Chapter Twenty-Six

Ryan didn't know what had awakened him.
After the meal, Norman had brought around tiny glasses with a choice of sweet, sticky liqueurs, bright rainbow colors, deep green and cerulean blue and violet and a sickly gold. All of them tasted of sugar and fire.
Krysty had described them to Ryan, who'd shaken his head at the idea. He'd eaten well rather than wisely and was feeling liverish. But she'd pressed him and picked one for him that she said was the color of ripe oranges.
Norman had poured him a glassful and it hadn't tasted bad, orangy with a hint of chocolate and a slightly bitter aftertaste that Ryan couldn't identify. But on principle he'd left most of it, and Krysty had finished it for him, without, she said, letting the butler see.
They'd all gone up to their rooms. Both Ryan and Krysty were exhausted and promptly fell asleep.
Now, something had awakened him.
"What was that?" he whispered to Krysty.
But she didn't stir. He could tell from the sound of her heavy breathing that she was deeply asleep, lying on her back. Ryan nudged her in the ribs, but she muttered and half raised an arm to vaguely push him away.
"Guess I'll just have to go and take a look-see myself. Or a listen-hear. Never heard of that. Mebbe I just invented it."
His head ached and felt muzzy.
Sitting up and swinging his legs out of the bed brought a passing wave of nausea, but it didn't last. Ryan slept with most of his clothes on, from force of habit. But he was barefooted as he padded carefully across the room, tucking the SIG-Sauer into its holster as he moved, both hands outstretched to try to avoid bumping into the furniture.
Behind him, the sound of Krysty's snoring grew deeper and louder.
Ryan was pleased that he made the walk to the door without even touching anything, his right hand dropping onto the cold metal of the ornate brass handle at the first attempt.
The door opened without a sound. Ryan hesitated. The Cornelius mansion was generally in poor condition. But every door hinge and lock had been recently greased. It was an interesting fact to store away and examine later.
Behind him, he heard Krysty muttering something about a milch cow.
He still had no idea what had awakened him, but the short hairs at his nape were prickling, and he knew better than to ignore such a warning.
The house seemed silent, except for the inevitable faint creakings and settling sounds.
Ryan had managed, during their time with the Family, to build up an accurate plan in his mind. Both Krysty and Dean had helped him, taking him on a repeated tour of the first three floors, telling him where all the doors and barred windows and sets of stairs were, who was in each room.
He eased himself into the corridor, head turning, alert for any noise.
A full set of armor was just to his left, and he reached out to touch the cold metal of the breastplate. To his right hung a large portrait of a stern-faced man. Doc had described it to him, saying he thought it was by an inferior Dutch artist called Van Helsing.
He recalled that Norman had shown them all up to this floor, and had repeated his warning about wandering in the night. J.B. had asked him where the threat might be, and the little man had skipped sideways to avoid the question.
"Who knows where danger might be? Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"
Mildred had given him some sort of answer to that. What had it been?
"Only the shadows know," Ryan breathed. Something like that, anyway.
He began to stalk along the passage, unconsciously closing his "good" eye, as if he were making himself blind and was, that way, kind of controlling his own destiny.
There was a long bench seat next, and he rounded it, barely brushing its surface with the tips of his fingers. The room where Mildred and the Armorer slept was on his right. Jak was opposite, and Dean immediately beyond that.
Ryan hesitated, fixing his position in his mind. A bathroom was to the right, its brass handle cool against his hand. Then there was a staircase that J.B. believed led up to the banned top floor of the rambling mansion.
But it was kept locked.
A floorboard squeaked under his bare feet and Ryan froze, putting out his arm to steady himself, feeling the carved wood of the heavy door, just as it had been described to him.
With one exception.
It moved at his touch, swinging away from Ryan, taking him so much by surprise that he stumbled and nearly fell. There was a breath of cold, dark wind. For a moment Ryan had an odd thought. He knew that he was near the attics and lofts of the building, yet the wave of air smelled as though it came from deep underground, scented by the buried roots of old trees.
He stood statue still, hand on the butt of the blaster, waiting.
The house was quiet.
Unless
Was there a faint noise from somewhere ahead of him? Johannes Forde's room was last along there, filled with all his movie equipment, which he'd insisted on having carried from the stabled wag.
Beyond that was a heavily barred window covered with an ornamental tapestry. Dean had described that to his father.
"This gaudy slut, with hardly any clothes, though there's bits of bushes and tree over all heryou know, Dad. So you can't see nothing." Ryan had corrected the boy's grammar. "And there's this swan, with a long neck and yellow beak." Dean had sniggered with embarrassment. "And you just wouldn't believe, Dad, what the swan's doing to the slut."
Ryan wasn't sure whether he did believe his son, though Doc had confirmed the subject matter, making a comment that was triple obscure, though he seemed to think that it was amusing. He told Ryan that the picture on the tapestry was called Take Me to Your Leader .
Like most of the old man's so-called jokes, Ryan didn't understand it.
There was a draft from the opposite side of the passage, where Ryan remembered there was a fireplace that Krysty had said looked like it had been sealed off and hadn't had a fire in it for a hundred years.
That might have been right, but the chimney had to still be open. The cold night wind surging down it was very strong, ruffling at Ryan's dark curly hair.
There was a knocking noise ahead of Ryan, irregular and muffled, sounding like a shutter that hadn't been properly fastened and was banging in the rising breeze.
He hesitated once more, concentrating his attention on making sure where he was.
One more door. An empty room, locked. Then came the final bedroom, with Forde sleeping in it.
If there was any nocturnal danger in the house, it would be in either Forde's room, or in the supposedly empty chamber next door to it.
Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer. Though he was blind, he didn't need to worry about whether the automatic blaster was fully loaded. If a single one of the fifteen 9 mm rounds had been missing from the mag, he'd have known it immediately. It was like having a joint sliced off your little finger. No way you wouldn't notice that.
Now he was shuffling along, crablike, trying to keep his back to the wall of the passage, feeling behind himself with his left hand for the door of the room next to Johannes's, finding it.
Locked.
The sensation of danger was almost overpoweringly strong and he took several slow, deep breaths, steadying himself for whatever it was he might face.
His shoulder knocked against something that rocked and began to fall.
"Big pot on a stand filled with a bunch of dried-out dead flowers."
Now he remembered that Krysty had mentioned it to him earlier in the day.
Despite his loss of sight, Ryan's reflexes were still rattler fast, and be whipped round, reaching with his free hand, grabbing at the ceramic stand that held the pot and steadying it. He brought up his right hand, the muzzle of the blaster making a tiny chinking sound as it touched the heavy pot.
But it didn't fall.
Ryan edged around it, closer to Forde's room. Some kind of instinct told him that the door was open.
He breathed in again, trying to taste the air.
The brackish scent of a subterranean vault was there, and something else, something stale and bitter. And a third smell. Hot and salt. It was unmistakable, once smelted, never forgotten.
There was blood in the air.
Ryan considered turning and fumbling his way back to his own room to wake Krysty, get her to wake the others, make sure that everyone was armed and ready for the danger, whatever it might be.
While he would remain behind, sitting on the bed, blind and useless.
"No," he mouthed, convincing himself that the threat to Forde was so obvious and so immediate that it had to be confronted now. After all, he could pull the trigger on the SIG-Sauer and its angry bark would wake the whole house.
He moved closer to the doorway.
The hand that gripped his wrist was so powerful that Ryan gasped in pain and shock. His fingers opened and the blaster fell to the carpet. There was a rustling like the wind through the feathers of a huge condor, and the smell of dirt and decay became so intense that Ryan coughed and nearly puked.
He thought that he heard a voice, rasping the single word, "Nooooo" but he couldn't be certain.
Ryan reached for the hilt of the panga sheathed on his hip, before realizing that he'd left it behind in the bedroom.
The grip on his lower arm was numbing. No norm could have such strength, making Ryan aware that he'd been attacked by some sort of murderous mutie.
He tried to snatch at where the man's groin might be, but his hand became tangled in material, and it was easily parried.
A second hand reached for his throat, pincering off the breath.
Ryan felt himself actually lifted clear of the floor and pressed against the paneled wall so that he couldn't even kick out at his enemy. It was like being a rabbit gripped in the paws of a gigantic grizzly.
He was helpless, choking, blood pounding in his ears and behind his eyes, his tongue feeling like it had swollen, pushing out between engorged lips.
He couldn't make a sound. All of his friends were within a scant dozen yards of him, and not one of them would know of his passing.
Ryan felt all of the lines going down throughout his brain and body. There was little pain, except for the pressure on his throat. His eye seemed to be on the edge of exploding from its socket. There was blood on his face and neck, seeping from eye, ears, mouth and nose.
Though he was trying to flail with his fists at the man holding him, his blows seemed to be filled with cotton candy and had no effect at all.
There was a roaring in his ears, then there was silence.


SWIMMING ON A secret ocean, rising and falling on the slow, measureless swell. A gray shadow on the sea and gray clouds floating over his head. No hint of sunlight.
It was very quiet and peaceful, and Ryan found himself content to drift. The fact that he was slowly sinking into the cold water didn't matter. The sooner that happened, then the better it would be. No more pain.
"Ryan."
It would be good to lie still in the primordial ooze with the blind eels.
"Come on, man!"
Something had brushed against his shoulder, jerking him around in a most uncomfortable way. Ryan screwed up his face and tried to push the creature away.
"By the Three Kennedys, come back to me!"
The voice was familiar to Ryan, but it was a puzzle why Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner should be out on the rolling billows with him. And why would good old Doc be behaving like such a bastard, ruining Ryan's rest?
"I know that you can hear me, Ryan. Do make an effort, or your attacker might return and complete his murderous task at any moment. Wake up."
"Fuck off, Doc."
The voice was cracked and feeble, like a forgotten godling in an abandoned tomb.
Ryan could hear relief in Doc's voice. "Excellent, my dear fellow, excellent. Let the anger flow, Master Cawdor. Up to the surface."
It really was Doc and he was struggling to lift Ryan into a sitting position, babbling of a murderous attacker. There was a memory of being thrown against a wall, fingers like steel traps, circling his throat.
"Triple strong, Doc," he whispered.
"The man who did this to you?"
Ryan nodded. "Yeah. Shoot first. Wake others."
"Wouldn't care to leave you here. In case"
Ryan had opened his eye and for a moment he thought he detected a flicker of golden light above him, like the bright flames of a torch on the wall.
But when he closed his eye and opened it again, the light was gone into the dark.
And he had slipped back into unconsciousness.