Kate leaned out farther and hugged the baby to her side. Anyone rushing her would send both of them plunging. If she were shot, the impact would knock her off. Joshua began crying softly, his pudgy hands gripping the wool of her sweater. He babbled syllables and Kate was sure that she heard “Mommy.”

“Hand us the child and we will let you go,” Radu Fortuna said smoothly, extending his arms.

Kate hunted for Vernor Deacon Trent but the old face was no longer visible in the crowd. “You won't let me go,” Kate said tiredly.

“Goddamn you, woman!” exploded Fortuna. “Of course we will not fucking let you go! Nor the fucking priest! Even if he leaves this mountain, we will find him, return him, and drink his fucking blood! Now give me the child!”

Kate held Joshua out over the abyss with straight arms. The pain tore at her muscles and shoulder sockets, but the movement froze Fortuna in his tirade.

She could see her watch. 12:25. She closed her eyes.

The white light, when it came, was a surprise. .The noise was very loud.

The Bell Jet Ranger helicopter just cleared the west tower and seemed to skim the east tower, its searchlight was on and flashing across the crowd, blinding the strigoi and Kate as well. The helicopter slewed sideways, seemed to be about to land in the middle of the strigoi throng, and sent the crowd shoving back toward the far wall, the wind of the machine's rotors pelting them with dust, gravel, and grit thrown up from the terrace. The chalices on the long table were blown off as red and white vestments fluttered and linens lifted into the sky like streams of toilet paper in a high wind.

Radu Fortuna screamed a curse that was lost in the incredible rotor noise. Guards tried to press forward and left their weapons in the crush of the retreating strigoi mob.

Kate caught the briefest glimpse of O'Rourke on the left side of the helicopter's steel and Plexiglas bubble, his face intent as he obviously wrestled with the controls, and then she was holding on to the baby with one arm and flailing to keep her balance with her right arm as the rotor wind threatened to tumble her off the wall into the canyon.

Radu Fortuna lunged forward and seized her ankle. Joshua screamed at the avalanche of light and noise.

The helicopter pivoted, its skids six feet above Kate, wand the entire machine moved sideways out over the canyon as if sliding on an invisible layer of ice. The rotor blast almost threw Kate back onto Radu Fortuna. The strigoi shielded his eyes with one hand and pulled at her ankle with the other. Several guards pushed through the mob.

The helicopter slid back toward Kate, the machine rocking like a rowboat in rough waves. Kate ducked as the slick's right skid bobbed where her head had been a second before. She started to rise and then ducked again as the door that O'Rourke had left open on the right side of the machine swung wider and almost took her head off. The rotor noise and gale was beyond belief.

Radu Fortuna snarled and grabbed the collar of her sweater. Kate did not look back as she swung her right elbow back, hard, into his teeth. His hand released her collar.

Kate stood up quickly while the door was open, leaned out over the emptiness, and set her baby in the right seat. O'Rourke shouted something she could not hear, lifted his right hand from the stick to reach across and keep Joshua from sliding out, had to return his hand to the controls, and bobbed the helicopter down and to the left to keep the baby from rolling out.

Kate pin wheeled her arms, could not catch her balance, and leaped as hard and as far as she could out into the abyss.

Chapter Forty-One

THE helicopter was already sliding back toward the castle and Kate hit the right skid hard, her arms going over it, her chin snapping down, her breasts feeling as if she had been slammed by a baseball bat, and the wind going out of her in a rush. She hung on.

The door on the right side was still swinging open and shut, and O'Rourke was working the controls, trying to hover without allowing Joshua to tumble out. The helicopter wheeled right. Kate glanced over her shoulder and saw strigoi guards raise their machine guns in the hailstorm of grit and dust.

“Nu!” screamed Radu Fortuna. He stepped up onto the wall.

Kate tried to scream at O'Rourke to move left, but the ex-priest was obviously too busy trying to control the machine and keep the rotor from slamming into the tower or battlements. The helicopter slid another eight feet to the right as if on invisible rails, Radu Fortuna reached up, grabbed the open door, and stepped easily onto the skid.

O'Rourke glanced left, saw the shadow of the man leaning in, and banked the helicopter steeply to the left. Kate's fingers slid off the fuselage but she clung to the skid and the metal strut holding the skid in place. Under her shoes, the vertical face of the castle wall suddenly upended and seemed to swing sideways as the chopper first dove, then rose again, always tilting a bit to the left so that Joshua would not tumble out.

Kate swung her leg up onto the strut and kicked Radu Fortuna's ankles out from under him before he could step into the cabin.

Fortuna fell forward and swung out on the door, his legs hanging free. Kate released her secure handhold, balanced forward on the skid as if doing a forward roll on a tubular balance beam, and got her left hand in the open cabin doorway. There was a ridge there and she locked her fingers around it and pulled herself to one knee on the slippery skid.

O'Rourke leveled the helicopter sixty or seventy feet above the castle terrace. A score of muzzles were lifted toward them, but no one fired because of the baby and Radu Fortuna.

With the helicopter level, the door swung inward and Fortuna's stocky body slammed into Kate, squeezing her against the doorframe but not giving her enough room to pull herself into the cabin. His strong left hand seized her by the throat and began squeezing.

They were both standing on the bobbing skid now. Their weight tipped the machine sickeningly to the right, and Kate felt Joshua's small form strike her back. If she and Fortuna went off now, the baby would come with them. She tried to twist out of the strigoi's grasp but the chopper tilted left, his weight fell against her, and he freed his right hand to complete his choking. His thumbs closed over her windpipe and Kate knew that he could break her neck in a second.

The helicopter bobbed slightly, a space opened between their bodies, and Kate pulled the Gypsy's dagger from her belt and plunged it through Fortuna's flapping vestments into his stomach.

The blade did not go deep. Kate's leverage was too restricted and Fortuna's robes too thick. But the pain and shock stopped Radu Fortuna's thumbs from closing on her neck. Kate released her grip on the inside of the door and pushed the knife farther in, knowing precisely where the largest bundle of nerve fibers was.

Radu Fortuna roared, pulled his hands from her throat, and wrestled the knife away from her, pulling it from its shallow cut. O'Rourke banked the hovering machine to the left at precisely the right instant, Kate leaned far back onto the seat over Joshua's wailing form, lifted her legs, and kicked Fortuna off the skid.

She swung her legs in, held the baby tight against the back of the seat, and leaned out the flapping door to watch Fortuna fall. Several hundred white faces stared up from red and black cowls, all of them watching while the short man, arms swinging and legs extended as gracefully as a sky diver's, did two complete somersaults in the air and then fell, face up, with all limbs extended for the final sixty feet. Directly onto the metal stake that had been reserved for Kate.

The crowd of strigoi raised their hands as blood spattered their robes and faces. Two of the guards began to fire short bursts.