Night of Demons - 02 (35 page)

I glanced back around at the judge. His spectacles had turned glossy in the white glow of the moon, making it look as though the things that he was witnessing had blinded him. And his mouth had dropped to a wide oval, showing off his teeth and tongue. His normal dignity had vanished. He was too amazed to even begin showing signs of fear. Although I didn’t doubt that that would come.

“What’s happening?” I asked him.

He didn’t even seem to hear me at first. And didn’t turn to me when he finally replied.

“I didn’t think that this could happen! It’s completely beyond anything we know!”

“What is?”

“He’s torn open a barrier! Between our dimension and another!”

He’d explained to me once that there were literally thousands of them. Multitudes of states of being, invisible walls holding them apart. Some were pleasant. And some rather less than that. There was no need to guess which kind this was. There was the smell, for starters. And the shapes behind the opening seemed to be writhing.

The stench was mostly rotting flesh. But there were other odors in there too. The pressure of the wind increased around us.

The rest of the night sky was normal. But the hole gaped across it like an open mouth.

Something pushed its way out from the bottom edge and dropped the twenty feet or so to the ground with no apparent injury. It lay there for a few seconds, curled up on its back. It was some kind of mottled brown hue, and I thought I could see folded arms and legs. But it was hard to be sure. The thing was balled up like a giant wood louse.

Then it started to unravel. Four narrow limbs suddenly appeared. There were what looked like hands on the ends of each, except that they were flat and splayed. They waved for a moment in the air. And then the thing flipped over, righting itself.

It hunched down on its hind legs, gazed at us and snarled, displaying rows of pointed teeth. It looked like one of the gargoyles on the rooftop of Raine Manor, except furrier and larger. Standing at full height, I guessed it had to be about four feet. And its limbs might be thin, but they still looked powerful.

Its face was a grotesque parody of a human one, the ears going to tufted spikes, the mouth much wider than it should have been. The eyes were a bilious pale yellow, and the brow above them was heavily ridged.

Two more of the things came tumbling out. Lay beside the first a moment, in the same position. Then sprung up themselves. They were its exact brothers, identical in every way. And they peered at us balefully. One of them sniffed the air and hissed.

“Some breed of demon from the lower orders,” I heard the judge say.

He had reached out with his powers, to understand them.

“They seem largely mindless, little more than animals. Though I’d imagine, pretty deadly.”

His voice had changed, losing its urgency. Becoming far more measured, purposeful. This was push-comes-to-shove time, and he knew it. Everyone here did. And he’d responded to that by finding a little of his calmer self, taking in the fact that panic was useless.

There was so much hurried movement beyond the opening, it was impossible to make out individual shapes. A churning swarm of darkened bodies was the only thing that I could see.

“How many of them are there?” I asked.

“At a rough guess? Millions.”

The first few had only been the vanguard. They were dropping to the ground in a continuous flow by this stage. First a small bunch at a time, then dozens. And the wind that accompanied them was getting even more intense, making it hard to stand up straight.

The creatures at the front got up from their crouched position and started to approach us. And the rest began to follow them.

They came on all four limbs, making no attempt to stand upright. Looked like they could move fast, but were closing in cautiously right now. This had to be as new to them as it was to us. Did they even know what a moon and stars were? Hills, trees, blades of grass?

Those yellow gazes swiveled around, taking in their surroundings in a slightly edgy manner. But then they fixed on us, trying to size us up. Trying to get the measure of the weapons in our hands especially. The creatures lurched and shuddered as they moved. The fur on their bodies was patched with dampness.

Ritchie Vallencourt yelled out, and the cops opened fire.

Chunks were blown out of the hunched shapes. Flecks of yellow goop began appearing on the ground. But it didn’t seem to hurt them as much as it should have, even when small sections of their heads came off. I could see what the problem was immediately. They didn’t seem to have vital spots the way that we did. This was like trying to kill insects with a needle. Which part of them did you hit to actually stop them moving?

Several of them started limping as a leg was blown away. But even those ones kept on trying to move in on us, hobbling on their shattered stumps. They were making high-pitched yowling noises, their jaws stretching open wide.

Levin squared his shoulders.

“If this is to be my final day,” he sighed, “then I might as well make it a memorable one.”

He stepped out smoothly from the shadows of the topiary. Extended his palms in the direction of the closing horde. Two beams of white light shot out from them, and a pair of the demons burst into flames and disintegrated.

Martha Howard-Brett stepped up beside him, doing the same thing. Which meant that they were taking four down at a time. But it didn’t discourage the rest in any way. And there were hundreds more tumbling from the opening, falling so rapidly that they were dropping onto the backs of the ones that had preceded them. A huge pile of the things was forming, narrow feet and elbows thrashing everywhere you looked. And as soon as the creatures at the bottom struggled out, more came down to take their place.

I was firing furiously, and there was gunsmoke all around me. But you could shoot at these things for hours, and it wouldn’t be any real use. How long would it be, I wondered, before we started to run out of ammo? And the adepts would begin to weaken as their powers were drained away.

I stared back at Hanlon. He still had that grin in place. And wasn’t even looking at us any longer. He was peering at the gap he’d made, watching the creatures struggle through. His skeletal hands were on the move, like he was conducting a symphony. There was something almost dreamlike to the way that he did that.

My gaze went to the Wand of Dantiere, clutched between his massive fingers. If I could somehow get it away from him…?

Last time we’d been in a hole like this, Amashta—the ancient shaman woman—had helped. Her dry voice had started ringing in my head, and then her powers had flowed through me. But there was no sign of that happening right now. If she was watching, she was standing back.

“Defender,” she had called me. So was I expected to do this by myself?

I thought of maybe trying to shoot the wand, but there were two things working against that. In the first place, it was a good long way off and a moving target. In the second, I doubted that a mere bullet would work.

I stepped out into open ground myself. There had to be another way to get the thing from him. But how?

“Just grab it, while his attention is elsewhere,” suggested an aristocratically toned voice, behind me.

Raine?

But when I whirled around, he wasn’t there. Only the darkness of the house behind me met my startled gaze. No one else had reacted, so maybe only I could hear him.

“I’m still in the Manor, sport.”

His voice was behind me once again. And so I didn’t bother turning, this time.

“I don’t need to go outside to talk to people. Surely you must realize that?”

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.

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 looming 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.