“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.