The candlelight was leaving shadowed hollows in his face, so it looked partway like a skull. A few crystal beads on the chandelier tinkled softly above us, in spite of the fact the door was closed.
“I need to get an idea what’s been going on behind the scenes,” I told him. “What Millicent and Hanlon have really been up to.”
He blinked at me again, but didn’t move.
“That would mean looking back into the past. Which I can’t do, old chum.”
His mind was like a junk heap. So much garbage kept getting poured across it, he could no longer sort out what was valuable from what was not. His memory was shot to pieces. So I reminded him—gently—he could do precisely that.
He squinted at me, still not getting it.
“The Eye of Hermaneus, Woody. You know where you’ve put it, right?”
“Oh!” He suddenly brightened. “One of my most precious artifacts. Ah, yes! I think I know where it is!”
He held out his right arm, the hand closed to a fist. And when he opened it, the large white jewel was lying in his palm.
“What precisely are we looking for, sport?” he asked me for the umpteenth time.
He kept on getting distracted by the tiny, detailed scenes that were unfolding in front of us, and forgetting what this was about.
“Langham Tavitt, just before he turned,” I reminded him wearily.
“In Garnerstown?”
“That’s right.”
“I really ought to do something about that neighborhood. It’s honestly a bit of an embarrassment.”
I had to fight hard not to let my irritation show.
The Eye of Hermaneus was floating six feet in the air. Brightness was churning at its heart, intensely as a tiny sun. A cone of light was being projected down from it. And, within that steady glow, images from this evening were being replayed in miniature, in full three-dimensions, but devoid of any sound.
There we were, shooting at the snakelike creature. There were Saul, Lauren, and Cass, arriving at the scene. Events were going backward here. It seemed to be the best way to discover the correct moment in time
The snake let go of a passer-by that it was clutching in its jaws, then went in reverse through the wall of Langham Tavitt’s home, which promptly became whole again.
“We’re getting there,” Woody murmured.
Then we were inside the house. My God, it was an awful mess. Everything looked grimy. A huge pile of newspapers over in one corner looked like it went back a couple of decades. And three plates were lying on the dining table, each of them with leftover food.
The elongated black form shrank away to reveal Tavitt himself, sprawled back in a rocking chair. There was a bottle of wine gripped in his fist. And in his lap was the same paperback I’d seen in Garnerstown.
Despite the fact he was indoors, he still had his coat on. It was a thick woolen number with big buttons down the front, the kind of thing they used to wear in the trenches in the First World War. He had on big scuffed boots as well. And fingerless gloves on his grimy hands. His hair and beard both needed cutting. There was nothing clean about him, when you studied him properly.
Nick McLeish hadn’t been joking. This guy was a total wreck. His eyes were closed and he was mumbling to himself. Of course, I couldn’t hear a word that he was saying. The magic of the jewel, so far as I was aware, didn’t allow for that.
But—I practically jerked when I saw it—he was not alone in the room. The ball of vapor was hanging over him, a gray miasmic pall like an embodiment of his own thoughts.
We went further back, to the point where it had first arrived. It came seeping in under the front door, for all the world like normal fog. Woody made a sudden motion with his hands. The scene stopped running backward, and we could see what had happened after that.
The vapor didn’t pour into the man. It merely swirled above his head, looking pretty harmless. Then it densened a little, contracting.
Tavitt sat up alarmedly—although, curiously, his eyes did not come open. He tipped his head to one side, like he was listening to something. Then his mouth began to work again. Whatever he was hearing, he had decided to answer it.
But this was no real use to me. I turned frustratedly to Woody.
“This isn’t helping.”
He looked perplexed, and a strange buzzing noise echoed between the paneled walls. I was used to things like that, since I’d heard similar stuff on previous occasions. Sounds that manifested his troubled state of mind.
“It was good enough before,” he argued.
He was referring to the time when he had helped me outwit Saruak. But that had been a completely different set of circumstances. I was pretty certain—whoever was in that ball of vapor, he, or she, was saying things to Tavitt. Things that could make him change shape physically. A spell?
It was the reason I’d come here. I just had to find out what it was. “Ached” was not too small a word.
“This is really important, Woody.”
“I’m not sure that I agree,” he stuttered.
He’d forgotten part of what I’d told him, and was wandering from the point again. I wondered what could bring him back. Appealing to his finer feelings? “The whole town’s counting on you,” I reminded him. “Your town. Your people, right? How can you let them down?”
His expression became far more sober. And he nodded, seeing I was right.
And once that was agreed, I gave him some elbow room. When the Master of the Manor turns to stronger magic, then it’s not overly wise to get too close.
He spread his arms out to the sides. Thanks to the robe, the only way that I could tell was by the white blobs of his fingertips. He closed his eyes again and tipped his head back. Then he started muttering.
I couldn’t make the slightest sense of it. Adepts use a range of languages when they’re invoking the dark forces. Kurt van Friesling uses Dutch. The McGinley sisters, Gaelic. Latin plays its part, of course. But the stuff that Raine was using sounded like English that had gotten drunk, and then fallen over and started mumbling to itself in a gutter. Some old dialect from a place like Cornwall, England, maybe? It’s believed to be the home of Merlin, so that’s not impossible.
The scene inside the cone of light started running in reverse again, back to the point where the mist appeared.
And suddenly, almost miraculously, there was a blurt of actual sound.
“Yes.”
That was Tavitt, his voice whiny, like he had a bug caught in his throat. The man looked attentive, for all that his eyes were closed.
“Yes, you’re right. I can see that.”
He tipped his head to one side and his features started creasing up, his expression becoming angry.
“It’s true. I’ve always known that, really.”
This was merely one half of the conversation. So I returned my attention to my host.
“This is single speaker, Woods,” I told him. “I need stereo.”
Woody’s eyes came open a slit. They’d gone an ever darker shade of gold, and were glowing in an edgy, rather feverish way. But then he applied himself harder to the task.
I had to wait another full minute before a second voice came oozing out. As I listened, I could hear that it was actually two voices, speaking in unison and overlapping.
One of them, I recognized immediately. Those cut-glass tones were Millicent Tollburn’s. The deeper accent had to be Hanlon. He sounded like a loud and fractious child.
So it had a weird, distorted echo to it. Rather like listening to the Little Girl, to tell the truth.
“None of these people understand you, Langham. No one in this whole town does.”
“I’ve always suspected that.”
“Look how you’ve been treated your entire life. All you’re fit for—so far as these people are concerned—is sweeping up the filth they leave behind.”
“You’re right. I had dreams, once upon a time.”
“And they’ve denied you that. They even te
ach their children to hate you, so it’ll be the same for the next generation. Your life will never change. It’ll be this way until the day you die. Do you deserve that?”
His face was growing angrier.
“They want to make you suffer, can’t you see that? Want to keep you poor and on your own. Why should you accept that, Langham? Why don’t you fight back?”
The man’s eyes snapped open at last. And they were not gray as yet. But a strange murkiness had begun to swirl across their glassy surface. I stared at it, amazed. The pall of vapor was still hanging over him. Had not taken possession of him, the way it had with Karl. The whole transformation, this time, seemed to be coming from inside the man.
“Show them they can’t get away with it,” the voices urged. “They’ve hurt you so very much. Now, it’s time to hurt them back. Make them regret what they’ve done.”
When he nodded, it was sternly.
“Yep. I think I’ll do precisely that.”
The cloud had still not touched him. But his eyes turned a glowing gray from lid to lid all the same.
There was a sharp crash as he let go of the bottle. His hands dropped into his lap. Then they started melting into his body. Which was lengthening, and turning black.
I could have let it go on, but I got the general picture. Woody seemed to think so too. The cone of light, the scene inside it, vanished. The glow inside the jewel diminished, and it floated back into its owner’s grasp. He slipped it quickly underneath his robes, then turned around to face me.
His features looked even more sickly than they’d been before. He was genuinely shocked. That was a rarity. Nothing seemed real enough to him for that reaction, most days. Which told me this was a very exceptional day indeed.
His lips were pressed together. And his golden gaze shimmered like a pair of distant lamps.
I still wasn’t sure I wholly understood this. If the cloud had not possessed the man, exactly what had happened? I looked to my host for an answer. And was pretty astonished by what finally came out.
“I really had no idea,” Woody murmured, “exactly how far reaching the wand’s powers were.”
Which didn’t make things any clearer. But I sensed that he was getting to the point, and so I waited for him to go on. He raised his fingertips to his chin, growing lost in anxious thought, and not his usual batty kind.
“Normally, by means of magic, change is imposed on an object or a person. But this…?”
He seemed aghast at such a concept.
“This is transmutation brought on by consent.”
His eyebrows were lifted as high as they could go. And he stared at me like I was lucky that I didn’t fully understand it yet.
“Tavitt became that creature because he wanted to. It was within him. I’m willing to bet the other man—”
“Penn.”
“—was the same. They weren’t turned into monsters, no. The monsters inside them were released. They were in there the whole time, Devries. Just hidden, until tonight.”
I still wasn’t sure I got it. Woody stepped in, getting so close up to me that we were almost standing face-to-face.
“Think about it. Can you really not see the big picture? Milly and Hanlon didn’t change those men. They simply released their inner demons.”
And that hit me like a blow, taking the remainder of my breath away. What he was suggesting wasn’t possible, was it? I didn’t see how that could happen.
I had watched it, though. I’d seen the process. There was no use trying to deny that.
“So…they’re seeking out misfits, and what? Letting loose the bigger creep inside of them?”
But I still had not got it completely. Raine shook his head, looking very subdued. He seemed—for the moment—utterly sane.
“It’s not only misfits who are vulnerable, old chum. We all have monsters trapped inside us, I’m afraid.”
He saw the question spark in my gaze.
“Even me, remarkably,” he nodded. “Even you.”
CHAPTER 28
By the time I’d got back to my car, I could see clustered bursts of small bright flashes, far off in the distance most places I looked. More gunfire. There was plenty of it, both sides of the darkly gleaming river. And patrol cars were rushing from district to district. It seemed like what had gone down in Garnerstown and Greenwood was happening in East Crealley and Pilgrim’s Plot as well. So I’d been right—it was counterclockwise. One by one, the outer suburbs to the east were being hit.
I climbed in and tuned my radio to a police channel. There was a load of shouting going on, several dozen voices competing for air space. If this went on, Cassie’s neighborhood would be next. Then mine.
I should have gone down straightaway. But I noticed something, shortly before I set off.
The flashing in East Crealley died away abruptly. So the beast down there had been stopped in its tracks. Another cloud appeared above the roofs’ dark silhouettes. It rose into the night sky like a misshapen balloon. And then it seemed to swell.
I understood it wasn’t that. The thing was simply heading my way, getting closer, and at speed.
I tensed up. But the thing never reached the crest of Sycamore Hill. Like both the others, it turned at the last moment, plunging down to Plymouth Drive. And disappeared behind a spreading clump of elm trees, shortly before it reached Millwood House.
What would I find if I went down there? I reversed onto the main road, then headed down the gradient with my lights off.
Which practically turned out to be a very big mistake indeed. As I rounded the final bend before Ms. Tollburn’s residence, a middle-aged man in expensive-looking sweats stepped out right in front of me, not even seeing I was there.
I stamped on my brakes, squealing to a halt mere inches from him. He glanced at me through the windshield. But then seemed to forget about me. He was more concerned about something else, apparently. His eyes had a haunted look. His face was damp.
He was silver-haired, distinguished-looking in a slightly paunchy way. Had a thin spike of a nose, and lips with a patrician twist. Most probably a local. There were big gold rings on both his hands, a chain of the same around his throat. And the watch that he was wearing hadn’t come exactly cheap. By the sweats, he might have been out running. He could have been using one of the woodland trails up here, and not even noticed what was going on.
My gaze wandered past him down the wide, shadowy avenue.
There were more people standing on the asphalt. They all looked as if they lived here too. They’d come wandering out of their homes, a few of them in shorts or even housecoats. And were staring blankly at Ms. Tollburn’s place.
I squinted across at it, and felt my face go slack. There’d been a high brick wall with spikes before. And a wide flat roof beyond it.
They had completely disappeared behind a barrier of plain, featureless gray that rose some thirty feet into the air. It was the same down the left side of the property, the entire mansion sealed from view, as if a huge box had been placed across it.
My heart sank even further. I couldn’t remember ever seeing anything quite so ominous. It looked genuinely threatening, sitting there like a steel fortress. I could only wonder what was happening inside.
As I watched, another ball of vapor arced across the sky, rushing in its direction. Which told me what precisely about the situation we were in? The creatures that had invaded our town were being dealt with, for sure. But they weren’t being destroyed in any meaningful way. They were simply retreating here. To regroup? If so, for what purpose?
I watched it drop down to the barrier, then disappear behind it. And felt my heart sink to rock bottom. How many more were there going to be?
By the time that I’d rejoined the others, the attacks had spread up to East Meadow. Further mayhem had broken out a couple of blocks from Rowan Street, where Cassie had her home.
And that really ticked her off. Her dark eyes blazed, her lean face was white with fury. And she laid into thi
s brand-new creature with a vengeance that was startling to watch.
It wasn’t anything gigantic, this time. Everybody had their own particular size of inner demon, I supposed. The thing was roughly my height, although far more densely muscled. And retained a vaguely human shape. But it was really much more like some massive ape, the same silhouetted black as the others, with the same gleaming eyes. Fur hung from it in ragged tatters, swirling as the creature moved. It had a wide mouth with pointed fangs. Lengthy arms with sharp nails at the fingertips. And legs as powerful as springs.
And it was moving at a truly unbelievable speed. Even the fastest of us could barely keep tabs on it. One second, it was up in front of us and we were trying to take aim. And the next, it was on a roof in one huge bound, and hurrying around to flank us.
We were on a street where some developer, a while back, had had the brilliant notion of tearing the wood-built houses down and replacing them with tightly lined apartment blocks. It didn’t make the place look any better. It simply made the shabbiness appear more permanent.
We kept on swinging around, trying to find our target. But we had to be careful where we opened fire. The people in the blocks around us were keeping themselves out of sight, of course. But a few times that a gun went off, a bullet sailed in through a window. Nobody was going to approve of the P.D. doing that, especially if some tenant caught a ricochet.
Cass, naturally, had no such qualms. She had her Mossberg out again, and was pumping at it furiously. She almost hit the creature twice, except it dodged away just in time. I wasn’t quite sure which was louder—the repeated blasting of her shotgun, or the stream of curses that she let out every time she missed.
Both of them finally trailed to a halt. Because this new demon had simply vanished.
“Where’d it go?” somebody asked.
We peered around cautiously.
The thing had been up on a cornice to our right. Except it was no longer there, or anywhere else we looked. Maybe it had given up, turning into a cloud of smoke and heading up the hill like the others.
Night of Demons - 02 Page 19