“She’s making us imagine it,” Cassie ventured. “If we just ignore this –“
But reason is one thing, instincts are another. One of the shapes came hurtling at my face. And I couldn’t help it – I raised my arms to protect myself.
Felt something like fish skin sliding underneath my palms. These things might be illusory, but they certainly felt real.
And then I got an even more startling demonstration of the young girl’s power. Another of these beasts moved in on Cassie. And – ignoring her own advice – she reacted the same way I’d done. Lifted her hands to fend it off. She couldn’t help it.
At which point, the damned thing bit her on the wrist.
The fact that it was in her mind made not the slightest difference. She let out an agonized yell, and then went springing back. There was no blood, no tearing, no puncture marks. But the pain of it was so savage that her face went gray.
“Jesus Christ!”
She slumped against a wall, clutching at her wrist, with the strength draining from her body.
Another creature brushed against my back. I only jumped away in time. And if these things could hurt us, could they kill us too? Cassie looked like she was trying to stop herself from blacking out. So I didn’t doubt that that was possible.
“Violet, cut this out!” I yelled. “We’re not trying to hurt you!”
“Lie all you like,” came her answer, from the depths of the mauve gloom. “I won’t have to hear it when you’re buried in the ground.”
Another huge blunt shape came rushing at my face. And I thought that I could make out massive jaws springing open this time. I should have held my ground and kept on telling myself they weren’t there – I know that. But you try it sometime.
My head was about to be crushed. There was no way to convince myself that wasn’t the case. And so I ducked and sidestepped, recognizing the plain truth of the matter. It was no longer even moderately safe to be here.
I grabbed hold of Cass, who looked like she was going into shock. And dragged her with me, back around the dogleg of the alleyway.
Once we’d turned the corner, normal sight came back. The air cleared, daylight filtering in. The darkness and the creatures had not followed us.
And so I lowered Cassie carefully till she was sitting on the ground. She put her hands across her mouth and drew in several deep breaths. I could see that she was still in a great deal of discomfort. When she let her arms drop, her gaze was watering. But she managed to get a grip on herself, and looked as though she was recovering.
“You okay?” I asked her quietly.
“Been better,” she grumbled back. “But that’s hardly the point. If we can’t even get near to that kid, how are we going to put an end to any of this?”
We could try approaching her from a different route. Climb a fire escape, or go across a roof. But I didn’t see how that would really help, and told Cass so.
“It’s still the case that she can read our minds. So any way we go at this, she’ll see us coming.”
“Okay,” Cassie muttered. “What do we do then?”
Not go back into that purple murk again, that much was for certain. But, apart from that thought, I was stymied.
I decided I should at least risk another glance back in. Went up to the dogleg, and then eased part of my face around it. Purple muddledness still reigned supreme in there, and huge, dim shapes continued burrowing through it.
And off at the far end, Violet’s eyes immediately locked on me, peering at me balefully until I ducked away again.
Her humanity was growing weaker by the second. Going out like a spent match. And with the Amethyst in her grasp, she could keep doing this for as long as she liked. A week might pass, and we’d still be unable to get anywhere near her.
We didn’t have an hour, much less a week. Our town most likely only had a few more minutes.
That is, if it wasn’t already gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Lauren was back in the room full of statuary. Raine had conjured her inside again. Because the events unfolding through the town had begun to startle even him. And it took a lot to startle someone who had such a tenuous grip on reality.
Dozens of new creatures had been arriving in the past few minutes. Not just grinders either. There were other things that practically defied description. Shapeless beasts, that started oozing down the snow-clad, purple streets, folding around and then devouring anything they touched.
And whole sections of the Landing were breaking up. Glowing a brilliant mauve for a few seconds, and then fading from sight. The tangled trees in front of her were hiding it from view. But Lauren knew it was still going on, and pressed her hands against the glass.
“I should be out there,” she murmured uncomfortably.
“Doing what?” Raine asked.
She dropped her head and curled her fingers, knowing he was right. But she despised being so helpless. Why’d she come here in the first place, if she couldn’t make a real difference when push came to shove?
Then she noticed an unexpected movement, and it made her lift her face again. There were familiar shapes coming toward the manor, plowing their way effortlessly through the trees. A large pack of grinders had found its way into the extensive grounds. So even this place was under attack.
Woodard Raine became so frozen with shock, when he saw that, he could have been one of his own gray statues.
“Can’t you stop them?” Lauren asked.
He blinked, recovering a little.
“I could, normally. But with magic. It’s the only thing I know. And that isn’t an option any more.”
Lauren forced her mind around the problem, and came to a swift conclusion.
“Then you’re going to have to act like normal people, Mr. Raine.”
He tipped his head and stared at her, not sure what she was talking about. And she was about to explain, when there was a blurring on the air around her.
Judge Levin materialized, followed by Gaspar Vernon, Kurt van Friesling, and a bunch of other adepts who she wasn’t too familiar with. But Lehman Willets and Martha Howard-Brett had shown up as well.
She gawped back at Woody.
“Don’t look at me,” the small man shrugged. “I didn’t summon them this time.”
“We need to make a final stand,” Levin announced, stepping over briskly, “and this looks like the best place to do it.”
Then he tilted his face at Lauren.
“Make like normal people, you said? What exactly did you have in mind?”
They couldn’t use their magic on the creatures or the purple holes. The Amethyst prevented that. But they could use it on themselves, and conjure objects into being.
Levin snapped his fingers, and a pump-action Winchester appeared between his hands. Kurt van Friesling magicked himself up a powerful hunting rifle with a scope. The McGinley sisters went for Tommy guns – how old precisely were those two? Martha for another shotgun, a Purdey this time. And Willets made a Mac 10 appear in his grasp.
“I believe this is called ‘getting strapped,’” he announced to the rest.
Woody paused for a short while, considering his options. And then an enormous modern Gatling gun popped into existence in his arms, a lengthy belt of ammunition hanging from it.
“That needs to be mounted on something,” Lauren pointed out. “You open fire holding that and it’ll spin you around like a top.”
“I like being spun around,” the man came back at her defensively.
Of all the strange stuff in this town, there were few things odder than the way that this guy talked. But okay then, suit yourself, Woody.
Lauren looked around. Even Hampton had armed himself, admittedly with a blunderbuss that he’d fetched from a nearby wall. And Judge Levin had conjured up a Heckler & Koch carbine as well, which he handed over to her.
Lauren led the way to the front door, opening it up onto loud whirring, crunching noises and the sun’s weird, purple light.
>
“Okay, everyone!” she called back to the others. “Let’s get going! And make every shot count!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“There has to be a way to fix this,” Cassie grunted, putting the pain behind her and standing the whole way back up. “Always has been in the past. So why aren’t we getting there?”
But the fact was, the solution in the past had usually involved finishing off some evil being, or smashing up some magic object. And this didn’t fall into that kind of category. Even if we could have gotten to Violet, neither of us had it in us to hurt her. She was a little child, for chrissake. I felt sorry for her, when it came down to the rub.
Those words she’d spoken kept on running through my head. All my life, no one has ever given two cents for me.
I hadn’t only been the father of a loving family. I’d come from one myself. Had grown up around relatives and neighbors who’d watched out for me throughout most of my childhood. And so I had no real idea what being on your own that way was like.
But Cass was not the same. She had a markedly different history to mine. Maybe she could get her head around the way that Violet’s mind worked, better than I could.
By the thoughtful expression on her face, she was turning matters over. And after a short time doing that, she began to brighten slightly.
“We’re going at this the wrong way,” she told me.
I waited, intrigued.
“We’re concentrating on the Amethyst, but that’s missing the point. She reads minds, Ross. And she’s been doing it the whole time we’ve been here. She can see inside our thoughts, and so cannot be lied to. So we hit her with the truth.”
I still wasn’t quite sure what she was on about. But a gentle smile had crept onto her face now. And her gaze was warmer than it had been.
She turned smartly on her heels. And before I could stop her, she’d walked back inside the dark part of the alley.
I wanted to haul her back, but stopped myself from doing that. Whatever she was up to, I had no right to distract her. Cassie might be tough and brave, but she’s not crazy. It was time to trust her, so I did that thing.
A dozen of those huge, writhing shapes moved up around her the instant that she put herself in view. I’d already seen the damage they could do. And – psychological or not – if they attacked again, the shock could stop her heart. I stood there rigidly, feeling like a block of ice, but letting Cassie do her stuff.
She spread her arms out to her sides, leaving herself wholly vulnerable. And I definitely wasn’t pleased by that. But Cassie has been in dangerous places many times, and doesn’t get intimidated by them. She was trying to show the girl her hands were empty and she meant no harm.
Tiny, purple eyes stared at her from the far end of the passageway.
“Violet?” Cassie shouted out. “You seriously think I’m trying to trick you?”
A couple of those great wide jaws moved right up to her face, bare inches of darkness keeping them apart. But my companion didn’t flinch. I drew in a slow breath.
“I’m not lying to you. I can’t. Look into my mind!”
Violet’s mauve gaze drifted up, then battened on her face.
“See my memories?” Cass was asking. “Everything that’s been happening the last couple of days? I’m not making it up.”
The grinders, houses disappearing, and the rest of it. Violet was now looking at that entire cycle of terror. And I thought I caught a glimpse of her small fingers, shifting round the Amethyst. But were they loosening, or was her grip getting firmer?
“What’s it gotta do with me?” the small girl shouted back. “I don’t know those people. Why should I care?”
Which was when I started to lose hope again. Violet wasn’t even being genuinely heartless. She was just a child who’d had the toughest breaks imaginable. She’d had to rely mostly on herself, and she did not know any better.
But my dark-haired friend was not giving up so easily.
“I’ve got other memories,” Cassie put in. “Go on, take a look at them.”
Violet appeared to do that. And the look in her eyes gradually transformed from anger into puzzlement.
“It can’t be true,” she objected.
What was Cassie showing her?
“It is,” my companion insisted.
“No way!”
One of the sets of jaws in front of Cass came fully open, stretching wide enough to swallow her head right down to the shoulders. But she wasn’t backing off.
“I can’t deceive you,” she repeated. “That just isn’t possible.”
Which seemed to strike a cord. The purple in the alleyway faded a touch. And the giant shapes moved back from her a little.
“I can change your life, if you’ll just let me. You won’t have to live like this any more. Isn’t that better than some stupid jewel? Isn’t it what you’ve always wanted?”
“Are you reading my mind too?” Violet asked, in an unhappy whisper.
She was still very suspicious. But it looked like Cass was slowly getting through to her.
“Take another look, not at my memories but what I’m planning. It’s for real, Violet, I promise you.”
The girl was silent for another while.
And then she asked Cass, “What if it don’t work?”
“It will. I’m sure of it. I know how to get to people, trust me.”
The mauve darkness bled away altogether. And the moving shapes faded from sight. None of which meant that Violet was entirely convinced. Her small body was still clenched up. And she’d tucked the jewel away again, so that its light was barely visible.
“The first instant I think you’re trying to trick me …”
“Yeah, I get it,” Cassie answered her. “The jaws come back. And this time, they bite.”
She was sounding very sure of herself. Far more calm than I would have been under the circumstances. She had spent time on the street herself, when she had been a teenager. So perhaps she felt a connection with Violet, far stronger than anything that I could manage.
The girl moved up to her, but terribly uneasily. Cassie let her keep the Amethyst, which puzzled me. We needed to get that jewel back, and as fast as was humanly possible. But that – apparently – was not part of her plan.
Violet’s irises turned back to a regular pale brown.
And then I was staring mystifiedly at the pair of them as they walked past me, heading straight out of the alley.
Whatever was going on now, this was Cassie’s gig. So I did not protest, or ask any questions.
I just quietly followed them out onto the main street, wondering where they were going.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
My head was reeling slightly, all the same. I knew I had to trust Cass, but I couldn’t see – not for the life of me – where this was going.
We were headed back to Union Square, walking at a steady pace. And I felt slightly awkward, a big tall cop following along behind a teenaged housemaid and a little ragamuffin. I started to twirl my billy club again – there were some of my great-grandpa’s memories still inside my head – and did my best to look nonchalant. But to anybody passing by, we must have made a curious sight.
Cass and Violet were discussing something as they walked. But it was quietly, and I couldn’t make it out.
Union Square opened up before us. The statue and the decorative lampposts and – in this day and age – the canvas-covered market stalls. People in top hats and bonnets milled between them. Wagons were unloading goods, stray dogs coming to investigate and yapping around people’s heels.
Chestnuts were being roasted on a brazier. And vendors were crying out. It looked like a scene right out of Dickens, and I felt pretty amazed to be here.
But it was utterly familiar to the little girl. And Cass, once she is set upon a course of action, lets nothing else distract her. So neither of them slowed down to take a better look, the way that a part of me wanted to. They went in a direct beeline across the wide gray
flagstones.
My breath practically froze in my chest, when I saw where they were headed. Clayborne Vernon came in sight, still standing next to his horse-drawn carriage, precisely the same way he’d been when the Eye of Hermaneus had depicted him. But it wasn’t any image, this time. I was looking at the man for real.
His two younger companions bowed, then turned and walked away, leaving the great man standing there. Townsfolk nodded to him as they went by, and some of them tipped their hats. So he was certainly a fellow who was treated with respect.
There were a few mean looking characters out on the edges of the crowd, but none of them came near him. That had to be down to his array of magical abilities.
He was hefty, like his grandson. Had the same bald head, the same drooping moustache, and I could see his cheeks were slightly red. But I could also see that what Gaspar had told us had been right.
He might be a solid fellow physically, but looked as if he had his head up in the clouds. He didn’t acknowledge any of the people who were greeting him. Quite possibly was not aware of them. He was staring off into the middle distance, lost in thought about something or other.
Cassie reached him, stopping a few feet off and telling Violet to hang slightly back. And I stayed back a few yards more. I had no idea what they were going to do, and thought it best to leave them to it.
Cass walked up behind the man and tapped him on the shoulder. And when he spun around, she spoke a few quick words to him.
He looked bewildered for a second. Then he quickly started grasping at his pockets, searching frantically for something. His gaze went across to Violet, who held out the Amethyst for him to look at.
“You dropped it, sir,” she said, in a far sweeter voice than she had used on us.
Clayborne beamed, his moustache scrunching up.
“My word, what a very helpful little lady.”
I held my expression firmly, wondering what the pair of them were really up to. Cass wasn’t above pulling some kind of scam if it got her what she wanted
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