Darkfall

now.”

The screw popped loose. The vent plate swung down, away from the ventilation outlet, hanging from the one remaining screw.

Rebecca hustled the kids toward the door.

A nightmare crawled out of the duct. It hung there on the wall, with utter disregard for gravity, as if there were suction pads on its feet, although it didn't seem equipped with anything of that sort.

“Jesus,” Keith said, stunned.

Jack shuddered at the thought of this repulsive little beast touching Davey or Penny.

The creature was the size of a rat. In shape, at least, its body was rather like that of a rat, too: low-slung, long in the flanks, with shoulders and haunches that were large and muscular for an animal of its size. But there the resemblance to a rat ended, and the nightmare began. This thing was hairless. Its slippery skin was darkly mottled gray-green-yellow and looked more like a slimy fungus than like flesh. The tail was not at all similar to a rat's tail; it was eight or ten inches long, an inch wide at the base, segmented in the manner of a scorpion's tail, tapering and curling up into the air above the beast's hindquarters, like that of a scorpion, although it wasn't equipped with a stinger. The feet were far different from a rat's feet: They were oversize by comparison to the animal itself; the long toes were triple-jointed, gnarly; the curving claws were much too big for the feet to which they were fitted; a razor-sharp, multiply-barbed spur curved out from each heel. The head was even more deadly in appearance and design than were the feet; it was formed over a flattish skull that had many unnaturally sharp angles, unnecessary convexities and concavities, as if it had been molded by an inexpert sculptor. The snout was long and pointed, a bizarre cross between the muzzle of a wolf and that of a crocodile. The small monster opened its mouth and hissed, revealing too many pointed teeth that were angled in various directions along its jaws. A surprisingly long black tongue slithered out of the mouth, glistening like a strip of raw liver; the end of it was forked, and it fluttered continuously.

But the thing's eyes were what frightened Jack the most. They appeared not to be eyes at all; they had no pupils or irises, no solid tissue that he could discern. There were just empty sockets in the creature's malformed skull, crude holes from which radiated a harsh, cold, brilliant light. The intense glow seemed to come from a fire within the beast's own mutant cranium. Which simply could not be. Yet was. And the thing wasn't blind, either, as it should have been; there wasn't any question about its ability to see, for it fixed those fire-filled “eyes” on Jack, and he could feel its demonic gaze as surely as he would have felt a knife rammed into his gut. That was the other thing that disturbed him, the very worst aspect of those mad eyes: the death-cold, hate-hot, soul-withering feeling they imparted when you dared to meet them. Looking into the thing's eyes, Jack felt both physically and spiritually ill.

With insectile disregard for gravity, the beast slowly crept head-first down the wall, away from the duct.

A second creature appeared at the opening in the ventilation system. This one wasn't anything like the first. It was in the form of a small man, perhaps ten inches high, crouching up there in the mouth of the duct. Although it possessed the crude form of a man, it was in no other way humanlike. Its hands and feet resembled those of the first beast, with dangerous claws and barbed spurs. The flesh was funguslike, slippery looking, though less green, more yellow and gray. There were black circles around the eyes and patches of corrupted-looking black flesh fanning out from the nostrils. Its head was misshapen, with a toothy mouth that went from ear to ear. And it had those same hellish eyes, although they were smaller than the eyes in the ratlike thing.

Jack saw that the man-form beast was holding a weapon. It looked like a miniature spear. The point was well-honed; it caught the light and glinted along its cutting edge.

Jack remembered the first two victims of Lavelle's crusade against the Carramazza family. They had both been stabbed hundreds of times with a weapon no bigger than a penknife — yet not a penknife. The medical examiner had been perplexed; the lab technicians had been baffled. But, of course, it wouldn't have occurred to them to explore the possibility that those homicides were the work of ten-inch voodoo devils and that the murder weapons were miniature spears.

Voodoo devils? Goblins? Gremlins? What exactly were these things?

Did Lavelle mold them from clay and then somehow invest them with life and malevolent purpose?

Or were they conjured up with the help of pentagrams and sacrifices and arcane chants, the way demons were supposedly called forth by Satanists? Were they demons?

Where did they come from?

The man-form thing didn't creep down the wall behind the first beast. Instead, it leaped out of the duct, dropping to the top of the dresser, landing on its feet, agile and quick.

It looked past Jack and Keith, and it said, “Penny? Davey?”

Jack pushed Keith across the threshold, into the hall, then followed him and pulled the door shut behind them.

An instant later, one of the creatures — probably the manlike beast — crashed against the other side of the door and began to claw frantically at it.

The kids were already out of the hall, in the living room.

Jack and Keith hurried after them.

Faye shouted, “Jack! Quick! They're coming through the vent out here!”

“Trying to cut us off,” Jack said.

Jesus, we're not going to make it, they're everywhere, the damned building's infested with them, they're all around us-

In his mind, Jack quickly slammed the door on those bleak thoughts, closed it tight and locked it and told himself that their worst enemies were their own pessimism and fear, which could enervate and immobilize them.

Just this side of the foyer, in the living room, Faye and Rebecca were helping the kids put on coats and boots.

Snarling, hissing, and eager wordless jabbering issued from the vent plate in the wall above the long sofa.

Beyond the slots in that grille, silver eyes blazed in the darkness. One of the screws was being worked loose from inside.

Davey had only one boot on, but time had run out.

Jack picked up the boy and said, “Faye, bring his other boot, and let's get moving.”

Keith was already in the foyer. He'd been to the closet and had gotten coats for himself and Faye. Without pausing to put them on, he grabbed Faye by the arm and hurried her out of the apartment.

Penny screamed.

Jack turned toward the living room, instinctively crouching slightly and holding Davey even tighter.

The vent plate was off the duct above the sofa.

Something was starting to come out of the darkness there.

But that wasn't why Penny had screamed. Another hideous intruder had come out of the kitchen, and that was what had seized her attention. It was two-thirds of the way through the dining room, scurrying toward the living room archway, coming straight at them. Its coloration was different from that of the other beasts, although no less disgusting; it was a sickly yellow-white with cancerous-looking green-black pockmarks all over it, and like the other beasts Lavelle had sent, this one appeared to be slick, slimy. It was also a lot bigger than any of the others, almost three times the size of the ratlike creature in the bedroom. Somewhat resembling an iguana, although more slender through its body than an iguana, this spawn of nightmares was three to four feet in length, had a lizard's tail, a lizard's head and face. Unlike an iguana, however, the small monster had eyes of fire, six legs, and a body so slinky that it appeared capable of tying itself in knots; it was the very slinkiness and flexibility that made it possible for a creature of this size to slither through the ventilation pipes. Furthermore, it had a pair of batlike wings which were atrophied and surely useless but which unfurled and flapped and fluttered with frightening effect.

The thing charged into the living room, tail whipping back and forth behind it. Its mouth cracked wide, emitting a cold shriek of triumph as it bore down on them.

Rebecca dropped to one knee and fired her revolver. She was at point-blank range; she couldn't miss; she didn't. The slug smashed squarely into its target. The shot lifted the beast off the floor and flung it backwards as if