She could not deny the truth, though, and if Dean Thobicus, too, had fallen to the darkness, then the library was doomed.
Danica took a deep, steadying breath, making no immediate move to resist, and the vampire smiled wickedly, revealing its fangs, only inches from Danica's face.
Danica's foot flashed up in front of her face, slammed Thobicus under the nose, and jerked his head back violently. The monk's arms worked in a fast circle, fists crossing in front of her chest, then going out and down over the dean's elbows. As strong as the vampire's grasp was, Danica's leverage pulled her free. Up came her foot a second time, again slamming the monster under the nose, doing no real damage, but buying Danica the moment she needed to break free.
She was back on the staircase and thought for a moment to go down, but Rufo was laughing, ascending the stairs behind her.
Up went Danica, to the third floor. A zombie stood silently in the stairway, but offered no resistance as Danica drove her fist into its bloated face, then heaved it down behind her to impede her pursuers.
She was free in the hallway of the third floor then, but where to go? She looked right, to the south, and then left, and found herself running north, toward Cadderly's room.
Rufo's feet made not a sound as he glided along the floor, but Danica heard his mocking laughter right behind her as she skidded into Cadderly's room and slammed the door in the vampire's face and dropped the locking bar into place. She found yet another zombie in the room, standing passively, and she hit it with a brutal barrage of kicks and punches that destroyed it in seconds. Its chest popped open as it fell to the floor, and Danica felt waves of nausea wash over her.
Those waves were stolen by fear when Rufo's heavy fist slammed the door.
"Where will you run, sweet Danica?" the vampire chided. A second slam rattled the bar, threatened to knock the door off its hinges. Purely on instinct, Danica threw her weight against the door, bracing with all her considerable strength.
The pounding stopped, but Danica did not relax.
She saw the green vapor then, Rufo's fog, wafting in under the door, and there was no way she could stop it. She staggered across the room, mesmerized by the vampire's transformation, thinking she was doomed.
The excited chatter of a squirrel cleared her thoughts. Cadderly's room was one of the few in the library that sported a fairly large window, which the young priest often climbed through to sit on the roof and feed cacasa-nuts to Percival.
Danica leaped over the bed.
"Where will you run?" the vampire asked again, resuming his corporeal form. Rufo got his answer in the form of stinging sunlight as Danica cracked and tore apart the boards blocking the window.
"Impudence!" Rufo roared. Danica growled in reply and tore another board free of its mounting. She saw Percival then, through the glass, hopping about in circles on the roof - dear Percival, who had saved her life.
The light felling on Rufo was indirect, for the window faced east, to the Shining Plains, and the sun was on its way toward the western horizon. Still, the vampire would not approach, would not dare chase Danica out into the daylight
"I'll be back for you, Rufo," Danica, remembering Dorigen, promised grimly. "I'll be back with Cadderly." She took a board and smashed out the glass.
Rufo snarled and took a step toward her, but was driven back by the light He ripped the door's locking bar from its supports and tore open the portal, and Danica thought he meant to flee.
Dean Thobicus stood in the hall. He brought his hand up defensively as soon as the door went wide and the weak daylight reached him.
"Catch her!" Rufo screamed at him.
Thobicus took a step forward, despite his mind's protests. He was a creature of the dark now and could not go into the light! He looked plaintively to Rufo, but there was no compromise in the master vampire's expression.
"Catch her!" Rufo growled again.
Thobicus felt himself moving forward against the pain, against his mind's protests. Rufo compelled him, as Cadderly had once compelled him. He had given himself to the dark and could not deny Rufo's will!
Thobicus knew he was a pitiful thing then. He had been dominated in life by Cadderly, and now in death by Rufo. They were one and the same, he decided. One and the same.
Only as he approached the window did Dean Thobicus realize the truth. Cadderly had been guided by morals; Cadderly would not make him jump out the window. Cadderly, Deneir, was the light
But Thobicus had chosen the dark, and Rufo, his master, was guided by no moral code, was compelled by nothing except his own desires.
"Catch her!" the vampire's voice, the vampire's will, demanded.
Danica had not broken enough glass to go safely through, and so she spun about and smashed the board over the approaching vampire's head.
Thobicus growled at her, and there was no joy in his apparent victory, for he knew then that he was a victim, not the victor.
Danica shoved the splintered remnants of the board at Thobicus's chest, thinking to drive the makeshift stake through his heart He got a hand up to deflect the blow, though, and the jagged wood sank deep into his stomach.
Thobicus looked at the monk, seeming almost surprised. For a long moment, they studied each other, and Danica thought the dean seemed somehow sad and remorseful.
Rufo's will shot through Thobicus's mind again, and his thoughts were not his own.
Danica and Thobicus moved together, both breaking for the window. They went through in a clinch, glass tearing at Danica's exposed arms.
Onto the roof they rolled, Thobicus clutching tightly and Danica not daring to break the momentum, knowing that if they stopped moving, she was caught and would be dragged back in to face Rufo. Over and over they went; Thobicus tried to bite Danica, and she wedged her arm in his face, holding him at bay.
For both of them the world had become a spinning blur.
Percival's chattering became a scream of protest as Danica and Thobicus plunged from the roof.
Nowhere to Run
The vampire's fangs sought her neck, and Danica was too engaged in keeping the wild thing at bay to concentrate on landing properly. She jammed her elbow under the vampire's chin, pushing with all her strength, and twisted to put Thobicus beneath her. They flew apart under the weight of impact, to an accompanying snap that sounded like the breaking of a thick tree branch.
The vampire wasn't even dazed by the fall, but as he sprang back to his feet and rushed at Danica, compelled still by Kierkan Rufo's demands, Thobicus staggered, then looked about, as if confused. The light of day washed over him. Danica whimpered as she tried to stand, and found that her ankle had shattered, the bone tearing out through the skin. Pained by every movement, the stubborn monk got up on her good knee and launched herself forward, her hands grabbing tight to the vampire's ankle.
All she had wanted was to get away, but now it was Thobicus who wanted to flee, to get back into the dark comfort of the library. Danica didn't want that to happen. She could see the agony in his expression, and she knew from legends she had heard as a child that the daylight would peel the skin from his bones. Even in her intense pain, in her horrifying dilemma, the monk kept her wits enough to understand that destroying Thobicus now would be a good thing, would make the necessary trip back to purge the library that much easier.
Danica held on like a bulldog. Thobicus battered her about the head, kicked and screamed. One of Danica's eyes swelled and closed. She heard the crackle of cartilage as her nose shattered, and the pain in her ankle did not relent, even intensified to the point where she had to fight hard just to keep her senses.
Then she lay in the cold mud, in her own blood, holding nothing. Distantly she heard the retreating vampire's diminishing screams.
Thobicus ran straight for the library's front doors. Every muscle trembled from the strain, from the burn of the daylight, and he was a weakened and pitiful thing. He hurled himself against the wooden barrier and was repelled. He staggered backward and tumbled into the dirt. He could see the hole in the door where Danica had kicked, could see the cool dark beyond, beckoning to him.
A patch of skin above the vampire's right eye melted and drooped, blurring his vision. He went back for the doors, but swayed in his path and missed, falling hard against the stone wall.
"How could you do this to me?" he cried, but his voice was no more than a whisper. "How?"
The beleaguered vampire stumbled as much as ran along the wall, to the library's edge and down the side of the building. There was a tunnel somewhere to the south, he knew, a dark, cool tunnel.