drops the odds from “very unlikely” to “virtually impossible.”
Murphy was a cop and a competition shooter, and less than five feet away from her targets. She did the whole thing in one smooth move, the shots coming as a single pulsing hammer of sound.
The men in grey suits didn’t have time to so much as register her presence, much less do anything to avoid their fate. Clear liquid exploded from the backs of their skulls, and both men dropped to the sidewalk like rag dolls, their bodies and outfits deforming like a snowman in the spring, leaving behind nothing but ectoplasm, the translucent, gooey gel that was the matter of the Nevernever.
“Hell’s bells,” I choked, as my adrenaline spiked after the fact.
Murphy kept the gun on the two until it was obvious that they weren’t going to take up a second career as headless horsemen. Then she looked up and down the street, her cold blue eyes scanning for more threats as she popped the almost-full clip from the SIG and slapped a fully loaded one back in.
She may look like somebody’s favorite aunt, but Murph can play hardball.
A couple of seconds later, what sounded like the howls of a gang of rabid band saws filled the air. There were a lot more than twelve of them.
“Come on!” I shouted, and sprinted forward.
The grey suits weren’t individualists. It wasn’t unthinkable that they would possess some kind of shared consciousness. Whacking the look-outs had obviously both alerted and enraged the others, and I figured that they would respond the way any colony-consciousness does when one of its members gets attacked.
The grey suits were coming to kill us.
We couldn’t afford to run, not when they were this close to Morgan and Molly, but if the grey suits caught us on the open street, we were hosed. Our only chance was to move forward, fast, to get into the storage park while they went screaming out of it, looking for us. If we were quick enough, we might have time to get to the storage unit, collect Morgan and company, and make a quick escape through the portal in the floor and into the Nevernever.
I pounded across the street and through the entrance, with Murphy on my heels. I threw myself forward as the howls grew louder, and made it into the center row just as maybe twenty or twenty-five grey suits came rushing out of the other rows. Some of them saw us and slammed on the brakes, throwing up gravel with their expensive shoes, putting up a new tone of howl. The others belatedly began to turn as well, and then we were all the way into the center row of storage units, still moving at a dead run.
The grey suits rushed after us, but Murphy and I had a good forty-yard lead, and they didn’t appear to be superhumanly light on their feet. We were going to make it.
Then I remembered that the door to the storage bay was locked shut.
I fumbled for the key as I ran, trying to pull it out of the front pocket of my jeans so that it would be ready. I figured that if I didn’t get the door unlocked and open on the first try, the grey suits would catch up to us and kill us both.
So naturally I dropped the damn key.
I cursed and slid to a stop, slipping on the gravel. I looked around wildly for the dropped key, horribly aware of the mob of grey suits rushing toward us, now in eerie silence.
“Harry!” Murphy said.
“I know!”
She appeared beside me in a shooting stance, aiming at the nearest grey suit. “Harry!”
“I know!”
Metal gleamed amongst the gravel and I swooped down on it as Murphy opened fire with precise, measured shots, sending the nearest grey suit into a tumbling sprawl. The others just vaulted over him and kept coming.
I’d found the key, but it was already too late.
Neither of us was going to make it to the shelter of my hideaway.
Chapter Nineteen
“Stay close!” I shouted. I thrust the end of my staff into the gravel and dragged it through, drawing a line in the dust and stones. I swiftly inscribed a quick, rough circle maybe four feet across around Murphy and me, actually getting between her gun and the grey suits for a second.
“Dammit, Harry, get down!” she shouted.
I did so, reaching out to touch the line in the gravel, slamming a quick effort of will into the simple design. Murphy’s gun barked twice. I felt the energy gather in the circle and coalesce in a rush, snapping into place in a sudden and invisible wall.
The nearest of the grey suits staggered, and then flung itself into a forward dive. Murphy flinched back, and I grabbed her, hard, before she could cross the circle and disrupt it.
The grey suit slammed into the circle as if striking a solid wall, rebounding from its surface in a flash of blue- white light that described a phantom cylinder in the air. An instant later, more of the grey suits did exactly the same thing, maybe twenty of them, each of them bouncing off the circle’s field.
“Easy!” I said to Murphy, still holding her against me. “Easy, easy!” I felt her relax a little, ceasing to struggle against being held in place. “It’s okay,” I said. “As long as we don’t break the circle, they can’t get through.”
We were both shaking. Murphy took a pair of gulping breaths. We just stood there for a moment, while the grey suits spread out around the circle, reaching out with their hands to find its edges. I had time to get a better look at them while they did.
They were all the same height and weight. Their features were unremarkable and similar, if not quite identical. They looked as if they could have all been from the same family. Their eyes were all the same color, an odd grey- green, and there was no expression, none whatsoever, on their faces.
One of them reached out as if to try to touch me, and his open hand flattened against the circle’s field. As it did, a freaking mouth opened on his palm, parallel to his fingers. It was lined with serrated sharklike teeth, and a slithering, coiling purple-black tongue emerged to lash randomly against the circle, as if seeking a way through. Yellowish mucus dripped thickly from the tongue as it did.
“Okay,” Murphy said in a small, toneless voice. “That is somewhat disturbing.”
“And it’s gonna get better,” I muttered.
Sure enough, the other grey suits started doing the same thing. Within seconds, we were completely surrounded by eerie hand-mouths, writhing tongues, and dripping slime.
Murphy shook her head and sighed. “Eckgh.”
“Tell me about it.”
“How long will this thing keep them off?”
“They’re spirit beings,” I said. “As long as the circle’s here, they’re staying outside it.”
“Couldn’t they just scuff dirt on it or something?”
I shook my head. “Breaking the circle isn’t just a physical process. It’s an act of choice, of will-and these things don’t have that.”
Murphy frowned. “Then why are they doing anything at all?”
I had to restrain myself from smacking my forehead with the heel of my hand. “Because someone summoned them from the Nevernever,” I said. “Their summoner, wherever he is, is giving them orders.”
“Could he break the circle?” Murphy asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Easily.”
“Which is an excellent note upon which to begin our conversation,” said a man’s voice with a heavy Cockney accent. “Make a hole, lads.”
The suits on one side of the circle lowered their hands and stood back, revealing a blocky bulldog of a man in a cheap maroon suit. He was average height, but heavy and solid with muscle, and he wore a few too many extra beers around his middle. His features were blunt and rounded, like water-worn stone. His hair was graying and cut into the shortest buzz you could get without going bald, and his eyes were small and hard-and the exact same color as those of the grey suits, a distinctive grey-green.
“Ah, love,” said the man, grinning. “I think it’s quite fine to see couples who aren’t afraid to express their affection for each other.”