The Gathering Dark Part 33

Peter had not known what Kuromaku had planned but he had been certain of its intent-to get Nikki away from the Tatterdemalion and provide him an opening to act. He had risked driving the h.e.l.lG.o.d over the edge of reason in order to distract it, gambling that Kuromaku would make his move in the meantime.

Kuromaku had come through.

And he had paid the price for his valor, struck by lightning, his body smoking even now where it lay on the rocks beside the corpse of Father Jack Devlin. Kuromaku might yet survive, but despite his dabbling in magick, Jack had been only human. He was surely dead.

"d.a.m.n you!" Peter screamed at the Tatterdemalion.

But it wasn't listening. The rags and clothing that the h.e.l.lG.o.d had brought to life, a cotton homunculus, where aflame. The viscous rain fell in a torrent now, dousing those flames, but there were seconds to spare when the h.e.l.lG.o.d was distracted by the plight of the scarecrow face it had offered up to them in effigy.

Nikki's eyes were fully open now. She was rigid, still trapped in the tempest that coalesced to keep her dangling there in the sky, but she met Peter' s gaze. The flames on the Tatterdemalion scorched her skin and she cried out in pain.

Something just past Nikki and the burning Tatterdemalion caught Peter' s eye and instantly he understood the rest of the plan Kuromaku had laid. Battered by the tumultuous winds, the falcon flew at the Tatterdemalion from behind.

Tendrils of magickal flame-his own lightning-snaked from Peter's fingers, replenishing the crimson sphere of sorcery that held him aloft. Though it had been five years since he had become human again, he bared his teeth as though he were flashing needle fangs.

Just as it would have collided with the Tatterdemalion, the falcon dispersed into a cloud of mist, swept around the h.e.l.lG.o.d even as the rains finally doused the last of the flames, and then Allison Vigeant coalesced in human form once more. Even as she took flesh, Allison reached out and wrapped her arms around Nikki.

Allison tore Nikki-naked, bleeding, and terrified-away from the Tatterdemalion and the two of them fell.

The h.e.l.lG.o.d screamed in fury. Thunder rolled across the sky and lightning tore through the state hotel on the edge of the Cleft of Ronda. Arcs of electricity from the sky shot down into the gorge. Peter thrust out his left hand and with the same sorcery he was using to hold himself aloft he s.n.a.t.c.hed Allison and Nikki when they were less than fifty feet from the ground. He slowed their descent but did not stop it.

His attention could stay with them only a moment, and he was forced to let them drop the last eight or ten feet, but he counted on Allison to take the brunt of the fall.

"A terrible mistake, Octavian!" the Tatterdemalion screamed, the floral sundress pasted to its face again, its mouth wide as it roared its fury at him. the Tatterdemalion screamed, the floral sundress pasted to its face again, its mouth wide as it roared its fury at him. "This is my world!" "This is my world!"

Peter sneered through the scrim of scarlet magick that separated them. "Yes, your world. Your plaything. But not the dimension you come from. You said it yourself. You brought Nikki here, just like you brought everything else!"

The Tatterdemalion faltered slightly, and Peter knew that he was right about all of it. The mage opened his arms wide and the sphere of magick around him burst outward and enveloped the Tatterdemalion, trapping it inside with him.

"Father Jack said it, before you killed him. He said we make our own h.e.l.ls. And that's what you did."

"Fool! You cannot destroy me! I am not even truly here, only my essence, only my influence."

The Tatterdemalion exploded in a burst of energy that singed Peter's face and clothes. The rags and clothing whipped at him, flying around inside the sphere, beating on the crimson prison Peter had trapped it in, lashing at their captor.

Peter Octavian smiled grimly. "I know that. I felt felt it, the world you really come from. This place isn't a parallel universe. It's just some toy you created, a pocket you sewed into your own reality. You found my home dimension and saw it was vulnerable, so you built a place where you could be a G.o.d. it, the world you really come from. This place isn't a parallel universe. It's just some toy you created, a pocket you sewed into your own reality. You found my home dimension and saw it was vulnerable, so you built a place where you could be a G.o.d.

"Well, now it's time for both of us to go home."

There was a roar inside the sphere with him. The rags whipped at him, bruising and scratching him. Lightning struck that magickal energy but it could not break through. Peter let the sphere drop from the air above the ruins, saw through a veil of red magick the Whispers on the banks of the river. The demons had stopped and stared up with their blank faces at the mage and his captive as the sphere lowered.

The power of the Tatterdemalion strained against Peter's magick and it felt to the mage as though he were being stretched on the rack, his bones and muscles tearing with the effort of keeping the monstrous h.e.l.lG.o.d imprisoned.

Below him Peter saw Allison and Nikki, the latter draped in Allison's jacket, running toward the place where Keomany and Sophie stood amid the rift between worlds, that sanctuary of sunlight. Keomany held on to Sophie, preventing her from running to the place where lightning had struck Kuromaku and Father Jack down.

"I will be free!" a voice boomed within the sphere. a voice boomed within the sphere.

Peter felt his ears begin to bleed.

"Like h.e.l.l," he muttered.

The sphere hovered inches above the ground. The others called to Peter. Allison began to run to him.

"Keep them alive!" he called to her.

Then he expanded the sphere again, feeling as though he were about to be swallowed by the darkness of the storm, as though his very spirit were unraveling. He caught Keomany up in tendrils of his magick and then she was there with him. Peter Octavian stared into those golden, glowing eyes and he felt refreshed by the sunlight that tore through the storm above, following her.

Yet there was doubt and fear on her face. She was the vessel of Gaea, and yet she was also just Keomany Shaw, a shopkeeper from Wickham, Vermont. This was the evil that had destroyed her town and slaughtered her parents, here with her in this magickal enclosure.

"What are you doing?" Keomany asked, her voice pleading. "Peter, what are we supposed to-"

He reached out and touched her face, feeling the smooth skin, smelling the scents of flowers and gra.s.s. "You're tied to Gaea now. You feel her and she feels you. Right?"

Keomany nodded, frightened, the golden light in her eyes faltering.

"Hold on to that connection."

The remnants of the Tatterdemalion whipped at him. Thunder shook all of Ronda. A building up above the gorge burst into flames and a piece of the cliff wall calved off and crashed down into the nearly dry riverbed. It had fallen silent, however. The h.e.l.lG.o.d was also afraid.

Already exhausted and in pain, Peter's body trembled as he summoned all the sorcerous power he had acc.u.mulated in his time in h.e.l.l and in all of his studies. With his right hand he held on to Keomany and once more he could feel the umbilical that led back to Gaea through her. More importantly, he could feel yet again the cord that tied the Tatterdemalion to its own reality. Focusing upon that, he reached out his left hand, fingers splayed wide, and he spoke a single syllable in the language of h.e.l.l.

He tore a hole in the air, a shimmering vertical pool of mercury, a portal between dimensions. With Keomany beside him, he stepped through.

All the strength went out of Peter, drained from him, and he fell to his knees. His stomach lurched and he bent over vomiting on the floor, which was as smooth and perfect as gla.s.s. Disoriented, he swayed, and then he felt Keomany's hand on his shoulder. He reached for her, and when he glanced up at her face and saw the golden light misting from her eyes, the light bathed his face and he did not feel quite so weak and lost.

On his knees the mage looked around.

They were in an enormous chamber, seemingly without any exit. It was formed of a smooth, reflective surface the blue of a robin's egg, and though he could not find its source, there was light pulsing softly within that cavernous cell.

For cell it was.

"Is that it?" Keomany asked, voice low and tinged with wonder.

Peter only nodded. On the other side of the ma.s.sive chamber was a single creature, an abomination easily a dozen feet high. Its body was armored with a carapace not unlike the Whispers, an indigo sh.e.l.l. Its upper half reminded him of nothing so much as the four-armed, hideous G.o.ddess Kali, and its lower half was not unlike that of a scorpion, ma.s.sive spiked tail wavering up in back of it.

The horror's eyes glowed a rotten orange that seemed all too familiar. It glared at them, took several cautious steps backward, and its ma.s.sive stinger went rigid, aimed directly at Peter.

The mage had seen the face of the h.e.l.lG.o.d only behind a cotton mask and outlined in ash and dust, but there was no mistaking it. The Tatterdemalion spoke then, its impossibly wide mouth opening, protruding lower jaw grinding against the upper. Its words were in a demon-tongue Peter could not even begin to decipher. But one word was familiar.

His own name. "Octavian."

It was horrible, this thing. But Peter was confused by its surroundings. What was this world, this doorless, windowless chamber? This was the h.e.l.lG.o.d's home dimension, he was certain of it. But there had to be far more to this reality, more creatures, more demons, even h.e.l.lish cities . . . an entire universe. Yet the Tatterdemalion was confined here.

And then he understood.

"It's a prison," he said, the words echoing off the gla.s.sy walls.

"Yes," Keomany whispered in response. "In a world of dark magick and evil, it's so monstrous that they have to keep it caged here."

The h.e.l.lG.o.d hissed, a hydraulic sound not unlike the voice of the Whispers, and it began to move slowly in at them, stinger twitching as it drew closer. This thing had been unable to exert its power over its own reality, unable to torment this world with its magick, and so it had turned its attention elsewhere, explored other dimensions, and found one that it saw as easy prey.

"No," Peter said, the one word bouncing all around the cavern. "The fighting's over. You're done."

He felt drained already, as though he had burned up the magick within him like fuel. But it was still there, traces of it, echoes of it. The mage reached out one final time and grabbed Keomany's wrist. He held up his free hand and tendrils of magickal energy exploded from his fingers once more, weaving a new sphere, a new cage for the demon. The magick was blood red now and it felt to Peter as though it were his own blood, leeching out of him as he grabbed the h.e.l.lG.o.d, paralyzed it there in that sphere. Its stinger was the only thing still moving, and it struck at its new, smaller prison again and again, and with each blow Peter winced in pain.

Scarlet light gleamed off the smooth gla.s.s cavern.

Peter closed his eyes. With Keomany to guide him he felt backward along the same umbilical they had used to arrive here. His sorcery twined with it, caressed the spirit of Gaea.

The mage stepped back into Ronda with Keomany at his side. The storm had begun to subside but the sky was still orange, the rain still thick and oily. He heard a voice call "Holy s.h.i.t!" as he dragged the h.e.l.lG.o.d through into the realm it had created.

But Peter did not stop there. The shaft of sunlight from their dimension, that Spanish morning light, bathed him and Keomany both. But that was not enough.

The next portal was easy to form. It was as though he slipped his fingers into a s.p.a.ce between that sunlight and the darkness of the storm and opened up a door. He led Keomany through. He heard the rushing of the Guadalevin River. The earthwitch gasped and she shuddered as she moved into the full presence of her G.o.ddess again at last.

The slit in reality remained open behind them and Peter could smell the stink of that h.e.l.l blowing through it on the wind from another dimension. They stood at the bottom of the Cleft of Ronda. The river rushed nearby. Above them, however, there was no city. No bridge. And no sign that there had ever been a settlement on that plateau.

The mage glanced around and could see the shimmering barrier that surrounded Ronda and all of the other cities the Tatterdemalion had stolen, but this time they were on the inside inside of the dimensional rift. The Spanish morning light-probably verging on toward afternoon now-still shone above and the breeze still blew in from the mountains carrying the scent of the countryside upon it, but anyone outside the barrier would have seen it as a blank spot upon the world. It was as though where the city ought to have been, reality was out of focus. of the dimensional rift. The Spanish morning light-probably verging on toward afternoon now-still shone above and the breeze still blew in from the mountains carrying the scent of the countryside upon it, but anyone outside the barrier would have seen it as a blank spot upon the world. It was as though where the city ought to have been, reality was out of focus.

Peter had no idea how the h.e.l.lG.o.d had accomplished it. It came from a dimension unknown to this world's sorcerers and its magick was a total mystery.

But the thing he thought of as the Tatterdemalion was here here, now. The place it had wanted to destroy, and yet had wanted to avoid entering at all costs. If it had the power to take cities away upon a whim, it could have left its prison and come to Earth at any time. With its magicks and its ferociousness it might have conquered.

So why had it not?

There was only one reason that made any sense to Peter. That it could not. It could not wield the storm here, could not send its demon sp.a.w.n Whispers out in the sun; its magicks had limited power here.

With a grunt of final effort, Peter dragged the blood red sphere through the tear in reality and into that null field in the Cleft of Ronda, a geography that had been reconstructed in that alternate dimension by the magicks of the h.e.l.lG.o.d.

Octavian fell to his knees, too weak to stand a moment longer. Barely able to kneel. The h.e.l.lG.o.d was freed as the sphere dissipated, his magick exhausted.

Keomany looked radiant in the sunshine. Her silken hair blew across her face, her expression one of grief, of mourning for her lost parents, and yet of resolution as well.

The h.e.l.lG.o.d hissed once more, its carapace steaming in the sunlight but not burning. It raised its stinger and charged at Peter, muttering in its demon-tongue.

A fresh wind kicked up across the rocks and the rushing river, and it seemed to emanate from Keomany herself. She raised her hands and the ground shook, knocking the h.e.l.lG.o.d off its many feet. Before it could right itself, branches shot from among the rocks, impaling it.

At the top of the gorge, the ravaged city of Ronda began to fade back into reality. Peter and Keomany found themselves in the midst of another battle, as their friends materialized around them. Allison was protecting Sophie and Nikki from the Whispers, which were incinerated almost instantly by the warm sunshine of that spring day.

The Tatterdemalion thrashed and cried out as more and more shoots of green and wood punched through its carapace from below and then shot out through cracks in its armor above. It was a demon, a monster, but its fear of this place had always been that here its magicks could not protect it. Here, it was only flesh.

A small grove of olive trees grew up to maturity within the s.p.a.ce of seconds, and tore the h.e.l.lG.o.d apart.

It was the last thing Peter Octavian saw before surrendering at last to the shadows of unconsciousness.

Epilogue.

"So the priest, Devlin, he was dead, right?"

The late afternoon sunshine cast long shadows out across the North Platte River. It was the last day of May and the spring air still held a hint of the past winter, a bit of a chill that slipped across the Nebraska countryside when evening was coming on.

Allison Vigeant sat on the gra.s.sy bank of the river with her knees pulled up under her chin, remembering another river. She shivered, but it was not from the chill.

"Yeah," she agreed. "That part of the report was true, at least. I didn't . . . I mean, I only knew him for a little while, and it was in the middle of all that, the s.h.i.t hitting the fan, everything. He had a lot of courage. Peter says he was a nice guy, as well. Quiet. Funny."

Carl Melnick sat beside her on the gra.s.s. He looked very out of place there, uncomfortable in his khaki pants and brown suede shoes and a b.u.t.ton-down shirt. The aging newsman's salt-and-pepper hair seemed to have thinned somewhat in the weeks since she had last seen him. But she suspected that the whole world felt a little older these days. The official death toll was just shy of eight hundred thousand and it would have been much higher if they had not reclaimed the lost cities when they had. Paris and New York had been brought back only hours after they had disappeared. Another day and . . . Allison did not like to think about that. It was a catastrophe of previously unimaginable proportions.

She shook her head, a bitter chuckle issuing from her lips.

"What?" Carl asked.

"Nothing. Just sad, really. Seems like Devlin was a good guy. A hero, if you go in for the word. We could use a lot more like him. Dealing with what happened."

Melnick cleared his throat and narrowed his gaze, studying her though she averted her eyes. "Dealing with what else might happen. Bad enough when you told the world there really were such things as demons and vampires among us. Now they've gotta get used to the idea that there are things as powerful as this somewhere out there, on the other side of some black hole or something. Stephen f.u.c.king Hawking meets The Exorcist The Exorcist. Just what the world needed to know."

"At least this time I wasn't the one to have to tell them." Allison glanced up at Melnick and smiled before returning her attention to the gentle rush of the river. It soothed her. "The world will get by. Humans are a pretty resilient species. And I have it on good authority that the earth itself is healthier than ever."

Her old friend raised an eyebrow. "You said something like that before. What's that mean, exactly?"

She had not told him about Keomany Shaw. Now Allison just returned the upraised eyebrow. "Let's just say there's more than one kind of magick, Carl."

Melnick raised both his hands; the skin on them was wrinkled and dry. "All right. Be mysterious. Just don't expect me to trust you again. You promised me you'd give me the story."

Allison did not turn her focus away from the river. "I did. I told you what happened."

"You told me part part of what happened." of what happened."

With a long sigh she nodded and turned to him. "What more do you want to know?"

"Kuromaku. The other one like . . . the other vampire," Melnick said tentatively. "What happened to him. Reports from the site didn't say anything about you, but they didn't mention him either. It's like the U.N. wants to pretend vampires don't exist anymore."

"We still exist. We're just not public enemy number one anymore."

Melnick nodded in understanding.

Allison brushed the hair away from her face and went on. "Kuromaku should've died. Even a shadow can't sustain that kind of damage and survive. Without being able to heal himself . . ."

"Should've died. But he didn't. How did you save him? You said Henning shot him with the coagulant."

She flinched and shot him a dark look. "You know I hate that word. It doesn't do anything to the blood."

"Sorry. But it's not supposed to exist, so there's no name for it. The online vampire fanatics call it that."