Tom Hyman (51 page)

He pulled off his coat, grabbed the pistol and the clip, and ran.

The lawn sloped directly to the vineyards and the trees beyond.

If he could make it to the trees, he could climb up out of their reach.

He ran as he had not run since he was a little boy—with the full-out abandon of despair. He strained to force his limbs to move faster than they had ever moved. The rush of energy bore him, weightless, over the ground.

He knew the dogs were right behind him, but he couldn’t hear them. His ears were filled with the sound of his feet hitting the earth and the noise of his heart pounding under his ribs. The trees, faintly illuminated by the castle’s spotlights, looked a long way off. He tried to jam the clip into the pistol on the run, but couldn’t manage it.

The lawn darkened beneath his feet and came to an end. He was in the vineyard now, rushing between rows of vines. The trees at last were getting close.

A sudden tug at his sleeve. The clip slipped from his hand and fell.

He tried to increase his pace. His lungs sucked in the air in loud, gasping gulps.

He thought of a fox hunt long ago in Leesburg, Virginia; the owner of a pharmaceuticals company had a big horse farm there.

He remembered the fox zigzagging across the field, a reddish blur in the morning light, the hounds of death baying on its tail.

Teeth snapped at his left hand. He felt a momentary sting and then nothing. Two were running abreast of him now. He could hear them slapping against the branches of the vines on each side of him along the narrow path. He threw the pistol at one and heard the weapon thud into the soft vineyard soil.

The dogs were closing in, snapping hungrily at his heels, his arms. He wanted to slow down before his lungs burst, but the trees were still so far away.

A heavy weight crashed against his back. A momentary sensation of a warm breath on his neck, of claws digging into his shoulders. Jaws captured a pants leg. He tried to shake them off and keep straight on for the trees, but the sudden tug threw him off stride.

He pitched forward, between the rows of vines, and the dogs crowded over him, whimpering in their eagerness. He could smell them, hear them, see them, feel them. They were at his neck, his chest, his arms, his legs.

He flailed and screamed. He felt the weight and pressure of the bites, the warm release of his blood.

His heart hammered mightily. His senses felt so sharp. He glimpsed the stars in the sky brighter and bigger than he had ever seen them.

And behind the spots of light around the castle walls he saw a bright red fire burning.

He remembered fireworks on the Fourth of July when he was a boy—how the vivid noise and color, building to a crescendo, had once stirred his soul—God, so long ago.

His last thoughts were of his daughter, Genny. His heart filled with a bitter sorrow. He would never know now what would become of her. His heir, his flesh and blood, and he had failed her, just as his father had failed him.

Genny could still hear someone in the passageway. A flashlight beam shined down the narrow passage and splashed against the wall right next to her. Once, she heard him come almost to the corner, then turn back.

A long time seemed to pass. People were running and shouting all through the castle. Genny could hear the fire crackling above her.

The air in the passageway was getting hot.

She expected to hear fire sirens and fire engines coming up the driveway, but none did.

She began to feel afraid. She had to find Mommy. She peeked around the corner. It was dark. The man had gone. She stood up, turned on the flashlight, and started back along the passageway.

She reached the far end and was about to start down the steps to the cellar when she heard him coming back up. He was shouting in German.

Someone was with him. Genny caught a whiff of the baroness’s perfume.

Then she heard her voice.

She turned and headed back around the corner. The sword fell from her hands and clanked on the passage floor. She scooped it up and continued.

At the stairs to the upper floor she paused. She didn’t want to go back up. The fire was getting loud and hot. Smoke was billowing down the stairs.

She trained the flashlight on one of the big crossbeams over her head.

If she could get up there, they might not see her. She let the flashlight hang from her neck on its ribbon of torn sheeting and tried to decide what to do about the sword. She couldn’t carry it, because she needed all her fingers free to climb the wall.

The man and the baroness were getting closer. Genny could smell the peculiar odor of the drug that the woman had injected in her earlier.

The baroness must be bringing it to inject her again.

Genny slipped the ribbon of sheet off over her neck, twisted it around the hilt of the sword, then draped the whole affair back over her neck, positioning it so the flashlight hung down in front and the sword down in back. The weight of the sword immediately pulled the ribbon up tight against her throat, but that was just as well, since it brought the flashlight into a better position for her to see.

She braced hands and feet against the walls and started up. She managed the first few feet quickly, keeping herself in place by dint of sheer strength; then she couldn’t find a toehold. She slid a foot up repeatedly, groping in the dim light for some slight depression in the stone surface.

A piece of the wall under one foot crumbled away beneath her, and she fell. The sword twisted around and wedged itself between the walls, nearly choking her on the ribbon as she fell past it. The ribbon tore loose and the flashlight bounced against the wall, hit the floor, and went out. The sword followed, clanking down in the dark, narrowly missing her leg.

Genny felt around frantically for the flashlight, found it, but couldn’t get it to come back on again. The baroness and the man were very close. They had stopped talking. They must have heard her fall.

No time to find the sword. She braced her hands and feet against the walls again and started up. This time she found footholds all the way.

A red glow from the fire above filtered down the stairs through a swirling haze of smoke at one end of the passage. In the other direction, the beams from the two flashlights played along the walls.

Genny stopped. She could see the crossbeam now. She was just about level with it, but it was well to one side and out of her reach.

Both of them came around the corner and passed directly under her. The baroness was holding something that looked like a pistol.

They hesitated when they reached the stairs. Then the baroness squeezed past the man and started up. From the top she shouted something in an alarmed voice. The man turned and retreated back along the passage. The baroness came quickly down the steps and hurried to catch up to him.

Genny felt her foot slip. She pressed it harder against the stone.

The baroness saw the sword and stopped directly underneath her.

After a moment’s hesitation she kicked it to one side.

The rock under Genny’s foot came loose and crashed to the floor.

The baroness whirled around. She pointed the flashlight upward and caught Genny in its beam. Genny let herself drop. The moment she hit the floor she recovered her balance and ran toward the stairs. The smoke and heat coming down from above were too strong for her to go any further.

The baroness hurried toward her, pointing the pistol and talking soothingly. Genny felt something sting her left shoulder. She slapped against the spot reflexively and felt the shaft of a tiny dart. She jerked it out quickly and threw it to the floor.

The baroness stood in the passage, ten feet away, shining the beam in Genny’s eyes and waiting.

Genny put her head down and lunged forward. She struck the baroness in the legs and knocked her off balance, but as she tried to squeeze past her in the narrow space, the baroness smashed the butt of her tranquilizer pistol on her head and knocked her down. Before Genny could recover, the baroness delivered a hard kick directly against her chin. The little girl howled with pain and rolled over onto her stomach. She took two more blows against the back of her head.

Before the baroness could land a third, Genny scrambled to her hands and knees and crawled back toward the stairs. The tranquilizer dart, despite the speed with which she had removed it, was making her groggy.

She reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped. She looked behind her. The baroness had put down her flashlight and was kneeling on the floor, reloading the tranquilizer gun.

Genny came running back. In the dim light she could make out the silhouette of the jagged piece of rock that had fallen from the wall.

She knelt and grabbed it. It was about the size of a softball.

She threw it as hard as she could. It struck the baroness in the face.

The woman fell sideways. Her shoulder hit the wall and spun her around. She threw her arms up, then toppled backward onto the floor.

Her foot kicked the flashlight and sent it rolling along the passage.

Genny snatched up the flashlight and then jumped over the baroness and grabbed the sword, lying near the wall a few feet away. The baroness was on her back. Her eyes were open. She appeared conscious but dazed. Genny set the flashlight on the floor, wrapped both hands tightly around the sword’s handle, and drove the fat blade through the baroness’s stomach. The tip struck her almost precisely at her navel.

It ripped easily through cotton blouse and silk slip, through flesh and stomach walls, and came to rest firmly wedged against the inner surface of the spinal column.

The baroness groaned. Her hands came up, felt the blade of the sword impaling her, then dropped back. She cried out in a hoarse, quavering voice. Her eyes fluttered closed, then opened.

She found the strength to grab the blade of the sword again. She pulled at it with one convulsive effort, and the sword came free, clattering on the stone. The baroness raised herself on her elbows.

Blood bubbled from her stomach. She screamed again, louder. She gasped for breath, then screamed again.

Genny picked up the flashlight and ran as fast as she could. She reached the long steps to the basement and hurried down them.

At the small closet she paused and listened. She could still hear the baroness, far above her. Her scream had lost power; it sounded like a sorrowful moan. Genny aimed the light in both directions down the basement corridor. No one was in sight. All the lights were out.

She ran through the basement until she found steps up to the ground floor. It was dark there as well. People were milling around, shouting. Stray beams from other flashlights crisscrossed the floors and walls. Everyone seemed intent on getting out.

Genny saw light beyond the windows. The whole outdoors flickered in an orange glow from the castle’s burning roof and upper stories.

Genny wandered through the pandemonium, not knowing what to do. Traces of her mother’s scent were impossible to isolate. Smoke was overpowering everything. She clambered up the main staircase and ran through the halls, looking in every room.

She picked up the scent again. She followed it to a bedroom down the end of a long corridor. The door was open, and the scent was strong, but Mommy was no longer in the room. She must have gotten out with everybody else, Genny decided.

She raced back downstairs and made her way to the front entrance.

People were crowded under the portico, crying and shouting at each other. No one paid any attention to her. She wondered why they stayed there and didn’t go out onto the lawns. She squeezed through, trying to discern her mother’s scent from the confusion of odors around her.

She couldn’t find it.

She saw why no one was leaving the portico. Both exits were barred by the huge portcullises. Out on the lawn men with tranquilizer guns were shooting at the dogs.

Someone shouted something. The others cheered. The portcullis gates on both sides of the portico started clanking upward, and everyone surged out onto the driveway and the lawns.

Genny looked at every face. Her mother was not among them.

Dozens of fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances came racing up the driveway, their sirens wailing mournfully in the night air.

Genny ran back inside. She hurried through the echoing dark rooms on the ground floor, swinging the flashlight from side to side. She screamed “Mommy!” over and over again at the top of her volce.

No one answered.

Ladders went up the side of the building. Bright emergency lights came on. Firemen were coming in with lights, masks, tanks, axes, and hoses.

One saw Genny and ran toward her. “Auskommen, Madchen! Auskommen!”

he yelled.

Genny switched her flashlight off and ran around a corner into the dark before he could catch her. Other firemen joined the chase. Eventually they cornered her in a pantry off the main dining room, grabbed her, and dragged her outside. She kicked and screamed. “Mommy! Mommy!

Find my mommy!”

Out on the portico she slipped free and ran out onto the lawn.

Satisfied that she was out of harm’s way, the firemen turned their attention elsewhere.

The moment they were out of sight, Genny slipped back inside.

There was still the basement, she realized. It took her a while to find the stairs again.

She rushed down and ran through the warren of subterranean chambers, calling out for her mother in a tear-choked voice.

Then she caught the scent. “Mommy!” she screamed.

“Mommy! ” She had to force herself to slow down and follow the scent.

She sniffled repeatedly to clear her nose. She felt very tired, very groggy The scent trace took her along a low, narrow passage to a set of old stone steps. She ran down them as fast as she could. At the bottom the scent was stronger. She called out again but got no answer.

The scent was strongest by a big iron chest at the back of a low-ceilinged chamber full of strange, unfamiliar objects.