The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,124
for a frenzy of strong arm. “With luck they won’t see that half those dents are bullet holes till it’s too late.”
Only one Storm Trooper opened the gate. He stepped back to let the truck pull in, then stepped casually close, his Schmeisser dangling at his back.
Saltwood slammed the door open into the man’s face, threw himself out before the guard had regained either his balance or his wits, pulled the Schmeisser from him with one hand, and slugged him hard and clean across the chin with the other. The Storm Trooper staggered and Saltwood shot him with a fast burst of shells, ripped the sidearm from the bloody corpse’s holster as Rhion was springing down from the cab on the other side. He grabbed the Professor’s arm and the two of them pelted up the gravel drive at a weaving run.
Bullets spattered from the open door. Saltwood returned fire and the guard there fell out forward, sprawling at the top of the steps with blood trickling down the worn marble in the dove-gray evening light. Without letting go of his staff, Rhion bent and pulled the man’s weapons free: automatic, submachine gun, and the silver-mounted dagger of the SS. “Search him,” Saltwood yelled, ducking into the door and covering the downstairs hall. “Get his identity papers, any money you can...”
A head appeared around a door and Saltwood fired at it with the automatic, ducked back at a returning shot and flung himself down with a long, low roll to catch the guard as he leaned around the door for a second try. Weaving from side to side, Rhion darted into the shadows of the hall and stopped to relieve Saltwood’s newest victim of his weapons, as well.
“You ever fired one of those things?”
The Professor shook his head as he followed Saltwood up the stairs at a run.
“Stand guard here. Tuck it into your arm like this, arm tight to the body, pull the trigger—it’ll fire a burst as long as you hold the trigger down. Aim low. The kick’ll pull the gun up. And put down that goddam stick.”
Rhion’s hand tightened stubbornly around the smooth wood as Tom yanked on it, his eyes suddenly blazing. There was no time to argue so Tom let the matter drop, muttering, “Crazy bastard...” to himself as he dashed up the attic stairs to the room where he himself had been kept.
The doors up there were bolted, not locked with keys. He slammed the bolts back and threw the door open; only a residual burst of caution, like a sixth sense, stopped him on the threshold when he saw the room empty. The next second a chair swooshed down hard enough to have broken his shoulder—Sara had been hiding next to the door.
“Christ almighty...”
She saw who it was—she already had the chair coming up for another swipe—and her pointed pale face burst into a smile that stopped Saltwood dead in his tracks, as if he’d seen a striking snake unfurl butterfly wings. “Tom!” And, a second later, the child-nymph turned lynx again. “There’s five, six guards in the house... I heard shooting...”
On the other side of a narrow hall was another locked door. Throwing it open, he saw a mirror image of the room where he’d been kept two nights and a day—like a cheap hotel with cot, chair, a few books and magazines, and a copy of Mein Kampf instead of a Gideon Society Bible. For a moment he saw no one. Then Sara yelled “Papa!” and a tall, gangly, bearded old man emerged from crouching behind the door of the tiny washroom.
“So is this the cavalry or the Indians?” he demanded in German with a thick Yiddish accent, cocking one wise dark eye at Saltwood.
“Cavalry,” Sara said briefly, already helping herself to the spare pistol and SS dagger Saltwood had stuck through his belt. “There’s a shed out back, I didn’t hear them take out the staff car today.”
A shot rang out somewhere below as they were racing down the attic stairs. Rhion was flattened behind the corner at the top of the next flight, the Schmeisser in one hand and his magic wand tucked awkwardly under his arm. Keeping his grip on the staff, he stepped quickly around the corner and let fly a burst from the submachine gun that knocked him staggering and ripped holes in every direction in the wall panels and ceiling before the gun juddered itself completely out of his hands.