,
the better." He paused a moment. "I'll go first." Ryan looked at
the others. "Skirmish line. J.B. as rear guard. Mildred and Dean in
the middle. Keep on triple red."
The night was cold and damp, with a fresh breeze from the north
that sent tattered clouds scudding across the face of a hunter's
moon.
The cool air speeded Dean's recovery. "Dad, I have learning to do,
to stop being a stupe? Learning about drinking drugged drinks and
stuff."
Ryan grinned at his son. "Yeah, and you had a lesson today. But
there are others to learn, right, Doc?"
"Yes," Doc said. "Life's curriculum for all occasions, you could
say, my young friend. And other bits of book learning could be
useful some day perhaps"
The gravel scattered thick on the path that marked off the flank of
the big Gothic house crunched under their feet as they hurried
along. The cliff fell away sharply, dropping to the foaming river,
way below. Ryan had noticed that the old iron-spiked fence that
marked the edge of the fall had rusted and broken down in several
places.
"Keep away from the brink," he warned, looking behind him to make
sure everyone had heard him.
When he turned back, Elric Cornelius was standing a few paces in
front of him.
Superficially the youngest of the vampire brood, his skinny height
was still dressed in the beautiful black suit, covered by the black
satin cloak with the scarlet silk lining, though his clothes were
smeared with gobbets of mud and trailing cobwebs.
But he appeared to be unharmed.
In the moonlight his stark white face seemed to shine with a
supernatural phosphorescence, the eyes glowing at Ryan like fire
embers.
"Mary dead, and poor Thomas destroyed. Both gone beyond any hope of
rebuilding. You've been clever. Nobody in a hundred years has been
as clever. But you are not clever enough for myself and
Melmoth."
"Where is Melmoth?" Ryan asked.
"Oh, he'll be here. I sent him word."
"Thought transmission? That it?" Mildred said. She'd let go of
Dean's hand and now stood facing Elric in a shootist's pose,
slightly sideways, hand hovering over the butt of her target
revolver.
"It would take too long, Doctor. Even for a relatively
sophisticated brain like yours. There are concepts in genetic
communication that you would never understand. The language of it
would leave you struggling. But if you wish"
"Stalling for time," Jak said.
Krysty backed him up. "Right, I feel that, too. He knows Melmoth is
on his way."
"With most of Bramton," Elric stated boastfully. "It's not who wins
the skirmish. It's who wins the war."
"We're doing fine," Ryan told him. "And we're about to blast you to
eternity."
"You know how pointless your leaden missiles are against us. No, I
think not."
Mildred had drawn the ZKR 551, using the shortfall thumb-cocking
hammer, extending her right hand with the .38-caliber revolver
aimed at Elric.
"Fire away," he said, spreading his arms.
Mildred shot twice, the explosions riding on top of one another,
echoing across the gorge.
The range was about ten paces, in poor light, but her targets
glowed like ice rubies, drawing her aim like twin lasers.
The first round hit Elric through the center of his left eye,
pulping it in the socket, the full-metal-jacket round driving
through the back into the brain.
The second bullet was just as perfectly aimed, hitting Elric in the
right eye, completing the blinding.
"Heal that, sicko," she yelled at him as he staggered back, howling
like a rabid wolf at the moon. His hands were pressed to the
wounds, and he was backing away toward the rickety iron fence at
the edge of the cliff.
"Going," Ryan said.
The wind seemed to catch the full cloak, tugging at it like a
billowing sail. Elric fought for his balance, stumbling into the
fence, spiking himself on a jagged stump of rusting iron that drove
into the center of his chest.
He fell against it, and there was a loud metallic crack as the
predark fence collapsed under his weight and he tumbled, shrieking,
into the void.
"Gone," Ryan said.
THEY'D WALKED ONLY a little way down the rough track from the
Cornelius mansion when they saw the pinpoints of light, winding
toward them like a fiery snake, from the outskirts of the ville of
Bramton. And they could just hear, borne on the wind, the sound of
yelling and jeering.
"Melmoth's rent-a-mob," J.B. said. "Got them all charged up to come
get us."
"Think he's leading them himself?" Ryan asked. "Can you see
anything of him, Jak?"
The teenager stepped to the edge of the trail, shading his eyes
against the fitful moon, staring intently down into the gloom, at
the advancing crowd.
"No. Light's about right for seeing good. No Melmoth. About thirty
or forty coming."
"We have the firepower to take the whole lot out, don't we,
Dad?"
"Sure we do, Dean. But I kind of draw the line at butchering three
dozen fairly innocent people. Not their fault that the Family had
them as victims for so long."
"I fear that I can't perceive any reasonable way around them," Doc
said. "Am I not correct in my assumption that this is the only road
out of here?"
"You're not wrong, Doc." Ryan joined Jak at the edge of the
graveled highway and peered down the sheer face of the cliff. He
could still make out the pallid corpse that lay smashed to pieces
beneath the broken fence. "I reckon there might be a way down
here."
"No, absolutely not," Mildred said angrily. "Rather do the
slaughter of the innocents, if you don't mind too much, Ryan
Cawdor."
He grinned at her. "It'll be fine, Mildred. Take us a little time,
but we'll keep quiet and pressed in while the folk of Bramton go
rampaging past us. By the time they find we're gone and the house
is empty, we'll be at least a couple of miles away from
Bramton."
"When they discover the two permanently dead vampires up there,
they might all decide not to come after us, anyway," Krysty
suggested.
"Possibility. But with Melmoth still around someplace, the fear
might be too bone deep for them to rebel." Ryan looked down the
trail again. "If we're going to do this, then we should be moving.
Don't want anyone down there to spot us going over the side. Be
like shooting fish in a barrel if we're spotted."
"True." J.B. had his scattergun slung over his shoulder, the Uzi in
his hand.
Ryan hefted the Steyr rifle in the same way and led his companions
off the track, down onto the face of the cliff.
IN DAYLIGHT it would have been a relatively simple climb, as there
were plenty of hand- and footholds and the rock itself was in good
condition with very little crumbling.
At night, in the fitful light of the cloud-racked moon, it was
immensely hazardous.
Dean still hadn't recovered properly from the effects of being
drugged, and Krysty and Jak tried to keep the doped boy safely
between them, watching him every perilous step of the way
down.
Ryan tried to find a route that would parallel the trail, so that
he would have some clue when the villagers were close by, listening
for them above the rumbling water.
They came quicker than he'd expected, at a point where the climbers
were barely a third of the way down. He heard the sullen roaring of
their shouts, and caught the menacing red glare of their torches
bouncing off the branches of the elegant beeches that lined the
road.
Ryan gestured to the others to flatten themselves against the damp
face of the cliff, all of them drawing their blasters. But, as he'd
hoped, the mob continued on toward the mansion without a glance in
their direction.
He waited a couple of minutes, then, waving for the others to stay
where they were, Ryan climbed carefully up onto the side of the
trail. He peered through a screen of stunted bushes, seeing the
last of the men from Bramton vanishing around the next gooseneck in
the track.
He called down to the others, and they made good time along the
trail toward the ville, not seeing another living soul.
THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER wasn't guarded, and the ville seemed
deserted.
"Seems like most of the men have gone marching up the hill," J.B.
said, glancing at his chron. "Wonder how long before they figure
we're not up there and they come running back down the hill
again?"
Ryan looked up into the darkness. "No sign of any lights coming
back again. And no sign of Melmoth, either."
Mildred stooped to retie the laces on her boots. "Have to say that
Melmoth looked much the sickest of them all. Despite his strength
and special powers, he still looked like a single puff of wind
could've blown him from this world into the next." She
straightened. "Probably sounds stupe, but in some ways I feel kind
of sorry for the Family. Made by scientists and forced to carry on
such an endless, painful, pointless existence, depending on the DNA
samples of others to keep them half-alive."
Doc nodded. "I can see that, Mildred, my dear. Living and partly
living. Bleak, bleak. Oh, the horror of dragging out your days and
years like that."
"Mebbe shock of others being dead'll freak out Melmoth and he'll
drop off the log, as well," Dean said.
"Could be," his father agreed. "Yeah, could be."
THE MOON HAD VANISHED behind a thick bank of cloud, and the rising
wind tasted of rain. The seven friends picked their way along
toward the redoubt, passing through a section of the bayou where
the villagers had been logging.
The path grew narrow, twisting between patches of muddy swamp. The
overhanging trees were draped with the white fronds of Spanish moss
that brushed damply at the faces of the companions.
Ryan was still leading the way, into a small clearing, when J.B.
shouted a warning.
"Lookout, left!"
The SIG-Sauer was already drawn and it swung around, almost of its
own accord. Ryan glimpsed someone coming in at him on his blind
side, carrying a weapon that glinted silver. It was a tall, skinny
figure, wearing black, with a shock of white hair.
"Melmoth," he breathed, and squeezed the trigger on the
blaster.
The bullet smashed into the dark shape, sending it skidding
sideways and backward, with a muffled cry of pain. Ryan leveled the
SIG-Sauer again, ready to put several more rounds into the skull of
the vampire and pulp it beyond redemption, when Krysty grabbed at
his arm.
"No, lover!"
"Why?" He saw the answer to his own question, lying still in a
brief pool of moonlight, like a crumpled toy.
It was a young woman, thin, wearing a long black skirt and a white
cotton head scarf. A short-hafted kindling ax lay on the ground a
couple of yards away from her. The 9 mm round had been fired with
extreme accuracy, hitting her just above the breastbone, tearing
through lungs and heart.
A classic killing shot.
"Shit! Never saw her properly." Ryan walked over to look down at
the dead girl, seeing that she was barely into her teens. "Came at
me with the ax. I couldn't have"
A violent gust of wind blew through the trees around them, almost
as if some vast night-flying creature had soared
overhead.
"Couldn't help it, lover," Krysty said. "She gave you no chance not
to chill her."
"Even so" He shook his head, remaining behind a few moments as the
others filed out of the clearing. "I'm really sorry," he said. To
himself.
THE REST OF THE WALK through the swamp was more or less uneventful,
though a big bull alligator lumbered along the path toward them,
tail swinging like an armored pendulum. But he made so much noise
that there was plenty of time for everyone to get safely out of his
way.
It was still dark when they reached the entrance to the
redoubt.
Ryan paused, holding up his hand. "I'll go ahead. Make sure there's
no sign of Melmoth. Soon as I think it's safe, I'll call
you."
It took him only a couple of minutes to reassure himself that the
outer sec door was still firmly locked. Unless someone knew the
code, it hadn't been touched.
"Let's go! "he shouted.