Divided and unified, both at once. He thought of the creature in his dream, and cold certainty filled him. What other image would his mind choose to represent such a Power?
Where the hell was Tarrant now? He’d been supposed to come up as soon as the sun set, so that they could compare notes and discuss future strategy. But it was well past sunset now and the Hunter hadn’t shown his face. Damien could think of only two reasons why he wouldn’t show up on time, and the simpler one—forgetfulness-just wasn’t like him.
Someone-or something-must have interfered.
With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach Damien caught up his keys and exited the small apartment. By the time the door slammed shut behind him he was already running down the narrow stairs to the first floor, his hand skimming along the demon-wards that had been inscribed into the banister. His feet hammered on the worn stairs in a rhythm only slightly louder than his heartbeat. A voice inside him warned, Even if it is what you think, what can you possibly do? but he forced himself to ignore it as he darted to the next staircase, the one that led down beneath ground level.
Tarrant’s door was shut, and looked just as it would if nothing were wrong. He banged on it with a heavy fist, calling out the Hunter’s name. Again. His blows were hard enough to make the door vibrate, but still there was no response.
“Who’s down there?” The voice came from behind him, a woman’s. He heard her steps descending the narrow stairs as he banged on the door again, with force enough that even the frame shivered. No response. Damn Tarrant to Hell, what was going on?
“Is something wrong?” It was the landlady, an older woman whom Damien had met but once. Her tone was more suspicious than concerned, and her tone made it clear that he looked more like a raving madman than a reliable tenant. He spared her a quick glance, trying for one moment to look calm enough to reassure her. He doubted it worked.
“I think my friend’s in trouble.” He banged on the door again, hard enough to shake the frame. “Gerald! Are you in there?” There was cold sweat beading on his brow now, and his hands had started shaking. He tried to remember what the windows of the apartment were like, which he had boarded up only two days ago. Too narrow for him to slide through, he decided at last, even if he could kick the boards free. Worse and worse. He was about to start banging again when the landlady pushed him aside. Her expression was harsh and frankly suspicious, but she had a large ring of keys in her hand and was reaching toward the lock with it. He let her. The brass key entered the lock and turned, and he heard the metallic snap of a bolt being withdrawn. With one last glance at him she turned the door handle and pulled. Nothing. He pushed her aside and pulled himself, but the door wouldn’t budge. Clearly it was bolted from the inside.
Damn!
“What did you expect?” she demanded.
He tried to work a Knowing aimed at the apartment within, despite the fact that fear and frustration combined made it hard to concentrate. The Working he conjured was a weak thing, that barely made it past the wood of the door. Images took shape before his eyes: dark shapes, bloodstained and evil, whose chill power constricted his lungs until it was hard to breathe. Great. That could be Tarrant himself, for all he knew. How did you distinguish the Hunter from true demons, when the two were so very similar?
“Look,” he told her, “I’m going to have to break in—”
“Oh, no, you don’t!” She forced herself between Damien and the door. “Your friend wanted a secure apartment, and that’s what he got. Already I’ve put up with gods know how many nails and such being hammered in the windows, and now—”
“I’ll pay for it,” he said quickly. “I’ll pay for any damages in cash, right now.” He dug hurriedly into his pocket, praying that he had enough money on him. There were coins in the bottom, large ones by the feel of them; he pulled them out quickly and offered them to her. “Here.” They’d pay for the door three times over, he estimated; even so she was reluctant to accept them. “Take them!”
“I never had such trouble like this before,” she muttered. But she got out of the way. He stepped forward and ran his hands over the door, trying to Know its substance. After a few seconds he cursed in frustration, stepped back, and tried to think clearly.
The bolt was a solid one, affixed in a steel chamber that was firmly attached to the wood. It wasn’t going to come loose easily, not by virtue of any Working he knew how to do. Damn the Church, which had limited his training to the sorceries it approved of, making him helpless in the face of such a simple mechanism! He drew in a deep breath and tried to think calmly, tried to reason his way through the problem the way Tarrant would have done. The lock was steel through and through. Steel was hard to Work. The slot that received it was also steel, and well fortified against a forced assault. But where the steel parts were affixed to the wood, and within the wood itself ...
He Knew the door and the wall beside it, and chose the wall as the more vulnerable of the two. Then he reached inside it with carefully focused fae, in the same way that he had done to a tree in the Black Lands so long ago. Insinuating himself into its cells, smelling out the microbes that crouched between the woody fibers, analyzing their hunger. At last he found what he wanted, and he Healed. The microbes grew and multiplied, their life cycles accelerated by his Working. As they grew, they digested the wood that surrounded them, breaking down the hard cell walls, rotting the powerful fibers. Two generations of microbes, then three. He guided them through their newly paced life cycles, making sure their hunger was focused on the one part of the wall he meant to weaken; there was no point in causing more damage than he had to.
At last he sensed that the process had done as much good as it was likely to. Despite his rush, he took care to stabilize the hungry microbes at a normal level before he withdrew his senses from the wall; otherwise the rest of the house could be undermined in a fortnight. Then he stepped back, drew in a deep breath, and pulled on the door as though his life depended on it. At first it didn’t move. He persisted. At last, slowly, the wood of the door frame began to give way. Softly at first, then with a splintering crack that made the landlady step back with a gasp. He gave the door a good jerk, as hard as he could muster, and the wood gave way utterly: the steel housing of the deadbolt tore through the wall and the door was open at last, the mechanism of its closure dangling from its edge like a broken limb.
“Gods’ Earth,” the woman muttered, but Damien had no time to coddle her. As soon as the door was open, he moved into the dark apartment—
—and malevolence swirled up about his legs with such force that he nearly crashed to his knees, cold fae invading his flesh with a power that made bile rise up in his gut, his stomach spasming as if it could vomit up this repulsive evil. Loathsome, unspeakably loathsome; it took all his self-control not to abandon his search and desperately try to find a Working that would scrub his flesh clean of the sickening power. Go ahead, the power seemed to urge, in a voice that stabbed like knives into his flesh. Try it. He could feel it sucking him down that path, toward that insane, doomed effort, and he knew in that moment that more than one living man had scrubbed his body raw in response to its presence, until skin and muscles both were abraded like cheap rope and even the hot blood which flowed freely was not enough to guarantee a cleansing.
With a sinking heart he staggered toward the bedroom, and somehow gathered enough strength to call the Hunter’s name. He no longer questioned what had happened here; the fae itself made it clear what type of creature had visited, and there was only one thing a creature like that would want. “Gerald?” He searched the bedroom quickly, desperately, but he knew even as he did so that the Hunter wasn’t here. Cold fae stabbed into his flesh like knives as he searched the living room and the small kitchen; he felt as if his limbs were rotting away beneath him, infected by every wound. It’s illusion, he thought desperately. It has to be. Ignore it. As he verified that the last room was empty, and gazed upon the basement window he had boarded up himself, he felt a black despair rise up inside him. It was still sealed from the inside, just as he had left it. Just like the other two had been. That and the bolted door guaranteed that the Hunter had been caught inside, and had been taken ... where? What kind of creature had the power to kidnap him out of this place against his will, despite such solid barriers?