As soon as we were headed down the path, every single bug rose up into the air, a swarming black cloud forming round us. A few brushed against my face, but then they started to disperse. And in a couple more seconds, they were gone.
We reached the porch. I put the fingers of my free hand up against the door, prodding it gently. And it silently swung open. A wedge of filtered sunlight appeared on the plain beige carpet out in front of me, but I could make out nothing else. And so we went inside.
We’d only traveled a few paces, when that door slammed shut. And I was already thinking about Eddie Allen’s house. So had we walked into another trap?
We had been plunged into a depthless blackness. There was not a hint of daylight in this place. Which I couldn’t understand at first, since how about the windows?
I groped around until I found the doorknob. Tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t budge. Which meant that, once again, magic was holding the thing shut.
My eyes couldn’t adjust, since there was nothing to adjust to. Another few seconds of this and I would start to lose my balance. So I felt my way along the inside wall until I reached one of the window ledges.
There was something hard lying across the glass. Some kind of shutter, I imagined, very smooth and flat. But then I pressed my palm against it, and was rewarded with a tingling sensation, almost like mild static.
Some sort of barrier had been conjured up. A supernatural shield. I had encountered them before. Doubtlessly, it was the same with every other window in this house. I kept on pushing till my wrists hurt, but the thing just wouldn’t budge.
I kept remembering what the doc had told me. The creature we were after – it would only remain in its human form so long as we kept looking at it. And we couldn’t even see our hands in front of our faces, right now. So that wasn’t an option.
I went still as concrete, listening for any movement. And I could hear breathing, but it turned out to be mine.
“Any suggestions?” Lauren whispered.
“These places are all laid out pretty much the same,” I told her. “So I think that I can find my way around.”
I rocked gently on my heels, trying to get my bearings. With my back to this window frame, there ought to be another doorway straight ahead and slightly to the right. And there was probably a light switch. So I went lurching over till I found it.
When I clicked it, nothing happened. The darkness was starting to overwhelm me, making my head spin, but I did my best to ignore that.
“There’s a back door in the kitchens of these places,” I told Lauren quietly. “We ought to try and reach it.”
But, Eddie Allen’s place, my mind kept saying. That had been a double-ended trap.
I was still waiting for Lauren to reply, except that wasn’t what I heard.
There was a swift, sharp slapping noise. And then, from lower down, a heavy thump.
“Lauren?” I hissed urgently.
I held my pistol out in front of me and pivoted one way, then the other, desperately trying to find something to take aim at, my ears straining for the faintest sound.
But without any warning, a hand closed around my right wrist, shoving my Smith & Wesson up. And when I tried to break free, the grip tightened so savagely sheer agony ran through my arm.
A second hand closed round my throat, pushing me back so I was pinned against the wall.
And then it tightened too, and started choking me.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
When I tried to knock the grip away with my free forearm, it just didn’t work. It was like trying to budge a lump of solid steel. The hand grasping me ought to have been thin and frail, but no amount of force that I applied could make it shift. And so I lashed out with a foot instead. It definitely connected with a shin, but there was no reaction. Not a pained one, anyway.
“That’s hardly polite, young man,” complained a creaky, rather genteel voice.
It could have been Miss Langhart, back from when I’d been a little kid at Northridge Elementary. The same refined but slightly rasping tone. And now that she was right up close, I could smell lavender water on the air around me. This was a devil that paid close attention to the details.
Then the grip around my throat got even tighter, and she pushed me up till I was lifted on my tiptoes. I’m easily over six foot tall, and she wasn’t, so that took a lot of strength.
Was she already in demonic form? If so, these were my very final breaths that I was struggling to take. But I didn’t think that devils wore perfume, or had voices that sounded quite like that.
“Your lady friend’s unconscious,” she was telling me. “I’ll get to her presently. But you’ve been a very bad boy, and need to dealt with immediately.”
Quite abruptly, I was whirling. She was spinning me around in a wide arc, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Pain flared through my back as I was slammed against another wall. I felt out with my free hand, my palm running over rough, bare brick. My heel met no resistance when I edged it back. A fireplace, perhaps? But then there was a sudden clatter. My shoe had struck something made of metal.
My gun hand was still being held directly above my head. I pulled with all my might, but couldn’t free it.
But then it struck me. She was making me aim at the ceiling. And this was a single story house, exactly like my own.
So I curled my index finger, firing four swift shots, all grouped together.
Narrow shafts of daylight flooded down across us.
They were pretty small and didn’t reveal an awful lot. I still couldn’t see the rest of the room, and couldn’t even make out where Lauren had gone. But they did outline, in thinnest detail, the features of my attacker.
Her face had no color in those slender shafts of winter light. I could make out a few wrinkles in her skin and the heavy crow’s feet round her eyes. Her lips were pursed. But then she smiled.
“Very clever,” she said, “for a human. But it will not save you.”
That clattering metallic noise – I kept trying to think what it might be. Eased my heel backward again, and got the same result. Something was swinging around back there. No, several objects, banging up against each other.
If this was the opening to a fireplace, could it be a set of irons? There was stuff down there that I could use. The problem was, I couldn’t reach it.
The schoolmarm’s grin became an ugly one. Her eyes glittered with sadistic fury. She had long nails that were pointed at the tips. They dug into my throat so hard that I was certain they had broken through the skin. I couldn’t suck in even part of a breath any more, and the pain of that was like a hot flame in me.
Then I realized I had gotten this the wrong damned way around. I still had a free hand, didn’t I? And so I opened up my right fingers and let the Smith & Wesson drop.
To where my left was waiting underneath, to catch it.
Her eyes widened when she saw that. But by that time, I had got my weapon properly gripped. And I only keep five in the chamber, so I fired the final bullet.
She let me go and then went shuddering back. Her hands closed across her belly, trying to stem the flow of blood. But then she stopped, a happier look returning to her dimmed-out features. And I realized I’d made a mistake.
I’d hit her with a gut shot. And a person could take half an hour, dying from one of those.
Whereas I didn’t have anywhere near that long. She was already stumbling away, edging off into the deep surrounding shadows. And the instant I lost sight of her, I knew that she’d begin transforming.
I kept on staring at her as I reached down for the fire irons. Her silhouette was getting fainter. My hand closed around what felt like it might be a poker. When I lifted it, I saw it had a sharp, barbed tip.
And so I grasped it in both fists and then lunged forward, aiming for the devil’s heart.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Harker Eastlake was lying on the bed again, the one that smelled of Becky Trayner. And he�
�d only meant to rest a while, but had somehow fallen fast asleep. That was what happened when you started to get older, however powerful you made yourself. He woke up with a start, his eyelids springing open, the orange fire still ablaze in his irises.
And he felt dizzy, and nauseous briefly. That never usually happened, and was troubling. There seemed to be something out of kilter. Something going wrong. Harker reached out with his senses, and then figured what it was. And it made him grit his teeth.
That goddamned private dick, Devries! He’d brought down one of Ithmoteus’s lieutenants! And he was a simple human being, with no magic powers in the least. So that shouldn’t even be possible!
What was it with that guy – did he have a host of angels looking out for him or something? Harker had never known anything quite like it. First the ruined mausoleum, and now this. A snarl came rasping from his throat. And then he got up quickly, a vein pulsing in his temple.
He needed to be putting his own weight into the battle. When he burst out through the bedroom door, his heart was pounding fiercely.
“Sonny-boy?” He leant over the railings. “Ryan?”
There was no reply. And so he went down to the common room, stood underneath the chandelier and spoke the password.
He went dropping through into the crypt below. There was still no sign of Ryan, but his ‘helpers’ were there, dressed in their black robes.
They were perfectly immobile round the altar, and had been standing there for the entire night. Wake them up and send them against Ross Devries and he was prepared to take an even bet they’d not be coming back.
They were still human, though. They still had warm blood running through their veins. And there were a hundred different uses Harker could think of for a substance of that sort.
He pulled one of the wall drapes back, got himself another of those robes, draping it loosely across his shoulders. Then he went across and fetched himself some other stuff from the concealed shelves. He pushed his way through to the altar, where he began chanting in a demonic tongue. He sprinkled ash, set specks of herb on fire while they were still floating in mid-air. His burning eyes were almost rounded as he worked, his face set like a porcelain mask.
Finally, he stepped behind the nearest of the frozen boys, a beefy looking fellow with short-cropped pale hair. Grabbed hold of his forehead with one hand, pulling it back. Took a knife from his robe’s pocket with the other. And he ran the blade across the kid’s throat, cutting swift and deep.
The young man collapsed to the floor, his lifeblood pouring from him. Harker grinned with satisfaction and then moved on to the next immobile figure.
“Pop?”
He wheeled round to find Ryan staring at him. And his son was normally was so in synch with his behavior. But the boy’s expression, right now, was of sheer dismay and anguish, his mouth so wide that you could see his tongue curled up behind his small, flat teeth.
“Pop, what are you doing?” He stared down at Thad Armitage’s corpse.
“How do you mean, Sonny-boy?”
“These aren’t enemies! These are our guys!”
“Precisely my point. ‘Ours’ denotes property, right? To dispose of as we see fit.”
Ryan was still staring at him like he’d gone insane, so Harker paused to explain what he was doing.
“I’m working on a brand-new spell, see. I’m appealing to the Higher Lords of Fate to help us overcome our foes. And they’re thirsty guys, those fateful lords. Takes a lot of juice to get them favorable in your direction.”
“You’re …?”
Was the boy an idiot or something? They’d already taken two setbacks, and Harker wasn’t going to simply wait around to see if Ross Devries could make the hat trick.
“Don’t you know nothing?” he bellowed. “Haven’t you learned anything I’ve taught you? It’s all well and good to get a devil or two on your side, but there are even stronger forces! Tap into the dark side of the Universe itself, and you can mold the future with the bare palms of your hands!”
Then he started moving over to the next young man along.
“Are you nuts? These are my friends!”
Ryan grabbed him by the shoulder,.
Harker’s face went very hard indeed. He let the arm holding the knife drop slackly. But he swung out with his other hand, the knuckles balled into a fist, and caught his son a hefty blow on the side of the head, the impact sending the young fellow reeling.
Ryan wobbled and then staggered to a halt.
“I’m your father,” Eastlake hissed. “The only reason that you’re even in this world. Touch me that way ever again and you won’t get the empty hand.”
He stared imperiously at Ryan, who was clutching at his ear and cowering.
“Friends?” he breathed contemptuously. “You’re an Eastlake, and we don’t have those. There are people who are useful sometimes, and we take advantage of that while it lasts. But otherwise, we make it on our own. You got that?”
Ryan nodded jerkily, his brown eyes filled with helplessness.
Harker gazed at him till he was satisfied he’d made his point. And then he turned back to the semicircle of robed figures, resuming the job he’d started.
CHAPTER SIXTY
I shoved the poker in as deeply as I could. The devil’s mouth sprang open in a frantic howl. And then I got the briefest glimpse of what the thing had really been, before it vanished altogether.
Abruptly, the spectacles and hair were gone. The schoolmarm’s whole head stretched out sideways, the cheekbones broadening hugely. A dull red glow filled up the room. And in its bloody luster, a very different being was revealed to me.
Slightly taller than I was. Massive batwings were unfurling from its back. And it had hairy paws, the claws of which were thick and blunt.
Its face was covered with short fur. It had a snout like a hog’s and tiny, tufted ears, and its eyes were glittering a carmine color. It was wearing a long coat of chain mail, but badly rusted, and the poker had gone through a hole. The creature’s jaws came open, showing several rows of jagged teeth. I got a whiff of its dead breath, and then it shrank into a dot and vanished. And the dull red glow went with it.
How did stuff like that come into being in the first place? My body was bathed in sweat, raw adrenaline coursing through me. But the force shields at the windows faded slowly, daylight flooding in. That helped to calm me down, and so I took in my surroundings.
Lauren was up on her elbows. Another huge bruise was apparent on the section of her jaw below the ear. And she was clutching at it miserably. I couldn’t help but wonder why she kept on coming back here.
But I crouched down and inspected her. She’d be sore for a while and had a tooth chipped, but there were no broken bones this time. And her gaze had started focusing okay, which hopefully ruled out concussion.
“I’ve finally found my true role in this world,” she mumbled. “I’m a punch-bag for the hordes of Hell.”
It sounded like her tongue was slightly swollen, but she’d live.
I made her rest a minute more, then helped her gently to her feet. We both went to the window and stared out. Everything was calming down. A good number of people out on Almer Square were staring at each other mournfully and trying to apologize. And ambulances were turning up. Saul must have called them.
“One devil down. Which just leaves two to go,” Lauren pointed out, trying to shine a hopeful light on this whole situation.
But I didn’t see it that way. I had barely fought that first one off by the skin of my teeth. It had partly been judgment, but an awful load of good fortune as well. If that poker hadn’t been there …
The next time, I might not be so lucky.
“Slow down. Back up,” said Patrolwoman Jenny Pearce.
The police cruiser she was in drifted to a halt a few yards past the intersection with Dyne, then was put into reverse. Jenny was in the passenger seat. Eddie Allen – the same rookie who had lost his home – was driving. He was a good
guy, helpful, eager, not really what you’d call a famous wit but not too boring either. The entire P.D. had been pulling double shifts since the fires downtown, and she had found herself partnered with him.
Jenny was in her early thirties and single. And Eddie here was almost ten years her junior, which had a certain allure to it. She’d toyed with the idea a while, but was experienced enough to know that work and whoopee never mixed.
Keep it in your head, a fantasy and nothing more, she told herself. But she had to admit, he was an awfully cute kid.
But then she’d spotted the moving figure off in the middle distance, and any thoughts like that dropped from her mind like a lump of granite off a cliff. It was a tall and overly wide figure she was looking at, in a white shirt and black pants and with what looked like dark and curly hair. The guy was heading away from them along the sidewalk. And she couldn’t see his face, couldn’t even tell if he was wearing specs. But an APB had already been issued on a certain Oliver or Olly Kirkland. Was this him?
They were in Garnerstown. If this man kept heading in the same direction, he would reach the municipal limits in another five minutes.
Jenny felt her pulse speed up.
“Pull us up behind that other car, where he can’t see us,” she instructed Eddie.
While he did that, she got on the radio, requesting backup.
Hobart had already briefed them, telling them what they should do. But Eddie was still looking baffled. Jenny raised a finger to her lips.
She opened her door and got carefully out, Eddie following her example. And he stuck behind her closely as she hurried along Dyne Street, both of them moving as fast as they could, but with as little noise as possible.
The man was a whole block off, still marching away purposefully. But maybe this was simply some unwary citizen. She didn’t dare make a real move till she felt certain about this.
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