The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,155

dagger were ripped from his belt before he recovered enough to think about committing suicide by putting up a fight.

“Put the Jew in the truck,” went on that calm, soft voice, shaking now with an inner core of blinding rage. “Bind him, gag him, blindfold him. Baldur, remain with him, since he seems to be able to twist the powers we have released to his own corrupt and dirty spells.”

Raising his head, Tom could see the golden youth and three or four Storm Troopers cross to where Leibnitz lay facedown in the wet yellow leaves of the roadside ditch. They picked the old man up, a broken scarecrow with his patched gray clothing and emaciated limbs. Only when they were halfway to one of the covered trucks did Leibnitz show by the feeble, disoriented movements of returning consciousness that he was still alive. Baldur struck him.

“You goddam Nazi coward!” Sara flung herself toward them but was caught, easily, by two Storm Troopers—Saltwood lunged to his feet more to protect her than to go after Baldur, and the men behind him had been waiting for that. The struggle wasn’t long.

“Bind the whore and put her in the other truck,” von Rath said calmly, still standing in the backseat of the open Mercedes, Satan in uniform, the thick chain of talismans lying like a hellish emblem of office over shoulders and breast. Those that had been made of jewels seemed to burn in the shadowless blue magelight that flickered all around him, and even those wrought of bone and skin and twisted hair pulsed in that strange radiance, with something that might have been a kind of light but was more probably, Saltwood thought distractedly, a reflection sparked from the jewels, or the silver on his uniform, or something... some rational explanation... In some odd way those dead and mounted mementos of past sacrifices seemed more living than von Rath’s eyes.

The wizard went on, “We have just time to reach Witches Hill, if we drive fast. Gall is waiting there already, but, with our hostage guaranteed, now we should have no trouble. So the night will not be totally lost. But you...” He turned to Saltwood, and a spiteful vindictiveness crept into his voice. “By leading this escape you have cost me the power I could have raised through an equinox sacrifice. You have almost cost me what I could have gotten from a second sacrifice, the sacrifice of a wizard, for without his Jewish whore as hostage, he would not have let himself be taken alive. You will pay for that.”

Saltwood felt something twist inside of him, a sharp stab of pain in his entrails, like the appendicitis he’d had as a kid. He bit his lip, gasping, trying not to cry out, but the pain grew, turning his knees to water. For a moment the men who were holding him took his weight; then they dropped him to the icy and broken pavement of the road.

Christ, he thought, what is this? all the while curling tighter over himself, tighter, retching as red claws ripped at him inside, like taking a bayonet in the gut, worse... He heard Sara cursing, was dimly aware of her fighting like a wildcat against the men who held her, men who were staring from him to von Rath’s cool face and back with growing uneasy horror. He tasted blood and bile in his mouth, blood trickling from his nose, and his teeth shut on a scream, fighting to keep himself from screaming Stop it! STOP IT! PLEASE!! and thinking Bastard, I won’t give that to you. Powder trails of pain and fire ignited along every nerve, burning up his flesh. It was all he could do not to scream, and he could feel that, too, coming...

Then the pain was over and he was lying on the wet gravel, weak and shaking and scared as he had never been scared before. Cloudily he was aware of a man swearing, “Bite me, you Jew bitch!” and von Rath’s voice, querulous and peremptory, commanding, “NO!”

Looking up, Tom saw one of the guards who’d been holding Sara shaking his bloodied hand, the other still gripping her, his fist frozen in middraw.

Von Rath shook his head, his brows pulling slightly together, the expression of a man puzzled by something he has done flickering, very briefly, to life in his inhuman eyes. His soft voice had a halting note. “We—we have no time for this.” He passed his hand across his