God in heaven, it was dark! They’d had a candle lantern that burned with a pinkish flame. The girl, whatever her name was—Margolla?—thought it was romantic and Daniel was happy with whatever a girl thought was romantic. It’d burned out, though, and the course of the evening he’d kicked heaven knew where the trousers he’d laid neatly over the bunk’s footboard when he took them off.
He groped on the floor, still disoriented—it was dark as six feet up a hog’s bum!—and grabbed a handful of the silky synthetic fabric as the girl said, “Dannie, what’s happening?” and somebody started banging on a door just down the hallway.
The girl—her name was Margolla—switched on a bedlamp. She was leaning toward him. Her breasts were firm, full, and shapely—enticing under most circumstances but right now of less interest to Daniel than the fact that Bloody hell, I’ve got my trousers on backwards!
“Daniel, where are you going?” Margolla said on a rising note. Daniel jerked the door open.
Electric sconces at either corner illuminated the hall with wan sufficiency. Father Rosario stood at the door of the next suite down. His wide hat had fallen off and lay like a soup dish on the floor beside him. As Daniel stepped into the hallway, the priest put the muzzle of his gleaming pistol against the lock-plate and fired.
The brilliant white flash of oxidizing aluminum lit the hallway. The pellet hit the lock a clanging hammerblow that blew it out of the panel. The doorpanel swung inward.
“Hey!” Daniel shouted, waving his arms as he started forward. He didn’t have strong feelings about Count Klimov as a person, but the Count was a Sissie, a member with Daniel of a family bound tighter than mere genetics could do. “Drop it!”
Father Rosario turned, bringing up the pistol. Daniel, ten feet away, saw the tiny black hole of the muzzle and threw himself sideways.
The first slug missed, blasting a divot from the wainscoting before it ricocheted off the concrete core with a spiteful howl. Recoil lifted the barrel so the priest’s next two shots smacked into the ceiling.
Daniel’d squinted as he rolled, but the flashes still left vivid afterimages quivering across his retinas. He saw Count Klimov, a gangling ghost of a man, lunge out of his room and sprint down the hall in the other direction.
Father Rosario turned, aiming through the doorway again. He was blinking, blinded by his own shots, but he caught motion from the corner of his eye and blasted twice more down the corridor just as the Count disappeared around the corner. The priest started after him, waving the pistol and screaming.
Bloody hell, it sounded like a whole stadium of people screaming, including Margolla bawling, “Dannie, don’t do it!” Daniel launched himself in a flying tackle that would’ve smashed the priest to the floor hard enough to jar his teeth loose, let alone his gun—except that Flora Pansuela, darker and more rounded than the Count but just as naked, ran into the hallway just at the wrong moment. Daniel crashed into her, knocking Flora into the doorjamb and slewing himself into the opposite wall. For all her softness, the lady was a solid weight.
Daniel rose to his feet again like a sprinter launching himself from the blocks. He’d never lost forward motion, just channeled it at the cost of some bruises. He’d feel them in the morning but they didn’t slow him tonight.
Rosario stumbled on the hem of his long robe, triggering another shot into the floor. It caromed into the ceiling, then back to punch a hole in the door of the thankfully unoccupied room at the end of the hallway.
The priest stopped at the corner and pointed his weapon down the intersecting hall. Daniel caught him around the shoulders and crushed him against the opposite wall. He thought he heard bones crack, and he bloody well hoped he heard bones crack. The pistol bounced away harmlessly.
Father Rosario crumpled to the floor. Daniel fell on top of him, breathing through his mouth and suddenly queasy from the adrenaline he hadn’t burned out of his system. He glanced down the hall through blobs of purple and orange flickering across his retinas. Count Klimov had tripped on a pile of boxes and was crawling on all fours toward the lighted doorway where Enrique Pansuela stood with a shocked expression.