The Gathering Dark Part 15

The aging Scottish couple had insisted that Nancy and Paula would be doing themselves a great disservice by taking the main highway. The Carling sisters must, the Vandals a.s.sured them, take the mountain road south out of Seville; a road that wound up into the mountainous region north of the Mediterranean and bring them, about halfway to the coast, to the town of Ronda.

Neither of the women had ever heard of Ronda but the effusive recommendation of the Vandals was too contagious to ignore. By the time they left Seville, they had mapped out their new route.

The dawn light through the curtains had roused them early and the sisters had found themselves excited to be breaking from their carefully laid plans. They were going off the path in a foreign country where they did not speak the language, with a few hundred words of high school Spanish and the fat guidebook to aid them. Nancy knew how silly it was to be so excited, that people did this sort of footloose travel all the time. But she and Paula had only been to Europe once before, and that had been to the U.K., where they spoke English. It was a bit of a thrill to them both.

They set off early after the meager continental breakfast provided by the hotel-s.n.a.t.c.hing a couple of bananas for the road. They had gotten turned around several times just trying to find the secondary highway-the mountain road as the Vandals had called it-that led out of Seville, but eventually they managed and were soon rolling south.

The spring morning was chilly but Nancy had the window rolled down regardless, the wind whipping her strawberry blond hair across her face. In the pa.s.senger's seat, Paula tied her chestnut hair back with a rubber band so that she could read from the travel guide without it getting in her way.

"Cool," Paula said several times as Nancy drove. "This place sounds cool."

Nancy had read the entry on Ronda two nights earlier, after they had first met the Vandals. It was brief, but unquestionably interesting. The region where it was located had been home to human beings since Paleolithic times. A broad, rocky plateau loomed high above the Guadalevin River valley. The rushing water had carved the plateau in half thousands of years ago and the city of Ronda sprawled on either side of the dizzyingly high, narrow canyon cut over the ages by the river.

"Did you know the ancient Romans built a castle there?" Paula asked, glancing over at her sister, even as Nancy tried to find a radio station without static.

"I read that," Nancy reminded her.

The Romans had been just the beginning, actually. The height of the plateau and its daunting cliffs made it a perfect natural fortress. When the Moors had taken control of southern Spain, Ronda had become the capital of an independent Moslem sovereign, and remained a Moorish city for several centuries. For a city with such a grand history, Nancy had found it amazing that she had never heard of Ronda before, but she was intrigued.

She drove through the hills amid groves of olive trees and Paula took over trying to find something worth listening to on the radio. They talked about friends new and old, about the odd people at Nancy's office and the new museum job Paula had secured. The sisters had had their share of squabbles growing up, as close siblings always did, but since Paula had moved from their hometown of Baltimore to Los Angeles, they had been planning this very trip as a kind of reunion. It had been a long time in coming. The same dynamic that had always existed between them lingered, however. Paula a.s.serted herself as leader of their expedition by virtue of her status as the elder sister while Nancy tried not to lose her temper.

Right now, however, all of those tensions had slipped away. The winding, leisurely drive through the picturesque hills eased them both into a rare feeling of well-being, so that they did little more than chat and laugh together. When at last they gave up trying to find a radio station, the Carling sisters began to sing, challenging one another to name the television series to which a particular theme was attached, or match a product to its advertising jingle, or name the band responsible for some horrid one-hit wonder.

In this way they soon found themselves at the turnoff that led up a long road into Ronda, past the high ramparts that had been built on the two far ends of the city where the plateau sloped down to the valley floor.

"Here we are," Nancy said as she drove up the steep hill into Ronda.

Paula leaned forward to peer through the windshield. "It doesn't look like much," she sniffed. "The guide made it sound amazing."

Nancy punched her leg. Her sister let out a satisfying cry of protest and she smiled. "Give it a chance. It's an adventure, remember?"

"Okay, but ow ow!" Paula replied, glaring at her.

The moment pa.s.sed quickly, however. They wove their way through streets lined with offices and hotels, gas stations and apartment buildings, following signs that announced that the Centro de Ciudad Centro de Ciudad was ahead. A public parking garage loomed up on the right and they managed to squeeze the rental car down inside of it, though making any of the corners in the underground complex was quite a trick. This sort of thing was exactly why Nancy would not let Paula drive. was ahead. A public parking garage loomed up on the right and they managed to squeeze the rental car down inside of it, though making any of the corners in the underground complex was quite a trick. This sort of thing was exactly why Nancy would not let Paula drive.

Their travel guide had a brief write-up about the city, but no map. Fortunately they were able to buy one very cheaply at the hotel above the garage. With her camera on its strap around her neck, Nancy slid the thick travel guide into the pocket of the light spring jacket she wore. She was a diminutive woman and seemed nearly always to be chilly, and so she found it made sense to always have a jacket along, even if she did not need it. In early May, the temperatures in Spain could vary greatly, particularly when they pa.s.sed from bright sunshine onto shadowed sidewalks.

The sisters followed the Centro de Ciudad Centro de Ciudad signs on foot for several blocks, examining the various structures for age and Moorish influence. The Moors had controlled this part of Spain for ages and built mosques and palaces unrivaled elsewhere in the West. Yet Ronda, despite the travel guide's description of it as a former Moorish stronghold, seemed devoid of such influences. signs on foot for several blocks, examining the various structures for age and Moorish influence. The Moors had controlled this part of Spain for ages and built mosques and palaces unrivaled elsewhere in the West. Yet Ronda, despite the travel guide's description of it as a former Moorish stronghold, seemed devoid of such influences.

They had been in the city less than fifteen minutes and pa.s.sed by dozens of gift shops selling masks and clothes and souvenirs, but Nancy had seen nothing of the marvel that the Vandals had led them to believe they would find.

"Give me the map for a second."

Paula frowned at her. "You're supposed to be taking pictures. I can read the map."

"The guide says there's a new city and an old city. This must be the new city. You have to cross the ravine or whatever to get to the old."

Paula stopped short on the sidewalk outside a restaurant with a bullfighter on the sign. "h.e.l.lo? I know that. I have the map?" She brandished it like a trophy.

They stared at one another for a long moment and then began to laugh.

"All right, map-lady," Nancy relented. "Where do we go from here?"

"Turn around." Paula raised an eyebrow at her.

Nancy turned and found herself looking at a large circular, whitewashed building surrounded by a high wall and fronted by an arch and black wrought-iron gate.

"The bullring?" she asked.

"The bullring," Paula confirmed.

Their attention had been diverted from reaching the old city for a moment. They paid to enter the empty building, which the guide identified as the oldest bullring in all of Spain, dating back to the late eighteenth century. The inside was impressive, with a two-story gallery supported by Tuscan arches and a stone barrier surrounding the ring itself. The sisters toured the ring, and though Paula lamented that they could not witness an actual bullfight, Nancy was glad there were no events that day. She did not want to watch such a spectacle.

Back on the sidewalk in front of the bullring, she glanced at her sister and smiled. "Where to?"

Paula smiled back, consulted the map, and set off along the street. They had their share of squabbles and always had, but they had promised each other that there was no way they were going to let themselves get mired in silly arguments that would spoil their vacation. Sometimes it wasn't easy to keep that promise, but at the moment, they were a team.

Nancy gazed around her, enjoying the way the sun caught the edges of the whitewashed buildings. The light seemed to have an almost unearthly quality here, and she did not know if it was the elevation of the city or simply her pleasure in viewing it. The smells from the restaurants were enticing but she wanted to make sure they explored more before stopping for lunch. They had left early and still had a couple of hours before they would be nearing starvation.

The breeze was even cooler than she had expected and she zipped her jacket, taking care to leave the camera accessible. She had taken some wonderful pictures of the bullring and only hoped that they communicated half of the structure's majesty. The travel guide jutted from the outside pocket of her jacket, but she needed to make sure it was accessible.

The Carling sisters had walked only a short way when the old city came into sight. Paula gestured to Nancy with the map in triumph, but they were both smiling and began to walk a little faster.

When they reached the bridge, they stopped.

Nancy discovered she was holding her breath but found she could not help it. Across the bridge was the old city of Ronda, parts of which dated from the Moorish occupancy, as far back as the twelfth century. The road on the other side of the bridge rose up to the peak of the plateau and so the buildings seemed stacked one upon the other. To the right they had a perfect view of the craggy cliff face that fell away from the edge of the old city in a breathtakingly steep, sheer drop to the valley floor, which spread out below, dotted with ancient ruins and a village of whitewashed houses.

The bridge itself was one of the most incredible things Nancy had ever seen. With Paula beside her, she walked to the edge of the new city and stared down into the ravine-what she now remembered that the travel guide had referred to as the "Cleft of Ronda."

"It must be a thousand feet," Paula said.

Nancy stared down at the rocky gap, at the walls from which trees and shrubs grew against all odds, at the tiny mouths of caves, at the river far, far below. "I think it's deeper," she said.

The bridge was a series of arches constructed upon other arches. At its center was the highest of them, and in the body of the bridge a tiny barred window. The guidebook had noted that this segment of the bridge had once been used as a prison.

"And this is the new bridge," Paula said, grinning at her sister.

"What do you mean new? What were the dates again?"

"I don't remember exactly, but this one was late seventeen hundreds."

"And that's new?" Nancy asked.

"For this place? Yeah. There are a couple of other bridges across the gap that date back to the Moors."

Nancy smiled and gazed out at the panorama again. This was the reason they had come to Spain, the magical quality of places like this, where you could almost hear the ringing of clashing swords still echoing off the buildings or feel the rumble of pa.s.sing wagons in the cobblestones beneath your feet. With very few exceptions, America was a land of make-believe, where the only magic kingdom came with a giant mouse that wore pants and talked in a high squeaky voice.

The camera hung around her neck and she raised it now, clicked it on, and snapped a photograph of the Cleft, trying to get some perspective on its height by including part of the valley in the background. She took several more photos of the old city from this side of the bridge. Then, at last, with Paula leading the way, she stepped onto the bridge itself. The sun was warm there in the open above the Cleft of Ronda and the air seemed to sparkle.

Nancy raised the camera again. There was a high barrier on either side of the bridge for the safety of people walking across, but a kind of high ledge ran along the inside of it. She had to get a better view over the side of the bridge. Though she recognized with a kind of sadness the fact that she would never be able to take a photograph that would accurately communicate the majesty of this place, she was determined to try.

"Careful," Paula warned.

"Always," Nancy replied.

With her left hand on the barrier wall and her right hand clutching the camera, she stepped up onto the ledge where the view was dizzying and spectacular. As she did so, her right knee pushed up the bottom of her jacket and the travel guide popped out, slipped over the top of the barrier wall, and fell into the Cleft.

"Oh, s.h.i.t," Nancy whispered.

Paula stepped up beside her and together they watched it tumble, pages ruffling, end over end, down and down until at last the tiny speck it had become landed soundlessly in the brush beside the river. The fall had seemed to last an eternity.

"Great," Paula sighed. "We're f.u.c.ked now."

Kuromaku had no idea how many hours had pa.s.sed since he had led Sophie and the others to the church. The journey through the ravaged city of Mont de Moreau had taken them through abandoned streets, entire blocks on fire, and they had been set upon several times by demons.

The black-armored, scythe-limbed creatures had kept their distance, but their path had led them into skirmishes with two more of the lumbering, poison-quilled monsters they had seen at the site of the train derailment, as well as a small clutch of J'ai-Pushti J'ai-Pushti, a race of tiny yet savage demons referred to in the oral histories of Central Africa. J'ai-Pushti J'ai-Pushti were much like vicious goblins, no more than nine inches high, yet despite their size they were formidable when traveling in packs. Sophie and the family she had saved from the train were covered with scratches, but Kuromaku had made certain none of them were fatally injured. were much like vicious goblins, no more than nine inches high, yet despite their size they were formidable when traveling in packs. Sophie and the family she had saved from the train were covered with scratches, but Kuromaku had made certain none of them were fatally injured.

In the church they had washed their wounds and made introductions. The couple were Alain and Antoinette Lamontagne. They had been traveling on holiday with their son Henri, planning to visit friends in Nice. Now their son seemed almost catatonic, sleeping for hours and only gazing around wide-eyed while awake, as though trying to convince himself it was only a bad dream.

Kuromaku could not blame him.

The Lamontagnes were handling the situation far better than he would have expected, however. Perhaps it was simply that they could not deny what they had seen and felt; perhaps it was nothing more than instinct and not wanting to die. The five of them, Alain carrying his son, had made it to the church alive.

But where to go from here?

Kuromaku had expected to find the church full of people fleeing the demons and the h.e.l.lish vista their town had become. Where else would they run? Yet the church had been empty when they arrived, not even a priest here to pray with them, and it troubled Kuromaku deeply. There had been no blood, no evidence of violence, no broken windows-but the front doors of the church had been hanging wide open when they reached it. In the long hours since they had taken sanctuary within that holy edifice, no human had appeared. The only things that had tried to gain admittance were the J'ai-Pushti J'ai-Pushti, but the magick inherent in the building's architecture had kept them out, just as it kept out the huge, razor-quilled thing that hammered on the door even now.

It could not enter, but with each thunderous blow on the door, Kuromaku winced. He could hear the thing all the way back in the sacristy, where the priests who presided over this church prepared for each ma.s.s and where they kept their holy vestments.

The others remained in the front of the church, among the pews, in the shadow of the cross. Kuromaku retreated twice an hour to the sacristy to peer out the windows-the only panes in the church that were not part of a stained-gla.s.s biblical scene-yet the view of Mont de Moreau spread out before him never changed. New fires burned and others dimmed, but the heavy, dark orange sky remained and nothing human moved on the streets. Above the church he saw several of the winged carrion demons they had seen feasting on the dead upon their arrival. The things circled expectantly above, as though certain the death of those in the church was inevitable.

And it is, Kuromaku thought grimly as he gazed out the window. His brow furrowed as he turned their dilemma over in his mind. There was a small refrigerator in the sacristy and there had been a little food inside. They had finished the last of it more than two hours before, forcing the boy, Henri, to eat a bar of chocolate Kuromaku had found on a desk in the sacristy.

A creature of the shadows himself, Kuromaku would survive. But if they did not leave here, Sophie and the others would die of starvation in time.

The vampire swore under his breath and turned from the window. He pushed through a door and strode out onto the altar, a place where once upon a time his kind would never have dared to set foot. The light that glowed outside the stained-gla.s.s windows cast an eerie, disturbing illumination upon the church. At the bottom of the two steps that led down from the altar, Antoinette Lamontagne had created a bed for her son out of the priestly vestments she had gathered from the sacristy. Her husband sat in the first pew, speaking quietly with Sophie, expression intense.

"What is it?" Kuromaku asked.

Sophie looked up. She had slept very little and her features were drawn and pale. Kuromaku resolved for the hundredth time to find a way to get her free of this.

"A small argument," she told him, her voice echoing in the vast church. "Alain thinks it would be sinful of us to drink the wine of the ma.s.s unless it is administered by a priest. He's not sure about the holy water."

Kuromaku stared at Alain grimly. He pointed to the man's unconscious son. "G.o.d would deny water to this boy?" he asked in French.

The man's mouth hung open slightly and he turned to stare at his son. His wife gazed up at him and then turned away. Alain covered his eyes as though afraid he might weep in front of them. Then he rose and went to Antoinette and Henri, and he lay down with his son, curling his body behind the boy's, shielding his son with his own flesh.

Sophie slipped out of the pew and walked up to Kuromaku on the altar. She sat down on the top step and patted the place beside her. Troubled, his mind working at the puzzle of their predicament, he sat.

"We can't stay here," Sophie said, voice low, her words heavy with her Parisian accent.

"No," he agreed.

"You've put a lot of thought into this. I wish you would share those thoughts."

Kuromaku turned to face her, aware suddenly of her nearness, of the spare inches that separated them. She seemed so delicate, fragile, though he knew she was hardly that. In that moment he remembered her father, and what a fine man and loyal friend he had been. If Kuromaku could not keep Sophie alive, he would never learn if there might be something more between them, but more than that, his honor would be forever tainted.

She gazed at him and he knew that though she knew what he was, she saw him as a man. Sophie saw his heart. In the time since they had arrived-fifteen hours, perhaps eighteen-he had walked back and forth between altar and sacristy over and over, trying to determine the best course of action. Yet he had shut her out, and he realized now that had been unfair. He owed her honesty, at least.

Kuromaku gazed a moment at one of the stained-gla.s.s windows, an image of the Nazarene at Golgotha, bearing upon his back the very burden upon which he would soon be crucified. The agony depicted there was plain enough, but with the dark glow behind it, the scene was like something out of h.e.l.l itself.

He tore his eyes from it, focusing on Sophie again.

"Do you believe in evil? True evil?"

Her blue eyes shone as she gazed at him, seemingly untouched by the hideous light that filtered through the stained gla.s.s, and Kuromaku felt strengthened by them.

Sophie nodded.

"I do not think that I believe," Kuromaku told her. Her eyes widened in surprise and he forged ahead. "I believe in cruelty, in lack of conscience, in pettiness and l.u.s.t and tyranny. I believe in savagery and the predatory nature of beasts, human and otherwise. But I cannot say that I have ever been convinced of the existence of the sort of epic, operatic evil so many religions have put forward to motivate their subjects to behave.

"If you look into the eyes of a demon, of a monster, and you can see that it wants to kill you, wants to feel your hot blood gushing into its throat, then it is evil, is it not?" Kuromaku asked. He nodded but more to himself than to Sophie. "By that definition, I do not think I have ever seen anything as evil as the things that swarmed our train."

He fell silent for several seconds then. Sophie reached out and took his hands in her own but kept her gaze steady, waiting for him to continue.

"You saw what happened in Paris," he said at length. "The demon that made an incursion there was unable to enter Sacre-Coeur. We should be safe here, but even if we are, we cannot stay. We will starve to death. Our only choice is to escape the h.e.l.l that has swallowed this city. Otherwise we will die. The sooner we move, the better."

Sophie took a deep breath and blew it out. "Do you think . . . what I mean is, you do not think that the whole world has become"-she gestured around them-"like this?"

"No. It may be simply that I cannot imagine it, but I do not believe it. Rather than making an incursion into our world, some h.e.l.l or another has absorbed Mont de Moreau. If we can reach the limit of the area that has been affected, we might escape this."

Sophie leaned back in the pew, turned to gaze up at the carved figure of the crucified Christ. "Then we go," she said quietly, her eyes ticking toward the Lamontagnes. "But perhaps a few more hours' sleep first? To rest before we have to endure that again?"

"I do not think that's wise," Kuromaku admitted.

Something in his tone made her flinch. Sophie looked at him with suspicion. "What are you not telling me?"

Kuromaku ran his hand along the smooth wood of the pew. It gleamed as though it had been recently dusted, by cloth or by the palms of hundreds of the faithful, and he had no doubt that it had indeed.

"If you thought that h.e.l.l had come to Earth and you lived in the shadow of a church like this one, with its spire beckoning to you, would you not have run here? If you were the priest who had been given this flock to shepherd, would you not remain here to welcome them to a safe haven?"

Sophie frowned. "I might. Or I might wish to go out in order to minister to that flock. Perhaps to lead them here."

Kuromaku nodded, but he was still troubled. He kissed Sophie on the forehead and rose from the pew. Leaving her to explain the terrible truth to the Lamontagnes, he returned to the sacristy only long enough to search for the communion wine. Uncorking the bottle he sniffed at its contents and wrinkled his nostrils. It was terrible stuff, and the last thing he wanted was for any of the humans with him to be even slightly intoxicated. Still, a small sip might give them a kind of strength water would not. Despite Alain's hesitation, Kuromaku hoped that the man would look upon communion wine as a gift of grace.

He returned to the front of the church with the bottle. The moment he stepped out onto the altar, Antoinette Lamontagne rose and approached him, cursing him in French. Kuromaku understood the language but Antoinette's words ran one upon the other with such speed that he could only grasp a fraction of what was said. With a frown he turned to Sophie, who ran both hands through her hair and froze a moment in frustration.

"They won't leave," Sophie told him. "They think it's going to end. Eventually it has to end, they say, and why can't we just wait here, where it is safe, until it is over or until someone else comes to help us? Antoinette refuses to take Henri out of here."