Bad Men

“Hey,” said Dexter. “You think you could help me?”

He swallowed.

“I want to get down to the water. I have money. You could buy yourself something nice.”

He extended one of the remaining wads of bills toward her. The girl moved forward.

“That’s it,” said Dexter. “Come on now. You help me get out of here and I’ll-”

The Gray Girl’s feet were not touching the ground. She floated toward Dexter, her arms wide and her dark eyes gleaming, her skin wrinkled and decayed. Dexter opened his mouth to scream and the Gray Girl’s lips closed on his. Her hands gripped his head and her knees pi

And then the Gray Girl drew back from the dead man, her dark eyes closing briefly in ecstasy, moths falling dead around her as she followed her companions at last into the depths.

Moloch was ten feet into the tu

He had progressed five or six feet more when he thought that he heard movement behind him. He stopped, and found only silence.

Jittery. I’m getting jittery.

Then he heard it again, clearer now. For a second, he thought it was falling earth, and panic hit him as he imagined the tu

The cop. It had to be the cop. She had come down after all. Maybe she had brought rope with her, or had found some among the detritus of the forest.

Shit.

He started to pull himself forward again, faster now. He was certain that he could hear water. Hell, he could even smell it. Cool air was coming through the tu

And then it was gone. Moloch stopped again. The airflow had ceased. He had heard no sounds of collapse. Something had deliberately blocked the tu

The sounds from behind were drawing closer, and now another smell had taken the place of the river and the forest, a stench like old meat left to boil in a pot for too long, of offal and waste. He found himself retching from it. Light filtered through the tu

With what?

He tried to turn his head again and found that he now had enough space to peer behind him. The tu

If it was the cop.

“Who’s there?” he called out.

The sound stopped, but he sensed that his pursuer was at the very edge of the tu

“I got a gun,” he said. “You better back out now. I hear you following me, I’ll use it.”

The light seemed to grow stronger around him. There were gray-white worms emerging from the earth of the tu

Then Moloch saw the nails on the ends of the pale fingers, and the wounds on the back of the hand, wounds that would never heal. There was movement everywhere now, above and below. Earth dropped onto his head from above as something scrabbled across one of the higher tu

Moloch heard himself sobbing with fear, even as he turned and found himself gilded in silvery light.

And in the final seconds of life granted to him, he saw the woman’s face, her skin gray parchment, her hair a handful of strands clinging to the skull, the roots of her teeth exposed by the retreating gums and the parted lips. He could make out the cuts in her face, the damage inflicted by fist and knife. The lamp in her hands radiated dimly, for in the darkest places even the dead need light.

He smelled her breath, fetid and rank, and he heard her voice-“Know me, husband”-as the light died and he was enveloped in darkness.

“He’s down there,” said Macy. “There’s nowhere he can go.”

But Maria

“You don’t understand,” she said. “There’s something else down there too.”

Macy looked at her. She remembered the tower, and the floating child, and the look on Scarfe’s face as he stared out into the forest and saw what was pursuing him.

Macy began to run. A rumbling sound came from the ground below her, and she felt the earth begin to give way beneath her. She increased her speed, Maria

Chapter Eighteen

Barron sat in the SUV over by the Portland Marine Company, an empty coffee container from the 7-Eleven on Congress in the cup holder by his right hand, the radio playing some Cheap Trick for the night owls. Once or twice prowl cars had passed his way, but he’d hunched down low in his seat and the cops hadn’t even slowed, the SUV just another vehicle parked in the lot. The snow was still falling, although the wind had died down some. The SUV was warm, the heat on full blast, but he had kept his gloves and coat on just the same.

Barron had spent most of his evening trying to reach a decision about Parker, the private detective who was nosing around. People listened when Parker spoke, and it was only a matter of time before somebody with real authority started paying attention to his noises about a sexual predator at work in the area, possibly a predator in a uniform.

The men in Boston were his only option. He was their tame cop, in so deep with them now that he could never escape. If they heard he was under threat, then they might be prepared to deal with his problem for him. The Russians didn’t give a rat’s ass about reputation, or influence. They were in it for the money, and anything that threatened their sources of income, or their carefully cultivated contacts, would be a

He glanced again at the dashboard clock: almost midnight. All was quiet. If Scarfe’s buddies did come back to the port, it looked like they would be able to do so without interference. Barron had even spotted one or two ships, dense with lights, braving the bay as the snow began to ease and the wind faded from a howl to a whisper. The streets were deserted and Scarfe’s battered Grand Am was parked not ten feet from where he sat, along with two vans. They had wheels. They were free and clear once they got back to Portland. Barron had done all that he could be expected to do. He had waited, he had kept an ear to traffic on the two police bands. He had his cell phone ready, the number he had been given by the men in Boston written on a napkin and not stored in the phone’s memory just in case any of this came back to bite him on the ass.