The medieval weapon shrieked as it swung for Michael’s skull, but he ducked its arc and backpedaled out of range. The mace swung back the other way before he could get his balance, and the iron spikes bit brown terrycloth, but Michael leaped back, colliding with another suit of armor. As it fell, he grasped a metal shield and whirled around, catching the mace’s next blow as it came at his legs. Sparks flew off the polished metal, the vibration thrumming up Michael’s arm to his bruised shoulder. And then the killer lifted the mace over his head to crush Michael’s skull-and Gallatin threw the shield, its edge hitting the other man’s knees, chopping his legs out from under him. As the killer pitched down, Michael started to kick him in the face but checked himself: a broken foot would not help his agility.
The killer was getting to his feet, the mace still in hand. Michael darted to the wall and pulled a broadsword off its hooks, and then he turned to face the next attack.
The German warily regarded the sword and picked up a battle-ax, casting the shorter weapon aside. They faced each other for a few seconds, each looking for an opening, and then Michael feinted with a thrust and the battle-ax clanged it aside. The killer lunged in, avoided a swing of the sword, the battle-ax upraised. But Michael’s sword was there to deflect it; the ax hit the sword’s hilt in a burst of blue sparks, snapped off the blade, and left Gallatin standing with a nub of nothing. The killer swung the ax at his prey’s face, his body braced for the pleasure of collision.
Michael had, in a split second, judged the fine angles and dimensions of impact. He realized that a step backward would lose him his head, as would a step to either side. So he moved in, crowding the killer, and since blows to the face seemed to do no good, he drove his fist into the exposed hollow of the armpit, his knuckles gouging for the pressure point of veins and arteries.
The killer cried out in pain, and as his arm went dead he lost control of the ax. It left his hand and thunked two inches deep into the oak-paneled wall. Michael hit him in the ruined nose, snapping his head back, and followed with a blow to the point of the chin. The German grunted, spewed blood, and fell back against the second-floor railing. Michael followed him, drew his arm back to strike at the throat-but suddenly the assassin’s arms streaked out, the fleshy hands closing on his neck once more and lifting him off his feet.
Michael thrashed, but he had no traction. The killer was holding him almost at arm’s length, and in another few seconds the idea would come to throw Michael over the railing to the tiled floor below. There was an oak beam two feet above Michael’s head, but it was smooth and polished and there was nothing to hold on to. The blood roared in his brain, oily sweat surfaced from his pores-and deep within, something else stretched and began to awaken from a sleep of shadows.
The fingers pressed into his arteries, interrupting the flow of blood. The killer shook him, partly in disdain and partly to secure a tighter grip. The end was near; the German could see the other man’s eyes beginning to bulge.
Michael’s arms reached up, fingers grazing the oak. His body trembled violently, a movement that the assassin interpreted as the nearing of death.
For him, it was.
Michael Gallatin’s right hand began to twist and contort. Beads of sweat ran down his face, and utter agony played across his features. The black hair on the back of his hand rippled, the sinews shifting. There were little popping noises of cracking bones. The hand gnarled, the knuckles swelled, the flesh turning mottled and thick, the black hair beginning to spread.
“Die, you son of a bitch!” the killer said, speaking in German. He squeezed his eyes shut, all concentration on strangling the man to death. Very soon now… very soon.
Something moved under his hands. Like scurrying ants. The body was getting heavier. Thickening. There was a pungent, animal smell.
The killer opened his eyes and looked up at his victim.
He was holding something that was no longer a man.
With a scream, he tried to throw the thing over the railing-but two pairs of claws dug into the oak beam and latched there, and the monster brought up a still-human kneecap and hit him in the chin with a power that all but knocked him senseless. He released the thing and, still screaming, but now in a high, thin drone, scrambled away from it. He fell over scattered armor, crawled toward the bedroom door, looked back, and saw the monster’s claws wrench free of the beam. The thing fell to the floor, hitching and convulsing, and thrashed out of its brown terrycloth robe.
And now the assassin, one of the best of his breed, knew the full meaning of horror.
The monster righted itself, crawling toward him. It was not yet fully formed, but its green eyes caught and held him, promising agony.
The killer’s hand closed on a spear. He jabbed at the thing, and it leaped aside, but the spear tip caught it on the malformed left cheek and drew a scarlet line against the black. He kicked desperately at it, trying to pull himself through the bedroom door and get to the terrace railing-and then he felt fangs snap shut on his ankle, a crushing power that broke the bones like matchsticks. The jaws opened and snapped on the other leg at the calf. Again, bones broke, and the assassin was crippled.
He screamed for God, but there was no answer. There was only the steady rumbling of the monster’s lungs.
He threw up his hands to ward it off, but human hands were of no consequence. The beast jumped upon him, its wet snout and staring, terrible eyes right in his face. And then the snout winnowed toward his chest, the fangs gleaming. There was a hammer blow to his breastbone, followed by another that almost split him in two. Claws were at work, the nails throwing up a red spray. The killer writhed and fought as best he could, but his best was nothing. The beast’s claws entered his lungs, ripped away the heaving tissue, drove down into the man’s core; and then the snout and the teeth found the pulsing prize, and with two twists of the head the heart was torn from its vine like an overripe, dripping fruit.
The heart was crushed between the fangs, and the mouth accepted its juices. The killer’s eyes were still open, and his body twitched, but all his blood was flooding out and there was none left to keep his brain alive. He gave a shuddering, terrible moan-and the monster threw its head back and echoed the cry in a voice that rang through the house like a death knell.
And then, nosing into the gaping hole, the beast began its feeding, tearing with rampant rage at the inner mysteries of a man.
Afterward, as the lights of Cairo dimmed and the first violet light of the sun began to come up over the pyramids, something caught between animal and man spasmed and retched in the mansion of the Countess Margritta. From its mouth flowed grisly lumps and fragments, a creeping red sea that went under the banister and over the edge to the tiled floor below. The naked retching thing curled itself into a fetal shape, shivering uncontrollably, and in that house of the dead no one heard it weep.
ONE – Rite of Spring
1
Again the dream awakened him, and he lay in the dark while the gusts bellowed at the windows and an errant shutter flapped. He had dreamed he was a wolf who dreamed he was a man who dreamed he was a wolf who dreamed. And in that maze of dreams there had been bits and pieces of memory, flying like the fragments of an exploded jigsaw puzzle: the sepia-toned faces of his father, mother, and older sister, faces as if from a burned-edge photograph; a palace of broken white stones, surrounded by thick, primeval forest where the howls of wolves spoke to the moon; a passing steam train, headlight blazing, and a young boy racing along the tracks beside it, faster and faster, toward the entrance of the tunnel that lay ahead.