An icy breeze blew into his face, and Noel’s heart slammed against his ribs in primitive fear. The hair on the back of his neck prickled, and he came to a halt.
What was this?
“Noel,” whispered the voice. “Come to me. I will help you. I will protect you. Do not run. Come to me.”
He swung back the way he’d come, and for an instant he imagined he saw light glowing faintly from the drain hole in the alley. Noel’s blood chilled in his veins. His fingers gripped the wall supporting him. No way was he going down there.
“Noel, I can save you. Come to me.”
His lungs froze on him. Suddenly he was choking for air, unable to draw enough in. His mind was dizzy with fear. He had to get away, had to…
Noel punched himself in the side with his fist. Agony came in a starburst, but it cleared the panic from his mind. He sucked in a breath, then another, able to think again.
It had to be Tibo, trying to mesmerize him.
He wasn’t going to let it happen.
Grimly Noel faced the strange blackness at the end of the alley ahead of him. The moon overhead was full and golden, like an enormous paper lantern sitting upon the spires of the city, but even its light did not pierce this darkness. Looking at it, he had the impression of a total and absolute void. It was like he imagined outer space would be if someone removed all the stars and astral bodies. While he hesitated, wondering if it was a tangible threat or only an illusion, he could feel a strange lassitude creeping over his body. It was as though he were being coated by the membrane of Tibo’s will, woven into a cocoon in the web of no return.
With all his might, Noel pushed himself forward. Taking one step was like pushing against an immovable wall. He gained a few inches and felt his body trembling with exhaustion. Gritting his teeth, he pushed to take another step and another.
“Noel, come back to me. You go toward danger. Come to me and be safe.”
His heart pounded crazily. His blood roared in his ears. Fear was sour in his throat, but he continued pushing himself forward, away from the voice. Just short of the black curtain, he stopped and gasped for breath. He was wringing wet. He felt as though he had pushed his body to the limits of its endurance, fighting the will that sought to ensnare his very soul. Now all he had to do was walk through this illusion, and he would be free. There were limits to what Tibo could do. Once Noel cleared this alley, he could hide himself anywhere in the city. Neither Tibo nor Vicente’s soldiers could find him. Just walk through it. It was a cloud, a trick of his mind. Go.
Shivering, he steeled himself, knowing delay only fed his fear. He extended his hands and stepped forward.
“Noel, don’t!”
It was Leon’s voice, shrill with terror and warning. It echoed between the buildings, flashing around Noel so that he couldn’t tell from which direction it had come.
A piece of him responded to Leon’s warning and wanted to turn back, but Noel had made his decision. He was too stubborn to let himself be defeated by a moth-eaten magician. Setting his jaw, he waded into the blackness.
A sudden force of suction pulled him forward bodily, and the darkness closed behind him. It was like being sucked into something’s mouth. The air surrounding him turned clammy and warm. He could hear a thrumming heartbeat, not his own but larger, faster, louder. Trying not to lose his orientation, Noel walked forward, expecting to emerge on the other side and be back in a normal Venice evening.
But there was no exit. He strode forward, hurrying now, almost running in the pressing need to get out. He knew he was only about twenty feet from the end of the alley, and he counted his steps now…eighteen, nineteen, twenty…twenty-five, twenty-six…thirty. He stopped in the moist darkness, his breathing jerky and too fast. The heartbeat throbbed about him. He could hear a rumbling roar, almost as though he stood near gigantic arteries that were pounding with the rush and constriction of blood.
Frowning, trying not to panic, Noel moved sideways in hopes of bumping into the wall.
The wall was gone. He was indeed in a void, a place that was endless, without exit. He frowned. Infinity?
No, he had passed through infinity before. He had journeyed too often through the time streams, had fallen more than once between dimensions, had almost been lost out there in nothingness. That had been horrible, yes, but it was not like this. This had nothing to do with the vastness of the universe, nothing to do with the laws of science or the order of the cosmos. This was not time; it was a place. What kind of place, he did not know. He did not like it, but his fear was fading as he reasoned himself through. He had seen worse. After all, he was a man of the future, not a superstitious creature of the past.
A shriek of rage filled the air, deafening him as much as it startled him. Clapping his hands to his ears, Noel tried to turn away from the sound and found himself face-to-face with a skeleton. The skull’s jaw hung open in a gaping grin. Its empty eye sockets stared blindly at Noel. He backed away from it and bumped into something solid. Whirling, he found a bloody corpse toppling over as though he had knocked it down.
The shrieks went on and on, piercing his hearing, shredding his nerves. Accompanying them came cries of misery and wretchedness, sobbing and wailing that reached to the primitive responses of his brain stem reflexes. No matter which way he turned, he found himself blocked by skeletons and hideous views of death. Dismembered corpses. Maggot-eaten bodies. Faces locked in rictus. Glazed and dusty eyes. The sticky gelatinous mess of blood and fluids. Flies buzzing and buzzing…a maddening sound.
He could not walk for the dead, yet he finally forced himself to pick a path through the strewn bodies, slipping on their blood, stumbling over limbs. He kept telling himself it was not real, none of it could be real. But the horror of it locked on to him, and would not let go.
Then the bodies began to writhe. Some convulsed in agony. Others lifted hands that snagged at his clothes as he stumbled past.
“Please, help me,” sobbed a woman.
Noel paused and knelt over her. She died still clinging to the hem of his long doublet. He could not tug the cloth free of her grasp. Trying not to look into her sightless eyes, he finally had to touch her hand in order to pry her fingers off. Her flesh was cold and strangely firm, almost hard. Rigor mortis was not instantaneous like this. Illusion, he told himself, choking on the bile that filled his throat. It’s just illusion, and not very accurate. Still, her fingers were like iron. He applied more pressure and heard a joint snap.
He shuddered, appalled that he had broken her finger, her dead vulnerable finger. Swiftly he tore the cloth to finish freeing himself without touching her again. Climbing to his feet, he hurried away from her.
Yet there were more dying, suffering people around him. In any direction as far as he could see, they lay in agony. He tried not to look at them, for if he made eye contact with a poor wretch, the person died. Yet they died anyway, horribly, their limbs shuddering with shock, their blood pumping away through terrible wounds. The buzzing of flies grew louder, more maddening, although he saw no insects. The sweet putrid stench of gangrene almost made him gag.
“Help me,” cried a boy. “Sir, help me!”
Noel looked down involuntarily and found himself gazing into the tormented blue eyes of Cody Trask, the teenage boy who had died in his arms in New Mexico.
“Noel,” cried Cody, the knife protruding from his chest, “I can’t get this knife out. I gotta get this knife out. Help me, Noel.”
“My God.” Aghast, Noel knelt beside him and gripped his shoulders. Noel had tried to save this boy. He’d been willing to jeopardize history to save this boy, whom he’d respected and liked. Cody was dead, he reminded himself, yet here lay the boy, pleading for his help. Cody’s fingers clawed at Noel’s sleeve. His eyes held trust as though he knew Noel could make things right.
“I been hangin’ on,” Cody gasped. “I knew you’d come to help me.”
“Cody, I—” Noel’s throat closed off. This can’t be, he told himself,
yet he could feel the boy. He could see the boy.
Cody’s face was damp and gray. His eyes fluttered a moment before he rallied. “You can get it out,” he whispered. “I know you can.”
“You need a doctor,” Noel found himself saying. He tried to hold back the words, tried not to speak, but he couldn’t resist this, couldn’t convince himself that Cody was an illusion. Whatever his mind knew, his heart saw only what was here now. “I can’t do anything without a doctor.”
“Ain’t no doctor here,” Cody said, his voice fading. “I been waitin’ for you. I knew you’d help. Pull it out. For God’s sake, Noel, pull it out!”
Sweating, Noel wrapped his fingers around the hilt of the knife. It was a Bowie knife, a huge, ugly weapon, the steel blade fully half as wide as his palm. “Cody,” he said, his nerve failing him. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Cody’s hand gripped his and the boy managed a tremulous smile. “Can’t hurt me more’n I hurt already,” he said with a bravery that broke Noel’s heart. “You’ll do me right.”
Noel knelt there, anguished and trapped. He could no more resist the boy’s trust and dependence now than he could in 1887. Breathing a silent prayer, he tightened his hold on the knife and pulled it out as quickly as he could. There was a dreadful scraping noise of steel against bone. Cody’s body lifted with the pull of the knife. He screamed, a raw sound that pierced Noel.
Then the big blade was out, dripping gore in spatters upon Cody’s shirt. Cody was crying. His face had lost all color. His blue eyes stared up at Noel in pain and accusation.
“You killed me,” he said, choking on his tears. Blood gushed from the wound. “I trusted you like family, Noel Kedran, and you killed me.”
Noel flung the knife away. “No, I—Cody, it was Leon who made El Raton throw the knife, Leon who killed you. I tried my best. I—”
He realized he was talking to no one. Cody lay dead in his grip, his young face dusty and ashen as though the desert winds had already begun to bleach and weather it away.
“No!” cried Noel. He shoved himself onto his feet and stumbled onward, blind and stricken with guilt. It hadn’t been his fault, he repeated to himself, unable to shake off the emotions tearing into him.
He bumped into something solid and flinched back. It was the prow of a ship, run aground in the blackness of this hell. A lantern swung ruddy light from the hand of the figurehead. Noel glanced up and saw that the figurehead was Lady Pamela, the fiery, imperious young woman who had been taken prisoner by Black Lonigan’s pirate crew. Only instead of carved wood, he saw a living, animated woman. She was staring down at him, her shapely bosom rising and falling, her arms outstretched, the lantern swinging from her fingers while she beckoned to him with her other hand.
Noel stood rooted in place and shook his head. There was only half of her. From the waist down she merged into the prow of the ship. He remembered the rope he had tied around her waist in an effort to keep her from drowning in the hurricane. He remembered finding her dead, waterlogged body on the beach the following day.
Now her chestnut curls blew in a wind that did not exist, and her green eyes flashed at him. “You, sirrah!” she called impatiently. “Cut me free at once!”
“This isn’t possible!” Noel shouted while the shrieks and wailings grew louder. “You are not possible!”
“Cut me free, you heartless blackguard! How can you see me in this torment and not lift a finger to help me? Use your knife and cut me free.”
He looked down at his left hand and saw that once again he held the Bowie knife. He flinched and hurled the knife at the ship with all his might. “Get away from me!” he shouted.
The knife thudded into the wooden side of the ship, just above its waterline and copper sheathing. Lady Pamela screamed as though the knife had struck her instead. Noel whirled away, refusing to watch her die. Yet behind him, her fine head drooped and her outstretched arms went slack. The lantern fell to the ground and exploded.
Fire flashed around Noel, and he was hurled away by the concussion of the blast. Landing in the distance, he tumbled like a rag doll and rolled up against a boulder. Stunned, Noel lay there awhile, then finally recovered his senses. Breathless and sore, he pulled himself to his knees.
The sound of singing caught his attention. It was an aimless little tune, a few notes repeated over and over. Unwillingly Noel turned his head. Sitting on another boulder was a beautiful young girl with an unruly mane of magnificent hair. She was naked, and only her long tresses covered her. Her oval face was streaked with dirt, and bits of leaves and sticks could be seen in her snarled hair. It looked as though no comb had touched it in years.
Noel stared at her, finally remembering her name. “Elena,” he whispered.
She glanced up, the way a dog will respond to its name. Her gaze was vacant and studied him without interest. When he said nothing more, she looked away and resumed her strange little song, over and over, repeating it in the mindless way of the insane.
She was the Greek girl of the mountains beyond Mistra, a wild and free creature when he first crossed her path. Leon had ruined her mind and taken her reason from her.
At the base of the rock where she perched lay a skeleton clad in mail armor. Its hands in mail mittens were crossed over the jeweled hilt of a broadsword.
“My love is gone,” she sang tunelessly, her gaze wandering. “My love cannot come back to me.”
A creature appeared from nowhere at her back, crouching on the rock and leaning over her shoulder. It was crimson and scaled and came no higher than Noel’s waist. Leathery wings extended from its ridged back, yet it had arms and legs like a man’s. Its head was wedge-shaped, a cross between a human and a reptile. A forked tongue flicked out from its blunt snout. Yellow eyes as cold as stone peered at Noel, then turned toward the girl, who seemed unaware of its presence.
Noel could not move in his shock and horror. The demon’s clawed fingers gripped Elena’s bare shoulder and it hissed in her ear. She laughed and began to twist strands of her hair together, as oblivious to it as she was to Noel.
He thought of how he’d first seen her, dressed in a jerkin and hose like a boy, a bow in her strong hands, her eyes as fierce and free as an eagle’s. She had stood on the mountainside overlooking the plain of Sparta, and she was the most gorgeous creature he had ever seen.
Now she sang, dirty and mindless, while the demon caressed her and nuzzled her.
Sickened, Noel stood up and clenched his fists. “Leave her alone!” he said.
The demon went on stroking her arms and face, its claws leaving red scratches on her creamy skin. It paused momentarily and gazed at Noel, then bent its scaly head over her. He saw its forked tongue flick out to her breasts. Tipping back her head, Elena laughed and wept and sang, forever lost in her own clouded mind.
Something snapped in Noel. He rushed at the demon and knocked the creature away. “I said leave her alone!” he shouted.
The creature shrieked and caught itself before it hit the ground. Spreading its wings, it lifted itself into the air and dived at Noel.
Screaming and hissing, it flogged his head and shoulders with its wings. Stumbling back, Noel put his arms over his head. It clawed at him, raking open his forearm, then his cheek, as it tried to gouge out his eyes. Its breath stank of sulfur.
Noel crouched low to protect himself, wincing as the thing clawed his shoulders and back. More shrieks came, announcing the arrival of a whole flock of the creatures. They surrounded him, pummeling him with their wings, tearing at him with their claws.
“Die!” they chanted. “Die! Die!”
Stumbling crazily, unable to defend himself, Noel staggered into the rock where Elena sat. His foot struck the skeleton’s helmet with a clang. Crouching, Noel grabbed the dead knight’s sword and swung it up and around in desperation.
Steel sliced one of the demons in half. Black blood spurted across the blade and splattered across Noel’s hands and forearms. It burned like acid, and h
e screamed. The creatures screamed too, rising up and away from him in a flurry as he swung again and again, driving them off.
Then they were gone, and Elena was gone too. He stood alone in silence and no longer heard the wails and sobbing of the damned. A wind blew in his ears yet touched not his clothing. Noel felt cold, frozen to the very marrow of his bones. A white mist appeared along the ground. It curled around his legs, and he was afraid of it. A sword was no protection against fog. It could consume him, and he would have no way to fight it.
Yet the fog was simply cold and damp upon him, nothing more. Still breathing hard, his cuts stinging harshly, Noel waited a long while, then slowly he walked forward once again.
Steps yawned before him, and he stopped, unwilling to go down. He turned around, and steps descended in that direction as well. The sword remained solid and somehow reassuring in his hands, yet he could not depend on keeping it in this madness. Reluctantly he started down the steps, taking them one at a time.
He seemed to descend forever. The steady heartbeat that boomed around him remained unchanged. He still felt as though he walked through the innards of some gigantic beast. But the steps seemed to lead down into a ravine. Cliffs rose on either side of him, snarled with dead vines and the barren skeletons of trees. He reached a landing and paused there. The wind was colder than before. It had the bite of coming off snow or ice. He shivered. His hands were aching with the cold. Glancing down, he saw that the sword was no longer made of steel but of ice. It was freezing his palms, and reluctantly he dropped it.
The ice sword hit the stones and shattered into small crystalline pieces that went spinning in all directions.
Noel walked down the next flight. It had become a staircase now, with a snow-covered balustrade. Icicles hung about him, and his breath misted white about his face. He realized there were eyes gazing at him from the tangle of frost-covered vines. Some eyes were human; many were not. He saw no faces.
Termination Page 16
