“There’s a way out back here, Mort. Come on!”
A way out? I abandoned the door and ran. I was halfway across the room when Winter kicked the door open and came in with her foil in one hand. She had on shorts and the shirt I’d first seen her in, days ago, hacked off to the underside of her tits.
I made it through the other door three steps ahead of her. Jeri yanked it shut. In that split second I got a brief glimpse of a small storeroom, walls of naked two-by-four studs, shelves, broken glass and piles of junk on the floor, no Kayla, then everything went pitch black.
“The shelves,” Jeri said in the dark. “Climb the shelves. There’s a trapdoor in the ceiling. Kayla’s up there.” Winter yanked on the door, but Jeri held it. “There’s no lock on the door,” she said. “Get going.”
“You go,” I said. “I’ll hold it.” I was worried that my weight might rip the shelving down, trapping us both.
“I can do it,” Jeri said.
I pulled her hands off the knob and held it myself. I was bigger than she was. Guess I still hadn’t learned who was stronger.
“No, Mort!”
“Go, goddamn it! Soon as you’re up I’ll be right behind you.” I hoped.
The axe slammed into the door inches from where my hand was on the knob. One hit, and a wedge of light the width of the blade was visible. I had to hold the knob to keep her out, but another few hits and I was going to lose a hand.
“Go, Jeri! Now!”
She went. I heard her scrambling up the shelves.
The axe ripped into the door an inch from my hand. Winter was going for the latch, and I couldn’t turn loose of it. More light leaked through. Goddamn doors of theirs weren’t worth a shit.
“I’m up,” Jeri said. “Come on.”
The axe struck again. I looked behind me, then up. Still couldn’t see anything. I tried to visualize the shelves I’d glimpsed a moment ago. I let go of the knob and scrambled up the shelving, praying that it would hold my weight. My feet slipped. I grabbed wildly, hands flailing at air, then touching wood. I hauled myself up another foot. With Winter somewhere behind me, it seemed to take forever. I scraped my shins. The climb was dead vertical. I felt like an ox trying to shinny up a rope.
At the top I bumped my head on the edge of the trapdoor, hard, almost losing my grip. Again I felt that nausea, a deadly faintness. Below, Winter yanked the door open and lunged into the room. I saw the gleam of the foil in her hands. Jeri grabbed my wrist and hauled me partway through the trapdoor, into whatever lay beyond. I smelled mold, a kind of leafy rot, couldn’t see anything, then a bolt of agony went through my leg as Winter’s foil pierced the bottom of my left foot, came out the top between the bones and continued up into my calf, glancing off my tibia.
I screamed. The steel jerked out of me as Winter prepared for another thrust.
“Mort!” Jeri cried.
“Go, go! I’m okay.”
I wasn’t, but she didn’t know that. I crawled away from the trap-door, visualizing that rapier coming at me again, tearing through my buttocks and deep into me, all the way to my liver.
Cool moist dirt was under my hands. We were under the house somewhere, the part that was supported by concrete piers. To my left I saw diamonds, pale glowing diamonds—latticework—and suddenly I knew where I was. Jeri was ahead of me. I pushed her deeper into the blackness, away from the latticework, then I rolled to my right into darkness, knowing I had no time left, sensing Winter behind me. I hoped the move was unexpected and that she couldn’t see me. I slammed into one of the concrete pilings that was supporting the underside of the house, then spun around, facing her.
I heard Winter coming, still breathing hard. The foil hissed blindly in the dark, clattering against a floor joist then whipping down across my nose and cheek. The feel of flesh telegraphed through the blade into her hand and I knew she’d found me. I tried to move off to one side, but the foil came out of the blackness, a straight thrust into my chest, all the way through and out my back, missing my heart by an inch or two, then it jerked away.
The next one would kill me.
I leapt toward her instead of away, scrabbling with outstretched hands, trying to get inside the radius of her foil. She yelled, we butted heads, and then her fingernails were at my eyes, clawing. I tucked my head into my chest and grabbed at her, got hold of her hair and yanked her down, off to one side, then instinctively rolled with her hair in my hands, winding her hair up, twisting her neck. She shrieked, nails ripping into my wrists, and I kept rolling, forcing her to roll too or lose her scrawny neck, seeing those diamonds flickering in the gloom, rolling toward them, getting closer, eight feet, five, then I got her in front of me and kicked her in the belly, hard, sending her sprawling up against the lattice.
I scrabbled away, back into the dark, through tough spiderwebs that hissed and snapped like fine steel wires. I slammed into another support piling. The pain in my chest and back was like a poker, heated to a dull red. I coughed, tasted blood, knew she’d pierced a lung.
I lay still for a moment. Silence, then I heard a murmur of traffic on Virginia Street and the sound of Jeri and Kayla scrambling away on dirt. Suddenly Winter screamed, a full-blooded wail of pure horror that turned me cold. She crashed into something wooden, shrieking insanely, her body drumming and thrashing against earth and pilings.
I crawled away. Jeri plowed into me
