Word & Void 02 - A Knight of the Word

by Terry Brooks

  Except for the homeless.

  And the demon who liked to hunt them.

  The demon was thinking of John Ross, imagining what it would be like to close its massive jaws about his throat, to crush the life from him, to feel the blood spurt from his torn body. The demon hated Ross. But the demon was attracted to him, too. All that magic, all that power, the legacy of a Knight of the Word. The demon would like to taste that. It would like to share it. It hungered for killing, but it hungered for the taste of magic even more.

  Its feral eyes cast about in the black as it loped through the darkness on silent paws, ears pricked forward, listening. All about, feeders kept pace. There would be killing, they sensed. There would be terror and rage and desperation, and they were anxious to taste them all. Just as the demon hungered after magic and killing, the feeders hungered for the residual emotions in humans that both evoked.

  John Ross belongs to me, the demon was thinking. He belongs to me because I have found him, claimed him, and understand his uses. I will subvert him, and I will set him free. I will make him over as I have made myself over. It will happen soon, so soon. The wheels of the machine that will make it possible are in motion. No one can stop them. No one can change what I intend.

  John Ross is mine.

  Ahead, distant still through the seemingly unending darkness, the faint sound of voices rose. The demon’s jaws hung open and its tongue lolled out. The eyes of the feeders gleamed more brightly and their movements grew more intense.

  Head lowered, nose sniffing expectantly at the cobblestones of the underground city’s abandoned streets, the demon began to creep forward.

  Above ground and unaware of the demon’s presence, Nest Freemark was less than two blocks away.

  It had taken her all day to get to Seattle, and she had arrived too late to make a serious effort at contacting John Ross until tomorrow—which, by now, was today, because it was after midnight. Fending off endless questions regarding her travel plans and misguided offers of help, she had booked a United flight leaving O’Hare at three-fifteen in the afternoon and, as planned, ridden into Chicago that morning with Robert. Robert meant well, but he still didn’t know when to back off. She avoided telling him exactly what it was she was doing or why she was going. It was an unexpected trip, a visit to some relatives, and that was all she would say. Robert was beside himself with curiosity, but she thought it would do him good to have to deal with his frustration. Besides, she wasn’t entirely unhappy with the idea of letting him suffer a little more as penance for his behavior at her grandfather’s funeral.

  He dropped her at the ticketing entrance to United, still offering to come along, to accompany her, to meet her, to do whatever she asked. She smiled, shook her head, said good-bye, picked up her bag, and walked inside. Robert drove away. She waited to make sure.

  She hadn’t seen Ariel since the night before and had no idea how the tatterdemalion planned to reach Seattle, but that wasn’t her problem. She checked her bag, received her boarding pass, and was advised that the departure time had been moved back to five o’clock due to a problem with the plane.

  She walked down to the assigned gate, took a seat, and resumed reading the book she had begun the night before. It was titled The Spiritual Child, and it was written by Simon Lawrence. She was drawn to the book for several reasons—first, because it made frequent reference to the writing of Robert Coles, and to his book The Spiritual Life of Children in particular, which she had read for a class in psychology last semester and enjoyed immensely, and second, because she was on her way to find John Ross, who was working for Lawrence at Fresh Start, and she wanted to know something about the thinking of the man with whom a failed Knight of the Word would ally himself. Of course, it might be that this was only a job for Ross and nothing more, but Nest didn’t think so. That didn’t sound like John Ross. He wasn’t the sort to take a job indiscriminately. After abandoning his service to the Word, he would want to find something he felt strongly about to commit to.

  In any case, she had whiled away the time reading Simon Lawrence, the airplane still hadn’t shown, the weather had begun to deteriorate with the approach of a heavy thunderstorm, and the departure time had been pushed back yet again. Growing concerned that she might not get out at all, Nest had gone up to the gate agent and asked what the chances were that the flight might not leave. The agent said she didn’t know. Nest retraced her steps to customer service and asked the agent on duty if she could transfer to another flight. The agent looked doubtful until Nest explained that a close friend was dying, and she needed to get to. Seattle right away if she was to be of any comfort to him. It was close enough to the truth that she didn’t feel too bad about saying it, and it got her a seat on a flight to Denver connecting on to Seattle.

  The flight had left a little after five, she was in Denver by six forty-five, mountain time, and back on a second plane to Seattle by seven-fifty. The flight up took another two hours and something, and it was approaching ten o’clock Pacific time before the plane touched down at Sea-Tac. Nest disembarked carrying her bag, walked outside to the taxi stand, and caught a ride downtown. Her driver was Pakistani or East Indian, a Sikh perhaps, wearing one of those turbans, and he didn’t have much to say. She still hadn’t seen a sign of Ariel, and she was beginning to worry. She could find her way around the city, locate John Ross, and make her pitch alone if she had to, but she would feel better having someone she could turn to for advice if she came up against a problem. She was already composing what she would say to Ross. She was wondering as well why he would pay any attention to her, the Lady’s assurances notwithstanding.

  She missed Pick terribly. She hadn’t thought their separation would be so bad, but it was. He had been with her almost constantly from the time she was six years old; he was her best friend. She had been able to leave him to go off to school, but Northwestern University was only a three-hour drive from Hopewell and it didn’t feel so far away. She supposed her grandfather’s death contributed to her discomfort as well; Pick was the last link to her childhood, and she didn’t like leaving him behind. It was also the first time she had done anything involving the magic without him. Whatever the reason, not having him there made her decidedly uneasy.

  The taxi driver had taken her to the Alexis Hotel, where she had booked a room the night before by phone. The Alexis was situated right at the north end of Pioneer Square, not far from the offices of Fresh Start. It was the best hotel in the area, and Nest had decided from the start that if she was going to travel to a strange city, she wanted to stay in a good place. She had been able to get a favorable rate on a standard room for the two-night stopover she had planned. She checked in at the front desk, took the elevator to her room, dropped her bag on the bed, and looked around restlessly.

  Despite the fact that she had been traveling all day, she was not tired. She unpacked her bag, glanced through a guide to Seattle, and walked to the window and looked out. The street below glistened with dampness, and the air was hazy with mist. All of the shops and offices she could see were closed. There were only a few cars passing and fewer people. It was just a little after eleven-thirty.

  She had decided to go for a walk.

  Nest was no fool. She knew about cities at night and the dangers they presented for the unwary. On the other hand, she had grown up with the feeders in Sinnissippi Park, spending night after night prowling the darkness they favored, avoiding their traps, and surviving confrontations far more dangerous than anything she was likely to encounter here. Moreover, she had the magic to protect her, and while she hadn’t used it in a while and didn’t know what stage of growth it was in at the moment, she had confidence that it would keep her safe.

  So she had slipped on her heavy windbreaker, ridden the elevator back down to the lobby, and gone out the door.

  She was no sooner outside and walking south along First Avenue toward the banks of old-fashioned street lamps that marked the beginning of Pioneer Square than Ariel had appeare
d. The tatterdemalion materialized out of the mist and gloom, filling a space in the darkness beside Nest with her vague, transparent whiteness. Her sudden appearance startled Nest, but she didn’t seem to notice, her dark eyes cast forward, her silken hair flowing out from her body as if caught in a breeze.

  “Where are you going?” she asked in her thin childlike voice.

  “Walking. I can’t sleep yet. I’m too wound up.” Nest watched the shadows whirl and spin inside the tatterdemalion’s gauzy body. “How did you get here?”

  Ariel didn’t seem to hear the question, her dark eyes shifting anxiously. “It isn’t safe,” she said.

  “What isn’t safe?”

  “The city at night.”

  They had crossed from the hotel and walked into the next block. Nest looked around cautiously at the darkened doorways and alcoves of the buildings. There was no one to be seen.

  “I remember about cities,” Ariel continued, her voice small and distant. She seemed to float across the pavement, a ghostly hologram. “I remember how they feel and what they hide. I remember what they can do to you. They are filled with people who will hurt you. They are places in which children can disappear in the blink of an eye. Sometimes they lock you away in dark places and no one comes for you. Sometimes they wall you up forever.”

  She was speaking from the memories of the children she had been once, of the only memories she had. Nest decided she didn’t want to know about those memories, the memories of dead children.

  “It will be all right,” she said. “We won’t go far.”

  They walked quite a distance though, all the way down First Avenue under Pioneer Square’s turn-of-the-century street lamps past shuttered shops and galleries to where they could see the Kingdome rising up against the night sky in a massive hump. The mist thickened and swirled about them, clinging to Nest’s face and hands in a thin, cold layer of moisture. Nest drew her windbreaker tighter about her shoulders. When the character of the neighborhood began to change, the shops and galleries giving way to warehouses and industrial plants, Nest turned around again, with Ariel hovering close, and started back.

  They were approaching a small, concrete, triangular park with benches and shade trees fronting a series of buildings that included one advertising Seattle’s Underground Tour when the screams began.

  They were so faint that at first Nest couldn’t believe she was hearing them. She slowed and looked around doubtfully. She was all alone on the streets. There was no one else in sight. But the screams continued, harsh and terrible in the blackness and mist.

  “Something hunts,” Arid hissed as she shimmered brightly, darting left and right.

  Nest wheeled around, looking everywhere at once.

  “Where are they coming from?” she demanded, frantic now.

  “Beneath us,” Ariel said.

  Nest looked down at the concrete sidewalk in disbelief. “From the sewers?”

  Ariel moved close, her childlike face smooth and expressionless, but her eyes filled with terror. “There is an old city beneath the new. The screams are coming from there!”

  The demon worked its way ahead slowly through the blackness of the underground city, following the scent of the humans and the sound of their voices. It wound through narrow streets and alleyways and in and out of doors and gaps in crumbling walls. It was filled with hunger and flushed with a need to kill. It was driven.

  Scores of feeders trailed after it, lantern eyes glowing in the musky gloom.

  After a time, the demon saw the first flicker of light. The voices of the humans were clear now; it could hear their words distinctly. There were three of them, not yet grown to adulthood, a girl and two boys. The demon crept forward, eyes narrowing, pulse racing.

  “What’s that?” one of them said suddenly as stone and earth scraped softly under the demon’s paw.

  The demon could see them now, huddled about a pair of candles set into broken pieces of old china placed on a wooden crate. They were in a room in which the doors and windows had long since fallen away and the walls had begun to collapse. The ceiling was ribbed with pipes and conduits from the streets and buildings above, and the air was damp and smelled of rotting wood and earth.

  The boys and the girl had made a home of sorts in the open space, furnishing it with several wooden crates, a couple of old mattresses and sleeping bags, several plastic sacks filled with stuff they had scavenged, and a few books. Where they had come from was anybody’s guess. They must have found their way down from the streets where they spent their days, taking shelter each night as so many did in the abandoned labyrinth of the older city.

  The demon rounded the corner of a building across from them and paused. Feeders crowded forward and hovered close. The older of the two boys came to his feet and stood looking out into the dark. The other two crouched guardedly to either side. There was only one way in or out of their shelter. The demon had them trapped.

  It advanced slowly into the light, showing itself gradually, letting them see what it was. Fear showed on their faces and in their eyes. Frantic exclamations escaped their lips—low, muttered curses that sounded like prayers. The demon was filled with joy.

  The older boy produced a long-bladed knife. “Get away!” he warned, and swore violently at the demon. The demon came forward anyway, the feeders trailing in its wake. The girl and the younger boy shrank from it in terror. The girl was already crying. Neither would challenge it; the demon could tell from what it saw in their eyes. Only the older boy would make a stand. The demon’s tongue licked out across its hooked teeth, and its jaws snapped hungrily at the air.

  The demon crept through the doorway in a crouch, eyes fixed on the knife All three of its intended victims retreated toward the back wall of the room. Foolish choice, the demon thought. They had let it inside, let it block their only escape.

  Then the younger boy wheeled away in a flurry of arms and legs and threw himself toward one of the broken windows, intent on breaking free that way. But the demon was too quick. It lunged sideways and caught the unfortunate boy in a single bound. It dragged him to the earthen floor, closed its massive jaws on his neck as he screamed and thrashed frantically, and crushed the life from him with a single snap.

  The boy fell back lifelessly. Feeders piled onto the body, tearing at it. The demon swung its bloodied muzzle toward the other two, showing all its teeth. The girl was screaming now, and the older boy was cursing and shouting and brandishing the knife more as a talisman than as a weapon. They might have made a run for the open doorway while the demon was engaged in killing their companion, but they had failed to do so. Or even to try. The girl was on her knees with her arms about her head, keening. The older boy was standing his ground, but it seemed to the demon that he was doing so because he could not bring himself to move.

  The demon advanced on the older boy, stiff-legged, alert. When it was close enough, it waited until the boy lunged with the knife, then hurled itself under the gleaming blade, jaws closing on the hand that wielded it. Bones crunched and muscles tore, and the boy screamed in pain. The demon knocked the boy backward against the wall and tore out his throat while he was still staring at his ruined hand.

  Feeders sprang out of the darkness in knots of black shadow, falling on the dying boy, lapping up the life that drained away from him, feeding on the raw feelings of terror and despair and pain.

  The girl had begun to crawl toward the open door, a futile attempt to get free. The demon moved quickly to intercept her. She crouched before it in a shivering heap, her arms clasped over her head, her eyes closed. She was crying and screaming and begging—Don’t, please, don’t, please, don’t—over and over again. The demon studied her for a moment, intrigued by the way the madness had enveloped her. It was no longer in a hurry, its hunger appeased with the killing of the boys. It felt languorous and sleepy. It watched the girl through lidded eyes. There were feeders crawling all over her, savoring the emotions she expended, licking them up anxiously. Perhaps she could fe
el them, perhaps even see them by now, with death so close. Perhaps she sensed what death held in store for her. The demon wondered.

  Then it closed its jaws almost tenderly about the hack of the girl’s exposed white neck and crushed the slender stalk to pulp.

  Abruptly, the screams faded to silence. Nest froze, staring into the mist and gloom, into the faint pools of streetlight, listening. She couldn’t hear a thing.

  Ariel drifted close. The tatterdemalion hung suspended on the air, spectral, barely a presence at all. “It is over.”

  Nest blinked. Over. So quickly. Her mind spun. “What was it?” she asked quietly.

  “A creature of the Void.”

  Nest stared into the tatterdemalion’s eyes and knew exactly which creature. She felt a chill sweep through her body and settle in her throat. “A demon,” she whispered. “Its stink is in the air,” Ariel said.

  “What was it hunting?”

  “The humans who live under the streets.”

  Homeless people. Nest closed her eyes in despair. Could she have helped them, if she had been quicker, if she had known where to go, if she had summoned her magic? If, if, if. She took a deep breath. She wondered suddenly if these killings were connected in some way with John Ross. Was this monster hunting for him, as well? Mustn’t it be, if it was here, so close to where he was working?

  “We have to go,” said Ariel. Her childlike voice was a ripple of breeze in the silence. “It isn’t safe for us to remain here.”

  Because it might come for us next, Nest thought. She stood her ground a moment longer, tempted to invite it to try, riddled with anger and disgust. But staying would be foolish. Demons were too strong for her. She had learned that lesson from her father five years earlier.