CHAPTER 59

Thomas wasn’t truly conscious of it, had not processed the awareness fully, but he had heard the ghoul’s trademark snarl a fraction before he rolled. He had heard it in the same instant he had wondered where the ghoul was, and as he rolled over he raised one knee to protect himself from the attack.

Thomas saw the ghoul’s dive, saw the blade flash white in the sun, saw the smug hatred in his eyes falter as Thomas’s raised knee caught him hard in the chest. The knife went wide as the other collapsed on top of him, and for a moment the two men looked into each other’s eyes, their faces almost touching. The ghoul bared his filed teeth, extended his long, pink tongue.

Revolted, Thomas reacted as he had when he had felt the bat in his hair in the Herculaneum tunnel, flinching away. He tore one hand free and jabbed hard at his attacker’s face with the heel of his palm. The ghoul writhed with unnatural speed, shaking off the thrust and snapping at it with those awful teeth. Thomas snatched his hand away and then, knowing he might have only seconds to live, and seeing as through a red haze Pietro’s dying face, kicked hard upward, extending his bent knee so that his attacker was thrown backward.

The ghoul flailed on the ground, but with a rush of power from his sinewy arms he sprang to his feet, before Thomas could even sit up. He bounded over to where Thomas still lay, arms spread wide like a crucifix, steadied himself with one foot on the lip of the wall, and reversed his grip on the knife. He raised it for one exhilarating and ceremonial plunge into Thomas’s heart.

Hissing with the satisfaction of total victory, the ghoul brought the knife scything down. In the same instant, Thomas snapped his left arm down to his side, sweeping the ghoul’s foot from under him.

For a second the bald man seemed nothing more than that. As the surprise and panic coalesced in his pale eyes, he fought to regain his balance, the drop over the low wall yawning suddenly toward him. He swung a hand out, almost in supplication, but there was nothing anyone could have done to stop him.

It all seemed so slow, a movie effect or a memory, the way the ghoul wavered, hung there in space for a second, and then fell heavily over the turret wall to the rock below.

For a long, slow beat, Thomas lay there and breathed, and then hunched into a crouch and looked down.

The ghoul lay bleeding on the stone bridge, his body twisted and still. And there was Brad, reaching back into his jacket for his pistol, looking up at him.

But then he heard shouting. Some of it came from Roberta, who was calling to Brad, warning, it seemed, telling him to get away from the body. Some of it, however, came from someone else, a man, yelling in Italian. Then there were more voices, and as Brad moved hastily back across the bridge toward the old city, Thomas saw policemen in uniform coming out of the gatehouse below and gathering around the body.

“It police house now,” Claudio had said of the castle.

Thomas jerked back out of sight. The police had momentarily scared Brad and Roberta off, but he still had to get out of here. He checked his watch. Claudio would be parking across the street in less than five minutes. If Thomas was to leave the castle now, Brad would shoot him down, police or no police. There was, after all, only one way out of the castle.

Thomas was fairly sure that the police had not seen he was up here, but sooner or later one of them would come up to see if they could tell why the ghoul fell. He had to move. If he went back down the stairs he would walk right into them and would not be able to avoid interrogation and, probably, arrest. The frontal wall extended all the way to the far turret, which was covered in scaffolding, the ramparts themselves blocked with more makeshift barricades and orange tape. Keeping as low as he could, Thomas began edging along the crumbling wall. As he did so, he turned the phone back on and dialed.