They used a tiny explosive charge and held a half-dozen or so darts, a half inch long, barbed and made from the finest surgical steel. They tumbled on impact, for maxi-mum impact, and were lethally difficult to locate and re-move.
Rachel had been bleeding, and there was blood crusted around her mouth. Her face also bore the clear imprint of a ringed fist. The eyes were venomous with hatred for Ryan. She wore a long black dress that dragged on the floor, hiding her dainty feet. The stiletto was sheathed at her belt. The bag that she normally carried was missing.
Her voice was quiet and gentle, difficult to hear above the crunching of bones from the pit below them, but loud enough for Ryan to hear every word.
“I offered you the chance, didn’t I? Now see what you’ve done. Harvey dead. Jabez, sweet child, dead. The ville ruined and everyone gone. All by the return of a middle-aged, one-eyed double-poor hired killer. You, Ryan.”
313
“Aw, it weren’t nothing, lady,” he replied, grinning wolfishly. “Anyone would have done the same if n they’d had the chance.”
“I’m going, as well. I have my jewels packed. My fa-vorite mare is in the stables, saddled and ready. She can outrun anything in the Shens. By sundown I’ll be forty miles south of here.”
“I thought you could run from your past,” he said, feeling warm blood easing itself stickily down the side of his chest. “I ran for twenty years. In the end, I find I’d run clear back to where I’d started. You can’t run from what you’ve done.”
“Watch me, Ryan.” A ghost of a smile flitted at the corners of her bloodless lips.
“You won’t even get out of the ville.”
“You won’t even know, Ryan. Because you’ll be dead with a gutful of steel darts. And I shall look back and en-joy watching you kicking at my feet. I shall remember that…” she concluded, leveling the gun, finger tighten-ing on the flat, broad trigger.
“Nevermore,” Doc Tanner said, squeezing the trigger of his beloved antique Le Mat pistol.
The blast of the .63-caliber scattergun damned near blew Rachel Cawdor’s head clear off her narrow shoul-ders.
Ryan ducked away from the devastating noise and power of the old handgun, but he was splashed with blood and brains. The noise stopped the boars at their feeding for a few seconds. Then they resumed dining on the rag-ged body of the baron of Front Royal.
Rachel’s corpse slipped untidily to the stone floor of the balcony, the dart gun still held in her right hand. Powder smoke hung in the cool air of the pit, and the stench of cordite was heavy in the nostrils.
314
“Just before being trawled forward by Project Cer-berus, I worked in a laboratory with an elderly English geneticist,” Doc said, holstering his blaster. “At the end of each working shift he would fold away his coat and say, ‘And that, gentlemen, concludes the entertainment for today.’ I think, my dear Ryan, this concludes our enter-tainment for today.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
IT WAS RAINING HEAVILY.
Evening had come early to the Shens, borne in on the teeth of a rising wind and the threat of a severe chem storm sweeping from the blue-ridged mountains to the north and west of Front Royal. Ryan and his friends re-gained their own weapons and clothes, then found ample food in the empty kitchens. None of the local villagers came near the fortress that first night of freedom from the oppression of Baron Harvey Cawdor.
In the abandoned palace it was easy for Ryan and Krysty to find an empty bedroom for themselves for the night. There was some wine from a crusted green bottle that Doc found in one of the old cellars. Called Chateau-neuf-du-Pape, it was a delicious soft red wine that lay like a silk ribbon on the palate. There were words on the dusty cobwebbed label that Krysty said she thought were French.
They made love with an infinitely gentle slowness, rel-ishing each other’s body, doing for each other the things they knew would give limitless delight. Afterward Ryan lay with his head cradled on Krysty’s stomach, one hand stroking her breasts. The shoulder wound had been thor-oughly cleansed and bandaged, and the pain had now abated to a steady throbbing. Nothing vital had been