Gasping for air, Colt staggered backward. He limply hit the wall just as the ceiling lights strobed into operation, filling the long passageway with the harsh illumination of halogen bulbs.
Shaking all over like a dog coming out of the rain, Colt broke into a dripping sweat as he began to physically shrink to his original appearance.
“G-g-great day in the morning!” Colt exploded, his chest heaving for breath. “I will never, repeat, never, put on that fu ... freaking thing for any reason!” An anguished look crossed his face. “You would not believe the bizarre thoughts that were going through my head!”
“Oh, yes, I would,” Rissa shot back, then tenderly kissed the man on the lips. “Nice to have you back, Mr. Coltier.”
“Thanks. Call me Colt.”
“Shotgun?”
“Please.”
Proceeding carefully along the corridor, they saw another steel door at the far end.
With the shotgun held at the ready, Colt took the lead and Rissa briefly glanced backward. The inside of the front door was covered with runic symbols, some of them made from bronze and welded into place while others appeared to have been drawn with lumpy reddish-brown paint. Rissa fought a shiver. Right, old, clotted, coppery-smelling paint.
Stopping in front of the second door, they looked for another keypad. But it was nowhere in sight.
“Open sesame?” Colt asked, out of the corner of his mouth.
Thoughtfully chewing a lip, Rissa smiled and then turned around to walk back down the long corridor to the ring. She returned with it gingerly held between two fingers like a ripe piece of offal.
As Rissa approached, the door vibrated and slid aside to reveal a curved metal box mounted on a tripod. Extended from the front was the fluted barrel of an M16 assault rifle; a ferruled cable was connected to an electrical outlet on the wall, and perched on top was a tiny rotating radar dish.
With a low hum, the assault rifle swiftly moved in their direction and Rissa raised both hands to blast the machine with a lightning bolt. But Colt grabbed her wrist.
“Not necessary,” he stated. “That’s an Auto-Sentry. A computer-operated machine gun. I know the woman who sells these to the Pentagon. If this thing wanted us dead, we’d already be splattered on the walls.”
Rissa frowned. “Then why ...” She stopped and hesitantly lifted the ring. Like the eye of a cyclops, the barrel of the deadly military weapon tracked along after her hand in perfect synchronization. Apparently the ring provided safe passage through this abattoir of a foyer.
Stepping protectively in front of Colt, Rissa started walking sideways, keeping the man close behind. The Auto-Sentry tracked along until they were past the door; then it swiveled about to point down the corridor once more as the door silently closed.
“Laura didn’t mention any of this,” Colt muttered, crouching down to rip off the cable.
With a sad ratcheting sound the Auto-Sentry stopped humming and the assault rifle dropped to point harmlessly at the floor.
“Which makes me wonder what else she forgot to tell us,” Rissa snarled, her heart still pounding.
Past the deactivated Auto-Sentry was a perfectly ordinary cloakroom full of coats, jackets, windbreakers, hats, boots, galoshes, and lots of umbrellas. Including, several oversized beach umbrellas.
“Anything important missing?” Colt demanded, glancing about the little room.
“Like what, for instance?” Rissa asked curiously.
He blinked. “Good point. Never mind.”
Next came a dimly lit flight of carpeted stairs that seemed to go all the way to the fifth story.
“This goes straight past the actual warehouse,” Rissa said, inspecting the stairs for any traps. “That’s probably just window dressing to fool the city building inspector and such. Anybody smart enough to find the hidden door in the back alley—”
Colt grimaced. “Gets rewarded by a face full of lead. What a charming fellow. Can’t wait until he’s dead.”
“Amen to that, lover.”
Keeping the ring in plain sight, they started easing up the stairs and the ceiling lights strobed into action, revealing that the right wall was lined with more defensive runes, a couple of Victorian-era landscapes, and several U.S. Army Claymore mines. Colt went pale at the sight of those, and moved to place himself between the high-explosive antipersonnel charges and Rissa.
“Lochinvar to the rescue,” she whispered, putting her back to his to watch for any dangers in the opposite direction.
“Just don’t fall for any French guys in shiny armor, and we’ll be fine.”
Rissa was startled that Colt would make jokes in the situation, then she remembered an old Van Johnson war movie where Ricardo Montalban had made the exact same request. The surprising answer was that tension weakens the will, and sometimes a soldier has to get a little crazy to stay sane in an insane situation.
“Not a problem,” Rissa whispered. “I always considered Lancelot to be a total dickhead.”
“Come again?”
“He broke the law by committing adultery, betrayed his best friend, and became a traitor to his king all at the same time!” Rissa snorted derisively. “That’s not love, that’s just lust wearing Sunday finery.”
“Hmm. I think you may have missed the whole point of the story, sweetpea.”
“No, I got it. Finks get fried.”
“Yankee girls,” Colt muttered under his breath.
“What was that, darling?”
“Oh ... nothing!”
At the top landing was another steel door, but this one was equipped with an ordinary lock. The same as before, Colt stood guard while Rissa tickled it open, and the door swung aside, tiny silver bells hanging on the other side softly jingling.
Twisting both hands on the shotgun, Colt frowned at the noise, then shrugged. If Dominic were home, he certainly would have attacked by now. However, the numbers were falling, and soon enough there would be a showdown, the end results of which were still very much in question.
Feeling the ever-mounting pressure of time, Rissa and Colt stepped over the threshold into a spacious living room. The place was huge, easily covering half of the warehouse below, and luxuriously decorated like something out of a magazine.
A wine rack was built into the wood-paneled wall; a white brick fireplace in the middle of the room was surrounded by sunken couches, dozens of jammed bookcases, and enough stereo equipment to launch a space shuttle.
A deep cerulean blue, the carpeting was sinfully thick, rising nearly to their ankles. The silk window curtains were delicately embroidered, and the windows themselves were sheathed in thick steel shutters that looked more than capable of holding back a Klingon armada.
“Hate to say it,” Colt muttered, glancing at the old wines on display, “but the bastard has rather good taste.”
Curling a lip, Rissa started to reply when she caught a faint whiff of carbolic acid. Just as she had back at her grandfather’s workshop. “This way,” she said, hurrying in that direction.
A short hallway lead them past a gleamingly clean French-style kitchen and to a plain wooden door.
Impatiently Rissa waited while Colt tossed the Frisbee down the hallway. When it landed undamaged at the far end, they quickly followed. The unremarkable door was marked Utility Closet.
“Nice try,” Rissa muttered, reaching for the handle.
“Just a mo,” Colt said, slinging the shotgun over a shoulder. Swinging around the duffel bag, he dug out the four sticks of dynamite. On their journey down the river, he had bound them together with duct tape, inserted detonator caps, and twisted the fuses into a single strand.
Hefting the homemade bomb, Colt tucked it back into the duffel bag, but left the fuse hanging out for easy access. “Ready when you are,” he stated grimly, removing a gold-plated cigarette lighter from a pocket and thumbing the lighter alive.
At the sight of the tiny flame, Rissa gave a nervous smile, then squared her shoulders and pulled open the door
.
The workshop inside was eerily similar to her grandfather’s—statues, charts, diagrams, ley line maps, display cases, all of it—as if he duplicated the place from a photograph. However, there were a couple of disturbing differences. In the far corner was a large autopsy table, exactly as it appeared on all of the boney TV crime shows, and next to that was a large vat with a hinged lid.
“This must be where he boils the meat off the bones of ... whatever he carves those rings from,” Colt said, risking a peek inside.
“Empty?” Rissa asked, trying to keep a squeak out of her voice.
“Not even soup,” Colt said, turning off the lighter. Tucking it away, he glanced at the autopsy table. “What are his rings made from, anyway? People, other vampires ... gorillas?”
Gorillas? “No idea,” Rissa said honestly, fighting off a shiver. “My grandfather carved his from—” Clamping her mouth shut, she stopped talking. Deep in the heart of the enemy camp was hardly a good location to spill the ancient family secrets.
Almost imperceptibly, a bronze statue of Medusa began to rotate in their direction, the eyes of her snakes starting to glow.
Surreptitiously Colt nudged Rissa, and she raised the golden ring into view. Immediately the statue stopped moving, then slowly returned to its original position.
“What now?” Colt asked, looking over the vast array of bizarre, strange, and obscene displays.
Spotting a tool bench in the far corner, Rissa hurried over, hope fluttering in her stomach. However, as she stepped around a suit of Japanese armor it was patently obvious that the bench had been emptied. There were rows of wooden racks to contain all of the myriad of tools needed to carve a ring, but everything was gone. Not even the scraps or dust remained.
“Tarnation, he took everything,” Colt said softly, rubbing the tingling finger where the ring had been only a few minutes ago. “Well, we can blow up the place, but if the rings aren’t here, that seems rather pointless.”
“Wonder what happened to them?” Rissa asked with a frown. “Think Dominic is wearing all of the rings?”
Colt waved a hand at a row of the empty jewelry boxes. “Is that possible?”
“The man has toes,” Rissa retorted, shifting uneasily. “Either that or he’s recruited an army of people like Laura, and given each of them a ring.”
Even as she said the words, Rissa felt an urge to slap herself on the forehead. She should have done that! Melissa, armed with a couple of her grandfather’s rings, could have given old Merlin a good run for his money. That girl had magic flowing through her veins that just needed an outlet of some kind. Rissa hated to admit it, but she was simply a mechanic, while Melissa was an actual witch, a true daughter of Mother Nature.
Feeling hopelessly out of her depth, Rissa ached to have her old friend alongside, and just for a moment there seemed to be warm ghostly arms hugging her gently, then rudely slapping her behind. Rissa had to smile. Yeah, that was Melissa, all right. I love you, now get back to work!
“Well, I’ve certainly seen enough Hammer horror films to know that a vampire needs a coffin,” Colt said, walking out of the room. “Let’s find it and blow this dump before laughing boy escapes from the lodge.”
“Can the biplanes drop more salt to try and keep him there?” Rissa asked, starting through the arcane maze.
“Sure, and they’re doing that. But it takes time to fly back to the GDOT and refill.”
Rissa arched an eyebrow. The Georgia Department of Transportation? Ah ... because no fertilizer distributor in the world would carry rock salt. Salt killed crops the same way that Superbowl Sunday did romance: stone dead. But only temporarily.
“Let’s go,” she said, breaking into a run.
Quickly returning to the living room, Rissa and Colt searched for a secret door they might have missed the first time through.
Astonishingly they found it, exactly on the opposite side of the fireplace where it could not be seen by anybody coming in through the front door. Once more Rissa was forcibly reminded that evil did not always equate with stupid.
At their approach Rissa felt the ring grow warm, and the wooden bedroom door unlocked to swing aside. Nice.
However, as she and Colt passed through, they both observed that the wood was only a thin veneer, merely camouflage. The rest of the door was solid steel, crisscrossed with wide leather straps that had runes burned into the material.
Weak on the outside, but strong underneath. Just more tricks and lies, Rissa noted dourly. She would have to remember that when they finally faced the hated antiques dealer again. Trust nothing Dominic Meternich did, said, or promised. Nothing!
As they entered the room, the ceiling lights automatically came to life, filling the small room with a soft pearlescent glow. Involantarily Colt flinched at the color, then dismissed the seriously unwanted memory.
The bedroom was small, with a steel floor, riveted steel walls, and no windows. The air smelled unpleasantly of sweat, stale beer, and marijuana, and the sheets on the circular bed were rumbled and badly stained from recent erotic gymnastics. The rest of the furnishings were extremely ordinary; a couple of mahogany wardrobes, a cherrywood armoire, and an antique dressing table with a huge oval mirror.
Strangely, there were very few decorations, only a bronze Buddha incense holder, a rather nice oil painting of a sunrise on the wall, and a small display case holding the classic trio of ceramic monkeys: hear no, see no, speak no evil.
That caught Rissa’s attention. To say the least, it was a rather odd decoration for a man who perpetually lived in the shadows.
Rapping a knuckle along the steel wall, Colt quickly circled the room, then moved each piece of furniture to check the floor underneath.
“If there’s a secret panel here, I can’t find it,” he stated grumpily. “Maybe we should just blow up the place anyway and hope for the best.”
“Sure, sounds good,” Rissa muttered, unable to look away from the three monkeys. There was nothing unusual about the little figurines, but for some reason she simply could not look away.
A surge of cold adrenaline surged through her entire body as Rissa realized that she recognized their eyes. The eyes! Rissa knew those eyes because she saw them every morning while brushing her teeth. The little statues look like me. Or rather, somebody very similar to me ...
“Grammy?” Rissa whispered, and the No-Tell statue seemed to vibrate slightly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“It’s them!” Rissa cried out, drawing Lady Magenta.
“Who them?” Colt demanded, wildly swinging the shotgun about to search for a target.
“My grandparents!” she shouted joyously, slamming the handgun into the glass front of the display case.
But instead of smashing through, the gun violently rebounded as if she had tried to pimp-slap Mt. Rushmore. Lady Magenta went flying from her fingers, but Colt caught the gun before it sailed out the open doorway.
“What in hell are you talking about?” he demanded, returning the weapon.
Without responding, Rissa cocked back the hammer, aimed, and fired. The roar of the revolver sounded louder than a cannon inside the confines of the steel room, and the bullet went deep into the glass, but did not come out the other side.
“I command thee ... Break!” Rissa shouted, gesturing with her free hand. The magic flowed through her veins, four of her rings blazed with power, but nothing happened.
“It’s not magical glass, honey,” Colt stated, placing a hand on her wrist. “That’s Lexan military plastic. Bullets are useless.”
“Are you sure?” she raged impotently.
“Yes! I have it in my limousine. You’d need an antitank rocket to get through that!”
“Got one?”
“Not on me.”
“Then let’s try something else,” Rissa snarled, grabbing the display case. It easily came off a set of hooks welded to the wall, and she set it down on the dressing table.
Studying the case, Rissa experimen
tally turned it around and smiled. The front might be armored, but the back was made of cheap pressboard. Overconfidence, or another trap? Only one way to find out. Digging with her nails, she ripped off the cheap backing and removed the middle monkey.
Setting that No-Tell monkey aside, Rissa drew Lady Magenta once more, then paused, not sure if this would free the person trapped inside or kill them. Were they prisoners inside the actual statues, or was this another of Dominic’s accursed deathtraps?
“Colt, I’m not sure ...” Rissa began, a catch in her voice.
Without comment, he handed over the ringing cell phone.
“Harmond House!” sang out Melissa from the tiny speaker.
“Hi! Me. Trouble,” Rissa rushed out in a single breath.
“Password, please.” Melissa yawned over the sound of her filing a nail.
“Succotash!”
The filing stopped. “Thank the goddess you’re still alive!” Melissa gushed. “Okay, what do you need?”
“Information. I’ve got some ceramic statues that might contain my grandparents and—”
“Are there three of them? Monkeys, by any chance?”
“Bingo, baby.”
“Soul Jars,” Melissa stated, her voice dripping raw hatred. “That’s really dark magic. Strictly forbidden. Believed to have come from the lost island of Atlantis.”
“Really?”
“Truer than a laser beam. Are they warm or cold?”
“Both, actually.”
“Okay, the warm ones contain living people. Most likely No-Tell and No-Hear. The cold one has a demon imprisoned inside, which is why the eyes are covered. The window to the soul, and all that jazz. Savvy?”
“Not really, no.”
“Then just trust me. Don’t touch the blind monkey! The thing inside is the guardian of the other two, ordered to instantly kill the fool who sets it free.”
Nice. “How do I open the warm ones?”
Belle, Book and Candle: A Fantasy Novel by Nick Pollotta Page 26