The Gathering Dark Part 23

Fuming, he glared at the Bishop, challenging the man to contradict him. It might have been career suicide, but Jack found that he no longer cared. The moment he had left Octavian and the others behind in Vermont, he had known it was a mistake, and from the second he had boarded this private jet, he had regretted it, wishing to be back among the people who wanted to destroy this gathering darkness, this insidious threat, solely because it had to be done and not out of any self-aggrandizing motive.

"Are you through?" Bishop Gagnon asked. His voice was light but anyone who knew him well would have heard the threat in it, seen the danger glinting in his eyes.

"If only I were." Father Jack casually slipped his gla.s.ses back on, as though whatever the Bishop said now would not matter in the least. He could feel the eyes of some of the other priests on the jet upon him but cared not at all. There were only a few of them he knew, and not one among them with whom he had developed any kind of kinship.

The Bishop paused a moment, lips pressed together in an expression of distaste, nostrils flaring. At length he narrowed his eyes, almost forcing Jack with his will alone to look up and meet his gaze.

"We have a sacred charge, Father Devlin," the Bishop said. "Sacred. We hold in our hands the faith of millions, and we may use it as our greatest weapon even as we safeguard it with our lives. This thing, this great evil that Octavian called the Tatterdemalion, is far more powerful than such a dismissive description could ever imply. Whatever this cruel sentience is, its power seems barely affected by our own magicks. For some reason its attention was drawn to our world. Our seers believe that it sensed the many breaches of the past, found the scars they had left behind, and has been forcing them open again.

"You and Octavian proved that some of these cities taken by the Tatterdemalion may not be gone forever. You, Father Devlin, are going to work with the rest of us to be sure the U.N. forces a.s.signed to this are able to cross over into the Tatterdemalion's dimension, its stolen empire. There we will determine if the other cities can be recalled into this world. If they cannot, then the breaches the demon has made into this reality will be resealed, this time with magicks of far greater power. Sealed forever."

For a moment Jack felt as though the plane had hit an air pocket and begun to drop, like the world was falling out from under him. But the flight was smooth, the engines still humming nicely. It wasn't the jet.

It was him.

The priest stared at his superior, his chest aching, breath catching in his throat. "You're . . . you're not serious. You can't just leave those cities in there. Even in Wickham there were thousands still alive. You'd be leaving millions behind . . . if it was even possible to seal them off completely."

At last Bishop Gagnon smiled, his pleasure at Jack's dismay obvious and harrowing. "Oh, we believe we can. We may well be able to seal this dimension off from others totally and eternally."

"You can't do this," Jack hissed, beginning to stand up from his seat to look around for support from the other priests on board. "People won't stand for it. Every single person in those cities has loved ones somewhere else, family and friends who will burn you at the stake if you just abandon them, if you-"

Faster than could be expected of a man his age, the Bishop shot out a hand and grabbed Jack by the shoulder. His grip was painful and he shoved Jack down into his seat, holding him there. When he spoke, he leaned in close and Jack could smell garlic and wine from lunch on the Bishop's breath.

"You should keep your seat belt on, Father Devlin," the Bishop suggested.

Jack made no move to comply but the man's hand lifted from his shoulder.

"You are right, of course. I cannot do any of those things. But we, my son, we can. We are the Holy Church, you little s.h.i.t. We are the shepherds of this world and we will tend to our flock whether they like it or not. If the wolf s.n.a.t.c.hes away some of our sheep during the night, we do not stake the others out as a sacrifice to its predations. We protect them, and we learn never to let the wolf near again.

"If it weren't for your heroics in Wickham with that d.a.m.ned monster, we wouldn't even be going in there in the first place. But now that every news channel has reported that Wickham was rescued-and you could hardly call it a rescue, could you?-the U.N. is insisting that an effort be made. So we're going to go in, Father. We're going to do our duty to the faithful, and even to the Philistines. And then we're going to put a fence around the rest of our flock and forget all about the ones lost to the wolves.

"You, Father Devlin, will cooperate because it's the only possibility that some of these cities could be resurrected, and that some of the survivors might be returned to their loved ones. And if you breathe a word of this conversation to anyone who is not on this plane, when this is over you may find yourself locked on the other side of the fence, in the territory of the wolf. Do I make myself clear?"

For several minutes Bishop Gagnon stared at him but Jack did not answer. The question was not posed again and eventually Jack turned away and stared out the window at the blackening sky. Flying east, over the Atlantic, they were chasing the night, hurrying into a darkness that might never lift.

For the remaining duration of the flight, there was utter silence.

Sophie Duvic wanted nothing more than to be able to close her eyes. Everywhere she looked, the streets of Mont de Moreau were alive with menace. Whispers moved inside shattered shop windows and clung to the front of apartment houses. Smoke from distant fires clogged the orange sky and winged carrion demons flew in vulture-circles above as she struggled to propel Antoinette Lamontagne forward.

"Move, d.a.m.n you," she whispered in French, afraid to raise her voice. Afraid to draw attention.

Antoinette carried her son Henri, deathly still once more, over her shoulder as though he were a rolled carpet or a length of rope. Her eyes were nearly as glazed and her features as gaunt as those of her nearly catatonic son. Antoinette had watched the Whispers slaughter her husband before her eyes and it had leeched all the energy from her.

"Please, please hurry," Sophie urged, reaching out to take the woman by the hand.

Antoinette s.n.a.t.c.hed back her hand as if Sophie's fingers had burned her. Her dull eyes were suddenly alive with madness.

"Go on without me if we are too slow for you," she sneered. But in an instant her anger dissipated and fresh tears sprang to her face.

"Alain would want you to live," Sophie told her. She could hear her own voice, cold and flat, so very matter of fact, and wondered how gla.s.sy her own eyes might be if she could see them in a mirror.

The truth was that it had crossed her mind that leaving Antoinette and her son behind might be the only chance for her own survival. She never would do such a thing, would die herself before she betrayed her heart and soul in such horrid fashion. But the thought was there, and it had tainted her so that she could barely stand to look at the Lamontagnes now.

"Let's go," she whispered. "Just . . . let's go."

This time when she reached out for Antoinette's hand, the other woman let her take it. Together they crept along the orange-dark street, keeping close to the buildings. There was a corner ahead where a narrower side street forked off to the right, a centuries-old area of the city that had been restored, its architecture charming once upon a time, and now ravaged by pa.s.sing beasts. For there were more things abroad here than the Whispers and the carrion fliers and the quilled monsters they had seen before.

The thought of the demons that had swept out of the sewer and nearly dragged Kuromaku down with them made her stomach convulse. Sophie pushed the images from her mind before she threw up again.

At the fork in the road ahead was a building that had once been a hotel. Empty cars were parked in the street in front of it, some abandoned, some merely forgotten. Corpses picked almost clean lay half-in, half-out of windows. The body of a man had shattered the windshield of a car and Sophie wondered if the man had jumped from the hotel's roof or if his remains had been dropped from high above.

"We cannot make it," Antoinette said aloud. "It's too far. By the time we get there, another city will rise. And another and another. This is h.e.l.l, don't you see? It's h.e.l.l."

Sophie could not argue. It was h.e.l.l, of a sort, but they would make it to the edge of town. They had to make it, before another city was brought into this h.e.l.lish landscape. Kuromaku had been clear . . . there was only one escape route and it would not stay open forever. She was about to tell Antoinette once again to hurry, but the sound of breaking gla.s.s ahead made her pause and crouch low, close to the building. She indicated that Antoinette should do the same but the woman barely twitched, as though she wanted to be discovered.

They had nearly reached the fork, had prepared to round the turn and start up the narrower street that made up the oldest section of Mont de Moreau and cut through the town, directly toward the one area of its perimeter that might provide them a route of escape.

Inside what had been the hotel's restaurant, Whispers moved in the dark. The grimy orange light filtered in only slightly but it glinted off their carapaces. Sophie held her breath as one of them leaped up onto a table inside that restaurant and peered out at the street.

It saw saw them. No eyes, but somehow, it saw them. them. No eyes, but somehow, it saw them.

Sophie's chest hurt and she found she could not breathe. Seconds ticked past. Antoinette felt Sophie's grip tighten on her and stopped to stare at her, shifting the weight of her son in her arms. Then the other woman must have seen the stark terror on Sophie's face, for she began to turn to see what Sophie was staring at.

The sharp tendril-tongue of the Whisper twitched and darted in the air as if pointing them out.

Antoinette screamed. The Whisper threw itself at the plate gla.s.s window of the restaurant, shattering it and landing in a rain of jagged shards upon the sidewalk. For a moment Sophie thought Antoinette was still screaming-that her terrified wail had grown to a strange roar-and then she realized that this was a different sound.

It was an engine.

The Whisper began to lope toward them. Antoinette clutched Henri more tightly. Sophie swore as she saw more of the dagger-thin, black-plated demons rushing out of the restaurant toward them. She started to turn, tugging on Antoinette, knowing they could not outrun the monsters.

The rumble of the engine grew louder. Headlights illuminated the Whisper that had first spotted them and it paused and turned to look up the hill. An aging red Volkswagen tore down the road, colliding with the Whisper, crushing it beneath its tires; the demon's body was snagged on the undercarriage and dragged twenty yards, pieces of it torn off and strewn in the street before the Volkswagen went up onto the sidewalk to swerve around an abandoned truck and the corpse of the demon fell off.

The Whispers on the other side of the street hesitated.

The Volkswagen spun into a turn that made the tires squeal on the road and then shuddered to a halt perhaps fifteen feet from Sophie, Antoinette, and Henri. The driver's door popped open and Kuromaku appeared. He shot a hard look at Sophie.

"Get in!" he snapped. "You drive."

The demons, their scythe-fingers clacking as if in antic.i.p.ation, rushed across the street toward the vehicle. The engine was still running, the headlights cutting the orange gloom. Kuromaku reached to his waist and from nothing but the air he drew his curved sword. The katana seemed to hiss in a voice not unlike that of the demons as it slashed through the air, slashing downward in a series of arcs and thrusts that cracked the carapaces of the Whispers, hacking their bony figures to pieces.

Sophie was transfixed in those first moments but then, while Kuromaku continued to fight and more Whispers began to appear from beneath abandoned cars and from the rooftops and shattered windows of nearby buildings, she was finally spurred into action. With Antoinette running hard behind her, weighed down by Henri, Sophie rushed to the Volkswagen and threw herself through the open door into the driver's seat. Antoinette had hauled open a back door and now seemed to tumble into the rear of the car in a bundle with her son.

A Whisper scrabbled across the pavement after them. Antoinette just had time to pull the door closed before it reached the car and the demon struck the car with enough force to crack the window and buckle the metal door.

"Drive!" Antoinette shouted in French.

Sophie did not need the prodding. She screamed out the window to Kuromaku, not even certain anymore what language she was speaking. Whether it was French or English, the vampire warrior understood her. He lunged forward, driving the sword through the demon in front of him. A dark spatter of demon blood had splashed his face and she saw his profile in that moment-those handsome, grimly regal features, black hair wild, muscles on the back of his neck clearly visible-and she was terrified of him. In her mind's eye she saw the gentle man upon whom she had placed her childhood affections, a crush that had not disappeared with maturity but only intensified.

Kuromaku turned toward her, wiping filthy ichor from his face, skin glistening with that hideous orange light and torn shirt whipping in the dread wind that had blown up just as they left the church, and she knew that despite-or perhaps because of-her terror, Sophie had never wanted Kuromaku so desperately. Her breath caught in her throat and her chest hurt, just as it had moments before, but now for an entirely different reason.

Survive, she thought. If you don't live, you'll never get to tell him. If you don't live, you'll never get to tell him.

She threw the Volkswagen into gear. In the back Antoinette cried out as the Whisper who had struck the door now shattered the cracked window and began to reach in after her. Kuromaku snarled something in his native tongue and then the ronin leaped atop the Volkswagen and decapitated the Whisper with a single swift stroke of his blade.

"Go!" he shouted.

Swarms of them were on the streets now, drawn by the fighting. Kuromaku dropped onto the hood of the Volkswagen, his sword at the ready. Sophie gripped the steering wheel in both hands and hit the accelerator. The car lurched and she drove directly at the front of the hotel where the Whispers had first emerged. The road forked and she cut the wheel to the right and the engine whined as she drove up the hill through what had once been a beautifully refurbished district.

At first the Whispers gave chase, capering and loping after them. Several caught up to the car but Kuromaku dispatched them quickly, scrambling over the roof with unnerving agility. One managed to grab hold of the rear b.u.mper and was dragged a ways before it tore itself apart on the pavement.

Three of them leaped from rooftops along the sloping road but reached the street moments too late, as the car was roaring by. Sophie floored it and they gained speed as they surged up the hill. At the top of the grade where the road first flattened slightly and then began to descend, they came to an intersection. She slowed down not at all, mindful of the demons still giving chase.

On a street off to her right, Sophie saw several others, but these weren't Whispers, nor were they the great quilled beasts they had seen earlier. These things were far larger than that, with bodies like that of a rhinoceros, long serpentine necks, and flat heads with ma.s.sive fanged jaws that reminded her of nothing so much as enormous alligators.

The roar of the engine drew their attention and the demons glanced up, then those long, fanged maws snapped open and closed and they began to give chase.

Kuromaku clung to the hood, ignoring these new abominations. His gaze was intent upon the road ahead and Sophie knew what he was thinking. They had to reach the edge of Mont de Moreau.

She drove faster.

In the back seat, Antoinette Lamontagne began to pray in a voice full of despair and desolation.

The street in the Village where Peter had his apartment was so small that he was forced to b.u.mp the Navigator up onto the curb, and still the big SUV was going to create a problem if any trucks tried to drive down the road. He was aware of the issue, but could not take the time to care. The clock was ticking. Truth was, the only reason they had come back to Manhattan at all was that the first direct flight from Boston to Seville upon which they could have gotten seats did not depart until quarter to ten that night. Any of the flights with connections-or going to Gibraltar or Malaga, which were also only a couple of hours' drive from Ronda-would have gotten them there even later. There was a flight out of LaGuardia at 8:25 P.M. That gave them enough time to drive back to Manhattan, pick up a fresh change of clothes for Peter, buy something for Keomany and Nikki to wear, and still get back to LaGuardia with enough time to drop off the rental. They'd arrive in Seville around nine in the morning, rent a car and head south, and be in Ronda before noon.

If Ronda was still there.

The knowledge that it might not be, that all of this rushing around might be for nothing, had Peter on edge. His jaw hurt from grinding his teeth together and his entire body felt electric, alive with a kind of static energy. He wanted to do something, not tomorrow, but now. Tonight.

The lights were on in Jarrod and Suze's row house but the windows of his own apartment-in their bas.e.m.e.nt-were dark. Peter stepped out quickly, saying nothing to Keomany and Nikki. Without being invited they climbed out after him. He slammed the door of the Navigator, not bothering to lock it, and hurried around the front of the vehicle toward the stairs that led down into his apartment. His keys rattled in his hand as he reached for the door. From down the block he could hear loud music-the grind of funky Amanda Marshall songs half a decade old-issuing from the open door of The Fat Cat along with the laughter of women.

Leave it to New York, he thought. Turn on the news and you can see the world's coming apart at the seams, but this is one city that's not going to hide and hold its breath. Turn on the news and you can see the world's coming apart at the seams, but this is one city that's not going to hide and hold its breath.

Nikki and Keomany were carrying their things, including the department store bags from the mall they'd stopped in to buy some fresh clothes while they were pa.s.sing through Connecticut. Keomany had mentioned that she would have liked to have time to shower again before they got on the plane, but they all knew that was a pipe dream. They'd have just enough time to change and repack their travel bags.

Peter stepped over the copies of The New York Times The New York Times that had acc.u.mulated on his doorstep and turned the key in the lock. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. Instantly he felt a p.r.i.c.kle of alarm go up the back of his neck. Octavian hissed and gestured for Keomany and Nikki to stay back as he peered into the darkness of his apartment. that had acc.u.mulated on his doorstep and turned the key in the lock. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. Instantly he felt a p.r.i.c.kle of alarm go up the back of his neck. Octavian hissed and gestured for Keomany and Nikki to stay back as he peered into the darkness of his apartment.

Something was there. He sensed it. Something inhuman.

His right hand came up, enveloped in a blue light the color of a robin's egg. The light splashed strange shapes and shadows upon the walls and he hesitated. This apartment and the things inside it-the books and the art he had collected, not to mention the art he himself had made-were all he had of a normal life.

But Nikki was with him, and Keomany as well, and whatever his hesitation about destroying his belongings, he would not risk their lives for simple things.

Blue light flickered around his hand. Something shifted in the shadows at the back of his apartment, in the little corridor that led to the bedroom.

"Show your face," he snarled. "And slowly. You don't want to p.i.s.s me off right now."

A susurrus of laughter issued from that back hallway, a rolling sound that seemed to curl like mist along the floor. The shadows resolved themselves into a figure. For a moment he could not make out what it was, but then he realized that it was human. Female.

Allison Vigeant stepped into the blue light, chuckling to herself. "Ooh," she said. "Tough guy."

Peter felt a rush of relief go through him. The blue glow around his hand winked out and he reached for the light switch. When he flicked it, floor lamps on either end of his living room blinked into brilliant illumination. Allison stretched a little and yawned.

"Sorry," she said. "I took a nap while I was waiting for you. It's been a while since I've had any decent sleep."

With a lopsided grin Peter went to her and pulled her into his arms. He hugged her for several long seconds, during which their crisis seemed to retreat. Then he stepped back and gazed at her, studying her; the black denim jeans and spaghetti-strap tank top, the scuffed black lace-up boots.

"You look great," he told her, smiling. "Your hair's different." He had been in touch with her since New Orleans-since Cody died and she had gone off with the U.N. to become their hound dog-but had not really seen her in a long time.

"Variety," she replied, pushing a hand through her red hair. "Spice of life. You, on the other hand, have gotten older."

"It happens to the best of us," Peter replied automatically.

Allison's face shut down then, her eyes narrowing and all traces of a smile fading from her lips. "Not to all of us, though," she said.

Regretfully, Peter nodded. He said nothing, however. Anything that needed to be said on that subject had been covered long ago. Allison had never wanted to become a vampire, a shadow. The decision had been taken from her. She had been forced to enter this life and considered it her curse. Allison was haunted by it.

For a long moment he just stared at her. Then he was shaken from his reverie by motion behind him as Nikki and Keomany moved farther into the apartment and closed the door.

Allison's gaze went past Peter and she smiled. "Nikki. Hey."

Peter moved out of the way, and he and Keomany watched as Nikki and Allison met in the middle of the living room. The two women were smiling but they greeted each other awkwardly; a perfunctory embrace and then two steps back to regard one another. Though both had been in New Orleans, they had not had time to grow close, yet they had shared a purpose at one time that had almost killed them both, and so had that much at least in common.

"I didn't realize you two were back together," Allison said, her hazel eyes widening with curiosity. She put her hands on her slim hips and glanced back and forth between Peter and Nikki. In that moment she looked for all the world like nothing more than a normal woman. Attractive, yes, but still ordinary.

Then she spotted Keomany, who had put down her things and was sifting through the bags of the clothing she had purchased, pulling out clothes to change into.

"Oh, sorry," Nikki said. "Allison Vigeant, my friend Keomany Shaw. Keomany, Allison."

The two women shook hands.

"I read your book," Keomany said. "Remember you from CNN, too. Sometimes I think you're the reason the whole world didn't fall apart when the news about the shadows-vampires and demons and all-first came out."

Allison seemed stunned by this and for a moment said nothing. Then she simply nodded. "Much appreciated. I only wish I really did have the power to change the world."

When Nikki next spoke up, her voice rasped with the ominous weight of her words.

"Well," she said, "someone does."

There were so many things Peter wanted to say to Allison, to ask her, to find out from her what her life was like now. He wanted to be able to tell her about his loneliness, and how he had retreated from the world, and how it had taken seeing Nikki again to make him realize that he had broken his promise to himself that he would make use of his mortal life. There were only two people left in the entire world that he thought would really understand, and Allison was one of them.

But now wasn't the time.

"Allison, it's . . . it's great to see you. Really," he told her, rubbing at his tired eyes with the heels of his hands and then running his fingers through his ragged-cut hair. "But something tells me you didn't come by for coffee, or a nap in my bed."

The vampire's face darkened, her expression grim and no longer beautiful. "No. I didn't. The U.N. knows what you did in Wickham. They sent me to ask if you'd be willing to work with them."

Peter stared at her a moment, an icy chill clutching at his heart. The U.N. The U.N., he thought. Then he glanced at Nikki and Keomany.