Midnight's Angels - 03 (15 page)

I won’t claim it was a whole load of fun. Getting out of trouble rarely is. The heat was so massive that we didn’t dare breathe in case our lungs got scorched. And sweat poured into my eyes, almost blinding me.

A couple of times, it looked like the dark fire was going to rush in on us. But each time that happened the wind got stronger, forcing it back. And finally, we stumbled through.

“I’ll never look at a barbeque the same way again,” Cass was panting half a minute later.

I could see her point, because we both now knew how a hamburger felt. The moisture in my eyes had practically been seared away. The skin on my face felt tender, sore, and there were several burn marks on my clothes.

Cass was rubbing at a badly reddened elbow. But she grit her teeth, not letting out a sound. Then we stared back the way we’d come.

The creatures hadn’t tried to follow us. The wind had died away completely, the channel through the dark flames closing to our rear. We could see the pack of hominids milling about furiously on the other side. Sooner or later Levin -- or at least the thing that he’d become -- would realize that it might be better if he made the fire vanish. But he didn’t seem to be too quick on the uptake these days. That was unsettling from one point of view, but it worked to our advantage.

What he’d done worried me badly, all the same. If the adepts who had been transformed were still in full possession of their witchcraft, then the trouble we had been in might amount to very little, compared to the dangers we were going to have to face.

Which made our visit here even more urgent. We headed up along the drive as soon as we’d recovered.

The trees around us had not a single speck of greenery on them. But despite the fact that they looked dead, they still kept growing, every year. Bugs of various sizes hummed beneath them. And something shuffled through the upper branches, making a strange chittering sound.

Occasionally, there’d be a break in the canopy. And when I looked up, I could see that there was still no light. The sky seemed to be black and blank. So this place was affected too.

There was no telling, right at the moment, what had happened to its owner. I didn’t like to think about it. Felt my chest grow tight.

The porch and front door came in sight. And Cass began to slow a little, looking visibly uncomfortable. As I said, she’d never been up here before. I was the one who, when it was necessary, paid Raine a visit. The fact was, Cassie had a natural antipathy to adepts. She’d put up with the likes of the judge, in the past, because she had to. But a magician far more crazed and unpredictable was a completely different matter.

“What if he turns out to be loping around like a monkey too?”

I put on what I hoped was a reassuring face. “Who knows? Might be an improvement.”

But that didn’t even get a tiny grin from her.

As we got closer, I could see the doors were firmly shut. Woodard Raine was more of a recluse than ever, these days. He was the last descendant of what had always been the most important family in the Landing. His ancestors had founded this town. And because of that, Raine regarded the place as his own. So he ought to have some inkling what was happening to its people.

When I went up on the porch and rang the bell, there was no immediate response. But then I heard some shuffling behind the heavy woodwork, followed by a metallic clunk. And the door eased open a small crack. A pair of eyes -- one green, one yellow -- peered at me from the dimness inside.

“Hi, Hampton,” I murmured.

This was Raine’s enormously tubby, walleyed manservant. I could make out that he was in his normal dark blue uniform. It filled up the narrow gap. The guy was as round as a balloon.

“Mr. Devries? We weren’t expecting you.”

I found that hard to believe. Raine had always known, previously, when I was on the way.

“Is Woody … is your employer around?”

“Of course he is. Where else would he be?”

The guy opened the door a little further, and then peered up past me at the sky. He frowned and took a quick glance at his wristwatch, giving it a shake.

“My word, but dawn seems to be late this morning.”

Sealed inside the darkened house, he hadn’t even noticed.

“Which is what I’ve come about.”

Creases appeared in the corners of Hampton’s mouth. “Ah. Is there trouble?”

And he was serious. So I immediately saw where communications had broken down. Raine had to know what was going on, but hadn’t bothered to tell the only person loyal to him in the whole world about it.

The lobby was practically pitch dark beyond him, just a couple of small candles breaking up the shadows. This man’s master -- amongst his other weird leanings -- did not trust electricity. And no sunlight got in here either, even on the brightest days. Woody had cast a spell on the windows so they wouldn’t let it through.

“Has your boss seemed troubled recently?” I inquired.

Hampton paused and chewed his lip.

“To be honest, it is sometimes hard to tell where normal leaves off and troubled begins.”

Which told me everything I really needed. Woody was fully aware of what was happening. But he’d either chosen not to do anything about it yet. He often gets that way, relying on others to take up the slack. Or else he hadn’t found a way to intervene. It was beyond his powers. And the second option was a lousy one.

We had better go find out.

“Coming?” I asked Cassie.

Her head shook, her eyes going very cold. “No need for the two of us.”

It was pretty much the answer that I’d been expecting. She’d only come this far to watch my back. Hampton looked slightly offended, but then stepped away from the doorway, forgetting about her. And I started heading past in the direction of the ballroom.

“No, sir,” he advised, bringing me to a wary halt. “You’ll find him in the game room this time.”

It was far deeper inside the mansion, and I’d been led there only one time. But I thought I remembered the way.

* * *

When I’d last been in here, Hampton had provided me with an old-fashioned oil lamp, so I could make out my surroundings in some sort of detail. But on this occasion, there was only a single candle. And it wasn’t even in a holder. It was floating in the air, directly above a pool table the baize of which was navy blue. Balls were spread out across it unevenly, and they were all jet black.

I only got a vague impression of the rest of the scene. The crystal chandelier and damask-covered armchairs. The chessboard over in the far corner -- the eyes of some of the pieces seemed to follow me. There were paintings of hunting scenes on the ceiling above me, I remembered. But I couldn’t even make those out.

Something passed between me and the candle for an instant, and then disappeared into the gloom again. It looked like a human figure, or what passed for one. That had to be Raine.

There was a loud, sharp clack. One of the jet-black balls shot forward and struck another. That one bounced off the cushions some three dozen times, never even slowing down, before it disappeared into a corner pocket.

“That’s called cheating, Woods,” I pointed out.

“How can it be,” his voice came back at me, “when I decide the rules?”

Suddenly, his huge eyes swiveled into view at the far side of the table. They were bright gold. And -- odd although it might sound -- I was pretty relieved to see that. In his darker moods, I had watched those weird peepers of his take on an added shade of redness, sometimes darkening almost to a glowing bronze.

His pupils were slitted. The rest of his face could not be seen. I got a vague impression of the slim body below it, and took in the fact that he was holding a pool cue. He was tilting it around like a knight errant, albeit a deluded one -- the Don Quixote of the witchcraft world. I could only hope he didn’t mistake me for a windmill.

“Fancy a game?” he inquired brightly. “We could make it interesting. Say, a buck a hole?”

It was already
too
interesting, in completely the wrong way. But it was obvious that he was in one of his chummy moods. The fact that it was not appropriate on a day like this was, as usual, beyond his grasp.

“To your rules? Forget it,” I grumbled.

He seemed to shrug -- I couldn’t be sure. And then returned his attention to the table, bending out across it with one foot suspended in the air. The next time he struck a ball, it flew straight off the table, vanishing from view. I didn’t hear it hitting anything, so heaven knew where it had gone.

But I didn’t have time for any of the man’s tomfoolery.

“Woody!”

He looked back at me, his eyes narrowing slightly. And something of a brassy tinge appeared in them, just like before.

“I suppose -- “ and his voice now sounded laden down with care -- “you want to discuss what’s happening in town?”

“What else?”

“Are you expecting me to fix it?”

“That would be a nice idea.”

His head didn’t even lift. And his eyes disappeared again. He began lining up another shot, as if we weren’t discussing anything important.

“Why should I even bother? Those who’ve lost their souls? They’re entirely happy as they are.”

I heard some odd things come out from his mouth, but that took me right off balance. What on earth was he talking about?

“It took me a while to see the truth. But human beings, sport … on one level they resent their humanity, their conscience. Those things stop them doing what they really want, hem them in and hold them back. That pack that chased you to the gate? They’re fine like that, all mindless and feral. Even Levin.”

I took in his words with a numb feeling of shock. Then I started getting angry. This was a fine time for Raine to turn into an amateur philosopher. A pretty lousy one at that. Exactly what had brought this on?

He seemed to sense what I was thinking.

“The fact is,” he explained, “I’ve grown tired with humanity in general. I’ve worked very hard to help this town.”

He’d done no such thing. He’d helped a little when I’d prodded him, but that was pretty much the whole picture. But -- as was normally the case with the man -- the facts of the matter didn’t even slow him down.

“And what have I gotten for it? Nothing really changes. Nothing genuinely improves. Here you are yet again, sport, coming to me cap in hand, begging me to get you out of another mess. I say there are limits. I say ‘no,’ it stops here!”

There was another clack. A ball ascended vertically and hovered, still spinning, beneath the chandelier.

“Woody?” I asked, biting down my fury. It was a bad idea to lose your temper with him and I already knew that. “You’re not serious?”

He straightened again and faced me.

“I’m afraid I am. You and that nasty girl of yours are going to have to sort this out by yourselves.”

I felt my gaze narrow. “Who helped us at the gate then, if it wasn’t you?”

His eyes became deeply puzzled, like he didn’t have the faintest clue what I was talking about. But then his attention wandered away from me.

Right in that instant, I finally got it. Saw what this was genuinely about. When Woody’s face shifted position, a touch of candlelight wandered across it. I could see how tight his features were. It wasn’t indifference I was looking at. It was a kind of blank embarrassment.

It
wasn’t
the case that he was willingly abandoning us. Rather, he was trying to save face. He had probably already looked into the problem. And seen that there was nothing he could do to solve it.

The great Woodard Raine, Master of the Manor, powerless? The sky would cave in before he admitted that. Or maybe -- it occurred to me -- he wasn’t consciously lying. I knew the way reality got filtered in his mind. Maybe he’d convinced himself that his opinion was an honest one. I could see how that was possible. The question now was how to change it.

The best way to approach this was to gently nudge his train of thought.

“People aren’t all bad, you know.”

“I never said they were.”

“If you leave them this way, then the whole town might go down.”

“Maybe for the best,” he answered dryly.

“You’d have no regrets if that happened? All that history and heritage gone? Your family’s tradition?”

His free hand wandered through the air like some pale butterfly. “I’ve become a lot more of a modernist than I used to be.”

“So this is the message that you want me to go back with? The Master of the Manor doesn’t care about us anymore.”

The brightness faded in his gaze. So I’d managed to get to him a little. But he turned his head further away a moment after that. He couldn’t even bear to look me in the eye.

“Conversation over, sport. If you’d excuse me …?”

I widened my stance slightly, told him, “I’m not going anywhere.”

The man just sighed and set his pool cue down.

Spread both his palms in my direction. And there was a flash of pure white light, so dazzling it blinded me. And an accompanying sense of motion.