Night of Demons - 02 (22 page)

There was nothing more that I could do among the adepts. So I got my car, and headed for the Marshall Drive area of town. Found the street and house I wanted. Went in through the door, which was ajar, as usual. And then headed up the stairs.

I went into the nursery. It was pretty much, I supposed, like the nursery of any little girl in any town in Massachusetts. Dolls were scattered everywhere, and there were plastic homes to put them in. There were fluffy toys as well, ducks and rabbits and a rather battered teddy bear. The wallpaper depicted a cartoonish stretch of sky, with white clouds, songbirds, and a rainbow. A mobile dangled from the ceiling, cows jumping over silver crescent moons.

The drapes were firmly shut. And so were the Little Girl’s eyes.

What was she?

Nobody on Bethany Street even remembered a family living at number 51, much less that they’d had a daughter. There were no public records for the place. Cass and I simply stumbled across it one evening, drawn to her room by the bright blue glow.

And once I’d come to understand exactly what her powers were, I’d kept on coming back here. You could even say she was my oracle.

She saw everything. More than even Lehman Willets. More than even Woodard Raine. She could stare beyond the limits of this town, and occasionally gaze a little way into the future. She’d foreseen Hanlon’s arrival, after all. And neither of the others could do that.

The problem was, as I’ve already said, she sometimes spoke in riddles.

That’s the trouble with the Little Girl. She poses far more questions than she actually answers. But I really needed her tightly focused insight today. When I walked in, it was halfway to noon. The sun was a pale smudge behind her curtains. It looked feeble compared to the glow that she put out. The walls were washed in electric blue light, which was emanating from her tiny body.

She was hanging at the center of it, her feet in their white buckled-up shoes dangling more than yard off the carpet. She had on her usual blue gingham dress. And was rotating in midair the way she always did, as though she’d gotten caught up in some invisible eddy.

Blond hair framed her face. I got a look at it each time she turned. And, in spite of the fact that her eyes remained closed, her expression was deeply troubled.

I stood there, waiting for her to speak. The energy that she was putting out washed around me, making my clothing stick to me slightly.

“Good morning, Mr. Ross,” she said.

“Not so very good, in point of fact.”

She thought about that.

“No. You’re right.”

Her expression screwed up a little more, her eyeballs moving swiftly underneath their folded lids. And, for the briefest instant, there seemed to be half a dozen faces up there, each of them overlapping. Then they faded. She went back to normal. But her voice had an echoing quality to it when she spoke again.

“I’d like to help if I can. It feels good to help.”

I agreed with her on that.

“What is it with Millicent Tollburn?” I asked. “Why would someone of her breeding go hooking up with a psycho like Hanlon?”

That’s another thing about the Little Girl. She can see into people’s minds as well, far more deeply than the other adepts. She could hear what I was thinking at this very moment. I found that unsettling—who wouldn’t? But I’d gotten used to it.

“Despite their differences, they have things in common, Mr. Ross. They were both damaged, very early on. Cornelius Hanlon, when he was young, was made to feel smaller than small. In trying to make himself a larger man, he overshot the mark and became grandiose, an obsessed monster.”

I got that, although it didn’t make me feel in the least bit sorry for him. But there was still the question of Ms. Tollburn.

“Millicent, though? What damaged her?”

The Little Girl stopped turning, with her back to me, so that I couldn’t see her face. And I didn’t think that was a particularly good sign. Something’s usually really bothering her when she stops spinning.

“I cannot tell you that,” she muttered

Why? I wondered.

“You can’t see it?”

“Yes. But I can’t tell you!”

And I practically jumped back, my heart beating double-time. The Little Girl had never shouted at me before. But now, her voice was loud and harsh, insistent. So whatever she had looked at, it was something that upset her badly.

I struggled to think what that might be. What would genuinely upset a little child of first grade age, if that’s what she really was? Something truly nasty, perhaps. Something dark and even…shameful?

I began to suspect, even more than ever, that whatever was up with Millicent, it might have a great deal to do with her past. Her family? Old Lucas? The worst in our society are usually the ones who hide it.

Except I seemed to be the only person who suspected anything like that.

What Cass had told me once came back again. That whole speech about my new sense of perceptiveness. It was bound up with Amashta, I knew. All of it tied up with this “Defender” business. I seemed to have changed in certain ways, once my family had disappeared. And I knew that it was in part the shaman woman’s doing. Other than that, it mystified me. I’d never thought of myself as special. And the idea that I might be didn’t comfort me too much.

I tried to get some more out of her. But the Little Girl didn’t even seem willing to address the subject any longer. She couldn’t be budged from her insistent silence. So I was finally forced to give up.

Which—it appeared—pleased her. She began to rotate again. And when her face swung around, it was back to normal. Her features were relaxed, her brow uncreased. And she turned smoothly as clockwork. She’d apparently put whatever she’d seen right out of her mind. Erased it.

But the whole business had left me unsettled. And my next question rasped in my throat.

“How exactly do we stop them?”

“You cannot. The Dantiere wand is terribly strong. And with two people wielding it, both of such bloodthirsty intent…?”

“What are we supposed to do, then?”

“You’ll have to ride it out,” she told me flatly.

I didn’t like the sound of that one bit, and shoved my hands into my pockets. “That’s your best advice?”

“It is. They cannot be defeated, but they can defeat themselves. They are not sane. They are not rational. Sooner or later, all their plans will fall apart.”

Which sounded slightly better. Except that it still left this town with an awful lot of pain to go through.

“And until then?” I asked, as measuredly as I could.

“Encourage them to turn against each other.”

My mind was whirling slightly. “How?”

The Little Girl looked thoughtful for a while.

“You’re a clever man, Mr. Ross,” she smiled. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

I freed my hands up, put one to my chin, and asked her, “Any more advice?”

“The attacks, when they come tonight, will come from where you least expect. You can trust no one.”

I waited for her to expand on that. But there were times when she just stopped talking. Was this one of them? The light from her continued to wash over me. I felt a strong twinge of impatience.

And she must have detected that, because her nose creased up.

“I’m not done.”

“Sorry,” I told her. “Please continue.”

“Miss Cassie. She’s getting back to her old self.”

And what kind of crazy warning was that? Cassie had seemed out of sorts for a while now, that much was for sure. Even more prickly and hotheaded than was usual. But she’d get over it. She always did. So how was that a problem?

“No, Mr. Ross. You’re not listening properly. Miss Cassie is getting back to her old self.”

I stared at her. She had begun spinning a little faster.

“The way she was before she started working with you,” she went on. “The way she was before she had her children. She’s getting back to her old self, Mr. Ross. Before she turned into a good person.”

The fact was that I didn’t really know too many details about Cassie’s past. She never talked about it much. But I couldn’t imagine any worse news. For the first couple of years after her parents’ deaths, Cassandra Mallory—I was aware—had been a rather different person from the one I was familiar with. There was darkness in her background. A fair deal of it. And this new enemy of ours…it thrived on darkness, didn’t it?

Yet what I’d been told simply couldn’t be correct. Cassie was the strongest person that I knew, and nothing in the world would make her…

I halted, my thoughts churning over furiously. The truth was—and I’d always understood it—that for all her courage and her inner strength, Cassie had her vulnerabilities, her weak spots. But could danger really come from her direction? I just wasn’t sure.

I thanked the Little Girl for her help, which was something that I always do. But a sense of urgency had gripped me. I went quickly down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk.

I seemed to be on a whirlwind tour of our town, this particular morning. And my next port of call was Rowan Street.

It was empty, when I finally rolled onto it. A wide but uninspiring avenue lined with rather old, dilapidated houses, many of which were curiously shaped without being in any way picturesque. Cassie’s Diner was halfway down. It was flat-roofed, with a big glass front. I slowed down and stared at it as I went by.

A while back, the place had been torn to pieces. Half the plate glass windows had been shattered, and a lot of chairs and tables had been blown apart. She’d told me that she’d fix it up. And I could see that she’d been as good as her word. The damaged furniture had been replaced. The hole in the back wall had been plastered over, so you’d never even guess that it was there. And the glass had been refitted.

The odd thing was, there was no real need to bother. No one used the diner anymore. But I suppose she was the same as me. She wanted everything the way it had been, just in case her family came back.

My frame of mind was grim and dull. Had she changed? I was praying that, for once, the Little Girl was wrong.

I drove around the back, and parked in front of her apartment door. When I got out, a dog started growling behind a nearby fence. The chickens in her neighbor’s yard began kicking up their usual fuss. There was little greenery around this district, an odd, tangy odor to the air instead. Some dust kicked up around my shoes as I moved forward.

I went across and rang the bell. After a while, Cleveland’s head poked out through the cat flap. His amber eyes shone gently as he took a good hard look at me.

Then he disappeared inside again. It seemed that no one else was home.

She was woken, once again, by the ringing of the doorbell.

Lauren Brennan shifted on the small bed she’d been given. Its mattress hadn’t felt right, even in her sleep. Her whole body smarted, and her mouth tasted like something that she’d swallowed last week had made a reappearance. She couldn’t even lift her head from the pillow properly. A green triceratops stared back at her from the crisp fabric.

For a few seconds, she prayed that everything she could remember since she’d got here was a dream. But the memories simply kicked in harder. Especially last night’s. That made her feel even worse. How in God’s name had she gotten involved in a screaming nightmare like this one? It was practically beyond imagining. Except this lunacy had substance. It had claws and fangs, and hurt the human beings that got near.

She was already sick and tired of it, and weary beyond belief. The only thing she really wanted was to get her cuffs on Hanlon and then go back home.

The doorbell made her jerk again.

Lauren got up awkwardly. Since she only had the one set of clothes, she’d stripped down to her underwear and put on the robe Ross had lent her. It tried to trip her over as she moved. She was forced to hitch it up around her as she went to answer the front door.

When she opened it, Cass Mallory was standing there. The woman was dressed from head to toe in black. Black T-shirt, black jeans, and those motorcycle boots of hers. As tall as a shadow before evening fell. She was still wearing her side arms. Man, a pair of Glocks like those looked pricey. Excellent tools for the job in hand, though.

The woman’s arms were folded. Her expression was unreadable.

It seemed to be early afternoon, by the position of the sun. The street was still bright—which she was pleased to see after the hours of darkness she’d endured—and the trees along it trembled in a gentle breeze. A few leaves had already dropped off them and were skimming along the curb. The approaching fall…that was something pleasant and normal to concentrate on, and she tried as best she could. The colors of New England at that time of year—a natural marvel.

Then she came back to the present sharply.

“Hi,” she mumbled, rubbing at her mouth.

Cass’s gaze dropped to her robe. She asked, “Is Ross back yet?”

“Er…I don’t think so. What do you want, Cassie?”

“There’s something new you ought to see, regarding Hanlon.”

Which woke her up a fair amount.

“Okay, then. You’d better come inside.”

They hadn’t exactly gotten off to a good start. She understood that. And the woman seemed unfriendly because of it. But she remembered something else. Cassie grabbing her by the collar last night, dragging her out of harm’s way. So maybe there was still a chance for them to connect. She never liked to be on bad terms with anyone she had to work with.

So as soon as the front door was shut, she came out with, “Hey, I never got the chance to thank you. That thing with the snake, I mean.”

Cassie blinked at her, her features passive.

“Don’t mention it.”

At which point, Lauren became worried there was something genuinely wrong with her. This was like trying to hold a conversation with a speak-your-weight machine. Cassie seemed so rigid and unyielding. And her eyes looked slightly darker than they had before. She didn’t understand how that was possible, since her irises were already black. But there seemed to be a strange gloss to them that made them look bottomless.

This wasn’t fair either, she realized, being critical and finding fault. Cassie had to be exhausted too. She’d fought harder than anybody else last night, throwing herself into the battles with a total disregard for her own safety. If she’d been on the force and behaved like that, she’d have gotten either a medal or a reprimand.

But Cassie wasn’t any cop. Which made what she’d done all the more remarkable.

Turning it over, she found that she was starting to admire the woman. Which made her feel increasingly awkward. That first encounter between them had been a mistake, an accident, she kept telling herself. They’d just got off on the wrong foot.

“Are you going to get dressed?” Cass asked, a little sarcastically.

Good point. Lauren went back on through but left the bedroom door ajar, so they could still talk while she smoothed out her crumpled clothes and pulled them on.

“I didn’t get time to apologize for the way I acted when I first arrived. I’m really, genuinely sorry about that.”

Cass’s voice, from out in the hallway, was as flat as a slab in a graveyard.

“You were doing what you thought was right. Easy enough mistake to make.”

But she didn’t sound particularly convincing. Is she going to stay pissed at me forever? Lauren thought. She yanked her pants over her hips and zipped them.

“I’d like to make it up to you. I’m simply not sure how.”

“Dressing faster would be a good start.”

Lauren frowned and did up the last buttons on her shirt, then slid her shoulder holster on. She checked her Walther, and then slipped her jacket over it. She was acutely aware she hadn’t showered, still felt very tired. And didn’t appreciate Cass nagging her. But if this was to do with Hanlon, if it brought her closer to her goal.

She went back into the hallway, smiled briefly at Cassie and said, “Mouthwash, at least.” Then disappeared into the bathroom, where she quickly swilled between her gums the contents of a mint green bottle. She took a glance in the mirror, saw how drawn she looked, but did her best to ignore that.

Cass’s gaze was still strange when she finally emerged. The bulb out here was not particularly strong, and made her face look shadowy.

“You done?” she asked.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Then Cassie led the way.

The sunlight outside made Lauren squint. It seemed so bright and clear, in view of everything that had been happening. Heavy cloud would have been more appropriate. The Harley was parked on the drive, a big red beast with narrow black stripes down it, its thick body shining like an insect’s carapace.

“Ever ridden pillion before?” Cass inquired, climbing on.

“Sure. Got a helmet?”

“No.”

She ought to have expected that. Goddamn, talk about reckless. But she climbed aboard anyway, gripping Cass around the waist. The smell of hot machinery and fuel eased up around her, bringing back an image from her past.

“My first boyfriend had one of these,” she said into the woman’s ear.

“Me too,” Cassie answered without looking back.

“He turned out to be a total asshole. But I’ve always liked bikes, ever since.”

“Same here, on both counts.”

And Cass let out a brisk, sharp laugh before turning the ignition. That made Lauren smile gently, with satisfaction. The bike shuddered underneath them, and its twin-cam engine roared.

See, they did have things in common. There was the potential for a bond between them.

She saw no real reason why they couldn’t be good friends.

They appeared to be heading north. She wondered what lay in this direction. God, but Cass rode this beast hard. Ross’s neighborhood sped by her, mostly in a blur. But she managed to pick up enough detail to understand what kind of place it was. Everything was simple, unpretentious, even humble. But properly looked after to the smallest detail. All the homes were freshly painted, and the lawns around them neatly mown. The cars on the drives were mostly older models, but were clean and shiny. There was no mess or disrepair, anywhere she looked.

A plain but entirely wholesome neighborhood, in other words. The kind of place her own folks would have loved to move to, if they’d ever been able to afford to leave their cramped, noisy apartment in South Boston.

They began to slow after a while, a thick row of trees coming in sight. It was the forest she had passed through when she’d arrived here. This was the first time that she’d seen it in the light. It looked dense and almost endless, and she supposed it played its part in keeping Raine’s Landing hidden from the outside world. A whole ocean of tightly packed trees. And this town was like a raft on it, drifting a good distance from the shorelines of normality.

Cassie drew the bike to a halt a few dozen yards from the tree line, and they both got off.

“Municipal limit,” the woman announced.

And then she simply walked across it. What about the curse? Lauren froze for a few seconds, but then followed her.

“I don’t understand.” She hurried up to Cassie’s shoulder. “I thought you guys couldn’t leave here.”

“Hell, we can do that. We simply can’t get anywhere else. Somebody born here could walk a week, a month, a year, and never glimpse another rooftop, never see another town. Or another person.”

Lauren frowned uncertainly. “I’m not sure I get that.”

“Lucky you,” was the only response she got.

They headed in among the trees. The odors of the forest swept across them. Some finches noticed them and danced up to the higher branches, but nothing else happened. Lauren really felt that something should.

“There’s a turnpike a couple of miles from here,” she pointed out. “You don’t even see cars?”

“Not a one. What’s a turnpike anyway?”

Which made her fall silent for a while. She’d never really understood, up until this point, what it meant to be this isolated.

They kept marching steadily along. Cass apparently knew where they were going. Some kind of natural path opened up ahead of them. When Lauren looked closer, she could see that it had heavy drag marks on it.

“Logger’s trail,” Cassie explained. “There’s a big lumber mill east of here. If this was a regular town, then we’d be famous for our furniture.”

They left the path after a while, turning left and heading through deep undergrowth. Fallen twigs and dead leaves crackled underneath them. There was a rich, dank stink, like compost. It was dimmer here, the sunlight filtered. Pretty quiet as well, besides the noises they were making. Occasionally, a larger bird would call briefly, flap its wings, then disappear. Otherwise, they were completely on their own.

Lauren was still trying to get her head around this whole business of Regan’s Curse.

“So you can come wandering out here? And, besides not getting anywhere, there’s no effect?”

“Not exactly,” Cassie answered, rather tersely. “Once you cross over the border, the forest gets pretty weird. Everything around you bleeds of color.”

She raised her head and stared about, as if to confirm that.

“And it all goes very quiet and still, like you’re not really in the world at all.”

But Lauren could hear sounds and see movement. And the colors around her were the same as they had been before. So she wasn’t in the least way affected by the curse. She ought to feel relieved, she told herself.

“Isn’t that rather scary?” she asked, trying to imagine what it had to be like.

Cassie dropped her gaze, and mulled the question over.

“No,” she announced finally. “I don’t mind it too much, to be honest. It may be odd. But it demands nothing of you. It’s peaceful.”

Except it didn’t sound that way to Lauren. Moving through a bleached-out, hushed-down version of the world? That seemed awful to her. But she reminded herself of the way this woman lived her life. The violence and the urgency of it. Primed for action, constantly. Always there on the front line. She usually thought of herself as being pretty tough. But she couldn’t do that, not twenty-four seven.

So if Cassie found the curse relaxing, who was she to argue?

They were starting up a gradient. Lauren thought she could make out a hill, maybe a hundred yards ahead. It was difficult to be certain with so many tree trunks in the way.

But it turned out that the ground did begin to slope up. They pressed on without another word until they reached the top. Went a few dozen more yards down the other side. Then Cassie drew to a halt. It was practically pitch-dark in this part of the woods, and full of the humming of insects.

“We’re here.”

Where exactly? Lauren wondered. Where was Ross? Or Saul? Or anyone, in fact? She stared around blankly.

“Okay? So what am I supposed to be looking at?”

“You can’t tell?”

Lauren turned around on the spot. The only things that she could make out were the outlines of more trees and branches, exactly like the ones they’d passed through. A shape whizzed away from them that she supposed might be a rabbit.

Faint annoyance began to seep up underneath her skin. She had been woken up and dragged along for this?

“You still don’t get it?” Cassie asked.

“I’m not in the mood for playing guessing games all afternoon,” Lauren replied.

Which was when she heard a sharp rustle behind her, so sudden it made her jump. She swung around.

Cassie had picked up a stout length of fallen branch. And her eyes had turned completely gray.

“Absolutely right,” the woman grinned. “No guesses left.”

And then the branch came swinging—hard—at Lauren’s chin.