I hadn’t. It was a talent he had never revealed before. Although—considering how powerful he was—I suppose I should have really guessed.
So I said, “Woody, he’s forty feet tall. What are you going to do, conjure me up a nice big ladder?”
And you’d have thought that nothing serious was going on, because he sounded breezy and lighthearted when he answered me.
“I picked you up before,” he said.
He meant our previous encounter in the ballroom, when he’d swept me up into the air.
“And I can do the same again. I hope you’re not afraid of heights.”
The wind around me altered course, gusting up in the direction of the open sky. My coat tried to swirl around my face. My hair felt like it was being wrenched.
And then I was lifted off my feet again, rising toward the hand above me.
CHAPTER 59
From the start, I was amazed. Not simply that I was airborne. I wasn’t claiming to like it, but I’d been there before. No, I was astonished that the Master of the Manor was helping us in so active a fashion.
He’d provided a little assistance before, usually by means of the Eye of Hermaneus. But a lot of the time, the worst of perils could descend on this town, and he wouldn’t lift a finger. He’d express what sounded like genuine shock. And then turn away, his deluded mind finding another matter to fixate on.
Why had he jumped in with both feet this time? I decided it was better not to ask.
As I lifted higher, my surprise gave way to growing unease. I had to be some twenty feet clear of the ground. And only Lauren seemed to have noticed I was gone. Her face looked like a tiny upturned smudge.
I glanced around at the rest of the town—the avenues and spires and leafy parks. Then my attention went down past my shoes again. The cops were still blazing away, to limited effect. And the judge and Martha were frying as many of the scuttling demons as they could manage. But there were already too many of them, thousands more flooding from the hole. The narrow line of human beings was beginning to fall back.
Which was a pretty alarming sight in itself. But not the only reason I was getting scared. The fact was, I knew Woody. He had carried me this far, but how much further? He could suddenly become distracted. If that happened, I’d drop like a stone.
I held myself together finally by telling myself one simple thing. If I fell, then it would be a relatively quick death. Far better, probably, than what awaited me below. And there was nothing I could do about it anyway. No way left but up. So I kept my eyes fixed on the bony hand above me.
Hanlon didn’t even see me coming. He was wrapped up in delirium, swaying to a tune inside his own crazed head. His fantasies had, at last, reached fruition. Which was the really bad thing about magic…it allows all the wrong people to do that.
I chanced a final quick glance down. The people and the other shapes below me had been reduced to moving dots. The smaller flashes were gunfire, once again. The larger ones were Sam and Martha, hitting the beasts with full force. It was an awful long way down by this time. But the distance between the two groups was getting even shorter.
Then I focused on the wand completely. The massive hand went skimming past my face. I stretched my arm out after it, and missed. And my first instinct was to go chasing after it. But I wasn’t in control of this. Woody held me statically in midair, like a key suspended on a chain. The wind from the opening had no effect on my position.
Another instant, and the arm was coming back at me. And Cornelius still hadn’t noticed I was there.
I stared at the black stick as it got nearer to me. Its tip gave another brilliant shimmer, for no reason I could see. Alive, I kept on telling myself. And as crazy and unpleasant as the person holding on to it. My first instinct was to shy away. But I hadn’t come up here for that.
Another heartbeat, and it was right in front of me. I reached out as it hurtled past. Felt it brush against my palm, and closed my grip around it. Then I yanked the thing away.
As soon as I had hold of it, the enormous skull above lurched down. The flames leapt higher in its empty eyes. The jaw dropped wide—no sound came out.
An arm the size of a narrow tree trunk lunged in my direction, the folds of the jet-black robe swirling around it. At which point, conscious thought took a backseat, stronger instincts taking over.
“Woody!” I bellowed. “Time to leave!”
I went shooting backward, just as the hand started closing around me. It was an awful, gut-wrenching sensation, like a bungee jump but in reverse. Hanlon’s bony fingers clacked together, missing me by barely a foot. The talons at the ends of them scraped across each other with a violent grating sound.
I continued drifting away from them, descending at the same time.
I closed both hands around the wand now. And took in the fact that it felt weird in my grasp. For a start, it didn’t seem any cooler than my skin, which an inanimate object ought to do. So perhaps it was at body temperature, the same as my own palms.
Secondly, it was so light my senses barely registered it was there. And third…
I thought that I could feel a very gentle pulse.
Whatever, I had to destroy it. And the easiest way seemed to be to snap it. It was no thicker than your average pencil. But phenomenally rigid too. When I applied pressure, it didn’t yield a tiny fraction. I couldn’t bend it a little bit.
I had managed to annoy it, though. And the wand instantly paid me back.
A jolt of flaring energy ran through me. Felt like liquid fire sweeping underneath my skin. I howled. Couldn’t help it. And dropped the thing. Panic rushed through me when I did that.
Except—for once—Woody was ahead of the game. He released me immediately, letting me fall after it. I managed to grab hold of it again.
Then the supporting wind came back. I was about twelve feet up by this time, and was drifting away from the battle.
A steady surge of creatures was advancing across Plymouth Drive. Hundreds were crowding in to take the place of those that had fallen. And the flow of mottled bodies from the opening hadn’t stopped. If Levin and the others couldn’t hold them back, then what chance did the rest of the town have?
I looked back up. The death’s head was surging closer, very quickly. And its arms were reaching out again. Hanlon hadn’t even left his makeshift throne. His whole body, below the chest, had become a misty blur that was stretching out like gray elastic.
“Faster, Woody!” I yelled out.
He turned me around, then began towing me along, parallel with the gradient of Sycamore Hill. I was headed for the very top, the moonlight making silhouettes of the large shapes ahead of me. A huge backyard, and then another, skimmed below. The battle was lost to my rear, and there was no one else in sight.
“Where exactly do you want to go, sport?” Woody asked. “I can’t simply keep you buzzing around like a June bug on a string all night.”
He sounded slightly peevish. Which made me suspect he was getting bored. I’d probably survive a fall of twelve feet. But, with Death on my heels, not for very long.
A broad, uneven shape became apparent up ahead. I was headed straight for it, and couldn’t quite see what it was in the darkness. Then, “Tree!” I bellowed.
And I skimmed around it just in time.
“Well?” he asked me again, as if nothing had interrupted us.
He was starting to sound genuinely unhappy. And I knew what kind of trouble that could bring.
I fought to think straight—it was pretty hard, given where I was. The air rushed around me, and a stretch of woodland swept below. If I couldn’t break the wand, then who could? Levin or Martha, it occurred to me. Except that getting to them would involve turning back the way I’d come. And that was not an option. I could try for the McGinley place, where the others were holed up. But that was off to my left, so I stood the risk of being intercepted.
Hanlon was still coming up behind me. Why would it be any other way? His skull was loomin
g higher up, and both his hands were still stretched out. So much as a pause, and they would grab me in an instant. But I couldn’t think where else to go.
What exactly did I know about the object in my grasp? I remembered what the judge had told me. And the main thing that he’d said came springing back to mind.
Dantiere had been a lunatic. He’d made that very clear. And if it took one madman to create the thing, then might the best person to destroy it be…?
“Woody?” I yelled. “Keep me going in this direction! You’ve got it exactly right!”
“But you’re headed for my own house, sport.”
“Yeah! I need to talk with you, in person!”
“Really?” he asked, sounding pretty intrigued. “And why’s that?”
You’d think that he’d have got it, but he simply didn’t work that way. And this needed diplomacy—I could see that right away. Tell him the real reason that he was needed and he’d get offended. But flattery could get you everywhere with Woodard Raine, a fact that I was already aware of.
And I was putting together the right words in my head…when his voice rang out again, cutting across my train of thought.
“My, that is an interesting wand you’ve got there.”
He made a soft humming noise, like he was musing to himself.
“I can feel this terribly strong aura coming off it. Rather a pleasant one in fact.”
Which wasn’t quite how I’d describe it. And I wasn’t sure I liked the way that he said that. His tone had become deeper again, far more brooding and reflective than it had been.
When he spoke again, it was practically a rumble.
“In fact, I’d like to take a closer look at it. Stop dawdling for heavens sake, Devries! Good Lord, man, hurry up!”
I was lifted slightly higher in the air and began hurtling toward Raine Manor at twice the speed I’d gone before.
CHAPTER 60
Before too much longer, its unkempt grounds were rushing beneath me. A few large crows burst from cover, startled by the fact that I was at their height.
I dropped a couple of feet lower as I approached the house. The spindly, leafless branches of the trees kept trying to snatch at the soles of my shoes. They looked even weirder than usual from up here. As dark as the surrounding night, and impenetrably tangled—what you might get if you poured a pint of Scotch down Jackson Pollack and then handed him a stick of charcoal.
But they were not the half of it.
The high spire was already in view, with the W at its apex. But I could also see the rest of the roof, more clearly than I had before. The gargoyles had all come awake. They were clustered on the upper ridge, their backs hunched over and their deformed faces tilted, staring up at me. Then they saw what was pursuing me. And within another moment, they were scuttling out of sight.
The house below seemed to lurch crazily as I changed direction. I could make out the ruined west wing, and the covered porch out front. And in the latter case…
There seemed to be some extra shadow on it. It didn’t look as empty as it normally did. I could scarcely believe what my eyes were telling me. But as I went lower, I got a better angle. And could see two figures standing there.
One was Hampton, a round, meaty bulk in the gloom. He was gawping at me startledly, his mismatched eyes shining with alarm. The other shape?
He hadn’t exactly come out into the open. Was wedged back against the partly open doorway. But, considering how deeply terrified of the outdoors he was…this was the first time Woodard Raine had crossed his own threshold in years.
He looked like he was ready to retreat given the slightest reason. And his whole body was hunched. But Woods was staying put for the time being. So perhaps I’d underestimated him.
When I usually met him, it was in the ballroom and surrounded by faint candlelight. He was merely a vague set of features or a pair of glowing eyes in there. You never got to see the entire person. So I was looking at him clearly for the first time in a good number of years.
He was thinner than I remembered. Slightly shorter too. His shoulders were rounded, his posture awkward. I suppose the best word for him—and I puzzledly took this in—was “average.” Pass him on the street, and you would give him little thought. Only his great powers and his even greater lunacy had made him someone to be reckoned with.
I was almost to the ground. And heading downward far too quickly.
“An easier landing, if you’d please?” I called out.
“Landing…?”
I’d confused him.
“Slow me down!”
I decelerated at the very last moment. My heels skidded through a dense mixture of gravel and crabgrass all the same, before I finally came to a halt.
Then I was running up onto the porch, and waving the wand at the man’s shadowy form.
“You need to destroy this, Woody! You might be the only person who can do it!”
He pulled an unimpressed face, then abruptly snatched it from me. Woody ran a finger down it, studying its markings. His eyes, which had been glowing yellow, took on a more amber shade.
“Why?” he asked me, sounding quite annoyed. “It seems a rather lovely thing.”
Which was precisely the opposite reaction from the one I’d wanted. The kind of response that made your hair curl. Not for the first time when dealing with this crazy adept, I felt like I wanted to scream.
But Hampton beat me to it.
He was pointing out across the gardens, high above the wild, uneven line of trees. Me and Raine both looked in that direction.
Hanlon was catching up. His bare skull appeared at first. Then his black-cloaked arms rose into view, the claws still grasping, the rest of the vast, elongated body stretching in their wake.
“Sir?” the manservant yelped. “I suggest you do as Mr. Devries asks!”
But the look on Woody’s face made my heart sink even further. He had a bland, detached expression now. So we were back to square one, weren’t we? The danger we were in meant nothing to him, or so it appeared. Perhaps he found it all rather distasteful. Overly prosaic and—because of that—beneath his contempt. His eyelids fluttered briefly shut, and his lips pursed with disapproval.
“And now my own staff are telling me what to do,” he sighed. “What is the world coming to?”
Except that Hampton was his only staff. There wasn’t any plural. This was a fine time for him to go losing his grip on reality completely. I clenched my teeth, my breath seething through them.
“Woody?” I barked at him. “Don’t you understand what’s going on?”
He had to know about the battle. And I jabbed my index finger at the vast, approaching figure. But he wouldn’t even look at it again. He kept brushing his fingertips along the wand, seemingly obsessed with it. And at that point, frustration boiled over in me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have done what I attempted to.
It made no sense to try and force him physically. If I’d been thinking clearer, I’d have seen that. But the situation was too desperate. And so I lunged at him and tried to grab him by his robe, forcing him to look around.
But my palms had barely closed around the fabric when he saw what I was doing. And his eyes abruptly flashed. They went brilliantly hot for a few seconds, so vivid they dazzled me. When the glare shrunk back, they’d returned to the ugly orange I had seen several nights back.
The heel of his right hand brushed, lightly and deftly, against my chest. I could feel its pressure for the briefest instant. Barely a plausible attempt at self-defense.
But as it pulled away, it suddenly felt like an earthquake had struck me. My bones shook fiercely, and the flesh on them seemed to quiver.
The strength was sucked out of my limbs. And I didn’t merely fall; going down I crumpled like a loose sack of coal. I tried to get up, found I couldn’t. Not a muscle in my frame was under my control.
Out of the corner of one eye, I could still see Hanlon. He had already floated halfway across the grounds, and was drawing eve
r closer.
“Sir?” Raine’s manservant moaned again.
But I heard no reply.
One side of my face was down on the porch’s cold stone surface. It was a struggle to attempt it from here, but I managed to get another look at Woody. He wasn’t looming over me, as I’d expected him to. In fact, he had forgotten all about me. He was bending over, studying the wand again. Touching it delicately with both his hands. And what was that noise he was making? A strange murmuring sound with no shape to it.
There was madness contained in that little stick. And perhaps, like Hanlon, he identified with that. The thing seemed to fascinate him like nothing else had ever done. As I watched, he stopped dabbing at it, and then gently tipped his head to one side.
Looked as though he were listening to something. And it didn’t make me feel a whole lot better, seeing that.
Hampton had backed off, too afraid to venture close. I doubted he’d ever seen his master in a mood like this, and he didn’t seem quite sure how to handle it.
I tried to move again. Couldn’t make so much as an eyebrow twitch. But if my eyesight was still working, maybe the same applied to my voice. Neither my lips nor my jaws were responding. But I could still push air up through my throat, then shape it lightly with my tongue.
I made a stab at it. “Woody!”
It came out more like “Oo-ee.” And he didn’t look around. So I tried again, more forcefully. He glanced at me with a peevish air.
“What’s that, sport? Why does everyone mumble so much these days? Speak more clearly, if you please.”
And he wasn’t being spiteful or sarcastic. He seemed to have genuinely forgotten what he’d done.
He clicked his fingers suddenly. And my entire mouth started moving again, although nothing else did. If I was going to make anything happen here, then it would have to be with words, not actions.
“I thought you were going to help us?”
He looked distinctly puzzled, like he didn’t recall saying that.
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