Twilight Eyes (66 page)

A ton of rock had come down atop the falling beam. More was going to give way in a moment—the rock face was buckling as if it were soft earth wet with rain—so we ran again, side by side because the tunnel was wide. Behind us the sounds of the cave-in grew louder, louder, until I was afraid the entire corridor was going to collapse.

The remaining charges of plastique were detonating in a single tremendous barrage, of which we heard steadily less even as we felt more. Damn, the whole mountain seemed to be quaking, its foundations shaken by massively violent tremors that could not have been induced by the plastique alone. Of course, half the mountain was honeycombed by more than a century of industrious coal mining and was therefore weakened.

And maybe the plastique had triggered other explosions of fuel oil and gas within the goblins' haven. Nevertheless it seemed as if Armageddon had befallen us ahead of schedule, and my confidence was shaken with each massive shock wave that passed through the rock.

We were coughing now because the air was filled with choking dust. Some of it sifted down from overhead, but most of it burst upon us in thick, rolling clouds carried on gusts of air from cave-ins to our rear. If we could not soon escape the ring of influence of the collapsing subterranean city, if we could not get to unshaken tunnels and clean air in the next minute or two, we would suffocate in the dust, a death that was not among the many that I had contemplated.

Furthermore, the waning flashlight beam was less able to pierce the dust mist. The yellow light was reflected and refracted by the fog of particles. More than once I became disoriented and nearly ran head-on into a wall.

The last of the explosions passed, but a dynamic process had been set in motion, and the mountainside was seeking a new order that would release long accumulated tensions and pressures, that would fill all unnatural cavities. On both sides and overhead, the mighty rock began to crack and pop in the most astonishing manner, not with the one-note rumble that you might expect but with an unharmonious symphony of queer sounds like balloons being punctured and walnuts cracked and heavy pottery smashed and bones splintered and skulls fractured; it thudded and clattered like bowling pins scattered by a ball, crackled like cellophane, clanged and crashed and boomed like a hundred husky blacksmiths wielding a hundred big hammers against a hundred iron anvils—and frequently there was even a pure, sweet ringing sound followed by an almost musical tinkling reminiscent of fine crystal being struck, being shattered.

Flakes of stone, then chips, then pebbles began raining over our heads and shoulders. Rya was screaming. I grabbed her hand, pulled her after me through the stone sleet.

Larger chunks of the treacherous ceiling began to fall, some as big as baseballs, clattering onto the floor around us. A fist-sized rock hit my right shoulder, and another hit my right arm, and I nearly dropped the flashlight. A couple of sizable missiles hit Rya too. They hurt, all right, but we kept going; we could do nothing else. I blessed Horton Bluett for having provided us with hard hats, though that protection would be insufficient if the whole place fell in on our heads. The mountain was imploding like a Krakatoa in reverse, but at least most of it was falling in our wake.

Suddenly the tremors subsided, which was such a welcome change that at first I thought I was imagining it. But in another ten steps it was clear that the worst was past us.

We reached the leading edge of the dust cloud and ran out into relatively clean air, spluttering and wheezing to clear our lungs.

My eyes were watering from the dust, and I slowed a little to blink them clear. The yellow beam of the flash pulsed and flickered constantly as the last power in the batteries was sucked away, but I saw one of our white arrows ahead.

With Rya running at my side again, we followed the sign we had left for ourselves, turned a corner into a new tunnel—

—where one of the demonkind leapt off the wall to which it had been clinging, and took Rya down onto the floor with a shrill cry of triumph and a murderous slashing of claws.

I dropped the fading flashlight, which blinked but did not go out, and I threw myself at Rya's attacker, instinctively drawing my knife rather than my pistol as I fell upon the creature. I put the blade deep into the small of its back and dragged it off her as it shrieked in agony and anger.

It reached back for me and sank the claws of one hand through the leg of my ski suit, shredding the insulated fabric. Hot pain blazed up my right calf. I knew that it had torn my flesh as well as the pants.

I slipped one arm around its neck, pulled up on its chin, ripped my blade out of its back, and slashed its throat—a series of swift actions that seemed like ballet movements and could have occupied no more than two seconds.

As blood spurted from the savaged throat of my enemy and as the thing began to seek its human form, I sensed, rather than heard, another goblin coming off a wall or ceiling behind me. I rolled away from the bleeding demon even as I withdrew my knife from it, and the second attacker crashed down on top of its dying companion instead of on me.

The pistol had fallen out of the pocket in which I'd holstered it, but it was beyond arm's reach, between me and the demon that had just leapt off the wall.

That creature swung to face me, all blazing eyes and teeth and claws and prehistoric fury. I saw its powerful haunches flex, and I barely had time to throw the knife as it launched itself at me. The blade tumbled just twice and sank into its throat. Spitting blood, blowing thick clots of blood out of its piglike snout, it fell upon me. Although the impact of the fall drove the knife all the way through its throat, the goblin managed to sink its claws through my insulated jacket and into my sides just above my hips, not deep but more than deep enough.

I heaved the dying beast off me, unable to stifle a cry of pain as its claws tore free of my flesh.

The flashlight was almost dead, but in the moon-pale glow that remained, I saw a third goblin rushing me on all fours, providing as low a profile and as narrow a target as it could manage. It had been farther away, perhaps almost at the end of this tunnel, which gave me just enough time, in spite of its speed, to dive for the pistol, raise the gun, and fire twice. The first shot missed. The second smashed into the hateful porcine face, blasting out one of its scarlet eyes. It pitched to one side, slammed against the wall, and was convulsed by death tremors.

Just when the flashlight throbbed and winked out, I thought I saw a fourth goblin creeping roachlike along the far wall. Before I could be sure of what I'd seen, we were cast into perfect blackness.

With pain bubbling like an acid in my slashed leg and burning in my punctured sides, I could not move gracefully. I dared not remain where I had been when the light had gone out, for if there
was
a fourth goblin, it would be moving stealthily toward the place where it had seen me last.

I eased over one corpse, then climbed across another, until I found Rya.

She lay facedown on the floor. Very still.

As far as I was aware, she had not moved or made a sound since the goblin had exploded off the wall and driven her to the floor. I wanted to turn her gently onto her back and feel for a pulse, speak her name, hear her respond.

I could do none of that until I was sure about the fourth goblin.

Crouching protectively over Rya, I faced out into the lightless tunnel,

cocked my head, and listened.

The mountain had grown quiet and seemed, at least temporarily, to be finished closing up its wounds. If portions of tunnel ceilings and walls were still falling back where we had come from, they were small failures that did not produce enough noise to reach us.

The darkness was deeper than that you see behind your closed eyelids. Smooth, featureless, unrelieved.

I entered into an unwanted dialogue with myself, pessimist confronting optimist:

—Is she dead?

—Don't even
think
it.

—Do you hear her breathing?

—Christ, if she's unconscious, her breathing would be shallow. She could be fine, just unconscious, breathing so shallowly that it can't be heard. All right?
All right?

—Is she dead?

—Concentrate on the enemy, damn it.

If another goblin existed, it might come from any direction. With its talent for walking on walls, it had a big advantage. It could even drop on me from the ceiling, straight down on my head and shoulders.

—Is she dead?

—Shut up!

—Because if she's dead, what does it matter whether you kill the fourth goblin? What does it matter if you ever get out of here?

—We're
both
going to get out of here.

—If you've got to go home alone, what's the point in going home at all? If this is her grave, then it might as well be yours too.

—Quiet. Listen, listen . . .

Silence.

The darkness was so perfect, so thick, so heavy that it seemed to have substance. I felt as if I could reach out and seize damp handsful of darkness, wring the blackness out of the air until light was able to shine through from somewhere.

As I listened for the soft click and scrape of demon talons on stone, I wondered what the goblins had been doing when we blundered into them. Maybe they were following our white arrows to see how we had entered their haven. Until now I hadn't realized that our signposts were as handy for them as for us. Yes, of course, they had searched every inch of their haven more than once, and after concluding that we had escaped, they had probably turned their attention, in part, to learning
how
we had escaped. Maybe these searchers had traced our route all the way out of the mountain and were returning when we encountered them. Or perhaps they had only set out to follow that trail shortly before we came rushing along behind them. Although they had taken us by surprise, they appeared to have had just a few seconds of warning that we were approaching. With more time to prepare for us, they would have killed us both—or taken us captive.

—Is she dead?

—No.

—She's so silent.

—Unconscious.

—So still.

—Shut up.

There. A scrape, a click.

I craned my neck, turned my head.

Nothing more.

Imagination?

I tried to remember how many cartridges were in the pistol's clip. It held ten rounds when fully loaded. I'd used two on the goblin that I'd shot on Sunday in the tunnel with the checkerboard lighting. Two more on the one I'd shot here. Six left. That would be plenty. Maybe I wouldn't kill the remaining enemy—if there was another one—with six shots, but that surely would be the most I'd have a chance to fire before the damn thing was all over me.

A soft slithering sound.

Straining my eyes was pointless. I strained them, anyway.

Blackness as deep as that in the bottom of God's boot.

Silence.

But . . .
there
. Another click.

And an odd smell. The sour smell of goblin breath.

Where?

Overhead.

I fell onto my back, atop Rya, squeezed off three shots into the ceiling, heard one ricochet off stone, heard an inhuman scream, and did not have time to fire the final three rounds because the badly wounded goblin crashed to the floor beside me. Sensing me, it howled and lashed out, got one of its strangely jointed but monstrously strong arms around my head, pulled me against it, and sank its teeth into my shoulder. It probably thought it was going for my neck, for a quick kill, but the darkness and its own pain had disoriented it. As it tore its teeth free of me, taking some meat with it, I had just enough strength and presence of mind remaining to thrust the pistol under its chin, tight against the base of its throat, and pull off the last three shots in the pistol, blowing its brains out the top of its skull.

The dark tunnel began to spin.

I was going to pass out.

That was no good. There might be a fifth goblin. If I passed out, I might never wake up again.

And I had to tend to Rya. She was hurt. She needed me.

I shook my head.

I bit my tongue.

I took deep, cleansing breaths, and I squeezed my eyes shut very hard to make the tunnel stop spinning.

I said aloud, “I will
not
pass out.”

Then I passed out.

Though I'd not had the leisure to consult my watch at the precise moment that I'd fainted and therefore had to rely on instinct, I did not think I had been out cold for very long. A minute or two at most.

When I regained consciousness, I lay for a moment, listening for the dry-leaf-windblown scuttle of a goblin. Then I realized that even a minute in a faint would have been the end of me if another of the demonkind had been in the tunnel.