The Fifth House of the Heart (32 page)

“I think I'd better close the door,” Sax said, and did so, crowding everyone back.

“Do not you want stupid clock?” Gheorghe said. He hadn't yet realized what its presence meant.

“We have a problem,” Sax said, his voice unnaturally calm. He did not feel calm. “Let's move away from the doors and windows. I think we need to think what we're going to do.”

“Rock has so much weapons,” Gheorghe said. “He's there. I get him.”

He reached for the doorknob and Sax caught his wrist.

“Gheorghe,” Sax said. “If that clock is here—”

Emily was moving toward the window to look out at the clock. “The vampire is nearby, isn't it,” Emily said. She was shivering.

Sax motioned to Paolo. “Get her away from there,” he said. Paolo grabbed the back of Emily's blouse and pulled her into the middle of the kitchen. “Can someone,” Sax continued, “please call Rock on his mobile phone? I'll call Abingdon. Min hasn't got a phone but she may already be dead, crossing that field.”

Sax let it ring. Abingdon didn't answer. The vampire might have gotten him while he was walking over to his bread truck. Sax dared to get close to the window to look outside—he vividly remembered the Russian's ragged fist coming through the window of the camper van, and expected another grab at any moment—and saw Abingdon's truck standing by the barn looking perfectly normal. There were lamps lit in the cottage as well, the small windows spilling honeyed light through the slashing wind and rain. Rock might be in there, oblivious to the danger, or he might be dead.

Paolo was sensibly turning out the lights around the
maison
.

Sax got Abingdon's automated message, waited for the beep, and said, “Don't go outside, the vampire is here.” Then he ended the call. What a strange world, that with a piece of technology like the mobile phone he was leaving a message to warn a fellow forty feet away about a vampire.

Fra Giu had his own mobile out: “I called the order in
Roma. Four hours away most soon, even in the swift helicopter. They are coming. When they can, here be they will.”

Sax was grateful. It was far past time to be sensible and let the professionals deal with the situation. He had never felt more amateur than he did now. Fra Giu suggested Fra Dinckel get Emily upstairs, and they went; Gheorghe stood beside the living room drapes, concealed by them, looking into the farmyard through the gap in the curtains.

The house was tragically insecure. At least they were inside a building, which was better than being inside, for example, an old bread truck; but the house was defenseless without its heavy shutters drawn shut. These were dogged back against the exterior walls, so that was that. Sax had a suspicion there were eyes watching him out there in the darkness beyond the panes.

“I gave to Emily a cooking knife,” Paolo said. He was standing in the darkness beside Sax, in the kitchen, where there was a view of the cottage.

“We might be safer if we can get over there,” Sax said. “It's got hardly any windows and only two great heavy doors.”

“I think the vampire wants us to go out in the yard,” Paolo said. It had been less than four minutes since Gheorghe had first seen the clock. A blast of cold air suddenly rushed around the house.

“Gheorghe, don't!” Sax shouted, but he was already speaking to an empty dining room doorway. Gheorghe had run out into the yard. With the house dark and the exterior floodlights burning, he was
like a mime on a stage in a dark, wet theater. He had his head tucked down into his shoulders against the stinging lances of icy rain, but he moved with speed and grace. His course took him past the pathetic little clock, which did not appear to notice him. He ran to the SUV and threw himself inside. Nothing leapt from the darkness beyond the glistening farmyard wall. Nothing changed.

“What the hell is he up to?” Sax muttered.

Paolo slammed the French doors in the dining room shut. The floor was already wet. He jammed a chair up under the door handle. Outside in the SUV, Gheorghe was rummaging around for something. Sax saw him in silhouette behind the streaming glass of the vehicle's windows. He found what he was looking for: the handgun he'd shot the vampire Yeretyik with.

“I give us ten minutes,” Sax said. “Unless she's just toying with us.”

Paolo blew through his nostrils by way of response, a noise of disbelief.

“Maybe,” he said.

That was when Sax saw it.

First the green discs of the eyes, then the white, wet flesh looming out of the darkness beyond the wall of the yard. A hunding.

“Aieee,” Paolo said, under his breath. “
Mio Dio.
”

“You're in for it now,” Sax said, deeply angry not at Paolo but at the huge, pale creature stepping into the light of the yard. “A piece of the action like you wanted.”

One by one, the others saw the creature. Emily made a sound in her throat like an antique telephone disconnecting. She was too frightened for words. Fra Giu muttered a prayer. The thing outside was maggot colored, covered in straps of thick muscle, its claws and fangs like something from a child's drawing, huge and gleaming. The heavy bristles on its back looked like cactus spines. Its eyes never left the group inside the
maison
.

There was a
crack
and a flash of light and a black hole appeared in the monster's chest. The creature recoiled and leapt back into the shadows and Gheorghe rolled his window up in the SUV. At least, Sax thought, he'd seen the thing in time. But the Romanian was now well and truly trapped.

“We need to do something,” Sax said. “Get more knives.”

Emily appeared at his side.

“For God's sake, woman—” Sax began, and then stopped, and instead of speaking he threw a quaking arm around her, pulled her to him, and clutched her tight.

“Emily, I'm sorry about this,” he managed to say at last. He turned back to the kitchen window. Gheorghe had a second gun in his hands now. It must have been the one Rock had brought with him to Germany.

“I have the hammer you gave me,” Emily said.

“What?” Sax wheeled on her, his old eyes lit with energy.

“Simon. I brought it.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Because it was a ridiculous thing to do,” Emily hissed, angry and ashamed and afraid all at once. “It's in my suitcase under the bed. Should I get it?”

“Foolish girl!” Sax hissed, frantic.

Fra Dinckel descended the stairs now, his eyes bulging almost out of his head, the massive Bible clutched to his chest.

“We heard a gunshot,” he said.

Paolo spoke to Fra Dinckel in rapid Italian and pointed at the ceiling. Emily's room was above the kitchen. Fra Dinckel put his Bible on the kitchen table and ran up the stairs with his thin-soled Italian shoes slapping.

The hunding was there again, moving along behind the wall of the yard. The wound in its chest issued a red river of blood and the lashing
rain diluted the blood and kept it flowing, its intensity of color shocking against the pale flesh. The creature slunk behind the cottage. Rock must have heard the shot from inside. He knew that sound well. He would be alert to danger, if he was still alive. Sax hoped so.

The hunding emerged on the other end of the cottage, by the entrance gate of the yard, and went down on all four legs. It kept low, the rear bulk of the SUV between itself and Gheorghe, who was in the front seats. Sax saw that Gheorghe was aware of the monster's position. He was up on his knees on the passenger seat. The Romanian wasn't wasting another shot. He kept the gun trained on the beast but did not fire, allowing the monster to come closer.

The hunding looked around at the
maison
and its green-glowing eyes fixed upon Sax, visible in the kitchen window by the floodlight that reflected from the wet, icy ground. When the monster locked eyes with him, Sax shrank. He was so very frightened.
Little pig, little pig
, he thought.
Mine is a house of straw.

Paolo took Emily by the shoulders and got her well back from the window, but she had seen enough. She was as terrified as Sax. Then the hunding's eyes turned back to Gheorghe, Sax dismissed for now, and the thing drifted closer to the SUV, water streaming from its sparse fur and glistening in beads on the coarse bristles of its shoulders.

Sax was watching Gheorghe as intently as the monster. The man was up to something. Sax tried to will Gheorghe to stay calm, to stay where he was. Sax could not hear the sounds of the tableau but saw it all in pantomime. Gheorghe used his elbow to pop the latch handle of his door and put one foot down onto the wet ground, keeping the mass of the vehicle between himself and the lycanthropic thing that had hunched, arms back, head low, ready to spring, at the sound of the opening latch. Rock appeared at the cottage door, shotgun in hand.

Rock was shouting to Gheorghe, who shook his head. The hunding gathered itself low for the spring—and Gheorghe fired both guns. The
monster leapt not at Gheorghe but sideways, out of the line of fire, and Rock shot at it as well. The thing was hit, but it did not flee now. It sank low on its front legs and tried to push itself up but lacked the strength. It was snarling, teeth bared.

These things didn't fear injury, because they could survive almost anything—but their boldness got them badly hurt. At least it might be out of commission. Then they could finish it off. Rock fired another round from the doorway and Sax saw a halo of dark blood jump up from the hunding into the spotlights. Again Rock was shouting to Gheorghe. Gheorghe tossed the wet hair out of his eyes. There was a filament of rainwater streaming from the end of his nose.

Rock fired the shotgun again, and in that moment, Gheorghe made his move, running with his shoulders turned at right angles to his path, firing the guns in his hands. A wild bullet shattered one of the windowpanes to Sax's left; he and Paolo and Emily hit the floor, scrabbling in a cascade of broken glass.

“We need to get to safety,” Paolo said.

“Brilliant,” Sax said, and lifted his head up to see out the window set in the kitchen door.

Only a second or two had passed. Gheorghe was still moving. He was almost to the cottage doorway when the second hunding appeared.

It lunged out from behind the corner of the building, just beyond the front door, and Gheorghe all but ran into its arms. The beast caught him around the neck with one of its thick limbs, and with the other it reached up and stripped open the man's belly. Gheorghe's guns flew from his hands. His mouth was stretched open in a tortured scream that Sax could hear through the window. A tangle of entrails spilled out of his body, then the blood poured forth, and the monster thrust its huge paw inside Gheorghe's abdomen and ripped out his lungs.

Sax must have made quite a sound himself, because Paolo came forward and clapped his hand over Sax's mouth and dragged him away
from the door, their shoes slithering in the broken glass. They reached the foot of the stairs, Emily following, bent double to keep out of sight. Fra Dinckel was at the top of the stairs, holding the hammer in his hands.

“It has no handle,” he whispered.

“Break a bit off that bloody chair,” Sax said. In his fear and anger he wanted to lash out, and he had always disliked the chair at the top of the stairs. He'd been meaning to get rid of it for years. Let it suffer—it wasn't a hunding, but it was something. When Fra Dinckel just stood there and did nothing, Paolo rushed up the steps, then smashed the chair over the stair railing, which was not at all what Sax had in mind. No sense breaking
everything
. But then one of the long uprights of the chair back came free and Paolo shoved it through the eye of the silver hammer Simon with its sharp tip shining even in the semidarkness.

A length of broken chair leg clattered down the stairs, split along its length: it could pass for a wooden stake, Sax realized, and snatched it up. It would not make much of a weapon. Maybe he could stab
himself
with it before they got to him. He saw in his mind a flash of Gheorghe's screaming face as the entrails tore free from his body. It was almost beyond Sax's ability to imagine surviving now. The flowers were blooming behind his eyes again. He felt faint. If he hadn't been sitting on the floor he would have fallen. Fra Giu was beside Paolo at the top of the stairs now. He placed a hand on Dinckel's shoulder and the younger man jumped with fright.

“Go with Nilu,” Giu said, and tossed his thumb over his shoulder at Sax's bedroom door. Dinckel scuttled away into the darkness.

“What is happening?” Giu continued, seeing the look on the others' faces. “Did someone—”

“Gheorghe,” Sax croaked. “He's done.”

“There are two wolf men,” Emily whispered. “One is wounded. They killed—” She didn't say it. Too much to encompass in words.

“There could be as many as six,” Sax said. “We saw them being loaded into the back of a truck at the foot of that bloody castle. That's what was happening—it never occurred to me. They trucked them here, and released them as soon as we got back.”

Sax cursed himself. In hindsight, if he had only paused to consider it, shouldn't this have been obvious? What
else
would the vampire have been up to? He was a fool, and now there was another dead man. But it was time to act, not utter mea culpas.

“How do we kill them?” Emily asked, like a child wanting to know how to stop the rain.

“We can't. Not six of them. They're just as tough as any man-shaped vampire, and stronger. The only advantage we have is they're stupid. But they have all the instincts you can get. So we're in real trouble—”

Emily interrupted: “If we were up in Fort Tetanus on the hill, we could lock ourselves in and wait for help.”

Sax shook his head. He was sweating. But he had an idea, a plan as bad as any he'd ever devised. “Yes, but we're not up there, we're down here in the airy-fairy farmhouse, all windows and doors, and they can walk right in here and play football with our livers. So instead—”