Things were definitely looking up.
I sprang to my feet, went to my right, and began cutting through the ropes that bound Garth, Insolers, Harper, and Jan. When Harper and Jan tried to stand, they both fell. Garth and Insolers supported Jan, while I gripped Harper's hand and pulled her to her feet. She lunged for, fell on, the sofa. She rummaged around the overstuffed pillows on the sofa until she found her purse, opened it, took out the small wooden box inside, and shoved it down the front of her blouse.
"This way!" Jan cried, tugging at both Garth and Insolers as she staggered forward toward the door leading to the pantry.
Veil and I started to go to retrieve the dead men's automatic weapons, abruptly halted, turned, and sprinted after the others as two more gunmen came running through the door at the far end of the library. We darted through the pantry door where the others had gone a split second before twin bursts of gunfire sent a hail of bullets chewing into the wood of the door frame. We found ourselves in a long, narrow pantry with a high ceiling. Garth was standing at the other end, holding a door open and frantically urging us on. We ducked through the doorway, with Garth following, slamming the door shut and bolting it behind us. We clambered down a circular staircase to a narrow stone corridor. Insolers and an anxious-looking Harper and Jan were waiting for us. The corridor was like an echo chamber, and the sound of running footsteps was all around us-but the men seemed to be running in a number of different directions, and there was no sound of splintering wood at the head of the stairs down which we had come.
Twenty yards down the corridor there were three more doors, one on the left and two on the right. We followed Jan through the door on the left, skipped and hopped down yet another steel stairwell into a large wine cellar. A door at the opposite end of the cellar opened into yet another stone corridor, and our footsteps echoed eerily as we ran down it after Jan. I presumed we were heading for what Jan had described as a labyrinth, but to me the complex system of stairwells and stone corridors was a hopeless maze and I wondered how many years it had taken the woman to find her way around this massive complex she modestly called home.
A man suddenly lunged out from the dark shadows of a deeply recessed doorway to my left, grabbed Harper with one hand, and started to raise the machine pistol he carried in the other. Jan was in the line of fire between Veil and Garth, and they couldn't get around her before he fired. I tensed, ready to leap at the man, but Harper reacted first. She jerked free from his grasp, reached down the front of her blouse, and took out the wooden box. As Insolers knocked the gun away, Harper opened the lid of the box, then slapped it against the man's face, just below his left eye. The man screamed, clawed for a few moments at the spot on his face where he had been bitten, then stiffened and crumpled to the stone floor. Veil stepped around Jan and picked up the machine pistol, and I grabbed Harper's arm, helping her to step over the corpse of the Black Flame soldier.
"We're almost there," Jan gasped, pausing just before a sharp bend in the corridor. "The door at the end opens into the labyrinth. I know the way through. It will take us to an apple orchard on a hill overlooking the castle. Chant will know where to find us. Come on."
Jan turned and went around the bend, disappearing from sight for a moment, and then we heard a startled cry. The rest of us hurried around the bend, then came to an abrupt halt, with Veil, Garth, and Insolers quickly moving to screen the women, when we saw what Jan had seen.
The door at the end of the corridor was open, and moonlight silhouetted the black shape of the tall man who filled the door frame. The man's hands were empty, hanging at his sides.
"Shoot the fucker," Garth murmured.
Veil shook his head, then handed the machine pistol to my brother. 'The sound of gunfire through that open door could give away our position. It doesn't look like he has a gun, which means I can take him out without making much noise. You people stay here."
"I'm coming with you," I said, and fell into step beside Veil as he started forward.
The man's features began to emerge from the moon shadows as we grew nearer, and I felt a little shudder as I recognized him. Carlo was bare-chested, which was understandable since he had wrapped his shirt around the corpse of one of the two Black Flame soldiers unlucky enough to have been ordered by Al to carry him out of the library and chop his head off. It seemed Carlo was anything but a run-of-the-mill assassin, with hidden resources neither Black Flame nor we had imagined; like Veil, he knew more than a little about focusing strength. In the second or two before they died, the men who had carried Carlo from the library must have been quite surprised when the chair they were holding abruptly disintegrated, and powerful hands gripped their throats.
The man who had been my chauffeur obviously knew a few other tricks as well. The features were still those of the man who had introduced himself to me as Carlo, but the bad leg was now straight, as was the spine. I stopped, grabbed Veil's arm just as he was about to leap at the man-a move I suspected might not be such a great idea, even for Veil. Suddenly, I knew who this man really was, even before he turned slightly to reveal the large mark, a combination of scar tissue and black tattoo ink, that ran up the left side of his back.
"John Sinclair, I presume," I said to the still figure.
"I want to thank you for what you did back there in the library, Mongo," the man replied in a deep, resonant voice that might have been Carlo's, except that it had lost all trace of any Italian accent. "You too, Kendry. Things were getting a bit out of hand."
"Chant!" Jan shouted with joy when she heard the man's voice, and rushed past Veil and me into his outstretched arms. "Oh, Chant!"
The man and woman held each other tightly, swaying back and forth slightly. They kissed, and then Sinclair gently pushed her away and turned to the rest of us. "We'll talk later. There's no time now. I just wanted to make sure you were all safe. Jan will lead you through the labyrinth to a safe place, and I'll join you there when I'm finished with the rest of that overgrown delinquent's men. I have to move quickly now, before it gets light."
Judging from his tone of voice and casual manner, he might have been talking about going to the corner grocery store for a quart of milk.
"I'm sorry, Sinclair," Insolers said in a low voice. "I came to help, but I … I didn't mean for things to happen the way they did. It's my fault those men found your home."
"Don't worry about it, Insolers," John Sinclair replied easily. "I'd have chosen a different battleground, but this was inevitable. They've been getting closer every year. It's why I chose to make my stand now, to try to draw them to Switzerland. It will work out. They're spread all over the castle and the grounds hunting for me." He paused, then added in a tone that chilled me, "I won't be long."