Free Midnight's Angels - 03 by Tony Richards Page A

Sergeant. But I’m not sure you really want to hear it.”
    Which did not sound in the least bit good.
    “We’ve faced bad stuff before,” I reminded him. “Bad as it comes, and then some. How’s this any different?”
    Willets turned his gaze on me, the soft smile still in place. But it had taken on a faintly mocking edge, like there was something that I was not getting.
    “You’ve faced evil spirits, Ross. Monsters and madmen with more power than they ought to have. But what we’re facing this time falls into a different class entirely.”
    I was getting fairly tired of this, impatience nagging at me. I knew that he’d been through an awful lot. But he was dragging this out, playing to a captive audience, perhaps because he hadn’t had one in a good long while. It was fine to behave this way on a podium in Boston. But I wasn’t any freshman, and I wasn’t much impressed.
    The doctor seemed to get that. He had always dealt with me straightforwardly in the past. His head dipped, his bright pupils disappearing. Then, he came right out with it.
    “I spend a lot of time on my own, in the dark. You know that.”
    His voice was back to its stern, gravelly normal pitch. It seemed that his powers of recovery were very strong.
    “A lot of time to think and ponder,” he said. “And explore. Just with my mind, you understand. This body,” he touched his shoulder, “stays put. But I’ve been delving recently as deeply as I can into the roots and origins of magic. Following the trails it leaves, as far back as I can go.”
    He was the one who had explained to me that the whole business had a hierarchy, a structure. He’d explained who Saruak really was. And he’d known in advance about Lucas Tollburn, sensed the presence of the Wand of Dantiere.
    “By gradual degrees, I’ve come to understand the truth.” He raised his face again and fixed me with his gaze, “That there are things out there, in the darkness beyond our plane of existence that, if humankind knew what was there, most people would curl up and die simply from the terror of it.”
    Which sounded overly dramatic to put it mildly. But, considering what had come down on us last night, I let him continue.
    “Truly dreadful entities, Devries. Beings with power beyond our grasp, and not a shred of conscience to hold it in check. Creatures that, confronted with a newborn child, would simply laugh and devour it. And what keeps them from overwhelming us? The light of day, in part. But mostly the light in our own hearts. Our basic, simple humanity is our best defense against them.”
    That was kind of hokey to my way of thinking, and not the way the doctor usually spoke. I read books and watched TV. Knew what went on in the outside world. And a lot of it was not too cute or happy, our humanity often failing us. So I told him that, making no bones about it.
    “You’re right. It’s true. Yes, all of that happens. But it happens when we forget who we really are. We stop thinking of ourselves as merely human, or stop thinking of our fellow men in those terms at all, and that’s when the dark forces manage to gain entry to this world, and Hell on Earth breaks out.”
    I thought about old footage that I’d seen, of previous regimes and wars. Peculiar uniforms and strange salutes, and people behaving like automatons. And I could see his point. But nobody was here for any philosophical discussion. I knew Willets well enough to see this was leading somewhere. I just wasn’t sure how long he’d take.
    The room had become utterly quiet. Even Levin looked subdued. He had sat down on a chair near the wall, and was staring at the doctor with his tented fingers pressed against his lips.
    I could even hear the ticking of the grandfather clock in the downstairs hallway. It seemed to be measuring the passing seconds slower than it ought. Willets sat a little more firmly, his composure coming back.
    “Last night, I managed to reach further than I’d ever done before.