“Izzie?” She could only faintly hear Daphne’s voice, even though she was right beside her.
Izzie felt a wave of nausea grip her insides, and a strange, unpleasant taste spread across her tongue. She had experienced this before. She knew what this was.
“Daphne?” She kept a firm grip on Daphne’s hand, squeezing it tightly, and for an instant savored the weight and warmth of it as Daphne squeezed back. “I think that we should . . .”
But before Izzie could finish, figures began to detach themselves from the shadows on either side of them, advancing on the two of them. Izzie could just barely make out the black spots that marked the skin of their faces and hands, darker still than the shadows around them.
They were the Ridden.
CHAPTER TEN
Patrick had been unable to stop glancing over at the mouth of the alley, where it met Almeria. He kept thinking about the car that Izzie had seen parked on the street earlier that day, and the truck that had nearly run her over. And he was reminded how he had felt like he was being watched earlier that day, when he ventured out from the 10th Precinct station house to get some lunch. Were they being watched? Was someone following them? Maybe Uncle Alf’s marks were protecting them here, but even then, there was something about that lurking just at the edge of his thoughts, an anxiety that wouldn’t stop nagging him, though he couldn’t bring it into clear focus.
“I’m cold,” Joyce had said, huddling close to him for warmth. “Do you think we’ve got enough to work with, so we can get inside already?”
“Yeah, we probably do,” Patrick had answered. “We just need to convince Izzie that . . .”
The sound of shouts issuing from the far end of the alley behind them interrupted him, and Patrick wheeled around, hand instinctively moving toward the semiautomatic holstered at his hip.
He saw Izzie and Daphne, some twenty yards away, menaced on both sides by figures emerging from the shadows. Was it just a couple of tweakers or crackheads, desperate for some easy money and thinking that two women walking down a dark alley made for easy marks? Or were they . . . ?
“Ridden!” Izzie shouted.
Patrick’s gaze shot up to the spiraling mark carved into the rear of his house, the same one that he’d spent countless weekends as a kid tending and cleaning. There were marks on every second or third house on this block, so why would the Ridden not be repelled from approaching?
And the anxiety that had buzzed at the edge of his thoughts slid clearly into focus.
There was a reason that his Uncle Alf had insisted that the marks be tended to on a regular basis.
As Patrick watched, two more figures emerged from the shadows in front of Izzie and Daphne. The two women were now surrounded, ahead and behind on either side, and the Ridden were closing in fast.
Izzie gave Daphne’s hand one last squeeze and then let go, reaching for her semiautomatic, which sat in a holster slightly behind her right hipbone. As she drew the pistol, with her other hand she reached into the left pocket of her suede jacket, fingers searching for the Ziploc bag that she’d stuffed in there that morning, hoping against hope that it was still there.
“Izzie?” Daphne stood shoulder to shoulder with her, and had already drawn her own pistol out of its holster. “Any ideas?”
“I’m working on it,” Izzie answered, and felt a brief surge of triumph as her fingers closed on the plastic bag in her pocket.
Izzie raised her left hand out in front of her, the makeshift gris-gris bag hanging from it, and held it out toward the nearest of the approaching Ridden.
But the Ridden seemed unaffected by the salt, quartz, and silver in the lumpy bag, and continued to shuffle toward her, its eyes seeming cold and lifeless in a face that was so marred by blots that it was practically a walking shadow.
“Izzie?” Daphne hissed through gritted teeth.
Izzie spared the briefest of glances down toward the mouth of the alley, where Patrick stood with his pistol in hand, Joyce right behind him. The Ridden seemed uninterested in either of them, which suggested that the unobscured and unobstructed marks on the building in that end of the alley were keeping the Ridden at bay. But how could she and Daphne reach that spot of safety? There were six Ridden approaching them slowly but inexorably, three on either side, blocking their escape down either end of the alleyway.
“Stay back!” Daphne shouted to the Ridden on her side, punctuating her words with a sharp jab of her pistol’s barrel. “I will shoot if you come any closer.”
One of the Ridden opened its mouth, jaw hanging open at unnatural angle, and an inhuman-human sounding noise shuddered forth. It sounded almost like “Ke-ke-ke-ke . . .”
Were the Ridden attempting to communicate? Was this their best approximation of human speech? Or was it just a voiceless threat?
The Ridden with the open mouth lurched forward, arms out and grasping toward Daphne only a few short paces away.
“Stay back!” Daphne shouted, pulling the trigger. Her pistol rang out as she fired a round into the Ridden’s torso, but the blot-covered shambler seemed unfazed.
Bullets weren’t the answer, Izzie knew.
“Hang on,” Izzie said, holstering her own pistol and then zipping open the mouth of the plastic bag. “I’ve got an idea.”
Simply holding the salt in her hand wasn’t going to be enough, she realized. She had to be smarter, use the tools at her disposal the way that she already knew would work. Her mind raced as she thought back to what she had read in Roberto Aguilar’s journals, taking a step toward the nearest of the Ridden.
“Izzie, what are you doing?” Daphne shouted.
“Did you bring yours?” Izzie bent down and tipped out a line of salt on the tarmac between herself and the Ridden, then continued in a slow clockwise arc as she moved in front of Daphne. When Daphne didn’t answer, she clarified, “The gris-gris bag? The Ziploc I gave you this morning?”
“Oh,” Daphne said in a quiet voice, sounding abashed. “No, I left it inside.”
“We’ll have to hope this is enough,” Izzie answered, eyes still on the ground as she carefully continued to mark out a tight orbit around the spot where they stood, leaving a faint circle of sea salt glittering on the dark tarmac underfoot.
By the time she reached the point where she had started, and closed the circuit around them, there were only a few grains of salt left in the plastic bag. She stood up, pocketing the Ziploc, and moved to stand close to Daphne at the center of a circle of sea salt roughly four feet in diameter.
Izzie remembered the circle that Nicholas Fuller had marked out on the metal floor of the lighthouse’s lantern room where he dismembered his victims, a final barrier against an attack. Would it be enough to protect her and Daphne now?
The nearest of the Ridden reached the edge of the circle and stopped short, as though it had hit a wall. The tips of its toes were mere inches from the salt, and if it had reached out its arms it could have grabbed Izzie easily. But the Ridden kept its arms at its sides, seemingly unwilling even to reach across the line.
As Izzie and Daphne huddled together, the other five Ridden approached the protective ring of salt, and all stopped short, just like the first one had. They stood, swaying slightly back and forth, feet planted on the ground just inches from the salt ring. And as one, they opened their mouths, impossibly wide, and that same horrible, inhuman sound shuddered forth.
“Ke-ke-ke-ke.”
Izzie thought that they were safe for the moment, but she wasn’t sure how long that would last. As the breeze picked up once more, Izzie could see some of the salt on the ground begin to stir, and she knew that it wouldn’t last for long.
Patrick had watched as Izzie shuffled her way around Daphne, hunched over and pouring out salt, and realized immediately what she was trying to do.
“Are you okay?” he called out, cupping one hand by the side of his mouth to direct the sound of his voice.
“For the moment,” Izzie answered, shouting to be heard over th
e unsettling sound coming from the mouths of the Ridden. “But this is only a short-term solution.”
Patrick had approached as close as seemed advisable, with the closest of the uncovered markings just a short distance behind him. Joyce had followed close behind, her hand on his back as though she worried they might lose each other in the shadows, though they had not yet ventured farther than the pool of light that spilled across this end of the alleyway from the streetlight on the corner.
“We’ve got to get them out of there,” Patrick said, thoughts racing. The night before they had been in close quarters with a pack of the Ridden, and had only narrowly escaped. The only thing that had saved them when things seemed at their darkest had been . . . “That’s it!”
He wheeled around to face Joyce.
“The Ridden are disoriented by loud, discordant sounds,” he reminded her. The night before, a few selections from ABBA’s Greatest Hits playing on the speaker of Joyce’s phone had been enough to keep the Ridden at bay just long enough for them to escape. “Do you have your phone on you?”
Joyce eyes widened as she met his gaze. “It’s in my bag inside.”
“Damn,” Patrick cursed beneath his breath.
He turned back to see how Izzie and Daphne were faring. The Ridden were still holding their positions outside the ring of salt. For now.
“The wind is picking up!” Izzie shouted. “The salt is already starting to blow away!”
Patrick took a step toward them, then stopped. The bullets in his pistol were no good, that much was clear. There were the tactical shotguns back in his living room, but could he get there and back in time to help? Or should he just try to find enough salt in his kitchen to reinforce or even widen the circle of protection? Maybe he could create a path from the safety of the spiral markings down to where Izzie and Daphne were trapped, and then they could . . .
“Joyce, do you think . . . ?”
He glanced behind him, and saw that Joyce had taken off running and was already rounding the corner onto Almeria. With the din of the strange noises the Ridden were making, he hadn’t been able to heard her footsteps as she left. Whether she was going to get her phone and then come back, or had decided just to run away, he wasn’t sure. Would Joyce just run off and leave him without saying anything if she hadn’t intended to come back?
“Patrick?” Izzie called out. “What are we thinking here?”
He turned back, considering their options. The Ridden that stood between him and the nearest side of the circle of salt were of average height, but with the thin, almost emaciated build of most Ink users. It was difficult to tell if they were men or women, or rather if they had been men or women before being taken over by the loa, because now they were little more than mindless suits of meat and bone. But Patrick figured that he had at least a couple of inches and a couple dozen pounds on each of them. Perhaps if he were to tackle one of the ones on this side of the circle, he could open a hole large enough for Izzie and Daphne to break through and run for cover. But what were the chances that he would be able to escape being grabbed by one of the Ridden himself before he could get back to safety?
He couldn’t worry about that now. He had to act fast while there was still a chance. If he didn’t make it back, then hopefully they would.
Patrick holstered his pistol. Then he bent low, one shoulder forward, and took a deep breath.
Izzie was standing so close to Daphne that they were practically pushing against each other, shoulder to shoulder and turned to face the Ridden on either side, so that they were almost standing back to back now.
“As dates go, this could have gone better,” Daphne deadpanned. “Next time, how about I make the plans, okay?”
Izzie glanced back over her shoulder, and met Daphne’s eyes.
“Yeah, maybe we should have just gone dancing, after all,” Izzie said.
“Hey, guys!” Patrick shouted from further down the alley. “Get ready!”
Izzie and Daphne exchanged a quick look before turning in his direction.
“Get ready for what . . . ?” Izzie began to say, but her words were drowned out by the tinny blast of a high-pitched car horn honking from far behind them.
She spun around, momentarily blinded by the glare of a pair of headlight beams swinging into the far end of the alleyway.
“What the hell . . . ?” Daphne said.
A heartbeat later and the alley was filled with the thumping sounds of a car stereo blaring out the Sisters Of Mercy’s “This Corrosion.”
The headlights’ glare grew even brighter as the car barreled down the alley toward them.
The Ridden seemed instantly disoriented. They left off making that horrible sound, and flailed around, as if they were suddenly struck blind and left in an unfamiliar place. One of them placed a foot on the salt circle, and recoiled as if in pain. Another waved its arms in front of it, hands grasping.
Brakes squealed as the Volkswagen Beetle slammed to a halt just to the left of Izzie and Daphne, and the passenger side door swung open.
“Get in!” Joyce shouted over the music howling from the car’s speakers.
Izzie pushed Daphne in front of her, keeping her eyes on the Ridden around them. They were disoriented, perhaps, but they were still trying to reach them. They grabbed the air blindly, hoping to take hold of them.
After Daphne was in the passenger seat, Izzie started to get in. There was no back door, and no time to crawl over Daphne into the back seat.
“Get in already!” Joyce urged.
Izzie folded herself down onto Daphne’s lap as best she could. It was a tight squeeze, but workable.
As Daphne was pulling the passenger door shut, Joyce was working the gear shift.
“Okay,” Joyce said, standing on the clutch and slamming the car into first gear, “now let’s . . .”
What she was about to say next was lost when one of the Ridden reached through the open driver’s side window and grabbed hold of Joyce’s throat, squeezing hard.
“Joyce!” Izzie shouted.
The driver’s side of the car was outside the salt circle, Izzie realized, even assuming that enough of the salt remained on the tarmac to provide any protection. One of the flailing Ridden, grasping at whatever was within reach, had by chance managed to grab Joyce. But now that it knew she was there, it wasn’t letting go.
“Shoot it!” Daphne said.
Izzie had thrown herself across the interior of the car and grabbed the Ridden’s arm, trying to pry its hands loose from Joyce’s neck. She knew that shooting it wouldn’t do any good.
Joyce, struggling for breath, eyes bulging, batted at Izzie’s arm, and at first Izzie thought she was just thrashing around in a panic. Then she met Joyce’s determined gaze, and saw that Joyce was trying to tell her something. She was trying to reach something.
On the floorboards at Joyce’s feet, a small case with squared off corners.
The Ridden still held tight to Joyce’s neck, and was now forcing its own head and shoulders through the open driver’s side window, eyes black and lifeless, mouth open and the same horrible sound shuddering from deep in its throat, audible even over the din of the music blaring from the speakers.
Izzie scrambled, ducking low and trying to reach the case. She was sure that she was kneeing Daphne in the face, but would have to apologize for that later. Muscles strained as she stretched her arm, shoulder wedged firmly against Joyce’s leg, until finally her fingers nudged the case.
From outside the car, Izzie could hear gunshots ringing out.
She sat up as best she could, clutching the case in her hand, and then quickly flipped open the lid. There on the bed of purple silk sat the long-handled silver-bladed scalpel that Joyce had shown them a short time before.
Wrapping her fist around the handle of the scalpel, Izzie twisted and in one swift motion slammed the blade into the side of the Ridden’s neck, just below the jawline.
Joyce gasped for air as the hand gripping her neck slowly loosene
d, and the Ridden slid backwards out of the open window like a marionette whose strings had just been cut. The dark blots that mottled its skin were quickly shrinking, like drops of water burning off a hot skillet, and the Ridden’s eyes rolled up in their sockets, showing white. By the time the lifeless body hit the ground, the scalpel’s handle sticking out of its neck, there were no visible signs that it had ever been possessed.
“Go!” Daphne shouted, somewhere behind Izzie’s knee.
Without waiting for Izzie to get out of her lap, Joyce stood on the accelerator pedal and the Volkswagen Beetle lurked into motion, barreling toward the mouth of the alley.
Patrick barely had time to jump out of the way as Joyce’s car roared past him. He’d stopped charging toward the circle the second that the Volkswagen had appeared at the far end of the alley, and had breathed a momentary sigh of relief as first Daphne and then Izzie had climbed into the passenger seat. But seconds later when the Ridden had reached through the driver’s side window and grabbed hold of Joyce, he had rushed forward again, all thoughts about his own safety forgotten.
Patrick had ducked the grasping arm of one of the flailing Ridden, then skidded to one side to avoid colliding with another. But just when it looked as though he had a clear path to rush the Ridden who was slowly choking the life from Joyce, in the hopes of tackling it and prying loose its grip on her throat, a third Ridden shambled directly into his path. Patrick’s forward momentum was too great to change direction in time, and his shoulder slammed right into the Ridden’s bony chest.
The Ridden grabbed hold of Patrick’s left arm just above the wrist, pinning it in a vice-like grip.
Patrick’s first instinct was to try to wrest himself free by force, but his first attempt to budge the Ridden’s fingers was met with failure, the thing’s grip being too strong to break. He tried punching the Ridden in the throat, but got no response.
The Ridden might be impervious to pain, it still relied on the mechanics of the possessed body to function. And if he could impair the functioning of the body parts involved . . .
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