A Coldness in the Blood

by Fred Saberhagen

  “The tools of alchemy, I guess. Or something.” He wished he knew just what a drug lab looked like.

  Several items of strange equipment came to light—glass in strange shapes, and ceramics, and twisted metal. Odd materials and tools used by the alchemists. No wonder Dickon had thought the cops would suspect a drug lab.

  “I don’t see any piles of gold,” Dolly whispered.

  Andy was shaking his head. Was the whole business some kind of elaborate joke? “Any sign of Dickon?”

  “Not since we came in. He was right ahead of me when we were just outside the building.”

  In another minute the two explorers had turned their backs on the gaping crater of the basement and were making their way slowly along another hall. Suddenly Dolly pointed to one side. “There—at the top of the stairs. He just moved out of sight.”

  Softly she called Dickon’s name. But no one answered.

  The stairway stood open and looked solid. A moment later, Dolly had started up, with Andy right behind. The second floor looked much like the first, rooms opening off a central hallway, all uninhabited and scant of furniture. Then back to the stairway, on and upward to the third floor.

  They had just reached the top of the stairs when Andy started at the sight and sound of a large and ugly rat, doubtless here in search of his own version of treasure, scampering away.

  Here on the building’s uppermost floor, most of the footing was still intact. The smell of smoke was just as strong; and the ubiquitous sogginess still glistened in the little flashlight beam.

  It was hard to tell just what sort of experiments the three partners might have been conducting here—maybe crocodiles and mummies, for all that Andy could tell now. The place now suggested a large and elaborate workshop rather than a dwelling. Benches had been improvised, with doors laid flat on sets of filing cabinets.

  Dolly turned with a jerk. “What’s that?”

  The sense that they had silent company was suddenly overpowering. Andy kept his voice as low as possible. “Someone else is in here.”

  “Someone … two or three of them at least.”

  “If it’s the cops …” But even as Andy whispered the words, he knew that they were wrong. Cops would be making noise and shining lights.

  One of the shadowy figures was standing apart from the other two. From the little he could see in the deep gloom, none of them looked at all like Dickon.

  “Let’s back out of this,” Andy whispered.

  Moving together, they reversed their field. But it was not to be. Two more of the silent figures were now standing at the head of the stairs, effectively cutting off their retreat.

  And one of them was laughing, a low, eerie sound that made the hair rise up on Andy’s neck.

  When Dolly flicked her flashlight upward, to illuminate their faces, both seemed to shift positions slightly, with eerie quickness, just enough to keep from being spotlighted. When she moved the beam again, they dodged again just as the beam reached them. It was like some illusion in a movie. But illusions in the real world did not laugh.

  Andy cleared his throat, and did his best to sound bold and authoritative. “All right. What’s going on?”

  Now Andy could make out the faces of two of those confronting him. They were remarkable faces, and frightening. Their bodies were all wrapped in dark clothing, suggesting the idea of some kind of gang uniform.

  Again there came a swift stir of movement, the scampering of some small animal. Then Andy blinked, unsure of what his eyes had just informed him in the bad light. One of the figures had seemed to move at lightning speed, snatched up a quivering rat—it had looked almost the size of an alley cat—tore off some portion of its body, and with an expert touch imbibed the resulting small jet of blood. The animal’s shrill squeal of terror and pain cut off a moment later.

  Andy heard Dolores, close beside him, reacting with a gulp and a choking sound. She clutched at his arm.

  Tugging her with him, he started to retreat. But in a moment there was no place to go. Turning to face the nearest confrontation, they found themselves with their backs toward the edge of the great crater. Overhead, a sizable portion of the flat roof was entirely gone, and indirect illumination came washing in from the reflective clouds above the city. The building’s upper windows had been boarded too, and only around the edges of the plywood panels could narrow spears of light lance in from the busy street outside.

  No path of escape remained. “What do you want of us?” Dolly’s voice was still almost steady.

  At last one of their challengers spoke. A man’s voice, commanding, tinged with a strange accent that Andy could not identify. “What we want is simple. We must know what your grandfather told you before he died—”

  A woman’s voice cut in impatiently: “He gave you a list of names, we know he did!”

  “—especially everything that he told you about the little statues.”

  Dickon had been asking about little statues too. But he hadn’t, not that Andy could remember, said anything about any list of names.

  Andy tried to bluff the nearest shadow. “Going to move out of our way, or am I going to move you?”

  The only answer was a little giggle. Someone having fun.

  Andy shoved one of the blockaders, sent him stumbling back. But before he could turn to deal with the other man, Andy was seized from behind, in the strongest grip that he had ever felt. Despite a furious attempt to struggle, he was held motionless.

  Hoarsely he cried out Dolly’s name, with some idea of urging her to run. But that was useless. The flashlight had been knocked away. Andy could see only dimly that a couple of them had grabbed Dolly too, one holding her while another rifled her pockets and her fanny pack. When she tried to scream, an effective muffling hand was clamped across her mouth.

  Again Andy tried to move, but his twisted arm felt like it was on the point of breaking. The grip that held him so immobilized seemed awkward, but was enforced by a strength that felt totally unreal.

  Now Dolly’s little moans, and Andy’s gasping breathing, were the only sounds in the dark house.

  Clearly Andy’s earlier impression of three or four people taking part in the prank, or ambush, had been totally wrong. He could see now that there were half a dozen of them at least. A couple seemed to be wearing ski masks—it was hard to be sure, in the gloom—and one slender woman in dark trousers had on huge silver earrings that glistened dully whenever they encountered a spark of light.

  This was no chance encounter; several of them had already called Dolores by name. Their only interest in Andy, so far at least, was to make sure he did not interfere.

  But now one evidently grew curious regarding him.

  “What is your name, heroic escort?” This from the fellow who was holding Andy’s arms behind his back, an especially tall man in a plaid shirt.

  Andy’s anger was growing rapidly, so fast that it had already burned away half his fear. With it came some inner devil’s prompting.

  “Matthew Maule,” he answered, in a loud clear voice, and was astonished at the sudden stillness that the name produced. All the snickering and whispering that had begun to grow cut off at once.

  After a full ten seconds of chill silence, the tall man said: “No, you are not. But what connection have you with that name?”

  Andy cursed himself for not keeping his mouth shut, or giving a straight answer. But before he was forced to speak again, Dolores let out another scream, pulling everyone’s attention back to her.

  Dolly’s voice was shaky, but she was still managing to get out coherent words. “I don’t know anything about any list of names. If you want the gold, you’ve got the wrong party, I don’t know where it is, I never saw it. If you can find it, take it and let us go.” Whoever had grabbed her was now holding her so deep in shadows that Andy could not see her at all.

  “Gold?” someone in the background questioned, with a sneer. Several of the gang seemed to find that idea amusing. They seemed to be offended
by the suggestion they could be distracted from their real goal by any lure as common as a fortune in gold.

  One shadowy figure picked up a piece of what looked like twisted glass—alchemical lab equipment, Andy thought—then smashed it, hurling it to the floor with a savage motion. “What did your grandfather tell you about the work he and the others were doing here? He, and noble Dickon, and unlucky Tamarack?”

  But another broke in impatiently to ask: “What did he say to you regarding Sobek?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking a—ahh!” Someone did something that drew from her another cry of pain.

  It was the woman with silver earrings who took up the interrogation now. “For the last time, where is the list of names?”

  “For the last time, I don’t know!” Dolly was screaming more than loud enough to be heard outside the building, but nobody seemed to care. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”

  “Don’t play dumb.” Dark trousers moved closer to Dolly by a step. “That would be a serious mistake. We want the names of those who are now in possession of the statues. Who bought them, when they were being so foolishly sold as cheap, common crockery.”

  Dolly gasped out: “If there is any list, I don’t know anything about it.”

  When Andy decided on one more desperate try at getting free, his captor seemed to know his intention before he had moved a muscle, and administered another jolt of pain.

  When his vision cleared again, Andy finally managed to make out where Dolly was, though her figure was still almost invisible in deep gloom. Her whole shape looked pale, as if most of her clothing had been pulled off, or partially off in the search process just concluded; now she was stretched out very quietly on the floor, as if stunned or simply afraid to try to move. Having exposed and searched her body, none of her attackers seemed much interested in it. Their only concern was some secret that it might have held.

  The woman’s relentless voice probed on. “We know that Nicolas Flamel received, from a certain source, the information that allowed him to compile a list of names. You are his heir, his only relative. He must have somehow passed those names on to you.”

  Meanwhile, in the background, other voices murmured. Someone grumbled that it was too bad the shop had been burned.

  Well, yes, said someone else, but we didn’t do that, it was Sobek. But he didn’t find what he was looking for.

  Sobek again. At least that was what the name sounded like to Andy.

  No, commented the previous speaker. Sobek couldn’t have found what he was looking for, not here anyway. Otherwise he would not have gone on to the apartment where he killed Tamarack.

  Once someone—Andy thought it was the silver-earringed woman—incongruously sneezed, marring the image of supernatural power and terror.

  Dolly’s pale form was moving a little now, as if she were trying to pull her clothes back on. Andy’s arms were still held in an iron grip, but his mind had started to work again, spitting up one idea after another. He couldn’t tell if they were all totally crazy or not. But there seemed nothing to be lost by trying out what seemed to be the best.

  He spoke up in a loud voice, breaking into the monotonous interrogation. “I have money. I mean, my family does. It could be worth a lot to you to let us go.”

  The man who was holding him had a good laugh at that.

  No one else paid the least attention. The original point of this capture, this interrogation, still held them all obsessed.

  People who laughed at money were terrifying indeed. Little statues. Someone named Sobek. Above all, a supposed list of names, somehow worth killing for. Andy could not make much of any of this. But the name of Matthew Maule had had an almost magical effect, and all this resonated somehow with his strange experience in Uncle Matt’s apartment.

  The big man was losing patience. Suddenly Andy was being hustled forward, to the very edge of the pit. His captor had turned his head and was saying to Dolly: “You will tell us, or I will take this one apart right now!”

  Andy supposed he ought to yell, but he couldn’t see what difference it would make. At exactly the wrong moment there came back to him the thought of Uncle John’s missing fingers. The Curse of the Southerlands, become the curse of the Keoghs, for marrying into them. He thought: Why didn’t anyone in the family ever warn me that things like this could still be happening to us? And it all had something to do with Uncle Matt.

  One of the others was murmuring something in a Latin-sounding language, something that sounded like an incantation, from which Andy could pick out only the two words: “ … Matthew Maule …”For certain, a name to conjure with.

  The man who was holding Andy cried: “I care nothing for Matthew Maule!” And gave his captive a great teeth-rattling shake.

  Now it seemed it could not be a man at all who held him, but some kind of Hollywood monster. The monster holding Andy was about to pitch him out from the third floor, so that in another second he would be falling helplessly right onto some of the splintered uprights at the basement level. And there was nothing to be done about it, nothing at all. He let out a helpless, warbling cry.

  “Here goes your late companion, lady. One, two, three …”

  Dolly screamed out something, just a little late. An arm of gigantic strength had actually launched Andy’s helpless body into the air, and he had just screamed in terror, when another hand, entirely different but feeling just as strong, somehow came out of the air to catch him by the upper arm. The course of Andy’s passage through the air was altered. His body was swept sideways in a gentle toss, that sent him rolling through darkness on a solid floor.

  His momentum spun him through a final somersault and let him go. Coming out of it on knees and elbows, bruised but functional, Andy found himself looking back toward the open pit.

  The scene before him was something out of a bad dream, bathed in the eerie light that washed in through the shattered roof, all of the city’s lights reflecting from a cloudy sky. But in the midst of terror and ugliness, he could now see the figure of his savior. Not ten feet away from Andy, a man neatly dressed in a dark suit was crouched like an acrobat upon a narrow crossbeam that projected solidly out over the pit. The man was smiling strangely, and his face was unmistakably that of Matthew Maule.

  ~ 11 ~

  The bulky man had recoiled slightly on seeing his victim plucked out of the air and tossed to safety. But in a moment plaid-shirt had recovered. To Matthew Maule he said in his rich voice: “I know you, old man. You have no business here tonight, and you would be well advised to leave.”

  Uncle Matt still crouched, motionless as a carven figure. “And I know you, or something of you—your name is Lambert. You are still in your first century, and you are wrong about my business. It is personal, and of the highest order. You have just tried to kill one who claims kinship with me.”

  Lambert was returning Uncle Matt’s direct stare, but Andy thought that it was costing him an effort. “The Crocodile has sent you, to try to get the list of names.”

  “I serve no Crocodile, but only my own interests. You will release your captives. When they are safely gone, we can discourse of crocodiles—and lists of names, and treasures, if you like.”

  Out of the background gloom there came a woman’s voice, in a tone that was almost pleading. “Make common cause with us, Vlad Tepes, against the monster.”

  Without taking his eyes for an instant from Uncle Matt, the big man barked at her: “Shut up, Merit!”

  Matthew Maule turned his head, gazing into the shadows. Whether he took his eyes off Lambert or not seemed to be a matter of complete indifference. “I think I have no quarrel with any of you others here. Not if you release your prisoners, unharmed. Then we will talk.”

  The big man would not have it. “We need no help and no advice from you, old man, and I advise you to keep out of our way.”

  The woman, Merit, who had pleaded for cooperation, was not ready to give up. She said: “Lambert, it will be be
tter if we abandon this effort to …”

  Her words trailed off. Perhaps no one but Andy was listening to them.

  Uncle Matt was grinning, but not at Andy. Instead he seemed to find something amusing in the presence of the bulkier man, who was sitting on the brink of the abyss only an arm’s length away from Maule, and who, only moments ago, had just tried to hurl Andy to his death.

  The man who had just attempted to murder Andy started to make some comment, or begin some movement, that he never finished. Matthew Maule must have judged it inappropriate, for he backhanded the fellow with a blow too fast for Andy’s eyes to follow. He could only witness the effects. There was a sound like the impact of a baseball bat, and the victim’s lower jaw had abruptly been detached, was hanging only from a flap of skin. Something that might very well have been a tooth sang like a bullet past Andy’s head to embed itself in a solid wall behind him. A moment later the big man’s body, with balance gone and all the grace knocked out of it, had gone spinning and tumbling into the wasteland of water and jagged points below.

  Even before the splash, all hell broke loose. Andy’s stunned senses were reporting the unbelievable. The effect of Uncle Matt’s blow was as if he had thrown a rock into a hornets’ nest. Half of the dark-clad gang, creatures who until now had looked like people, were taking flight, some of them going right up into the air like startled birds. In moments they were already out of sight. One or two were running to get away, and Andy heard the thud and crash of panicked human feet on wooden floors in darkness.

  Others in the group were not trying to get away, but felt ready to have a shot at being Uncle Matt’s opponents. They closed on him in a rush, and he in a blur of motion fought them off. What weapons might be in use was more than Andy could tell in the dim light.

  Whatever their intentions, fight or flight, most of the assembly were moving faster than Andy’s eyes could follow. He had the impression that momentarily the air was thick with darting, flying bodies, more movie illusions come to life.