I eased up on the gun more and blinked at him. "What are you talking about?"
"You know how hard it is to make a living as a clairvoyant. So many horrible memories, and you usually end up working with the police for no money. I'd been using my powers to get myself in good with wealthy people who weren't so careful about the law. I'd promise them something, but it wouldn't be real. Then they'd be too embarrassed to go to the police about it. Or couldn't complain that they got cheated out of a stolen object. It worked. I only swindled crooks. It worked."
"Until Niley," I said.
"He's crazy. If he ever finds out I tricked him, he'll kill me and have Linus feed my soul to that thing."
"They're going to kill Charlotte to try and find something that isn't even here, you asshole."
"I know, I know, and I'm sorry. I am really, really sorry. I didn't know what he was capable of. Oh, God, let me go. Let me run away."
"You're going to get us into that house. You're going to help us rescue Daniel."
"There isn't time to rescue them both," Howard said. "They're going to kill the man and sacrifice the woman now. If I get you into the house, the woman will be dead before you can get to her."
Roxanne appeared on the other side of the tree, just there, like magic. Howard gasped. "I don't think so," she said. She opened a mouth full of fangs and snapped them near his face. Howard screamed.
She pressed clawed hands into the bark of the tree on either side of him and clawed long furrows in the bark. Howard fainted.
I left him with Roxanne and the vampires and Ben. When he came to, he'd get them into the house and they'd rescue Daniel. I'd take the rest and rescue Charlotte. There would be no choosing. No either/or. We would save them both. I had to believe it as I threw myself into the black woods. I unleashed that power inside me and sent it outward, casting like a net to catch ... a faint, ruffling scent of evil. They'd know I was coming now, but it couldn't be helped. I ran like I'd run earlier in the day with Richard. I ran as if the ground told me where to go, and the trees opened up like welcoming hands. I ran in the dark and couldn't see and didn't need to. I felt Richard running, running towards us. I felt the hard edge of his panic and ran faster.
45
They'd chosen the top of a hill that had once been meadow, but some time today they'd bush-hogged all the grass and meadow flowers so that the hill was bare and broken under the moonlight.
In the movies there would be an altar and maybe a fire or two, at least a torch. But there was nothing but darkness and a silver wash of moonlight. The palest thing in the clearing was Charlotte Zeeman's skin. She was tied naked to stakes driven into the ground. I thought at first she was unconscious, but her hands flexed and strained against the ropes. I was both happy to see her still fighting and sorry that she hadn't passed out.
Linus Beck was wearing the proverbial black hooded robe. I guess if it saved me from seeing him naked, I could live with it.
Niley stood by Linus. He was dressed in the same suit I'd seen him in earlier. They'd drawn a circle on the ground with something dark and powdery. Charlotte was inside the circle. She was food for the demon, bait.
Wilkes stood not eight feet from me, to my right. He had a high-powered rifle and was searching the darkness.
Linus's voice rose in a singsong rhythm that filled the night with echoes and movement as if the darkness itself shivered at the words.
Nathaniel and I lay on the ground at the line of trees, watching. Jason and Jamil were supposed to be on the other side of the clearing. A moment of concentration told me where they were. The marks with Richard were open and roaring. I'd never been so aware of the scent and sounds of a summer night. It was like my skin expanded outward, touching every tree and bush. I was liquid and barely contained within my skin.
I felt Richard and the others moving through the trees like a solid wind. The lukoi were coming. But they were miles away, and the spell was almost complete. I could feel it growing, swelling, like a dank, unseen fog. The evil was coming.
There were shots from the house, echoing up the hill. Wilkes turned towards them and I went to one knee and sighted down my arms. The first shot hit him in the middle of his back. The second shot took him a little higher up the back because he was falling to his knees. He stayed motionless on his knees for one of those seconds that lasted an eternity. I had time to put a third bullet in his back.
A bullet hit the tree next to my head, and I rolled back into the underbrush. Three more shots hit the bushes where I had been. Niley had a gun, a semiauto that might hold eighteen bullets if he'd modified the clip. Not good. Of course, it might hold only ten. Hard to tell in the dark from this distance.
I sidled up to a tree, leaned my arm against it, and sighted on his shape in the bright darkness. I pulled off one careful shot and he went down. I wasn't sure how badly he was hit, but I'd hit something. He fired back, and I hit the ground.
Nathaniel crawled to me on his belly. "What do we do?"
Niley yelled, "You cannot cross the circle, Anita. If you kill us, all you can do is watch Charlotte die."
I risked a peek. Niley had taken cover. I could shoot Linus, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure what that would do to Charlotte. I didn't know what the spell entailed. I just didn't know that much about sorcery.
"What do you want, Niley?"
"Throw your gun out."
"You throw yours out, too, or I shoot Linus."
"What happens to Charlotte if Linus dies in midspell?"
"I'll take my chances. Throw out the gun."
He stood and tossed the gun off the side of the hill. I couldn't hear it hit over Linus's chanting, but he'd done it. I moved out of the trees and tossed the Browning away. I still had the Firestar.
"The other gun, too," Niley said. "Remember that Linus searched you earlier today."
I tossed the Firestar away into the broken grass. It was all right. This wasn't about guns anymore.
I felt the spell close. Linus's last word reverberated on the night like a great brass bell that had been struck slightly off-key, but it echoed for all the flatness of the note. It echoed and grew until the skin on my body tried to crawl away and hide, creeping as if every insect in the world were under my skin. For a second, I couldn't breathe or move. Then Niley's voice came, "You are too late, Anita. Too late."
Charlotte was screaming through the gag on her mouth. Screaming, over and over again, as fast as she could draw breath.
I stared across the meadow and found that there was something else in the circle. I wasn't sure if it was the blackness of it that made it hard to see, or if it was like smoke, never exactly one shape. It seemed to be about man height, maybe eight feet, not much more. It was so thin that it looked like it was made of sticks. Its legs were longer than they should have been, bent wrong somehow. I realized that the longer I stared at it, the more solid it was growing. The neck was a long serpentine, bent back on its shoulders like a heron, and it had a beak for a mouth. If it had eyes, I couldn't see them. The face looked blind and only half-formed.
"You are too late," Niley said again.
"No. I'm not." I stood and walked out of the trees. Niley seemed terribly confident now that the demon was here.
"Only Linus can send it back to whence it came. If you harm him, then it will certainly devour the fair Charlotte."
I ignored him because I knew the plan was for the thing to eat Charlotte. Let them think I believed they intended to save her. Let them think she was still useful as a hostage. I wanted to get close enough to see the circle of entrapment they'd put up.
Charlotte had stopped screaming. I could hear her voice trapped behind the gag, but she was speaking now, not screaming. A strong woman, a very strong woman.