Darkfall

themselves seemed to be alive and, worse, seemed to be creeping closer with great cleverness and stealth.
    Rebecca and the kids evidently felt the same way about the place. They stayed close together, and they looked around worriedly, their faces and bodies tense.
    It’s all right, Jack told himself. The goblins can’t have known where we were going. For the time being, they’ve lost track of us. For the moment, at least, we’re safe.
    But he didn’t feel safe.
    The night man in charge of the garage was Ernie Tewkes. His thick black hair was combed straight back from his forehead, and he wore a pencil-thin mustache that looked odd on his wide upper lip.
    “But each of you already signed out a car,” Ernie said, tapping the requisition sheet on his clipboard.
    “Well, we need two more,” Jack said.
    “That’s against regulations, and I-”
    “To hell with the regulations,” Rebecca said. “Just give us the cars. Now .”
    “Where’re the two you already got?” Ernie asked. “You didn’t wrack them up, did you?”
    “Of course not,” Jack said. “They’re bogged down.”
    “Mechanical trouble?”
    “No. Stuck in snow drifts,” Jack lied.
    They had ruled out going back for the car at Rebecca’s apartment, and they had also decided they didn’t dare return to Faye and Keith’s place. They were sure the devil-things would be waiting at both locations.
    “Drifts?” Ernie said. “Is that all? We’ll just send a tow truck out, get you loose, and put you on the road again.”
    “We don’t have time for that,” Jack said impatiently, letting his gaze roam over the darker portions of the cavernous garage. “We need two cars right now.”
    “Regulations say-”
    “Listen,” Rebecca said, “weren’t a number of cars assigned to the Carramazza task force?”
    “Sure,” Ernie said. “But-”
    “And aren’t some of those cars still here in the garage, right now, unused?”
    “Well, at the moment, nobody’s using them,” Ernie admitted. “But maybe-”
    “And who’s in charge of the task force?” Rebecca demanded.
    “Well… you are. The two of you.”
    “This is an emergency related to the Carramazza case, and we need those cars.”
    “But you’ve already got cars checked out, and regulations say you’ve got to fill out breakdown or loss reports on them before you can get-”
    “Forget the bullshit bureaucracy,” Rebecca said angrily. “Get us new wheels now, this minute, or so help me God I’ll rip that funny little mustache out of your face, take the keys off your pegboard there, and get the cars myself.”
    Ernie stared wide-eyed at her, evidently stunned by both the threat and the vehemence with which it was delivered.
    In this particular instance, Jack was delighted to see Rebecca revert to a nail-eating, hard-nosed Amazon.
    “Move!” she said, taking one step toward Ernie.
    Ernie moved. Fast.
    While they waited by the dispatcher’s booth for the first car to be brought around, Penny kept looking from one shadowy area to another. Again and again, she thought she saw things moving in the gloom: darkness slithering through darkness; a ripple in the shadows between two patrol cars; a throbbing in the pool of blackness that lay behind a police riot wagon; a shifting, malevolent shape in the pocket of darkness in that corner over there; a watchful, hungry shadow hiding among the ordinary shadows in that other corner; movement just beyond the stairway and more movement on the other side of the elevators and something scuttling stealthily across the dark ceiling and-
    Stop it!
    Imagination, she told herself. If the place was crawling with goblins, they’d have attacked us already.
    The garage man returned with a slightly battered blue Chevrolet that had no police department insignia on the doors, though it did have a big antenna because of its police radio. Then he hurried away to get the second car.
    Daddy and Rebecca checked under the seats of the first one, to be sure no goblins were hiding there.
    Penny didn’t want to be separated from her father, even though she knew separation was part of the plan, even though she had heard all the good reasons why it was essential for them to split up, and even though the time to leave had now come. She and Davey would go with Rebecca and spend the next few hours driving slowly up and down the main avenues, where the snowplows were working the hardest and where there was the least danger of getting stuck; they didn’t dare get