Darkfall

it were a bundle of rags. It landed hard, clear back at the archway to the dining room.

It should have been blown to pieces. It wasn't.

The floor and walls should have been splashed with blood — or with whatever fluid pumped through these creatures' veins. But there was no mess whatsoever.

The thing flopped and writhed on its back for a few seconds, then rolled over and got onto its feet, wobbled sideways. It was disoriented and sluggish, but unharmed. It scuttled around in a circle, chasing its own tail.

Meanwhile, Jack's eyes were drawn to the repulsive thing that had come out of the duct above the sofa. It hung on the wall, mewling, approximately the size of a rat but otherwise unlike a rodent. More than anything else, it resembled a featherless bird. It had an eggshaped head perched atop a long, thin neck that might have been that of a baby ostrich, and it had a wickedly pointed beak with which it kept slashing at the air. However, its flickering, fiery eyes were not like those of any bird, and no bird on earth possessed stubby tentacles, like these, instead of legs. The beast was an abomination, a mutant horror; just looking at it made Jack queasy. And now, behind it, another similar though not identical creature crept out of the duct.

“Guns aren't any damned use against these things,” Jack said.

The iguana-form monstrosity was becoming less disoriented. In a moment it would regain its senses and charge at them again.

Two more creatures appeared at the far end of the dining room, crawling out of the kitchen, coming fast.

A screech drew Jack's attention to the far end of the living room, where the hallway led back to the bedroom and baths. The man-shaped thing was standing there, squealing, holding the spear above its head. It ran toward them, crossing the carpet with shocking speed.

Behind it came a horde of small but deadly creatures, reptilian-serpentine-canine-feline-insectile- rodentlike-arachnoid grotesqueries. In that instant Jack realized that they were, indeed, the Hellborn; they were demonic entities summoned from the depths of Hell by Lavelle's sorcery. That must be the answer, insane as it seemed, for there was no place else from which such gruesome horrors could have come. Hissing and chattering and snarling, they flopped and rolled over one another in their eagerness to reach Penny and Davey. Each of them was quite different from the one before it, although all of them shared at least two features: the eyes of silver-white fire, like windows in a furnace — and murderously sharp little teeth. It was as if the gates of Hell had been flung open.

Jack pushed Penny into the foyer. Carrying Davey, he followed his daughter out of the front door, into the eleventh-floor corridor, and hurried toward Keith and Faye, who stood with the white-haired doorman at one of the elevators, keeping the lift open.

Behind Jack, Rebecca fired three shots.

Jack stopped, turned. He wanted to go back for her, but he wasn't sure how he could do that and still protect Davey.

“Daddy! Hurry!” Penny screamed from where she stood half in and half out of the elevator.

“Daddy, let's go, let's go,” Davey said, clinging to him.

Much to Jack's relief, Rebecca came out of the apartment, unharmed. She fired one shot into the Jamisons' foyer, then pulled the door shut.

By the time Jack reached the elevators, Rebecca was right behind him. Gasping for breath, he put Davey down, and all seven of them, including the doorman, crowded into the cab, and Keith hit the button that was marked LOBBY.

The doors didn't immediately slide shut.

“They're gonna get in, they're gonna get in,” Davey cried, voicing the fear that had just flashed into everyone's mind.

Keith pushed the LOBBY button again, kept his thumb on it this time.

Finally the doors slid shut.

But Jack didn't feel any safer.

Now that he was closed up tight in the cramped cab, he wondered if they would have been wiser to take the stairs. What if the demons could put the lift out of commission, stop it between floors? What if they crept into the elevator shaft and descended onto the stranded cab? What if that monstrous horde found a way to get inside? God in heaven, what if…?

The elevator started down.

Jack looked up at the ceiling of the cab. There was an emergency escape hatch. A way out. And a way in. This side of the hatch was featureless: no hinges, no handles. Apparently, it could be pushed up and out — or pulled up and out by rescue workers on the other side. There would be a handle out there on the roof of the cab, which would make it easy for the demons, if they came. But since there wasn't a handle on the inside, the hatch couldn't be held down; the forced entrance of those vicious creatures couldn't be resisted — if they came.

God, please, don't let them come.

The elevator crawled down its long cables as slowly as it had pulled itself up. Tenth floor… ninth…

Penny had taken Davey's boot from Faye. She was helping her little brother get his foot into it.

Eighth floor.

In a haunted voice that cracked more than once, but still with her familiar imperious tone, Faye said, “What were they, Jack? What were those things in the vents?”

“Voodoo,” Jack said, keeping his eyes on the lighted floor indicator above the doors.

Seventh floor.

“Is this some sort of joke?” the doorman asked.

“Voodoo devils, I think,” Jack told Faye, “but don't ask me to explain how they got here or anything about them.”

Shaken as she was, and in spite of what she'd heard and seen in the apartment, Faye said, “Are you out of your mind?”

“Almost wish I was.”

Sixth floor.

“There aren't such things as voodoo devils,” Faye said. “There aren't any—”

“Shut up,” Keith told her. “You didn't see them. You left the guest room before they came out of the vent in there.”

Fifth floor.

Penny said, “And you'd gotten out of the apartment before they started coming through the living room vent, Aunt Faye. You just didn't see them — or you'd believe.”

Fourth floor.

The doorman said, “Mrs. Jamison, how well do you know these people? Are they—”

Ignoring and interrupting him, Rebecca spoke to Faye and Keith: “Jack and I have been on a weird case. Psychopathic killer. Claims to waste his victims with voodoo curses.”

Third floor.

Maybe we're going to make it, Jack thought. Maybe we won't be stopped between floors. Maybe we'll get out of here alive.

And maybe not.

To Rebecca, Faye said, “Surely you don't believe in voodoo.”

“I didn't,” Rebecca said. “But now… yeah.”

With a nasty shock, Jack realized the lobby might be teeming with small, vicious creatures. When the elevator doors opened, the nightmare horde might come rushing in, clawing and biting.

“If it's a joke, I don't get it,” the doorman said.

Second floor.

Suddenly Jack didn't want to reach the lobby, didn't want the lift doors to open. Suddenly he just wanted to go on descending in peace, hour after hour, on into eternity.

The lobby.

Please, no!

The doors opened.