The Death Ray

Prologue

He closed his eyes just before his chin hit the cold marble floor, smashing his teeth together and cracking at least one tooth. His hands, numb at the ends of shaking, flailing arms followed soon after, though he'd meant for them to hit the floor first and save the teeth. Thick, hot, coppery blood covered his tongue. When he opened his mouth to draw a deep breath into protesting lungs, he coughed, sending a spray of blood and chips of teeth fanning across the floor in front of him.

"Get up," he grunted to himself, trying to ignore the terrified quaver in his voice. "For Fharlanghn's sake, get up and run!"

He got to his feet, stumbled once, then ran. His knees shook so badly he could make barely half the speed he knew he was capable of, and the rhythmic shudder of the floor didn't help. His racing, terrified mind went back and forth between the urge to run faster and the need to sacrifice some speed in order not to fall again.

The floor shuddered again, and a dull boom rippled through the high-ceilinged hall. The memory of a brief glimpse of the behemoth chasing him was all he needed to make his legs finally move faster. The air tossed his long, clean hair behind him as he ran, moving alternately through shadow, candlelight, shadow, and candlelight as he passed the gilded sconces set along the walls.

He coughed again. Blood dribbled from his chin and onto his expensive, silk tunic. The rapier tapping against his left leg as he ran was more a piece of jewelry than a weapon, and he had no illusions about either its strength or his own swordsmanship. The thing chasing him would surely snap the fine blade like a dried twig.

He passed the huge, double doors that closed off his parents' private suite and kept running. He knew no one would be there. The house was empty, save for a skeleton staff of servants and maybe half a dozen guards who he was sure were already dead. The family was gone to the country for the warm summer months, when the smells of the Trade Quarter grew strong enough to fight the prevailing winds and descend upon the collection of fine manor homes on the Duke's Island.

Though he remembered insisting that he stay behind, as he ran through the grave-quiet corridors, the heavy air disturbed only by those thunderous footsteps, he couldn't recall why. There was a girl or two in the winding alleys of the Merchant's Quarter, to be sure but he couldn't have been willing to sacrifice himself for any of them.

Of course, he'd had no idea an enormous, heavy-footed monster would come to kill him.

"It can't be me," he whispered, streaks of blood punctuating each word, splashing back up into his face to trickle through his neatly trimmed goatee.

Why in all the planes would this thing come to kill him? He'd made it a point, as his father always advised, to steer clear of wizards, gnomes, and other dangerous types. He kept his dalliances discreet and was careful to avoid women with jealous husbands or protective brothers. As he ran through the tall-ceilinged maze of his family's city house, he couldn't think of anything he'd ever seen like the horror that was chasing him, and there was no reason for it, though…

…though he wasn't the only one.

"Gods," he breathed as the thought came to him.

There was a door hanging ajar and he slid to a stop in front of it-overshot it actually but he stumbled back to slip into the chamber beyond. It was his father's library.

As he crossed the wide room at a run, he recalled the news of the past few weeks. Young men, men he'd known his whole life, from important families, had been found dead. There were as many "official" causes of death as there were rumors. His family had left before the first of them was killed. They didn't know-none of them knew-that there would be any danger. Could the other young men have been chased down and murdered by this thing? To what purpose?

He came to the foot of a wrought iron staircase and tripped again as he stumbled up the first few steps. Catching himself, he ignored the bruising shock to his forearms and scurried up the stairs, cringing at every step as his boots clanged on the delicate latticework.

His father's library was four stories tall, a huge gallery easily seventy feet in height. The stained glass ceiling looked dull under the midnight sky but in the daylight it was the envy of the finest families in New Koratia. Imposing bookcases lined all four walls with galleries circling each level. There was only one way into the room-the way he'd come-and only one way up. The wrought iron staircases matched the railings that circled the galleries. He used the railings to pull himself along, grasping for an opportunity to put distance between himself and those horrid, stomping footsteps.

He would be trapping himself in the upper reaches of the gallery, he knew, but it was the only place he could think of to hide. The thing chasing him would be too heavy to climb the stairs and too big to fit between the tight rows of heavy bookcases made even heavier by the thousands of books jammed onto them. If he could get high enough up and deep enough into the library, he could hide long enough to think of something-perhaps long enough for help to arrive or for the thing to tire and go away.

The booming sounds came more quickly, almost on top of one another, and increasingly loud. It was moving faster and getting closer.

More from panic than from any sort of plan, he made for the fourth, uppermost gallery. There, the room widened again, and the bookcases were arranged in rows barely two feet wide. The bookcases themselves were solidly made of the sturdiest hardwood. Packed as they were with books, scrolls, and manuscripts of every description and in myriad languages, they were as heavy as brick walls.

He reached the second set of stairs and was certain that the booming footsteps had come around the corner of the corridor outside. At that rate his pursuer would be at the door before he stepped onto the third flight of steps.

"Get there!" he urged himself, more loudly than he'd intended.

The tingling in his mouth had become a throbbing ache, broken only by razor stabs of pain as his heavy breathing pulled cool air over broken teeth. He tried not to imagine how much worse the pain would be when the thing finally had him, when the injuries were worse than a blow to the jaw. The thing was big enough to crush him and likely strong enough to tear him limb from limb.

That thought was, thankfully, interrupted by the realization that the footsteps had passed the door.

He didn't stop, barely even slowed, even as that potentially life-saving fact dawned on him. He reached the third flight of stairs with a smile, laughed halfway up, but then his blood ran cold. The footsteps behind had stopped. The tower was quiet-easily quiet enough to hear someone running up a flight of wrought iron stairs, laughing.

There was a boom, then another-louder, closer-and it was at the door.

He made it to the uppermost gallery and dodged behind a huge bookcase that soared eight feet over his head. From below came the sound of the library door being ripped from its hinges, then the first booming footstep echoed in the confines of the library itself.

He turned a corner, already lost in the maze of bookcases. The floor beneath his feet trembled through a rapid series of footsteps. His shoulder clipped the edge of a wood-bound manuscript that protruded from a low shelf, and he grunted as he spun to a flailing, bruising stop on the hard floor.

He managed not to hit his head but he thought he had when his teeth and eyes and tongue vibrated in his skull. It wasn't the fall that made the deafening, skull-shaking sound. Something huge, something as heavy as a caravan cart, had hit the floor.

The sound came again, then again, then again, and as he stood, hoping to run deeper into the maze of shelves, the bookcase to his left was peeled off the floor and thrown into the air.

He screamed but the sound was swallowed up by the crash of the bookcase shattering on the floor atop four others. Looking up into the eyes of the behemoth, he had just enough time to whisper a prayer before he died.