His eyes gleamed red with a savage fury as she clung to him afresh. He caught her wrists, forcing her backwards.
"I don't believe he is dead!" he snarled.
"He is! He is! Mr. Curtis told me so."
"If he isn't, I'll murder him!" Brett Mercer vowed, and flung her fiercely from him.
She fell with violence and lay half-stunned, while he, blinded with rage, possessed by devils, strode forward into that silent place, leaving her prone.
She thought later that she must have fainted, for the next thing she knew—and it must have been after the passage of several minutes—was Mercer kneeling beside her and lifting her. His touch was perfectly gentle, but she dared not look into his face. She cowered in his arms in mortal fear. He had crushed her at last.
"Have I hurt you?" he said.
She did not answer. Her voice was gone. She was as powerless as an infant. He raised her and bore her steadily away.
When he paused finally, it was to speak to Beelzebub, who was holding the horses. And then, without a word to her, he lifted her up on to a saddle, and mounted himself behind her. She lay against his breast as one dazed, incapable of speech or action. And so, with his arm about her, moving slowly through a world of shadows, they began the long, long journey back.
They travelled so for the greater part of the night, and during the whole of that time Mercer never uttered a word. The horse he rode was jaded, and he did not press it. Beelzebub, with the other two, rode far ahead.