recede. It was highly annoying that a man like Ernst Escher was still running loose, but the Turks would eventually track him down again. They weren’t good for much-and Rigaud had often argued with Linz to replace them with a more professional bunch-but Linz liked them for their single-mindedness and overall lack of curiosity. Even Rigaud appreciated their unslakable taste for revenge.
Ali’s fingers were working their magic on the knots in his back and shoulders and Rigaud allowed himself to drift away. Soft music was playing, that Eastern stuff that Ali liked, but right then it sounded good even to Rigaud. He remembered that he had to tell the cook, who arrived with the other servants at six in morning; that Linz wanted cream of wheat for breakfast. But then, just as promptly, he forgot all about it.
Chapter 39
Ascanio pressed the gilded border of one of the mirrors, and it opened out to reveal a spiral staircase that rose toward the top of the turret. Then, raising one finger to urge absolute silence, he slipped onto the staircase, with David right behind. The steps wound upwards for twenty or thirty feet before coming to an end behind what looked like a heavy flap of cloth. It was only on closer inspection in the flashlight beam that David could tell, from the complex threadwork, that what they were standing behind was an immense, hanging tapestry.
Ascanio flicked off his light, and ever so gingerly pushed an edge of the cloth to one side. Over his shoulder, David could see that they were in a kind of anteroom, with a reading chair and a marquetry table holding crystal decanters and a brass lamp. A master bedroom was just beyond it. He could hear classical music playing, a shower running, and voices.
Linz and his wife.
“Ava, bring me the pills.”
“How many of these are you going to take?”
“Just bring them.”
David saw Ava-completely nude-saunter out of the bathroom with her palm open.
All he could see of Linz were his legs, in a pair of black silk pajamas and scuff slippers on his white ankles.
“Put something on,” he scolded, “for decency’s sake.”
“I was just about to take a shower. The water’s finally hot.”
He took the pills, and she strolled back out of sight with an athlete’s casual grace. David heard the bathroom door slam shut.
Ascanio crossed himself, then put his backpack on the floor and opened it. Then he withdrew the silver garland.
David had witnessed its powers only hours before, in the privacy of Sant’Angelo’s home. And as much as anything else he had seen, or been told, that demonstration had convinced him of the marquis’s claims. If he had had even a scintilla of doubt, watching the marquis disappear before his very eyes had erased it.
Fixing his eyes on David, Ascanio settled it squarely on his own head.
And within seconds, he had vanished.
The flap of the tapestry lifted, then fell back, as Ascanio slipped out from behind it. David wiped a vagrant spiderweb from his glasses and stared intently… but what was there to see?
Linz’s slippers were twitching in time to the music. But suddenly, as if he had heard something no one else could, or sensed some menace no one else could have detected, his slippers stopped. He sat bolt upright on the bed, rolled to one side, and fumbled in the drawer of the bedside table. In an instant, he had drawn out a gun and fired it into thin air.
There was a cry-it was Ascanio!-and a billow of blood exploded like a balloon in the empty air. Linz shot again, and the second bullet ripped through the tapestry and lodged in the wall above David’s head.
A moment later David saw Linz suddenly topple backwards off the bed, as if he’d been hit by a freight train. David rushed out, only to see Linz, in a red robe, wrestling on the floor with his unseen assailant.
But that was when he also saw, swinging against Linz’s bare chest on a silver chain, La Medusa.
His hand was still clutching the gun, but it was being banged repeatedly against the bedstead, and blood from an invisible source was spurting onto the carpet. Linz was struggling to hold on to the pistol, and when he swung the arm free, David saw the butt of the gun plainly collide with something solid. A second later the garland rolled free, spinning on the floor like a plate.
“It’s around his neck!” Ascanio cried to David, as he shimmered back into view. “Get it!”
But the muzzle of the gun was pointing right at him, and David ducked just as the next shot blasted the ceiling light, raining shards of glass. He was grappling for it when he heard a hellish scream and wet feet squishing across the floor. A naked body, lithe and strong, leapt on top of his back, the legs wrapping themselves around his waist, the arms folded across his throat, choking him.
David staggered back, catching a glimpse of himself in the bureau mirror-with Ava’s snarling face, teeth bared, over his shoulder-as he tried to shake her loose. But her grip was too tight, and he was stumbling backwards, barely able to stay on his feet at all. His glasses hanging from one ear, he crashed up against a heavy armoire. He heard her grunt, the wind knocked out of her, and he threw his head back, catching her chin. He ran a few steps away from the wardrobe, then rushed backwards, slamming her against the cabinet again.
“Bastard!” she gasped through bloodstained teeth, but still managing to hang on like a Harpy.
With what breath he had left, David reached behind his head, trying to grab her hair and pull her off his back; but she bit at his fingers and hands. He whirled around and threw himself, as if he were on fire, backwards onto the floor. Her arms loosened their grip, he took a breath, then rammed an elbow back into her face. He felt her nose shatter, and her whole body went limp.
Shaking free, he crawled to his feet, only to be bowled over again by Linz as he ran from the room, the tails of his red robe flying.
“Go after him!” Ascanio said, collapsing against the bedpost and holding out the sword. “I’ll never catch him!” His pants were torn, and blood was coursing down from a bullet wound in his leg.
David staggered up, hooking his glasses back on, as Ascanio pressed the harpe into his hand. “Now you know who he is!” he shouted, staring deeply into David’s eyes. “Don’t you?”
But David, reeling, simply nodded in confusion. His mind could not process something so enormous… and so terrible.
There was a crash from the anteroom as the table and lamp toppled over.
“We should have told you! But it’s up to you now, to finish the bastard, once and for all!”
David felt his fingers gripping the handle of the sword as if they belonged to someone else entirely.
“Go!”
David turned and ran toward the anteroom door-it had been flung open and the carpet runner in the hallway was rumpled from Linz’s headlong flight. David could hear his feet tearing around a corner toward the staircase.
He took off after him, vaulting down the stairs three at a time, then through a suite of dark, cluttered rooms, where the curtains rippled from Linz’s flight and furniture had been overturned to block his pursuit.
Linz was heading, David now knew, for the grand escalier, and bloody footprints on the marble floors confirmed it.
As did his rasping cry from below-“Rigaud! For Christ’s sake, Rigaud!”
But when David ran past the hall where Rigaud had last been seen, his door was firmly shut and there was no light emanating from under it.
At the top of the staircase, David caught a glimpse of Linz’s black slippers, racing around the bottom of the stairs and off toward the armor hall. He was still trying to call out, but his voice was hoarse and barely carried.
David lunged down the stairs, nearly losing his balance on a smear of wet blood, before skidding into the entry hall and pivoting.
He couldn’t see Linz anymore, but he knew which way he’d gone, and he ran after him, the short sword still clutched in his hand, as something long and sharp suddenly grazed his shoulder and thwanged into the wooden
