The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [102]
Time slowed, the parking lot stretched, Erics’s car receded. Each footfall was like slow thunder. A paw shot from the side and clutched at Travis’s throat, squeezing. Then the night tore apart, and a pair of strong hands reached from the gap, pulling the creature back into darkness. Snarls turned to inhuman screams, then ended with the sound of breaking bones.
Time dilated, snapped back. In one dizzying rush the car grew to fill Travis’s vision. They had made it. He started to reach for the door handle.
The air above the car wrinkled like cellophane, then grew smooth again. With a fluttering of jet cloth, a figure landed lightly on top of the car. Travis gazed up into a serene, gold face.
The figure crouched, wrapped all in black—trench coat, gloves, cowl. Set into the cowl was not a human face, but a mask: gleaming and burnished as the death mask of a pharaoh, smiling with strange peace as it gazed upon what no other could possibly see. The figure lifted a gloved hand and made a gentle, caressing motion.
A gold needle of agony plunged into Travis. His heart shuddered in his chest, faltered. He tried to speak, but only a soft gurgle escaped his lips along with a foam of saliva. The figure squeezed its fingers together. As it did, Travis’s heart slowed.…
Grace lashed out with her dagger. The figure moved its hand aside, easily avoiding the strike. However, the movement interrupted the spell. Travis was free. In one motion he reached for his own knife, jerked it from his belt, and thrust it forward.
His action was stiff, clumsy; the other should have dodged the blow without effort. Instead, it was as if flesh and blade were drawn to one another. There was a blinding flash of crimson, followed by a mind-flaying scream. Travis shut his eyes, blinded. When he opened them again, the masked figure was gone.
He jerked his head to look at Grace. Her eyes were wide.
“Where …?” she started to say, but then the air melted, resolidified, and Vani was there.
“Get inside. Now.”
They did not argue. Travis ripped open the door. He and Grace fell into the backseat; she groped for the door and slammed it shut behind them. Vani was already in the front seat. Engine roared, tires wailed against pavement, and the car leaped into swift motion.
There was a wet thump as the vehicle struck something. A shadow spun past the tinted windows. The car made a violent turn, throwing Travis against Grace. By the time they managed to untangle their limbs and sit upright, streetlights and glowing signs flashed by. They were driving west down Colfax, the motel already a dim spark of neon behind them. Vani piloted the car with precise movements that nonetheless seemed too conscious.
She’s a good driver, but she has to think about it. She can’t have been driving very long.
“The one in the mask,” Grace said, clutching the back of the passenger seat. “Who was that man?”
The rearview mirror framed Vani’s unsettling gold eyes.
“Not man. Sorcerer. It was he whom you sensed earlier, Grace Beckett. He was the master of the gorleths.” She spoke this last word like a curse.
“Gorleths?” Travis said in a croak. His throat ached, and his heart fluttered in his chest.
Vani did not take her eyes from the street. “It means, the Mouths Which Hunger. His kind often create such slaves to do their bidding, although I have not seen the likes of these before. They are new, I think. And had I known he was present, and not just his minions, I might have thought again about what I was doing. However, the sorcerer did not like the sting of your knife, Travis Wilder. It is well you had it.”
On reflex, he glanced down at the stiletto. To his surprise, the gem in the hilt still flickered red. Motion caught his eye: a glint of gold. It scuttled across the back of the passenger seat, toward Grace’s arm. A spider of gold. Fascinated, he watched as it wriggled closer.…
The car did not veer even slightly as Vani lashed out a hand and crushed