NOT THAT!
Her fear dissolved as she erupted hate and anger; she snapped the sub-machine gun to automatic and opened fire And then all hell seemed to explode into the cabin.
Nine
Jerry had been standing by the doorway, listening in the darkness to that thick breathing, nauseated by the fetid stench, trying to stop his gun shaking so much. He had just decided that Asterios knew he was there and was waiting for him and he had lifted a leaden foot on a rubber leg to step forward.
Then his gun was gone, and he was on the floor. He never knew afterward whether he had been struck by the monster or by the bursting door frame, or whether it was merely the force of the sound itself. The momentary roar of Ariadne’s Uzi, the shattering of glass as bullets ricocheted, the smashing of wood— all vanished before a bellow of pain from Asterios like a great pipe organ at full volume, unbearable in that tiny space. Darkness and the stench of carbide and noise— and impact. Head down, the brute charged; table and chairs crumpled and were rammed into the far wall. The cottage rocked like a boat.
Jerry rolled into a ball and covered his ears to ease the pain in his head. Rampaging in pain-maddened frenzy, the monster wheeled sideways, hurling the icebox across into the cupboards. Then it straightened and lunged, still roaring, at Ariadne, and she gave it another burst of gunfire. Louder yet, the monster went right by her and cannoned into the piano, exploding it out through the wall.
The cottage settled back on its foundations.
There was sudden silence… until hearing returned, and the children were screaming.
Dazed, Jerry clambered to his feet. Through the remains of the far wall and the acrid smoke, he saw a very faint tinge of light; false dawn, perhaps, but good enough.
Had they escaped? Apparently! The demons were gone, and he had no idea how or why.
Coughing, he reeled over to the other bedroom and could just make out Maisie hugging Lacey and Ariadne holding Alan. For a few minutes he leaned against the jamb, feeling confused and somehow more ashamed than relieved. The children’s screams died away to whimpers as the women comforted them.
“What happened?” Jerry demanded. “What in Hades did you do?” Ariadne’s face was a pale blur; she looked up momentarily from her child. “I shot it in the nuts,” she snapped. “There, there…” Jerry choked and then shook his head to try to clear it. Why not? The bullets would not have penetrated the monster’s hide, but that would not have mattered. He had never heard of that technique, yet it made sense.
Suddenly he started to laugh. “You have written a whole new chapter into the book on demonology, Ariadne! And it took a woman to think of it!”
“Long overdue,” she said vaguely.
Huh? “What do you mean?” he demanded.
“Oh… nothing. I didn’t… Forget that.” She went back to comforting Alan. Jerry turned to the front room. A cool, fresh breeze had taken away the smoke and told of the coming dawn. The piano had totally vanished, probably scattered all over the clearing by the force of impact; there would be no more Mozart ever played on that instrument. Almost the only undamaged area was the rug on which Killer still lay by the door, blissfully unaware of the epic chaos that had erupted all about him— and he would be speechless-ly furious at having missed it. His face looked like variegated marble in the faint but gradually increasing light, a statue with stubble. The wand glowed no more, but when he knelt down and put his ear to Killer’s chest, Jerry could still hear a slow and steady thumping.
That left the other bedroom, and now he realized that he was floating around in a self-indulgent, witless daze instead of behaving like a competent leader and sternly counting his casualties.
He stepped over the fallen door and for a moment he thought that there was nothing else in the room. As he had expected, almost the whole of the rear wall and part of one side had been ripped away; the roof drooped dangerously. Then he saw that there was a limp sprawl of a body in one corner, went over to it, and discovered Carlo, alive.
He ran back into the kitchen, picked up a dagger that had fallen out of the twisted ruins of the icebox, and returned to cut the youth’s bonds. Carlo groaned and opened one eye.
“You’re alive,” Jerry said. It sounded as stupid to him as it probably did to Carlo. “The demons have gone, it’s all over.” Carlo groaned again, tried to move, and lapsed into obscenities. After a moment he gathered strength and the sounds became stronger, but repetitious. If he had suffered any new injuries, Jerry could not see them. The bloody and pulped face was unbearable for him to look at; how could he have allowed his rage to turn him into such an animal? He decided to let Carlo do his own stocktaking and go in search of Gillis.
Now the grayness in the sky had chosen a direction to be east and was growing stronger— he could see trees outlined against it and make out enough of the terrain to risk walking. He jumped down through the open wall and looked around the debris of planks and spars which littered the ground. No body. He shivered and not merely from the clamminess of dawn air on his bare chest— Meran weather was more accommodating, except sometimes on Killer’s hunting trips. Had Asterios somehow dematerialized his victim? There was the bed, hurled an incredible distance from the cabin, and there something which had once been a dresser, even farther. He inspected both, and there were no human remains underneath either. Perhaps there had been other demons waiting outside to catch Gillis and remove him.
The hedge and grasslands had not reappeared— he was standing in a clearing in a pine forest, still dark and mysterious. He strode over to the barn and walked around it, saw nothing amiss there, and poked his head inside to inspect the mare. She screamed and reared in terror— he was going to have fun getting her harnessed up— so he shut the door again and left her.
It was good to be alive. He pumped up some water from the well and doused his head, then went briefly to inspect the light pole which Aster-ios had snapped so impressively— at least a foot thick— and headed back to the cottage.
He jumped in through the wall, and Carlo was sitting up.
“Any bones broken?” asked Jerry, in a cheerful, hospital sort of voice. “Just my face,” Carlo muttered, barely moving his lips.
Nothing to say to that. “Anything you want, then?”
“Water.”
By the time he returned from the pump with a bucket of water, the women and children had emerged, and he had to break the news of Graham’s disappearance to Maisie. She teetered on the brink of renewed hysterics, and Ariadne hugged her and soothed her back to shaky self-control. Alan started to laugh at the demolished icebox, found an apple, and proceeded to eat it.
A jam sandwich was produced for Lacey, Jerry’s cape returned to him, as the children were now back in their own clothes, and Ariadne made a pot of coffee. Fortunately Asterios had missed the range, or the cottage would have surely burned to the ground.
“Now what?” Ariadne asked. She was pale— they all were— but she had combed her hair and looked better than anyone else, her Meran cape and pants once more clean and unrumpled, the bloodstains gone. She had a glow of satisfaction which no one else could match, and which was probably a rare experience for her.
“If we can, we should get the mare between the traces and leave,” he said, then saw Maisie’s face and added quickly, “after we’ve had a proper look for Graham, of course.”