Image of the Beast and Blown (25 page)

he settled back, asking himself what he cared if she fell.
But conditioning took over at the oddest moments, and
he had been taught to be kind and respectful to old
ladies.

The back of the robe was white with a number of
large black symbols, some of which duplicated those on
the wall. The old woman lifted her arms to flap the wide
sleeves as if she were an ancient bird about to make
a final flight. She began chanting loudly in a foreign
tongue which sounded like that used at times by others
in the household. Her arms waved; a large gold ring on
a finger glinted dully at times, seeming like an eye wink-
ing at him.

After a while she quit chanting and clambered down,
off the stool again. She tottered to the table and mixed
up several of the fluids in the bottles in a glass and drank
the contents. She belched loudly; he jumped at its loud-
ness and unexpectedness. She got back on the stool and
began to turn the pages of the huge book and, apparently,
read a few phrases from each page.

Childe guessed that he was looking upon a genuine
magical ritual, genuine in that the witch believed in her
magic. What its object was, he did not know. But he felt
chilled when he suddenly thought that perhaps she was
trying to locate or influence him by means of this ritual.
Not that he believed she could. It was just that he did
not like the idea. At another time and under different
circumstances, he would have laughed. Too much had
happened tonight, however, for him to make light of
anything in this house.

Nor did he have any reason to crouch here in the
doorway as if waiting to be born. He had to get out,
and the only way was past the baroness. There was a
door beyond the table; that door, as far as he knew, was
the sole exit from the cupola, except for the way by
which he had come. That door probably led to a hall-
way which would lead to a stairway to the lower floors or
to a window to the top of a porch.

He doubted that he could get by her without being
seen. He would have to knock her out or, if necessary,
kill her. There was no reason why he should be gentle.
She had to know what was going on here and probably

had participated in her younger days or, for all he
knew, still did.

Sword in hand, he stood up and walked slowly to-
ward her. Then he stopped. Above her, a very thin
haze, greenish-gray, shapeless with some short curling
tentacles, had appeared. It could be accounted for if she
were smoking. She was not. And the haze grew thicker
and spread out sideways and down but not upward.

Childe tried to blink it away. The smoke flowed
over her gray Psyche knot of hair and down her neck
and over the shoulders of the robe. She was chanting
even more loudly and turning the pages of the book
more swiftly. She could not be looking up to read the
book; her head was bent so far forward that she had
to be staring at the map.

Childe felt a little disoriented again. It was as if
something were wrong with the world, however, not
with him. Then he shook his head and decided to tiptoe
by her if he could. She seemed so intent, she might
not see him. If the smoke grew thicker, that is, if there
indeed
was
smoke and he was not suffering another
hallucination, he would be hidden from her.

The smoke did expand and become denser. She was
sitting in a ragged column of it. And she was suddenly
coughing. Smoke blew out of the way of her breath
and then coiled back in to fill the gap. He caught a
whiff of a tendril and stepped back. It was acrid,
burning, filled with the essence of a million automo-
bile exhausts and smokestack products of chemical
factories and refineries.

By now, he was opposite her and could see that the
cloud had spread downward and was beginning to cover
the map.

She looked up, as if she had suddenly detected his
presence. She squalled and fell backward off the stool but
whirled and landed on all fours and then was up and
running toward the doorway through which he had just
come. He was startled for a second at her swiftness and
agility but recovered and went after her. She had
slammed the door before he could stop her, and when
he turned the knob and pulled on it, he found that the
door was locked. To break it down was useless, since

she would be long gone down the stairway and the
passageway.

No, there was Dolores. She might stop the old
woman. Then, again, she might not. Her position in this
situation was ambiguous. He suspected that she would do
what was best for Dolores and that might not coincide
with what would be good for him. It would be good sense
to quit chasing after the baroness and try to get out
before she could warn the others.

The smog over the table was disappearing swiftly and
was gone by the time he left the room. The door led di-
rectly into an elevator cage which must have been made
about 1890. He hated the idea of being trapped in it but
he had no other way out. He pressed the DOWN button.
Nothing happened except that a small light glowed above
the button and a lever near it. He pushed down on the
lever, and the elevator began to sink. He pressed more
on the lever, and the rate of descent was a little faster.
When he pushed the lever upward past the neutral posi-
tion, the elevator stopped. He pressed the UP button and
then pushed the lever upward, and the elevator began
to ascend. Satisfied that he could operate it, he started
it downward and stopped at the second story. If the alarm
had been given, they would be waiting for him on the
ground floor. They might also be waiting on every floor,
but he had to take some chances.

The door was just like the other doors, which was why
he may not have known about the elevator. He turned
the knob and pushed it and found himself near the door
to Magda's bedroom. At the same time, increasingly
loud voices and rapid footsteps came up the stairway.
He didn't have time to run down the hall and try other
doors. He slipped into the room again. Glam's body
was still in the marble enclosure, the boots sticking over
it. The wall-section was open. He considered for a mo-
ment hiding under the many pillows and cushions in-
side the enclosure but decided that he would be found
if they moved Glam's body. There was nothing to do ex-
cept enter again the passage behind the wall.

He hid behind the inner wall and waited. The first one
to step through was going to get a sword in his guts. The
sword trembled in his grip, partly from weariness and
partly from nervousness. He had had no experience in

swordplay, no fencing lessons, no conditioned reflexes
built up, and so he suddenly realized that he was not as
dangerous as he would have liked to be. To handle a
sword expertly, a man had to know where to thrust and
where not to thrust. An ill-placed stab could hit a bone
and glance off and leave the intended victim only lightly
wounded and able to run off or attack, if he were tough
and experienced. Even a hard musculature could turn
an inept thrust.

He swore. He had been so intent on what he was go-
ing to do with the sword that he had not noticed that his
penis was working up to, another orgasm. Stormed, he
dropped the sword with a clatter but did not care about
the noise for a few seconds. He jetted, the chlorox
odor rising strong in the dusty hot passageway. Then he
picked up the sword and waited, but he was even more
uneasy. Those people out there might have nostrils more
sensitive than human beings—he admitted by now that
they were not human, as he knew human—and they
might easily detect the jism. Should he move on? If so,
where? To the same circuit?

He had been running long enough. It was time to
fight fire with fire.

Fire.

He looked through the opening. The door of the
room was still shut. Loud voices came through it. A
savage squeal which chased cold over him. It sounded
like an enraged hog. More shouts. Another squeal. The
voices seemed to drift away, down the hall. He crept out
and inspected the room and found what he wanted.
There were books in the shelves, the pages of which he
tore out. He crumpled up a
Los Angeles Times
and piled
crumpled book-pages over them and ripped open several
pillows and sprinkled their contents on the pile. The cig-
arette lighter in the purse touched off the papers, which
soon blazed up and began feeding on the wall-drapes
under which the fire had been built.

He opened the door to the hall to open the way for a
draft—if it should exist. Taking the classified ad sec-
tions of the
Times
and a number of books, he went
into the passageway. Having found a one-way mirror,
he broke it with the hilt of his sword to make another
draft or a reinforcement of the first. He started a fire

in the passageway, which was made of old and dry
wood and should soon be blazing like the underbrush
in the hills at the end of a long dry season. He then
entered the room with the broken mirror and built a
fire under a huge canopied bed.

Why hadn't he done this before? Because he had been
too harried to have time to think, that was why. No
more. He was fighting back.

If he could find a room with windows to the outside,
he would go through it, even if it meant a drop from the
second story. He'd let them worry about the fire while
he got over the walls to his car and then to the police.

He heard voices outside the door to the room and
went back into the passageway. He ran down it, using
his flashlight, although the fire was providing an adequate
twilight for him. A corner took him away from it, how-
ever. He stopped and sent the beam down one corridor
to check ahead of him. Nothing there. He started to turn
to probe the corridor on the other side of the intersection,
and he froze. Something had growled at the far end.

Faint clicks sounded. Claws or nails on the naked
boards of the floor?

A howl made him jump.

It was a wolf.

Suddenly, the clicking, which had been leisurely, be-
came rapid. The wolf howled again. He turned his flash-
light on the corner of the passageway at the far end just
in time to see a big gray shape come around it, eyes
glowing in the beam. Then the shape, snarling, was
bounding toward him.

And behind it came another.

Childe thrust almost blindly at the hurtling shape.
His sword traveled in the general direction of the beast
as it sprang, but its speed and ferocious voice discon-
certed him. Despite this, the blade struck it squarely
somewhere. A shock ran along his arm, and, although he
had leaned forward in what he hoped was a reasonable
imitation of a fencer's lunge, he was thrown backward.
He landed on his rump but scrambled to his feet, yelling
as he did so. The flashlight, which had fallen, was point-
ing down along the floor at the second wolf. This was
several yards away and crouching as it advanced slowly
toward Childe.

It was smaller, the bitch of the pair, and presumably
had slowed down to find out what was going on before
it attacked.

Childe did not want to expose his side to the bitch,
but he did not want to meet her charge without a weapon.
He grabbed the hilt of the rapier, put his foot on the
body, and pulled savagely. The carcass was palely illu-
minated in the side-wash of the flashlight. The sword
shone dully, and darkness stained the fur around the
beast's neck. The rapier had gone in three-quarters of its
length, through the neck and out past the bottom rear of
the skull.

The rapier pulled out reluctantly but swiftly. The she-
wolf snarled and bounded forward, her nails clicking
briefly. Childe had a few inches of blade to withdraw
yet and would have been taken on the side. Her jaws
would probably have clamped on his shoulder or head,
and that would have been the end of him. A wolf's jaws
were strong enough to sever a man's wrist with one
snap.

The bitch, however, slipped on something and skidded
on one shoulder into the rump of the dead wolf. Childe
leaped backward, taking the sword with him and then
as quickly lunged and ran her through the shoulder as she
bounded to her feet. She snarled again and her jaws
clashed at him, but he pushed with all his weight against
the hilt and drove her back so that she fell over the dead
wolf. He continued to push, digging his heels into the
wood. The blade sank deeper and presently the tip
ground against the floor. Before that, the bitch was silent
and still.

Shaking, breathing raspingly as if his lungs needed
oil, he pulled the rapier out and wiped it on the she-wolf's
fur. He picked up the flashlight and ran its beam over the
wolves to make sure they were dead. Their outlines
were becoming indistinct. He felt dizzy and had to shut
his eyes and lean against the wall. But he had seen what
the bitch had slipped on. A smear of his semen.

Voices drifted around the corner from which the
wolves had come. He ran down the passageway, hoping
that they would become too occupied with fighting the
fires to chase him. The corridor ran into another at right
angles to it, and he took the left turn. His beam, dancing

ahead of him, picked out a section of wall and a locking
mechanism. He went through it, his sword ready, but he
was unable to restrain his wheezing. Any occupant of
the room, unless he were deaf, would be warned.