Darkfall

on the door and the horde in the foyer beyond. Rebecca and Penny stared at that Hellborn pack without speaking, both of them driven beyond the need-and perhaps beyond the ability-to scream. Davey was the only one who cried out. He clutched at Jack’s arm.
    “They must be inside the building by now,” Rebecca said. “In the walls.”
    They all looked toward the hallway’s heating vents.
    “How do we get out?” Penny asked.
    How, indeed?
    For a moment no one spoke.
    In the foyer other creatures had joined the worm-thing on the glass of the inner door.
    “Is there a rear entrance?” Rebecca wondered.
    “Probably,” Jack said. “But if there is, then these things will be waiting there, too.”
    Another pause.
    The silence was oppressive and terrifying-like the unspent energy in the raised blade of a cocked guillotine.
    “Then we’re trapped,” Penny said.
    Jack felt his own heart beating. It shook him.
    Think.
    “Daddy, don’t let them get me, please don’t let them,” Davey said miserably.
    Jack glanced at the elevator, which was opposite the stairs. He wondered if the devils were already in the elevator shaft. Would the doors of the lift suddenly open, spilling out a wave of hissing, snarling, snapping death?
    Think!
    He grabbed Davey’s hand and headed toward the foot of the stairs.
    Following with Penny, Rebecca said, “Where are you going?”
    “This way.”
    They climbed the steps toward the second floor.
    Penny said, “But if they’re in the walls, they’ll be all through the building.”
    “Hurry,” was Jack’s only answer. He led them up the steps as fast as they could go.
    III
    In Carver Hampton’s apartment above his shop in Harlem, all the lights were on. Ceiling lights, reading lamps, table lamps, and floor lamps blazed; no room was left in shadow. In those few corners where the lamplight didn’t reach, candles had been lit; clusters of them stood in dishes and pie pans and cake tins.
    Carver sat at the small kitchen table, by the window, his strong brown hands clamped around a glass of Chivas Regal. He stared out at the falling snow, and once in a while he took a sip of the Scotch.
    Fluorescent bulbs glowed in the kitchen ceiling. The stove light was on. And the light above the sink, too. On the table, within easy reach, were packs of matches, three boxes of candles, and two flashlights-just in case the storm caused a power failure.
    This was not a night for darkness.
    Monstrous things were loose in the city.
    They fed on darkness.
    Although the night-stalkers had not been sent to get Carver, he could sense them out there in the stormy streets, prowling, hungry; they radiated a palpable evil, the pure and ultimate evil of the Ancient Ones. The creatures now loose in the storm were foul and unspeakable presences that couldn’t go unnoticed by a man of Carver Hampton’s powers. For one who was gifted with the ability to detect the intrusion of otherworldly forces into this world, their mere existence was an intolerable abrasion of the nerves, the soul. He assumed they were Lavelle’s hellish emissaries, bent on the brutal destruction of the Carramazza family, for to the best of his knowledge there was no other Bocor in New York who could have summoned such creatures from the Underworld.
    He sipped his Scotch. He wanted to get roaring drunk. But he wasn’t much of a drinking man. Besides, this night of all nights, he must remain alert, totally in control of himself. Therefore, he allowed himself only small sips of whiskey.
    The Gates had been opened. The very Gates of Hell. Just a crack. The latch had barely been slipped. And through the applicator of his formidable powers as a Bocor , Lavelle was holding the Gates against the crush of demonic entities that sought to push forth from the other side. Carver could sense all of those things in the currents of the ether, in the invisible and soundless tides of benign and malevolent energies that ebbed and flowed over the great metropolis.
    Opening the Gates was a wildly dangerous step to have taken. Few Bocors were even capable of doing it. And of those few, fewer still would have dared such a thing. Because Lavelle evidently was one of the most powerful Bocors who had ever drawn a včvč , there was good reason to believe that he would be able to maintain control of the Gates and that, in time, when the Carramazzas were disposed of, he would be able to cast back the creatures that he had permitted out of Hell. But if he lost