Moonheart (41 page)

"You got it. But I prefer the darts." He wondered if Hogue's face was already waiting for him at his window.

Chevier shrugged. He carried a Smith & Wesson .38 Chiefs Special himself. For quiet work, he had a throwing knife strapped to his left wrist and another hanging between his shoulder blades. Morin had worked with him twice before.

"So now..." Morin began.

"Now we wait."

Chevier popped another mint into his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully.

"Maggie, what are you doing here?"

"Come to give my favorite cop some moral support."

"This isn't a game," Tucker said.

"I know," she replied seriously. "That's why I'm here. I don't want to sit at home, waiting to hear about another 'armed robbery' on the late news."

"There's not going to be any trouble."

"Then there's no problem with my being here, is there? Besides, I'd like to meet this Jamie Tams that you've been talking about." Pointedly she looked at Blue.

"Sorry," Tucker muttered. "This is Glen Far—"

"Blue. Just Blue is fine." He was sick to death of hearing Glen Farley thrown at him. But he
was
enjoying the Inspector's discomfort with his ladyfriend; unfortunately, Tucker had one thing right. "Nice to meet you, ma'am. I'm sure Jamie'd like to say hello too, but the Inspector's right. This is
not
a good place to be right now."

"It's all for real then, isn't it?" Maggie asked, looking from one to the other, gauging their reactions with a lawyer's eye.

"Too real." Blue glanced out the window. "Anybody got the time?"

"A little after five."

Blue shook his head. "Well, I hope to hell that it's just the dusk settling in that's making it so dark out there. But I've got a bad feeling..."

Tucker followed Blue's gaze and frowned. "Let's go see how our patient's doing," he said.

"Sure." Blue stopped long enough to pick up a large orange tabby that had wandered into the hall. "Nobody feeding you, big fella?" Then he looked from the cat to Tucker and smiled. "Hey, Inspector. Want to meet a namesake? His name's Tuck."

Tucker glanced at the cat, then caught Maggie's grin.

Blue ruffled the cat's fur, then thought of Sara. The smile on his lips died.

"C'mon," he said.

Letting the cat down, he headed for the stairs.

"Morin?"

Gannon's voice sounded thin coming through the Oldsmobile's cheap speaker grill.

"Yeah?"

"We're heading in. Leave the car where it is and hoof it down to O'Connor. We'll meet you there. Got that?"

"Sure thing."

Switching off the radio, Morin turned to his companion. "You all set?"

Chevier nodded. Morin looked down at the cigar he was still holding and stuck it away in the front pocket of his jacket.

"Then let's go," he said.

"Why honey?" Sally asked.

Following Traupman's instructions, she was heating a large tablespoonful by the light of a fat candle.

"It's supposed to impart fertility and vigor," Jamie explained.

Traupman nodded. "The ancients imagined that bees had a parthenogenic origin," he said, "which made honey an uncontaminated sacred food. We'll mix it with mistletoe, which was the Golden Bough of the druids and the followers of Aeneas. It's like we're getting double our money."

Jamie had been surprised they'd had any mistletoe lying around. Though the House was liable to have a bit of everything, stored away somewhere in its labyrinth. You just had to know where to look— and it seemed that the House wasn't above giving you a little nudge in the right direction. He'd gone looking for Fred just now and took a wrong turn that delivered him into the room where the Christmas decorations were stacked in boxes behind a sofa.

"You don't think it's too stale, do you?" Jamie asked, watching Traupman grind the old leaves into an uneven powder.

"Magical things never go stale," Traupman said.

I hope, he added to himself. He wasn't sure why he was going through with this. It wasn't as though he actually expected it to work. But it was good to have a task.

"You have to go about these things just right," he added.

He glanced out the window, then at Jamie. It was getting dark outside. Very quickly. But no one made mention of the fact.

"That's about it," he said. "Is the honey hot yet?"

Sally nodded.

"Bring it here, would you please?"

Jamie watched Traupman stir the mixture of warmed honey and ground mistletoe together in a small glass, not really sure what he expected. A flash of light? A strange smell? But all Traupman ended up with was a cloudy mixture flecked with dark bits of the mistletoe. He held it up to the light, then moved to the bed with it.

"Place feels weird," Morin offered.

"Forget how it feels," Gannon told him. "Just pop that lock so that we can get in off the street."

"Sure. No problem."

There were five of them on one of the House's Clemow Avenue porches, standing around while Morin worked the lock on the door with a set of master keys. The lock was a Weiser— old, but common.

The sixth key Morin tried produced a satisfying click.

"Alarms?" he asked.

Gannon shook his head.

"Then we're in."

Morin turned the knob and, standing to one side, eased the door a crack. He remained still for a moment, then pushed it completely open with the toe of his shoe. As he crossed the threshold, an eerie prickling raised the hairs at the nape of his neck. He stood aside as the other four men entered, then shut the door behind them. As they spread out in the hallway, Morin glanced out the small window set high in the door. It seemed a lot darker outside than it had a moment ago— as though a sudden storm had blown up.

"A final briefing," Gannon was saying quietly. "No fireworks. Just keep it clean. Round up anybody you find and bring them back here."

Morin's gaze traveled down the length of the door. The wood looked different than it had a moment ago. He had the weird feeling that if they'd waited a minute or so longer, they'd never have gotten in.

"What about Tucker?" the loose-jowled man called Bull asked. "He's not gonna stand around and pick his nose while we're doing that."

"You let me worry about Tucker," Gannon said.

Bull shrugged. Still at the door, Morin shook his head. Mother Mary, he
was
getting too old for this kind of work. He was never one to get a case of nerves before a job, but that's what the jittery feeling he was experiencing had to be. He reached out a hand to touch the door. The wood was hard and smooth against his fingers. Nothing weird about it. It was just in him.

"What's Walters want with this guy, anyway?" Robert Mercier asked. He was a stocky man, an ex-middleweight fighter who'd gotten too old for the ring, but not too old for a little strong-arm work. Gannon had passed around a photo of Thomas Hengwr earlier and Mercier called the old man's features up in his mind's eye.

"You let me and Mr. Walters worry about that," Gannon told him. "Mike, you take the right corridor. Bob, the left. Serge and I'll handle the upstairs."

"And me?"

"You stay here, Bull. Anybody comes by, collar them. You can store them—" He looked around the hallway and, opening the first door on the right, settled on that room. "Store them in here, okay? Now let's get moving."

Traupman slid his hand under Tom's head and lifted it, bringing the glass with the honey-mistletoe mixture up to the old man's lips. Then the lights went out.

Outside the windows, the sky went utterly black. The candlelight flickered, the one small flame throwing strange shadows across the room. Then a pale luminescence started up along the baseboards and where the walls met the ceiling. That light was all that kept Jamie from losing himself to the sudden fear that gripped him.

His heart pounded, but he knew that the light meant that the House was ready to meet this new attack. It would protect them. He opened himself to the House, reaching out to try and regain that sense of oneness he'd felt with it last night, and it came, quick and sure, like a hand fitting a well worn glove. And then he sensed the presence of outsiders in the House. Not just Tucker and the two that were here because of him, but others... scattered through the halls.

"Keep back from the windows," Traupman told Sally.

Sally nodded and moved back. Traupman raised the glass to Tom's lips again, but at that moment the old man sat up, throwing the glass to one side with a reflexive move of his hand. It shattered on the floor.

"It's come!" Tom cried.

He pushed past Traupman to get off the bed, but only sprawled on the floor, shaking with fever. When Traupman grabbed hold of him to pull him back onto the bed, Tom's skin felt like ice to the touch.

Tom fought Traupman's grip. Sparks leaped between his fingers and Traupman threw himself back from the old man. He remembered what Tucker had told him about the constable who had died in Patty's Place. Where
was
Tucker?

He heard a footstep outside in the hall and turned to the door. He only got one glimpse of the stranger that stood framed in the doorway— a tall, broad-shouldered man with a gun in his hand— then the House shook as though someone had let off a bomb under it and he was thrown to the floor.

"Shit!" Blue said as the lights went dead.

He went up the stairs two at a time and burst onto the upper landing to skid on a loose rug. By the pale green light that ran along the baseboards and ceiling ridges, he made out a figure standing by the door of the Gramarye's Clover where he'd left Sally and the others. Jesus Christ! he thought. They're already in! Then he realized it was a man he saw, not a monster. He started down the hall, making for the figure, when the first blast rocked the House.

He caught himself from falling, one hand knocking a painting from the wall in the process. He heard the crash of breaking glass as it smashed beside him. Down the hall, he saw the stranger turn in his direction. Light spat from the end of his outstretched hand and then the boom of a gunshot echoed in the close confines of the hall. Blue threw himself flat and heard the slug whine by over his head.

"Stay down!" Tucker shouted from behind him.

Rolling to one side, Blue looked up to see the stranger running down to the far end of the hall. Tucker fired twice from behind him, but another tremor shook the House and both shots went wild. Before the echoed had died away, Blue was on his feet and running for the bedroom.

"Anybody hurt?" he asked.

The House rocked again, but he saw that though they were as shaken up as he was, nobody had been hurt. He glanced down the empty hall. Who had that been anyway? Pushing himself back from the door, he ducked into Jamie's study and came out in time to meet Tucker and Maggie. The Inspector looked down at the Weatherby that was now in Blue's hand.

"You know how to use that?" he asked.

Blue nodded. "You keep watch here. I'm going to go nail that sucker."

"Wait a minute—"

"I know the layout. You don't. So I'm going. No arguments, got it? I'm not one of your bully-boys that you can lay orders on."

"Now, listen up—" Tucker began.

"Tucker," Maggie said, laying her hand on the Inspector's arm.

The Inspector nodded. He started to frame what he had to say so it wouldn't come out so abrasively, but it got lost in the sudden turmoil that followed. They braced themselves as another series of shocks ran through the House. Then they heard Sally scream and the room where she and the others were gathered was flooded with a sudden sharp light, as piercing bright as a lightning bolt. Blue turned to see Tom rolling on the floor, the light coming from him, pouring out of the pores of his skin; then abruptly it died and he lay still in the House's faint illumination.

"Jesus," Blue said. "Is he...?"

"Not dead," Traupman replied, gingerly kneeling beside the old man. He pointed to one side of the room that was blackened and charred. "We're lucky he didn't hit one of us."

They spent the next few minutes stamping out sparks, the job made more difficult by the constant shifting of the House under the continuing barrage. The air was close with the smell of burnt wood.

"I'm going," Blue said, picking up his rifle. "You folks stay put."

Tucker looked like he was going to protest again, then said simply, "Keep him alive. Dead, we don't learn anything."

"Hey. I didn't see you aiming for the sky, Inspector."

Before Tucker could reply, Jamie spoke up. "There's more than one of them," he said.

He swallowed, trying to say more, but his link with the House had grown stronger and he felt each barrage of shocks as the House did— as though someone was pummeling every inch of his body. And the blast of Tom's magefire had burned him like a blowtorch, though there was no physical evidence of what he was undergoing.

"How do you know?" Blue asked.

Jamie shook his head. "I... I just know. Don't go, Blue. There's too many of them. If they're in league with whatever's attacking us..."

He felt the shadows beating at the walls of the House, the claws tearing the wood of its doors, the blind mad hunger of the creatures as they attacked.

"Yeah," Blue said. "And what if they're not? What if they wanted something else and open a door right now and let the monsters in?"

"Yes, but—"

Blue shook his head. "Wizards don't need guns. I don't know who these guys are, Jamie, but guns I can handle."

Before anyone could raise another objection, he was out of the room, heading down the hall. He hugged the walls, bracing himself when the shock tremors hit. This is crazy, he thought. At each doorway, he paused, waiting for lulls in the attack so that he could check the room out. His familiarity with the House gave him a sense akin to Jamie's new perceptions. He
knew
if there was someone in each one or not, before he ever poked his head around the doorway.

Trusting this instinct, he made good time going down the hall. And while his hands were filled with the weight of his Weatherby, under his breath he muttered the words to the Blessing Way that Charlie Nez had taught him down in Arizona. He didn't know how much good it would do, but at this point he'd give anything a try.