Brooklyn Knight Page 9

  “Then what do we do?”

  “There’s nothing we can do. I’m thinking the same thing you are, that this all must be tied to the Dream Stone. It must be—has to be. And you have to believe me, if something was sent here to destroy it, to keep it out of the hands of others, then it’s surely a thing of great power. Far greater than we can deal with on our own.”

  The large man looked deep into Knight’s eyes, then turned to stare back toward the property room. The door was glowing even more fiercely, giving off molten shimmers of orange and scarlet. Fiery slag was rolling down the softening steel, dripping from above, sending a scattering of dazzling sparks in all directions. And, as Dollins stared closely, he felt his heart stop beating for a split second. Blinking hard, he looked forward once more to determine if what he thought he had just seen was actually there. Leaning toward him, the professor whispered in a voice made small by fear;

  “Yes. Those are hands!”

  Slender and tapered, two glimmering, bestial sets of fingers were crammed inside the oozing, ever-widening circle forming in the door, tearing at it, scraping away the softening metal one mushing lump after another. Dollins’ eyes fixed on the horrifying sight, freezing his limbs, rooting him to the spot.

  When the professor once again pulled on the detective’s arm to start him moving, the big man did not resist, too mesmerized by the lunatic scene playing out before him to make any conscious decisions of his own. Finally, however, when Knight had moved him practically the entire way back to the stairwell, Dollins muttered;

  “No … stop.”

  “We can’t stop. We don’t dare,” hissed the professor, reaching for the door to the stairs. “We’ve got to keep moving.”

  “No.”

  As Knight’s fingers reached the doorknob, Dollins stepped away from him, slipping his backup weapon into his sport coat’s pocket while he moved toward a small cabinet built into the opposite wall. Throwing open its rectangular glass door, he reached inside the compact space, pulling out the fire extinguisher stored within it. Checking the heft of it, making certain it was fully charged, he told the professor;

  “Go on—take off. I’ll stop this thing.”

  “Don’t be a fool—you can’t stop it with that,” insisted Knight. Reaching for the detective once more, the professor insisted, “For God’s sake, man, it’ll roast you alive!”

  “Gotta try.” Swallowing hard, Dollins added, “No one else did nuthin’ … just ran. Someone’s gotta do somethin’.”

  Knight’s hand stopped short of the detective’s arm. Making any further attempts to get him to flee obviously would be futile. The professor was almost certain he knew why no other officers had made a stand against the horror just beyond. He recognized the aroma of a planted repulsion there in the harsh atmosphere of the basement. Whoever had sent the thing in the property room had first charmed it with a fear caster—not an overly long or powerful one, just enough to allow the thing to form and be about its business. No unprotected human could resist the urge to retreat in its presence. It was no wonder the area had been vacated so quickly and without question.

  “Go on,” ordered Dollins, pointing with his weapon toward the door to the stairwell. “This ain’t your fault and it ain’t your fight. So, do it—go!”

  The professor nodded, turning toward the door once more, then suddenly stopped. Touching the detective’s arm to catch his attention, Knight began removing the blue stone ring from his hand as he said;

  “Last year, in Red Hook, when you survived the shooting … you remember, I was there. I was wearing this at the time. It’s … it’s lucky.”

  The two men locked eyes one last time. Sliding the ring onto his left pinkie, the only finger he possessed small enough to accept it, Dollins said simply, “Thanks,” then turned and moved back toward the property room. Knight, knowing he had done everything he could, fled into the stairwell. Taking one final glance, the professor could tell from the amount of black sparks coming from around the corner ahead that the collapsing door would soon be no barrier at all to that which was behind it. Throwing Dollins a heartfelt salute, Knight then did the only thing he could, and retreated to the surface.

  Alone in the smokey hallway, the detective started once more for the property room. He did so slowly but resolutely, walking with the heavy-duty fire extinguisher held high in both hands, waiting for the inevitable. In the last moments he had spent talking with Knight, the temperature had risen more than ten degrees. With each step taken toward the corner before him, sweat rolling off his head, down his back, into his eyes, Dollins could feel the wildly increasing heat—knew what it meant.

  “All right, you bastard,” he sneered as he reached the corner. “Show yourself.”

  With a sudden increase of light flooding the area, the detective knew the property room door had finally collapsed—that whatever had been restrained by it had freed itself at last. Swallowing hard, the large man took the final step needed to where he could view the situation for himself. And at that moment, suddenly there it was before him.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph …”

  Tall it was, a willowy, vaguely humanoid frame, but one constructed out of bones cast from lava wrapped in fascia created of flame.

  Seeing the entire thing at one time, Dollins understood why it had needed to melt its way through the door. The demonic shape’s fingers were an illusion, a distortion caused by both the heat and the detective’s intense desire to understand, to assign comprehension to that upon which he was looking. The fiery imitation of a human form standing before him was not something that could turn knobs or press buttons. It was a gathered mass of elemental fury, forged into an approximation of being sent out to accomplish a task. Staring at the blazing shambler, struggling desperately to make his brain function once more, Dollins swallowed hard, then snapped;

  “Okay, I guess you got your job and I got mine.” Flipping the restraining safety catch on the fire extinguisher, as the very plaster in the walls and ceiling began to liquify, dribbling all about him, the detective pulled hard on the trigger, screaming, “Drink up, Shirley!”

  Frigid carbon dioxide blasted forth from the canister’s release nozzle, the streaming cloud of it splashing against the creature’s torso in violent reaction. Lungless, brainless, the thing made no verbal response as it reared back, the language of its movements suggesting Dollins had actually managed to wound it to some extent. Holding back from emptying the extinguisher, the large man moved his hand still holding his service automatic and fired, emptying the entire clip into the monstrous shape before him.

  Every bullet fired entered the burning mass drawing toward him, but Dollins could see no effect. Dropping his weapon—discarding it as if knowing he would never need it again—he hoisted the fire extinguisher to his chest once more, pulling the trigger and releasing all the frozen ammunition he had left to him. Again the horror was staggered, but in nothing one might consider a hope-giving amount. Perhaps if there had been forty or fifty men all armed with such weapons, the detective thought, there might have been a chance of stopping it.

  “But that, of course,” he growled, “would be too easy.”

  Knowing the ring Knight had given him was somehow protecting him and that without it he would have burst into flames long ago, James Albert Dollins hefted the now-empty metal cylinder in his hands like a club. Hunched over, breathing hard from the heat, he pulled forth all he had within himself, throwing himself erect. Then, screaming in defiance, the detective sergeant raced forward, battering with all his strength at the slice of Hell trying to set foot in his world.

  INTERLUDE

  “I regret to inform you, sir, that the object you commissioned us to obtain for you has apparently been destroyed.”

  Of course it has, the man thought, drumming his fingers against his leg with increasing violence. Within his mind, a dozen voices seethed, writhing in confused anger, pushing at him, screeching—but the rage of one in particular, the new one, the only one
that mattered, was beyond description. Its fury was about to boil over, to explode.

  “We have our own code of procedure for such regrettable occurrences,” the electronic voice said. Despite its heavy masking, the sound of it seemed one of genuine regret, leaning far more toward sincere apology rather than indifference. “And we are ready to render unto you full and unconditional recompense. But we do have a few questions.”

  “Questions?” The man on the other end of the line choked out the word in a tone situated roughly halfway in between laughter and a snarl, threw it out to the caller as if the thought were beyond his comprehension.

  “Yes. First,” answered the electronic voice, seemingly unaware of the level of distress present on the other end of the line, “the obvious thing we need to know is whether or not you truly needed to possess the article, or if, perhaps, your need was to keep it out of the hands of others?”

  The fingers of the man listening to the electronic voice stopped beating against his leg. Instead, clawlike, they began to dig harshly into his flesh, unnoticed, as if of their own volition. Staring off into space, his eyes unable to focus on anything within his surroundings, the man’s head began to vibrate, shaking uncontrollably. While the distorted voice continued to speak into his ear, the man closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of the real world around him to any greater extent than that found within his eyelids. His teeth clamped together, a twisted, feral growl began to grow deep within his throat.

  Cheated, lied to, betrayed—

  The voice from the back of his mind was hissing now, the words of it like steaming fangs within his brain, chewing upon his memories, tearing at them, consuming vast portions of the man, bending him into its willing vessel.

  “Sir,” the electronic voice droned somewhere in the distance, attempting to make its case, “we understand you must be feeling a certain sense of loss. We here cannot stress how much we regret this. Our organization is not used to having to report such failure. If you could but—”

  “Silence, animal—”

  The distorted voice broke off, somewhat alarmed. The familiar tone it had come to know, the person it had been conversing with over the past day, was somehow suddenly gone. Something the speaker on the other end of the line could not fathom had transpired. In the business of making his firm’s rather exotic clientele happy, the owner of the electronic voice pushed past any concerns for himself, asking;

  “Sir … ?”

  “I said silence!”

  And then, a crackling burst of energy surged from within the speaker’s mind, flashing into his cell phone, following the transmission back to its source. At the speed of light it arrived in the spot halfway around the world where those who had attempted to arrange the theft of the Dream Stone dwelt. Its unexpected arrival spelled the end for everyone there.

  The shock wave erupted violently through the receiver on the other end, flooding the room, and then flashed throughout the entire building. Impossibly, it grew exponentially, killing everyone within—more than killing them. It consumed them, obliterating each person within reach from their innermost core outward, swallowing their spirits, devouring their souls. So violent was the attack, it burst the bodies open, splattering their blood across the walls, superheating it so that in many instances the sizzling liquid melted the plaster where it struck.

  In an instant the deed was accomplished. Those who had failed were destroyed, their essence stolen and delivered to what up until that moment had merely been a whisper in the back of the caller’s mind. Now, however, it was more. Those who had failed it had paid the price for disappointing it with their lives.

  Disgusting fools—

  Destroying those who had failed it, however, in no way lightened the sinister voice’s foul mood. The darkly growing thing in no way felt compensated—it could not. The Dream Stone held too major a spot within its plans.

  But, what was done was done.

  Releasing the vessel of which it had taken command’s grip on its own leg, the invader immersed itself within the energies it had just stolen, then recessed to the back of the man’s mind once more. It had gained a great deal of power and it could see that more would be just as easily obtained. Further, as it studied its newfound freedom, even while concealing it away within the folds of its host’s subconscious, it knew its actions were still undetected. Satisfied, the voice that had traveled so far pushed aside its remaining regrets over the Dream Stone. There were other ways to accomplish its goals. Settling its essence, it basked in the warmth of its newly stolen energies, delighted in their taste. Looked forward to more.

  “This place,” it whispered, its grease-drenched words oozing their way into the furthest corner of the man’s mind, “it is so incredibly rich. So invitingly full of life—

  “It is so wonderfully good to be back.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “It’s been a long night,” suggested LaRaja, his voice tense, sounding close to snapping. Raising one hand, moving his index finger back and forth between himself and Knight, he told the professor, “Everyone’s wrung out and, as at least you and I know, there isn’t anyone here that has the slightest clue as to what’s been going on. So, why don’t you stop getting in our way and take this poor kid out of here? I can always start harassing you again in the morning.”

  “Thank you,” answered the professor. “And of course, I am assuming there was nothing in the way of humor in that… .”

  “You assume real good, Piers.”

  Knight nodded, grateful for the detective’s reprieve, as well as his candor. Still, the professor was concerned enough about his assistant to worry about LaRaja and whatever further questions the police might have later. For the moment, he had to admit that LaRaja was correct about one thing—Bridget Elkins had been within the city limits of New York for not even half a day and already her mind was pulsing toward overload. Knight himself had completely overwhelmed her sense of size and order in the world immediately upon her arrival with their little trip to the top of the Empire State Building.

  He had meant to do so, had done so partly for his own amusement but also, he knew, ultimately for her own good. One of the Big Apple’s specialties was knocking people for a loop. The quicker she caught on to that fact, he felt—the faster she took that rocket ride to the top and followed it up with the inevitable, crashing disappointment the city always eventually provided—then the better off she would be. But from there on, things had progressed at a far more rapid pace than he could have ever predicted.

  Hell, thought Knight, allowing himself a faint touch of self-pity, she’d better have been overwhelmed by it all. I’m feeling fairly overwhelmed myself right now.

  The professor did not bother to chastise himself for taking his new assistant to the museum that night. She was young and full of energy. To see the fabled Brooklyn Museum, the art of Africa and the Pacific, of ancient Egypt and the modern Islamic world, to walk its corridors overflowing with seven hundred years of European painting, it was paradise for any who understood the joys of a repository experience. And that was the regular, render-your-donation-and-enter-with-the-public experience.

  To see it as she would have, after hours, to walk its beautifully laid out, well-appointed stone hallways, to view its seemingly limitless treasures in private—especially in the dark, with its wonderful ability to make anything seem forbidden—their work then would have been the icing on a slice of cake the flavor of which she would have remembered fondly for all her days. Possessed of a few of his own cherished remembrances, he had meant it as a gift.

  “Instead of a happy memory, however, the poor child ends up traumatized.”

  Knight wanted to curse the luck of it, but had no direction in which to sling the abuse he so desperately wanted to hurl away from himself. Who, after all, could he blame? Ungari? The thieves or the police? Maybe himself, he thought. Maybe he could find nowhere else to hurl it because none deserved it more than he did.

  Fie, it’s all or none, the back
of his mind snapped, to which another voice within his brain responded, But then, isn’t it always?

  When they had first driven to the precinct house, Knight had been allowed to take his own car. He had driven Bridget there as well, since the detectives had insisted on her coming to be questioned. New to town or not, the young woman was a witness, after all, and the professor knew the police were offering both himself and his new assistant quite a grand amount of consideration by allowing them to travel both together and without an escort.

  If there had been even the slightest substantial suspicion that either of them might be responsible for the deaths in the museum that night, of course, such would never have been allowed. It did not pay to give suspects the chance to get their stories straight between themselves before questioning them.

  But Dollins and LaRaja both were seasoned professionals. They could tell from every movement of Bridget’s body language, from every glance she offered them and the tone of every word she spoke, that there was nothing of the criminal about her. If she was hiding anything from them, LaRaja had actually commented to his partner at one point, she was damn good enough to keep it hidden.

  The large man had agreed, smiling as he did so.

  As he offered his hand to the redhead, helped her up from the hard wooden bench upon which she had fallen asleep, Knight could not help but think of Dollins and his incredible sacrifice. No one, not even himself, he was quite certain, would ever know exactly what had happened to the detective. But the professor was also certain his guess would be far more accurate than that of anyone else.

  The big man had not been one to quit. With the protection of Knight’s ring, Dollins would have been able to approach the elemental sent to the property room. When bullets failed him, the detective would have gone for the direct approach.