Chills (22 page)

I
t felt to Jack like he was going down a long, long way. The wall was rough beneath his hand, and cool, though not as cold as it had been upstairs in the morgue. The air smelled vaguely musty, like a damp basement. He felt very vulnerable in that limitless darkness, like he was adrift at sea and sinking farther and farther, and the sharks had come circling around him.

As he made his way down, he thought about his kids. Jack Jr. was still scared of the dark. He had a night-light in his room that he asked Jack to make sure was on every time he stayed over. He also had asthma. Jack could only wonder what the cold and the dampness of some underground prison was doing to the poor kid's lungs.

He thought about Carly, too. So often, she reminded him of a tiny grown-up in a little girl's body. Jack imagined her trying to soothe her brother and probably even her mother. She wouldn't let her terror show, not too much. But she had to be scared. They all had to be scared, and it made Jack's chest ache that they had been put in that position.

It made Jack roil with anger toward Cordwell.

Just when he thought he'd be descending into that pit of the earth forever, his foot stumbled on a hard floor. He left the security of the wall beneath his fingers and moved forward. Ahead, down what he thought was a long tunnel, he thought he saw a faint, flickering light. He headed toward it, listening. He thought he heard voices far off in rhythmic chant—another bad sign. It suggested maybe he'd found the cultists' meeting place, and worse, it suggested that those present were actively participating in something. For the first time in a long while, he wished Kathy were there to guide him through how to handle these people.

As he got closer, the small patch of light resolved itself into a cave opening, and beyond it, Jack caught glimpses of a round, roughhewn room with a cavernously high ceiling. Within, he could see several figures—Jack counted nine—in icy blue robes surrounding what looked to Jack like an immense circular altar made of ice. Torches lined the circumference of the cavern, and between them were several irregular, large stone statues, with a few feet between each and the rough cavern walls. The latter were terribly detailed in their carving, not only suggestive of horrific alien forms but of the movement of those forms. The statues continued up along the diameter like sentinels, flanking a pathway right to the altar itself. Suspended in a large wire cage above it was Morris—and the kids and Katie! Jack's heart leaped in his chest. They looked a little bruised and bloody and absolutely terrified, but otherwise, they were okay. He checked the bullets in his .45. He had a full magazine and one in the chamber. It would have to be enough.

Jack considered his options. There would be no backup; even if there were any other police officers around town at this point, his cell wasn't sending texts or making calls anymore. He could charge in there, gun drawn, but it didn't seem wise to leap before he looked, in a sense. In a best-case scenario, Jack imagined the folds of those robes would be hiding guns or knives. Likely, they had weapons on them of a less tangible source that he couldn't even imagine. It wasn't his life so much that he was worried about. His family was in there, along with one of his best detectives, and he didn't want to engage in any impulsive behavior that might put their lives in danger.

Eight of the cultists were gathered in a semi-circle around the altar. They wore hoods, so Jack couldn't make out the faces of any of them except the ninth, who was facing him from the other side of the altar, his arms raised.

It was Terence Cordwell.

He was speaking in a language unfamiliar to Jack, though, if he had to guess, he would have thought it some old version of Irish or Welsh, maybe.

Unlike most of the other things he had seen out in the snow—the echoes, the ghosts, the hallucinations—there was a kind of substantial horror to seeing him there, the perpetrator of such cruelty and madness, a liar as close to some of his department as clothes were to skin.

Jack wanted to kill him. His hand closed around the butt of his gun. One shot, straight to the head. He saw his kids, little Jack Jr. and Carly, dangling within that cage, tears streaking their faces, and he began to withdraw his weapon. But then he saw Morris, doing his best to keep Katie and the kids calm, no doubt reassuring them with his special Morris brand of almost naive charm, and he let the gun rest. Soon, maybe, but not now. Now, he had to get in there and get closer.

Jack listened for another moment to the words the cultists were saying, the syllables that meant absolutely nothing to him, and saw his chance to move in when, as a group, the cultists closed their eyes. He crept in and hid behind the nearest statue. There were two between him and the one nearest Cordwell, and he hoped there would be another instance of their being distracted enough for him to get closer.

Luck, for once, was with him; again they closed their eyes, their chanting loud and long, and he crept on a swift diagonal to the statue right behind Cordwell. He was so close, he could smell the man, a mix of his expensive cologne and bleach and some odd incense burning on the edge of the altar whose smoke wafted back over him to Jack.

From here, he could see the altar and his stomach tightened; he was glad he'd been cautious. The entire center fell away to a black pit. Whether it had a bottom or not, Jack couldn't tell, but he suspected it was very deep. Which meant, he realized, that if his family and Morris should fall . . .

He didn't want to think about that. Jack was a thinker, had always been a thinker. Now was the time to be a doer. For his kids, he needed to do something.

Jack stepped out from behind the statue and pointed the gun at Cordwell's head. The trailing off of the cultists' chanting as they became aware of him arrested Cordwell's chanting. He turned his head to see Jack's gun level with the bridge of his nose and nodded as if he'd been expecting him. In his other hand, Jack still clutched the snow brush.

“Jack, you made it. I'm afraid we've had to start without you, but I'm certainly glad you'll be here to witness the final stage of our preparations.”

“Daddy!” Jack Jr.'s and Carly's little faces pressed eagerly against the bars.

“Jack! Oh, thank God.” Even Katie looked relieved to see him.

“Let my family and my detective go,” Jack growled, “or I'll kill you.”

“Kill me?”

“You and every one of these murdering bastards along with you.” Jack chanced a quick look at the faces, now unhooded, that stared at him with vague unease. They lacked the evident confidence their leader had in the face of Jack's intrusion.

“I'm afraid it's a little too late for that, Jack. See, my friends and I have been industriously working toward opening the way to Xíonathymia, the Great Far Place beyond the realms of starless space. And now, the way is opened.” Cordwell turned back to the altar. “One last collective show of wills, my brothers and sisters, and we will welcome a new age, a multiverse of limitless possibility. We welcome Iaroki the Swallower of Suns, Imnamoun the She-Beast Mother of the Spheres, Xixiath-Ahk the Blood-Washed, Okatik'Nehr the Watcher, and Thniaxom the Traveler to the very nexus of a new co-mingling of universes! Now, my brothers and sisters! Now! Now!”

The hands of the cultists began to glow with silvery light. Their mouths moved, but Jack couldn't make out what they were saying.

“Jack!”

He looked up to see Morris leaning against the bars. “Jack, you have to stop them. This is beyond the law now. They're opening the door. You need to stop them.”

Jack looked at his kids.

“Your family is here as a sacrifice. We're all here as a sacrifice—a man, a woman, a boy child, a girl child. And Cordwell—he wanted you to see it. Apparently despair strengthens these Old Gods.”

The chanting around them got louder. They no longer seemed to care or even be aware of Jack. They were supremely confident that they were beyond his reckoning now.

“Stop them, Jack. It's the only way now. Stop them from opening the door.”

“But you and the kids and—”

“Don't worry about us. Toss me that snow brush and I've got this. Just stop them, before we become creepy creature corn chips, eh?” He tried to smile as he reached through the bars for the snow brush from Jack. Jack handed it to him and he pulled it back through the bars, and his expression grew serious. Morris looked him in the eye. “Kill them. Nothing standing, boss.”

With a grim nod of determination, Jack began to fire.

* * *

Each of the Blue People seemed to be made of a translucent blue, somewhat crystalline substance that molded itself, at will, into the semblance of a tall, gaunt person-shape. This shape, with its long, rather sharp features, was swathed in an assortment of sapphire folds of plush cloth embroidered, or so it looked, with silvery-white threads, so that only the skeletal head and hands could be seen. In the cavernous sockets of their eyes was a deep blackness that seemed almost a tangible thing, twin subzero caverns of disdain and impenetrable contempt.

The being in front opened its mouth, and the others followed suit. A bright light issued from their throats and carried their voices in unison to her. “You are in our way.”

Kathy and Teagan glanced at each other, then squinted at the figures.

The voices continued. “We were summoned. The Sixth Door of Nine was opened.”

Kathy raised a hand to shield her eyes from the brunt of their light. “We didn't summon you. We—”

The one closest to her held its hand out to her, palm up. The long, clear nails of its last two fingers reached sharply into icicle points, while those of the thumbs and first two fingers curved slightly over the tips. Again, without moving or closing their mouths, unified voices of the group came from within the depths of light pouring out of their throats. “Not you. Others. But you are attempting to close the Sixth Door of Nine. You must not.”

“Yes, we must. We can't allow you to cleanse this world.”

“You cannot stop that.”

“We intend to.”

The blazing light in their throats flickered as if they were considering that, and then the beacons resumed as the voices said, “Then you will have to die.” The light in their throats faded as the Blue People spread out around the circle. She noticed that although they came close to the outermost ring of oil, not so much as a hem of their robes crossed it.

“Teagan,” she said without taking her eyes off the figures, “start the invocation again.” When he didn't move or speak, Kathy nudged him. “Teagan!”

Beside her, he began to read the invocation. Kathy wished she could read it, too, to take comfort in the flow of the language and the power behind the words, but she didn't want to risk messing them up.

The Blue People raised their arms in unison as if pleading with the ceiling, and a wind blew up around them, whipping through the circle, yanking at their hair and clothes and the papers Teagan held tightly in his hand. He kept reading.

The corners of the room grew very dark with amorphous shadows. Those shape-shadows crowded closer, pulsing and twisting, forming and reforming. Frost outlined them, and as they moved, it cracked, chipped off, and recovered them immediately, giving their definition a kind of jerking movement. There was something abjectly horrific to Kathy about these things, more than the scorpion things or even the Blue People themselves, perhaps because they were simply darkness beneath the cold, a darkness more alien than anything in her universe. Perhaps they were the very substance of the dark of starless space. These were the things that drove the odd behavior of the snow, and wore it like a disguise. They were the
real
cleaners; she was sure of that. They were the faces, the voices, the hands of that unnatural winter that had Colby in its grip.

Kathy shivered. She looked down at the symbols she had drawn within the circle and hoped they would hold.

The Blue People stepped back as the shadows, the cleaners, surged and billowed right up to the circle. The temperature dropped immediately to a painful low. The air felt raw and uncomfortable, almost like sandpaper against her skin and inside her nose and throat. She felt the light pelting of snowflakes on her arms and face, and looked up to see a swirling cloud of blue-black blotting out the ceiling. Snow appeared to be materializing from it and falling lightly all around. Kathy didn't think the snow covering up the circle would have any bearing on its effectiveness, but wondered if it was possible for melting flakes to wash the chalk or even the oil away. That would be bad. That would be very bad.

More pressing in her thoughts was the worry that these cleaners might have a way around or through the circle. She had created these circles of protection before in her line of work, and had done so with confidence in their strength. But these creatures . . . they weren't demons, even Duke or King demons. These weren't ghosts. These weren't even Hollowers, Hinshing, or Scions, creatures she understood to be hardly, if at all, affected by most protection circles and protection spells. Kathy tried to tell herself that this particular circle and its symbols were specific to the Blue People and those that were bound to serve them, but still . . . that tendril of frosted darkness was coming awfully close to the outer oil ring....

From the black center of one of the cleaners' masses, a bass growl actually vibrated the floor beneath their feet.

Teagan, to his credit, kept reading. He didn't look up, and his voice didn't waver. Kathy suspected it was what was keeping him together.

From their semi-circle behind the cleaners, the mouths of the Blue People opened again. The light and the voices surrounded them.