It was pretty obvious that this hadn’t been just an accident when the “victim” lying in the road opened coal-black eyes and used the shattered stumps of its arms to drag itself toward us. We ran helter-skelter down the Uxbridge Road, which left us completely and utterly soaked by the time we reached the Ealing Broadway Shopping Centre. The sheets of rain parted just enough to spot another wreck fifty yards ahead, so by mutual, unspoken consent, we ducked into the nearest storefront.
“What’s going on, Julian? I left after some maniac burned our house down, and I come back to Father O’Hanrahan telling me that you’ve set up some batshit crazy plan that somehow requires you to have dinner at our favorite restaurant?” I wondered for just a heartbeat if her charge into the front of the building had been strictly a rescue attempt. As we wended our way through the partially roofed shopping arcade, I filled her in as quickly as I could on the events of the last twenty-four hours and how I intended to extricate myself from this mess.
“And that’s your plan to end this?” Her tone was a bit incredulous, but even if she had found it in herself to believe in my powers as a Dreamwatcher, I couldn’t expect her to grasp the instinctive logic that had led me to my desperate gambit.
“I know it sounds crazy, but you’ve trusted me so far, and further than I had any right to expect, so please trust me on this.” The storm was still flinging thunderbolts through the summer air, but I stopped just inside of the covered part of the central piazza in the Centre, grabbed my wife, pulled her close, and kissed her hungrily. Our wet clothes provided no barrier to the heat of the embrace, and when my lips finally left hers, I whispered in her ear, “I love you.” I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to hear me over the constant rumbling, but either she did or the moment had left us both with the same thought because she whispered the same words in reply.
That moment wasn’t allowed to last. The eyes of a man huddling next to me under the awning suddenly went as big around as dinner plates and his face blanched white, so I whipped my head around to follow his gaze. It didn’t take long for me to spot Derrick Redderton coming through the crowd. If brains were dynamite, that man wouldn’t have had enough to blow his nose. If he had simply tried to be a bit inconspicuous, he could have been on top of us before we even realized that he was there. Instead, the flat-nosed detective strode through the shopping center, waving a pistol the size of a cannon in the air and bellowing at anyone who got in his way as he made a beeline toward us.
The man’s stupidity gave us a four- or five-second head start. If I managed to keep limping forward and stay on a straight-line course, it would be possible to reach my goal in only another two miles of travel, but it also seemed pretty likely that if I kept to a straight line, I’d have to fight every step of the way.
The downpour might have been letting up fractionally, and as we plunged into the sheet of water coruscating through the uncovered open area at the center of the mall, I managed to catch the last notes of a frustrated bellow from our pursuer as he lost line of sight. When we emerged forty yards away on the other side of the square, I managed to spot the detective scanning the crowd futilely, and I grinned at discomfiting the bastard.
Any thought that I had about getting away clean evaporated as I spotted two tall men walking a bit too purposefully side by side through the thin crowd by the western exit. I had hoped to slip out that way and take Mattock Lane parallel to the larger Uxbridge Road, hopefully avoiding any more prepared ambushes. From outside, I could hear the wailing of sirens and was vaguely impressed at the response time.
With Derrick just behind us, I nodded toward the entrance to Marks and Spencer, and we went inside. Given the genteel air that the store tried to project, it was unlikely that many couples in their late twenties sprinted through, sopping wet, just before closing time on a Thursday, but nobody bothered us as we crossed the store in about thirty seconds.
The two of us burst through the front door slightly out of breath but ready to continue our journey. Unfortunately, Ena’s strategy started to pay dividends just then, as a pair of uniformed officers noticed us. They both got the familiar look on their faces that police the world over get when they see something that trips their “out of the ordinary” radar. Maybe if there hadn’t been disturbances throughout the city for the past week, or maybe if the light had been a bit better and they could have taken in our ages, then we might have managed to avoid the delay, but as things stood, they both reached out and collared us.
“Oy—just a moment, kids,” the larger of the two officers, a big black man with a missing front tooth, shouted over the roar of thunder. I thought about the sword strapped to my side and tried furiously to come up with some reasonable excuse for having it. Dana stepped into the breach and bailed me out for the second time in the last hour.
She put on a southern drawl much thicker than she’d had even when she came to university and said, in an overly loud and slightly gormless voice: “Officer, can you help us? We’re supposed to be back at the hotel to relieve the babysitter by nine, but with the buses disrupted by this storm, we don’t know what to do.” It was a masterful display, and we instantly changed from wild potential rioters and looters into stupid lost tourists. The hands of both men left our shoulders, and I could see the smaller man, a turbaned Sikh, about to make a suggestion when the black officer’s eyes went wide and he shoved both Dana and I to the wet ground.
“Hey—” I started to protest at the rough treatment, but any imprecation that I’d intended to utter died on my tongue as the cannon roar of a large-bore handgun exploded a few feet away. I went down in a heap and cursed as my cracked ribs took part of the fall, and I felt a stabbing pain in my chest. There was a return volley of shots and a scream. I wasn’t able to focus on anything for at least a minute, and the first thing that registered was Dana shaking my shoulder and shouting my name. I nodded my head once in acknowledgment, and she went quiet.
When I managed to look up a moment later, I saw the black officer leaning heavily on the black iron railing that lined the street, one hand on his chest and the other dangling from his side and clutching a small nine-millimeter pistol. The Sikh was kneeling next to a prone form that poured blood, but the pace had slowed enough that rainwater was winning the battle against the puddle of red, and it was clear that no one could survive that much trauma. I tried to ignore the purple tendrils questing out of the hole in his back. I guessed I didn’t have to worry about Derrick anymore. Oddly, for a change, I didn’t feel any guilt about this death.
CHAPTER 49 2050–2145, Thursday, August 6, 2015
***Julian***
Before anyone could notice us again, Dana had me on my feet, and we stumbled off into the night. I hoped that the black officer would be all right, but the scream of inhuman rage that cut through the thunder sent a pulse of pain through my back and pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind.
Normally during the height of summer, I could have expected to see until well after ten at night, but with the heavy cloud cover, it was pitch-black well before nine. Although the rain concealed us, given the puca’s nature I was pretty sure that the dark wouldn’t be our ally, so instead of cutting through the leafy grounds of Walpole Park, we continued down the main thoroughfare.
The next twenty minutes were spent hurrying at the best pace I could make, little better than a quick walk, through a storm that shouldn’t have been braved by man or beast—as testified to by the deserted streets. Roads that normally thronged with people at all hours of the night were eerily empty. With the storm’s coming, the temperature had dropped and soon enough, we were shivering, and I fought to stifle a coughing fit. In the dull streetlight, I saw that my hand came away from my mouth stained red; I quickly wiped it away before Dana could see. I didn’t want her worrying.
By the time we had reached the Lido, the emergency service’s lights and sirens had long ago faded, and I thought that perhaps we were going to reach our destination without any further molestation, but I should have
been more suspicious of the unpeopled streets. Night was the creature’s element. I still never would have expected doom to come riding a number 207 Scania OmniBus (if it had been a bendy bus, maybe I would have expected the evil it contained).
The bus neared us doing only about ten miles an hour, and I thought for a second that we’d had some good luck as it pulled up to the stop just in front of us. With a short ride and £1.50 each, we could be at our final destination in just a couple of minutes.
I touched the vehicle, and it felt like I’d grabbed an electric fence as the same sense of wrongness that had permeated the puca’s domain slammed into me. I closed my eyes hard in an effort to hold down my suddenly heaving guts, but Dana’s hair hung in front of her eyes, and she was so busy dragging her travel card from her pocket that she was already three steps into the aisle before I could react.
“Dana!” My voice cracked as I shouted out a warning that I knew would be too late.
I could have backed out at that point. The door was still open behind me, and a single lunge would have taken me to safety.
I could have left my wife to fend for herself. She had doubted my fidelity, and the bus was hardly moving.
I could have betrayed the woman who had saved me, who had believed the insane story that I’d spun out about walking the halls of dream. I was the real target. I took one certain step and drew my sword.
The bus lurched into motion, and the door closed with surprising finality behind me, shutting out the weather and leaving me trapped with Ena, sitting with half a dozen black-eyed thralls at her feet, and the puca somewhere on board. As dark as things looked, I knew that I still had a chance as long as we stayed on the Uxbridge Road. Dana backed up against me, breathing fast and shivering almost uncontrollably, whether from cold, fear, or a mixture of both, I couldn’t be sure. I pushed her behind me and took a step toward a maniacally grinning Ena.
Ena reclined on the back seat of the bus with the six thralls arranged on the tiered seats just below her, creating a kind of pauper’s throne room. We weren’t moving very fast through the pouring rain, and I suddenly had inspiration, recalling some of her odd comments from earlier in the night.
“Long live the queen…quite a nice throne room you have here, Your Majesty. Though my understanding was that most Irish weren’t really royalists?” I sneered, watching with interest as the people in her little “court” sprang to their feet. Dead, black eyes locked on me, and they spread out around her, teeth bared in silent snarls, although the wry twist to Ena’s smile never wavered.
My skin prickled, and I could feel the reality-warping aura of the thing wearing Kelly’s remains shifting closer—it was on the upper deck—but I wasn’t going to let anyone know I knew she was there. If Ena wasn’t announcing the creature’s presence, then my knowledge was an ace in the hole. Or at least a jack. Okay, maybe a deuce.
“Oh, I don’t have much time for that dried-up old biddy in Westminster, but you know what they say; it’s good to be the queen,” she said, giving me a wink before continuing: “Really, I’m disappointed, Mr. Adler. I would have thought that this was all quite obvious. Didn’t your priest friend fill you in? He and his people have known what was going on for days, and they made me a very lucrative offer to ‘abdicate’ almost immediately after the summoning tome was put into their possession.”
This revelation left me extremely confused, and it must have shown on my face as the final OMG partner’s eyes went wide and her mouth opened in an “O” of feigned surprise. “Oh, I can see that you hadn’t been told about that either? I know how painful it is to have someone that you care about violate your trust. Thanks to you, though, I’ll never be able to experience forgiveness from Kelly or Tara. But I’m kind. Before we…make use of you, I’ll explain what your friends didn’t.”
I glanced out the window and saw that we were coming up on Hanwell. At the snail’s pace we were moving, I needed to string this out another couple of minutes. Ena had obviously been caught by some of the same downpour that we had, and I couldn’t stop myself from noticing as her impending success seemed to excite her and her big, dark nipples showed clearly against the thin fabric of her straining dress. I think Dana noticed too because her shivering slowed down, and she pressed rigidly against my back.
“You see, Julian, when I refer to myself as having had a right to use Tara and Kelly, I’m not exaggerating. My surname is O’Brian, and if you know any Irish history, then you know that the greatest king of Ireland was Brian Boru. Among his many, many achievements, legend says that he tamed the puca. That’s not exactly what he did, but according to his diary, he defeated the creature and bound it to him and his heirs, which through direct line of descent, I am,” she said and smiled at me before continuing.
I needed to keep her going for another minute. “So you were feeding your friends to a mythological creature a bit at a time. Did you get naked and chant just for fun, then?” I had to admit that I was a bit intrigued by this point.
“Oh, the ritual wasn’t a complete sham; I could only contact it when the stars were right, and the chain worked quite nicely to create the correct magical link. As one of Brian Boru’s heirs, I could remember what was written in his diary, and it was necessary for someone to say the words to get its attention and for someone to be there as food, but it was always my will that reached out and provided the instructions about the target and how they should be manipulated. The nudity…well, I believe it was one of your countrymen who said that there’s a sucker born every minute?” She ended the explanation by tossing her head, sending a shower of rain off of her auburn tresses.
“So you inherited a pet monster and were going to use it to become the dark queen of real estate? Are you in a club with Dr. Evil and that guy in Quantum of Solace who was going to increase the price of water in Bolivia?” For the first time today, I saw her frown, and it was clear that I’d touched a nerve.
“I do you the courtesy of explaining the situation to you, and all you can do is insult me?” She leaned forward, and her voice rose to a shout. “Obviously, I had more of a plan than that. A few years more, and I would have had the wealth to buy real influence, and when the girls were ready, I would have brought the puca over in Kelly or Tara. With it permanently anchored to our reality, I could have called on it as often as I wanted, and I could have accelerated my recruitment effort a hundredfold. I would have been ruling these islands in ten years in all but name…and that would have come eventually.” Her chest heaved as she took a few calming breaths before carrying on. “Now that I don’t have those two…well, as I said. I’ll just have to work with the tools that are available. Oh look—there you are.”
“I—”
She cut me off with a chopping motion. “Enough of this. Put down that silly sword and don’t put up a fuss, and then I’ll let your wife go. Last chance. ‘Kelly,’ can you come down here?” She sounded fed up, and I could hear a sick kind of hunger in her voice as she put verbal quotation marks around Kelly’s name.
From where I was standing at the front of the bus, I saw her legs first as she descended from the upper deck. I knew that I’d done some damage to the young woman’s remains, but I cocked an eyebrow in surprise as I saw charred skin flapping loose with black goo oozing through the flesh in a dozen places. However, the bloated thing moved much faster than I would have thought possible, and within a few seconds, it had arrived in the middle of the bus. This close up, I could see why Ena was so focused on getting it “rehoused” in me as quickly as possible.
Ena hadn’t bothered putting any clothes on the thing, but between the burns that ranged from blistered to charred black over most of her body, the black goo oozing from her cuts, and the waving purple tentacles that had burst through her skin in dozens of places, no one would be paying attention to her nudity. Even as I watched, I could see another tendril of darkness worming its way into the light. It was evident that the body wouldn’t hold together much longer.
I cocked my head to the s
ide and gave my shoulders a little shrug. “Am I supposed to be afraid of that? You’re lucky that thing didn’t fall apart when it was coming down the stairs.” I needed to buy a few more seconds for the bus to get us to our destination, but I could only watch in horror an instant later as someone else paid the price for that time.
Faster than I could have imagined possible, the thing pivoted, moving its bulk half a dozen steps and striking out with both hands to grab one of the lackeys at Ena’s feet. Almost as quickly as thought, there was a small, wet, popping noise, and a set of ropey purple tendrils impaled the thrall, a Chinese woman in her late forties, at both temples. I froze as her body shook violently, her eyes closed, and a web of familiar filaments burst out from dozens of places on her skin. As that ultimate violation played itself out over no more than ten seconds, the woman had a final moment of freedom. Until the day I die, I’ll wish that she hadn’t, because her eyes snapped back into focus and she looked desperately, pleadingly at me and begged for help.
Her exact forlorn words didn’t penetrate, but what did was that for a few moments she knew who she was, what was happening, and what was to come. Within a few dozen heartbeats, her gaze transitioned from focused to confused and then vacant as she faded away. I’d just watched a human being’s utter annihilation—mind, body, and soul. All because I had to shoot my mouth off.
The thing puppeting Kelly’s remains stood straighter, and a number of rents in her flesh knit together in front of my eyes. When the process was complete, the puca still looked horrible, but it no longer gave off the impression of a loose collection of parts on the brink of collapse. I glanced out the window again; it was time.
Dream Job (The Dreamwalker Chronicles Book 1) Page 32