Never Fear (57 page)

“
Lewis! Lewis!” The second
shout finally snapped Lewis out of his stupor.

“
I’m all right.” Lewis
felt like he was the farthest thing from all right he could
be.

“
Antoine, you’re injured.”
His uncle spoke the words as cold assessment rather than caring
inquiry.

“
It be no ding.” The blood
soaking the voodoo doctor’s sleeve suggested otherwise.

“
We have to go after it.”
That what not what Lewis wanted to do, but he felt that he had a
responsibility stop the creature before it could kill again.
Whatever the cost.

“
Nonsense. Between us we
put a dozen bullets in the monster and we hardly slowed it down. If
we give chase, we’ll end up like those two there.” Gideon pointed
to the disemboweled couple, and Lewis needed only a quick glance to
lose his will to continue the hunt. “Come on. Back to the house.
With any luck the demon will be dormant again until tomorrow night.
We need to regroup and come up with a plan, one a little bit more
advanced than our previous shoot-and-pray strategy. Chin up,
everyone. We had a bad night, but tomorrow will be
different.”

“
Why is that?” Lewis
didn’t understand why his uncle didn’t share his own despondency at
the beast’s escape.

“
Because now we know what
we’re up against. And once you understand your enemy, you can beat
your enemy.”

December 24, 1881

By the time Lewis awoke, it was
already approaching midday. Will lay next to him on the bed,
looking worriedly at his master. After he dressed, he found his
uncle and Antoine in the dining room, poring over maps and books
and the policeman’s notebook he had stolen an eternity ago. They
looked haggard. Lewis doubted they had gotten much sleep, if they
had gotten any at all. Another thing to feel guilty about. At least
Antoine’s wounds had been dressed.

“
There’s something I’m
missing. Something that connects the attacks that I’m not seeing.”
Gideon’s voice was strained and his frustration was visibly boiling
over.

“
You said last night that
you knew what we were up against.” Doubt filled Lewis.

“
I do. The problem is that
I don’t know what I know yet. All the information is here. I just
have to piece it together.” His uncle spoke with what Lewis
considered to be an unearned confidence. “We have to go over the
other murders again. What connects them?”

“
De tree before dawn
yesterday. None during de day. Den tree more last night,” Antoine
recapped for them all.

“
Then none again today. It
hibernates during the day. We’d already sussed that out. No, I mean
the individual victims. That thing covered a lot of ground the last
two nights in what could hardly be called a straight line. Why that
route? Why those people?”

“
It was looking for the
easiest kills?” Lewis posited.

“
Hardly. It completely
bypassed the orphanage, and why go to the basement of the infirmary
then leave when there you have plenty of tasty, immobile human
snacks above you? List every victim in order for me, telling me
where and how they were found.”

“
Mrs. Dunham was in de
kitchen baking de morning bread. Remi was in de basement at Touro
Infirmary working on de building boiler. Walter Jackson was getting
ready for de day at de ironworks. Dey found him by de—”

“
By the smelter! That’s
it! The missing piece! Right in front of me the whole time. How
could I be so stupid as to miss it? It’s so obvious. Can’t you see
it?” Lewis looked to see if Antoine understood what his uncle was
going on about. It was a comfort to him that the large man looked
as lost as he was. “The heat! It’s drawn to heat! Mrs. Dunham had
the oven going. St. Croix was stoking the boiler at Touro. Jackson
was working a smelter—”

“—
De Gaslamp lighter had a
torch wid him...” came Antoine’s wide eyed
comprehension.

“
There was a cigarette
case and a lighter by the couple.” Lewis excitedly chimed
in.

“
Now put it all together.
Everything we know about this monstrosity. It’s nocturnal, it’s
drawn to sources of heat, it’s hiding somewhere in City Park, and
bullets merely seem to annoy it.” Lewis could see the gears turning
in his uncle’s head now.

“
Dat seems te be de long
and de short of it,” Antoine affirmed.

“
So if we can’t kill it,
we’ll have to send it back to where it came from.”

“
Ain’t no easy ding to
trick de Devil back to Hell Professor.”

“
We’ll need some sort of
heat source, something large enough to lure the beast to us. We
won’t be able to get it to the lab. We’ll need some place wide open
in or near the park.” His uncle was pacing again.

“
Den it’s a good ding Papa
Noel rides tonight.” The words stopped Gideon mid-stride. A smile
broke out all over his face.

“
Antoine, you’re a genius.
Can you make the arrangements in time?”

“
It shouldn’t be a
problem. Can you say de same?”

“
Are you asking if I can
build a portable generator capable of powering an extradimensional
portal between now and sundown? Antoine, please, I’ll be done with
an hour to spare.”

“
Best be to it den.”
Without further discussion Antoine headed out the door.

Gideon was about to do the same when
the need to confess suddenly overwhelmed Lewis.

“
Uncle...” The words stuck
in his throat. “Uncle, there’s something I have to tell
you.”

“
Lewis, I need to get to
my laboratory.” His uncle looked at him and his facial expression
went from stern to concern in an instant. “Lewis, what is
it?”

“
It’s just that...” Lewis
forced himself to tell his uncle his shameful secret. “The truth is
that this is all my fault. I snuck back down to your laboratory
after everyone had gone to bed. I know I shouldn’t have, but I
couldn’t help it. I just wanted to see him again. I turned the
dials back to where you had them before. I swear all I did was
watch them. I didn’t touch anything other than the dials, honest.
They’re all dead because of me.” Tears filled his eyes and he began
to sob uncontrollably.

“
Is that what’s been
eating at you this whole time? Lewis, I’m going to say something
now, and I want you to listen very closely because it’s important
that you believe me. None of this is your fault. It can’t be
because the fault lies with me. I tampered with the natural order
of things. More than that, I did so in the most cavalier way
possible. There should have been nothing for you to find when you
snuck back down. It was the height of arrogance and idiocy to leave
that connection open and unmonitored. I have no idea what possessed
me to do so, especially in light of the obvious temptation it
offered you. Everything that has happened has been a result of my
hubris and not your innocent desire to see your father alive and
happy again. You are a good lad, Lewis, as good as I’ve
seen.”

“
But mother
said—”

“
My sister is a ghastly
woman completely unable to look beyond her own petty needs. What
your father saw in her I’ll never know. How she could send you down
here alone to stay with a stranger, at Christmas of all times,
absolutely boggles my mind, but I’m damn glad she did. Now,
there’ll be time for feeling feelings later, but right now we need
to get to work. We have a beast to slay and honor to regain. Are
you with me?”

“
Yes sir,” Lewis said.
Will barked his affirmation as well.

The work took most of the afternoon,
but Gideon was good to his word. They finished loading the
equipment onto the wagon while the sun was still two fingers over
the horizon. Gideon, Lewis, and Will rode to the park in silence.
Lewis assumed that his uncle was too preoccupied with going over
the plan in his head to speak, and Will was too preoccupied with
sticking his head out the window and barking at passing streetcars
to pay much attention to his master.

Their destination was well into the
park, a clearing somewhere along the bank of the Mississippi. They
found Antoine waiting for them when they arrived. Lewis was still
completely in the dark about what the plan was. If he had to guess,
he would say the giant, twelve-foot-high stack of wood they were
setting up next to them was going to be involved in some manner or
another. But something about the demeanor of the two adults made
him think it was best not to ask questions at the moment. He simply
got to work unloading the wagon.

Gideon had not just brought with him a
stack of lab equipment. He’d also loaded the wagon with a small
armory. Lewis pulled out a gun with a single long barrel and some
kind of pumping mechanism attached to the bottom. He had never seen
anything like it before although, given the frequency at which he
had been making that observation lately, he supposed his uncle’s
custom firearm was apropos. While he was admiring it, his uncle
came up behind him and snatched it out of his grasp.

“
What is that?”

“
It’s a
shotgun.”

“
It doesn’t look like any
shotgun I’ve ever seen.”

“
That’s because it’s a
repeating shotgun, one of the many tricks I have hidden up my
sleeve and years ahead of anything that bastard Browning’s come up
with. Any other questions?” His uncle meant it as a
dismissal.

“
Who’s Papa Noel?” Lewis
asked immediately

“
Cajun Santa Claus. Every
year on Christmas Eve people light huge bonfires to guide him in.
Now back to work.” Suddenly their plan made much more sense to
Lewis.

By the time they had set up the
equipment to Gideon’s satisfaction, the sun had sunk long past the
horizon and given way to the black of night. The general
apprehension Lewis had felt all day was now completely gone,
replaced by a more palpable sense of doom.

“
The generator has limited
power. Once you turn it on, we’ll have less than five minutes to
drive the demon back to whatever hell it came from. Stay out of
sight, and don’t throw the switch until you hear me shout for it.
Understand?”

Lewis nodded at his uncle’s
instructions.

Across the river, giant pillars of
fire came roaring to life as families began to light their bonfires
in celebration of Christmas.

“
Dey light the way for
Papa Noel,” came a jubilant shout from Antoine.

“
Then we’d best do the
same,” was the gruffer response from his uncle as he lit the pyre
next to him. Antoine had long since chased off any other revelers
on their side of the river, so when Gideon started their specially
chosen bonfire, it stood out like a fiery beacon against the dark.
If they were right about the demon’s attraction to heat, it would
be impossible for the creature to resist the bonfire’s
lure.

“
What now?” Lewis
asked

“
Now we wait for the Devil
to show himself,” was his uncle’s intense reply.

They did not have to wait
long.

The ground trembled under their feet,
alerting them to the demon’s approach. The beast let loose with a
horrible cry as it stepped out into the moonlight. This was not the
same creature they had faced the previous evening. In its day of
hibernation it had grown almost six feet and now stood over twelve
feet high. Massive leathery wings had sprouted from its back, each
one as wide as the beast was tall. Its skin was the deep black of
the void, making the demon almost impossible to see.

“
Bigger than I remember.
And with wings. That’s certainly an unfortunate development.” His
uncle spoke the words casually, showing defiance through his
nonchalance.

Gideon opened fire with both pistols,
unloading shot after shot into the demon’s chest. A roar of anger
escaped its throat.

“
I tink you got its
attention,” Antoine called out, staff in one hand, pistol in the
other.

“
Yes, I think you might be
right,” Gideon responded as the beast increased its speed from a
lumbering stride to a quick gallop.

The demon closed the distance between
itself and Gideon in mere moments. Lewis cringed as the boom of
gunfire turned into the hollow clicks of an empty
chamber.

His uncle let his now useless weapons
fall from his hands, diving toward his right to escape the beast’s
slashing claws. Lewis watched his uncle repeat the tactic twice
more, each escape narrower than the last, the creature allowing
Gideon no time to do anything but dodge.

Eventually Gideon’s luck gave out and
the demon’s claws found flesh. His uncle cried out, instinctively
reaching out for the newly formed gash in his thigh.

The creature raised its hand back to
strike, ready to deliver the deathblow.

“
Gideon! Roll!” Antoine
bellowed while unleashing his own barrage of pistol fire. The
bullets did minimal damage, succeeding only in puncturing a few
holes in the creature’s leathery wings, but they did manage to
distract the beast long enough for Gideon to roll clear.

The creature swept its wing back at
its attacker. The wing struck Antoine with incredible force and
sent the large man flying through the air. He landed in a heap,
clearly dazed by the blow.