He was over, managing to twist like an acrobat and grab the iron stanchion, hanging on to the suspended canvas with his other hand. He clung there, poised between life and death, aware that nothing could now save them. In a few seconds his grip would go, and they would be doomed.
He had closed his eye, then opened it once more to find that he was staring, inches away, into the blankly incurious steel eyes of the Magus.
Chapter Nineteen
Time stopped.
Ryan wasn’t even aware of the ripping, howling wind that tore at him, or the grinding strain on his arms, one holding the ragged canvas that enveloped Krysty, the other gripping the slippery iron stanchion on the corner of the rail. He knew that the whirling stern-wheel was slicing through the spray, only a few inches away from Krysty’s dangling boots.
But none of that had the same reality as the glittering face of the Magus, streaming with river water, leering at him from the safety of the deck. The angular skull, remembered from years long gone, was so close that Ryan could see every pore in the smooth skin, see the effects of the sophisticated, heroic surgerythe best available in all of Deathlandscarried out in the past, which had saved his life, leaving him to survive with prosthetic add-ons to his hands and his face.
The teeth were a strange, mottled mix of plastic and titanium steel, sharp pointed, with serrated edges that Ryan knew could snap through reinforced cable.
And the dead eyes of the Magus, sheathed in metallic lenses, were impenetrable in their deep-set sockets, staring blankly into Ryan’s good eye.
A distant phrase, barely recollected, came into Ryan’s memory at that spine-chilling moment. Something about becoming death the destroyer of worlds. That was what he saw there, in that crazed, alien face, aware that this was the last living being that he would ever see.
The pressure on both his arms was becoming unendurable, and Ryan knew that the last train was about to pull out for himself and for Krysty. Nothing and nobody could save them now. He felt his fingers slipping off the cold iron, the pounding stern-wheel eager to drag them both down and under. The noise and the spray boiled about him, numbing what remained of his senses.
“Ryan Cawdor.” The voice slid through the maelstrom that whirled around the Golden Eagle. It was unbelievable that Ryan could hear his name being whispered from the cruel mailbox slit of a mouth. The face of the Magus, so close to him, showed no human emotion.
The artificial hand lifted and brushed against Ryan’s cheek, wiping away the blown spume, making him wince in expectation of the blow.
Ryan tried to spit his hatred into the passionless face of the Magus, but the wind blew the thread of spittle away into the shrieking darkness. Krysty was limp and still, a deadweight in his arms.
Suddenly the Magus moved, reaching over and gripping Ryan by his other shoulder, the artificially powered fingers digging in so hard that muscles creaked, making Ryan gasp in pain. Then he was being lifted, with unimaginable strength, back over the rail, Krysty wrapped tight in her sodden shroud of colored canvas, trailing behind him.
Both of them were safely on the water-washed deck planking, lying there helpless at the feet of the Magus.
Ryan fumbled for the butt of the SIG-Sauer, glimpsing a ghost of a chance to take the creature out. But the Magus was quicker, his boot crunching on Ryan’s wrist, pinning him motionless, his dull, leaden gaze piercing into his face.
The boat was jerking and quivering like a mortally wounded animal, its timbers grinding out a shrieking protest at the storm’s treatment. The sky seemed a little lighter, viewed through the great veil of opaque spray, whirling off the top slats of the spinning stern-wheel.
Ryan could just feel Krysty’s movement, weak and helpless like a sickly, newborn calf, kicking to try to free herself from the enveloping awning.
The Magus leaned down toward Ryan, his index finger touching just below the undamaged right eye, making him shrink again. He pushed at the soft, wet skin, hard enough to bring a frisson of terror that Ryan was about to be blinded.
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