The Key to Midnight

still.

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        Alex fell, jerked free of Carrera, rolled back down the trail, and sprang to his feet, acutely aware that he was not likely to get up again if he gave the big man a chance to get atop him.
        The bodybuilder was badly enough hurt that he wasn't able to reach his feet as quickly as Alex. He was still on all fours in the middle of the path, shaking his head as if to clear his mind.
        Seizing the advantage, Alex rushed forward and kicked Carrera squarely under the chin.
        The thug's head snapped back, and he fell onto his side.
        Alex was sure the kick had broken his adversary's neck, crushed his windpipe, but Carrera struggled onto his hands and knees again.
         The bastard doesn't quit.
        Alex took another kick at Carrera's head.
        The bodybuilder saw it coming, grabbed Alex's boot, toppled him, and clambered atop him, growling like a bear. He swung one huge fist.
        Alex wasn't able to duck it. The punch landed in his face, split his lips, loosened some teeth, and filled his mouth with blood.
        He was no match for Carrera in hand-to-hand combat. He had to regain his feet and be able to maneuver.
        As Carrera threw another punch, Alex thrashed and bucked. The fist missed him, drove into the trail beside his head, and Carrera howled in pain.
        Heaving harder than before, Alex threw Carrera off, crawled up the slope, clutched a tree for support, and pulled himself erect.
        Carrera was also struggling to his feet.
        Alex kicked him squarely in the stomach, which gave no more than a board fence.
        Carrera skidded in the snow, windmilled his arms, and went down on his hands and knees again.
        Cursing, Alex kicked him in the face.
        Carrera sprawled on his back in the snow, arms extended like wings. He didn't move. Didn't move. Still didn't move. Didn't move.
        Cautiously, as though he were Dr. Von Helsing approaching a coffin in which Dracula slept, Alex crept up on Carrera. He knelt at the bodybuilder's side. Even in that dim and eerily phosphorescent light, he could see that the man's eyes were open wide but blind to any sight in this world. He didn't need to fetch a wooden stake or a crucifix or a necklace of garlic, because this time the monster was definitely dead.
        He got up, turned away from Carrera, and ascended the trail, heading back toward the house.
        Anson Peterson was waiting for him in the open field just beyond the forest. The fat man was holding a gun.

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        Rotenhausen was dead.
        Joanna felt no remorse for having killed him, but she didn't experience much in the way of triumph either. She was too worried about Alex to feel anything more than fear.
        Stepping carefully to avoid the broken glass scattered across the floor, she found her ski clothes in a closet.
        As she was hurriedly dressing, she heard the steel fingers - click-click-click-click - and she looked up in terror, frozen by the hateful sound. It must have been a reflex action, a postmortem nerve spasm sending a last meaningless instruction to the mechanical hand, because Rotenhausen was stone-cold dead.
        Nevertheless, for a minute she stared at the hand. Her heart was knocking so loudly that she could hear nothing else, not even her own breathing or the wind beyond the windows. Gradually, as the hand made no new move, the fierce drumming in her chest subsided somewhat.
        When she finished dressing, as she knelt on her left knee to lace up the boot on her right foot, she spotted the small bottle from which Ursula Zaitsev had filled the syringe. It was among the litter on the floor, but it had not broken.
        She laced both boots, then picked up the bottle and pulled the seal from it. She shook a couple of drops of the drug on to the palm of her hand, sniffed, hesitated, then tasted it. She was pretty sure that it was nothing but water and that someone had switched bottles on Zaitsev.
        But who? And why?
        Puppets. They were all puppets - as Alex had said.
        Cautiously she unlocked the door and peered into the hall. No one in sight. But for the background noise of the storm, muffled by the thick walls, the house was silent.
        Room by room, she inspected the rest of that level but found no one. For almost a minute she stood on the second-floor landing, looking alternately up and down the