“Mort?” he heard Hanrahan snarl from below, as the old fisherman stomped up to the deck. “What the hell’ve you done now? You trying to run us aground?”
“We’re nowhere near shore, or anything else for that matter,” Mort snapped at his boss. “Look for yourself!”
Which Hanrahan did. And Mort was right. He peered out into the darkness at nothing. Nothing out there at all.
Something slammed into the boat again, and it began to tilt, hard to starboard. Hanrahan lost his footing, slipped in fish guts Mort had never gotten around to cleaning up, and slid right off the deck of the Lisa C. and into the water.
Mort Pingree screamed as huge tentacles lined with razor-edged suckers whipped across the deck and the helm, gripping the trawler in a crushing embrace. One of the tentacles lashed across Mort’s abdomen, the suckers tearing his belly open on impact.
By the time the Lisa C. was hauled beneath the waves, Mort Pingree was already dead.
* * *
Meloney Abrams kept telling herself it was only another year. Another year of waiting tables at The Fish Tank, suffering the gropes and the leers and the come-ons, and she’d have enough money to hit the road, go to L.A., maybe even go to community college or something. Whatever. Just out of here. Somewhere she could make a fresh start.
Sexy blues poured out the door behind her as Meloney stepped out of the bar. There were only a few customers left, so Dickie had let her take off a little early. Even paid her tonight so she wouldn’t have to come in on her day off tomorrow to pick up her check. Maybe he wasn’t all bad, she thought. Even if he did try to get her alone in the back room just about every time she worked.
What else should she expect, Meloney wondered. He was a guy, after all. In her experience, at least, they all had to try.
With a shake of her head, Meloney started walking toward the lot where she’d parked her tank, a 1982 red Ford Granada. She figured someone could come after her with a cruise missile and the car would come through just fine.
She never made it to the car.
A fluttering sound behind her drew Meloney’s attention, and she turned to see a man standing about twenty feet away. The strangest looking man she’d ever seen. His body and face were a sick-looking white, and his eyes looked like bullet wounds. Working at The Fish Tank, Meloney had seen a couple of bullet wounds in her life.
The sleazeball wore a cape.
“Back off, scumbag,” she said bravely. “I don’t need a stalker, okay?”
The sleazeball opened his mouth, gave a creepy laugh, and with the laugh, a bit of blue flame shot from his mouth.
Meloney screamed, and ran for her tank.
That fluttering came again, she glanced over her shoulder, and the creep was gone. She slowed her pace, uncertain now, and then the fluttering came again, and a thump as the creep—the thing, whatever it was—landed in front of her, blocking her path.
It was inhumanly fast. Its hands lashed out, one gripping her throat, the other, with claws like needles, slashing open her clothes.
It tore out her heart.
* * *
“No!” Buffy screamed, but she was too late to do anything except warn Springheel Jack.
As the thing turned toward her, Angel’s powerful arms locked around the pasty-faced killer, and its sunken black eyes widened in surprise.
“You vicious, sadistic freak!” Buffy roared, and gave Springheel Jack the hardest backhand she could muster. The weird, oily white skin of its cheek split under the blow, black bone showing through and a bit of blue fire leaking out.
“You should try not to be so predictable in your patterns,” Xander told the thing, then released the trigger on Buffy’s crossbow.
Springheel Jack tried to break Angel’s grip, but the crossbow bolt slammed into its chest . . . and was deflected by the weird armor it wore.
“What the . . .” Xander began.
But the monster only smiled at them, pointed teeth showing, and opened its mouth to burn them.
Buffy hit it again, even harder, and several of the thing’s teeth broke off. “Stop that!” she said, and then pulled out a stake. “Maybe this calls for a more close-up approach.”
“Hurry, Buffy,” Angel groaned. “Bastard’s a lot stronger than he looks.”
Buffy gripped Springheel Jack’s face, forced its mouth away from her, and raised the stake, hoping the strength of the Slayer would be enough to pierce the thing’s armor. Thinking maybe, if all else failed, she could just break its neck.
It crouched, pulling Angel down with it. Buffy lost her grip, and for a moment, her balance.
“Buffy, grab it!” Xander shouted behind her.
Springheel Jack shot upward with such speed and strength that all Buffy could do was stare in astonishment. Angel held on as tightly as he could and was carried up with the thing. It arced up and came down hard on the roof of The Fish Tank and out of sight.
“Angel!” Buffy cried in shock and horror.
On the roof, nothing moved.
“Oh, man,” Xander whispered.
“Angel!” Buffy shouted again.
Then he was there, standing on the edge of the roof, staring down at them. Angel scratched his head, then dusted off his pants.
“He’s gone,” the vampire said grimly. “Just seemed to disappear.”
* * *
Oz had parked his van half a block away and was walking Willow to her house when the perfectly cloudless sky split with thunder so loud both of them were forced to cover their ears. It roared through the air, almost as if someone were firing a hundred cannons just above their heads. Oz could feel it against his chest, pounding against him. It sounded as though the sky were collapsing in an avalanche.
“Whoa, Chicken Little,” he said, as the echo of the incredible thunder rolled in waves across town.
“Yeah,” Willow agreed. “The sky is falling.”
Chapter
2
The Court of King Francis I of France Fontainebleau, 1539
SHE WAS THE WIFE OF Henri, who was the heir to the French throne, but to Richard Regnier, the alchemist, Catherine de’ Medici would always be “the Little Florentine.” Her court at Fontainebleau was entirely Italian, made up for the most part of fellow Florentines exiled from their native land by her kinsman, Cosimo. Her courtiers were her Medici cousins, Lorenzo, Roberto, Leone, and Piero. Her troubadour sang to her in Italian.
Catherine suffered and hated with the hot-blooded temperament of her nation. Regnier had never witnessed such torment. Such rage. That elemental nature in her both worried and mesmerized Regnier as he stood in her ornate private chapel, watching her. Catherine lay prostrate before a cedar statue of the Virgin, sobbing and pleading in her fine Italian brocades and jewels, her dark hair braided into a coronet that had come undone. He was an unwilling witness to the shattering of what was left of this desperate woman’s heart.
Desperate she was, indeed. Astrological charts had been ripped to shreds and strewn like rushes across the mosaic floor. A stinking pile of ashes smoldered on a small marble table to the left side of the statue of the Holy Mother—an animal sacrifice—a sorcerous act banned by the Church and outlawed by His Majesty the King. The air reeked of evil, treachery, and blasphemy. Sin blew through the chamber like an icy winter breeze. But Catherine de’ Medici sensed none of this. She was a princess, not an alchemist, nor a sorcerer. She was an innocent.
All her life she had been a pawn. The daughter of the legendary Lorenzo de’ Medici, she had been orphaned by both parents before the end of her first month of life. Then she’d been shut up in a convent before her eighth birthday, with no little girls to play with, no toys, no dolls.
Civil war erupted in Florence when Catherine was eleven, and her family’s enemies sought to kill her or, at the least, ruin her chances for a princely marriage by destroying her reputation. In the dead of night she had been smuggled by her kinsmen to another nunnery, and then to Rome.
There, she had nurtured in
her heart an innocent young love for a gallant named Giuliano. As soon as her handlers heard of it, they spirited her back to Florence until, when she turned fourteen, she was brought to France to marry the son of the king. It ought to have been a new beginning, free of the politics of Florence. Life as a princess. But after the wedding, portions of her agreed-upon dowry had been withheld from her new family. There being but minor political advantage to the match—and now, no financial gain to be had—it was on the lips of the French courtiers that she would be sent back to Florence with all the scorn due a penniless and ugly little orphan. Only through the kindness of her father-in-law, Francis I, had she been allowed to remain rather than being cast aside. The king announced that she was a submissive, sweet girl, one free of ambition and pride. Such a pleasant young lady could remain in his household.
But six years into the marriage, her husband, Henri, was madly in love with another woman, and Catherine had not produced a child.
Now, as the alchemist watched, circumstance ripped the veils of submission and sweetness from Catherine’s face. And veils they were: she had never been that sort of girl. She had merely played a part in order to survive. For years. It astonished Regnier that one so young could possess such self-control.
As he felt for his wand, hidden within his generous sleeve of black velvet, Regnier’s gaze returned to the pile of ashes. His heart beat angrily within his matching doublet. A rabbit had been used, perhaps, or some other small and helpless creature. The act was vile, bespeaking familiarity with the black arts. It shocked him that she would take part in it. Yet who would not turn from the divine if, when so sorely burdened, one was met with only silence from a God who never answered prayers.
Grimly, Regnier put his hand to the hilt of the rapier at his waist. He knew who had led the tragic lady in these forbidden devotionals. Who guided her along the treacherous path of the dark world, promising her what she wanted most in this world if she would favor him and raise him up. Who bled her of her reason and discretion and went so far as to urge her to have him, Regnier, murdered in his bed.
The sorcerer, Fulcanelli. He was a base, grasping man. He was cruel and heartless. But he was Florentine, and as the former advisor to Catherine’s dead father, Fulcanelli held sway over her heart. He was, in a way, all that she had left of her lonely, frightened childhood. Her only link to the parents she had never known.
Poor, poor Catherine.
The princess’s sobs rose into shrieks of agony, almost of madness, and Regnier hastily stepped forward from the shadows and put his hands on her shoulders. He had not been eager to betray his presence, for she would resent it. He had innocently entered the chapel to cleanse it of evil influences, as he did every night prior to Catherine’s celebration of evensong. She was not aware that he did so because he never told her. He was her true friend, and he had sought always to protect the Little Florentine, because it was right to do so, and because he pitied her so. But as he was French, and distantly related to Henri’s mistress, she had never trusted him.
“Madame,” he said in French, “please, I beg of you, calm yourself.”
“Regnier,” she rasped, clearly shocked and mortified, “what are you doing here? Get out! Get out or I will have your head!”
“Your Grace, I beg of you,” he murmured softly, urging her to sit up. “The palace walls have ears. Your enemies lurk everywhere.”
“My enemy is this body,” she wailed miserably, punching herself in her abdomen with doubled fists. “This barren, treacherous body.” She wrenched away from him, fell to the marble floor, and surrendered once more to her misery.
Regnier persisted. “Let me call for your women. You need rest. You are much overwrought.”
For a moment she was silent. Then her shoulders moved, and he realized she was laughing silently.
“Much overwrought? My husband seeks to put me aside because I have borne him no children. I shall be sent to another convent, or worse yet, made to serve her who takes my place like a slave. And you say I am much overwrought.”
“You are yet his wife,” he pointed out.
“And I am yet childless.” Her voice dripped with bitterness and frustration. “Motherless, fatherless, and soon to be without a husband.”
“No, it can be prevented,” he said. “It must be.”
“By you?” She laughed hollowly. “You’re the king’s lapdog. A mere alchemist and nothing more.” She burst into fresh tears. “Though you have promised me a hundred times that you would help me, you have done nothing.”
He was ashamed. He didn’t know why his conjurations on her behalf had not succeeded. He had fasted, prayed to the gods of old, venerated the proper saints, performed more rituals than the pope had said masses. And still, this poor lady had no petits enfants. He suspected, though he had no proof, that Fulcanelli thwarted him. He also suspected, though he had no proof, that Fulcanelli himself was responsible for the princess’s unhappy situation. In fact, it was his opinion that when Fulcanelli decided that the time was right, this lady would have no trouble conceiving.
“You don’t even look like an alchemist,” she added. “You’re a gallant, playing a role.” She spoke with a challenge in her voice, as if begging him to dispute her opinion of him. It was true; he usually wore the clothes of a French nobleman among the other members of Francis’s court. Only in private did he don the midnight-blue robe and pointed hat spangled with stars and comets that had been bequeathed to him.
“No, lady, I am a mage of some power,” he assured her. “And I seek to serve you. And for now,” he said, speaking aloud, “you must take heart. You must protect yourself from danger.”
He reached into his other sleeve and pulled out a beautiful golden ball encrusted with gems. At a flick of his thumbnail, the ball popped open. Within, a piece of vellum was folded in the shape of a cross.
“This is a potent talisman,” Regnier explained as he took out the paper cross, “which I have prepared especially for you. I have inscribed prayers in Latin, French, and Hebrew upon it. I beg of you to wear it always.”
“Will it . . . .?” She cast down her gaze, unable to continue. Then she forced herself to speak. “Will it make me conceive?”
He was piteously sorry for her. “It will protect you from harm, and nothing more.”
“But to be protected, I must be . . . I must fulfill my duty,” she said slowly. “Surely God himself understands that.” She raised tearstained eyes to him. “I am without hope, if I have no children.”
“Did not God hear the cry of Rachel?” he asked gently. “ ‘Give me children, or else I die.’ ”
The tears began to flow once more. “Do you have any idea, monsieur, how many times my priest has recited that verse to me?”
He lowered his head. “I beg your pardon. I do not mean to patronize you.”
She placed her hand on the crown of his head, much as one would give a benediction. It was a majestic gesture, which made him all the sadder for her. She had the makings of a fine queen; however, he was far from certain she would ever become one.
“It is kind of you to think of me at all,” she replied in a shaky voice. “Though I must ask myself if you have been sent to smooth the way for my repudiation. Make me more compliant and obedient so that I’ll withdraw without summoning my zealous kinsmen to my cause. You know we Italians are famed for our vendettas.”
He was chagrined, and wondered if he had in some way revealed his less-than-favorable opinion of her exclusively Italian court.
“Not at all, dear lady.” He hesitated. “Though I would caution you not to go up against the king of France. You know that your marriage is unpopular with the people.”
“With whom is it popular?” she asked with scorn. “Answer me that, sir, and I’ll go to my father-in-law and ask him to make you a duke.”
It was on his lips to say, “It is popular with me,” but that was untrue. He would say it as a reflex; he was a seasoned courtier, and such pronouncements flowed from his
mouth with practiced ease. But she was too intelligent. She had spent too much of her life as an observer for him to be able to lie successfully to her.
“I know not,” he replied.
“And now I know that perhaps you are a friend,” she replied, studying him anew.
He touched his hand to his chest. “I desire to be so, madame. At the very least, the life of my master, the king, would be easier if I could in some way help his daughter-in-law with her difficulties.”
“There is that.” She rose with difficulty, waving him away when he moved to help her. “No,” she said. “I have two feet, and I must use them.”
“My admiration for you grows.” He was most sincere.
“Then you are the only man in France who admires me.”
She sighed heavily. She was indeed, less than beautiful. Was this poor girl unfortunate in every area of her life? Her husband’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers, was a goddess.
“Leave me now,” she said regally. “I must compose myself. No one must know of my private agonies.” She looked at him meaningfully. “For six years, I have been a dutiful, submissive wife. I have never raised my voice. I have never begged my husband to love me. I have caused no trouble.”
“I shall cause you no trouble,” he assured her. “In all ways, I shall endeavor to help you.”
She extended her hand. He kissed the air above it, bowed, and left her.
* * *
For a moment Catherine stood silently in the growing gloom, gazing in the direction in which Regnier had taken his leave. Then she shivered, suddenly cold, and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. The room darkened, as does the forest when the sun retreats behind the tallest trees. She felt a twinge of fear and looked around herself, as if to determine the cause. She was shivering with cold.
Out of the Madhouse Page 4