Karl Wagner - Why Not You and I?

The door on the left of the fuselage opened. Twisting his big frame past the door and ducking the wing strut, John Chance dropped to the ground. Warily he crossed the split-rail fence and came toward the cabin. The porch lay in shadow, but he could see the two figures who stood there. Chance wondered at their silence.

“John!” he heard Kirsten’s choked cry.

Chance sprinted to the porch. “Come on!” he called. “Compton’s holding her revved up. Let’s get out of here before Dread comes calling!” Kirsten’s voice was frightened. She held out her hand to him. “Dread has already been here.” In the moonlight there seemed to be a droplet of bright blood on her white palm. It was a dime-sized seal of carved red stone, probably carnelian. Its device was an equilateral triangle from which spread a nimbus of flame. Within the triangle curled a salamander, its tiny jaws wrath-fully agape with a breath of flame.

“He was here just a minute before you landed,” Wells explained, still shaken. “Just all of a sudden there Dread was, standing right where you are like he’d dropped down out of a tree. I sat here like a bird that’s been hypnotized by a snake, and I guess if Dread had told me to crawl down his throat, I’d’ve had to try, because I was like a stranger in my own body. He handed me that little chip of stone and directed me to give it to Miss von Brocken with his respects, and I couldn’t do otherwise even though when I looked again Dread had fair disappeared.”

“I’m sure you couldn’t,” Chance nodded grimly. “Not if Dread caught you staring out here into moonlight and shadow. His hypnotic powers are enormous.”

“I was inside,” Kirsten added. “Using a mirror to call you here. I’d drawn a Solomon’s Seal across the doorway.”

“Protection against some of Dread’s creatures, though not against Dread himself,” Chance told her.

“This is Hampton Wells,” Kirsten remembered to introduce them. “And John Chance. Mr. Wells killed two of Dread’s hirelings when they were hunting me this evening.”

Chance offered his hand. “Mr. Wells, I’m in your debt. But I’m afraid you’ve cut yourself in on a deadly piece of business.”

The mountaineer’s handshake was firm. “Guess I thought it was a fight worth winning, Mr. Chance. Been trouble in these parts since this spring when this devil Dread sent his people prying about for information on the lost mines of the Ancients.”

Chance gauged the man. “I found out some little about that just lately. I’d guess I’d have found out a good bit more if Cullin Shelton had lived to tell what he knew.”

The circle of red stone glinted evilly in the moonlight. In the pasture the Stinson’s engine throbbed impatiently.

“We’ll have to hurry,” Chance warned. “Dread must only have held his hand until he had us all together.”

“What is it?” Kirsten asked, staring fixedly at the stone sigil.

“The sign of the salamander,” Chance said tensely. “Dread has marked you for its victim.” Wells moved faster than thought. His big hand lashed out and slapped the deadly sigil from the girl’s grasp — like brushing off a crawling spider. The carnelian seal fell to the puncheon floor, and Wells’s heavy boot stamped hard — as a man stamps his heel at the striking head of a venomous snake.

“Don’t!” Chance shouted in horror. He lunged for Wells, knocking him off-balance. The boot heel smashed inches away from the skittering bit of red stone.

Wells staggered for balance, goggled at the other man.

“Why did you do that?” Chance demanded, swiftly retrieving the salamander carving.

Wells shook his head. “Why, I don’t know. The thought just came to me…”

“Dread’s thought came to you is more likely,” Chance supplied. “This talisman explains Dread’s control over the salamander. He marks his intended victim with the sign of the salamander, then sends his elemental seeking the person who bears the sigil.”

“Then destroy the thing!” Wells argued.

“A spell doesn’t work that way!” Chance insisted. “The only release will be to give the sigil back to Dread. If it’s destroyed, that’s impossible — and the salamander will still seek its prey!”

“But last night…?” Kirsten began.

“Dread must have somehow found a way to pass the salamander sign to Shelton — and to Wingfield — and to any other victims of his sorcery.”

“But John never received any such talisman.”

“Yes, he did.” Chance dug out the rolled envelope from his inside pocket, tore it open. A mate to the first sinister stone carving slid onto his palm.

“I found this near where your Packard smashed to a stop,” he explained. “I wasn’t certain what it meant until Dread took such pains to present you with this one here tonight.

My guess is Dread had one of them placed in your car at some point.”

“I was thrown clear just as we went over,” Kirsten filled in. “Knocked unconscious.”

“Doubtless saved your life. Presumably Dread’s salamander would have attacked any living presence in the immediate circle of the sign’s influence.”

“Then why are you carrying that thing, John? It’s deadly!”

“Because I’d hoped to find Dread here and return the sigil to him. Then his spell would have backfired on him. It seemed worth the gamble.”

“Suppose we just leave these devil’s signs setting here on the stoop and make a run for it,” Wells suggested in a practical tone.

“It won’t help Kirsten. Dread personally presented her with the sigil. Unless she finds a way to give it back to Dread, the salamander will come for her regardless — according to the laws of magic, she and the sign of the salamander are bound together because she accepted it. Our best chance is to get back to Knoxville with this sigil and use the facilities I have at my disposal there in an effort to break the spell and exorcise Dread’s sending before the salamander seeks us out even there.”

“You’re forgetting,” Wells stated. “Dread didn’t give Kirsten that salamander sign-thing. I did. And now, ma’am, I’ll be obliged if you’ll return that devil sign to me.”

“Brave of you, Wells,” Chance clapped his shoulder. “But no use. You were acting under Dread’s influence at the time — so in a sense you were only an extension of Dread himself.”

Wells set his jaw. “All the same, give it back to me. Then you two make a dash for it in your plane. That’ll split the trail, and besides which I’m not going to be run off from my own house and land by any kind of low witchery.”

Chance started to protest further. A sudden roar of the aircraft engine spun him around. “Moore!” he yelled. “You fool!”

Silver in the moonlight, the monoplane jerked into forward motion. Engine building power, it jolted across the rocky pasture — gathering speed. The high wings barely cleared sudden outcrops of limestone as it lurched toward the mouth of the cove.

“The madman! He’ll never reach flying speed in time to clear the trees!” Kirsten moaned.

A silver-winged juggernaut, the Stinson raced suicidally toward the tree line. With a quick rush the plane was airborne. The Lycoming radial poured on power. It headed straight for the waiting trees.

Then with inches to spare the plane staggered for altitude — clearing the treetops at the last instant. For a moment they saw it hover ghostlike over the ridges — then the monoplane disappeared into the night — taking with it Chance’s equipment and their only means to escape.

“Forget that one,” Chance growled. “We’re stuck here on our own!”

“I don’t understand..Kirsten stammered. “Compton deserted us!”

“I don’t get it either. I can’t believe Moore’s nerve broke. Either I misjudged the man and the depth of his jealousy — or Dread has shown his hand again.”