Haven's Blight

by James Axler

  He judged his best bet was to turn himself into a whirlwind of pain and potential death.

  “No blasters!” hissed a tall, black-clad figure, its features obscured like those of the other attackers, that hung back not far from the deeper shadows of the trees. Ryan felt relief. He hadn’t wanted to shoot because he didn’t want the coldhearts shooting back. Apparently they didn’t want to alert their quarry.

  For a moment there was only motion: slashing, clubbing, feeling resistance to his strikes, hot blood splashing his face and bare upper torso. Shouts and groans. He kept his attacks moving, kept them fluid, never lingering, trying not to be predictable.

  But the numbers caught up to him.

  An ax handle caught him across the belly, doubling him over briefly. He threw himself forward, diving beneath and inside the skull-crushing follow-up blow. Coming to his feet, he slashed another man upward across the gut.

  A long, bubbling scream erupted inside the house.

  Chapter Twenty

  As he and his partner stole softly up onto the big house’s second floor, Bo Gentry was sulking. It was just luck of the draw they got to lead the way up into the baron’s house, and Bo was on fire with excitement. But his dog-dick partner Jean-Paul Dolan, who he never wanted to get teamed with in the first place, insisted he had to go first. He hissed and pissed about it so insistently on the stairs Bo got to fearing he’d rouse the house. And that might bring Baron Blackwood down on them, when their only job was to secure this floor, make sure the outlanders didn’t interfere while the strike team moved past to the third floor.

  Bo didn’t want to piss off Le Patron, and he surely didn’t want the baron descending on him with those two swords of his like two whole butchers on jolt.

  If all went to plan—and Le Patron assured them that it would—they were in no danger of facing their albino overlord, which was doubly good, since they intended him no harm. The point to the mission was to force him to see reason, force him to reveal where the Beast could be found.

  All Bo and Jean-Paul had to do was to make sure the outlanders didn’t interfere. Along with suitable bludgeons, each man had been provided a rare cartridge blaster, Jean-Paul a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, Bo a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, to intimidate them. Or kill them quickly, of course, if they wouldn’t see reason.

  The intruders heard a strange tap-tap. They froze, spying an outlandish figure in the deep gloom at the hall’s far end. It was an oldie, tall but stooped, lank hair hanging in his face. He wore a strange single-piece long-sleeved garment that covered him neck to ankles, and he walked with the aid of an ebony cane, on which he leaned heavily.

  Jean-Paul glanced back over his shoulder at Bo and grinned. Jean-Paul was much larger, which also figured in Bo’s giving in when Jean-Paul wanted to go first.

  Standing upright, Jean-Paul swaggered forward. “Give up now, old man, and we won’t hurt you. Much.”

  The old man straightened a few painful degrees, enough to raise his cane without toppling onto his face.

  He poked the cane toward Jean-Paul’s face. “Show respect to the aged! You shall not pass!”

  Jean-Paul laughed. “You have made your choice, old man. Mebbe you can stand up straight when I shove this cane up your withered old ass!”

  And he grabbed the tip of the cane and yanked it away.

  Except the old man was still holding the head end of the cane. Starlight skittered faintly along a long, thin piece of metal protruding from it.

  “Merde!” Jean-Paul exclaimed, holding the swordstick-sheath in front of his face in disbelief. “C’est impossible!”

  “Not at all, dear boy,” Doc said. The slender blade in his hand flashed forward like a striking copperhead.

  Jean-Paul screamed long and loud as the tip entered his left eye.

  CLUMSY ASSES, Jak thought in contempt as footsteps clomped into the foyer. He judged he faced at least four intruders, perhaps six.

  Coiled in the darkness like a serpent, he waited. Five men in black hoods walked past on their way to the stairs. They held clubs and machetes. Each spared barely a glance into the dining room as they passed. Clearly, they expected to encounter no one. Or if they did, servants who would be easily cowed.

  Jak grinned. He waited a beat, then slipped forward. When he came around the corner, the first two men were trudging up the stairs. They seemed to be trying to keep quiet, but making a bad job of it. Otherwise they acted as if they owned the place.

  Noiselessly he lunged at the back of the last man in file. His butterfly knives whipped open in his hands, as quietly as his bare feet glided over the shabby carpet runner.

  Jak cocked back both his arms. From somewhere overhead he heard a prolonged shriek. The men ahead of him stopped dead.

  Jak was as surprised as they were, but he never broke stride. As the first two assassins came out of their stunned surprise and rabbited up the stairs, he plunged his small but lethal knives into the kidneys of the last man in line.

  There’s no such thing as “hurt too badly to scream.” Jak knew that from much observation, as well as a few unfortunate experiences of his own. But the pain of certain wounds makes the victim inclined to suck in a breath, rather than immediately expel air in a cry of intolerable agony.

  As expected, his victim stiffened, sucking in a whistling breath. From overhead the insane screaming continued. No one seemed to notice what had befallen their trail man, as he fell thrashing at Jak’s feet.

  Jak pulled his knives free and prepared to leap on the next man, who still stood as if terrified to advance in the face of whatever had caused the terrible shrieks from the second floor.

  But the howling also fouled Jak’s fine-tuned hearing. He never heard the burly man who rushed in the front door behind him and caught him in a bear hug with arms as thick as legs.

  DOC’S BLOOD was up. Leaving his fallen antagonist to thrash and squall and spray the baseboards with blood and aqueous humor, he advanced on the other holding his swordstick en sixte.

  “Have at you, young rogue!” he shouted lustily. “Surrender now!”

  “Filthy old bastard!” the other cried. He raised a short-barreled, double-barreled blaster to point at Doc’s midsection. “I chill you in the belly!”

  He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Likely he had been ordered to approach the house with hammers down for safety. He had forgotten to lift them.

  Before the befuddled young man could cock the double-blaster, a door opened to his left. The angry dark face and black handblaster of Mildred Wyeth protruded from the doorway.

  “Not on my watch, motherfucker!” she shouted. She shoved the muzzle of her .38 into the intruder’s soft side and shot him twice.

  RYAN WOULD’VE SWORN he wasn’t distracted by the horrible cries coming out of the house’s second story, and perhaps he just got unlucky. In a fight against multiple enemies, the dregs weren’t generally polite enough to line up and attack one at a time.

  He got nailed by a trick worthy of him. Whether by unlooked-for cunning or blind-panic luck, an attacker lashed out from behind and nailed Ryan in the balls.

  It was one of the top five nut-shots Ryan had taken in his life, and it hit him at the worst possible time: the end of an exhalation. His body now emptied of air, his every cell screaming for oxygen, there was just no room in his spasm-knotted body for breath to fit.

  His vision darkened; his head spun. Or perhaps that was just his body corkscrewing down to the soft damp-springy turf and wrapping itself into a reflex knot of agony.

  Ryan’s peripheral vision was just clear enough to take note of the worn sole of a heavy boot upraised to stomp on his head.

  AS SHOTS CRASHED somewhere upstairs, the man holding Jak in a bear hug threw back his head and added his own woman-shrill shrieks to the ululations to the cacophony. The sharp bits of metal and jagged glass Jak sewed into his jacket had bitten deep into the unprotected flesh of his attacker’s palms and burly bare arms.

  His gri
p slackened, and Jak twisted free. He flattened himself on the carpet as the invader he’d been trying to backstab wheeled and cut loose with a crossbow.

  The steel-spring bow twanged, and the bolt hummed above Jak like an angry bumblebee. It struck the former bear-hugger with a sound like a knife stabbing into a ripe watermelon and sank to the feathers out of sight in the fat of his gut. The intruder’s screams took on a deeper, more urgent tone, then he fell.

  Jak sprang toward the man with the now-useless crossbow. His blades slashed figure eights in the invader’s hood-covered face and chest. Hot gore splashed his face.

  RYAN HAD NO STRENGTH, but he still kept a few shreds of his presence of mind. He managed to roll his fetal-curled body onto his back and fire his 9 mm blaster twice upward into the leg and groin of the man about to stomp him. The man fell away, screaming.

  Blasters boomed. People started shouting all over the place. Ryan had a sense of fighting going on just past the fringes of his vision.

  Purposeful movement caught his eye. The tall black-clad figure directing the others had turned to scuttle into the protecting darkness of the trees. Once inside he’d be home free. If he had an ounce of woodcraft—as pretty much every Havenite did—within a few hundred yards he could lose himself in the marshes and bayous where even bloodhounds couldn’t track him.

  With a total concentration of will Ryan extended his right arm. Trying to sight upside down through a blurry eye, he cranked out four quick shots. The man in black pitched forward. The tail of the coat or cloak he wore billowed like the wings of some giant evil night bird.

  But the dark form continued to wriggle forward, dragging itself into the azalea bushes at the edge of the woods. Ryan tried to get off more shots, but his body failed him. He finally managed to suck in a breath. It wasn’t deep enough. Head swimming, he slumped, fighting now merely to breathe through the agony that enveloped his midsection.

  He was helpless.

  Sensing a looming presence, Ryan turned his head and saw a bare foot and shin, both as white as chalk. Looking up, he saw Baron Blackwood standing tall against the stars. His hair, face, and the formerly white underwear that was all he wore were streaked with blood.

  “Are you injured, my friend?” the baron asked in his deep voice, plunging a sword tip-first into the ground and kneeling by Ryan’s side.

  Already Ryan was able to breathe normally again. Mostly.

  “Only my pride,” he answered, sitting up gingerly. The dew on the grass had soaked through the seat of his jeans.

  “Plus the family jewels.”

  Tobias grinned and reached out a hand to Ryan. They gripped each other forearm to wire-muscled forearm. Blackwood straightened, pulling Ryan to his feet as if he weighed no more than a child.

  With effort Ryan managed not to sway.

  “That’s twice I owe you for saving my hide, Baron,” Ryan said.

  “There is no debt, Ryan. The prompt, bold actions of you and your friends may well have spelled the difference between survival and calamity for my house.”

  “Speaking of which, you don’t seem to have been caught sleeping yourself.”

  Blackwood shook his head, casting pink sweat and blood droplets from his white hair. “St. Vincent warned me intruders were approaching the house. You must have spotted them around the same time. I told St. Vincent to rouse you, then I went out the window.”

  He grinned. Somehow, despite the sweat and blood that turned his pallid face into a canvas painted with pure horror, he managed to make it almost boyish.

  “When Elizabeth and I were young, my father used to lock us in our rooms. I learned several ways to climb safely to the ground, including one over the roof and down the back. It came in handy tonight. You?”

  “Found my own way down.”

  Ryan realized several burly male servants and a couple of women, all armed with an assortment of knives, clubs and axes, were moving around him, securing the wounded intruders and making sure the dead ones stayed that way. He put his own weapons away as St. Vincent emerged smiling from the front door. Stepping delicately over a corpse sprawled at the foot of the steps, he approached Blackwood and spoke softly in his ear.

  “Thank you,” the baron said.

  He turned to Ryan. “By some miracle none of our people were seriously hurt. Your friends are well, although young Master Lauren has incurred some minor gashes and bruises.”

  “Standard for him. What about Krysty?”

  “Safe. None of the attackers reached her floor. St. Vincent tells me servants found my sister sitting beside Miss Wroth’s bed with a pump shotgun across her lap.”

  Ryan grunted and nodded. It was all he had in him.

  Guerrero walked up the road at the head of a column of sec men. His round bearded face was coated thickly in sweat that reflected orange highlights from the torch a flunky carried at the big-bellied man’s side. Ryan got the feeling it wasn’t just the heat that made him sweat like that.

  “Baron,” Guerrero began as soon as he came in range, “I’m so sorry. I—I mean, there was no—”

  Tobias held up a slim white hand. “Enough. None of us was adequately prepared for this treachery. We’re all safe, and we’ll all be more aware in the future.”

  To the sec boss’s credit he neither kept quivering nor groveled. Suddenly all business, he straightened and asked, “How can we serve, Baron?”

  “Secure the prisoners.” His handsome features hardened. “We want the blackguards healthy enough to hang.”

  “Yes, sir!” Guerrero turned and began directing his men. He did it in a solid, steady tone, without hollering and blustering.

  Despite the majestic way he’d stepped on his pecker tonight, he wasn’t the fat clown he appeared to be. Not wholly, anyway, Ryan observed.

  “There was a ringleader,” Ryan said, sorting through the jumbled memories of the last few minutes. “All in black. I winged him, but he crawled off into the woods.”

  “See to him, Guerrero,” the baron said without looking around. The sec boss gave the necessary commands. A party of armed men with torches immediately set off into the woods.

  A wave of dizziness washed over Ryan. His incompletely healed ribs were paining him once again, accompanying a number of other aches. He couldn’t prevent himself from swaying. Blackwood gripped his upper arm and guided him to a bench beside the house. Ryan gratefully sat.

  His friends drifted out to join him: Jak, then Doc and J.B. Mildred appeared last, having examined Krysty, finding no change in her condition, as well as checking on Elizabeth Blackwood. Ryan gradually collected their accounts of the battle. He told them what had happened to him.

  Soon the search party returned in triumph from the woods. The two biggest men carried a long pole, a hastily stripped sapling judging by the stubs of branches, across their shoulders as they walked side by side. Between them they half carried a man in black clothes and hood, with his arms bound behind him and the pole shoved under them, behind his back. He stumbled along on one leg. The boot of the other dragged along the ground behind. He groaned loudly every time something jarred it.

  Guerrero stepped up to speak to the squad leader, then he accompanied the party to stand in front of Blackwood.

  “We got the ringleader,” Guerrero said. “Cawdor shot him in the ass. Fucked up his right hip. Boys couldn’t make him walk, so…” He gestured with a broad hand toward their improvised carry pole.

  “Excellent,” the baron said. Most of the blood had been sponged off him by servants with buckets of well water. He now had a black cloak with scarlet lining wrapped around him. Its tails flapped in a sluggish breeze that had risen. The wind smelled of rain, although the sky overhead remained clear.

  “Set him down,” Blackwood commanded. The sec men deposited their captive on the ground in front of him. The bound man slumped, his good leg folded beneath him, the other sticking out to the side. He moaned softly.

  “Take the hood off.”

  Guerrero reached down, l
oosened a drawstring, then yanked the mask away.

  Franc Landry sat staring up at them from a face gray with misery.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Rain spattered down from a late-morning sky the color of slate. Ryan, Doc and Jak sheltered beneath the branches of mulberry tree at the west end of the town square. They watched the construction going hastily up in the midst of the grassy plaza.

  “An appropriate day for a hanging,” Doc said glumly.

  “Better cut throats, be done,” Jak said. He had an aversion to hanging bordering on the phobic, having found himself on the wrong end of it, once upon a time.

  Mildred, expressing disgust with the whole proceedings, had gone off to Amélie Mercier’s high-tech lab. She said Mercier claimed to be on the verge of some sort of breakthrough concerning Krysty. Ryan wasn’t getting his hopes up.

  “I am not sure kindness is the object of the exercise,” Doc said. “Although to his credit, Baron Blackwood is at least trying to render the unpleasant process as humane as possible.”

  Ryan grunted. He wasn’t feeling so tender toward the six condemned men, the survivors of the group of upward of a dozen who had attacked the baron’s house the night before. He hadn’t slept well. His ribs hurt and his balls ached. His head and stomach didn’t feel so great, either. He would’ve been happy to finish off the bastards himself with an ax handle.

  J.B. strolled across the plaza toward them. When he got under the densely leafed branches he took of his glasses and cleaned water and condensation from them with a handkerchief.

  “Quite a project, constructing a six-holer gallows on short notice,” he said. “Fixing the trapdoors up right’s a mite tricky.”