Dead of Light (28 page)

Then the bell on the door jangled, as someone came in. I glanced round, we all did, glad of a moment's distraction; and I saw a man who was briefly a stranger, darkly dressed and dimly lit. He stood still, only his head moving as he scanned the room and the people in it, us; and I felt my arms prickle with chill at the threat of him, and was glad of the touch of Carol's hand suddenly on my leg, although that was only saying,
I'm scared too...

Our own fault, partly. We'd been talking about unknown and threatening figures all night, we'd set ourselves up to be spooked by any combination of man and shadow. But it wasn't all fancy, there truly was something sinister, an air of danger about this man; and I knew it, I saw and understood it as soon as he stepped further into the light and came towards our table.

He was one of us, was what it was. Steven Macallan, blond and burly, another heavyweight cousin, pretty much of a thug: unexpected here and so I hadn't known him for a moment, had seen him instead as the cattle, as Carol and Laura and Gino and everyone in town must have seen him. Shadowed, dangerous, a constant threat and his close company a terror...

But Jamie raised his hand in greeting and so did I, just to give a message to the others: no panic, look at his nose, he's got to be on our side with a proboscis like that.

“Steve,” Jamie said, going the second mile here, giving him a name for added reassurance. “You looking for me?”

“No. Just checking.”

“Right.”

Right enough. He'd be one of Uncle James' patrolmen, the town's new security force out pacing the streets all night. Looking into doorways, big noses sniffing for trouble.
And pray they don't find it
, I thought nervously, distrustful of the presumptions that underlay such patrolling.
I don't want to lose any more cousins...

“Seen anything?” Jamie asked.

“Nah. No one has. We've got radios, see,” and he tapped a neat walkie-talkie in a holster on his belt, “we keep in touch, but there's nothing happening. The whole place is dead as shit.”

No surprise, with three Macallans dead and the rest on the warpath. If I were a normal citizen I'd be battening down my hatches, locking up my children and staying all night indoors and also as much of the day as I possibly could.

“Well, I guess that's good,” Jamie said. “Be careful, though, Steve. Yeah?”

“Yeah, sure,” Steve said casually, the wave of his hand a dead giveaway, sure guarantee of a young man who was not going to be careful. Who hadn't learned the lessons of these last days, who still thought himself immortal.

Oh, Christ
, I thought.
And they're all going to be like him, all the young men, all my cousins...
Too many years of invulnerability, it was an attitude soaked into their bones; and of course they weren't going to learn from others' dying. Such men never had. It took their own to do it, too late by definition...

“What about you, then?” Steve asked, still addressing himself only to Jamie. Apparently I counted with the cattle. “You coming to join us, or what?”

“Later. Maybe,” Jamie said, with a glance around the table that settled on Laura and said
no, I'm not.
“I'll see.”

Steve grunted, obviously at one with Uncle James in this, that a cousin's duty as much as a son's lay in the street tonight, not in bedding a girl who wasn't even blood. Water off a duck's back, to Jamie; he didn't even look up, though I saw him smile and I saw his hand tighten very publicly on Laura's, all the protection she needed against the weight of Steve's glare.

After a second or two of difficult silence, Steve's radio crackled and a voice whispered his name through static. He stepped aside from us to answer it, having obviously labelled us all, even Jamie, equally unworthy to overhear; and then he glowered around at the apprehensive staff like Arnie,
I'll be back
, and he stalked out of the restaurant.

Soft breaths of relief, from Gino and Mario and the girls and me; but as the door crashed shut behind him, I said, “Something, something my sister said to me: whoever they are out there, they're picking off the weakest. People like Steve shouldn't be going around on their own, making targets of themselves...”

Jamie stared at me. “Steve's not weak. Nor was Marty,” emphatically.

Not like he thought I meant, no: bruisers, the pair of them. But, “The ones with the crudest talents, then. Steve, he's got strength, okay; but he's got no finesse, you wouldn't back him in a fight with anyone smarter than he is...”

Which in all honesty didn't narrow the field too far. Jamie saw that, and nodded, and his eyes narrowed; and he pushed back his chair an inch or two, as if he had half a mind to leave right then, to go after Steve, not to let him be alone out there.

But if he had half a mind to do it, he had no more than that, because the other half was still hand-linked to Laura and not wanting to go anywhere; and then a moment later he had no mind at all, we none of us did.

Because a voice yelled, and the big plate window at the front of the restaurant shattered; and we were still sitting frozen, still trapped in the aftershock of that while Mario moaned and hid his face behind his hands and we could all see blood dribbling through his fingers, when the voice outside quit yelling and started to scream.

And that was Steve, just as if I'd made a target of him myself with my concern.

It was Carol among us who moved first. That bit older, I guess that bit more used to crisis, she was up on her feet while the rest of us were still stricken. Her moving got us moving, but we could only follow her as she pushed her way between the tables and towards the door. She broke stride briefly when Mario came blundering from behind the bar, still seemingly blinded by blood and his big hands; but Laura said, “I'll see to him, Carol. I've done first aid, at least...”

And first aid won't do anyone any good out there
, the footnote that we all heard, that none of us felt any need to voice.

“Good.” Carol spared a second to grip Mario's shoulders, to guide him into Laura's arms. Lucky man. Twice lucky not to have to face, not to be able to see whatever might be outside. I'd seen its like three times now, and already I was shaking. “Call an ambulance too, yeah?”

“Only one?”

Laura glanced through the gaping hole that was the restaurant's front now, that let Steve's screaming in so loud; and her glance said,
Won't he need one too?

It was me Carol looked at briefly, and our eyes shared a memory, Hazel far beyond the skills of any paramedic; but she shrugged, said, “Call half a dozen, if you like,” and yanked open the street door with barely a visible hesitation, barely a confession,
I don't want to go out there
before she did, with Jamie and me behind her and someone else coming after me.

Looking back, I found Gino at my shoulder.

“Don't you want to stay with Mario?” I asked. I knew I did; and he surely looked like he wanted to stay with Mario, or preferably behind Mario, somewhere a long way behind. Down in the cellar, maybe, with the door locked and the lights on and all those bottles of courage to help him through till daylight. His eyes were enormous and all the flesh of his face was trembling; but he shook his head hard, almost managed to look insulted.

“Mario's cousin is the cook, he has nephews here too. They will stay with him. I want to help.”

“Good enough. Come on, then.”

I didn't see what help he could be; but the same went for me, very much so, and I was going. The other two had gone already, and though Carol was still in front, in truth only Jamie had any hope of helping.

o0o

Il Milano
's wasn't the only window broken. All the length of the alley glittered with glass, in what light fell from the pizzerias on either side. There was little movement, though, no customers tumbling out to see what was going down; only the odd figure in a doorway standing as still as possible not to be noticed, craning to see from the shadows, squinting towards the sound of screaming.

It was darker than usual out there, darker than it ought to be; only the shattered shopfronts lit the alley. All the streetlamps had had their lights punched out, by the same force that had riven so much plate glass to splinters. The main street at the end was bright still, but of course we had to turn our backs to that; we had to head the other way to where it was darker still, to where a keening song of terror thickened the air and twisted gravity higher, till we could hardly run against it.

We found Steve at the corner, at the furthest distance from the light; and he was a man of supplication when we reached him, down on his knees with his eyes tight shut to be sure not to see, and his hands held out palm-up into the air. His fingers curled around nothing, I thought.

I was wrong. Jamie, cruel Jamie made a globe of nightfire to shine its light around us; and then I saw how Steve's fingers curled around pain, as if he held a bowl of it cupped in his hands.

His flesh seethed and festered in that cold light; and Christ, no wonder he was wailing.

This wasn't like Tommy, when blood-leeches had writhed within his flesh. This wasn't like anything I'd ever seen before. All Steve's skin was blistering, and the blisters were starting to burst; and there was an acrid smoke wafting up, and a thin liquor dribbling off.

We stood and stared, and saw how his palms melted, how the flesh deliquesced and dripped away; and God I hated that, I hated that I knew the word for what was happening to him. There shouldn't even be a word, for something so appalling; it ought to be a nameless horror, even the possibility of it never foreshadowed in a dictionary. Certainly the word shouldn't come slipping like a gobbet of foul meat into my mind, just as I watched my cousin fester so fast.

“Steve,” Jamie said, and his voice slurred in his wet mouth, words too slippery to get a grip on. I could have given him
deliquesce
, I could have given it up forever; only he wasn't interested in description, he wanted information. “Steve, did you see him?”

Slowly, dreadfully slowly Steve lifted his face towards us; and in the cold blue light I saw pale pustules rising on his cheeks and forehead, and no, that wasn't sweat running off his eyes. Nor tears either, I could see it steam.

Whether he could see us, God only knows; but he was hearing Jamie, at least, and there was enough strength or courage or humanity left in him, just enough to honour us with an answer.

He opened his mouth, and smoke rose around his teeth. Nothing by nightfire was the colour it ought to be, but his teeth were dark and pitted. His tongue I saw, a shrivelled thing weeping pus; he should not have been alive, nothing should be like that and live.

But he lived, he moved, he lifted one arm to point, although his finger would not do it; and although he was actually pointing at a wall, the message was clear. There were only two ways his killer could have gone, left or right, down the alley or up; and it was his left arm Steve was pointing with.

And his mouth hung open now, as though he had nothing left to close it with; and all the skin of his face was running as wet as his eyes, and I could see the shape of his bones too clearly and then the bones themselves, briefly white before they smoked and seared. And he was staring at us with sockets that were empty, and he had no voice to use in screaming; and Christ, it was such relief when Jamie ran off into the dark and I could follow.

Only to protect my cousin, of course: being pro-life, voting to go with my living rather than my dying cousin. Nothing I could possibly do for Steve, but I wouldn't have left him else. And Carol was with him anyway, Carol and Gino, he wouldn't have to die alone.

Except that, in the end, everyone dies alone; and if I couldn't do anything for Steve, I couldn't do anything actually to help Jamie either. No matter what he found down there before the alley's end, be it all the hordes of Hell or just one medical madman with a syringe emptied of acid, I would be equally useless. This was the darktime, their time, none of mine.

One thing certain, that there was someone — or something — down there. Jamie made another flare of cold fire and hurled it like a cricket ball into the dark, to show us whatever it could; and just before it guttered and died, too far for him to feed it, I did see what we were both looking for as we ran, what I most dreaded to see.

Only a suggestion, a hint, a shadow of movement in the night; and not all the hordes of Hell, no. But not a maniac medic either. Less than the one, surely, but infinitely more than the other: one man alone or one of an army, either way this was the man — or woman, I supposed, but all my training and all my understanding said not, said to expect a man — who had destroyed Steve. That at the least, and maybe more. Marty and Tommy and Hazel might be laid also to his account, but we had no way of telling. Yet. We might be facing a family of formidable talents for all we knew, they might be taking turns at us...

Whatever else they were taking, they were taking us. Knocking us over like skittles, they were.

Had been, at least. But they hadn't met Jamie before, presumably hadn't been expecting anyone other than Steve; and Jamie was a power in the land. If I had to come face to face with nemesis in a dark alley, there was only one guy I'd sooner have there with me — or preferably ahead of me, as Jamie was now — and that was Uncle Allan.

Jamie would do, though, in our uncle's absence. Jamie would definitely do.

Maybe that was how that fractional, that barely-glimpsed figure ahead of us felt also. Maybe he'd seen more than we had, maybe he'd recognised Jamie's face behind the nightfire or told his power and intent from the hurl of light. That, or else once a night was enough for him. Whatever, he had no stomach to stand and fight; Jamie's second bolt of fire, again made on the run and again thrown hard and flat, showed us nothing but the alley's walls and gates.