The Medusa Amulet

Chapter 39

Ascanio pressed the gilded border of one of the mirrors, and it opened out to reveal a spiral staircase that rose toward the top of the turret. Then, raising one finger to urge absolute silence, he slipped onto the staircase, with David right behind. The steps wound upwards for twenty or thirty feet before coming to an end behind what looked like a heavy flap of cloth. It was only on closer inspection in the flashlight beam that David could tell, from the complex threadwork, that what they were standing behind was an immense, hanging tapestry.

Ascanio flicked off his light, and ever so gingerly pushed an edge of the cloth to one side. Over his shoulder, David could see that they were in a kind of anteroom, with a reading chair and a marquetry table holding crystal decanters and a brass lamp. A master bedroom was just beyond it. He could hear classical music playing, a shower running, and voices.

Linz and his wife.

“Ava, bring me the pills.”

“How many of these are you going to take?”

“Just bring them.”

David saw Ava-completely nude-saunter out of the bathroom with her palm open.

All he could see of Linz were his legs, in a pair of black silk pajamas and scuff slippers on his white ankles.

“Put something on,” he scolded, “for decency’s sake.”

“I was just about to take a shower. The water’s finally hot.”

He took the pills, and she strolled back out of sight with an athlete’s casual grace. David heard the bathroom door slam shut.

Ascanio crossed himself, then put his backpack on the floor and opened it. Then he withdrew the silver garland.

David had witnessed its powers only hours before, in the privacy of Sant’Angelo’s home. And as much as anything else he had seen, or been told, that demonstration had convinced him of the marquis’s claims. If he had had even a scintilla of doubt, watching the marquis disappear before his very eyes had erased it.

Fixing his eyes on David, Ascanio settled it squarely on his own head.

And within seconds, he had vanished.

The flap of the tapestry lifted, then fell back, as Ascanio slipped out from behind it. David wiped a vagrant spiderweb from his glasses and stared intently… but what was there to see?

Linz’s slippers were twitching in time to the music. But suddenly, as if he had heard something no one else could, or sensed some menace no one else could have detected, his slippers stopped. He sat bolt upright on the bed, rolled to one side, and fumbled in the drawer of the bedside table. In an instant, he had drawn out a gun and fired it into thin air.

There was a cry-it was Ascanio!-and a billow of blood exploded like a balloon in the empty air. Linz shot again, and the second bullet ripped through the tapestry and lodged in the wall above David’s head.

A moment later David saw Linz suddenly topple backwards off the bed, as if he’d been hit by a freight train. David rushed out, only to see Linz, in a red robe, wrestling on the floor with his unseen assailant.

But that was when he also saw, swinging against Linz’s bare chest on a silver chain, La Medusa.

His hand was still clutching the gun, but it was being banged repeatedly against the bedstead, and blood from an invisible source was spurting onto the carpet. Linz was struggling to hold on to the pistol, and when he swung the arm free, David saw the butt of the gun plainly collide with something solid. A second later the garland rolled free, spinning on the floor like a plate.

“It’s around his neck!” Ascanio cried to David, as he shimmered back into view. “Get it!”

But the muzzle of the gun was pointing right at him, and David ducked just as the next shot blasted the ceiling light, raining shards of glass. He was grappling for it when he heard a hellish scream and wet feet squishing across the floor. A naked body, lithe and strong, leapt on top of his back, the legs wrapping themselves around his waist, the arms folded across his throat, choking him.

David staggered back, catching a glimpse of himself in the bureau mirror-with Ava’s snarling face, teeth bared, over his shoulder-as he tried to shake her loose. But her grip was too tight, and he was stumbling backwards, barely able to stay on his feet at all. His glasses hanging from one ear, he crashed up against a heavy armoire. He heard her grunt, the wind knocked out of her, and he threw his head back, catching her chin. He ran a few steps away from the wardrobe, then rushed backwards, slamming her against the cabinet again.

“Bastard!” she gasped through bloodstained teeth, but still managing to hang on like a Harpy.

With what breath he had left, David reached behind his head, trying to grab her hair and pull her off his back; but she bit at his fingers and hands. He whirled around and threw himself, as if he were on fire, backwards onto the floor. Her arms loosened their grip, he took a breath, then rammed an elbow back into her face. He felt her nose shatter, and her whole body went limp.

Shaking free, he crawled to his feet, only to be bowled over again by Linz as he ran from the room, the tails of his red robe flying.

“Go after him!” Ascanio said, collapsing against the bedpost and holding out the sword. “I’ll never catch him!” His pants were torn, and blood was coursing down from a bullet wound in his leg.

David staggered up, hooking his glasses back on, as Ascanio pressed the harpe into his hand. “Now you know who he is!” he shouted, staring deeply into David’s eyes. “Don’t you?”

But David, reeling, simply nodded in confusion. His mind could not process something so enormous… and so terrible.

There was a crash from the anteroom as the table and lamp toppled over.

“We should have told you! But it’s up to you now, to finish the bastard, once and for all!”

David felt his fingers gripping the handle of the sword as if they belonged to someone else entirely.

“Go!”

David turned and ran toward the anteroom door-it had been flung open and the carpet runner in the hallway was rumpled from Linz’s headlong flight. David could hear his feet tearing around a corner toward the staircase.

He took off after him, vaulting down the stairs three at a time, then through a suite of dark, cluttered rooms, where the curtains rippled from Linz’s flight and furniture had been overturned to block his pursuit.

Linz was heading, David now knew, for the grand escalier, and bloody footprints on the marble floors confirmed it.

As did his rasping cry from below-“Rigaud! For Christ’s sake, Rigaud!”

But when David ran past the hall where Rigaud had last been seen, his door was firmly shut and there was no light emanating from under it.

At the top of the staircase, David caught a glimpse of Linz’s black slippers, racing around the bottom of the stairs and off toward the armor hall. He was still trying to call out, but his voice was hoarse and barely carried.

David lunged down the stairs, nearly losing his balance on a smear of wet blood, before skidding into the entry hall and pivoting.

He couldn’t see Linz anymore, but he knew which way he’d gone, and he ran after him, the short sword still clutched in his hand, as something long and sharp suddenly grazed his shoulder and thwanged into the wooden frame of the door.

Linz was standing halfway down the hall, doubled over from throwing the spear, huffing and puffing with his hands on his knees. But his face was contorted with rage, his eyes bulging, and his thatch of brown hair, shorn close on the sides, sweeping low over his forehead. His left arm was shaking, as if from a palsy, and David had the ghastly impression that he had indeed seen this face before.

And Ascanio had said: You know who he is, don’t you?

Linz cursed and whirled around, grabbing a battle-axe and shield from the wall. His robe flapping open, and the Medusa swinging on its chain, he was done with running and advanced on David.

“ Sie denken, sie konnen mich toten? ”-You think you can kill me?-he challenged, as David deftly dodged the first swing of the axe. David backed up, and the next swing crashed into a suit of armor, knocking it off its pedestal and sending the pieces careening across the floor.

David tried to parry with the short sword, but Linz banged it aside with a shove from the shield. By the moonlight pouring in from the windows, David could see the fury in his eyes, and the manic gleam

… of pleasure.

“ Niemand kann mich toten! ”-No one can kill me!-he exulted.

Linz rushed at him, the shield raised, trying to knock him off his feet, but David dodged the attack and the axe crashed into another suit of armor.

The man was breathing hard, the weapon was heavy, and David stepped back as Linz turned again, like a maddened bull, searching for his enemy.

“ Ich will tausend Jahre leben! ” he exploded-I will live a thousand years!-and the very marrow in David’s bones froze.

It was the voice he had heard in newsreels, scratchy and amplified and bursting with hate. It was the face, with its blazing eyes and chin raised in defiance, that had inflamed a nation and engulfed the world in war. The madman who had conjured up the fires of the Holocaust.

In that instant, David understood just what creature had managed to slink from its bunker in Berlin to claim the gift of immortality. And why, for fear that his courage might fail him, or his belief might falter, he had not been told.

But now he knew, and he felt as if an electric current had suddenly coursed through his veins, down his arm, and into the very blade he held. When the monster charged again, his hatchet raised, David nimbly stepped to one side, and before the man could turn he swung the razor-sharp edge of the sword into the back of his neck.

The monster crumpled, a geyser of blood erupting, but the chain of the Medusa had kept the sword from cutting clean through.

Finish it, David heard in his head. You have to finish it.

Pulling the sword free with one hand, and yanking the head back with his other-even now, the eyes were boiling with rage and hot spittle was flying from the lips-he chopped again. But the head still clung to the body.

Finish it.

Clutching the head by a thatch of its blood-slick hair, he hewed at the stump as if it were an unyielding branch. And though he wielded the sword, it felt as if the blade was acting on its own, hungry to complete some ancient labor. Another blow, and the body at last collapsed in a heap.

David felt as if time had stopped. All he could hear was the pounding of his own heart, booming like a bass drum. His breath burned in his throat. His gory prize-mouth open, eyes agog-dangled by its hair from his hand. Gradually, he came back to himself, like a man emerging from a trance. The sword clattered to the floor. And then the head dropped, too.

Stooping, he retrieved from the expanding pool of blood the thing he had come so far to find. Looping the Medusa around his neck, he stood up again, like Perseus astride the slaughtered Gorgon, and went to rescue his companion-and tell him it was indeed finished.