The Gathering Dark Part 13

Only days after she had fled her hometown, Keomany sat in the back seat of the rented Lincoln Navigator and stared out the tinted window at the green hills and valleys that rose and fell on either side of the highway. With every mile they drew closer to Wickham, and with every mile her throat became dryer, her heart sped faster, and the images in her mind became more and more inescapable.

The rotten pumpkin sky. The black, skeletal demons. The unnatural silence on the street, the emptiness of it, as if the whole town had been hollowed.

Keomany closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.

A gentle hand touched her shoulder. "Are you not feeling all right?"

She opened her eyes again. Father Jack was studying her with genuine concern and she forced herself to smile. "As well as can be expected, I suppose."

The priest nodded as though he understood precisely what she felt. It must be something they're trained for It must be something they're trained for, Keomany thought. For though she was sure Father Jack had seen his share of chaos, somehow she doubted he had any idea what she was feeling. The terrible certainty that she would arrive back home and the place would be barren, deserted, nothing but a ghost town. The idea that the h.e.l.lish possession of the town would have ceased and left only the bones of the town where her life had been. She would go to her parents' home and find that they, too, were now only bones.

The night before, she had dreamed precisely that.

"Keomany, when we get there, you don't have to come into the town," Peter said.

He was behind the wheel, and Nikki in the pa.s.senger seat. Keomany had watched him a lot during the hours they had been on the road-watched both of them, in fact. Peter was an enigma to her. Despite what she knew of his past, what she knew he had once been, he seemed on the surface to be a normal, average, thirtysomething guy. But Keomany had always been able to sense the true nature of things. Perhaps that was part of being an earthwitch, or perhaps it was simply that she was a good judge of character. Either way, she saw beneath the surface when it came to Peter.

Underneath the chamois shirt and the blue jeans, under that almost mundanely handsome exterior, Peter Octavian burned burned. It was not just magick that coursed through him, but fierce pa.s.sion and honor. Keomany found it strange that Octavian kept these things almost hidden, as though the face he wore were a disguise, like Superman receding beneath the persona of an earnest reporter.

Keomany saw him, though, for what he really was and it helped her to understand why they all automatically deferred to him, why Father Jack had handed him the keys to the Navigator, why Nikki so obviously still loved him.

Nikki glanced into the back seat at her and Keomany blinked, realizing she had not responded to what Peter had said.

"You sure you're all right?" Nikki asked.

"No," Keomany admitted. Her gaze ticked toward Peter. She saw him looking at her in the rearview mirror. "But I'm not staying behind, either. That's my family in there. My friends. It's my town."

Peter nodded and said nothing more on the subject. Unlike Father Jack, she had a feeling that his apparent understanding had a depth and truth to it. It helped.

Keomany let her gaze drift out the window again. She saw a little town in a valley off to her right, homes sprawling out from the center of town, where a picturesque white church marked the heart of the community. Another quaint and peaceful New England village, where every day seemed just like the last. And where-as she had learned- anything could happen.

When they pa.s.sed the sign that announced that Wickham was five miles away, she flinched. As those last few miles rolled past, Keomany fished into her pocket book and took out a rubber band, then tied her raven hair back in a tight ponytail.

"Take a right here," she told Peter.

He followed her directions as she guided them toward Wickham. Since she had left, Keomany had felt only a glimmer of the connection to nature that had been hers the last time she was here. It was still there-a new awareness of the world around her, of the order of things and the health of the land-but not so much that she could wield it. Not so much that she felt able to reach out and touch the soul of the earth itself, the way she had on that day.

Now, though, as she drew closer to home, Keomany felt it growing in her again. She was an earthwitch, and what had happened in Wickham was like a huge wound in the flesh of the world, a scar upon nature. It was as though the wound was hers, and yet at the same time, she felt the earth trying to heal itself, felt that she could tap into that.

It was the most incredible feeling she had ever had, being a part of something. No, of everything No, of everything.

Half a mile outside of town Peter drove the Navigator down a gentle slope from the top of which the village ought to have been visible. There was nothing there but a kind of haze, as though a cloud had dropped to earth and made everything past that point in the road out of focus.

A hundred yards from the barren land that had replaced Wickham-from the bubble of air that shimmered and blurred her vision-Keomany saw a phalanx of police cars and two military Jeeps. The road was blocked. The men and women posted at that roadblock were armed. When the Navigator rumbled toward them, they raised their weapons and trained them on the huge black Lincoln SUV.

"Thank G.o.d it's a rental," Father Jack said.

n.o.body laughed.

Peter parked the Navigator in the middle of the road and killed the engine. He glanced at Nikki first, then into the back seat.

"Sit tight. I'm going to have a little talk with them."

He opened the door and stepped down from the driver's seat. Keomany leaned forward to get a better view and she noticed that Father Jack had done the same.

Peter had his hands up as he approached the police and the MPs, but there was something different about him now, as if the warrior that he had hidden away was now revealed. It was in everything about him, the way he walked, the way he held his head, the sheer energy that radiated from him. This was what he had come here for.

This was who he was.

When he reached the first police officer, Peter spread his arms wider and his fingers sketched at the air as though he were conducting an orchestra. One of the MPs shouted in alarm, demanding to know what he was up to. The man barely finished his sentence.

A bright flash of green light burst from Peter's hands, rolling like a wave over those who had been guarding the road. As it struck them, they fell one by one to the ground, unconscious.

"Jesus!" Father Jack hissed.

Nikki glanced back at him, smiling. "Was that a prayer, Father, or were you taking the Lord's name in vain?"

The priest did not respond. He only stared, just as Keomany did, as Peter turned his back on the men and women he had just rendered inert with a gesture and walked back toward the Navigator. Tapped into nature, Keomany felt as though she could sense the power of the earth itself, even access it a little. But she could not imagine the kind of magick that Octavian had at his disposal. A thousand years in h.e.l.l, and he had brought this back with him.

Peter opened the door and smiled in at them. "It was just going to take too long to explain," he said. "And we're kind of in a rush."

9.

Peter Octavian took a deep breath of sweet Vermont mountain air. His heart sped with antic.i.p.ation, a kind of adrenaline high filling him. For so long he had been denying himself this rush and now he could not remember why. Something about wanting to live normally now that he was mortal again, wanting to have an ordinary life.

What the h.e.l.l was I thinking? he asked himself now. he asked himself now.

In Venice and Salzburg and New Orleans he had faced horrors unimaginable. He had spent an eternity in h.e.l.l and somehow been reborn on the other side. Nearly every person he had ever loved, human or vampire, had been taken from him to that place after death. He had wanted to live, to be bored, to paint and be human and love and cry. But Peter Octavian had seen the destruction of his home and his family and his loved ones before. For hundreds of years, it had been the pattern of his life. It had been foolish of him to think he could escape that, that he could hide away the truest part of him.

There on the outskirts of Wickham, with the sky so blue above and a ma.s.sive, barren landscape before him, the warrior in him came awake for the first time in a very long while.

"Peter?" Nikki called from inside the Navigator.

He had been standing just inside the open pa.s.senger door. Now he grinned up at her. "I'm fine." Peter climbed up into the rented SUV and slammed the door. He glanced over his shoulder at Father Jack and Keomany.

"Jack, the guns?"

The priest turned in his seat and reached into the back of the Navigator for a metal case that he dragged over into his lap. As Nikki and Keomany watched, he opened the case. Peter eyed its contents with satisfaction: a quartet of Heckler and Koch nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistols, gleaming silver, and a dozen replacement clips, already loaded.

"Very nice," Peter said. "The Lord provides, huh?"

Father Jack smiled. "Or the Bishop does. Even if he doesn't know it." Then the priest glanced up at Nikki, who was leaning over the front seat to get a better look. "These things have a h.e.l.l of a kick. Most demons are vulnerable to traditional weaponry if you hit something vital, or shoot them enough." His gaze went to Keomany. "But all the ammunition is also blessed, just in case."

"Will that make a difference, really?" Nikki asked.

Peter nodded, watching as Father Jack pulled out the first of the HKs, checking the weapon's action and confirming that it was loaded. "It's a kind of magick all its own, isn't it?"

"I don't need a gun," Keomany announced.

"What?" Nikki asked.

She had beat him to it. Peter frowned as he studied the woman who had brought them all here, her gentle Asian features now grave. Her choice of words was curious. Not that she did not want a gun, but that she did not need one. It reminded him that there had been something he had been wanting to ask her about her exodus from Wickham.

"You don't need one?" he asked now. "So how will you protect yourself? Better yet, maybe it's time you tell us how you got out of here alive the last time."

Nikki shot him an admonishing glance as though he were being harsh, but Peter ignored her. They were here together, a unit, and the truth of it was that he was the only real warrior among them. It fell to him to keep them alive, so he needed to know everything about the people he was with. Father Jack had a modic.u.m of sorcerous ability, knew enough spells to combat certain kinds of enemies and to protect himself and possibly others. But he was also going to have a gun. Nikki was fast and smart, but beyond that she would be armed.

Keomany was staring at the open case with obvious distaste. "They're unnatural. Guns."

"What do you call what's going on out there?" Peter asked, tilting his head toward the windshield, beyond which the distorted air that marked the perimeter of the reality disruption was clearly visible.

The woman nodded. She looked up at Nikki and smiled almost shyly before turning her gaze to Peter.

"I'm an earthwitch."

Father Jack held up the gun in his hand. "Meaning your religion won't allow you to handle one of these?"

"That's not what she means," Peter said.

Keomany glanced at him and a kind of understanding pa.s.sed between them. For Peter, it was as though he were looking at her for the first time. Her pupils seemed to glow dimly even in the sunlit interior of the Navigator, as though dawn were fast approaching behind her eyes.

"We're not talking about pagan rituals and dancing naked around the fire, are we?" he asked.

Keomany smiled softly. "Well, there's plenty of that too. But no, we're not. I've known a lot of earthwitches with a certain amount of power. Weather influence, mostly. But when I was trapped here . . . something happened. I tapped into Gaea herself. At least I think I did."

There was silence inside the vehicle but Peter was not going to let it last long. Soon enough the cops and MPs outside would be waking up, and he didn't want to have to give them another jolt if he could avoid it. Even if he was careful, there was always the possibility he might seriously hurt one of them.

Nikki reached across the front seat and took his hand, but her attention was on Keomany. "So you're a sorceress?"

"No." Keomany shook her head.

"Magick has many sources," Peter said. "Or so I believe, given everything I've learned about it. It's possible it all comes from one place, different kinds of energy, manipulating molecules. What is today's science but yesterday's magick? Father Jack and the Bishop would tell you it comes from G.o.d. Maybe it does. But I've met an earthwitch or two before-though they called themselves other names. Gaea is a real source of power. It's the heart of this world."

"The heart?" Father Jack asked. "Or the soul?"

Keomany looked to him and her eyes shone more brightly. "That's it exactly. Gaea's the spirit of this world."

"Mother nature," Nikki said, pushing her blond hair away from her face. "Well, I'm sure this kind of s.h.i.t really p.i.s.ses her off."

"You could say that," Keomany replied.

Peter nodded, wanting to move on. "Jack, take two of the guns for yourself. Give Nikki the other two." He gazed at Nikki, reached over, and put his hand on her upper arm, the contact meant to rea.s.sure himself as much as her. "You remember how to fire a gun?"

She grinned as the breeze picked up, blowing through the window and rustling her hair. "Something tells me a demon gets up in my face, it'll refresh my memory."

"It might not come to that," Peter replied, but the words sounded hollow, even to him.

He faced forward again, gripped the steering wheel with one hand, and turned the key in the ignition. The Navigator roared to life, the engine like some caged beast. In his peripheral vision he saw Nikki accepting the two guns from Father Jack, then he dropped the transmission into gear and accelerated.

The Navigator lurched toward the distortion field, which shimmered and flickered as they drew nearer to it. It was as though the view of a barren wasteland that had replaced the village of Wickham was little more than a blurred, static-filled image broadcast on a ballooning television screen. Peter guided the vehicle around the roadblock and the fallen sentinels who had been guarding it.

The distortion field loomed before them now, stretching out as far as they could see on either side and reaching up toward the sky at an odd, curving angle so that it seemed Wickham had been swallowed up by some warped dome of electricity. As the Navigator rolled closer, Peter could even hear a sort of hum that was being emitted from it.

"What if it's real?" Nikki asked suddenly, a hitch in her voice.

Almost unconsciously, Peter let up on the accelerator. "What?"

"What if it's just blurring our vision but that's really all that's left?"

"Then where did the town go?" Father Jack asked.

"Let's find out," Peter answered, ignoring Nikki's question mainly because he had no satisfactory answer.

Right arm stiff as he gripped the wheel, he thrust his left hand out the window. It was not easy to make his throat and lips form the words, but he spoke in a guttural, demonic language known to no one else on Earth. h.e.l.l had taught him many things.

A moist ball of pink light blossomed around his left hand which was closed into a fist. As he opened it, spreading his fingers out, the light turned from pink to crimson. He muttered the words again, grunting deep in his chest.

In the back seat Keomany turned to Father Jack. "Is he all right?"

Peter ignored them.

With a final word, punctuated by the clack of his teeth coming together, he clenched his fist again and the sphere of damp crimson light flashed away from his hand as though a silent explosion had occurred in his palm. The sphere grew enormous in half a heartbeat and, soundless, it struck the distortion field.

"Holy s.h.i.t," Keomany whispered.

Father Jack grunted. "Was that a prayer or a curse?"

The crimson sphere burned through the distortion field. For a moment it did nothing but create a red-tinted window through which they could see that barren wasteland in focus for the first time. And that was precisely what it was on the other side of that window. No sign of the village of Wickham, or its people.

But Peter's magick burned deeper, seeking beyond appearance, tearing at the distortion field but also seeking out the source of it. A shudder went through him as he kept his foot pressed on the Navigator's brake, waiting for an opening. If the infernal denizens of other dimensions could make breaches into this world, Peter could return the favor.

The crimson sphere glowed brightly, and then it exploded into shards of red-tinged light that were instantly swallowed by the sickly orange glow that erupted from within the distortion field. Rotten pumpkins Rotten pumpkins, Peter thought. That's how Keomany described it That's how Keomany described it. And he could see the comparison. The orange light was impossibly dark and tainted, and where it streamed out of the hole he had blown in the distortion field, it seemed as though it had been vomited into existence.

Unnatural, he thought. Keomany's right. This has nothing to do with our world. Keomany's right. This has nothing to do with our world.

"It isn't just distorting our vision," he said quietly. "It's a dimensional displacement."

"Explain," Nikki demanded.

"You were right. Wickham really is gone. Sort of. It's been shunted out of this plane of existence and into another."

"So what now?"