Midnight's Angels - 03

by Tony Richards

  She hesitated, her face stiffening and a crease appearing on her chin. Then she began.

  CHAPTER 41

  “I see a man, an angry man,” she was telling me less than a minute later.

  Her voice had become hushed and dreamlike. And her face -- every time that it rotated into view -- was rigid with concentration. I’ve always treated her respectfully whenever she goes like that, not least because nobody has any true notion what the extent of her powers are. So I stood back and let her work. She was seeing things that no one else could, not even the adepts.

  “He is wearing a winged collar, and his clothes are tight and heavy. And he works by lamplight.”

  So she was looking back -- and this came as something of a mild surprise to me -- into the distant past. Her eyeballs kept on moving swiftly underneath their lids.

  “His name is Harmon Luce,” she announced.

  I recognized the name. He had been the husband of the famous Erin Luce, one of the mighty witches of the Nineteenth Century. The man had died in his early forties, I seemed to recall. And his wife had never remarried.

  “What’s he got to be angry about?” I pointed out gently. “He was married to a woman who could give him anything he wanted.”

  “That’s the reason, Mr. Ross. That’s what caused him so much inner pain. She was so powerful he felt completely in her shadow.”

  And if Cass had accompanied me up here, she would most probably have let out an affronted snort. Why did so many men have problems with the concept of strong women?

  “He wants to be … as great as her. Wants to be respected just as much. So he’s constructing something magical and new. Something that’s never been heard of or even tried before. He’s using rare minerals, binding them together with the most arcane of spells.”

  He was trying to construct a monument to his own memory, in other words. It wasn’t exactly a unique impulse. Every time I came across it, I was reminded of a poem I’d once read called ‘Ozymandius.’ But I didn’t bring that up.

  “What exactly is he making?” I asked.

  I watched as her nose screwed up.

  “Clavis.”

  What was that, even a proper word?

  “A key,” she continued. “No … the key. One that opens any door.”

  “A skeleton key,” I inquired, not getting what the deal was.

  “No, Mr. Ross. Not the kind of door you have in mind. The Clavis opens any seal, and breaks down any barrier in existence. Nothing can withstand it.”

  And I had already seen -- back when the Shadow Man had been in town -- what could happen when such barriers were ruptured. Hordes of demons had come flooding through.

  “Did he succeed?”

  “Yes. And when his wife found out that he had created something so dangerous, she became furious and tried to destroy it. But he’d built the Clavis too well -- it could not be broken. And so Erin Luce … she hid it where no one would ever find it.”

  “Except you, of course,” I added hopefully.

  But her features became even paler, and slightly uncertain.

  “She hid it behind a mighty Spell of Shielding. Even I cannot see where she put the thing.”

  So, another dead end.

  “What does it look like?” I asked.

  Her whole mood became wary, almost puzzled.

  “Mr. Ross, that is the strangest thing. It looks like a simple piece of rock, about twice this big.” She held up one of her own fists. “The fine, intricate work is on the inside, and concealed from view.”

  Which was just great. I felt my shoulders heave, then slump. This was a town built over a bed of natural gravel for the most part. I’d had some tough assignments in my day, but finding one small piece of normal-looking rock amongst several million of them had to cap the lot. I could think of nothing more confounding.

  “You should be glad of that, Mr. Ross,” the Girl informed me. She had read my thoughts again. “Because the Darkdweller is looking for the Clavis too. That is why he’s sent his servants here.”

  Which made me grimace. To what purpose?

  “It will allow him back into this Universe. And if he returns, the light will vanish, and all life will end. Forever.”

  And I’d heard her make some grim predictions previously. But that one definitely beat the rest back to an unimpressive second place.

  * * *

  She looked like she was going to add something more. But then her mouth went very still, as if it had been frozen. And her features went extremely slack, both of her arms dropping down limply by her sides.

  Her rotations faltered for a couple of beats, and then continued at a slower pace.

  The blue light emanating from her became a shade darker. And I’d never seen that happen. I remembered the warning that she’d given me, and felt unnerved. Not least because I didn’t have the first genuine notion what to do.

  The Girl took in a long deep breath. Then her lips came open very slightly.

  And a single word came spilling out.

  “Flesh.”

  It wasn’t in her normal tone of voice. In fact -- apart from that small initial widening -- her lips hadn’t even moved, and with a word like that they should have. The voice that she was speaking in was very deep and cold and lifeless. And came booming from her like she was an acoustic box.

  Another syllable came out.

  “Blood.”

  I went back again involuntarily, banging my hip against a chest of drawers. My attention stayed with her despite that. She was still turning too slowly.

  “Heart,” she intoned. But her mouth remained completely motionless, so I was pretty sure it was not really her. “Heat.”

  In which case, who was it? I felt my upper lip grow damp. Her face was blank, like she’d somehow been hypnotized.

  “Feeble. Useless. Die.”

  A pair of words of my own pushed their way up through my throat, as painfully as gravel. “Say what?”

  The blue in the room went even darker.

  “Flesh. Blood. Heart. Heat. Feeble. Useless. Die.”

  Which was what I’d thought she’d said. But it didn’t make things any easier, hearing it repeated. I felt my muscles going hard. And every single hair on my head was trying to stand up.

  She’d cautioned me that this might happen. But I hadn’t understood the full implications of it. Some other presence seemed to have her in its grasp. The creature she’d referred to as the ‘Darkdweller,’ Lehman Willets’s monster from the Void. I was pretty sure that this was it. And I had never heard anything so deathly or menacing in my entire life.

  “Flesh -- blood -- heart -- heat -- feeble -- useless -- die.”

  She began to spin faster again, disturbing the air as it hissed around her.

  “Flesh, blood, heart, heat, feeble, useless, die.”

  The glow in the room deepened so immensely it was almost navy blue. The Girl seemed swallowed up in it. The static that was always there was rushing around me in great rippling waves. Everything that hung loose began flapping. The drapes. The silver mobile. A calendar tacked to the wall. And my own clothing.

  Before too much longer, the Girl was spinning so fast that her features had begun to blur.

  “Flesh blood heart heat feeble useless die.”

  It was the voice of oblivion I was hearing. One that seemed to come swelling out from some bottomless pit. My strength appeared to drain away. I couldn’t move a muscle, and could only watch in horror as the Girl sped up a little more.

  “Flesh blood heart heat feeble useless die.”

  Her mouth started coming properly open, but not in time with the repeated words. There was purest darkness inside, as though the Void had filled her up. And what would happen if it started spilling out of her?

  She was rotating so fast that she seemed to make a humming noise.

  “Flesh blood heart heat feeble useless die.”

  I couldn’t let this go on. I knew that. This felt like standing in the same room as a bo
mb that might explode at any second. So I got a hold of myself, tensing my limbs. Something in me didn’t want to move, but I ignored that.

  “Flesh. Blood. Heart. Heat. Feeble. Useless. Die!”

  Her mouth had stretched so wide her face was practically bisected. And something appeared to be moving in the blackened depths that were revealed. Something churning. Furiously boiling. Something moving up.

  I stopped even trying to think. Simply flung myself at the whirling figure, attempting to wrap my arms around her dangling legs.

  I’d never even tried to lay a finger on her before. Every sensible cell in my brain had argued against that. And now …?

  The moment I connected with her, there was an almighty flash.

  The shock of it didn’t merely run through my frame. It seared inside my skull, blacking me out for a split instant. The next thing I knew, I was flying away, hitting the nearest wall with a bone-shuddering thump.

  I slid down to the carpet. And consciousness seemed to leave me again for a few extended moments.

  When I managed to reopen my eyes, the light in the room had gone back to its usual pale electric blue. The Little Girl was rotating normally, the speed and savagery gone. Her mouth was closed. There was no darkness anymore. So the connection had been broken.

  Her face tilted down at me concernedly.

  “Are you okay, Mr. Ross?”

  I pushed myself into a seated position and stared at her, satisfying myself that she was fully back to normal.

  Except I knew something about her that I hadn’t known before. I had touched nothing solid, no flesh, when I’d tried to grab her. She seemed to be made up wholly of energy.

  So maybe there was not any kind of real little girl there at all.

  CHAPTER 42

  “We’re in the middle of an emergency here,” I found myself grumbling at Cassie a while after we got back to the center of town. “Do you think this is really the time to go staging Sex Fest 2010?”

  Because when we’d returned, Quinn was there to greet her. And they’d disappeared to his place for over an hour.

  She didn’t even look at me. Her thoughts seemed far away. “Green-eyed monster eating you?” she asked casually.

  And then she realized what she’d just come out with. Met my gaze and looked apologetic, remembering my own circumstances, my missing wife.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I oughtn’t have said that.”

  And she wouldn’t have, a few days back. But things had changed. She obviously wasn’t thinking too clearly.

  Something began occurring to me that hadn’t before. I knew that she’d had numerous affairs in her colorful past. Hell, each of her three children had a different father. And she’d never settled down because she made bad choices every time. The men she’d been attracted to had each turned out to be a bitter disappointment. I felt pretty sure Quinn wouldn’t fit that category, but that was not really the point.

  Was it the case that she flung herself into every new relationship the same way she was doing this time? Plunging into the deep end of romance without so much as a pause or a backward glance? I’d seen her act extremely recklessly in fights a lot of times before. And did she do the same thing with her heart?

  It was a flaw I hadn’t known about. But flaws make up what people are, equally as much as strengths do. When I turned that over properly, it only made me like Cassandra Elspeth Mallory a little more. Which I hadn’t thought was possible, since I liked her an awful lot already.

  “Besides, I asked a favor of him,” she added.

  “Yeah?”

  I wondered what, but let her tell me.

  “The way the adepts can’t seem to use their powers in the darkened regions? I asked Quinn if he could do something to change that. And he’s working on it.”

  Which was good to hear. We were heading back up the Town Hall staircase to the mayoral suite. Martha and Willets were ensconced in there again, the strangest War Cabinet the world had ever seen. I had already brought them up to speed about this stone, this Clavis that the Little Girl had talked about. And they’d been searching for it this whole while.

  Not physically, you understand, but with their consciousness, their highly attuned magic senses. Which was mostly a matter of going very quiet and still, tipping back their heads and closing their eyes. Not too interesting to watch, in other words, even if you knew precisely what was going on. And so I’d gone and got myself a late breakfast, which had mostly consisted of ersatz vegetarian bacon, since our provisions were starting to run out.

  “Any closer to an answer?” I asked as we walked into the office.

  “Not a thing,” Willets told me, opening his red-flecked peepers.

  He’d already explained -- by the way -- one thing that had been bothering me. If Harmon Luce had worked his spells more than a century ago, why had the angels taken this long to show up? They’d probably been sent immediately, the doctor surmised. But had been in some distant section of the galaxy, and taken a while arriving.

  Martha gave up searching too, her chin tipping level. She looked sad and deflated, like she’d let everyone down.

  “Maybe it’s best no one finds it,” she opined. “After all, didn’t the Girl say that it couldn’t be destroyed?”

  “She said that Erin Luce couldn’t destroy it,” I corrected her. “And she was a pretty impressive sorceress, granted. But there are beings with greater powers.”

  One who dwelt in the dark, for instance. Which was not in the least bit a comforting thought. But we had a pretty strong player on our side as well. A man who had the ability to light up an entire section of town. I glanced across pointedly at Cass, but she pretended not to notice.

  “How about your boyfriend, Cassie?” Willets asked directly. “Isn’t there something more that he could do?”

  But she immediately began to bristle.

  “What do you want? He saved everyone’s lives last night, and Ross’s and mine this morning.”

  “I’m aware of that. But --“

  “You want him to use violence? Find this stone and somehow blow it apart? He can’t do that. Just leave him alone.”

  And she was so emphatic that the doctor faltered.

  As I have already said, she wasn’t really thinking straight. The heart does that sometimes, making such a racket that it overwhelms a person’s mind.

  But the safety of this town had always been Cassie’s number one priority. And so the way she was behaving troubled me more than a little.

  * * *

  We had no plans and no direction. And the only thing that we could do was hang around. Waiting doesn’t sound like an uncomfortable word, but it can be the worst.

  Each hour bled into the next until the sun was going down again, deep shadows returning around us like they’d been hiding in the corners, out of sight. A breathless hush fell over Union Square. A lot of the people around me were looking as grungy and bedraggled as I felt. They’d spent most of the day kicking their heels, and at uncomfortably close quarters. Or, if they had families, listening to their children whining that they wanted to go home.

  The kids were back in the theatre by this hour, the doors sealed shut and armed townsfolk guarding every entrance. Those guys at least had a definite purpose. The rest of us could only wonder what was in store for us this evening.

  As the western sky began to turn red, Quinn showed up. Like Cassie, he seemed to favor the same kind of clothes on a regular basis. He had on another sleeveless T-shirt, yellow this time. The jeans and the boots that he had on were the same as last night’s.

  His casual air had left him slightly. He looked a touch awkward as he loped up to us. He embraced Cass and kissed her quickly. Then he turned to me with an anxious look.

  “No one knows about me, right?” he whispered.

  Even under circumstances such as these, it seemed terribly important to him.

  “Absolutely,” I murmured back, taking care not to be overheard. “We told everyone that Martha an
d the doc combined their forces last night, and that brought the power back. So far as everyone’s concerned, you’re still just a guy with some bowling trophies.”

  And then a fresh thought struck me, and I squinted at him worriedly. Wasn’t he planning to do the same tonight?

  “You’re going to do this right out in the open? Isn’t it going to give the game away, what with you chanting and waving and whatnot?”

  Which made him relax and grin. “I could do that stuff if I wanted. But it would only be window dressing.”

  He could work vast magic spells as casually as I might flip a switch, in other words. And that information surprised me hugely, leaving me more than a little bit awed. Even in the company of somebody like his half-brother, I had never come across that before.

  But the light was dimming badly, and I got a demonstration. Quinn dropped his head. I saw his eyelids flutter partway shut. He murmured something very briefly. I could not hear what it was, and no one in the crowd appeared to notice.

  Then a crackling started above us. The power lines nearby began to hum again. And the light bulbs throughout this area of town sprang slowly into life, the same way they had last time.

  Not a moment too soon. A heavy rumbling, clattering noise told us the hominids were on their way.

  There was something different about the sound this time, and I took that in uncomfortably. They did not come rushing at us. Gazing down the nearest side street to the south, I could see their dim shapes lurch up to within thirty yards of the edge of the bright electric glow. Then they stopped completely.

  There was nothing anxious or frustrated about the way they did that. They seemed calm, as if they’d been expecting this. Apparently, they were waiting too. I felt pretty sure I didn’t like this.

  “Maybe they understand they’re beaten?” Martha suggested.

  In which case, why bother coming in the first place? I had been in situations of this sort far too regularly to feel optimistic.

  A small group of figures broke away from the rest, scurrying closer. They stuck together so tightly that they formed one compact, homogeneous mass, but I thought that there were five or six of them. They got as near the lighting as they could, then reared up on their hind legs.