Deadly Violet - 04 (13 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

There was someone else awake and in his car at that hour of the morning. A far less lucky man than Saul.

Ritchie Vallencourt drove down Crealley Street
– which was empty save for parked vehicles – then turned right onto Greenwood Terrace. He’d been riding around in his Camaro ever since the hospital had released him. And a couple of his colleagues had visited him before that, so that he knew precisely what was going on.

His head was still throbbing mildly from the sedation he’d been given. And on top of everything else, he felt humiliated by that fact. Being drugged into submission like some rowdy child? His handsome face was set hard, and his almond eyes were burning.

He was on his own, and knew that. Everybody else had forgotten about Heidi, and was far more concerned with the general safety of this town. And he couldn’t blame them. If he was in their position, he’d have been the same.

But she was his
wife
, for chrissake. Forsaking all others. Till death do they part. And she wasn’t dead yet, so far as he could tell. So it was up to him to find her, save her.

But the whole time he’d been driving, he’d seen not so much as a single violet flash, much less one of those purple, vaguely man-shaped things emerging. If he could only find one, if he could only put a gun to its head, pull back the hammer, and force the damned subhuman thing to show him where Heidi had been taken.

Her little cousins too. They had to be scared out of their wits. Those purple sons of bitches had a whole big load to answer for. His pulse thumped faster when he thought about it.

A few more flakes of snow came drifting down. Ritchie switched his wipers on, then peered out through the screen, his shoulders hunching and his teeth clenched with frustration. There was nothing he could see but the usual houses and the usual cars. Nix. Absolutely zip. His brow pounded. But then …

He was getting nearer to the open strip of grassland between Maydown Street and Brookley Avenue. It was only the length of a football field and half as narrow. But people walked their dogs there. Children played on its green expanse during the summer months. It was a flat, deserted stretch of white by this time of the year, dotted with footprints, the streetlights around its edges giving it a hollow look.

But as he watched, a point of violet light showed up. It was only the size of a large coin, at first. Then it began swelling in his vision.

At last!
Ritchie slowed the Camaro right down. In a few more seconds, the mauve glow had formed a hole in the air as big as a double set of doors. And – true to form – a hunched and spindly purple figure stepped on through.

Ritchie’s breathing became ragged. His teeth were still clenched, but they began to form a savage grin. He’d
known
that if he kept on at it long enough he’d find one of these things.

The only thing he had to do now was to get in very close to it, without it noticing. And, once he had it in his grasp, there would be nothing stopping him from doing what he wanted. To hell with the usual rules. He would beat Heidi’s location out of the damned creature, if he had to.

A yellow light had come on in the top floor of a nearby house. Ritchie saw a curtain move. So somebody else had noticed the disturbance, and was watching the purple being too. But that didn’t faze him – it was only a civilian. By the time anybody in authority showed up, he’d have found out where his wife was, if he had to half murder the thing to do it.

The creature was stepping away from the opening, leaving a faint trail of footprints in its wake. It got a couple of dozen yards out. And then the hole it had emerged from vanished, shrinking out of sight.

The thing looked back and seemed to be a little dismayed, but then continued on. Oh, this was better than perfect. It was trapped out here, in the open and with no escape route.

And it still hadn’t noticed him, was staring around as though lost. Ritchie eased his car up to the curb and killed the motor.

Then he opened the door silently. And, his heart swelling with anger, he got out.

I was about to head for Plymouth Drive and see what was happening up there. There were vantage points along the way from which I could look out across large sections of the town. And a short while back, I thought I’d caught some glimpses of purple light up near the top. Right in the vicinity of Raine Manor, in fact. Which warranted investigation.

But I had my Caddy’s radio tuned to the police waveband. And a report started being broadcast for the attention of Saul Hobart.

Someone living just off Greenwood Terrace had rung in. Another of those openings had appeared, and an Oon had come wandering through. Except it wasn’t going about its business unimpeded, on this occasion. It was being chased by a young man in plain clothes, who had turned up in an orange Chevrolet Camaro.

Vallencourt?
A terrified instinct took hold of me, and I swung my car around and floored the gas.

The strip of grassland was called Regis Green. I reached it precisely one second before Saul’s dark blue Pontiac drew up. Judge Levin was riding shotgun, and both of them got out and stared, dumbfounded, at the unfolding scene.

By the tracks in the snow, Vallencourt had been pursuing the Oon as hard as hell. It had been trying to get away from him. But he’d finally caught up with it at the top end of the park. He had it by the throat, and was shaking it furiously. We could hear what he was yelling from the whole way down here.

“Where’s Heidi, you asshole?”

Which was no big surprise. But my blood had already started running like ice water in my veins. This was the last thing that we needed.

A lot of lights had come on in surrounding houses, but nobody was venturing out. They weren’t sure what they would be getting into, and I can’t say that I blamed them.

“Tell me or you’re dead!” I heard Ritchie howl.

And the worst thing was, the creature wasn’t even trying to resist. Shorter than Vallencourt
– who wasn’t actually so tall – it looked like a stick of putty come to life. It appeared to have no powers to defend itself, didn’t look as though it had the first clue how to fight back. Its narrow arms were swinging limply by its sides, its head was hanging back, and it was letting out pathetic wailing noises.

The awfulness of what was happening struck at me. But then, I wasn’t looking at this thing from Ritchie’s point of view.

“Ritch!” I yelled, and started running.

“Sergeant!” Saul hollered, doing the same.

I could see how terrified the creature’s eyes were, the closer I got. I could see how weak its body looked. And I knew how Ritchie had to feel. But any way you cut it, this just wasn’t right.

I put on an extra burst of speed, the soles of my shoes skidding. And finally reached the sergeant, grabbing him around the shoulders and pulling him off.

He tried to fight me, but I’d been expecting that. One elbow flashed in the direction of my face, but I blocked it. Then I held onto him firmly, tightening my grip so hard the socket in one of his shoulders almost popped.

He grimaced with pain, but then forgot that and his eyes went damp.

“They’ve got my wife, Ross! They’ve got my
wife
!”

Me? I understood precisely what was going through his head.

“I know,” I told him. “But this isn’t the way to get her back.”

Then I looked across at the Oon. It had collapsed in the snow. Still holding Ritch as tightly as I could, I waited for the creature to recover.

But its eyes were shut. It wasn’t moving.

Saul arrived, and went to move in closer to it, but I shook my head. We didn’t know what these things were built like, and had no idea we were dealing with. Our ideas of what might constitute first aid could only make things worse.

There was a blur of movement, and Willets popped into existence. He took in the scene, open-mouthed. And then he re-gathered his wits, and strode in until he was standing right above the creature.

The red dots in his pupils swelled, so that both of his eyes turned a startling crimson. He stared down intently. And I knew what he was doing. Rummaging around inside the Oon with his special powers, trying to figure out what made it tick.

And when he finally pulled back, his expression went very grim. He let out a hissing breath.

“Oh, good God,” I heard him mutter.

He stared bleakly at Vallencourt, who had gone limp in my grasp.

“This thing is dead,” the doc announced.

He curled his lip indignantly.

“You’ve killed it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The whole town appeared to go very still around us. If somebody had dropped a pin a mile away, I think we’d probably have heard it. What Raine had told us kept on going through my thoughts like some reverberating echo. These creatures had been trying to stave off the disaster that was coming down on us.

“But …” someone said.

And it was Ritchie. He was still slack, so I let him go. He staggered away from me a few paces, then righted himself and gawped down at the purple creature’s corpse.

“All I did was shake the thing. I didn’t even hit it or nothing.”

Willets peered at him exhaustedly, crows’ feet forming in the corners of his eyes.

“Apparently, they’re different to us. Physically much weaker. And violence of any kind is something that they don’t seem to be built for.”

I remembered how entirely helpless it had looked. As malleable as cotton candy in the sergeant’s grasp. We’d come to dominance in our world the hard way, fighting every step to reach the top. But their universe was obviously very different to our own.

The next thing that happened was that Saul stepped in again, his face like thunder, and exploded at his subordinate.

“Jesus Christ, I ought to bust you off the force!” he bellowed. “I have
never
witnessed a detective under my command behave in such a brutal, reckless –“

I turned to my old friend and put a hand against his chest, making an attempt to calm him down. I understood why he was furious. But Ritchie had been very far from thinking straight, and we all knew it.

Judge Levin – who had only been observing until this point – came hurrying across to the younger cop, put an arm around his shoulders and made efforts to console him, his gaze full of sympathy. Because by this time, Vallencourt was looking utterly distraught.

“I didn’t mean to kill it,” he kept mumbling.

“Yes, I know that. I understand completely,” the judge whispered to him.

“I only wanted Heidi back.”

“And I’d be the same, believe me.”

Saul snorted, gazed around at the whole messy scene again, then peered into my face.

“How long do you suppose it’s gonna be before the rest of the Oon find out?”

I’d been left so muddled by what had happened, I hadn’t thought of that. I stared around. There were no other signs of activity, no flashes of purple light. But Raine had said that these things could communicate by using their minds, hadn’t he? So it was possible that they already knew.

And would they see this for what it was, merely an accident? Or would they start regarding us as pretty dangerous, from this point on?

Faces were pointed at me from a lot of distant windows. A load of people, gawping out at this, were wondering what was going on. But none of that felt relevant.

I could see what needed to be done, and the urgency of the matter gripped me. I stepped away from Saul, tipped my head back and yelled, “
Woody!
”

I could only hope the Master of Raine Manor was paying attention.

“Woods, we need your help again, like
now
!”

His projected image appeared, flickering a couple of times and then resolving itself properly in front of me.

“What is it, sport?”

Then he looked around, and a hand went to his mouth.

“Oh Lord.”

His face, which didn’t have much color in the first place, went completely white.

“Can you still get back into their world?” I asked him.

“But how did this happen?”

“Never mind that. Can you talk to them again?”

“I think so,” he stuttered. “The opening in my grounds is still there.”

“Then you’ve got to explain this to them. An accident, a terrible mistake, and that’s all it was. Apologize. Offer to make amends. Be as humble as you like. But the last thing we want is these guys turning against us.”

They couldn’t punch their way out of a paper bag, and posed no threat in that regard. But Woody had mentioned advanced science, so who knew what else they were capable of?

Raine favored me with a mild grin and said, “I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of a diplomat.”

And
– before I could even snap out a response – his image disappeared.

We were putting our lives in his hands?
Dammit!

Five slow minutes passed, during which time Levin got a blanket from Saul’s car and put it around Ritchie. The sergeant had gone very quiet, his face a tepid gray and his eyes glossy. Some of the lights across from the park had now gone out. People weren’t sure what was happening, or else had lost interest. I could only hope that wasn’t going to be a big mistake on their part.

A dog barked somewhere. Ritchie’s head did not even come up a little.

Oh, and another thing. A most peculiar and unpleasant fact. The dead Oon had begun to melt, leaving a wide violet stain on the footprint-covered whiteness. Maybe that was what they did when they expired. Or maybe their bodies were not used in the slightest bit to our plane of existence. They really were that different from us.

Saul Hobart was pacing around like a caged tiger. And he wasn’t finished with his sergeant yet.

“Your wife is safe,” he growled at the young man, his voice still heated. “And those things were trying to help us, idiot.”

Ritchie took that in, became even unhappier, and turned his face away.

Woody re-appeared. Any lightness of before had gone from his expression.

“Well, what did they say?” I asked him.

“I couldn’t find them,” he replied, “but I could sense where they have gone. It appears that they have the ability to merge into the walls of their world. It’s almost like a form of hibernation. They’re refusing to come out again, and they won’t talk. I’ve begged and I’ve pleaded. Nothing seems to work. As I said before, their minds are very different to ours.”

“So what do you suppose they’re up to? Are they simply sulking, or are they planning some form of revenge?”

“I’m afraid it’s gone beyond the planning stage, old chum,” Raine told me. “You remember that machine of theirs, the one that was intended to repair the damage to reality?

When I nodded, Woody gulped before replying.

“It’s stopped bubbling.”

“Meaning what?” I asked.

“I think they’ve switched it off.”