more than a suggestion of what must once have been disaster.
'What are those scars?' Cathy repeated. 'I don't remember them.'
'Someone attempted to kill me.' Her father turned from his workbench to answer tersely. 'Actually, they wanted to burn me to death.'
His look softened when he saw his daughter's reaction.
'It doesn't matter now,' he assured her. 'They failed. And that was a long time ago. Here, here are the rocks
Tyrrell broke off, listening. He looked at Cathy, and his face grew worried. Moments passed before she could hear what he heard, approaching voices, sounding like those of two women and a man.
Chapter 18
In the bright sunlight of midafternoon Jake stood, momentarily immobilized by the screams that poured out from behind the chipped and blasted but still solid barrier of rock. The man Jake was trying to kill obviously still survived.
Camilla, standing beside her breathing lover, had covered her ears with her hands, but now she added scream after scream of her own to Edgar's.
Anger brought Jake out of his momentary paralysis. He slapped Camilla viciously, trying to knock her out of her hysteria.
A moment later she was clinging to him, sobbing, and he was trying to comfort her. Then he grabbed her by the arms and shook her. Almost shouting to make himself heard above Edgar's cries of agony, he commanded: 'We've got to try the dynamite again. We've got to finish him off.'
Camilla shuddered. 'I know, I know—I'm all right now.'
Already Jake had picked up his hammer and drill again; the only practical hope was another attempt at blasting. He still had dynamite, and wire, and blasting caps.
Camilla had an inspiration. 'We forgot about the kerosene in the lamps in the house. I can get that.'
'Good idea. Throw the lamps back there. Keep that fire burning.'
She ran off.
Hastily Jake ran his hands over the barrier rock, selecting the spots where he wanted to drill the next set of holes. In a few moments he had begun hammering again. The failure of his first attempt had made him more keenly aware than ever that he didn't really know what he was doing when it came to blasting rock.
In a couple of minutes Camilla was back, walking now, carefully carrying three kerosene lamps. She hurled these accurately, one at a time, the glass bowls shattering inside the cave. The fresh shower of flammable liquid made the black smoke pour forth with increased volume.
Then she came to help Jake. 'It'll go faster if I hold the drill.'
'Yeah.'
She gripped the steel tool, rotating it after each blow as she had seen Jake do. Jake switched to a bigger hammer, as he had before. A slowly growing frenzy of fear and horror fueled him with energy. The work went faster.
When Jake and Camilla prepared to start the second new hole, he happened to look back into the little cave. What had been a deeply shadowed recess was now well lit by flames. To Jake's horror, he was able to see a portion of Tyrrell's head, scorched gray hair and blackened skin, at about knee level. The old man in his torment must somehow have managed to pull himself up on hands and knees.
Black smoke obscured at least half of what the orange flames were trying to reveal, but still Jake could see that Tyrrell's clothing was largely burned away, at least around his neck and shoulders, and the vampire was looking out at his assailants. His eyes, set in the scorched ruin of his face, were glassy and staring. His blackened lips writhed, uttering strange sounds.
On Jake's next swing his hammer missed the drill completely, fortunately missing Camilla's hands as well. She yelled at him in fright and dropped the tool.
Jake bellowed back at her, and she picked up the drill again.
Then suddenly it was all too much for her. Screaming, she dropped the tool clanging on rock and started to run, heading down the side canyon in the direction of the river.
Jake's shout of desperation—'Cam, get back here! I can't do this alone!'—stopped her in her tracks.
Quivering, she came back. But then she slumped weakly to the ground, unable or unwilling to do any more.
Again he gripped the drill in his own left hand, though both his arms were trembling with fatigue. Again he swung the smaller hammer with his right.
The drilling progressed, slowly. Time passed. Tyrrell’s screams slowly subsided into hideous moans, as the fire in the recess burned itself out, the black smoke diminishing to a greasy trickle in the air. Jake could not believe that the moans were ever going to stop.
Slowly, slowly, the last hole that Jake would have time to drill deepened in the limestone. Somehow the sun had passed the zenith and was going down. Despite oddness of the way time was passing, and the urgency of passing time, he had to pause frequently to rest his arms.
He didn't look into the cave again, but with the wind blowing the last traces of smoke away he knew that now the fire was out. Whatever damage the burning kerosene was capable of doing had been done, and their enemy had somehow survived it.
'Jake, I'm sorry, lover. I'll help you now, I'll help.'
Camilla had pulled herself together and come to stand beside him.
Jake nodded and smiled, saving his breath for work. He put down his hammer for a moment, leaning against the barrier rock to rest, wiping sweat from his forehead, and from his face, long days unshaven, with the sleeve of his work shirt.
Camilla came to give him an embrace.
Without warning, Tyrrell's scorched hand came groping out of the recess. The thin limb struck like a black snake wearing the ashen remnants of a sleeve, the arm extending itself unbelievably far. The grab missed Jake's arm by a fraction of an inch, and caught Camilla by the collar of her shirt.
Jake let out an incoherent sound of horror, dropped his hammer and jumped back. But the vampire's groping hand had now fastened on Camilla—she was being dragged helplessly into the small aperture between two unyielding surfaces of rock. The sound she made now was less a scream than a prolonged sob.
Jake stepped forward again. He picked up the metal drill, half as long as a baseball bat, and heavier, and swung it directly against Tyrrels almost skeletal wrist—to no effect. The sensation of impact that traveled back up the drill and into Jake's own hands was as if he had struck the massive rock itself. The blackened hand did not release its grip.
Camilla's body was braced, all her muscles straining as she struggled to keep herself from being forced, crushed, into the narrow aperture. Her sobbing made coherent words: 'No, Jake, use wood! Use wood!'
Jake dropped the drill. He grabbed up the longest hammer, and tried pounding with the handle at Tyrrell's arm. When that had no effect he changed his tactics, using the handle like a lever, jamming it into the narrow crevice between rocks, making a fulcrum of one angle of the big rock slab. With all his strength he forced Tyrrell's burned wrist against another rock.
Once more, the man in the cave screamed horribly.
His blackened, bony fingers still refused to release Camilla's collar, but now the fabric of the shirt was ripping.
Part of the garment, collar and shoulder and sleeve, tore completely away. With a final cry, as if she might be dying, the young woman fell to the ground, out of the vampire's reach.
Jake grabbed her under the arms, pulled her even farther from the blackened arm that still groped in search of breathing flesh.
'Come on, Cam, we're not done yet. Come on, you've still got to help me. We still have to drill another hole.' It would have to be done, obviously, in a place where Tyrrell could not possibly reach them as they worked.
'All right.' Camilla dragged herself back to her feet.
