She could see his face contorting as he attempted to use his talent to disentangle himself from it. But it drew him nearer, with little effort. Constance almost felt pity for Ephram…
And she felt herself drawn after him. She felt a jolt of Reward as she staggered toward the Magnus, transmitted through Ephram but originating in this Lord of Akishra itself. She was connected to Ephram – she had to go with him. It was that simple. It was not to be questioned…
No. Go your way, my dear. More than me, it wants you. Go. Ephram's voice, from nowhere. Let us take some comfort in frustrating it, a little.
And then she felt Ephram withdraw from her. His psychic fingers slipping out of their sockets in her brain. She felt cold and strange and sick and relieved.
Ephram tried once more to hold himself back. Shouting: 'Ich bin der Ubermensch!' (Hearing that, the Handy Man laughed).
Then Ephram was drawn up inside the Spirit -
Constance found her will to move again; she turned and jerked the black girl to her feet. Denver and the Handy Man had gone ahead of her, fled from the room.
Constance pulled the sagging girl along with her, out into the hall.
The wind roared through the door, behind them, banging it open and closed, open and closed, and open again. Denver and his wife's servant were waiting for her, the Handy Man weeping now, calling softly, 'Elma… Elma…'
Constance felt it when Ephram exploded. She felt it as a release of hatred: her own. And suffering: his. Her own buried hatred; his buried suffering. She screamed like a vivisected cat. She bared her teeth at Denver – preparing to lunge at him. Sink her teeth into him.
Then a mountainous pressure vanished completely. It was just gone.
There were two sickening squelching sounds. Out of sight, in the room behind them: Two bodies pulverized to lumps of mush, dropping from midair to splash over the remains of the bed and the dead boy. Constance looked through the open door. The room was empty, except for the absurd tumble of body parts and the fresher, steaming, unrecognizably pulped heaps of what had been two human bodies. The ceiling was in place again, with the same cobwebs.
I ought to be happy Ephram's dead, Constance thought. She smiled wearily. And I sure as Hell am.
The Spirit – he Magnus, the Akishra, the godsized predator of Astral places – was gone, for now. It had withdrawn.
Constance's rage floundered and lay sodden in her. She swayed, feeling as if the floor were rocking under her, though in fact the house had settled to a new quietude.
Slowly, she turned toward the front door. It was very easy to figure out, she told herself. You just go away. Just walk away…
'No,' the More Man told her. He took a gun from his coat pocket. The tendrils, the thing on his head, were no longer visible. But she knew it was there, too, cocked as much as the gun.
'No,' the More Man said. 'You will stay with us. And play.'
13
The Hills near Malibu
'He's out there, talkin' to nothin' again,' Lonny said.
'He do that a lot? Prentice asked, wearily. He was pressing an old towel soaked in cold water against his battered head. 'I did some of that myself, lately.'
He and Lonny were sitting in the best-lit corner of the old shack. Prentice propped up on the bed, Lonny sitting on the rocking chair next to it. The dog paced restively near the closed wooden door, growling softly to itself.
'It's almost dawn, too,' Lonny went on. 'Fuckin Drax's been out there since midnight. Smokin' weed and chewing those cactus buttons and talking to those dolls on their posts out there. It's trippin' me out. Like he might geek out and come in here and smoke us with that shotgun. You sure you can't sleep? You oughta.'
'Sure, like I can sleep when you talk about how this fuckin' crazy old hippy is going to come in and waste me while I'm sawing logs. Shit! Anyway, I think I remember something about how you're not supposed to sleep for a while if you get a concussion. If that's what this is.'
'So let's get you to a doctor, dude.'
''No. Drax says he's got a way to beat them. Let's check him out.'
'If he's not just, like, hallucinatin' it.'
Wincing, Prentice got up and walked to the window, and peered out at Drax. He was squatting between two of his kerosene lamps. Small white insects flung themselves at the lamp, drew back, and flung themselves again. The dawn was just adding aluminium filings to the blue steel of the sky. Drax said something inaudible, then cocked his head to listen. He rocked back on his heels, laughing, reacting to something that was said. By no one visible. Then he stood up, and stretched. Looked at the horizon. He stared into the white crescent of sun that showed over the hills. Then he turned, picked up a kerosene lamp in one hand and the shotgun in the other, and strode back to the shack.
Drax shouldered through the door, hands laden with gun and lamp – and paused to glare at Prentice as if he'd never seen him before. Then he seemed to remember, and grinned. 'Yore wife got a great sense of humour. Says some damn funny things.' He stalked past Prentice to the woodstove in the corner, hung the lamp on a nail, and dumped water from a bucket into a coffee pot sitting on the stove's white upper shelf. Some of the water spilled onto the stove griddle, and it sizzled into steam.
Prentice stared at him. After a moment, not caring much about the shotgun that Drax had leaned against the wall near the stove, said, 'You're full of shit.'
Drax nodded, his beard wagging. 'Her name's Amy, am I right?'
Prentice shivered. 'You found that out from someone else.'
Lonny snorted. 'You never told me her name. He be talking to Orphy, too, and he came back with some shit only Orphy know about.'
It wasn't that Prentice disbelieved in the supernatural. Not after what he'd seen in the car. But he didn't want to believe Amy was… so close.
Drax took a brown sack of coffee from one of six stacked crates, all of them containing coffee, and dumped an unconscionable amount in the coffee pot. 'Fuck you if you don't believe it, pal,' he said cheerfully. 'But how you think you found your way here? Luck? No more'n this boy did. I've been working on these here friendships for a while…'
They drank coffee and Prentice ate a plate of stale Oreo cookies, which Drax also bought by the crate. He declined marijuana. After drinking a cup of acrid coffee with a thoughtful look on his face, Drax hurried to the door, ran outside, and vomited explosively. Then he came back in, wiping his beard with the back of his hand, muttering, 'Damn peyote do it to me most every time, when I drink coffee.' And to Prentice's amazement poured himself another cup of coffee.
After they'd eaten, they went outside to pee. Prentice was feeling better. He pissed toward Denver's house, though it was hidden by the swell of a hill and trees and distance, and pissed toward Lissa's wrecked car, and spat once in that direction too. It did him good.
Then Drax said, 'I want to show you what I got to kill them things with. If we got time to do it.'
'What's this about 'time to do it'?' Prentice asked, walking with Drax and Lonny through the blue light of early morning, around the side of the shack.
'They going to reproduce like a motherfucker, so to speak,' Drax said, 'and if they get too far along we're dead meat. A wright. Here we go. What do you think?'
He flapped a hand in the general direction of the battered red '59 Ford pick-up. It was scored with rusty dents. Its front window had been knocked out. Its crooked hood was wired down. It had oversized tyres with big, stand-out tread. Some sort of old tractor tyres, never meant for a pick-up.
'What do I think of what?' Prentice asked, his headache beginning to pound again.
