Then it came squirming across the pavement at us, with the velocity and power of a locomotive. It lunged at the nearest car. Its head slammed at it like a battering ram, lifting the vehicle clear of the ground. At which point, the windows shattered. Safety glass came raining down on us.
The car landed so close to Cassie she was forced to jump away from it. But this time, the beast did not retreat again. It went behind one of the other cars and stopped there, furling up. It had put itself within easy striking range of every person trying to stop it. So there was no choice. We began falling back.
It seemed to like that, growing bolder. Two of the patrol cars groaned, then shifted on their axles as it nosed its way between them. As its head emerged, I could see that my original impression had been right. It had mutated, the top of it splitting. It had become less like a snake, and more like something shapeless from a nightmare.
No one turned and ran. They rarely do, and I’m proud to say that. But we kept stepping off, the whole while we were firing. Cassie’s shotgun pounded like a jackhammer. The carbine jerked and sputtered as I fired off triple bursts. The creature up ahead of us came apart again for a few seconds. But then it funneled back into its original shape.
A crawling instinct made me glance across, and I saw something that concerned me badly. Lauren Brennan, looking pretty dazed, was moving back too slowly, getting separated from the rest. When that bisected head came lashing out again, it was in her direction. And she wasn’t halfway used to stuff like this, the way that me and Cassie were. And so she did entirely the wrong thing, and froze. I saw her mouth drop open.
I started reaching out for her, painfully aware she was too far away. That was when a speeding blur rammed into her, knocking her to the ground. A band of pure darkness went sweeping through the empty space where she had been, and then retracted.
It was Cassie who had jumped in. They both hit the pavement together. But Cass didn’t even pause. She rolled, and was back on her feet in the same fluid motion. Then she grabbed Lauren by her suit collar and hauled her away to safety.
Her expression—when she did that—was grim, rather embittered. Like she’d only done it because she ought to, not because she wanted to. If I’d been thinking clearer, I’d have gotten worried about that.
But too much was still happening. The creature was continuously advancing, careless of our firepower. The gun I’d been handed gave one final rattle, then went silent in my grasp. I tossed it aside and drew my Smith & Wesson instead, for all the good that that would do.
Something else was going on around me in the darkness. It took me a couple more seconds to see what it was. Some of the people firing at the thing were no longer in uniform. The ordinary civilians had at last come forward. The fact that we were in real trouble had doubtless inspired them. They’d understood they could not merely stand back any longer. Even the guy with the hammer was in among us, swiping at the massive head each time it gave a thrust.
And I was grateful they’d joined in—don’t get me wrong. But it was making very little real difference. If we couldn’t stop it, how much damage could this creature do? If it just kept pushing on like this, unchecked…?
It was progressing ever northward. If it carved its way through Garnerstown, and then straight up between Tyburn and Greenwood, that route would take it into the center of the town.
There was no way that I could see to win this. Any moment now, we were going to be forced to turn tail and withdraw. I glanced across at Saul, and saw he understood that too. And he hated the idea of giving up completely, just as much as I did.
A new sound came to my ears. So soft that—above this uproar—it shouldn’t properly have been audible. But magic sometimes works like that.
A gentle thrumming. It was coming from the west.
Against the stars, there was a dark smudge moving, high up in the air. Not any pall of vapor, this time. Far more like a thumbprint on the canvas of the sky. A thin bolt of lightning accompanied it, although there was no thunder. And it was moving even faster than the snake had.
It dropped in our direction, hurtling swiftly down. Reached the ground several yards to my right.
And then resolved itself into a human form.
It was Judge Levin.
By the tightness on his face, he knew exactly what had been going on. His chin was raised, and he was holding himself very stiffly. His eyes glittered with a small, cold inner flame his glasses only magnified. He had his robes on…he always wore them when performing magic. There was still a breeze, and the hems fluttered, giving him an almost medieval look.
His arms were by his sides, his fingers twitching. He was getting ready to do something big. I knew him well enough to see that.
The monster was reflected in his spectacles. He stared at it with open disgust.
“I don’t think that this is Millicent!” he told me, his voice raising itself above the din. “Or Hanlon!”
“What is it, then?”
“How the hell would I know?” he snapped back at me.
Then he started shouting to the rest.
“All of you! I need you to give that thing another solid blasting!”
Once again, it was the case that they shouldn’t have been able to hear him with this racket going on. But something about his tone of voice embedded itself on the air around us, so that every nearby face swung toward him. He was using his powers, I understood. We could have heard his words inside our skulls even if our ears had been plugged up.
“Make the damned thing fly apart again!” he called out. “All I need is one brief second!”
I took aim. So did everyone around me. From the corner of my eye, I could see Cassie clamp her weapon to her shoulder, her whole face scrunched up. Then Saul barked out the order. And everyone let fly at once. The guy with the sledgehammer even threw it, in an almost mythic gesture.
When the beast dissolved a third time, Levin murmured something quickly. A brightness appeared between his outstretched palms. Merely the tiniest flicker, at first. But it spread out within an instant. Was composed of light so brilliant I had to look away.
The judge didn’t even pause. Peering at the cloud of vapor, he curled back his upper lip.
“Reveal yourself!” he bellowed.
And he flung the searing ball of light. It kept expanding as it went. Washed through the gray cloud ahead of us before it had a chance to return to its original shape. That broke it apart again.
This time, it burst out wider, rolling away from us like a great cloud of dust. It spread much thinner than before. I could see right through it. And it did not start changing back into that reptile shape. Instead, a huge human face became apparent at the center.
It was merely in outline, monochromatic. The eyes were still pale gray. But the features…they were pretty damned alarming. It looked like a madman’s face.
The mouth was stretched inhumanly wide, like it was perpetually screaming. The teeth were broken and uneven. And there were folds in the skin in places where there ought not be.
The features were framed by wild, unruly hair and a thin, straggling beard. Impossible to tell what color they had been. No sound emerged from the open mouth. The dead gray eyes stared down at us.
And then, the face collapsed as well. And the vapor was there again. It didn’t stick around, this time. It lifted, and started hurtling away from us, soaring high up and shooting off westward, the same direction that the judge had come from. Was it possibly going to Sycamore Hill? Levin and I exchanged worried glances.
At least the immediate threat was over. I doubled over, pretty shaken, sucking air into my lungs. Every guy around me was the same. Only Cass looked like she’d been enjoying this.
“The Light of Truth,” the judge announced, explaining what he’d done to the people near him. “Always an excellent weapon. You would do well to remember that.”
I could scarcely remember my own name. I went across to Lauren, who was slumped against a lamppost. She was barely on h
er feet by this stage and it would have been kinder to let her rest a while. But I had to know what we were up against, and wasn’t prepared to wait.
I asked her sharply, “Was it Hanlon?”
After all, I’d never even seen the man. She took a moment trying to collect her thoughts. Then she shook her head.
That was when a deep voice, coming up behind me, called out, “I know who that was.”
I turned and saw the guy who’d thrown the hammer stepping up, a grim expression on his stubbled face.
“That was Langham Tavitt. The guy’s lived round here his whole life. And I always knew that creep would bring down trouble on us, one of these fine days.”
CHAPTER 25
He introduced himself as Nick McLeish, holding out a faintly grimy hand. I was a little puzzled under the circumstances. This didn’t seem to be the occasion for hospitable politeness. But I shook it all the same.
He was—as I had already taken note—a burly fellow around five foot ten, who’d run slightly to fat down his forty or so years. He had darkly curly hair cut short, and was dressed in his undervest, a pair of stained chinos, and carpet slippers. So obviously, he’d had to leave his place in a big rush. His deep brown eyes were wide, his face a little ashen. But otherwise, you’d have thought that oversized mutating reptiles turned up on this block most weeks of the year.
And he turned out, over the next few minutes, to be a pretty verbal kind of guy as well. He was in construction, he explained. That was what the hammer was about. His home, he explained, was one of those that had been wrecked. He and his family had barely gotten out in time.
“Sorry to hear that,” I told him, looking at the scattered ruins.
But the only thing he did was shrug.
“Only sticks and stones,” he told me. “Main thing is that we’re okay. You can always replace a house.”
I was quickly coming to understand that Nick here was the kind of solid citizen who took everything that life threw at him in his stride. What remained of the street lighting cast his face into stark relief, and there was nothing cowed about it. You find a lot of folk like that in the Landing. This place breeds survivors.
He had retrieved his sledgehammer, but set it down against the curb. Then he led me over to another house that had been turned into matchwood.
“This is where he lived, just three doors down from mine. Inherited the place from his ma, who was a good old soul. Hell, he could never have afforded it.”
We stopped at the edge, and he kicked some broken planks away.
“Street sweeper, that’s what he was. Only job he could hold down. He was…what’s the word I’m looking for?”
“A loner?” I suggested, beginning to get the picture. On closer inspection, the place looked like it had been a wreck even before it had been dismembered.
“Not just that. Tavitt was plain anti-social. ‘Misfit,’ that’s what I was trying to say. Hated other people, all the ones on this street for sure. Shouted curses at us from behind his fence. We’ve had vandalism on this block for years, and we know it’s down to him.”
“Sounds like a charmer,” I came back at him. “Ever think of calling the police?”
“We tried. He wouldn’t talk to them. And we couldn’t prove nothing, so…”
His big round shoulders shrugged again.
I was starting to notice more about the mess this place had been turned into. There were chunks of furniture strewn around, the torn upholstery on them stained and greasy. And Tavitt seemed to have collected quite a load of empty wine bottles. Cheap brands, without exception. Dozens of the things. From my years on the force, I knew precisely this guy’s type.
Then my eyes alighted on the garish, battered cover of a book. There was another underneath it. In fact, dozens scattered around.
All paperbacks, with the same type of illustration on the front. Horses cantered across red-brown deserts. There were tall cacti, and men in big white hats.
“He was into Westerns?” I asked.
The man’s gaze went where I was looking. And then his expression crumpled up.
“Never knew about it until now. But heck, it certainly looks that way.”
He bent down and picked one up. It had been purchased secondhand. The cover was worn like old tissue paper, and there was a handwritten sticker on it. He glanced at the blurb, then turned it over.
Again, there was a mounted cowboy. But the guy’s horse was rearing back on its hind legs. Away from a rattlesnake.
In which case…Tavitt’s reading habits and what we’d experienced, what he had been changed into, were somehow linked. Except there was no telling in what way. My mind reeled perturbedly.
“How exactly did this whole thing start?” I asked Nick. “Did you see him turn into that monster?”
His head shook with frustration. “First thing I knew about it, there was this almighty crash. I looked out my window, and that goddamn snake was breaking out through the front wall here. The entire house collapsed around it, but that didn’t even slow it down. After that? We didn’t have time to really notice much. We were too busy running.”
More people were drifting in around us, the inhabitants of the nearby streets coming across to see what had happened. There were gasps and murmurs of surprise. And a family had appeared, a good deal further down. A slim woman, her hair copper in the artificial light, with three small kids clinging tightly to her skirt. They were staring nervously in our direction. McLeish spotted them and raised a hand.
“And that about sums up what I can tell you. If you don’t mind, I have to be going.”
He headed off toward his wife and children. When he drew up closer to them, the three kids ran up and hugged his legs.
I was pleased they’d got through this in one piece. But I have to admit something in me—something pretty massive—envied Nick McLeish.
I headed back in the direction of the rest. The cops were inspecting their damaged vehicles. Several of them were totaled, and there were bullet holes in most of them where shots had gone astray. There was glass everywhere, crunching underneath our shoes. And a lot of tires had burst. The whole place smelled of rubber.
Cass was reloading her Mossberg. She did it with mechanical zeal, clicking in one slug after another. Lauren was now sitting on the curb, her blond head down.
A couple of ambulances had arrived, the paramedics spilling out and hurrying to the bodies on the verge. Which seemed rather a waste of effort. None of them were moving.
Saul was on his cell phone, saying, “Yes, Reverend. There’s about four families who’ll need shelter for a while.”
So I suppose he was talking to his friend Dr. Purlock, at the House of the Good Word on Savory Street.
Judge Levin was still around, though standing at a distance from the others, taking in the whole scene sternly. He had his robes pushed back, his hands thrust in his pockets, which was never usually his style.
“What is this, Devries?” he asked me.
I explained what I’d found in the ruins of Tavitt’s house.
“And how does that make any sense?”
It was not like he was asking me. More like he was wondering out loud. I wasn’t sure, but pointed out the plume of vapor may well have been headed toward Millwood House. He chewed his lower lip musingly.
“I suppose, under the circumstances—if Saul reapplied—he might just get his warrant.”
I didn’t think it wise to tell him I’d already been inside the place.
“And what are you planning to do?” he asked me.
I was just about to respond when one of the uniformed men started yelling out for Saul. Who ran across to his own car and talked quickly on the radio. When he looked back around at us, I could see how astonished he was.
“There’s another one appeared!” he shouted. “It’s over in Greenwood!”
Except it wasn’t any kind of snake, this time. I’d drawn up beside Saul’s car, and was peering at it through my windshield. And from the gli
mpses I was getting, I had real trouble understanding what it was at all. A lot of streetlights had been broken, like the last time. And the thing was keeping to the deepest shadows, the same way its predecessor had. I was reminded of the main fact about magic. It and its practitioners preferred to cling to gloomy places, avoiding direct bright light.
The ironic thing was, Greenwood was the dullest district in the entire Landing. Nothing dramatic or outstanding ever seemed to happen here. We were on Oak Tree Avenue, and there weren’t even any oak trees in sight. Single-story houses stretched around me for as far as I could see. The place was as flat as a pancake, and considerably less interesting.
But in front of us, there were more wrecked homes, about a dozen of them this time. More corpses were strewn along the sidewalk, one of them a local cop. And at the heart of this destruction?
I climbed out, my gun already in my hand, and got a short-lived look at the creature as it slid along from one street to the next. Except that mostly, it defied description. It appeared to be composed wholly of tentacles, no main body visible. The elongated limbs, hundreds of the things, were mostly narrow. Some of them seemed to have curving talons at the end. And each of them was moving independently, coiling up then straightening. Watching them could make a soul feel giddy, but there wasn’t even time for that. I got one last impression of the beast. And then it vanished into the darkness, making a strange whirring, lashing noise.
There was a wail from that direction. And no trick this time. As I watched, a man was lifted high into the air, a strange silhouette above the rooftops. I wondered if I could shoot him down. The tentacle grasping him was thin enough.
But I quickly forgot that idea. He was already gone.
A load more cops had shown up here. Presumably, the dispatchers had been calling the whole dayshift back. And the fire department boys had decided to join in as well—the cops were issuing them with riot guns. A whole crowd of them went forward. Weapons’ fire started to wash across the street again.
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