Midnight's Angels - 03 (20 page)

The glow around us was so fierce that the remainder of the town seemed to have shrunk into the background. It was hard to make out any distinct shapes off in the distance anymore. So I went forward as far as I could without putting myself in harm’s way, right to the edge of the brightness. And then squinted into the murky shadows. Cassie came along for the ride.

There were still half-human shapes up on the walls and roofs out there. But they were not advancing any longer. They had stopped dead. The glow from the center of town was winking off their staring pupils, and I got a real sense of frustration there. They could no longer get at us, and realized that.

They seemed to understand that there was no point remaining where they were. Or maybe their master told them. Great masses of them turned and began to shrink away, dwindling and vanishing from sight. And up above, the angels followed suit. They could do nothing about this either, so they turned around and melted off into the shadows.

A few townsfolk had followed us out, and word went back of what was happening. A murmur ran through the crowd, growing louder until it turned into a hubbub. Cheers and yelps and hugging were the order of the day. I’d have liked to join in, but did not.

Since … what exactly were we celebrating? No one genuinely understood what had happened.

Willets and Martha were consulting agitatedly when I went back to them, their hands moving in a spastic fashion.

“Any chance of finding out who our mysterious benefactor is?” I asked, stopping in front of them.

They stared at me with open annoyance.

“Don’t you think that we’ve been trying?”

The more I thought about it, then the worse the muddle in my own head got. How could there be another adept, one who could light up more than half a dozen city blocks? This town had been in desperate straits before. So why’d this person waited until now to make his presence known?

The doc and Martha faced each other, closed their eyes and reached out. They were combining their resources. Tipped their heads back, and began to chant in unison

“The brother or the sister who has granted us this bright light of salvation? We summon you to step into that light yourself, that we may see you far more clearly.”

It was a form of witchcraft I had encountered before -- a Spell of Revelation. The air around them seemed to waver, like a massive lens was passing through it. I was careful to take a step back.

“You may no longer hide yourself. Shrouds and barriers fall away from you. The light shall find you, though you do not move. Accept it, stranger, and step forward, letting us perceive your inner truth. By wind and stream and tree and fire, we command it.”

They let go of each other, spreading their arms wide. The air practically bulged in front of me. And when Willets’s eyelids sprang back open, there was a dazzling red flash.

But nothing more than that. Nothing in the slightest was revealed.

Unless you counted the adepts’ frustration. Willets peered around, squinting in a dumbfounded fashion.

“It’s the first time that’s not worked,” he said. “I can’t imagine who would be immune to it. Except for Raine, and it’s not him.”

“Someone equally as strong, but more controlled,” Martha suggested.

And that was an idea to chew on. But how could that possibly be? The kind of witchcraft Raine had -- it could not be learned. He had inherited it. It was in his genes, his bloodline. Like the others, I was struggling to make any sense of this.

“There might another way,” suggested Willets. “Perhaps we can’t find out who’s wielding this great power. But it’s possible that we could find where it is coming from.”

He held his right hand out again, the palm cupped upward. Tiny sparks of redness darted from his eyes and hovered over it, circling each other in tight orbits.

“If this stranger won’t come to us, then maybe we can go to him.”

The slyest of smiles played across his weathered features. Which was another first -- I’d never seen him look that way before.

The sparks hung there a short while longer, like they were preparing themselves for the task in hand. Then they lifted a few inches higher, and began to drift slowly away from him.

Willets followed them.

And I followed him. And so did Cass and Martha.

* * *

The little cluster of red sparks wove between the milling, still rejoicing crowd. Some people didn’t even notice. Others looked surprised, and edged out of their way. Willets nodded apologetically as he walked past, and a few of them replied with a swift, respectful duck of the head. They were no longer as afraid of him as they had been.

The lights were leading us back along O’Connell in the direction we’d originally come. I was starting to wonder if this new adept might be in the square, under our noses all along.

But then they paused at the next intersection, and turned left northward along Meadows Street. It was a faintly seedy area of town, and seemed an odd place for a sorcerer to be holed up. Halfway along it was the dim opening of an alley.  The fragments of red brilliance paused in front of that.

Then Willets made a gentle ushering motion with his hand, like he was coaxing some small child along. The tiny glimmers disappeared inside, and we continued after them.

It was much more pleasant in here than outside. Far less shabby. Almost picturesque. There were streetlamps shining here as well, but cast-iron Victorian ones. And broad cobblestones underfoot. I’d never been down here before. One side of the alley was a plain, bare wall. But along the other were ranged small wooden houses that might have been stables or servants’ quarters in bygone days. I remembered this had once upon a time been an expensive district.

All of them were freshly painted, tidily maintained. There were flowerpots beside some of the porch steps. A sign in a window told me one of these places was for rent.

The sparks wandered further along, stopped in front of a yellow-painted door, then vanished.

There were a few dim lights on inside. So whoever lived here seemed to be home. We gathered out front. And by the looks on the adepts’ faces, I knew they were reaching inward, trying to get the measure of what we had found.

Even this close up, it apparently got them nowhere. Willets breathed out and his face went slack.

“There’s an impenetrable Spell of Shielding round this place,” he told the rest of us. “Whoever lives here keeps himself a secret on a constant basis and has no wish to be found.”

But that was precisely what we had managed. And the adept in the small house had to know that.

A few more seconds passed.

And then the door’s latch made a clicking sound, and it came swinging open.

Willets went to enter, but I stopped him, grabbing him by his tweed jacket. He looked surprised when I did that, and then annoyed. But I’d laid hands on him roughly before, and didn’t back off.

“It might be better if you stopped out here,” I told him. Then I glanced across at Martha. “And you too. We don’t know a single thing about this adept. If you guys go marching in completely blind … the last thing that we need right now is a three-way clash of magic.”

They could see my point, but still looked troubled.

“But you’ve no defense in the slightest,” Martha reminded me.

Me and Cassie exchanged glances. That was true, for sure. But it was a place we’d been a good number of times before.

“We’ll figure things out,” I assured the gorgeous, auburn-headed woman.

Cassie propped her carbine by the side of the door and then rested her hands lightly on her Glocks, although she did not draw them.

“And if we can’t, there’s always these,” she said.

God, but it felt good to have her by my side again. All the same, my lungs tightened as we approached the doorway. And my breath felt chilly, passing down my throat. Adrenalin gives you sharper reflexes, but it often doesn’t feel like that. Almost the reverse, in fact. Like everything is happening in slow motion.

The light beyond the opening was gentle. Golden-edged, in no way harsh. And when I pressed out with my fingertips and nudged the door the whole way open, my eyes widened slightly.

The walls inside had been removed to leave just one big room. There was a thick iron beam standing upright at the center, presumably for structural support. The rest was a large studio, and looked well lived in. There was some kind of futon bed on the floor in the far corner, a wooden pallet, then a thick mattress, the quilt on it in a state of disarray.

The kitchenette across from that told me that whoever lived here cooked. There was a wooden block full of Sabatier knives, a row of copper-bottomed pans, a spice rack with the jars half empty, and a general smell about the place that spoke of Latin America and the Orient.

I recognized the style of some of the paintings on the walls. They were by our better local artists. A few of them had to be quite expensive, and I wondered how a person who lived in a place so compact had come by them. There were also a good number of small sculptures dotted about the place. They were carved from local stone and again, seemed familiar. Although I couldn’t put a name to who’d created them.

Otherwise, there was a four foot wide, round dining table that seemed far too close to the ground and was ringed with scatter cushions. It took me a few more seconds to figure out that it was in the Japanese style -- you were supposed to sit cross-legged round it on the floor. The only person in the Landing who was into that kind of culture was Lawrence L. DuMarr and so, again, that puzzled me. Otherwise, there was an old music center -- I could not make out the titles of the albums stacked below it. And a Bauhaus style recliner propped in front of a portable TV.

No armchairs and no couch. Which suggested that whoever lived here did that thing alone.

Right at the back, beyond the kitchen, was an iron spiral staircase, heading upward. We could see another light up there. But if there was anyone above our heads, then they were not making the slightest sound.

* * *

Cassie wanted to go first, but I refused to let her. Back when I had been a cop, I had been trained in situations such as these. So I headed quietly up the staircase with my revolver preceding me, my gun arm held straight, my eyes darting to every possible corner danger might emerge from.

There had to come a moment when my head was lifted into view. I simply could not avoid that. I steadied and then did it, my gaze going around real fast.

Caught sight of a human figure. Didn’t try to figure who it was or what it might be doing. I just aimed my gun in its direction.

“Keep still!” I commanded.

But he wasn’t moving anyway. I climbed higher up, taking in every detail.

It was a guy, apparently a few years younger than myself, dressed in jeans and a white sleeveless T-shirt. He was squatting on his haunches in the middle of the floor. His feet were bare. His hands were resting on his knees. I guessed he might be pretty tall when he stood up.

By the condition of his arms and shoulders, he worked out, although he was not muscle-bound. He had shoulder-length yellow blond hair. It dropped across his temples, and I couldn’t see his face because of that. His head was tucked down.

But I could hear his voice.

“Sorry, Mr. Devries,” he was murmuring, “but I have a few strict rules. And one of them happens to be … no weapons in my place.”

His right hand lifted. And I tensed at first, but saw that it was empty.

But magicians don’t need to be holding anything. It comes from inside. His fingers gave the tiniest wiggle, and the Smith & Wesson vanished from my grasp. Directly below me, Cass let out a yelp. Her precious Glocks had gone as well, by the sound of it.

The man finally looked at me and smiled.

“You’ll get them back when you leave,” he assured me.

Which left me wondering who exactly we were dealing with. I tried to keep a poker face, but it was difficult as hell.

He had dark blue eyes, a smile that was slightly quirky. Now that his face was properly in view, I was definite that he was somewhere in his late twenties, his complexion flawless. Despite the fact we’d found him out without him wanting us to, his manner was relaxed, a touch resigned and philosophical. He seemed to take the attitude that what was done was done. The real question in front of us was where did we go from here?

I was smelling something on the air other than cooking odors. A sharp, slightly acrid scent, like you’d expect to find in some kind of quarry. So I let my gaze wander from the man, who still wasn’t moving. This upper floor had been broken down into one room as well. But there was not a stick of furniture. It was almost completely bare. The floor was tiling of some kind.

At the center was a half-finished marble statue maybe four feet tall. It was a variation on an African style that I had seen in magazines -- a man and a woman clinging to each other so they formed one single entity. But where the pictures I’d seen were simplistic figures, this one had more detail.

Scattered about the piece was a selection of chisels, mallets, sanders. And, by the mess of rubble and dust also present, the guy had been working at this sculpture hard. Which puzzled me profoundly since, if this man really was an adept, he could bring something like that into existence simply by conjuring it up.

I climbed the rest of the way up and took a few slow steps in his direction. Could hear Cassie hurrying up behind me. She seemed pretty nervous for some reason, because her footsteps were faltering ones. Which wasn’t like her in the slightest. But the blond man looked past me, and his smile widened slightly.

“Pleased to finally meet you, Cass.”

When I glanced around at her, she had a rabbit in the headlamps look. Awfully numb, uncertain. She was barely blinking as she stared at him. Then she seemed to remember herself.

“How’d you know my name?”

“I’ve noticed you plenty of times. You used to hang round here a lot when you were younger.”

He was referring to her shady past, when she and the motorcycle gang she’d joined had hung out on O’Connell.

“I never noticed
you
,” she pointed out. And her tone was wary, like she ought to have. This was all pretty odd.

“I have a talent for not being noticed.”

“We already figured that one out,” I told him.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I suppose you did.”

He was still behaving like nothing untoward had happened. And that irritated me more than a little, given the circumstances we were in. This was a major turn-up for the books. But it still remained to be seen whether it would work to our advantage.

There was only one light in the room, a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. And a skylight up there too. But I looked at how cramped his conditions were. Was this any way for a major adept to be living?

“Who
are
you?” I asked him outright.

He tightened his lips, then stood up. The guy was as tall as me, and had the same wide shoulders.

“Quinn Maycott,” he announced.

He offered me a hand, but noticed the suspicion on my face and then thought better of it.

“It was you who brought the lights back on?”

He gave another, brisker nod. I almost had to bite the inside of my lip to stop my frustration boiling over.

“You’re a big-time conjurer, in other words. And this is the first time we’ve ever
heard
of you?”

He saw what I was getting at, and looked slightly uncomfortable. His movements became wooden. One slender-fingered hand lifted and brushed his hair back to the side -- it had to be some kind of mannerism.

But that was the point when I caught a glimpse of his right ear. It was slightly leaf-shaped. Which was the hallmark of a certain bloodline that I knew. And combined with the dark blue peepers …?

Maycott saw where my gaze had gone, and his cheeks colored slightly.

“You’re a
Raine
?” I asked incredulously.

And once again, he nodded.

* * *

I’d known Woody’s father, August. He had been a good man, genial and decent, not a crackpot like his son. But even good men go astray on occasion.

His wife, Marielle, was a fine woman in her own way, but highly-strung and high maintenance. So obsessed with magic that she had real trouble coping with the everyday problems that life threw at you even when you were an adept.

So when August fell badly and broke his ankle one year -- and most people who practiced witchcraft could not heal injuries the way that Willets was able -- she found herself incapable of dealing with the matter, crutches and splints and whatnot. She’d been forced to hire a nurse. Ursula Maycott, Quinn’s mother. Who had passed away from a series of strokes three years back. But had told him everything before she’d died.

We heard all this in the downstairs room, Quinn sitting upright on the edge of the recliner. I paced around as I listened to him. Cass was standing propped against the handrail of the staircase, gawking at him. There was still an air of awkwardness about her, but it wasn’t fear, uncertainty, that made her look that way. In the normal scheme of things, she was deeply wary of most adepts. But she seemed almost fascinated by this one.

I forgot about her, turning my attention back to the matter in hand. Of all the explanations I had been expecting, this one was the last. Woodard Raine had a half brother. Who’d believe it?

“So you …” I fought to accept what my eyes were telling me, the way he lived, the work he did. “You make a living with these sculptures?”

“A fairly good one, sure.”

“That’s horse puckey. I’d have heard of you.”

“Part of my magic too,” he explained. “People buy my work, but then forget my name. Anonymity is … important to me.”

But I still didn’t get why he was doing this. This tiny little house. And working with his hands, in obscurity, when he could be …

I asked him out loud.

“Living on Sycamore Hill?” he came back. “Skulking in the shadows with the other snooty descendents of the Salem crowd? Hanging around in some big, hollow mansion, with no regular friends, not even many neighbors? Sounds to me like hell on earth.”

I hadn’t been expecting any answer like that. And it stopped me in my tracks, but gradually sank in.

“So … you want to live a normal life?”

“It’s not just what I want,” he smiled. “It’s what I’ve always done. I even have bowling trophies -- do you want to see them?”

If he was trying to make a joke of this, I wasn’t laughing. My head began revolving slightly, the details of the room swimming around me.

“So you’ve never used your powers?” I managed to get out.

“I have. But not on a large scale. Not till now.”

And that was when anger finally overtook me.

“Don’t you think that’s being pretty irresponsible?”

Over by the staircase, Cassie gave a jerk, as though I’d woken her from some mild reverie. Her gaze went hard, a crease appearing across the bridge of her nose. I wasn’t quite sure who that was directed to.

Maycott sat a little straighter, frowning mildly.

“How d’you mean?”

“This isn’t the first time our town’s been in trouble. You have to know that. We’ve found ourselves staring at destruction several times before. And you’re telling me you sat back and did absolutely
nothing
, just so you could hang onto your bowling trophies?”

His expression became slightly pained.

“You don’t understand,” he replied. “I don’t know why exactly, but I cannot use my powers for violence. Believe me, I’ve tried. I would have
gladly
stomped all over Saruak and Hanlon. But my magic isn’t of that kind.”

A supernatural pacifist, then. That was a new one on me. And an argument that I was not wholly convinced by.

“Maybe you should have
tried
harder.”

I was still seething, remembering those times in the past when people had perished at some monster’s hand and me and Cass had nearly joined them.

“Whenever I’ve tried to force it,” Quinn said, blinking at me, “there’s been this pain in my head. It gets worse till I stop. I can’t explain, but it’s prevented me from helping in the way I wanted.”

“I’ve managed what I could, though,” he added uncomfortably.

If he had second sight, like the other adepts, then he had to have been watching me when I had been in trouble. And I figured out what that might imply.

“On Greenwood Terrace? You opened the barrier?”

“Yuh.”

Which finally explained it. And I started to calm down a little.

“And in front of Raine Manor? You parted the flames?”

“Uh-huh. And other, earlier times, before this started.”

I felt deeply unsettled when he said that. Because … which earlier times was he referring to? A thought occurred to me. That on a few occasions in the past, facing other dangers, I’d been blessed with slightly more luck than a person had a right to. Was that merely the Fates dealing me a decent hand? Or had the person I was talking to been watching over me and Cass?

I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about that. I suppose I ought to have been grateful. But it made me feel slightly like my life was not my own, and I’d been made to feel that way before. The whole ‘Defender’ business. So I finally decided to just let the matter drop.

I paced about a little more, breathing deeply, letting my surroundings steady. Then I pointed out, “Well, bang goes your anonymity.”

He peered at me. “Only if you tell.”

“Are you seriously asking me to believe that not a single person in this town knows what you are?”

He pulled a face. I noticed Cass had tipped her head to one side.

“Why should they? I make my own living, cook my own meals, clean and maintain this place by hand. I’ve never cast the tiniest spell with anyone around to see it.”

“And so that’s as far as helping us goes? Your contribution’s done?”

It didn’t sound like I was giving him much choice. But -- by the resolute look on his face -- he’d already come to his own decision.

“I’ll do whatever else I can,” he assured me, “just so long as it involves no violence.”

Which sounded like a limited amount of help, to put it mildly. But maybe he was telling the truth, and there was something preventing him from really cutting loose the way the others did. The man seemed genuine enough, and I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“What do you think we ought to do now?” I asked him, hoping he might have some kind of fresh insight on this business.

“We’re safe for tonight, at least. The lights’ll keep on going until dawn. So I suggest we give ourselves a break.”

To my amazement, he got up, strolled casually across to the futon, dug out a pair of suede ankle-length boots from behind it and stepped into them. I stared at him.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Down the road to have a drink with my friends. The rest of you guys can do what you like.”

And he was serious. Fully confident that his magic would keep us safe throughout the hours of darkness. So relaxed about it that he wasn’t even giving it a second thought. I’d rarely known an adept behave that assuredly. Maybe it was the Raine blood in him.

My first impulse was to try and stop him, but I could think of no sensible way to do so. I had to accept it. If the man wanted to go out, then that seemed to be the last word on the matter. I’d never encountered anyone quite like this before.

And there was something else.

I couldn’t help but notice that, when I went back outside to tell the others what was going on, Cassie didn’t seem inclined to follow.