Free Medusa's Web by Tim Powers Page B

the window to her left, holding a curtain aside and peering out, her narrow face and hair backlit by morning sunlight.
    Madeline felt the remembered subsonic roar—it rippled her view of the room, and she shivered with a current that almost made her feel that she could leap right out of this unfamiliar house. Usabo is nearby, she thought. Why did I do this?
    â€œNatacha,” the woman said without looking away from the street, “he won’t let you leave him.”
    Madeline choked, for she had tried to inhale just as her mouth began to speak. “He doesn’t need me, Fridi,” she found herself saying. “He’s got you. Hell, he’s got lots of girls.” She realized that the odd thumping sensation in her palms was her fingers snapping. “Do you see my taxi?”
    The woman turned to look at her. “I don’t see it. He might let you go, but he won’t let you take that away.” She nodded toward the knees of the body Madeline was occupying, and Madeline found herself looking down.
    In her lap was the brown folder with the Medusa head imprinted in gold on the cover; the remembered red wax seal over the ribbon held it closed. Her hands were unfamiliar, with long tapering fingers and painted nails, and a silver chain bracelet was draped around her right wrist.
    â€œIt’s mine,” came the voice out of her mouth. “And I’ll be gone, where he can’t find me, or it—long before he gets home from his hunting trip with DeMille.”
    â€œOh, Jesus!” exclaimed the woman, stepping quickly back from the window—and a moment later Madeline heard boots thumping on a porch beyond the front door, and then the door was kicked inward.
    Madeline found her viewpoint rising as she faced the man who stood silhouetted in the doorway. She could see that he was curly haired and broad shouldered, and the object in his right hand was a long shotgun.
    â€œYou leave me, Fridi?” he shouted at the woman by the window, his voice seeming to shake the walls of the parlor. Madeline could see suitcases out there on the porch by his feet.
    And then her voice was saying, “ I’m leaving you, Kosloff.” Beyond the man, she saw an antique checkered taxi slow to a stop at the curb. “Get out of my way.”
    â€œDamn,” the man shouted, pointing at her hand, “you not leave with the Beardsley!” Madeline could feel the rough texture of the Medusa folder against her fingers. Outside, the taxi’s horn honked.
    â€œI will,” she said, and moved to step past him toward the door and the sunlight outside—
    â€”and the shotgun barrel came up and fired, and the deafening explosion knocked her off her feet. Her ears were ringing and all she could see was the afterimage of the muzzle flash, but she rolled into a crouch on the carpet and ran away from him, toward a hallway.
    Another stunning boom sounded behind her, and a fist-sized patch of the wall ahead of her burst into dust and stinging fragments. She gripped a door frame and swung around it into a bedroom—the window ahead of her was open, and as two more blasts shook the house, she crossed the room in three awkward strides and dove through the window without touching the frame.
    She tumbled through the green leaves and pink flowers of an oleander bush. As she rolled over in the grass, she saw that her skirt wasdark and gleaming with blood, and a pain like hot coals pressing into her thigh finally caught her attention. The first blast of shot had not entirely missed her.
    Limping now and sobbing through clenched teeth, she flailed across the lawn to the old taxi and wrenched open the rear door.
    â€œGo,” she said shrilly as she threw herself in across the seat, and the driver stepped on the accelerator.
    â€œDamn, lady,” he said, exhaling, “that guy shoot you?”
    â€œGet me to a hospital,” she said, clutching her thigh with both hands above