The 5th Witch (22 page)

He looked around. The golf course that surrounded the country club was emerald green and peaceful, and
a cool evening breeze was blowing from the west. The parking lot was full of gleaming black SUVs—Cadillac Escalades, BMWs, and Porsche Cayennes. A groundsman in an orange baseball cap was sweeping the front steps of the clubhouse as if he had been given the rest of his natural life to do it, but apart from that, the club looked deserted.

Dan, however, could see the black-uniformed officers lying in the shadow of the bunkers, concealed in the alcoves beside the main entrance to the clubhouse, and crouching behind the ornamental flower planters and the wide-spreading cedar trees.

“I’m assuming that you’ve briefed these guys about the witches?” he asked Lieutenant Harris.

“They’ve been told that they’re something different from your garden-variety gangster’s arm candy, if that’s what you mean.”

“I mean have you told them that they have supernatural powers? Have you told them that they can shake people to death without even touching them and make them puke up the most disgusting stuff that you can think of?”

“Hey, come on, Detective. You told me that you’d taken most of their power away from them.”

“I have. But these officers still need to be aware that these women can work magic spells.”

“They’ve been warned that all three women have unusual abilities in unarmed combat. If I had told them about ‘magic spells,’ do you honestly think they would have believed me? I told them to go in very hard and very fast and to physically restrain the women before anybody else. Gag them, too.”

“Well, I guess that’s good advice. At least they won’t be able to do any whispering or charming or incantations.”

Lieutenant Harris gave him a long, sober look. “When this is over, Dan, I want you to take a psych evaluation and a long vacation someplace normal, where ‘spell’ means ‘a short period of time,’ and nothing else.”

It was 6:58
P.M
. when one of Vasili Krylov’s heavies came out of the main entrance to the country club in his dark designer suit and his floral designer necktie and lit a cigarette.

He leaned on the railing overlooking the reflecting pool, blowing smoke. Lieutenant Harris said, “Some fricking timing.”

They waited tensely while the Russian continued to smoke.

“We can bring him down,” said the SWAT commander.

“In total silence? Before he has the chance to shout out or let off a shot?”

“Sure. Officer Lefkowitz over there can blow off a mosquito’s left nut from a mile and a half away.”

“We can’t just kill him in cold blood, Sergeant. So far he’s presenting us with no threat whatsoever, let alone a deadly threat.”

“He’s a goddamned inconvenience. That’s good enough for me.”

“Have two of your guys jump him. Then we’ll go in.”

The SWAT commander gave a complicated hand
signal to one of the officers hiding in the alcoves beside the main entrance. There was a moment’s pause, and then two officers came running toward the Russian while he was still leaning against the railing with his back turned.

But he must have heard their composition-soled boots drumming across the decking because he half turned around, and when he saw them coming toward him he rolled over the top of the railing and dropped into the pool. He made a loud splash, and he startled the ducks, but the pool was only seven or eight inches deep, and he recovered his balance and started to run diagonally across it, leaping and bounding like a champion hurdler. He ran straight through the fountain in a burst of spray.

“Goddamn it to hell!” cursed the SWAT commander. “Get in after him, you clowns!”

The two SWAT officers clambered over the railing and jumped into the water, but the Russian was already screaming on his walkie-talkie. “Police!
Police!
”

As he reached the far side of the pool, more SWAT officers rose from the nearby sand bunkers, and he shouted, “
Chyort voz’mi!
Police everywhere!”

“Go!” said Lieutenant Harris, and the SWAT commander echoed, “Go!”

But instantly, with a thunderous bang, the doors to the country club’s main entrance slammed shut. Every other door and window slammed shut, too, dozens of them, one after the other, like tumultuous applause.

“They’ve locked the whole place down!” crackled a voice over Lieutenant Harris’s walkie-talkie. “We’ll have to use the breaching ram!”

Ernie looked at Dan uneasily. “How did they do that? Shut all those doors and windows, all at once? I thought they couldn’t hardly do nothing no more.”

“I don’t know,” said Dan, but he wasn’t at all happy
about it. He began to feel that something was about to go badly wrong. “Lieutenant!” he shouted. “Maybe the men need to pull back.”

“Too late now!” Lieutenant Harris responded. “Come on, you guys, let’s get in there! Hard and fast!”

The SWAT teams came pouring out of concealment and ran toward the country club buildings from all directions. Five men started to batter down the main doors, while the other teams swarmed around the conference center and the private dining rooms. They quickly set up mobile floodlights and swung them around to shine on the dining-room windows—although the shutters were all closed, and they couldn’t see the mobsters inside. The double oak doors were firmly closed, too.

“Okay—
go!
” yelled the SWAT commander.

Four men ran forward, carrying a breaching ram between them, while a dozen others covered them. But they hadn’t even reached the first step when the doors were flung open, and three figures appeared, calm and unblinking in the brilliant floodlight.

On the left was Michelange DuPriz, wearing a clinging scarlet dress and a necklace of shining copper disks. Her snakelike hair appeared to be writhing like a Gorgon’s. On the right was Miska Vedma in a very short dress of metallic bronze satin and a bronze satin cap that completely covered her head, like a swimmer.

In the center, her arms spread wide, was Lida Siado in a filmy yellow dress that looked like flames, and her hair tied up in a yellow chiffon scarf. Her eyes were staring and her white teeth were bared in a furious grimace. She could have been a madwoman on the steps of an asylum.

“
Have you no ears?
” she screamed at the SWAT team. “
Did you not hear our agreement, that we should live together
in harmony?
”

Lieutenant Harris made his way through the SWAT officers and up to the steps. “Harmony means exactly that, ma’am. Harmony. But you and your friends have been acting anything but harmonious. You’re all under arrest for homicide, conspiracy to commit homicide, and too many other offenses than I have time to tell you. So let’s see you come with us quietly. We have vans ready.”

“
Eskize mwen, msyé
, you don’t understand,” said Michelange DuPriz, stepping forward on very high heels. She was smiling at Lieutenant Harris in the way a hooker smiles at a potential client—teasing him, daring him, but deeply contemptuous of him, too. “You have to leave us alone. You have no choice.”

“Oh, you think so?” Lieutenant Harris retorted. “Not only do I have a choice, I have a duty, and I have more than a hundred heavily armed police officers who are going to assist me in carrying it out. So let’s go, shall we?”

“Treating three innocent women in such a way!” Michelange DuPriz scolded him, strutting down the steps until she was less than three feet away from him. “Such behavior should make you
malad!
”

With that, she opened the palm of her hand and blew a shower of fine gray dust at him. Lieutenant Harris backed away, flapping at the dust with his left hand.

“That’s it!” he snapped. “I want these women restrained. Sergeant!”

“Yes, sir!” said the SWAT sergeant, and unclipped the cuffs from his belt.

But at that moment, Lieutenant Harris abruptly dropped to his knees, and said, “
Gahh!
”

“Lieutenant?”

“
Gaahhhhh!
” gargled Lieutenant Harris. His eyes
were bulging, and he was clutching his neck with both hands, as if trying to strangle himself.

“Paramedics!” Dan called out. “Paramedics, now!”

He hurried over to Lieutenant Harris and knelt down beside him. As he did so, he glanced up at Michelange DuPriz, and she was grinning at him.

“
Mwen regret sa
,” she said. “But I did advise you to warn them, didn’t I?”

Lieutenant Harris was bent double, his face gray, whining for breath. Dan said, “What is it? What have you put inside him? For Christ’s sake, you witch, he’s choking!”

The SWAT sergeant advanced on Michelange DuPriz, but now Lida Siado stepped forward, too, pointing at him with one finger and flicking the little drum that she wore around her neck. Tap-
flick-
tap-
flick!

“
Rete!
” said Michelange DuPriz. “You do not want to come any closer, police, else worse bad thing happen to you!”

Lieutenant Harris was shuddering now, his mouth stretched wide open.

“What the hell have you put inside him?” Dan shouted.

Half a dozen more SWAT officers approached the witches, but Lida Siado pointed at each of them, one by one, as if she were placing a curse on them individually, and they all held back, even though it was obvious from the confused looks on their faces that they didn’t understand why.

Lieutenant Harris gave one last convulsion, and out of his mouth came a bulging mass of worms, hundreds of them, pink and brown and some still streaked with dirt. He vomited again and again, until there was a whole tangle of worms wriggling on the steps in front of him.

“Oh, God,” he moaned, spitting out the last stray worms. “Oh, God, help me!”

The SWAT commander shielded his eyes in disgust, and one of the younger officers turned away and retched.

“Worms!” sang Michelange DuPriz, gleefully. “But not just any worms! These worms came from Forest Lawn Cemetery, where your father was buried! These worms came out of his casket! Don’t you remember what you said after his funeral? ‘I always hated his guts. I hope the worms make a good meal out of him.’ Well, they did—and now
you
have, too. Although, what a pity, it doesn’t look as if it agreed with you!”

Dan helped Lieutenant Harris to his feet. Lieutenant Harris was still sweaty and ashen, but he jabbed one finger at Michelange DuPriz and rasped, “You, lady—you’re finished!”

“Finished, Mesyé Police? We have not even begun!”

Lida Siado took out two clamshells and pressed them over her eyes, as she had at Chief O’Malley’s house. Then she quickened the tapping on her drum.
Tap
—flick—
tapp!
and it seemed to Dan that the ferocious woman’s face painted on the drumskin slowly opened her eyes and stared at him just as madly as Lida had herself.

“
Night Wind! Come blow for me! Night Wind! Rise up
for me! Bring me your darkness! Bring me your children!
Bring me your fear! Night Wind! Come blind this company!
”

Dan gripped Lieutenant Harris’s sleeve. “Lieutenant, we have to get out of here. Everybody!
Now!
”

Lieutenant Harris spat and spat again. He was shaking with rage. “If you think I’m letting these bitches get away with this, Detective, you’re making a serious
mistake! Sergeant, get the bracelets on them! And let’s get inside and collar the rest of them! Let’s move!”

The SWAT commander shouted into his r/t mike: “Inside team! This is it! Go! Go! Go!”

They heard three deafening explosions from inside the dining rooms and a stuttering volley of submachine-gun fire. Then there was another explosion and shouting and three or four shots from a.45 automatic.

The SWAT team mounted the steps to seize the three witches, but as they did so there was a catastrophic bellow of thunder, and the sky turned instantly black, as if the sun had been switched off.

“Cuff them!” yelled Lieutenant Harris, before he broke into a coughing fit. But there was another rumble of thunder, followed by a low howling sound, which quickly developed into a high-pitched scream.

A gale rose up, and the courtyard was filled with dust and grit and whirling leaves. It blew harder and harder, until Dan could hardly stay on his feet. The SWAT officers were staggering about in confusion, shouting at each other, but the wind was so loud that they couldn’t even hear the headphones in their helmets. One man was blown against a low wall and tumbled over backward, firing his carbine into the air.

With his hand raised to protect his eyes, Dan looked toward the witches. All three were completely unruffled by the wind. Not even their dresses were stirring. Yet hundreds of rose petals were flying all around them, and chairs were tipping over, and shutters were being ripped away from the country club windows to careen off into the darkness.

“Retreat!” shouted the SWAT commander. “Retreat and regroup!”

Not many of his men could hear what he was saying, but his hand signals made it clear. With the wind
screaming at their backs, they battled their way out of the courtyard toward the front of the country club, trying to keep their balance, as if they had only just learned to walk.

Suddenly one of the officers spun around, holding his arms out and groping at the air. He tripped and fell heavily onto his back, but instead of trying to get up, he stayed where he was, his hands pressed over his eyes. Two more officers struggled across the driveway to help him, but then they lost their footing, too. By the time Dan and Ernie reached them, twenty or thirty more officers had fallen to the ground. Some of them were attempting to get to their feet, but most were kneeling or lying where they were, shouting desperately for help.

“What’s wrong with them?” shouted Ernie.

Lieutenant Harris gave him his answer. He came toward them with his eyes staring wide, but from the jerky way that he was walking and the way that he was waving his arms around in front of him, it was obvious that he had lost his sight.

“She’s blinded them!” Dan shouted back. “That Night Wind spell! She’s blinded them!”

He tried to take Lieutenant Harris’s arm, to guide him toward the country club driveway, but Lieutenant Harris screamed, “Get away! Get away from me!”

With that, he went zig-zagging off in the direction of the golf course.

Dan and Ernie looked around, their eyes narrowed against the gale. Everywhere they looked, SWAT and police officers were wandering around like marionettes with their strings cut. Several of them waded straight into the reflecting pool, and others blundered into the sand bunkers. Occasional bursts of gunfire flickered in the darkness, as submachine guns were accidentally let off.

“This is all my fault!” Dan shouted.

“What? I can’t hear you!”

He leaned close to Ernie’s right ear. “This is all my fault! I didn’t realize the witches had so much power. I didn’t think they could do anything much, not on their own. Not without that fourth witch.”

“How were you supposed to know that? You can’t go blaming yourself. None of this is natural, is it? It’s
blasfemia!
”

Dan took out his cell phone and punched in Annie’s number. He held it to his ear, but he could hear nothing but fizzing. Whatever had brought on the wind and the darkness had blotted out phone reception, too.

Ernie yelled, “We can see!”

“What do you mean?”

“All of these other guys—they’re all blind! But you and me, we can
see!
”

“Well, let’s get the hell out of here while we still can!”

“We should help these guys. Lookit—even the paramedics have gone blind!”

“What do you think you and me can do? There’s over a hundred guys here!”

Ernie turned around and around in desperation. “I don’t know! But why haven’t you and me gone blind?”

“Who knows? Let’s just be grateful, shall we, and get going, before we do.”

They had nearly reached the decking at the front of the country club, and they clung on to the railings for support. The wind was shrieking so loudly that they gave up trying to shout at each other, but as they reached the reflecting pool, Ernie turned around and frantically jabbed his finger at the water.