And this was where Harker Eastlake slept. It occurred to me that – on some very deep, subconscious level – he was rather frightened of the darkness he had filled his life with. So he slept in a room that he’d made very pale and bland, in an attempt to keep all that at bay.
But the darkness … it had managed to get in regardless. Always does eventually, and he ought to have known that. Only this time, it had done so in a quite spectacular fashion.
A huge amount of crimson liquid was splattered across the carpet nearest to the bed, and down one whole side of the mattress too. And it was fairly fresh and glossy. An awful lot of life’s blood had been spilled here recently. At a guess, I’d say most of the contents of a human body.
My first thought was, My God, what’s he done to her? We’d been assuming Harker wanted Becky for her femininity, but right now I was having second thoughts. I don’t know about Lauren, but I could hear a steady thumping in my ears. I had to blink a few times just to straighten up my blurring vision. Had he butchered her? And if so, to achieve what? There was no sign of any corpse.
Only, the closer to the bed I got, the more that I began to see that there was something else not right. The bloodstained quilt was perfectly flat for most of its breadth, but rose up at the center. And was that merely the way it had settled, or was there something underneath?
It wasn’t large enough to be a body. So I reached across and pulled the cover back.
Tried to reel away, but collided with Lauren. Disgust filled me, and a jolting sense of shock.
It was a severed human head that I was looking at.
But not one with long red hair. No, not a woman’s head at all.
The waxy, dead face that was staring back at me belonged to Harker Eastlake.
His eyes were still wide open, and his lips parted just a touch. A dead man shouldn’t really have any kind of expression, but he seemed to have one, largely of dismay.
I was still trying to take this in when something small and warm hit my brow, dropping from above.
I slapped a hand to it, and my palm came back scarlet. Which forced me to tip my gaze up, only to have my sense of shock redoubled. Lauren stared up at the ceiling too, then clamped her fingers to her mouth.
It looked, at first, like a loose canopy of pinkish yellow cloth, cut raggedly and stretched along the edges. I’m still not entirely sure what was keeping it up there
But then you began noticing the other details. The curling gray body hair at certain spots. The nipples, and the navel.
I’d no idea where the rest of his cadaver might have gone. But Harker Eastlake had been flayed. This was his skin that we were looking at.
“Holy Christ!” That was Lauren. “How did this happen?”
I was certain only of one thing. This couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person. It was genuinely good news that Eastlake senior was gone. But the more serious question was … who, or what, had done this?
“Do you like it?” asked a singsong voice behind us, breaking up the crazy pattern of my thoughts. “I think it helps to add a splash of color to what most people would call an essentially cold room.”
Becky Trayner was there in the doorway, when we turned. Once again, she had no clothes on, but she didn’t look as naked as she had the last time.
Her whole body was covered up with coppery, triangular scales. Her eyes were dark mauve, with no whites, and they were glowing incandescently.
Extremely sharp teeth came into view the moment that she smiled.
She’d fooled us this entire time, and both Eastlakes into the bargain.
She was the third devil.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
She still had that long red hair. But it was pretty much the only thing that hadn’t changed.
Her ears were heavily serrated round the edges. And her brow was lower, bulging quite a bit. There was a dark blue scale above each eye, making it look like she’d applied a thick layer of makeup. And when she opened up her mouth, there was that same deep purple on the inside.
Her arms were hanging by her sides. Her nails had grown about six inches longer, very narrow, razor-sharp. Dried blood had formed a pair of gloves around her fingers and her wrists, stretching down the whole way to her elbows. So I guessed that I could figure out how Harker’s skin had been removed.
She came into the room, but managed that without the benefit of legs. Her body, as it reached the floor, was split up into three serpentine tails, each of them thick but tapering away to a sharp point. And they were moving independently of each other, like the tentacles of some sea-creature, her scales making a dragging noise as she shifted herself forward.
Lauren raised her Walther. The demon threw her what was practically a pitying look, and the gun vanished from the lieutenant’s grasp with a small pop.
My head was still reeling. This whole thing had been the ultimate deception. Maybe there had never even been a woman in this town called ‘Becky Trayner.’ False memories had been implanted in her neighbors’ heads, perhaps, and in the kids from college. There had been no innocent young girl. No sickly auntie calling from the back. Everyone who’d got mixed up in this thing had been well and truly had.
The creature gazed across at Harker’s amputated head, her top lip twitching.
“Would you believe it?” she asked. “He tried to force himself on me while I was still in human form. Which is why I took his skin off before I removed his head. I mean, violence in general is fine and good. But sexual violence is so very …” and she hunted for the right word, “squelchy.”
Every couple of seconds, now, the hair on her head was transforming into tongues of wavering red flame, which boiled across her scalp for a brief instant before turning back again.
The devil stared at Lauren.
“And I know what you’re thinking, missy. Being what I am, why did I allow that nasty little Ryan to abase me so?” She ran a long, forked tongue across her lips. “Well – for my species – there’s a certain pleasure to be had in the perversions of the flesh. And it put him where I wanted him, in the palm of my hand. Menfolk are so easy to control. Don’t you agree?”
Underlying her singsong tone, there was a faintly hissing undercurrent, like a flow of acid. I began stiffening up. But I was starting to back away into the bargain, unable to stop myself. Lauren was doing the same, I noticed.
Was this devil going to finish us the same way she’d killed Eastlake? There was no real telling.
But she didn’t make a move toward us. She just spread her arms out to the sides, announcing herself in the most grandiose of fashions.
“I am the she-devil Tavanah Kouralis!” she yelled. And her voice had taken on an echo, every syllable resounding. “I was here long before mankind walked upon this Earth, and I shall be here when they have all perished! Cities fall before my wrath, and civilizations crumble!”
Then she winked at me and smiled again.
“You’re an educated man, Mr. Devries. Ever heard of Pompeii? Or Herculaneum? Those were both my work, and you know what? I feel an encore coming on.”
What the hell was she talking about? Mild annoyance went through me, in spite of the cold fear that had gripped me. Both those ancient cities had fallen under a volcano. We had no such things round here.
The insides of my throat felt swollen. Every scrap of breath I pushed up was an effort.
But I managed to ask her, “Hold it … isn’t this whole business over, now that there are no more Eastlakes?”
She had no eyebrows to raise, but the deep ridge on her forehead lifted.
“Oh, I see. You’re thinking of all this in terms of bargains made, souls bartered, signatures in blood. That Faust stuff?” And she gave her head a tiny shake. “No, I’m sorry, but you’re thinking of the Big Guy. That’s His way of doing things, not the way of My Lord Ithmoteus.”
“So he didn’t do a deal?”
“With Eastlake? Well, he pretended to, of course. But then, deals are about honesty, aren’t they? And there
is none of that about my master. Devils of the third echelon never keep their word.”
And then she simply swung away from us – her whole long body flexing like a length of cord – and started heading back into the main part of the house. I fired two shots at the back of her skull as soon as her head was turned.
The only thing she did was laugh.
The rasping sound of scales on marble flooring was retreating quickly. When we pulled ourselves together and went running after her, she was already more than halfway back to the big staircase. But I could see that both her arms were flailing, moving through the air in wild, eccentric patterns. Her head was tipped right back, and she was shouting something out.
I’d heard that kind of rhythmic cadence more than a few times, and was in little doubt that she was casting a new spell.
She reached the top of the stairs, disappearing down them, and was lost from view a moment. And it turned out she was chock full of surprises. When we reached the top ourselves, we saw that something else had changed.
Tavanah Kouralis had begun to grow. And I don’t simply mean that she had added a few inches. She was stretching out hugely, getting vastly taller, her arms like tree trunks, the distance between her head and her three tails becoming more exaggerated by the second. There was room in here to do that, since this was a spacious lobby. But if she was planning to leave this mansion, then I couldn’t help but wonder how she was going to get through the door.
Her chant became a high-pitched bellowing, a raging like some maddened beast. Her hands were held out flat and downward, moving in slow, sweeping patterns. And the floor below her palms began to shake.
The entire house had started doing that, more violently than ever. Thicker plumes of dust came down around us. We could hear stuff dropping and then smashing. We had never had an earthquake in Raine’s Landing, but this was probably the closest we would get.
There was a bone-shuddering jolt. The tiles down there all suddenly sprang up, cracking into smaller chunks. Another portion of the roof came loose, fortunately not near us. And the whole stairway fell to pieces.
The snakelike creature had gone very still and calm. Her body had grown longer by some fifty feet, if you included the tails. Her eyes glowed brightly through the thickening murk. And I could make out her smile. It was serene, like she’d been sampling some exotic drug.
She bent forward, pressing her palms against the shattered floor. And then she spoke three final words.
“Kavar! Taroon! Shevaliah!”
And then she roared, the way a tiger roars, and there was nothing human left about her. Huge, curved spines were now emerging from her back, and a penetrating stench was filling up the air.
The floor around her looked like it was pulsing. Then a massive fissure started opening up, making a swift beeline for the entranceway. And when it got there, a part of that wall collapsed. The fissure kept on growing.
Deepening too, laying bare the mansion’s foundations and splitting them apart. Steam came up, then jets of yellow smoke, sulfur adding itself to the stench around us.
And the air was getting hotter too. Something red and glowing started bubbling from the elongated crack. I couldn’t believe my eyes, since I had only ever seen this on a movie or a TV screen.
This was lava I was looking at. It started pouring off the house’s porch and down into the grounds. And it kept on like that until, before much longer, I was staring at a slowly moving river of the stuff.
Tavanah went over to crouch at by edge of it. She reached down, dipping two fingertips into the molten rock. Held them to her tongue, sampling the red-hot slop with no apparent pain. She grunted and stared up at us with gloating satisfaction.
And then she slithered out onto the bright red river and began to move across its surface, quite unbothered by the heat. Which was the point at which I reminded myself that we were near the top of a steep hill. And in the movies that I’d seen, lava always ran from high points to lower ones.
There was a whole town full of people down below us. And my insides started cooling when I realized what was going to happen.
More cracking and rumbling sounds were ringing out beyond the mansion’s damaged walls.
There was no way down the main stairs any longer, but a quick jog to the nearest window confirmed it.
More fissures were opening up, right across this portion of the hillside.
And each of them was spewing molten rock.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
He’d overslept. That often happened in the winter months and didn’t particularly matter, because his employer kept very strange hours indeed.
Hampton heaved his rotund bulk out of his sagging bed and padded through his big apartment at the back of Raine Manor till he reached the washroom. There, he showered, shaved, and brushed his teeth. Only he had to do it all by candlelight, since Master Woodard didn’t approve of electricity.
He sometimes wondered why he bothered staying. But the plain fact was, he had been Raine’s manservant for so long that he knew barely anything else. Cast him out into the world and he’d be absolutely lost. Who else would hire a tub of lard like him? Woodard Raine treated him well, and he was comfortable and relatively safe here. So if he had to put up with some odd behavior from time to time, well, that was not such a high price.
He pulled on his uniform, midnight blue and tailor-made to fit him. Left the cap off, since he usually only wore it when he was chauffering Raine’s Silver Shadow. Then he went through to his cozy little kitchen, fixed himself some coffee.
He was strolling through the manor’s blackened corridors before much longer, a steaming mug in one hand and a candle in a holder in the other. What would be required of him today? It always was a guessing game. There were whole weeks when Raine asked absolutely nothing of him, and others when his services were very badly needed
Hampton reached one of the big front windows of the house at last. And they were very strange indeed. They let in no daylight, but you could still see out through them. Which didn’t make the tiniest bit of sense, but that was simply the way things went round here.
He found himself peering out through one of those rare gaps in the thickened foliage that surrounded this mansion. He could see partway down the hill from here. And … good heavens, was that a fire he could make out?
But it turned out that it wasn’t living flame. Not the main bulk of it, anyway. There were fires springing up around its edges, surely, trees and small sections of grassland starting to blaze up. But the main thing he was looking at – it was far more solid, spreading out.
Lava? Here in Massachusetts? Hampton had been witness to some very curious and confusing things, but never anything as weird as this. Volcanic activity was definitely not what you’d expect in this part of the world.
But then he caught a brief glimpse of the creature down there. The size of it, and its alarming shape. The coffee mug dropped from his grasp and his jowls started quivering.
And then he was running back into the great house, his stout legs pumping his huge bulk along.
“Sir? Master Raine?”
He tried the ballroom first. Played his candle’s light around the hollow, dark expanse, but it was empty. So he kept on going, trying every door he reached, but finding nothing. Raine was not in the games room, nor the dining area.
There was no master bedroom. Not one that got used, anyway. His employer slept wherever he liked. And there was no study or office either. Raine had no need for that kind of room, since he’d never worked.
It was finally an instinct that took Hampton to the right place. This part of the house hadn’t been used in years, and had a musty smell because of that. But – back at the very rear of the manor, overlooking a large courtyard with a dried-out fountain – was the nursery where Woodard Raine had spent his earliest years. His crib was still there. And his playpen. Rows of shelves against one wall were lined with toys.
Woodard Raine was sitting in the corner, his knees drawn up to hi
s chest. He had a blue-and-white woolen rabbit in one hand and was stroking it with the other, murmuring inaudibly as he did so.
“Sir?” Hampton asked carefully.
He stepped in closer, the light from his candle washing over Raine’s thin face. But that got no reaction.
Only Hampton could now hear what he was saying.
“It’s going to be all right, Jack,” Raine was murmuring, that being the rabbit’s name. “You and me, we’re going to be okay. So long as we stay here, very still and in the dark, the fire will not find us. But we must be very quiet.”
His eyes, which were usually a bright gold hue, had turned back to their original dark blue and were looking very glazed. He was usually such a very powerful magician. But he seemed utterly helpless now.
“It’s going to be fine, Jack,” he kept whispering. “We’re going to get through this, you and me.”
And he continued like that for a good long while, oblivious to the fact that there was anybody with him.
So when it came to the matter of the creature on the hillside, well, he wasn’t going to be much use. And Hampton frowned defeatedly.
It was like a pair of blinkers had abruptly fallen from his eyes. Lehman Willets jolted as his second sight came back in a big rush.
For the past few days, it had been like he had been walking round half blind. He’d had the eyesight of a normal human being, sure. But he’d encountered serious problems when it came to reaching for stuff with his mind. It was a power that had worked sometimes, but had become unreliable. The presence of black magic was responsible for that. But without any warning, that had changed.
He could now see everything that was happening. The huge snake-devil emerging from the ruined Eastlake mansion. Gouts of lava spreading out across Sycamore Hill. Ross and Lauren, still trapped on the second story of the house, and even what had happened to its owner.
Why’d his inner vision suddenly come back this way? And there were other things, not merely sight. Knowledge he’d not had before. The name of this thing’s lord, for instance. It occurred to him that, just perhaps, the snake-thing on the high hillside was trying to taunt him.
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