“She’ll be fine,” the big lieutenant told the man, a touch sternly. “A rough day, is all.”
“Looks like it, from where I’m standing. Mind if I get back to work?”
“Knock yourself out.”
Hobart propped her up against the same wall, then gazed at her concernedly and murmured, “Try to breathe. Just concentrate on that.”
He studied her eyes, checking them for focus, and then gently felt her pulse. She managed to gulp down some air. Then she got out, “Sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
His attitude was far more relaxed than hers would have been under the circumstances. A homicide cop who couldn’t deal with a few dead bodies? But he seemed to understand that there was more to it than that. He just looked pleased she was recovering. And was about to speak again, when two loud noises broke across him.
First, an ear-splitting howl, half pain and half terror, from beyond the double-doors. And then a massive crash on the tiled floor in there, metal instruments going everywhere by the sound of it. Had the coroner slipped?
Saul let go of her, his frame tensing.
“Leonard? You okay in there?”
Footsteps started to approach the doors. But they were shambling ones, uneven. So maybe the guy had hurt himself.
The left door started to push open. Lauren tried to make out what was going on.
It wasn’t the hirsute Furbellow whose face emerged from the examination room, though.
It was the guy from the slab. Stephen Anderson.
Lauren thought she was hallucinating, at first. Then she took in the fact, dizzily, that what she was seeing was real. The shock slammed at her like a wrecking ball. Her stupor left her, and she flattened herself against the wall, her slender body tightening up. Her chest felt like it had filled up with concrete.
Oh my God! Her lips dropped open, but no sound came out.
Then she glanced over at Saul Hobart, expecting him to be the same. And that was when she got another shock.
He looked surprised, certainly. But his body didn’t even twitch. He simply took in what was happening, then squared his shoulders, his chin lifting. Like he’d faced this kind of thing before.
Anderson’s eyes were still glazed over. His lips were the same shade of blue they had been when she’d seen him on the slab. The structure of his cheekbones stood out very starkly on his bloodless face. He stepped out fully into view.
There were some ugly purple patches where the blood had settled. His flesh matched the walls out here, a pallidness pretending to be white. It looked like there was a second mouth across his throat, the severed edges curling back. And his chest cavity gaped redly where the coroner had sliced into it. But there was not a single drop of blood that she could see emerging from the wounds. And so his heart was still not pumping.
Lauren tried to make herself smaller, but couldn’t move a muscle. She could barely think.
Which made what Saul did all the more amazing. He just muttered quietly to himself.
“Aw, dammit.”
Then he drew his piece and aimed it.
Which seemed inhumanly calm.
She noticed something else red, and her attention dropped to Anderson’s right arm. The hand was covered with fresh, dripping blood, splattered the whole way to his elbow. And there was a scalpel, equally drenched, in his right fist.
So now she knew what had happened to Furbellow. Except…her mind couldn’t take it in. She couldn’t quite accept it.
Lauren wanted to run, but couldn’t. The strength had rushed out of her body as though somebody had pulled a plug. She felt her legs beginning to give way completely. She was sliding down against the wall, and there was nothing she could do to slow her descent.
Anderson took another step forward. The big lieutenant told him, “Stop right there.”
The fellow did as he was asked, at first. But then his milky gaze slid past the man and his gun, and settled on Lauren. His stare on her felt ghastly. She pushed herself back into the wall.
The corpse smiled. It was like watching latex being tugged out of shape, a humorless, unnatural thing.
“Why hello, Lieutenant Brennan,” its voice came hissing out. “I’ve seen you on the TV several times. Good to meet you in person at last.”
She felt like she was going to pass out. Was this thing claiming to know her?
“It was awfully nice, having somebody so very pretty searching for me for a while,” the dead voice went on. “It made me feel loved and wanted. What a shame the FBI took over.”
Hanlon? Another fierce quiver ran through her.
Then the corpse’s smile completely vanished.
“Although you did say some nasty things about me in those early days, dear. Pervert? I’m not that, sweet pea. What I do is spiritual, not sexual. The killings weren’t ‘brutal’ either. They were merely to a prescribed plan. And I always thought, back then, how appropriate it would be if you became one of my sacrifices. And now you’re here. Just how much luck is that?”
He took another step toward her. She finally heard a sound come out of her own mouth, though she was not sure what.
“Hold it!” Hobart bellowed.
The corpse swung its faded gaze back at him.
“Or you’ll kill this body? Hate to point out the obvious, friend, but it’s already dead.” It jabbed at its chest to emphasize that. “I’ll make a deal with you, okay? Leave now, and you’ll survive to see another sunrise. Attempt to defend the little lady here, and you’ll die alongside her.”
The only thing Saul did was grunt and hold his ground. When the corpse moved again, he fired twice, grouping both the shots near the heart. The impact made the body rock, but it showed no sign of doing any more than that.
The corpse’s voice had become gloating. “That’s no use. I told you.”
Then it kept advancing, trying to go around the man. Saul placed himself directly in between them. The corpse’s right arm swung back. Then, the scalpel came lashing at him. The big lieutenant stepped away from it just in time, and fired another shot into a bare knee.
The thing started limping when it tried to move again. So it could be damaged. But apparently not halted.
It suddenly occurred to her that she ought to be defending herself, not letting someone else do it. That would have normally been her first instinct. But she was still having trouble even thinking straight. She pushed a hand inside her jacket, got hold of the Walther’s grip. But her fingers were so nerveless that, when she tried to pull it out of its holster, it clattered away to the tiles below. She couldn’t even see where it had gone, because her gaze was still fixed on the corpse.
“Get out of my way,” it was saying to Saul.
Lauren watched, horrified. Hobart was still looking far more composed than he ought to be under the circumstances. He seemed to be trying to think this through.
And then he came to a decision. Aimed higher than before.
And put one shot each into the corpse’s murky eyes, leaving only ruined sockets there.
The scalpel dropped and rattled as it struck the floor, bright red flecks of blood appearing around it. The only thing that she could do was wait and see what happened now. It felt like time had stopped completely.
“It’s gone all dark. What the hell did you just do?”
If it was Cornelius Hanlon in there, using Anderson’s cadaver like a crab inside another shell…?
“This body’s ruined!” Hanlon was shouting angrily. “You big dumb ape! That was a lousy thing to do. But it won’t stop me. I’ll be coming back.”
Without any warning, the corpse tumbled to the ground. Its arms went out to either side. Its mouth dropped slackly open.
Gray vapor came pouring out. And even Saul jumped back at that. It spread across the ceiling. And at first, she was afraid it might attack them too. But it just went streaming off, billowing away in the direction of the entrance.
Saul watched it go, then put his gun back in its holster, wiping some
perspiration off his face.
“That was pretty close,” he murmured, turning back to her.
He walked across, looking worried and apologetic. Crouched down and reached out a big hand.
But she simply couldn’t help herself. Because by this time, panic was exploding through her like a fireball. Everything inside her seemed to be collapsing in its wake. Her bones. Her organs. Sanity itself. None of this could be real. But she’d seen it!
So Lauren pulled her knees up to her chest, cringing away from his touch.
“What’s going on?” she could hear herself start yelling, almost as if from a gaping distance. Body and mind were that far separated. “Who are you people? What the hell kind of a place is this?”
CHAPTER 16
I was coming back down the fire escape, my head still pounding from what Willets had told me, when my cell phone rang, bringing me to an unsteady halt. It was Saul Hobart. And I could tell, merely from his tone, that something new had happened.
“Where are you?” I asked him.
“With Lauren Brennan, at Sam Scott’s.”
Which was a bar. At this time of day?
“What are you doing there?”
“Trying to calm her down.” His voice sounded tired, defeated, with a strong ring of inevitability to it. “She knows, Ross. You’d better get over here.”
I took that in carefully. Saw that we’d been swimming against far too powerful a current, trying to keep the truth from her. There was too much going on that was unusual, even by our standards. And she wasn’t stupid. Was in the same line of work that we both were. But apprehension seized me all the same.
See, we’d had interlopers several times before who’d found out the real nature of this place. They had been evil or deluded beings almost to the very last. Never someone genuinely good. So we’d never once been in a position like this. How were things going to pan out, from this point on?
That’s another thing about the Landing—it is always throwing up brand-new surprises. Far too many of them, in fact. And very few of them are welcome ones.
I told Saul I’d be ten minutes. Then I went the rest of the way down.
I drove back into East Meadow. It was Cassie’s neighborhood, and sprawled out around me in all its shabby glory. I hadn’t heard a peep from her since the incident outside the cafe, but there was no time for an impromptu visit. If there was one certainty about Ms. Mallory, it was that she could take care of herself. She’d been doing that since the age of seventeen.
I headed for Crealley Street, the fastest route to the center of town. But my mind was slightly elsewhere. Willets’s voice was still causing percussive echoes, deep inside my head.
He had described to me this war he’d mentioned, many thousands of years before the birth of Christ. The first war between adepts, as it turned out. They were called shamans back then.
“Not with clubs and spears, you understand. No, this was a war with magic, a far more terrible thing.”
And his red gaze battened on me in the dimness, seeing how I’d react. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about this. How could anything so old be relevant to us today?
“A war about what?” I asked the doctor.
He looked thoughtful for a few seconds.
“The guy was pretty vague about the cause of it. I’m not even sure he fully understood. All he could really tell me was that it had to do with ‘free will.’”
Which was precisely what Amashta kept on mentioning. But what on earth did that mean? It was a term that conveyed very little, without being put in context.
I had to swerve to avoid a stray dog that had wandered out across the blacktop. Then I reached Crealley and started speeding up.
“He was more specific about the ‘who’ than the ‘why,’” Willets continued. “There were two factions. One styled themselves ‘the Elite.’ The other? The closest he could tell me was…‘the Liberators.’”
Which—like “free will”—raised an unanswerable question. If they called themselves that, then who did they liberate, and from what?
“There were many deaths on either side, and some atrocities, apparently. As in all wars, terribly cruel things were done. But it ended, so it seems, with an impasse. Neither side completely won.”
“Which might mean it’s not over yet,” I pointed out.
Willets’s head jerked up at me, his features becoming twisted. Like he hadn’t even thought of that. And then he seemed to figure out that I knew more than I was letting on. So I decided it was time. I told him the whole story about Amashta and the gemstone pendant. I had never known him listen to anyone so closely and carefully, motionless as a dim painting.
The lights were red at the Colver Street intersection, and I drew up to a halt. There was only some light crosstown traffic, a patrol car among it. Jenny Pearce was at the wheel, her white-blond hair clearly in view. She noticed me and gave a brief wave as she passed. I nodded back.
Then the lights changed, and I was heading on a couple more blocks of plain-looking houses before turning right.
“But what does such an old war have to do with us?” I asked him.
Willets favored me with a warmthless smile.
“Few things in magic are permanent. The nature of it, after all, is constant flux. If there’s still a conflict taking place, then the best way to win would be by altering the rules. The problem is, both sides are capable of that. The battle would constantly evolve, in other words. Who knows which direction it might go? As for ‘old,’ well, magic is a cosmic thing. And a few millennia count barely as a heartbeat in the time frame of the cosmos.”
Which was not the kind of thing I really liked to hear about.
“So why this town? How come we got involved?”
“If the war’s not over, if the issue’s not resolved, then what better place to settle it than here? Raine’s Landing is, let’s face it, the most magic-imbued place on this entire planet.”
I took that in uncomfortably, seeing he was right. Then we talked about the gemstone pendant that the woman had been sealed in. It had broken in half when I’d freed her. The pieces were, at present, off at Gaspar Vernon’s place.
“Regan Farrow owned it, and the curse came into being,” Willets pointed out. “Jason Goad owned it and…”
He faltered, embarrassed. Hadn’t meant to bring my family up.
“But I think the upside might be this,” he went on, his voice rather quieter. “Once you’d freed her, her first instinct was to help us. At a guess, I’d say that you can trust this woman, whoever she is.”
Something else was nagging at me. I decided to voice it too. So I told the doc what Amashta had dubbed me when I’d first encountered her. He peered at me slightly askance.
“‘Defender’?” He shook his head. “It’s not a common title, Devries. There’ve been Defenders of the Faith before. Defenders of the Realm. But merely plain Defender? Against what?”
He looked brooding, something confounding him. And when he stared at me again, was he seeing me in a new light?
“I really don’t know what it means. So I can only tell you what I think again. To hold such a title…that sounds like a pretty hard thing. Dangerous, and lonely too.”
He let his head tilt to one side.
“But if I had to choose anyone to hold it, then I wouldn’t hesitate, not for a second. I’d choose you.”
Sam Scott’s Tavern, on the corner of Pine and Logan, was well known as a cops’ hangout. At this hour of the morning, it was usually empty. So there were only the thin redheaded barman standing behind his brass-topped counter and two figures on stools in front of it. Saul was slightly hunched, as usual. But Lauren was slumped the whole way down, almost like she’d fallen asleep.
It wasn’t that. All three faces swung around when I walked in. Her head came up a few inches. I could see her features were as white as a sheet, her eyes shining like glass. But then they tipped away from me again.
The lighting in the place w
as turned low. Shadows swallowed half of it up. The air smelled faintly of stale booze and age-dried woodwork. A long row of bottles glinted behind the counter, and the brass on the beer taps had a ruddy sheen. There was an engraved mirror back there too. It was six feet long and had a gilded frame, and was probably quite valuable.
On the back wall were photographs of cops who’d died the past few decades, Davy Quinn right in there among them. Below each of them was a pewter tankard, suspended from a hook. Cops have weird traditions, and those in the Landing are no exception. Even though you’d bought it, you were still a drinking buddy to their minds. That was what the tankards represented. Guys even poured a little liquor into them from time to time.
Saul seemed exhausted, and had a mug of coffee in front of him. But Lauren had a shot glass in her grasp, and a bottle of bourbon propped in front of her, half empty. I could see, even from this distance, that the hand holding the glass was shaking.
Saul came across and quietly explained what had been going down. And I was thunderstruck.
“You’re sure it was Hanlon?”
“It recognized our friend here. So I’d say yes.”
Lauren Brennan didn’t even seem to notice we were talking about her. She was finishing off the rest of her drink, then reaching for the bottle again, the barman watching her unhappily.
I told Saul about the doctor’s suspicions regarding the Tollburn family.
“A magical device?” His eyes got wider. “Couldn’t he be more specific?”
“Afraid not. But if Hanlon’s gotten hold of it, we’re in a big, fat mess.”
But we’d been in that place before. The main thing was to hold our nerve, and both of us knew that.
Except that Lauren didn’t understand. And you could scarcely blame her. When she poured herself another shot, half the whisky missed the glass. The barman went to get a cloth.
It had to be terrifying for her. Those who had been born here—we had grown up our whole lives with strangeness. Fact was, we’d known nothing else. I’d never claim that it felt normal—human beings aren’t wired that way. But they can adapt to most circumstances, which was precisely what we’d done.
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