The Dark Ones (16 page)

Frederick disappeared through a tall archway to their left and Norman heard the heels of his polished black shoes clicking down the hardwood floor of a hallway. Left alone, Norman went into a kind of trance as his mind again fixated on the events leading up to the death of Louella.

He jumped when Frederick reappeared. “The mayor will see you now, sir. If you’ll follow me . . .”

Norman clapped a hand to his chest. “Goddamn, Freddy.”

The butler lifted an eyebrow approximately one millimeter. “Sir?”

“I’m a big ol’ bundle of nerves today, Jeeves. You don’t want to go sneaking up on a man like that.” He thumped his chest again. “Jesus goddamn Christmas. All right. Lead the way.”

In a few minutes, he was seated in Luke Harper’s private study. He had a glass of whiskey in one hand and a freshly lit Cohiba in the other. The booze and the tobacco helped take the edge off his nerves, but that didn’t stop him from squirming beneath the considerable force of the mayor’s unflinching gaze. He listened to Norman’s grim tale in attentive silence. When Norman was finished, Harper used his desk phone to make a call. He hung up after issuing terse instructions. “I’ve sent some men to retrieve the corpse. So . . . the bitch meant to blackmail you?”

Norman gulped more whiskey. “Oh, yes. Definitely. And wait . . . what do you mean ‘retrieve’? They’re not bringing her back here?”

“Don’t concern yourself with that. This woman also asked you to hire a man to kill Audrey?”

“Yes. I . . . look, I know how crazy it sounds, but—”

Harper raised a hand to cut him off. “I don’t care how it sounds. You did what needed doing. A woman has to know her place, Campbell. What concerns me about this incident isn’t that you killed a gold-digging whore, but rather the location of the incident.”

“It was just a boarded-up old house.”

Harper shook his head. “No. It is much more than that. And this issue is so much more complicated than you know. For instance, are you aware that your father also committed murders on that property?”

Norman frowned. “Um . . . what? But he’s . . .”

“Yes, he’s been dead a long time. And this happened a long time ago.”

“Wait . . . you said murders, as in more than one?”

Harper’s smile was strained. “Your father killed a number of people. Two of them at the Hollis house. The other concerning aspect of this matter is the identity of the woman you killed. She is . . . was . . . a descendant of Frank and Eleanor Hollis . . . who were murdered by your father. This cannot be coincidence.”

Norman drained the last of his whiskey. “This is crazy. You’re telling me my father was . . . what . . . a serial killer?”

“He was a man interested in power, a trait he passed on to you. And he had some . . . arcane ways of acquiring power.”

“Such as?”

Harper folded his fingers steeple-style as he leaned over his desk. “Your father was a practitioner of what some would call black magic. He was capable of summoning and binding demons. Powerful entities he used to intimidate and bully his adversaries.”

Norman laughed. “This is a joke . . . right?”

“No.”

“So . . . he was crazy?”

“No.”

Norman puffed on the Cohiba and grinned broadly as he pointed an index finger at Harper. “All right, old buddy. You had me goin’ pretty good there, but—”

The mayor abruptly stood and circled his desk to stand before him. Norman’s grin faded as he stared up at the man’s face. He had an uneasy, stomach-clenching sense of being in the presence of a dangerous stranger rather than a trusted old friend. The feverish intensity of the man’s gaze made him cringe. Jesus, but everything about today was wrong and upside down. He couldn’t understand how his entire life had gone so far off track in the course of a few hours. Until today, he’d been happy and successful, utterly content in nearly all aspects of his existence. Now he was a murderer and his best friend was spouting lunatic nonsense. Harper started talking again at some point, but Norman’s high state of agitation was such that he heard none of what the man said.

“Are you listening to me?”

Norman blinked. “What?” He stubbed the cigar out and wiped sweat from his forehead. “I don’t feel so good.”

Harper’s mouth twitched. His eyes bugged out in a strange and disturbing way. “Do you feel it?”

“Uh . . .” Norman scooted to the edge of his chair.
Time to get the hell out
. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t feel shit. And, uh, you know, I’m starting to think maybe I should, uh . . . leave. I shouldn’t have burdened you with any of this anyway. A man should clean up his own messes, after all. So I think I’ll just be on my way.”

He started to rise from the chair.

Harper grinned.

Something in the expression stopped Norman. There was something wrong about it. It looked somehow . . . inhuman. Almost . . . feral. It looked a bit like the look you’d expect to see on the face of some savage wilderness predator cornering prey. It was a
hungry
look. A wild and gleeful flash of long-hidden madness.

Norman gulped.

Harper laughed. “You
do
feel it. The presence of the demon.”

Norman didn’t know what to say. “Uh . . .”

You are a crazy son of a bitch. Lord, please get me out of here. I’ll never sin again, I swear
.

Harper abruptly whipped his coat off and flung it across the room. Norman’s face twisted in confusion as the man tugged at the tie knotted around his neck. The tie came free and Harper began to rip at the front of his shirt. Buttons popped free of the knitting and went bouncing across the carpeted floor. Norman no longer had any doubt he was in the presence of a deeply insane person. The mayor of Ransom stood panting in the middle of the room, his muscled chest heaving mightily with each big breath. A chest, in fact, that looked a good deal more muscled than it should. Harper had never been a fat slob, but he was soft in the way of many men of his age and position. But now his physique resembled that of a dedicated gym rat, with rippling, hard muscle in evidence all over. Just as inexplicable was the scar tissue on the man’s stomach. Norman saw intersecting lines of raised, puckered flesh in a circle. Someone had branded the man with a pentagram.

The same symbol he’d seen painted on one of the boarded-up windows of the Hollis house.

“My God . . .” Norman was shaking. “What’s . . . wrong with you?”

Harper flashed another savage grin. “Your father shared his demonology secrets with me. Together we raised the demon Andras and his henchman Flauros. In the old days, Andras was called ‘the killer of men.’ He was among the deadliest of all demons. Your father and I became rich men by harnessing his powers, but Andras was too powerful. We could no longer control him. Something had to be done.”

Norman nodded. “Yes. I see. That sounds . . . sensible.”

Harper laughed. “You don’t believe me.”

Norman shook his head several emphatic times. “No, no, no, I believe you. I mean, I can see how serious this is and, um . . .” He frowned and scratched his head, unable to think of the right thing to say to pacify this maniac. “Ah . . .”

Harper slapped his stomach. “
This
was done. Your father seared my flesh to bind Flauros inside me forever.” He laughed again. “Well, forever is relative. Flauros is locked away in a corner of my mind.” He pointed at his head. “In
here
, where the demonic cocksucker will stay until the day I die. You see, we didn’t have much time. They were getting harder to control and we had to do something before they became unbound. They’d kill us if they got loose. We had to bind them in a more permanent way, and we had to separate them because they’re stronger together. Sticking Flauros inside me was an imperfect solution, but your father believed it was the best option available at the time. He swore he’d transfer the vile thing to a more permanent prison after the immediate danger was removed. But it never happened. For all his knowledge, he couldn’t figure out how to do it. And I can’t just release Flauros. It would be suicide.”

“Uh huh. So this Flauros fella is in your noggin?”

“He is. He can’t control me. The binding magic your father performed was very effective. But his influence bleeds out.”

“And that’s why you look sorta like that green asshole on TV right now, right? All hulked up?”

The hard muscles in Harper’s arms visibly swelled. “Yes.”

Norman didn’t know what to think. All this demonology stuff had to be nonsense. But Luke’s body was transforming right in front of him. There was something not natural happening here. He didn’t want to believe it, but he was seeing it and he wasn’t the sort to hallucinate. “Okay. So what happened to the other one?”

“Andras.” Harper’s expression darkened again. “We imprisoned him in the basement of the Hollis house using layers upon layers of binding spells. He is there still, asleep in the darkness and imprisoned underground. Even so, you must have felt his presence when you were there today.”

Norman thought of the unnatural chill that had emanated from that house. And that strange sense of being observed. He shrugged. “There was . . . something.”

He jumped at a knock on the door.

Harper’s huge muscles rippled like waves as he turned toward the door. He bared his teeth and raised his voice to address the person on the other side:
“Yes?”

His tone was huskier now, a deep, low-down rumble. A wisp of what looked like steam drifted out of his nostrils. His ears twitched and thickened, changing shape to become almost pointed. Norman glanced at the big window to his left. He knew it overlooked the rear of the property, but he couldn’t recall whether it was positioned over the hard cement pool deck or the adjoining acres of lush green grass. A leap through the second-story window to the ground below would mean a world of pain either way, but he might just survive a tumble to the ground whereas an impact with the deck would surely mean at least one broken limb. It was something to think about, because this demonology business no longer seemed like such a steaming load of horseshit.

Instinct brought Norman to his feet. He backed away from the mayor and glanced again at the window, psyching himself to take a possibly suicidal dive through the glass. A voice from the other side of the door stopped him cold. “Luke?”

Norman’s heart almost seized up. He recognized that voice.

A throaty chuckle rumbled out of Harper’s throat. “Come in, dear.”

The door opened and Audrey Campbell came into the room, stopping short when she glimpsed Norman’s stricken expression. “Oh. I thought I saw your car outside.”

Audrey was wearing a sexy red dress that accentuated her lithe curves, the thin fabric clinging to her body like an extra layer of glistening skin. Her high heels raised her shapely ass in a provocative way and emphasized the jut of her large breasts. It was a far cry from the frumpier outfit she’d been wearing this morning. She generally only dressed to kill for the more important social events.

He forced the words out: “What are you doing here?”

Audrey smiled. “Why do you think, Normie?” She went to Harper and draped herself around his still-shifting physique. His thighs had grown huge and were straining the fabric of his khaki trousers. Audrey leaned into the man’s massive erection and writhed like a harlot, wanton and shameless. She shot a leer at her husband. “You want to watch, baby?”

Norman’s hands curled into fists. “You . . .
bitch
.”

Audrey tossed her head and laughed. “Please. You think I don’t know about all your whore-fucking?” She dragged a red-painted fingernail down the length of Harper’s sculpted torso. “Well, I do. So you can take your jealousy and shove it up your tight little ass.”

She laughed again.

Harper snarled, sounding more like an animal than ever, and ripped the red dress from her body, exposing generous breasts that jiggled and glistened in the harsh overhead light. The thing that now only vaguely resembled the mayor of Ransom threw her to the floor and fell on top of her. The remaining clothes came off and in seconds Harper was violently fucking his wife on the floor.

Norman reeled.

He couldn’t deal with this. At all. It was just too insane. He stumbled toward the door and then through it. He wobbled down the long hallway, pitching from wall to wall until he reached the second-floor landing, where he took a moment to gather his wits. He winced as he listened to Audrey’s high-pitched shrieks of ecstasy. It was that damnable sound that at last drove him down the stairs.

He was just starting toward the big double front doors when they burst open and Frederick came through them wielding a chain saw.

Norman screamed and toppled over.

Everything went fuzzy for a time.

When he came to, he was in the mansion’s large garage. He saw Frederick and again felt the urge to scream. The man was still wielding the chain saw, but the power tool wasn’t on. His coat was gone and in its place was a thick leather apron. He didn’t much look like a proper English butler just now. His gleeful grin made him look like something from a nightmare. At first he was certain Frederick meant to use the chain saw on him, but a glimpse of something else familiar drew his still slightly foggy vision to the floor and this time he did scream.

It was that woman. That blackmailing bitch.

She’d come back from the dead to exact her revenge!

Except . . . no . . . she was still dead. Norman struggled to calm down. He was close to hyperventilating. The woman was there, but she was a corpse. He made himself focus on that fact and that alone for a few moments. Then he saw that a large, clear sheet of plastic had been spread beneath the body.

It all suddenly clicked.

The chain saw.

The leather apron.

The sheet of plastic.

Holy fucking shit!

Norman surged to his feet, whirled about, and ran smack into a brick wall. He teetered and stumbled backward, realizing seconds later that he’d run not into a brick wall but a man built like one. He was a large and powerfully built thuggish brute. He was dressed all in black. Black jeans. Black shoes. Black turtleneck sweater. Black watch cap. Black leather gloves. The man’s eyes were a hard, pitiless blue and his prominent jaw looked carved from granite.