The Damnation Game Part 19

"You're strong," the European said. "You told me so. Open the gate."

Breer put his hand on the wire. The boasts were true: he felt only the slightest tremor. There was just a cooking smell and the sound of his teeth chattering as he started to tear the gate apart. He was stronger than he'd imagined. There was no fear in him, and its absence made him Herculean. Now the dogs had started to bark along the fence, but he just thought: let them come. He wasn't going to die. Perhaps he would never die.

Laughing like a loon, he ripped the gate open; the hum stopped as the circuit was broken. The air was tinged with blue smoke.

"That's good," said the European.

Breer tried to drop the section of wire he was holding, but some of it had welded itself into his palm. He had to tear it out with his other hand. He looked down incredulously at his seared flesh. It was blackened, and smelled appetizing. Soon, surely, it must begin to hurt a little. No man-not even a man like him, guiltless and sublimely strong-could receive a wound like this and not suffer. But there was no sensation.

Suddenly-out of the dark-a dog.

Mamoulian backed off, fear convulsing him, but Breer was its intended victim. A few paces from its target the dog leaped, and its bulk struck Breer center chest. The impact toppled him over onto his back, and the dog was swiftly on top of him, jaws snapping at his throat. Breer was armed with a long-bladed kitchen knife, but he seemed uninterested in the weapon, though it was within easy reach. His fat face broke into a laugh as the dog scrabbled to get access to the man's neck. Breer simply took hold of the dog's lower jaw. The animal snapped down, clamping Breer's hand in its mouth. Almost immediately it realized its error. Breer reached around the back of the dog's head with his free hand, grabbed a fistful of fur and muscle, and jerked neck and head in opposite directions. There was a grinding sound. The dog roared in its throat, still unwilling to let go of its executioner's hand, even as blood sprang from between its clenched teeth. Breer gave the dog another lethal wrench. Its eyes showed white and its limbs stiffened. It slumped down onto Breer's chest, dead.

Other dogs barked in the distance, responding to the death-yelp they'd heard. The European looked nervously to right and left along the fence.

"Get up! Quickly!"

Breer loosed his hand from the dog's maw and shrugged the corpse off. He was still laughing.

"Easy," he said.

"There's more."

"Take me to them."

"Maybe too many for you to take on all at once."

"Was this the one?" Breer asked, kicking the dead dog over so that the European could see it better.

"The one?"

"That took off your fingers?"

"I don't know," the European replied, avoiding Breer's blood-spattered face as it grinned at him, eyes sparkling like an adolescent's in love.

"The kennels?" he suggested. "Finish them off there."

"Why not?"

The European led off from the fence in the direction of the kennels. Thanks to Carys, the layout of the Sanctuary was as familiar to him as the palm of his own hand. Breer kept pace with him, stinking of blood already, a spring in his heavy step. He had seldom felt so alive.

Life was so good, wasn't it? So very good.The dogs barked.

In her room Carys pulled the pillow over her head to shut out the din. Tomorrow she'd pluck up her courage and tell Lillian that she resented being kept awake half the night by hysterical hounds. If she was ever going to be healthy she'd have to start learning the rhythms of a normal life. That meant going about her business while the sun shone, and sleeping at night.

As she turned over to find a portion of the bed that was still cool an image flashed into her head. It was gone again before she could entirely grasp it but she caught enough to wake her with a start. She saw a man-faceless, but familiar-crossing a tract of gra.s.s. At his heels, a tide of filth. It crept close behind him, in blind adoration, its waves sibilant as snakes. She didn't have time to see what the waves contained, and perhaps that was a good thing.

She turned over a third time, and ordered herself to forget these nonsenses.

Curiously, the dogs had stopped barking.

And what, after all, was the worst he could do, what was the very worst? Whitehead had tried on this particular question so often it felt like a familiar coat. The possible physical torments were endless, of course. Sometimes, in the clammy hug of a three-A.M. sweat, he would deem himself worthy of them all-if a man could die a dozen, two dozen times-because the crimes of power he had committed were not easily paid for. The things, oh, Jesus in Heaven, the things he had done.

But then, d.a.m.n it, who would not have crimes to confess, when the time came? Who would not have acted out of greed, and envy; or grappled for station, and having gained it, been absolute in authority rather than relinquish it? He couldn't be held responsible for everything the corporation had done. If, once in a decade, a medical preparation that deformed fetuses had slipped onto the market, was he to blame because there'd been profit made? That kind of moral accounting was for the writers of revenge fiction: it didn't belong in the real world, where most crimes went punished only with wealth and influence; where the worm seldom turned, and when it did was immediately crushed; where the best a man could hope was that having risen to his ambition's height by wit, stealth or violence there was some smidgen of pleasure in the view. That was the real world, and the European was as familiar with its ironies as he was. Hadn't Mamoulian shown him so much of it himself? How, in all conscience, could the European turn around and punish his student for learning his lessons too well?

I'll probably die in a warm bed, Whitehead thought, with curtains partially drawn against a yellow spring sky, and surrounded by admirers. "There is nothing to fear," he said aloud. The steam billowed. The tiles, laid with an obsessive's precision, sweated with him: but coldly, where he was hot.

Nothing to fear.

36

From the door of the doghouse Mamoulian watched Breer at work. It was an efficient slaughter this time, not the trial of strength he'd had with the dog at the gate. The fat man simply opened the cages and then the throats of the dogs one by one, using his long-bladed knife. Cornered in their cells the dogs were easy prey. All they could do was turn and turn, snapping uselessly at their a.s.sa.s.sin, somehow knowing the battle was lost before it was truly entered. They dropped t.u.r.ds as they slumped down, slashed necks and flanks spurting, brown eyes turned up to look at Breer like painted saints. He killed the pups too; tearing them from their mother's lap and cracking their heads open in his hand. Bella fought back with more vehemence than the other dogs, determined to inflict as much damage as she could on the killer before she too was killed. He returned the favor, mutilating her body after he'd silenced her; wounds in return for the wounds she'd given him. Once the clamor was over, and the only movement in the cages was the twitch of a leg or the splash of a bladder giving vent, Breer p.r.o.nounced himself finished. They went together toward the house.

There were two more dogs here; the last of them. The Razor-Eater made short work of them both. By now he looked more like an abattoir worker than a sometime librarian. The European thanked him. It had been easier than he'd expected.

"I have business inside the house now," he told Breer.

"Do you want me to come?"

"No. But you could open the door for me, if you would."

Breer went to the back door and punched out the gla.s.s, then reached through and unlocked it, letting Mamoulian into the kitchen.

"Thank you. Wait here for me."

The European disappeared into the blue gloom of the interior. Breer watched him go, and once his master was out of sight, entered the Sanctuary after him, blood and smiles wreathing his face.

Though the pall of steam m.u.f.fled the sound, Whitehead had the impression that somebody was moving around in the house. Strauss, probably: the man had become restless recently. Whitehead let his eyes drift closed again.

Somewhere close by, he heard a door opening and closing, the door of the antechamber beyond the steam room. He stood up, and quizzed the gloom.

"Marty?"

There was no answer from Marty or anybody else. The certainty of having heard a door at all faltered. It wasn't always easy to judge sound here. Nor vision. The steam had thickened considerably; he could no longer see across to the other side of the room.

"Is there somebody there?" he asked.

The steam was a dead, gray wall in front of his eyes. He cursed himself for letting it get so heavy.

"Martin?" he said again. Though there was neither sight nor sound to confirm his suspicions, he knew he wasn't alone. Somebody was very close, and yet not answering. When he spoke he reached, inch by tremulous inch, across the tiles to the towel folded at his side. His fingers investigated the fold while his eyes stayed fixed on the steam-wall; in the towel was a gun. His grateful fingers located it.

This time more quietly, he addressed the invisible visitor. The gun gave him confidence.

"I know you're there. Show yourself, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I won't be terrorized."

Something moved in the steam. Eddies began, and multiplied. Whitehead could hear the double thump of his heart in his ears. Whoever it was (let it not be him, oh, Christ, let it not be him) he was ready. And then, without warning, the steam divided, killed by a sudden cold. The old man raised the gun. If it was Marty out there, and he was playing some sick joke, he was going to regret it. The hand that held the gun had begun to tremble.

And now, finally, there was a figure in front of him. It was still indecipherable in the mist. At least it was until a voice he'd heard a hundred times in his vodka-sodden dreams said: "Pilgrim. "

The steam shrank back. The European was there, standing in front of him. His face had scarcely conceded the seventeen years since last they'd met. The domed brow, the eyes set so deep in their orbits they glinted like water at the bottom of a well. He had changed so little, as though time-in awe of him-had pa.s.sed him by.

"Sit down," he said.

Whitehead didn't move; the gun was still pointed directly at the European.

"Please, Joseph. Sit down."

Might it be better if he sat? Might the death blows be avoided by a feigned meekness? Or was it melodrama to think that this man would stoop to blows? What kind of dream have I been living in, Whitehead chided himself, to think he'd come here to bruise me, to bleed me? Such eyes have more than bruising on their mind.

He sat down. He was aware of his nakedness, but he didn't much care. Mamoulian wasn't seeing his flesh; he looked deeper than fat and bone.

Whitehead could feel the stare in him now; it stroked his heart. How else was he to explain the relief he felt, seeing the European at last?

"It's so long . . ." was all he could say: a limping ba.n.a.lity. Did he sound like a hopeful lover, longing for a reconciliation? Perhaps that wasn't so far from the truth. The singularity of their mutual hatred had the purity of love.

The European studied him.

"Pilgrim," he murmured reproachfully, glancing at the gun, "there's no need. Or use."

Whitehead smiled and laid the gun down on the towel beside him.

"I was afraid of you coming," he said, by way of explanation. "That's why I bought the dogs. You know how I loathe dogs. But I knew you loathed them more."

Mamoulian put his finger to his lips to hush Whitehead's talk.

"I forgive the dogs," he said. Whom was he forgiving: the animals or the man who'd used them against him?

"Why did you have to come back?" Whitehead said. "You must have known I wouldn't welcome you."

"You know why I came."

"No I don't. Really. I don't."

"Joseph," Mamoulian sighed. "Don't treat me like one of your politicians. I'm not to be paid off in promises, then thrown away when your fortunes change. You can't treat me like that."

"I didn't."

"No lies, please. Not now. Not with so little time left to us. This time, this last time, let us be honest with each other. Let us spill our hearts. There won't be any more opportunities."

"Why not? Why can't we start again?"

"We're old. And tired."

"I'm not."

"Why haven't you fought for your Empire, then, if not because of fatigue?"

"That was your doing?" Whitehead asked, already certain of the reply.

Mamoulian nodded. "You're not the only man I've helped to fortune. I've got friends in the highest circles; all, like you, students of Providence. They could buy and sell half the world if I asked them to; they owe me that. But none of them were ever quite like you, Joseph. You were the hungriest, and the ablest. Only with you did I see a chance of-"

"Go on," Whitehead prompted. "Chance of what?"

"Salvation," Mamoulian replied, then laughed the thought off. "Of all things," he said quietly.

Whitehead had never imagined it would be like this: a hushed debate in a white-tiled room, two old men exchanging hurts. Turning the memories over like stones, and watching the lice scuttle away. It was so much more gentle and so much more painful. Nothing scourged like loss.

"I made mistakes," he said, "and I'm genuinely sorry for them."

"Tell me the truth," Mamoulian scolded.

"That is the truth, d.a.m.n it. I'm sorry. What more do you want? Land? Companies? What do you want?"

"You amaze me, Joseph. Even now, in extremis, you try to make bargains. What a loss you are. What a terrible loss. I could have made you great."

"I am great."

"You know better than that, Pilgrim," he said gently. "What would you have been, without me? With your glib tongue and your fancy suits. An actor? A car salesman? A thief?"

Whitehead flinched, not just at the taunts. The steam had become uneasy behind Mamoulian, as if ghosts had begun to move in it.

"You were nothing. At least have the good grace to admit that."

"I took you on," Whitehead pointed out.

"Oh, yes," said Mamoulian. "You had appet.i.te, I grant you. You had that in abundance."

"You needed me," Whitehead retorted. The European had wounded him; now, despite his better judgment, he wanted to wound in return. This was his world, after all. The European was a trespa.s.ser here: unarmed, unaided. And he had asked for the truth to be told. Well, he'd hear it, ghosts or no ghosts.

"Why would I need you?" Mamoulian asked. There was sudden contempt in his tone. "What are you worth?"

Whitehead held off answering for a moment; and then he was spilling the words, careless of the consequences.

"To live for you, because you were too bloodless to do it for yourself! That was why you picked me up. To taste it all through me. The women, the power: all of it."

"No..."

"You're looking sick, Mamoulian-"

He called the European by his name. See that? G.o.d, the ease of it. He called the b.a.s.t.a.r.d by his name, and he didn't look away when those eyes glinted, because he was telling the truth here, wasn't he? They both knew it. Mamoulian was pale; almost insipid. Drained of the will to live. Suddenly, Whitehead began to know he could win this confrontation, if he was clever.

"Don't try to fight," Mamoulian said. "I will have my due."