Night of Demons - 02 (23 page)

I had no idea where Cass was. I’d been looking for her most of the afternoon, with no result whatever. She wasn’t at any of her usual hangouts, and she wasn’t even answering her phone. I knew that there were times when she just cruised around for hours. It didn’t seem like much to do, but it was better than being at home on her own, with those dozens of photographs staring at her.

With everything that had been going down, though, you’d have thought she’d stay in touch. Which bothered me badly. It was rare as hen’s teeth for the Little Girl to make an inaccurate prediction. But it didn’t stop me praying that she’d made one this time.

Evening was closing in on us once more. The town was darkening, its avenues becoming gloomy. The streetlamps came on, trying to alleviate that, but not succeeding the whole way. And the emptiness of the place made matters even worse. It’s strange how the night changes everything, turning the familiar into the opposite of that. Shadows cast across your backyard make it a faintly unreal place. And the street you live on…What else lives there, once the sun has gone?

Most folk who weren’t in the militias had disappeared indoors. And the breeze had dropped away completely, as if the world around us was holding its breath. My fingers had begun to itch. The demons could start showing up any time, in any place. But where?

On an instinct, I swung my Cadillac around and headed back into Garnerstown. I’m not sure why. But the place seemed to be a magnet for trouble. Saul Hobart was of the same opinion, since I found him there. We were a little west of Keane Street this time, on McAdam.

There were two uniformed cops with him, three firemen, and a band of armed townsfolk. I squinted at them curiously in the fading light. This was the militia Saul had organized. One of the women was in her fifties, and one of the men beat her out by roughly twenty years. Nick McLeish had finally put on a proper shirt, and appeared to be in charge of them. Most of their expressions were anxious and strained. Which reminded me that being brave did not mean being unafraid. In fact, the reverse is usually the case.

Saul could see what I was staring at. Or rather, the lack of it…the shortage of properly trained peace officers.

“I’ve had to post men in every part of town,” he told me, bringing me up to speed. “We’re stretched as thin as taffy here.”

Then he peered across his shoulder.

“And we’re short a man as well. Matt Chalker hasn’t shown up.”

He was obviously puzzled as to why. I recalled the way that Matt had been when I’d last met him, sullen and detached. But he wasn’t the kind of guy to go abandoning his colleagues and his duties. It seemed ominous…but then, so did almost everything this evening.

A sudden angry, blatting noise announced the arrival of a Harley Davidson, and my heart jumped a little. I looked around to see a cyclopean headlamp coming down the street. Well, Ms. Mallory at last. I wondered what she’d been up to. And felt slightly unsure, watching her ride up.

And where, for that matter, was Lauren? She couldn’t still be asleep. And if she wasn’t with Saul any longer…?

I kept a careful eye on Cass as she climbed off her bike. She looked very drawn and moody. Somewhat diminished from her usual fiery self. But that was hardly odd, under the circumstances. There were no real signs that she had changed.

She came over to me, thrusting her hands in her back pockets.

“Where were you?” I asked her.

And I studied her reaction.

She cocked an eyebrow at me, like she was wondering what business it was of mine. Pretty typical of her. And then her face relaxed.

“With friends. I dropped in on Pam.” Who was her half sister. “And Bella. And I wanted to see how Ginny and Karl were, and their kids, of course.”

Her expression grew slightly darker.

“Then I dropped over to your place. And guess what? I bumped into Lieutenant Brennan, headed off the other way.”

“What?” Saul asked. He’d moved up to my side.

Cassie looked down at her boots.

“She’s left town, and in a hurry. Told me that she couldn’t take it any more. Can’t say I blame her—she’s not used to any of this. So it’s probably for the best all round.”

I knew she didn’t care for the woman. And noticed a faint hint of triumphalism in her tone. But for myself, I felt astonished. And Saul looked dismayed.

“She was so determined to get Hanlon,” he blurted. “She didn’t look to me like she was going to quit.”

Cassie looked at him rather sardonically. The tired edge that I’d noticed before had dropped away completely. She was showing us a harder, slightly meaner aspect of her nature. Maybe that was what the Little Girl had meant.

“After last night?” she asked. “Are you kidding me? One-way ticket to Boston, I’d say.”

And when I thought about it closely, well, she had a point. But it didn’t stop me feeling disappointed. Without Ms. Brennan, we were alone once more, the outside world lost from view completely.

I decided to put it out of my thoughts, since there was no sense dwelling on it. Leaving here was not a luxury that the rest of us had. The only thing that we could do was wait for whatever came down on us tonight. Saul stayed by his car, busy on his radio, coordinating everything. The rest of us were left to hang around at something of a loss. Our talk was stilted, coming out with difficulty across the swelling tension on the air. The police department had already checked around, of course, seeking out the few obvious misfits still remaining, and then making sure to keep close tabs on them.

Apart from those, we had no idea who might transform next.

Woody’s words came drifting back to me. “We all have monsters trapped inside us.”

This area hadn’t picked up too much since Saruak had been here. There was still a lot of rust and shabbiness, and dandelions poking through the sidewalks. People from my neighborhood view Garnerstown with plain disgust.

After a while, I found myself talking to an older cop called Harrison Whitby. In the time that I’d been on the force, we’d not had much to do with each other. But he’d been in the department nearly thirty years, and had known my father well.

“He was a good man. A really first-class cop.” His pale, nicotine-stained moustache screwed up. “I felt real bad about what happened. In fact, the last time you and me talked, it was at his funeral.”

And I remembered it, that long, rainy day in late October, years back. Harrison had looked marginally taller then, his hair and moustache still shiny black.

Neither of my folks had been around to see their grandkids born. They had passed away within eight months of each other. My mom went first—bone cancer. After that, my father—who had been such a strong presence in my life—simply crumbled. It was like watching a statue fall, or a cliff-front slipping down into the ocean.

It wasn’t that depression made him quit his job or hit the bottle. He’d never have given in to anything like that. He just stopped eating very much, his health began deteriorating. And after a while, the precise same kind of cancer began eating at him too. It was like he’d rather share Mom’s fate than remain in this world without her.

I still missed them, and could feel their presence sometimes. But maybe that’s the kind of wishful thinking that we’re prone to when there are questions of mortality around.

The sky was fully black by the time we’d finished talking. And the stars were out again, bright specks like grains of sand. I knew how far away they were…but, this night, they really looked it. The air was minty clear, and even misting up our breath a little. The figures around me were reduced to silhouettes. Cass was standing by her Harley like a piece of solid shadow. Normally, she is the last word in impatience, and unable to keep still. But I guessed that this uncertainty was getting to her just as much as anyone.

On a more normal evening, the homes around us would be full of light and muffled sound. Dinners being cooked and eaten. Toddlers bathed and put to bed. TVs—and, in a few cases, pianos—gathered around. But not tonight. Most windows were dark, although there were definitely people in the houses. You could see a glimpse of movement occasionally.

“What the hell are they waiting for?” I heard one of the militia women grumble.

She meant the demons, naturally. Anybody in this town could turn into one, and we all knew it. But I had no idea how conscious a process that might be. Could it even be me? That made me really start to worry. How to tell exactly?

Footsteps started coming up behind us. And we swung around, aiming our weapons.

But a badge flashed, the next second, on a dark uniform shirt. It was Matt Chalker. I got a better look at the man as he passed under a streetlamp. He didn’t have his cap on, and his brown hair needed cutting. His face was down as he came along to join us. And he seemed horribly robbed of energy, his gait a shambling one.

None of which got any sympathy from Saul.

“Where the hell’ve you been?” he demanded.

At times like this, I knew, he expected the utmost from his men.

“Sorry, Lieu. I overslept,” Matt came back at him.

He was still moving in our direction when I took in the fact that there was something very odd. Matt Chalker lived in Vernon Valley, not too far from Saul’s house. Which was a good way to the north of us, a further journey than my own place.

Had he walked the entire distance?

He was a dozen yards from me, and getting closer. Two of his colleagues stepped across to greet him.

That was when his head came up.

His eyes had turned completely gray.

His uniform melted away, revealing a far more profound darkness underneath. And then his shape began to alter.

His torso swelled and stretched. His whole body broadened, taking on extra swathes of bulk. His shoulders grew wider, his chest stretching like a barrel.

Then his legs bent backward, the knees reversing on themselves, the feet swelling to a massive size. His arms grew unnaturally long. And his hands had claws on them, with curving tips.

His face changed too, the features stretching out to create a lupine muzzle. Matt’s ears lengthened to narrow points. When his lips parted, his mouth was full of hungry, pointed teeth. He stared at us balefully, then snarled. Was this the inner darkness he’d been carrying around inside him?

When his good friend Davy Quinn had been killed, the Dralleg had been in town. And that creature had been wolf-like too. So maybe it had stuck with him, a constant presence in his nightmares.

One of the militia people drew a bead on him. But Harrison Whitby reached across and knocked his aim off.

“He’s one of ours!”

Matt abruptly rushed forward. Grabbed the cop nearest to him. And plunged his talons into the guy’s chest.

“Not anymore, he ain’t!”

Harrison stumbled back, his expression crumbling. Nick McLeish ran up and started shooting, and the civilians around him followed his lead and did the same.

Matt howled and thrashed as the bullets struck him. But he showed no sign of going down. I remembered how it had been with the beast that had inspired him.

“Aim for the face!” I yelled. “The mouth and eyes!”

And everyone did that. The creature moaned and shook its head furiously, staggering off to the side. But it still didn’t look like it was going to come to pieces. Where was Cassie, with her heavier ordnance?

The beast lurched to our right with alarming speed. It reached a parked black-and-white, then bent down and grabbed its lower edge. And flipped the whole thing over on its side with a huge crunching sound. It had a metal shield now, to deflect our shots.

A grating noise reached my ears after that. The car had begun to scrape across the ground in our direction, the creature shoving it along. Both the carbine and the Mossberg could shoot through several layers of metal, couldn’t they? So I glanced across, again, at Cassie. Felt amazed by what I saw.

She was standing next to her Harley, her arms by her sides. Watching everything as though from a tremendous distance—a spectator to this, and nothing more. And she never acted that way. She was always where the action was the thickest. What on earth did she think she was doing?

“Hey!” I yelled.

But she didn’t seem to hear me. The upended car was getting closer. The only thing she did was blink, her gaze strange-looking in the dim electric light.

I wasn’t sure what was wrong with her, and didn’t have time to find out. There was another patrol car next to me. Its doors were open, I could see the key in the ignition. So I went across and yanked the seat belt on. Started it up and then swung it around.

Got it pointed at the upended car approaching us, then jammed my foot down on the gas. The prowl car surged ahead and hit the other vehicle with an almighty crash. The black-and-white went over on its roof, with the creature underneath it.

But I didn’t stop at that. I kept pushing my car forward, shunting the upturned one over the rough asphalt.

If there’d been a man underneath, he’d have been ground to paste in seconds. But Matt wasn’t that thing, not any longer. There was a burst of vapor up ahead of me. It drifted above the pavement for a few seconds, then soared away, heading up into the darkness and retreating from us quickly.

I undid the belt, feeling my body go a little slack.

The general mood on the street, by the time that I climbed out, was one of shock and absolute dismay. Of all the places danger could have come from, the last that we’d expected was another cop.

I could hear Harrison Whitby murmuring.

“Any of us? Any of us could go like that?”

I swung around angrily, looking for Cassie again. What did she think she was playing at?

But her bike had disappeared from view. I’d not the first clue as to why.

That was when I noticed Saul was gesturing to me. He was on his cell again. And when I walked across to him, he squinted at me frozenly.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he said.

“Try me.”

There was an awful lot I was prepared to believe, these days. Except it still turned out that he was right.