Vittorio's face was twisted with surprise and pain. He blinked at the shotgun, then at me, and then at the stump of his right hand.
I couldn't hear or see the stopwatch anymore, but my head provided the sound effect. Tickticktickticktick. How much time was left? Less than sixty seconds?
Around me, the ghouls, recovered from their moment of pain, began to let out a steady, low growl, like the rumbling engines of several dozen motorcycles. I kept my eyes focused on their boss. If I took a moment to get a good look at all the bits of feral anatomy around me that might start ripping into my flesh at any second, I would probably cry. That would be unmanly.
"B-back!" Vittorio stammered. Then he said something in a language that sounded vaguely familiar, but that I didn't understand. He repeated it in a half scream, and the ghouls edged a couple of inches away from us.
Ticktickticktick.
"This is what happens," I told Vittorio. "I take my people. I go through the gate. I close it. You get to live." I leaned into the shotgun a little, making him flinch. "Or we can all go down together. I'm feeling ambivalent toward which way we go, so I'll leave it up to you."
He licked his lips. "Y-you're bluffing. Pull that trigger, and the ghouls will kill everyone. You won't l-let them die for the pleasure of killing me."
"It's been a long day. I'm tired. Not thinking real clearly. And the way I see it, you got me pretty much dead to rights here, Vitto." I narrowed my eyes and spoke very quietly. "Do you really think I'll let myself go down without taking you with me?"
He stared at me for a long moment, and licked his lips.
"G-go," he said, then. "Go."
"Thomas!" I shouted. "Wakey, wakey! Now is not the time to lie down and die."
I heard my brother groan. "Harry?"
"Lara, can you hear me?"
"Quite," she said. Thomas's older sister was already on her feet, from the sound, and her voice was coming from close behind me.
"Thomas, get Marcone and get him through the gate." I gave Vittorio a fierce glare. "Don't move. Don't even twitch."
Vittorio, his face in agony, held up his left hand, fingers spread. He was bleeding, a lot, and started shivering. There wasn't any fight left in his face. He'd hit me with his best shot, and I'd apparently shrugged it off. I think it had scared the hell out of him. Losing his hand hadn't helped his morale any, either. "Don't shoot," he said. "Just... d-don't shoot." He shot a glance around at the ghouls and said, "L-let them go."
I heard Marcone let out a groan, and Thomas grunted with effort. "Okay," Thomas said from behind me. "I'm through."
I kept the gun on Vittorio and stood up, trying not to let the barrel waver. How many seconds did I have left? Thirty? Twenty? I've heard about people who can keep track of wild situations like this while keeping a steady count, but apparently I wasn't one of them. I took a step back, and felt Lara's back pressing against mine. From the corner of my eye, I could see that the ghouls had spread out all around us. If she hadn't been there, one of them could have blind-sided me without any trouble the second I was a couple of feet away from Vittorio. Gulp.
I took a step back, forcing myself to move smoothly, steadily, when my instincts were screaming at me to run.
"Three more steps," Lara told me in a whisper. "A little more to your left."
I corrected the direction of my next step, trusting her word. One step more, and I could hear winter wind sighing behind me. Silver moonlight shone on the barrel of the shotgun.
And then I found out whether or not Cowl was actually there.
There was a surge of power, an abrasive scream against my arcane senses, and the offspring of a comet and a pterodactyl came hurtling out of the darkness at the far end of the cavern. My eyes had adjusted enough to see a dim oval of reddish light that outlined a heavily cloaked figure - Cowl, standing in his own gate.
"Master!" Vittorio cried, his voice slurred.
"Look out!" I screamed, and thrashed behind me with my arm as I ducked and lurched to one side, trying to sweep Lara out of the flying thing's path as I did. It missed us by inches, but we got out of the way.
Cowl's leathery, rasping voice hissed something in a slithering tongue, and a second surge of power lashed invisibly across the cavern - not at us, but at my gate.
And as quickly as that, my gate began to close, the opening sewing itself shut like a Ziploc bag - starting with the end closest to me.
Tickticktickticktick.
The gate was closing far more quickly than I could have gotten up and moved. I wasn't getting out. But Lara might.
"Lara!" I shouted. "Go!"
Something with the strength of a freight train and the speed of an Indy car seized my duster and hauled on it so hard that it wrenched my neck and nearly dislocated my arms.
"Dresden!" called Marcone's voice from the closing gate. "Nineteen!"
I hurtled through the air. Looking wildly around showed me that Lara had seized me and leaped for the far end of the collapsing gate.
"Eighteen!" came Marcone's shout.
Lara and I flew through empty and unremarkable air.
The gate had closed.
We missed it.
Chapter Forty-Two
The only light was the dim scarlet glow from Cowl's gate, and everything had become blood and shadows. The eyes of dozens of ghouls burned like nearly dead coals as they turned toward us, reflecting that lurid luminescence.
"Lara," I hissed. "This cavern goes up in seventeen seconds, and there are ghouls in the tunnel out."
"Empty night," Lara swore. Her voice was thready with pain and fear. "What can I do?"
Good question. There had to be... Wait. There might be a way to survive this. I was too tired to work any magic, but...
"You can trust me," I said. "That's what you can do."
She turned her pale, beautiful, gore-smattered face to me. "Done."
"Get us to the tunnel's mouth."
"But if there are ghouls there already - "
"Hey!" I said. "Tick, tick!"
Before I'd gotten to the end of the first tick, Lara had seized me again and hauled us across the floor to the mouth of the tunnel. Behind me, Cowl was shouting something, and so was Vittorio, and the ghouls set up a howl and were running after us. Only one of the ghouls was close enough to get in the way, but Lara's wicked little wavy-bladed sword ripped straight across its eyes and left the monster momentarily stunned with pain.
Lara dumped me at the mouth of the tunnel, and I took a couple of steps back in, checking the smooth tunnel walls as I shook out my shield bracelet. That demonic flying thing of Cowl's banked around for another pass.