first night in Paris?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t have met Astiza and taken her away from you.” He gave her a quick glance, her arm cocked to throw the skull. “I’ll have her back to do with as I wish, soon enough.” So she hurled the bone. He knocked it away with the hilt of his rapier, his lips in a sneer, the skull making a loud clack as it fell. And he kept coming past the tables toward me.
He looked younger, yes—the book had done
but it was an odd youthfulness, I realized, as if he’d been stretched.
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His skin was tight and sallow, his eyes bright and yet shadowed by fatigue. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept for weeks. Who might never sleep again. And because of that, his eyes had a hint of madness.
There was something terribly wrong with this scroll we’d found.
“Your study smells like hell, Alessandro,” I said. “Which god are you apprentice to?”
“It’s simply a preview of where you’re going, Gage. Right
So I held up my macabre shield. Omar was penetrated, but the mummy trapped the point. I felt guilty about putting the old boy through all this, but then he was past caring, wasn’t he? I shoved the mummy at Silano, twisting his wrist, but then his sword slipped entirely through the carcass and along my own side. Damn, that hurt!
The rapier was like a razor.
Silano cursed and swung with his free arm—he’d regained his old litheness—and struck me a blow, knocking me back and wrestling the Egyptian cadaver away from me. He staggered to one side, his sword still entangled, but he groped inside the body’s cavity and triumphantly pulled out the scroll. Now I had no shield at all. He held the book above his head, daring me to lunge so he could skewer me.
Astiza had crouched, waiting for a chance.
I looked around wildly. The wooden sarcophagus! It was already leaning upright, so I grabbed it and wrestled the unwieldy box around to protect me. Silano had his sword free now, poor Omar almost broken in two, and he thrust the scroll into his shirt and came at me once again. I parried with the casket, letting the sword stab through the old wood but twisting, now knocking him backward and snapping the rapier in two. He kicked at the coffin angrily, smashing the decrepit wood, and when it fell apart something wedged inside broke free.
My rifle!
I dove for it, but when I reached out the broken sword slashed across my knuckles like the bite of a snake, so painful I couldn’t get a grip on my gun. I rolled clear as Silano was kicking shattered wood 3 2 8
w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h
aside to get at me. Now he’d produced a pistol, his face twisted with rage and loathing. I threw myself back against the shelves just as the gun went off, feeling the wind of the bullet as it sped past. It hit one of his noxious glass jars at the end of the room and the vessel shattered. Liquid splashed onto the floor by the balcony and something hideous and pale went skittering. A poisonous smell arose, a stench of combustible fumes, to mix with the smell of gunpowder.
“Damn you!” He fumbled to reload.
And then old Ben came to my aid. “Energy and persistence conquer all,” I remembered again. Energy!
Astiza was under the table, creeping toward Silano. I took off my coat and threw it at him for distraction, and then tore off my shirt.
The count looked at me as if I were a lunatic, but I needed bare, dry skin. There’s nothing better for creating friction. I took two steps and dove forward toward the jar that had broken, hitting the wood carpet like a swimmer and skidding on my torso, gritting my teeth against the burn. Electricity, you see, is generated by friction, and the salt in our blood turns us into temporary batteries. As I slid to the end of the room, I had a charge.
The broken jar had a metal base. As I slid I thrust out my arm and extended my finger like Michelangelo’s God reaching toward Adam.
And when I came near, the energy I’d stored leapt, with a jolt, toward the metal.
There was a spark, and the room exploded.
The fumes of Silano’s witch’s brew became a fireball, shooting over my cringing body and ballooning toward the count, Astiza, and down toward the carts, coaches, and boxes below where the preservative had dripped. The puff of the blast threw the table’s papers up in a whirlwind, singeing some, while below me the storage area caught fire. I struggled up, my hair singed and both sides burning—one from the scrape of the sword and the other from my slide on the carpet—and eyed my rifle. There was preservative on my remaining clothes, and I swatted out a puff of flame on my breeches. A dim, smoky haze filled the room. Silano, I saw, had fallen, but now he too was struggling upward, looking dazed but groping again for his t h e
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pistol. Then Astiza rose behind him and wrapped something around his neck.
It was the linen wrapping from Omar!
I crawled toward my gun.
Silano, writhing, lifted her off her feet but she hung grimly on his back. As they clumsily danced the hideous mummy bounced with them, a bizarre menage a trois. I got to my gun and snapped a shot, but there was just a dry click.
“Ethan, hurry!”
