Dragon Tears (48 page)

The address they had gotten from Jennifer Drackman was less than two miles from Pacific View Care Home. They located the street at 2:31, slightly more than one hour after the Pause had begun and ended.

It was actually more of a long driveway than a short street, serving only five homes with ocean views, though now the Pacific was lost in fog. Because, from spring through autumn, the entire coastal area was crawling with tourists seeking parking spaces near beaches, a sign was posted at the entrance, sternly announcing
PRIVATE—VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED
, but no security gate restricted access.

Harry didn’t make the turn. Because the street was so short and because the van would be loud enough to wake the sleeping and draw attention at that dead hour of the morning, he drove past the turnoff and coasted to a stop two hundred feet farther along the highway.

Everything better, everyone together, so maybe they can all be a family and want a dog to feed and all live in a people place, warm and dry—and then suddenly everything wrong, wrong.

Deathcoming. The woman who has no boy. The not-so-stinky man. Sitting up front in the van, and deathcoming all around them.

He smells it on them, yet it is not an odor. He sees it on them, yet they look no different. It makes no sound, yet he hears it when he listens to them. If he licked their hands, their faces, deathcoming would have no taste of its own, yet he would know it was on them. If they petted or scratched him, he would feel it in their touch, deathcoming. It is one of those few things he senses
without really knowing how he knows. Deathcoming.

He is shaking. He cannot stop shaking.

Deathcoming.

Bad. Very bad. The worst.

He must do something. But what? What what what what?

He doesn’t know when the deathcoming will be or where it will be or how it will be. He doesn’t know whether deathcoming will be to both of them or only to one of them. It could be only to one of them, and he senses it on both of them only because it will happen when they are together. He cannot sense this thing as clearly as he can sense the countless odors of the stinky man or the fear on all of them, because it is not really something to be smelled or tasted so much as just felt, a coldness, a dark, a deepness. Deathcoming.

So…

Do something.

So…

Do something.

What what what?

When Harry switched off the engine and doused the headlights, the silence seemed almost as deep as it had been during the Pause.

The dog was agitated, sniffing and whining. If he began to bark, the walls of the van would muffle the sound. Besides, Harry was confident that they were too far from the Drackman house for Ticktock to be disturbed by any sound the dog could make.

Sammy said, “How long before we should figure…you know…you didn’t get him, he got you? Sorry, but I had to ask. When should we run?”

“If he gets us, you won’t have a chance to run,” Connie said.

Harry turned to look at them in the shadowy rear compartment. “Yeah. He’s going to wonder how the hell we
found him, and after he kills us, there’ll be another Pause, immediately, while he checks out all of you, everything, trying to figure it out. If he gets us, you’ll know it, because just a few seconds later in real time, one of his golems will probably appear right here in the van with you.”

Sammy blinked owlishly. He wetted his cracked lips with his tongue. “Then, for God’s sake, be sure you kill him.”

Harry opened his door quietly, while Connie left the van on her side. When he stepped out, the dog slipped between the front seats and followed him before he realized what was happening.

He made a grab at the mutt as it brushed past his legs, but he missed.

“Woofer, no!” he whispered.

Ignoring him, the dog padded to the back of the van.

Harry went after him.

The dog broke into a sprint, and Harry ran several steps in pursuit, but the dog was faster and vanished into the heavy fog, heading north along the highway in the general direction of the turnoff to the Drackman house.

Harry was cursing under his breath when Connie joined him.

“He can’t be going there,” she whispered.

“Why can’t he?”

“Jesus. If he does anything to alert Ticktock…”

Harry checked his watch. 2:34.

Maybe they had twenty, twenty-five minutes. Or maybe they were already too late.

He decided they couldn’t worry about the dog.

“Remember,” he said, “headshot. Quick and up close. It’s the only way.”

When they reached the entrance to Phaedra Way, he glanced back toward the van. It had been swallowed by the fog.

He is not afraid. Not. Not afraid.

He is a dog, sharp teeth and claws, strong and quick.

Creeping, he passes thick, high oleander. Then the people place where he’s been before. High white walls. Windows dark. Near the top, one square of pale light.

The smell of the thing-that-will-kill-you is heavy on the fog. But like all smells in fog, not as sharp, not as easy to track.

The iron fence. Tight. Wriggle. Through.

Careful at the corner of the people place. The bad thing was out there last time, behind the place, with bags of food. Chocolate. Marshmallow. Potato chips. Didn’t get any. But almost got caught. So put just the nose past the corner this time. Sniff sniff sniff. Then the whole head for a look. No sign of the young-man-bad-thing. Was there, not now, safe so far.

Behind the people place. Grass, dirt, some flat stones that people put down. Bushes. Flowers.

The door. And in the door the little door for dogs.

Careful. Sniff. Young-man-bad-thing smell, very strong. Not afraid. Not, not, not, not. He is a dog. Good dog, good.

Careful. Head in, lifting the dog door. It makes a faint squeak. People food place. Dark. Dark.

Inside.

The softly fluorescent fog refracted every ray of ambient light on Phaedra Way, from the low mushroom-shaped Malibu lamps along the front walk at one house to the lighted numerals of the address on another, seeming to brighten the night. But, in fact, its slowly churning, amorphous luminosity was deceptive; it revealed nothing and obscured much.

Harry could see little of the houses past which they walked, except that they were large. The first of them was modern, sharp angles looming out of the fog in several places, but the others seemed to be older Mediterranean-style homes from a more graceful era of Laguna’s history than the end of the millennium, sheltered by mature palms and ficuses.

Phaedra Way followed the shoreline of a small promontory that jutted out into the sea. According to the prematurely aged woman at Pacific View, the Drackman house was the farthest out, at the point of the bluff.

Considering how much of his ordeal had seemed to be based upon the darker elements of fairy tales, Harry would not have been at all surprised if they had found a small but preternaturally dark forest at the end of the promontory, filled with lantern-eyed owls and slinking wolves, the Drackman house tucked therein, decidedly gloomy and brooding, in the finest tradition of the residences of witches, warlocks, sorcerers, trolls, and the like.

He almost hoped that was the kind of house he would find. It would be a comforting symbol of order.

But when they reached the Drackman place, only the eerie pall of fog upheld the tradition. In both its landscaping and architecture, it was less menacing than the scary little cottage in the woods for which folk and fairy tales had long prepared him.

Like the neighboring houses, it had palm trees in its shallow front yard. Even in the cloaking mist, masses of bougainvillaea vines were visible climbing one white stucco wall and spreading onto the red tile roof. The driveway was littered with their bright blossoms. A night-light to one side of the garage door illuminated the house number, its glow reflected in beads of dew on the hundreds of bright bougainvillaea blossoms that glimmered like jewels on the driveway.

It was too pretty. He was irrationally angry at its pret-tiness. Nothing was as it ought to be any more, all hope of order gone.

They quickly checked the north and south sides of the house for signs of occupancy. Two lights.

One was upstairs on the south side, toward the back. A single window, not visible from the front. It might have been a bedroom.

If the light was on, Ticktock must have awakened from his nap, or had never gone to sleep. Unless…some children wouldn’t sleep without a light on, and in many ways Ticktock was a child. A twenty-year-old, insane, vicious, exceedingly dangerous child.

The second light was on the north side, first floor at the rear—or west—corner. Because it was at ground level, they were able to look inside and see a white-on-white kitchen. Deserted. One chair was turned half-away from the glass-topped table, as if someone had been sitting there earlier.

2:39.

Since both lights were toward the back of the house, they did not attempt to gain entrance on the west—or rear—side. If Ticktock was in the upstairs room with the light, awake or asleep, he would be more likely to hear even the furtive noises they would make if they were directly beneath him.

Because Connie had the set of picks, they didn’t even try the windows, but went straight to the front door. It was
a big oak slab with raised panels and a brass knocker.

The lock might have been a Baldwin, which was good but not a Schlage. In that gloom, it was difficult to tell the make.

Flanking the door were wide leaded-glass sidelights with beveled panes. Harry put his forehead against one to study the foyer beyond. He could see through the foyer and down a shadowy hallway because of light leaking through a partially open door at the end, which had to be the kitchen.

Connie opened the packet of lock picks. Before starting to work, she did what any good burglar did first—tried the door. It was unlocked, and she let it swing open a few inches.

She jammed the picks into one pocket without bothering to fold up the packet. From the shoulder holster under her corduroy jacket, she withdrew her revolver.

Harry pulled his weapon, too.

When Connie hesitated, he realized that she had broken open the cylinder. She did a Braille check to be sure that cartridges still filled all the chambers. He heard a soft, soft
snick
as she closed it, evidently satisfied that Ticktock had not been playing any of his tricks.

She crossed the threshold first because she was nearest to it. He followed her.

They stood in the marble-floored foyer for twenty seconds, half a minute, very still, listening. Both hands on their guns, sights just below their lines of vision, Harry covering the left side, Connie covering everything on the right.

Silence.

The Hall of the Mountain King. Somewhere a sleeping troll. Or not sleeping. Maybe just waiting.

Foyer. Not much light, even with that second-hand fluorescent glow leaking down the hall from the kitchen. Mirrors to the left, dark images of themselves in the glass, shadowy forms. To the right was a doorway to either a closet or a den.

Ahead and to the right, a switchback staircase led to a landing, shrouded in shadows, then to an unseen second-floor hall.