“You don’t think it’s too stale, do you?” Jamie asked, watching Traupman grind the old leaves into an uneven powder.
“Magical things never go stale,” Traupman said.
I hope, he added to himself. He wasn’t sure why he was going through with this. It wasn’t as though he actually expected it to work. But it was good to have a task.
“You have to go about these things just right,” he added.
He glanced out the window, then at Jamie. It was getting dark outside. Very quickly. But no one made mention of the fact.
“That’s about it,” he said. “Is the honey hot yet?”
Sally nodded.
“Bring it here, would you please?”
Jamie watched Traupman stir the mixture of warmed honey and ground mistletoe together in a small glass, not really sure what he expected. A flash of light? A strange smell? But all Traupman ended up with was a cloudy mixture flecked with dark bits of the mistletoe. He held it up to the light, then moved to the bed with it.
“Place feels weird,” Morin offered.
“Forget how it feels,” Gannon told him. “Just pop that lock so that we can get in off the street.”
“Sure. No problem.”
There were five of them on one of the House’s Clemow Avenue porches, standing around while Morin worked the lock on the door with a set of master keys. The lock was a Weiser—old, but common. The sixth key Morin tried produced a satisfying click.
“Alarms?” he asked.
Gannon shook his head.
“Then we’re in.”
Morin turned the knob and, standing to one side, eased the door a crack. He remained still for a moment, then pushed it completely open with the toe of his shoe. As he crossed the threshold, an eerie prickling raised the hairs at the nape of his neck. He stood aside as the other four men entered, then shut the door behind them. As they spread out in the hallway, Morin glanced out the small window set high in the door. It seemed a lot darker outside than it had a moment ago—as though a sudden storm had blown up.
“A final briefing,” Gannon was saying quietly. “No fireworks. Just keep it clean. Round up anybody you find and bring them back here.”
Morin’s gaze traveled down the length of the door. The wood looked different than it had a moment ago. He had the weird feeling that if they’d waited a minute or so longer, they’d never have gotten in.
“What about Tucker?” the loose-jowled man called Bull asked. “He’s not gonna stand around and pick his nose while we’re doing that.”
“You let me worry about Tucker,” Gannon said.
Bull shrugged. Still at the door, Morin shook his head. Mother Mary, he was getting too old for this kind of work. He was never one to get a case of nerves before a job, but that’s what the jittery feeling he was experiencing had to be. He reached out a hand to touch the door. The wood was hard and smooth against his fingers. Nothing weird about it. It was just in him.
“What’s Walters want with this guy, anyway?” Robert Mercier asked. He was a stocky man, an ex-middleweight fighter who’d gotten too old for the ring, but not too old for a little strong-arm work. Gannon had passed around a photo of Thomas Hengwr earlier and Mercier called the old man’s features up in his mind’s eye.
“You let me and Mr. Walters worry about that,” Gannon told him. “Mike, you take the right corridor. Bob, the left. Serge and I’ll handle the upstairs.”
“And me?”
“You stay here, Bull. Anybody comes by, collar them. You can store them—” He looked around the hallway and, opening the first door on the right, settled on that room. “Store them in here, okay? Now let’s get moving.”
Traupman slid his hand under Tom’s head and lifted it, bringing the glass with the honey-mistletoe mixture up to the old man’s lips. Then the lights went out.
Outside the windows, the sky went utterly black. The candlelight flickered, the one small flame throwing strange shadows across the room. Then a pale luminescence started up along the baseboards and where the walls met the ceiling. That light was all that kept Jamie from losing himself to the sudden fear that gripped him.
His heart pounded, but he knew that the light meant that the House was ready to meet this new attack. It would protect them. He opened himself to the House, reaching out to try and regain that sense of oneness he’d felt with it last night, and it came, quick and sure, like a hand fitting a well worn glove. And then he sensed the presence of outsiders in the House. Not just Tucker and the two that were here because of him, but others . . . scattered through the halls.
“Keep back from the windows,” Traupman told Sally.
Sally nodded and moved back. Traupman raised the glass to Tom’s lips again, but at that moment the old man sat up, throwing the glass to one side with a reflexive move of his hand. It shattered on the floor.
“It’s come!” Tom cried.
He pushed past Traupman to get off the bed, but only sprawled on the floor, shaking with fever. When Traupman grabbed hold of him to pull him back onto the bed, Tom’s skin felt like ice to the touch.
Tom fought Traupman’s grip. Sparks leaped between his fingers and Traupman threw himself back from the old man. He remembered what Tucker had told him about the constable who had died in Patty’s Place. Where was Tucker?
He heard a footstep outside in the hall and turned to the door. He only got one glimpse of the stranger that stood framed in the doorway—a tall, broad-shouldered man with a gun in his hand—then the House shook as though someone had let off a bomb under it and he was thrown to the floor.
“Shit!” Blue said as the lights went dead.
He went up the stairs two at a time and burst onto the upper landing to skid on a loose rug. By the pale green light that ran along the baseboards and ceiling ridges, he made out a figure standing by the door of the Gramarye’s Clover where he’d left Sally and the others. Jesus Christ! he thought. They’re already in! Then he realized it was a man he saw, not a monster. He started down the hall, making for the figure, when the first blast rocked the House.
He caught himself from falling, one hand knocking a painting from the wall in the process. He heard the crash of breaking glass as it smashed beside him. Down the hall, he saw the stranger turn in his direction. Light spat from the end of his outstretched hand and then the boom of a gunshot echoed in the close confines of the hall. Blue threw himself flat and heard the slug whine by over his head.
“Stay down!” Tucker shouted from behind him.
Rolling to one side, Blue looked up to see the stranger running down to the far end of the hall. Tucker fired twice from behind him, but another tremor shook the House and both shots went wild. Before the echoes had died away, Blue was on his feet and running for the bedroom.
“Anybody hurt?” he asked.
The House rocked again, but he saw that though they were as shaken up as he was, nobody had been hurt. He glanced down the empty hall. Who had that been anyway? Pushing himself back from the door, he ducked into Jamie’s study and came out in time to meet Tucker and Maggie. The Inspector looked down at the Weatherby that was now in Blue’s hand.
“You know how to use that?” he asked.
Blue nodded. “You keep watch here. I’m going to go nail that sucker.”
“Wait a minute—”
“I know the layout. You don’t. So I’m going. No arguments, got it? I’m not one of your bully-boys that you can lay orders on.”
“Now, listen up—” Tucker began.
“Tucker,” Maggie said, laying her hand on the Inspector’s arm.
The Inspector nodded. He started to frame what he had to say so it wouldn’t come out so abrasively, but it got lost in the sudden turmoil that followed. They braced themselves as another series of shocks ran through the House. Then they heard Sally scream and the room where she and the others were gathered was flooded with a sudden sharp light, as piercing bright as a lightning bolt. Blue turned to see Tom rolling on the floor,
the light coming from him, pouring out of the pores of his skin; then abruptly it died and he lay still in the House’s faint illumination.
“Jesus,” Blue said. “Is he . . . ?”
“Not dead,” Traupman replied, gingerly kneeling beside the old man. He pointed to one side of the room that was blackened and charred. “We’re lucky he didn’t hit one of us.”
They spent the next few minutes stamping out sparks, the job made more difficult by the constant shifting of the House under the continuing barrage. The air was close with the smell of burnt wood.
“I’m going,” Blue said, picking up his rifle. “You folks stay put.”
Tucker looked like he was going to protest again, then said simply, “Keep him alive. Dead, we don’t learn anything.”
“Hey. I didn’t see you aiming for the sky, Inspector.”
Before Tucker could reply, Jamie spoke up. “There’s more than one of them,” he said.
He swallowed, trying to say more, but his link with the House had grown stronger and he felt each barrage of shocks as the House did—as though someone was pummeling every inch of his body. And the blast of Tom’s magefire had burned him like a blowtorch, though there was no physical evidence of what he was undergoing.
“How do you know?” Blue asked.
Jamie shook his head. “I . . . I just know. Don’t go, Blue. There’s too many of them. If they’re in league with whatever’s attacking us . . .”
He felt the shadows beating at the walls of the House, the claws tearing the wood of its doors, the blind mad hunger of the creatures as they attacked.
“Yeah,” Blue said. “And what if they’re not? What if they wanted something else and open a door right now and let the monsters in?”
“Yes, but—”
Blue shook his head. “Wizards don’t need guns. I don’t know who these guys are, Jamie, but guns I can handle.”
Before anyone could raise another objection, he was out of the room, heading down the hall. He hugged the walls, bracing himself when the shock tremors hit. This is crazy, he thought. At each doorway, he paused, waiting for lulls in the attack so that he could check the room out. His familiarity with the House gave him a sense akin to Jamie’s new perceptions. He knew if there was someone in each one or not, before he ever poked his head around the doorway.
Trusting this instinct, he made good time going down the hall. And while his hands were filled with the weight of his Weatherby, under his breath he muttered the words to the Blessing Way that Charlie Nez had taught him down in Arizona. He didn’t know how much good it would do, but at this point he’d give anything a try.
Gannon’s first thought when the lights died was: They’ve got the place booby-trapped. He didn’t know how or why, but there was a very sophisticated security system in operation here. It had let them get in, but now it was going to play games with them . . . at least until a mop-up squad came to pick them up.
He paused just beyond the door of the room from which he’d heard voices, momentarily indecisive. Then he moved into the doorway and the first shock wave hit. He saw the room full of startled people and registered the fact that they were as surprised by the disturbances as he was, then turned to see a big man in a T-shirt and jeans coming at him from the far end of the hall. He got off one shot, saw Tucker appear behind the first man, and beat a hasty retreat. Tucker’s shots ploughed into the walls on either side of him. This wasn’t going well at all. What the hell was going on?
The sudden dark, the weird lighting, and the shocks rattling the House didn’t make any kind of sense. He began to get the first inkling then of just what it was that Walters had gotten him into. He’d never believed in what Walters was so intent upon gaining, but for the first time he began to question whether or not such things might actually exist.
When he got to the far end of the hall, he chose a room at random and ducked into it. It gave him an excellent vantage point if Tucker or one of the others decided to follow him. It would also give him a chance to get hold of Morin, who should be retreating as well, and get them all the hell out of here.
He glanced at the room’s windows and shook his head. It was so black out there. He couldn’t see a thing. How had they opaqued the windows like that? And the lighting. . . . It just didn’t make sense. He braced himself as a new series of tremors threatened to spill him to the floor.
Outside the House, the being that the quin’on’a had named Mal’ek’a, the Dread-That-Walks-Nameless, watched its tragg’a storm the structure. Mal’ek’a was weak in the World Beyond, but Tamson House straddled more than one world. Here in a plane of the Otherworld, Mal’ek’a’s powers were strong. Here, given time, it could peel the House’s defense as though it were no more than a crayfish’s shell and tear its enemy from within.
For the druid was here, the enemy. Hurt. Helpless. Mal’ek’a could taste his presence. He had escaped too often, but would not do so again.
The tragg’a, whose shape Mal’ek’a wore, clawed at the House, rocking its foundations as they swarmed about it. Watching, Mal’ek’a knew that force alone would not tear that protection from his enemy. At least not quickly enough. But there were other methods. Spells to counter spells. The House was here now, in the Otherworld, and here it would stay. There would be no escape for the beings trapped within it, no fleeing into the World Beyond where Mal’ek’a’s powers were not strong yet.
Inside, amongst the druid’s companions, there would be one whose mind Mal’ek’a could reach. One to control that would crack the shell of the House for it. It need only sift through the minds of those beings to find the one that would suit its purposes.
Bull was staring at the painting of a young woman when the House’s lights died. He’d been fantasizing about her, rubbing the wart under his left eye as he imagined her smooth skin under his hands. The skin that would be crisscrossed with welts when he was done with her. He could feel the give in her body as he dug his nails into her, could hear the terror in her voice as she pleaded with him.
A drop of spittle eased out of the corner of his mouth, but then the lights gave out and he was sitting in utter darkness, the fantasy stopped dead as he stood clawing his .32 from its holster under his armpit. The faint luminescence that started up gave him a creepy feeling, but at least he could see. Then the House shook and he was knocked to the floor. Above the din, he heard pistol shots. Three of them.
Crouching on the floor, his revolver ready in his hand, he tried to figure out what was going on. The shots must be bright-ass Gannon running into someone—probably Tucker.
Bull wasn’t sure what he should do. Gannon had told him to stay put, but what if Gannon was out of the picture? There was no way he was sticking around to shoot it out with a squad of horsemen. On the other hand. . . . The House rocked again, but this time he was better prepared for it and kept his balance. What the hell was going on? He was about to start up the stairs when he thought he heard someone call his name.
He turned, looked all around. Nothing. No one. Then why did he have the creepy feeling that there was someone near? It was like there was someone in his head. “That you, Bob?”
He looked down the left corridor that Mercier had taken. There was no reply. Nothing there. Only that creepy feeling. He swung his gun slowly from left to right, straining his eyes in the dim lighting.
“Stop screwing around!” he ordered. “Who’s there?”
Then it came, echoing inside his head like a bad dream. He had a sudden wild feeling, like he was soaring high on coke, aware, but buzzing. He turned to the door and looked into the blackness beyond its windows. Something out there wanted in. The House shuddered as a series of concussions shook it. Regaining his balance, Bull started for the door.
“It’s quiet,” Tucker said.
There’d been nothing for five minutes now. Just the silence.
“Too quiet,” he added, checking the window. It didn’t feel like this was the end; more like a lull between attacks.
With Sally and Maggie’s help, Traupman got Tom back onto the bed. Jamie was sitting in a chair, his features drawn and haggard, a cold pipe lying forgotten in his hand. Tucker stood by the door, his .38 in his hand; he’d replaced the two spent shells. Sticking his head out the door, he could just make out Blue at the far end of the hallway.
Take it slow, he thought. He looked back into the room. Since it was so quiet now, maybe he should go after the biker. But Jamie had said that there was more than one intruder. He didn’t know how Tams knew that, but everything else had been happening like he’d said it would. Blue was doing okay on his own. No point in him going out there and confusing matters.
Just gotta wait, he told himself. But Christ, he hated waiting.
Before Blue turned the corner, he hunkered down against the wall and had a think. One of them was there. He could feel him. Not on the landing itself, but in one of the rooms that opened out onto it. The thing was, which room? And how did he plan to handle it? He was just pissed off enough to blow the intruder away, but knew there was no way he could get away with it. Not with the Inspector just down the hall. So how did he flush the guy out and get the drop on him?
The real trouble, Blue realized, was that he just wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing anymore. Physically he could handle it. But his head just wasn’t in that space anymore. Six, seven years ago, this would’ve been a game and he’d have no problem playing his hand. But now, after living with Jamie and Sara all these years . . .
His eyes went flat as he thought of Sara. What if these guys had something to do with her disappearance? In the space of a heartbeat, his whole headspace changed. Not cut out for this kind of thing, was he? He worked the bolt on his Weatherby and the first bullet snapped into place. Like hell he wasn’t.
He came around the corner in a roll, caught a sense of motion behind the door where Gannon was hiding, and fired straight through it. High. The boom of the big rifle was loud in the hall. Before its echoes had died away, Blue worked the bolt again and had the muzzle leveled at the door.
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