He cursed the day when he had decided to reserve one statue for his own private research. But it was here now, and chance had decreed that it should be the one to hold the prize.
And the vivid images of what Vlad Drakulya might do to him were just as terrifying as any picture of the Crocodile that his fears could paint. In the case of Drakulya, Dickon’s memory presented him with several grisly examples, standing out as remarkable even in the bloodsoaked annals of world history. That vision was enough to send him reeling, almost fainting, into near-paralysis.
Andy and Dolly had now almost reached the cabin’s door. He was sure this was the small house Connie had pointed out to him from a quarter of a mile away.
At the last moment Dolly asked in a low whisper: “What if the monster’s in there?”
He shook his head. “Connie may be dippy, but she’s not the one who’s been trying to get us killed—I don’t know whether to be glad she disappeared, or not.”
“Better knock before we try the door,” Dolly advised. Having no effective way to conceal the shotgun, she was now carrying it in her right hand, the foreshortened barrels down. It seemed to her that if they should encounter any normal people on this walk, it might at least be a little less noticeable that way.
“Sure.” And Andy, turning off his little flashlight, raised his right fist and knocked. The full darkness of night had not yet quite established itself. From somewhere back in the woods came a soft sound that he imagined might be the calling of an owl.
The vampire inside, lost in tortured introspection, had not heard his visitors approach. At the sound of a knock, he almost dropped the statue in his astonishment. Moments later, someone tried the door. He recognized his callers by their whispering voices, and was stunned with surprise. This was partially alleviated when he realized that Connie must have directed these children here.
Fatalistically Dickon moved to discover whether Maule had come with them. Quickly he pushed the statue and its torn wrappings under a pile of spare clothing, then stepped warily to the door and opened it.
From the startled reaction of his visitors, it was plain they had not really expected to find anyone at home. Hastily Dickon inspected the night behind the two young breathers, then stepped aside, and curtly motioned them in. He was anxious to find out if they had yet told Maule where he could be found.
As soon as they had crossed his threshold, Dickon shoved Andy out of the way and pulled the door tightly shut again. The darkness inside the cabin was absolute, except for the thin beam of Andy’s little flashlight.
“Leave the door open!” Dolly ordered sharply. She wasn’t pointing with her shotgun—not quite yet.
“When you are ready to leave,” the old man said, calmly settling a wooden bar across the door. If Dickon had even noticed the shotgun, he gave no sign. He sounded more forceful now than she had ever heard him, and he was smiling. It seemed a harmless smile, on the face of a harmless old man—but his little shove had sent Andy staggering.
Sobek felt a divine pride in his divine magic. He was greatly pleased with how smoothly and inexorably it was now conducting him to his goal. He could feel that he was closing in upon the treasure, though the pinpointing of its exact location still eluded him. Certainly the Stone was now much closer than a quarter of a mile—yes, very much closer indeed.
Joe Keogh had been on the point of starting his engine, Maule or no Maule, and heading back to see what was happening to his son, when the call came from Uncle Matt, advising him to do just that.
“Good. This was turning into some kind of a damn snipe hunt.”
With John Southerland muttering beside him, he eased the vehicle into gear and moved out slowly, using his headlights only occasionally as he drove along the bumpy, overgrown lane in the direction of the place where Maule had said the action would be taking place.
If anything that looked remotely like a crocodile should materialize out of the night in front of him, he decided that he was going to try to run it down.
Dickon had pressed his visitors to tell him whatever they knew concerning the whereabouts of Mr. Maule, and they had told him shortly that they knew nothing. It was very easy to believe that they were lying.
Andy was keeping the beam of his flashlight turned mainly in Dickon’s direction, but every now and then he jerked it briefly aside, illuminating one of the single room’s far corners. There was very little to be seen. Near the center of the single room stood an old cast-iron wood-stove, its metal chimney climbing through a protective metal patch built into the roof. Near the stove, a crude box held a little firewood. Against the far wall lay a disorderly pile of what looked like surplus clothing. That was about it.
There was also a narrow back door, as heavily locked and barred as the door in front.
Clearing his throat, Andy announced: “I was told that the Philosopher’s Stone is in this cabin.”
“Who told you such a lie as that?” Dickon’s voice was going shrill. “Who? It was the witch-bitch known as Connie, was it not?”
“You were pretty good at telling lies yourself, last time we talked. Is the thing in here or not?”
Now Andy had turned his flashlight beam directly on the box of kindling wood, trying to peer into its depths.
“Put out that light!” Dickon snarled, and took a quick step forward, suddenly menacing.
Andy had never forgotten the easy strength with which this little man had torn loose a steel boot from an automobile’s tire. Keeping the flashlight turned on Dickon, Andy reached into the box and grabbed up the only choice of weapon he had available, a wooden stick with somewhat pointed, jagged ends.
Dolly had leveled her shotgun. When Dickon turned and took a menacing step in her direction, she fired one barrel, the charge spreading murderously wide. Metal shot stung the vampire, drawing no blood, doing no true harm. But more shot, striking close beside him, blasted a storm of splinters from one of the timber posts supporting the cabin roof. Dickon’s face and arms were suddenly pocked with blood as the wooden fragments gouged his flesh.
Letting out a scream of pain and terror, he threw up his arms, crossing them over his face, and staggered back.
A moment later, he had disappeared.
“Where in hell’d he go?”
“Vampire tricks. Never mind him, where’s the Stone?”
Seizing the wood-box, Andy with a great heave turned it upside down, dumping out a trove of wood, and a scampering mouse, but nothing else.
Meanwhile Dolly was kicking, scattering the pile of assorted clothing, much of it winter gear. Here were paper wrappings that had been buried, and—
“Andy!”
He turned swiftly, the flashlight’s beam quickly centering on an object of startling white.
Dolly was just reaching for the statue, when the heavy front door, the one that Dickon had just rebarred, burst in with a great crash.
The incredible shape of the monster, a crocodile walking on two legs, filled the doorway.
Dickon suddenly reappeared, still in human shape and marked with his own blood, groveling on the floor and screaming.
Dolly’s reaching hand had just touched the great prize when Sobek’s huge reptilian paw knocked her hand away and snatched it up.
Andy fumbling at the back door—only for a fraction of a second, but it seemed like months—lifted the heavy wooden bar and hurled it aside. Somehow bolts and catches yielded. Dolly was with him, turning, firing her second barrel into the cabin’s darkness. The flaring blast from the shortened gun barrel showed her the Crocodile’s heavy paw raising the small white statue in triumph. It seemed that Sobek minded shotgun pellets no more than confetti.
In the next instant, Andy had the back door open. Both breathing humans seemed to squeeze through the narrow aperture at the same time.
Moving quickly toward the cabin from in front, Maule observed the escape of the two young people with relief and satisfaction. A moment later he had stepped up on the porch, spear ready in his hand. Withou
t pausing he swiftly moved inside, through the gaping hole where Sobek had already demolished the front door.
Dickon, cringing and bleeding on the floor, looked up at him with unbelieving eyes.
Maule gave the coward one of his warmest smiles. “Have you forgotten, old one? Not many days ago you gave me a blanket invitation, never to be revoked—I can enter any dwelling you may ever own.”
As Dickon shriveled, Vlad Drakulya shifted his gaze to Sobek, who stood before him on two stubby, reptilian legs, holding the last statue up in one greenish and malformed hand.
The Crocodile turned toward Maule a gaze of perfect arrogance. “It is too late now, Tepes, for you to surrender on favorable terms. Now I have caught you.”
Maule shook his head. He was standing straight upright, spear balanced in his right hand, point toward Sobek.
Dolores Flamel and Andy, running for their lives, heading uphill to where they had left the SUV, could see the lights and hear the engine of the smaller vehicle in which Joe and John were approaching.
Dickon, peering up between his fingers like a child, could see that Maule was still smiling, but now in a way that suggested sadness. Maule said to the Crocodile: “I told you when we last met that you might catch me—and then wish that you had caught the plague instead.”
Sobek as usual did not seem to be listening. Tauntingly he held up the statue, as if perhaps he expected Maule to make a grab for it. Sobek rubbed it with his reptilian fingers. “I can feel that the Stone is very near.”
Dracula nodded slightly. “Oh, yes. Very near to you indeed. But it has taken you a long time to realize the fact.”
“I mean to kill you slowly, Tepes.”
Maule nodded. “Before you try, I intend to tell you a story. But perhaps you are already familiar with this tale—I am told it is commonly repeated from one end of Africa to the other.”
“I have nothing to do with stories.”
“But I would like you to hear this one. It has to do with a crocodile, one famed for his strength and cunning and ambition, which even excelled the remarkable attributes enjoyed by most of his race—your race.
“It is instructive—as Cousin Sherlock used to say—to contemplate the artistry of this great predator. How, when some land-based animal approached the water to drink, the crocodile lunged up out of concealment to grab its victim by a foreleg. Then, with a single, overpowering, twisting surge of strength, pulled its unfortunate captive into the water, broke its bones, and held it under until it had drowned.”
Sobek, Maule noted, was listening now, as if despite himself. He even seemed to be enjoying the story. It was as if no one had ever told him a story before.
Smoothly the narrator went on: “On one memorable occasion, our noble crocodile appeared to have transcended the achievements of all others of its race. He gave the impression of setting forth to conquer new worlds, because he was observed by many to have attained a position high in the branches of a thorn tree, yards inland from the water and many feet above the ground.
“Every climbing and flying creature for a mile around came to perch in the nearby treetops and admire this accomplishment. But alas, your namesake was already uncomfortable at such an elevation, and soon discomfort was too weak a word to describe what he was feeling. Before an hour had gone by the vultures were pecking at his eyes.”
Sobek was still listening, but it was plain that he no longer found the story entertaining.
Maule went on: “Some were ready to credit that crocodile with divine powers, but the true explanation was somewhat more mundane.”
A growl.
Maule shifted his position. “Before you try to kill me slowly, you must let me deliver what I believe is called the punch line. You see, the last thirsty animal he grabbed by a foreleg had turned out to be an elephant.”
~ 22 ~
You tell an amusing story, Tepes. But what has it to do with me?”
“More than you might think. Perhaps, like you, your namesake had come to believe he was a god. He dared to bite the elephant, only because he had forgotten who he really was.”
Sobek’s voice and bearing were those of an emperor. He said: “I am a god. If I have forgotten anything in these three thousand years, it is only because I have chosen to forget.”
Maule shook his head. “Memory does not become more reliable as the years turn into centuries, and the centuries add up. I am a mere youth compared to you, but even I … there are things I have forgotten. The farther back one gazes along the path of history, the thicker grow the mists of time. At some point they tend to swallow up the truth.”
Deliberately the Crocodile turned a little aside, as if it were trying to ignore its enemy. Once more it centered its attention on the little statue in its great green hands.
Maule prodded sharply: “Are you afraid to listen to me, monster? Can you really think back to the day when those clever Egyptian adepts created this version of the Stone, then had it stolen from them? Your name was not Sobek on that day, was it?”
After waiting briefly for an answer that did not come, Maule went on: “Probably you truly do not remember what your name was. Nor does it matter, I suppose. But you were no more a god then than you are now.”
Dracula’s voice sank low on the next words. “You began that incredible day as a human being—though a human of the most contemptible type. You were the thief.”
“What?” For once the Crocodile was fairly startled, and swung round on Maule again. “What insanity is this?”
Maule calmly shook his head. “You were the robber, the two-legged child of the streets.”
Sobek was growing angry. “A damned lie! Who has told you such a tale?”
“It was your own dream, your endless, ongoing dream that we were cursed to watch, that told me part of it. Another part came from something I saw in you—a certain flash of light—at our first meeting.”
Connie was standing at a little distance from the cabin, close enough for her nosferatu ears to hear what was being said inside. Joe and John, their weapons drawn, were slowly rolling closer in their four-wheel drive.
Dolly was trying to convince herself to run back uphill to the SUV, in search of shells to reload her shotgun. “I had some, somewhere—”
“Never mind, it won’t help.” Andy had stopped running when she stopped, and was now edging back toward the cabin. Now and then he could hear the rumble of Sobek’s voice coming from inside, but was still too far away to hear Uncle Matt’s.
Maule was going on: “But you were also something even lower than a thief, if that is possible. You were a nearly brainless beast, whose blood ran cold, who crawled in slime. And you still are.”
Sobek was holding the statue close to his body now, as if to keep his trembling hands from dropping it. He moved a step nearer his antagonist. “I will kill you, Tepes. Kill you slowly.”
Maule shrugged. “Soon or late, the true death comes to everyone.”
Then he raised his spear. “Break your statue,” he advised. “You will find it empty, as empty as all the others. The Stone was never in any of them.”
“You are insane!”
“Not I. The Philosopher’s Stone lies buried in your monstrous heart, where it has been for three thousand years. What lesser power could possibly have made you what you are?”
For a second it seemed that the Crocodile had been paralyzed. Then its great hands crushed the statue, letting the remnants dribble away in a stream of white chips and black organic residue. In another moment Sobek was down on all fours on the cabin floor, unbelieving, searching the debris for a prize that was not there.
Dracula’s spear-thrust came at him too quickly for a breather’s eye to follow. Swift as it was, it still was parried by the rapid movement of a thick forelimb. Bellowing hoarsely, the monster sprang up from the floor into a charge.
In the next moment, the spinning bodies of Crocodile and vampire, grappling for advantage, had burst outdoors, crashing right through the sturdy wall beside
the ruined doorway. Thick logs were jarred loose, and a large section of the wall came crashing down. Maule had one shoulder jammed up under his enemy’s lower jaw, keeping his body too close for the Crocodile to bite.
The Crocodile’s hide shone dull green in the Jeep’s headlights, making a big target, and Joe leapt from the driver’s seat to fire round after round. This time he had loaded steel-jacketed lead, not wood, and so had no fear of hitting the vampire by mistake.
He heard the sharp sound of metal impact on the monster’s scales, blending with the crack of his revolver. But the green shape bellowed and fought as fiercely as before, showing no sign of damage.
Beside him, John had pulled out an automatic pistol and opened up his own barrage, with no more noticeable effect on Sobek.
The struggling combatants had now rolled down the short slope below the cabin, into the rushing waters of Rock Creek, knocking down small trees and bushes in the process.
John and Joe had emptied their weapons, and were pausing to reload. Not that it seemed like it was going to do much good.
“Lead’s no better than paperwads,” Joe gasped.
“Next time we try depleted uranium.”
No sooner had the fighters fallen into the creek than they surged out again, Sobek roaring and bellowing in his rage.
Maule had been forced to drop his spear at the start of the wrestling match, back near the cabin. Now he changed abruptly to wolf-form, breaking free of his opponent in the process. In a burst of four-legged speed he bounded over the stream, and dashed up the slope, at the top regaining his human form, to snatch up his weapon in both hands.
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