Stephen Brust - The Gypsy

More shots. The beautiful strangler was startled; She turned to find their source. With a major effort, Stepovich scraped his head on the cold paving stones. There, at the corner of his vision, was Durand. He was walking toward them, his pistol held out in both his hands, wavering like a dowser's stick. He was firing at Her from point-blank range. The woman laughed Her wonderful laugh, and the ringing shout of it smashed against Durand and flung him like a toy.

A distraction. There was a cop inside Stepovich's head, yelling at him. She's distracted. Use the time,Protect your partner. You're going to die anyway, draw her attention to yourself, give Durand a chance. Die like a cop, you damn well lived like one, and it ruined everything you ever thought you wanted.

Stepovich wanted to lay still and die quietly. There was nothing more he could do here. But someone,somewhere, was playing music, fiddle music. The notes plucked at him like fingers at his sleeve, scraped his nerves raw. He couldn't die. Not while that music was playing. But another man was dying nearby. One of the gypsies. The body next to him was Timmy's. Damn, who got him? Stepovich wondered for an instant. And then remembered. The knife still lay where it had fallen. It pointed at Stepovich like an accusing finger.

The knife. The goddamned knife. All this time, the same fucking knife. Cut my life to ribbons.

She was choking the Gypsy still, but he could almost feel the hands squeezing his own windpipe. He couldn't pay attention to it. All he could think of was how much he hated that knife.

It was with a curious sense of inevitability that he felt it under his hand. The touch of it was like a shot of whiskey, only in his blood instead of his stomach.Galvanizing. He closed his hand on it, then pushed down on the hand that clenched the weapon, forcing himself up from the floor and to his knees. His other arm and hand were a dangling weight that bumped against him as he moved. There was pain, too, incredible pain somewhere, but he wasn't sure it was his. He didn't have the strength to stand, but he didn't need to. His vision was going fuzzy and useless. He blinked, trying to clear it, imagined he saw Ed's grinning face behind the Lady, egging him on. Stepovich scraped forward, a crawling step, and the rasp of his shoes on the stone floor turned Her eyes to him, even as he raised the knife. Beautiful eyes. They burned into his, and froze him to stillness.

He would have fought Her if he could, but he had no strength of will-not when She looked at him. His peripheral vision tried to tell him that Ed's hands were lifting, falling on the Lady's shoulders. Ed clutched her, whispered, "Gotcha!"

In one startled instant, Her power wavered. She struck Ed aside as if he were made of straw and newspaper. Stepovich thought he heard the crack of ribs.It didn't matter. Ed had known what it would cost him, to buy Stepovich that instant. It would not be wasted.

He sheathed the knife in the beautiful woman's breast.

A scream; a woman's or a fiddle's, he could not tell. But he could pull cold air into his hot lungs, and he could lift his head. The scream again, so sweet it could only be Luci dying-sent back to where She belonged, there to wait for him, ah, not now. There was Raven, waltzing into the room as he played Her death on his fiddle strings, while Owl on the floor feebly tapped out the staggering beats of Her failing heart.Csucskari rolled his head and saw Her on the floor,thrashing with a knife, his knife, transfixing Her white gown to a red growing stain. The Wolf lay discarded,his eyes open in slits, but he seemed to feel Csucskari staring at him, because, for an instant, his eyes widened. Their gazes met, and the nods they exchanged cost them the world in pain. Then the Wolf's eyes closed tightly and he turned his head away.

It made no sense. The task had been his, and his alone. It made no sense at all. Csucskari felt something sting his eyes.

There was an old woman, and he found he knew her name- Cynthia. Cynthia Kacmarcik. She had been gripping the Wolf's cub by the shoulder, but now that it was all over, she released her. Cynthia turned her eyes to another old woman. Madam Moria. They opened their arms to one another, crossed the room like dancers treading a measure. "I found it, sister,"said Madam Moria. "The lock of hair. I destroyed it."

"I know, sister," said the other. "It set me free."

They met without touching. They held each other in a gaze that would probably last forever. What passed between them not even the Gypsy could know, but at last Cynthia Kacmarcik gave a barely audible sigh and fell apart. She became bits of white bone china and a bundle of straw, a scrap of burlap and a tangle of string. For one instant the simulacrum stood, a mocking scarecrow of the soul it had held trapped. Then it tumbled to the floor, a scatter of junk.Moria spurned it with her foot as she turned aside."It is over," she said to no one and everyone. "We must go quickly now."

The fiddle spoke a single phrase, sliding down the scale and into stillness.

As if in reply, cracks of yellow light appeared soundlessly in the walls like curtains parting. A pale blue wind whispered through them, and the freshness of it made him realize how bad the stench of the chambers had been. There was a groan, as of two worlds parting, deeper than sound.

Daniel lowered his bow. Csucskari lifted his head,fixed him with a look. Almost, almost he had been too late. But in the final count, blood had told, and the Raven had flown with his brothers. Daniel lowered the fiddle from his throat, let it ease down to his side. "Lore lei," he said, but the young woman he addressed did not turn. Step by slow step, she was advancing on the Wolf's body. Daniel lifted a hand,reached after her, but he could not touch her, not in a room lit by flickering fire and wan daylight, not where the dead lay grouped with the wounded, the demons with the men.

Luci still twitched and thrashed on Her back in an obscene dance, a parody of a woman in passion, the knife still in Her chest as She gnashed Her teeth.Blood spurted from the knife wound, then slowed as Her movements slowed, as the Owl's hesitant fingers tapped out the last beats of Her heart: Teckadum, teckadum, teckadum.

Hollo turned away from the young woman, back to his brother. Csucskari bled for what was dying in his eyes, but Hollo knelt down, and lifted his brother by the shoulders. Csucskari felt his strength returning."It's over, brother," Hollo told him.

Csucskari nodded and shuddered. Gently he freed himself from his brother's grasp, managed to stand on his own. Managed to walk to Luci's body, to crouch down beside it. He put his hand to the knife."I'll need this," he said.

"Probably," Hollo sighed.

Csucskari drew the knife from the body. He felt the last of Her life go with it. "Help our brother," he said.

"Owl can help himself," Raymond said gruffly. He heaved himself to his feet. For a long moment he and Daniel looked at one another as if they were strangers.Then he lifted his shoulders in a long, slow shrug."In the end, you came," he said.

"Yes," said Daniel. "I did." But his eyes followed Laurie as she sank to her knees by her father, and there was a hollowness in his voice. "How many times, though, my brothers? If there is another time,another chance to escape all of this, do you think I will not take it? I don't know."

The ground gave a bare tremble beneath them.

The two policeman, young and old, were supporting one another. The young one bled from his arm,and from the bites of the Fair Lady's minions. The old one just looked very old as they gathered around the fallen Wolf.

"Laurie," said the old one gently. But she knelt by her father, gripping his good hand in both of hers.

"Laurie," he said weakly, almost inaudibly. "You can't be here. You can't be here."