Saul had finished all his explanations. Dr. Purlock seemed to take them quickly in.
“People?” he yelled, raising both his arms above his head. Their attention swung away from me. I could see the man was well-respected.
“People, I’m afraid we have a situation! If you’d care to, very calmly, make your way toward the exit? No need at all for panic – we can do this in an orderly fashion, can’t we?”
His congregants just stood there and blinked at him. It wasn’t that they were refusing to move. It was that no one seemed to understand what he was asking of them, what this was about.
At which, the reverend simply reached across. Took the riot gun from Saul’s grasp and pumped a slug into its chamber with a loud, decisive clack.
“Folks?” he asked them mildly. “Would you like me to repeat myself?”
I immediately saw why he and Saul were on good terms. Boy, this was no ordinary minister.
In less than a minute, we were all outside. People were milling around numbly on the sidewalk, still wondering what was going on. But at least they were not missing body parts or bleeding. It was rather different from the scenes we’d left behind.
The murmur of voices around me sounded like the clatter of soft wings, a gentle sound. A few small children in the crowd appeared to think this was some kind of game, and they were beaming. Let them believe that, if it made them happy. All I felt was sheer relief.
Then I took in the fact that Saul was still consulting with the reverend. And the little man was nodding swiftly.
Purlock’s arms went up again.
“My brethren? I need a few seconds more of your attention!”
He looked round at them anxiously.
“Some of you have medical experience, don’t you? Even first-aid training, anything of that sort?”
At least a dozen people nodded and spoke up.
“Okay, then. You need to come with me to St. Agnes’s on Devon, right away. There are brothers and sisters there who are badly in need of our assistance.”
He began organizing them.
Hobart came across to me, looking bluntly satisfied. We both gazed at the building, which had all its lights still on.
“So we beat him to it,” Saul growled.
But surely he could move a good deal faster than us. In which case?
I took my cell phone out and speed-dialed Cassie’s number. There was no reply.
EIGHTEEN
A similar looking crowd was swarming around outside St. Cleary’s when we arrived. They were not exactly the same. These people seemed precisely as well off, but even more buttoned-down and formal. A lot of black in evidence, and even veils on some of the women’s pill-box hats. There were long dark gloves in evidence, black ties and black fur stoles. These folks looked shadowy, exactly like a witches’ coven. And everywhere that my gaze went, crystals flashed and talismans glittered.
This bunch seemed less happy, too, than the crowd outside the House of the Good Word. They were talking rapidly among themselves, obviously agitated about something. Cassie can have that effect. Puzzled gazes battened on us as we climbed out. And this time, Saul did show his badge.
I stared past them at the church itself. It looked Eighteenth Century and was built of roughly hewn gray stone, as solid as a fortress. All the windows were intact, but the lights were off inside. Cassie’s Harley was beside the porch. Of its owner, there was not a sign.
“Anybody seen a woman, about so tall?” I held out a palm. “Cropped hair, tattoos, probably heavily armed?”
About a dozen voices all chimed up at once, most of them affronted.
“Is she your friend?”
“She tossed us out of our own church!”
“She shot a hole in the ceiling.”
“She was very rude!”
None of which I doubted. But where was she?
“She’s still inside,” somebody else explained.
And … what was she doing in there? I was still wondering why, when a triple burst of shots rang out from the interior of the building. The stained glass windows were illuminated briefly by the flash of Cassie’s Heckler & Koch.
Hobart and I were at the entrance, shoulder to shoulder, a bare couple of seconds after that. I don’t know about him, but my heart was trying to beat the minute mile. The darkness was broken by another triple-flash, and a burst of fire that made our eardrums ring.
Silhouettes leapt into being. Narrow, fluted pillars. A crisscross of rafters over us. A huge crucifix at the rear. An ornate stone pulpit with a huge angel, its wings outspread, engraved across the front of it. Then, they were lost into the blackness once again.
Saul had had the presence of mind to bring a flashlight with him this time, and he flicked it on. Its wide beam swept along a rear wall lined with plaques and wreaths, until it started picking movement out.
Cass was standing just down from the altar. And standing squarely, her boots planted shoulder-width apart. She couldn’t use both of her guns at the same time. So the Mossberg was lying at her feet, where she could snatch it up. And she was shooting with her carbine, firing from the hip.
Why was she still here at all? If the same happened as at the other churches, she was risking being torn to shreds.
But it appeared that Saruak had grown tired of that game. And gone back to one that we were already familiar with.
As I watched, she swung round to the left and pumped another burst at a mere shadow, something I could barely see. The flashlight dipped toward it, just in time to catch the Dralleg stumbling back, then sinking away completely into the dimness.
But I thought I could make out another large shape in the gloom. And this time, it was moving up behind her.
Hobart swung the light again. And yes, it was the same damned creature, coming straight toward her back, its arms already raised and its claws gleaming. How had it gotten around there so fast?
I didn’t have time to figure it out. Just leveled my own gun at it, firing a charge of pellets.
They didn’t have the same effect as Cass’s heavy slugs. The Dralleg simply shuddered, coming briefly to a halt. But it was enough to warn her. She pivoted on the spot, then handed out the same treatment she’d given it the last time.
It wailed and abruptly vanished. With no wavering on the air, on this occasion. God, with no delay at all! That startled me as much as anything I’d seen so far. Had Saruak’s power risen even further?
Cassie glanced across at us. And my chest went very tight, at that point. She looked as startled as I’d ever seen her, genuinely afraid. Her face was pasty, sweaty in the flashlight beam. I could see it in her eyes – she had miscalculated badly.
“Get out of there!” I yelled.
She’d got everyone else out, after all. Why’d she not taken her own advice?
I got my answer a few seconds later. Two things happened practically at once. The beam picked up yet another glimpse of the hulking Dralleg, closer to us this time, trying to circle round her through the gleaming wooden pews.
And then the circle of light … flashed across a second one. And then a third. That was why she wasn’t moving. That was why she hadn’t left. There wasn’t only the one of them. There were several. And they had her surrounded. My pulse skipped its next few beats.
Each creature was identical, so far as I could see. But what was going on?
A familiar dry, mocking voice came skirling down from the high rafters.
“Ever play Find the Lady, Ross?” it asked me. “Well you’d better, before Death finds yours.”
We both looked up, and Hobart shone the light there. But the ragged old man was not in view.
Cassie’s carbine thumped again.
I tried to figure out what Saruak was implying. He had used illusion at the last church, hadn’t he, made us believe that he was actually there? And could this duplication of his monster be the same?
Which meant that only one of these hunched, drooling creatures was the genuine Dralleg. I sa
w the game that he was playing with us. We had to decide which.
Almost as soon as I’d figured that out, though, things started to get more complicated.
Because more of the beasts began appearing, all throughout the church.
Hobart glanced across at me. He squinted.
“They’re not real either?”
He could be smarter than he looked sometimes.
“One of them is,” I told him.
“Damn.”
Cassie, however, still hadn’t got it. Or maybe it was simply that she didn’t have the luxury of waiting to find out. She was firing at anything that got close enough to harm her. Three, four, then five of the beasts came lunging at her, and she gunned them down in quick succession.
They weren’t even pretending to be injured anymore. They simply crumbled to fine dust when the bullets hit them, the same way the one at St. Agnes’s had done. That rotting stink filled the interior once more.
It felt like spiders were unfolding in my gut. New beasts were appearing all the time, replacing the ones who’d vanished. And in the darkness, among all this mayhem, the genuine Dralleg was lurking somewhere.
I could still remember, from my first encounter, its ferocity and massive strength. There were two sets of real claws out there, both as sharp as scalpels. Two enormous arms to swing them. Shimmering green eyes to guide the blow. Caliban, with murder on its mind. And if it managed to sneak up on her, while she was distracted …
Me and Hobart exchanged looks. We couldn’t just stand by this doorway any longer.
“Cass!” I called to her. “Stay where you are!”
“That’s what I’m doing!” she howled back furiously.
“We’re coming to get you!”
“Any time this week?”
Dozens of pairs of shining eyes all swung toward us momentarily. But we weren’t the one who they were after. Their focus went back to Cass.
The next time she tried to fire, her carbine gave a hollow click. She dropped it and snatched the Mossberg up in one fluid motion. Put a saboted slug into the beast that had gotten nearest to her. It – like the others – came apart into a sprinkling of fragments.
“Why the hell are they doing that?”
“They’re just illusions!” I yelled. “But the real one’s here as well!”
“Where?”
“I don’t know!”
And now she’d got it. She had crouched down slightly, gnawing at her lip. Her gaze was hunting through the dimness for any slight sign of the genuine monster.
Hobart swept the flashlight round and we began to edge inside. At least six of the creatures looked at us again, when we did that. Their eyes burned with warmthless light. A rumble sounded from their throats. Then several of them were swiveling around and loping rapidly toward us.
As to which of them was the real Dralleg … there was simply no way to tell. We opened fire on them, cutting them all down. Each of them dissolved to powder. A fine patina of the stuff was settling everywhere.
But more materialized into being. This was like fighting with a Hydra. Chop down one – two more appeared. I was getting more concerned with every second. How strong had our visitor become?
Time was going at a crawl now. And with every single slow moment that passed, the pattern was the same. Crouched gray shapes, one after another, would come surging through the dark at us. We’d hit each of them with a barrage of pellets. Only to find out it was a wasted effort.
Several of them got so close that I tensed up. It was pointless – the pain never came. But there were scores of them. And I still could find no way of telling which one was the creature we were looking for.
Cassie’s gun kept roaring too, the spent cartridges ringing as they struck the flagstones. And how many rounds did the Mossberg hold? Nine, I remembered. All of us were getting low on ammunition. Maybe that was part of the plan too.
Sweat was dripping down my face, and my breath was coming in ever shorter gasps. This wasn’t working. We weren’t getting any nearer to Cass with these things coming at us the whole time. Was there any way that we could sort out the reality from the deception?
And then something popped into my head. Something quite remarkable, in fact. Because the only things there, usually, were my own thoughts. And this definitely wasn’t one of those.
There was – suddenly, behind my eyeballs – a pale flash. Electric blue. And there was only one place I could think of where I saw that color.
The Little Girl’s home was not far from here. And … had she just communicated with me in some way?
She had opened a small doorway in my mind, it seemed. Caused me to go back. A recent memory.
That first tussle with the Dralleg. One of its hind paws pinning me down. The monster rearing up, ready to finish me. And then Cassie’s shotgun announcing its presence, and the thing stumbling back.
And when I had looked over at its injured gut …
I reached across, without a word. And snatched the flashlight from Saul’s grasp.
“What?”
He’d been playing it at head- and shoulder-height, until this point. But I shone it lower, seeking out the pale gray bellies all around us. Another of the things came leaping at me with a high-pitched growl. Its skin, though, was entirely unmarked.
Saul fired, and it turned into a billow of fine particles. Then he noticed that I hadn’t even tried to shoot the thing
“What are you doing?” he yelled again.
I kept sweeping the beam around. And an instinct taking hold of me, aimed it close to Cassie. There were four more of the creatures round her. Three to the front – her attention was fixed on them. But another one, slower and far stealthier, was creeping up on her directly to the rear.
The stomachs of the first three were as flawless as the rest had been.
But on the one behind, there was a massive, ugly bruise, a souvenir of its last encounter with the Mossberg.
I looked frantically at Saul.
“That one!”
Its claws had already lifted. Two more steps, and it would be all over her, taking her apart like kindling. Saul finally got what I was driving at, and we both charged toward it.
Several of the creatures that we went past swiped at us. I felt their claws pass through me like a blast of ice-cold air. But they were insubstantial, and did no harm. There was no injury.
“Cass!”
The riot gun exploded in my grasp, and Hobart’s did the same. And from this close a range, there was much more impact. The real Dralleg went lurching back a step.
Its jaws parted, fangs glinting. It howled massively. Cass span around, her face almost childish with fright for the briefest moment. She could see how close the thing had gotten.
And then she scowled, her eyebrows knitting. She went forward and fired at the beast herself.
It threw its ugly head back, let out a reverberating shriek, clutching at its torso once again. Hobart and I responded to that by emptying our last rounds into it.
It glowered at us, letting out a strangled noise. Then vanished.
When I looked around, the rest were gone as well.
My lungs wouldn’t slow down. I felt like I’d keep breathing this hard for the entire remainder of eternity. My hands were quivering. I could feel dampness running down my spine.
Cass and Hobart looked pretty much in the same condition. Perhaps we should have simply pulled ourselves together and gotten out of there, before Saruak tried out any more such stunts on us. But we didn’t have the strength to move, not right away.
My thoughts went, rather muddledly, to that flash of light inside my head. It was hard to figure. For the first time since we had discovered her, the Little Girl had done something to genuinely help. She’d personally intervened. But why exactly … was the danger we were facing so serious it had finally awoken her, stirring her into action?
A new sound made me forget all of that and straighten up again. It was a slow, dry hand-clap, echoing and loud. A
nd again, it was coming from above us. There was no way to be sure of which direction.
A couple of sirens were pulling up outside. Hobart must have called for back-up on the way here. But details of that kind were lost on me by this time. My eyes peered up and hunted through the gloom.
Saruak’s voice, all venomous, came spilling down at me.
“Bravo, Mr. Devries!”
“Show yourself!” I bellowed back.
But he obviously had no intention of doing that. He preferred to remain hidden when he could. I had read that too, about his breed.
“You’ve acquitted yourself better than I thought. You catch on quickly, sir.”
He paused a moment.
“But I’m only warming up, you see? The big event is still to come”
And what might that be? I spat out an oath, still trying to catch a glimpse of him. Except he simply wasn’t there, I understood before much longer. The only part of him here was his voice.
“What are you talking about?” I called out.
He didn’t reply at first. And I was starting to think that he’d gone away, when he spoke up again. But he ignored my question.
“By the way, Ross.”
I just stood there.
“One more thing about me that you have to understand. I am not magnanimous. Not the type to shrug and say ‘you’ve won this round.’ Don’t make that mistake about me.”
With so many people dead, I was hardly about to.
“I have to admit,” he went on, rather mildly, “that I can be spiteful when I’m bested. And – just to prove my point – take a good hard look. There appears to be something wrong with that curious female companion of yours.”
I peered round startledly at Cassie. She was still on her feet, and seemed perfectly okay. There was not a scratch on her that I could make out. So what was he on about?
There was a crackling sound above us. It was coming from one of the stained-glass windows. Was it going to implode, and cut us all to shreds? I tried to move away from it.
But it wasn’t the whole thing that came apart. Only one section broke free. It was about six inches long, a triangle, glinting at its narrow tip.
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