combination, until a red light began flashing . . . the alarm system, obviously. Then he heard the crump! crump! of his grenades from within the vault, and felt the bedrock give a shudder under his feet.
Another jump took him into the outer passage on the other side of the first door, where again he fiddled with the combination
... and once more the red flashing light -
- Which was when he heard the shouting, and saw powerful torch beams turning the dim light almost to daylight where they lit up the bend in the tunnel. As to why he'd bothered to mess with the combination locks: he'd definitely developed a 'thing' about protecting his talents. This way he was making it 'obvious' that somebody had physically broken into the strong-room. And thus it would be far less obvious that the someone in question was purely and not-so-simply a magician!
But in order to protect his talents yet again it was now time for him to move on, before the people with those powerful hand torches came into view around the bend. And anyway, there was somewhere else he wanted to see.
He didn't quite know why, but -
- There was definitely somewhere else he wanted to see ...
THE PIT-THING - THE CLIMB - THE EXAMPLE
IV
THE PIT-THING - THE CLIMB - THE EXAMPLE
Harry was back in his hotel room. He dumped his smal but heavy burlap sacks and unzipped his jacket into a wardrobe, deflating himself like a marquee with a snapped kingpost. Then, moving at a frenzied pace, he was out again.
At Le Manse Madonie: only nine or ten seconds had passed; the Francezci brothers were at the outer vault door, where Tony expertly spun the combination lock in a sequence that disarmed the alarms. But already Francesco was asking: 'Why did he lock the fucking place up again? And how did he - how could he - get past us on his way out? Or
... is he still here, one of us?' He glared all about, at the small party of thralls gathered in the tunnel.
They stared back at his writhing features, the unequivocal guarantee of murder written clear in his scarlet eyes and flaring, convoluted nostrils.
Tony had the outer door open; he made to step through into the airlock section . . . paused, lifted his head, and sniffed at the air. And, nostrils gaping, he inhaled frantically, disbelievingly - then choked and grabbed his brother's elbow.
They all smelled it at the same time: gas!
Tear-gas, in the ventilation system!
The lieutenants and thralls reacted instantly: they stumbled about in the tunnel, coughing and choking, blinded by their own tears, as the atmosphere became tinged with a trace of yellow from the tunnel's ducts. But a trace was enough.
Not enough for the Francezcis, however. Not yet. Wamphyri, they had more control over their bodies. The gas couldn't hurt if they didn't breathe it in. Their eyes wouldn't sting if they shuttered them with transparent membranes.
The membranes would sting, but sight would remain unimpaired for a while at least.
Francesco put the second combination to rights as his men began to
leave the tunnel, staggering away through the reek of the place, colliding with each other, their torches probing the misty-yellow, gradually thickening atmosphere. He spun the dial this way and that, and finally swung the door open -on an inferno!
Hot metal had set fire to paper money and burlap; shelving sprawled in twisted disarray; art treasures lay blackened, broken in the roil of dense smoke and fumes. Electrical conduits burned, sparked, sputtered. Flames licked up the rear wall and gouted on the ceiling, emitting the greasy black smoke and gut-wrenching stench of destruction, as fabulous oil paintings submitted to the heat. A wall of heat came scorching out of the strong-room!
There were fire extinguishers, but many of them were damaged, blasted loose from their seatings on the walls. It took quite some time for the Francezcis to find two that were still working, and a lot longer to bring the wreckage of the treasure vault under a semblance of control. And of course they must do it themselves in the stinging yellow fog, through all the tears and blood and rage of their hellish vampire eyes -for as yet their thralls were only human after all...
Harry emerged from the Continuum at Humph's co-ordinates deep underground - where the American's unauthorized explorations had been challenged more than forty years ago, and from which he'd been marched under escort before his