A Knight of the Word

by Brooks, Terry

  'Please, let me in' she begged, trying to keep her voice even, to keep the fear out of it. She could see herself reflected in his glasses, dishevelled, muddied, scraped, and bruised.

  'Good Lord, young lady!' he exclaimed, wide-eyed. He was an older man, white-haired and slightly stooped. He peered at her doubtfully. `What happened to you?'

  He was still talking to her through the screen. She felt her desperation threaten to overwhelm her, felt the demon's breath on her neck, its claws and teeth on her body. An accident!' she gasped. 'I need to call for help! Please!'

  He unfastened the latch now, finally, and the moment he began to crack the door, she wrenched it open and rushed inside, ignoring his startled surprise as she pushed him aside, slamming the screen door, then the inner door, and locking them both.

  The man stared at her. `Young lady, what in the world...?'

  `There's something chasing me' she began.

  The demon slammed into the screen door from the other side with such force that it tore it off entirely. Then it hammered into the inner door, once, twice, and the hinges began to loosen.

  `What in God's name?' gasped the older man as he stumbled backward in fright.

  `Get out of here!' she shouted, racing past him for the back of the house. `Call the police!'

  The demon was hammering into the door, pounding at it in fury. It meant to have her, and it didn't care what stood in its way. She raced down a hall into a kitchen, where an older woman stood washing dishes at a sink. The woman looked up in surprise, blinked, and stared at her with the same look of shock as the man.

  `Get out of the house now!' Nest screamed at her.

  Sorry, sorry, sorry! she apologised silently as she raced out the back door into the night.

  Rain and wind beat at her. The storm was growing worse. She glanced left and right into the darkness, then broke across the backyard, heading north once more. If she could reach the service station the taxi driver had told her about, she could call for help there. Porch lights came on in a few of the houses around her. She could no longer hear the sound of the demon trying to break down the door of the house she had abandoned. That meant it knew she was gone and was coming for her again.

  She crossed through several backyards before coming to a fence. She would have to climb it or go back out front. Rain and sweat streaked her forehead and spilled into her eyes. Her strength was ebbing. She wheeled left along the fence and raced for the street once more.

  When she broke into the open, she was alone but for one or two feeders; the rest had fallen away. There was no sign of the demon. She felt a moment of elation, then saw a flicker of movement behind her. In a panic, she raced toward the street. A car swept out of the darkness, its tires throwing up spray, and she ran for it, waving her arms and yelling. But the car never slowed, and a moment later she was alone again. In the fading sweep of the car's headlights, she caught a momentary glimpse of the demon charging toward her. She turned back to the houses, searching. There was a two-story with a glassed-in porch and lights in almost every window. She made for that one. Cars lined the curbing in front. A party was in progress. She felt a hot rush of satisfaction. This time she would find the help she needed.

  She raced up the steps and yanked on the handle of the porch door. The door opened easily, and she was inside in the blink of an eye. She slammed the door behind her, drew the lock, rushed to the front dour, and began to pound. Inside, she could hear the sound of laughter and music. She pounded harder.

  The door opened. A young woman dressed in a sweater and jeans stood there, holding a drink in her hand and staring in disbelief.

  'Please let me in!' Nest began once more. 'There's someone after me,, and I need to call-'

  A storm window flew apart in an explosion of jagged shards as the demon crashed onto the porch and slammed into the front wall of the house, snarling and snapping apt the air with its massive jaws and hooked teeth. The young woman screamed in terror, and Nest shoved her back inside the house, followed her in, slammed the door shut, and threw the bolt lock. The young woman went down in a heap and lay there, sobbing. They were in a hallway leading to a series of rooms, the nearest of which was filled with other young people who stared out at them in surprise. Laughter and light conversation gave way to exclamations. Nest went past them down the hall in a rush. Behind her, the demon was tearing at the door, stripping away the wooden facade as if it were cardboard.

  Party-Goers spilled out into the entry to help the young woman back to her feet, some calling after Nest, some staring wide-eyed toward the sounds coming from outside the door. `Don't open it!' Nest shouted back at them. Not that anyone was that stupid, she thought in a sudden moment of giddiness.

  At the end of the hallway lay the kitchen. Inside, she found a phone and dialled 911. Maybe the old couple down the block had already done so, but maybe not. She told the operator there was a forcible entry in progress at a house just north of Lincoln Park. She said there was screaming. She gave the phone number of the house and then hung up. That ought to bring someone.

  There was a new sound of glass breaking, this time from somewhere at the side of the house. The demon was trying to get in another way. She leaned against the kitchen counter, listening to the sounds, staring into space. If she remained where she was, she was risking the safety of the people in the house. If she went out again, she was risking her own safety. She closed her eyes and tried to think. She was so tired. But she was alive, too, and that was more than she could say about Boot and Audrey and Ariel. She pushed away from the counter and went through a laundry room to a back door. The demon was still trying to break in from the other side of the house. She could hear the party-Boers shouting and screaming, crowding down the hallway, trying to get away from the intruder. She could hear the phone begin to ring.

  She yanked open the door and fled once more into the night.

  She was running through a tall hedge into a neighbour's backyard when she heard the boom of a gun. Maybe the shooter would get lucky. You couldn't kill a demon with a gun, but you could destroy its current guise and force it to take time to re-form. If that happened, it would be done chasing after her.

  But she knew she couldn't count on that. She couldn't count on anything except that the demon would keep coming. She crossed through several more backyards, then caught sight of something that might save her. A transit bus was just pulling to a stop down the street. She broke from between the houses and raced for it, yelling at the top of her lungs, waving her arms wildly. She saw the bus driver turn and look at her. The look was a familiar one by now. She didrit care. She raced around the front of the bus and through the open door.

  `Hey, what's going on?' the driver demanded as she dug frantically into her pockets for same change.

  `Just close the door and start driving,' she ordered, glancing quickly over her shoulder.

  Whatever he saw on her face convinced him not to argue. He closed the doors and put the bus in Beat The bus swung away from the curb and into the street, rain beating against its wide front windows.

  She had just begun to make her way down the aisle when something heavy crashed into the doors, causing the metal to buckle and the glass to splinter. There were only three other passengers on the bus, and all three froze, eyes bright with shock and fear. The driver cursed and stepped on the gas. Nest wheeled back toward the damaged doors, hanging, on the metal bar of a seat back far support, searching the darkness beyond.

  A huge, wolfish shadow was running next to the bus, eyes gleaming brightly in the night.

  Then a police car crested the hill in front of them, coming fast, lights flashing, It swept past without slowing, searchlight cutting through the rainy dark,

  The shadow disappeared.

  Nest exhaled slowly and slipped into the seat beside her, heart pounding in her chest. When she looked dawn at her hands, she saw that they were shaking.

  The ride back into the city was a blur. Once she determined that the bus us-as going in t
he right direction" she quit paying attention. People got on and off, but she didn't look at their faces. She stared out the window into the darkness, thinking.

  It took a long time for the fear to subside, and when it did she was filled with cold rage. Three lives had been snuffed out quicker than a candle's flame, and no one but she even knew about it and no one but she cared. Boot, Audrey and Ariel-a sylvan, an owl, and a tatterdemalion. Creatures of the forest, of magic and imagination. Humans didn't even know they existed. What difference did their loss make to anything? The unfairness of it burned inside her. She struggled for a time with the possibility that she was to blame for what had happened, that she had brought the demon down on them. But there was no reason to believe this was so, and her guilt stemmed mostly from the fact they were dead and she was alive. But barely alive, she kept reminding herself. Alive, because she had been fortunate enough to step off a cliff and survive the fall. Alive, because she had evaded a handful of serious attempts by a monster to rip her to shreds.

  She blinked in the sudden glare of a passing truck's headlights. How had the demon found out about her meeting? There was a question that screamed for an answer. She stared harder at the darkness and tried to reason it through. The demon might have followed her. But to do so, it must have been following her all day. Vas that possible? Could it have done so without Ariel or Two Bears knowing? Without her feeling something, a twinge of warning initiated by her dormant magic? Maybe. The magic wasn't so dependable anymore. But if the demon hadn't been following her, then it must have intercepted her message to John Ross. It must have been listening in when she called. Or learned something from Stefanie Window or from John himself

  She gritted her teeth at the idea that she had been caught so unaware, so vulnerable, and that she had run-run! --rather than stand and fight. She hated what had happened, and she was not pleased with how she had behaved. It didn't matter that she could explain it away by telling herself what she had done had kept her alive and that she had reacted on instinct. She had fled and not stood her ground, while three other lives had been taken, and no amount of rationalisation could change how that made her feel.

  As she rode through the darkness and the rain, struggling with the rush of emotions churning inside, she was reminded of how she had felt at Cass Minter's funeral. She had stood there during the graveside services on a beautiful, sun-filled day trying to make herself believe that her best and oldest friend was gone. It hadn't seemed possible. Not Cass, who was only eighteen and had lived so little of her life. Nest had stood there and tried to will her friend alive again, furious at having had her taken away so unexpectedly and abruptly and pointlessly. She had stood in a rage as the minister read from his Bible in a soft, comforting voice, trying in vain to make sense of the arbitrary nature of one young woman's life and death.

  She felt like that now, thinking back on the events in Lincoln Park. She had been in Seattle for less than twenty-four hours. She had come with simple expectations and a single purpose to fulfil. But it had all gotten much more complicated than anything she might have imagined. It had become rife with madness.

  She watched the lights and the buildings of the downtown rise out of the darkness, sitting sodden, muddied, and exhausted in her seat. West Seattle fell away behind her, disappearing into the dark, and her rage faded with her fear, and both were replaced by an immense sadness. She began to cry. She cried softly, soundlessly, and no one around her appeared to notice. She wanted to go home again. She wanted none of this ever to have happened. A huge, empty well opened inside, echoing with the sounds of voices she would never hear again. Some came from Lincoln Park and the present. Some came from Hopewell and the past. She felt abandoned and alone. She could not find a centre for the downward spiral in which she was caught.

  She left the bus at a downtown stop and walked through the mostly empty streets of the city to her hotel. She wondered vaguely if tie demon might be tracking her still, but she no longer cared. She almost hoped it was, that it would tome for her again and she would have another chance to face it. It ways a perverse wish, unreasonable and foolish. Yet it made her feel better. It gave her renewed strength. It told her she was still whole.

  But no one approached her or even tried to speak to her. She reached the hotel and went into the lobby and up to her room, locking the door behind her, throwing the deadbolt and fastening the drain. She stripped off her ruined clothes, showered, and climbed into bed.

  There, in the warm enfolding dark, just before she fell asleep, with images of Ariel and Boot and Audrey spinning in a wash of streetlight shining brightly through her bedroom window, she made herself a promise that she would see this matter through to the end.

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31st

  CHAPTER 18

  When Stefanie Window woke him at midnight, John Ross was so deeply asleep that for a few seconds he didn't know where he was. The bedside clock flashed the time at him, so he knew that much, but his brain was fuzzy and muddled and he could not seem to focus.

  `John, wake up!'

  He blinked and tried to answer, but his mouth was filled with cotton, his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth, and there was a buzzing in his ears. He blinked in response to her words, recognising her voice, hearing the urgency in it. She was shaking him, and the room swam as, he tried to push himself up on one elbow.

  He felt as if he were drugged.

  `John, there's something wrong!'

  His memory returned through a haze of confusion and sluggishness. He was in his bedroom-their bedroom. He had come back there after his lunch with Nest, to think things over, to be alone. He had thought about her warning, about the possibility of a demon's presence, about the danger that might pose to him. The afternoon had passed away into evening, the weather outside slowly deteriorating, sunshine fading to clouds as the rain moved in. Stef had come in from work, stopping off to deliver a message from Nest and to see how he was. She had made him pasta and tea and gone out again. That was the last he remembered.

  He blinked anew, struggling with his blurred vision in the darkness, with the refusal of his body to respond to the commands from his brain. Stefanie bent over him, trying to pull him upright.

  The message from Nest . . .

  That she was going to West Seattle for a meeting with a sylvan. That the sylvan had seen the demon she was looking for. That this was her chance to prove to him her warning was valid. Her words were coded, but unmistakable. Stef had asked him if he knew what they meant, and he had, but couldn't tell her, so he had been forced to concoct an explanation.

  The message had been very upsetting. He didn't like the idea of Nest wandering around the city looking for a demon. If there actually was one and it found out what she was doing, it would try to stop her. She was resourceful and her magic gave her a measure of protection against creatures of the Void, but she was no match for a demon.

  But when he had started to go after her, Stef had quickly intervened. She had felt his forehead and advised him he had a fever. When he insisted he was going anyway, she had insisted with equal fervour that at least he would have something to eat first, and she had made him the pasta. Then she had left for her press conference with Simon, promising to be home soon, and he had moved to the sofa to finish his tea, closed his eyes for just a moment, and . . .

  And woken now.

  Except that he had a vague memory of Simon Lawrence being there, too, coming in through the door right after Stef had gone, saying something . . . he couldn't remember . . .

  He rubbed his eyes angrily and forced his body into a sitting position on the side of the bed, Stef helping to guide him into position.

  `John, damn it, you have to wake up!' she hissed almost angrily, shaking him.

  His head drooped, heavy and unresponsive. What in the world was wrong with him?

  He slept like this often these days, ever since the dreams had stopped and he had ceased to be a Knight of the Word. He had lived up to his charge and his responsibilities and
his search, and the dreams had faded and sleep had returned. But his sleep had turned hard and quick; it frequently felt as if he were awake again almost immediately. There was no sense of having rested, of slumbering as he once had. He was gone and then he was back again, but there had been no journey. Stef marvelled at the soundness of his sleep, commenting more than once on how peaceful he seemed, how deeply at rest. But he felt no peace or rest on waking, and save for the few times he had dreamed of the old man and the burning of the city, he had no memory of having slept at all.

  `What's wrong?' he managed to ask finally, his head lifting.

  She bent close, a black shape in the room's darkness. Streetlight silhouetted her against the curtained window. `I think there's a fire at Fresh Start'

  His mind was still clouded, and her words tolled through its jumbled landscape like thick syrup. A fire?'

  `Will you just get up!' she shouted in frustration. `I don't want to call it in unless I'm sure! I called over to the night manager and no one answered! John, I need you!'