Midnight's Angels - 03

by Tony Richards

  The same had happened this direction as on Sycamore Hill. But Tyburn was a much larger area, and far more densely populated. The entire southwestern section of our town was heavily buried beneath layers of dimness, despite the fact the neighborhoods around it were all brightly lit, their windows gleaming.

  Two whole sections of the town were virtually lost to us. And -- since it’s the only home we’d ever known -- it’s hard putting into words precisely how that felt. Imagine how you’d feel if the eastern seaboard suddenly dropped off.

  A pair of moving blurs told me that the adepts had come to join us. They materialized, and stared. And were immediately plunged into the same despair that I was feeling.

  “I never thought I’d say this,” Martha managed to get out. “But even in a town like our one, this defies belief.”

  “And I’m afraid it gets even worse,” Willets muttered, surprising us, but not in any pleasant way.

  He raised his right hand, snapped his fingers. And a pair of field glasses appeared in his grasp.

  Which he handed to me with the words, “Take a look.”

  I was the one who needed them, since he was capable of seeing what the regular human eye could not. I adjusted the focus carefully. It was hard to make out smaller objects in that lightless murk. But I began to notice there was movement. Not simply on the narrow avenues and lanes of Tyburn. It was in the yards and on the walls, and even on the rooftops.

  The hominids again. It was becoming increasingly difficult to remember they had once been human beings. Some of them were in the trees, like those cops last night had been.

  With no daylight to drive them back, they could go anywhere they wanted in that part of town. The angels were not in sight, but I guessed they had to be down there somewhere.

  I handed the glasses to Cassie and she peered. And her face slackened with dismay.

  “How do we even start to deal with this?” she asked.

  But the only answer that she got was a soft breeze moaning round us. Otherwise, there was just silence.

  CHAPTER 25

  “I say we start to kill ‘em,” argued Nick McLeish. “Doesn’t matter that they were once human beings, ‘cause they sure aren’t any more.”

  Which had been Woodard Raine’s original argument. It was strange to hear the same thing coming from the mouth of a sane person. But several other people murmured in agreement. A lot of the townsfolk had joined in the discussion, clustering around the statue’s plinth.

  Few of them had gotten much sleep, and none in a lot of cases. Their faces were wan and drawn, their eyelids edged with red. But they were animated, nonetheless. Something needed to be done.

  Willets and Martha looked as unhappy as I was. We understood what this was partially about. Would Nick even be suggesting such a course of action if the people who’d changed had come from Garnerstown?

  The ordinary population of the Landing had never had much time for Tyburn folk. Hardly surprising, when you were talking about a community that kept itself completely isolated and stuck to its own weird ways. Its denizens were viewed as almost alien round here, their neighborhood no real part of the town. And that always makes a brutal attitude easier to consider. I knew enough about the history of the world beyond our borders to get that.

  But there was the matter of the hill as well. There were not so many victims involved, but they included guys like Levin. And could we simply, coldly, gun them down?

  “We’re talking about several thousand lives,” I pointed out.

  Which was another thing about the Landing. It might have the feel of a small town; the inhabitants might think and mostly act that way. But Regan’s Curse -- the fact that none of us could ever leave -- meant that the population had expanded far more than it should have done.

  A few staff from the Town Hall had shown up. They’d come forward to find out if there was anything they could do to help. But there was still no sign, as yet, of Mayor Aldernay. He had doubtless been transformed with the rest, and was grubbing around on his hands and knees right now. But we could get on well enough without him.

  “There has to be another way,” Martha pleaded, a genuine sadness in her hazel gaze. “These are people who were like us only yesterday. So doesn’t killing them amount to murder?”

  “Looking out for your rich buddies?” someone shouted from the crowd.

  I couldn’t make out who had spoken, so I snapped out angrily at the whole load of them.

  “We need to calm down. We’re in a bad way, for sure. But turning on each other isn’t going to help.”

  And I was glad to see that Nick McLeish and those around him saw the sense in that. They quieted down a little.

  “So what exactly are we going to do?” he asked me. “Sit around on our asses until nightfall?”

  “Anything but. Most of the people here are from the southern suburbs, where the news first broke. But we’re not nearly the entire town.”

  He listened carefully.

  “Plenty of families are still holed up at home. We need to get in touch with them and bring them up to speed. Tell them how fire can keep these things off, especially.”

  It wasn’t much, but was the best that we could manage presently. And it gave Nick something to keep him occupied, which he seemed pretty grateful for. He took charge and began to organize that, assigning small groups to different districts.

  “If you run into any trouble,” he was saying, “don’t try to fight. Head back here immediately.”

  Which was right.

  When I turned back to the adepts, Martha’s slender eyebrows lifted. Intuitive as ever, she could see I had a question for her.

  “Yes?”

  “You said last night the adepts who had changed might have retained their magic powers?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  One we hadn’t told the others about yet, since there was no doubt that it would create more panic. We’d have to tell them before night fell, though. We didn’t want another repeat of what had happened yesterday evening.

  “So if they’ve still got their mojo, to what extent?”

  “You don’t think we’ve already tried to find that out?” Willets asked me. “All we’re getting is another blank. If their sorcery’s still present, then it belongs to the Dweller.”

  “You’ve another question,” Martha pointed out.

  And she was quite correct.

  “Can you still not tell if Raine’s been changed?” I asked her slowly. “It could really be an important factor.”

  They could see what I could -- it was a factor that worked both ways. He’d have the potential to either help or harm us.

  Willets’s lips moved gently, silently. I knew that he was turning options over. Then his temples unclenched and he shook his head.

  “I’ll go take a look,” he told me.

  “I’ll come with you,” Martha said.

  Considering they’d only met a few hours ago, they were getting along extremely well. They were both smart and educated, so I supposed that made sense.

  Both their bodies faded, becoming little more than murky blurs. And the next instant, they were gone from sight.

  Except the process was reversed in barely a second. They reappeared in front of me, the pair of them looking astonished. I’d not been expecting them back so soon, and took an involuntary step away from them.

  “What …?”

  Neither adept answered right away. They were both struggling to arrange their thoughts and come to grips with what had happened. And it was Willets who managed it first.

  “It seems that, where the darkness begins, our magic stops working.” He rubbed a hand across his face, wiping a trace of damp away. “We couldn’t get anywhere near Raine Manor. In fact, we were stopped dead at the bottom of the hill.”

  I took that in, then turned my gaze back to the high, dark promontory. The mansion up top was still pitch black, the grounds spreading around it in their usual murky tangle. It was impossible to tell, from
here, if the place had been affected or not.

  But it was possible that Raine was still up there, untouched by last night’s events. He might be crazy, but his sorcery was of the highest caliber.

  And if he could be persuaded to assist us …?

  I had managed that before on a couple of occasions.

  “I’ll have to go,” I told the others.

  “No,” Cassie corrected me. She’d moved up to my shoulder. “We will.”

  And she raised her shotgun, just to emphasize that point.

  CHAPTER 26

  We drove to the foot of Sycamore Hill, although we didn’t go by way of Plymouth Drive. There was no sense that I could see in taking the main route up. The whole place had to be crawling with hominids, and we’d be spotted far too quickly.

  I went instead to a steep gradient on the north frontage of the hill. There was a series of connecting footpaths that I knew about in that direction, and not too many houses in view. With luck could make nearly the entire distance without passing so much as a back yard or an overlooking window.

  Cassie kept glancing around at the interior of the car during the journey. The truth of it was -- despite the fact we’d worked together for the past couple of years -- this was the first time that she’d ever been inside my Cadillac.

  “Ever think of getting something newer?” she asked.

  “Wash your mouth out,” I growled at her.

  She moved her fingertips across the radio. “And what does this get? Glen Miller?”

  So her time in the forest hadn’t lost her that sarcastic edge. I took it on the chin, remaining silent.

  She was sitting where my wife once had. That ground at me a little. Cassie and Alicia, although both attractive, came from two entirely separate molds. The woman that I’d married had been soft and blond, a teacher and a loving mother. And sure, Cassie had once answered that second description. But there was nothing soft about her. She’d had a much harder life, and from a very early age.

  When you boiled it down though -- bottom line -- I was happy to have somebody as good as her watching my back again. Cassie doesn’t simply fight evil. She does it with real passion. And that’s what makes the genuine difference.

  She’d pocketed the last of her incendiary shells, and was loading her shotgun with saboted slugs again.

  “You realize, in spite of what you said,” she asked me, “if we start running into any trouble up there, we might have to end up killing a few of those things?”

  I was already well aware of that. Didn’t like it, but it was a fact. I nodded stiffly. Living where we do, we’re sometimes prey to forces beyond our control. And they can strike at anyone, without the slightest warning.

  We take our chances, that’s the fact of the matter. Levin. All the other adepts. Anyone. Which means that we can scarcely complain if our luck runs out.

  I pulled off the main highway, onto a side road that led us deeper in. Then turned left into a cul-de-sac that terminated at a line of trees. The unnatural darkness started here.

  At first glance, it was like a pall of heavy, oily smoke. The same kind of dimness that you get around a factory fire. But then it got a good deal denser, tightening its grip.

  My throat went dry as I got out. I was staring at something that should have been impossible. The area in front of me was still trapped in the realms of midnight. And on this side of the divide, I was standing in the middle of a sunny, bright fall day.

  The trees ahead of us were sunken deeply in shadow. You could not make out the details of them, only their general shapes. Their branches were completely still, and none of their leaves were rustling. So at least there didn’t seem to be any hominids in them, like last time. It was far more likely that the creatures were sticking to the better-populated areas, hunting for survivors maybe. They had no reason to be down here.

  I felt a bead of sweat crawling across my upper lip. Wiped it away. And Cassie noticed that. Her lashes batted sympathetically.

  “I don’t want to go in either.” She ran her gaze across the swathe of gloom ahead of us. “I thought I’d seen creepy in my time, but not like this.”

  I pushed a hand toward the dark, but it didn’t respond. Unlike smoke, it hung there motionlessly, waiting for us to step in. Cassie gripped the Mossberg with both hands and pumped a slug into the chamber. Then she looked at me again.

  “I’d lead the way,” she informed me. “But I don’t know this place the same way you do.”

  * * *

  It barely counted as a footpath. Really just a winding strip of bare earth -- most of it at a sharp upward angle -- that had been formed by the weather down the years. Rainwater had carved it out. And because of that, the route got pretty steep and treacherous the higher up we climbed.

  There were times when we had to let go of our weapons, and haul ourselves up the next few yards by whatever means were available. A trailing root. Sometimes just a handful of coarse grass. I puffed and panted, and the muscles in my limbs burned. This part of the north side was the steepest climb on the whole hill except for one. Over to our left was Coven Point, and that was a sheer drop.

  Cassie managed it a lot more easily. She’d always been the fitter of us. But I was reminded, too, that she’d spent the last couple of months living out of doors. It seemed to have invigorated her, refreshing her natural energy and strength. There was something unconcerned about the way she crossed each obstacle.

  I was already wishing that I’d picked an easier route up. But that would have taken us much closer to the houses, and I knew we had to avoid that.

  It was not only the adepts who lived up here. Most people in town who’d done well for themselves -- or had had it done for them by their parents -- had a place on Sycamore Hill. Occasionally, we’d catch sight of a sprawling rooftop or a set of high gates through the tangled branches. At which point, we’d both slow down, moving as quietly as we could, our guns held at the ready, our eyes scanning the darkened undergrowth for anything that looked like trouble.

  None came, thank God. Although I did make out a pair of shapes clambering across a big old chimneypot, one time. They stopped abruptly, angling their heads in the direction we were hiding. Then they moved away.

  This was daytime. I kept having to remind myself of that. And the sun should have been above us. So why couldn’t we see it?

  The fact was, we just plain couldn’t. There was not so much as a faint yellow smudge above our heads. Nor was there any view of the rest of the town, even when we reached a clearing. It was like we’d entered a different dimension, cut adrift completely from reality. The hill was no part of the Landing any longer. It had become the property of something else.

  A few more massive residences went by, every single one of them with darkened movement on its roofs and walls. And then we came, at last, to blacktop. It took me a brief moment to get my bearings, but it looked like we’d arrived at the final bend on Plymouth Drive before it reached Raine Manor. From this point on, the foliage got so dense that there was no way to continue through it.

  Cassie hadn’t even been up here before, but she glanced up ahead and could see the problem too.

  Peering from behind the tree line, we tried to make out if there were creatures in our way. There didn’t appear to be any. None visible either on the sloping road below us. But that might not last for very long.

  Memories came back of what I’d seen on Greenwood Terrace. How rapidly those blocks had been completely overwhelmed. Those scuttling hominids moved really fast. Which meant we had to do the same

  “We’re going to have to run?” Cass whispered to me.

  And I nodded. She had got that right.

  “If Raine turns out to have been changed as well …?”

  “Then we’ll know that we’ve been running in the wrong direction,” I said flatly. “There’s no other way to do this.”

  She gave a stiff nod.

  No further words passed between us. There are times when they are not enough. One se
cond, we were staring at each other.

  The next, we were on our way.

  Out onto the open road, the streetlamps as dead as lightning-blasted trees ahead of us. We started powering our way up the final gradient. The muscles in my thighs were smarting, but that didn’t even slow me down.

  CHAPTER 27

  Pattering. I could hear it before we’d gone fifty yards. And I thought at first it might be only my imagination. Or else there were small stones on the pavement, and our hurried feet were kicking them aside.

  But then it got much louder. It was coming from behind us, from the barren, hollow gloom that we were trying to leave behind. There had been nothing back there a few seconds ago. But now …

  I was forced to slow down and stare back.

  The only thing that I could see, at first glance, was that the surface of the road seemed to have broken up a little. Sections of it seemed to be bobbing up and down as if in the grip of some silent earthquake. And then my eyes focused better. I could see that it was not the pavement itself but figures on it. Somewhere around a hundred of them.

  Cassie had noticed the same thing.

  I’d brought a flashlight with me. Took it out and switched it on, then shone it at the approaching horde.

  Which slowed the creatures down a little, the same way that my headlamps had. Hands came up to shield twisted faces. But they were still too far away for anything this small to have much effect. They halted from surprise more than anything else, and then kept on coming.

  Cass tugged urgently at my sleeve.

  “Let’s go!”

  She was right. We needed to be gaining ground again. But the hackles on my neck were prickling. I was starting to get a bad feeling about this. Felt certain I was missing something.

  My gaze went -- and the beam with it -- to the hominid at the front of the pack. It was loping up the hill like the rest of them, coming down on its hands first, then powering forward with its strong back legs. That was what made them look like they were bobbing. Their heads were going constantly up and down.