The Gathering Dark Part 18

Slowly, he shook his head, gazing at that same spot.

"I honestly have no idea."

12.

The Cleft of Ronda was breathtakingly beautiful from the vantage point offered by the New Bridge. The Carling sisters remained on the bridge for nearly fifteen minutes as Nancy took photographs of the vistas offered on both sides. From the western view she could see the remains of centuries-old battlements in the foothills below the cliffs of the plateau, and to the east the Guadalevin River flowed through a sprawl of whitewashed houses surrounded by lush trees and other greenery.

Perhaps most startling-and it was a sight Paula insisted Nancy take several photos of-was the view available to them when they had reached the other end of the bridge. Looking back from the Old City to the comparatively new, they could see the back of the government-owned luxury hotel that loomed at the edge of the plateau, and the craggy drop below. They could, in fact, see all around the western part of the plateau, the outcroppings of rock and the striations in its composition, the ledges where dense shrubbery grew, the steep cliff face that made Nancy think that a leap from that height would feel like falling forever.

Not that she had any plans in that regard.

"So," she began, glancing at her sister. "You've got the map. Where to first?"

Paula smiled. "Sure you don't want to toss the map over the bridge?"

Nancy held out her hand. "Try me."

"I don't think so."

While her sister perused the map of Ronda and the descriptions of the various sights in the Old City, Nancy watched the cars and mopeds rumble past. People walked across the bridge as well and she struggled to hear their voices. She heard Spanish, of course, as well as Italian and German, but only one fortyish couple speaking English, and them with British accents, not American. Ronda seemed out of the way, the sort of place that people here knew about but that was not a destination the way other Spanish cities were. Americans had not really discovered it yet, it seemed. She liked that.

"Let's start up this way," Paula said.

Together they set off to the east along a road that ran parallel to the Cleft on one side and what the map identified as the family home of the Counts of Santa Pola. The street ran steeply upward and it narrowed the farther they went, their path taking them on a jag to the right, between two rows of beautifully restored buildings that appeared to have been renovated into apartments. At the northeastern edge of the Old City, not far from the protective ramparts, they found a beautiful archway and an ancient Moorish bridge whose actual age, according to the map, could only be guessed at.

Only a stone's throw away the sisters came upon a strange structure, an array of stone upheavals in the ground with small rounded windows built into them.

"Moorish baths," Paula informed her sister after consulting the map. "The best preserved in the country, according to the write-up. Built at the end of the . . . holy s.h.i.t . . . built at the end of the thirteenth century. That's like twelve hundred and something."

Nancy pursed her lips. "Thanks. I can do the math."

They descended along a short set of stairs and entered the Moorish baths. Nancy felt herself holding her breath. The place was like an underground church constructed of stone, bare floors punctuated only by enormous stone pillars that supported the ceiling. Beams of sunlight shone down through the circular holes in the roof.

It was not the first time she had been filled with wonder in Ronda, and it would not be the last. The beauty and age of the place entranced her, and as they moved on, she even forgot to keep up the usual back-and-forth jabs with her sister.

They wandered south along streets lined with shops. Elegant old row houses on either side were adorned with second-and third-story iron-railed balconies, some of which had beautiful wood and gla.s.s enclosures that were unique in Nancy's experience. These master-works of carved wood and paned gla.s.s hung out above the sidewalk and she yearned to go inside one of the homes, to look out at Ronda from the other side of that gla.s.s.

Everywhere they walked there were architectural pleasures, from the churches and their towers on the tallest portion of the plateau to the meticulously laid tiles of blue and green and white that finished the appearance of signs and the corners of buildings with the perfect flourish. A trio of bells, one larger between two of equal size, topped the facade of a convent whose upper windows mirrored the position of the bells, one large round window between two smaller.

They explored museums and gardens that overlooked the plains below, torn between the beauty of the view and the tile work and history within. During lunch at a little restaurant Paula studied the map and pointed out that they had not yet visited the Mondragon Palace, the description of which sounded beautiful, though Nancy suspected Paula was most intrigued by its name. It was the sort of thing that would appeal to her, dragons and moons and such.

"It was built in 1491 when the Moors had been driven out," Paula said. "It sounds like something we shouldn't miss."

After lunch they set off to discover the Mondragon. Even with the map they found themselves turned around more than once, in the shadow of the Church of Santa Maria la Mayor. Paula became frustrated, propping her sungla.s.ses up on top of her head and twining one finger in her hair before a.s.suring Nancy that, at last, she had figured out the maze of narrow, zigzagging streets on the western edge of the Old City.

The calle calle they strode down now was more of a cobblestoned alley, the buildings laid out in jagged angles to what pa.s.sed for a road. Unlike the other areas of the Old City, this street seemed in the midst of a renovation that had reached the rest of Ronda years before. Lanterns jutted from high up on the walls. Shops were vacant and for rent or lease and buildings half a millennium old were dilapidated and in need of not merely paint but structural b.u.t.tressing as well. Some of them had broken and boarded windows, and graffiti on the boards, though most-the ones that were occupied, Nancy guessed-had iron grates over the windows. they strode down now was more of a cobblestoned alley, the buildings laid out in jagged angles to what pa.s.sed for a road. Unlike the other areas of the Old City, this street seemed in the midst of a renovation that had reached the rest of Ronda years before. Lanterns jutted from high up on the walls. Shops were vacant and for rent or lease and buildings half a millennium old were dilapidated and in need of not merely paint but structural b.u.t.tressing as well. Some of them had broken and boarded windows, and graffiti on the boards, though most-the ones that were occupied, Nancy guessed-had iron grates over the windows.

"Are you sure this is the way?" Nancy asked.

They approached a three-way junction consisting of a trio of alleys and Paula consulted a sign on the wall, then the map.

"It's just down here," Paula a.s.sured her, and they continued in the direction they had been walking.

Despite the faded paint and the grime on the cobblestones, the architecture along this calle calle was still lovely. Some of the buildings had high doors not unlike those the sisters had seen in Seville, and there were one or two enclosed second-floor balconies. On the left, Nancy noticed a wooden door perhaps twelve feet high, lined with iron studs and capped with a beautiful piece of woodwork. A stone arch surrounded the door. It seemed almost too well preserved for this particular area of the Old City. was still lovely. Some of the buildings had high doors not unlike those the sisters had seen in Seville, and there were one or two enclosed second-floor balconies. On the left, Nancy noticed a wooden door perhaps twelve feet high, lined with iron studs and capped with a beautiful piece of woodwork. A stone arch surrounded the door. It seemed almost too well preserved for this particular area of the Old City.

"Weird," Paula whispered.

Nancy frowned and drew her attention away from the arched door, glancing at her sister. Paula was staring across the alley, at a door almost precisely opposite the one that had drawn Nancy's attention. Yet this other door seemed its complete opposite, and was set into a building that was so ravaged as to appear almost ready to be condemned.

The windows were not merely shattered, but torn out completely, frame and all. Inside there was crumbled masonry and other debris scattered all over the floor. A balcony that hung above the door was rusted and partially separated from the wall. It was not quite precarious, but Nancy would not have wanted to stand beneath it.

The door, however, was the most disturbing thing about this crumbling edifice. Elsewhere along the street, where buildings were in the midst of renovation or boarded up to await its eventuality, there was at least still evidence that efforts had been made to preserve their general appearance. Here, no such artifice had been employed. At some point the entire threshold of the wooden door frame had been filled with brick, which had then been smoothed over with a layer of concrete. Spanish graffiti had been scrawled all over the concrete when it was still wet.

That would have been unpleasant enough, yet a portion of the concrete and brick obstruction had been removed, knocked out and hauled away, to reveal a much smaller door set into the original frame. This door was steel, painted white and without a single mark of graffiti. A padlock held it tightly closed.

Nancy felt the skin p.r.i.c.kle across the back of her neck and a shiver of dread run through her. It made no sense to her that this sight should unnerve her so, but she could not help herself.

Paula stepped closer to her, also staring at the door. She reached out to take Nancy by the elbow, gaze never leaving the hole broken through the concrete and that small steel door.

"Let's go," Paula said.

Another moment and Nancy would have followed her, but the furious roar of a small engine interrupted and the sisters stepped aside to let a moped pa.s.s. The driver was a handsome teenager with mirrored sungla.s.ses on his face and his beautiful, raven-haired girlfriend clutching tightly to his waist. Both of them wore wild grins that spoke of the exhilaration of speeding along this alleyway.

Nancy found she had been holding her breath. She exhaled and shook her head. Another shiver ran through her but she ignored it, raising the camera that was still slung around her neck.

"Come on, Nance, let's go," Paula urged, taking a step away, down toward the Mondragon Palace, if that was indeed where the alley led.

"I just want a couple of pictures. This is freaky. I mean, what were they keeping in that they needed a steel door and a padlock, never mind the concrete?"

"That's stupid," Paula snapped. "If you cement up the door, anything inside isn't going to live very long."

With a frown Nancy turned to her. The camera was in her hands and she had opened the lens cover but something in her sister's voice had forced her to look over at Paula.

"You said yourself it was weird," Nancy reminded her. "And you're the one in such a rush to get out of here."

"Well," Paula protested, rolling her eyes to hide her obvious embarra.s.sment, "it is creepy."

Nancy sighed as though she were above such feelings, when in truth she agreed wholeheartedly. Just one picture she decided. It really was a strange sight. She raised the camera and looked through the lens.

A thump like the clap of thunder echoed off the alley walls and the door shook in its frame, showering loose fragments of cement to the cobblestones and cracking the concrete around it. A crimp had appeared in the steel.

Not a crimp. A dent. dent. That had been made from the inside. That had been made from the inside.

Her fingers mindlessly clutched the camera as her mind tried to process what she had just seen and heard. It was as though the dread within her, the fantastical, horrifying image of what the door's true purpose might be, had been summoned into being by her thoughts alone. That sort of thing only happened in dreams, of course.

It was nothing more than a single moment of hesitation, a second, no more, in which she considered the possibility that what she was seeing was not really there. Then Nancy began to turn her head toward her sister even as Paula grabbed her more firmly by the arm.

"Paula, what was-"

"I don't know I don't know I don't know, let's go!" Paula muttered under her breath.

There came another crunch of metal, a new dent in the steel door. Part of the concrete and brick fell away and crashed to the street.

Real, Nancy thought. Whatever it is, it's real. Whatever it is, it's real.

Before the sisters had taken another step, a third impact snapped the padlock and threw the steel door wide, tumbling more brick and concrete onto the cobblestones. The thing that emerged from the dark recesses of that door was unthinkably horrid, a monstrous beast that scuttled sideways like a crab, its flesh a mottled, bruise-dark substance pitted with holes across its body, inside of which wet, slippery tubes could be seen slithering.

In the darkness behind the creature there were other things, black, skeletal figures that flitted there, Reaper-like, but would not come out into the sun.

Nancy's mind could not contain the terror that overcame her then. "No," she said, shaking her head. "No, no, no." This thing could not be real. Nothing like this could exist in the world she knew.

Paula was screaming her name, screaming at her to run, but it sounded distant and tinny like a radio in another room. Then Nancy saw motion in the corner of her eye, felt her sister's fingers twine in her hair the way they had when the two women had fought as children. The skittering crab-thing had paused on its spindly legs as if noticing them for the first time and now there came a sound like regurgitation from inside the holes in its skin. The moist green-black tubes erupted from those holes and shot toward the Carling sisters.

In that same instant Paula had grabbed Nancy's hair, the slick tentacles lashed out at them, there in that grimy, cobblestoned alley. Nancy screamed as her sister yanked her out of the way. Another scream joined her own in terrible harmony and Nancy fell to the ground, skinned her knee, and kept rolling with the momentum of her fall. She stopped herself and looked up quickly, just in time to see those tentacles flay the skin and muscle from her sister's bones.

Paula's screams echoed off the faded walls.

When the thing came for her, its pulsing appendages circling her neck in a fatal embrace, her mind was already gone.

Henri Lamontagne kept screaming. The little boy had awoken from a strange catatonia as if from a nightmare, only to be thrust into a scene of genuine terror. His mother Antoinette clutched him tightly to her breast and his father Alain stood to defend them both.

The ronin warrior Kuromaku, once a samurai, now an immortal thing of shadows, watched it unfold with mounting fury. The skeletal, hard-sh.e.l.led demons whose long slender limbs ended in razor talons, dropped one by one from the rafters of the church. They landed upon the pews and in the aisles-seven of them by Kuromaku's count-and they slipped silently toward the Lamontagnes and toward Sophie, whom Kuromaku had vowed to protect.

But Kuromaku's rage was not at the demons, these things the little boy Henri had called Whispers. Rather, he was furious with himself. How long had the creatures been up there in the rafters, lurking, waiting for the proper moment? Despite the absence of anyone in the church, he had still relied upon the religious magick inherent in the structure to keep them safe. Instinct had told him otherwise, but he had not acted soon enough.

He uttered a curse that was already ancient when he was a boy in j.a.pan and reached down to his hip. The katana solidified in his hand, materializing from nothing, and he drew it from its scabbard in a single deft motion even as he leaped into the air. A spinning somersault that spanned nearly twenty feet landed him in front of the Lamontagne family in the instant before a pair of the black-sh.e.l.led demons would have torn them apart.

"You will not have them!" Kuromaku snarled, his teeth changing unbidden, his rage causing them to elongate into fangs.

The Whispers hissed at him, pointed tongues darting from beneath their skull carapaces. His hands were raised at shoulder level, the katana held sideways, and now Kuromaku spun in a whirlwind circle, each twist taking him closer to the creatures, his blade cracking their sh.e.l.ls and cleanly slicing both of them in half.

Behind him, Sophie screamed.

Kuromaku mentally logged the location of the other five demons. Two nearer the rear of the church, still among the pews, crawling across the tops of the wooden benches toward him and the Lamontagnes. One nine feet away in the main aisle, where the priest would have stood to give communion.

Two others pursuing Sophie as she ran up onto the altar, the demons slashing at the air she disturbed in her wake. She grabbed hold of a five-foot iron candle stand and with all her strength swung it in a solid arc. It connected with the closest demon, striking the eerily featureless black sh.e.l.l where its face ought to have been. A crack appeared there and the Whisper staggered back, hissing. The other hesitated, probing the air in front of it with the sharp tendril that protruded from beneath its facial sh.e.l.l.

Kuromaku leaped into the air again even as the demon closest to him turned, its movements no more than a whisper, as were his own. The blade of the katana swept down and the demon fell under the onslaught, carapace shattered. The ronin moved on without hesitation, as though floating over the dead thing.

"Get back, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" Sophie screamed in French at the two menacing her. She whipped the iron candle stand around again but the demons dodged backward.

There were a thousand thousand ways Kuromaku could have killed them, an endless number of beasts he might have transformed himself into in order to tear them apart, to pry the sh.e.l.ls from them like stripping a lobster to reach the flesh. But that sort of indulgence held no interest for him. Samurai trained all their lives to be swift and decisive and efficient; there was no room for theatrics.

He killed them, punching the tip of the katana through the backs of the demons' skulls, first one and then the other. The Whispers fell dead at his feet there on the altar and Kuromaku froze, staring into Sophie's sky blue eyes. Her breathing was heavy, the fear and exhilaration emanating off her in waves.

Henri Lamontagne had stopped screaming.

"d.a.m.n it!" Kuromaku snapped, turning in time to see the last two of the creatures lunge from the final pew toward Alain Lamontagne, who had only his bare hands to protect his wife and child where they huddled behind him in terror.

Kuromaku bounded off the altar, racing for the Lamontagnes, knowing even as he did so that he was too late. The bare instant that had ticked by as he looked into Sophie's eyes had cost him a vital moment. Even as he raised his katana, he saw one of the Whispers strike, its right arm scything down, long talons sharp as blades slitting Alain Lamontagne open from throat to pelvis.

The other lunged at Antoinette, who curled herself around her son as though her flesh and bone could act as armor for the child. The demon's talons punctured her back like daggers and Antoinette screamed in soul-deep agony, knowing that they would tear through her to reach her son.

Rigid with bitter anger that made bile rise in the back of his throat, Kuromaku cut the last two Whispers down, then hacked at the pieces where they lay on the floor, the katana cutting through wood and carpeting. The clack, clack of the blade on wood was the only sound in the church then, echoing back from those same rafters.

The rafters.

The ronin ignored the wounded woman and her son, turned his back on Sophie as she ran to see to them. He gazed up into the rafters, eyes peering into the depths of every shadow, ears attuned to the slightest creak of the wind. The quill-covered behemoth outside had stopped pounding on the door and the winged, carrion creatures that circled above had not even attempted to enter the church, but these things had.

"Watch the shadows," Kuromaku instructed Sophie, who nodded mutely, her expression revealing a kind of surprise, not at the events that had just unfolded here, but that she had survived them at all.

With that caution, and moving more swiftly than any human could have conceived, Kuromaku raced through the church, searched every darkened nook, and a.s.sured himself that each door and window was tightly shut. He investigated the sacristy and the bas.e.m.e.nt and each armoire and closet that he came to.

Only minutes after he had departed, he returned to Sophie's side. She was sitting with the boy, Henri, who seemed to have fallen again into that strange catatonia. His mother barely acknowledged his presence. Instead, Antoinette Lamontagne knelt by her husband's corpse, blood spattered on her clothing, whispering to him in angry French. From time to time her voice would rise higher, become shrill, and she would strike the dead body as though it might elicit some response. All her recriminations were for nothing, however. Alain was dead.

Sophie stared at the woman and her dead husband while she stroked the boy's hair. Kuromaku did not like the hollowness of her eyes. Antoinette was already mad; he could not afford to have Sophie become unhinged now.

"I wish she would stop," Sophie whispered.

"I wish it also," Kuromaku replied gently.

He reached out to touch her shoulder. The connection seemed to spark something in her eyes and she glanced at him, blinking, as though her vision had been blurred but was now clearing.

"Now what do we do?" Sophie asked, searching his eyes for answers, for some truths that she must have feared his lips would not reveal.

"We find another sanctuary."

She shook her head, glanced up into the shadowy rafters, and shivered. "If we aren't safe here-"

"Somewhere without windows, with a single door. A bank vault, perhaps. Somewhere I can keep the three of you safe while I explore this place and find a way out, a way back back."

Sophie's eyes widened. "You're going to leave us alone?"

Kuromaku gazed grimly at her. "There is no other choice. To do what must be done, to be free to fight and move, I must be unhindered by the need to protect you. Only for a short while. And not until I have moved you somewhere safe."

She looked for a moment as though she might argue, then she only sighed and nodded, her eyes downcast. Antoinette Lamontagne was still muttering to her dead husband, the boy lay motionless, eyelids fluttering as though he was disturbed by his dreams-though Kuromaku was certain his nightmares could not be more terrifying than the reality he refused to wake to. Sophie did not want to be left alone with a raving madwoman and a mentally paralyzed child, but she had made the choice to protect them on her own behalf and on Kuromaku's. At the beginning, Kuromaku would simply have left them behind. But when the train was attacked, that was war. Now, they were all survivors, and he intended to see that no more of those under his protection lost their lives in this infernal place.

"I don't understand," Sophie said, glancing up. "How could they come inside? All the things you said before about the magick of the church-"

Kuromaku nodded, his brow furrowed. "I have been thinking about that," he revealed, feeling his suspicions coalescing into grim certainty. He let his gaze drift a moment before returning his focus to Sophie.

"There are many h.e.l.ls," Kuromaku began, voice just above a whisper. Even so it seemed to slink furtively through the pews and up into the rafters. "Thousands of years ago it was . . . common is such a strange word to use, but yes . . . it was common to find creatures from these h.e.l.ls in this world. Reality is layer upon layer. Or perhaps all is one vast universe and what we think of as portals between dimensions are merely folds in s.p.a.ce, spanning galaxies and diminishing them so that they are separated by inches rather than eternities."