Night of Demons - 02

by Tony Richards

  “She used it to draw Hanlon here?”

  I nodded uncomfortably, slipping the thing in my pocket. It might turn out to be useful later.

  “So where are they?”

  Now that was the question, wasn’t it?

  When we looked around, we couldn’t find the slightest sign of any struggle. So whatever had gone on here, it had either happened very quickly, or had somehow turned out amicably. And I didn’t care to think about the latter option too much. Hanlon and Millicent combined?

  Frustration seethed through me. We’d arrived too late. No one but the two people involved knew exactly what was going on. And they hadn’t hung around to answer any questions.

  Cass blurted, “Do you suppose they came to an agreement?”

  Which told me she’d arrived at the same conclusion. And it was a pretty frightening concept, any way you tried to cut it. I struggled to think how we could react to that.

  “Hey!” I heard her say, a bit more loudly. “What the hell is going on?”

  Which sounded like a pretty big non sequitur, until I glanced where she was looking. Her eyes were tracking something out beyond the windowpane. And I couldn’t make out what it was, at first. It all looked normal, Union Square illuminated with its old-gold glow, a couple of the streets running from it shining with bright neon signs. The rest of the Landing sprawling away, double rows of streetlamps marking out the wider routes.

  Then a red flash caught my attention. Held it, repeating itself. A patrol car with its beacon on was heading southward, moving really fast. Which would not have been too remarkable. Except I looked across and saw another, heading in from Pilgrim’s Plot and turning in the same direction.

  Then a third appeared.

  I got on the phone to Hobart. By the sound of it, he was in his car as well.

  “The switchboard’s jammed! Reports of some kind of creature!” he yelled down the line at me. “It’s tearing up an entire block in Garnerstown!”

  One of the least prosperous suburbs in the Landing, Garnerstown had suffered quite enough already. Saruak had struck there on two consecutive nights when he had first arrived. Nobody had moved back into Cray’s Lane, so far as I knew. As for St. Nevitt’s—they weren’t even planning to repair that stricken church. They’d simply shut it down.

  The word “creature” could mean a very wide variety of things in a place like the Landing. The fact that Saul hadn’t been specific told me what? He wasn’t sure?

  I’d reached Sandhurst Avenue, the gas pedal pushed down through the floor. The red taillight of Cassie’s Harley was visible about a quarter of a mile ahead. She could have easily outstripped me. But when there’s trouble going down, we prefer to stick together, back each other up. And trouble with creatures…that can be the very worst kind.

  Sometimes—either willingly or by mistake—people conjure the things up. They pop into existence. Other times, it is the conjurer who gets transformed. Fear and madness quickly work their way into that particular equation, and that’s usually when all hell breaks loose.

  As to which type we were facing? Well, we’d soon find out.

  I hit the intersection at Greenwood Terrace, swinging to the left and going across town a couple of blocks. Then I was turning right and heading south again, down Keane Street.

  Halfway along it, five squad cars had been pulled up, forming a tight barrier. Saul’s Pontiac was in there with them too. And Cass was already off her bike, sprinting over swiftly.

  The cops were kneeling. Most of them had their revolvers drawn, and a couple were holding riot guns. I skidded to a halt behind them, got out, and surveyed the scene. Which was fairly difficult, because a lot of the streetlamps were out.

  Four wooden houses had been torn apart almost completely. Broken walls and shingles, and pieces of furniture, were scattered everywhere. The top of a chimney pot was lying in the middle of the street. A power line was down as well, the cables jumping and sparking furiously.

  Their intermittent glow lit up Lauren Brennan’s face. I’d not supposed that she’d be here. She was crouched down with the uniformed men, had her gun out the same way they did, and was looking drawn. But not nearly as frightened as she’d been at Sam Scott’s Tavern.

  Then I noticed there were corpses lying in a few front yards. None of them looked like they’d died easily. One body was almost ripped in half.

  I was about to go across to Saul, and ask him what had done this, when a massive shadow moved out there, behind another wooden house. Lights were on, but the front door was wide open. So whoever had been living there had fled.

  Everyone around me stiffened and took careful aim. I went so completely still that I could hear my own heart bumping. A bead of moisture started trickling across my lip. Whatever had shifted off in that direction, it had been enormous.

  Then I heard the weirdest noise, a loud sharp clattering that seemed to go on for longer than made any sense. The echo of it, even after it had stopped, went ringing down the street.

  It was followed by an abrupt, scaly grating sound, like two pieces of huge shell being rubbed together. Out where the streetlights didn’t reach, the shadows took on an extra density and began to bulge. I tried to follow the movement, but it was far too quick. Too fleeting to make out a proper shape. The only thing registering was that the body I was catching glimpses of appeared to be jet black, darker by far than its surroundings. It had disappeared behind the broken houses before I could take in any more.

  It was something long, although not in any form I recognized. I thought I’d caught a glimpse of spines, but knew I could be wrong about that.

  Something very fast and huge, and obviously deadly.

  I hunkered down a few more inches as the first noise I’d heard, the prolonged clattering, started up again.

  CHAPTER 23

  The strange sound went right through me, grating at my nerves. I had my own gun drawn by this stage. Every weapon swung in the noise’s direction, even Lauren’s. I could see how badly her hands were shaking, but she was staying put and doing her part. But none of us could tell exactly where it was coming from. It was so loud it echoed up and down the street, rebounding.

  It stopped for an instant, and then started up again. And…I thought I recognized it. It seemed to be a hugely amplified version of a sound that I had heard before. Although I couldn’t recall from where or when. And this wasn’t the moment for guessing games.

  The next instant, it died away completely. And the shadows up ahead of us lurched again. One of the cops fired. That seemed to have no effect. Whatever was out there, it was circling back the way it had first come, still clinging to the darker areas. It struck me that we should have been able to make out more than this. The moon was high above us, almost full. But whatever this thing was, it seemed to absorb the best part of the light that touched it, making itself practically invisible.

  It had gone behind a clump of low trees in between the ruined homes and the abandoned one. Cassie—both her Glocks drawn—started edging forward. But I reached across and caught her elbow, staring at her and shaking my head. And she took notice of that, thank God. We had to know what we were dealing with before we tried to confront it.

  The clattering did not come back. Nor did any of the scraping sounds. I almost wished they would. It was better than the silence that had descended over us.

  My insides felt rigid. Staying hunkered down actually hurt. And there was a fine second skin of moisture on my face. Everyone around me was the same, excepting Cassie. We knew there was some kind of terrible danger out there, but we couldn’t even see it properly.

  When the hush was finally broken, it was not by what I had expected. The sound that came to us this time started softly, but then lifted to a high-pitched wail.

  I felt my shoulders jolt with shock. It sounded like a child in pain.

  My first instinct was to start moving toward it. It was a safe bet that was Cassie’s too. We’d both had families of our own, even though they were no
t with us any longer. But, impulsive although she can sometimes be, Cass just stayed put. And we exchanged puzzled glances. Could this be some kind of deception, to fool us?

  Except that hadn’t occurred to everyone. A young sandy-haired cop called Gregson suddenly stood up and began heading forward, mumbling something. Then we heard, “It’s got hold of a kid!”

  His voice was choked up with emotion, and I understood exactly why. He had twin baby boys at home.

  Everyone was watching him. And Saul began shouting at him to come back. But no one tried to follow. Gregson was apparently too caught up in what he was attempting to notice the lieutenant’s voice. The only thing that we could do was aim into the darkness up ahead and try to cover him.

  He was going at a slow jog, keeping low, his head darting around. His service pistol, at the ready, gleamed beside his shoulder. Gregson knew the risk that he was taking. That did not deter him for a second.

  And I thought at first that he was going to be okay. What if he was right, there was a child out there? There had been ordinary families along this entire block, let’s face it.

  But then the shadows seemed to coalesce, and started moving faster than I’d possibly imagined.

  There wasn’t time to fire. Not even Cass managed to get a round off. It was over and done with between one blink and the next, so that you only got a brief impression of it, like a sudden bright light on your retinas. Except…no, not bright. The opposite of that.

  Something vast—with a blunt, triangular head—came surging out. And slammed into Gregson’s chest, knocking the man over.

  He’d barely hit the pavement before jaws sprung open, clamped around his leg. And he was dragged away in a split second. There was a brief shriek.

  Then silence closed across us again, like a wall of blackened water.

  A terrible coldness began to fill me up. And it seemed to seep through every pore. I wasn’t even sure that I was drawing proper breaths. The only thing that I could do was stare at the empty space where the man had been standing.

  I heard someone mutter an oath. Hobart whispered, “Oh my God.”

  What had I just seen? I tried to piece the fragments I had glimpsed together. It had been…a long shape. Uniformly wide along its body. I could remember no colors. It had been a massive silhouette. But a serpentine shape, I felt sure of that.

  A snake? A rattlesnake, by the noise it had been making? We have no such creatures around these parts, but even if we did they wouldn’t be that size.

  This was making less and less sense the more that I thought about it. And my head was whirling slightly now. If it was a reptile, how’d it made that childlike wailing?

  I got my answer to that next second, when a creaky, rather demented-sounding laughter started ringing out behind the trees. Which told me that we weren’t dealing with any kind of real animal. This was either Hanlon in a brand-new incarnation, or something else that was sentient and vicious.

  The reaction of the cops was instantaneous. They’d been holding back in the hope that Gregson might still be alive, but the laughter seemed to indicate he wasn’t. So they opened fire on the trees. Cassie joined in. I did too. Twigs and leaves, and then whole branches, started flying everywhere, a cloud of splinters swelling up ahead of us.

  You’d have thought that nothing could withstand a storm of lead like that. But the only things we’d damaged were the natural shapes up front. The unnatural one came surging out again as the noise of our shots was still dying away. Swifter than lightning, it slid across the road in front of us and disappeared behind another house.

  I could see spines along its back. I was pretty sure of that, this time. A cop next to me blurted, “What the hell?”

  And there’d been something like a leathery frill around the part of its body where its neck ought to be. So this wasn’t just a snake. Far more like some kind of basilisk, or a reptilian demon. I didn’t have the first clue where it might have come from.

  Then I saw something else moving in the house that it had gone behind. A small head bobbed up in a first floor window, followed by a larger one. The lights might have been switched off in there…but the family who lived there hadn’t managed to get out.

  Cassie saw that too. And her response was instantaneous. She holstered her Glocks, sprinted across to her Harley, and came back with her Mossberg in one hand and the Heckler & Koch carbine in the other. She handed the latter to me. It didn’t look quite as scary as the shotgun but its bullets had a similar impact, and she had it set to triple bursts.

  She leapt up on the hood of the nearest patrol car, and then stepped onto its roof. And from that vantage point, she began stamping on the metal, yelling at the point where she’d last seen the creature disappear.

  “Over here, you asshole!”

  When nothing happened, she stamped even harder, leaving dents in the car’s roof.

  “Wanna meal? Well, come and get it!”

  None of which would have made much difference to an actual reptile. I’d seen rattlesnakes on TV, and knew they didn’t work like that. But that laugh we’d heard. That trick that it had used to bait poor Gregson? We were dealing with something that had a mind, an ugly sense of humor, and malign intent. Which made me all the more convinced that it was supernatural. Although for the moment, it was staying put.

  Cassie started jumping up and down with both feet like a big kid on a trampoline. Several of the cops around us stared at her like she was crazy. But I’d seen that kind of bold behavior in the face of peril plenty of times before.

  “What’s the matter? Scared of me? You frightened of a girl?”

  And for some reason, that seemed to do the trick where nothing else had. The deeper shadows in front of us drifted together, then came boiling out again. I saw that I’d been right about my first impressions. But I noticed something else as well. The thing wasn’t entirely dark. Its eyes were such a pale gray that they almost seemed to be glowing. The same shade as the vapor we had previously encountered. So this was connected.

  Except with one big difference. We were ready for it, this time. We both had our weapons to our shoulders. And we opened fire immediately. Cass wasn’t even using regular shot. She loaded the Mossberg with BRI saboted slugs, chunks of ammunition that could punch holes through a solid concrete wall. And she pumped one round after another straight into the creature’s face. I drilled it intently with the carbine.

  But I thought at first we still weren’t going to stop it. My heart turned to a rock inside my chest. Its great triangular head kept on expanding in my vision, its jaws coming open as they got nearer to Cassie. But she didn’t even flinch away. Simply stood there, firing mechanically.

  Then—without any preamble—the whole head burst apart.

  Although it didn’t turn out to be flesh and blood. Its entire body lost its structure, then began to fall apart. And in another second, it had transformed into a vast, elongated plume of vapor.

  Which started drawing back in the direction of the house again. None of it dispersed. It churned gently as it moved away, retaining its general shape.

  Just before it disappeared around the corner, I saw it turning denser, darker. Getting more compact. So it was probably returning to its solid state once more.

  At least Cass had given the trapped family a chance to run. As I watched, the front door burst open and they came dashing out. A couple of cops sprinted across, and started hustling them away.

  When I looked at the backyard again, something was still on the move in the deepest shadows out that way.

  We hadn’t hurt the thing in the least little bit. We’d only, momentarily, slowed it down.

  CHAPTER 24

  Insubstantial one moment, solid the next. How could we fight against something like that? But I couldn’t understand why Hanlon—or was it Millicent?—had chosen to turn themselves into that kind of creature. It honestly didn’t seem to be in either of their natures.

  The great shape was still clinging to the deepest shadow
s, slithering over to the next backyard along. Cassie kept after it with her shotgun, but it didn’t take much notice of that. It was hard to be certain, but it seemed to be altering its appearance. And none of what I could make out was good. Its head seemed to be changing, its mouth splitting ever wider. I thought I might be imagining it at first, the darkness playing tricks on me. But…the whole top section of the thing appeared to be dividing, splitting the way an amoeba might. And as it came open, it was revealing rows of curving fangs the whole way down.

  It disappeared around a wall. Then it suddenly lashed out at us with terrifying speed. In fact, it came straight across the barrier of blue-and-whites. And it was definitely solid again. Metalwork groaned and crumpled. Windshields splintered. Thank God, we stepped back in time. And then, before we had time to do anything more, it withdrew into the gloom, so swiftly that there was barely time for conscious thought.

  Off to my side, I could hear Saul Hobart swearing brutally.

  The creature was moving again, changing position, so fast it was practically impossible to track. Which direction would it strike from next time? I chanced a rapid glance behind me. And got another big surprise. When I’d first arrived, there had been no one apparent on this street except the cops. The usual inhabitants had presumably been hiding. But some of them had now emerged.

  They were gazing at the whole scene from a healthy distance, watching it unfold with utter disbelief. Some had had the presence of mind to arm themselves—rifles and shotguns could be seen. And one burly fellow was even clutching a sledgehammer. But not one of them moved toward us. They were waiting to see how this played itself out. And they were absolutely right about that, so I couldn’t blame them. As things stood, there was no way that they could help.

  One of the cops near me let out something that was half a word and half a frightened yelp. And that brought my attention back. The serpentine shape had moved again, as fast as a winter wind. Had gotten in between two of the nearest houses. And it coiled up tautly for a second. Several people opened fire, but that did no good.