The Mortality Principle (19 page)

Six steps.

That was all it would take.

Six steps and Roux could slide the cold steel of his sword between the killer's ribs.

Six steps and their quest would be over.

Six steps, then at last Roux would be able to sleep. Six steps and Garin wouldn't have a reason to moan about being dragged across Europe and could focus on what was important to him. Sex. Money. Money. Sex.

Six steps.

But he lingered too long to take the first one.

The brute was on his feet before Roux realized that he was even awake.

It might have been a colossus, but it was agile and it was shockingly fast.

The shadow moved in a blur, swinging an arm even as Roux raised his sword in readiness to deflect the blow. Steel made contact with the sleeve of the brute's heavy coat, the blade biting into the heavy material before being swatted aside harmlessly.

Roux took a stumbling step back, trying to dance out of the man's reach. He thrust the lantern toward Garin. The brute struck again before he could make the handoff, and the glass lantern went spinning to the floor. The window shattered and the candle snuffed out as the stub came loose.

For a long sliding second the world seemed to fall into absolute darkness, but a moment later there was light once more.

The flame had caught hold of straw strewed across the floor and now the ground beneath their feet was burning.

The big man swung again, oblivious to the danger that Roux's sword represented.

Roux grasped the hilt with both hands and swung as hard as he could.

This time the blade dug deep, slicing through the heavy layers of coat into the flesh of the brute's upper arm and striking bone. Roux's arms shuddered with the impact. There was a heartbeat when they were locked together before Roux yanked the blade free.

That moment proved costly.

The killer swung with his other clubbing hand, the blow slamming into Roux's temple, the sound of thunder detonating inside his skull.

Roux's grip on his sword relaxed, his reflexes reacting
automatically to the skull-shattering impact. He staggered, dropped to one knee, but somehow managed to keep one hand firmly on the hilt as the tip of the blade struck the burning floor.

Roux lowered his head, willing the killing blow to fall.

He had no fight left in his old bones.

But the killing blow never landed.

Roux looked up as his senses were assailed by the smell of brimstone.

The brute fell backward.

He collapsed into the burning straw as the fire spread with alarming speed into old packing cases stacked unevenly against the wall.

Gunpowder.

“Up, old man. We've got to get out of here before the whole place blows,” Garin barked, hauling Roux back to his feet. Garin's flintlock pistol still smoldered in his other hand.

The brute wasn't down for long—and most certainly not out. It struggled back to its feet, coat ablaze, smoke wreathing its giant frame and transforming it into a beast stepped straight out of his nightmares, as Roux caught a glimpse of its face for the first time.

Its features were out of proportion, too large for its face, unfinished. They shifted in the firelight and shadow, seeming to melt.

No matter what this creature was, it was less than human.

Around them the flames rose, the heat coming off them ferociously. Flame shot up the walls of the cellar. Stone and mortar groaned and wooden supports creaked
and snapped as the moisture was leeched out of them by the blaze, adding to the conflagration.

“Now!”
Garin demanded, dragging Roux back into the tunnel. “I'm not dying here, old man. I'm not ready!”

Fragments of stone crashed from the ceiling, sending a thick black cloud of smoke and choking devils of dust that poured back to fill the corridor. The flames turned the cramped tunnel hellish. They covered their mouths as they stumbled away from the heat, knowing they had seconds before the flames bit through the barrels and ignited the black powder.

Roux had no recollection of how they had come, which branches in the tunnel would lead them toward the shaft back up to daylight. The choking smoke made it impossible to tell where the walls began and ended. All they could do was chase the flicker of breeze, hoping it brought them to the light. They stumbled along in the darkness, fumbling their way along the walls, the heat in the stone scorching their hands as a deep grumble formed in the belly of the subterranean lair. The grumble deepened, resonating through the walls, filling the tainted air. Dust fell around them, clogging the air, making it harder to see and to breathe in the darkness.

The ghost of a breeze seemed to guide them to safety as it was sucked back toward the shaft they'd descended, billowing up into the daylight as they hauled themselves gratefully up the ladder set into the shaft's wall.

Roux closed his eyes as he emerged.

Alive.

Still.

“I guess it's all over,” Garin said, climbing up behind him.

“Anything but,” Roux said, choking back bitterness, dust and smoke.

He sank to his knees.

Bile rose in his throat. He leaned forward and spit on the ground.

He felt the explosion ripple through the soil beneath his hands, the dirt undulating like the skin of a storm-tossed lake.

A second explosion, more savage than the first, sent a rumble through the earth before the shaft gouted dust and flame through the vent in the ground.

Nothing could have survived that.

“And you are sure it was dead, whatever it was?” Annja asked, pressing home the point.

The three of them sat in the car waiting. She really hated waiting.

“Nothing could have gotten out of there, believe me. After the second explosion the tunnel began to collapse,” Garin said. “Even if the fire hadn't killed it, or my gunshot and blood loss, it wasn't getting out of that hole in the ground.”

“And yet it must have,” Roux growled. “Somehow it survived down there until someone dug through the rubble to rescue it.” He turned on Garin. “Tell me, be honest—how long did you wait before you excavated the ground? A week? A month? A year? We both know the thing didn't need food to sustain its unnatural life. So how long did you wait before you went back to dig it out?”

Garin met the old man's stare, and rather than defiance there was merely sadness in his expression as he shook his head in denial. “You really are convinced that I'm responsible for this, Roux? Even after everything we've been through, you think I'm capable of this?”

“I know you better than you know yourself, Garin.”

“And because of that you're not even prepared to consider any other possibilities? Like maybe I've got nothing to do with this?”

“Don't waste your time pleading your innocence. Only the two of us knew it was down there. I didn't liberate it, and now you're here and it is on the loose again.”

“Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, old man, but you're out of your mind. This isn't my fault. I saw the news, realized what it meant, but couldn't believe it was true, so I came here. I wasn't the one who cleared the rubble away. I didn't let it out of there. I came back to end it once and for all.”

As Annja listened to the argument rage back and forth, one thing struck her: they were both working under the assumption that it was the same killer some two hundred years later, which really should have been impossible. She said as much. “Just for a moment, suppose it's not the same killer. I know you think that what you saw down there wasn't human, but that doesn't mean it's the only one, does it? Could there be more of them?”

“A second golem?”

“Even Frankenstein made a mate for his creation,” Annja said. She wondered if the notion had even crossed their minds.

“I'm pretty sure that's only in the movies, Annja,” Garin said. “And we all know how trustworthy Hollywood is when it comes to the treatment of the truth.”

“Forget what you think you know about the Modern Prometheus,” Roux countered. “Annja may be right, after all. In the Latinate version of the myth, Prometheus made a man from clay and water. A golem.
Just as the legend of the Maharal also goes. I have no idea if the author truly knew what she was writing about that summer, but the proximity is uncanny. Victor Frankenstein rebelled against the laws of nature and how life was naturally made, only to be punished by his creation. The monster turned on its maker. Mary Shelley's story is, of course, a tragedy. The monster is immortal. Death, you see, is a gift of the gods.” There was a wistfulness to the old man's voice as he said this. “Mary called him Adam. Does this sound familiar?”

Annja thought about the ramifications of that name. “Where there is an Adam, surely there is an Eve?” she offered, using his arguments to support hers.

Roux had been so convinced that Garin was the root of all evil. That set him on a train of thought from which he couldn't break free. There were no certainties beyond the facts, and admittedly those facts were compelling—the entrance to the castle cellars had been cleared; there was a killer on the loose, preying on the most vulnerable members of Czech society; and from her own sighting, that killer was big, ungainly and unnaturally fast, with features like some child's drawing of a face—but that didn't mean they were tracking the same killer across two centuries.

Annja's head was suddenly full of doubts. Occam's razor came into her thinking: if in doubt, the most obvious answer is usually the right one. But what was the most obvious here? That a man-made creature had somehow woken after two hundred years of hibernation? That didn't seem obvious at all.

She checked her watch. Half an hour had passed since she'd called Lars. At the earliest he wouldn't be there for another half an hour or so. She thought about
calling Turek again, to see if he'd come up with anything at the border, but before she could the shadow just beyond the reach of a streetlight seemed to change, becoming darker for a moment. It wasn't a trick of the light. She saw it move again and was sure.

“Over there,” she whispered, indicating the thicker shadow with a slight nod. The shape burst from the shadows, running straight through the pool of light. She didn't get a good look at its face because a hood shrouded it.

“Time to put our differences aside. We both want the same thing here,” Garin whispered. He leaned forward from the backseat so he could watch between them.

“Two hundred years,” Roux said.

“Feels like yesterday, doesn't it?” Garin stated.

Annja watched as the figure strode across the road. She shrank in her seat in case it chanced to glance their way. The brutish figure was intent on moving toward the grille, and the entrance to the subterranean warren beneath the castle. The shape ran unevenly, dragging one leg with a strange limp, but whatever wound it carried didn't slow it at all. Despite favoring the leg, it didn't appear to be in pain.

“The golem doesn't feel pain,” Roux said, as though privy to her thoughts. “Believe me. I caught it with more than one good blow with my sword, but it didn't cry out once.”

“Nor when I shot it, or when its coat caught fire,” Garin added.

“Maybe it's the voice that's lacking, not the pain receptors,” Annja said. “Because there's something wrong with one of its legs.”

“Just because something is damaged doesn't mean
that it causes pain,” Roux said. “Pain is a uniquely living quality. Something has to be alive to feel pain.”

“That looks pretty alive to me.”

“And again, just because something is mobile doesn't mean it is alive, or sentient, or any such notion. Mechanisms wear out.”

“Speaking from experience there, old man?” Garin chuckled from the backseat.

Annja tried not to let the smile spread across her lips, but it wasn't easy.

The figure disappeared out of sight.

She felt her heart start to beat a little faster.

She wanted to get this over with, but the two men had a better idea of what was down there than she did.

“We should go straight in after it,” Garin said. “Get this over with. I can't pretend I'm looking forward to it.”

“We wait until Lars gets here,” Annja insisted. “You both owe me that much.”

Roux raised an eyebrow. “I wasn't aware that either of us owed you anything. This life isn't all quid pro quo.”

She stared at him through the mirror. Did he really mean that or was he trying to rile her, push her away?

They were a team, weren't they?

She might be the junior partner, but she brought unique strengths to the table. They needed her. She'd always given as good as she'd got. Certainly she'd come a long way since she'd needed rescuing by the old man on that hillside in France or by Garin in the village below. No, that wasn't fair. They did owe her. They owed her plenty.

“Call him,” Garin said. “Find out how far away he
is. Ten minutes here or there won't make much difference. Maybe he got lucky with the roads.”

She knew it was a long shot. The worst case was confirmed when he picked up.

“Where are you?”

“Stuck. There's some kind of holdup.”

“Holdup?” Annja felt two pairs of eyes burning into her.

“The traffic's at a standstill. Nothing is moving. The lineup is half a mile long. All I can see in the road up ahead are blue flashing lights. I'm not going anywhere fast. Sorry, boss.”

“Okay, there's nothing you can do about it,” Annja said. She could only stall Roux and Garin for so long, and that wasn't going to be long enough. “Call me and let me know when you're moving again.”

She forced a smile and shrugged as she slipped the phone back into her pocket. “Give him ten minutes,” she said eventually.

“He won't be here in ten minutes,” Roux said, as if that ended the debate.

Annja had no choice but to admit defeat. Roux opened his door without waiting for a response from the others. Garin was out of the car a second behind him, keen to get on with things. All hope of giving the network what they wanted to save the show went out of the door with them.