Darkfall

But nothing worse than that. Nothing with silvery eyes. Nothing with lots of pointed little teeth.

Not yet.

He pressed the Grofelds' button, asked if this were the Santini apartment, and was curtly told that the Santinis' mailbox was the next one.

He rang the Santinis and was prepared to ask if theirs was the Porterfield apartment. But the Santinis apparently expected someone and were considerably less cautious than their neighbors, for they buzzed him through the inner door without asking who he was.

Rebecca ushered the kids inside, and Jack quickly followed, closing the foyer door behind them.

He could have used his police ID to get past the foyer, but it would have taken too long. With the crime rate spiraling upward, most people were more suspicious these days than they'd once been. If he had been straightforward with Mrs. Evans, right there at the start, she wouldn't have accepted his word that he was a cop. She would have wanted to come down — and rightly so — to examine his badge through the glass panel in the inner door. By that time, one of Lavelle's demonic assassins might have passed by the building and spotted them.

Besides, Jack was reluctant to involve other people, for to do so would be to put their lives at risk if the goblins should suddenly arrive and attack.

Apparently, Rebecca shared his concern about dragging strangers into it, for she warned the kids to be especially quiet as she escorted them into a shadowy recess under the stairs, to the right of the main entrance.

Jack crowded into the nook with them, away from the door. They couldn't be seen from the street or from the stairs above, not even if someone leaned out over the railing and looked down.

After less than a minute had passed, a door opened a few floors overhead. Footsteps. Then someone, apparently Mr. Santini, said, “Alex? Is that you?”

Under the stairs, they remained silent, unmoving.

Mr. Santini waited.

Outside, the wind roared.

Mr. Santini descended a few steps. “Is anyone there?”

Go away, Jack thought. You haven't any idea what you might be walking into. Go away.

As if he were telepathic and had received Jack's warning, the man returned to his apartment and closed the door.

Jack sighed.

Eventually, speaking in a tremulous whisper, Penny said, “How will we know when it's safe to go outside again?”

“We'll just give it a little time, and then when it seems right… I'll slip out there and take a peek,” Jack said softly.

Davey was shaking as if it were colder in here than it was outside. He wiped his runny nose with the sleeve of his coat and said, “How much time will we wait?”

“Five minutes,” Rebecca told him, also whispering. “Ten at most. They'll be gone by then.”

“They will?”

“Sure. They might already be gone.”

“You really think so?” Davey asked. “Already?”

“Sure,” Rebecca said. “There's a good chance they didn't follow us. But even if they did come after us, they won't hang around this area all night.”

“Won't they?” Penny asked doubtfully.

“No, no, no,” Rebecca said. “Of course they won't. Even goblins get bored, you know.”

“Is that what they are?” Davey asked. “Goblins? Really?”

“Well, it's hard to know exactly what we ought to call them,” Rebecca said.

“Goblins was the only word I could think of when I saw them,” Penny said. “It just popped into my mind.”

“And it's a pretty darned good word,” Rebecca assured her. “You couldn't have thought of anything better, so far as I'm concerned. And, you know, if you think back to all the fairytales you ever heard, goblins were always more bark than bite. About all they ever really did to anyone was scare them. So if we're patient and careful, really careful, then everything will be all right.”

Jack admired and appreciated the way Rebecca was handling the children, alleviating their anxiety. Her voice had a soothing quality. She touched them continually as she spoke to them, squeezed and stroked them, gentled them down.

Jack pulled up his sleeve and looked at his watch.

Ten-fourteen.

They huddled together in the shadows under the stairs, waiting. Waiting.

CHAPTER SIX

I

For a while Lavelle lay on the floor of the dark bedroom, stunned, breathing only with difficulty, numb with pain. When Rebecca Chandler shot a few of those small assassins in the Jamisons' apartment, Lavelle had been in psychic contact with them, and he'd felt the impact of the bullets on their golem bodies. He hadn't been injured, not any more than the demonic entities themselves had been injured. His skin wasn't broken. He wasn't bleeding. In the morning, there would be no bruises, no tenderness of flesh. But the impact of those slugs had been agonizingly real and had rendered him briefly unconscious.

He wasn't unconscious now. Just disoriented. When the pain began to subside a little, he crawled around the room on his belly, not certain what he was searching for, not even certain where he was. Gradually he regained his senses. He crept back to the bed, levered himself onto the mattress, and flopped on his back, groaning.

Darkness touched him.

Darkness healed him.

Snow tapped the windows.

Darkness breathed over him.

Roof rafters creaked in the wind.

Darkness whispered to him.

Darkness.

Eventually, the pain was gone.

But the darkness remained. It embraced and caressed him. He suckled on it. Nothing else soothed as completely and as deeply as the darkness.

In spite of his unsettling and painful experience, he was eager to reestablish the psychic link with the creatures that were in pursuit of the Dawsons. The ribbons were still tied to his ankles, wrists, chest, and head. The spots of cat's blood were still on his cheeks. His lips were still anointed with blood. And the blood veve was still on his chest. All he had to do was repeat the proper chants, which he did, staring at the tenebrous ceiling. Slowly, the bedroom faded around him, and he was once again with the silver-eyed horde, relentlessly stalking the Dawson children.

II