A Coldness in the Blood Page 16

  Andy himself, still on all fours, not knowing what to do or what to think, kept edging backward, farther from the pit, until he felt his feet bump against a solid wall. Partially disoriented by his whirl through the air, he had the idea that Dolly ought to be somewhere near him, but he could not tell where.

  Now on the edge of the great gap stood the woman with huge silver earrings, poised as if she wanted to fly with some of the others but was somehow held back. At the moment her gasping breath made more noise than Andy’s. She had drawn a handgun from somewhere, and snapped it up for a quick shot at Uncle Matt. The muzzle flash was almost dazzling in the gloom; the pistol’s noise was big in the enclosed space. Maule spun around and clutched at his own left arm.

  But Uncle Matt did not fall. He had not been knocked out of action—far from it. Again his dim image in the darkness blurred. Whatever happened to the woman came upon her so swiftly that Andy could not quite see what it was, but her scream choked off as quickly as it had begun, and now she was nowhere to be seen.

  Light from the smeared grayness of Chicago’s night still came in where the roof was missing, and showed the struggle continuing in the pit below. Turning his head a little, Andy could look down through splintered holes in flooring, as through a window into hell. Maule’s first victim, the inhumanly strong man in the plaid shirt, was still down there thrashing, his great wounds pouring dark blood into dirty water; his lower jaw appeared to be still hanging by only a flap of skin. The upthrust spear formed by one jagged, jutting two-by-four, had punctured his ribcage, so he was half-impaled upon it.

  Even as Andy watched, Lambert tore himself free, and dragged himself away.

  There was a fluttering and howling high above that sounded like a further evacuation. To Andy the noise evoked a vision of a flight of monstrous bats escaping from a cave. Except that some of those who fled were screaming threats, their voices seeming to mount quickly through the sky.

  And now the two people wearing ski masks had come within reach of Maule’s arms, down in the pit. His harsh voice carried: “You wish to be faceless? Let it be so!” And with a hand clasping the neck of each, he smashed and ground their covered heads together.

  Andy was held by the scene before him, as he might have been gripped by watching a tornado. But now his instinct for survival overcame the fascination. He turned, groping and crawling in the direction where he thought Dolly ought to be. As he moved, his twisted arm still hurt, but it was functional.

  There came a lull in the sounds of fighting, and it seemed the real nightmare might be over. There was dim movement just in front of him, and he murmured her name. When his hand touched her, she gave another little scream, her body lurching sideways.

  “It’s me, Andy. Can you stand up? Can you move?”

  Dolly mumbled something. She was already doing her best to try, and had succeeded in pulling her clothing more or less back into place.

  In another moment, with Andy’s help, she was on her feet, saying: “I think so. What’s happening? Somebody new came in, didn’t they?”

  A new outburst of screaming, splintering and splashing noises drowned out the rest of what she was trying to say.

  “That’s right. Where’s the flashlight? Never mind, we’re getting out.” The route to retreat, straight away from the ghastly pit, though grimly dark, now appeared entirely open.

  Hobbling together, Andy and Dolores quickly reached the shadowed but unobstructed hallway. Behind them, in and around the pit, still sounded a fiendish chorus of roars, bangs, slams, and sounds like splintering two-by-fours, blended with occasional outcries that seemed to issue from no human throat.

  At the head of the stairway, Andy came to an abrupt halt. The way by which they had climbed to the third floor was no longer clear. A roof beam, loosened by some recent impact on the damaged structure, had fallen across the downward passage. Worse than that, a mangled body that could only be that of Lambert, his ghastly wounded enemy, was crouched directly beneath the beam, making spasmodic movements, and uttering frightening noises of pain and rage commingled.

  Then abruptly the mangled body proved itself still capable of speech. The first words came in some Latin-sounding language, and they were poisonous in tone. Then in English, to Dolly: “Come, bitch, I need your blood.” His words were muffled, coming through torn flesh and splintered bone, but still they sounded plain enough.

  An arm in a torn plaid sleeve shot out, in a grab of startling power and swiftness for Andy’s ankle. Andy dodged out of the way barely in time, so that the savage snatching movement caught only air.

  The young man and young woman danced and stumbled backward, almost falling in their terror. Lambert’s gurgling cries pursued them: “One day I will have your blood! Both of you!”

  Abruptly the uproar behind Andy and Dolores ceased. Looking back, he got the impression that the pit, or crater, now yards away, was suddenly deserted except for the dead and possibly the wounded. But he was afraid to go back to the stair, and that part of the building offered no other way of getting out.

  Dolly was crying now, fear, frustration, and anger sounding all together. Between sobs she managed to choke out some coherent words. “Maybe there’s another stairway.”

  “There ought to be.” Didn’t the fire code require two in every building?

  Stumbling and groping along as best he could with no flashlight, Andy turned away from the ghastly blockage, and led his stumbling companion toward where he thought the rear of the building ought to be.

  Dolly stumbled again, and seemed to be having trouble walking. Andy murmured something intended as reassurance, and pressed ahead, scouting out the way. In the midst of thicker darkness, he found the passage blocked by what felt like quite an ordinary door. Some twisting of the building’s frame had frozen it ajar, by only a few inches, and Andy in search of a way out now ruthlessly applied his shoulder.

  The barrier suddenly gave way, and he stood staring into another room, this one relatively free of damage. The plywood covering of one window had been knocked askew, and some combination of moonlight and streetlight came pouring freely through. In the middle of the newly revealed space, a cheap bed with a stained mattress stood in comparative brightness, like part of a stage setting. On the bed two people were locked in a tight embrace. The man’s dark suit now hung in shreds and rags on his pale body, as he crouched holding the woman’s limp form in his arms.

  At the moment of Andy’s entrance, the man was bending his head sharply forward, nuzzling at the woman’s neck. Beside the falling curve of his dark hair, one of her huge silver earrings glistened with a muted brightness.

  In the next moment, the man abruptly raised his head, and Andy understood that his own personal nightmare was not yet over. He recognized, with the certain knowledge that comes in dreams, a face no more than half-familiar, because it was now misshapen in its lower part, distorted around the mouth by the presence of fangs that dripped and dribbled drops of gore, blood that looked black in the strange light, as they pulled free from the woman’s punctured throat.

  Uncle Matt’s eyes were no longer really human. They seemed to be flashing green, like an animal’s, with faint reflected light. They fastened their gaze on Andy’s. Softly but quite audibly, Uncle Matt’s distinctive voice, slightly distorted by protruding teeth, came through his bloodstained lips: “Stay with the girl, wherever she may go. Help her if you can.”

  And then he bent his head once more, urgently resuming the unthinkable embrace.

  Andy’s nightmare was only deepening, the shock redoubling. Cursed with a kind of horror he had never known before, he backed out of the room, mechanically putting one foot behind the other. He tried to pull the door shut after him—this was something Dolores must not see. He could not even try to speak. In a moment he had groped his way back to her and grabbed her by the hand.

  There was another door to be discovered, on the opposite side of the hall from the one he had just closed upon the nightmare. The second door proved
to lead to a second stairway.

  Now, with their way out of the building seemingly clear, and no longer facing any immediate threat, Dolly was sobbing openly again. Together she and Andy blundered somehow down the stairs, only to find their way blocked at the bottom by another sheet of plywood, nailed and wedged into the exit doorway. But this barrier had been made to resist attack from outside, not from within. Again and again Andy threw his weight against it, until the thin slab suddenly crashed away, letting him fall out.

  Once they had broken their way out of hell, the night air of Chicago seemed suddenly marvelously clean and pure. Andy was half-expecting to find the building already ringed with cops, drawn by the ungodly noise. But nothing of the kind had happened yet.

  Four young legs ran. Hand in hand, Andy and Dolly sped limping down the alley, just past the place where Dickon’s car had been parked illegally. In passing, Andy took note of the fact that now the vehicle was gone.

  They did a hundred yards or so of alley at the best speed they could manage, holding hands, then slowed to a stumbling trot and turned onto a sidewalk when they emerged onto a residential cross street. Here trees were soft and lovely, the young green of June shading the street lamps. There were only the usual noises of the city. Somewhere a siren sounded, but not coming nearer, only part of the city’s common background.

  Dolly still walked beside him, though they were no longer holding hands. Andy’s eyes kept jumping from one shadow to another, his mind seeking active reassurance that there were no dead bodies lying anywhere. No one they passed on the sidewalk was gushing blood. But he had learned in his heart that at any moment the world might again erupt in horror.

  In a minute or two they had covered several blocks, and Andy could feel sure that no one was chasing them. None of the people they now encountered turned to stare. Again the couple slowed their pace. They were walking almost normally now, but still breathing heavily.

  At length they stopped, in the streetlight-shadow of a huge tree, to take inventory.

  Andy leaned against a comforting brick wall, built right up to the sidewalk. “Are you hurt? What were they doing to you?”

  “What were they doing? You mean what didn’t they try?” Dolly was clinging to his arm, and it seemed for a moment that she was going to go thoroughly hysterical.

  “But you’re not bleeding anywhere. Are you?”

  “No. No, I’m not bleeding. I’m all right, nothing’s broken, I can move.” Rage was keeping her energy level high. “Someday I’ll get those …”

  They were both dirty, soaked in their own sweat and the clinging smell of smoke. Andy’s jeans were torn, a small flap hanging open on his right thigh, over a bleeding scratch. He gave thanks for the darkness, making their condition less noticeable. He ached in more places than he could count, from being punched and bounced and twisted, but all his essential parts seemed to be working.

  Andy kept looking back along the way that they had come, imagining at every moment that he would see some kind of nightmarish pursuit. But so far there was nothing.

  Now they had started walking again. Without really thinking about it, he was leading the way toward his own apartment.

  Catching unexpected movement from the corner of his eye, he spun around sharply. “What’s that?”

  This time it was Dolly who was relatively calm. “Only a dog.” The large, dark animal was trotting briskly along, keeping pace with them on the other side of the street.

  Another couple of blocks went by without incident—un- less you counted the occasional wary looks that they received from passersby.

  “Andy?” Dolly’s voice had gone tiny, almost childish. Now she was hanging on his arm.

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened back there? I mean, they were killing us. How did we get away?”

  “We had help.”

  “They didn’t just start fighting among themselves—?”

  “No.”

  “Then who? I mean, how—?”

  If he was slow to answer, she wasn’t going to wonder why. Not now. “Tell you about it later.”

  Apparently that answer was good enough for Dolly in her current state. Presently she got out: “I’m not going to the cops.” Further speech was delayed for two more gasping breaths. “Whatever Gramp was doing, I don’t want to get mixed up in it.”

  Andy had used up all his capacity for surprise. “I think we’re both already about as mixed in as anyone could be.”

  “Then I want to get unmixed.”

  “Sounds like a great idea.” At the moment Andy couldn’t tell if what he and Dolly were saying made any sense or not. She said things, and he answered, more or less automatically. Meanwhile, looming ever larger and brighter in his mind, like the afterimage of a flashbulb in the dark, was that last apparition, seen in that dim and quiet little room: the bloody fangs of Uncle Matt protruding from his handsome jaw, the dead or dying woman in his arms.

  Gradually what Dolly was saying started to come through to Andy again. Her sudden relief at being free, and still alive, was taking the form of babbling.

  “ … so, it was never really gold. I didn’t think so. That son of a bitch Dickon, he was lying. Did you hear? When I offered them gold they only laughed.”

  “I heard.” Then Andy started violently when a nearby driver blasted his car’s horn. But again it was only random noise, nothing to do with him or Dolly. “They said you had some kind of list of names.”

  “I do have it. I can tell you, because it almost got you killed.” She made a strange sound, between a chuckle and a squeal of pain. “It’s almost funny! It is funny, if it doesn’t kill us both. I’ll tell you about it when we have the chance.”

  That ought to have been a staggering answer. And it would have been, except that all the time, while he and Dolly kept on walking, there hovered in the foreground of his mind, tending to blot out everything else, a greater horror than anything Dolly had seen or felt tonight. Even greater, in its own way, this one was even greater than the fear of being almost killed—Andy had known for a long time that there were people in the world who might do that.

  The picture just hung there in his awareness, refusing to be processed, refusing to make way for useful information. But when he saw a slowly cruising police car, instead of running to overtake it, pouring out a tale of kidnapping and attempted murder, he turned instinctively away.

  He could see himself being arrested, certainly put under suspicion. He could have been somehow involved in whatever crazy business had been going on with Dickon and Nicolas Flamel, alchemy and gold. Maybe Uncle Matt had also been in on it from the start. Murder had been intended tonight, with Andy himself as victim, and killing had been done. But for Andy the true horror lay in what came after … .

  He couldn’t stop seeing the face of Uncle Matt, stained and disfigured with the fangs, the blood. He could neither stop seeing it, or find a way to think about it usefully. His thoughts seemed to be marching round in a dazed circle.

  At last, something Dolly had told him only a few moments ago bobbed up on the surface of his thoughts. “You said you’re not going to the cops.”

  “I’m not.” Violently she shook her head, then winced as if the motion had caused pain. “I just want to get away from this fast, get far away, and then …” She paused. “What about you?”

  Pale-faced Uncle Matt, taking a break in his blood-drinking affair with a fresh corpse, opened his unspeakable mouth to offer Andy sage advice. Stay with the girl, wherever she may go.

  Andy said aloud: “I will.”

  Dolly looked round on him sharply. “What?”

  He shook his head. “I mean, I agree. I don’t see how I can go to the cops either.”

  The two of them had come now to a neighborhood playground, dark and deserted at this hour behind its locked gate and serious fences. No hiding out in there. Not that Andy wanted to hide out—he was determined to keep going. They passed a vacant lot, concealing perfect shadows for an ambush behind a loom
ing billboard, the huge sign undergirded by a decaying latticework of lath. Gigantic figures lurched across the billboard, advertising fear and wild adventure. Something about a major motion picture, coming soon.

  They passed another clump of wild bushy little trees, growing high as a man’s head, beside a viaduct. Now they were skirting the embankment, part of Chicago’s endless, thick-stranded spiderweb of railroad tracks. Their footsteps echoed as the sidewalk led them through a brightly lighted viaduct built up of antique limestone blocks, out on another residential street looking no different than the one they had just left.

  The presence of the railroad track above them reminded Andy of something Dolly had said earlier. Amtrak tickets.

  But before he could raise the subject she was talking about something else. “That man on the stairs, the one who almost grabbed us again. The way he was all torn up, he must have been dying—wasn’t he?”

  “I don’t know. At first I thought he was totally butchered. But then, the way he moved … I don’t know what he was.”

  They were no longer even walking fast, just gently strolling in their deadly weariness, when they saw another police car. This vehicle was just sitting, engine idling, waiting for the next good chance to jump into action and do some law enforcement.

  Dolly’s nails bit into Andy’s arm. “No cops,” she whispered to him through clenched teeth.

  “No cops. Just keep going, don’t try to duck.”

  As soon as they were out of sight of the police car, they changed course, moving in silent agreement. Now they had turned onto a street where there were fewer trees, and the lights shone down more brightly.

  Dolly said: “We’re getting out of town. Or I am, anyway. You’ve stuck with me, so far, and if I ever find any treasure I’ll split it with you. Whatever it turns out to be.”

  “Treasure?” Andy repeated the word mechanically, and then forgot about it. Because only now, in the brighter light, did he notice: small, so small as hardly to be noticeable, drops of someone’s blood, not their own, had spattered on them both. Already the red was drying into a dull brown. The spattering must have happened before that final scene.