The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,110

hell did it get in here? Then it buzzed him with a strafing run like a Messerschmitt’s and he backed away, ducking and swatting with his hand. There had to be a nest in the rafters above the ceiling panels, though how it had gotten into the room was a mystery.

The hornet, fully aroused now, dove at his face, and he swatted at it again, cursing the Nazis for taking away his belt, his cap, and anything that might be used to protect his hand. He crowded into a corner as the insect whirred up against the ceiling again, where it droned in furious, thwarted circles, banging against the plaster in its rage. Finally it lighted, crawling discontentedly around like a huge, obscene fly.

Saltwood didn’t budge. It buzzed and circled a time or two more, then lighted on the wall.

Cautiously Tom edged forward, flattening and stiffening the muscles of his hand. The hornet remained where it was. A quick glance around the room revealed no way it could have gotten in, no crack or chink, but the concern was academic at the moment. He moved out of his corner, more slowly, more carefully than he had stalked the guard he’d killed last night, more delicately than he had entered that poor wretch Sligo’s little cell. He needed all the experience he’d picked up in Spain and all the training Hillyard had beaten and cursed into him at the Commando base at Lochailort—if he missed now he was in for a hell of a stinging.

The insect heard him and was in flight when he struck it. It made a satisfying crunch and splat on the wall.

Great, he thought, wiping his ichorous palm on his thigh. You’re looking at torture by the Gestapo and what really scares you? Two inches of black bug.

But at least he could fight back against the bug.

Slowly he walked around the room again. Dammit, the bastard had to have gotten in somehow. If there was access to a crawlspace... The thought of wriggling out through a crawlspace filled with hornets wasn’t particularly appealing, but neither was the alternative. And in any case he’d been over the place...

He stopped, staring up at the ceiling. How he’d missed it before he couldn’t imagine, but there it was—the faint, unmistakable outline of a trapdoor. It fit flush. Nailholes marked where a molding had been pulled off and painted over... Painted over? So how had the hornet got into the room?

He couldn’t imagine, but didn’t particularly care. The ceiling was high, higher than he could reach even at nearly six feet with long arms. He cast a wary glance at the mirror—Who knew when they’d come into that side of it to watch him get the third degree?—and fetched the chair. It wouldn’t buy him much time, but anything would help.

With a roar like a thunderclap the chair burst into flames.

He flung it from him, flattening back against the wall in shock. The chair bounced against the opposite wall near the door, the fire spreading across the dry wood of the floor in greedy amber trails. Diversion? he thought, ripping off his clay-colored uniform shirt to wad over his mouth and nose against the smoke. Maybe. It’ll weaken the door, if the smoke doesn’t get me first. A firefighter in Tulsa had told him once that most victims of fire weren’t burned but smothered. The flames were spreading fast, but he pushed back his panic at being locked in with the blaze and crouched low to the floor where the air would be better. The fire was around the door, but it was eating its way across the planks toward him as well. In the midst of it the chair was beginning to fall apart, smoke streaks crawling up to blacken the walls. He shrank back as the fire’s heat seared his bare arms and chest. The blaze was all around the door—if he miscalculated his timing, flung himself at the door and it didn’t give, he’d burn.

Then, abruptly as it had begun, the fire began to sink. Before Saltwood’s startled eyes the flames ceased their advance, flickering down into fingerlets and then tiny tongues no bigger than two-penny nails that guttered out one by one. Within minutes, the only things left of the blaze were a huge patch of charred floor, the still-guttering chair, the suffocating heat, and the upside-down waterfall of smoke stains around the door.

What the HELL?!?

He crossed swiftly to the door, pulling his shirt hastily on without