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With the intensity of the flames temporarily reduced, the horses raced for the door and their chance of freedom. Louise dug her heels into the stallion’s flanks, spurring it on. There was an exhilarating burst of speed. Yellow spires of flame splashed across her left arm and leg, making her cry out. Genevieve squealed in front of her, batting frantically at her blouse. The stench of singed hair solidified in her nostrils. Thin layers of smoke stretching across the aisle whipped across her face, stinging her eyes.
Then they were through, out of the gaping door with its wreath of tiny flames scrabbling at the ruined frame, chasing after the other horses. Fresh air and low sunlight washed over them. The hefty knight in the dark mosaic armour was standing ahead of them. Streamers of bright orange smoke were still pouring from his helmet’s eye slits. Sparks of white fire danced across his raised gauntlets. He started to point a rigid forefinger at them, the white fire building.
But the posse of crazed horses couldn’t be deflected. The first one flashed past stark inches from him. Alert to the danger they presented, even to someone with energistic power, he began to jump aside. That was his mistake. The second horse might have missed him if he’d stayed still. Instead, it struck him almost head on. The screaming horse buckled on top of him, forelegs snapping with an atrocious crack as inertia sent it hurtling forwards regardless. The knight was flung out sideways, spi
Louise gasped, instinctively pulling the reins to halt the stallion. Daddy was hurt!
But the flowing blood swiftly stanched itself. Ragged tears of flesh started to close up. The uniform was stitching itself together. Dusty, grazed leather shoes became metallic boots. He shook his head, grunting in what was little more than dazed a
Louise stared for a second as he started to raise himself onto his elbows, then spurred the horse away.
“Daddy!” Genevieve shouted in anguish.
“It’s not him,” Louise told her through clenched teeth. “Not now. That’s something else. The devil’s own monster.”
Rachel Handley stood in front of the arched entrance to the courtyard. Hands on hips, aroused wormlet hair threshing eagerly. “Nice try.” She laughed derisively. A hand was raised, palm towards the sisters. The awful white fire ignited around her wrist, wispy talons flaring from her fingers. Her laugh deepened at the sight of Louise’s anguish, cutting across Merlin’s miserable barking.
The bullet-bolt of white fire which caught Rachel Handley an inch above her left eye came from somewhere behind Louise. It bored straight through the maid’s skull, detonating in the centre of the brain. The back of her head blew off in a gout of charred gore and rapidly dissipating violet flame. Her body remained upright for a second, then the muscles spasmed once before losing all tension. She pitched forwards. Bright arterial blood spilled out of her ruined, smoking brainpan.
Louise twisted around. The courtyard was empty apart from the woozy figure of her father still clambering to his feet. A hundred empty windows stared down at her. Faint screams echoed over the rooftops. Long swirls of flame churned noisily out of the stable block’s wide doors.
Genevieve was shaking violently again, crying in convulsive gulps. Concern for the little girl overcame Louise’s utter confusion, and she spurred the stallion once more, guiding it around the vile corpse and out through the courtyard’s entrance.
From where he was standing beside the window of the third-floor guest suite, Qui
He pursed his lips in distaste. Someone had aided them. Why, he couldn’t think. The traitor must surely know they would never go unpunished. God’s Brother saw all. Every soul was accountable in the end.
“They’ll head for Colsterworth, of course,” he said. “All they’re doing is postponing the inevitable for a couple of hours. Most of that poxy little town already belongs to us.”
“Yes, Qui
“And soon the whole world,” Qui
He turned and smiled proudly. “It is so nice to see you again. I never thought I would. But He must have decided to reward me.”
“I love you, Qui
“I had to do what I did on Lalonde. You know that. We couldn’t take you with us.”
“I know, Qui
“Yeah,” Qui
The datavised alert woke Ralph Hiltch from a desultory sleep. As an ESA head of station, he’d been assigned some temporary quarters in the Royal Navy officers’ mess. Strange impersonal surroundings, and the emotional cold turkey from bringing Gerald Skibbow to Guyana, had left his thoughts racing as he lay on the bunk after a three-hour debrief session last night. In the end he’d wound up accessing a mild trank program to relax his body.
At least he hadn’t suffered any nightmares; though Je
He swung his legs over the side of his bunk and ran fingers through hair that badly needed a wash. The room’s net processor informed him that Guyana asteroid had just gone to a code three alert status.
“Shit, now what?” As if he couldn’t guess.
His neural nanonics reported an incoming call from Ombey’s ESA office, tagged as the director, Roche Skark, himself. Ralph opened a secure cha
“Sorry to haul you back to active status so soon after you arrived,” Roche Skark datavised. “But the shit’s just hit the fan. We need your expertise.”
“Sir?”
“It looks like three of the embassy perso
“What?” Panic surged into Ralph’s mind. Not that abomination, not loose here in the Kingdom. Please God. “Are you certain?”
“Yes. I’ve just come out of a Privy Council security conference with the Princess. She authorized the code three alert because of it.”
Ralph’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, God, and I brought them here.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“It’s my job to know. Goddamn, I grew slack on Lalonde.”
“I doubt any of us would have done anything different.”
“Yes, sir.” Pity you couldn’t sneer with a datavise.