The Gathering Dark Part 17

But Keomany would not stop. She pushed past Peter now and he did not stop her. She went to the top of the stairs and looked into the living room. Nikki knew she should stay where she was. She did not want to see what had happened up there. And yet somehow she could not stop her feet from going up the steps.

"They're getting closer," she heard Father Jack say from the front door.

Nikki did not even glance at him. She walked past Peter on the stairs and stood beside Keomany. Over the top of a half-wall that separated the stairs from the living room she saw her friend's parents. Among delicate furniture and shelves filled with antiques, their bodies were sprawled on either side of the splintered coffee table. Their torsos were torn open and completely eviscerated, hollowed out until all that remained of them were shriveled husks that reminded her of melon rinds.

The carpet was stained with blood and the demons had tracked their prints all over it in scarlet, but of Mr. and Mrs. Shaw's viscera there was no sign. Whatever the things had torn out of these people they had either eaten or taken with them.

Keomany whimpered and turned to Nikki, who embraced her tightly. The women held one another and Nikki felt Keomany's breath hot on her throat, felt her friend's warm tears drip on her neck. Cold anger burned in her, as resolute as guilt or grief, but so much more powerful.

"I'm so sorry," Nikki whispered, jaw clenched in fury and shared pain.

"The dogs," Keomany whispered. "Where are the f.u.c.king . . ."

She let her words trail off mid-sentence and turned to go into the kitchen. Nikki followed her. The linoleum floor was covered with the b.l.o.o.d.y demon tracks. Keomany ignored them as she went to the sink and looked out the window above it-a window that gave a view of the back yard. Over her shoulder Nikki could see the broad expanse of lawn and the trees back there, as well as the twin cables that ran from the house to the woods. Dog runs.

And tied to each of the runs, a pair of yellow Labrador retrievers, who even now hid in among the trees as though waiting in ambush for the demons that would come no closer to them than they could reach. Their masters had been slaughtered and the dogs had been unable to help. Nikki could only imagine the baying and growling and barking that had ensued.

"Muggsy," Keomany said. "Bonkers. You poor boys."

From the bottom of the stairs, Father Jack called up to them. "They're coming!"

Peter had followed Nikki and Keomany only as far as the top of the steps. He stood and stared at the blood-soaked living room, at the corpses of Mr. and Mrs. Shaw. When he heard Father Jack shout to them that the demons were attacking once more, he snapped his head around and glared down at the priest.

"No they're not."

He marched down the stairs. Father Jack was even paler than he had been before. His eyes were haunted but he did not look away under the weight of Peter's scrutiny. The priest nodded and stepped aside, then followed Peter out the door. He sensed Nikki and Keomany coming down the stairs behind them but did not turn.

The chain of demons that was stretched out in a circle around the property were moving slowly, inexorably forward. They were nine and ten deep in places, hundreds of them, and yet they moved nervously, all of them with their faceless heads tilted toward Peter, waiting for him to attack.

But he had no intention of fighting them. Their number seemed infinite. It was a battle he might not be capable of winning, no matter how much sorcerous power he was able to wield. But defeating these monsters was not the battle he had come to fight. Not at all. There was another victory to be had here, a far more important one. Keomany's parents were dead, but Peter felt certain there were others still alive in Wickham. He wanted to make sure they stayed that way.

Father Jack raised his gun and leveled it at the approaching hordes. Peter glanced over at him.

"Don't bother," he said.

Then he turned and spotted Nikki and Keomany hanging back near the brick steps at the front of the house. "Keomany. Come here, please."

It was as though his voice had awoken her from some horrible fugue state, a trance of grief and impossibility. He suspected the power she wielded was just as much a part of that as were the demons and the infernal landscape around them. More than likely she had already distanced herself from all of this psychologically, just to deal with it.

Nikki took Keomany's hand and together they rushed across the lawn to Peter. Father Jack looked on anxiously, his gun still wavering between the ground and the slowly advancing army of chittering demons that slunk forward, orange light gleaming off their black carapaces.

"We've got to get back into the Navigator," Nikki said. "We've gotta get out of here, Peter."

He shook his head. "No. That's not why we came." He reached out and touched Keomany lightly on the shoulder and her gaze lifted, their eyes met.

"This is real, Keomany," he told her. "You understand that? All of what you see. All of what you feel. It's real."

Her delicate Asian features seemed to break then, and she bit her lower lip as she nodded. Her eyes pinched shut, squeezing tears that slid down her cheeks. Quickly she raised a hand to wipe them away and then stared at him again, almost defiantly.

"Good," Peter said, and though his heart was grim and cold, he offered her a smile. "Then show me what you've got, Earthwitch. Give me one of those roots. Right here."

He pointed to the lawn.

"Peter," Father Jack warned.

"I know. They're getting closer," Peter replied, without even glancing at the demons. "Don't shoot unless they rush us. I think they're waiting for something."

"For what?" Nikki asked.

Peter kept his gaze on Keomany. "I don't think we want to know. Do we?"

Keomany took a deep breath. There was the faintest scent of perfume on her, like lilacs. She backed away from Peter and her brows knitted together as she stretched a hand toward the ground, her fingers curled as she beckoned something forth.

Peter s.h.i.+vered as he felt the power surge up from the earth. It came not from Keomany, as it would with true sorcery, but from the ground-from the very spirit of their world. The village of Wickham was from that other place, from their world, and so perhaps it was still connected as well, though it had been displaced. Perhaps Keomany would not have been able to touch the world of her birth if Wickham itself had not been stolen from there. But she did.

Somehow, though she had traveled into this terrible alternate dimension, Keomany was still connected to the world that they had left behind. With every fiber of her being, she called out to it now and it responded by striking out for her, bursting through into this horrid place like lightning arcing up into the sky.

The thick, gnarled root of a tree burst up through the soil and gra.s.s of the lawn, growing before their eyes, lengthening and tearing up more of the gra.s.s as it reached up. It rose from the ground like a serpent summoned from a wicker basket by some Egyptian snake charmer.

Keomany glanced at Peter for further instructions but he only nodded and thanked her.

His skin felt filthy, coated with a putrescent film that had collected upon all of them like pollen. It was the atmosphere of this strange realm, this place between worlds where some power had secreted the village of Wickham away and changed it forever, baptized the town in blood and cruelty. They were all tainted with it now, but the filth would wash off, might even burn off if exposed to the pure sunlight of their own world.

For all of them save Keomany. It had taken something from her and left a stain on her soul that might never be cleansed.

Peter knew he had to find the being behind this horror, but first there was Wickham to be dealt with. He glanced over at Nikki and took strength from the faith in her eyes. As if that were some silent cue, the indigo demons began to swarm toward them again.

The things were deadly and swift as they crossed the pavement and danced across the lawn, constricting the perimeter circle they had created. Their talons gleamed hideously in the h.e.l.lish orange light. Father Jack and Nikki turned on them immediately and began to shoot, gunfire ripping through the first wave of attackers. They would be out of ammunition in seconds. There were too many of the creatures. Keomany had not plumbed the depths of her newfound power yet, but Peter did not think she would need to.

The magick that surged through him was much like electrocution. His muscles went taut, his limbs rigid, and pain lanced through him, deep as the bone. Peter summoned all the magick within him, all that he had learned and that was now a part of him, and he reached out his left hand and gripped the top of the tree root that jutted from the earth in front of him.

Connection.

It was instantaneous. Purely on instinct-as all of his most powerful sorcery had become-he muttered words last heard on the banks of the River Tigris many millennia before. Keomany had drawn that root forth from their world, from the earth they all knew. It had punched a hole into this realm and now Peter used that root as an anchor. He could feel feel the world of his birth. With his mind, with his magick, he reached his power down along that root and felt the edges of that puncture wound between worlds. the world of his birth. With his mind, with his magick, he reached his power down along that root and felt the edges of that puncture wound between worlds.

With his eyes tightly closed, he tore it wide open.

He had done this earlier, ripped a hole in this dimension that allowed portions of Wickham to spill back into its rightful place. The effort had driven a wedge of pain through his skull. This was completely different. Then he had sensed their own dimension lurking just beyond the veil that enclosed this realm. Now, with Keomany's earthcraft aiding him, he could feel it. Touch it.

Peter could hear ripples of gunfire but it all seemed distant from him now. Nikki and Keomany and Father Jack, they were all so far away. He smelled freshly mown gra.s.s and felt the warmth of the sun on his face. He opened his eyes and looked up.

The dreadful pumpkin sky had been wounded. A circular hole gaped in that bilious ceiling; a hole through which the sky was pure blue with white wisps of cloud, and through which the life-giving spring sunlight burned down upon the small patch of lawn where Peter now stood. The gra.s.s seemed to yearn for it, the tree root in his hand trembled as the circle of sunlight on the Shaws' yard began to grow. Visually, it was deceiving, for he was not pus.h.i.+ng the h.e.l.lish landscape away. Rather, he had grabbed hold of his own world and was pulling pulling them back into it. them back into it.

Peter took a deep breath, focusing his energy. He propelled it out of him, into that jutting root, and he felt the barrier tear, felt more of Wickham pulled back into alignment with its proper place. White sparks leaped from the blades of gra.s.s in the lawn as the area he had affected grew wider and the sunlight spread and the circle of blue sky above blossomed and spread until all of the property that had belonged to Keomany's parents had been reclaimed.

An island of peace in the midst of h.e.l.l.

The gunfire died.

Peter looked up to see Keomany staring at him. The demons were shrieking and retreating, scrambling over one another, trampling each other as they fled away from this otherworldly light to the safety of the disgusting realm they knew. The difference was tangible. It terrified them. This time they ran not only beyond the veil that now separated the two worlds, but farther, slipping into the black-orange shadows, into the broken windows of houses across the street or the woods beyond them, into the hole just down the block where the Slogute had burrowed.

One of the monsters, mewling like an injured kitten, turned the featureless, horseshoe-crab sh.e.l.l that served as its face up toward the blue sky, tendril-tongue darting out to taste the air, then dropped to the ground and began to dig insanely. It had given up hope of fleeing beyond the reach of the light of the earth-dimension's sun and now tried to excavate itself a hole in which to hide.

Father Jack took four quick strides toward it, aimed, and blew the carapace over its skull to pieces. The priest blessed himself and looked around as if searching for other targets, but all of them had gone. Peter had no doubt they were watching from their hiding places, but for now he knew they would not attack again.

Nikki held her gun by her side as she walked to where Peter and Keomany stood on either side of the jutting root. Peter still clutched it in his hand and Nikki glanced at his grip before she met his gaze.

"That's a start." She grinned. "What do you do for an encore?"

Keomany could not seem to summon a smile; her grief was too great. "Can you do this for all of Wickham?"

"It wasn't just me," Peter a.s.sured her. "But with your help, I think I can, yes. I think we we can." can."

Father Jack muttered something, his voice barely above a whisper. Peter ignored him, focused on Keomany. The earthwitch nodded and laid her hand over his upon that living root. Peter wondered if it were just any tree, of if there was something more to it, if Keomany had touched on the roots of nature itself, the earth spirit those of her faith believed in. In ancient Norse myth it had been called Yggdrasil, the world tree.

Perhaps, he thought, all trees are part of Yggdrasil. all trees are part of Yggdrasil.

"Octavian!" Father Jack snapped, but the intensity in his voice was born of fear rather than anger.

Nikki grabbed Peter's free hand but she was staring back the way they had come. Peter followed the line of her gaze and saw what had entranced her and terrified Father Jack. He felt Keomany's hand slip from his own and then, barely conscious of having done it, he let go of the root himself. The Shaws' property remained bathed in the warm sunlight of their world, but Peter felt cold in spite of the sun.

In the distance, above the tops of houses and trees, where mountains rose over Wickham, the orange sky had darkened and thickened. Ominous storm clouds had formed and even now dipped toward the ground as though they might at any moment touch down and become tornadoes. The air-even there in the place where the world had returned to normal-felt heavy and damp.

Tendrils of storm hung from the horrid sky and their color deepened from orange to b.l.o.o.d.y red. They drifted toward one another until they began to fuse-two, then four, then six p.r.o.ngs of furious, raging storm that from a distance looked very like antlers, perhaps horns, or the p.r.o.ngs of a crown.

In the ma.s.sive wall of raging winds and debris that was whipped up from the ground beneath that crown, Peter Octavian was certain that he saw a face. The scarlet storm had black eyes and a slit for a nose and a gaping maw for a mouth.

And the storm came on.

At first it had seemed only to drive in upon itself, a war between ground and sky. Now that ma.s.sive twist of furious winds, of deadly tornadoes, began to move in their direction. Even over the tops of houses they could see cars and chunks of buildings torn up from the ground and sent to whirl inside that ma.s.sive storm.

The face in the storm leered at them.

Nikki clung suddenly to Peter's side. "What is it?" she whispered.

Keomany spoke up before he could respond.

"It's the thing that did this," she said. "The thing that took Wickham."

Father Jack had not moved. He simply stared at the oncoming storm, weapon hanging useless at his side. "You've got to be f.u.c.king kidding me," he said, voice barely audible over the rising howl of the wind as the blood red storm thundered toward them. "How do you kill that?"

"Let's solve that one from outside Wickham," Nikki said. She grabbed Keomany by the hand and the two women started toward the driveway, where the rented Navigator sat waiting.

Peter did not move. He stared at the face in the storm, at the black eyes like sinkholes in the midst of that crimson hurricane, tendrils of tornado stretching up into the stratosphere forming the crown of this power.

"We can't outrun it," Peter said flatly. "It's all around us."

He felt it, knew it. Though he had pulled a small portion of Wickham back to their dimension, the rest of the village was filled with the power of this thing they now faced.

Father Jack stared at him. "So we just wait for it to reach us?"

"It's already here."

The priest frowned but then he paused and s.h.i.+vered as though he felt it too. Nikki and Keomany stopped on the gra.s.s just short of the driveway. They all turned to look at the figure that appeared from the woods behind one of the houses across the street.

This was not like the other things they had encountered, not a skittering, hissing, indigo-armored demon. It was shaped like a human being, though impossibly tall and thin, and it was clad in rags and strips of cloth that clung to it as though pasted on, a papier-mache effigy of a man. Strips of cloth covered its face as well, or as much as they could see of it, for its features were shaded by the hood of a ragged cloak that swirled around it with a wind churned up by the approaching storm.

Peter Octavian stared at this nomadic figure, this strange tatterdemalion, and he felt afraid.

It strode beneath the structure of an enormous family swing set, and though it did not touch them, the swings seemed to sway aside for it to pa.s.s. In its path was a sandbox shaped like a green-and-orange dragon lying on its back, its belly full of sand, a too-cute character out of children's storybooks. The thing walked over it, feet treading sand and then gra.s.s again, in a straight line toward them. A white picket fence cordoned off the back yard and the wooden struts shattered as it pa.s.sed.

Nikki shouted something to Peter but he could not hear her. The roar of the incoming storm had grown much louder, drowning her words.

The Tatterdemalion reached the street, its eerily slender form silhouetted against the house and the woods and the roaring, blood red storm that ma.s.sed above the trees-the sinister face of the storm glaring down upon them. The creature was close enough that Peter could see that some of it was covered with not rags but actual pieces of clothing-a little girl's sundress, a pair of denim jeans, a green silk blouse.

At the place where the horrid orange light ended and golden sunlight began, at the crossroads between worlds, it stopped. Tendrils of cloth flapped in the high winds. It did not seem even to notice Nikki and Keomany, and though its hooded eyes might have seen Father Jack, Peter was certain it was staring at him.

"Sorcerer," the Tatterdemalion said, and despite the howling winds and the rumble of the storm, he could hear its high, wheedling voice perfectly, as though it had spoken in his ear. the Tatterdemalion said, and despite the howling winds and the rumble of the storm, he could hear its high, wheedling voice perfectly, as though it had spoken in his ear.

Peter raised his hands, clenched into fists, and magickal fire blazed up around them. He held his breath. His friends were nearby and he could feel their closeness as well as their vulnerability. Whatever this thing was, he would not allow it to lay its hands on Nikki.

"Give back what you've taken!" Peter shouted into the wind, barely able to hear his own words.

The cruel storm had paused, lingering just beyond Little Tree Lane, but it filled up the sky. Beneath it, the Tatterdemalion tilted its head to one side as if studying him.

"You are powerful," it said, voice echoing in his head. it said, voice echoing in his head. "The Whispers fear you. Yet know this. Your magicks, no matter how ancient, cannot defeat me. They were forged to combat the energies that govern your own realm and many others. But your world is new to me, and I am new to it. The power I bring is like nothing that has ever been here before." "The Whispers fear you. Yet know this. Your magicks, no matter how ancient, cannot defeat me. They were forged to combat the energies that govern your own realm and many others. But your world is new to me, and I am new to it. The power I bring is like nothing that has ever been here before."

At that place where the two dimensions clashed, the Tatterdemalion inclined its head.

"I leave you now. Of all my holdings, I have found this land to be least interesting. Therefore I will grant your request and return it to you. I warn you now, though, sorcerer. I will do as I wish in this plane, as I have in all others I have encountered. If you interfere further with my Whispers or my will, you shall be destroyed."

As the words lingered in his mind and Peter tried to make sense of them, tried to formulate some kind of response, the wind whipping around the Tatterdemalion increased. Nikki and Keomany ran the last few feet to the Navigator, afraid the storm was going to strike them in full. Father Jack leaned into the wind, but was so thin that Peter wondered how he managed to keep his footing.

The magick burned around his hands and surged through him and he felt he should strike, should attack the thing, but did not know how much power it truly had. Whatever horror lived in that storm it was as terrible as any of the ancient demons he had confronted during his time in h.e.l.l.

The wind whipping around it became a cyclone and for a moment the Tatterdemalion simply stood there. Then the green silk blouse was torn away from it, followed by the blue jeans and dozens, perhaps hundreds, of ragged strips of cloth.

The cloak was twisted around by the wind and funneled into a small tornado of cloth.

And the Tatterdemalion was gone.

In an instant, the s.p.a.ce between two heartbeats, the sky above Wickham returned to normal, as though the sun were a spotlight turned on to dispel the filthy orange clouds. The blood red storm became pink mist and showered to the ground, leaving no trace.

The village of Wickham was in ruins, most of its citizens dead, but the sky was blue again and somewhere nearby birds sang and a dog barked furiously.

Nikki stomped across the lawn toward Peter, stood before him, and pointed at the place where the Tatterdemalion had stood.

"Excuse me, but what the f.u.c.k f.u.c.k was that?" was that?"