Dark Rain

by Tony Richards

  It hung in mid-air for a second, flipping over, catching the flashlight’s beam.

  And then it suddenly shot forward, hissing through the dark. And embedded itself deep in Cassie’s stomach.

  NINETEEN

  As I watched that happen, my heart seemed to stop beating and then rush right up to block my throat.

  Cassie could only stare back at me, her mouth dropping open. But no sound came out at all.

  Her shotgun fell away, crashing to the flagstones from her nerveless grasp. Both her hands went to the wound. And then her legs started giving way, her whole face crumpling up.

  By the time she’d fallen to her knees, she was tipping over to the side as well. She went down. The pain hit her badly. On the cold stone floor, she curled into a fetal ball, an anguished grunt finally escaping her. Tears were pushing through her eyelids. She was hissing quickly, trying to stay conscious and alert.

  I was at her side immediately. Put one hand across her arm. Was the violent shaking hers, or mine? My thoughts weren’t even coherent anymore.

  In all the time we’d worked together, I had never seen her hurt as bad as this.

  “Cassie?”

  Her teeth grated – I could see them clench and shift. Her palms were clasped across her stomach. Not enough, however, to stop the blood from spilling out.

  A pool of it grew as I watched, jet black in the flashlight’s beam.

  “Cassie? I want to see how bad the damage is!”

  She tried to ease her hands away, but didn’t get them very far. Because, as soon as the pressure eased, something began to bulge under the skin there.

  Something had been torn or severed. So I made her hold on tight again. Oh good God, was I watching her die?

  Several cops had entered, moving warily through the dense shadows. Hobart spoke to one of them, then shook his head. He came across and bent over us, his face apologetic.

  “There are no ambulances left,” he murmured.

  Which made sense, after the other attacks. But it didn’t exactly help.

  “One of our cars can take her to the hospital, Ross. That’s her safest bet.”

  But my mind was unclouding by this stage. Raine General was at least ten minutes from here, even with a V8 engine and a siren. And the ER ward would probably resemble a field hospital after the Battle of the Somme. I recalled how many injured there had been. They’d be running short of blood reserves as well. And Cassie needed plenty.

  I put my mouth to her ear and said, “I’m going to get you to my car. It’s going to hurt. You ready?”

  Her eyelids fluttered, and she managed to give me a tiny nod.

  As carefully as possible, I rolled her into my arms, then stood up. It obviously pained her like crazy, but she kept her jaw tight and didn’t make a sound. I admired her for that. Except, for somebody so wiry, she wasn’t exactly light.

  Hobart stepped out of my way, wondering what I was up to. I just headed for the open street.

  She was practically unconscious when I eased her into the passenger seat. I ran round to the driver’s side, then gunned the engine.

  Lawrence L. DuMarr, read the lettering on the glass door. Apothecary. Acupuncture. Spiritual matters addressed.

  It was on a short brownstone block called Exeter Close, at the farthest edge of Marshall Drive. The only storefront with any lights still on. All the rest were dark. But when you looked at them, you could see that they were all of a kind.

  If you practiced magic, you could do all of your shopping on this single street. It was straight with broad, neat sidewalks. There were no trees or shrubbery whatsoever. And the stores were all packed side by side.

  Some specialized in pendants, fetishes, and amulets of every description you could think of. Others carried the ingredients for potions. One establishment stocked only crystals, in every shape, size, and color imaginable. And there were several bookstores, naturally. The subject? You can guess.

  But none of those instruments, that knowledge, could help Cassie, and I knew it.

  I’m the first to admit that magic, wielded properly, can cure a sickness, a disease. Actual wounds, though, are another matter. Most powerful adepts think twice, then three times, before trying that.

  It’s a matter of understanding, you see. Proper magic begins in the head, by visualizing something. And in this case, visualizing the body itself, the damage to it. How to fix it. How to make it right.

  Cells mending, and closing round each other. Severed vessels joining up. Muscles readjusting. Blood starting to flow along the correct routes again. There’s far too much to take account of. Far too much that could go wrong. And whatever condition Cassie might be in, I couldn’t take that chance. I wouldn’t risk it.

  Lawrence L. DuMarr was something rather different.

  There was a ‘closed’ sign turned around in the door. Beyond it, I could see hundreds of neatly arranged glass jars with fat cork stoppers on a row of shelves. They were filled up with dried fungi, dried dead beetles, God alone knew what else. But another door at the rear of the store was slightly ajar, a chink of ochre light apparent from behind it.

  The air was faintly misty as I lifted Cassie out and carried her along. It formed soft, yellow nimbuses around the streetlamps, like the breath of some strange phantom, and made my surroundings seem a touch unnatural. Rather like a dream, in fact. If only it were that.

  Cassie was unconscious. Her head lolled slackly on my forearm. All the blood had gone from her face. She was still breathing gently, and no longer in pain at least. But my heart was beating like a hammer. How much longer did she have?

  I couldn’t push the doorbell without letting go of her. So I simply kicked the frame till Lawrence noticed that. His face came poking out of the back office, looking annoyed at first. But then he saw what was going on. His expression changed to one of alarm, and he hurried across to let us in.

  “Cassandra! What’s happened?”

  “Picked the wrong fight,” I told him as I hefted her inside.

  DuMarr ushered us through, sweeping all the papers off his desk. I set her down. She made an unpleasant bumping noise, like a dead weight of potatoes. Blood began spreading almost immediately on the wood.

  The man peered at her anguishedly. He was on the scrawny side. In his middle forties, but with prematurely white hair that swept down across his shoulders. And, despite the fact that he’d been born here, looked more like he came from Oxford, England, in the pre-War days. A friend of Tolkein’s, perhaps. He had a goatee beard, the same white as his hair. Wore a maroon velvet smoking jacket with cigar burns on the sleeves, a silk shirt of the same color, and loose bell-bottomed pants. There was an embroidered skull cap on his head, a tassel swinging from it. And a gold pince-nez was balanced on the sharp bridge of his nose.

  His eyes were watering. He was genuinely mortified. For some reason – despite the fact that they’re as different as chalk and cheese – DuMarr has always utterly adored Cass, ever since he’d met her. Not in any amorous way, you understand. It was more to do with admiration. He liked her straightforwardness, her vitality, I think. Whenever she was around, he’d fuss over her until it drove her to distraction. And when not in her presence, he would talk about her like some kind of heroic princess.

  “I feel so much safer, knowing she’s around,” he’d tell me.

  He inspected her wound, as carefully and gently as if he were handling gossamer.

  DuMarr, you have to understand, doesn’t practice magic any more than I do. Has the same suspicion and disdain for it. But years ago, hunting through our libraries, he came across another art, and one that fascinated him.

  It’s a Chinese practice. The guidance and manipulation of the power inside ourselves, the life-force called the ‘chi.’ He’d taught himself the skill, and has demonstrated it to me numerous times. This was its most important and skillful application. He wasn’t going to heal Cass. He was going to try and help her body heal itself.

  Once he had surveyed the da
mage, he put his middle finger to the spot between her eyebrows. It’s a vital area known as the ‘third eye.’ I imagined he was trying to tell exactly how much life force she had left. His own myopic gaze slipped shut. You could almost believe he’d gone into a coma, he became so still.

  My eyes darted briefly round his office. The ochre glow in here was coming from a big old oil lamp, with a hint of jasmine to its fumes. It cast strange shadows around us that seemed to sway, as if we were at sea. There were dark wooden shelves and cabinets, with books and boxes of instruments on each. Thumb-tacked to the walls above them were a dozen massive charts. Each a different aspect of the human body, with dotted lines drawn all over the skin. These were the meridians through which the energy flowed, he’d told me. And the round dots spaced along them were the pressure points.

  His eyelids drifted open again, the lamp reflected in his glasses. His face was grave when he looked at me.

  “You barely got her to me in time,” he muttered. “Maybe I can help her. But there’s no guarantee.”

  He had to be hurting terribly inside. I certainly knew I was. But the man was a picture of composure by this time, his every gesture measured. Her survival depended on him alone. On no one else in the whole world. He’d not give in to panic, and he would not let her down.

  The palms of his hands started to move very gently up and down her body, tracing its smooth contours without touching them. Both palms came together just above her navel, at the area called the ‘dan tien.’ I thought I saw the bloody shard of glass move slightly

  “Come, Cassandra, breathe. As deeply as you can,” he murmured. “Breath and chi are one. Draw in good, new life force. Push out bad.”

  Even unconscious, Cass seemed to respond. Her nostrils flared slightly and her ribs began to lift and fall.

  Her jaw dropped open and she let out an incoherent moan. DuMarr stooped lower, coaxing her quietly.

  “Yes, I know it hurts. But you have to try. Where’s all that courage of yours when you need it, huh?”

  But he was smiling at her.

  Not much later, I could feel a gentle prickle on the hairs around my wrists, like a mild electric current was now flowing through the room. I understood what this was, too. He’d explained the whole process. He was not merely using the force in her own body. He was drawing it from outside, what is known as ‘universal energy.’ The life force of the world itself, and even the stars beyond.

  It may seem strange that a man like myself, a practical man, accepts this kind of stuff. But the fact was, I’d seen it work. And right now, that was more than good enough.

  I could only stand and watch, though. And I felt utterly helpless. The racing and the pounding in me had faded away, and been replaced by an awful leaden feeling. My thoughts kept on getting darker. Cass had already bled out so much. Could even Lawrence save her?

  His empty palms continued to move in fixed patterns across her. The glass actually did lift an inch from her stomach, the third time he completed that. He reached down smoothly and pulled it out, flinging it aside. Then his hands were circling the wound, making the bleeding stop.

  And I understand what you are thinking. I have done a little reading on this subject for myself. And know that, in the outside world, the skills DuMarr was demonstrating do not work as powerfully as this.

  Maybe it’s simply the case that, steeped in the arcane the way Raine’s Landing is, anything that’s in the realm of metaphysics just works so much better here.

  Cass was breathing far more evenly, I could make out. Her face was still like ivory, but it looked a little more serene. The tension in my body eased for the first time in quite a while. Were we going to be lucky after all?

  I don’t think DuMarr believed in luck. He just kept on at it. His gaze never left her once.

  I swear there was the faintest lambent glow under his palms, by this stage.

  Oh yes, and one other thing. The wound was starting to close up.

  TWENTY

  “Make her a tea of this when she wakes up,” he told me, handing me a small glass vial with some nondescript brown shapes in it.

  I didn’t even like to guess what they were.

  “Full of iron,” DuMarr assured me, “far more than in a tablet. Otherwise, make sure she rests. Which will be hard work – yes, I get that.”

  He looked utterly exhausted, but delighted with himself. Cass was in an armchair, heavily wrapped in blankets. Still completely out of it, but a glow was finally returning to her cheeks.

  I started to express my thanks.

  “No need, no need,” the man said, brushing me off quickly. “I did what I could. It’s up to you now. Take her home.”

  We turned at long last onto Rowan Street, a wide, nondescript avenue in East Meadow, one of the rather shabbier parts of town. Not as dingy as Cray’s Lane – at least the road was paved. But a lot of the old wooden houses had been partitioned off into – in some cases – curiously shaped apartments. And the whole place had an air of neglect about it

  I’d been here a good deal, back when I’d been on the force. Nothing very major ever drew me here, you understand. Mostly domestic disturbances and the handling of pilfered goods. It’s the sort of community, in other words, that stretches concepts like relationship and economy past their normal limits. The sidewalks were empty. A fox appeared in my headlamps for a moment, and then vanished like a ghost.

  The neon sign outside her place was turned off, but I could still read it. “Cassie’s Diner.” That was what she used to do, before her whole world got turned head over heels. It had a low flat roof, big plate-glass windows, and you could make out the shapes of the tables and chairs inside. A deep-fryer. A coffee machine. A sign on the door read ‘Ask about our specials.’ It was peeling away at one corner.

  She owned the place free and clear, and had done okay with it. I’d dropped in many times, when I’d still been a cop.

  I drove around the back, stopping outside her apartment door. The screen was torn. There was a bug lamp to one side, but it hadn’t been switched on in months.

  The sky above us was a hazy, starless charcoal murk. Something flittered across it that I thought might be a bat.

  I looked Cass over carefully. She was sleeping soundly, her breathing mildly sonorous, and I felt grateful just for that. I fumbled with my keychain till I found the one for her place. We keep each other’s, for situations just like this. And then hefted her again – she didn’t make a sound.

  The instant that the door came open, there was a mewl from near my feet. Her big old tabby cat, Cleveland, was staring up at us with those dusky amber eyes of his. When he saw that there was something wrong, though, he beat a retreat, disappearing off into the back. The goddamn coward.

  Once inside, I bumped the light switch with my elbow.

  And there they were, even in the hallway. The children she’d once had. Staring at me – tiny – from the walls, in dozens of framed photographs.

  Kevin, six years old. Angel, five. And Little Cassie, only three.

  Trapped at those ages forever, motionless and two-dimensional.

  I knew her story. Not all of it, but enough.

  Cass had never married, but there’d been plenty of men. The problem was that – strong and hardy and dependable herself – she’d always had a penchant for, been drawn to, total losers. Flotsam on the sea of life. Guys who wasted their existences, and used up other folks’ along the way. Drinkers. Gamblers. Semi-criminals. She liked them the same way other people took a shine to stray dogs. She would move them in and feed them like you would a scruffy, homeless mutt.

  It never lasted long. After a few months she’d get bored, and then show Mr. Wrong the door. Cass had never been the sort of person to get all tied down. So I guess that, on one level, she preferred her life that way.

  Her kids, as a consequence, each had a different father. But she loved them deeply, fiercely, all the same. I’d seen her with them, in the old days. She was like a tender lioness, with them
around. When she needed to be firm with them, she always did it kindly. They were her whole life. So imagine how she must have felt, to turn around one day and find …

  She still felt pretty weighty, but I didn’t mind a bit. Not when you considered option number two. I shifted her in my arms, and headed slowly toward the next door down the corridor.

  She had never told me the full details. Couldn’t bring herself to do it. Every time she tried, the words just piled up like a car wreck in her throat. I’d got the gist of it, however, down the last couple of years.

  She’d been out front, flipping burgers. Her kids and her new paramour were here in the apartment. He’d gone out that day, despite the fact that it was freezing cold, and brought back something with him. Some kind of ornate talisman, a black stone at its center. Where’d he even got it? Stolen it, more than likely.

  “You be careful with that thing,” she’d told him.

  She was busy at the time, with a new raft of customers out front.

  “Don’t let the little ones touch it.”

  A normal day, then. Flipping burgers. Snow on the pavement outside and the windows of the diner misting up continuously. The griddle sizzling. The smell of coffee on the air.

  She had somehow sensed that something was wrong. Simply a mother’s instinct. And come running back inside, to find an utter, yawning vacuum where her family had been.

  Cassie had searched for hours after that, first in every corner of her silent and deserted home. Then through the white-clad streets outside. One of her regulars had called the police. It was no use at all, none of it. That man of hers, and all three of her kids, had simply …

  “Vanished, right?” she managed to ask me just one time, the tears pouring freely down her cheeks. “Not forever, though? Not dead? Just like your family … right, Ross?”

  Right, I’d told her. But the plain fact was, I didn’t know for sure, in either case. There was simply no way of telling.