Mildred looked at him as he started to get out of bed. “Doc! You aren’t well enough for this.” But the doubt in her voice showed that she also realized that things were indeed moving quickly against them.
“I’m well. Well enough, Dr. Wyeth.”
J.B. bit his lip. “I’ll get our things. Collect the Steyr. Find Ryan and the others. Think Krysty went into the library. Jak said something about the armory. Ryan? Don’t know.”
THERE WAS A BALCONY on the top floor of the mill, and the countess stood proudly there, arm in arm with the hero who would father her long-needed son and heir.
“It is a shame you are so stupe-stubborn,” she said, smiling into his blank, puzzled face. “We could have rid ourselves of that mongrel Straub once the baby was born. And you could have ruled with me. Obeyed me. Though I think that Straub might leave us sooner rather than later. Yes, very soon for the sick bastard. Once he has finished cleaning.”
Far below them they could see the lily-fringed lake, with the shadows of the giant carp moving sinuously below the rain-speckled surface.
But it made no sense to Ryan. His lips moved and he said, “All dead. Krysty, all dead.” But no sound came out of his mouth. The drizzle ran over his stubbled cheeks, mingling with the invisible salt tears.
After a few moments the woman shuddered. “Time to go in and get warm, my strong love,” she said.
KRYSTY WAS LOUNGING in a padded chair by the window of the library, looking out over the damp, streaming, melancholy gardens of the ville, flipping through some bound issues of a travel magazine from the 1990s, bound in bright yellow covers. She’d seen them scattered around Deathlands, but never in such clean condition, giving an amazing peephole into the late months before skydark and the long winters.
She looked up as Mildred came in, helping Doc, who was moving slowly and painfully.
“What’s up?”
“Weird. Shit’s hitting the fan somehow. Straub tried to waste Doc, so he chilled him. But he was alone. No sign of the sec men anywhere. Place is deserted. Countess isn’t anywhere. But we’re finding the others and getting out. John’s getting Jak from the armory. Where’s Ryan?”
“Said he was going for a walk to the river.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember.”
Krysty stood, looking worried. “Something’s triple-bad, Mildred. Few minutes ago I almost saw him in here, with Straub. Felt them as strong as if they were standing by the door, but the room was empty. One of the oddest, most powerful feelings I ever had. Something real bad.”
She looked out of the window, seeing the ornamental mill just visible through the drifting, misty rain, with its wrought-iron balcony that looked out over the fish pool. She narrowed her eyes, seeing a flicker of movement. Someone stood there in white. Two people? She rubbed her eyes and looked again, but the balcony was empty.
J.B. rushed into the room draped in blasters, followed by Jak.
Krysty spun, overwhelmed by a feeling of total, heart-stopping disaster. “The mill river out that way,” she gasped. “Now!”
“KNEEL DOWN.” The voice was a harsh, gasping parody of seductive lust.
Ryan did as he was told, wincing at the sharp pain it caused his healing thigh. The woman towered over him, her white boots smeared with mud and dulled with rain, inches from his hands. She was so close he could smell the rutting scent of her body, hot and urgent and deeply unattractive to him.
His mind was flooded with pain, unbalanced by Straub’s evil genius.
Krysty was dead.
John Dix was dead.
Doc, Jak and Mildred were all dead. Perhaps he was also dead and this was a form of Hell, like the Bible thumpers used to preach at the river-crossing meetings.
“First, your tongue.” Slowly she lifted her skirt, revealing her knees, then her thighs, almost touching his face. She wore no underclothes, and her coiling hair was moist and matted with her utterly overpowering need. “Taste me.”
He ignored her for a moment, though he knew he was soon going to do what she wanted. That was inexorably charted by the steel locks of Straub’s will, and nothing could stop him. But the bitterness of bereavement held him back from obeying for a handful of crucial seconds.