Johnny has what used to be called Witchfinder’s Eyes by the old women in the highland village where he was born. And there are some kinds of trouble he can see in the dark with his eyes closed. The gothic architecture and baroque decorations in the Hall of the Singers cannot disguise one aspect of the design of the room—that it is essentially a box chock-full of right angles.
The Schloss is a museum and a tourist attraction by day, a small and significant part of Bavaria’s cultural heritage owned and maintained at arm’s reach by the agencies of the state government. But it wasn’t built here, in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps, solely for the picturesque view. Ludwig Friedrich Wilhelm II was not known as the Mad King by reason of mere psychiatric diagnosis alone, nor was the coup and subsequent assassination that ended his reign a matter of mere realpolitik. The Schloss was not built to be a temple to the Moon King’s Wagnerian fantasies. Tonight, on the eve of a certain recurring celestial alignment, the temple’s night watch are padding through the passages and stairs of the castle on black velvet paws, their eyeless muzzles questing for the stink of fear.
There is movement at the end of the room.
Johnny raises his hands round the back of his neck: he draws a pair of strange knives from their sheaths, their twin blades carved from flat slivers of some black glassy material.
Claws click on the parquet floor as a doglike darkness stalks into the hall.
There is no panic, but Johnny wets his lips. These things have no ears or eyes, but rely on other senses to find their prey. “Duchess,” he says quietly, “we’ve picked up a hound.”
The dog-thing fades in and out of view as it walks towards the warding circle. Shards of leg and head and torso ripple and stretch, rotating and distorting around an invisible reference point as it moves. When in motion it is an occult blur, but when it pauses its entire body is visible: a nightmare-black dog-shape, a gaunt eyeless hunter that doesn’t seem to be all there.
The ward is doing its work, for by its movements the hound appears baffled and uncertain. Nevertheless, Johnny tracks it tensely, throwing knife raised and ready. The knives snarl silently, eager to drink souls. They carry words of banishment, hopefully enough to send the hound back from whence it came…but perhaps not. One thing is sure: the instant one of the knives crosses the perimeter of the ward, the ward’s protection will vanish. At this range, if he misses his target, the hound will be on top of him within two seconds. And while Johnny wouldn’t blink at facing off against a timber wolf, these things are different. Even a momentary skin-to-skin contact with its rippling integument means death. He’s only going to get one shot at it.
The hound casts its blind muzzle from side to side, then pauses a couple of meters short of the ward, right in front of Johnny. It lowers its head towards the floor, and freezes, muzzle pointing straight down.
He throws once, in a blur.
There’s a blue flash as the knife splits the warding circle; simultaneously, a loud thudding noise comes from the vicinity of the hound. The dagger strikes the hound directly, splashing ribbons of green light from its flank. But it isn’t the hungry knife that causes the hound to thrash wildly and keel over, huge jaws snapping at its own belly. There’s another door-slamming sound. “Clear!” he calls, pitching his voice low as he steps over the shorted-out warding circle and approaches the hound, which is lying still now, limbs twitching tetanically. “It’s not quite gone yet,” he adds, as he sets the point of the other knife to the side of the hound’s throat and pushes.
There’s a moment of resistance, then he topples forwards, reaches out to catch himself with one hand against the floor. Of the hound there is no sign, save the knife and the splinters around the firing hole Persephone had drilled beneath it. “It is now,” he adds.
THE REST OF THE OPERATION GOES EXACTLY ACCORDING TO plan.
Using the amulet as a guide, Persephone drills a thirteen-centimeter hole in the ceiling of the Arbeitszimmer. She fastens the amulet to a fishing line and lowers it through the hole. Peering through a compact fiber-optic probe, she lowers her payload towards a display cabinet in the shape of a grotesque miniature oak chapel that squats beneath a mural depicting scenes from the legend of the Holy Grail. There is a glass screen and velvet ropes to keep visitors from getting too close, and there are under-carpet pressure sensors and infrared body heat detectors—hence the ceiling approach. The amulet descends towards the front of the cabinet, tugging like a magnet beside an automobile. Then there’s a sudden yank on the cord, a crunch of fine woodwork, and a shattering of glass. The amulet slams into the center of the display, where its identical twin rests on a velvet pad; the replica is sent flying as the wards inlaid in the floorboards under the parquet around the cabinet flash lightning-bright.
Persephone tenses; but there is no shrill of bells. Pressure plates are seldom tuned to hair-trigger sensitivity, lest the security guards are called out every time a mouse scurries across the floor at midnight. Nor do body heat detectors work on pieces of extravagant jewelry, whether or not they are imbued with grotesque and unpleasant powers by their former owner. She permits herself a sigh of relief. Then she turns her attention to retrieving the replica of the Moon King’s amulet from the bottom of the cabinet: a fiddly fishing job, but one familiar to any child who has wasted their pocket money on an amusement arcade grab-machine—and far more rewarding. It’s just like old times, really.
Finishing, she coils up the fishing line, weights it down on top of the ceiling boards with her hand drill, and retreats back to the Hall of the Singers—making sure to take the spent cartridge cases from her silenced pistol with her.
“Done here,” she says as Johnny pulls her out of the hole in the floor. “Just the one hound?”
“The next time I see ’em hunting in a pack will be the first.” He checks his chronometer. “Thirty-two minutes to alignment. Is it in place?”
Persephone glances at him, scrutinizing his face: he’s as stoical and imperturbable as ever. “Ever walked past a big electromagnet with a ring of keys? It knows where it belongs. The wards still work after all these years. Nothing to worry about.” She smiles, buzzing with exultation. The amulet is back in place, another chink in this world’s defenses repaired just in time. The replica installed in place of the stolen original by an uninformed but highly proficient jewel thief is safe in her bag, earmarked for delivery to its final resting place. The incursion will be exposed tomorrow, recognized for what it is by security guards boggling at the ingenuity of the cat burglars who came so close to stealing the Mad King’s crown jewels the night before.
“Let’s go!”
Persephone gathers her climbing ropes and stalks towards the windows, ready to abseil to the forest below in preparation for the long midnight walk to the rented safe house in Füssen. Tomorrow they will dispose of their equipment and meet with an agent who will take the not-invaluable forgery (itself containing over a hundred carats of blue diamonds and black fire opals, supplied to the jewel thief by a very special collector to whom the original was vastly more interesting than any collection of unenchanted gems) and make it disappear. Then they will depart by light plane, and it’s back to the cover of the everyday whirl of the celebrity culture vulture circuit for her, and the adventure tour business for Johnny.