Quicksilver - Amanda Quick [104]
Virginia grabbed the nearest heavy object, a large iron skillet, and hurled it at the doll. The pan struck the curiosity full on, knocking the device off its feet. It toppled onto its back. The booted heels drummed relentlessly on the floor. The eyes rattled in the porcelain skull, seeking a target.
Virginia seized Matt’s ankles and tried to haul him across the floor out of range of the doll. The Sweetwater men were not small, and they were evidently constructed of pure muscle and bone. The smooth wooden floor was in her favor, though. She managed to slide Matt’s heavy frame halfway out the pantry door before she had to stop and gather her strength for another tug.
The clanking, thumping and rattling of the clockwork mechanism muffled the sound of the footsteps behind her until it was too late. She caught a whiff of a sweet, flowery scent just before the chloroformsoaked cloth covered her nose and mouth.
A man’s arm wrapped around her throat and wrenched her back against a hard chest. She reached upward, trying to claw at her captor’s eyes. Her fingers closed around a pair of spectacles. She ripped them off and dropped them to the floor. There was a sharp crack when the lenses shattered.
“You stupid woman,” Jasper Welch snarled. “Why do you have to make things so bloody difficult? You have come close to ruining my great work.”
She held her breath, but she had already inhaled some of the vapor. Her head was spinning, and the world was disappearing into a fathomless fog. She tried to struggle—at least, she thought she struggled—but she could not be certain.
She fell into an endless night.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Flames smoldered deep in the mirrors.
Virginia sensed the paranormal heat before she was fully awake. She knew glasslight the way she knew sunlight or rain. She did not have to look into the mirrors to know that they surrounded her and that they were infused with energy unlike anything she had ever experienced.
The power in the looking glasses called to her, triggering frissons of awareness, summoning her out of the darkness.
Warily she opened her eyes and beheld a dazzling, glittering wonderland of ice lit by massive glass chandeliers. For a few seconds she wondered why she did not feel the cold. It took her some time to realize that there was no ice. She was lying on a low bench in a long, highceilinged chamber that was entirely paneled in mirrors.
The room reminded her of the terrible chamber in the basement of the Hollister mansion, but this hall was fashioned on a far larger and grander scale, a palace room of mirrors. There were no windows, no obvious door.
The brilliantly reflective surfaces were everywhere. They covered the walls and clad the stately columns. An elaborate mosaic of tiny mirrored tiles patterned the coved ceiling and accented the decorative molding.
And all of the mirrors simmered and seethed with the paranormal fires trapped inside the glass.
She struggled to a sitting position and discovered that the bench on which she had awakened was padded in white velvet. She was still wearing the day gown she had changed into before she was kidnapped. The small chatelaine purse dangled at her waist.
For a moment she sat there, entranced and intoxicated by the energy that flooded the gallery. After a while, she gathered her nerve, heightened her senses and looked deeper into the mirrors.
She was braced for dreadful visions of death, but there were no afterimages, no visions that indicated that people had been murdered in the glittering chamber. All she perceived was power, an enormous quantity of it, locked inside the looking glasses.
She had been reading mirrors since the age of thirteen, but she had never seen or experienced anything like what she was viewing now. She could not imagine how so much raw energy had been trapped in the mirrors.
Slowly, cautiously, she got to her feet and discovered that she was in a museum gallery. All of the artifacts and antiquities were fashioned of mirrors and glass. Each relic was displayed on a mirrored pedestal or inside a glass case. Combined