It didn’t seem to matter that the adults were trying to rescue them. These kids turned on them, spitting and snarling, then attacking with full force. If you’ve never seen a six year-old girl throw herself onto a grown man and then try to claw his face off then, believe me, you’re the lucky one.
I went stiff with shock. And even Cassie froze.
We saw we had to get over that. Because the small creatures had passed the Tyburners out front, and were surging in around us in a tide of flailing limbs, their eyes like metal.
They were moving too fast to keep track of. My gaze went from side to side. I felt tiny fingers grabbing at both legs. And was about to do something about that, when a weight landed on my back.
They’re still only children, was my first thought. Then a set of fingernails reached around and tried gouging out my left eyeball. Which made me re-evaluate that.
I pushed the small hand away, managing another glance around me. Nobody was lashing out, and certainly not aiming a weapon. They had us at an utter disadvantage, using our instincts against us.
I caught sight of Cassie’s outline, to the left of me. She was trying to hold the creatures back with the flats of her hands. And was shouting stuff out, actually trying to reason with them.
It was no use. If we could destroy the angels, we could get them back. But in the meantime …
A hand went for my eye again. And I wasn’t simply going to stand there being clawed at.
I reached back, my grip closing around the collar of whatever my attacker had on. And I gave a tug. The creature responded by hanging on tighter and sinking its teeth into one of my shoulders.
So I pulled a good deal harder.
There was a shriek. The thing’s grip slackened. I clenched my jaw and finished the job, hauling it off and flinging it aside. I’d have time to feel shitty about that later, if there was a later.
It hit the floor and sprang up immediately, totally unharmed. A girl of about five years old, with dark hair down almost the whole way to her waist. She spun round on the spot and hissed at me. And I was worried she might attack again. But then she turned away and disappeared into the flickering gloom. Other people around me were pushing dozens of the little figures off them.
The crack in the disc kept growing wider. Not a single person, so far, had come up with any way to stop that.
A boy flung himself through the air at me, with his mouth stretched open wide. His arms and legs clamped around the back of my skull with startling ferocity. His features came pushing into mine. He was trying to clamp his mouth across me, take me over. And when I tried to ease him off, he held on tight.
His breath was sour in my face, and he was making clicking noises. There was no easy way to do this. So I put both palms against his chest and shoved him off.
Cassie was in a real fix. She had three of these lovable little mites crawling on her shoulders. And she didn’t seem sure how to handle it. Was trying to shake them off as gently as she could. It wasn’t working.
About a dozen of the Tyburners, by sheer force of will, had managed to force their way over to the altar. They’d gotten hold of the curved dagger I had made Judge Levin drop. And they were cutting Martha down.
The disc was half open right in front of them, grayness flowing through it like the beam of some strange lighthouse.
As for the angels … that was when I took in something really odd. They weren’t getting involved in the slightest. They had gone high up under the chapel’s roof. And were merely hanging in midair and watching.
Which told me what, exactly? That they felt no need to join the struggle. The die was already cast, their master’s arrival a done deal.
More hands closed on me. Another tiny hominid was trying to scramble up my leg. I used the side of my knee to brush it off. It spat at me but I barely noticed, my attention fixed on the expanding circle.
Which wasn’t all gray anymore.
A tiny point of pure black had appeared deep in its heart. Then it started to swell. It was approaching, from a long way off.
The door onto our world had almost opened fully. And the Dweller in the Dark was on its way.
CHAPTER 63
Weak, and only vaguely aware of his surroundings, Quinn Maycott had dropped into a shallow, uncomfortable doze. And was in the middle of the kind of sharply realized dream that people sometimes have in that state, fuelled by his imagination.
He had found himself in a broad, lush field, well beyond the borders of the town. Regan’s Curse had not affected him, since everything was vivid. He could feel the sun on his face and the gentle breeze against his skin. And could see the colors around him very clearly. The green of the grass and the blue of the sky. There were wild pink poppies. There were butterflies.
He was sitting on the ground, a checkered cloth spread out in front of him. There was a picnic hamper to one side, and a bottle of wine in a portable cooler. It all looked perfect but he felt a little sad, since he had nobody to share it with.
A figure appeared in the distance, then approached him. And it turned out to be Cassie, dressed her usual way.
He found himself admiring her long-limbed gracefulness. Her strong, handsome face. Her dark, shoulder-length hair and gentle, even tan. He’d dated women who were more conventionally pretty. But she was unique, and beautiful because of that.
She stopped on the far side of the cloth, gazing down with those dark, smoldering eyes of hers. Quinn patted the ground beside him.
“Won’t you join me?”
She shrugged. “Why should I do that?”
And he understood, from the expression on her face, that if he gave her a false answer then she’d simply walk away. He had to be entirely truthful with her.
He faltered and his throat felt tight. But he finally came out with what he really wanted to say.
“I’d like you to stay with me.”
She raised an eyebrow. “For how long?”
“The rest of my life.”
Quinn woke suddenly, his eyes snapping open.
Cass, was his immediate thought.
And it wasn’t a dream, this time. He was back in the here and now, his inner senses reaching out.
And they were telling him that there was something very badly wrong.
* * *
He still felt muzzy, and could feel his heart pump sluggishly. But he tried to focus. His inner vision wavered, then revealed the scene inside the chapel. Oh good God! He began sitting up.
He could see it all in the next instant. The high domed ceiling. And the battle going on below it. The spreading disc of gray light. And the thing inside that, still approaching.
Cassie was struggling as hard as she was able, although not fighting the way she usually did. He got a vague impression of her thoughts. The fact that these were children was slowing her down. She wasn’t even going to make it as far as the disc. And even if she did, what could she do?
Quinn sat the whole way up, feeling his pulse bump. He’d helped her from a distance several times before. But when he tried this time …
It was no use. He was too badly weakened. He needed to be up close.
He pushed the bed sheet off him and got unsteadily to his feet, propping one of his palms against the nearest wall. Wooziness swept over him. But Cassie’s figure was still there in his mind’s eye. So he pushed himself onward.
Found his jeans and boots and tugged them on. Sweat had started trickling down his chin. The quickest way to get to Tyburn would have been to turn himself into a blur and spirit himself there.
But he shied away from doing that. If he was going to face that thing inside the disc, he would need every ounce of magic power. Couldn’t waste any. There had to be another way to get there.
His senses reached out again and he found the answer. Quinn started moving to the door. The living room seemed to sway around him, looking rather strange, the lights in it too bright and glaring. Man, he had to hold himself together.
Cool air struck at his f
ace when he went outside. He shivered, feeling nausea well up inside him. Cassie would be furious if she saw him doing this.
Her Harley was parked by his porch. So he climbed onto it, but then realized that the key was not in the ignition.
Quinn dabbed his index finger where it ought to be, producing a small spark. The engine growled immediately to life. He grasped the handlebars -- his palms sweaty -- and kicked the stanchion back.
In another few seconds, he was heading westward on O’Connell. Weaving his way through the clustered townsfolk and then, once that he was past them, opening the throttle fully.
The air rushed past his dampened face. His gaze flickered to the speedometer.
Eighty. One hundred. One hundred and twenty.
Quinn pressed on.
CHAPTER 64
The disc had opened up almost completely. And its powerful gray light was washing through the inside of the chapel, lighting up the whole thing like an overcast day in the middle of summer. Martha had been cut free. She’d been hustled over to the side, small shapes still coming at the group that had released her. But there was nothing she could do to stop the thing approaching us. I wasn’t looking at her any longer.
I was staring at the center of the portal. I was staring at the black shape growing at its heart.
But ‘shape’ was the wrong word. It had none, was entirely formless. It didn’t ripple and it didn’t waver. Just changed its outline every time you blinked. My eyes couldn’t keep track of its edges from one second to the next.
It had to be the blackest object I had ever seen. Looking at it practically hurt, like there was a vacuum sucking at your retinas. An emptiness that swallowed everything it touched.
Which is what the Dweller really was. The direct opposite of existence.And I’d experienced fear before, numerous times. I’d been confronted with creatures from the wildest imaginable nightmares. But it was still nothing, compared to this.
Everything in my body froze up hard. Limbs, fingertips, the trembling of my eyelids. Even my thoughts were frozen.
Something slammed into me, hard. In fact, it was several bodies. Three or four more little kids had thrown themselves on me.
The oldest one couldn’t have been more than six, but their combined weight sent me sprawling. I hit the edge of a step with my shoulder, anguish flaring through it. But at least it hadn’t been my head.
The pressure shifted to my chest. Tiny faces loomed above me, their teeth showing. They were trying to press down on my face. I angled it away to make that difficult and shoved at them, but they clung on like leeches.
Then I caught another glimpse of Cass. She was down as well. Was on her hands and knees, with hominids all over her.
“Someone fix that goddamn disc!” I yelled.
I got two of the kids off, managed to sit up. Caught sight of Martha. She looked badly shaken. But she raised her hands all the same. A pulse of golden light shot out.
The gray disc simply swallowed it, without anything happening. And the shapeless black mass at its heart just kept on getting closer.
The Tyburners had divided into two separate groups. Those who’d come in through the windows first were taking most of the flack, fighting off hordes of children. But the ones who’d followed them had their hands largely free as a result. They were clustered by the curving wall. Took aim with their handguns, and began to fire into the gray light.
Most shots hit the disc square on. But they disappeared into it harmlessly. Its bright surface didn’t so much as shiver.
The angels were hovering on either side of it, waiting to be reunited with their master. I had struggled halfway to my feet. But hopelessness was spreading through me.
That was when I caught another sound, barely audible above this clamor. A faint snarling from outside the dome. A motor. Someone else seemed to have arrived. I struggled to think who.
The huge front doors of the Farrow Chapel -- which had been barred shut -- suddenly burst open with a crash, the beam across them splitting in two. Splinters flew at me, forcing me to shut my eyes.
And when I opened them again, a familiar silhouette was standing just beyond the threshold.
* * *
It was one thing seeing it through his mind’s eye. A different thing completely looking at it right up close. This snarling horde of children -- my God! It was like a really bad dream rendered into scraps of living flesh. The awfulness of the scene numbed him.
Several of the infants bared their teeth and came loping at him. But Quinn held his ground impassively. That seemed to do the trick. They got within a few feet, then stopped in their tracks, obviously sensing something very powerful about his presence. A couple of them hissed, but came no closer.
He began looking around for Cassie. Finding her was not exactly hard. She was on her knees halfway down into the amphitheatre, struggling but apparently unharmed.
She glanced across at him, realizing he had arrived. Then yelled out, “No, Quinn! No!”
She pushed the last couple of children off her, floundered to her feet.
“Please -- you can’t do this!”
But several small pairs of hands grabbed her by the ankles. She went down again.
The other people around her were trying their best to stop this, but it simply wasn’t good enough.
He took another step inside, then felt the powers of the chapel tugging at him. A kind of psychic lasso tried to tighten itself around him, stopping him from using witchcraft. He guessed immediately what it was. Rules had been imposed upon this place by means of sorcery.
But he just reached inside and found the strength to overcome that. Flexed his psychic muscles.
The magical bond snapped, its fragments vanishing. From this point on, he was free to cast whatever spells he liked.
A movement brought his gaze up higher. Both of the remaining angels had abandoned the disc and were rushing his way. Their arms were reaching for him, their faces murderous. His heartbeat was already thumping over nastily, merely from the strain so far. But he raised his palms, the middle fingers both bent inward at the joint.
“Quinn, stop it!” he heard Cassie scream.
And he knew why she was frightened, but ignored her.
Murmured “Darkness must die,” twice in quick succession.
* * *
When I’d last seen this happen, it had come by way of Cassie. But this time, it came directly from the source.
Quinn’s whole body shone brilliant white. And then two streams of that intense light flowed out from his middle fingers. Lashed out in the manner of a pair of whips. They struck the angels in mid-air, forcing them to halt.
The creatures turned the same bright color. Hung there, pinned against the backdrop of the dome.
And then, like the first one that had been destroyed, they both exploded into tiny fragments, which dispersed.
It was all over in an instant. And it seemed incredible. Quinn was wobbling though, his knees starting to buckle. My first impulse was to run across and help him. But then I noticed what was happening to the children.
The effect on them was instantaneous. There’d been hands grabbing at me constantly, but now they stopped. The fighting around me halted as the kids returned to normal.
They began standing upright, sparks of intellect returning to their faces. Most of them gazed around bewilderedly, their jaws dropping open. And a few of the smallest started crying.
They had no idea how they’d gotten here, or what they had been doing. The only thing they really seemed to understand was that there were a load of adults surrounding them, the glow from the disc reducing them to silhouettes.
It must have been terrifying, and I got that. But they were still in mortal danger. There was not a moment to waste. I peered at the Tyburners, then started yelling, “Get them out of here!”
Some of them reacted immediately, taking hold of a couple of kids each and hauling them toward the nearest exit. But a lot of adults were still looking pretty stunned.
Emaline saw that, and backed me up.
“Brothers and sisters!” she yelled. “Drop your guns and grab a child! The fighting time has passed!”
Which galvanized them into action. The people I could see were snatching up the nearest infant. Martha was among them, cradling a curly-headed little girl. And I thought I spotted Judge Levin herding a few little ones away, stumbling lopsidedly and clutching at his shoulder.
Cass was still down on her hands and knees, trying feebly to get upright. She seemed to have knocked her head that last time she’d fallen, and looked groggy and disoriented.
There wasn’t any time to help her. Something had changed about the disc. It should have been completely gray with the portal wholly open. But the Dweller had filled most of it.
I looked back desperately at Quinn, the only person who could possibly end this. And to my horror, he was on the floor. When he’d slain the angels it had nearly killed him, I could see, the Hallows Knot tightening around his heart.
He was shuddering and his teeth were bared. I rushed across to him. He seemed to know that I was there, because his face turned to me.
It was ashen, slick with sweat and contorted with agony. There was a glazed look in his eyes when they came quivering open. But he still seemed to recognize me.
He lifted a hand, saying, “I can’t do this alone. Give me your strength.”
Which took me so heavily aback I almost stumbled. I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t a magician. Had never used witchcraft. Did not have any kind of power. But then it occurred to me that --maybe -- that was not what he was talking about.
And so I wrapped both of my hands around his outstretched one.
There was a jolt deep inside me. And some of the weight seemed to leave my body.
Quinn’s frame spasmed. Then he came up on his knees. Stared into my face. His eyes took on the weirdest look. Maybe he had realized there was something different about me. That thing that went by the title “Defender.”
It only slowed him down a moment. He returned his focus to the portal. I saw its gray glow, and the growing darkness in it, captured in his glossy gaze.
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