But was somewhere outside, somewhere else.
Going back was the worst alternative. Having come this far, they had to go on.
” first is only fair,” Mary said.
The response from the voice that was either Thomas or Melmoth was inaudible.
The woman spoke again. “I could do the same with the little one. So like his father.”
“Why not?” Elric said. “But not just you, Sister. All of us for all of us. Melmoth first. His need is much the greatest.”
“But he hunts tonight. The outlanders have given him new hope so be seeks fresh power in Bramton.”
At least that answered part of the equation. Three of them were just ahead, now so close that Ryan could see their shadows moving on the wall a few yards in front of him.
Jak had stopped, showing that to go any farther would be to emerge from hiding.
The moment of attack was very close.
Ryan inched past the teenager until he could squint with his good eye around the angle of the underground passage into a circular chamber, around thirty feet across, with a stone seat most of the way around it. There were niches for lamps, but only a couple of them held lights. At the center of the room, surrounded by the three members of the family, was a rectangular table of multicolored marble.
On it lay Dean, fully clothed, eyes closed, hands folded across his breast. For a single heart-stopping moment, Ryan thought his son was dead, and his index finger tightened on the trigger of the handblaster. Then he detected the slow rise and fall of the boy’s chest and guessed he lay in a drugged sleep.
On a smaller table, by a second entrance to the chamber, Ryan spotted an array of syringes and clear tubing, looped and curled over a chromed stand. The sight made him wince in horror and disgust at the thought of how the apparatus of transfusion might be used on his child.
Mary was touching Dean, stroking his cheek with her fingers, the long hornlike nails brushing at the soft skin. She smiled, and Ryan saw the needle-sharp incisors between her full, red lips.
“In the morning it will be a new dawn for us all,” she said to her freakish brothers.
Ryan looked to each side, seeing that J.B. and Jak were both ready.
“Now! “he yelled.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Thomas was perceived as the most powerful of the Family, and he was the prime target for their attack. Ryan leveled the SIG-Sauer and fired five rounds, each bullet striking home at the center of the black-clad chest, as a head shot was chancy in such poor light. A ripple of sound erupted from the Uzi, and the vampire staggered back under the punching force of the 9 mm rounds.
Jak shot three times at the woman, two of his bullets hitting her in the upper arm and shoulder, spinning her. But none of them struck in vital parts.
Elric swung his cloak, extinguishing one of the lights, and darted for the farthest entrance. Ryan hesitated for a moment, then the lithe figure was gone.
Thomas was steadying himself against the wall, blood streaming down his arm over his hand.
“Bastards,” he hissed, pointing at them with his unbloodied hand. “You’ll all”
Ryan shot him twice more, aiming at the knees, sending the giant figure toppling to the dusty floor. As he fell he staggered in front of Mary, who snatched at her moment. She picked up Dean’s unconscious body and ran at the three invaders, knocking Jak out of her way with a backhanded blow that sent him falling to his right, his Colt Python exploding uselessly, the round sparking off a distant wall.
Ryan tried to grab at her, but she was too fast and too strong, seeming hardly affected by her wounds, leaving him gripping a handful of torn black cloth. She elbowed J.B. aside and rushed away along the passage toward the stairs.
“Let her go. Others can take her. Get Thomas. Quick!” Ryan bolstered his warm SIG-Sauer and beckoned to J.B. to hurry and help him.
They’d rehearsed the next few seconds in the bedroom.
J.B. took out the small thermite bomb that was shrouded in a plastic tube. He’d carefully prepared the mixture of one part magnesium to four parts of the powdered barium, all that they had left of the ingredients after their adventures in the jungle. Now he handed it to Ryan, simultaneously reaching for a self-light from another pocket.
He’d primed the bomb by carefully opening a half dozen spare rounds of ammo, and it was ready to fire.
If it worked.
But Thomas Cornelius wasn’t prepared to go gently into the good night. He was already trying to sit up, and the cascading flow of blood from his shattered chest was already easing. His eyes were pits of crimson in the dim glow from the last of the lamps, and he hissed furiously at them, groping unsteadily toward Ryan’s face with his long right arm.
“Done for now,” he crowed. “The boy and all of you are bastard done for.”
He threw his head back to laugh, and Ryan seized the moment, jamming the homemade bomb in between the gaping jaws. Thomas reacted by trying to bite off Ryan’s fingers, but the one-eyed man was too quick this time.
“Light it,” he gasped.
The tiny red-orange flame flickered into life, and J.B. lowered it toward the pinched end of the tube.
For three or four breath-snatching moments, nothing at all happened.
Thomas punched out at Ryan, catching him a glancing blow on the shoulder. The pain was considerable, and the force of it knocked the one-eyed man on his back, the SIG-Sauer jolting from his hand into a shadowed corner of the chamber.
With a maniac roar of triumph the white-skinned vampire reached into his sharp-toothed mouth, ready to pull out whatever it was jammed in there.
And the thermite ignited.
Ryan and J.B. tried to shield their eyes from the dazzling incandescent glow that began to burn, deep between Thomas Cornelius’s iron jaws.
“Out!” Ryan yelled, his voice cracking.
The huge man began to thrash around on the floor, arms and legs flailing in the white agony from the thermite. A fearsome bubbling scream surged from his tortured lungs.
The mutie vampire had no chance of removing the bomb from his mouth, his breath sucking the flames and the fumes into his chest.
At the angle of the corridor, right on the heels of J.B. and Jak, Ryan glanced behind him.
It was a scene from the worst imaginings of Hades.
Thomas was rolling around, his back arched in a spine-cracking curve. The thermite had burned its way through his throat, up past the soft palate, attacking the base of the brain and the spinal column. His eyes were melted, and his whole face had fallen into the silver-bright flames. Despite the appalling injury, the man still clung to a fragment of life.
But, even as Ryan stared with horrified fascination at the last throes, the body jerked twice, then lay still, while molten brains and skull dribbled over the floor and the bomb continued its work of totally destroying the man’s head.
“Come on, Ryan!” J.B. yelled from the top of the cellar stairs.
“He’s done!” Ryan called as he made his way through the basement of the house. “Nobody could rise again from that. I mean nobody.”
Despite the promising start to their plan, everything else had gone sorely wrong.
Doc was sitting up, rubbing at a bump on his cheek that was weeping crimson. And Mildred was swaying from side to side, doubled over, clutching her stomach.
“What?” Ryan said.
“Woman was like a fury uncontained, a Valkyrie in strength and glory.”
“Where? And where’s Krysty?”
Mildred straightened, a thread of vomit trickling down her chin. “Went after Mary. She had Dean in her arms. Went toward the stairs. Go, Ryan!”
“Thomas is dead. Permanent. Elric fled up another passage. Could be loose anywhere in the house. Remember our plan and watch yourselves. Jak, stay with them. J.B., come with me. All take greatest care.”
He had used the pause to reload the SIG-Sauer, noticing the Armorer doing the same to the Uzi.
Now they ran together, up the stairs, pausing on the second-floor landing to listen for any sound. But the Cornelius mansion was oddly silent.
“Higher?” J.B. said, panting from the exertion.
“Must be. In the attics. Just hope that we aren’t going to be too late.”
KRYSTY HAD MANAGED a shot at Mary as the white-haired woman burst up the stairs and out of the cellar door, Dean’s unconscious body clasped to her breast. But the genetic mutie had been too quick, blood-filled eyes glaring wildly at her enemies, knocking Doc and Mildred out of the way with a kick and a punch, spitting at Krysty, then running away at inhuman speed toward the big central staircase.