Free Books of Blood by Clive Barker Page B

wounded Butterfield -'
    'I heard. But that won't stop them.'
    'We can still try the door.'
    'I think we're too late, my friend.'
    Wo!' said Harry, pushing past Valentin. The demon had given up trying to drag Swann's body to the door,
    and had  laid the magician out in the middle of thecorridor, his hands crossed on his chest. In some last mysterious act of reverence he had set folded paper bowls at Swann's head and feet, and laid a tiny origami flower at his lips. Harry lingered only long enough to re-acquaint himself with the sweetness of Swann's expression, and then ran to the door and proceeded to hack at the chains.
    It would be a long job. The assault did more damage to the axe than to the steel links. He didn't dare give up,
    however. This was their only escape route now, other than flinging themselves to their deaths from one of the windows. That he would do, he decided, if the worst came to the worst. Jump and die, rather than be their plaything.
    His arms soon became numb with the repeated blows.
    It was a lost cause; the chain was unimpaired. His despair was  further fuelled by a cry from Valentin - a high,
    weeping call that he could not leave unanswered. He left the fire door and returned past the body of Swann to the head of the stairs.
    The demons had Valentin. They swarmed on him like wasps on  a sugar stick, tearing him apart. For the briefest of moments  he  struggled free of their rage, and Harry saw the mask of humanity  in rags and  the truth glistening bloodily beneath. He was as vile as those besetting him, but Harry went to his aid anyway, as much to wound the demons as to save their prey.
    The  wielded axe did damage  this way and  that,
    sending Valentin's tormentors reeling back down the stairs, limbs lopped, faces opened. They did not all bleed. One  sliced belly spilled eggs in thousands, one wounded  head  gave birth to tiny eels, which fled to the ceiling and hung there by their lips. In the mel£e he lost sight of Valentin. Forgot about him, indeed,
    until he heard the jack-hammer again, and remembered  the broken look on Valentin's face when he'd named the thing. He'd called it the Raparee, or something like.
    And now, as his memory shaped the word, it came into sight. It shared no trait with its fellows; it had neither wings nor mane nor vanity. It seemed scarcely even to be flesh, but forged, an engine that needed only malice to keep its wheels turning.
    At its appearance, the rest retreated, leaving Harry at the top of the stairs in a litter of spawn. Its progress was slow, its half dozen limbs moving in oiled and elaborate configurations to pierce the walls of the staircase and so haul itself up. It brought to mind a man on crutches,
    throwing the sticks ahead of him and levering his weight after, but there was nothing invalid in the thunder of its body; no pain in the white eye that burned in his sickle-head.
    Harry thought he had known despair, but he had not.
    Only now  did he taste its ash in his throat. There was only the window left for him. That, and the welcoming ground. He backed  away from the top of the stairs,
    forsaking the axe.
    Valentin was in the corridor. He was not dead, as Harry had presumed, but kneeling beside the corpse of Swann, his own body  drooling from a hundred wounds. Now  he bent close to the magician. Offering his apologies to his dead master, no doubt. But no.
    There was more  to it than that. He had the cigarette lighter in his hand, and was lighting a taper. Then,
    murmuring  some prayer to himself as he went, he lowered the taper to the mouth of the magician. The origami flower caught and flared up. Its flame was oddly bright, and spread with supernatural efficiency across Swann's face and down his body. Valentin hauled himself to his feet, the firelight burnishing his scales. Hefound enough strength to incline his head to the body as its cremation began, and then his wounds overcame him.
    He  fell backwards, and lay still. Harry