Predator and Prey Prowlers 3 (19 page)

He turned to look at the cinnamon girl, Letitia, where she stood just beside him with little Amy Duvic. Beyond them, on the other side of the landing, up against the door to her office, he saw Madame Stefania. The medium looked like a ghost to him now that he was using his second sight, but even so the terror on her own face was clear.

“What is it?” the flesh-and-blood woman cried out. “What do you see?”

Jack ignored her. He stared at Letitia and Amy instead. “Why don’t you run?”

“We can’t! Where would we go?” the cinnamon girl replied.

Amy did not even look at him. The ghost of the curly-haired girl only stared at the monster as it slaughtered and ate the others on its march up the steps toward Jack.

“Is it the devil?” the little girl asked softly. “Is it?”

A horrible rage blossomed inside Jack, and he rounded on Madame Stefania. He could barely make her out, but he heard her bracelets jangle as she held up her hands as if to ward him off. She was a shade in a world of gray shadows.

“Damn you,” he snapped. “Listen to me. There’s a thing here, a demon if you want to call it that. It’s
eating
them, and they won’t run away because of you.
Tell
them! Tell them to go!”

The shade of Madame Stefania shook her head in denial. If she were not backed up against the door and he so close, he knew she would have tried to escape by running inside and might even have really called the police. Instead she raised one arm even further as if to brandish the bracelets at Jack. Madame Stefania grabbed at the jewelry there frantically.

“Look, I get it now. I know what you’re doing. Trying to scare me. Fine! The lady wants the bracelet back, she can have it.”

The medium tore the twisted band of gold Mrs. Duvic had given her from her wrist and held it out toward Jack. He only stared at her, this gray shade of humanity there in the formless landscape of what he knew was the real, the solid world. He stared at her and he knew she could not hear the screams of souls who would never reach their final destination.

“Keep it,” Jack snarled at her. “You earned it, lady.”

Then he crouched by Amy, reached out to try to touch her face but his own hands were little more than shades as well,
his
fingers ghostly now, and they passed through the girl’s cheeks.

“You’ve got to go,” he said. Then he stood and stared at Letitia, the cinnamon girl. “You’ve got to run away.”

With only one more moment’s hesitation, Jack started down the stairs. A ghost of the living, a phantom of flesh and blood, he passed through the souls whose own hopes and inability to let go had trapped them here, and as he touched each one, his essence pushing through them, the screaming stopped. They moved up the stairs toward where Madame Stefania stood and watched in confusion as Jack ran down the steps toward the Ravenous.

It sensed him coming. Its head snapped up, jaws leaking the mystical residue of another spirit it was consuming, and it growled with menace and anticipation. A ripple passed through the thing and it shuddered, its flesh beneath the filthy matted fur shaking. Some of the soul-maggots that squirmed through its dark fur fell to the floor and then simply disappeared. The Ravenous was crouched over just slightly, the rows of spiked horns that ran over its forehead and down its back seemed somehow sharper now. Its scorpion tail swung like a puppy’s.

Jack clenched his jaws together to trap the scream that tried to erupt from his throat.
What the hell are you doing?
he thought.
Back up, Jack! They’re already dead, you moron. What does it matter? Let it have them.
But he could not do that. The Ravenous was a spiritual entity and Jack was still alive. He could see it, it could scent him when he shifted his vision into the Ghostlands, but how could this thing hurt him if it was just a ghost?

And even if it could, how could he just let it have Letitia and Amy, when they could not even run away?

Every muscle in his body was heavy with reluctance, but he forged ahead, down the stairs. Only a few steps above the Ravenous, he stopped. The thing snorted and then roared and then it swung that spiked tail around at him. It would have crippled Jack, but he dodged backward, out of range of the tail. The second it had swept past his chest, Jack kicked at the thing’s face as hard as he could, though in the back of his mind he feared his foot would strike nothing and he would simply tumble down the stairs.

The kick connected. His foot struck the Ravenous in the side of head, its snout snapped to one side, and the spirit-beast roared again in surprise and fury. Terror raced through Jack in that instant—if he could touch it, then it could touch him—but it was too late to retreat.

And if he could not retreat, there was only one option.

The Ravenous raised both huge taloned hands and reached for him. Jack cracked it in the face with a hard elbow, taking advantage of his greater elevation. Then he threw himself at the thing, thinking to drive it down the stairs. But its claws flashed at him. One mighty hand clutched him by the left arm and tugged him right off the stairs. Jack swore and all the fear he had been pushing away came rushing in. His heart hammered in his chest and he felt a surge of panic that seemed to race through his whole body as though it were trying to find a way out.

At the top of the stairs, Madame Stefania must have seen him lifted off the ground by what to her was some invisible force, for she began to scream in shock and horror, trying to ask him what was going on, what was happening.

Jack barely heard her.

The Ravenous shook him, roared in his face, and he could smell the stench of the thing’s rancid breath as though the ghosts it had eaten had been made of flesh and blood, and the stink that came from its mouth was that of the dead. Jack cracked it across the face again with a hard backhand, kicked at its chest, but the Ravenous held him up as though he were a rag doll and examined him for just a moment.

Don’t look!
Jack’s mind screamed.
Get out of the Ghostlands. Stop looking!

The spirit-beast gripped him in one taloned hand and with the other it slashed razor-claws down at him, raking deep furrows across Jack’s chest, tearing him open, cutting flesh and muscle and cracking bone. Jack screamed with pain unlike anything he had ever felt, and he closed his eyes.

Then he was in freefall.

He struck the steps and banged his head and when he looked up, the wooden stairs and the stained floral wallpaper in the stairwell were back in focus. The Ravenous was invisible to him now, but he could still see it. The creature was there, just above him, probably enraged that he had escaped it again.

But he had not escaped it, had he? The pain in his chest was excruciating and he gritted his teeth, fear of the Ravenous replaced by fear that these wounds would kill him before paramedics could arrive. The way his head lay on the stairs, he could see up toward the second floor landing. Madame Stefania stood there, staring down at him, both hands covering her mouth, her skinny body quivering enough so that her bracelets clanged together.

Between them, Jack could still see the others, the ghosts. They were transparent again, shimmering specters who stared in abject horror down the stairs at him.

Not at me. At the Ravenous.

And if I die now, then it will be able to get what it really wants. My soul.

“Tell them,” Jack gasped. “Tell them they’ll never be able to . . . talk to the people they left behind. Tell them to
go.”

Madame Stefania threw back her head and cried out as though the ghosts were flying around her head rather than clustered by her on the stairs in terror. But then, she did not know any better.

“It’s true!” she said. “Go! Find your own peace. There’s nothing I can do for you!”

Little Amy Duvic began to weep, the truth of that even worse to her than her fear of the Ravenous. Letitia Soares picked the dead girl’s ghost up in her own gossamer arms and looked down at Jack.

“
How can that be? What do we do now?”

“Go!” Jack pleaded. “There’s another place for you, but if you stay you’ll be destroyed.”

There was a single moment of hesitation, and then the ghosts began to flee. Some of them passed through walls, others seemed to float up and right through the ceiling, and one spectral old woman simply dissipated like a breeze had blown her away. Letitia, carrying Amy in her arms, ran right at Madame Stefania. The ghosts passed through the medium, and Madame Stefania gasped and shuddered with a sudden chill.

“Was that . . . ?” she asked.

“Yes,” Jack said softly, relieved to see that there were no more ghosts there in the stairwell.

Now he only had to worry about himself, about staying alive. He lay on the steps, the hard wood against his back, his neck craned up to stare at the medium. His chest felt numb and though that was better, he knew it really was not. That numbness was very bad. Thus far he had avoided trying to look at the ragged wounds on his chest.

“Are you all right?” Madame Stefania asked softly, beginning to walk down the steps toward him.

“Jesus,” Jack whispered. “Do I look all right?” He wondered why the woman had not gone in to call 911.

“Um . . . yes?”

Yes?

Slowly, Jack raised his head and looked down at his chest. He was sprawled on the stairs and his back hurt from where he had landed, but there was no blood, no tear in his shirt, no wounds at all on him.

Physically.

But as he struggled to stand, pain lanced through him and he had to lean against the wall for support. There were no wounds in his flesh, the Ravenous had not been able to harm him in that way. But though even now it began to fade, the pain was there, the echo of torn skin and cracked ribs.

The wounds were only on his spirit, yet still he could
feel
them.

C H A P T E R 10

In its way, working the narcotics division had been even uglier than working homicide. Being a detective in narcotics meant spending every single day down among the most reprehensible creatures on earth, men and women who had no respect not only for the lives of others, but for their own. Soul-dead men, dealers, poisoning people in their own neighborhoods, turning the children of their community into junkies.

Women who sold themselves not for money but on the barter system; anything for the next fix. He came across mothers who had given away their children in trade when they ran out of things anyone wanted.

In comparison, Jace Castillo felt that homicide was the easier job. The victims were already dead. There was nothing he could do to save them. The job was to make sure the people responsible ended up in prison, to keep murderers from taking any more lives.

Today was the first time Castillo regretted moving to homicide. For in all the years he worked narcotics, Jace had never had to tell a mother that her child was dead. That had always been somebody else’s job. Today it fell to him. It did not make him feel any better that the victim, Paul Manning, had been twenty-three years old when he died. Would it make a difference to his mother? Would it make a difference that he was an adult when somebody tore him apart and stuffed him in a car trunk?

Ellen Manning lived alone in a small split-level in Chelsea, a grimy, run-down little city so full of corruption that it ran out of money and had to be adopted by the city of Boston for a while. Even so, the blue-collar neighborhood where the Manning house was located lacked the usual signs of neglect Castillo so often saw in such places. No cars up on blocks in the driveways, no groups of young men sitting on stoops and smoking cigarettes.

If this was a working-class neighborhood, then it truly was
working
class. In the middle of this weekday the only people at home were the few women whose husbands made enough money as electricians or painters or plasterers so that they could stay at home with the kids. Mrs. Manning had been one of those—all the bills paid by her ex-husband—and she apparently still got by on her alimony, for she had only a part-time job at a local greenhouse.

The flower beds in front of Ellen Manning’s house were well taken care of, the perennials in glorious bloom on that hot summer afternoon. The colors were rich and vibrant, and Castillo shuddered to see them. In his mind he shouldn’t have had to come there on a day like today. That did not make any sense, of course, but it did not have to. News like he had to deliver ought to arrive under the cover of rain and dark thunder clouds. Not with the sky so blue with just wisps of clouds. Not with the sounds of a sprinkler running on the lawn next door, or the children laughing and shouting as they rode their bikes just up the road. Not with the flowers thriving, so brilliant and vivid, bees buzzing from bloom to bloom.

No, he should not have had to come here today and tell this woman her son was dead. But the Prowlers did not care about such things. They were only predators, monsters.

One of these monsters, at least one, had it out for Jack and Courtney Dwyer and their friends. Castillo wanted to help them, and not only because it was his job. The idea that these creatures lurked in the night, these Prowlers existed there, hiding away among humanity waiting for someone to walk into the wrong shadow . . . it horrified and repelled him.

Paul Manning had been murdered at least two days before he was put in that trunk. If Castillo could trace his activities in the time leading up to his death, find out where and when he had been killed and if anyone had seen his killer, or what the killer looked like with its human face on, then he might be able to stop it. He might be able to prevent any further harm from befalling the Dwyers and Bill Cantwell and the Hatcher girl. And he might be able to kill another one of these things. That was an honorable ambition all on its own.

But he could not help thinking how much simpler it would have been if Manning had turned out to be another John Doe, a nobody, a nothing, someone they could have swept under the rug and never thought about again.

Castillo parked in front of the house rather than in the driveway, not wanting to be that close, that intimate, as though he were a friend. He walked up the short driveway and then the paved walk rather than cutting across the lawn. As he reached up to ring the bell, a petite brunette in her mid-forties came around the side of the house. She wore work gloves and had a trowel in one hand, smears of dirt across her cotton blouse.