Night of Demons - 02

by Tony Richards

  “He’s one of ours!”

  Matt abruptly rushed forward. Grabbed the cop nearest to him. And plunged his talons into the guy’s chest.

  “Not anymore, he ain’t!”

  Harrison stumbled back, his expression crumbling. Nick McLeish ran up and started shooting, and the civilians around him followed his lead and did the same.

  Matt howled and thrashed as the bullets struck him. But he showed no sign of going down. I remembered how it had been with the beast that had inspired him.

  “Aim for the face!” I yelled. “The mouth and eyes!”

  And everyone did that. The creature moaned and shook its head furiously, staggering off to the side. But it still didn’t look like it was going to come to pieces. Where was Cassie, with her heavier ordnance?

  The beast lurched to our right with alarming speed. It reached a parked black-and-white, then bent down and grabbed its lower edge. And flipped the whole thing over on its side with a huge crunching sound. It had a metal shield now, to deflect our shots.

  A grating noise reached my ears after that. The car had begun to scrape across the ground in our direction, the creature shoving it along. Both the carbine and the Mossberg could shoot through several layers of metal, couldn’t they? So I glanced across, again, at Cassie. Felt amazed by what I saw.

  She was standing next to her Harley, her arms by her sides. Watching everything as though from a tremendous distance—a spectator to this, and nothing more. And she never acted that way. She was always where the action was the thickest. What on earth did she think she was doing?

  “Hey!” I yelled.

  But she didn’t seem to hear me. The upended car was getting closer. The only thing she did was blink, her gaze strange-looking in the dim electric light.

  I wasn’t sure what was wrong with her, and didn’t have time to find out. There was another patrol car next to me. Its doors were open, I could see the key in the ignition. So I went across and yanked the seat belt on. Started it up and then swung it around.

  Got it pointed at the upended car approaching us, then jammed my foot down on the gas. The prowl car surged ahead and hit the other vehicle with an almighty crash. The black-and-white went over on its roof, with the creature underneath it.

  But I didn’t stop at that. I kept pushing my car forward, shunting the upturned one over the rough asphalt.

  If there’d been a man underneath, he’d have been ground to paste in seconds. But Matt wasn’t that thing, not any longer. There was a burst of vapor up ahead of me. It drifted above the pavement for a few seconds, then soared away, heading up into the darkness and retreating from us quickly.

  I undid the belt, feeling my body go a little slack.

  The general mood on the street, by the time that I climbed out, was one of shock and absolute dismay. Of all the places danger could have come from, the last that we’d expected was another cop.

  I could hear Harrison Whitby murmuring.

  “Any of us? Any of us could go like that?”

  I swung around angrily, looking for Cassie again. What did she think she was playing at?

  But her bike had disappeared from view. I’d not the first clue as to why.

  That was when I noticed Saul was gesturing to me. He was on his cell again. And when I walked across to him, he squinted at me frozenly.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” he said.

  “Try me.”

  There was an awful lot I was prepared to believe, these days. Except it still turned out that he was right.

  CHAPTER 37

  The dragon was some forty feet long, and stood nearly three stories on its narrow, sharply angled legs. There were no cadavers in its wake, so it didn’t seem to have killed anyone yet. Let’s face it, you could see it coming from a mile off, and had plenty of time to get out of its way. And besides, this was a shopping street, empty by this hour.

  But it had wrecked most of a block of Exeter Close, right up on the edge of the Marshall Drive area. The town’s practitioners—which included most inhabitants from time to time—would have to go elsewhere to get their magic supplies for a while.

  The stores here were devoted to the sale of such goods—or at least, they had been. A lot of the buildings had been wholly or partially demolished. Front walls had collapsed. There was not a single window left intact, and most of the streetlamps had been knocked over.

  Among this ruin, thousands of scattered crystals flashed. There were pendants and amulets strewn in the gutters. And the whole place had an awful perfumed reek—the contents of smashed bottles intermingling with each other. There were books lying everywhere, many of them with black leather covers.

  My gaze went to Lawrence L. DuMarr’s oriental clinic, which had been destroyed completely. The furniture had been turned to kindling, and there were broken jars all over the place.

  Then the dragon held my attention again, its tail sliding off across an intersection. The thing was starting to climb the gradient of Sycamore Hill itself.

  Every person here was shooting at it. But it barely even seemed to notice. Looking at its size, I doubted it could feel more than a very mild discomfort. Not even Cass’s weapons would have changed that very much.

  The moon had reappeared. Two dark, blurred shapes—they were not vapor—showed up against it and came hurtling down. They reached the ground either side of the great reptile and resolved into human form, Judge Levin nearest me, Kurt van Friesling on the other side.

  Both the adepts held their palms up, and two nets of glowing sparks shot out. They wrapped themselves across the lizard, winding along its body and then tangling around its legs, its massive claws.

  It simply snorted, gave a shake. The webs broke into shining pieces. Well, so much for that.

  It was headed for a row of large houses some quarter of a mile up. There didn’t seem to be anything special about them, but it was striding at them with that purposeful manner reptiles often have. I watched it carefully as it climbed away from us.

  It was relatively narrow for a thing that size. Looked less like a St. George type of dragon than a snake with legs. There was a pair of leathery wings behind its shoulders, but they were small and pretty useless-looking. Big, soft spikes ran the length of its back. And hanging from its chin were several flopping whiskers, like a beard.

  I began understanding what it really was, my mind digging back through things I’d read, from books that had been loaned to me. And it took me a few seconds more, but I finally got it.

  This was a Chinese variety of dragon. The kind they believed in across the whole Far East. And it looked as strange—on a Massachusetts hillside—as a statuette of Buddha would on a Christmas tree.

  My head went darting back toward the ruined medicine shop. And I realized who had transformed this time. He’d loaned me that particular book. Usually so gentle-natured, he liked doing things like that.

  A thing this size didn’t need to have been ill intentioned. It could have caused that wreckage simply climbing out of there. And trashed the other establishments merely by turning around on the spot.

  It hadn’t hurt a single person, and wasn’t attacking anyone.

  So I looked back at it with a revised opinion.

  DuMarr?

  I still found it hard to believe what he had turned into. But most of the destruction seemed to have been accidental. Then I took in something else.

  People were still firing at him. And both adepts were trying to snare him with their nets again. But he ignored that.

  He went a little higher up. The moonlight caught him fully. Something else became apparent. He should have been completely black. The other creatures had been. But in this case, there was a little color trying to break through, a faint blush of red underneath the darkness. And his eyes were pale gray, sure. But there seemed to be a shifting glitter to them, as if they were trying to alter that.

  In which case…

  It had not occurred to me before but…if a person could be turned
toward his dark side, maybe he could be turned back?

  It was pretty hard to imagine how, confronted with a creature this size. Lawrence had reached a line of trees and was trampling over them like they were buttercups. I struggled to think what might stop him.

  Cassie, it occurred to me. Lawrence thought the world of her. Would he back off for her sake?

  But she wasn’t here, and I wasn’t even certain that she was still on our side. I hurried across to the judge, explained my theory to him. Kurt appeared and listened too. The dragon had climbed even higher up the slope, a few of the militia guys still following it and firing. I could make out reinforcements arriving, drawing up in cars above us. A new cordon was being formed in front of the houses. But that was useless—I already knew it. They didn’t have the faintest chance of slowing something that size down.

  Judge Levin could see it too. His eyes became thoughtful and he bit his lower lip, then nodded quickly.

  “Yes, you’re right.” He looked at Kurt. “We could create a real-seeming illusion, couldn’t we?”

  They both turned around to face the hilltop. Raised their hands again.

  A perfect image of Cass blinked into existence in front of the dragon.

  It stopped dead.

  It lowered its head. Its muzzle edged slowly closer to the tall figure in front of it. I started climbing further up to get a better view.

  There was something about its face that was rather placid, more like a horse than a creature with scales. So I struggled to remember what I knew of Eastern dragons.

  They weren’t merely dumb brutes, were they? They were rumored to be very wise. And that proved to be exactly the case. Its muzzle sniffed at her audibly. Then it reared back, and its jaws stretched wide.

  A huge jet of water shot out of its throat and washed over the image. Which dissolved.

  My mind was working overtime. Chinese dragons did spit water, not fire. They were generally peaceable, which gave me some degree of hope. Lawrence hadn’t transformed into anything crazed or murderous. Darkness might have claimed him, but his good side was still there. He simply wasn’t thinking all that rationally by this stage of the game. If we could only get to him, make him see sense…

  The great dark beast moved off again, its tail leaving a deep, wide furrow in the dirt.

  There was a sudden tug at my sleeve. I turned around to find myself facing Martha Howard-Brett.

  CHAPTER 38

  When I explained to her what was required, she didn’t hesitate.

  “You understand you have to actually change shape?” I asked her. “An illusion won’t do it.”

  After all, the shadow show that Kurt and Levin had created hadn’t fooled DuMarr in the slightest.

  “No, that’s fine.”

  She smiled again, then muttered a stream of foreign words. Her silk blouse, linen slacks, and high heels rapidly gave way to ripped jeans, a T-shirt, and tall black boots. Her face grew longer, narrower, with a squarer jaw. Her irises turned black. And then her hair turned the same color, starting to shrink back. Faded tattoos came into being on her upper arms, a scorpion and a broken heart.

  “You understand this might be dangerous?” I asked.

  She stared up again. DuMarr had passed through the cordon, hardly noticing it was there. He’d reached the row of homes, and was trampling a pool house, although whether on purpose or not was impossible to tell.

  “I know how dangerous it might be if nothing gets done,” she told me.

  Even her voice was different. Her enunciation was not so crisp and had a distinct throaty burr to it. And before I even had time to respond, she had turned to a murky outline that swept away uphill. My gaze followed it. The dragon had gone through one side of the main house and had disappeared from view.

  I went quickly up myself. Not that I could do much good, but I didn’t want to leave her coping with the thing alone.

  When I got there, nobody was firing anymore. The cops and militiamen were still hanging around, but they were looking unsure what to do. We were on Covey Avenue, and none of its inhabitants had stuck around to watch. Which was a shame, since they were really missing something.

  The dragon had lain down in the center of the road, its tail following the broken white line. Its massive head was resting on its claws. Martha—still a doppelganger of Cass Mallory—was stroking its muzzle, whispering in its ear. And the darkness of its body was fading away. Its eyes were not as colorless as they had been before.

  As I watched, they turned to a pale brown laced with tiny flecks of gold. I felt the tension lift out of my body as the shape subsided and the man came back in view.

  His bell-bottom pants. His velvet smoking jacket. His pince-nez and his knitted skullcap. His prematurely white hair and his goatee beard. He’d not turned to a cloud of vapor like the others. So we’d pulled him out of the spell’s vaporous grasp.

  He staggered slightly. Martha grabbed his shoulders, steadying him. And then she turned herself back to her normal shape as well.

  “Oh, my good Lord!” DuMarr gasped.

  His legs went out from under him. He was lowered gently onto the blacktop.

  “I am so, so sorry.”

  He tried to peer back at Exeter Close, but it was lost behind the row of houses. The damage that he’d done the nearest one was pretty bad, though, and it made him look even more apologetic.

  “I don’t know what came over me.”

  But I did. I understood it all too well, and felt a mild tingle of satisfaction. Lawrence was an easy touch, admittedly. But he was a start.

  Another pair of shapes moved up beside us, Judge Levin and Kurt again. They peered around curiously, taking in the fact that the dragon had vanished.

  “Everything’s under control at last,” Levin commented. “Well, that’s a relief—or at least, a partial one.”

  I could see what he meant. Because from this high up, I could see more flashes. Firefights were starting up in other parts of town again. I could only stare helplessly as a roof about a mile away imploded on itself. The judge didn’t seem aware of that, and beamed warmly at Martha.

  “Well done.”

  Then he turned his gaze to me. “So where’s the genuine Ms. Mallory, Devries? Isn’t she usually with you?”

  Which was the biggest question so far this evening. Where exactly had she gone, and what precisely was she doing? The patrol cars had started to move away. Past the wrecked walls of the house behind us, you could see some shattered woodwork floating in a swimming pool.

  “I don’t have a clue,” I told him. “I was kind of hoping you could answer that.”

  He closed his eyes, and focused inwardly for a few seconds.

  “I can’t find her anywhere,” he grunted. “Very odd.”

  No—it was more than that. She had no way to leave this place, and ought to have been easy to detect. But then something else came to mind, with an urgency that almost shook me.

  “How about Lauren Brennan?”

  The judge concentrated. “I can’t find her either.”

  But then, as I watched, his small fists clenched.

  “I’ve found her car, though.”

  Which made little sense.

  “It’s in an alley behind Colver Street. The driver’s door has been left open. So it seems that it’s been dumped there.”

  I took that in quickly and then turned to Kurt van Friesling.

  “Do you still have that compass? The one that detects supernatural forces?”

  His pale eyes sparkled, his mouth twisting gently out of shape. He didn’t seem sure what I was getting at, but took it with his usual casual wryness.

  “Yes, of course. But she’s not…”

  “I know that. Could it be adapted to find someone born outside this town?”

  He considered that.

  “I would suppose so.”

  “Can you bring it here?” I asked.

  “By magic? No. A magical object is, in itself, immune to witchcraft.”
<
br />   Which was one of the numerous rules of magic. I’d forgotten about that.

  “If you want to use it,” he said, “then we’ll have to go and fetch it, I’m afraid.”

  He was already there—naturally—by the time that I pulled up outside his place. It was only a drive of a couple of minutes. He was waiting at the front door, with the lights turned on.

  Like Millwood House, his home was purpose-built. I suspected he’d modeled it on photos from the canyons in Los Angeles, a very modernistic style. Most of it was open-plan, and two of the outer walls were glass. The furniture was mostly Bauhaus. There were paintings and sculpture most places you looked. His Porsche was sitting on the drive, next to a brand-new Lamborghini. You could make out a huge illuminated pool out back, much larger than the one we’d left behind. And stars hung around the place as if he’d placed them there as backlights.

  It was the best bachelor pad in the Landing, I knew. He had a good number of female visitors, but had remained resolutely single.

  He gestured to me hurriedly. “It’s ready.”

  So I followed him inside.

  The compass was laid out on his enormous blue-glass dining table. It was exactly as I remembered it, a black stone disk with a needle in the shape of—of all things—a thin golden dragon. Cabalistic symbols were engraved around its edges. Kurt bent across the thing, but did not touch it.

  “What do you want it to find?”

  I explained it to him again.

  He murmured what sounded like a rather complex spell, in Dutch. Then, before my eyes, the symbols in the stone began to move, becoming fluid. Slithering around until they’d taken on completely different shapes.

  The pointer immediately lurched to the northeast, then swung about crazily before returning.

  “What’s this?” Kurt muttered unhappily.

  I could see what was happening almost straightaway. We had asked it to find somebody not born here. So the compass had pointed, first, at Lehman Willets. And then it had attempted to track Hanlon before going back. We needed to be more specific.