The floor began to ripple again. And this time, a whole cluster of fresh mauve bubbles swelled up into view. They were smaller than the one that was holding him, and broke free of the general mass, rising a little more than a yard in the air before stopping.
There, they hovered. Most of them were perfectly round.
Ritchie was still wondering what they were for, when they began to shimmer. Next instant, they turned opaque. They remained blank for a few seconds. And then images began to fill them up.
He glanced from one to the next, his heartbeat thumping in his chest. These were images from his own life. His wedding day – standing in the church with Heidi. Being sworn in on the force.
Scenes from earlier years, when he’d been a rowdy and pugnacious teenager.
His gaze kept moving, till he came to one that stopped him short.
It was from only a few hours ago.
Him, chasing the purple figure across the park. Catching up and grabbing the thing and starting to shake and yell. And the creature falling.
And that was when Ritchie began to wonder.
Had these beings merely captured him?
Or was he already on trial?
Some fifteen minutes later – though the Oon did not mark time like that – one of their number, at the rear of the group, slipped quietly away from the rest. It had been familiar with the one who’d died. They had been close in their own way. And it already felt aggrieved by what had happened.
And the more it stared inside this multi-colored creature’s thoughts, the more that those emotions had transformed to horror.
It was hard to believe what was being revealed. On the surface, these things seemed pleasant enough. They had families and formed relationships. They worked for the good of their community, and tried to care for those who were weaker than themselves.
But that was merely an elaborate disguise, a mask. And when you ripped the mask away, when you got down to the nub of what these beings really were …
The scene kept playing over and over through its head. The human chasing an Oon through the whiteness. Catching it, and then mauling it savagely. And there had not only been the pictures. Some of the bubbles had revealed the ideas going through this human’s mind while it had done its deadly work.
You could barely even call them thoughts. They were more like an endless, savage scream. Or like a massive fire which devoured everything it touched, with no room left for sense or reason.
It was awful to look at. Terrifying. Vile. Strip these beings to their basic essence, and they were merely wild animals. They had been trying to be otherwise for thousands of their years. But they reverted to a feral state of being at the slightest provocation.
And that made them – to this Oon’s mind – the most dangerous creatures it had ever come across.
The fact that their worlds were now touching horrified it to its very core. And if they kept on coming in here …
That could not be allowed. They had to be stopped.
Masking its intentions from the rest, it stole away into the rounded central chamber where the device had been built. The thing was dormant at the moment, a flat, static pool.
The Oon stepped over to it and bent down. Cupped its hands and filled them with a little of the liquid, which it lifted to its mouth.
It blew a bubble, then returned the fluid to its source. And the bubble began to propagate, hundreds more immediately springing up.
The surface frothed, but not like last time. Every bubble sank away as soon as it was formed.
The machine to mend reality was working once again.
But this time, it was working in reverse.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Most of the group dispersed after another hour. There was simply no point hanging around Devries’s living room, waiting for the next dreadful event to occur. And what could they do about it anyway? Judge Levin had never felt so helpless.
Fleur was waiting for him when he arrived home. He kissed her, forced a smile, assuring her that everything would work out fine. But then he feigned weariness – not too difficult a trick under the circumstances. And headed for the study at the top of his tall wooden house.
One carpeted flight of stairs went by, and then another. And might this be the last time he ascended them? He paused for a few seconds, straightening the frame of one of the prints on the wall.
His mind, deeply troubled, was reflecting on the course of his whole life. Then further back, into the distant past.
His ancestors were not from here, originally. Levin was hardly an old-time Massachusetts name, now was it? In the Sixteen Hundreds, they had lived in New York City, which back then was called New Amsterdam. They’d been tinkers by trade. And in those days, tinkers rarely remained in one place the entire time. They moved around when necessity warranted it, going from area to area in search of work.
The Levins had decided to take a risk and venture into New England in the middle 1690’s. It was Puritan country in those days, and they were not sure how they’d be received. So they’d moved carefully from one hamlet to another, always stopping their horse-drawn wagon out on the very edge of town, and being polite and respectful in the way they did their business.
But the plain truth was, they had encountered very little trouble. The Puritans already traded with the local natives, and so why not them?
By the time that they arrived at a small township called Raine’s Landing, Levin’s many-times great grandmother was heavily pregnant. And his direct ancestor – Avram – was born that night.
But something else happened – around the same time – that not a single one of them could have possibly predicted. It was the same night when Regan Farrow spoke her curse.
“If I cannot leave, then none of you ever shall.”
Having been born a few feet inside the village boundary, Avram was trapped by it, the same way as everybody else who lived here. And when his parents found he could not leave, they made the decision to stay with him. The remainder of the family had no choice but to move on.
Thankfully, the townspeople had taken pity on a homeless couple with a newborn child. And – since his bloodline had always produced far more sons than daughters – there’d been Levins in Raine’s Landing ever since.
He did not practice. How could he possibly? There were no temples here, no Jewish girls to marry. Of that whole slice of his history, only the family name remained.
And besides, Sam mused ruefully, he was a regular practitioner of witchcraft. He could not imagine Levins in the outside world finding too much to approve of in that way of living life.
The judge sighed, and continued up the final flight.
Avram’s children had been lucky here, and he was the first to admit it. From those humble beginnings, they’d gone on to acquire prestige, respect, and even power. There were incidents like these for sure. Monsters coming at them, or crazy men with magic at their fingertips. But when he thought about what had befallen his kind in the world beyond this town …
He’d read about it, and seen it in TV documentaries.
The persecution and the cruelty and slaughter. It was dreadful, almost unimaginable, and it troubled him sometimes. What had happened to those other Levins, those who’d gone away from here? Late at night, he would occasionally dwell on it, and those were not his happiest moments.
He reached the top floor, went along the short corridor to his study. And his feelings of anxiety lifted away slightly. Levin always felt at his most comfortable in here. The rows of leather-bound books on the walls. His collection of scrimshaw in its glass-fronted armoires. The dormer window out front, through which he could see the entire upper side of town. He went across to look. And was it going to vanish? Was it all about to end?
The air behind him flashed violet without any warning. Only very briefly, but it made him jolt. His head swam momentarily. He closed his eyes and tried to steady himself. But when he opened them again and looked around …
The furniture
in his study was gone. And the walls were different. Before, they’d been papered. But now, they were plain, bare wood.
And the whole room was shaking, rattling. He could hear the squeal of metal wheels, and feel a sense of movement. Fright and confusion rushed through him. Between one instant and the next, it felt like he was riding on a train.
But there were no such things in town. They didn’t come here, never had. This was insane. Preposterous.
Levin marched over to the door. But it had changed too. It was larger, and had turned into the sliding type. And when he tried to pull it sideways, it only moved an inch before it met resistance.
When he shook it, there was a metallic sound. So it was padlocked from the outside.
He spotted a large knothole in the wooden wall nearby. Went up to it, and put his eye against it. And his agitation went up several notches.
Not only was he not on Sycamore Hill any more. He was no longer in Raine’s Landing. There was no surrounding forest. And the moving landscape he was looking at was chilled and gray and perfectly flat, tilled fields stretching away from him to the far horizon.
Where had he wound up? He couldn’t understand it. And then he looked down, and saw the way that he was dressed. His smart modern suit and handmade shoes were gone. He was clad mostly in coarse brown cloth, in a manner he had seen in photographs from way back in the 1930s.
Then he spotted something else, and fixed his gaze on it with disbelief.
Sewn to the breast pocket of his jacket was a symmetrical yellow six-pointed star.
It took that to make him finally figure where he was. And hadn’t he been thinking about precisely that subject, just a minute back? Now, it seemed his thoughts had turned into reality. And how far could this process go?
No, this was wrong! It shouldn’t be happening!
Levin went back to the door and started banging at it furiously, but with no result.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
As soon as they got back to her place, Cassie went inside. But Lauren hung around beside the bike a while, trying to take in her surroundings properly. She was still a little bleary from the lack of sleep, but a city-based detective was, well, pretty used to hardships of that kind. She’d gone seventy-two hours that way in the past.
Her gaze swept the length of Rowan Street. East Meadow wasn’t what you’d call a picturesque neighborhood. Too many oddly shaped abodes and tacked-on extensions for that. But underneath its layer of whiteness, it had taken on a gentler aspect. It looked placid. And there were neighborhoods in her hometown where no amount of snow could manage that.
She thought about the lecture Ross had given her. And maybe – from some points of view – this wasn’t such an awful place. Thousands of people seemed to live lives that were mostly normal here. They went to work and raised their families, like any other place.
Other communities got turned upside-down from time to time, didn’t they? There were wars, recessions. Nobody could depend on the course of life progressing at a steady pace forever.
But this town was an extreme example. She reminded herself forcefully of that. Raine’s Landing might have its pleasant side but, not having been raised here, she couldn’t get used to the weirder stuff. And most likely, she never would.
The cold started biting into her. And she was turning to the front door, when she thought she saw the briefest purple flash off beyond it. That was the worst thing that she could possibly imagine, and a sharp tremor ran through her. Then she went ahead a few more yards, trying to peer inside.
“Cassie? she bellowed. “Cass, are you okay in there?”
The door swung fully open, having been pushed from the inside.
Lauren’s jaw dropped, and she stumbled back.
At first, she thought it was a trick of the light. Because the figure she was staring at was caught in silhouette.
But then, there was a leathery rustle. And she caught sight of a pair of massive, bat-like wings protruding from the figure’s back.
It was Cassie she was staring at. But an entirely different version of Cass. One from the past. From the first time she’d been in this place.
When Lauren had been here last, they’d been fighting the Shadow Man. And he had managed to take Cassie over. He had turned her to her own dark side.
She had been physically transformed, becoming a voracious flying monster. But how was this happening a second time? Hanlon was dead. Lauren had killed him herself. And so she couldn’t understand it.
But there was no denying the evidence of her own eyes. Her friend had reverted to the creature that she’d been before.
This couldn’t be! It wasn’t possible!
Cassie’s body was completely black again, not merely caught in shadow. Her hands and her feet had changed to heavily taloned claws. The only difference from the last occasion was – whereas before her eyes had been pale gray – they were now shining violet.
Lauren tried to figure out what that might mean, but she couldn’t find it in herself to think straight.
Cassie took a long step out into the snow. Her clawed feet dug into it, and then contracted, leaving furrows. She folded her arms across her chest and studied Lauren coldly.
“Want to put the past behind you?”
Her voice came out like frozen gravel, with a quality so soulless it was almost dead.
“Thought that we’d be buddies from now on?” she asked.
Her chin tipped up and her lips parted. When she grinned, twin rows of jagged white fangs were revealed.
“Wishful thinking, sweetie pop. Don’t you know? The past always comes back to bite you.”
Lauren couldn’t pull her gaze from Cassie’s purple eyes. Her thoughts began to blur again, but then she started seeing the truth.
The time they’d spent together – it had been an utter lie. Cassie had been a monster all along, but she had hidden it. And now, the woman’s true form was at last being revealed. And she’d better do something about it, or she wasn’t long for this world.
Lauren drew her Walther. Tried to take aim. But the instant that she did that, her arm started shaking.
Tears were forming in the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t believe this. The hours they had spent together had been something really special. They might have been facing danger for a good part of the time, but they had done it side by side. There’d been a bond between them – they had been a team. Or so she’d thought.
And all of that had been for nothing, merely an illusion?
Cassie noticed her confusion and snorted derisively. She took another step in, spreading both her arms.
“Here I am, a sitting duck. Take your best shot, you blond bitch.”
Lauren’s trigger finger squeezed all by itself. The Walther pounded, but the round went wide.
Cassie laughed, glancing across her shoulder and then looking back.
“Oh, was that a trashcan that you hit? A trashcan isn’t going to split your skull and rip your brains out, girl. But I am.”
Lauren fought to steel herself. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Her nose was clogged up and her head was spinning. But then she thought about the way that she had been fooled and betrayed. She steadied her grip. Clenched her teeth and fired again.
But the next shot spanged away from Cassie without even touching her, just the same as the last time that she’d transformed this way. There was some kind of invisible shield protecting her.
“Would’ve hit my heart, if I had one,” Cassie sniggered. “I’d call that provocative behavior.”
Alarm bells started ringing in her head, and Lauren yelled out, “No!”
And then she was wheeling around and trying to run away. Because Cassie’s wings had now spread open, with a noise like a tarpaulin being ripped apart. They were huge, spanning a dozen feet apiece. The sound of their beating filled the air, next second.
And how fast was she capable of flying? Lauren didn’t know.
It occurred to her – at that point – w
hat had gone before had merely been a dream. She’d dreamt that she and Cass had made amends. Dreamt that they’d become good buddies. Dreamt that they had shared a house and worked together.
And it was nonsense. Because this was the reality.
The snow around her was some two feet deep, slowing her down badly as she fought to get away. And it hadn’t been that way before. When they’d first turned up, there had been five or six inches at the very most. So how could this be right?
She was forced to haul her boots out vertically to take a single step. And she only managed four of those before the thrum of wings closed in behind her. A fierce draft came skirling past her neck.
Pain went through her shoulder blades like red-hot lava.
“Having trouble?” came a harsh voice from above her. “Need a lift?”
Cassie’s claws sank in until they hit the bone. Her wings pounded harder, and Lauren was yanked out of the drift, leaving her boots behind.
She was howling with agony and crying. How could this be happening? She still had her gun, and tried to lift it. But her palms were very damp by this stage, and the Walther went slithering out of her grasp. She watched helplessly as it hit the snow and vanished.
“Better off without it!” Cassie crowed. “Guns don’t kill people – I do!”
She changed direction smartly. Lauren felt her entire body being swung around. And then she was let go of, and plummeted down.
She hit the icy center of Rowan Street, and skidded several yards on her back. And then those jet-black wings were blurring down across her.
Lauren managed to raise both her feet, and tried to use them to fend Cassie off. Moaned with pain as her legs were knocked brutally to one side. Then Cass landed on top of her. Was all over her like stink on cheese, her claws coming at her and those sharp fangs snapping inches from her face.
Lauren had her eyes shut and was struggling insanely, yelling, “Cassie, please! This isn’t you! You’re a good person, and we’re friends, we’re friends, we’re friends!”
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