The Gathering Dark Part 27

"We have to find another way," Keomany said. Her eyes had changed, the spirit of Gaea filling her so completely that they glowed pure white, with tiny golden pupils.

Allison noticed it a moment after Peter did, for she stared at Keomany now. "What's happened to you you?"

Keomany smiled. "She's in me now. Not completely, not that. But not like before . . . I feel her pain, her hysteria, but it doesn't hurt anymore. I also feel her power. I'm her tool. Gaea has put me here. I understand that now. I'm like a virus in this place."

From where he hovered slightly above the ground in the bullring, Peter could see that Keomany was right. The vines and roots had begun to spread. Though the tear in reality was not growing larger, every new growth punctured the Tatterdemalion's realm again. The virus was spreading.

Allison reached inside her jacket and pulled out a nine-millimeter automatic pistol. She checked the cartridge of bullets, then jacked it back into the weapon. When she looked up at the other two again, the three of them in a strange triangle at the center of the bullring, she shook her head.

"I don't know what the f.u.c.k is going on with you two. Great. You're all hyped up with power now. Wonderful. So tell me, what does that mean? If you're right, Peter, and we can't shake these cities loose, if we can't return them to our world, what good is it being here at all? We're just going to get f.u.c.king killed."

Octavian took a deep breath. The magick that burned in him was nearly overwhelming. He could feel every nerve ending, every pore, every follicle of hair. It was extraordinary, but at the same time, he could feel the current of dark emotion that ran beneath it and vowed to himself that he would use this sorcery, and not let it use him.

"Maybe we will," he allowed, the sphere of energy dissipating around him as his feet once more touched the ground. When he turned his head to peer at Allison, sparks of green fire flew from his eyes. "Then again, maybe we won't."

Allison smiled at him.

"What?" Keomany asked. "What am I missing?"

"He has a plan," Allison said.

Peter glanced around at the shadows of the seating galleries, searching the dark for more Whispers. There were none to be found. All of them had been slain or fled out of the bullring, out into the city of Ronda, where he knew at this very moment Whispers were slipping into houses and slashing throats, slaughtering innocents, and destroying homes purely for the sake of havoc. Why? That was the question. Out of pure malice, or because it was what the Tatterdemalion desired, what it had instructed them to do.

"I don't have a plan," Octavian confessed. Then he smiled at the women. "I have a theory."

A rumble of thunder filled the air and the wind whipped down into the bullring, carrying the stench of h.e.l.l along with it. Keomany was not responsible for this wind. It came from here, and not from Gaea. When Peter turned toward the sound of thunder, he saw precisely what he had expected to see.

Due south, orange-black thunderheads filled the sky, hanging low and ominous. A storm was brewing in the distance, and it was coming this way.

"Oh, s.h.i.t." Keomany stared at the raging storm, at the red lightning that lit up the thunderclouds.

"He's not in Ronda yet," Peter said. "But he's coming."

"It's just like you told me," Allison said. Despite her immortality, despite that she was nearly unkillable, she sounded terrified. "What the h.e.l.l is that? How can it do that? Son of a b.i.t.c.h, Peter, how can we fight something on this level?"

"I told you," Peter replied without looking at her. "I've got a theory."

With the verdant, electric magick blazing up in him, Peter turned toward the huge double doors of the bullring. With a wave of his hand, a wave of sorcerous power arced across the ground, shearing the air and tearing up the dirt. The doors exploded outward, shattered.

He looked at Allison. "I need an aerial recon, Allie. Keep back from the storm, but give me everything you can. What other cities you see, if there's anyone else here fighting the demons."

The vampire shapeshifted instantly into a ma.s.sive falcon. Allison flapped her broad wings and tilted her head, birdlike, to regard him. She flew off the ground, soaring above their heads, and circled once around the bullring.

"Where are you going?" the falcon cried, its words a shriek.

Peter smiled at Keomany. "We're going to meet the storm."

Together they began to walk toward the shattered gates. Tangled vines followed her, and where she walked, the golden light followed, gashing open the sky above so that tiny slices of Ronda began to spill back into the world.

Nikki opened her eyes.

She lay on Peter's bed-the bed where, if not for the s.h.i.tstorm the world was involved with, they would likely have been making love that very moment-and she blinked several times. A quick glance at the clock told her that she had been asleep less than half an hour. After looking around her lover's apartment to see what had changed in the time they had been apart, and to admire his latest paintings, she had lain down upon his bed with the radio on and her nose in a book, and promptly fallen asleep.

Her eyelids fluttered tiredly. The light was still on but she was completely unmotivated to get up and shut it off. She had fallen asleep early but it was late enough now that it didn't matter. There was a vague sensation teasing at her brain-something more than the dim urge to pee that accompanied it. No, this was something more.

Something had woken her, some sound that had been jarring enough to reach down into her peaceful slumber and jolt her awake. For several long moments she lay there and listened and then her eyes began to close once more, the radio still playing low.

The song ended abruptly and a voice broke in. The volume was so low and Nikki nearly asleep and so the words meant nothing to her, but the suddenness of the interruption made her brows knit in consternation, even with her eyes still closed.

Almost unwilling, she began to listen more closely, trying to make out the words.

Then the radio died.

Nikki's eyes snapped open and she froze. She had not gotten up to shut off the light, yet the room was dark. Dark, and silent.

From upstairs there came a terrible, piercing scream. Nikki was fully awake now and she sat up in bed, listening intently. It had been a woman's voice. And now the scream was punctuated by a thump of feet upon stairs.

"Suze!" a man's voice shouted, frenzied. "Suze!"

Barely able to catch her breath, Nikki rose from the bed and slipped on her blue jeans. She pulled on a shirt as fast as she could, but even as she did so, the noises from the home of the Balents, Peter's landlords, continued. More thumping of feet was nearly drowned out by a second scream, this one cut off so sharply that there could be no misinterpreting the reason for its cessation.

Oh, f.u.c.k, Nikki thought. Oh, G.o.d, what am I doing here? Oh, G.o.d, what am I doing here? A scowl crossed her face; she hated the sound of the little voice in her head, hated the fear in it, hated its cowardice. But she could not stop her heart from hammering in her throat, or the pain in her chest, or the way she held her breath. A scowl crossed her face; she hated the sound of the little voice in her head, hated the fear in it, hated its cowardice. But she could not stop her heart from hammering in her throat, or the pain in her chest, or the way she held her breath.

Upstairs, Jarrod Balent began to shriek now in a voice that should never have issued from the throat of a man. There were words in there, cries to his G.o.d and a repet.i.tion of his wife's name. Gla.s.s shattered and there were other thumps that reverberated down into the bas.e.m.e.nt apartment, the sound of something crashing into the floor and the walls.

Not something, you know what it is, Nikki thought. It's him. It's Peter's f.u.c.king landlord.

"Please, no," she whispered, and she held her hands to her mouth so as not to scream. Nikki had no idea with whom she was pleading, but regardless, no answer was forthcoming.

She had pulled her clothes on, thinking she might rush upstairs, might do something to help them. But that was after Suze Balent's initial scream. Nikki Wydra had faced horrors before, had dealt with things that would have forced a lot of people to curl up in a corner and whimper. In New Orleans, in Wickham . . .

But now Nikki made a terrible discovery. Despite all that she had done and experienced, despite the terrifying, amazing things she had done, in the end, she was merely ordinary.

An ordinary woman.

Alone, in the dark.

Other sounds came now from the Balents' home upstairs. Subtler, softer sounds, and yet in an old row house like this not even a cat could move without causing the errant board to squeak. Things were moving upstairs.

Nikki bit her lip. Slowly, as if she had to learn how to control each muscle in her body all over again, she began to move along the corridor into the front room of Peter's apartment.

How did it come to this? Nikki thought. Images flashed through her mind, of the day she left Peter behind to move to Los Angeles, of the day she found out she had a record contract, of Keomany appearing in the audience the night of her showcase performance, of the demons in Wickham, of Allison insisting that she remain behind. Nikki thought. Images flashed through her mind, of the day she left Peter behind to move to Los Angeles, of the day she found out she had a record contract, of Keomany appearing in the audience the night of her showcase performance, of the demons in Wickham, of Allison insisting that she remain behind.

f.u.c.king Allison. Jesus, look what it's come to. You stupid b.i.t.c.h, look what you've done to me.

Something sc.r.a.ped at the door. Nikki froze as she entered the front room, body rigid as she stared at the windows high up on the wall that looked out, at ankle-level, at the street. The light that shone through those windows was a dirty orange and it cast a sickening pall across the room.

A whimper escaped her lips and Nikki hated herself for it. Somewhere in this apartment, she knew that Peter kept his old sword, the one that he had wielded five and a half centuries before as a warrior of Byzantium. Mentally she catalogued every crevice of the apartment, every place he might have stowed the blade. She would find it. She would- With a splintering crack, something pierced the door. It was hideous, a sharp, writhing, wormlike thing protruding into the apartment. Nikki backed up two steps, hissing as though she had been burned, and then she recognized it, knew what it was. The spike that had punched through the door was the tongue or antenna or whatever it was of one of those demons, one of the Whispers.

It probed the air inside the apartment, and Nikki knew with grim certainty that it was looking looking for her. for her.

18.

Henri Lamontagne sat up and began to cry; a high, keening wail that was filled with anguish and lunacy. And yet somehow Kuromaku thought that if the boy could cry like that, he hadn't lost his mind at all. What other response would have been appropriate? The boy was not screaming; he sat up, rapt with attention as he stared out the car window at the Whispers as they scaled the outer walls of whitewashed buildings and tore the bars off windows. Some of the houses had gla.s.s-enclosed balconies and the faceless, armored demons crashed into those homes easily. Some of them scampered on rooftops.

On the side of the road the Whispers could be seen dragging people from their homes, some of them through windows still edged with jagged gla.s.s, and then ripping their heads off their bodies. Where there were lamp posts, the Whispers set the heads up for decoration.

Of course Henri was crying.

Of course he was.

The boy had been shaken from his catatonic state, and yet his mother Antoinette was the one who seemed mentally paralyzed.

"Stop it!" she screamed over and over. "Stop it, stop it, stop it!" And then her praying began again.

Kuromaku was now crouched on the roof of the car, clutching the door frame, his katana ready. The air was close and damp, the orange light tainting everything it touched. Even the wind that whipped Kuromaku's face smelled rank, diseased.

The vampire had noticed an odd thing. In Mont de Moreau there had been a great many demons other than these Whispers, some of them familiar to him. He had long since reasoned that incursions into his own reality, breaches like the one he and Sophie had witnessed in Paris only days ago, had been the punctures that had allowed the Whispers to slip in as well. The Whispers were from a h.e.l.l all their own, he surmised, and whatever intelligence was orchestrating them had sent them through to hold those breaches open, to allow it to drag those cities into this pocket h.e.l.l dimension.

Some of the familiar demons, the ignorant savages, that had paved the way for the Whispers, had been drawn into this collective h.e.l.l as well, but they were not welcome here. The Whispers were killing them, too.

Now, in Ronda, the other breeds of demons-the Nektum and the winged carrion beasts, the quilled monstrosities and the gelatinous giants floating across the sky-were all gone. Only the Whispers remained.

This was their their realm. realm.

The engine whined as Sophie guided the Volkswagen up the hill. The town was Spanish, Kuromaku could tell from the architecture, but he had no idea where they were. Not that it mattered. All that did matter at this point was getting through the town as fast as they could, getting to the other side, reaching the edges of the influence of whatever power was controlling all of this.

The wind carried Henri's cries away, but suddenly they grew louder. It took Kuromaku only a moment to realize that the boy was not the only child crying. He held on to the door frame more tightly, glanced around quickly, ears tracking, eyes searching.

Just ahead, where the road they were on was joined by two others as they merged into one wider avenue, still leading up the hill, Kuromaku saw a second-floor balcony, a frame of gla.s.s shards. Inside that frame a pair of Whispers slashed at one another, tugging at the limbs of a wailing toddler as they fought over the little boy.

Behind the wheel, Sophie must have seen it as well. She tapped the brakes, beginning to slow.

"Drive!" Kuromaku roared, slapping the roof of the car.

"It's . . . they have a child!" she shouted out the window, unaware that he had already seen the demons and their prize. "Hold on!"

Sophie hit the brakes. The Volkswagen shuddered to a halt. Kuromaku hissed a curse in j.a.panese and leaped down from the car. They were in the midst of the place where the three roads merged into one, out in the open. All of the activity around them, the Whispers shattering gla.s.s, slaughtering people . . . all of it stopped. Only the screams and cries of the wounded and terrified reached him now, and the barking of dogs. Henri Lamontagne stared out at him from the back seat of the car, having ceased his own crying. His mother lay curled into a fetal position against one of the doors as if she had been trying to push herself into that corner, make herself disappear.

Teeth gritted tightly together, Kuromaku threw open Sophie's door and slid in behind the wheel, roughly forcing her into the pa.s.senger's seat. Silently, he put the car in gear and hit the accelerator. The tires kicked up dust from the road. He did not have to look at Sophie to know that she was staring at him in horror.

"Do something," Sophie whispered, so low that her words were barely audible over the engine. There was a crack in her voice. But then she said the words again and her voice was louder, angrier.

"Do something, d.a.m.n you! You can save them, Kuromaku. What good is it, being what you are, if you don't try to save them?"

He seethed, his nostrils flaring. Nausea churned in his gut and he forced himself not to look at either side of the road, not to bear witness to whatever atrocities they were leaving behind with every rotation of the tires.

"Kuromaku!" Sophie shouted in despair.

"Stop!" he snapped back, glancing momentarily at her before returning his attention to the road. Up ahead there were two buildings that had begun to burn.

"Think a moment," he instructed her. "This is a war, Sophie, I am sorry, cherie cherie, but it is true. We are behind enemy lines. That's what this has all been about . . . getting back to our allies, our comrades, so that we can launch a counterattack."

"But you you can-" can-"

"Yes, yes, I'm a vampire. All the things I can do," he said, jerking the wheel to the right, ignoring the steeples of houses of worship higher on the hill to his left. They offered no sanctuary; he knew that now. They would be defiled just like the rest of this city.

"But I can't save anyone in this d.a.m.ned place and still protect you. I couldn't keep Henri's father from a savage death and it's only through luck that the boy and his mother are still alive."

Henri sobbed even louder in the back seat. Antoinette said nothing, but she reached out from her huddled terror and pulled her son closer to her, both of them swaying with the rocking of the car as Kuromaku weaved around a few vehicles that had been abandoned.

"The object is to get the three of you out of here alive, and then to return with enough force to wipe out the demons and destroy whatever evil is responsible for this. Every death we leave behind will haunt me, Sophie," he said, glancing at her, trying to make her understand the pain in his heart, "but how many more will die if this is not stopped? I cannot stop it alone. For now, the Whispers are ignoring us. They're caught up in their bloodl.u.s.t, taking the easier targets. But-"

From the back seat came the voice of Antoinette Lamontagne; every word seemed as though it had been scarred into existence.

"They are not ignoring us anymore," the woman said. Then, in French, she added, "When Sophie stopped the car . . ."

No more words were necessary. Kuromaku shot a look over his shoulder just in time to see the sharp edges of a demon's carapace running from the sidewalk toward the car. One of them landed on the roof and its tendril-tongue punched a hole through the metal, shattering the dome of the interior light. Kuromaku turned in silence, his foot pressing more heavily upon the accelerator. Through the windshield he saw Whispers coming out of buildings and two of them leaping off the roof of a three-story structure on the left.

"If we die now," Kuromaku told Sophie, without turning toward her, "it's for nothing."

Sophie whispered something to him in French, words of quiet endearment that seemed wildly inappropriate at that moment. And yet Kuromaku found that they gave him strength and determination and he hunched over the steering wheel further.

The Volkswagen crested the hill and started down. Through the ma.s.s of Whispers that now swarmed the car, he could see that the road curved slightly and then there was a broad gorge with a bridge across it.

They were not going to get there.

A Whisper leaped onto the hood of the car and its ebony talons slashed down and splintered the windshield. The gla.s.s spider-webbed but did not shatter.

"Take the wheel again!" Kuromaku shouted.

"Go!" Sophie snapped without hesitation.

The moment he saw that her hand was on the wheel, he transfigured himself, shifting his body ma.s.s to mist. He could feel the moisture of himself on her as she moved into the driver's seat and then he slipped out the window. As mist Kuromaku enveloped the Whisper on the hood of the car and then with a thought he transformed again, bursting into a cloud of fire that engulfed the Whisper completely.

Once more he took human form, katana in hand, and the blade began to sing, hacking at the demons that crowded in around the car. A crush of Whispers pushed in, some of them being driven down beneath the car, broken by its weight. But there were too many for Kuromaku to slaughter himself, and as the car careened wildly, others leaped onto it, punching talons through the metal to hang on, shattering windows and grabbing hold of the frames, trying to reach inside to tear at Antoinette and her boy.

Sophie cried out as her arm was slashed, but she kept both hands on the wheel as they thundered toward the bridge. From what Kuromaku had seen, there were many of them on this side, but none of the Whispers on the other side of the gorge.

Then, in the midst of hacking a Whisper in two, shattering its carapace with his blade, he glanced back the way they had come. In the distance, the Spanish town silhouetted against it, there hung a ma.s.sive storm front, dark, orange-tinted clouds rolling in, a hurricane sp.a.w.ned in h.e.l.l itself. For just a single instant it seemed to him that there was a face in the storm, slitted red eyes and a gaping, grinning mouth.

The wind whipped up even harder-enough so that it tore several Whispers away from the car and nearly knocked Kuromaku off as well-and an acid rain began to fall that burned his flesh where it touched him.