Bloodless (Aloysius Pendergast #20)(94)
No place on Earth…
“Keep up!” Pendergast barked as they struggled toward the park, while the thing whirled overhead, tormented by gunfire as a bull might be by fleas. It dropped once in a while to scoop up more people, ripping them apart in midair, flinging the pieces away and then diving again, in a fury of bloodlust.
Pendergast dodged and weaved through the flow of people like a cat, Coldmoon in his wake. “We have to get closer to it,” he said. “And gain some altitude.” Then, suddenly, he pointed. “The church!”
Coldmoon heard a crash ahead and saw the amplifier towers toppling over in a shower of sparks and sizzling arcs of electricity. A moment later, flames licked up from the giant wooden stage, swiftly growing into a conflagration. The fire seemed to excite the creature, driving it almost to madness: it circled around, wings brushing the fire and scattering burning lumber, and made a loop above Whitaker Street, wingtips clipping trees and striking the fa?ades along the park, sending glass and bricks crashing into the crowded street. A car, crushed by a falling tree, burst into flames.
The fabric of the Whitaker Street Methodist Church loomed up, its steeple outlined against the fire. They ran up the front steps. The oak doors of the church were closed and locked, terrified people huddling in the portal. Pendergast snaked his way through them, went for the lock on the door, and in a moment had it open.
As people streamed into the sanctuary, Pendergast veered off toward one side. They paused to catch their breath and take stock. Coldmoon could see the orange light of the burning grandstand flickering through stained-glass windows.
“This way,” Pendergast said.
He had found a stairway behind a door, and they began climbing, taking the stairs two at a time. In a moment they came out in the choir loft, facing a wall of organ pipes. But Pendergast was already making for a locked door in one corner; a quick twist of his wrist and it flew open, revealing an old iron staircase spiraling up into darkness.
Round and round the tower they climbed, until they were stopped by a ceiling with a trapdoor. Pendergast slammed it open with his shoulder and climbed into a small square room surrounded on all sides by louvers. Countless small bells hung suspended by ropes from horizontal beams: the church’s carillon. But Pendergast, paying no attention to these, pushed his way through the louvers, triggering a din of tinkling bells, and came out on a small walkway that surrounded the steeple. Coldmoon could see they were above the treetops. The monster, still circling, was coming around in a long, lazy loop that would take it directly past the church.
“Higher,” said Pendergast. He swung up, grasping a rusty iron ladder fastened directly to the outside slope of the steeple itself.
“Wait!” cried Coldmoon. “Don’t you realize this is hopeless?”
Pendergast paused ever so briefly.
“We already know what’s going to happen!” Coldmoon shouted. “We saw it!”
“Nothing is certain!” Pendergast replied fiercely, and began climbing.
67
CONSTANCE STARED OUT OVER the rooftops to see, circling above Forsyth Park, a creature out of a nightmare. Leathery wings spanning several dozen feet or more sprang from a swollen, hairy abdomen, itself festooned with two rows of greasy, foot-long paps. Protruding above the wings was a head that looked like a hellish mix of horsefly and mosquito: compound eyes gleaming in the reflected light, wicked proboscis slithering in and out from its maw. Big as it was, the head was still horribly small in comparison to the distended body, and it gleamed like the chitinous exoskeleton of an ant. As Constance stared, the beast seemed to go in and out of focus—once, twice—its silhouette flickering like a bad video.
She had seen this effect before: when looking through the portal.
Even as she watched in horror mingled with fascination, the thing swooped down toward the park and, talons furrowing up divots from the ground, snatched up two individuals. Rising again, it squeezed them between its claws like grapes and let the remains drop away.
Constance spun around. Miss Frost was standing beside her, one hand over her mouth, horror-struck.
“I imagine this is your work,” she said coldly. “Yours and Ellerby’s.”
“No—”
“Ellerby pushed the machine too far, didn’t he?”
The old woman stared.
“You went into the basement. You confronted him. You knew he’d built a new machine. And you knew what it might do.”
“I didn’t know—” Frost said breathlessly, backing up against the French doors.
“But you guessed.” Constance advanced on her. “You could have stopped him. You could have destroyed the machine.”
“He threatened me—”
“You didn’t stop him because you loved him.”
Frost had no answer.
“When Ellerby was killed, you could have said something. Maybe this”—she flung back an arm—“could have been prevented. But you were in denial. You stayed up here, playing the piano and drinking absinthe, while that demon out of the Old Testament killed, and killed again. And now those deaths, and this destruction, are on you.”
“No, no,” the old woman croaked. “Please, I didn’t know. I’ll do anything—”
“Maybe you can redeem yourself,” said Constance.