Midnight's Angels - 03

by Tony Richards

  Two things became apparent as our eyes adjusted. The front door of the house that Ritchie’s people had been guarding was hanging wide open. And, although there were still patrol cars in evidence, the uniformed men who’d arrived in them were no longer in sight. My gaze swept through the dimness.

  Willets tapped me on the shoulder, bringing my attention around. He was pointing to a pole by the curb, one which carried power lines. There was some kind of junction box up there. The thing had been broken open, and was smoldering gently. So this street hadn’t become dark by chance. It had been intentional.

  I slid a hand into my coat pocket, closing it over my revolver.

  Something rustled in a nearby tree.

  We looked at it as the leaves began to shift. There seemed to be something large and heavy on the move up there. The longest branches almost reached above our heads, so we took a quick step back.

  A face emerged from the dense mass of fading, curling greenery. It didn’t have its uniform cap on any longer, but was instantly recognizable. The gray moustache. The hollow cheeks.

  “Harrison?” Ritchie yelled out.

  I knew this old-timer too. And what the hell was the guy doing the whole way up there?

  He started moving closer to us. Seemed to be managing it easily, despite the fact that he was clinging to a single narrow branch. You’d need the balance of a tightrope walker to do something like that. Harrison was too old. I tried to figure out what I was really looking at.

  Then his mouth started coming open, revealing a pit of utter blackness. I began to see the kind of trouble we were in.

  He was tensing. And then leapt at us in the next moment. I started pulling my gun out. Would have been too late.

  Lehman Willets raised a hand, his palm held flat. A flash of brilliant red shot out. It wrapped itself around the figure, chewing into its outline while it was still sailing through the air.

  Its form started breaking up, fissures of red appearing through it. And the whole thing vanished just before it reached us.

  Ritchie’s mouth came open in protest. But it turned out there wasn’t even time for that. Because another huddled shape came peeling down the tree trunk the next instant, hurtling across the ground. It was Lee Drake. I had my gun out, but felt so nerveless that I couldn’t even aim.

  Martha Howard-Brett raised both her palms and did the same as Willets had. With the exception that the flash was shining gold this time. I felt my breath stop in my throat. The two cops hadn’t merely been spirited away. If I’d gotten this right, they had been atomized.

  Willets stared across at Vallencourt, who was aghast.

  “I’m very sorry,” he murmured. “I know they were your people, but they just weren’t human anymore.”

  There were more stirrings of movement coming to our ears by this time. And they were emerging from the open doorway of the house.

  Shapes began to appear at its edges. Some of them were as large as the cops. But there were smaller figures, apparently children, in among them. Not hanging back either. Not timid or subservient in any way. They were moving into view as boldly as the adults. And there was something rather feral about the way they moved.

  I felt my insides drop. This was an entire family. And I had no idea how to react.

  Martha’s lovely face became as blank and stiff as plastic. As for Willets, the creases on his forehead deepened, and his pupils glowed a duller red. I knew exactly what was going through his mind. Back when he’d gone crazy, it hadn’t been children this young who had died. But young people all the same. Snuffing out any life before it had been fully lived … I wasn’t sure that he could bring himself to do that.

  “Might be best if we get out of here,” Ritchie suggested.

  So his frame of mind was pretty much the same.

  “How about the other people on this street?” I pointed out.

  We had no idea what had happened to them. Nothing else was on the move, in any of the other homes. The doors were shut, the windows bottomlessly black.

  My gaze returned with a sickly jolt. One of the kids had come fully outside and was scuttling up the front wall of that first house like a spider. And another one was hanging upside down from the lintel. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, at first. But then I saw the truth.

  These people were not part of our world any longer. They were under the spell of this Dweller. And it belonged to a dimension where there was no space or gravity. So maybe that explained it.

  Their emotionless eyes were all fixed on us. It was like being stared at by mannequins who’d learned to walk around. No life in there, and no humanity. They gleamed coldly, but reflected nothing.

  And then their lips began coming apart, the exact same way the cops’ had.

  I had no doubt they were going to rush us. It was either slaughter a whole family or fall back.

  But I wasn’t looking at this thing the way an adept might.

  “A Spell of Sealing!” Willets shouted.

  And he was not shouting at me. Martha nodded, and they quickly faced each other. Held their arms out at full stretch, both of them mouthing the same string of words.

  They flung their hands in the direction of the house. A huge bubble came into being around it. A curved, glistening translucence on the air. The family beyond it looked distorted, weirdly magnified.

  One of the children on the wall leapt down and came bounding at us. But when it hit the bubble’s edge, it bounced back with a low, percussive thud. It tried again, to the same effect -- it didn’t seem to be hurting itself, so the barrier was not rock solid. Then it hunkered down on the far side, glaring at us with open frustration.

  “That should hold them for a while,” Willets informed us. “Although I doubt the same spell will be of any use on those damned angels.”

  “We’d better go,” Martha added, reaching out for me and Ritchie. And neither of us needed asking twice. Seeing kids transformed that way … it was a pretty awful spectacle. One I knew would haunt me in my nightmares. We both took hold of the woman’s slender fingers.

  In the same manner that she had brought us down here, Martha spirited us away.

  Except that, once the world slowed down again and took on substance, we were not back where we’d started. Or even anywhere near.

  I’d expected us to wind up on the same ridge we had started from. And so, by their startled expressions, had the adepts. Martha’s spells were usually fine-tuned and very accurate. But her magic appeared to have gone completely askew.

  Or else, somebody had interfered with it.

  I started figuring that out when the rest of the adepts began popping into view. The McGinley sisters first, closely followed by Judge Levin, Kurt van Friesling, Gaspar Vernon, Walter Cobb. And they peered around alarmedly too, just as surprised as I was. Nobody had planned this, or had even been expecting it.

  I recognized where we’d wound up, since I had been here many times before. We were on Sycamore Hill, but at the very top. We were standing on a driveway, so heavily overgrown that you could barely make out the original gravel anymore. Tangled, leafless trees surrounded us, forming a canopy over our heads.

  When we looked along the drive, we found ourselves staring at the outline of Raine Manor.

  A pair of darkly golden eyes was watching us from an otherwise blackened window in the topmost story of the house.

  You shouldn’t have been able to see them from this distance. But when it came to Woodard Raine, words like ‘shouldn’t’ didn’t even enter into the equation.

  CHAPTER 16

  Amelia Hobart peered at the doctor who was standing in front of her, unable to decipher the patterns that his moving lips were making. Or perhaps -- it occurred to her -- she didn’t want to make sense of what the man was telling her. It had been two whole months of anguished waiting. Now, she had her husband back. But not all of him, apparently.

  The doctor’s words started to even out into comprehensible sentences at last. But it was still painfu
l to hear them.

  “Memory loss at this stage,” the man was saying, “would appear to be almost total. He has enough left to function. But as to what his job is, who his friends and acquaintances are, even his family …”

  He faltered. They were standing in the corridor outside Saul’s room, a harsh fluorescent strip fizzing above them. Amelia felt herself beginning to grow faint.

  “He doesn’t know who I am?”

  The doctor adjusted a pen in the top pocket of his coat. “I’m afraid not.”

  “The children?”

  He dropped his gaze a little. “The same. As of right now, Saul doesn’t even know which town he’s living in, much less recall its history.”

  He didn’t know about the witchcraft or the dangerous things that came here, then. And that had to put him in a lot of danger.

  There seemed to be a hard obstruction in her throat. Amelia had to swallow before she could get her next words out.

  “How long before it starts to come back?”

  The doctor, who’d been honest and straightforward up until this point, was finding it increasingly difficult to look at her.

  “There’s no way of predicting. It’s different in every case.”

  “But sooner or later?” she insisted. “He will get his memory back, won’t he?”

  “The human brain’s a complex thing. Saul might make a full recovery in the next couple of days. That’s the best-case scenario. The worst …?”

  And the way he left that hanging raised Amelia’s deepest fears. That Saul might be this way permanently. Unable to recall that he was a police lieutenant. A foreigner to the experiences that had brought him to that place. Mystified as to the names, the births, or even the existence of his own three daughters. As to their relationship, their years together and their wedding day …?

  He might not even remember why he’d come to love her. And how would their lives unfold from this point, if that was the case?

  No, she was being selfish, and Amelia saw that quickly. Saul was the real injured party here, not her. He was the one who’d almost died. It had to be frightening for him, waking up into a world he didn’t know. So what she had to do was very clear indeed. She had to do her best for him. Always had, and always would. He was the kindest, noblest man she’d ever come across, and he deserved it.

  She returned to the door and pushed it open a crack. Enough that she could see her husband but he did not notice her. Saul had been such a massive presence in her life. But now, he looked slightly shrunken.

  A bunch of pillows was stacked up behind him. He was half-sitting, half-lying, and was watching the small television that was fastened to the wall. It had been tuned to RLKB, to the local news, in an attempt to revive his recollection of the place.

  But it didn’t seem to be working. His face was utterly blank. His eyes were darkly mystified. It was all a puzzle to him. As she watched, his lips began to move a little.

  It took her a few seconds to understand what he was doing. He was silently repeating place names and the names of local people. Union Square. Sycamore Hill. Richard Vallencourt. Mayor Edgar Aldernay. But he was doing it without the slightest sign of comprehension. Simply echoing the words.

  Amelia felt despair wash through her. Saul was normally so capable. Always on the ball, on top of things. It felt like he’d been lost to her, the real Saul spirited away and replaced by this vacant-minded changeling.

  She looked at the doctor again, her mouth coming open. But he’d already anticipated her next question.

  “He needs as much human contact as possible, with you and the children especially. Show him old photos, videos you’ve made, your wedding album. He’s got commendations from the department? Show him those as well. I want him discharged as soon as he’s ready. Saul is better off at home, amongst familiar surroundings. Like I said, each case is unique. Which means that there’s no telling what might trigger off a recollection.”

  He was going to add something more, but a low moan from inside the room suddenly cut across him. It started gently, but then gathered in strength, in sheer painful intensity.

  And turned into an anguished bellow.

  Amelia went rushing through the door, the doctor hard on her heels. A terrifying sight swelled up in front of them.

  Saul -- in his pale blue hospital robe -- was sitting up on his bed, with the sheets pushed back. But he was also doubled forward, both huge palms pressed to his head. His eyes were squeezed shut and his teeth were gritted. And his big oval face with its prominently jutting jaw was mangled up with pain.

  The doctor pushed past and started trying to examine him. Amelia froze, her pulse thumping through her entire body. Saul had been shot in the chest. That was what had put him here. So why was he clutching his head?

  The doctor tried to move Saul’s hands away and examine his eyes. But Saul shoved the man off, gripped his temples harder and let out another bellow.

  Then a word came out between his clenched teeth. And he repeated it, several times.

  Amelia thought at first that it might be a person’s name. And then she figured out the truth. He was repeating the place-name of the strangest neighborhood in the whole of Raine’s Landing.

  “Tyburn,” he kept on grunting. “Tyburn.”

  * * *

  As the night grew thicker, the creature that had once been Pastor Alan Clary came scuttling out from the front doorway of St. Edmund’s, going hands-first down the short flight of stone steps. A flickering white glow emerged behind it. The third angel slid into view, its face contorted horribly, its eyes like blank holes in a twisted Halloween mask.

  When they started toward Greenwood Terrace, it was almost as if they were teamed, the floating creature hovering idly above the thing it had created. A few people in the surrounding houses noticed the glow coming from it. Drapes were yanked aside, faces appearing at windows. But the people who got a look at the thing seemed to guess straight away how dangerous it was. Most went to their telephones, to call the authorities. But no one ventured out. It headed on, completely unimpeded.

  Greenwood Terrace was a different story. It was one of the largest, busiest thoroughfares in town, running in a straight line from the west edge to the east. And there was still plenty of traffic on it, people headed out for the evening or else coming back home late from work. A constant thrum of vehicles. A steady stream of headlamps in one direction, taillights in the other.

  Faced with this obstruction, both of the creatures came to a halt. Passing drivers started noticing them, their cars wobbling but not stopping. Lanes were abandoned. A few vehicles lost strips of paintwork down their sides, but thankfully there was no worse damage. Horns blasted out.

  The thing that had been Alan Clary squatted a little lower. Its lightless eyes followed the passing movement. It let out a hiss. And then seemed to come to a decision. Got up on all fours again, and started moving quickly forward. And the angel followed it at the same steady rate.

  They both began to cross the pavement. The cars approaching them swerved and braked, their tires screeching. There were several crunches. People yelled.

  One station wagon came within a yard of hitting the hunched moving figure, but avoided it in time.

  A driver got out from his SUV, took in properly what he was looking at and decided to turn and run. Most of the others merely gawped out through their windshields.

  And, within a few more seconds, the strange figures had disappeared from view.

  Last seen, they were going south, into the dark heart of the neighborhood called Tyburn.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Hecate, blessed Goddess of the moon, answer our prayers. Grant power to those gathered here, your children, your True Believers. Grant us dominion over the laws of science and the laws of nature. This we beseech you!”

  A pure white cockerel was held up by its feet, which had been bound. Its throat was briskly slit. Hot blood spattered down across a black marble altar before being directed into a pair of silver go
blets, one of them studded with jet and one with opal. The light of the rising moon caught the edges of the cups, making them wink like lightning bugs.

  Emaline Pendramere, a High Witch from one of Tyburn’s oldest clans, dropped the limp corpse to one side, then turned to face her congregation.

  There were perhaps six hundred people gathered, many of them dressed in robes of midnight black. They ranged from pensioners in their eighties to a few tiny babes in arms. And they were uniformly pale of skin. The inhabitants of this district did not spend much time in the sun if they could help it.

  They were gathered in a small park -- surrounded by houses, so it really was a garden square -- deep in the heart of the neighborhood. Rows of tall trees ran along its outer edges, making this a private place. They had not been pollarded in decades, and grew wildly. And the grass underfoot had not been mown all year. Weeds and wild flowers were growing everywhere. Elsewhere in the Landing, this would not have been allowed. But the people who lived here did not let such mundane things as tidiness bother them too much.

  Evidence of that could be found in the narrow streets which threaded out from here like the strands of a cobweb. The tall, narrow houses -- brick-built -- were densely clad with climbing plants and ivy. There’d been few attempts to cut it back. Most of the yards were like miniature jungles, whole sections of fence-work broken and the roots of big trees bulging through the dirt. Shingles on the roofs were loose, and a few chimney pots were halfway broken.

  None of which was of any concern, either, to the families present here tonight. Venture inside any of their homes and you’d find equal disarray. They saw their lives as spiritual ones, with only the thinnest bond to everyday reality. The rituals of witchcraft were the central aspect of their lives. The practice of it, and the belief in its boundless power, gave them most things that they needed.