THE COUNTESS was in the room, looking down at Ryan, stretched helpless on his sofa. She wore a knee-length white robe of embroidered silk, cut low across her swelling breasts, with a long crimson scarf wrapped around her neck. On her feet were boots of white Spanish leather.
“You are sure, Straub?”
The bald man was capering around, playing an imaginary flute, using a carved human femur as his instrument. “Of course. First the drink and the potion. Then my little silver pendant to draw him and bind him and keep him. Now he sees only the pictures that I paint for him and does what I command.”
“I wish him to do what I command.”
Straub giggled again. “But of course. My plans are for you, Mistress.”
Ryan watched as she drifted in slow motion across the thick carpet and touched the man softly on the cheek with her long fingernail, drawing it across the taut skin, leaving a needle-thin thread of scarlet.
“Yes,” she hissed, the syllable dragging on and on like an angry cobra.
“Where will you take him, Mistress?” Straub asked, ignoring the bead of blood that dangled from his chin.
“My room.”
“Not here?” A note of faint disappointment crept into the unctuous voice.
“No.” She paused. “In fact I think it should be more special. Perhaps that is why I have been failing. The setting has not been right for the fathering of a fine son. Not a dull bedroom in a dull house. The attic of the old mill above the gardens. With its fine view. On the way to the ob platform over the gorge.”
Straub laughed. “The one-eyed stupe had said he wanted to see the river. Why not show it to him after he has fulfilled your requirements, Mistress?”
The woman smiled and nodded at him, turning her face toward Ryan, who unaccountably shuddered, unaccountably since none of the words being spoken made any sense to his crazed, fogged mind.
THEY WERE OUTSIDE in a fine drizzle, with a light breeze whipping through the tops of a gigantic pair of live oaks near the rear entrance to the ville.
Straub had seen them off, bowing to the countess and slapping Ryan gently and contemptuously across the cheek. “I pray it will be success.”
“I know it will. And after, I shall follow your idea and send him to view the river.”
“And I go into the house, Mistress, to make everything he saw into reality.”
SHE HELD HIM BY THE HAND as they strolled like lovers across the terracing, down the side of the long pool toward the squat building. Ryan could hear a faint roaring sound in the background, like ferocious animals trapped deep underground. He had no idea what it might be.
“Soon, lover,” she said. “It will take time, so that I am properly satisfied, but I shall tell you what to do. Anything I want, anything. And your seed will fill me, and I will rule on here through my son, through eternity. Soon, Ryan.”
STRAUB WENT FIRST into the room where Doc lay on his back on the bed, eyes closed, motionless. He looked around the room and picked up a large stuffed cushion from an armchair, hefting it and moving silently across the room.
“So long, you babbling old fool,” he whispered, bending low over the frail figure beneath the coverlet.
“So long,” Doc said, squeezing the trigger on the concealed Le Mat and blowing Straub’s guts out through his spine.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Straub died without saying a word, sitting against the wall, hands pressed together to try to hold his stomach together. The 18-gauge scattergun round had cut the cord on his silver amulet, which rolled beneath a long mahogany table and lay in the shadows.
The shot had set fire to the bedcover, and Doc laid the blaster down, quickly beating out the smoldering material. He looked up unworriedly as the door burst open and J.B. jumped into the room, holding the Uzi, with Mildred at his heels, the ZKR 551 cocked and ready in her right fist.
“Doc! Dark night, what ?”
“Caught a rat sneaking in trying to do a princes-in-the-tower job on me. Shut me up with that cushion.” He pointed to it with the smoking muzzle of the blaster. “One thing that traveling with you and dear Ryan has emphasized to me is that caution is ever-constant and the eye never sleeps. The blade is never sheathed. The pistol never unloaded. The spirit always ready. But I digress. I heard the door creak and squinted out and saw Straub there. So I shot him. It looks as though things must be moving elsewhere for him to try that. Should we not find Ryan and the others?”