Night of Demons - 02 (36 page)

Before too much longer, its unkempt grounds were rushing beneath me. A few large crows burst from cover, startled by the fact that I was at their height.

I dropped a couple of feet lower as I approached the house. The spindly, leafless branches of the trees kept trying to snatch at the soles of my shoes. They looked even weirder than usual from up here. As dark as the surrounding night, and impenetrably tangled—what you might get if you poured a pint of Scotch down Jackson Pollack and then handed him a stick of charcoal.

But they were not the half of it.

The high spire was already in view, with the W at its apex. But I could also see the rest of the roof, more clearly than I had before. The gargoyles had all come awake. They were clustered on the upper ridge, their backs hunched over and their deformed faces tilted, staring up at me. Then they saw what was pursuing me. And within another moment, they were scuttling out of sight.

The house below seemed to lurch crazily as I changed direction. I could make out the ruined west wing, and the covered porch out front. And in the latter case…

There seemed to be some extra shadow on it. It didn’t look as empty as it normally did. I could scarcely believe what my eyes were telling me. But as I went lower, I got a better angle. And could see two figures standing there.

One was Hampton, a round, meaty bulk in the gloom. He was gawping at me startledly, his mismatched eyes shining with alarm. The other shape?

He hadn’t exactly come out into the open. Was wedged back against the partly open doorway. But, considering how deeply terrified of the outdoors he was…this was the first time Woodard Raine had crossed his own threshold in years.

He looked like he was ready to retreat given the slightest reason. And his whole body was hunched. But Woods was staying put for the time being. So perhaps I’d underestimated him.

When I usually met him, it was in the ballroom and surrounded by faint candlelight. He was merely a vague set of features or a pair of glowing eyes in there. You never got to see the entire person. So I was looking at him clearly for the first time in a good number of years.

He was thinner than I remembered. Slightly shorter too. His shoulders were rounded, his posture awkward. I suppose the best word for him—and I puzzledly took this in—was “average.” Pass him on the street, and you would give him little thought. Only his great powers and his even greater lunacy had made him someone to be reckoned with.

I was almost to the ground. And heading downward far too quickly.

“An easier landing, if you’d please?” I called out.

“Landing…?”

I’d confused him.

“Slow me down!”

I decelerated at the very last moment. My heels skidded through a dense mixture of gravel and crabgrass all the same, before I finally came to a halt.

Then I was running up onto the porch, and waving the wand at the man’s shadowy form.

“You need to destroy this, Woody! You might be the only person who can do it!”

He pulled an unimpressed face, then abruptly snatched it from me. Woody ran a finger down it, studying its markings. His eyes, which had been glowing yellow, took on a more amber shade.

“Why?” he asked me, sounding quite annoyed. “It seems a rather lovely thing.”

Which was precisely the opposite reaction from the one I’d wanted. The kind of response that made your hair curl. Not for the first time when dealing with this crazy adept, I felt like I wanted to scream.

But Hampton beat me to it.

He was pointing out across the gardens, high above the wild, uneven line of trees. Me and Raine both looked in that direction.

Hanlon was catching up. His bare skull appeared at first. Then his black-cloaked arms rose into view, the claws still grasping, the rest of the vast, elongated body stretching in their wake.

“Sir?” the manservant yelped. “I suggest you do as Mr. Devries asks!”

But the look on Woody’s face made my heart sink even further. He had a bland, detached expression now. So we were back to square one, weren’t we? The danger we were in meant nothing to him, or so it appeared. Perhaps he found it all rather distasteful. Overly prosaic and—because of that—beneath his contempt. His eyelids fluttered briefly shut, and his lips pursed with disapproval.

“And now my own staff are telling me what to do,” he sighed. “What is the world coming to?”

Except that Hampton was his only staff. There wasn’t any plural. This was a fine time for him to go losing his grip on reality completely. I clenched my teeth, my breath seething through them.

“Woody?” I barked at him. “Don’t you understand what’s going on?”

He had to know about the battle. And I jabbed my index finger at the vast, approaching figure. But he wouldn’t even look at it again. He kept brushing his fingertips along the wand, seemingly obsessed with it. And at that point, frustration boiled over in me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have done what I attempted to.

It made no sense to try and force him physically. If I’d been thinking clearer, I’d have seen that. But the situation was too desperate. And so I lunged at him and tried to grab him by his robe, forcing him to look around.

But my palms had barely closed around the fabric when he saw what I was doing. And his eyes abruptly flashed. They went brilliantly hot for a few seconds, so vivid they dazzled me. When the glare shrunk back, they’d returned to the ugly orange I had seen several nights back.

The heel of his right hand brushed, lightly and deftly, against my chest. I could feel its pressure for the briefest instant. Barely a plausible attempt at self-defense.

But as it pulled away, it suddenly felt like an earthquake had struck me. My bones shook fiercely, and the flesh on them seemed to quiver.

The strength was sucked out of my limbs. And I didn’t merely fall; going down I crumpled like a loose sack of coal. I tried to get up, found I couldn’t. Not a muscle in my frame was under my control.

Out of the corner of one eye, I could still see Hanlon. He had already floated halfway across the grounds, and was drawing ever closer.

“Sir?” Raine’s manservant moaned again.

But I heard no reply.

One side of my face was down on the porch’s cold stone surface. It was a struggle to attempt it from here, but I managed to get another look at Woody. He wasn’t looming over me, as I’d expected him to. In fact, he had forgotten all about me. He was bending over, studying the wand again. Touching it delicately with both his hands. And what was that noise he was making? A strange murmuring sound with no shape to it.

There was madness contained in that little stick. And perhaps, like Hanlon, he identified with that. The thing seemed to fascinate him like nothing else had ever done. As I watched, he stopped dabbing at it, and then gently tipped his head to one side.

Looked as though he were listening to something. And it didn’t make me feel a whole lot better, seeing that.

Hampton had backed off, too afraid to venture close. I doubted he’d ever seen his master in a mood like this, and he didn’t seem quite sure how to handle it.

I tried to move again. Couldn’t make so much as an eyebrow twitch. But if my eyesight was still working, maybe the same applied to my voice. Neither my lips nor my jaws were responding. But I could still push air up through my throat, then shape it lightly with my tongue.

I made a stab at it. “Woody!”

It came out more like “Oo-ee.” And he didn’t look around. So I tried again, more forcefully. He glanced at me with a peevish air.

“What’s that, sport? Why does everyone mumble so much these days? Speak more clearly, if you please.”

And he wasn’t being spiteful or sarcastic. He seemed to have genuinely forgotten what he’d done.

He clicked his fingers suddenly. And my entire mouth started moving again, although nothing else did. If I was going to make anything happen here, then it would have to be with words, not actions.

“I thought you were going to help us?”

He looked distinctly puzzled, like he didn’t recall saying that.

“Why bother to start, then stop again?” I went on.

His chin dropped slightly, and lines appeared on his brow. I could only pray that he was trying to think of an answer.

The death’s head passed over the final line of trees and Hampton shrank away into the shadows of the hallway.

“I…” Woody muttered.

We were running out of time for little chats like this. But…

“Yes?”

“Though it might be a good idea.”

“Helping us? It still is one.”

“Really?”

“Look around you at what’s happening.”

His head came back up and he closed his eyes. But I knew that he was staring with his inner one. A tic appeared on one side of his face. What he was looking at was not making him noticeably comfortable.

“If those demons win…? he asked.

“Uh-huh?”

“There’ll be no one left, now will there? Nobody in my whole town.”

“That’s pretty much the size of it,” I told him.

We only had a few more seconds. I could hear the noises of the battle faintly, drifting up the hillside. Woody was inspecting the wand again.

“And even if I manage to survive…”

Which was not impossible.

“I’ll be…alone, won’t I?”

He was that anyway most of the time. An almost total recluse. But I knew he reached out with his senses to the world beyond his mansion. Kept his eye on everything that happened down below this place, even if he mostly saw it as a fantasy, a half-formed dream. And so I held my tongue at that point. There are times when silence can be far more eloquent than words.

A much deeper shadow fell across us. When I swung my gaze around, the sky had been blocked out. The only brightness up there was the flame in Hanlon’s sockets. He was looming right above us, one hand reaching down.

“Break the wand. None of it’ll happen if you do that,” I whispered to Raine urgently.

He applied some cautious pressure, and then went at it with all his strength. The wand bent slightly, which was more than I’d been able to make happen. But there was no sign that it was going to crack.

“Use magic, sir!” called Hampton from inside the doorway.

So he’d not gone very far.

“Ah. Quite.”

And Woody grinned. But then he peered at me inquiringly.

“Devries, do you suppose there’s such a thing as a Spell of Breaking?”

“You’re a great magician,” I hissed at him. “Make one up.”

Two of the uniformed cops who’d been standing near Lauren were already dead. They’d let the hunched creatures get too close. And she’d had some extremely ugly demonstrations of how these things operated. They could put on far greater bursts of speed than they’d originally shown. They’d get within a few yards, and then suddenly come rushing forward, swiftly as a closing trap. Several of them at a time would leap onto a victim, their thin limbs taking purchase. Then they’d start clamping down with their mouths as well, devouring their prey alive.

Not that that last word really applied for very long. Dozens of others would come surging in, drawn there—so she imagined—by the sight and smell of blood. Both cops had disappeared beneath a writhing mass of mottled brown and grabbing hands within a bare few seconds.

It was an awful thing to watch, worse than anything she had ever known. The screams, and glimpses of torn flesh. Lauren kept on fighting, but felt shaken to the core. And the hole in the air was still filled with the things. An unbroken stream of them kept on dropping down. What she’d been seeing…was this the fate in store for this whole town? For her?

There was little time, thankfully, for reflections of that sort. The line was falling back a few more yards, Vallencourt shouting out the order. They had almost reached the front walls of the dark houses behind them.

The pavement of Plymouth Drive was so solidly swamped with the advancing demons that you could no longer see it. And the ones at the front kept spilling across the curb ahead of her. A vast, lurching body of them. If it wasn’t for their size, they would almost have resembled soldier ants.

She and the guys around her kept on shooting, and they killed three more. But another three hundred must have arrived by the time that they’d accomplished that. There seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of them. Lauren changed her clip, and kept on firing.

Levin and Martha were still blasting at the things. But it was like trying to stop a blizzard by snatching at individual snowflakes. Not nearly enough to do the whole job.

There were hundreds of yellow eyes fixed on her. Lauren tried to edge away and keep her distance from them. But her heel caught on a clod of turf. She practically went crashing downward, terror surging through her. If the demons saw her fall, they would be on her in an instant.

A big, meaty hand caught hold of her elbow, righting her.

She swiveled around, and found herself staring into an aged but robust face, its bald head offset by a drooping white moustache. This new guy—she had not seen him before—blinked at her solemnly, then raised his other hand, palm flat. A bolt of green-tinged light shot out. A demon that had gotten too close caught fire and crumbled.

Looking across, she saw that other figures had appeared. A younger man, blond and fairly handsome. A distinctly weedy-looking fellow in a bow tie and waistcoat. And a pair of fiercely glaring women who looked like they might be twins.

“At last!” she heard Levin shout.

So were these the other adepts she had heard about?

“We discussed it,” the man who’d saved her grumbled. He was talking to the judge, not her. “And decided we at least had to try and stop this.”

“Pleased to hear it,” Levin came back dryly.

“Waste of time, if you ask me. But I’d rather die on my feet than sitting down.”

All of them began using their powers. Blinding streams of light shot out. Most of the advancing front line went down, and the demons coming up behind it paused. But then they started to move again, like nothing had really happened.

“We need to find higher ground!” Levin yelled.

Which sounded like a plan. They were on a hill, after all. But when she glanced from side to side, she could see that they were being flanked. These beasts might be brutishly dumb, but even they seemed to know what a pincer movement was. Thousands of the things had swept out past the edges of the battle, scampering around to cut them off. And a few had got onto the rooftops, attacking the marksmen up there.

Lauren felt a crushing sensation in her chest, like a rock pressing on it. There was nowhere left for them to go.

The new front line was only about five yards off. There was another hurried surge from it and another cop went down. She drew a bead on the creature nearest her, aiming at its narrow legs. Blew one away. It didn’t kill it, but the thing started going around in mindless circles.

Two more replaced it immediately. She did the same to the one on the left, then heard a clack that told her she was out of ammunition. And she’d used up the last of her clips.

More weapons were falling silent, the air becoming quieter as their echoes died away. She heard somebody curse, and a cop behind her muttered what sounded like a brief prayer. The hisses and snarls of the beasts seemed to become more insistent, pounding at her ears.

The adepts were still trying their level best. But the first two—Levin and Martha—were both looking pretty wasted, and firing less frequently. Would the same happen to the rest before much longer?

Something in her wanted to hunch down, just wrap her arms around her head, and wait there for the end to come. Why’d she even stayed here in the first place? What on earth had she been thinking of?

But she rebelled fiercely against that idea. No, she was damned if she was going out that way. Lauren held herself stiffly, refusing to back down.

The night’s darkness seemed to fold across her, trying to distract her. Everything was happening so fast.

Three more of the demons, in a tightly packed bunch, came running at her. She gripped her Walther like a club again, setting her feet apart and holding her ground.

They were almost on her. Their flat hands were reaching for her legs. She tensed herself and swung the gun back, hoping that this would be over very quickly.

There was an unexpected but immense crackling noise off in the distance. She glanced up at the hilltop, just in time to see a brilliant white flash bring the mansion up there into sharp relief. Its bizarre-looking silhouette was burned into her retinas, that weird spire and the mass of trees around it.

The demons stopped, so close that they were almost touching her. The brilliant light flared up, then faded. Nothing seemed to move.

And then, the moment the hilltop went dark again, the wind that had been screaming around them this whole while…it changed direction. It reversed. Began sucking back into the hole it had emerged from.

At first, it looked like that might be the only thing that was going to happen. But then, the beasts in front of her were lifted off their splayed feet. They went hurtling away from her, and disappeared back through the opening. She wasn’t affected, and neither were any of the others. But in a few more seconds, the massed ranks in front of them were disintegrating. Hundreds of the demons, and then thousands of the things, were being sucked away.

It looked like they were actually being siphoned back. And the more of them that disappeared, the smaller the hole was getting. The sky was returning to normal. And the road in front of her was becoming visible again.

Gratitude surged through her, and she almost doubled up.

It had to be Ross, she figured. Somehow, he had done it.

The hole shrank swiftly to a dimple on the air, the stars hanging around it like a great cluster of fireflies. It wavered there a short while longer, and then disappeared completely with the gentlest sucking noise. Lauren felt her body try to crumple in upon itself.

But this was not over completely, and she forced herself to stay fixed in the moment. The thousands of creatures might have gone. But there was still one apparition left in view.

The great, robed skeleton of Death had returned. Its massively extended body was shrinking back in the direction of the rubble throne. It didn’t sit down on it this time. And was getting smaller as she watched.

It finally contracted to the size of a man. And then the skull and bones, the black swathes of cloth around them, melted from sight. Giving way to draw-stringed sweatpants and an old, stained polo shirt. A familiarly pudgy face was staring around with bewilderment.

She took in the unshaven jowls, and the deep shadows underneath the eyes. Hanlon. Lauren felt her shoulders stiffen. He’d been reduced to a human being again, the magic taken from him. And this was what had brought her to Raine’s Landing in the first place. When she let out her next breath, it carried two whispered syllables with it.

“At last.”

He seemed to be in shock himself. Was stumbling around beneath the piled-up wreckage, unaware that there were eyes following him. Well, that was something she’d be glad to change.

Sweat was running down her face, and her clothes were sticking to her body. Her limbs ached with exhaustion and were trembling. But Lauren paid no attention to that.

She tossed aside her empty Walther. Lying on the lawn in front of her was the revolver of a cop who’d fallen. She felt sorry for the man, but picked it up all the same. This was no time for finer feelings.

It turned out to be heavier than she was used to. But that barely even registered. She checked the chamber. There were two rounds left inside.

“Cornelius Hanlon!” she yelled out.

She’d waited practically a year to do that, and it felt good coming out. It had the desired effect too, lifting him out of his stupor. He stopped tottering around and looked up at her. Then she saw his head cock to one side. And so she took a few steps in his direction, making sure that he could see her clearly.

“Face-to-face finally, and on equal terms!” she called.

Then she held up the gun so he could see that too.

“Or maybe not!”

Even from this distance, she could see the terrible emotions fighting for position on his face. Utter devastation. Failure. All his crazy schemes destroyed. His imaginings reduced to dust.

Then that slid away, revealing the bile underneath. Fury screwed his features up. He wasn’t going to take this lying down.

His shoulders swung away from her. He was reaching for the pile of rubble. And he fished out something from it that flashed when he turned back around. It was a long shard of glass from one of the house’s broken windows. He was grasping the base of it like a knife.

His mouth came open. And he started letting out terrible screams. His bulky frame began to move. He was running at her with considerably more speed than you’d give him credit. But not nearly fast enough.

The few uniformed cops around her hadn’t even noticed what was going on. They were still recovering from the onslaught. Lauren gripped the gun in both hands, aiming it at Hanlon’s chest.

She shouted out a warning, giving him one final chance. He didn’t even seem to hear her. Just kept on coming at her at the same pace, howling like an angry child. The glass was cutting into his grasp. She could see his palm was bleeding. But he wasn’t taking that in either. He had really lost it, hadn’t he?

The fact was, he’d never had it in the first place. Lauren reminded herself of that, then squinted down the sight.

“Back to the shadows for you, Cornelius,” she murmured.

Then she squeezed the trigger, twice.