The Gathering Dark Part 19

He reached up to ma.s.sage his temples and took a breath he did not need.

"I am complicating things," he said grimly. "Where did I begin? Oh, yes. There are many h.e.l.ls. That is what we have always called them. Whatever they are, many of these places have monstrous creatures, savage things, some of which are merely animals, but others are sentient. Aware." He paused and studied Sophie closely.

"As demons from these many h.e.l.ls found or forced their way into this world, sorcerers and mages wove new magicks to combat them. Eventually all of that knowledge was collected in a volume called The Gospel of Shadows The Gospel of Shadows. The book is lost to us now but a new effort is under way to gather that knowledge again. Meanwhile only one man in the world knows all of the magick that book once contained."

Sophie frowned. "Who is this man?"

"His name is Peter Octavian and he is my brother," Kuromaku said reverently. He saw the confusion in Sophie's eyes and shook his head. "Not my brother by birth, nor even by the blood of Shadows, but my comrade in arms, my fellow warrior, a brother of my own choosing."

He paused, frowned. "Yet I wonder how even Peter would fare against these demons. If they can enter the church, it seems clear to me that these wraiths are from a dimension unknown to the ancient mages. All known demon races are magickally barred from holy ground. If we are not safe in this church, it is because whatever they are, these things are unknown, from a h.e.l.lish dimension not even the greatest sorcerers of history ever knew existed."

Sophie stared at him, expression blank. After a moment her face changed, as though a wave of awareness seemed to come upon her and she was awaking, for the first time, to the reality of their situation. She reached out and touched Henri's face but the little boy did not stir. With a glance at Antoinette madly mumbling over the corpse of her husband, Sophie stood and faced Kuromaku eye to eye.

There was a fire in her gaze that he was heartened to see. Sophie Duvic had decided that she was going to make it out of this alive. It gave Kuromaku hope.

"You really believe that Mont de Moreau has just been . . . captured somehow? That if we reach the edge of the city, we may be able to break back through into our world?"

Kuromaku nodded solemnly. "I do."

Sophie glanced around the church again. "All right. I will get them to the bas.e.m.e.nt and block the door. But the demons-the wraiths as you called them-will not be held off for long. There was no blood here. I believe that the priests and the faithful, if they made it here at all, were driven out and then killed outside. The ones you killed were here all along. Others may find this place, but I think it would be by accident, I do not think they know that we are here. Otherwise they would swarm the church as they did the train."

Kuromaku nodded at her logic. "All right. I will go and find a safer place for you to hide. Once you have been moved there, I will go to the edge of the city and see if escape is possible."

He turned from her, intent upon his mission. Sophie grabbed his arm and pulled him back. When she kissed him, Kuromaku felt as though she were giving over to him a little bit of her spirit, her soul, and it nourished the vampire far more than stolen blood ever had. When the kiss ended, they gazed at one another for a moment.

"Before you go," she said, pointing upward. "Fly up there and make sure there are no more of them."

Kuromaku let his lips brush gently across hers again, committing to memory their softness and the smell of her. Sophie's blue eyes caught and held him a moment.

Without pause he transformed, his body flowing and twisting, much of his physical ma.s.s going to that same place where his katana stayed until he needed it. Kuromaku s.h.i.+fted from human to crow, black feathers gleaming in the church. Sophie gasped and stared in amazement.

"I will never get used to that," she said.

He cawed and spread his wings, flew up into the rafters of the church, searched every shadow there and made certain there were no more demons lurking above the pews or the altar. Then he circled once above Sophie and what remained of the Lamontagne family, cawing vows of fealty and protection in the tongue of crows, until at last he flew toward a side door. Sophie ran to let him out, opening it just a crack for him to fly through and then barring it again behind him after he had pa.s.sed.

Then Kuromaku was out of the church, back into the h.e.l.lish landscape of Mont de Moreau. The horror of the city's fate struck him deeply once more but he steeled himself against the visions of fire and destruction that met his eyes. He was a warrior. He had seen such devastation before, and then at the hands of men.

The crow soared high above the tall white steeple. Below he saw the wraith demons that had been hunting them, that had swarmed the train and hidden in the church. He saw more of the enormous quill-backed demons and other horror that slunk and crept through the smoldering streets beneath that hideous orange light. Winged carrion eaters flew above and Kuromaku was careful not to soar too high.

But he was high enough.

High enough to see something that made his mind spin, made even one who had learned so many of the world's secrets gaze in incredulous awe. For as he looked to the northern edge of the city, he saw not the barrier he had expected to see, nor the French countryside that would have been there had this atrocity not taken place.

At the northern perimeter of Mont de Moreau there was another city, a sprawling desert village of small, dusty homes and cantinas. This place was not in France, that much was certain. It might have been Mexico, or somewhere in the southwestern United States.

The crow dipped one wing and glided eastward. On that side it could see another city, with sprawling green hills surrounding a busy shopping district downtown, the architecture and the signs upon the stores and pubs revealing it as an English town.

To the south, Kuromaku saw Salzburg, Austria, recognizing it immediately by the view of the ramparts of the ma.s.sive Hohensalzburg fortress, overlooking not only the streets of Salzburg, but of Mont de Moreau as well.

Cities from all around the world, impossibly drawn together beneath that dreadful orange sky. All so different and yet all now identical in the horrors that had befallen them, the ravaged streets, the burning buildings, the monstrous beings that prowled in search of human survivors.

A tear appeared at the corner of the eye of that crow, moistening its feathers. Kuromaku did not understand how this had happened but he knew that there had never been such an abomination, such a terrible slaughter, in the history of the modern world.

And to the west . . . at last Kuromaku saw the barrier he had sought, a s.h.i.+mmering field of energy that stretched from the ground all the way up into the heavens. Whatever unimaginable demon or G.o.d had the power to drag cities from the real world into this dimension as though building a kingdom of the d.a.m.ned one puzzle piece at a time, the western edge of Mont de Moreau was still the outer perimeter of this hideous montage.

There was no time to find a new sanctuary. If whatever power was behind this continued, they might never find the outer barrier again. Kuromaku had to get Sophie, Antoinette, and Henri out of this d.a.m.nable place before they were trapped here forever.

Once outside, he would have to discover what was doing this, how many cities had been taken, and what could be done to stop it. But first, they had to escape Mont de Moreau, had to reach the western perimeter before another city was dragged into h.e.l.l to block them in, and then another, and another, until the whole world burned and bled beneath that filthy orange sky.

13.

The moon was high and bright and limned with a halo of s.h.i.+mmering gold that turned the night sky blue around it. The woods were dark, but moonlight illuminated the canopy of branches that sketched at the sky above Nikki's head as she walked side by side with Peter along a path worn over years by other feet.

It was the second time she had lived through something incredible with him, something terrible. Afterward there was a kind of high, an adrenaline rush that nothing in the world compared to, not even performing with her guitar on stage in front of hundreds of people, not even on those nights when she just knew that every heart in the audience was beating with hers and she had them, just had them, right with her.

But that high did not last. In the aftermath, when the surreal tingle in her skin and the heat of her blood rus.h.i.+ng through her and the almost s.e.xual flush to her cheeks were over, there was only silence left in her. A quiet unlike anything else in the world.

Images from that first time, in New Orleans, still lingered in her mind, still visited her dreams on long, difficult nights. The blood and death, the sheer cruelty of those who tried to kill her and Peter and all those who believed in what he stood for-it had left a scar upon her soul. Nikki had carried on, and always would, but to have seen that and felt it all was something that would stay with her forever. And when she sang, she knew that some of that dark knowledge was communicated to her audience with every note.

Today had been worse.

In New Orleans, Peter and his friends had been able to put a name to their enemies. The threat had been horrifying, but identifiable. Whatever that thing was-in the storm storm, she could still picture it in the storm, the winds tugging at the rags of the creature and simply carrying them away after it had delivered its warning-whatever it was, the sorcery Peter wielded was not powerful enough to destroy it.

This was an enemy with no name, with power even Peter did not understand. After Wickham had been saved-if that was a word she could use to describe what had happened there-they had slipped away, avoiding the military and emergency crews that moved in as soon as the village had been restored to its rightful place.

More than seventy miles west and higher in the mountains, they had found a small motel that would let them rest and figure out what their next move was going to be. But as soon as Nikki and Keomany checked into their room, Keomany had turned on the television, and they had discovered that Wickham had been just the beginning.

Nikki s.h.i.+vered.

"Hey," Peter whispered as they strolled, hand in hand, along that mountain path, the lights of the motel behind and below them.

She glanced up at him and forced a smile.

"You're cold," he said. "Do you want to go back?"

"Not just yet." Nikki paused on the path and looked again back at the hotel. In her mind's eye she saw those creatures again-Whispers, the demon had called them-and she saw the thing itself, the thing Peter had called "the Tatterdemalion" in the SUV on the way out of Wickham.

But it wasn't the cold that made her s.h.i.+ver.

Didn't Peter understand that she would never be warm again?

"I wish we had been able to share a room," she said as they picked up walking again, following the trail that would have been used for cross-country skiing in the winter.

Peter laughed softly. "Somehow I think that would've been awkward for Keomany and Father Jack."

They had strolled another twenty feet but Nikki stopped again. She turned to him, reached up to touch his face, forcing him to meet her gaze, to see in her eyes all that was in her heart.

"Tomorrow morning, we're going to figure out our next move, right?" she asked.

"Yes," he agreed, staring back at her curiously. "We all need some sleep. The news is terrible, I agree, but we've got to retrench a little bit, get some rest before we can try to stop this."

"Fine," she agreed, brus.h.i.+ng her hair out of her eyes. Nikki gazed at him intently. "I never want to spend another night away from you."

A smile played at the edges of his lips, but he also looked surprised. "Shouldn't you be getting back to L.A.?"

"Do you want me to go back?" Nikki's chest hurt. She would not be able to breathe until he answered.

Peter stared at her. The moonlight glinted in his eyes. "No," he said, his voice a firm, quiet rasp.

"You saw the news," she said. "I don't even know if L.A. would still be there when I got back. I'm not going on tour, not going anywhere, until this is over. I was starting to think, hey, maybe our days are numbered, maybe this is all the time we have. And then I realized that even if I live to be a hundred, there are still only so many days in a life, and I want to spend mine with you."

Peter reached out to touch her as if she might be a mirage, as if she might disappear at any moment. Nikki smiled as his fingers touched her arm and something pa.s.sed between them, a silent covenant, a promise to each other. She stood on her toes and kissed him, and he held her close against him as though she would fall off the Earth if he let go.

When the kiss ended, Nikki laid her head on his chest, and they just stood there on that mountain trail, warm against the chill night air. She could hear his heart beat.

They stayed that way, there in the dark of the night, for a very long time. Yet as safe as Peter made her feel, as glad as she was that they had learned this terrible lesson and been given a second chance, she knew that morning was going to come too soon.

Allison flew above the streets of London. The sun was high and the sky uncharacteristically blue and clear for springtime. With falcon's eyes she gazed upon the city below, laid out in patterns that described its history, from the most ancient foundations of London-the portion of the city that had once been walled in-to the neighborhoods at her edges that had been built to house the less fortunate and were now the trendiest spots in the city.

Exultant, she soared higher, glided on warm air currents above the River Thames, admired the sprawl of the Parliament building.

This was what she was made for. Allison despised what she was, mostly because she had not chosen to become this thing. Her kind had painted its history across the ages in the blood of innocents, thriving on terror. But not all of them. Though she would never be able to shake off the loathing she felt completely, she had at last come to terms with another emotion inside her, rare and often hidden.

It was glee. She hated what she was, but she loved the gifts it gave her. Others had shown her that pleasure could be taken from her immortality, from the malleability of her flesh, but for a very long time, she did not believe it. That had changed.

Allison Vigeant soared, powerful wings outstretched, feathers flat and smooth, over the city of London, and she relished every moment of it.

But her moments were not her own. Once more she circled Westminster Abbey and then she struck off toward an engagement she wished she did not have to keep. It was not long before she found herself flying above the Kingsway, wings fluttering as she alighted upon the roof of the nine-story structure where she was due for a meeting called by her superiors.

It surprised her that there were no guards on the roof. To the innocent pa.s.serby, the faithful subject of the Queen, it was just another office building along the Kingsway. But the British government owned that structure, it housed various ministry offices the sort of which they did not discuss in the papers. From time to time, the Prime Minister also offered certain rooms in the building to the Secretary General of the United Nations for use in the international crusade to erase the last of the shadows, the last of the vampires, from the face of the earth.

Allison had been thinking of late that this crusade was destined to failure. They could bl.u.s.ter as much as they liked, but she had no doubt that there were shadows hidden away in the darkest and most secret places of the earth whom they would never find, not even with her aid. It had also occurred to her that perhaps it was best they were never allowed to think they had succeeded . . . because that would make her the last vampire in the world, and it would be simple logic for them to want to remove her as well.

Still, no guards on the roof. That was something, at least. There would be sensors and alarms, but that was to be expected.

With a strangled bit of birdsong that evolved into a human groan, she transformed from falcon to woman once more. Her wings unfolded as she stood, becoming a long brown duster jacket. She was clad in denim and leather boots and a beige turtleneck sweater beneath the duster. It was still chilly this early London spring day.

Allison stretched and glanced around at the other rooftops and into the windows of the buildings that stood taller than this one. She inhaled the scents of this world capital, the heart of an island in motion. London was an old place, and though she herself was young, it always made her feel like a conspirator, as though she had been a part of this city for ages.

It was a shame she could not enjoy it more, a shame she had to come here to deal with these people. But it was either that, or have them begin to hunt her instead of employing her to hunt others on their behalf.

Enjoying the warmth of the sun on her, she strode across the rooftop to the structure that jutted upward, housing the door and stairwell that led down into the building. The door was a heavy metal thing, wired with alarms and certainly barred on the inside. She could have torn it off its hinges and tossed it aside as though it were made of cardboard, but they would only have billed her for it, deducted the cost from her paycheck.

Allison let her molecules drift, became a fine white mist, and she slid around the edges of the door, finding the thinnest of entries despite the weather-proofing meant to keep the chill wind outside. With a thought, she effortlessly coalesced once more on the top step inside the door, then walked down the narrow staircase to the top floor of the building.

No guards up here, but there were cameras mounted all along the hallway. She smiled at the first one she pa.s.sed and waved amicably. The urge to brandish her middle finger was powerful but she managed to contain it.

She was meant to be here. Security would have been told to expect her and prepared to witness the reality of what she was. The Brits wouldn't have put anyone in the job who couldn't handle that.

Halfway down the corridor, she found the office she was looking for. It had no name on the door, only a number: 913. Allison rapped lightly on the door to Room 913 and from inside she heard a familiar voice calling for her to enter.

She pushed the door open. There were only two men inside. One of them was Ray Henning, the Commander of Task Force Victor. The other was Rafael Nieto, a lanky, serious man whose hair had thinned and gone silver in the years since she had first met him, but otherwise looked much the same. Nieto was a good man, dedicated to his job. Which was a positive trait to find in one of the most powerful men in the world. Nieto was the Secretary General of the U.N., a job that had, in recent years, nearly outstripped that of the American President in its importance to the peace and security of the planet.

"Allison," the Secretary General said. He smiled and waved her in. "Have a seat. It appears we have a lot to talk about."

"Mister Secretary," she said, nodding a greeting as she closed the door behind her. "Commander," she added, acknowledging Henning, who neither smiled nor greeted her with more than a grunt.

They waited while she moved the chair beside Henning, sliding it away from him in a subtle indication that she considered herself apart from him. This would hardly hurt the commander's feelings, for Allison knew that he disliked and perhaps even feared her. It accomplished something else, however. Rather than the two of them facing the Secretary General across the large desk in the room, it was now the three of them set in a sort of triangle, changing the dynamic in the office. Henning stared at her with pale blue eyes. He was fifty-two but very fit, balding and yet his features were striking. A handsome man.

But not her friend. Not even close.

The silence ticked on a few seconds too long, into awkwardness. Allison shot a glance at the Secretary General, one eyebrow raised. Nieto sat up straighter and smoothed his jacket, which hung oddly on him as though he were a department store mannequin.

Outside the window, the unusually beautiful London day was wasting.

"Are we waiting for someone else?" Allison asked.

"No," the Secretary General replied. "I'm sorry. I was thinking for a moment. On to business, then. Do you know why you're here?"

A smiled teased the edges of Allison's mouth. "I don't want to jump to conclusions."

Commander Henning cleared his throat and the balance of power in the room tilted in his direction. "What did you and Carl Melnick talk about in Venice?"

Allison stiffened, her gaze ticked from Henning to the Secretary General and back again. "Come on, Ray. We both know you're not in the business of asking questions you don't already know the answer to."

Commander Henning stared at her but said nothing. Allison turned to Nieto again.

"Mister Secretary, given that we've now got thirteen towns and cities worldwide that have apparently been erased from the map, I'd think the United Nations would have better things to do than spy on its employees. It hasn't been lost on me that my position as a scout for Task Force Victor is not unlike the position Will Cody once held for the U.S. Army. If he was alive, he'd be horrified."

Henning sniffed. "If he were alive, we'd be hunting him."

Cold fury spread through Allison and she turned slowly to regard Henning again. The two men must have felt her anger, for in that moment the balance of power in the room s.h.i.+fted to her. Allison could taste it. Perhaps they remembered, in that moment, that she was not merely a scout, that she could have killed every living creature in that building and walked out unscathed if she were so inclined.

Nieto gazed at her, clearly taking her measure. "Twelve."

"I'm sorry?" Allison asked.

"Twelve. There are twelve cities and towns that we know of that have been affected by this . . . crisis. The town in Vermont, Wickham, is . . . back."

All the rage left her and Allison sank into her chair, staring first at Nieto then at Henning. "Back? What do you mean, the town is back?"

"Just as I said," Nieto replied. "Our troops report that one moment the energy field that seemed to have enveloped the town was there and the next it was gone and the town was visible again. Entire blocks had been destroyed by fire. Most of the townspeople were dead or missing. The survivors are talking about demons."