In The House Of Secret Enemies

'Somebody's building it.'

'Haitians, who appreciate our powers. They are afraid of voodoo spells. They would tear their own tongues out before they told anybody about this place. It's true that Borrn will be investigated, but I have no doubt that he will come out of it clean.'

'People know he's a witch.'

That shook him. 'How is that?'

I decided against mentioning Garth or Uranus. 'It's in his witch's diary. Davidson's.'

Peth was silent for a long time. Whatever he'd finally decided wasn't going to be shared with me. He rose from his chair and gave a slight nod of his head. As one, the twelve figures outside the door entered the room and began to fan out around me. Their movements were slow, almost mechanical; it was like seeing a guillotine blade descend in slow motion.

I smiled in what I hoped was a disarming manner, and gathered my legs beneath me. I focused my gaze on Peth's solar plexus. I couldn't fight thirteen men, but a few of them were going to discover that I was one deadly dwarf. Peth would be my first candidate for instruction.

^'O Pentacle of Might, be thou fortress and defense to Robert Frederickson against all enemies, seen and unseen, in every magical work.'

Uranus' voice drifted down from the darkness in the outer chamber. Before all the lights went out I caught the looks of utter astonishment on the faces of the coven members. I was a little surprised myself, but not so much that I forgot the way out of the room. I lunged forward in the darkness, caromed off a few sheeted bodies and landed on my face on the concrete outside. I got back up on my feet and raced off to my left, taking cover in the darkness, beyond the firelight. I'd traded in one trap for a new, slightly larger one; as long as the lights remained out, a few people were going to pay a heavy price for trying to find me.

That left me to meditate on the question of what Uranus was doing in the building.

Peth and the others seemed to be preoccupied by the same question. I watched as they slowly emerged from the darkness to spread out in a circle around the raging fire. Peth stood at their head, gazing up toward the spot where the hole in the north wall would be.

'Who are you?' Peth asked in a whisper that carried throughout the chamber.

'All wise Great One, Great Ruler of Storms, Master of the Heavenly Chamber, Great King of the Powers of the Sky, be here, we pray thee, and guard this place from all dangers approaching from the west?'

Peth and the others knew a few rhymes of their own. There was no visible signal of any kind, but their voices rose in a chorus that made chills ripple through my body:

'Amodeus, Calamitor, Usor! You who sow confusion, where are you? You who infuse fear and hate and enmity, I command you by the power of Disalone and Her Horned Consort to go!'

'So mote it be!'

'So mote it be!'

There was a pause, then Uranus' voice again, soft, drifting like a sonic feather:

'Four corners in this house for Holy Angels. Christ Jesus be in our midst. God be in this place and keep us safe.'

The response was a blast of psychic hate:

'It is not our hands which do this deed, but that of Amodeus the Horned One!'

'The trespasser must die!'

'So mote it be!'

'So mote it be!'

I was watching a duel of sorcerers, and I felt thrown back in time a thousand years, thrown to the ground at the mouth of a cave in which moved dark, strange shapes.

There was a long silence. Peth made a motion with his hand and the other members of the coven turned and started to fan out. It was dwarf-hunting time.

'Stop!' Uranus' voice was weaker, ragged, as though she were short of breath. The movement of the coven members stopped. 'I am Uranus Jones, and Dr. Frederickson is under my protection. You have heard of me and know of my powers.'

Peth's voice drifted softly through the room, waxing and waning like some invisible moon. 'I have heard of you, Uranus Jones. You are a member of our family, a unit of the Universal Mind. Respect our wishes. This is not your concern. Leave us. So mote it be.'

Again, the faint, muted tones: 'I repeat that Dr. Frederickson is under my protection. You harm him at your own peril.'

Her voice drifted off strangely. The muscles in my stomach began to flutter uncontrollably. There was movement to my left.

'Mongo! Shoot the leader if anyone moves again!'

Uranus' voice seemed stronger now, as though she had successfully passed through some great ordeal. I liked her suggestion, except that I didn't have a gun, and Peth knew it.

'He doesn't have a gun,' Peth said, underlining my thoughts. I wondered why he sounded so uncertain.

'He does now,' Uranus said. 'Open the doors and let him pass.'

It was the beginning of an argument between two other parties that I was going to lose. It seemed a good time to excuse myself from the debate.

I remembered the scaffolding hanging from the hole in the north wall, and tried to picture in my mind exactly where it would be. I knew it was about ten feet off the ground, and I would need tremendous momentum if I hoped to reach it.

Circus time. I shoved off the wall and sprinted across the floor, getting up a good head of steam. Somebody reached out for me and missed. Twenty feet from where I judged the wall to be I launched into a series of cartwheels, then, on the last turn, planted my feet on the floor and hurled myself up into the air.

At the apogee of my leap my hands touched wood. I gripped the edge of the scaffold; I scrambled up onto the platform, shinnied up the rope and dropped over the concrete cornice onto a pile of building supplies.

The entire escape had taken less than fifteen seconds.

I could see Uranus now in the glow of the firelight reflected off the walls. She was slumped against a girder, next to a large circuit breaker; her appearance frightened me more than anything that had happened previously. She appeared to have aged into an old woman, devoid of energy; her beautiful, silver hair hung in wisps from her head.

I ran over to her and grabbed her around the waist.

'Fire exit,' she gasped. 'Off to the left.'

I started to my left, pulling Uranus after me. I'd expected to hear a furor from below or, at the least, a few well-chosen curses. There was silence.

'Why the hell didn't you tell me about this place?' I whispered through clenched teeth. 'It would have saved everybody a lot of trouble.'

'Scry,' Uranus sighed in the same broken voice that had so frightened me before. 'Knew. . felt. . you in trouble. Called Garth but afraid. . there wasn't. . time.'

She seemed to be regaining her strength. I released her and she scrambled along beside me. I found the window she had come through. We both went out, then started down the fire escape.

'The gun,' Uranus said. 'Do you have it? They may try to come after us.'

'I don't have a gun.'

Uranus said nothing. I could hear the sirens of Garth's cavalry coming to the rescue. Judging from the sound, they were closing fast.

'Let's go watch the show,' I said, starting down the alley leading to the front of the building.

Uranus grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the darkness beside the building. She looked herself again, though still pale; it was as though she had passed through a near-fatal illness in a matter of only a few minutes.

'I can't go with you,' she said.

'Why the hell not? Knowing Garth, he'll have an army of cops with him.'