Midnight's Angels - 03

by Tony Richards

“Great power brings with it great pride,” Willets put in. “And when that gets hurt …”

  So the big old adept had just wandered off into the dimness. There’d been no sound, no indication anything was wrong. But when he came back, he seemed to be injured. Was down on his hands and knees. A couple of the others had rushed across to help him.

  “He deliberately tricked us,” Martha told me crossly. Touches of faint color were returning to her cheeks. “Even making sounds like he was hurt. Sam Levin was the first to reach him.”

  That was when Vernon had grabbed hold of the judge, pressed their faces up close and transformed him. And the angel itself had put in an appearance, around that point.

  “Sam immediately joined the other side, attacking us. And none of us had time to fight. We were just … overwhelmed.”

  She and the doctor had only escaped by the narrowest of margins, leaving the road and hurrying away down the tracks between the houses. And when they got a chance to stare back …

  “All of them?” I breathed, my face going numb.

  “Every single adept, yes. Crouched on all fours. Turned to animals. And then they started spreading out across the hill, bursting into people’s homes and changing the inhabitants. There’s an army of them growing.”

  Which would turn into a larger one, exactly like Tyburn. The whole idea was appalling. Even Cassie, who’d never had much time for the people up there, shook her head tiredly and muttered, “Jesus Christ.”

  “You said they burst into people’s homes?” I pointed out. “Sam Levin and Walter Cobb -- they aren’t exactly hefty.”

  “We think it’s possible,” Willets croaked, “that they might still have their magic powers.”

  He looked about as gloomy at that prospect as I felt. We had been in a bad enough fix in the first place. But if we were now facing hominids with witchcraft up their sleeves, then it had just turned into trouble squared.

  Then something else occurred to me.

  “How about Raine?” I asked. “Is he affected?”

  “There’s no way of telling,” the doc came back at me, seeing what I was getting at.

  And when I glanced toward the peak again, I could see that he was right. Raine Manor was pitch black, its windows lightless. But then, that was nothing in the least bit new. The place had been that way for years. Its windows were permanently opaque, and its owner lived in almost total darkness, punctuated by the merest glint of candlelight.

  But another thought was coming to me. I took a few seconds chewing it over, and then spat it out.

  “Sounds like you’ve both been pretty busy.”

  The adepts stared at me, not seeming to understand what I was driving at.

  “So which one of you opened up the barrier?”

  They still looked blank, which bothered me. But I described to them what had gone down on Greenwood Terrace, that young family trapped back there. The way that they had suddenly been freed, a hole opening in the translucent wall.

  Willets and Martha glanced at each other and then back at me. And I could see how mystified their gazes were.

  “It wasn’t us,” Martha told me. “And it couldn’t have been any of the others.”

  Which left who? There was a chance it might have been Raine, although I seriously doubted that. So was there someone that we didn’t even know about -- with serious power -- in this town?

  But that was an issue that we would have to examine later. There were far more serious events confronting us. I noticed movement in the streets around us. And before much longer, we were no longer alone on Union Square.

  A bunch of frightened townspeople had started showing up.

  * * *

  Some arrived in vehicles, others on foot. They came singly, in pairs, in families or groups of neighbors. And they came across the flagstones like a broken army that was trying to find its way back home. These were the ordinary folk of Raine’s Landing, coming here for safety, or to find out what was going on.

  It was the natural place to do that. Union Square has always been the heart of this strange community. But the Town Hall was closed by this hour, and there was no indication that anybody like our mayor was going to show up.

  In fact, when I reflected on it, he lived on the hill as well.

  Of the faces approaching me, one in particular stood out. A roundish one with dark brown eyes and short, curly hair. This was Nick McLeish, a construction guy from one of the southern districts, Garnerstown. I knew him to be brave and sturdy, and he’d helped me out before.

  He spotted me as well, came striding across to greet me. Then he noticed who I was standing next to, and drew to a halt. He stood there nervously, eyeing my companion. Most people are scared of Willets.

  So I went across to talk with him. He flinched back a little, like I might have caught something contagious from the doc. But then he got a grip on himself. He looked shook up, like all the rest. But he remained defiant and determined. Nothing could take that away from him.

  “Why the hell was no one warned?” he asked me, genuinely angry.

  I could hardly blame him. But it had been the adepts’ decision, not mine.

  “We weren’t sure what we were up against,” I tried to explain.

  “Ain’t that usually the case? People should’ve been given at least some kind of explanation. Then they might have had a better chance.”

  Or maybe not. Everything had happened so unexpectedly. I put that aside, and did my best to bring him up to speed.

  “Have the creatures reached the southern suburbs yet?” I asked him.

  “Not while I was there. But word of them spread like wildfire, when those guys from Greenwood Terrace arrived.” He meant the people who had managed to escape the first onslaught, Garnerstown being the next district along. “Most of us decided to get out of there before those things showed up.”

  More of our citizens were pouring in while we were speaking, the entire square filling up.

  “Maybe it’s time to reform the militias?” Nick suggested.

  We had done that when we were facing the Shadow Man. Groups of private citizens had defended their neighborhoods. But this was something rather different.

  “No.” I was recalling what had happened on the hill. “Smaller groups are not a good idea this time. If we have to do one thing tonight, we have to stick together.”

  He started at me with a perturbed expression. “You’ve gotta have a better plan than that?”

  My head was spinning gently, though. And I could give no other answer.

  But Willets has very fine-tuned senses, and I suppose he’d been listening to us.

  “Take a leaf from Cassie’s book,” he called out. “Light some fires.”

  Nick flinched again, peering at him oddly. But I could see the doctor might be right. The streetlamps might be on here, but I knew how quickly that could change. Casting more light on the situation definitely sounded like a good idea.

  A lot of the people around me had started staring at the man. Just as nervous of him as they always were. But they were listening to what he said.

  He swept one arm out, indicating our surroundings.

  “Light is the one thing that those creatures can’t abide. So what we have to do is keep this whole place bright as daylight, until dawn.”

  A ripple went through the mass of bodies. And when I looked back at Nick, his face had tightened up.

  “I’m on it.”

  He turned to the neighbors he’d arrived with. There were over a dozen of them. They quickly consulted, then Nick led them to the front door of an office building. I thought at first that they were going to break it down. But one of his guys yanked something from his pocket, stooped down quickly, fiddled with the lock. And in another moment, they were through.

  When they re-emerged, they were carrying furniture. Chairs, desks, anything wooden they could lay their hands on. Others had already begun following suit.

  Piles were formed, the larger items broken up. Someone had al
ready siphoned gas from a parked car. Flames, accompanied by narrow wreaths of oily smoke, began to spring up everywhere I looked. Those who’d arrived with children were carefully keeping them at a distance, since the kids were fascinated.

  There had to be nearly a thousand people in the square by this hour. It was an amazing sight. All those faces, of all ages, lit up with dancing yellow. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have supposed this was some kind of festival.

  Cassie turned around on the spot, taking the whole thing in. Then she smiled.

  “Wow, we should do this every year!”

  And in spite of everything, I managed a brief laugh.

  “Know what it reminds me of?” asked Lehman Willets, coming up behind us.

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Some old black-and-white footage. Paris, 1968. That student rebellion they had back then.”

  I didn’t know too much about it. So I asked him, “What were they rebelling against?”

  “Authority,” he told me. “Militarism. War.”

  “Loss of freedom then, and death. Like us.”

  “Yep. Cross an ocean, half a century, and the basic things, the important ones, remain the same.”

  But the basic bad stuff was progressing to its own agenda too. Up near the top of Sycamore Hill, the very final light went out.

  CHAPTER 24

  I ended up, close to dawn, sitting propped against the statue’s plinth, the big bronze face of the town’s founder hovering over me. The fires had been allowed to drop a little, but they were still glowing the whole way across the square. And -- Paris, 1968, be damned -- it looked from my point of view like the early hours before a battle in some old-time conflict, an army keeping itself warm. The temperature had dropped a few degrees, and most people had huddled in closer to the flames. But the two remaining adepts didn’t seem to feel the chill. And neither did Cassie, who was strolling along the perimeter with her shotgun at her side.

  She’d cleaned up and changed by this hour. It turned out one of the eateries on O’Connell had a washroom out back with a hand-held shower. And then someone had opened up his men’s store for her. So she was dressed in new, much stiffer-looking jeans, and a Red Sox T-shirt. She didn’t look especially happy about that, but promised she would pay him later.

  It didn’t look like we were going to be attacked again. So maybe Willets had taken us in the right direction, suggesting what he had. When had he become so very smart and able? Most of the time I’d known him, he’d been rather screwy and detached.

  All I really knew was that I was exhausted. It felt like pinches of fine sand had gotten up behind my eyelids. So I rubbed at them, which only made things worse. Then my hand fell back into my lap. My chin rocked down without my willing it to. And then I was dozing.

  The whole town was lost to me. My mind went to another place. I had been there before, but it still made me uneasy.

  A great dry open plain yawned around me, an outcrop of jagged rocks visible at the far horizon. The sun was on the point of setting directly above them, bathing their outlines in a deep blood red. And there were thicker shadows visible in there I believed might be the openings to caves.

  I heard a noise and turned around. A sparsely realized face sprang into being in the air in front of me.

  A female one, gaunt and withered and with straw-like hair. I’d met her in my earlier dreams. Her name was Amashta, and she was a very ancient shaman. What she wanted with me, I still couldn’t tell.

  The carved scar on her neck was still there. And the dangling earrings made from animal bone. She peered at me evenly, her wizened lips twisting into a vague impression of a smile.

  When she spoke, her voice didn’t seem to issue simply from her mouth. It was on the air around me, echoing.

  “You choose fine times to sleep, Defender.”

  “Got to grab a little while I can,” I answered, trying to sound nonchalant.

  Although truthfully, inside, I was anything but that. What did she want this time?

  “You are facing your greatest challenge yet.”

  “And don’t I know it. Are you going to help?”

  “I did that the first time, yes. But it is you who answers to the title of ‘Defender.’”

  “I never asked for that,” I pointed out.

  But she ignored me.

  “You cannot expect me to intervene every time a threat comes down. Or do you suppose I am some sort of … what is the term your kind use?”

  I thought I got it. “Fairy godmother?”

  Her smile took on a slightly harder edge.

  “I think that we both understand I am not that.”

  A surge of anger ripped up through me. I was getting sick of her riddles. In fact, between her and the Little Girl, I’d all of them I could ever possibly use. What I genuinely required was straight answers.

  “Why don’t you tell me what this is about? What exactly does ‘Defender’ mean? And what the hell’s this ‘prophecy’?”

  The image of her face began to fade.

  “That would be telling you too much, Ross Devries. As I have said, free will is the most important element in all of this. You must make your own decisions, without the luxury of knowing whether or not they might be the right ones.”

  “But if this is already foretold …?”

  “The prophecy relates to only one possible future. And there are thousands of those.”

  Her face had turned into the palest outline on the air, like a scrap of mist that had been accidentally blown into a human shape. She was taunting me with little bits of information all over again. Which infuriated me almost beyond reason. And I wasn’t going to let her have the final word this time.

  “You’re expecting a hell of a lot from one man, aren’t you?”

  Any trace of hardness fled from her expression. Her smile became an open, genuine one, her eyes widening.

  “Defender is not simply a title. It is what you are, Ross. It is in your nature.”

  She blinked and pursed her lips together.

  “Let it guide you. Seek your inner truth. That is your best chance to prevail.”

  I jerked and woke up, squinting, blinded suddenly. And it took me a few more seconds to figure out why.

  I was facing east. And the sun was rising, gold and glaring, on the far horizon.

  * * *

  The massed ridge of treetops in the distance seemed to phase through turquoise before turning green. A flock of birds span up from them and wheeled away. The details of the square around me began to solidify. The theatre. The offices of local governance. I had my own office close by, although I rarely use it these days. Even the people around me became more tangible a presence. Night turns human beings into partial phantoms. Only daylight makes them fully real again.

  Folk were stretching and pacing around, and kicking the last embers of the fires out. Some had cups, and plates of food. The crowd had grown so large that it had stretched off from the square into O’Connell Street. And there were plenty of bars and eateries down there. The staff still had to be present, since there was no way they could go home.

  Safe. That was the word they were clinging to. A word like a life raft on a huge, fathomless ocean. And we knew it couldn’t last forever. Time would pass until the twilight hours fell again. But we were grateful for the respite. Once the sun was fully up, people looked like they were breathing far more easily.

  The only people who were not looking relieved were Martha and Willets. I couldn’t help but wonder what was still bothering our two remaining adepts. So I got to my feet and did a little stretching of my own, and then went over to them.

  They were both gazing, all over again, at the high uneven bulk of Sycamore Hill. And I could understand Martha’s discomfort, since her own home was up there. She was a virtual outcast by this juncture, with no hope of reaching it.

  Which still didn’t explain why Willets was looking so terribly unhappy.

  “What’s up?” I asked them.


  The doctor replied without so much as turning his head.

  “Good God, man! Don’t you have eyes?”

  I stared where they were. Could see nothing wrong, at first. The side of the hill facing us was still rather darker than the rest of town, the big houses dim. But there was nothing too unusual in that. Sections of the hill were densely forested. And the fact that so much witchcraft was practiced up there seemed to have had an effect as well. It always took a while longer than was natural for the shadows on the gradient to untangle.

  But the more I kept on staring, then the more I figured out that simply wasn’t going to happen. The sun had risen high enough that its rays ought to be spilling down the slope, illuminating Levin’s home and Gaspar Vernon’s mansion. But no such thing was evident. The hill remained darkened.

  A chill spread through me. And I shook my head, trying to understand what I was looking at.

  I’d seen some genuinely weird stuff in my time, but not a lot to match this. It was hard to tell precisely where the sunlight gave up and the dark took over. The air above and around Sycamore Hill was filled with a smoke-like blur which gradually thickened, deepening, the closer to the hillside your gaze took you. As if day and night had blended with each other at the edges, like ink in the bottom of a tall glass full of water.

  Others began to notice too. Shoulders were nudged, fingers pointed. And an alarmed murmur rose. Which was when Cass came hurrying across.

  “What the hell is this?”

  I shrugged. If it was like this on the hill, then how about Tyburn? Was the same happening there?

  The pair of us headed for the tall house where my office was located. The door was hanging open, so we went through to the back and started climbing up the fire escape. Vivid memories came back as we went higher. I had fought and beaten Saruak up here, with a little help.

  Gravel crunched below us as we made our way across the flat roof to the southwest edge. We stopped there, the shingles of the town spreading off around us like a brown-red forest flecked with strips of green and charcoal gray. There were no cars on the avenues today, and no pedestrians on the sidewalks. Normal life had been put on hold.

  I heard Cassie murmur something when we turned our gazes to the southwest. I’m not sure what, because my pulse was bumping loudly in my head. If there were such things as frozen moments, this was one of them. A tiny little fragment of time, locked up in cold storage.