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.”Adam took the chair next to Vampirella and she slid back into her chair.With a touch that was a caress as well as a gesture of introduction, the girl said, “Count Mordante, this is Adam Van Helsing.”“Ah, I have heard of you and your father, Mr.Van Helsing.”Adam said, “And I’ve heard of you, Count Mordante.”“Good, very good,” said the count.“I’m certain we will all be friends.”Chapter 10The phone rang, fuzzy and far away, the sound all mixed up with the patter of rain and the murmur of dream voices.Pendragon, huddled far over on one side of his bed with a sheet twisted round his middle and a blanket over most of his head, grunted.The phone persisted.“One moment,” he murmured, “while my astral body comes home.”At last the magician got himself sufficiently awake and untangled to pick up the phone and place it somewhere near his face.“Yes, hello?”A girl’s husky, urgent voice said, “Pendragon, you’ve got to come and help me, right now.”“Vampirella, child, is that you?”“Come to 72 Via Ammazzare.Quickly or—” The phone went dead.“My dear, what…?” He blinked, brushed his gray hair off his forehead, yawned, and hung up.“There seems no recourse but a trip to the Via Ammazzare.” He stumbled off the bed.“Well, there’s one advantage to passing out while fully dressed, you don’t have to spend time putting your clothes on when you get up.”Less than five minutes later, he was on the rainy night street.The time was a few minutes short of five a.m.The rain had turned cold, misty.He turned up the collar of his plaid cloak as he hurried along the empty street.The Via Ammazzare was within easy walking distance, even for a second-hand magician.Once Pendragon slowed, sensing something behind him.He saw nothing but shadowed doorways, not another living soul.“Stop using clichés like that, m’boy.You’ll scare yourself.There aren’t any dead men trailing you, either.”Inside his dully aching head he saw a replay of the last moments of the Princess di Pozzi, all in color and slow motion—the skeleton, all that was left of her, crumbling and clacking, the skull bowling across the dance floor.“And I’ve got one of those things inside me, too.Very unpleasant to contemplate.At least I won’t be around to watch my own skull bouncing hither and yon.”A high stone wall surrounded 72 Via Ammazzare.Pendragon pushed, gingerly, at the wrought-iron gate in the wall.It opened just enough inches to let him go through sideways.He found himself in a large courtyard filled with…what?“Ah, good morning.” He rubbed his eyes and squinted, trying to see through the misty rain and his hangover.Angels they were, big.All watching him, their wings unfurled.Over there a saint or two.“Marble,” the magician decided, “marble statues.”One of them moved.Pendragon stopped still.No, it was the rain, the way it was drifting down, that made it seem as though the figure had moved.An illusion.He wandered among the tall still figures and found the door to the establishment that went with the wall and the statues.Next to a wooden door was a small metal sign.Pendragon managed to keep a match lit by cupping his hand over it.By its fragile flicker he read, “Macri Brothers, Funeral Directors,” in both Italian and English.“Were I to vote on all the places in the world I would want to be,” he murmured, “a funeral parlor in Venice at five a.m.on a rainy morning would be unlikely to make even the top twenty.”He tried the brass knob, and the thick door silently opened.“I was afraid of this.” His eyes were used enough to the dark to be able to discern what was in the room he’d entered.Coffins.Black coffins with silver handles, bronze coffins with gold fittings, plain pine coffins.Floral pieces made of plastic hung around the walls, along with religious paintings.The whole room smelled strongly of flowers.“I wasn’t aware that plastic flowers had any scent.What won’t they think of next?”What was that outside? He spun to face the window that faced the courtyard.Again he’d had the impression one of the stone figures had moved.Absolute stillness out there, the rain flickering down.Click!The door he’d closed behind him when he entered had been locked, from outside.“Can it be,” Pendragon inquired aloud, “I have been lured into a trap?” He surveyed the coffin-filled room.There was one other door, in the far corner.Whoever they were, they’d probably appear through that.They didn’t.The lid of the bronze coffin opened wide, then one of the black ones.Two large swarthy men sat up and pointed.45 semiautomatics at him.“Forgive me for awakening you, gentlemen,” said Pendragon.“You go back to sleep, I’ll quietly—”“Halt exactly where you are, signore.” A third coffin, a pine box, had opened to reveal the largest gunman so far.A.38 revolver in hand, he climbed out onto the carpeted floor.“This one we’re going to use for you, padrone.”Pendragon asked, “Are all these coffins full of hoodlums?”“No questions will be answered.” His.38 swung around to aim at the magician’s chest.“This is real simple; we shoot you and put you in the box.Then we—”The window exploded.Shards and chunks of glass came spewing into the room.Rain and chill morning air followed, then Adam Van Helsing.He landed on the biggest gunman’s back and yanked him around so he was facing his two associates.A flat-handed chop knocked the.38 to the floor.The carpet was so thick the thud was barely audible.Adam had his own revolver in his right hand.“You two, throw the guns down and then get back inside your coffins and close the lids.”“We don’t want to do anything like that,” said the one in the bronze casket.“We had enough trouble breathing when—”“Do it!”The guns hit the rug, and the coffin lids snapped shut.The magician, after brushing a few scraps of window from his person, bowed to Adam.“A most timely, if unorthodox, entrance, Adam.”“The guy they left on the door outside dropped the key.Rather than look for it, I took the quicker way in here,” he said.He shoved the biggest gunman toward the pine box.“You can play dead for a while, too.Until the police get here [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]