Midnight's Angels - 03

by Tony Richards

  I reached Cass, who was out of breath.

  “What now?” she gasped, doubling partly over.

  And the only answer I could give her was another numb shake of my head. We still had no electric power, and only a couple of the bonfires were alight.

  Staring at the closest woodpile, I could see the heart of it was smoldering. The core shone; a few thin orange strands snaked through the broken lumber. But they were no match for the surging wind. They reached the sides and top, but didn’t last a second before being spirited away.

  The whole thing started dwindling before my troubled gaze. Winked, and then went out completely. The night settled back across us. And it felt like being buried under several tons of shadow.

  The gale finally began to subside. You’d have thought that that would come as a relief, but it didn’t. Because the sound that I’d originally been expecting … it turned up at last.

  A distant pattering at first. And then as it drew closer, a steady clatter, not broken up and fragmented but forming one continuous sound that swelled as it approached. It was coming from the west, from Sycamore Hill and the power station off beyond that. Forces had been joined.

  I turned to our magicians. “Another barrier?” I suggested. “A much stronger one, this time?”

  Willets’s head shook solemnly. “It took all of us to make the one round Tyburn. With only the two of us left ...”

  He fixed his attention on the palely glowing figures, who were still hovering in front of the hill, staring down on us mere mortals with what looked like satisfaction.

  “And those things went through the last one like butter. Why do you suppose it should be any different?”

  Martha, normally a gentle, thoughtful soul, was holding herself rigid. Her fingers were quivering, but from adrenalin far more than terror.

  “We have to fight back hard,” she said. “There is no other way.”

  That mood appeared to spread throughout the crowd. We’d had to battle for our lives before. In a place like the Landing, it came with the territory.

  Cops were pushing to the front again, many of them holding riot guns. Ritchie Vallencourt was in there with them, looking as if he was spoiling for a fight.

  When the hominids came at us, I’d seen enough of them to understand they’d just come rushing in. And we’d be forced to gun them down. Might that include people I knew? That thought was put aside completely, because conscience had become a luxury that no one could afford.

  We stood there, staring out and waiting. The fires might be gone, but a segment of the moon had reappeared. So I could still see the outlines of the frontages surrounding us. Sheets of plate glass, smooth as lakes, with striped awnings hung over them. Posters in some of the windows. Darkened shapes that had been neon signs. Big Joe’s Bar and Poppa’s Pizza. Normal things from everyday life. Now they were diminished in the darkness, almost gone.

  The sound of the hominids became a low, insistent rumble. My pulse started to trip over rapidly, because I thought I saw the walls and rooftops move out there.

  Hundreds and then thousands of crouched, loping shapes had begun scuttling across every surface they could find. And they were all headed in this direction.

  There were some muffled curses and some sharp intakes of breath, but no one backed away.

  “Hell, bring it on,” I heard someone mumble.

  That was when the power lines directly over us began to crackle.

  * * *

  Which shouldn’t have been happening. The turbine was down -- we all knew that. How could there be juice up there when it was no longer being created?

  But a hint of static sprang up in the dim air, tugging at my hair and clothes. And when I looked up, the lines were flickering. Tiny sparks were leaping from them. Blue-white flashes leapt across the road. Every face was raised, eyes reflecting the shimmering activity. Everyone was frozen with astonishment.

  And that included Willets, who was right beside my shoulder.

  “Are you doing this?” I asked, without looking around.

  He shook his head. I only saw that in the corner of my eye. But Martha, next to him, did the same.

  I began wondering if it might be the Little Girl, who I’d always associated with a bluish light. But even if she had come back, she’d never demonstrated a capacity for anything like this. Besides, my instincts told me otherwise.

  Then I recalled those earlier incidents. The way that barrier had parted down on Greenwood Terrace without any seeming reason. The way a path had been formed between those flames outside Raine Manor. There was powerful sorcery at work here, but from which direction we could only guess.

  The bulbs and neon tubes started to come back on around us. Not immediately. They flickered first. Then elements began to glow. A thin sheen of yellow light sprang up, laced with red and green. It was like being in some multicolored, lamp-lit fog. The faces of the people near me started to take on clearer definition.

  There was a louder fizz from overhead. And then the cables began to actually hum. The bulbs went glowing white, shining so fiercely I was worried they might burst.

  My gaze swiveled, peering down the side-roads. And I could see this wasn’t happening to the rest of town. It was still perfectly dark out there. But here on O’Connell and in Union Square, brightness was reclaiming everything.

  Smiles appeared, and a few people began whooping. But who exactly ought they thank?

  “Is this Raine?” I asked concernedly.

  If it was, he might lose interest again in a matter of seconds. Willets closed his eyes and thought about it, and then shook his head a second time.

  “No, this is a very single-minded form of witchcraft. And it tells me something that I’d never have believed before.”

  He peered at me gravely, his vermilion pupils glinting.

  “He’s shielding himself from me, evading my inner gaze. But there’s another adept in this town that no one ever knew about. And -- by the look of it -- an extremely strong one.”

  CHAPTER 34

  The glow around us was so fierce that the remainder of the town seemed to have shrunk into the background. It was hard to make out any distinct shapes off in the distance anymore. So I went forward as far as I could without putting myself in harm’s way, right to the edge of the brightness. And then squinted into the murky shadows. Cassie came along for the ride.

  There were still half-human shapes up on the walls and roofs out there. But they were not advancing any longer. They had stopped dead. The glow from the center of town was winking off their staring pupils, and I got a real sense of frustration there. They could no longer get at us, and realized that.

  They seemed to understand that there was no point remaining where they were. Or maybe their master told them. Great masses of them turned and began to shrink away, dwindling and vanishing from sight. And up above, the angels followed suit. They could do nothing about this either, so they turned around and melted off into the shadows.

  A few townsfolk had followed us out, and word went back of what was happening. A murmur ran through the crowd, growing louder until it turned into a hubbub. Cheers and yelps and hugging were the order of the day. I’d have liked to join in, but did not.

  Since … what exactly were we celebrating? No one genuinely understood what had happened.

  Willets and Martha were consulting agitatedly when I went back to them, their hands moving in a spastic fashion.

  “Any chance of finding out who our mysterious benefactor is?” I asked, stopping in front of them.

  They stared at me with open annoyance.

  “Don’t you think that we’ve been trying?”

  The more I thought about it, then the worse the muddle in my own head got. How could there be another adept, one who could light up more than half a dozen city blocks? This town had been in desperate straits before. So why’d this person waited until now to make his presence known?

  The doc and Martha faced each other, closed their eyes and reached
out. They were combining their resources. Tipped their heads back, and began to chant in unison

  “The brother or the sister who has granted us this bright light of salvation? We summon you to step into that light yourself, that we may see you far more clearly.”

  It was a form of witchcraft I had encountered before -- a Spell of Revelation. The air around them seemed to waver, like a massive lens was passing through it. I was careful to take a step back.

  “You may no longer hide yourself. Shrouds and barriers fall away from you. The light shall find you, though you do not move. Accept it, stranger, and step forward, letting us perceive your inner truth. By wind and stream and tree and fire, we command it.”

  They let go of each other, spreading their arms wide. The air practically bulged in front of me. And when Willets’s eyelids sprang back open, there was a dazzling red flash.

  But nothing more than that. Nothing in the slightest was revealed.

  Unless you counted the adepts’ frustration. Willets peered around, squinting in a dumbfounded fashion.

  “It’s the first time that’s not worked,” he said. “I can’t imagine who would be immune to it. Except for Raine, and it’s not him.”

  “Someone equally as strong, but more controlled,” Martha suggested.

  And that was an idea to chew on. But how could that possibly be? The kind of witchcraft Raine had -- it could not be learned. He had inherited it. It was in his genes, his bloodline. Like the others, I was struggling to make any sense of this.

  “There might another way,” suggested Willets. “Perhaps we can’t find out who’s wielding this great power. But it’s possible that we could find where it is coming from.”

  He held his right hand out again, the palm cupped upward. Tiny sparks of redness darted from his eyes and hovered over it, circling each other in tight orbits.

  “If this stranger won’t come to us, then maybe we can go to him.”

  The slyest of smiles played across his weathered features. Which was another first -- I’d never seen him look that way before.

  The sparks hung there a short while longer, like they were preparing themselves for the task in hand. Then they lifted a few inches higher, and began to drift slowly away from him.

  Willets followed them.

  And I followed him. And so did Cass and Martha.

  * * *

  The little cluster of red sparks wove between the milling, still rejoicing crowd. Some people didn’t even notice. Others looked surprised, and edged out of their way. Willets nodded apologetically as he walked past, and a few of them replied with a swift, respectful duck of the head. They were no longer as afraid of him as they had been.

  The lights were leading us back along O’Connell in the direction we’d originally come. I was starting to wonder if this new adept might be in the square, under our noses all along.

  But then they paused at the next intersection, and turned left northward along Meadows Street. It was a faintly seedy area of town, and seemed an odd place for a sorcerer to be holed up. Halfway along it was the dim opening of an alley. The fragments of red brilliance paused in front of that.

  Then Willets made a gentle ushering motion with his hand, like he was coaxing some small child along. The tiny glimmers disappeared inside, and we continued after them.

  It was much more pleasant in here than outside. Far less shabby. Almost picturesque. There were streetlamps shining here as well, but cast-iron Victorian ones. And broad cobblestones underfoot. I’d never been down here before. One side of the alley was a plain, bare wall. But along the other were ranged small wooden houses that might have been stables or servants’ quarters in bygone days. I remembered this had once upon a time been an expensive district.

  All of them were freshly painted, tidily maintained. There were flowerpots beside some of the porch steps. A sign in a window told me one of these places was for rent.

  The sparks wandered further along, stopped in front of a yellow-painted door, then vanished.

  There were a few dim lights on inside. So whoever lived here seemed to be home. We gathered out front. And by the looks on the adepts’ faces, I knew they were reaching inward, trying to get the measure of what we had found.

  Even this close up, it apparently got them nowhere. Willets breathed out and his face went slack.

  “There’s an impenetrable Spell of Shielding round this place,” he told the rest of us. “Whoever lives here keeps himself a secret on a constant basis and has no wish to be found.”

  But that was precisely what we had managed. And the adept in the small house had to know that.

  A few more seconds passed.

  And then the door’s latch made a clicking sound, and it came swinging open.

  CHAPTER 35

  Willets went to enter, but I stopped him, grabbing him by his tweed jacket. He looked surprised when I did that, and then annoyed. But I’d laid hands on him roughly before, and didn’t back off.

  “It might be better if you stopped out here,” I told him. Then I glanced across at Martha. “And you too. We don’t know a single thing about this adept. If you guys go marching in completely blind … the last thing that we need right now is a three-way clash of magic.”

  They could see my point, but still looked troubled.

  “But you’ve no defense in the slightest,” Martha reminded me.

  Me and Cassie exchanged glances. That was true, for sure. But it was a place we’d been a good number of times before.

  “We’ll figure things out,” I assured the gorgeous, auburn-headed woman.

  Cassie propped her carbine by the side of the door and then rested her hands lightly on her Glocks, although she did not draw them.

  “And if we can’t, there’s always these,” she said.

  God, but it felt good to have her by my side again. All the same, my lungs tightened as we approached the doorway. And my breath felt chilly, passing down my throat. Adrenalin gives you sharper reflexes, but it often doesn’t feel like that. Almost the reverse, in fact. Like everything is happening in slow motion.

  The light beyond the opening was gentle. Golden-edged, in no way harsh. And when I pressed out with my fingertips and nudged the door the whole way open, my eyes widened slightly.

  The walls inside had been removed to leave just one big room. There was a thick iron beam standing upright at the center, presumably for structural support. The rest was a large studio, and looked well lived in. There was some kind of futon bed on the floor in the far corner, a wooden pallet, then a thick mattress, the quilt on it in a state of disarray.

  The kitchenette across from that told me that whoever lived here cooked. There was a wooden block full of Sabatier knives, a row of copper-bottomed pans, a spice rack with the jars half empty, and a general smell about the place that spoke of Latin America and the Orient.

  I recognized the style of some of the paintings on the walls. They were by our better local artists. A few of them had to be quite expensive, and I wondered how a person who lived in a place so compact had come by them. There were also a good number of small sculptures dotted about the place. They were carved from local stone and again, seemed familiar. Although I couldn’t put a name to who’d created them.

  Otherwise, there was a four foot wide, round dining table that seemed far too close to the ground and was ringed with scatter cushions. It took me a few more seconds to figure out that it was in the Japanese style -- you were supposed to sit cross-legged round it on the floor. The only person in the Landing who was into that kind of culture was Lawrence L. DuMarr and so, again, that puzzled me. Otherwise, there was an old music center -- I could not make out the titles of the albums stacked below it. And a Bauhaus style recliner propped in front of a portable TV.

  No armchairs and no couch. Which suggested that whoever lived here did that thing alone.

  Right at the back, beyond the kitchen, was an iron spiral staircase, heading upward. We could see another light up there. But if there was anyone ab
ove our heads, then they were not making the slightest sound.

  * * *

  Cassie wanted to go first, but I refused to let her. Back when I had been a cop, I had been trained in situations such as these. So I headed quietly up the staircase with my revolver preceding me, my gun arm held straight, my eyes darting to every possible corner danger might emerge from.

  There had to come a moment when my head was lifted into view. I simply could not avoid that. I steadied and then did it, my gaze going around real fast.

  Caught sight of a human figure. Didn’t try to figure who it was or what it might be doing. I just aimed my gun in its direction.

  “Keep still!” I commanded.

  But he wasn’t moving anyway. I climbed higher up, taking in every detail.

  It was a guy, apparently a few years younger than myself, dressed in jeans and a white sleeveless T-shirt. He was squatting on his haunches in the middle of the floor. His feet were bare. His hands were resting on his knees. I guessed he might be pretty tall when he stood up.

  By the condition of his arms and shoulders, he worked out, although he was not muscle-bound. He had shoulder-length yellow blond hair. It dropped across his temples, and I couldn’t see his face because of that. His head was tucked down.

  But I could hear his voice.

  “Sorry, Mr. Devries,” he was murmuring, “but I have a few strict rules. And one of them happens to be … no weapons in my place.”

  His right hand lifted. And I tensed at first, but saw that it was empty.

  But magicians don’t need to be holding anything. It comes from inside. His fingers gave the tiniest wiggle, and the Smith & Wesson vanished from my grasp. Directly below me, Cass let out a yelp. Her precious Glocks had gone as well, by the sound of it.

  The man finally looked at me and smiled.

  “You’ll get them back when you leave,” he assured me.

  Which left me wondering who exactly we were dealing with. I tried to keep a poker face, but it was difficult as hell.

  CHAPTER 36