A grin spread out across his wide face. He was lying – fully-clothed and with his shoes on – on the mattress of a bedroom on the house’s second story, with his hands folded behind his neck. And he was humming quietly to himself, staring at the high, pale ceiling without really seeing it, a hundred thoughts and memories running through his head.
Man, this was a large and very cozy bed. Comfortable, yet supportive. And the sheets were pure Egyptian cotton – he’d magicked them up himself. A healthy, red-blooded American male could sure have a load of fun on a work-surface like this one, with the right companion. And the fact was, he could smell a lady’s perfume on the pillows. Some kind of lilac scent, on the cheap side, sure, but not unattractive. That had to be Becky Trayner. And she might become Ryan’s princess in the next few hours. But he’d be King, lord of all that he surveyed. And lords had certain privileges, didn’t they?
He’d been so damned patient down the years. You needed to be that way when you were working with a major devil. Creatures like those, they had no slightest sense of time. Three whole decades? It meant no more to the demon Ithmoteus than the swift blink of an eye. Harker had known the big lug to take three years, considering its answer to a simple question.
He’d planned all this out meticulously, paying close attention to the details. He had bought up land in all the right locations, building on it quickly. And when each new structure had been near completion, he had personally carved the pentagrams into its beams, then covered them with drywall. He had done that mostly in the hours of darkness. It was his work down to the last staple.
There was more to it than that, of course. He’d performed sacrificial rituals, animals at first, then humans. And every single night for three whole decades, he’d retired to his study after work to hit the books again, refining his knowledge of the dark, demonic craft.
Only it took far more than reading. If you wanted to be truly powerful, then there were sacrifices of another sort that needed to be made. To gain real strength, you had to give up something that was not only important to you, but was part of what defined you as a human being.
What Ithmoteus had demanded of him … it had almost torn his heart apart, but he had gone ahead and done it all the same.
His smile grew wry. The corner of one eye went damp. He still loved his wife, and always would in a strange way.
He dabbed a teardrop with his thumb and then his broad features relaxed again. Once that he was ruler, he could even bring her back. Except she wouldn’t have a soul, since that was now the property of Ithmoteus.
Nah, way better to go with the Trayner broad, he thought. What’s Ryan gonna do about it?
Harker glanced over at the bedroom’s covered window. Out beyond a gap in the drapes, there was still only that curious, milky, pallid hue to their surroundings.
But he knew that, in Raine’s Landing, everything was getting darker.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
“Have you gone completely nuts?” Saul hollered at me. “Do you even know what you’re suggesting?”
Emaline had helped me retrieve my car. And then we’d gone back to the station house, to find our top cop in a harassed state. The last two corpses that his guys had uncovered still hadn’t been identified. And the rest of the force had searched high and low, without unearthing so much as a single clue as to where the Deth House might be.
Added to which there was my suggestion, and that only wound his spring up even tighter. But I persisted with it, not particularly caring how much I got yelled at.
“It’s the only way,” I told him sternly, “unless you can think of something better.”
“You want to empty out every single last one of the Eastlake properties and then destroy them? In the next few hours? In early February, with night approaching?”
I nodded. “Burn them to the ground would be the quickest way.”
He gawked at me like I’d announced I was from outer space.
“We’re talking about something close to a couple thousand families losing their homes and most of their possessions in the middle of winter. And you want to do this because of some picture on a map?”
“It’s not merely that,” Willets told him, stepping in. “Ross and I have already seen what can be done with that type of portal.”
“It transported you – yeah, right, I get that. But are you suggesting that it’s going to move an entire town?”
“Not necessarily. It could be bringing something here. Or maybe a whole load of somethings.”
And that gave Saul pause, but then he shook his head.
“It’s insane. I simply can’t condone it.”
“How about we try one building?” Martha Howard-Brett suggested. “A small one. Destroy it and then see what happens? Maybe that might even break this symbol up?”
And Saul didn’t look a whole lot happier. He worked his jaw around a lot. But finally, his shoulders dropped.
“Okay,” he breathed. “So now we need to figure out who the lucky homeowner is going to be.”
It turned out that one of his own uniformed men – a rookie cop called Eddie Allen – lived in an Eastlake property up close to Vernon Valley. It was a little three-room bungalow, set among a whole row of them. It was poorly built, like everything else in the Eastlake catalogue, and the ceiling in the bathroom leaked. But Eddie was single and had rented the place because it was cheap.
“Real sorry about this,” Saul was telling him. “If you’d prefer to change your mind …?”
“No, it’s okay, sir,” the young cop smiled. “Tell the truth, I’ll be glad to see the back of this dump.”
“I’ll put you up at my place till we find you something new.”
“That’s very generous of you, sir.”
Listening, I couldn’t help but wonder just how grateful Eddie would still be when Saul’s three little daughters started waking him up at some ungodly hour of the morning. But I kept that to myself.
About a dozen patrol cars had shown up. If we were going to do this, then we had to do it right. A constant stream of uniformed men was going in and out of the bungalow’s front door, gathering every item Eddie owned and humping it out in cardboard boxes. He’d lose none of his stuff when the house was burned. It was the least that we could do for him.
The little place was empty in a few more minutes, save for a final pair of cops who were sloshing kerosene around in there. A small crowd had gathered to our rear. People started murmuring nervously when they saw what was happening.
“That’s enough! Get out of there!” Saul shouted to his two men.
And they started backing out immediately, looking damned relieved, and little wonder. The whole place had to be full of fumes. Not what you’d call a comfortable environment.
But they hadn’t even reached the front door, when it slammed abruptly shut. There’d been no gust of wind, and nobody had touched it. Everybody jumped, and I include myself in that.
The door was being rattled from the other side. Both the cops in there were banging on the woodwork. Several of their colleagues had sprung forward to help, but none of them could get the latch to work. At which point, panic started spreading through the ranks.
“There’s another door out back,” Eddie suggested, looking really worried. Then he called out to the trapped guys, “Head back through the kitchen!”
Except it didn’t take a great humungous deal of mental effort to figure out what happened next. There was a second loud bang as the rear door slammed as well. Which left us in little doubt what we were dealing with. A trap.
Someone drew his sidearm, aiming at the lock.
“Stop that!” Hobart shouted at him. “The fumes, idiot!”
I was watching, horrified, as the two trapped policemen staggered back into the living room. The fumes were already getting to them – they were red-faced, gasping, loosening their collars. One of them tried opening a window, but it wouldn’t budge.
Someone threw a rock against the glass. It just bounced o
ff.
“Where was the roof leaking?” I heard Lauren asking Eddie.
And the rookie pointed to the rearmost corner on the right.
Lauren went sprinting off in that direction, and I followed. She grabbed hold of a gutter and hauled herself up. Felt around for a brief while, then began ripping at the shingles.
I could see where she was going with this. She had found a rotted spot. And so I climbed up there and joined in too. And within less than a minute, we had ripped open a hole several feet wide. There was only mildewed board beneath and so we stamped our way through that.
Was it merely my imagination, or was it getting warmer up here than it ought to be? Heat definitely felt like it was rising from the house.
Other cops were crowding in around us, and the two inside were soon hauled out. My hands were dripping blood, and so were Lauren’s, but she didn’t look as if she gave much of a damn. She’d noticed the same thing I had, and her bright blue eyes were very wide.
“Everybody off!” I shouted.
So we jumped. We hit the dirt. We ran. And the crowd out front, astonished by the sight of fleeing cops, all started backing off.
And barely in time. Next second, there was an almighty wham behind me and I got blown off my feet, ending up face down on the soggy ground.
Which was a whole lot better, I supposed, than to have still been on that roof when it went up.
When I finally rolled over, almost all the little house was gone. The remnants were blazing furiously, and you could feel the scorching heat even from this distance.
I got back to my feet and then watched Lauren do the same. No one looked like they were hurt, and that was something to be grateful for. So we walked over to confront a goggle-eyed, dumbfounded Saul.
“Now do you get it?” I asked him. “These places are literally death traps.”
“They were designed as such,” Lauren agreed. “We have to get those people out.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Ker-honk!
It was round about the seven hundredth time he’d heard that noise today, and what pained him worst was the fact that he was making it.
Mike St. John had been off work since the beginning of the week. This wasn’t a mere cold – it was a killer dose of winter flu. And he hoped that his employers were the understanding type, because he’d only started at Mackay Technologies a month ago.
He could have forced himself to go on in, but he didn’t see how that would do him any good. His head kept swimming so fiercely that he could barely keep his balance, and his sinuses were so blocked he could hardly breathe. He was running a fever too. Which left him with the problem of what to do with himself, stuck home on his own this way. He couldn’t really read, and listening to music made his sinuses ache worse. The only thing that he could manage was to goggle at the TV, with the volume turned down low.
He’d been watching a documentary – broadcast from outside Raine’s Landing – about the situation in Somalia. And he wasn’t quite sure where that was but, holy hell, those people had it bad. If they thought that they had problems in this town, then it was nothing compared to what those poor guys had to go through.
Finally, the scenes got too depressing and he switched the TV off. Silence settled in around him, but then noises from the rest of the building started drifting in to fill the vacuum.
He was in Lakeview Apartments on the edge of East Crealley. So called – he believed – because you were supposed to be able see the park and its broad body of water from here. But you couldn’t see them from his window. It was facing in the wrong direction.
The building was large, and looked robust from the outside. Except that once you’d lived here for a while …
He wasn’t sure if it was simply that the walls were thin, but you could hear snatches of conversation from a load of different homes. You were aware of other people’s footsteps. Other people’s music, and their television sets as well. It drove him halfway nuts sometimes.
It had been quiet most of the day, nearly everyone at work. But this last half hour, his neighbors had started coming back. The noise level was rising.
He was going to have to move. He’d have to do it anyway when he and his fiancée, Val, got married. This place was much too small for the both of them.
Where was she anyway? Mike glanced at his wristwatch.
She’d promised she would drop around as soon as she had finished up at the boutique where she worked. She’d done so faithfully each day this week, turning up with bags of goodies tucked under her arm – fresh fruit, cans of soup, bags of Gummi Bears, and a wide selection of sports and puzzle magazines. That was the only thing, since he’d got sick, that made him smile, and he’d been looking forward to seeing her this entire afternoon.
But she was late. It happened sometimes. The store she worked in was a high-class and expensive one and did slow business – they could not afford to turn away a late customer simply on account of the clock.
But then the front door buzzer sounded. At long last. Mike hauled himself slowly off the couch, then headed across, stumbling slightly, to pick up the security handset.
“Val?”
“Expecting someone else, huh?” came her cheerful voice.
He thumbed the small red button that would let her in.
There was a pause, and then the buzzer sounded for a second time, the tone lasting far longer.
“Mike?”
He pressed the receiver to his ear. “What’s up?”
“The door hasn’t opened.”
So he tried again, but with the same lack of result. Jeez, why did stuff like this always start happening when you least needed it?
“Don’t you have your key?” he asked.
“I knew you’d be in,” came Val’s reply, “so I left it home.”
Mike cursed under his breath. He was sweating merely from this small exertion. But he turned around and went back to the couch, on the arm of which his keys were perched. He scooped them up, went to the window, tried to pull it open …
It was stuck as well. It wouldn’t budge. Goddamn this place!
He made his weary way back to the handset.
“Val, I’m coming down.”
Only it turned out that the door to his apartment wouldn’t open either, however much weight or effort he put into it.
And that was when he began to notice thumping noises in the building all around him, voices being raised in fright.
So it was starting to sound like everyone was trapped.
Molly Driver had lost her husband years ago. And she missed him very badly, but had always been a practical woman. She’d sold the spacious house they’d owned and moved into this small apartment a few blocks away. She had all of the financial security she’d ever need, but was still not too much distance from her old neighbors and friends. Davina House, this place was called. She’d lived in Greenwood her entire life.
And she kept herself reasonably busy. Since she had no need for extra cash, Molly gave her afternoons to working at a charitable thrift shop just off Greenwood Terrace. The money that was raised there went to helping people who were suffering from fatal illness. She was sure her husband would be proud of that.
And the remainder of the day, she knitted stuff that could be sold there. She made hats and scarves, ties and sweaters, even tiny clothes that little girls could dress their dollies up in. They sold very well, the items that she made, and it gave her hands something to do.
Her fingers worked nimbly, the clacking needles darting back and forth. But then another sound intruded. Someone on the street outside was shouting. There was some kind of commotion. So had trouble broken out?
She set down her ball of wool and went across.
Staring through her window, she could see a police cruiser on the avenue below. Its beacon was ablaze but it was moving very slowly. Trundling along beside the curb, the passenger window down wide open and a lawman leaning out.
He had an electronic bullhorn and was sh
outing something through it. Something about ‘danger.’ And ‘vacate the premises.’
Molly had no real idea what this was all about, but she’d been brought up to respect authority. And so she fetched her coat and started heading for the door.
But that was when a shining yellow glow started appearing inside her apartment. And it looked like it was coming from directly in the walls.
Molly jolted with alarm.
Was there a fire?
Esther Reeves was starting to get really anxious. Her husband – John – was still pounding away at their apartment’s front door. He worked at the lumberyard and was a big, strong guy with good wide shoulders. And he kept applying all that muscle to the woodwork, ramming at it hard. But to no effect whatever.
She could tell from the sounds around her, other people in their small building in West Meadow were doing the same. But how could that be … how could everybody’s front doors and their windows all get stuck at once?
Her baby – Jasmine, three months old – picked up on the general mood and started squirming in her arms and wailing, which spurred Esther into greater panic.
“John, get it opened up!”
He grunted with annoyance, went through to the kitchen, pulled his toolbox out from underneath the sink and starting rummaging through it. A police siren had begun to wail outside, but you could barely hear it through the racket.
Then the apartment walls began to shine bright yellow. Esther lurched back. John sprang to his feet and shouted, “What the frig?”
But then he studied it more carefully, and managed to calm down a little.
“Hey, it’s not a fire. I can’t feel no heat. It’s just some kind of glow. But what on earth is making it?”
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