Midnight's Angels - 03

by Tony Richards

Somewhere in plain sight, the journal had informed me. But where could you obviously hide a little chunk of rock, where people would pass by it without thinking it unusual?

  Emaline’s attention had already wandered. I was starting to get the measure of her by this time. She was intelligent, for sure. How could a natural leader not be? But she had one of those butterfly intellects that hovered around one subject for a short while and then flitted to another. And right now she was staring at the people walking past us. A wistful expression spread across her face.

  “I wish that I could glow like that. It strikes me as marvelous.”

  It had only been intended as an off-handed remark. But it kicked off a new train of thought, bringing to the surface something that had been simmering away for quite a while.

  I started turning away urgently, but she wasn’t finished with me yet. She brought me back around with, “Ross?”

  I peered at her, wondering what else she had to say. She was holding herself very proudly.

  “Our community is just as much under threat as yours. Perhaps even more so. Whatever help you need, my people will give it instantly and unquestioningly.”

  I thanked her for that. But she moved in a little closer.

  “And, if we get through this, then I can help you personally too.” The fingertips of one hand moved up to my shoulder. “I sense hidden pain in you. And there are methods I know of to deal with that as well.”

  Was she talking about magic, or did she have something else in mind? My imagination stuttered. She was trying to be kind in her own way, but had unnerved me slightly.

  So all I did was thank her again, a little more stiffly than I had before. Then I put her behind me.

  * * *

  Seven or eight hundred people was an awful lot to add to an already very busy part of town. Union Square was jam packed. Nobody was yelling in particular, but the hubbub was still dreadful. I was having to pick my way through a vast mob to cross the flagstones. And, because of that, it was taking me much longer than it had the last time.

  Most of the folk here still had that golden glow. But the returned ones -- and it wasn’t only Tyburners -- had nothing but their normal flesh tones. I was passing by them the whole time. And what Emaline Pendramere had brought to my attention was, a few of the hominids were still here too.

  Most of the things, finding their search useless, had moved on to other parts of town. But there were still some out on the edges, staring in at all of this activity.

  If anyone who glowed approached them, they backed off quickly. But there were people near them who had no such protection. They could have rushed in and attacked them, but were staring at them blankly or ignoring them. And why were they doing that?

  I found Gaspar Vernon conversing with Willets by the Town Hall steps. They both looked around as I approached. And must have noticed the determined expression on my face, because their eyes filled up with questions.

  As well they might. It was time for Vernon to put his money where his mouth had always been and prove that he’d risk everything for the sake of this town.

  “What is it, Devries?”

  “The hominids aren’t touching you, or anyone else who returned tonight,” I pointed out.

  He squinted, not getting my drift immediately.

  “None of you are glowing, so what’s stopping them?”

  Willets rubbed at his chin when he saw what I was driving at.

  “And some folk who got changed back had to come miles through the dark to get here. They should have been all over those ones, putting them back under the Dweller’s control. But no such thing has happened.”

  Vernon’s face began to color.

  “If you’re implying --?“

  “I’m saying you might be immune. That once you’ve been changed back, you can’t be transformed again.”

  He looked thoughtful when that sank in.

  “But we have to test it,” I informed the man. “Or to be more accurate, you have to. You need to confront these things, even try and provoke them.”

  Gaspar went practically bug-eyed.

  “I’ll be standing by,” I assured him, “with my gun in my hand. And the doctor’ll keep an eye on you as well. But there’s still an element of risk. Are you prepared for that?”

  CHAPTER 52

  It was almost like they’d heard me. Three of them suddenly put in an appearance on the cab roof of a cherry picker truck that had been parked in a side street by the nearest corner. They scuttled up the metal arms of the thing, swinging themselves over into the cage at the top and clustering together. Then they stared at us and hunched down lower. They were making those strange clicking, creaking noises once again.

  The whole section of the crowd nearest them, lit and unlit alike, pressed back, giving them a wide berth. It almost looked like the things were conversing, trying to decide what to do next.

  Vernon took a few more seconds. Then he stood as straight as a ramrod and marched toward them, the crowd parting for him.

  “You there!” he boomed.

  They hissed back.

  People seemed to understand that there was something going down, because they tried to push further away, a bigger clear space opening up. It occurred to me how vulnerable we were, crammed in like this. What if the angels came again, with newer tricks? But I just followed quietly along behind the older adept, Willets by my side.

  Vernon kept advancing on the things, but I thought I could detect a slight, uneasy falter to his tread. He was trying to hide that, and you had to give him credit. But he was afraid. I couldn’t blame him. What I had proposed was merely theory. Anybody would be having second thoughts.

  The man kept going anyway.

  “Come and get me! I’m right here!”

  He spread his arms. But then his pace slowed and he stopped. He seemed to be staring at one creature in particular.

  I wasn’t sure what was going on, since I could only see the back of his head. So I went across to the side, the doctor coming with me. It would be better to watch this from an angle. Martha Howard-Brett appeared in the crowd across from me. And so did Emaline Pendramere.

  “You?” Gaspar rumbled, pointing with one hand. “I know you -- you’re Jim Bunt!” The big man looked across at me and said, “He used to be one of my gardeners.”

  The creature he was talking about -- thin, gray-haired, with ragged fingernails -- gazed at him coldly, its eyes like a pair of tarnished coins. It didn’t seem to recognize its old employer. Gaspar kept his arms spread and resumed his forward progress.

  “Well, here I am, Jim. Come and get me, why don’tcha?”

  A couple of other huddled shapes came bounding across, joining the rest and staring at the man. And I was starting to genuinely dislike this. But it was the only way to find out where we really stood.

  I reminded myself that it wasn’t only my gun covering him. There were two strong adepts on the sidelines, three if you included Emaline. And Gaspar had extensive witchcraft of his own. Perhaps that gave him the kind of confidence an ordinary man just wouldn’t have.

  He stopped in front of the pack. And then opened his mouth wide and pointed at it.

  “Here it is, boys. Come down here and give your Uncle Gass a nice big mushy kiss.”

  They reared up on their haunches when he did that. And he took advantage of it, moving even closer to them. But that turned out to be a mistake.

  They might look smaller than us, huddled up the way they were. But they were still, physically, full-sized human beings. Just as large and heavy as they’d been before all this had started. Just as strong.

  The nearest one, a middle-aged guy with a buzz cut, bounded down to the flagstones and lashed out at Gaspar’s legs. It took the adept off balance. He let out a yelp and tottered, then went slamming to the ground. The rest of the creatures had him surrounded in seconds. And I’m pretty certain that I yelled out at that point.

  They were punching him and clawing at him. I started running at the th
ings, the chamber of my gun clasped firmly in my hand. I didn’t want to shoot any of them. But something needed to be done to stop this, and a few pistol-whippings might turn out to be appropriate.

  The sorcerers were in before I got there. And they didn’t even have to move. They merely raised their hands.

  Flashes of light shot out from the crowd around me, milder than the fire bolts and lightning of before. But there was solid force behind them, the magical equivalent of punches being thrown. Three of the hominids went over on their sides so violently they skidded. But the rest ignored that, kept on raining blows down.

  Gaspar had been curled up in a ball until this juncture. Now, he raised one hand and opened it.

  The next flash of light was a good deal larger, and it had a greenish tinge. His remaining attackers were sent flying through the air.

  One of them traveled at least a dozen yards. When it finally hit the ground again, it landed unharmed, like a cat. Another one wound up in front of me. I slammed it on the jaw. The blow was hard enough to knock a human cold, but the thing merely snarled at me and ducked away.

  My attention returned to Gaspar. The other adepts had moved in and were helping him back to his feet. He looked like he had gotten in a fight with a pack of angry chimpanzees. Had a good number of bruises, scratch marks, but was otherwise unharmed.

  “Friendly critters, ain’t they?” he muttered, dusting himself down. The guy never usually talked like that, but had reverted to his woodsman roots.

  He shook the supporting hands off. Then he saw that I was there, and stared at me, deeply satisfied.

  “So at least we’ve found out what we needed to know.”

  I’d never believed the man had that much courage and resilience, and I now felt deeply grateful. The creatures might have done their best to hurt him. But none of them had tried to return him to the dark side. Which told us that they probably couldn’t. We had that to our advantage.

  Willets smiled at me cautiously.

  “Could it be that things are looking up?”

  I pressed my lips together, watching the last of the creatures scuttle off into the shadows.

  The Dweller in the Dark might have created its own army. But … my gaze swept across the hundreds of people near me who had been that way but then changed back.

  Now we had our own. Which was a pretty huge bonus for our side.

  It didn’t change the fact, though, that we were still in an awful lot of trouble.

  There were still plenty of creaking sounds emerging from the deep, surrounding gloom. And we needed to do something to change that.

  CHAPTER 53

  “Seems I’m very much in demand tonight,” Gaspar Vernon answered when I told him what I wanted to do next. “I’m surprised, Devries. You’ve never been this way with me before.”

  To tell the truth, it was the same trick he’d used to start my car I really needed. But I knew what the man was talking about. We’d never exactly been the best of buddies.

  Vernon’s family, as I said, originally came from woodsman stock. And he always dressed as if that were still the case. He had on well-worn jeans, a green plaid shirt, and a pair of boots with leather laces -- the whole effect intended to give him the common touch, in other words. But the way he behaved generally didn’t match that.

  He normally spent a good deal of his time shouting and demanding. And people like me and Cassie don’t have an awful lot of patience with that. Except he’d toned it down considerably since he had gotten back. Perhaps the whole experience had sobered him up, humbling him.

  We headed off though the darkness for a couple of blocks, Willets accompanying us. Our eyes kept going around for any signs of movement. We caught no glimpse of any hominids, much less angels. But we knew they had to be out there somewhere, so we stayed on the alert.

  Evidence of the creatures’ work was visible everywhere we looked. Rose bushes had been torn up, the flower borders of front yards completely overturned. Windows were broken where heavy objects had been tossed aside. And the contents of a small convenience store were lying strewn across the sidewalk.

  When I’d first suggested where we head, both the adepts had been pretty damned surprised. But they could see the sense, once I’d explained it.

  Erin Luce had died in 1933. She was part of history. So what we needed now were records. An account of all the places she had been, what she’d done and been involved with.

  And where better to find that than our central library?

  It sat a couple of blocks north of Union Square, not too far from the hospital. We could see the glowing windows of Raine General from where we stood. There were tiny upright figures moving behind some of them. And my pulse thumped slightly, since I knew that one of them was Hobart’s wife.

  The structure looked like a becalmed tall ship, adrift on jet-black waters. But I was certain that they’d be okay in there, so long as the generator kept running.

  The library building came in sight. It had been modeled, or so I’ve always thought, on photographs of that famous one in New York City, with the exception that it had stone unicorns out front, instead of lions -- they’re part of the Raine family crest. And the scale was a good deal smaller.

  We went up the low wide steps, our gazes still going around. The surrounding shadows were completely still. And there was no sound up ahead of us. Maybe we were lucky and the hominids had been here, but had moved on to another part of town.

  Something rustled under our feet. And it didn’t sound like dead leaves. We angled our flashlights down, and saw that it was sheets of paper. I thought that some files from inside had been rummaged through at first, since it was printed paper. Then I started taking in the fact that it was pages from books, hundreds of them, ripped along one edge. The hominids had done this.

  It was only the beginning. As we headed through the building’s lobby, hundreds turned to thousands. And then several thousand more.

  “My God!” Gaspar blurted when we reached the main atrium.

  His face crumpled with anguish when he saw what had been done. And that’s another odd thing about him. He might go about dressed like an ordinary workingman. But the truth is, he’s a scholar. And all scholars have a religious reverence for books.

  Sure, the creatures had been here. And they’d had no such leanings whatsoever. My heart sank when I saw what they’d been doing. Willets let out an unhappy groan.

  In their search for the Clavis, the hominids had worked their way through every bookcase. Pulled each volume off the shelves. And then ripped it apart.

  It didn’t make sense. Why would a stone be hidden in a book? Perhaps they were being controlled by one single, stark imperative that had been planted in their heads… search everything. Which was precisely what they’d done.

  It looked like a collosal snowstorm in here. And it wasn’t just a matter of torn leafs of paper scattered about. There were mounds of them, great drifts of them, ravaged book covers protruding from them like broken seashells.

  How long had it taken this town to collect so many volumes? I felt as bad about this as Gaspar did.

  But people’s lives were at stake, and they counted for more than any book. I hadn’t come for this stuff anyway. So I led the way to the back, trying to take the least cluttered route.

  In an alcove at the very rear were three computers, set up on one long desk. They don’t get used an awful lot since, here in the Landing, we cannot communicate with the outside world by means of them. But I knew the library staff had, several years back, begun transferring records to them. The whole history of our town and its inhabitants.

  The boxes were stone dead of course with no electric power, their screens blank. And Gaspar immediately figured out why I’d brought him along.

  “You want me to do the same thing as your car?”

  “Can you? Will it work?”

  “I’ve never tried,” he told me.

  He grunted, thinking it over. Then he murmured, in a quieter voice, “I’l
l have to be far gentler, I suppose.”

  He raised his left hand in the dimness. Tiny sparks began to fly.

  * * *

  The middle computer’s fan was humming, and its screen had come to life. I sat down in front of it and called up the library’s search engine. And when I typed in Erin Luce’s name, a whole barrage of information popped into existence.

  She’d been a busy woman during the eighty-three years of her life. In spite of which, she’d found the time to have four children. There were thirteen grandchildren, so far as I could see. I scrolled down through the other records, looking for anything that might be useful to us.

  And finally reached an entry listing the dozens of bodies that she’d been associated with.

  She’d been on the board of this town’s college when it had been founded, and several of schools as well. Had been a patron of the Liberty Theatre, the same one we were keeping all the children in right now. And of the town’s orchestra. A couple of art galleries. A charity for the disabled, which existed to this day. She’d been chairperson of the polo club, the chess club and the archery society.

  She had also been a patron of …

  I stopped, and pointed at the screen.

  “Of course,” Willets breathed, leaning closer.

  The place we had to head to now was Alcott Avenue in Pilgrim’s Plot, right out on the eastern edge of town.

  And if we were going to venture that far out again, there needed to be more than just the three of us.

  CHAPTER 54

  By the time we’d gotten everyone together, the sun was on the verge of coming up. I didn’t know about anyone else, but I was really glad to see that. It felt like I’d been plunged in darkness half my natural life, a black grime pressing up against my entire body, working its way through my pores and back behind my eyeballs.

  When the eastern horizon began growing brighter, I started to breathe a lot more comfortably.

  I looked at the ragged little army that we’d gathered. There was Vernon. Not Willets -- I’d asked him to stay behind, in case there was more trouble. The rest -- and I’d insisted on this -- were townsfolk who had come back from the darkness, since those people were less vulnerable.