The Wolf's Hour Read Online Free PDF Page B

into a holy shrine of violence. He picked up a mace-a wooden handle with a three-foot-long chain attached to an iron ball of jagged spikes-and whirled it gleefully over his head. He advanced on Michael Gallatin.
    The medieval weapon shrieked as it swung for Michael’s skull, but he ducked its arc and backpedaled out of range. The mace swung back the other way before he could get his balance, and the iron spikes bit brown terrycloth, but Michael leaped back, colliding with another suit of armor. As it fell, he grasped a metal shield and whirled around, catching the mace’s next blow as it came at his legs. Sparks flew off the polished metal, the vibration thrumming up Michael’s arm to his bruised shoulder. And then the killer lifted the mace over his head to crush Michael’s skull-and Gallatin threw the shield, its edge hitting the other man’s knees, chopping his legs out from under him. As the killer pitched down, Michael started to kick him in the face but checked himself: a broken foot would not help his agility.
    The killer was getting to his feet, the mace still in hand. Michael darted to the wall and pulled a broadsword off its hooks, and then he turned to face the next attack.
    The German warily regarded the sword and picked up a battle-ax, casting the shorter weapon aside. They faced each other for a few seconds, each looking for an opening, and then Michael feinted with a thrust and the battle-ax clanged it aside. The killer lunged in, avoided a swing of the sword, the battle-ax upraised. But Michael’s sword was there to deflect it; the ax hit the sword’s hilt in a burst of blue sparks, snapped off the blade, and left Gallatin standing with a nub of nothing. The killer swung the ax at his prey’s face, his body braced for the pleasure of collision.
    Michael had, in a split second, judged the fine angles and dimensions of impact. He realized that a step backward would lose him his head, as would a step to either side. So he moved in, crowding the killer, and since blows to the face seemed to do no good, he drove his fist into the exposed hollow of the armpit, his knuckles gouging for the pressure point of veins and arteries.
    The killer cried out in pain, and as his arm went dead he lost control of the ax. It left his hand and thunked two inches deep into the oak-paneled wall. Michael hit him in the ruined nose, snapping his head back, and followed with a blow to the point of the chin. The German grunted, spewed blood, and fell back against the second-floor railing. Michael followed him, drew his arm back to strike at the throat-but suddenly the assassin’s arms streaked out, the fleshy hands closing on his neck once more and lifting him off his feet.
    Michael thrashed, but he had no traction. The killer was holding him almost at arm’s length, and in another few seconds the idea would come to throw Michael over the railing to the tiled floor below. There was an oak beam two feet above Michael’s head, but it was smooth and polished and there was nothing to hold on to. The blood roared in his brain, oily sweat surfaced from his pores-and deep within, something else stretched and began to awaken from a sleep of shadows.
    The fingers pressed into his arteries, interrupting the flow of blood. The killer shook him, partly in disdain and partly to secure a tighter grip. The end was near; the German could see the other man’s eyes beginning to bulge.
    Michael’s arms reached up, fingers grazing the oak. His body trembled violently, a movement that the assassin interpreted as the nearing of death.
    For him, it was.
    Michael Gallatin’s right hand began to twist and contort. Beads of sweat ran down his face, and utter agony played across his features. The black hair on the back of his hand rippled, the sinews shifting. There were little popping noises of cracking bones. The hand gnarled, the knuckles swelled, the flesh turning mottled and thick, the black hair beginning to spread.
    “Die, you son of a