Then the first figure’s mouth spread likewise. The top of Duke’s skull was bitten off. Orbs of brain glimmered. Duke Belluxi died in flinching convulsions, atop a blanket of his own blood and offal.
Holy Mother of G—
The two figures looked at Ann. They seemed amused. Ann’s mind crumpled at the impact of recognition. One figure straightened up on her knees, her nipple ends erect as coat pegs; she chortled, smearing Duke Belluxi’s blood over her breasts and abdomen like some luxurious lotion. The other figure was sloppily eating gobbets of Duke’s brains out of the cranial vault.
Milly. Maedeen, Ann realized. But…
It was something she apprehended rather than saw, a recognition that somehow reared beneath the tainted features: pronglike taloned hands and feet, elongated heads, bottomless, primeval eyes.
Not women, Ann’s thoughts verified. Things.
Maedeen rummaged for plump morsels amid Duke’s plundered gut, while Milly rather greedily slurped blood and spinal fluid out of the emptied skull. They paused only briefly to grin at Ann.
By now her incomprehension turned her limp. Laughter followed her as she was dragged away suddenly from behind. She was being helped up, urged out the back door into darkness. She was insensible.
“Come on!” a voice bellowed at her. Rough hands shook her at her shoulders. “Snap out of it!”
Ann’s eyes roved up, focused on the plump face in moonlight. It was Chief Bard.
“It’s tonight, Ann! We’ve got to get you out of here!”
Her awareness returned in pieces, in slabs. “What…”
“They’re succubi, Ann. They’re part of a cult that’s as old as civilization,” Bard told her, dragging her now toward the woods behind the house.
“Then it’s all true,” Ann muttered. “Everything Tharp said—”
“Yes!”
“They want Melanie to be the physical body of—”
“Come on!” he yelled again.
But the voice stopped them in their tracks. They turned, staring. In the sliding glass door, Maedeen stood looking after them. She was holding what appeared to be one of Duke Belluxi’s lungs. Even at this distance, Ann could see the chaotic features of her transformed face, and the teeth glittering like chisel blades.
“Bring her back, Bard!” croaked the inhuman voice. “You can’t get away from us! You can never get away!”
Bard yanked her on through the brambles. The moon followed them like a distended, pink face. “I’m one of their helots,” he panted to explain, “but they never fully initiated me because they needed someone on the outside. I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to watch any more innocent people die for their devil. It’s your mother, Ann—she’s the wifmunuc. They’ve all been waiting for this day for the last—”
Thousand years, Ann finished in thought. Tharp had said the same thinly. But—
“Melanie,” she said “We have to get Melanie.”
“Melanie’s lost! She’s part of the bludcynn now. She’s not your daughter anymore, she’s hers!”
Ann pulled against him. “I’m not leaving Melanie!”
“I might be able to get her later,” Bard said. “But the most important thing right now is to get you as far away from the cirice as possible. If they don’t have you when the moon goes into complete apogee, then the Fulluht-Loc can’t take place.”
Could he really get Melanie back, or was he just placating her? Ann couldn’t think of a way to resist him; he was saving her life, after all. She supposed all she could do was hope and pray.
He’d parked his police cruiser at the end of Senlac Street, in the dark. He was sweating, harried. He rushed her into the passenger side, jumped in himself, and gunned the engine.
He paused on the shift. “It’s all true, Ann.”
“I…I know.”
“And I’m sorry.”
Ann tilted her head. He’d saved her life. What did he have to be sorry about?
His chubby face turned to her. “I’m very, very sorry.”
“But I’m not.” rose the voice from the darkness of the backseat.
Ann flailed, screaming. Bard’s fat hands grappled at her. He clamped her head in the crook of his elbow. She shrieked at the sharp deep prick of pain.
“Well done, Chief.” Dr. Ashby Heyd’s face emerged into the pink fight. “There, fine.” He gingerly withdrew the hypodermic needle from her neck. “That’s a good girl,” he said.
—
Chapter 34
Dr. Harold didn’t know what he was thinking. He’d stopped only briefly at his house—for his gun. Clinical psychiatrists easily received state gun permits. But what do I need a gun for? he queried himself.
What did he expect?
The highway seemed to thwart him, its abandonment, its wide, open darkness—or something. His high beams stretched out ahead of the car only to be sucked up by interminable black.
He did not try to calculate the coincidences, and the facts, that had been revealed to him tonight. What am I thinking? the question returned. It seemed fat, like a dull, protracted headache. What do I think I’m going to do? He felt certain that Tharp had already returned to Lockwood, that he was there now.
But where does that leave me?
He could call the police, but what would he tell them? That Tharp had gone back to the locale of his crimes to prevent the incarnation of a female demon? They’d be committing me, he considered. Besides, the authorities had ignored his and Greene’s early recommendations. Why should they listen now?
Maybe I should listen to myself.
The moon seemed to pace him, its odd pink light flittering through lone stands of trees. The light and the constant drone of the tires threatened to lull him at the wheel, or hypnotize him. Yes, he felt thwarted, he felt pushing upward against some bizarre mental gravity that was bent on repelling him. Paranoia, he dismissed. He felt he was racing against something, but he couldn’t imagine what. Time, perhaps, or unprecedented fears.
Or impossibilities, he thought.
The moon was so full now it looked pregnant in its raw light; it looked heavy enough to drag itself out of the sky and fall to earth. Doefolmon, the strange word came to his head. Moon of the devil.
And another word, a name: Ardat-Lil.
He could not erase the image from his memory. It seemed indelible—the sheer beauty wed into the features of sheer repugnance, sheer evil. Most religions were born out of reaction to other religions; their roots were obvious. But the Ur-locs? Pre- Christian? Even pre-Druidic? What bizarre sociology could’ve created such an idea?
Dr. Harold did not attempt to contemplate an answer.
He felt sick in increments, waning as the car droned on into the inclement dark. The pinkened moonlight on his face felt warm, humid. He could see it still, Tharp’s harrowing psych ward sketch transposing into a vision of stunning clarity: the perfect hourglass physique, the large and perfect breasts, and then the bestial three-fingered hands with talons like meat hooks, and—
The face, he remembered.
—a black, thinly stretched maw full of stalactitic teeth.
How long had he been driving now? It seemed like all night, or a week of nights. Perhaps he’d been driving in circles, his sense of direction perverted by Tharp’s perverted imagery.