Night Terrors (2 page)

Randy forgot about his broken nose, which was still gushing blood onto the front of his shirt, and stared in horror at Jinx. Cubs-Cap’s eyes were red and swollen, but he no longer rubbed at them, either because he’d adjusted to the pain or, more likely, he was too terrified by Jinx to care how much he hurt. Anarchy-Symbol looked on the verge of tears, and if I could’ve heard anything over the din of Jinx’s maniacal laughter, I was confident I would’ve heard Anarchy-Symbol keening softly, as if he were on the verge of losing his sanity.

Pedestrians on both sides of the street stopped and stared at Jinx, and while most were too creeped out to do more than look, their eyes wide and jaws slack, a few still possessed enough presence of mind to pull out their phones and start taking pictures. Traffic had ground to a halt, and drivers and passengers were reacting the same way as those on foot, goggling at Jinx and holding out their phones as if they were some manner of technological talismans to ward off evil.

I could imagine the headline in tomorrow’s
Tribune:
Psychotic Clown Terrorizes Loop!

Sanderson would
not
be pleased.

I punched Jinx in the shoulder as hard as I could. The flesh beneath his suit was rubbery, but the bone it covered was hard as marble, and pain flared in my hand. I ignored it.

“Cut it the hell out!” I shouted.

Jinx gave no sign that he heard me – or for that matter, felt my punch. He continued laughing, his eyes now the size of golf balls, his teeth sharp as a shark’s.

I pulled my trancer from its holster and jammed the silver muzzle of the weapon – which looks too much like a toy ray gun – against Jinx’s temple.

“I’ll fire if I have to. You know I will.”

I didn’t shout this time, didn’t raise my voice above my normal speaking tone. But Jinx’s laughter cut off as if a switch had been thrown somewhere inside him. The sudden silence was startling – which I knew was precisely the effect he wanted.

I still had my trancer pressed to Jinx’s head, and now he turned until the muzzle rested at a spot just above his eyebrows. His gaze locked on mine.

“Go ahead,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “Make your day.”

Ice water flooded my gut. Jinx had never tried to harm me – as his Ideator, I wasn’t sure he could – but that didn’t reassure me much. As you might’ve guessed by now, I had a thing about clowns. Big-time. I didn’t trust them, and that included the one I created.

Especially
him.

I lowered my weapon, and when I spoke, I tried to sound tougher than I felt right then. “We don’t have time for this crap. We need to–”

That’s as far as I got before Randy – owner of the oh-so-amusing
Down Here, Ladies!
T-shirt – let out a choked gurgle. I turned to look at him, figuring that he had probably swallowed some blood from his broken nose and it was making him gag. But when I saw the hilt of a knife protruding from his throat, I knew that Randy had a more serious problem than a busted beak. The hilt was black, as was the blade itself, but it wasn’t an ordinary black. Instead of reflecting light, it absorbed it, giving the impression that if you tried to touch the blade, your fingers would pass through its nonexistent surface and keep going into a realm of nothingness, deeper and deeper… I’d seen shadow daggers like this before, and I knew where it had come from. I also knew what would happen if I didn’t get it out of Randy fast.

“Shield me!” I ordered Jinx, and without looking to see if he was going to do it – with Jinx, you never know – I ran toward Randy.

As bad as his broken nose was bleeding, it was nothing compared to his throat wound. Blood sprayed from it like a fountain, and while I knew there was a very real chance he would bleed out within moments, it wasn’t the bleeding I was most concerned about. I managed to reach him just as his knees buckled, and I was able to catch Randy and lower him to the blood-slick sidewalk. I knelt next to him, and I felt the knees of my slacks soak through with his blood, but I ignored it. His eyes were wide with confusion and disbelief, and I couldn’t blame him. First he got punched in the nose by a clown, and now he had a dagger sticking out of his throat. It definitely was not his night.

His eyes shifted to look at me, and he opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a dribble of blood.

“Shhh,” I said. I wanted to tell him that it was OK, that he was going to be all right. But I couldn’t lie to him, even if it would’ve given him a few moments of hope before he died.

The dark blade had already started its work. Thin lines of black spiderwebbed out from the wound, running beneath the surface of Randy’s skin like a rapidly spreading infection, which I suppose in a way was what they were. He grimaced in pain, teeth gritted, neck muscles tensed, and I had to resist the urge to grab the dagger’s hilt and pull it out of him. If I so much as brushed my fingers against the blade, its taint would spread to me.

I still had my trancer, and I switched the gun to its highest setting. Trancer fire concentrated Maelstrom energy, and since that’s what the dark blade had been made from, I hoped that a short burst would destroy the dagger, and – if Randy was lucky – nullify the effect of its poison. And once
that
miracle was accomplished, then I could see what I could do to stop Randy’s bleeding.

It had only been a few seconds since Randy had been wounded, and his companions hadn’t had time to do more than stand and stare in shock. Now Cubs-Cap said, “No, he didn’t! No, he didn’t!” He kept repeating that phrase, but I wasn’t sure exactly what he was trying to say. Maybe he wasn’t trying to communicate anything in particular, just speaking nonsense out of sheer terror. Anarchy-Symbol was doing something similar, only instead of talking, he was shaking his head rapidly, as if by doing so he could alter reality and negate what had happened to his friend.

I glanced at Jinx. He stood facing the street, gigantic shoes planted far apart, arms stretched wide. I couldn’t see his face, but I had no doubt he was grinning.

“Come at me, bro!” he shouted.

Relatively reassured that a shadow dagger wasn’t going to slam between my shoulder blades in the next several seconds, I turned my attention back to Randy. I could see the black threads covered his entire neck and were now moving down onto his chest and up onto his chin and cheeks. His breathing had become shallow and rapid, and I knew he didn’t have much time left.

I placed the muzzle of my trancer a fraction of an inch away from the dagger’s ebon hilt and squeezed the trigger.

There was a flash of multicolored light, and I felt a wave of vertigo wash over me as Maelstrom energy was released. The sensation passed quickly, leaving me feeling mildly nauseated – as it always does – but I was thrilled to see that the burst from my trancer had cancelled out the shadow dagger’s energy, just as I’d hoped it would. The blade was gone. Randy still had a seriously nasty hole in his throat, of course, but at least he no longer had a mystic dagger poisoning his system.

But then I saw the black threads of dark energy were still spreading through his skin, and I knew that I’d been too late.

I switched my trancer to its lowest setting and aimed it at Randy’s head.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, and pulled the trigger.

Randy’s eyes widened in surprise, but then a short burst of Maelstrom energy washed over him, and his eyes closed and he fell still.

“What the fuck did you do?” Cubs-Cap demanded, an edge of hysteria in his voice.

“He’s just sleeping. If you want him to wake up again, you better call an ambulance.”

I knew there was nothing medical science could do for him now, but at least he’d be spared the agony of the dark energy negating his life force, in a very real sense eating him alive. Still, I pressed my free hand to Randy’s throat in an attempt to stop – or at least slow – the bleeding.

I hollered over my shoulder at Jinx. “Do you see him?”

“No, but he’s close.”

“Can you smell him?” I asked.

“Don’t need to.” He turned around and grinned as he displayed the half-dozen shadow daggers embedded in his chest. Although he was bleeding from the wounds, no black threads of infection spiderwebbed across his bone-white skin. Like Quietus, Jinx was formed from pure Maelstrom energy, so aside from making him look like a human pincushion, the shadow daggers had no more effect on him than a bee’s sting.

His body jerked several times, and when Jinx turned around to face the street, I saw he had three new daggers in his back.

Not for the first time, I wondered what sort of nightmare had birthed Quietus into existence. I mean, who dreams about a shadow assassin that can create throwing knives from shards of his own dark substance? I bet a psychologist would have a field day with that one.

The situation was rapidly getting out of control. Some of the onlookers were beginning to panic – and who could blame them? They’d witnessed a lunatic clown break a guy’s nose, then saw one of the guy’s companions catch a knife in the throat. And now the clown was standing guard and being struck with one dark blade after another, seemingly with no ill effects, grinning all the while. It was only a matter of time before another bystander was hit by one Quietus’ dark shards. Or he might decide to take a hostage in order to force us to allow him to escape.

And how long would it be before one or more of Chicago’s Finest got wind of what was going on and showed up, guns drawn, ready to kick ass first and ask questions later? I wasn’t worried about what the cops might do to us. I was afraid of what Jinx might do to them.

“Do you have a fix on him?” I called over my shoulder.

“He’s in one of the buildings across the street,” Jinx said. “I can’t tell which one or how high up he is, though. You know how he blends in with the shadows.”

“Keep looking,” I said. Then I turned toward Randy’s friend. “Hey, Anarchy-Symbol!”

At first, the kid didn’t know who I was talking to, but then he glanced down at his shirt, and it clicked.

“Uh, my name’s Dale.”

“I don’t give a damn what your name is,” I snapped. “Get your ass over here!”

He hesitated, and I thought this time he really would break and run. But he came over and I put my trancer on the ground, reached up, grabbed his hand, and pulled him down to a crouching position. Then I removed my bloody hand from Randy’s throat wound and replaced it with Dale’s.

“Keep the pressure on until help arrives,” I told him. “It probably won’t do any good, but it’s the only hope he’s got.”

Dale was pale and shaking, but he kept his hand pressed tight to his friend’s neck.

“What the hell is going on?” He spoke in a near whisper, almost as if he wasn’t certain he wanted an answer.

I decided he’d sleep easier in the future if I kept my mouth shut. I mentally apologized to Randy as I wiped my blood-slick hand on his pants leg, then I picked up my trancer and stood. Keeping my head low to avoid catching a dark shard in one or both of my eyes, I made my way over to Jinx, making sure to keep his body between me and the street.

I checked on Cubs-Cap. He was standing and gaping like an idiot, his gaze moving from his wounded friend to Jinx and back again.

“You moron! You’re lucky you haven’t been hit yet! Get your ass down!”

Cubs-Cap looked startled, as if the possibility he might be struck by a blade hadn’t occurred to him. He flung himself belly-first to the sidewalk, hitting so hard that his face smacked the concrete. Ouch.

Constructs formed from the substance of an Incubus’ body don’t last long, and the dark shards embedded in Jinx’s back were already starting to fade. Jinx jerked his head to the side as a shard came flying at him. It flew past him, missing my head only by inches. It struck the building behind us, shattering the window of a pawnbroker’s shop.

“How about a little warning next time?” I scolded him.

“My bad,” Jinx said, and then gave a soft giggle. “Emphasis on
bad
.”

By this time, most of the pedestrians had cleared the street, although a few idiots remained, unable to stop watching the action. I wanted to shout,
This isn’t a TV show, dumbasses!
But I knew it wouldn’t do any good.

Still using Jinx as a shield, I said, “I don’t get it. Since when does Quietus start attacking random people on the street?”

Quietus was an assassin for hire, and he had a reputation for working quick, neat, and – you guessed it – quiet. It wasn’t like him to be wasteful with his weapons, either. One shard, one strike, one kill. That had been his MO up to this point. Something had happened to change that, but what?

“Maybe he decided he needed a change of pace,” Jinx said. “Every Incubus needs to cut loose now and then.”

“Emphasis on
cut,
” I said as another shard streaked past. This one hit the side of the building, bounced, and clattered to the sidewalk.

Jinx started to chuckle, but then he stopped. “There he is.”

I looked past Jinx and saw a slash of darkness in one of the third-floor windows across the street. The window was open, and a shadow emerged and fell silently through the air – to land just as silently on the sidewalk below. Quietus looked like a tall, thin man garbed from head to toe in midnight-black spandex. He had no visible facial features – for all I knew, he didn’t have any – but his head was pointed at us, and I had the impression that whatever sense he might’ve possessed in place of sight, he was using it to “look” straight at us.

And then he turned and began sprinting eastward down the sidewalk.

Why was he fleeing? It wasn’t as if Jinx and I had had a bead on him. Was there a limit to how many dark shards Quietus could create from his body in a short amount of time? If so, that could mean – for the moment, at least – that he was weaponless. But I didn’t have time to strategize. Jinx and I needed to haul ass if we didn’t want to lose him.