And that was a good question. The Landing seemed to be going to hell in a handcart these days. He ushered me into the living room, shutting the door carefully behind us. He was trying to avoid disturbing his family. So the phone had obviously not woken them up, or not for very long.
The house was wooden, and it groaned faintly around us. Everything in here was plush. Velvet, silk, and soft, deep cushions. The cabinets and coffee tables were rosewood. He’d redecorated recently, perhaps by magic. The predominant colors by this time were red and gold. And there were framed prints of the Pilgrim Fathers on the tastefully papered walls.
“Ever since your phone call,” Levin told me, “I’ve been reaching out, trying to discern what’s going on. I can’t tell. But I can see Doctor Willets.”
He meant through his inner eye.
“He’s alive?”
He nodded. And I thought, Thank God.
“I can tell that he is agitated, lashing out at something. But the weird thing is, I can’t see what.”
Which took me aback. The creature that had chased me was as plain as my own face. So what was the judge talking about?
I felt my brow crease up. “You … can’t see visually? Can’t sense?”
“None of the above. If anything’s there, then my inner eye won’t focus on it. And when I reach out with my other senses, I get precisely nothing. The town as normal, no visitors present. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were making this up and the doctor was play-acting.”
I absorbed that and turned it over. What it told me, in the end, was that whatever we were facing, it was nothing of a kind that we had encountered before.
The judge had figured that out too. His cheeks flushed for a moment, then his manner became calmer. He went across to a cabinet, fished out a couple of Montgolfier glasses and a crystal decanter full of golden fluid. He only poured half an inch for each of us, which under the circumstances was probably wise. Handed me a glass. I sniffed it. Cognac, of the finest marque.
“You must get tired, on occasion,” he remarked, “of living such an energetic life.”
“Gives me something to do,” I muttered.
The bridge of his nose furrowed and he snorted faintly.
I took a sip. It made my head spin very slightly. Levin invited me to take a seat, then settled down on the nearby couch and asked me to describe -- in detail -- everything I’d seen and done the last few hours.
By the time I’d finished, he had rummaged in his pockets and put on his glasses. They made him look shrewder, more alert. And his expression was more focused than it had been. I had his complete attention.
“So where’s the third of these angel things?” he wondered. “Yes, that’s an extremely good point. I think we need to get the police in on this.”
I started punching buttons on my cell phone once again. But all I got was a pre-recorded engaged message.
Ritchie Vallencourt was being kept busy. And I could only imagine how.
CHAPTER 8
Ritchie felt the hairs on the nape of his neck crawl as he stared at the completely darkened house. There was nothing outwardly remarkable about it. It was on two stories and recently painted, with a rather grimy white truck parked out front. But he’d been around trouble his whole adult life. Before he’d been promoted, he had mostly worked the Tyburn area of town, which was a challenging beat to put it mildly.
So he knew what trouble looked like, felt like. It set up a low vibration on the air. And right now, he could sense it clearly. Lord, he could almost taste it.
“This has been happening all over town?” he asked the uniformed patrolmen who had called him here.
“Fourth report we’ve had so far,” replied the older one, Harrison Whitby. “And Christ knows how many others have gone unreported so far.”
They were on Cartland Street, on the inner edge of the Greenwood district. Garnerstown lay to the south of them, and Tyburn to the west. The air was very still around them, and their breath was misting slightly on it. The whole street looked perfectly normal, except that a few lights had come on in the windows of the nearest houses, and a few faces were peering out. A scream had been reported coming from this place, some forty minutes back. A family called the Hermanns lived here.
But it wasn’t these patrolmen who had turned up in the first place to investigate. They hadn’t even been inside, as yet. A second black-and-white was sitting on the driveway with its doors wide open and its lights switched off. Ritchie knew whose car it was. Bob Beecham and Luther Clayburgh’s, good officers both.
“Neighbors said they forced an entry. And that was the last that was seen or heard of them,” Harrison explained.
Except the door was shut again. They’d obviously used a credit card, since there was no visible damage to the lock. If there was one thing Ritchie couldn’t tolerate, it was bad things happening to his own men. And two officers disappearing counted very much as that.
He frowned and peered more closely at the house. There didn’t seem to be mere ordinary darkness in there. It was pitch black past the windowpanes, like they’d been painted over from the inside. Not any of the glow from the streetlamps made its way in past those panes. And it ought to have done. There should be outlines visible. He didn’t like the look of that.
“Anyone tried calling them?” he asked.
“Several times, sir,” Lee Drake said.
And dammit, cops didn’t go vanishing for no good reason. So what was the deal here?
Vallencourt got his Browning out and started closing the distance.
“Sir?” Harrison asked behind him. “Shouldn’t we wait for backup?”
“You can do what you like,” he answered. “Me? I’ve waited long enough.”
When he got within six feet he charged, slamming the door with his shoulder. The lock burst open easily enough. Ritchie stumbled into the hallway. A swift clatter of footsteps told him that the uniformed guys had followed him up. And he’d have done this on his own, sure. But he felt a whole lot happier knowing that his back was being watched.
He raised his left hand, signaling the pair of them to keep quiet and slow down.
Aside from his own breathing, there was not another sound. The house was wholly immobile around them, like it had been cast in stone. Then he noticed something else.
The door was fully open, wasn’t it? And there was a streetlamp on the curb out past this same front yard. He ought to be standing in a strip of faded yellow. But …
Everything was still black around him. Was as seamlessly dark as a coal mine. When he glanced at his own raised hand, he could barely make out the edges of it. And that simply couldn’t be the case.
Which confirmed -- if he didn’t already know it -- this was something supernatural.
There was an unexpected shuffling noise to his right. Ritchie swung in that direction, but still couldn’t see butkiss. Had no idea what had made that sound. This was virtually like being blind.
At which point, Harrison Whitby unclipped his flashlight from his belt, switched it on, and played it around. And that seemed to work. It was only light from outside that could not get in, apparently.
He played the beam where that first sound had emanated from. An open doorway emerged from the gloom, with a dining room beyond it. But Ritchie couldn’t make out what had made that shuffling.
“Let’s see what you look like,” he was whispering.
But nothing showed itself. At least, not at first.
There was a polished table, surrounded by chairs. A glass-fronted cabinet beyond that with some crystal ornaments arranged inside. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Harrison took a few steps closer so that he could get a better angle on the room. And when he stopped, the sound came again.
The beam danced everywhere, still picking up nothing. The carpet was bare. So if something was on the move in there, then where exactly was it?
Ritchie’s gaze lifted a little higher and he thought, for the briefest second, that he’d
caught a wink like silver. Like the light being reflected off a metal object. Like a badge?
Harrison had seen it too, and growled, “What the blazes?”
The pool of light went to the far end of the room. All that it illuminated was some faded wallpaper, the metallic glint no longer apparent. Ritchie didn’t think their eyes were playing tricks on them. But there seemed to be nothing there.
He had been keeping quiet this whole time. But now, he decided to announce himself.
“Bob?” he bellowed. “Luther? If you’re in here, show yourselves!”
His voice echoed down the hall. He got no other answer.
But when he heard another shuffle, it was coming from above them.
Harrison, beside him, jerked. The light shot up, wavering spastically. It passed across bare ceiling for an instant, and then settled on a darker shape. Ritchie could make out the deep blue of a uniform. Within it was the glitter of the badge he’d seen.
And finally, a pale face was revealed, actually hanging upside down.
It was Bob Beecham.
* * *
Vallencourt went lurching back. So did both the uniformed cops. The beam flew off wildly for a second and the pallid features disappeared. Then Harrison got a handle on himself and redirected it, revealing the same bizarre sight it had done before.
There was Officer Robert Beecham, on his hands and knees. And it was strange enough that he was on all fours. But that way on the ceiling?
There seemed to be nothing holding him up. Ritchie had seen a lot of weird sights in his time, but nothing quite like this one. He felt his arms begin to quiver. And there seemed to be ice water rushing through his veins. He’d come across some stuff as bizarre as you could possibly imagine, but this beat them all.
God Alive, he knew this man! Bob Beecham had a wife and a three year-old son, and lived in a nice little house in West Meadow. He’d been around to them for barbeques during the summer months, and had gone out drinking with the guy on several occasions. Bob was the decent, normal type. So what had happened to him?
The face above him twisted to a mask of pure malevolence. Its eyes shone strangely in the flashlight’s beam. It moved a few inches, the whole body still defying gravity. And then, its lips began to slide apart.
There was nothing red beyond them. Nothing wet or moving, like there’d usually be when someone’s mouth came open. Just impenetrable blackness, the same kind there had been when they’d first entered the house. It was like Bob was no longer filled with flesh and blood. Like all of that had been gouged out and then replaced with hollow darkness.
The mouth had formed an almost perfect circle, but it showed no signs of trying to speak. Ritchie could see the man’s limbs tensing. Was Bob going to attack?
His head was reeling. He still couldn’t grasp what exactly he was looking at. He took aim with his Browning, although he did that reluctantly. The thought of shooting at another cop sent shivers down his spine.
That was when Lee Drake, behind him, shouted, “Oh my good God -- Sarge?”
The flashlight swiveled around. The beam immediately started picking out more faces.
Officer Luther Clayburgh still had his uniform cap on, albeit it was tilted at a very peculiar angle. His features were twisted up the same way as his partner’s, his eyes like pools of dark, polluted oil. And the rest of them …?
There were a middle-aged couple, a husband and wife, presumably the Hermanns. Several children of various ages. And what might be an aging relative, an old man with his perfectly bald head offset by a pair of bushy sideburns.
Their expressions were the same, horribly contorted. And their eyes looked soulless, throwing back no slightest human spark.
It took Ritchie’s fractured mind a little while more to figure out what was happening above him. These people were spaced around the staircase, but not on the actual stairs. They were clinging to the banisters, or hanging from the nearby walls. Defying gravity, the same way as Beecham.
So whatever had happened to them, it had set them free of natural laws. Staring at them, Ritchie was put in mind of huge, ungainly insects. They were, like Bob, on their hands and knees.
As he watched, their mouths started coming open too, with ugly wet smacking noises. One of them, a dark-haired girl of about six years old, abruptly leapt from her position on the wall and landed on a banister post. Then her brother started scuttling down to join her.
Stand and fight, was Ritchie’s usual credo. Whatever you are facing, face it down.
But not tonight. An instinct overtook him. Staying put and letting these things come at him was not the brightest plan. The mere fact they were getting closer made his entire body cringe.
He had to examine this more closely. Get a better idea of what he was up against. And that would take the adepts’ help -- of that he was absolutely certain.
Both the six year old and her brother were tensing again. Getting ready to spring forward this time? The rest were stealing closer too, creeping down the walls. Ritchie swung his aim around, but did not fire.
These had recently been people, even if they looked like they might never be that thing again. He wasn’t sure. He had to opt for caution at the moment.
“Back on the street!” he hollered to his men. “We’re out of here!”
Neither guy exactly needed telling twice.
CHAPTER 9
By the time I finally managed to get in touch with Vallencourt, it was gone three in the morning. Judge Levin had had a speakerphone installed in his study since I’d last visited, so we moved up there. His wife, Fleur, had come fully awake by this time -- understanding something bad was happening -- and was fetching us a pot of coffee.
I listened as the sergeant described what he had come across in Greenwood. Then I told him what I’d seen.
“Angels?” he blurted. “This was nothing like that. This was --“
“Yeah, I get it,” I said. “More like animals, but human ones.”
Me and Levin exchanged sour glances.
“And this is happening …?” he asked.
“Right across town,” Ritchie told him. “Six different locations so far that I know of.”
“And how are your men responding?”
“I’ve told them to secure the perimeters, but not to enter. We don’t want more cops going down before it’s clear what this thing is.”
Which was the only course of action he could take, and I confirmed that. The judge was nodding. Until we understood what we were really up against, we had to opt for holding back.
But there was one thing that we knew for certain. For the second time in one night, our humble town was under some kind of attack. You wouldn’t have even known it from up here. We were underneath the roof. The window was a dormer one, and had a clear view of the north and western sections of the Landing. It looked peaceful, the rows of homes like slumbering dogs. I could make out my own neighborhood, and not a thing seemed out of order.
Except you can’t always believe what your eyes tell you. Because the truth is, bad magic is like a poison, seeping through the bloodstream of a closed community like ours.
My temples throbbed. I wished I knew a whole lot more. Wished I hadn’t been forced to leave Willets behind, since I had no doubt there was an awful lot that he could add to this. Without his special insight, we were groping in the dark.
“We need to form a strategy,” Judge Levin was saying. Although, by his expression, he didn’t seem quite sure what that might be. “Can your men be trusted to their own devices, sergeant?”
“Sure,” Ritchie answered, sounding slightly wary.
“Then you’d better get up here. I’ll look forward to meeting you.”
He usually consulted with Hobart, and had not had the pleasure, so far as I knew, of standing face-to-face with this town’s new numero uno cop.
Ritchie gave an okay, then the line went dead. Levin joined me at the window. It was still dark beyond the glass, the sky like a navy blue bowl above u
s and the intersecting rows of streetlamps like a puzzle posed by fireflies.
“You’d think that I’d be used to this by now,” he murmured.
And I knew precisely what he meant. My heart couldn’t seem to slow down properly. And I could feel a mild, constant vibration underneath my skin.
“Yet every time something like this comes down on us,” he went on, “my lungs tighten, my palms grow damp, and I start wondering if this might be my last hour on this planet. I have wealth and the community’s respect. Power, both judicial and paranormal. And despite that, I feel wholly shackled by my own mortality. Isn’t that odd?”
“Being an adept doesn’t stop you being human,” I told him. “Welcome to the club.”
The man stared at me wordlessly for a few seconds and then pulled a face and shrugged.
* * *
It took Ritchie another half hour to show up, so he’d obviously spent a while making sure that he could leave his people to cope for themselves. But finally we heard a car pull up, the doorbell chime, and then Fleur Levin let him in.
When he walked into the study, I got a mild shock. He had transformed somewhat from the hard-nosed, fiery young sergeant I had come to know. He was slightly hunched, his eyes downcast, his every movement under tight control. His manner overly respectful. And I immediately saw what this was. Damn it, if he’d owned a cap, he’d have it clasped between his fingers and been fiddling with the brim right now.
It was Levin he was nervous of. And perhaps I should have been expecting this. It was the typical relationship between most of the ordinary townsfolk -- who only practiced magic occasionally -- and people like the judge who had been born to it and used it all the time. The former was extremely wary and respectful of the latter.
That doesn’t apply to me, since I’ve never practiced magic, the same way my folks refused to when they were alive. I think it’s playing silly games with the natural rules, and refuse to be cowed by it. Okay, it is a pretty impressive form of power, startling at times. But power -- on its lonesome -- doesn’t get my vote.
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