Something Stirs, page 21
Her fault.
“C’mon, kid, let the boy go.”
She rocked, and wept, and tasted blood.
And when Karacos finally pried her arms loose, she looked at him, pleading, and he only smiled when she said, “Bad.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Abruptly the wind settled, the snow retreated to flurries, the street- and floodlights regained their purpose and kept the alley and parking lot free of most of the dark.
“We gotta get out of here,” Pancho said uneasily, snapping his fingers, dancing toward the street, dancing back. “C’mon, guys, we can’t stick around.”
Out on the Boulevard Scott could hear a fire truck’s blare, cruisers, caught a glimpse of an ambulance van flaring away, with a patrol car right behind.
“Right,” Tang agreed. “We can’t stay here. We gotta get moving.”
Katie broke away from Murtaugh then with a hasty, grateful “thanks,” and Blade nodded as he wiped his face with a sleeve, opened his mouth but said nothing. He tried a smile, tried a frown, threw up his hands and, before anyone could stop him, sprinted away. Scott reached out to grab him, hold him back, but the little man dodged nimbly, whimpering, and vanished into the parking lot.
“Outta here!” Pancho insisted.
“Go!” Tang said.
They turned toward the street, stumbling at first, then running slowly, herding Katie into the center. Not looking back. Not asking questions. Scott considered trying to get Murtaugh back, realized it was futile before he even started, and took a dozen steps after the rest of the Pack before a bonfire suddenly erupted in the meat of his left leg. He gasped loudly and fell against the alley wall, pushed off with his right arm, and fell again, this time to the ground.
The burning cramp brought instant tears to his eyes, familiar and hateful ones, as he tried to sit up and grab for the thigh, knowing why it had happened, knowing this time he would have to ride it out because there was no way he could get the prosthetic off. Not here. Not now.
He fell back, clenched his fists, and tried again.
A dark figure blocked the boulevard light.
He stiffened, panting, shaking the tears away.
Oh god, he thought; not now, please not now.
“You hurt?”
It was Barnaby.
“My leg,” he gasped. “Cr-cramp.” The fire spurted. He groaned. “Jesus!”
“You ran, you dumb shit,” Garing said flatly, kneeling beside him, grabbing hold of the thigh to knead it roughly.
“You’re not supposed to run, you know that.” His hands worked. “You know that, asshole.”
A siren screamed to silence.
Scott squirmed around to prop himself against the wall. “That won’t work,” he said when Garing rocked back to flex his fingers. His mouth dried, his throat tightened. “Gotta get it off.”
“You’re shitting me.”
The cramp eased, and returned.
“Oh god!”
“All right, so take off your damn jeans, idiot.”
Scott glanced to his right, as a crowd of the curious began hurrying down the alley to examine the parking lot, voices echoing off the stone walls, freak storms, freak tornado, some kind of gang on the rampage.
“Jesus, man, c’mon!” Barnaby snapped. “We ain’t got all night, y’know.”
A scrambling at his buckle, the zipper down, and he eased the pants off his hips, just far enough to be able to get at the straps that wound toward his groin. The moment the upper leg was clear, Garing cursed and stripped off his jacket, dropped it over Scott’s lap, grinning without humor.
A woman paused and watched with concern.
Barnaby snarled at her, told her to mind her own fucking business, get lost, and her eyes widened, her mouth opened, as she moved on, looking around for someone to help her.
“Grab the shoe,” Scott said.
Barnaby did.
The straps fell away, the cup around the stump eased off much easier than he thought, though not without a stab of protest, and he sighed, sagged, when Garing pulled the plastic limb away, through the jeans leg. The Cramp eased almost immediately, and he clenched his teeth in anticipation as he leaned forward to pull the jeans back up.
Barnaby held the leg away from his body, straps dangling. “C’mon, Byrns, for god’s sake.”
“A minute,” he asked. “Please. Just a second, okay?”
“No time.” Barnaby reached down, grabbed his arm, hauled him upright without apology. “So now what?”
Scott grinned. “You’ll have to be my crutch.”
“Christ!”
An arm around the fullback’s waist was good enough to get him to the street. Awkwardly. Twice he stumbled, nearly fell, until they found a reasonable rhythm. And as they moved, Scott wished he could kick at something, throw something, yell at someone for making him this way—almost but not quite good enough to pass for normal.
“Dumb shit, running like that,” Garing muttered as they turned down the street. “You know better, asshole. Christ, you’re heavy.”
“So what was I supposed to do?” he demanded heatedly, gulping air, forcing the residual pain to go back where it came from. “Fly?”
Barnaby grunted, pushed them to one side as a gang of young kids in football jackets raced up the Strip, yelling to each other, dodging and laughing into the street where the traffic had been stalled by a fire engine and the cruisers.
Scott’s right heel began to ache, his side grew a stitch. “Wait up,” he said before they’d gone half a block. “Not so fast. Gotta rest.”
Garing stopped, the false leg rapping impatiently against his side. Then he sniffed, looked around. “Byrns, what the fuck was that?”
Scott just looked at him until he turned away, moved on, practically dragging him along until he recovered the rhythm. “Where’d they go?”
“I don’t know. Tang’s car’s in the next lot, she found a place behind the Apollo. Maybe there. Panch went to find Laine and the kid.”
People stared.
Barnaby glowered at them, daring them to comment, forcing them to veer around them as if they had the plague.
Scott noticed and, for the moment, didn’t mind. He was too busy trying not to fall. He couldn’t fall. If he fell, he’d be a cripple. Helpless. And helpless fed a slow growing anger that tightened the muscles of his neck, his jaw, promising another cramp if he didn’t calm down. Helpless, and feeling as though he weighed no more than a gnat in Barnaby’s grip.
A siren whooped and died.
What had he seen?
A stiff flurry of flakes slapped his cheeks, made him duck his face into Barnaby’s arm. The smell of fear there and damp cloth.
What the hell had he seen?
A man tried to stop them, ask what had happened, but Barnaby waved the leg in his face, straps whipping the air between them, and snapped something about getting the hell out the way of an emergency, was the jackass blind or what?
Scott almost giggled.
If he hadn’t been so scared, he might have even laughed.
The wind kicked once, scrambling a torn tabloid cover into Garing’s legs. He growled at it, kicked it away, and had to sidestep to avoid losing his balance. Scott yelped, positive he was going to fall, throwing out his right hand to grab at something that wasn’t there. When the threat passed and he could breathe easier, he looked up to ask a question and saw Barnaby checking over his shoulder every few feet. It wasn’t the crowds, or the converging police cars; he was looking up.
“It isn’t there,” Scott told him.
“Hell it ain’t.”
A voice called their names.
“It’s gone.”
“Hell it is, gimp.”
Scott jammed his heel into the pavement, startling Barnaby into stopping. “Damnit, will you stop calling me that?”
Garing’s eyes narrowed.
“God, if you don’t like me so much, why did you come back?”
He felt the grip loosen, and grabbed Garing’s coat more tightly.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with who likes who, Byrns.”
The call a second time.
Scott nodded, and concentrated on keeping up. It had been a stupid question, at least from Barnaby’s point of view. They were part of the Pack; no other explanation needed.
They managed to reach the corner without having to stop again, without speaking, and were forced to wait while a patrolman funneled what vehicles he could off the Boulevard, away from the activity behind him. Beyond the cars, the grumbling trucks, Scott spotted Katie standing under the Apollo’s marquee, waving her arms wildly, beckoning, turning to walk away and turning again to wave again. White light falling around her. More a shadow than a girl.
“There,” he said, pointing.
Barnaby looked, and nodded, and stepped off the curb.
“Hey, you want to get us killed?”
Garing grinned. “No sweat.” He swung Scott in front of him and waved the leg over his head. “Coming through,” he bellowed. “Move your ass, jerks, we’re coming through.”
I’m going to die, Scott thought in dismay as a car braked less than inch from Barnaby’s left knee; my god, I’m going to die.
“Hurry up!” Katie yelled.
She was midway down the block, but Barnaby yelled anyway: “Jesus Christ, hold your water! He can’t fly, you know!”
Scott laughed.
Barnaby stopped without warning in the middle of the street.
“Hey.” Scott tried to pull him on. “Hey, C’mon, man, we—”
Barnaby pointed with the leg.
He pointed up.
Scott looked.
As traffic complained loudly on the street and the patrolman puffed his cheeks and used his whistle, white-gloved hands pointing and directing as he stepped side to side in increasing frustration.
As customers leaving the theater watched and stood in uncertain groups, some wandering immediately off to see what all the commotion was about, others not so sure and hanging back, keeping their distance from Katie, rising up on their toes as if that would provide them proper height.
Scott saw it all, and saw Katie.
As the wind returned, grabbing hats, toppling trash bins, snapping awnings and their fringes, he saw something monstrous press down out of the night sky, piercing the dome of the light the shops and theaters and streetlamps had thrown up. He didn’t know what it was—a hand, a claw, a foot, an insect’s leg—but he saw it.
And he yelled.
Katie grinned and nodded vigorously, yanked on her cap and started toward them.
Barnaby began to run, was pulled up by Scott’s weight, and yanked him off his feet, carrying him one-armed, tilting sideways, until they reached the curb, where he dropped Scott against the hood of a parked car.
“Katie!” he bellowed.
Scott couldn’t see properly, there was too much movement, too many panicked people in the way.
But he could hear the sudden groan and crack of masonry, could hear a man’s voice cry out a sudden panicked warning.
Seconds later, sparks exploded from the corners of the marquee as wires and cables were exposed and snapped in two, bulbs popped before blacking out, mortar dust and shards of brick flew from the theater’s upper facade. Streamers of white fire reaching into the sky. Veils of white falling to the sidewalk, a fireworks display, crackling and steaming.
Scott threw his arms up to protect his face just as the marquee ripped away from the building.
The last thing he saw was Katie waving to him even as she looked up at the white, coming down.
Scott sagged against the car, didn’t care when he felt himself sliding.
There was a great silence on Summit Boulevard, an instant of stunned immobility.
Even the wind had temporarily lost its voice.
But not its vigor.
Fire convulsed in it; sparks became dervishes; branches on the far side of the park wall clawed their way over; the snow increased and marked its currents.
Barnaby turned to him, lips working, hands fluttering.
When sound returned, it came with screams.
Garing picked him up, he didn’t complain, and ran down the side street and flung them into the parking lot. They could see the others racing toward them from the other end. Barnaby howled a warning, Scott punched at them to turn around, get away, for god’s sake, run. Pancho, back from the diner, was the first to understand and grabbed the girls to stop them.
Tang instantly retreated.
Fern stood there, fighting Pancho’s hands, slapping at them, twisting away from them, calling Scott’s name above the wind that filled the air with smoke now and the stench of burning wire.
It’s gone, Scott realized then, feeling as if he’d been slammed in the stomach with a log; Katie’s gone, and now it’s gone too.
It is, he answered himself.
Katie’s nightmare is gone, but it isn’t over.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Blade Murtaugh ran.
He didn’t stop at his bedroom alley.
He didn’t stop when a cruiser’s spotlight tried to pin him to the ground.
He was crazy.
He didn’t want to be crazy. Not like Slap. Not like Bonita. But he was crazy. He was sure of it now. If he wasn’t crazy, then he was going to die and the Hat Trick Boys wouldn’t even be a memory.
The Queen of Foxriver sat primly on her bench at the station, hands carefully folded, turban placed just so, just right, knees together, coat properly buttoned. A regal muffler around her throat. Regal boots on her feet.
Two lights beneath the platform roof, a handful from the houses across the way, beyond the trees that dodged the wind kicking at the railbed gravel.
She didn’t mind not having the sun, and the occasional snowflake that brushed against her face was a comfort, a soft caress, a kiss from the season that seemed to have arrived too soon.
But she didn’t mind.
The train would be here shortly.
She was sure of it
Despite the din that rose above the park from far, far away, and the pandemonium it signaled, despite the occasional puzzling flares of brightness that made the shadows duck like guilty children behind their posts, she knew her train would arrive before she knew it. She checked her watch; it was only just after nine.
Any minute now. Any minute.
And when it came, when it slowed, when the engineer greeted her with a salute of the train’s horn, she would rise and count the windows, the train would stop, and she would be on her way to the warm place.
Blade would understand.
Though he had expected her at the banquet hall, and she had as much as given her royal promise to be there, she had a feeling he would understand that things had changed. With Lord Tobin no longer around to protect her, to fill her coffers, she was forced to protect herself.
As she had just after sunset, when that disgusting, fat serving woman had forced her fat way into her private quarters, yelling all sorts of things, foul things, obscene things, and the Queen had no recourse but to punish her.
Execute her.
Then make her way through the rest of the cold castle, the knife close to her side, searching for the rest of those who conspired against her benevolent rule, against the faithful Blade, against the dear Lord Tobin.
She felt a tear.
She swallowed.
The tear never fell.
They had been surprised, those unfaithful others, but were too weak from living softly under the Queen’s command, too bereft of purpose. They made no rational attempt to deny their complicity, their fear of her, and only the old, foul-mouthed retainer tried to defend himself with his sword. A pitiful weapon. The Queen took a single blow to her shoulder, and delivered a blow herself.
The castle was hers.
And now it was hers no longer.
Blade would understand.
He would miss her, no doubt, but he would understand, and forgive, and perhaps once in a while think kindly of her in his dreams.
And her knights, of course; her dear sweet knights all dressed in black armor, would have to find someone else to serve.
The rails began to hum.
The Queen began to smile.
Blade ran.
Cold air slicing his lungs, threatening a headache, cleared his mind, cleared his eyes, relieved him of the notion that he was going, had gone crazy.
He knew it was so because the rats were coming.
They had disguised themselves this time, the little bastards, dressing like some kind of weird shit creature from the movies he remembered from when he was a kid. He had seen it almost squash that little girl, the one who ran with the Pack. She’d been lucky tonight. Lucky he’d been in the alley, trying to make up his mind if Leg had really asked him inside. It was so different, so unexpected, he hadn’t been able to think two straight thoughts since the funeral, walk two straight blocks without turning around and walking back, just to be sure he had done it, just to be sure he wasn’t lost.
Then the wind came.
And the darker piece of the night.
She had been lucky, the little girl.
Tomorrow would be different.
But for now there were the rats.
And they were going to kill him.
He ran across the plaza in front of Town Hall.
His shadows scrambling up the pots that held the flowers long dead, up the stairs as he swerved by them, filled the narrow gap between the Rotunda and an office building with no windows on this side, fled into the street when he left Town Hall and almost left him behind.
It was the long way around to the train station.
It was one of his secret ways.
But he had to get there without the rats ambushing him because he knew the station was where she was.
Waiting for her dumb train. Sitting in the cold. Going to freeze to death like the Hat Trick Boy. Trying to get out.
Always trying to get out.
Ain’t nobody gonna get out this time.
Nobody.
The town was going to die.
He didn’t want to die with it.
A dog chased him.
He kicked at it until it ran in the opposite direction.
