Rivera rose, then bent over him, trying to speak in a calming voice. “What is your name?”
This was answered with a fresh gust of shouting. “What does it matter?” The man cried inconsolably. “The world is ending; nobody will have a name now!”
Rivera leaned closer and steadied the man’s face with his hand. “I’m here to help you. My name’s Lieutenant Rivera. What is your name?”
The man began to emerge from his mindless panic. He stared at Rivera, eyes bugging, sweat streaming down his face.
“It’s not the end of the world,” Rivera went on calmly. “I want you to listen. Are you hearing me? Nod if you understand.”
The man stared and finally nodded.
“Your name, please?”
A croak. “Boyle.”
“Mr. Boyle, are you hurt?”
The man shook his head.
“What did you see?”
He began to tremble. “Too much.”
“Tell me.”
“A…demon.”
Rivera swallowed. “Could you please describe the attacker?”
“It…he…came down the street… He was running… And making a sound. He kept saying the same thing over and over again…”
“What was he saying?”
“Something like son, son… He was horrible, gigantic, seven feet tall. He had a dog’s snout. Rotten teeth. Naked. Horrible yellow skin. And he stank. He stank like shit.”
“Naked? In this weather?”
“Yes. And…he had a tail.”
“A tail?” This was disappointing; the man was going to be about as useful as the others.
“A horrible tail, not like a real tail, it was dragging around behind him like a snake. And he had hands, giant hands that ripped people apart like they were nothing more than…” He was overtaken by a violent fit of trembling. “Oh, God… Oh, God!”
Rivera shook his head and rose. “Get this man into an ambulance. He’s not sane.”
52
Gavin’s gun went flying as the creature seized his wrist; he drew Gavin toward him with a growl, twisting the wrist hard as he did so. There was a faint crackle of tendons. Gavin grimaced in pain but did not scream; he stared, as if in shock.
Constance remained frozen. So this, she thought with a strange detachment, is Morax—the demon. And yet it was human, or mostly so. A tall man with a dreadfully deformed face: a prognathic snout, with projecting teeth that pushed out from behind rubbery lips, and a sloped forehead with a massive sagittal crest that rose up like a bony Mohawk across his knobby skull. His skin was sallow and streaked with filth, his yellow skin puckered with pustules, scabs, and a thousand tiny scars; his eyes were a dark orangey brown; his body was ropy; he was bald and naked; and his stink filled the perfumed confines of the altar room. But the tail—the tail—was what most arrested her attention. It wasn’t a typical animal tail, but rather a long rope of pink flesh that was utterly limp, its club-like end bristling with wiry hairs. The tail had no life; it dragged behind him like a flaccid, paralyzed limb.
The man gripped Gavin’s wrist with a hand as massive as a bear paw, with spade-like fingers terminating in brown nails. He stared at Gavin, his pupils contracted with hate. The two seemed momentarily frozen in a grotesque tableau.
And then the creature made a sound, an angry hissing sound, which broke the spell.
Gavin, wincing, spoke with remarkable presence of mind. “It’s all right, Morax. Everything’s going to be fine. You’re home now. Let go of me, please.”
Morax repeated the guttural hiss. It sounded like shunnng, or sohnn, but Constance couldn’t catch it.
“You’re hurting me,” said Gavin. “Please let go.”
In response, Morax gave Gavin’s wrist another savage twist. There was a sharp cracking sound. The sergeant gasped, but—much to Constance’s surprise—kept his composure.
Even if she had not heard Gavin’s story, it would have been obvious that these two had a long and troubled history—a history, it seemed, that was about to reach its end, one way or another.
The two were so focused on each other that Constance realized she had an opportunity to escape—if she moved carefully. The way by which she had first entered the chamber, however, was blocked by the two antagonists. She would have to escape deeper into the tunnels.
She took a step back, and then another, careful to keep her eye on the confrontation.
“Morax,” Gavin said, “I’m now the leader of the coven, which means that we’re partners, in a way. It was wrong, what’s been done to you over the years, and—”
With a sudden roar, the creature yanked Gavin’s hand and wrenched it off as he might a turkey drumstick. Blood spurted from the ragged wrist. With a cry Gavin staggered back, frantically trying to stop the bleeding, now wide-eyed with terror. The demon roared again.