James Axler – Cold Asylum

They must have used some trick to get the serving girl to open the outer door for them. With most of the garrison out on the hunt and the destruction of the mill stopping all power, it would have been deeply confusing. Even so, it crossed Harry’s mind that the woman was lucky to be dead. That way she was spared punishment from Mistress Marie.

After pushing their way in, they’d dragged her body out of the way through the unlocked second door, bolted both, then headed upward.

He stood still, elbowing back at someone who was trying to push past him. “Wait, damn you!”

It was difficult to visualize precisely where he was standing. The main stairs were ahead of him and to the right, circling up, with one of the dusty old tapestries covering the small alcove beneath them. There was no other corridor available to the outlanders to escape.

They had to be higher, on the second or the third floors, where the guns were. They had to be.

Guiteau was trying to decide how many of his shrunken party he should leave behind as a last line, in case Ryan or any of them managed to get past and escape through the two broken doors. Three would be enough.

Then he heard the hiss of a lash and the unmistakable sound of the quirt striking flesh, a gasp of pain and shock, only just behind him.

“Out of the way, or I’ll bury you facedown in cold pig shit. Why have we stopped?”

“Thinking about putting a rearguard to” Guiteau began.

“Don’t think. You get good jack to do what you’re told. Up the fuck-damned steps right now. All of you. And I want them taken alive, if possible. Particularly I want Michael Brother and the one-eyed man unharmed.”

“But if any of them” Even in the total blackness, he realized he could actually see her anger, knew he was wasting breath and laying himself open to bleak disaster. “Fine. Sure. Let’s all go kick some outland ass.”

Harry Guiteau had hardly noticed that there had been a sudden and total shift of power in the last five minutes. Somehow Baron Nathan had become a peripheral figure. Seeming shocked by the odd turn that events had taken, he had given up the lead to his voracious daughter and was now standing disconsolately among his armed servants.

“Anyone got a lamp?”

Several of the men had self-lights, but the rain had affected most of them. Eventually three or four managed to get theirs working, giving a weak and fluttery yellow light around the cramped space at the bottom of the stairs.

Above them, the top four floors of the tower were totally dark and silent.

“Go first, Guiteau,” Marie ordered.

“Sure.” Carrying the Armalite in his right hand, the disfigured left hand moving cautiously up the damp banister. A brace of sec men followed him, with Marie coming fourth. Plodding doggedly along at her heels was the baron, water still glittering in the fronds of his snowy beard. The rest of the group pressed close behind.

Outside the tower, one of the tethered horses snickered softly in the easing rain.

The noise of the thunder was moving southward, and there was only a lingering, occasional flash of the pink-purple chem lightning.

The rasping of their wet boots on the stone stairs carried clearly to Ryan and the others.

IT WAS DESPERATELY crowded in the tiny alcove under the stairs, with only the dusty wall hanging between them and the posse of sec men.

Everyone had their blasters drawn and ready, nerves strung taut, waiting for someone to rip the tapestry back and reveal them in the darkness.

But the minds of Guiteau and the sec force were directed upward to the baron’s priceless gun collection and the threat it represented to the ville.

Ryan put his eye to a ragged tear in the flimsy material, seeing that the lobby was now empty, except for the ruin of the two doors and the motionless body of the woman. The occasional flashes of lightning gave enough illumination for him to be sure that there was nobody left downstairs, though a flickering glow from above and the noise of the feet told him they weren’t far away.