"Hang around. Maybe I can help you out."
The guy shook his head and stumbled off down the sidewalk, still sobbing. Jack hurried up the steps to Walt Duran's apartment house. He pressed the button for Walt's room but got no answering buzz. The glass panel in the front door was broken. Maybe the buzzer was too. Jack reached through the shattered pane and turned the inside knob. Then he hurried up to the third floor.
Despite repeated knocks, Walt didn't answer his door. Concerned now, Jack pulled the piece of clear, flexible plastic he kept in his back pocket, slipped it between the door and the jamb, and jimmied the latch. The door swung open.
"Oh, jeez," Jack said as he viewed the carnage within.
The front room was a shambles of shattered glass, torn upholstery, and broken furniture. Jack dodged through the wreckage and hurried to the bathroom where he'd installed Walt last night. Empty, damn it. He went to the one remaining place to look, the tiny bedroom.
Blood. Blood on the sheets, on the floor, on the transparent daggers remaining in the frame of the smashed bedroom window.
"Walt," Jack said softly, staring at the dry brown streaks on the glass. "Why didn't you come back with me last night? Why didn't you stay locked up like I told you?"
Angry and sad, and not sure which to give in to, he wandered back to the bathroom. Walt's metal-working tools were set up across the rust-stained tub. But where were the necklaces? He probably hadn't finished them, but Jack knew he'd started them.
And what was Jack going to do without the copies?
Then he spotted something silvery gray and serpentine in the tub, under the work board. He dropped to his knees and reached in. Out came a necklace.
Jack cradled it in his hands and stared at it. The sculpted, crescent-shaped links, the weird engraved inscriptions, the pair of topazes with dark centers. The look of it, weight of it…a deluge of memories, most of them bad, engulfed him. He especially remembered the night he had worn the genuine article, how it had kept him alive when he should have died, how removing it had damn near killed him.
He shook off the past and felt a lump form in his throat for the man who had made this.
"Walt," he whispered. "You were the best."
He reached into the tub and found the second necklace. But when he got a good look at it, he groaned. It was only half a necklace. The links on the left side were blank. Walt hadn't got around to engraving them before…well, before whatever had happened to him.
One and a half necklaces wasn't going to cut it. Jack's plan required two phonies to get the two real ones.
He got to his feet and stuffed the completed necklace into his pocket. He'd have to come up with a new plan.
Out on the street again, he looked around for the drunk and spotted him sitting on the curb at the corner. He called to him, but the guy was absorbed in staring down at the sewer grate beneath his feet. Jack walked toward him.
"Hey, fella!" he called. "I'll get you to a safe place where you can sober up."
The guy looked up. "Somebod's downair," he said, pointing into the sewer. "Can't see'm but I hear 'm movin' 'round."
Jack wondered if people were hiding in the sewers from the night things.
"Swell. But I don't think you'll fit through that opening, so—"
"Probly c'use a drink," the guy said and reached down to pour some of his rum through the grate.
Something flashed up from the sewer, something long and thick and brown whipped out and grabbed the drunk by his neck and yanked him down face first onto the grate, nearly breaking his spine in the process. Then it began tugging him into the opening in the curb face. Not slowly, smoothly, inexorably, but with violent heaves, accompanied by sprays of blood and frantically but futilely flailing arms and legs. Three heaves did it. Before Jack could recover from his shock and take a single step forward to help, the man was gone. All that remained behind were splashes of blood and a bottle of rum on its side, slowly emptying its contents into the sewer after its owner.
Jack backed up a few steps, then turned and ran for Ralph. There weren't people hiding in the sewers from the night things, there were night things—big night things—down there hiding from the day.
Am I going to lose you too? Carol thought as she stood next to Bill in his bedroom and helped him pack a small duffel bag with some extra clothes for the trip.
Why was it always she who was left behind? Jim had died and left her—although that certainly wasn't of his choosing. And her son—at the time she had thought of him as her son—had left her. Hank had run off last night, and now Bill was preparing to fly to Rumania.
"What are your chances of getting back?"
"I don't know," Bill said. "Not great, I think."
"Oh." Carol couldn't manage any more than that.
"Do I sound brave?" Bill said, straightening and looking at her. "I hope so. Because I sure as hell don't feel brave. I mean, I want to do this, but I don't want to die or even get hurt doing this. But I've got to do something."
"Can I go with you?"
Anything would be better than being left behind again, especially now when she had nothing else to do but sit around and wait for Hank's call. A call she was sure would never come. And that certainty hurt. She and Hank hadn't had the romance of the ages, but to pack up everything and sneak off like that…
Even if he did call, she wouldn't go back to him. She didn't want to be with somebody who'd do that to her. And then there was the matter of that crazed look in his eyes. She had to face it: She no longer trusted her husband.
"To Rumania?" Bill said, staring at her. "It's too dangerous."
"Is anyplace safe anymore?"
Even the daytime was no longer safe. A rather shaken Jack had returned a short while ago with a story of horrors hiding in the sewers and storm drains.
"This place is. And Glaeken seems to want you around."
"But why? What can I do besides help him take care of Magda? Not that I mind, but what else?"
"I don't know. Maybe you're part of the equation. I don't pretend to understand why he's doing what he's doing. Sometimes I wonder if he knows why he's doing what he's doing. But he's all we've got. And if he says we need these bits of metal from Rumania and I'm the only one left who can get them, then I'll try to get them. And if he says you're important to the solution to what's happening to the world, then I'll go along with him. He hasn't let us down yet."
" 'Part of the equation,'" she said, her throat constricting around the words. "I've been part of some sort of equation since I got pregnant and provided the little body that allowed this…this monster back into the world!" Her voice cracked. "He took my baby, Bill! He kicked out whoever my real baby might have been and took over his tiny body. And now he's going to take you!"
She felt Bill's arms go around her shoulders and pull her tight against him. His flannel shirt smelled lightly of detergent, and as its rough surface pressed against her cheek, the thought that he really should use fabric softener wafted inanely across her mind. She slipped her arms around his waist and pulled herself closer. If she could just hold him here like this, it soon would be too late for him leave, and then she wouldn't lose him.
And she realized then how much she wanted him. Not like the last time, not like back in '68 when the beast within twisted her into trying to seduce Bill from his vows. That had been lust, induced lust. This was something else. This was love. An old love, following a long and winding road from the puppy love when they'd dated in their teens, to something deep and real. In a way, perhaps she'd always loved Bill. And now that he'd turned away from his church and his old beliefs, now that the cocoon of the priesthood had been unraveled from around him, he seemed real again, flesh and blood again. She wanted to tell him how she felt but the decades-old memories of that degrading scene of attempted seduction still echoed around her and held her back. And yet, if she didn't tell him now, would she ever get the chance again?