by Tad Williams
There was no direction to run where I wouldn’t be out in plain sight for several seconds, an easy kill shot for men with automatic rifles, and although I took a moment to reload my.38, there was no way I was going to try blasting it out gangster-style with a bunch of armed assault troops. Instead I broke the light bulb above my head with my gun butt, then shoved the pistol into my pocket and leaped up to catch the overhang of the porch, which was not much bigger than the top of an old-fashioned phone booth. I managed to swing my legs up and pressed myself belly-first into the dark space above the door just as the first people appeared from around the front of the building. It sounded like some of the auction guests running away, but I didn’t bother to look, since I was busy straining my muscles to keep myself hidden. An instant later the door crashed open beneath me and a trio of armed men lurched out and met several of their fellows coming around from the front of the hall. One of the three beneath me was talking into a headset, but he pushed it away from his mouth to growl at the other four.
“Haven’t found him inside but they’re still sweeping the building. The bastard’s probably running, but we’ll catch him before he gets far. Move out and deploy down the street along either side, and I’ll get you some backup. Go! Go!”
I recognized the leader’s voice-my hairy old chum Howlingfell, who began talking on his headset again as his men hustled off in military quick-step. I waited until the last of the assault team had rounded the far corner before I interrupted his conversation by swinging down and booting him as hard as I could, both heels against his nasty flat head. He was wearing an aramid fiber assault helmet; I didn’t crush his skull but it wasn’t for lack of trying. As he crumpled to the ground I dropped on him, planting my knee on his throat for the second time in a week or so as I shoved my.38 against his belly.
“Remember me, Howly?”
“Fuck you, Dollar,” he gasped, then made a retching noise. I was glad to hear I’d kicked him as hard as I’d meant to. “You’re as good as dead.”
“I already am dead, stupid. That’s how you get to be an angel.” I pushed down harder on his neck. “How many men have you got out there?” He just stared at me so I prodded him with the gun. “Remember our past meetings? I sure do. I treasure every golden minute. Why were you babysitting Grasswax when you work for Eligor? If you’re really his security chief, you’re too high-ranking to be a prosecutor’s bodyguard.”
He stared at me, his single eyebrow drawn down in a scowling V. “I’m not telling you shit, Dollar. I told you, you’re a dead man-the real kind of dead, like Grasswax. The Grand Duke is going to eat your heart.”
“Maybe, but if you don’t tell me what I want to know you won’t be around to enjoy it.” I was bluffing though, and he probably knew it-I didn’t have the time to shake him down for information.
He definitely knew it. “Have a nice ride down to Hell, Dollar,” he rasped past the pressure of my knee on his compressed throat. “Go ahead and kill me-my boss’ll just get me another body.”
“Really?” I straightened up but still keeping my foot squarely on his windpipe. “Do you think he’ll bother if I just blow off your nuts?” I paused to savor the expression on his bestial face briefly, then gave him a couple of silver hollow-points in the general crotch area before I turned and ran toward the front of the building, reloading as I went. Howlingfell’s screams of agony sounded loud as an air raid siren behind me. Every member of his assault team still on the premises would be spilling out the doors of Islanders Hall within half a minute.
Just before I reached the front of the building I veered off and scrambled over the high iron fence, catching my pants leg and ripping it on the spikes at the top. Yanked off balance, I came down tumbling and flailing and crashed right into an angular, painful shadow that appeared out of nowhere, sending both of us flying. I sprang up, revolver in hand and braced to run or shoot, but it was only Edie Parmenter, sprawled in the street with her bicycle lying beside her, its wheels still spinning. Horrified, I leaped forward to lift her onto her feet and give her back her bicycle.
“Edie, get out of here!” I whispered. “Hurry up!”
“It’s okay,” she said, as calmly as if we had met in front of her boarding school instead of while being chased by armed troops. “I live real close. I’ll be fine. They don’t want me.” As she climbed back on her bicycle she asked, “Is it safe? The feather?”
For a moment I didn’t know what she was talking about, then suddenly the light went on. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I didn’t bring it. Be careful!”
“You too, Mr. Dollar,” she said as she pedaled off into the darkness.
I didn’t have much time to savor the revelation that Eligor’s object was apparently some kind of feather, because I could hear Howlingfell screaming orders from the back porch of Islanders Hall and his soldiers’ rapid footsteps getting closer. I jumped up and started scorching leather toward where I’d left my car, doing my best to keep out from under any streetlights as I sprinted out of King and onto Jefferson. I spotted my loaner a few dozen yards down and headed toward it, and although I could hear many voices in the street behind me now, I was thinking I might actually manage to reach it, and had even started to fumble in my pants pocket for the keys-no easy feat when you’re running, looking over your shoulder, and holding a revolver in your other hand-when somebody screamed my name.
“Bobby! Look out!”
Everything that happened next seemed to take place in a single kaleidoscopic swirl of light and darkness, a muddle of flaring streetlights, clawing shadows, and things that shouldn’t exist but did, right where I didn’t want them. A blazing hot blackness snapped past my face with such force that if I hadn’t slowed at the shouted warning it would have knocked my head right off like I was a carnival sideshow game. It was the ghallu. The rotten, burning, bastard thing had been waiting for me and had almost got me. The voice had been Sam’s.
I stumbled as I avoided the creature’s flailing swipe, which missed so narrowly that the hairs on my head crackled and curled from the heat, then I took a few more steps without ever really getting my balance. Finally, surrendering to gravity, I fell and rolled, smacking some part of myself hard against the asphalt with every revolution, until I came to a stop halfway onto Jefferson Avenue and still several yards from the Pontiac Orban had loaned me. There weren’t many other cars on the street this time of night, but they all had to swerve abruptly to avoid hitting me. The drivers only located their horns afterward, blatting indignantly as they straightened out and went on their way, apparently never noticing the huge black shape pounding after me.
I hadn’t dropped my gun until the last roll so it hadn’t gone far, but as I scrambled after it I still doubted I’d reach it in time-the ghallu was right behind me. Then Sam, bless him, leaped out into the street from behind my car and opened fire on the monstrosity, emptying a whole clip from his automatic into the thing. Whatever kind of loads he was packing didn’t seem to hurt it at all, but it startled the creature a little and it hesitated before continuing after me, which gave me time to reach my own gun, roll, and start firing.
I pulled the trigger three times before I hit an empty chamber, and I swear all three silver hollow-points hit that big ugly bastard right in the torso, but the ghallu only stood up straight like an angry bear and bellowed in pain or maybe just irritation. It was the first cry I’d heard it make-a booming roar that made my ears pop and set off car alarms up and down the block. The gunfire must have already awakened everybody in the neighborhood, but now windows started slamming open up and down Jefferson as people peered out to see who was jackhammer-murdering an African lion in front of the Arco Station. The ghallu shook its misshapen, horned head and then started toward me again. Meanwhile, I had already given up on the idea of trying to reload in the street and was sprinting toward my car.
“It’s unlocked!” I screamed at Sam. “Get the hell in!”
I yanked the door open and threw myself behind the wheel even as m
y buddy came crashing in from the passenger side. I tossed him my.38 and a speed loader as I cranked the ignition, grateful beyond expressing that I hadn’t dropped the keys and equally thankful that Orban’s old bomb had decent plugs. It caught on the first rev and I threw it into reverse, skidding backward just as the thing threw itself onto the armored hood. We crashed into the car parked behind us but the ghallu hung on. For just a moment I could see something of its face through the windshield, a sight I will probably never be lucky enough to forget-insane hatred sketched in fire, features that rippled and ran like a slow liquid, and a beard composed of writhing, headless snakes. It stared back at me like a burning mask of Hammurabi, with just enough human symmetry to make it inexpressibly alien. The ghallu was primitive, I remembered, and that was its power; it came from some even deeper, darker pit than Hell itself.
The beast raised fists like black sledgehammers. I knew it was going to punch its way through the hood and destroy the engine, stranding us, so I gunned the engine and threw the Pontiac into drive, slamming into the car parked in front of me as hard as I could, trying to nutcracker the monster between the vehicles. The thing bellowed and thrashed but didn’t seem badly hurt. I grabbed the gun-butt that Sam was pressing into my hand and emptied my weapon into the ghallu as it scrabbled to tear itself loose. It bellowed again, and I swear I heard some pain in the cry this time, but although I’d knocked it off my hood it was quickly pulling free from the tangle of the other car’s bumper.
“Let’s get out of here!” yelled Sam. I didn’t need to be told.
The Bonneville screeched backward, tires smoking. The ghallu dropped to one knee, then shoved itself upright, pressing down on the other car so hard that the whole chassis collapsed and one of the wheels popped off and skidded across Jefferson Avenue. I didn’t wait around to see what kind of shape the monstrosity was in-I could tell it wasn’t badly hurt. Seven or eight silver rounds in the thing and it was still up and running, as I quickly saw in my rear-view mirror-loping after us like some horrible carbon-black ape, dodging between the honking cars on Jefferson as I pushed the pedal to the floorboard.
Sam leaned out the window and fired a couple of shots back at the thing.
“If those aren’t silver, don’t bother,” I shouted over the roar of the V8. “And even if they are, it probably won’t slow it down much. What the hell happened to you?”
“What happened to me?” he shouted back. “That thing happened to me! I was a couple of minutes late, and it was waiting outside the building. Damn near caught me, but I managed to get down a manhole where it couldn’t follow me. I got back out in time to see you running toward me, so I figured it might be laying for you.”
“Thanks. Shit!” I swerved to avoid a group of merrymakers in Carnival costumes who had just staggered out of a liquor store and right into the street. I don’t know what happened to them when the ghallu went past, and I didn’t want to look back, but I did hear screams. I accelerated, but I could still see that immense shadow loping along the rain-slicked streets behind us at a terrifying clip. And now brake lights were going on in front of me-a big back-up of cars ahead at the Camino Real. “It’s still right behind us. Where are we going to go?”
“Office or The Compasses,” said Sam. “They’ve both got wards that should keep that thing out. Nothing else will.” He was loading my gun again. “You get these from Orban?”
“Yeah. But they don’t seem to be doing much good.”
“Nice work, though.” He squinted, then bit down on one of them. “That’s good silver.”
“It better be. I’ve shot off about four hundred bucks’ worth already, and I haven’t killed fuck-all except some of Eligor’s assault squad guys.” I gave Sam a quick rundown on what had happened inside Islanders Hall. By the time I’d finished I could see the Camino Real in front of us and not only was the light still red, the road between us and the Alhambra Building, home of The Compasses, was gridlocked.
“Turn right before we get there,” Sam said. “Shit, I just remembered-they had the parade tonight! The whole downtown is going to be like this.”
I slalomed the Pontiac right onto Adams, fishtailing so widely that I almost lost control of the car, sending a group of costumed pedestrians shouting and leaping for the stairs of the Victorian houses that lined the street. Once I was clear of them I risked a glance back and saw the ghallu digging around the corner behind me like a hound after a rabbit.
I don’t like being the rabbit.
When I got to the T-junction with Oak Avenue at the end I yanked us back toward the Camino Real, cutting the corner so sharply that we went up over the curb at about fifty miles an hour, the two left side wheels off the ground for a couple of seconds before we slammed down again, bouncing like a low-rider. The barriers were still up at the Camino Real end of the street but only a few cars were in the intersection, so I crashed the yellow caution gates at speed and dragged the emergency tape out into the wide street, the ends flapping like pennants behind me. For about a second and a half it looked like a power surge had hit a bumper car ride as I pinballed between vehicles, damaging a couple badly but mercifully not hurting any of the drivers or passengers as far as I could tell. We smashed through the barrier on the other side and zigzagged over to Main Street before heading toward the heart of downtown. I knew we’d never get around the whole parade route before the thing caught us, and I didn’t want to risk crashing the barriers again. I was just grateful the parade itself was over.
Downtown was crawling with post-parade revelers. Most of them reeled in drunken groups, but others were in their cars now, cruising slowly up and down the streets that hadn’t been blocked off, still looking for amusement or action even at one in the morning. San Judas combines several carnival traditions-I saw rainmakers in Mayan hats and the Elders of Guymas in their long robes and pointy beards as well as the Knights of Numa and the Ravenswood Krewes and all kinds of other Mardi-Gras-inspired partiers. Just by the mess and the merrymakers still swarming the downtown streets, it looked like it had been a hell of a parade. I wish I’d been there instead of being shot at in Islanders Hall.
I nearly killed a pair of stiltwalkers as I crossed the railroad tracks at speed, but though I missed them the ghallu didn’t, tearing the legs right out from under them and sending them flying.
What I saw in my rear-view mirror was getting increasingly hallucinatory, but the view ahead wasn’t much better. We were coming up fast on the downtown barriers, and that was where the serious mayhem was going to start-cop cars and firetrucks were lined up everywhere, red and blue lights spinning, and even the armored Bonneville wasn’t going to crash through them without hurting a lot of people, not to mention what would happen to Sam and me if we got tangled up in a wreck long enough for the ghallu to catch us. We were going to have to ditch the Bonneville and try to get to The Compasses on foot.
But even as I thought this, the monstrosity did catch us: a ghastly hollow thumping as it leaped up onto the trunk was followed by the most painful groaning, gnashing sound I ever heard-the sound of a very large demonic summoning trying to yank the top off an armored sedan to get at the fleshy treats inside. I was counting my blessings: if we’d been in my Matador not only would the creature have reached us by now, it would have really screwed up the paint job, too.
The aluminum oxynitride driver’s side window, which was meant to resist anything up to armor-piercing rounds, shattered into a spiderwebbed hole as a hot black claw smashed through, intent on yanking my head out of the car whether or not it was still attached to my body. I ducked even as I slammed on the brakes so that I bashed my face against the hard old steering wheel, then realized stopping with the monster on top of the car had not been my best idea. The ghallu was trying to rip through the reinforced metal of the roof while still trying to catch my head in its other great taloned hand and pop it like a boiled grape; even as I strained my neck to stay out of its reach I could see little wisps of smoke or steam dancing on the thing’s carbon-
black skin. Sam still had my gun, and I was beginning to lose faith in the idea of silver bullets anyway, at least for this particular horror, so instead I did what they taught me at Leo the Loke’s Emergency Driving School: When something’s on your roof, knock if off. Still holding my head at an absurd and extremely painful angle, I floored the car and steered straight for the nearest building.
“What are you…?” was all Sam had time to shout before we hit the curb, bounced into the air and hurtled into the wall of the Main Street branch of Wells Fargo Bank like a runaway missile, sending bricks and plaster flying everywhere (and not treating us passengers much better). A huge piece of rebar came through the windshield like Van Helsing’s money shot and passed neatly between Sam’s head and mine as we bounced around with the impact, the pointy end of it lancing the back seat like a tuck-and-roll boil. I prayed fervently that the ghallu’s head had been bashed in, but I doubted it; if close to a dozen silver rounds in the torso couldn’t stop it then a little thing like a bank building wasn’t going to do the job.
