Midnight's Angels - 03

by Tony Richards

  But we weren’t here to photograph the place for Home & Garden. We kept heading in, the High Witch directing me quietly.

  There was no sign that the creatures had been searching in this district. No doors thrown wide, nothing strewn about. And so perhaps the Dweller understood the Clavis’s history. And that made me even more uncomfortable, the thought that there might be a great dark eye out there, a consciousness, observing everything we did.

  It had been there before the start of existence. Which made it what exactly, the flip side of God? I tried to put such thoughts out of my mind, since they genuinely weren’t helping very much.

  The streets grew even narrower, winding. Little room for front yards now. The doors of houses opened up directly onto the sidewalk. But there were still big old trees planted along the curb. So I guessed that, even in broad daylight, the inner parts of Tyburn would remain partially sunken in shadow.

  We’d still not come across any low, hunched shapes. And I wondered where they were. My neck started prickling, warning me that they were close. Cassie’s too, apparently -- one of her hands went to a pistol.

  And then we got our answer as we rounded the next bend.

  A hulking structure became apparent. A massive building, mostly dome-shaped, but going to a sharp peak at its very top. It put me in mind of photographs I’d seen, of onion-shaped churches off in Russia. And it looked pretty incongruous in a town like ours. But that was Tyburn for you.

  “The chapel?” I asked.

  Emaline nodded proudly.

  And I thought I knew why I’d never seen it from the center of town, even from high up. We were heading down a gradient by this stage. The chapel had been built between two hills. Which meant you couldn’t see it until you were right close up. And maybe that was the intention.

  Huddled between us and it was every single person who’d been changed into a hominid.

  CHAPTER 60

  Cass had both her Glocks out in a flash. She hadn’t brought a light along, so I suppose that she was relying on ours to direct her.

  “Only try to wing them if you can,” I reminded her, since she had been away through part of this.

  “Always with the rules,” she grumbled. But the expression on her face told me she got it.

  Behind me there was clattering, the sound of hammers being thumbed back. Every single Tyburner had taken aim. Man, they could be single-minded when they needed to. But with any luck, we wouldn’t even need to use the guns. We had other weapons at hand. And the best one in the box was standing right beside me.

  “Ready?” I asked Emaline.

  She nodded, but looked slightly drawn. I knew that the constant use of magic drained the other adepts. And I guessed that she was no exception. But she wasn’t trying to make any excuses for herself. She was utterly committed, and would see this through whatever it took.

  The hominids came rushing at us in a single body. Like one vast, shuddering beast with thousands of eyes and thousands more limbs. It was difficult to tell in the fragmented darkness, but I reckoned that we had to be outnumbered at least three to one.

  They charged with utter fury, ignoring our beams. Didn’t even bother to turn their heads away this time. We were too close to the thing that they’d been after all along, and no mere row of bulbs was going to slow them down.

  I could see it on their faces -- they were determined to kill us. Or rather, the entity controlling them was.

  Emaline spread her arms again. The women behind her started making circles with their hands.

  But this time, when the golden strands touched the back of her head, there were many hundred of them. A great cobweb of shining filaments. And I thought there were too many to be simply from the women. When I looked around, I saw that I was right. The men had joined in too.

  A dazzling glare came bursting from my yellow-haired companion. And she started walking ahead, blasting a path for us.

  We followed.

  * * *

  As on the previous occasions, a few hominids managed to slip around the edges, getting far too close. Cassie dealt with one of those by shooting off one of its index fingers. The creature dropped to the ground, clutching its hand and writhing. Whoever it was, I was sure she’d apologize if the chance ever presented itself. But this wasn’t the moment for niceties.

  I took another one down by putting a slug through the flesh of its thigh. There was more firing from behind me, which meant the Tyburn folk were dealing with the rest.

  As we drew closer, I got a better impression of the Farrow Chapel. It had only been a vague shape in the gloom when I’d first looked at it. But its details were starting to become clearer. And despite the trouble we were in, I almost gawped.

  It stood as tall as the Town Hall, although it wasn’t quite so wide. And Emaline had not been making any idle boast when she had told me that they’d built it entirely by hand. I’d never seen anything like it.

  There was stone, but not in solid blocks. The entire structure had been put together out of small pieces of rock, most of them no bigger than your fist. Sealed in place with what looked like dried mud. It was hard to tell in our constantly shifting artificial light, but the walls seemed to be reddish-brown.

  It looked like something you might find in North Africa, not in Massachusetts. Whoever had thought this up had either been crazy or inspired. How did it even stand up?

  I took in another detail as the brilliant glow from Emaline moved closer and then washed across it. The dome was honeycombed with glassless windows. Holes about a yard wide and hexagonal in shape. There was a pair of massive double doors out front. But they were closed, and possibly barred. So it was the lowest rank of windows that we headed to.

  The High Witch’s magic had begun to fade. The pool of brightness that had been protecting us was growing smaller. She tried to renew it, but real signs of exhaustion were beginning to show on her face. She had brought us this far. But I wasn’t certain she could take us the whole way.

  The white light died completely at the same time as we reached the nearest window. The unnatural night came rushing in again. We were back to relying wholly on our flashlights, but we kept them angled low. It was a pretty sure bet the hominids out here would regroup and attack before much longer. But it wasn’t foremost in my mind.

  Where were the two remaining angels? And if they had the Clavis, what exactly were they doing with it?

  When there’s fighting, it’s hard to listen properly. There had been gunshots, snarling, and blood pounding in my head. I made myself slow down for a few moments, going very still.

  There was a voice emerging from inside the dome. Not too loud, but it had an insistent tone that seemed to make the air reverberate. I couldn’t make the slightest sense of the words that were being spoken. They were guttural, punctuated heavily by clicks and grunts.

  We’d heard these creatures speak before. But I felt pretty sure this one was chanting.

  Eased my face up over the rim. No big surprise that it was pitch dark inside. So I killed my larger beam, then fished in my pocket for the smaller flashlight. Clicked it on and shone it carefully inside.

  And drew a very startled breath. Emaline and Cassie, on either side of me, did the same.

  The dome was packed full of hunched shapes, but they were smaller than the ones out here.

  And I’d previously wondered where the children who had been transformed had gotten to. Now I had my answer, and it wasn’t what you’d call a pleasant one.

  The place was full of them.

  CHAPTER 61

  Their backs were to us, which I supposed counted as some kind of minor lucky break. They ranged in height from a few feet to a lot smaller than that. And they were, to the last, facing the far end of the chapel. It looked like there was some kind of small flat open area down there, from which a High Witch might preach to an audience. The rest of the chapel was made up of rows of broad steps that descended deep into the ground in the form of an amphitheatre.

  Bu
t why were all the children here?

  “What the hell is this?” I hissed at Emaline.

  She looked perturbed. More troubled than I’d ever seen her, her eyes glassy and far away. But she struggled to figure out what might be happening.

  And when she finally got it, pain filled up her yellow gaze.

  “When the Dweller arrives, it will begin devouring everything in its path. It seems to want to take our children first. That is the extent to which it hates us.”

  “We can’t shoot these,” Cassie pointed out sharply.

  I knew for a fact she couldn’t even bring herself to wound them. Which made two of us.

  So I peered back inside and shone the flashlight as far as its thin beam reached. It picked up the backs of more massed heads. And then, very faintly, hit the open space below.

  The floor was simply tight packed dirt. I could make out the rough-hewn altar that the High Witch had described. It looked like a squared-off boulder, nothing more than that. And a chunk was missing from one corner, exactly as I’d been told.

  Except the stolen piece had now returned. The stone that had been taken from us was sitting on top of the main block.

  And above that …

  I thought that I was seeing things. At first glance, in the sparse light, it seemed to be some kind of spider’s web. I tried to get a grasp what I was looking at.

  Four ropes had been tethered to the ceiling of the chapel. They were pulled extremely tight. And Martha Howard-Brett was hanging from them, suspended above the altar, a knot around each wrist and ankle.

  She was struggling furiously, shaking her head from side to side. But there was no way she’d get down from there without help. And her yells were muffled, because she’d been gagged.

  Emaline Pendramere registered that, then returned her attention to the mass of figures on the steps.

  “By the love of the Goddess, those are our children down there.”

  The casual assuredness of earlier had left her.

  I forced myself to think the situation through properly. Even a light as weak as my one ought to have been noticed by this stage. I reckoned that it probably had been, but was being ignored. They had to know that we were out here, but a ceremony was underway. And maybe they were confident that there was nothing we could do to stop it.

  On either side of the flat area, there was a dull white flash. And a pair of figures appeared in the darkened air. Both of the remaining angels. I’d been wondering when they’d show up. They had almost achieved what they had come for in the first place.

  They were hanging about eight feet up, their wings not even making the pretense of beating this time. And their faces were revealed in their full awfulness. If skulls had the ability to scowl and grimace, that would be the closest way to describe their expressions.

  Martha craned around, gawking at them. Then her struggling got worse.

  Below them, another figure moved up into view. ‘Stepped’ is mostly the wrong word, because it didn’t do that so much as scrabble. And at first, I could only make out its general shape. Then it squatted on its hind legs and its face rose.

  Levin.

  He was in an awful state, his tailored clothing hanging from him in ragged strips. His spectacles were gone, of course. His hair usually neat hair was matted.

  But when his head tipped back, I saw that his mouth was moving. He was the one who was the source of that febrile chanting. It was pouring from him like a river, getting louder by the second. I wasn’t even sure he knew what he was saying. He was being guided by a greater power.

  In his right hand was a curving dagger. And that sent another wave of shock through me. The stone needed blood to work its magic. So this ceremony ended with a sacrifice.

  I turned to Emaline.

  “Do you have any power left? One final blast and you can clear this whole place out.”

  My head reeled slightly when she answered ‘no.’

  “Well how about the others?”

  “It makes no difference,” she told me quietly. “Magic may not be used inside this chapel.”

  A pulse started up inside my skull where there had not been one before.

  “If that’s a tradition, now is definitely the time to break with it.”

  “You don’t understand, Ross. This building is reserved for prayer alone. It was woven into the fabric of the place by its creators, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.”

  “But they’re casting a spell!” I argued.

  She gave that a little more thought.

  “Willets said it, didn’t he? They’re not bound by the laws of our world.”

  God, that was terrific, wasn’t it? I returned my attention to what was going on below.

  My beam of light was starting to have some effect, a few of the children twisting around and hissing at me. And it had been bad enough seeing their parents with their faces scrunched up and their eyes completely lifeless. But seeing little kids that way …?

  Then I glanced to either side. The Tyburners were all here, pressed against the outside of the chapel. Those that were close enough were peering through the windows. Their expressions were aghast. Maybe they were recognizing some of the children.

  And I could work with that. If magic couldn’t help us, there was always determination to fall back on. It had served Cassie and myself well plenty of previous times.

  I got my larger flashlight out again, switched it on and waved its beam above my head.

  And shouted, “Throw your lights inside! We’ve got to stop this!”

  No one needed telling twice. Every light that we’d brought with us went clattering in through the open windows. The interior of the chapel started filling with streaks of white and yellow.

  And the effect was immediate. The mass of children nearest us began to yelp and spring away. They didn’t so much run as churn, scrambling over each other’s backs in their efforts to get away into the darkness. The others rose from their crouched positions, baring their teeth and snarling at us.

  The angels started taking notice too. They swung around in our direction. And when they held out their arms, I guessed what was coming next.

  Dozens more of those black filaments oozed out from their fingertips. If this went the same as last time, the lamps would be extinguished in seconds.

  But the figure I really had my attention on was Levin. And he was reacting too. A little of the glow reached him and made his face tighten up. But he steeled himself and continued chanting, the strange words tumbling from him ever faster.

  Then he stopped. A slight smile crept over his distorted face.

  He stepped across, pressing the blade to Martha’s throat.

  The lights were already being extinguished. So there was no other way to go.

  While I could still make out a target, I took aim with my revolver.

  And, my lips curling back, put a round into the judge’s shoulder.

  The impact sent the man lurching away, sprawling across the dirt floor.

  A dull flash in the gathering dimness told me that the curved blade had gone spinning from his grasp.

  But then I noticed something else. Martha seemed to be mostly okay, but something was dripping from her neck.

  She was still alive, still struggling. He’d not had time to really cut her. But when my bullet had struck home, it must have made the judge’s arm jerk.

  It had opened a nick in the skin of her throat. And that was all that was required.

  Her blood was leaking down onto the Clavis.

  As I watched, it turned jet black.

  CHAPTER 62

  In the last glimmerings of battery-powered light, I saw it lift into the air, right in front of Martha. And then begin expanding into the same darkly flattened disc we had seen in the mayor’s offices.

  Total black descended on the chapel once again. The only things still visible were the cold, pale outlines of the angels. But you could still make out scurrying below them -- the children, on the move.r />
  The darkness didn’t last for very long. But when a new light appeared, it was hardly what you’d call a blessing. At the point where the disc had been expanding, a crack appeared, from top to bottom. A warmthless gray glow started shining through, illuminating everything around it in stark outlines.

  It looked like some mockery of a busy playground down there. Tiny figures lurched and capered. A few had gotten up on their haunches, and were staring at the disc as if the mysteries of life might be contained there. But other people here had different matters on their mind.

  “Our kids!” one of the Tyburners shouted.

  And I knew how that person felt. I’d watched my own children being snatched away by twisted magic. But I didn’t know how we could stop this. We’d not been able to do the slightest thing about it last time. There’d been two adepts and a High Witch, and they’d had absolutely no effect on the disc.

  These people, however, weren’t about to wait for me to tell them what to do. There was frantic motion on both sides of me. They had thrown caution to the wind. The entire crowd was clambering in through the lowest windows. They were going to confront this directly.

  And I could see that they were right. I followed suit, Cass and Emaline coming up behind me.

  Not a moment too soon. Because the crack on the disc was already spreading wider.

  And it wasn’t opening onto nothingness this time.

  * * *

  You’d have thought that the dead light from it would have scattered the children again. But it didn’t seem to do that. It flowed through the round chamber like semi-frozen water. I could see that it was shuddering slightly, making everything it touched as cold as it was.

  Most of the small hominids stared at it, their faces bled of every last ounce of color by its glow. But then they either reached a new decision, or the thing that was controlling them issued another order.

  They had been moving away from us until this point. But now they turned and came rushing back.