The Gathering Dark Part 21

Father Jack frowned. "How do we do that?"

"Keomany knows a whole community of earthwitches ninety minutes from here on the highway. She thinks they can help."

The priest nodded slowly and sipped his coffee. "I wish I could come with you."

Octavian smiled. "I guess the Bishop's not very happy with you at the moment. You or me, for that matter. Is he trying to find a way to blame me for all this?"

Father Jack started to deny it, but there was a glint in Peter's eye that told him there was no benefit in lying. The mage had a long and nasty history with the church. No matter how much Jack himself knew things had changed-the Church of the Resurrection was hardly the secretive, self-serving inst.i.tution that the Roman Catholic original had been-men like Bishop Gagnon made it hard to convince anyone of the difference. Particularly someone like Peter.

"It's all right, Jack," the mage said, dragging a hand across his stubbled chin, then reaching for his gla.s.s of orange juice. "You do what you have to do. It could be that you'll learn what's really going on, what that thing was in Wickham. I don't think I have the power to take these places back one by one, but maybe with the earthwitches' help, we can find the source. Let's keep in touch."

"Bishop Gagnon won't like that," Father Jack muttered.

Peter's features narrowed, brows knitting together, and his nostrils flared. "I don't think I care what he likes. Tell him he can take all the credit if I stop this thing, whatever it is, from spreading. And if it eats the world, well, he can just blame it on me. Not that there'll be anyone left alive to listen."

The priest smiled. He would have to rent a second car but that was simple enough. He held out a hand and Peter shook it.

"We'll save the world in spite of itself," he said, half in jest.

But only half.

14.

Nikki lay sprawled sideways on the pa.s.senger seat of the Navigator. The big SUV's engine rumbled and she could feel it all through her. Behind the wheel, Peter seemed to have retreated inward, lost in contemplation, but she had seen him like this before. The weight of the world. No one could expect him to bear the burden, to be responsible for stopping the cataclysm that was facing the Earth now, and yet Peter willingly took it onto himself.

She wanted to reach out to him, but she knew it was best to let him alone until he surfaced from wherever his mind had taken him.

Music played low on the radio and the sun was warm on her face. Her window was open partway, and despite the sun a light rain fell, a spring shower that sprinkled the winds.h.i.+eld and sprayed a few drops in through the window. Nikki kept it down. The shower would be over in a moment and she never minded a little rain.

Keomany sat in the back, her fine features very drawn, her perfect black hair a curtain veiling her face. Nikki had seen horrors before, but she had never had to witness the ravaged corpses of her own parents. With what Keomany had seen and experienced, what had happened to her hometown, Nikki thought it was a wonder she was still speaking in complete sentences.

I'd be a basket case, she thought as she peered over the back of her seat at her friend. What a strange turn of events, that this woman she had not seen in years would turn up at one of her performances to draw her back into the terrible, secret shadows of the world.

Only they aren't shadows anymore, are they? Everyone can see them. Just turn on f.u.c.king CNN.

And that was the truth. Anyone in the world could turn on the television and watch the apocalypse in progress. The thought made Nikki s.h.i.+ver, but neither her lover nor her friend noticed.

"Not too far now," Keomany said, craning forward slightly to peer at a sign above the highway. "It's north of Brattleboro, this exit or the next. I'll know it when I see it."

"You're sure we shouldn't have called first?" Nikki asked.

Keomany shook her head. "Cat and Tori will be there. In a situation like this, I can't imagine them being anywhere else."

Nikki sat up a little and looked at her, feeling a sadness sweep through her. This ought to have been a blissful moment, with Peter and Keomany around her and the sun and the breeze and the sprinkle of spring rain. Much as she wished, she could not sink down into the moment and pretend that beyond the confines of that vehicle, beyond the reaches of that highway, the world was not falling apart.

It was.

But at least she was facing the unknown with people she cared for, and who cared for her.

"So, Kem," she began, peering into the back at her friend, "tell me about this whole earthwitch thing. I remember you had an interest in wicca way back when, but how did you get into this?"

Keomany sat back against the seat, pus.h.i.+ng her hair away from her face. Her eyes were wide, as though she had just woken from a dream, and yet Nikki felt that what she had been pulled away from was the echo of the previous day's horrors. She had not begun the conversation as some honorable effort to distract Keomany from sinking deeper into her grief, but if that was the result, so much the better.

"Wicca wasn't for me," Keomany said, glancing out the window at the forest to the east of the highway. "There's a purity to it, sure, but there are also people who are just in it for the magick. Magick for magick's sake is just bulls.h.i.+t."

She blinked and glanced at the rearview mirror. "No offense, Peter."

"None taken," he said, surprising Nikki, who had thought he would have tuned them out. Peter glanced once into the rearview mirror. "The desire to know magick without a purpose-a benevolent purpose- always leads to dark places."

"Exactly," Keomany agreed, focusing on Nikki again. A sad smile teased the edges of her lips. "Wicca is benevolent, no doubt. But it had become popular, almost faddish, and that meant it drew too many people who weren't benevolent. It was never about magick for me. It was about respecting this world that supports us, gives us life. We take it so for granted, and I didn't want to live like that. The real power is in the earth and in the air. Nature is the soul of the earth. Gaea's the mother of us all."

With a small chuckle, she stopped and shook her head. "I'm preaching."

"No," Nikki protested. "I'm interested. Notice the lack of mocking?"

Keomany nodded. "All right. Anyway, when I learned about earthcraft-"

"Earthcraft?"

"That's what it's called. Simple and to the point, I think. It's based on a lot of old Celtic rituals, ancient druidry, that sort of thing, and it's meant to allow people to tap into nature, to honor Gaea and celebrate all that she provides us. It isn't exactly an original concept, but it is benevolent. And the truth is, it works."

Nikki nodded. Obviously Obviously it worked. They had all seen the proof of that in Wickham. "What I don't understand is where the power comes from. And is it accessible to everyone? I mean, could anyone tap into the forces of nature like that? Sort of scary to contemplate." it worked. They had all seen the proof of that in Wickham. "What I don't understand is where the power comes from. And is it accessible to everyone? I mean, could anyone tap into the forces of nature like that? Sort of scary to contemplate."

For a long moment Keomany just stared out the window, frowning. "I guess I never thought of it like that," she said at length. "One of the tenets of earthcraft is that anyone can commune with Gaea like that, honor her, celebrate the festivals and all. The impression it gives is that anyone can tap into the power, but in practice I don't think that's true. Maybe two or three out of every hundred at the Bealtienne festival showed any actual power. Mostly to influence the weather, actually, and that's an easy one for skeptics to brush off. Though it's real enough. I was convinced pretty much immediately.

"Cat can create an earth tremor. She can make plants and trees grow. Tori can bring rain or snow or disperse clouds. They're the major pract.i.tioners of earthcraft in the northeastern U.S."

Nikki tried to wrap her mind around that. This network of people- mostly women-across the country, across the world, who had developed a new way of looking at the world and discovered magick in the midst of it. If they got together, they might have the power to change weather patterns in certain areas, to help crops grow, to feed people who were starving. If earthcraft grew, it could change the world.

If there was a world left to change.

"That's amazing," Nikki said. "Really. Are they as strong as you are?"

Keomany shrugged. "Up until what happened in Wickham, the day I came back from the festival, I'd enjoyed the ritual of it, the joy it brought me, but I'd never so much as summoned a raindrop, never mind made anything grow. I don't understand it. Really I don't.

"You asked where the power comes from. Well, it doesn't. It's here. It's all around us. Earthwitches believe that we live in symbiosis with Gaea and that we can influence nature, turn it to our own ends as long as they're pure. Some people are more adept at it than others. Maybe some people are just born with a greater . . . I don't know, affinity, or whatever. I was happy to be one of the majority, someone who just wanted to be there. It felt right to me. I guess I had more of Gaea's spirit in me than I knew."

Nikki reached into the back seat and took Keomany's hand. The two women gazed at each other for a moment and Nikki found herself regretting that she had let this friends.h.i.+p slip away and never once tried to resurrect it. Despite all that had happened, she was grateful for this chance to know Keomany again.

"I guess you do," she said. "We were always in turmoil, weren't we? Back when we met. But you've got a kind of peace inside you now, and I have to wonder if that comes from having connected with Gaea, or if there's something in nature that sensed that peace, and found you."

Keomany smiled so sweetly it nearly broke Nikki's heart. Catastrophic tragedy had torn through her life in recent days, but somehow Keomany could still summon that smile.

"Let's just hope that the coven will be able to-" Keomany began, but then her eyes narrowed and she c.o.c.ked her head slightly, listening carefully to something.

A small laugh escaped her lips.

"What's funny?" Nikki asked.

Keomany raised an eyebrow. "The radio. Listen to the radio."

It was turned down low, a static buzz in the background, and Nikki had not been paying any attention to the music while they were talking. Now that Keomany had drawn attention to it, she mentally tuned into the music. Even Peter smiled, roused from his contemplation by the rhythm, and he reached out to turn up the volume.

It was her song. Nikki's song. "Shock My World."

"Oh, G.o.d," she whispered.

The mood in the Navigator seemed to have been lightened by the music on the radio, at least for Peter and Keomany. For Nikki, it was another story entirely. Images flashed through her mind, memories of being in the studio recording the song, of singing it onstage at the showcase where Keomany had appeared out of nowhere, of Kyle, whom she had left behind with little by way of goodbyes and given scarcely a thought to since.

Auditoriums, bright lights, music charts. All the things she had hoped for, there at her fingertips.

Right now it all seemed so far away, and hearing that song on the radio, her own voice and guitar weaving in through the rhythm, made her feel as though she had been stolen away into some other world right along with Wickham and Hidalgo and Salzburg and the others.

Nikki through the Looking Gla.s.s.

She had chosen to stay. Given the current situation in the world and the quest that Peter and Keomany were on, she could not imagine any other option. The world beyond the Looking Gla.s.s would have to wait. Nikki only wished there was some way to know if she would ever get back to the other side.

Though he had remained silent throughout, Peter had listened very carefully to the conversation between Nikki and Keomany. He was fascinated by this thing Keomany called earthcraft earthcraft, the magick it yielded being so completely different from sorcery. Whatever power Keomany was able to harness-or access-the fundamental concept was attuning oneself with nature, with the world. Sorcery was the renegade b.a.s.t.a.r.d of such thought. When Peter did magick, he forced the natural world to submit itself to him, subjugating to his will the very thing that earthwitches wors.h.i.+pped.

It made him uneasy to think about, but now wasn't the time for a conversation on the subject. He figured the best thing for him to do at the moment was keep his mouth shut. They needed the help of Keomany's coven, and his insights into the complex nature of magick weren't going to help at all.

With Keomany directing him, Peter pulled off at an exit north of Brattleboro and they rolled west along a scenic, tree-lined street, pa.s.sing a farm stand on the side of the road and a shop that sold homemade ice cream. There were a few antique stores and a gas station that looked as though it had been transported to the present day from somewhere around 1950. It was nice to see. Despite all that was happening in the world, this place, at least for the moment, was untouched.

A left on Orchard Hill Road took them on a winding, narrow drive through even more beautiful surroundings, low stone walls on either side of the street. When Keomany had said that the Bealtienne festival had been in Brattleboro, Peter had images in his mind of the thriving Vermont city he had visited once a decade and a half before. While it was hardly a metropolis, he had a difficult time imagining this huge gathering of wors.h.i.+ppers-Witchstock, in a sense-in the middle of downtown Brattleboro.

But this was more like it. There were houses here and there, nice older homes set into the trees or far back on stretches of farmland. Another turn and they came in sight of a hill that rose up on their left, covered with row upon row of apple trees. The field on the right was filled with young cornstalks that swayed in the wind.

"It's beautiful," Peter said.

"It is," Keomany agreed.

Nikki reached across the gulf between the front seats and put her hand on Peter's thigh. He glanced at her and smiled. She made a game attempt at smiling in return, but she was obviously troubled. Not that he blamed her. Not at all.

A hand-painted sign ahead identified the property on both sides of the road as Summerfields Orchard and almost immediately they came to a huge red barn building on the left with a parking lot around it. Peter pulled the Navigator into the lot, kicking up dust and gravel that shrouded the damaged Lincoln for a moment before floating away in the air. There were a handful of other cars in the lot but Peter had seen another twenty or so in the other lot across the street at the base of the orchard.

"Nice place," Nikki observed, peering out the window. "They do pumpkins in the fall? Halloween hay rides and all that?"

"All that stuff," Keomany confirmed. "Plus they sell crafts in the shop and they have a bakery in there too. The best cider donuts you'll ever have. Corn, apples, beans, blueberries, strawberries . . . all kinds of stuff grown right here."

"Gaea's been good," Nikki said.

Keomany might have responded but Peter wasn't listening. He put the Navigator into park and glanced around the vehicle. Cars, yes, but the barn was locked up tight. The shop Keomany was talking about was closed. Behind the big red barn was a rambling farmhouse painted a faded white with black shutters. It would have been unremarkable, even depressing, if not for the jungle of flowers, a riot of brilliant colors, that spread out in front of the house and along a path that led toward the barn.

"It's quiet," Peter said.

Keomany and Nikki fell silent, glancing around as if to confirm what he'd said.

"Maybe they're closed today," Keomany suggested.

"Then why all the cars?" Peter asked.

"Oh, G.o.d, no," Keomany whispered, opening the Navigator's door and stepping quickly out. The wind seemed to pick up around the SUV, particularly near Keomany, and a dust devil formed, whipping at her legs. "If anything's happened-"

Peter and Nikki stepped out of the Navigator simultaneously. Disturbing scenarios ticked across Peter's mind as he tried to make sense of what was going on at Summerfields Orchard. The air around him s.h.i.+mmered like July heat off pavement and he felt the static crackle of magick between his fingers and along the back of his neck. But just as the wind around Keomany belonged to her, this was his magick, his own sorcery, instinct drawing it from him to make certain he was ready for anything.

He glanced at Keomany, who glared back a moment and then nodded. Together they started across the dusty lot toward the rear of the barn, toward the path that led up to the farmhouse.

Nikki called after them. "Hold up."

Peter and Keomany both paused to glance back at her. Nikki was gesturing at the cars parked near the Navigator.

"Look at the license plates."

With a concerned glance up at the house, Peter strode back toward Nikki. Keomany hesitated only a moment before doing the same. Nikki pointed to a blue Toyota with a Wisconsin license plate. From there Peter quickly scanned the others. Ohio. Virginia. Quebec. Only a couple of the cars were from Vermont and he reasoned at least one of them had to belong to Cat and Tori.

"These aren't just customers," he said, glancing at Keomany.

"No," she agreed. "No, I don't think they are."

"The coven?" Nikki asked.

The wind rustled across the young corn crop but otherwise there was not a sound to be heard. The road had been largely deserted as well. The radio had reported that millions of people had stayed home from work that day, watching the news, riveted to the television as reports continued to come in of the cities that had gone missing.

Quiet.

"Not just the coven. They're mostly New England."

Peter nodded, then started again for the farmhouse. They skirted the barn but he glanced at it from time to time, watching the windows of the shop and the locked doors to make certain nothing was lurking there in the shadows inside the building. Despite the a.s.sumption that the cars in the lot belonged to people who had been invited rather than customers, he was not ready to presume that meant all was well here.

He whispered to himself in an arcane language whose words were summoned from deep inside his mind, from an ancient place. He barely understood them himself but he felt their power. A vibrant blue light began to s.h.i.+mmer around his hands.

"Is that necessary, do you think?" Nikki whispered.

Peter glanced over at her, saw the fear in her eyes, and yet he also marked the courage it must have taken for her to feel such fear and continue onward. In New Orleans, years ago. In Wickham, just yesterday. And now today.

"I'm not taking any chances," he told her.

Nikki moved a little closer to him and they moved onto the walk side by side. Keomany was right behind them, and when Peter glanced back at her, he saw that as she pa.s.sed among the wild splashes of color that made up the garden, the flowers seemed to grow slightly taller before his eyes, and to lean in toward Keomany as she pa.s.sed. Her hair blew around her head in a wind he could not feel.

A cry of agony came from the open windows of the house, the pain in that voice such that birds took flight from the trees beside the barn. Peter began to run. He was only a few yards from the front door when it was thrown open from inside by a tall, slender woman with skin so dark it seemed to absorb the afternoon sunlight. Peter thought that if not for the pain in her expression, she might have been beautiful.

The woman on the front steps of the house did not even look at him, or at Nikki, her eyes were focused only on one spot.