The great Crocodile had recrossed the stream bed also, and now he lowered his belly to the ground and charged again, making startling uphill speed on his four stubby legs.
Several breathers’ voices cried out unnecessary warnings. Instead of trying to avoid the charge, Dracula screamed out a war cry and lunged forward with his long spear leveled like a lance, aiming for the monster’s open mouth.
In their first encounter, back in Illinois, his enemy had adroitly dodged this thrust, and the spear had only torn a few scales from his shoulder. Now the monster snapped his jaws shut at the last moment, and twisted to one side; but this time Maule’s second reaction was quicker than before. With a sound like a crowbar pounded on an anvil, the spear-point glanced from a row of teeth, to tear open a small wound at the corner of the mouth.
A fraction of a heartbeat later, the great jaws snapped sideways with blurring speed, to close with a ringing clang on nothing but damp air, as the man dodged neatly away.
The sparring and maneuvering went on, moving closer to the cabin and then away from it again, working up and down the slope. Maule’s breathing allies kept hovering anxiously, unable to do anything to help, trying to stay close without getting run over. Dolly had abandoned all thought of running for more shells, and was gripping her shotgun in two hands like a club. Still she wisely was not trying to get close enough to use it.
John and Joe, back at their vehicle, argued whether they should turn off the headlights or not. Let it be, they decided; if Maule wanted less light, he could shout an order.
In the end, it seemed to make no difference.
Sobek must have been shaken by Maule’s revelation, shaken even more by his failure to crush the vampire quickly, and by the sting of a new wound. One side of his great cheekless mouth was steadily leaking blood, of a bright unnatural red.
“You are a liar, Tepes!” he roared madly. “Your story is all lies, vicious and childish lies!”
Then, belatedly, an idea struck him. Swiftly he grabbed up a fallen log from the forest floor, broke off some awkward branches, and turned to use the weapon of wood against the vampire.
Dracula brandished his spear, which now in the headlights’ gleam showed the blood of the monster on its tip. With it he parried blows from Sobek’s enormous bludgeon. Each impact bent the slender shaft of Merlin’s spear, sometimes almost double, but it did not break.
The clumsy log-club caught on other trees, first rebounding awkwardly, then breaking. Whirling the remnant round his head, at last hurling it away in mad frustration, Sobek surprised the watchers by trying to summon help.
His voice went up in a long, inhuman howl. “Rally to me! Rally to your god, my followers!”
The great sound vanished without an echo, was absorbed into the dark surrounding woods. Answer came there none—only the crushing realization that his many worshipers existed almost solely in his imagination.
Sobek moved uncertainly. Vlad Tepes relentlessly advanced.
Once more, the Crocodile sprang, with incredible speed. Somehow he got past the spear’s bloodied point.
There was a renewed clash, the fighters grappling again, sliding down into the stream. Rock Creek ran shallow almost everywhere, though its swirls concealed the occasional unexpected pool. But it was in most places swift and violent, particularly along this steep descent.
Suddenly it seemed that Sobek was winning, that he had Maule pinned at a disadvantage between rocks in the rushing torrent.
Trying to aid the struggling vampire, Andy went splashing into the furious flow, to find he had all he could do just to keep his feet. John, next in, lost his footing and was suddenly swept away, drenched and pounded on rocks by the frigid, rushing current. Desperately he clawed for a grip, felt rocks and tree roots slide past his grasping fingers.
At last he managed to grab something solid, and pulled himself out, gasping, on the shore.
Andy was there beside him, and now Joe Keogh, who had tried to come to his aid. All three of them were bruised and battered, partly stunned, splashing in the creek.
… then they looked up in shock, to see the bodies of monster and vampire, locked in combat, come rolling down on them.
The three men tried to scatter, then were knocked aside like toys as the brawl went rolling past them.
Maybe, thought Joe, he should have brought along an axe. And then a saner thought: I’m much too old for this.
Dolly, weeping in frustration, had picked up a rock the size of her head, and was trying to balance it for an accurate throw when Sobek once more came near. John Southerland, too, had got out on the bank and was looking for more rocks to throw.
And over and beneath all other sounds, the endless roaring of the stream.
Again and again the Vampire and Crocodile went splashing into the stream, again and again they emerged from the water to go rampaging through the woods.
There were moments when the Crocodile’s eyes, the whole upper portion of its face, were warped into a sickening semblance of humanity, above the great jutting snout with its glut of teeth.
Maule had lost his spear again, regained it, and kept trying to get in a killing thrust. It was only a faint residue of Merlin’s power that still charged the spear, like the last lightning of a departing storm; and Maule could only pray that there would be enough for one more thrust.
Connie, hovering near the cabin, watching from a distance, was now holding a shrieking Dickon by the hair to keep him from escaping. She screamed advice to Vlad Tepes to get away, run for his life while he still could.
Dickon’s eyes were closed, his fingers in his ears, and he was shuddering.
Dolly threw another rock and watched it miss, then added more bloodthirsty encouragement. “Get him, Matt! Tear out his bloody guts!”
And, suddenly, Maule’s spear was broken.
An instant later, the Crocodile’s lashing tail struck him a hard blow, knocking him into a crevice between two rocks at the top of another stretch of rapids that almost made a waterfall. Joe winced, then stumbled forward again, sloshing in wet clothes, trying to grab pieces of the spear before they could be washed away.
But it was Andy, younger and faster, who grabbed up a splintered fragment of the shaft, and saw that it had the spearhead on one end. In another moment he had scrambled close enough to the combatants to try, ineffectually, to jab the green hide with the spear-point. Before he could try again, Maule’s white hand deftly reached to take his weapon back.
The fighters had now stalled in the stream, on the brink of a minor waterfall. Below them ran swift rapids, studded with sharp-edged rocks.
It seemed that the monster had managed to get the vampire wedged into a crevice between rocks. Maule was gripping one foreleg of the Crocodile, keeping himself too close under its jaw for it to get in a killing bite.
Sobek cried out again, this time in some language too old for even Maule to understand. But his meaning sounded plainly in his agony—he was bellowing again, this time in despair, for help from a universe that could have none to give.
The end came suddenly, just as the huge jaws opened to grab Maule’s body in their crushing, rending grip, or to tear his arm off at the shoulder. Instead, the broken spear-shaft went straight down the Crocodile’s throat, with all the strength of one of Maule’s long arms behind it.
The point of hardened wood, informed and blessed by Merlin’s power, went stabbing, probing on through softness, until it reached the center of the great, writhing body.
There was an explosion of light as Maule withdrew his arm, and he was flung aside, to land half in the creek, half out of it.
For just a moment, both banks of the stream, and the woods that clothed them, were filled with a pulsing, crimson glare.
The glare was centered upon Sobek. In the center of that pulsating outline, at the moment when the Crocodile died, a small lump of something that resembled scarlet ice, a burning coal surrounded by a layer of crystal, became briefly visible to everyone.
There came another dazzling explosion of light.
To some of those who watched, it seemed for one nearly blinding moment that their enemy’s body had been converted to mere frozen water.
But a moment after that, the Crocodile had utterly disappeared. Where he had been, there lay only a most peculiar artifact; a twisted remnant of Sobek, retaining something of his shape, though of somewhat lesser size. The color of it gleamed pure gold.
Throwing down another useless stone, Dolly came dashing forward. Others were running also, but she was first to reach Maule’s fallen body. Murmuring anxious words that Andy could not quite hear, she started to pull the fallen vampire from the rushing stream.
Uncle Matt stirred as she threw her arms around him. Now he was sitting up straight, and his eyes were open, glinting with triumph through exhaustion. Catching Joe Keogh’s eye, he nodded in the direction of something over the treetops, and in a weak voice muttered: “The god of war is with us, Joseph.”
Joe turned and looked. Low in the southern sky, Mars burned as red and bright as he had ever seen it.
~ 23 ~
Half an hour after the battle, injuries had been salved and bandaged—fortunately none were severe enough to require treatment beyond first aid. And rest and food had already begun their job of restoration.
Dolly’s treasure, in the form that all its seekers had imagined, had proven to be an illusion. The dream had evaporated—but in its place a new prize had appeared, this one all the greater because of its reality.
Both vehicles had been driven closer to what was left of Dickon’s cabin—no one could remember seeing Dickon anywhere since well before the climax of the fight.
Connie observed: “Perhaps this time the old one has really taken shelter on the roof of the Chicago public library—on the theory of that being the last place where anyone will look for him.”
Maule’s dark eyes glittered. “Bah. If he ever comes within my reach again, I will crush him like an insect. But search for him? I have better uses for my time. Life is too short to spend it hunting for mosquitoes.” A pause. “Or for any ordinary treasure.”
The headlights on both vehicles had been turned off; the darkness in the woods was far from absolute, and there were flashlights enough for breathers to see all they had to see. The survivors of the fight, breathing and unbreathing, were half-expecting that someone else would have taken note of all the racket, and would be coming to investigate. Joe Keogh had been mentally at work, trying to get ready some kind of cover story. But now he supposed that the nearest other human might be a mile or more away, and had never even heard the noise. Dickon had chosen the location of his hideout well in terms of isolation. No outsiders had been attracted by the noise of gunshots and breaking logs.
All that was left of Sobek was indeed a lump of solid gold—the Philosopher’s Stone, at the moment of its destruction, had fulfilled its legendary power of converting ordinary matter to the noble metal. Joe thought that “trophy” was an awkward and inappropriate word to describe the grotesque, bright yellow lump, almost the size of a full-grown crocodile, and retaining something of the creature’s shape—which was all that remained of the great god Sobek. But right now he could not think of a better word, so maybe “trophy” would have to do.
After making sure that no one minded, Joe took a couple of flash pictures of the thing. Someday, maybe, he would secretly show them to his grandchildren.
The combined strength of two vampires—one of them admittedly exhausted—was needed to wrestle the mortal remains of the Crocodile into a dense thicket, over which Connie recited a simple spell that she promised would make it hard for anyone to see. She had suggested a deep pool in the creek as a temporary hiding place, but quickly abandoned that idea when some practical breather pointed out that, come the dawn, some eager fisherman might possibly appear on the banks of Rock Creek and begin to probe its depths with line and hook.
Everyone who still had energy to move went over the site of Sobek’s demise, closely examining the ground for any surviving trace of the Philosopher’s Stone. But there was nothing to be found.
When the broader site of the conflict had been inspected, various tire marks erased, and ejected cartridge shells picked up, all were ready to adjourn to their waiting hotel rooms.
Having regained the security of a hotel room back in Red Lodge, Maule uncharacteristically slept through most of the remainder of the night. But he was awake and moving on the following morning, up early enough to join his breathing companions for what they considered a late breakfast. He had already enjoyed what amounted to his morning meal, and had been greatly refreshed and strengthened thereby.
On rousing from a deep, and thankfully dreamless, sleep, he first packed away his plastic bag of native earth, then moved to adjust the elegant window curtains of his room to shut out a maximum amount of sunlight. Then with thoughtful attention he observed that his companion of the last few hours was still asleep, in the far half of the double bed. Bending close over Dolly, tucking the cover up round her bare shoulders, he glanced, with tender concern, at the pair of tiny red spots that their union had left upon her throat. They were so small, he noted with approval, that it was highly unlikely anyone else would notice them. Nor should the young lady be troubled with any lasting aftereffects.
In a few hours Maule intended to return to bed, alone, and enjoy a delicious daylight trance. But he did not want to miss the breakfast conference with all of his loyal associates.
Their hotel, a solid brick construction right on the main street of Red Lodge, had proven to be an unexpected oasis of urban comfort and even luxury. Moving about in the process of showering and dressing, he found that a condensed, fax edition of the New York Times had been thoughtfully slid under the door. The marvels of modern electronics! Pleasurably he allowed his thoughts to return to his own plans for a web site.
After dressing, and making sure that Dolores Flamel was awake and would soon be up, Maule made his relaxed way downstairs.
He found most of the others already at table, in the dining room just off the tiny lobby. To a quiet chorus of greetings he acknowledged having slept well.
Refusing an offered menu, he took a chair beside Andy, who said that he had slept well too. “First time in more than a week I had a room to myself.”
“Indeed, there are times when that is much to be desired.”
After breakfast, the entire party retreated from the dining room to the privacy of the suite rented in John Southerland’s name. It was necessary to reach a quick decision on several matters, notably what disposition should be made of the golden Crocodile, which all agreed ought to be theirs by right of conquest. “It would be hard to imagine who else could have a right to it.”
It was promptly decided that the great trophy should be cut or broken into chunks of manageable size, on the spot where it lay hidden in the woods. From there the pieces would be transported directly, in two vehicles, to the Billings airport, where Joe Keogh’s aircraft waited.
Maule cleared his throat politely. “If I may suggest—?”
If Uncle Matt wanted to put forward a suggestion, everyone was going to fall silent and listen carefully.
“In Chicago, where the necessary technology should be available, I suggest that the pieces be melted down, poured into ingots, weighed, and sold, then the money divided into equal shares.”
After a moment he added: “I am assuming that we each desire to have a share?” Then, in response to unanimously surprised looks, he explained: “Gold is, after all, the deadliest metal. I wonder if, over the centuries, despite its rarity, gold has not destroyed more human lives than steel blades or leaden bullets.”
With discussion of the treasure out of the way, at least one of Maule’s allies found the climax of last night’s events hard to believe.
Andy spoke up, in a slow, determined voice. “There were some things that happened last night that I don’t understand. Maybe I never will, maybe I just don’t have to know. But before
we all shut up about this, and none of us ever speaks of it again—hey?—I’d like to have one shot at getting matters straight in my own mind.”
“Proceed,” Maule said agreeably. “Now is the time.”
“Well—he really had the Philosopher’s Stone inside him, for the past three thousand years? And how did you know that?”
“He really did. I doubt that those alchemists in ancient Thebes—I must admit that they were truly adepts—understood the magnitude of their accomplishment. Or perhaps they were stunned into a fatal carelessness. For somehow, before they could even begin to reap the benefits of their achievement, it was taken from them.
“The dream we shared—and which has now ceased to trouble us—was accurate in its essentials. The wretch who stole the priceless treasure really was carrying it in his mouth when he ran into the temple of Sobek. He really did stumble to a halt in the dark passage where six virtually identical statues, still wet from the mold, stood drying on two shelves.
“And that is where we were deceived. Over the course of centuries, Sobek somehow convinced himself that the thief—with whom he did not identify himself—had hidden the Stone in one of the statues. As long as he did not know where the Stone really was, he need not face the truth about his own identity.”
“So, the thief never really put it in any statue. Instead, he—?”
“He ran on, with the great gem still in his mouth, into the next room of the temple. And from there on into the courtyard of the crocodile pool … where he was devoured, but did not die.
“Instead, he underwent a monstrous transformation. When the fangs of the sacred crocodile closed on his helpless body, he was still carrying his loot, still feeling the coldness and the weight of it inside his mouth.”
A Coldness in the Blood Page 30
