A creaking noise tore Levin’s gaze away from that. A lamppost was bending slowly over to one side, like a stick of candy melting in the sun. It got about halfway across, and then collapsed. The judge tried to fathom what was being done.
Alone, these tiny creatures – or whatever they were – could probably not do much harm. But there was an enormous swarm of the things on this street. There had to be thousands. And, constantly skimming into objects in their path, they were eroding the structure of everything they touched.
Would they do the same to human flesh? He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.
Saul was peering at the swarm, its constantly changing shape, and working his jaw in a confused way.
“I’ve never seen anything like this. What are they?”
“Does it matter?”
Which was a good point.
“Got any suggestions as to what to do?” Then the lieutenant remembered himself and added, “Sir?”
But that last part wasn’t necessary, not under these circumstances. Levin ignored it, his expression puckering up.
“I don’t think you’re going to take too many of those things out with bullets. Maybe if I had a go?”
His mouth began moving, although silently. And he raised his right hand with the palm thrust out. A searing shaft of pure white light came surging from it. Widened into a broad cone as Hobart watched, and swept across hundreds of the purple dots.
The effect was instantaneous, but not what they’d been hoping for. Every single one of the things that the energy blast touched halted in mid-air. Paused for a brief while, their noise diminishing. And then, they came hurtling straight at the judge, before he could react.
They passed directly through his outstretched palm, coming out the other side of it like a squadron of tiny aircraft before turning around and peeling away.
The judge let out an anguished howl and collapsed to the frozen pavement. He curled up, clutching at his fingers, obviously badly hurt.
Saul had rarely seen an adept felled before, and went down on his knees beside the man.
“Are you okay?”
“Heaven alive!” the judge hissed through his bared teeth. “That was like a bunch of red-hot needles!”
But he got a grip on himself, fighting off the pain. Sucked in a breath and then sat upright. His eyes were watering and his face was strained. But he was still fully aware of his surroundings.
“How’d that happen?” Saul asked loudly.
The energy bolt ought to have hurt the creatures, not the other way around.
“It has to be Morgana’s Amethyst,” Levin told him. “It must have turned my own spell against me.”
Saul took that in unhappily, then returned his attention to the things that they were attempting to deal with. The general mass of violet dots was closer than it had been, hissing and fizzing like a massive bunch of firecrackers that was almost ready to go off.
“Best that we get out of here,” he said. “I can’t see that there’s much else we can do.”
That didn’t exactly please him either, but there wasn’t any other option. So he pulled the smaller man up to his feet, then turned back to his car.
To see that a whole big section of the swarm had snuck around behind them. And had been at work. The tires of his Pontiac were deflating.
“Not good,” Hobart groaned under his breath.
The noise abruptly grew a great deal louder. Saul looked up, to see that the rest of the swarm was closing in above their heads. They were surrounded in a few more moments, not the tiniest way out that he could see. No openings in that mass of little shapes at all.
The violet dots began to move in closer. Saul could feel the judge go stiff.
“We have to stay calm,” Levin muttered, trying to sound brave.
But his eyes were starting from his head. And Saul could feel his own doing the same.
“Can’t you just spirit us out of here?” he asked.
“I’ve already tried that. It’s not working.”
Saul put a hand to his gun instinctively, but knew that that would do no good. Helplessness had already begun sweeping through his big, ungainly frame.
If he was going to die, then he’d prefer that it was not like this. A bullet through the heart, a swift blow to the head, okay. But being chivvied apart by things that looked like purple bugs?
He steeled himself and tried to think straight. Which was getting harder by the second. Maybe if he rushed at them and simply barged his way on through …?
The noises around him stopped while he was still considering that. Saul blinked, scarcely able to believe his eyes.
Either he was imagining this, dying in a state of wishful thinking, or …
The entire swarm had disappeared, between one heartbeat and the next.
He felt his mouth drop open. Then the judge let out a stifled grunt.
“What happened?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“The laws that shape reality have been around a good long time,” Lehman Willets opined. “Thirteen point seven billion years, to be precise. I doubt that they’d collapse in a few hours. Maybe that’s what gave us this respite.”
We’d all re-gathered in my living room, most of us looking even wearier than when we’d started. The good doctor had inspected Levin’s injured hand and made such repairs as he could manage. But the judge was still in a fair degree of pain, which I was sorry to see, because I respected and liked him.
I had given Cass and Lauren a big pile of towels to mop themselves down with, and they were both still doing that. My drapes were open onto a brightening east horizon, the sky turning the color of platinum in that direction since the sun was coming back up.
“Our universe re-asserted itself?” I ventured
“That’s one way to put it, yes,” Willets replied. “But, given the circumstances, we should see it only as a temporary break. There’ll be more incidents. I should imagine larger ones, more frequent and persistent. And each time that happens, our reality will be weakened further.”
“Until?” Cassie asked.
“Until there’s nothing left.”
Everyone stared at him bleakly, wondering what could be done. Levin wasn’t the only one who was rubbing his hands. But whatever the solution was, it wasn’t going to be the kind of magic we were used to. That stuff couldn’t help us.
“Any suggestions?” the doc asked.
And it was Lauren who chipped in first.
“A town of this size? How about you just evacuate it?”
When we stared at her, she became uneasy but pressed on.
“I mean, I know about the curse and all. But Cassie lived for two months out in the forest, and she’s perfectly okay. You could move everyone out there, couldn’t you? At least get them away from this?”
I wasn’t certain about that idea, and by the look of things, neither was anybody else. Sure, we could cross the town line. But Regan Farrow’s age-old curse meant that anyone who had been born here could keep heading off for days or even weeks, and never see a person from the outside world or reach another human habitation. That was how it worked.
Willets explained that to her.
“One person, fine,” he concluded. “But you’re talking about thousands, walking aimlessly through endless forest. Most of them would freeze to death, or perish from starvation.”
So that was a non-starter. If we were facing our Nemesis, then we were doing it at home.
But the doctor took it on himself to smile at our visitor encouragingly and add, “Your input is welcome, though. It’s an idea that deserved to be examined.”
And I thought I understood why he had done that. Lauren was looking even more awkward, now that her idea had been shot down in flames. She was an outsider, didn’t really know her way around, and had been reminded of that firmly.
But that wasn’t the real issue, so far as I could see. The real question was, why was she still here at all?
“Maybe you should
go,” I told her.
Which made her look even sadder.
“I don’t mean you’re not wanted here,” I put in quickly. “I mean, you’re probably risking your life for no good reason.”
She looked shocked by what I’d just said, but we had to face the truth. We’d stared extinction in the eye several times back in the past. But this was starting to look like it was turning out to be the genuine article.
“If our adepts can’t help, if Raine can’t get a result, then this town might be finished,” I went on. “Why go down with it when you don’t have to? That isn’t what any of us wants.”
But she didn’t look like she was willing to accept that judgment.
“I stopped about a dozen of those grinder things,” she came back at me. “And I saved a kid.”
Cassie confirmed that.
“And I don’t feel that I can walk away from this with any kind of real clear conscience. Sorry, Ross, but I’m staying.”
Everybody in the room was studying her again, Levin with his eyebrows raised and Martha with a mild, appreciative smile. Lauren wasn’t trapped by any curse. The only thing keeping her here was her own sense of right and wrong. And apparently, it was a stringent one.
I wouldn’t want to be a murderer in Boston, not with her around.
Cassie stepped up to her.
“You sure this makes any sense?”
“You’re qualified to lecture people on what’s sensible?” was the answer that came back.
So the matter was settled.
“Any more ideas?” Willets inquired. “Can anybody think of something we can try?”
I exchanged glances with Saul Hobart. And we both knew what the real truth of the situation was.
“Wait and hope,” he mouthed.
I nodded.
Then I started wondering how Raine was making out.
“Hello? Purple fellows?”
Woodard Raine turned around on the spot, everything around him still the same monotonous degrees of color.
“Oon? Remember me? We got on very well when we first met, as I recall. And I do apologize again for that unpleasant incident. But I assure you, it was not done deliberately.”
There was no response. No creatures appeared. Even the spiders and the things with teeth were gone. And the purple corridors of this place, they were such a maze that he was starting to get more than a little lost. His thoughts churned gently.
“Why are you being so stubborn?” he yelled. “I’ve apologized until I’m blue in the face. Bad things happen. You have to take them on the chin and get on with your lives. You can’t sit sulking in these walls forever.”
But perhaps they could. They were extremely strange beings and, when he turned it over honestly, he saw that he knew hardly anything about them.
Cajoling them wasn’t working. So maybe making some kind of generous offer would do the trick.
“We’ll get you a new Oon,” he suggested. “I’ll conjure one up – I’m sure that I can do it. As good as the old one, I promise you.”
Apart from the echo of his own voice, there was only silence.
“Oh, come on, sports, be reasonable about this!”
Which was when he thought he heard a voice. And not one in his mind either. No, this one appeared to be calling out. A human voice, but very distant.
He couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from. It rose in pitch for a few seconds, but then stopped abruptly and did not resume.
Raine faltered to a halt and peered around, his confusion growing. Was there somebody else in here with him?
It was wholly unexpected, and he felt his mind go blank.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Ritchie Vallencourt had been driving around in his Chevy again. Looking for one of those purple openings again. But not for the same reasons as the last time, or anything like.
His thoughts were still dull and his brow was throbbing. He was trying to get his head around the way that everything had panned out, and the awful things he’d gone and done. And it felt, from his point of view, as if his memories were not his own. They were like those of another person, fitting awkwardly inside his skull.
He stared at his reflection in the rearview mirror, taking in the shadowiness of his features and the chilled look in his eyes. What had he been thinking of? What exactly had been going through his mind?
But a storm had been raging in him. And he hadn’t taken any notice of the evidence of his own senses. He’d whaled on that purple creature anyway, unable to stop himself, in spite of the fact that it hadn’t lifted a finger in its own protection.
Ritchie blinked morosely. What exactly was he? He had always thought of himself as a good guy, committed to doing the right thing. Had joined the force for precisely that reason. But after what he’d done – if Heidi were to re-appear in front of him right now – he felt so ashamed of himself that he doubted he would be able to look her in the eye.
He was a murderer. And worse than that, he’d done real harm to this whole town. And that was something that he couldn’t allow to stand. He couldn’t change the past, but he could try to put it right.
A new instinct took hold of him. He turned off Colver Street onto a narrower byway. And, before he’d gotten halfway down it, Ritchie caught sight of a wavering glimpse of purple, off beyond another house.
He took a right, and there it was. Another of those openings to a different universe. It was smaller than the others that he’d seen. And there were no beings emerging from it. But that gave him precisely the chance he needed to redeem himself.
It was shrinking. Ritchie took that in unhappily. It was dwindling before his eyes, reducing from a six-foot gap to considerably less than that. Another few seconds, and the opportunity would be gone. So Ritchie floored the gas.
He powered the Camaro over. Slid to an uneven halt. Then flung his door wide open, the engine still running.
The hole had reduced to only three feet wide. He ran at it, his breath rasping in his throat.
And then, while it was still diminishing, he flung himself inside.
He hit ground on the far side, rolled, then came up on his feet. And froze stock still, thunderstruck.
His eyes blinked repeatedly, trying to adjust themselves to their new surroundings. He was used to seeing a variety of different hues. But there was nothing like that here.
Shades of purple, everywhere he looked. And that wasn’t the only thing. He’d been expecting another planet. A flat stretch of earth beneath his feet, and a horizon to look at. Instead of which, he’d found himself inside a network of tunnels, rather like a mining complex. Was he underground?
When he pushed a heel into the floor, it felt slightly spongy, almost like organic matter. He became slightly light-headed, taking in his new surroundings. And there was the most curious smell in here, like fresh raw meat. So this was probably not any kind of mine.
The plainclothes cop stood there for a short while more, then pulled himself together. He wasn’t here on any kind of sightseeing trip. He’d come here on a mission.
So he got a grip on himself and pressed forward, heading down the widest tunnel he could find. His gaze went everywhere, but he was unable to detect the slightest sign of motion.
No square-headed, thin-limbed men came lurching at him. Nor anything else. He stopped walking several times and listened, but could not make out a sound.
So, after a while, he started to call out. If he could not find the purple beings, maybe he could bring them to him.
“Hey!” he yelled out. “Here I am! The human who killed one of yours!”
He got no response, turned right and went a different way.
“It’s down to me and no one else! And you can do whatever you want to me! But please, don’t take it out on the rest of the town!”
What was wrong with these things? If a wanted criminal had walked through Union Square and given himself up the way that he was doing …
But the tunnels’ openings stared back at h
im, with nothing showing up in them. What in God’s name did these creatures want?
He threw his arms out to the sides.
“Look, I’m guilty! I’m your guy! Just leave the others alone, okay? They had nothing to do with it!”
He was starting to become convinced that he was wasting his breath. But then the floor beneath him moved. It rippled, and Ritchie stared down.
A thin, mauve-tinged membrane started lifting from it, like the surface of a bubble.
It swelled around him so very quickly – passing over his whole body and his outstretched arms – that he could do nothing about it. It reached his neck, and then his face. Ritchie shuddered as it went up past his nose and eyes, except there was no loss of breath. And the stuff wasn’t hurting him in any way.
It rose over the top of his head, closing up seamlessly. And then stopped growing.
Ritchie peered at it uncomfortably, wondering what it was for. He took a slow lungful of air, then pushed an index finger out.
The surface of the bubble shifted round it, expanding a few inches. But it did not show any sign of breaking. And when he shoved his whole palm up against it, Ritchie got the same result. The bubble’s skin was as thin as a whisper. But apparently unbreakable. So he was trapped inside it.
Okay, this was starting to look like a result. Not really the kind that he had been expecting. But what was going to happen from this point on? Were the purple creatures going to keep him standing here until the end of time?
It turned out that was not their plan. Because the walls nearby began to tremble. And a whole group of them emerged.
He counted ten of them, pretty much identical except for variations in their arms. There were no expressions on their lumpy, squarish faces, but he thought that he could make out curiosity in their perfectly round eyes. Had they understood what he’d been telling them? He hoped so, because his sacrifice was pointless if he couldn’t save the Landing.
He was getting pretty nervous, but fought against that, holding himself still. The creatures kept on staring in at him from different angles. Then a couple of them stepped back, holding their hands flat, their palms turned down.
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