Bloodless (Aloysius Pendergast #20)(93)
She focused on her radio, but the dispatcher was making no sense, just broadcasting a 10-33 over and over. The officers around her seemed uncertain what to do, looking to her for direction.
Delaplane rounded on them. “Okay, you heard it. We got a situation in east Savannah. Something big, a ten thirty-three, all officers respond. Now. Let’s—”
Drayton’s voice faltered midholler. The crowd stirred, suddenly silent, uneasy. The eastern sky was reddening fast and the night was now filling with the sounds of car alarms and sirens. The booming voice from the speakers stopped and she glanced over at the stage. Drayton was staring eastward, mouth agape. And then she saw what he was staring at: a dark shape, backlit by the reddish sky, flapping its wings slowly, almost lazily, as it approached. She stood transfixed as her mind tried to make sense of it. A bird of prey? No: it was too large, too far away. Some sort of flying contraption? It was dark and yet shimmery at the same time. It glided over the tops of the buildings, which seemed to reflect off its underside. Christ, it was the size of a small plane.
The deep silence that had fallen over the crowd was cut by a single thin scream—and then all hell broke loose. The massive shape came straight for the gathering, gliding in as if attracted by the noise, light, and multitude. It passed over the stage, abruptly illuminated from below by the floodlights. Now she could see it in detail, but that was of little help: it was like nothing she’d ever seen in her life. A mosquito head with huge bug eyes and an oily feeding tube was affixed to a monstrous, batlike body the color of liver. The wings were webbed with engorged blood vessels, and from its belly hung two rows of hairy, withered dugs. After passing over the stage, it banked and came back around, pumping its wings with a sound like tearing silk, gliding in low, each thrust sending a wash of foul, humid air over the terrified, stampeding crowd. Delaplane saw the greasy proboscis thrusting out, like a dog’s nose scenting the air, the compound eyes swiveling this way and that.
In a flash, the gathering had been transformed into a pandemonium beyond all belief. The thousands of rallygoers ran from the platform like a massive wave, with an inchoate roar of terror, scrambling every which way, falling and being trampled, chairs clattering and overturning, shoes coming loose, people clawing up the backs of others as they tried to escape—and on the stage, high above, was Drayton, his face on the giant screens slack-jawed, jowls quivering, as the creature swooped in. Delaplane saw a flash of savage talons close like a steel trap around Drayton’s torso, and then he was yanked upward, the creature rising into the air with a beating of its leathery wings, with Drayton twisting and writhing like a fish torn from the water by an eagle, a single shrill scream echoing down from above.
The senator’s security detail—the few who hadn’t fled—pulled their weapons and, crouching on the stage, opened fire on the thing as it rose. Delaplane pulled her own Glock, the cops around her following suit, but the thing was beating upward and out of range—and she held her fire; the chances of hitting the senator were too great. Besides, it seemed the barrage of gunfire from the others wasn’t hurting it, just making it mad. As she watched, it reared its mosquito head back and plunged the sharp end of its dripping, tube-shaped labrum into the senator’s body. Drayton’s keening voice was abruptly silenced—followed immediately by the wet, gurgling sound of a thick milkshake being sucked up with a straw.
She pulled her radio again. “Commander Delaplane, in Forsyth Park. We need SWAT, we need National Guard, we need heavy weapons, we need full mobilization. Now! Now!”
And just at that moment, the panicked, mindless crowd reached the police staging position, surging over them like a human tsunami, and Delaplane felt the glancing impact of a burly man with a shaved head, and she staggered backward as the crowd streamed by.
66
FOLLOWING PENDERGAST, COLDMOON SPRINTED up the basement stairs and into the lobby. The normally sedate space was quickly filling with a crush of panicked people streaming in from outside, seeking shelter. Some were sobbing with fear, others hysterical, a few drunk. As they pushed their way through the flow, Coldmoon wondered where the hell Constance had gone to when she’d slipped out of the room like a cat. God knew what that bloodthirsty woman was going to do.
Once they were outside, the situation was even more chaotic. To the south, in the direction of the political rally, he could see a monstrous flying creature circling like a buzzard, its outline shimmering with an otherworldly gleam, a strange glowing cross, almost like a scar, on its left wing. Something—a body—was gripped in its claws. Pulling his firearm, Pendergast ran toward it, against the crowd, and Coldmoon struggled to keep up. The air was filled with the din of screaming, sirens, and sporadic gunfire. The sidewalks and streets were packed with panicked people trying desperately to get away, to get anywhere, as long as it offered refuge from the creature.
As he watched in awe and horror, the monster flung away the corpse in its talons, which went tumbling off into the darkness, and then swooped down on the terrified crowd still in the park, to a chorus of screams and a scattered volley of weaponry. It rose again, beating its wings, with several fresh writhing people in its talons, wings shimmering.
Coldmoon stared at the fearful thing, trying to keep moving, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. This was not Wakinyan, the Thunderer, the sky spirit his grandmother had told him of. Nor was it Unktehi, the huge horned serpent that had troubled his childhood dreams. No: this was some terrible amalgam, a foul obscenity, a battle-scarred monster that had no place on Earth or in mythology.