Was she recognizing any of them as the townsfolk who she usually defended? Did she even know that I was there?
The details of her body were still hidden underneath that shroud of blackness. But her eyes were clearly visible. They glowed like opals in the sparse street lighting. Except that, once more, there was something odd.
They appeared to be flickering very slightly, instead of remaining as a steady monochrome. And as I watched, they wavered momentarily, trying to go back to normal.
Which put me in mind of Lawrence. I had seen the same from him not long ago. He’d had misgivings about the whole process. And maybe—I clung to that hope desperately—maybe she did too. Could that be why she hadn’t actually shot anyone, when she could have done it so terribly easily?
She moved along a few yards, clacking, so I couldn’t see her properly from this point any more. And I wanted to keep an eye on her. Needed to see what she was going to do next. So, holding myself steady, I began to edge a little further out.
She noticed that, and swung around. The arm with the Mossberg on it straightened up. There was a lethal-sounding boom, and I ducked back. Barely in time, was my first thought. But it turned out that she wasn’t aiming at me. The corner of the house four feet above my head exploded into broken chunks of masonry. A warning shot.
So perhaps I was right. She could have killed me, and she hadn’t. Maybe I could work with that.
Very carefully, I eased my face out again, ready to duck back. But Cass had already turned away from me. I’d been forgotten, in favor of someone else.
She was headed for the shattered vehicles. There was a large amount of fluid pooled around them by this time, the smell of it powerful even from this distance.
Then I caught a glimpse of something moving in among the cars. Pale and smooth and round. I couldn’t figure it out, at first. But then I realized it was the big crown of a head, a bald one.
Not everyone had made it to cover.
Saul Hobart was still out there, directly in her path.
CHAPTER 41
Her pace slowed and her lean frame stiffened. She was staring right in his direction, I could tell, but only by the angle of her head. I couldn’t see her face at all. And felt pretty glad of that. Because as soon as she spotted him, she took on the stealthy manner of a hunting dog that had spotted something close by it could snatch between its jaws.
Saul had been crouching behind a departmental pickup truck. But when he saw the game was up, he tried to make a break for it.
You’d have thought that such a cumbersomely large man would move awkwardly, but there was none of that. He began heading swiftly to the nearest brick wall on the street. But only got halfway.
The shotgun boomed. A cloud of dust and debris flew up in front of the lieutenant, where a section of asphalt had been. He skidded to a halt, and then was forced to go the other way.
Disappeared behind the back end of the truck again, and started edging toward its cab.
Cassie let out a hoarse bark of a laugh, then marched forward. A deadly game was being played here. And I couldn’t see what to do about it. I kept on wondering for how much longer she’d resort merely to warning shots.
Some people emerged from cover and started firing at her again. But—exactly like last time—none of the shots seemed to touch her.
“Hey!” I yelled at them. “You’re going to hit Saul!”
They seemed to get that, and the shooting died away. Which left only that stark rattle of talons, still closing in on the vehicles.
I had to do something. Couldn’t simply huddle here and watch. So, steeling myself, I did the only thing that I could think of.
I stepped out in the open.
Then I shouted to her.
“Cass!”
She stopped again, and turned to face me.
Looking at her when she’d been high up on a roof was one thing. On the ground, so much closer up, the whole experience was very different. Far too close for comfort. Too immediate to be ignored. The shock of it struck me harder than I’d thought it would, and that was to put it mildly.
Her eyes that way? That blank, black face? It was like my friend and closest ally for the past couple of years was dead. The only things left were this shell, this dark mask. Where had all the goodness and self-sacrifice in Cassie gone?
She stared at me, her weapons still partly raised. Then cocked her head slightly. It was like she was having trouble even recognizing me. Her eyes remained an even gray, no flickering in them any longer. And her mouth came open. The jaw worked gently, but no words came out. Yes, her teeth had become jagged. They were the same black as the rest, but with a faint sheen that made them stand out.
Couldn’t she even talk anymore? None of the other demons had, it occurred to me. Just maybe, the darkness that had enfolded her was so primal it went right beyond anything like that. I knew how much rage and pain she carried around inside her. The mourning for her family and the way her life had been. So perhaps it went beyond mere conscious thought, and she could only express herself through violent action.
I spread my hands out to my sides, showing her that they were empty.
“Cassie? It’s me! It’s Ross!”
Her lips slid shut. But her pale eyes glowed a touch more fiercely. I could feel everybody gazing at us. So the game I’d been watching? I was part of it by now. And could just make out Saul beyond her. He was tensed like a spring, uncertain whether or not to make a break for it again.
I looked away from the man, not wanting to draw attention to him.
“Cass, this isn’t you,” I said.
I was having to talk loudly from this distance, which made it difficult to sound exactly calm. She stared at me the way you might do at a curious-looking stain you hadn’t noticed until this point.
“I know what’s inside of you.” I took a few more steps toward her, gently. “I’m the same, remember. But this isn’t you. You have to see that. There’s a whole lot more to you than this.”
I drew to a halt, gazing at her steadily. She was more immobile than I’d ever seen her, not responding to my words in the least little bit. But I wasn’t giving up. I kept on trying to reason with her.
“Look what you’ve done for this town the past couple of years,” I reminded her. “The people that you’ve helped. The lives you’ve saved. We owe you a great deal. Don’t make us regret it now.”
I could see that I’d been right before. Her eyes flickered again. And this close up, I could see what it really was. The whites showed up momentarily and there was a fleeting glimpse of her dark irises. Cassie’s normal eyes were fighting with the gray ones she’d been given, the better aspects of her nature trying to push back through to the surface.
All of us have inner darkness, sure. But inner light as well. Except it was obvious the spell she’d been subjected to was suppressing that fiercely.
Her gaze went pale and dull again. Her black lids batted, and her eyes turned noticeably glossy. But it wasn’t dampness. They had become glazed. She looked further away from me than ever, like I’d only made her whole mood worse. I saw what was happening. She didn’t want to think about this. Didn’t want to face the truth. She was caught up completely in her own inner turmoil.
It was like she had been swallowed by the deep shadows inside of her. The Mossberg came back up, its muzzle aimed directly at me. And Cassie’s lip curled.
“What do you think you’re doing?” came another voice.
Saul Hobart had reemerged. Like me, he’d put his gun away. He started edging carefully in the direction of her silhouette. His step was nervous, his big brown shoes coming down uncertainly on the blacktop. But he didn’t let that show on his broad face. If anything, he looked quite angry.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” he told the thing that had been Cassie.
She swung around once more.
In the corners of my sight, I could see fresh heads bobbing up. Nobody seemed sure how to deal with this.
<
br /> “We’re your friends, Cassie,” the lieutenant said. “I don’t have to tell you that. We’ve never done you any harm.”
He stopped, and I could see his eyebrows draw together.
“What happened with your kids? We’re genuinely sorry, but this won’t fix it.”
My God no, he was getting this wrong. My frame seized up, the breath turning solid in my throat. He was referring to her one Achilles heel. The subject I had always skirted around, even back when she was normal. Bringing it up now was taking a hell of a chance.
The entire scene—the houses, the trees, even the river in the background—seemed to all be locked behind a massive plate of glass. I felt dislocated from the world around me, captured in a frozen moment. Nothing seemed to move.
Cassie remained still for several breathless seconds.
Then she raised the strange arm with the carbine on it.
And shot Saul in his chest.
CHAPTER 42
All that I could do was watch him hit the ground. His big feet flew up as he bounced. And then he was extremely still, his arms splayed out and his legs lying crooked.
Dull noises started resounding in my head. It was the rushing of my blood, at first. And then, there were sharper sounds. I might have been turned to stone—the other guys had not. They had opened fire massively again, unafraid of hitting the man this time.
Cassie paid them no attention whatsoever. Her wings unfolded almost casually. They stretched out to their full span, then became a racketing blur. I could feel the wind they made. It carried scraps of dust with it, but I didn’t look away. And she was gone in the next instant, spiraling high into the air and hurtling off.
I didn’t even take note in which direction. I just stared back at Saul again.
Do something! my mind was telling me.
My limbs unfroze, and then I was charging forward. Every second was vital. I knew that. I sprinted across to where he was sprawled out, knelt down beside him and pressed two fingers to his throat. And at first, I couldn’t find anything. Helplessness swept over me. But then…
“He’s got a pulse!” I shouted.
And I started yelling for a medic. Which was pretty much a waste of breath. Two guys with blue bags on their shoulders were already hurrying our way.
Lamp-lit dimness gave way to a cold, bright glow—the fluorescent lighting of a hospital corridor. It was outside an operating theater at Raine General. There were plenty of chairs, but I didn’t use any of them.
A few cops had accompanied us. Then word spread, and more started showing up. Despite the fact that they were stunned by what had happened, none of them could stay for very long. The reason for that was obvious.
The operating theater was at one end. At the other was the waiting room for the ER. A double set of swinging doors shielded us from some of the hubbub. But they had windows, and we could see right through them. It was like a scene from Florence Nightingale in there.
People were bandaged up and creased over with pain. Many had their families with them. More were coming in. New battles were breaking out across the town, and an awful lot of ordinary folk were getting hurt. Saul wasn’t the only one.
And so these guys were needed elsewhere. They looked shame-faced all the same, fingering their caps and mumbling apologies before heading back out into the fray.
“He’d want you to,” I told them. “Hell, he’d do the same.”
His wife, Amelia, turned up several minutes later. He likes to keep his work and family separate, so I’d only met her once before. She’s a tiny, pretty, fine-boned woman, barely five foot two. I almost laughed when I first met her, standing by a man that size, but there were no smiles on this occasion. When I went across to talk to her, she had real trouble listening. Her eyes wouldn’t focus, and her head kept moving around in a peculiar way.
Finally, she settled down in one of the plastic chairs, an unnaturally stiff expression on her face. Making a supreme effort just to hold herself together. Her eyes were fixed on the opposite wall, except I wasn’t even sure that she was seeing it.
She’d not had time to leave her kids with anyone, and had been forced to bring them with. Which, perhaps, explained why she’d not broken down yet. She was trying to be strong for their sake.
Saul had married late, had children even later. So the oldest of his daughters was only six. The youngest—at two years old—had no way of understanding what was going on. She was simply upset because her sisters were both crying. She pushed her head into Amelia’s blouse and whimpered bitterly.
The other pair clung to her skirt and were making noises like their grief was strangling them. That ground at me, and I looked away. Lord, they were so small and frightened. Of all the places that I really didn’t want to be, this had to be at the top of the list.
Lauren arrived, with her face patched neatly up. Kurt, she explained, had taken her back to her car after the clinic. She’d heard what had happened on the police band while she’d been heading back in.
Her manner was one that I was unfamiliar with, rattled but still businesslike. So I supposed she’d been through stuff like this before.
“How long’s he been in there?” she asked, her voice noticeably tight.
At least half an hour, I guessed. But I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t thought to check my watch, and it felt more like half a year.
Jenny Pearce put in an appearance after that. There was a rip in one of her uniform sleeves, and some heavy grazing underneath. But otherwise she looked okay. She hunkered down in front of Amelia, talking with her for a while. They seemed to agree that she should take the kids away. But good plans and small children do not always mix. None of them would let go of their mother. And their misery got so intense that, in the end, they were allowed to stay.
A weight had settled in my gut, and kept on increasing. When I did look at my watch again, another twenty minutes had passed. No one had emerged from the operating theater. And we didn’t have the first clue what was going on in there. Jesus Christ, I couldn’t believe I was just standing here, completely useless.
I took it for five more minutes. Then I pushed on through into the little anteroom, and stared into the theater through the plain glass in the doors.
Saul was mostly covered up—you could barely see him. A tent of white cloth had been raised above him, centered on his chest. The surgeons and nurses were clustered around the table, each absorbed in different jobs. Except that they looked more than simply busy. They seemed frantic. There was a tangible sense of panic in that room.
And blood everywhere. All over the surgeons’ gloves and aprons. Hard to believe that a single body, however large, could contain that much.
I tried to fight against my next thought, but it wouldn’t go away. They were going to lose him. I was watching Saul live out his final evening.
A young blond nurse looked up at last and noticed me. Her smooth brow furrowed above her surgical mask. Then she came over and pushed one of the doors halfway open.
“Sir, you can’t wait here. If you’d…?”
“How is he?” I cut across her.
Her gaze became more sympathetic.
“We’re doing everything we possibly can,” she said. “But there’s a great deal of internal damage. We’re still trying to stop the bleeding.”
Words seemed to fail her at that point. Her head dropped, then she finished up with, “We’re doing our level best for him. I’m just not sure it’s good enough.”
She was about to let the door drop shut, when a sudden, loud commotion broke out to the back of me. It was coming from ER. People began yelping, even screaming. And I heard a crash as something hit the floor. My first thought was, another demon, right here in the hospital. My hand went to my gun. And I’d already started moving in the direction of the racket…when the sound of a familiar voice stopped me dead in my tracks.
“Doctor coming through!”
The tone was deep and slightly gravelly.
“Out of my way!
I’ve no time for this nonsense!”
He wasn’t that kind of doctor, of course. But Lehman Willets stepped into view, everyone else scrabbling to get out of his way.
Willets never left the building where he lived, not willingly anyway. I’d dragged him out by the scruff of his neck once, but that had been on account of a very different kind of threat. Otherwise, he had been holed up in there ever since the disaster at the Iron Bridge…his powers had overwhelmed him, twelve people had died. Which was the cause of the reaction I was looking at right now. I knew he was more controlled these days, okay to be around. But most of the people in town were still terrified of him.
The point of his being here, though? So far as I knew, he was the only adept who could heal injuries.
What had drawn him here? And why to Saul specifically? There were loads more townsfolk hurt. Lord, you could see them all around him.
Then it occurred to me. I was the only person in the whole Landing who ever dared to visit him. Usually it was for advice. But a bond had grown between us, of a kind. So maybe he had heard my anguished thoughts, decided to respond to them.
When he came bursting through into the corridor, he was wearing the same floppy denim hat I’d given him last time he’d been out. I’d intended it as protection from the sunlight. It was night this time—he didn’t need it any more. But maybe he’d come to think of it as his outdoors hat, or something of that nature. He’s not nearly as bad as Raine, but can still go off at curious tangents sometimes.
Amelia Hobart looked up startledly, breaking out of her trancelike daze. Even her daughters stopped crying. Their faces lifted and they gawped. Willets’s features had an utterly determined set. His pupils shone like molten metal. He marched straight past the huddled family, then went by me and Lauren too, not even acknowledging that we were there.
When he burst into the operating theater…you’d have thought that educated folk like surgeons would have acted far more calmly. But he got precisely the same reaction as he had outside. They yelled and shied away like the crowds in the ER. Forgot about the lieutenant in their care, and began retreating.
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