Night of Demons - 02 (32 page)

They were still alive so far, which made the situation rather different from the ones we’d left behind. Maybe the riders had plans for them, although there was no telling what exactly those might be.

What were these people even doing here at this time of the night? I glanced at the ornate, darkened frontage of the Town Hall, and got a partial answer. A lot of windows in the second story were still lit. That was where the mayor and his staff had their offices. They had apparently been working late, helping to coordinate the defense efforts. And I have never cared much for the long-serving mayor of our town. Edgar Aldernay can be hostile, unreasonable and—quite frankly—a pompous ass. But he takes his job extremely seriously—there was no doubt of that. If he was here this late, then it was typical of his persistence.

But how’d the Horsemen even gotten to them? Then I got a startling demonstration of the abilities they had.

The four of them were riding in broad circles, hemming in the panicked workers, keeping them all trapped. A lot of the globe lighting around the outskirts of Union Square had been smashed. They seemed to have a real love of destroying things, although that shouldn’t have surprised me. As I watched, one of them—War—rode straight at the bronze statue of Theodore Raine. The creature and its horse went straight into the huge square plinth. Then reemerged smoothly on the other side.

I stared at them, horrified. We’d had some pretty dreadful things appearing in this town before. You’ll never really know what fear feels like until you’ve faced a Manitou or a Dralleg. But the forces of darkness had outdone themselves this time. The sight didn’t merely take my breath away—it didn’t want to give it back.

They’re not the real thing, I kept trying to tell myself. They’re only imitations. But it didn’t really feel like that. More like I was watching Chaos and Destruction rendered into living flesh.

And besides, I wasn’t even sure that was completely true. How far did the powers of the wand extend?

The riders were wearing flowing black robes. There were wide hoods pulled up almost to their temples. Only their hands and faces were on view. And those had a slightly ethereal look, as if they existed somewhere between being mist and being solid.

War had an expression like a thunderstorm, his grim features twisted up. His eyes were narrow orange slits that seemed to leave impressions on the night air as he moved. His brow was creased like corrugated metal, his mouth set as firmly as twin plates of steel. Muscles were shifting underneath his cloak as he swung his great sword around. Flames were springing from it, leaving marks against the darkness too.

Famine—far narrower—looked even more ghostly. The eyes in this case were dead white, like tiny fluorescent lamps. They gleamed from deeply sunken hollows. The cheeks were concave. And the mouth was one big pucker around a sparse few rotted teeth. The bony hands looked barely strong enough to keep a hold of the horse’s reins. But it was managing with one of them. In the right was the ax that I’d been told of.

As for Pestilence…I don’t think we need to go there for too long. I’d already seen a couple of its victims. The creature was similar, an insubstantial mass of pus and scabs, barely any clean flesh visible at all. The lesions shifted as I stared at them, as if they didn’t have a fixed position. That was the one armed with the bow and arrows.

And the steeds that they were mounted on were genuinely alarming too. Great dark slabs like something from a quarry that had come alive. Their hooves set up a terrible percussion. Their skulls were oversized, even in comparison with their huge bodies. It was a wonder that their necks could bear such massive burdens. Each face was covered with bony protrusions. The skin on them was twisted. I had never seen a horse with an expression before. And I suppose these had none really—but the flesh was so deformed it looked that way.

Where there should have been wide, flat teeth, there were jagged fangs instead. Their eyes burned like hot metal, with no pupil remaining.

My gaze darted to the final rider. Oh Lord. Death himself. He appeared to be more solid that the rest. And I supposed this one was Hanlon, in all his demented glory. Just looking at him, I felt exhaustion creep over me.

Skeletal hands gripped the reins, in this case. Merely bones, with nothing holding them together. The face was a bare, tissueless skull, with a bony ridge of temple and a crescent of discolored teeth. But like the horses, it seemed to contain emotion in its structure. Not just vicious, this time. Pleased with itself. Gloating.

Its eye sockets were hollow, but there was a gleam in them. A laughing one, of victory assured. The thing carried no kind of weapon. Didn’t even need one—that was what I figured out. Blades and arrowheads were merely paths for it to travel down. I remembered the people at the bottom of the hillside who had simply fallen in midstride.

The figure noticed me, and drew its stallion up. Plumes of steam came billowing from the horse’s nostrils, and it pawed with one hoof at the flagstones, making sparks.

The three other riders drifted to a halt as well. Silence pressed down over everything. Even the trapped folk at the center went extremely quiet.

Deal with this, I kept telling myself. At least their attention had been diverted from their prisoners. And that was some comfort to me, although not an awful lot.

There was no further point in trying to stay hidden. So I stepped fully out into their line of sight. Lauren tried to follow, but I signaled her not to. And she took notice and stayed put, thank heavens. There was no sense in both of us getting directly in harm’s way.

Death’s hollow jaw dropped open. There was no tongue, but a voice still came ringing out.

“Devries?”

It was so loud it hurt my ears.

“I know about you!” it went on.

The words thundered around me, echoing between the buildings. I tried to remind myself this was not the true figure of Death, not really. Just some lunatic who wanted to be that.

“You’ve saved this town before, or so I understand. Demonstrate that to me now. Save one single inhabitant.”

He turned his massive horse around, and began trotting over to the captives. I could only watch him frozenly, wondering what he was going to do.

Aldernay and his people were huddled in a tight mass, many of them kneeling. As the Horseman drew closer, the whites of their eyes expanded. The mayor was shaking visibly. Mrs. Dower—his assistant—looked almost on the point of fainting. As for the rest, they were mostly young interns, volunteers. I recognized Joe Norton’s daughter, Iris. She’d just turned eighteen, and lived a few houses away from my own. She gawked up helplessly as Death’s shadow crept over her. A tight fist clenched around my heart.

What exactly could I do to help them? This was on a different plane to anything I’d ever encountered before.

Hanlon stopped before the cowering people and reached down. And I thought at first that Iris was his intended victim. I took a step forward.

But he grabbed hold of the collar of the slim brunette directly next to her instead and hauled her into view.

He lifted her into the air, turning around in his saddle to show her off, the same way that a hunter might show off a trophy. Her limbs flailed frantically, and both of her shoes dropped away. But she was so petrified that when her mouth sprang open, there was only a thin creaking sound.

“This one, for instance?” Hanlon called out. “Are you going to rescue her?”

His empty gaze fastened on me again. And the smile beneath it was more horrible than I could bear. What could I do against something like this?

He extended the index finger of his free hand. And then began to move it to her cheek with a deliberate lack of haste. I knew what would happen when it touched her. All those victims with no wounds? The blood surged in my veins.

“Take me instead!” I heard myself shouting.

Which was, realistically, a damned fool thing to say. But it stopped him for a moment. He considered my proposal.

“Why should I do that?” he said. “I’ll kill her, then the rest of them. And then I’ll kill you too.”

His hand started moving toward the girl’s face again. And she finally found a proper voice. A high-pitched wail of terror rang across the square.

And that was just too much for a person to take. I held my pistol out in front of me and tensed my legs.

But I didn’t get the chance to move. Because a massive thump rang out.

Hanlon’s whole arm exploded into fragments. And the girl who he’d been toying with dropped, unharmed, to the flagstones.

She scrabbled away to safety on her hands and knees, heading for the side of the Town Hall. And would have been easy enough to catch up with. Except none of the riders were watching her any longer. They were staring around, trying to make out where the shot had come from.

I was the only person in the entire square who understood what was going on. In fact, my heart lifted a touch. A Mossberg 590 shotgun had made that sound, firing not pellets but saboted slugs. Which meant that not only was Cassie here, but she was back on our side.

She didn’t show herself, at first. Those angry, spectral faces kept on searching for her in the gloom. The rest of the mayor’s party was still huddled in the same spot. But they’d gone motionless, their heads anxiously raised.

Then Pestilence swung its horse around and, taking out an arrow from the quiver on its back, started trotting up warily toward the north end of the square.

I took another glance at Hanlon. His shattered arm had turned to a vapor gathered around his shoulder. And it was reforming.

There was a sudden movement in the corner of my eye, below the Town Hall’s clock. My sense of relief started to evaporate immediately. Oh my God, was she back there?

While everything else had been going on, Cassie had obviously snuck, unnoticed, right across the frontage of the building. And was now behind one of the stone lions at the entranceway. The Horseman was headed directly at her. And when it found her, there would be no place left to hide.

But Cass is never stupid in a fight. She saw that there was no point staying where she was. She lifted herself smoothly into view. The wings were gone. Her arms were normal. She was back to her old self.

And she wasn’t nervous about these creatures either, the way I felt. Her attitude was the same with anything that threatened our town. She threw herself directly at the rider, running flat out at the thing.

But…did she even understand what she was up against? Fear tightened its grip around me as I watched her.

Her face was contorted, and she kept on firing as she ran. Her aim was as good as ever. Every single one of her saboted slugs struck home. They could have felled a medium-sized tree. But when they hit the rider, they blew clouds of vapor straight out through its back. Which promptly returned to the thing’s body.

As I watched, it drew its bow. I fired a few shots myself, but was too far off.

The string was let loose with a singing noise. Cass didn’t even try to duck. She held the Mossberg up in front of her, sideways. When the arrow struck, it hit the metal, burying itself in one of the holes in the gun’s heat shield.

The Horseman paused, apparently surprised. But then it started tugging at the bow again.

This was going to be a test of speed. Cass was still going as fast as she could. But the rider had already put a new notch to its bowstring. Was taking aim. She wasn’t going to make it. And I was too far away to help.

But I hadn’t reckoned on Ms. Mallory’s quick thinking. She yanked the first arrow out with her left hand. Then she swung the shotgun back, and hurled it with full force.

It didn’t do the rider any harm, of course. But that was not what she’d intended. She managed to knock its aim off, and the second shot flew wild.

Cass was right up to the stamping, snorting white horse in another instant. It shrieked and reared over her.

She ducked around the side of it. And drove the arrow she was holding into Pestilence’s thigh.

Time seemed to stand still, for a moment after that. The faces of the other three were all suspended, facing north.

Pestilence’s face was so covered with shifting sores and welts that it was hard to tell exactly what was going on. But the creature’s eyes got noticeably wider. And its mouth clamped shut—a ridge of pain.

It reached down for the arrow, but did not complete the motion. Abruptly, it was toppling sideways. Coming loose of its saddle, then dropping to the ground.

It tried to push itself back up. And got halfway before it started getting weaker. Dozens of ugly bulges pushed out through its cheeks, its forehead. And the sores and welts were spreading, eating the last scraps of faded flesh away.

It went down a second time. And then its body started falling apart before our very eyes.

Its horse vanished completely.

At least I now knew how they could be beaten.

One down. But still three to go.

War went howling after Cassie, furious and vengeful, the burning sword in its grip held high. She could see immediately this wasn’t going to be as simple as the first time, and she scrambled back to the Town Hall’s front steps. Reaching them, she scaled a drainpipe. And barely got up high enough in time. The blade lashed at her, narrowly missing her heels.

Famine turned its emaciated face to me. This was the same creature that had done such harm to Vallencourt. Its flesh clung to its skull like thin tissue paper. Its mouth dropped open in an uneven circle. Then it gathered up its reins, and spurred its horse in my direction.

I stared at the ax clutched in its narrow grasp. That was what Cass had figured out. Use their own weapons against them. Then everything came back in much broader focus. The stallion had crossed most of the square before I’d even had time to react.

It was on me. Its massive hooves lashed at my face. I lurched to the side, lost my balance and fell. And that was probably what saved my life.

As the rider went by, its ax came swinging down, making a strange murmuring as it split the air. And it would have sliced my head in two. Its aim was deadly accurate. I felt my hair being ruffled by the passing gust of wind it made. But the blade missed me…barely.

I hit the ground and rolled away. By the time that I was back on my feet, the rider had swung around.

Lauren was still against the wall. It hadn’t seen her yet. She had her own gun out, and was trying to take aim. But everything was happening too fast. And I doubted that a handgun would be any real use, even at this distance.

She hadn’t seen what Cass had done, I realized. There was no view of the north end of the square from where she’d been hiding.

The rider came at me again, leaning over in its saddle this time. It was not going to make the same mistake twice.

But I’d a few more tricks of my own. I waited until the beast was practically on top of me. And when I did move, it was not away from the weapon but toward it.

I threw myself into the broad arc of the rider’s swing. And grabbed the Horseman by its black-cloaked elbow.

Its arm slammed into me. The impact knocked the breath from my body. I felt my feet leaving the ground. But the horse continued forward. And gravity has the same effect, whatever kind of creature you are.

The rider parted company with its saddle. I crashed to the ground a second time, Famine coming down on top of me. For something so ethereal-looking, it landed on me heavily enough to make my ribs flare with agony.

Although what really caught my attention was the sharp metallic clatter that I heard at the same time.

This thing might still have the upper hand. But I had made it drop its weapon. I started feeling around blindly, but I couldn’t seem to find it.