Midnight's Angels - 03 (12 page)

When she clambered off her bike and started jogging forward, she remained in silhouette, the cyclopean headlamp on the Harley rendering her that way. So far as I could tell, she was dressed pretty much the same way as she had been on the riverbank. Except a silvery flash of buckles told me that she’d put her boots back on.

She must have gone back home before she’d headed off in this direction. That was where she’d left her weapons when she’d gone into the forest. Her twin Glocks were dangling from her hips, so much a part of her it looked like she’d been born wearing them. And she had her shotgun, the Mossberg 590 she’d used so many times to such impressive effect. Although -- unusually -- she was not holding that particular weapon. She had it on a sling across her back.

The way that she was moving made my brow crease. Something had definitely changed. Cass had always been good in a fight, don’t get me wrong. She learned it the hard way mostly, as part of a motorcycle gang.

But there had always been a ragged quality to everything she did, as if she had a powder keg inside her, ready to explode. Now though, with all hell erupting around us, she looked very calm, controlled, her every motion smooth and measured.

The hominids who’d been closing in around us backed off a little as she approached. Mindless they might be, but these things seemed to have strong instincts of their own. They did not seem sure what they were dealing with, and stared at her, their heads cocked to one side.

But then they saw that she was only human, and grew bolder again. The ones at the front bared their teeth and padded closer. My chest thumped when I saw that. But Cass ignored it, behaving pretty much like she was going fishing and was simply trying to pick the spot.

A creature rushed at her. Cassie barely even looked at the thing. She simply snatched out a Glock with her left hand -- she’s ambidextrous, so far as I’ve ever been able to tell. And pumped a slug into its leg. It collapsed to the ground, writhing and whining.

“All these houses empty?” she called across to me, indicating those nearest us.

I didn’t get what she was driving at, but told her that I hoped so.

“Better be,” I heard her mutter.

She pumped another couple of bullets into the limbs of the approaching pack, choosing those who looked like they were getting really testy. Then she stepped across to the closest front yard.

And drew her second Glock as well, her trigger fingers pumping. She was not shooting at anything alive this time. She opened fire on the broad front windows, blasting at them until most of the glass had dropped away. Holstered her side arms while the final pieces were still dropping, and then yanked the shotgun off her back.

I stared at her, wondering if she’d gone crazy. What exactly was she hoping to achieve? The real threat was coming from all around her, not from someone’s empty living room.

Cassie opened fire, slamming out three shots in quick succession. And normally, plenty of dust and debris would have been apparent as the rounds struck home. She normally loaded the Mossberg with ‘saboted’ slugs, capable of punching holes through concrete. Except this time …

Three bright red flashes tore apart the darkness of the living room. Then flames began appearing, spreading rapidly across the furniture and drapes. It took me by surprise, but I finally worked out what she was doing. She’d swapped her normal ammo for incendiary shells. Flares.

My gaze swung to the hominids. A few of them looked ready to attack. But the swelling yellow brightness gave them second thoughts. Their soulless eyes were squinting, and they looked bewildered.

Cass paid them no mind, moving smoothly to the next house along and repeating the same process. Then she did likewise to another place across the street. If the folks who’d owned those homes survived this, then she’d have a lot to answer for.

But she was achieving what I couldn’t. Flames from the first house were licking up across the roof by this juncture.

The angels finally saw what she was up to. And attempted to swoop down in her direction. But a second roof burst into flame. The brilliance propelled them back. They were forced to hover in the dim air at the edges of its reach.

In less than a minute, great swathes of flickering, dancing yellow were washing across this entire block. And there was no way to make it stop. The trick with the power cables couldn’t be repeated.

The hominids were shrinking away, scuttling back into the deep shadows of Tyburn. And even the angels had no option but to give up and withdraw from view, their chill glow diminishing.

When Cassie headed back to me, she was no longer in outline. The firelight revealed her clearly. Her square-jawed features were composed. Her eyes, almost jet black, had a powerful, determined gleam. She looked a different Cassie to the one I’d known before the forest. Equally as strong and capable, but with the rougher edges smoothed out somewhat.

“That’ll hold ‘em for a while,” she called to me. “But not forever.”

Then she reached the teenaged girl who I’d been trying to save. The poor, skinny thing still hadn’t taken in what had been going on around her, terror rooting her to the spot.

Cassie gave her a nudge with her free hand, getting her attention.

Then said, “Get in the car, dummy.”

So perhaps she hadn’t really changed that much.

* * *

We met up again at Union Square, on the spread of wide gray flagstones, the globe-shaped lanterns shining like small planets and the statue at the center peering down. By then, the teenager -- who turned out to be called Ellie -- had snapped out of her trance and was making me wish she hadn’t, gabbing at me like a stuck record, conveying the same information every fifty or so seconds. Her folks were going through a hard time in their marriage, but had decided to try and make it work. She hoped they stayed together, because she loved both of them. They were out for dinner, only half a block away from here.

Well, we all had our problems, I supposed. I told her I was sure things would work out.

“How? You don’t even know them!”

Descending herds of monsters obviously took second place in this young woman’s train of thought. Or maybe she was blocking what had happened out. I told her I just got this feeling everything would be all right. She seemed pleased with that, nodding vigorously. And, as soon as I had stopped the car, she was out of the passenger door and running off to find them.

I’d been that age once. Watched her figure melt into the distance, hoping she’d come through this in one piece. She’d already had the luckiest of starts.

Then I returned my attention to the Harley, which was already parked in front of me. I got out. Cassie switched her motor off, but remained on the bike.

“How did you know where I was?” I asked her.

She stared at me evenly. “A little help from a certain red-eyed friend.”

Which was what I had already figured.

“Are you back for good, or is this just a visit?”

Cass shrugged. “I’ve no particular plans. Playing it by ear, from this point on.”

Looking at her in the electric light, I could see that there were smears of grime across her chin and forearms. Some thin scratches on the latter, too. I hadn’t really taken those in the last time that we’d spoken. But now that she was back in a more civilized environment, the plain fact was she might be healthy but she looked a ragged mess.

Living out of doors can be hard on the human body, even one as resilient as hers. She was leaner than before, and she had never been that chunky in the first place. Her clothes looked like the seams were going to unravel. And, frankly, she smelled strongly of the river, which she’d been washing in the last two months.

None of which meant I was anything less than extremely pleased to see her. My heart lightened for the first time in several days.

“Occurs to me I ought to thank you.”

“No need. Never has been.” She tipped her head a couple of inches to the side.
“Know what your father told me one time?”

Which took me aback a little. I had never realized she knew him.

“Only met him once,” she explained. “He was on duty.”

Which meant that she had still been on the wrong side of the law when they had come across each other. But I held my tongue, letting her continue.

“He said, ‘friends, they look out for each other, watch each other’s backs.’”

Something tugged at my emotions when she mouthed those words, old memories from my childhood coming back.

“Yeah, that sounds like him,” I grunted.

“What bothers me is, if I start watching your back again, who exactly watches mine?”

I stuck my lower lip out. “I do. You know that.”

She thought about it.

“Maybe that’s why we keep on going round in circles.”

Cass looked weary for a moment.
Then she broke out in a big, warm smile. I was about to do the same thing when her head lifted. Her whole body tightened. Any hint of relaxation vanished from her face, her dark eyes blazing.

And she wasn’t even looking at me. She was staring past my shoulder.

“Holy Mother of God!”

I spun around to see what had caught her attention. Had the angels and the hominids come back already? But it wasn’t even the right direction.

I couldn’t make out anything, at first. Until Cassie pointed and told me, “Up there!”

When I lifted my gaze above the clustered rooftops, taking in the huge dark bulk looming over them …

I tried to suck in a breath, but couldn’t.

Because it wasn’t only Tyburn this time. Every single light on Sycamore Hill was going out.

The moon was still out, although half-hidden by a line of clouds. The night sky had taken on a slight silver-blue tinge at its edge because of that. Constellations were apparent, the stars winking down at us. And against this frozen majesty, the spreading blackness on the hill looked even more horrifying.

How was this even happening? That entire neighborhood was a place of enormous wealth and power. And it wasn’t merely the rich inhabitants. Almost every single one of our major adepts lived up there.

To see it being snatched away from us as easily as this … it went against everything that I’d grown up believing. It seemed to be turning out that the place wasn’t so special after all. It was as vulnerable as any other part of town.

But not everything had been lost. Two shapes lifted, off there in the distance, and then sped in our direction. They were not glowing, and I was deeply relieved to see that. My lungs re-acquainted themselves with fresh air. They were twin dark smudges, hurtling through the night sky like a pair of animated clouds.

They circled over the Town Hall, then settled down on the flagstones in front of us before resolving into human shapes. Martha Howard-Brett and Lehman Willets, the pair of them looking very badly shaken. Martha’s auburn hair was askew, and the doctor had an expression like he’d run an entire marathon, backwards.

They steadied themselves, then stared at us from bloodless faces, their eyes wide.

“The angels again?”

“Only one,” gasped Martha.

So it was the third. The others had to still be back in Tyburn. I recalled how Willets had fought them off last night, and wondered what had gone wrong this time. My gaze kept going past them to the hill, but I could make out no white shimmers.

“It got the drop on us,” the female adept went on.

She outlined the whole course of events, the doctor punctuating everything with angry grunts.

“It would have made sense if we’d stuck together once we cast the Spell of Sealing. But Gaspar got it in his head to go wandering off. He said he needed to be alone. I suppose he was embarrassed by how ineffectual he’d become.”

“Great power brings with it great pride,” Willets put in. “And when that gets hurt …”

So the big old adept had just wandered off into the dimness. There’d been no sound, no indication anything was wrong. But when he came back, he seemed to be injured. Was down on his hands and knees. A couple of the others had rushed across to help him.

“He deliberately tricked us,” Martha told me crossly. Touches of faint color were returning to her cheeks. “Even making sounds like he was hurt. Sam Levin was the first to reach him.”

That was when Vernon had grabbed hold of the judge, pressed their faces up close and transformed him. And the angel itself had put in an appearance, around that point.

“Sam immediately joined the other side, attacking us. And none of us had time to fight. We were just … overwhelmed.”

She and the doctor had only escaped by the narrowest of margins, leaving the road and hurrying away down the tracks between the houses. And when they got a chance to stare back …

“All of them?” I breathed, my face going numb.

“Every single adept, yes. Crouched on all fours. Turned to animals. And then they started spreading out across the hill, bursting into people’s homes and changing the inhabitants. There’s an army of them growing.”

Which would turn into a larger one, exactly like Tyburn. The whole idea was appalling. Even Cassie, who’d never had much time for the people up there, shook her head tiredly and muttered, “Jesus Christ.”

“You said they
burst
into people’s homes?” I pointed out. “Sam Levin and Walter Cobb -- they aren’t exactly hefty.”

“We think it’s possible,” Willets croaked, “that they might still have their magic powers.”

He looked about as gloomy at that prospect as I felt. We had been in a bad enough fix in the first place. But if we were now facing hominids with witchcraft up their sleeves, then it had just turned into trouble squared.

Then something else occurred to me.

“How about Raine?” I asked. “Is he affected?”

“There’s no way of telling,” the doc came back at me, seeing what I was getting at.

And when I glanced toward the peak again, I could see that he was right. Raine Manor was pitch black, its windows lightless. But then, that was nothing in the least bit new. The place had been that way for years. Its windows were permanently opaque, and its owner lived in almost total darkness, punctuated by the merest glint of candlelight.

But another thought was coming to me. I took a few seconds chewing it over, and then spat it out.

“Sounds like you’ve both been pretty busy.”

The adepts stared at me, not seeming to understand what I was driving at.

“So which one of you opened up the barrier?”

They still looked blank, which bothered me. But I described to them what had gone down on Greenwood Terrace, that young family trapped back there. The way that they had suddenly been freed, a hole opening in the translucent wall.

Willets and Martha glanced at each other and then back at me. And I could see how mystified their gazes were.

“It wasn’t us,” Martha told me. “And it couldn’t have been any of the others.”

Which left who? There was a chance it might have been Raine, although I seriously doubted that. So was there someone that we didn’t even know about -- with serious power -- in this town?

But that was an issue that we would have to examine later. There were far more serious events confronting us. I noticed movement in the streets around us. And before much longer, we were no longer alone on Union Square.

A bunch of frightened townspeople had started showing up.

* * *

Some arrived in vehicles, others on foot. They came singly, in pairs, in families or groups of neighbors. And they came across the flagstones like a broken army that was trying to find its way back home. These were the ordinary folk of Raine’s Landing, coming here for safety, or to find out what was going on.

It was the natural place to do that. Union Square has always been the heart of this strange community. But the Town Hall was closed by this hour, and there was no indication that anybody like our mayor was going to show up.

In fact, when I reflected on it, he lived on the hill as well.

Of the faces approaching me, one in particular stood out. A roundish one with dark brown eyes and short, curly hair. This was Nick McLeish, a construction guy from one of the southern districts, Garnerstown. I knew him to be brave and sturdy, and he’d helped me out before.

He spotted me as well, came striding across to greet me. Then he noticed who I was standing next to, and drew to a halt. He stood there nervously, eyeing my companion. Most people are scared of Willets.

So I went across to talk with him. He flinched back a little, like I might have caught something contagious from the doc. But then he got a grip on himself. He looked shook up, like all the rest. But he remained defiant and determined. Nothing could take that away from him.

“Why the hell was no one warned?” he asked me, genuinely angry.

I could hardly blame him. But it had been the adepts’ decision, not mine.

“We weren’t sure what we were up against,” I tried to explain.

“Ain’t that usually the case? People should’ve been given at least some kind of explanation. Then they might have had a better chance.”

Or maybe not. Everything had happened so unexpectedly. I put that aside, and did my best to bring him up to speed.

“Have the creatures reached the southern suburbs yet?” I asked him.

“Not while I was there. But word of them spread like wildfire, when those guys from Greenwood Terrace arrived.” He meant the people who had managed to escape the first onslaught, Garnerstown being the next district along.  “Most of us decided to get out of there before those things showed up.”

More of our citizens were pouring in while we were speaking, the entire square filling up.

“Maybe it’s time to reform the militias?” Nick suggested.

We had done that when we were facing the Shadow Man. Groups of private citizens had defended their neighborhoods. But this was something rather different.

“No.” I was recalling what had happened on the hill. “Smaller groups are not a good idea this time. If we have to do one thing tonight, we have to stick together.”

He started at me with a perturbed expression. “You’ve gotta have a better plan than that?”

My head was spinning gently, though. And I could give no other answer.

But Willets has very fine-tuned senses, and I suppose he’d been listening to us.

“Take a leaf from Cassie’s book,” he called out. “Light some fires.”

Nick flinched again, peering at him oddly. But I could see the doctor might be right. The streetlamps might be on here, but I knew how quickly that could change. Casting more light on the situation definitely sounded like a good idea.

A lot of the people around me had started staring at the man. Just as nervous of him as they always were. But they were listening to what he said.

He swept one arm out, indicating our surroundings.

“Light is the one thing that those creatures can’t abide. So what we have to do is keep this whole place bright as daylight, until dawn.”

A ripple went through the mass of bodies. And when I looked back at Nick, his face had tightened up.

“I’m on it.”

He turned to the neighbors he’d arrived with. There were over a dozen of them. They quickly consulted, then Nick led them to the front door of an office building. I thought at first that they were going to break it down. But one of his guys yanked something from his pocket, stooped down quickly, fiddled with the lock. And in another moment, they were through.

When they re-emerged, they were carrying furniture. Chairs, desks, anything wooden they could lay their hands on. Others had already begun following suit.

Piles were formed, the larger items broken up. Someone had already siphoned gas from a parked car. Flames, accompanied by narrow wreaths of oily smoke, began to spring up everywhere I looked. Those who’d arrived with children were carefully keeping them at a distance, since the kids were fascinated.

There had to be nearly a thousand people in the square by this hour. It was an amazing sight. All those faces, of all ages, lit up with dancing yellow. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have supposed this was some kind of festival.

Cassie turned around on the spot, taking the whole thing in. Then she smiled.

“Wow, we should do this every year!”

And in spite of everything, I managed a brief laugh.

“Know what it reminds me of?” asked Lehman Willets, coming up behind us.

“Enlighten me.”

“Some old black-and-white footage. Paris, 1968. That student rebellion they had back then.”

I didn’t know too much about it. So I asked him, “What were they rebelling against?”

“Authority,” he told me. “Militarism. War.”

“Loss of freedom then, and death. Like us.”

“Yep. Cross an ocean, half a century, and the basic things, the important ones, remain the same.”

But the basic bad stuff was progressing to its own agenda too. Up near the top of Sycamore Hill, the very final light went out.