Midnight's Angels - 03 Page 4

  The needle on my dashboard climbed up to the hundred mark. It was a long straight road that I was on, warehouses on either side. I made sure that there were no obstructions up ahead, then took a hard look in my rearview mirror.

  The angel -- or whatever the hell -- was about a dozen yards behind and gaining fast. It was coming after me silently, like some kind of glider. And this time, I could clearly see the details of its face.

  The sheer ugliness struck at me. It was little more than a sparsely embellished skull. The awful deadness of its pure black eyes bored into me. It seemed to be trying to fixate me, and was halfway succeeding.

  This thing might look like an angel from a distance, but I didn’t think that it had come from any kind of Paradise.

  That was when matters got a whole lot worse. Because its mouth began to open. There was no tongue I could see, nor teeth. Simply a gaping lightless maw that kept on spreading, an expanding emptiness rather than a feature. It made me wonder what this thing might feed on. But I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know the answer.

  Sweat welled up between my shoulder blades. My grip had become so tight my hands felt welded to the wheel. The thing was getting closer every second, in spite of the fact that I had passed the hundred mark. I couldn’t outrun it.

  At the next intersection, I veered right. The tires shrieked again. It was such a sudden change of course that, for a few seconds at least, it ought to have thrown my pursuer off. But when I glanced back in my mirror, the creature was still right there behind me, almost hovering above my trunk.

  I stared into that gaping mouth, and then my surroundings came rushing back. I’d almost left the commercial district. Ahead of me was the thin strip of parkland which separated it from the rest of town. Yellow streetlamps glittered beyond that, and there were squares of light in a few distant windows.

  If I kept on going, I would draw the thing behind me into the main body of the town. And it occurred to me I couldn’t risk that. It was still deserted around here. But up in front of me lay thousands of unwary, sleeping people.

  Impulse taking hold, I swung the car abruptly to the left.

  The wheels slammed across a shallow curb, then found themselves plowing over flat, damp turf. There was a broken line of fir trees in my way. I swung between them like a skier on a slalom course, my tires kicking up huge flurries of mud.

  The creature behind me hadn’t been expecting anything like this. It had dropped back a few more yards. But then two things started to work against me. It recovered its wits, and started to catch up again. And I wasn’t riding across blacktop any longer, so the needle on my dashboard dropped.

  There was an almighty, rubbery thump. The whole car jolted violently. I had hit something that I’d not spotted -- a half-buried root perhaps. Fought to control the steering the first couple of seconds. But then I felt the Caddy’s tail slide out, and knew that I had lost it.

  I was going into another skid, but not of my choosing this time.

  It ended with a second savage impact as the car collided with a tree trunk. Passenger side first, thank God.

  When I tried to bear down on the gas again, all I got was a helpless whirring, a spray of sludge shooting up behind me. I was stuck. And realized my gun and phone were now down by the pedals on the floor.

  A pure white glow lit up my hood.

  The angel had drifted across so that it was hovering directly in front of my windshield, staring in at me.

  CHAPTER 6

  Hospitals have an uncomfortable stillness in the early hours of morning. A sense that everybody on the wards is keeping purposefully quiet. Sudden noise, sudden activity at that hour means that nothing good is happening. So at two a.m., hospitals seem to hold their breath.

  Raine General was no exception.

  Ritchie Vallencourt went through the empty, brightly lit front lobby and then climbed a flight of stairs and headed down a barren corridor. There was a cleaner at work with a mop at the far end, but no one else in sight. He didn’t need directions, since he’d been here plenty the last couple of months. His head was down, and he was trying to get his churning thoughts in order.

  Meteors? What the hell next? He knew he ought to write it off as simply a freak occurrence. But he kept on getting a bad feeling about this one. Things in the outside world might happen for no purpose, but that was rarely the case in the Landing. It sometimes felt as if the whole attention of the paranormal world was focused on this town.

  As to what the meteors signified -- well, in his time as top cop, he’d learned that there was just one policy that you could sensibly adopt when something new turned up. Wait and see what happened. Let the chips fall where they may before deciding to react. Above everything, he’d learned patience. Saul would be proud, if he ever woke up.

  Ritchie stopped outside the door of a small private room. There was a pane of glass at eye height, and a faint light on inside. He rapped gently with his knuckles, but got no answer. And so he went carefully in.

  The sight that met his gaze left him unsure whether to frown or smile.

  His boss, Lieutenant Hobart, was lying flat out on the steel-framed bed, covered with a sheet to the waist, tubes and wires dangling from him. The enormous bald man looked like he was only sleeping. But the truth was, he had been that way for many weeks.

  In a chair beside the bed, his wife -- Amelia -- was dozing. She was pretty small, and looked genuinely tiny next to her huge husband. Fine-boned, barely five foot two, an unselfconsciously pretty woman. She had very curly light brown hair, and was wearing a patterned frock. One of her hands was resting on the mattress, pressed limply across Saul’s fingers.

  She seemed to be dreaming, since her mouth was slightly on the move. No sound came out. He couldn’t tell what she was trying to say. But then she seemed to sense that there was someone present. Her eyes fluttered open, taking a short while to focus. Ritchie could see how damp and red they were. But then she recognized him, straightened up.

  “Oh. Hi there, Ritchie.”

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you. If you like, I’ll --”

  “Oh, no. No.” Her jaw worked awkwardly. She yawned and looked exhausted. “Always glad of a visitor, even at …”

  Amelia stared at her watch.

  “Lord, is that the time? Are you still working?”

  “Always.” He forced a grin. “How’s the Big Guy holding up?”

  Amelia glanced down at her husband with the same expression as if she was trying to guess the coming weather.

  “He always was a quiet man. But this is too quiet, for too long. I keep on imagining he can hear us, and knows everything that’s going on. Except he can’t do anything about it. It must be very frustrating for him.”

  Tears swelled in the bottom of her eyes, and she hurriedly wiped them away, looking embarrassed. Ritchie tried to change the subject.

  “How’re the kids?” he asked.

  Her smile was genuine this time. “They’re fine. Their grandma’s looking after them at the moment, and she always spoils them, so they’re happy about that. Allie, the eldest, keeps on telling everyone that Daddy’s in a comma. He’s become a punctuation mark.”

  “He’ll pull through,” Vallencourt assured her. “The Big Guy’s a fighter, and he always has been.”

  “Strongest man I ever knew,” Amelia agreed. But then her head ducked slightly. “Except that maybe strength isn’t enough.”

  An uncomfortable silence followed. Ritchie tried to think of something he could say to get her looking on the bright side. But the plain fact was, what she had voiced might be the truth. Human beings were simply that, pieces of organic matter, helpless in the face of greater powers. Whether Saul survived was not a matter of will or decision. It was in the hands of Fate.

  He was drawn out of his reverie by something unexpected. Amelia suddenly let out a startled yelp. Vallencourt jerked toward her urgently.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” The woman was staring at
her husband’s face. “I thought … I saw him move.”

  Ritchie straightened rigidly, then stepped up closer to the bed. “Saw what?”

  “His mouth. He tried to say something.”

  But the lieutenant’s features were as immobile as they had been when he’d first walked in. So perhaps -- at this hour, recently awoken -- his wife was imagining it.

  Ritchie figured that he ought to be encouraging and positive, whatever the truth of the matter was. So he said, “Maybe he did. Maybe he heard what we said, and wants to tell us that.”

  He was trying to think of something to add, when his cell phone went off in his coat. He ought not have it switched on in a hospital, and knew that. But he was genuinely still on the job, and there was no equipment in this room that could be affected.

  So he took it out and answered.

  It was one of the dispatchers at the station house. And as it turned out, there were quite a few things going down that needed his attention.

  CHAPTER 7

  I’d never heard of evil angels before, but this seemed to be one. The opposite of what our stories tell us, ancient lore turned on its head. The white glow around it didn’t speak of any purity. It spoke of coldness, sterile deadness, making it look very remote from the surrounding world. And its general outline might be human, but the details didn’t nearly match.

  I’d already noticed the ugly and corroded-looking face, the deadly lack of feeling in those eyes. But there was more of the same, and equally bad, going on below the neck.

  The hands were like a diseased old man’s, the fingers hooked spastically, tight cords standing out. And on the forearms, where you would expect there to be healthy muscle, the skin looked shrunken, withered, as if it was decaying from within.

  Even the wings were not what they’d originally seemed. Viewed from this close up, there were no actual feathers. There were only strips of fragmented pale light, shifting around constantly.

  I’d seen enough monsters in my time to know when I was looking at one. It stared at me balefully, its expression dull and hungry, its mouth sliding open again.

  I unclipped my seatbelt without even thinking, hunkered down and snatched my gun up. And then got quickly out of the car. Except I wasn’t sure what good that would do me.

  I aimed my piece, but doubted very much a simple slug could harm a thing like this. And if it had kept up with my car at high speed, I didn’t seem to have much of a chance on foot.

  But it had slowed down now, its movements becoming languid. That was not because of anything I’d done. Sweat began to pool around my gun grip when I figured that out. The creature was savoring the moment. It definitely had some kind of sadistic streak.

  As I said, I’ve mingled with the bad and beastly well enough to know their traits. And most of them have that one.

  I couldn’t see too many ways of escaping this thing. But if I didn’t even try, this would be over very quickly. Without taking my eyes from its face, I began to back off.

  I was heading along the same route that my car had followed. And the tires of my Cadillac had churned the turf beneath me to an oozing sludge. If the creature made a rush, I’d probably fall before it even reached me. And that didn’t make me feel exactly good.

  I kept my handgun pointed at it all the same. The thing practically smiled, when it saw me do that.

  “What the hell are you?” I murmured quietly.

  Then I dropped my aim a little and tried backing away faster for a few unsteady yards. It wasn’t trying to follow me as yet. But considering how fast I’d seen it move, it wouldn’t have much trouble catching up.

  The worst thing was how horribly alone I felt out here. The empty parkland stretched around me, mostly the dark shapes of treetops lancing through a pool of shadow. The only thing properly visible was my own car, since the interior lighting was still on. The front was lit up by the angel’s glow. Even my old Cadillac seemed lost to me.

  I could still see the far more normal, yellow lights of town in the corner of my vision. They looked awful distant. I could call for help in that direction as loud as I wanted. Nobody would hear me, or arrive in time.

  The angel folded its wings slightly. And then it stretched a narrow arm toward me, beckoned with its finger. It was asking me to venture closer, passively accept my fate.

  Goddamit! Anger flared through me. I managed to get off the sludge, and started moving at a quicker rate.

  Its hand dropped. Its face contorted even more fiercely. Then it was coming after me.

  Purely out of reflex, my aim leveled out again. I squeezed off two shots. As I had suspected, they had not the tiniest effect. The slugs passed through it like it was morning mist. It kept on getting closer.

  And I was about to turn on my heels and try to make a run for it …

  When something exploded right in front of the thing’s face.

  Another burst of bright red sparks. Which meant that Willets was managing to keep an eye on me, despite the fact that he had his own problems. The angel reared back a few feet, which gave me a chance to extend my lead. But then it started moving in on me again.

  A second red blast deterred it. Then a third. It reeled off to the side.

  It wasn’t simply being forced away from me. It was being chivvied away from my vehicle as well. And I thought my ears were playing tricks on me, at first. But my cell phone, on the floor by the driver’s seat, had started ringing.

  The doc, trying to get in touch with me again? That seemed the most likely explanation. So I took a real big chance. Sucked in a breath, and then flung myself forward, a real quarterback with the ball kind of effort.

  I was putting my life entirely in the adept’s hands, and knew it. But the truth was, he had changed a lot since we’d first met. I felt that I could trust him.

  The angel made another attempt to close in on me. The largest blast of red sparks yet exploded in the air in front of it. Would have burned its face off, if it had been flesh and blood.

  That finally made its mind up. And it lifted higher in the air, spreading out its wings again.

  And then it was gone, hurtling back in the direction of the ruined building.

  I slammed against the side of my car and then scrambled back into the driving seat. Didn’t even think to shut the door, just snatched the cell phone up.

  Willets’s voice blurted from it so loudly it almost made me wince.

  “I thought I told you to get out of here?” His tone was gruff, exasperated, like I was one of his old-time students who had handed in the wrong damned paper. “Instead of which, I find you messing about in the mud like a two year-old!”

  He never did have what you’d call a sympathetic nature. I was about to answer when the line went dead. And it wouldn’t reconnect when I pressed ‘dial back.’ Which left me feeling troubled. What it signified, I wasn’t sure.

  But the fact was, he had given me a second chance. And I’d be an idiot not to take it.

  I turned the engine, which had stalled. Swung the wheel around, and eased down very gently on the gas, coaxing my beloved old car out of the rut which it had dug for itself. And as soon as it was free again, I put my foot down harder, regaining the blacktop and then speeding away.

  The commercial district shrank behind me, but I kept on glancing in my rearview mirror all the same.

  What was going on back there -- who was dead and who was still alive -- I had no way of knowing.

  * * *

  I finally pulled up on Crealley Street. It’s a major thoroughfare, and busy during the day, but it was totally abandoned at this hour. The only vehicles around me were parked ones. I found a space and drew up to the curb.

  And, as soon as they let go of the steering wheel, my hands started shaking so badly it was like they had a life of their own. I hunched forward, feeling like I was going to hurl, but didn’t. My brow got very slick and damp.

  I still had not the first clue what was happening. Everything tonight had pounced on me, with no real ex
planation. Normally, when something bad came to this town, there was some kind of warning or preamble. But not on this occasion.

  Willets doubtlessly had some answers, if the man was still among the living. And then it occurred to me. Why’d they gone after him in the first place? Why the doc especially? It was his habit to keep himself distant from the business of this town.

  He’d saved my life. I knew that. Hoped he hadn’t done it at the expense of his own. But whatever the case, he was out of play for the time being.

  So I needed to bring in the other major adepts. And I knew exactly which one to approach. I picked up my cell phone again, and punched in a number. It was practically two minutes before anyone replied.

  * * *

  When I reached Judge Levin’s residence, the front door was open and there was a compact figure standing at the edge of the dimly lit hallway. The judge was still in his pajamas, and had yanked on a thick plaid housecoat a size too large for him. He was blinking, obviously unhappy to be woken at this hour. He’s a slight man, physically. There was a dusting of silver in his luxuriant black hair. And he normally wears rimless spectacles, but they were not on now.

  He looked rather older than usual, creases on his cheekbones, deep bags underneath his eyes. But most of us look the same when our sleep is disturbed. Like we come back into this world unprepared and vulnerable.

  I headed up the path, still trying to sort out what had happened in my head. And that was when a pair of memories combined, striking me forcibly. I had seen only two ‘angels’ back in the commercial district. But if the meteors had brought them here, then there’d been three of those. In which case …?

  There was no way to be certain. I stepped onto the porch and nodded.

  “Judge.”

  I wiped my shoes before I went inside. He just peered at me worriedly.

  “I can’t believe we’re under attack for the third time in a single year,” he murmured. And he looked extremely anxious, but was keeping his voice low. “I’ve never known anything like it. What is happening to our town?”