The Gathering Dark Part 25

He was just in time to see the shimmering, swelling field of magickal energy sweep across the line of tanks and trucks and Jeeps. Some of the soldiers, like Father Vernon and Father Spencer, turned to run. The officers of Task Force Victor stood their ground and let the blossoming magick envelop them as though they were standing in the ocean and a tall wave were crashing over them.

The sound of static reached Father Jack where he stood in front of the Derbyshire Inn, and a kind of sulfur smell that he could not help thinking of as brimstone.

The dimensional field swept over the troops, even those who had tried to run. Bishop Gagnon and Commander Henning stood their ground. In the car down on the road, Jack saw Henning's driver glancing anxiously back and forth between his commander and the magickal onslaught and there was a squeal of tires and a puff of dust kicked up by the wheels as he did a hard U-turn and took off in the other direction.

"Coward," Henning snarled.

"He won't get far," Bishop Gagnon said dreamily, staring at the wave of magick humming toward them with a kind of breathless adoration.

"Jesus," Father Jack said, lowering his head and closing his eyes. It was not a prayer. "You're both madmen."

But he remained where he was, head down, not wanting to look as the wave rolled toward him. The static grew louder, the smell and sound like the buzz of the bug zapper his aunt Judy'd had in her back yard in Scarsdale when he was growing up. It grew louder still, so loud Father Jack wanted to scream. He could barely contain the urge and at last he threw his head back to bellow his fear.

When h.e.l.l swallowed him, he barely felt a thing.

The airport was jammed with people and Keomany was stunned. She had never imagined so many would have been willing to risk flying with all that was happening. They had talked about it on the drive to LaGuardia, though, and Peter had predicted exactly this kind of madhouse. The modern world had never seen a crisis of this magnitude. People were going to want to be with their loved ones.

The big problem was that airs.p.a.ce over certain cities was restricted, flight plans had to be redrawn, routes changed, and some pilots were likely to have refused to fly at all.

Their flight had been rescheduled for 11:45 P.M.

"s.h.i.t," Allison muttered, staring up at the screen amid the crush of people pushing, trying to get to their gates, dragging their wheeled luggage behind them for others to trip over.

Keomany was sweating. It might have been the crush of bodies around her, but she knew it was not that because she wasn't hot, or even warm. She was freezing. So cold that she could barely keep her teeth from chattering. Peter and Allison were so wrapped up in the delay of their flight, trying to figure out what to do, that neither of them had noticed yet. And that was all right. If they knew she was sick, she was afraid they might make her stay behind the way they had done with Nikki.

d.a.m.n it, Nikki, Keomany thought. A pain shot through her side and she clutched at it, teeth pressed together in a rictus grin, a poor attempt to hide her discomfort.

The last thing she had wanted to do was leave Nikki behind, but neither could she really argue. As detached as she felt from what had been happening to her, from the deaths of her parents and the extraordinary new connection she felt with Gaea-a connection she believed was providing her with the spirit to go on-she felt it filling her up and knew that she had to go. Earth magick was driving her on. She had touched the soul of the world and it required her as its instrument.

Keomany had power. Nikki did not. She had wanted to argue that her friend should come along but in her heart she agreed. Gaea was not going to touch Nikki, to keep her safe, and Keomany knew that the being Peter called the Tatterdemalion would look at an ordinary human as little more than an insect.

Another spike of pain went through her. This one in her back. Peter glanced over at her with a raised eyebrow, breaking off his conversation. Keomany forced her smile back on, letting herself be buffeted by the crowd around her, the labyrinth of lines that wound about the airport terminal. Announcements were made on the speaker system but it crackled so badly and the drone of the crowd was so loud that no words could be made out.

She was fooling herself. The Tatterdemalion was not commanding the storm they had seen in that h.e.l.lish dimension. It was the storm. It was the power. Likely it would think of all of them, even Peter, as insects. But Gaea had touched Keomany's soul and she would not turn away from the purpose that had been given to her.

Listen to me, she thought. I'm on a crusade. Keomany Shaw, earthwitch, savior of the universe. I'm on a crusade. Keomany Shaw, earthwitch, savior of the universe. The words sounded obnoxiously foolish in her mind, and yet the essence of them felt true and real. The words sounded obnoxiously foolish in her mind, and yet the essence of them felt true and real.

Peter and Allison were still talking heatedly, almost arguing, and Keomany studied them. It was easy to see how Nikki had fallen so quickly for Peter, even back when he had been one of them them, a vampire. Even now, with all the lines of tension creasing his face, he had an amazing presence, a charm that emanated from him. It didn't hurt that he was handsome. Allison was not beautiful in the supermodel sense, and there was a hardness to her features that ought to have been off-putting. Instead she had the bearing and beauty of a marble sculpture of a Greek G.o.ddess. Her auburn hair framed her features and her intense eyes.

It was hard to imagine that she was a monster, that she was a shape-changing, demonic blood-drinker. Keomany shuddered. Not evil, she knew that. Allison was one among the shadows who did not drink blood from humans without invitation. She was not a savage. Not a predator.

Her presence was still chilling.

"Ahhh!" Keomany moaned in pain, clutching at her chest. The world seemed to swim around her and her legs fell out from under her. She was tumbling to the ground then, crashing into a woman strolling by with a huge piece of luggage. Keomany fell over the suitcase and struck the floor, her head thunking hard on the ground. Her vision blurred and her breath caught in her throat. It felt as though someone had slipped the thinnest and sharpest of blades into her breastbone and punched a hole in her.

She cried out.

Blurry figures appeared above her from a nightmarish swirl of activity. Out-of-focus faces swam in and out of her field of vision and then she felt a strong, comforting hand on her left arm. Keomany blinked and her vision cleared slightly.

The ground beneath her back trembled and the airport shook, dust raining down from the ceiling.

Someone shouted about an earthquake and people panicked and began to run. Peter's voice tore through the miasma around her as he ordered people away from her.

Keomany smiled. "Sorry. I . . . I fell, didn't I?" Her tongue felt thick and the words sounded slurred in her ears.

"What's wrong?" Allison asked, stroking her hair gently.

"Keomany?" Peter began, kneeling by her. She could see his features perfectly now. "What is it? Where are you hurt?"

She tasted salt and felt warm tears slip down her cheeks, so hot against her cold skin. Keomany whispered up to him. "We shouldn't have left Nikki behind."

Allison and Peter exchanged confused, grave glances.

"It's okay," Keomany said. "I understand. I just wish . . . I wish she was here."

"What is it?" Peter asked again.

Keomany laughed softly. "It's Gaea. I can feel her inside me. You cut her off from Cat up in Vermont. Now I'm feeling her pain."

Peter's eyes roved across her body-over bare skin and clothed flesh-and it was exactly the way she had seen many men look at her in her life, wishing they could see what she looked like naked. This was the same, and yet so very different.

"I don't think I'm cut," Keomany rasped. She grabbed hold of Peter's hand and pulled herself into a sitting position. The world spun dizzily around her for a moment, but then her head started to clear. "I'm . . . I'm feeling a little better, actually. I think . . . Gaea was just . . . just screaming. She's been hurt even worse, and I felt it."

Peter swore. He glanced up at the departures screen in the midst of the airport chaos, as if by sheer force of will he could make their flight leave on time instead of more than two hours late.

"We're not going to make it," he said grimly, his silver-gray eyes narrowing.

A shrill ringing sounded close by. They both glanced over to see Allison frown as she reached into the pocket of her leather jacket and withdrew a cell phone. She flipped it open.

"Vigeant," she announced to the caller.

Then she listened. And she swore. And she hung her head just slightly before thanking the caller and snapping the phone shut, then returning it to her pocket.

"What was that?" Peter asked.

Allison raised her chin and stared at him defiantly. "That was an old friend of mine. Carl Melnick. He's a news producer, one of the best-informed guys in the world. We've been keeping in touch on this thing. There's been a development that the U.N. is trying to keep the world media from reporting . . . at least until someone finally leaks it."

Keomany felt an ache deep in her bones, a dull, throbbing pain that she knew was part of her connection to Gaea. This was where her pain had come from . . . something new had happened. It was getting worse.

"What happened?" Peter asked.

Allison glanced at the two of them, then looked around to make certain no one was paying attention to them now that Keomany's fainting episode was over. Allison moved in nearer to them.

"No new cities have been taken," she said, her voice low. "But from every location, everyplace that's been affected, the void is spreading spreading. And fast."

Then Allison crouched down beside them and reached out to put a comforting hand on Keomany's arm. She stared at Peter.

"Ronda may not be accessible much longer. But either way, we've run out of time. There's only one way to get there fast enough now."

A flash of something much like anger went across Peter's face then and Keomany thought that she had seen for the first time the warrior he had once been . . . and the monster he had later become. He shook his head slowly, falling to his knees and letting his hands rest on the travel bag he had been carrying over his shoulder.

"d.a.m.n it, Allison," he began.

"You know I'm right."

Through gritted teeth he snarled at her. "You're always right. But with all that's going on . . . the Tatterdemalion can feel every crack in our dimension, every breach that's ever been. Or most of them, at least. That's how it's been slipping its creatures in and getting anch.o.r.ed to drag the cities away. What if it knows knows? What if it feels us go?"

"What choice do you have?" Allison asked quietly.

Her strength coming back, Keomany glanced back and forth between them. "One more question. What are you two talking about?"

But Peter just stared at Allison for several long seconds before standing straight up. He stared around the airport, his gaze lingering in one particular angle, a direction that might have been back toward Manhattan. Then he looked down at Allison one last time and he took a deep breath.

"d.a.m.n it!" he shouted in frustration.

The curse echoed through the airport, shushing the cacophony of the crowd for a single moment, forcing hundreds of heads to turn toward him. Then Peter Octavian held his hands out in front of him, palms together as though molding clay. Something grew there in his hands, bright and glowing, fluid as mercury and just as silver. It slipped over his fingers and the sphere grew larger and larger.

As though watching some street magician, people began to gather around them, mesmerized by the work of Peter's hands.

"Back off," Allison instructed them.

There was menace in her tone, and she was obeyed.

The silver, pulsing sphere in Peter's hands was no larger than a melon but he raised it above his head as though he meant to shatter it on the floor. Instead his hands spread apart and the mercury seemed to sweep them up in a whirlpool of silver, blocking Keomany's view of the terminal.

Her stomach lurched as Gaea screamed in her heart again.

Once more Keomany was falling. Impossible, of course, for she had never risen to her feet; yet still she was falling. Silver magick rained down around her, splashing the ground, silencing the world. She landed on her side, hip painfully striking the pavement.

The pavement.

Keomany blinked as she looked around. The airport was gone. The crowds and the lights and the noise, all gone. The silver sphere of magick had dissolved to nothing, leaving the three of them standing in the middle of what a dozen old movies had taught her could only be a bullring. It was empty. A breeze toyed with a few strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail, and even the wind smelled different here. In the night sky above, the constellations had moved, the stars shifting.

"Ronda? Is this Ronda?" she rasped, turning to stare at Peter in awe. He looked pale and exhausted and no wonder and no wonder, she thought-but he nodded in return.

"Gaea," Keomany whispered.

From the gallery circling the bullring came a rustling that was not roused by the wind. In the shadows, something stirred.

The stream that wound through the outskirts of Mont de Moreau ran red with the blood of its citizens and the offal of river demons. Kuromaku crouched on the roof of the aged red Volkswagen he had commandeered and clutched tightly to the frame of the open driver's window beneath him. In his right hand, his katana seemed to glow darkly in the perpetual orange light of this hideous dimension.

"Kuromaku!" Sophie called out in alarm from behind the wheel of the car.

He knew what had upset her. All around the French village new cities had appeared, dragged into this realm by whatever terrible power had transported Mont de Moreau here. Only one edge of the village still shimmered with the dark magick that separated this community from the world where it belonged, the barrier between dimensions. They had to reach that one spot if they had any hope of breaking through, of forcing their way back to reality.

But to do that, they had to cross a bridge that spanned the stream. The water was filled with tiny figures the size of human infants, demons with translucent flesh and pointed, outsized heads that made Kuromaku think of squid. Like some freakish human mutation, they had limbs that seemed a nauseating combination of arms and seal flippers, covered in suckers like those on the tentacles of an octopus. They weren't close enough yet to the bridge for Kuromaku to see such detail, but he had been attacked by similar creatures once long ago, on an island in Greece.

"What the h.e.l.l are they?" Sophie called.

Nektum, Kuromaku thought. They're called Nektum. They're called Nektum.

"Just drive!" he shouted back. "Don't slow down!"

He wanted also to tell her not to look as she crossed the bridge, to avert her eyes from the grotesque panorama that would unfold on the banks of the stream as they pa.s.sed. Even now Kuromaku tried to block from his memory the images of Nektum attached to the faces of dead village children, using those suckers to tear the skin-just the skin- from their bodies; of their translucent forms burrowing inside people who were not quite dead yet.

But if he told Sophie not to look, it would ensure that she would do just that. Kuromaku could only hope that she was too focused on driving the car to pay much attention to the Nektum, and that Antoinette Lamontagne would be cradling her catatonic boy in the back seat, perhaps crooning to him softly with her eyes closed as she prayed for deliverance.

He did not have the heart to tell the woman that her G.o.d could not hear her; not from this place.

The tires screamed as Sophie cut the wheel to the right, speeding toward the bridge. Kuromaku shouted to her again, exhorting her to drive even faster. The Volkswagen b.u.mped over several ruts in the road but he paid no attention, clamping tighter to his handhold, gaze sweeping the banks of the stream and the support beams of the bridge, where Nektum clung like starfish.

The engine roared. Below him, Sophie was silent. Kuromaku watched the horrid little demons, gauging the distance to the bridge. If they were lucky, they could be partway across before the Nektum even noticed them. Fifty yards from the bridge. Thirty.

Beyond it, Kuromaku could see the shimmering barrier that separated them from the world they knew, the wall that locked them into this h.e.l.lish nightmare.

A dozen yards from the bridge, the engine whined, and at last the Nektum noticed. Like deformed babies they raised their heads. Kuromaku felt their eyes on him and his grip tightened on the pommel of his sword. The car was only a few feet from the bridge when the abhorrent little things attacked. They moved impossibly fast, swimming lightning fast to the supports of the bridge and then crawling up, scrambling on their bizarre appendages with sickening speed.

"Drive!" Kuromaku shouted.

The engine roared louder as the tires. .h.i.t the bridge and surged forward, Sophie accelerating even further, moving dangerously fast. The Nektum moved in a blur. The car was halfway across the bridge when the creatures began to launch themselves at Kuromaku, webbed appendages spread out to either side, translucent bodies gliding across the air, mouths gnawing at nothing.

In a crouch, Kuromaku sliced his katana through the air, windmilling the blade around him one-handed. The Nektum were gelatinous, and he felt the tug of their gummy flesh as the sword cut through each one. Their corpses thumped to the roof of the car or onto the bridge. Other Nektum slapped against the car, sticking to the windows and the body of the Volkswagen. He knew it would be only seconds before they tore their way into the car.

Sophie laid on the horn, perhaps thinking that it might scare them off. Instead, even more of the demons flew off the structure of the bridge like a flock of birds rising from a tree. They launched themselves at the car.

The Volkswagen's tires b.u.mped hard as they reached the end of the bridge and hit the dusty road again. Kuromaku hacked at the air, dropped to his back on the roof of the car, and whirled the katana around, cutting up the Nektum. Chunks of their bodies fell upon him, sticking to his clothes. A quick glance back revealed that most of them had fallen away or missed the car entirely and now had ma.s.sed on the bridge staring after the retreating car in eerily silent hunger.

Sophie began to cry out to him. The tone alone told him that one or more of the Nektum had gotten into the car. Of course they had! Her window was open. In order for him to be able to hold on, he had unthinkingly prevented her from closing off the car.

d.a.m.n it! he thought, as he spun onto his knees again on the roof. Several Nektum were still clinging to it. Kuromaku raised his sword even as one of the translucent, unnervingly infantile demons launched itself at his face. Its appendages slapped against his skin, suckers digging instantly into the flesh. In his mind's eye he saw again the awful carnage he had witnessed in Greece centuries before. he thought, as he spun onto his knees again on the roof. Several Nektum were still clinging to it. Kuromaku raised his sword even as one of the translucent, unnervingly infantile demons launched itself at his face. Its appendages slapped against his skin, suckers digging instantly into the flesh. In his mind's eye he saw again the awful carnage he had witnessed in Greece centuries before.

His face tore.

Kuromaku screamed.

By the sheer force of his will, of his rage, he trans.m.u.ted the skin of his face into living fire, burning the Nektum off. The demon squealed as it melted, its viscera boiling and spilling onto the Volkswagen's windshield. The car swerved, Sophie either unable to see or trying to keep away from whatever demons had slipped into the vehicle.

The Volkswagen shuddered to a halt. Kuromaku released his grip and rolled off the roof, even as he willed flame to become flesh once again. He landed on his feet, surveying the car. One of the Nektum shattered the gla.s.s of the rear window and it showered down upon a screaming Antoinette Lamontagne, who was trying to shield her boy even as she grabbed at the latch for her door. Another was in the front seat with Sophie, who had shot out one foot and pinned it to the pa.s.senger door, and still managed to drive the car a little ways before being forced to stop. The thing shrieked and tore at her boot.

Kuromaku snarled, almost unaware that he had bared his fangs. He sheathed the katana back into nothingness and this time it was his hands that erupted into devastating fire. With fingers of flame he tore Nektum off the car and threw them burning onto the side of the road. He melted the one that had snuck into the back seat and then went around to the pa.s.senger window. With his blazing fist he smashed the window, reached down, and grabbed the flailing thing from where it was trapped beneath Sophie's boot. He tore it apart with fiery hands.

Antoinette sobbed in the back seat, covered in shards of gla.s.s, bent over her son. Sophie stepped out of the Volkswagen, stared at Kuromaku with eyes wide with shock, and then ran to him. His hands became flesh once more and he embraced her as he glared back toward the bridge. All but a few of the surviving Nektum had gone back to the river, swimming in the blood of their victims and the stink of their own waste. A small group, perhaps four or five, remained on top of the bridge, watching the escapees.

"Come on," Kuromaku whispered to Sophie. "We cannot stop now. We're so close."

"We're not close," she said, her voice m.u.f.fled against his chest. "We're here."

Surprised, Kuromaku glanced up and saw that she was right. They were less than a hundred yards from the barrier. Now that he saw it, he realized he could hear a low hum coming from the field of magickal energy. The barrier shimmered and sparked and looked to him like static on an old television screen.