I was moving in still closer. But he didn’t flinch as I approached.
Then I recalled the other major thing I didn’t like about him.
“Really cute, the way you’re using your own son in this.”
“Using?” He stopped smiling and his chin came up. “You’re not quite as perceptive as I thought. Ryan’s a player, not a pawn. It’s how I brought him up. And he’s committed to this enterprise one hundred and one percent, enthusiastically.”
It felt like there were cold fingertips pushing through my insides as I listened to him talk.
“We’re equal partners, see, Devries.” Eastlake knocked some ash off his cigar tip. “Don’t you get it? When it comes to this satanic stuff, I had to hit the books and study hard to find my way down the Dark Paths. But Ryan’s a true natural. Took to it like the proverbial duck in an imaginary pond. I’m not making him to do a single goddamned thing.”
“And what are you hoping to get out of this?”
“Rid ourselves of the adepts first. Remove any possibility of opposition.”
“And then?”
The tip of his cigar had started glowing much too brightly. He held it out at arm’s length, and a flame shot up.
It didn’t behave naturally. Went sailing up and downward through the dim air of the chamber till a rectangle of dancing fire was formed. It was some seven foot high by four foot wide. A doorway, in other words.
Eastlake pushed himself away from the sarcophagus, brushing a few pale specks from the black sleeve of his jacket as he did so.
Then he peered across at me and grinned.
“What happens next, son? Well, you’ll find out soon enough.”
And then he stepped in through the burning door and vanished.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I lurched forward, far too late. Not only had the man disappeared, but the fiery portal he had escaped through was gone as well, leaving nothing but the smell of burning on the air around me.
What had slowed me down that much? There had been something about Eastlake, his whole way of speaking and his casual air, that had left me partly mesmerized. Maybe that was down to dark magic as well, in part.
I looked at my gun hand and saw it was shaking slightly. I was genuinely rattled and, these days, that took a lot of doing. He’d been so utterly calm. So wholly confident. And that could have been a part of the show he put on, but he was acting like the game that we were playing was already won.
Which put me on the losing side, and I was very far from happy about that.
A thin trail of bluish smoke came wavering up past me, lifting from the floor right by my feet. Eastlake had left his cigar behind. I stooped down and picked it up, staring at it curiously. Why was this still here? The odor of tobacco tugged at me a little, since I used to smoke. But there was nothing special to it, so I threw it down and stomped on it, then inspected his wife’s tomb closer.
It was made of black marble, so flawless there was not a single speck of any other color. There were no plaques or inscriptions. But I found one detail that gave me a strong dose of the heebs.
Engraved on the lid was another large pentagram. And when I got my flashlight out again and ran its beam across the symbol, there were traces of dried blood along the indentations.
Well, wasn’t this all nice and practical? This was not only the resting place of Eastlake’s wife – it doubled as another altar.
I put my palm against the lid, and felt such a sudden chill I drew my hand back almost instantly. It hadn’t only been the natural coldness of the stone. No, there was some kind of dead, absorbing energy in there.
Which set me thinking. That unsolved murder, that home invasion all those years back. The death of Eastlake’s wife, before he’d gotten to be successful. Done by burglars? Or maybe not.
To wield the kind of magic Eastlake did, you had to pay a hefty price. And that man struck me as the type who would do almost anything for power.
Which left me with the same old nagging question.
What precisely was he planning to do with it?
Willets and Emaline were emerging from DuMarr’s storefront, when I headed down. They no longer had Lauren between them. She emerged behind them, and I was glad to see that she was back on her own feet.
She was wrapped up in conversation with Lawrence DuMarr, who was in his usual smoking jacket and his tasseled cap, a pince nez gleaming on the bridge of his hooked nose. He was nodding vigorously, and when he shook her hand it was with both of his and very warmly.
It looked like he’d become practically as fond of our infrequent visitor as he was of Cassie. But then they parted company, and my three ‘helpers’ spotted me and started up the slope. Lauren’s face was still a little swollen, I could see as she drew closer. But the worst of her injuries had obviously healed up. She was moving fairly naturally, and even looking quite bright and quite alert.
“I always thought that New Age stuff was bee-ess!” she called up to me when she was near enough. “Not anymore! You’re looking at a convert!”
“Pleased to hear it.”
But then I looked across at Willets and took in the fact that his pupils had returned to … is ‘normal’ the right word? They were glowing crimson once again. So it wasn’t the location that had frozen up his magic. It was Harker Eastlake’s presence. Things were back to how they should be now the man was gone.
“What did you find out in there?” the doctor asked.
I described my encounter, leaving nothing out. And the three of them became extremely thoughtful as they listened.
Willets let out a low rumble.
“Looks like he’s got a definite endgame, doesn’t it? And at a guess, I’d say it’s something pretty big.”
Oh yeah, that was a given. But it didn’t get us any closer to discovering what.
“He dances with the Devil,” Emaline pointed out, “and yet he doesn’t seem afraid of eternal damnation. But that’s the usual consequence of practicing the evil arts.”
And she was dead right. That simple fact, well known to all, kept bothering me badly. Harker hadn’t struck me as a stupid or shortsighted man. So he had definitely figured out some way to avoid paying that particular tariff.
“You say those pentagrams are inside all his buildings?” Lauren asked.
I nodded.
“Which are everywhere in town,” Willets grunted. “Which means his influence is all around us.”
But then Emaline stiffened, something striking her.
“Except for Tyburn,” she reminded us. “Eastlake’s never been there. And so that is where we ought to go.”
I started opening my mouth, but the hillside disappeared around me before I could do that.
We were already on our way, and she was giving us no choice.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
He hated to waste anything, especially a good cigar. But whenever he stepped through one of those fiery portals, Harker could only take with him the clothes that he was standing in. He had to leave the rest behind.
He didn’t see how that was fair. The goddamned adepts could take stuff with them when they blurred. It was a problem he’d been saddled with unwillingly, and he felt like he had been shortchanged. He might have a polite word with his patron – Ithmoteus – about this whole business. You’d have thought a devil of the third echelon could do considerably better.
Another burning rectangle sprang into being in the common room of the Deth House, and Harker stepped out through it. He was instantly surprised to see the place in disarray. A table had been knocked over and a decanter smashed. Several drapes, expensive ones, had been ripped down from their hooks. And the frames of a few paintings had been smashed and the glass shattered. It looked like an angry bull had gotten in here
His only son, his flesh and blood, was standing at the center of the room, his fists bunched up and his limbs trembling. Ryan had gone deathly pale.
There were trickles of blood leaking from his knuckles, so he was obviou
sly the one who had done all this damage. Harker felt his mouth go slack.
Why wreck a nice place like this, whose furniture he’d mostly paid for? But his fatherly instincts took over and he hurried across, clasping Ryan’s shoulders.
“Sonny-boy, what’s going on?”
Ryan wouldn’t even look at him. His head was lowered, and it looked like he was staring very hard at something captured in his memory. So Harker shook him gently.
“Sonny-boy, it’s your old man. Please, tell me what’s wrong?”
But when his offspring still refused to answer, Harker let him go, taking a slow step back.
“Are you ignoring me?” he yelled. “You goddamn can’t! At this stage of the game, I have to know everything that’s happening!”
And that finally got through. Ryan’s brow lifted, his features stiff as board. His irises were like dark tidepools, deep enough to drown in, and the corners of his wide mouth were tucked firmly down.
“Pop?” he muttered.
“What the hell have you been doing here? I didn’t bring you up to treat a place this way.”
Ryan’s gaze went numbly round, like he was unaware of what he’d done.
“What is this, kid?” his father demanded.
Ryan looked a little cowed.
“I’m sorry, Pop.”
“Enough with the apologies. Just tell me what the deal is.”
“It’s Becky. Hell, that stupid –“
But his father raised a finger, cautioning him to go no further.
“None of that kind of talk, kiddo. When it comes to women, treat ‘em how you want, but speak of ‘em respectfully. That’s always been the Eastlake way.”
Ryan nodded and then tried to pull his thoughts together.
“I went to her house. I was going to bring her here. She didn’t want to come at first. So I tried to transport her.”
“And?”
“It didn’t work. I think someone’s protecting her.” His gaze dropped back to the floor and his tone became a little more high-pitched. “I really wanted her to be here, Pop. If I’m gonna be a prince, then I want her to be my princess.”
Harker peered at his son with astonishment. And then the skin around his own eyes crinkled up. His irises went damp and glassy, and his whole expression filled with warmth.
“Sonny-boy!” He threw his arms round Ryan. “Such a sweet kid. So emotional. So vulnerable.”
But then he put a thumb under the young man’s chin, forcing it up.
“You listen to me though, and you listen good. Once that this is over, once that we are done, there’ll be a thousand Becky Trayners lining up to be your princess, and a thousand others lining up to be the one you leave her for. You hear what I’m saying? You’ll have everything your heart desires. So where’s the sense in getting all hooked up on just one dame?”
Ryan’s features rearranged themselves into a gentle smile.
“I guess.”
“Don’t guess, kid. Know. Be certain. That’s the Eastlake way as well. It’s in your blood and in your bones. We know what we want, we know how to get it, and heaven only help anyone who tries to stop us.”
Ryan’s distress of earlier was dissipating like a morning mist.
“So … I keep on after the adepts?”
“Nah, they’re well and truly on their back foot. There’s not a chance they’re going to bother us in the time they have left. So all we do is wait till dark, and then we make our final move. And after that, it’s Prince Ryan the First. And Last. And Always.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
We didn’t wind up in Emaline’s living room, this time. We popped into existence in the conservatory out back of her house. Several of the panes of glass were cracked, and all of them were filmy.
The garden, only half-visible beyond them, was similarly ill tended. To be precise, it looked like it had never once been touched and had been left to grow entirely wild. There were some small patches of grass. They were about five foot tall. But grass needs sunlight, and there was scant room for that. A huge old oak tree had been allowed to spread so wide it dominated the whole space. Fronds of mistletoe depended from its branches, and the darkened ivy underneath that had become so thickened and unruly some of it was climbing the conservatory’s windows.
I glanced up through the glass roof, which was littered with dead leaves. The clouds above were almost solid black, lightning continuing to flash between them.
Emaline clicked her fingers and a light came on, although I couldn’t make out any source. There were more piled heaps of scrolls in here and she began rummaging through them.
I turned around, and saw she’d brought the others with.
“Jeez!” Lauren was gasping.
She tottered dizzily a moment and then peered about, her attention getting caught by something.
On top of all the other oddities that had accumulated in this house, it turned out Emaline had a pretty large collection of preserved dead bugs, all of them in big glass-fronted cases. Not hanging on any wall, you understand, but in a loose pile over in one corner.
“What are these for?” I asked.
“I grind them up to use in potions,” Emaline said, without looking around at me. “I have to buy them in that state, since I would never harm a living creature that was put here by the Goddess.”
“You’ve hurt evil things before,” I pointed out.
“Precisely. Evil things were never Her creation in the first place.”
Then she found what she’d been looking for. She went to a small desk at the far side of the room and spread it out.
And it turned out to be an ancient and quite beautifully drafted map of the Landing. A little out of date – there was no commercial district. And the ink was so old it had turned pale brown. But the quality of the draftsmanship was genuinely impressive. Every major building was depicted in fine detail and our river, the Adderneck, had lifelike ripples on it, small clusters of reeds along its banks.
Emaline ran her index finger down the same street in East Meadow where we’d nearly been incinerated. And she left an orange streak behind when she did that, but it was only orange light. Another of her gifts, it seemed.
“We know that this is one place Eastlake has some properties,” she said. “But can you point out where the others are?”
It was another twenty minutes before we were done. The first dozen or so locations were quite simple, but it’d been a while since I had properly patrolled this town. I had to rack hard through my memory to recall every place. Willets wasn’t too much help and Lauren – of course – was none at all.
“Why’s he never built in Tyburn?” she was asking.
Emaline’s mouth had formed a stiff, tight line, and it was left to me to answer.
“They simply don’t like new stuff here,” I told the lieutenant. “They’re all about keeping things the way they are.”
“Besides which,” Emaline put in, “no one here pays rent. Houses are passed down through the generations, and are gifted to their owners by the Goddess.”
Wow, I hadn’t even known that.
Finally, though, we believed that we were looking at the total picture. There were dots and streaks of orange most of the way across the aged map. Eastlake senior had certainly been busy for the past few decades. But busy achieving what?
“Most of his developments appear to have been built on ley lines,” Emaline pointed out. Her index finger went back to East Meadow, then to several other places of apparent interest. “And the larger clusters … they are all on plots of land where there are sizeable undertows of metamorphic power.”
I didn’t doubt that she was right, whatever she might be talking about. But I was starting to pick up on something else.
Willets had noticed it too.
“Can you make the dots join up?” he asked the High Witch.
Emaline looked faintly surprised, then shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
She collected herself, then spread both ha
nds above the map. And spoke the brief words of a spell, so quietly I could barely hear them.
Longer streaks of orange light began appearing. And they spread out quickly, but did not connect. They kept on wavering and changing direction. Flickering around like the ragged edges of a cobweb in a strong wind, going nowhere.
“Looks like there is no discernable pattern,” Willets said, a note of disappointment in his tone.
But then, I had a thought.
“We’ve left one of his buildings out,” I told the rest.
Emaline was staring at me dumbly. So I took hold of her right hand and I pressed her index finger to the western side of Sycamore Hill, leaving a final orange dot.
“Davina Eastlake’s mausoleum,” I explained. “I guess it counts.”
And it turned out I was absolutely right. The wavering streaks of light abruptly flashed, then sprang into a fixed position. And a pattern was revealed. One that I had seen before, and not too long back either.
In the picture we were looking at, flames were leaping. There were human figures writhing in them. And devils were stalking through the horror and the carnage.
It had been bad enough when I had seen this thing back at the Deth House. But right now, I was staring at that same demonic symbol imprinted across a large part of the town I lived in.
Willets was shocked too. Or maybe appalled would be closer to it.
“Another Portal of Astaroth! And a truly enormous one, this time!”
It had been used, the last time we’d encountered it, to grant you entrance to a hidden place. Which begged the question … where did this one take you?
Or maybe that was looking at it upside down. My mind was trying to follow this along, and getting nowhere quickly.
But I knew one thing for certain.
This portal could be put to use with just a single magic word. And the Eastlakes could do that thing any time they wanted.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
He’d left his son downstairs. The boy was far too edgy and impatient, however hard he tried to hide that, and it simply got on Harker’s nerves. He’d never been like that, not even as a younger man. Other guys were mugs in that regard. They had no focus. Whereas he was like an arrowhead that traveled straight and true and found the bull’s eye every time.
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