Covenant Of The Flame Page 21

  Free? Tess thought. There's a good chance we're about to be shot!

  They reached the back door.

  It was open, smoke billowing out as cool air spewed in. Then the smoke dispersed, and as Jonathan hurried forward, Tess saw beyond him -

  - twenty feet ahead! -

  - in the glow of the flames from windows! -

  - a woman sprawled face-down in the grass. Blood soaked the back of her nightgown.

  'Edna,' Jonathan gasped.

  Tess tried to stop him. 'No!'

  But Jonathan pried away and raced toward his fellow servant. 'Edna!'

  The last word he ever said. Halfway toward her, Jonathan straightened, seemingly jolted by a cattle prod. A lethal prod.

  Dark fluid erupted from his neck. More fluid spurted from his back. Jonathan appeared to be attempting a trick, to grasp his neck, his chest, and his forehead simultaneously.

  Not enough hands!

  Like a clumsy acrobat, he fell.

  Thrashed pathetically.

  Quivered.

  Lay still.

  Tess's mother screamed. Either she didn't understand what had happened, or else she did understand and panic seized her, or perhaps she felt desperate to try to help her servants. For whatever reason, she fought to squeeze beyond Tess and scramble out of the mansion.

  Tess clawed to stop her, but the hand that clutched her father's pistol failed to snag on her mother's nightgown. The other hand clasped at lacy frills, which snapped from the strain.

  Her mother escaped her.

  'No!'

  Tess gaped as her mother's frail, diet-thinned body didn't heave back like a catapulted acrobat but rather pirouetted, then sank, arms fluttering, like an exhausted ballerina. With blood-spurting holes in her abdomen and chest.

  Tess wailed.

  In grief.

  In horror.

  In rage.

  Bees seemed to buzz around her, walloping the doorframe, slamming against the corridor's walls. Bullets. From silenced handguns in the backyard shrubs!

  The bullets overcame Tess's shock-induced paralysis. She stumbled backward, pivoted to run, and lurched to a halt at the sight of flames eating through the closed kitchen door.

  What am I doing?

  I can't run back inside!

  I'm trapped!

  Too many thoughts sped through her mind. Her mother's death. The gunmen outside. The fire.

  Paralysis again controlled her.

  I can't stay here!

  But I can't go outside!

  Think!

  The fire kept licking through the kitchen door, brightening the smoke-filled hallway.

  The basement! I can get to the basement! The door's in this hallway! I can hide downstairs in a corner! I can use the laundry tub to soak rags and wrap myself in-!

  No! That's crazy! I wouldn't have a chance! When the smoke filled the basement, no matter how many wet rags I tried to breathe through, I'd still be suffocated!

  And the heat would be unbearable!

  And the overhead floor would eventually collapse! I'd be buried by flaming-!

  Fear made her tremble so hard that her bladder muscles nearly failed.

  But I can't just stand here!

  The smoke made her bend over, retching.

  At once a new thought gave her frantic hope.

  It might not work!

  But God help me, it's my only chance!

  She held her breath and scurried forward, dodging past the fiery kitchen door. The heat struck her clothes. For a terrifying moment, she was certain that their cotton would burst into flames.

  Blinded by the smoke, she reached the stairs, tripped, banged painfully forward, and clambered on her hands and knees up the steps. The heat became mercifully less, although the smoke increased, and when she had to breathe, her lungs rebelled, her chest racked with spasms. Determined, she scrambled faster, harder, and suddenly the steps ended. Pawing at nothing, propelled by her thrusting knees, she arched through the air and sprawled, slamming her chin on the upstairs floor.

  Ahead, at the hallway's midpoint, even with the smoke, she had no trouble seeing the flames at the top of the vestibule's staircase. With a roar, they swelled toward the ceiling.

  Hurry! The smoke made her eyes weep. It seared her throat.

  She struggled to a crouch and darted forward, moaning as she neared the increasing heat, the spreading blaze. The crackling whoosh of the flames became deafening.

  She whimpered, seized with terror that she might not be able to reach her destination, that the surge of blistering heat would force her back.

  No choice now! She cursed, mustered her resolve, and veered to the left. Chased by a gushing arm of flame, she found her open bedroom door, lurched through it, and slammed the door shut behind her.

  By comparison with the furnace of the hallway, the air in her bedroom was wonderfully cool, although thick acrid smoke continued to sting her eyes. Her exertion forced her to breathe and made her cough so deeply that she spit out phlegm.

  She didn't care! She had a chance now!

  Move!

  The glow of the lamp on her bedside table was useless, so enveloped by haze that it was almost invisible.

  That didn't matter! In this familiar bedroom, she didn't need to see in order to do what she had to. She lunged past a chair and reached French doors. When she yanked them open, she couldn't believe how delicious the outside air smelled. Flames that shattered windows to her right illuminated the gardens and shrubs below her.

  But all Tess paid attention to was the giant oak tree beyond the small balcony outside her room.

  That oak tree had been the reason Tess had broken her arm when she was eleven. One Saturday afternoon, after having come home from her gymnastic class, she'd been so excited by her progress on the overhead bar that she'd studied the oak tree from the balcony and wondered how easy it would be to leap toward the nearest branch, then swing toward a farther branch until she reached the trunk and climbed down, hand over hand, to the ground.

  Tempted beyond her ability to resist, she'd leapt, grabbed the branch, clung by one hand while she'd stretched her other hand toward the next branch. and screamed when she felt her fingers slip.then screamed again, even more fiercely, when she'd hit the lawn, her left arm twisted under her. The arm had projected in a wrong - a horribly wrong - direction. Until that moment, she'd never known a greater agony.

  Her father had burst from the house and rushed to pick her up, then raced to the garage and driven her, speeding through red lights, to the nearest hospital.

  Her father.

  Dead.

  How much she missed him.

  And now her mother was dead as well! Tess still couldn't adjust to the sight of the blood from the bullets that had struck her mother's abdomen and chest.

  She couldn't believe it had happened.

  Dead?

  Her mother couldn't be dead.

  You bastards!

  As flames squeezed through the top, bottom, and sides of her bedroom door, Tess crammed the handgun into her burlap purse, tugged its top closed, and wrapped the purse's strap repeatedly around her wrist until there wasn't any slack.

  The flames no longer squeezed but erupted through the sides, top, and bottom of her door.

  No time!

  Tess retreated into the smoke of her bedroom. Responding to her years of training, she crouched, braced one foot behind the other, and bent her knees in a sprinter's pose.

  She blurted a prayer.

  And propelled herself forward.

  THIRTEEN

  She jumped, felt her sneakers touch the balcony's ornate metal railing, and vaulted outward, hurtling through the air. In the dark, she feared that the past would reoccur, that she'd lose her grasp on the tree limb and plummet toward the lawn.

  But she was twenty-eight now. Her tall lithe body reached the tree much sooner than she expected, her long arms stretching, her firm hands clutching.

  The jolt of grabbing the bra
nch swung her down, then up toward another branch. She took advantage of that motion, and as the branch she held began to droop, she hooked her legs around the farther branch and dangled, her hips bent toward the ground, balancing her weight between one branch and the other. The moment the branches stopped bobbing, she groped, hand-overhand, shifting her legs, toward where the two branches converged.

  With an expert twist, she upended herself, facing downward now, and inched along the two branches, finally clutching the trunk where she huddled, supported by stout limbs, concealed by leaves.

  Her heart pounded so fiercely that she feared she might become sick.

  Had the gunmen seen her leap from the balcony?

  Despite the flames that burst from windows near the front of the mansion, she strained to convince herself that this area remained in shadow.

  The branches had bobbed. True. Yes. She couldn't pretend that they hadn't. But if the gunmen were concentrating on the doors from the mansion, they might not have thought to look toward this side of the house where there weren't any doors.

  And in particular, they might not have thought to glance toward the least likely exit, a balcony on the upper floor.

  Well, Tess trembled, I'll soon find out.

  She yanked open her purse and tugged out her pistol. It gave her great satisfaction to think that the men who'd killed her mother might be killed by the gun her father had trained her to use. Even though it hadn't been cleaned in six years. Even though the spring in its magazine might have been weakened from so many years of having been loaded.

  Tess couldn't think about that risk. All she could think about was.!

  Descending the tree.

  Doing her best to escape through a barrier of thick evergreen shrubs toward the darkness of a neighboring mansion.

  She climbed down the tree, huddled at the base of its murky trunk, aimed toward the shadowy back of the mansion, saw no one, and bolted toward the shrubs on her right.

  A bee seemed to buzz. A bullet splintered the oak.

  In midstride, Tess whirled, crouched, and raised her father's pistol.

  A lunging target appeared, silhouetted by flames that suddenly gushed at the back of the mansion. A target with a gun! A target who stooped and aimed toward Tess.

  The lessons at the shooting range came back to her.

  She squeezed the trigger. The pistol roared, its recoil jolting the barrel upward.

  Ignore the recoil. Never take your eyes from the target.

  She stared at the gunman and realized, heart lurching, that she'd missed!

  Oh, Jesus.

  She dove as the gunman fired. His weapon had a silencer. She didn't hear the spit when the gun discharged, but she definitely heard the bullet whiz over her.

  Flat, both hands gripping the pistol, Tess aimed more deliberately, concentrating more fiercely, firing again. The roar made her ears ring.

  With an inward scream of triumph, she saw the gunman stagger back and topple. At once her stomach cramped, from tension, from the shock of what she'd just done.

  She couldn't allow herself to feel guilty about.! She had to get away.

  Scrambling upward, consumed by frenzy, she raced toward the shrubs on the right. In the distance, sirens wailed. The fire department. Maybe the police. Someone in a neighboring mansion must have called them! But the sirens were too far away. They wouldn't get here soon enough to help her. Keep running!

  Someone shouted from the front of the mansion.

  Tess pivoted. A man with a gun darted into view.

  Reflexively Tess aimed. She squeezed the trigger. Again! Then again! The first bullet struck the mansion's wall. The second hit a tree behind the gunman.

  But the third knocked the gunman backward.

  Tess again screamed inwardly with triumph.

  Directly, the silent cheer stuck in her throat.

  No!

  The gunman had managed to stay on his feet. He continued to raise his weapon. Her own gun roaring, Tess fired again and slammed the man onto the lawn.

  She sprinted past a flower garden, hearing bullets zing from the back of the mansion. They slashed the evergreens she ran toward and made her dive again.

  Frantic, she rolled against the bottom of the shrubs, twisted, aimed at a gunman racing in her direction from the back of the house, shot three times, missed, but at least made the gunman scramble behind the cover of a gazebo.

  The mansion was completely in flames now. The sirens wailed louder. Closer. As the gunman leaned from the side of the gazebo, aiming, Tess angrily shot yet again.

  He spun out of sight.

  But not smoothly. Tess tried to assure herself that it was possible she'd hit him, although maybe she'd merely splintered wood near his face.

  She couldn't tell. It didn't matter. No time!

  She crawled through a narrow gap at the bottom of the shrubs, felt branches scrape her skull, her back, her hips, and charged to her feet the moment she was through the hedge. She ran through the fire-illuminated shadows in the spacious back yard of the neighboring mansion.

  Lights were on in the house. She imagined the frightened residents scrambling toward the street in case the fire spread and their own house caught fire.

  Despite the roar of the blaze, she heard branches scrape behind her. Whirling, she shot three times toward where the hedge moved, heard a man groan, and urged herself onward through the deepening darkness of the extensive yard.

  She veered past trees, lunged through flower gardens, tripped against the low rim of a lily pond, nearly tumbled into the water, but caught her balance, and skirted the pond, running faster.

  Count how many rounds you've shot, her father had always insisted.

  But in her frenzy to escape, Tess had forgotten her father's rule. How many times did I shoot?

  She couldn't remember. More than ten, she was sure of that. Perhaps thirteen or. The pistol would be almost empty.

  Fear chilled her despite the sweat that soaked her clothes and dripped from her face. She had to conserve her ammunition.

  Chest heaving, she came to another line of evergreens. In the darkness, she couldn't help spinning to face the blazing mansion a hundred yards away. Flames licked from her bedroom. The violation made her furious. Her past, her youth, were being destroyed. Trembling, she detected no sign of anyone chasing her and sank to the ground, scurrying beneath the farther shrubs.

  In the next mansion's yard, she realized, tense, that she couldn't keep running in this direction. It was too predictable. All her Pursuers had to do was hurry along the street in front of the house, get ahead of her, hide, and wait to kill her when she tried to leave the area. Her only hope was that the sirens, now very close, would force her hunters to flee.

  But she couldn't count on that. She had to guarantee her protection. How?

  Breathing rapidly, shaking, confused, afraid, she made an urgent choice and instead of continuing to sprint across this yard, she darted toward its rear. After passing through the darkness between a swimming pool and a tennis court, she found her way blocked by a high stone wall. She glanced around, desperate, in search of a ladder or a tree near the wall, anything that would allow her to get over the top.

  Nothing.

  Jesus.

  She retreated toward the swimming pool. Next to a maintenance shed, she found a long metal pole. The pole had a net at one end, obviously used for skimming leaves and other debris from the surface of the water.

  Hurry! She pressed the pole against the bottom of the shed, squeezing it, flexing it, twisting. The pole was strong yet pliant. Maybe.

  Her temples throbbed from the force of her rapid heartbeat. No choice.

  Tess crammed the pistol into her purse, which still hung securely from her wrist. With equal speed, she gripped one end of the pole, shifted the other end toward the back of the yard, lifted the pole, and raced toward the wall.

  When the far end of the pole was five feet from the wall, she rammed it into the lawn and hurtled upward.


  It had been years since she'd practised this event. In track-and-field, pole vaulting had never been her favorite activity. But now she had to pretend she was in the Olympics. As her body arched higher, she felt the pole begin to bend. Its metal creaked. If it snaps.!