Читать книгу World Enough, and Time - FastPencil Premiere - Страница 7

TORCHES filled the cave with grimy light. Close to ninety Humans cowered at one end, herded into the corner by a dozen Accidents, as the vile creatures exchanged harsh mutterings in their guttural language. At the other end of the cave a flock of vampires mingled. Many slept among a cluster of empty tumbrils. Some were talking, some made plans. Two were feeding off the white dying body of a man named Moorelli.

The smoke from the torches twisted, like so many wraiths, to the ceiling, where it hid in the recesses, breathlessly still. The Accidents chose a few of their group to stand guard, while the rest went to sleep in whatever stagnant pools they could find. Accidents loved to repose in the thin slime of moldy caverns. It was near midnight.

None of the Humans slept.

“What are they going to do with us?” Dicey asked Rose for the twentieth time. They huddled near the center of the confined area, surrounded by the terrified faces of their fellow prisoners. “Are we going to die?” she begged for reassurance.

Rose stroked her young friend tenderly. “They won’t kill us, child. If they were going to, they’d have done so by now.” She almost believed this herself. In any event, her words eased Dicey’s mind. Each time Rose spoke like this, the young girl’s face became visibly soothed. Ollie wasn’t so fortunate. He’d remained mute and transfixed ever since the ordeal at the cabin. He sat in Rose’s lap now like a too-real doll.

“If I only had something to write with,” Dicey went on whispering, “I know I could get us out of here.”

Rose nodded patiently. Though she could read somewhat, she didn’t belong to the religion of Scribery; she had no real faith in the magic of writing. Still, she would do nothing to quell Dicey’s hope.

Dicey went on. “If Josh were here he could write some powerful lines. He can turn Word into Sword. He could read them all to sleep and we could walk out of here.”

Rose smiled. “I don’t think Accidents care much about reading.”

“Why are they doing this to us?”

“Accidents hate Humans and that’s just the truth. Don’t know about these Vampires and the others. My mother used to talk about vampires back south. Hateful creatures. The Accidents look horrible, I know, but I just pity them.”

“How come Accidents hate us so much?” Dicey asked, passing her gaze over the loathsome beasts.

“Accidents used to be Humans, a long time ago, before there were Scribes, when Centaurs lived on their own land, and Vampires never flew north of the line. Used to be Human, but they drank a potion they thought would make them Gods, and that’s what they turned into. Now they hate the Humans who are left for not taking the potion.”

“That’s not what it said in the book.”

“Books don’t know everything, child.”

“Don’t call me child,” Dicey pouted. “And books do too know everything. And the book I read said there were no such things as Accidents, they were just figments of imagination that we invented to punish ourselves.”

“These Accidents are real. Their smell alone ought to be enough to gag you.” That was the trouble with Scribery, as far as Rose was concerned. Much of it was fairy tale; it didn’t distinguish between history and metaphor.

The young girl was silent. Two monstrous fiends near the wall squabbled over the remnants of an old man they were eating. Dicey looked like she might become hysterical. Rose turned her around by the shoulders.

“Let me read your eyes,” she told the girl, to keep her occupied. She stared into Dicey’s left eye. It was dark, opaque. Like an endless night.

“What do you see?” asked Dicey.

“Happiness and long life,” lied Rose. She could see nothing.

The moon was a yellow ripe fruit hanging low in the sky, ready to burst. In the near distance the serene Pacific could be heard sighing. The wind slept. Josh and Beauty advanced on the brothel slowly, savoring that mix of fear and cunning that is the hunter’s lust.

The brothel was a grand old wooden house, three stories high with gables, extra wings, and scattered cottages. A large cracked glass window faced out on the open field that fronted the building. In the window burned three fat candles in clear red plastic jars. Candles could be seen flickering everywhere in the front room, making wild and changing forms out of the shadowy figures who moved within.

Out back was an enormous barn and a windmill which generated some electricity for lights and refrigerators. But there was no storage battery, so the only electricity was when there was wind, and now the wind was resting. A quiet night.

Josh climbed the rickety stairs to the front door and knocked. Beauty waited behind, at the foot of the steps. The plan was to enter as patrons, do some sniffing around, and take the wounded Accident alive, if possible. It had to lead the hunters to its accomplices and to the orphan Humans.

There were footfalls inside; the door unlocked and opened. The old madam stood there in an evening gown, all four hundred pounds of her. Her face was painted in primary colors, and she wore a peacock-feather wig. Two big bouncers stood beside her and behind.

The old madam looked at Josh, glanced briefly at Beauty behind him, then fixed her stare on the young Human. “Come on in, Trouble, we been waitin’ for ya.” Then again, without looking at Beauty, “There’s stables out back for his kind.”

Beauty’s nostrils flared; he skittered back a few steps. Josh turned to him. “Forget it,” he said quietly. Then louder, “The stable might be just the place you want.” He looked back and winked broadly at the madam. The madam smiled. She didn’t like horses, but she didn’t want trouble.

Beauty didn’t take insults lightly, but he understood Joshua’s double meaning and knew he was right; the creature was as likely in the stable as anywhere else. Besides, it would give him a chance to look over the grounds. He reared up once and cantered around the side of the house. Josh went inside.

A great room with a high-beamed ceiling spread off to the right, lit by a crystal chandelier, sparkling with candles. A player piano bobbed on madly in the corner. Off to the left a carpeted staircase curled upstairs and beside it, in a side room with the door ajar, a group of six noisily played cards.

Joshua entered the main room. The madam said, “You find somethin’ ya like, Trouble, an’ we’ll discuss it,” and then wandered off, leaving Josh on his own.

The room was filled with buyers and sellers of every description, trysting quietly in the dark and fluid candlelight. In one corner a pale, gaunt man spoke in low tones to a female Vampire. She was naked, though her brown wings loosely encircled her. As the man spoke, he slipped his hand down under the smooth, thin wing-skin to fondle the slope of her heavy breast. She let out a throaty chuckle, showing a long white tooth at the corner of her mouth.

A Satyr lounged on the couch, goat-legs up on a table, a smile on his face, and a young woman in his lap with another at his side. Their moist eyes were glazed, their hands urgent in his fur. It was not immediately apparent whether the Satyr was buying or selling.

Shadows danced in the stairwell.

Near the dark side of the room two Hermaphrodites explored each other’s darker sides.

A Troll exposed his hump to someone with bulbous lips and a vacant stare; a black Cat lapped distractedly at the inner thigh of a hairless woman wearing a black mask.

Josh scanned the group, but saw no sign of the Accident. Where would it be? He thought of everything he’d ever read about them, but there had never been mention of Accidents going to brothels. The black Cat looked up, and her strange eyes met Joshua’s for a long moment. Then she jumped down from her couch and disappeared. As Josh was about to try another room, a pretty girl walked up to him. She was no more than four feet tall, wearing a gauzy half-slip and a thin half-smile that was at once shy and hungry.

“Looking for me?” she said. Her voice tinkled like fine crystal breaking in a muffled room.

Josh began to shake his head, but stopped and decided to take a chance. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Meli,” she smiled. “Will you dance with me?”

He smiled back. “So you’re a Dryad.” Her name was a giveaway. “What’s a wood nymph like you doing in a…”

Her face lit up like autumn fire. “I knew you were a hunter,” she exclaimed. “You know the woods, I could feel it.” She danced around him once, then pressed her diminutive body up to his, “Take me up to room seventeen,” she whispered gaily.

Madam walked up. “You found somethin’ that suits ya, Trouble?”

Josh dug into his belt and extracted one of the five gold pieces cached in the lining. The madam examined the coin in the candlelight, then tasted it. “This’ll buy you a lotta trouble, boy,” she said as she laughed uproariously and then swatted him on the bottom. He swatted her bottom right back and she laughed even louder. Then Josh took Meli’s hand, and they went upstairs.

Beauty trotted once around the buildings, but saw nothing of interest. A few rough-hewn cabins, a watering hole, a garden, a few goats, and sheep. All very innocent.

He hoped he could catch the Accident alone, without Josh. He could make the beast talk quickly, and he could kill it quickly. Humans hesitated too often in these matters; they had too many motives, too many second thoughts. Scribes were the worst of the lot.

Beauty was glad to be Centaur. Centaurs had the gift of balance – physically, spiritually, intellectually. They defined grace on the earth both in demeanor and being. Their graceful behavior was well known and their spirit forever poised toward the patch of sky in the constellation Equus, where the great Horse Spirit was known to live. But most important for Beauty was that Centaurs had a history.

An ancient, royal history. It extended back thousands of years to the birth of animals, to the earliest days after the continents congealed. A history of heroes, principles, and – naturally – balance. It was a heritage weighted with responsibility. He wore the mantle proudly.

Not like some of the other animals you saw crawling around. Animals you might see once and never see again. One-of-a-kind creatures, without a past or future, the dregs and the flotsam. Like the Accidents.

The thought of the wretched beast brought Beauty’s senses back to the moment and to his resolve. He put his nose in the air. The wind was beginning to respire, but not really enough yet to catch the blades of the windmill behind the barn. He walked up to the stables and opened the door.

Inside he was greeted sourly by an old man who took his piece of silver and told the Centaur he could have the use of any stall for an hour. Beauty thanked him curtly and started to look the place over.

It was a big L-shaped structure with cubicles along the walls. Paper and straw littered the dirt floor and candles were set out every five feet or so. Three open windows near the ceiling provided the only ventilation and allowed some thick waxy moonlight to pour in.

Beauty walked a few steps and opened the door to the first stall. A pretty bay mare stood inside, her big brown eyes fearful. Beauty backed off. In the next stall a heavy woman lay on her back in the hay, her teeth yellow, her dress open.

Next was an Equiman girl – head and torso of a woman on the upright hind legs and tail of a horse. She was the sterile cross between a Centaur and a Human. Beauty’s child with Rose would have looked like this, and Beauty stared into the girl’s eyes from the depths of his own lost future. She clopped her hoof in the dirt, tossed her hair, half-laughed, half-whinnied, made a kissing expression with her lips, and then rubbed her breasts and slapped her Horse-bottom. Unnerved, Beauty withdrew.

Centaurs lolled in the next two stalls, aged and mangy, and then there was a roan stallion mounting a gray female Centaur, followed by some empty stalls, a young boy, an old woman, and a couple of ponies. No trace of the Accident.

He went back into the stall with the young Equiman girl and closed the door.

“Hi-i-i-i,” she whinnied, smoothing the hair under his flanks.

He bent down and nuzzled her neck. “I just want some information,” he said softly.

Josh closed the door to number seventeen and sat down on the bed, while Meli danced over the floor like a leaf in a crosswind.

“You always this happy?” Josh asked. He’d never heard of a Dryad living anywhere outside the woods.

She flittered up to him and sat, feather-light, on his knee. “This is my room,” she confided, then jumped down to the floor and did a pirouette.

“But why aren’t you out in the forest with…”

She leapt up, pushed him back flat on the bed, and straddled his chest. “This is my bed,” she said quietly. He began to answer, but she placed two fingers on his lips. “My tree,” she said. “They cut down my tree to make the bed.” Joshua looked at her open face and nodded softly. Every nymph was said to have a tree that was her own, about which she had special feeling, of which she had special knowledge, with which she had special communion. Some said a Dryad withered when her tree died.

He ran his hand along the hard ash bed frame. She got off his chest and lay beside him. “Hunters understand the trees,” she said distantly. Then she hugged him and stroked his chest.

“And you understand losing something dear,” he responded. He needed to enlist her aid and saw this as a way of securing her empathy. She brought her head up and nibbled the side of his chest. He felt vaguely sleepy. “I’ve lost something,” he continued, “something close to me, like your tree.”

“How awful,” she said somberly.

“It was stolen, too. Taken from me in the night.” He forced himself not to think directly of Dicey; it was far too painful and he needed to keep cool. Meli was responding, though, to Joshua’s true feelings, and to her own as tears filled her eyes.

“What was it?” she asked timidly, afraid to hear his answer, trying to erase the image of her tree being cut.

“My bride,” he whispered.

“How awful,” she repeated. She smoothed his brow with her fingertips. “Who stole her? Do you know the man?”

Mercifully, he forced his thoughts again on to his revenge, off his pain. “The thing that did it is here,” he replied. “Hiding. Meli, you have to help me find him.”

She was frightened, uncertain. A dozen fears assaulted her, all meeting at her lost tree. Lost life. “What if she’s dead?”

Josh refused to entertain this thought. They hadn’t kidnapped Dicey just to kill her. “No,” he said. “Besides… we’re Scribes.”

Meli looked confused. “I met a Scribe once,” she nodded. Then asked, “What’s a Scribe?”

“We read and write,” he began. “We believe in the power of the written word. We learn things in books. We believe the Word is God. Words tell us everything important, we set it down in writing, then it lives forever, and other Scribes can read it in thousands of years and know it the same as we do.” He paused. “That’s why Dicey won’t die. Because her name is written. Even if her body is destroyed, I can lay down her life in scripture, and she’ll live as long as the words, and every time her words are read by another Scribe, she’ll feel joyful.”

“That’s beautiful,” said Meli. The wind outside rose a bit and rattled the window. The lights in the room went on dimly for a moment as the windmill outside began to generate some electricity. Soon enough the wind subsided and the lights flickered out. The candles on the table continued to glow warmly.

The sleepiness Josh had felt earlier returned. He forced himself not to yawn. Meli sat up and put her slight hand on his breast. “Will you do something for me?” Her voice quivered. “Will you write the name of my tree?”

Josh was moved. He got up, walked over to the table and sat down. He picked a piece of bramble out of his boot, held it to the candle flame until it started to burn, and then dropped it into a little cup he found on the windowsill. When the bramble had burned itself out in the cup, Joshua stuck his thumb down onto it and crushed it into soot. His flesh was pricked in the process, and two or three drops of blood fell into the cup. Finally, he spit into the mixture of blood and charcoal dust. Meli watched the whole thing with mixed wonder and doubt.

Josh tore a piece of dirty white sheet off the bed and laid it flat on the table. He took his quill out of his boot, dipped it into the makeshift inkwell, and wrote in careful block letters on the small cloth: MELIAE. Then he handed it to her.

She stared at it lovingly, turning it this way and that, holding it up to the light, smelling it, touching it. It made her so happy, Josh tore off another piece of sheet and wrote ‘Meli’ on it in flowing script. He handed this second scrap to her and said: “This is your name.”

She held it gingerly, lest it break. The wind whipped up the lights once more, then let them down slowly. Muffled laughter floated up from downstairs. Meli pressed the two cloths gently together, then looked back at Josh. “I’ll help you find your tree,” she said. “What do the thieves look like?”

Back to the hunt. Josh felt his muscles tauten once more. “One is an Accident,” he said, “and he’s wounded. I know he’s here somewhere. He was with a Griffin and a Vampire, but they split up. He might be meeting them here or somewhere else.”

She scrunched her face. “I haven’t seen any Accidents.”

Josh found himself so profoundly sleepy he had trouble keeping his eyes open. He sat down on the bed.

Meli went on. “But there was a Vampire and a Griffin here before, just waiting around too; they didn’t want to dance…”

The press of sleep became overpowering and Josh closed his eyes. Meli’s voice was getting farther and farther away.

“They said they couldn’t wait, but they went to room…”

Everything faded into blackness, without sound, without direction, without substance. At the end of the blackness, an intensely bright, infinitely distant spot of light arose. Distant but evocative, like the memory of perfume. The light exerted a pressure, only it was a negative pressure, a kind of suction, teasing Joshua through the endlessly unfolding black ether…

Beauty reached into his quiver, pulled two silver coins out of the pouch and handed them to the Equiman whore. She took the money and tied it into a loop in her tail.

“Now tell me where the Accident is,” said Beauty.

She put her finger to her lips and motioned him in closer. He leaned his head down to hers and put his ear to her mouth. With an unexpectedly swift stroke, she brought a plank down on the side of his head. He heard rather than felt the blow, but reflexively stumbled out the door of the stall.

She followed him, yelling. “Dirty bounty killer, filthy scummy parasite,” she screamed, whacking at his loins.

He stumbled and then got up. Animals were coming out of their stalls to watch. Beauty felt a rivulet of warm, thick blood flow down the side of his face. He saw the old man approaching and reared up to defend himself. The old man walked right past him though, grabbed the raging Equiman by the wrist and knocked her unconscious with one reluctant punch.

Beauty quieted down. The old man came up to him. “Sorry about that, mister. She goes kinda crazy sometimes. Her old man was killed by bounty hunters. You better go.” He handed the Centaur his money back.

Beauty trotted out of the barn and sat in the grass fifty yards away. His head hurt, but the fresh air cleared his mind.

It was a good lesson. He was a hunter, not a detective. Houses, walls, or cities were not for him. Besides which, he’d been too trusting in the stable, too unwary.

He lay back, let the cool rising breeze dry the blood on his head. Time to sit and wait and watch. He could do more with his senses in an open field than in any barn or brothel.

He let his eyes and ears accommodate to the night, and set a vigil.

Josh opened his eyes. No more sleep hunger, no burning hypnotic light. He lay on his back in the half-dark room, trying to remember where he was. He turned and almost rolled over on Meli, lying quietly beside him. At his movement she jumped, sat up straight, and hugged him happily.

“Oh, you’re alive,” she breathed, “I was so scared.”

“What happened?”

“You went down, you looked dead, I got so scared, I didn’t know what, you didn’t move, I was afraid to tell anyone.”

“Wait, wait,” he sat up. He looked down. He was naked. He looked at her questioningly.

“Well, you weren’t waking up,” she explained, “and I shook you and talked to you but I didn’t call Madam because she’d get mad, especially if she found out you wrote my name, but you still didn’t wake up, so I took off my clothes and, well, pretended like I was your lover and you just found me. Only I found you. But you still didn’t wake up.” Her expression was one of self-satisfied guilt.

Josh didn’t want to know any more. He got up, pulling on his clothes. This was the second time he’d fallen asleep like that – without warning, without choice. It disturbed him; he felt out of control and it left him vulnerable. He stared cautiously at Meli, fearful of all the treacheries she might have inflicted upon him during his failing consciousness.

She looked hurt. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no, everything’s fine.” He squeezed his temples to press away his suspicions. “You were telling me something before, about a Griffin and a Vampire.”

She nodded. “They were waiting for their friend. They were mean.”

“Where did they go, Meli?”

“Madam told them to wait in room twenty-one, down the hall. She said she’d let them know. They made a mess in the front room, they made someone leave, and everyone got angry at them, so Madam made them wait upstairs.”

Josh checked his knives. The wind was blowing enough so that the light bulbs in the small room glowed orange.

“Show me where,” he said secretively. He knew nymphs loved to reveal secrets.

Her face flushed, her eyes ablaze with the fire of complicity. She took his hand and led him out the door.

They stood noiselessly in the hallway, listening for sounds of danger. The coal-red electric wires along the corridor grew brighter and dimmer as the wind rose and fell outside. They started quietly down toward room twenty-one.

There was a sudden jumble of noises downstairs. Voices, footsteps, doors. Meli looked at Josh. “I’ll go see,” she said, and ran down before he could stop her. He walked on alone, to room twenty-one.

He put his ear to the door. Silence. He bent down, put his eye to the keyhole. Dull, electric-red flicker. He took a knife in each hand. He began to turn the doorknob.

When he felt the latch click, he pushed the door open and lunged in. Tense silence in a darkening room. The lamp on the table dimmed from blood-red to complete extinction, and only two small candles by the bed continued to shed light. Josh turned slowly, searching every shadow. When his stare fell on the bed, a shadow moved.

Josh raised his knife. The shadow stood up and walked to the edge of the bed. It was the black Cat he’d seen downstairs earlier. The Cat shook her head slowly back and forth at Joshua, then raised her paw and pointed to the open window, where the wind billowed the curtains.

Josh looked uncomprehendingly at the small animal. It whined. He walked up, scratched between its ears. It lifted its head higher into the pressure of his fingers. There was a noise behind him and he swiveled, but it was only Meli at the door.

“Don’t mind her,” said Meli, indicating the Cat. “That’s only Isis. She’s kind of odd.”

“Sooooo?” purred Isis. It was half word, half meow.

“Nobody here,” said Josh to Meli. “What was downstairs?”

“Just a bunch of King Jarl’s soldiers, come to have some fun.” Jarl, the Bear-King, had soldiers posted all through the areas south of Monterey – a ‘peace-keeping force’ that had moved in following the Race War, and never left.

“Yarrrrrrl,” said Isis, licking her paw.

Josh said to Meli, “Are you sure they were in this room?”

Meli nodded vigorously. Isis jumped down to the floor, padded across the room, and leapt up on the windowsill. “Soouuuuth,” she meowed. Outside, the wind began racing.

Josh stared across the darkness, first at the strange little Cat, then at Meli. “What did they look like?” he asked.

Meli thought a minute. “The Vampire was tall, even for a Vampire. He had long black hair and his eyes were scary. Griffins all look alike to me but this one had a broken beak.”

The last candle flared and guttered, and then the room was dark. The wind wrapped the house, howling.

Joshua’s pupils opened wide in the darkness. “I’m going to look around,” he said. Meli followed him into the corridor.

They looked into rooms through secret windows Meli knew of. They saw things Josh had never even heard of before – things that unsettled him. Passionate animals in compelling patterns of embrace, terrible scratchings, furtive moans. He wished he had time to write down everything he saw.

They tried hidden doors. Isolated candles lit their immediate surroundings. Forms and shapes moved out of corners and along walls in the darkened chambers as the wind outside steadily rose.

Joshua stared through the long dark hall, out the window into the rising wind. He thought: dark hall, rising wind. Dark. Wind. “Something’s wrong with the windmill.”

Meli looked at him blankly.

“The windmill,” he repeated. “It was making electricity when the wind was up, and now the wind is stronger but the lights are off.” He turned. “Something’s wrong in the windmill.”

His pulse snapped up with the realization, and its implications. He’d run his prey to ground.

“I’m going out,” he told her. “You stay here.” She looked at him quizzically. He hugged her briefly, and left.

Beauty stood motionless on the lee side of a slope that gave a good view of the whole panorama – house, barn, cottages, and garden. The smell of the creature was still in the air, but with the wind blowing so hard now, and shifting direction so much, the odor was impossible to localize. The ochre moon gave good light, though, and Beauty would see what there was to see.

The pain in his head had been numbed by the chilly wind. He had his bow out, an arrow loosely strung.

His beacon eyes searched the complex methodically. Main house, lantern-lit, occasional laughter bubbling over on a flight of wind. Stables, quiet. Cows and sheep, asleep. Windmill, quiet and still. Cabins, dark.

Windmill. Why was the windmill quiet and still when the wind was so angry and wild?

There was a movement by the back of the big house. Beauty watched carefully as the lone figure ran a few dozen paces, froze for a moment, then began running straight at Beauty. The Centaur raised his bow.

At a hundred paces he could see clearly it was Josh, so he lowered his weapon and waited. A few seconds later they stood facing each other. Josh was panting lightly. “The windmill,” he said. Beauty nodded.

They approached the old wooden tower from the east, walking in the shadow it cast by the low-hanging moon. Its top rocked slightly in the wind. One of the big propeller blades was broken off, but still, in all that current, the fan did not turn.

They found the door around the other side, half open in the glare of the moon. Beauty readied an arrow and Josh unsheathed his steel. They entered in a crouch.

It was dark inside. Moon glow filtered through slats in the walls, throwing distorted images around the circular room. Most of the floor was taken up by a large ancient generator that ran lines out to the main house and up to the top of the windmill to the driveshaft.

That’s where the Accident was: dangling by the neck from the severed drive chain that connected the big fan blades to the turbine generator on the floor. He was dying. Josh climbed up the ladder and cut him free. The horrible creature tumbled to the floor.

They knelt by his broken body.

“Uluglu domo,” said the Accident. His belly was torn open, the mark of a Griffin.

Josh looked at Beauty. “You know their language?”

Beauty nodded. “Domo dulo,” he said to the Accident. “Odo glutamo nol?”

The ugly creature opened his eye for the first time and looked at his stalkers. “Ologlu Bal,” he said, coughing blood. “Bal ongamo, ayrie gludemos, oglo Bal endamo.”

Beauty nodded. “Nglimo tu? Nagena gli asta log nak.”

“Glumpata Bal o Scree tudama gluanda.”

“Ednatu?” said Beauty.

“Glisanda nef. Riaglo tor” said the beast. “Ologlu Bal, ologlu lev Scree. Gor. Gor.” And with that, he died.

“What did he say?” asked Josh.

“He said he was betrayed by his friends, a Vampire named Bal and a broke-beak Griffin named Scree. They met him here, and they killed him.”

“Did he know where they went?” Joshua no longer had any thoughts, good or bad, for the Accident. His mind now focused entirely on Bal and Scree.

“They went south. Scree lives in Ma’gas at the edge of the rain forest. The pirate city. Bal lives south of that. They have Humans with them, tied in a cart, but only Bal knew where they were being taken. This one did only what Bal told him. He hopes we kill them now. He said his name was Gor and he was glad to die, for life is a river of pain.”

They were silent a few moments. There was a sound behind them, and they turned. Isis, the Cat, stood in the doorway. She tipped her head behind her, indicating the big house, and said, “Yarrrrl.”

Josh went to the door and looked. Four lanterns bobbed toward him, midway between the mill and the house. “Jarl’s men,” said Joshua. “We’d better leave.”

They slipped out the door as inconspicuously as possible, but the moon snagged them. Voices amid the lanterns shouted: “There, in the windmill!” “Saboteurs! Get them!”

Josh jumped on Beauty’s back. “Run over the hill in the open, then circle around to the back of the house.”

“Why go back?” asked the Centaur.

“I have to get Meli. She may be in trouble.”

Isis slipped into the night. Beauty galloped over the hill, the soldiers’ shouts and snarls getting more distant with every stride. He made a wide circle in the shadow of the trees, doubled back to the house, and stood under Meli’s window. Josh got a foothold in some ivy and started scaling the brothel.

He was almost to Meli’s window when the sounds of commotion rose at the windmill. “Murder!” “A dead Accident!” “The Centaur was with someone!” “After them!”

Josh felt the ledge to Meli’s window and hoisted himself up. Through the glass he saw her. She sat, naked, in the lap of a Mongolian Vampire. With one hand she reached up behind her, stroking his pale cheek; with the other, she reached down between her legs and stroked his insistence. His right hand reached around to her chest, rolled her tightening nipple with his long-nailed forefinger. Her head was tilted to the side, her eyes half-closed.

He buried his teeth deep in her neck; cherry-black blood trickled down to her shoulder. Her eyes opened, with a gasp.

She saw Joshua’s face at the window, like an apparition. She brought her finger up to her lips – “Shhh” – and imperceptibly shook her head. Her face was mischief and resignation together, inviting Joshua’s complicity. Joshua backed down the side of the house.

He hopped on Beauty’s back. Jarl’s soldiers were raising a posse. Whoops, oaths, and growls could be heard. Madam said, “I knew that boy was trouble.”

Beauty galloped off in the opposite direction from the way the soldiers had first seen him leave, and he didn’t stop running for quite a while.

They weren’t just hunters, now, they were hunted.