“Fitting,” the pale man said with finality. “This is where I became obsessed with you, and this is where it all comes to an end.”
The killer lurched forward.
Squire was looking off into a particularly deep patch of gloom, searching…searching…and felt the hair on his entire body jump to attention.
“Yeah, it pretty much ends now.”
He pulled up his shirt, revealing his bleeding wound. He placed his hand beneath the gash, wetting his fingers, and then flicking the blood into the darkness.
“Shouldn’t pick at that,” the pale man said with a hiss. “It’s gonna get infected.”
And then he lunged, knife blade ready to take another bite out of Squire….
Just as something struck from the expanse of darkness.
It was large, probably one of the bigger shadow serpents that existed in the Shadow Lands. Squire had always been lucky enough to avoid it, but he knew that it had been aware of him. They’d both gotten each other’s scent.
The goblin dove back as the serpent hit the pale man’s side, flinging him violently across the blackened landscape. He must’ve lashed out with the knife as he was struck, because the serpent had reared back, away from its prey.
Squire managed to find an outcropping of solidified darkness to hide behind and watch the horror unfold.
The pale man was hurt pretty badly, what passed as blood oozing from his side, but he didn’t seem to be concerned with protecting himself from the inevitable second strike. He seemed concerned with something else entirely.
The serpent’s strike had torn away a section of the killer’s shirt, and something had spilled from the top pocket.
Through squinted eyes, Squire watched as the killer dropped to his knees to collect what had fallen to the ground. They looked like photographs, and he crawled across the frozen darkness, desperately snatching them up and clutching them lovingly to his chest.
He had grabbed the last of the objects; his gaze had just found Squire’s when the shadow serpent struck again.
The great beast latched onto the pale man, his precious objects flying into the air as the serpent yanked him back toward the darkness of its lair.
Squire tentatively emerged from his hiding place, the curiosity of what had been so important to his attacker drawing him like a beacon. They were exactly what he thought they might be: photographs. Squire looked at each of them, frozen moments in time with no rhyme or reason, until the last image.
It was a driver’s license, and it belonged to the girl, Ashley. Squire slipped the plastic identification into a pocket, just in case, before starting to search for a passage to take him back.
Ashley ran until she couldn’t run anymore.
It looked as though she’d made it inside a company lounge of some kind, big, overstuffed couches and chairs positioned around modern-looking coffee tables covered with magazines. One entire wall was nothing but large, tinted windows looking out over the city.
She came to a stumbling stop at the windows, peering out through the smoky glass at the spectacular view below, but the view was the least of her concerns.
The short sword still in hand, she spun around to face her pursuer.
“Stay back, Teddy!” she warned, but she couldn’t see the youth.
Her eyes scanned the darkened room as she stepped away from the floor-to-ceiling glass. With Squire’s warnings to avoid puddles of darkness prevalent in her thoughts, she was careful where she stepped as she looked for the wild boy.
Heart hammering in her chest so hard that she thought it might bust a rib, she moved toward the chairs but still could find no sign of the youth that had tried to keep her as a pet. She had no idea what was wrong with the boy, only that she’d heard his father say something about magick having killed his humanity, leaving only the beast behind.
It sounded right to her.
Ashley stood in the middle of the lounge, eyes darting about, searching for any sign of movement. There still was nothing, and she began to wonder if he had fallen victim to one of those shadow pools.
The back of her leg bumped up against the edge of the glass coffee table, and she stumbled back ever so slightly, her gaze falling to the clear surface of the table, reflexively reading the titles of the magazines lying there.
It was to the left of Cooking Light that she saw the grinning face peering up at her through the glass.
Ashley let out a scream, jumping away as Teddy surged up from where he had hidden beneath the coffee table. He was growling like a mad dog as he came at her.
She tried running again, her panic making her blind, and she ran head-on into the sofa, falling up against it as Teddy pounced.
Ashley cried out as the boy landed atop her, his jagged fingernails scratching her skin as he attempted to restrain her.
“Teddy, no!” she cried out, hoping to reach what little humanity might still exist.
The wild boy tried to pin her against the couch, but she continued to thrash. She felt his groping hands on her body and felt another piece of her sanity snap off and drift away. It was then that she realized she was still holding the sword and lashed out with it, hoping to drive her attacker away.
“Stop it!” she cried out, the flat of the sword connecting with the boy and actually knocking him back to land on the coffee table, shattering the top into what appeared to be a million pieces.
Ashley didn’t waste any time, climbing over the back of the overstuffed sofa onto the other side. The sound of something thrashing among pieces of broken glass could be heard behind her, but she didn’t want to turn around.
Teddy tackled her, his limbs entwining with her legs and bringing her hard to the lounge floor.
The air punched from her lungs, Ashley lay there stunned, the boy straddling her, as she rolled onto her back. In a flash of panic, she realized that she had dropped her sword and tried to find it, but the wild child appeared to sense this and bore down on her.
Ashley was wild, fighting beneath the boy’s weight, but he kept her pinned, leering down at her, his lips pulling back to reveal sharp, yellowed teeth. Her panic set in as he leaned toward her, his mouth opening as he got closer to the soft flesh of her throat.
Close enough to bite.
I’m going to die, was the first thought that shot through her mind as she watched the animal child’s open mouth come closer. After all that she had been through, this was the way that she was going to go out.
She imagined what it would feel like when the boy bit into her flesh, the popping of her skin as the teeth broke through, the ripping sensation as he tore away the first bite.
Ashley didn’t want to feel it, but if that was the case, then she had to live.
She had to survive.
Adapt or die. She heard Mr. Harpin’s nasty old voice echo through her mind, and Ashley knew what she had to do.
Teddy’s breath was hot on her throat when she lost it, screaming like a madwoman and bucking her body so violently that she flipped the boy off her.
She knew that she couldn’t hesitate, not one little bit, or he would be back at her. Teddy was getting to his feet and coming at her just as she found her sword. Without a moment’s pause, she snatched it up from the carpeted floor and spun to face her attacker.
“Get the fuck away, or I’ll kill you!” she screamed, but it didn’t slow the boy down. He came at her full force, and there was only one thing she could do.
Ashley brought the sword down with all her might, the blade striking off the top of his shaggy head and continuing down across his shocked face.
The wild child cried out in pain and backed quickly away. His trembling, clawed hands went to his wounds and came away covered in scarlet.
Teddy stared at her with eyes that said, How could you do this to me?
Ashley remained perfectly still, blade ready to strike again, if necessary.
“I warned you,” she said, the sound of her voice scaring her with its ferocity.
Teddy whined
, rubbing at the blood that now flowed freely down his face, but the whine quickly turned to a growl as he tensed to come at her yet again.
“Teddy…,” she started to warn, but he was already hurling himself at her.
Ashley struck him again, this time sinking the sword blade deeply into the fleshy area between shoulder and neck. Blood was now squirting from the wound, as he stumbled back and away from her.
The air was filled with a strangely metallic odor that she guessed was fresh blood, and would have likely gotten sick from the stink if she hadn’t been preoccupied with the wild child’s next attack.
Bleeding profusely, Teddy lunged, and Ashley defended herself. She swung the blade with excellent precision, cutting into the boy again and again, feeling the arterial spray of his blood hitting her face as she finally cut him down.
Teddy at last dropped to the floor, his lifeblood seeping from multiple wounds into the carpet, as he lay there for a moment longer before expiring.
Ashley stood over him, sword still poised, waiting for him to rise, waiting for him to come at her again.
But he didn’t.
It took a little bit longer for it to sink in—what she had done.
She didn’t know how long she had been standing there, staring at the boy’s dead body, when Squire found her.
“Hey, Ashley. You all right?” she heard the goblin ask her as he emerged from a particularly dark section of shadow near a tall potted plant.
She would forever remember the look on his face as she turned toward him, bloodstained sword in hand.
“It was just like Mr. Harpin said,” she told him. “Adapt or die.
“I adapted.”
Mulvehill could drive only as far as Mass Ave before the traffic came to a complete standstill. Waiting for the traffic to move just far enough, he found an alleyway with No Parking signs posted and pulled his car down to do just that. He had a Police Business placard in his glove compartment and placed it in his window as he climbed from the car.
There was a constant, hurried flow of foot traffic coming down Boylston Street, and he moved against the current, going toward where they were coming from. He knew that he had to go there; it was practically calling to him, even though he had no clue as to what he would find.
And the unknown was terrifying.
His hand drifted down to the weapon inside his coat and he felt a surge of courage flow through him, giving him that extra bit more to continue on.
The street was blocked off at Fairfield, two uniformed officers nervously standing on one side of the yellow wooden horses, occasionally calling out to the people who flowed passed them to keep moving.
Mulvehill recognized one of the young officers, having worked with his father, and approached. At first the police officer didn’t recognize him and was preparing to keep him from passing, but Mulvehill already had his badge out to flash at the man.
“Sorry, Detective Mulvehill,” the officer said. “Didn’t recognize you.”
“That’s all right, DeWitt,” Steven said, looking past the man, up the street to where he needed to go. “What’s the story?”
The young cop looked over as the other officer approached.
“We’re really not sure…. We’re hearing all kinds of shit,” DeWitt said, a twinkle of fear in his dark brown eyes.
“Heard it might be a terrorist act,” said the other cop. “Or maybe just an electrical fire. They got the whole plaza cordoned off, and we’ve been told to keep the foot traffic moving and the curious away.”
“Interesting,” Mulvehill said, moving past the young officer and behind the barrier.
“Are you going in, Detective?” DeWitt asked.
Mulvehill took his eyes off his destination for just a moment.
“Duty calls,” he said with a chuckle. “And on my fucking day off, too.”
Both of the officers laughed nervously.
A woman approached them with a panicked expression, asking how she was going to get home if her car was parked in the garage below the plaza.
“I’ll catch you two when I’m coming out,” Mulvehill told them with a wave. “See if I can’t get you a better handle on what’s going on.”
They both waved, appreciative of his offer, as they began talking to the panicked woman.
Mulvehill continued up Boylston. One more block and he saw it: the Hermes Building, looming off in the distance, towering above many of the other buildings surrounding it. It looked as though there was a thick black cloud surrounding the top of the skyscraper…. And what’s that swirling around in the sky above it? he wondered. It looked like a whirlpool in the sky.
The crowds and emergency personnel in front of him appeared impenetrable, so he headed back down Exeter Street, hoping to cut through on St. James Ave and approach the building from the other side. He was still moving against the flow of traffic, the looks in people’s eyes reminiscent of the news reports he had seen on 9/11. What did they experience? he wondered, fear whirling like the thing in the sky, but in the pit of his stomach. Then he was reminded of the weight of his gun by his side, and it allowed him to go on.
Mulvehill found it odd that the closer he got to the location, the darker it seemed to be getting. It was almost as if he were entering a different time zone or something, the shadows of dusk crawling across the faces of businesses and brownstones, but in all reality it would be hours before the sun started to set.
The fear churned, almost as if he could sense the unnaturalness of it all. Maybe I’ve developed some kind of weird shit detector, he considered, still moving forward.
The crowds were becoming more sparse, and when he did see anyone coming from that area, they were running…running as if the Devil himself were chasing them.
Or something worse.
Images of the things he had faced while helping Remy Chandler flashed before his mind’s eye, and he actually found himself flinching. Mulvehill slowed slightly, blinking his eyes repeatedly as he tried to force the terrifying recollection to pass.
There was a through alley on his left that would take him that much closer to the Hermes, and he decided that he would cut through to see how close he could actually get. There was a woman, a cute blonde, in jogging shorts and a T-shirt coming down the opposite side. A little bit of a thing, no more than five-one, she must’ve been out for an afternoon run when the shit hit the fan.
He wasn’t exactly sure why, but he wanted to tell her to hurry it up, to move as quickly as she could through the dark, shadow-filled alley to get to someplace safe.
Where there were lights and others.
He was just noticing that she was wearing earbuds, an iPod attached by a band around her biceps, and that she wouldn’t have heard his urgings, anyway, when the shadow on the brick wall to her left seemed to explode.
It didn’t make a sound as something long and snakelike shot out from the dark patch on the wall, wrapped itself around the woman’s bare legs, and yanked her violently to the filthy ground.
The woman had no idea what had happened as she went down and was dragged across the alley toward the area of shadow that undulated and moved like the surface of a lake on a windswept day.
Mulvehill did not hesitate; he did not question what he was about to do, even though fear had grasped his heart in an ever-tightening grip and he thought that he might actually be having a heart attack.
But he wasn’t listening to the pain or the panic; all he saw was the look of fear on the jogger’s face as she was dragged toward the shadow moving on the wall.
“Hold on!” Steven cried, taking his gun from his jacket pocket. He doubted that she could even hear him, deafened by the iPod and her terror. He ran to her side, holding his pistol at the ready, and she began to scream as she saw him.
His gaze fell on the pool of darkness from where the limb—the tentacle?—originated. He didn’t want to fire the weapon too close to the woman, so he decided to shoot where the limb came from.
Taking aim, he fired at th
e base of the black arm, one shot right after another hitting his target.
And the terrible limb reacted.
The tentacle recoiled, releasing the woman from its grasp and withdrawing into the pool of shadow on the wall.
The woman lay on the floor of the alley, hysterical, and he went to her, helping her to rise.
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” she said over and over again between gasping sobs.
Mulvehill checked her out to be sure she was okay. She had circular bruises along both shapely legs but otherwise seemed unscathed.
There was a sudden explosion of some kind from close by, and he could feel it in the air, a vibration that made the skin of his face tingle and itch. That was followed by screams off in the distance.
“Get out of here,” Mulvehill told the woman, waving his gun around as he turned his attention to the other end of the alley.
He did not watch her leave, feeling the pull of his destination at the end of the alley.
There was no stopping him now; Mulvehill knew exactly where he needed to go.
Where he needed to be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Like a faithful dog, the power of the divine was coming back to him.
Deacon could not help but smile as he was filled again with the energy Stearns had so desperately coveted. He held Stearns tightly by the shoulders, watching as the divine force the sorcerer had tried to rip from him flowed back into his own body.
He allowed wings of flame to unfurl, reveling in the rush of cosmic energies that made him feel like the next-best thing to the Creator Himself.
“What was that, Algernon?” Deacon asked the man who had started to wither and age in his grasp. “What was that about taking away what’s mine?”
“Please,” Stearns gasped as a bloody tooth fell from blackened gums to dribble on a string of spit to the floor. “Leave me with something…just a taste.”
Deacon threw his head back and laughed, catching sight of the rip in the fabric of reality swirling above his head. Is that getting larger? he wondered offhandedly.
“I gave the power to you, Algernon.” Deacon turned his attention back to what was left of the sorcerer. “A gift…but you were too weak to contain it.”