Читать книгу The Demon Road Trilogy: The Complete Collection: Demon Road; Desolation; American Monsters - Derek Landy - Страница 32

THE ALARM WOULDN’T STOP WAILING. It howled through the high school’s wide corridors, an unrelenting assault on Amber’s eardrums, and escaped through the open door that led out into the night.

Glen sat with one hand cuffed to the radiator. Amber herself was on her knees, both hands cuffed behind her back. She watched as Shanks opened the glass cabinet, and trailed a long finger over the contours of the dollhouse within, the last surviving dollhouse that contained so many of his victims.

He looked back at her, and smiled.

“This is my life’s work,” he said, his voice barely audible over the alarm. “This is everything that has ever given my existence meaning. What is your meaning, Amber? What is your purpose?”

Amber didn’t say anything.

“Do you even know?” Shanks continued. “Do you have any idea? You probably don’t. Very few do. I didn’t – not when I was alive. I needed to die before I could see why I needed to live. The Shining Demon helped me. He granted me my new life, and he gave me the key that made everything so much easier. Do you have it, by the way? Did you bring it with you?”

“He wants you to help me,” Amber said.

“Sorry? What was that?”

“The Shining Demon,” she said, louder this time. “He wants you to help me.”

Shanks laughed. “I don’t think so, Amber. He plays games, as is his right as a Duke of Hell, but that is not a game he is interested in playing. He would rather we scurry about on our own, fumbling blindly in the dark. We arouse his curiosity only rarely, I’m afraid.”

She shook her head. “I’m special. He said it himself. If you hurt me, if you harm me or my friends, he’ll be—”

He hit her. It was a slap, an open palm, but it struck so fast and so suddenly that it rocked her, sent the world tilting and the floor rushing up to crack against her skull.

She lay on her side, the alarm in her head, tasting blood. Then she felt Shanks’s hands on her as he pulled her back to kneeling position.

“My apologies,” he said. “I don’t like it when people lie to me. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. That was rude. But try not to lie again, all right? It brings out my ugly side.”

“Every side is your ugly side,” Glen said.

“Do you really think it wise to taunt the man with the gun?”

“You think I’m scared of you?”

“Yes,” answered Shanks. “You said as much, not fifteen minutes ago.”

“That was then,” Glen said. “This is now. You know what I think? I think you’re the coward. You’re a big man with the gun and the knife, but take those away, and you’re a pathetic little loser.”

Shanks said, in a bored voice that the alarm nearly drowned out, “You do realise I don’t need you, yes? All I need is Amber here. You are quite disposable.”

Glen laughed. “Of course I’m disposable. I’ve got four days to live. I’m practically dead already. Four days or right now – what difference does it make? Shoot me, or take these cuffs off and we’ll settle this like men.”

Amber watched them, waiting for her moment.

“I think I’ll shoot you,” said Shanks. “It’ll be funnier.” He raised the gun.

There.

A brief wave of pain washed over Amber as she shifted into her demonic form, and she charged into him, her shoulder catching him in the middle of the back and one of her horns scraping his neck. Shanks went down and she fell on top of him. She tried to snap the handcuffs that bound her wrists behind her – she felt the links strain – but her demon strength wasn’t up to the task. Instead, she knelt on his hand and he let go of the gun, and she twisted and fell back, managing to kick the weapon. It skittered across the polished floor towards Glen. He reached for it with his free hand, but it stopped just short of his splayed fingers.

Shanks pushed her off. She got to her knees while he leaped to his feet. He darted for the gun and she threw herself at his legs. He fell sideways, smashing through the glass of the cabinet, narrowly avoiding the dollhouse inside.

Roaring, he clambered out, glass covering him in a thousand crystals. He grabbed Amber by the throat and threw her backwards, then reached down for the gun. In his fury, his clumsy attempt to snatch it up merely pushed it a few inches further away. Glen closed his hand around it, brought it up and fired three times, point-blank, into Shanks’s chest.

The alarm cut off.

Shanks straightened up and kept going, toppling over backwards. He landed in a bed of glass and didn’t move.

Amber stood up. Glen stared at the gun in his hand. The air carried a whine in the sudden silence.

“You okay?” Glen asked, his voice dull.

She nodded. “You did it.”

“I did,” said Glen. “I killed—”

Shanks sat up so suddenly it actually made Amber cry out in surprise. Glen tried to get another shot off, but Shanks tore the gun from his grip and pressed the barrel into his jaw.

Amber froze.

“You can’t kill what’s already dead,” said Shanks. “Haven’t you ever heard that?”

“I’ve always wanted to test that theory,” said Milo from the door.

Shanks leaped up, grabbed Amber and put the gun to her temple. She felt her scales harden, but she doubted they’d be able to stop a bullet.

Milo walked slowly into the school, holding his gun in both hands, his head cocked slightly, aiming down the sights.

“Take one more step and I’ll shoot,” said Shanks. “Amber won’t look so beautiful with half her face missing, now will she?”

Milo didn’t lower the gun and didn’t stop moving forward. “We’re not letting you leave.”

Shanks laughed. “Oh, Milo, I doubt that is your decision to make.”

“You and me aren’t on a first-name basis, Shanks. Let her go and I won’t blow your head off. You remember what that feels like, don’t you?”

Shanks’s grip tightened. “I do indeed. But you may have noticed the last person to do that is now lying on the sidewalk outside with his life leaking away along with all that blood.”

Milo gave a little smile. “I noticed, all right.”

“Put the gun down. You know it can’t hurt me.”

“That’s not exactly true, though, is it?” said Milo. “It can’t kill you, no, but it can hurt you. Might even put you down long enough for us to take those cuffs off of Amber’s wrists and put them on to yours.”

“One more step,” Shanks said. The cold steel pressed harder into Amber’s head. “Take one more step.”

Milo stopped walking.

“Good doggy,” said Shanks. “Now toss the gun.”

“Can’t do that, I’m afraid. Against my upbringing.”

“Toss it or your ridiculous Irish friend dies first.”

“Glen is not my friend,” said Milo. “And the moment that gun moves away from Amber’s head, I pull my trigger. I’m a pretty good shot, I have to warn you.”

“Then Amber will be the first to die.”

“You kill her, I pull my trigger. Whatever you do, this trigger gets pulled.”

“Unless I give up,” said Shanks, “in which case you still put me back in that prison. You think you’re giving me options, but they all end the same way. The only difference is how many of you I get to kill. Well, Milo? Which one will I start with? The rude Irish boy, or the red-skinned demon girl?”

Milo didn’t answer for a moment, and then he spread his arms, taking his finger from the trigger. “You got me,” he said. “Don’t hurt either of them. I’m putting my gun down.”

He laid his pistol on the floor and straightened up, his hands in the air.

Shanks shook his head. “I’m actually disappointed,” he said. “I thought we were headed for a showdown.”

Milo cracked a smile. “Like in High Noon, you mean?”

Shanks pushed Amber to her knees beside Glen, but kept his gun trained on Milo. “Something like that.”

Milo didn’t seem particularly worried. He was so casual, he shrugged. “Ah, I was always partial to The Wild Bunch, myself.”

“Me too,” said a voice behind them.

Shanks turned to see a shotgun levelled at his chest, and then Ella-May blasted him off his feet.

Shanks hit the ground, the front of his shirt obliterated. He rolled like a rag doll.

Milo holstered his pistol and ran to Amber, the handcuff key in his hand. She reverted to normal instantly, but Ella-May wasn’t even looking at her.

Shanks chuckled, and stood.

Ella-May racked the shotgun’s slide and blasted him again. And again. Each blast threw him further back, turned his clothes to rags, mutilated his flesh. But, every time he stood up, his skin was unmarked.

The fourth blast hurled him backwards through the door. Ella-May followed him out, and Milo, Amber and Glen followed.

Shanks got up, smiling. “You can shoot me all you want,” he said, “you’re not going to kill me. It’s not going to change anything. Look at you. Ella-May Roosevelt. You got old.”

“Maybe a few grey hairs here and there,” Ella-May said.

“You look like them, you know. Your daughters. The ones I killed. Just like I killed your husband. You’re not so smart now, are you, Ella-May? You led them to me all those years ago when you had your whole life ahead of you … and now look. You’re old, with your life behind you, and I’ve taken every last one of your family from you.”

“You took Christina,” said Ella-May. “But that’s all you’re going to take from me.”

Shanks narrowed his eyes and looked down at the street, where a blood-drenched Heather was helping a blood-drenched Teddy into the back of the cruiser.

“We Roosevelts are a hardy lot,” Ella-May said, and blasted Shanks in the back.

For a moment, he flew, his spine arched and his arms flung wide. Then gravity found him, gripped him, yanked him down, hard, into the concrete steps. He bounced and twisted and tumbled and finally flipped, hitting the sidewalk with his head turned the wrong way round.

Milo walked down the steps after him, and calmly cuffed his hands behind his back as he lay there, unmoving.

A car pulled up and a man leaped out, carrying a black bag.

“Doc,” Ella-May said in greeting as she handed the shotgun to Amber, “good of you to come so quickly. I need you to see to my husband and daughter while I drive us to Waukesha Memorial.”

The doctor stared at the scene. “What the hell happened?”

“Heather has a stab wound to the abdomen,” said Ella-May. “As far as I can tell, it missed the major organs. Teddy has had his throat cut. No arterial damage. Both have lost a lot of blood.”

The doctor glanced down at Shanks. “What about this man?”

“He doesn’t need your help,” Ella-May said. She hurried down the steps and guided Heather into the passenger seat.

“Dad first,” Heather said. She was corpse-pale and covered in sweat. “His pulse is barely there.”

The doctor didn’t ask any more questions. He climbed in the back and Ella-May got behind the wheel. She reversed away from the sidewalk and swung round.

“Guess you’ll all be gone by the time I get back,” she said through the open window.

“We will,” said Amber.

“Good,” said Ella-May, and she floored it, the cruiser’s lights flashing.

Milo watched her go. “Passed her and Heather on my way here,” he said. “Figured if she was half as tough as her daughter, giving her the shotgun might not be a bad idea.”

Shanks moaned. His bones cracked and his neck straightened.

“Welcome back,” said Milo, hauling him to his feet.

The streets were quiet in Springton. This didn’t surprise Amber, not after the stories she’d been told. Tomorrow the townspeople would discuss the gunshots and the alarms and all this blood, and they’d let the theories settle in beside the legends and the myths they’d already stored up. She wondered what Walter S. Bryant would make of it all.

“What do we do with him?” asked Glen, keeping a respectful distance from Shanks as Milo forced him to walk.

“We’re taking him with us,” Milo said.

Shanks grunted out a laugh. “Are you inviting me to join your motley crew? I’ll say yes, but only if I can be leader.”

“Safest option,” Milo said, ignoring Shanks and talking to Amber as they neared the Charger. “We can’t leave him here, not after everything that’s happened.”

“We could chop him up,” said Glen. “Or, I mean, you could chop him up. Bury him, maybe?”

“Maybe,” said Milo. “But there’d always be the risk of someone digging him up by accident.”

“I do have a tendency to return when you least expect it,” said Shanks, chuckling.

They stopped at the rear of the Charger and Milo turned him so that Shanks’s back was to the car. Amber noticed that all of their bags had been taken out of the trunk and were now in a pile on the ground.

The trunk opened silently, red light spilling out.

“So we’ll take him with us,” Milo said. “It’ll be inconvenient for a few weeks, but the car will eventually digest him.”

“What?” said Shanks, his face going slack, and then Milo shoved him backwards.

Amber’s eyes played a trick on her then. For one crazy instant, it looked like Shanks was sucked into the trunk as the trunk itself enveloped him, the lid slamming closed like a great black jaw. Shanks kicked and battered and yelled from inside, and then all that noise turned down, like the Charger was slowly muting him.

Amber blinked. “Whoa.”

Glen was frowning. “Did you see that? Did I see that? What the hell was that?”

Amber looked at Milo. “Were you serious? About the car digesting him?”

Milo trailed a hand lovingly over the Charger’s contours. “She’s a beast,” he said.