The Gathering Dark Part 4

Peter waved his hand and the magick was gone.

"Because when you live forever, nothing matters as much as it does when every heartbeat is a tick of the clock closer to the end. Life is vital. It has texture and preciousness that you lose track of very quickly if you do not have to worry about things as mundane as wrinkles and cholesterol and cemetery plots. When I was a Shadow . . . shadows of humanity, that's what vampires are . . . when I was a Shadow I always felt that no matter who stood beside me in battle or lay beside me in bed, I was somehow still alone."

He smiled wistfully. "It wasn't until I was human again that I remembered that the living feel that way too. Living is a journey we all end alone. The difference, then, my dear Father, is this: when you cannot die, it no longer matters how you live. Mortality gives meaning to the journey.

"So I'm human. And I'm alone. And yes, I'm haunted. I have always loved art and now I paint to escape some of my ghosts."

Peter opened his hands and clapped them together like a gleeful child. "Now you know all there is to know about me. And can I just say, who needs therapy more than I do?"

But there was no humor in it, and Father Jack clearly understood that, for there was not even the flicker of a smile on his features.

"Your tea is getting cold," he told the priest.

Father Jack regarded him carefully. "I don't really like tea."

Peter laughed incredulously. "You lied?"

"It seemed rude to do otherwise."

"Until now?"

"Oddly enough."

The mage let that sink in and then nodded once. "All right. I'll stop toying with you, Jack. I just wanted to make sure you really understood what was going on here. If I'm a monster as the Bishop says I am, then so be it. But I figure that's for you to decide. It sure isn't up to me."

"I didn't come here with villagers bearing torches to try to burn you out, Mr. Octavian."

"You couldn't," Peter replied. "That's why I let you in. There are wards on this place. If you meant me harm, or even if you were searching for me for your own purposes, like some of the obsessive lunatics who showed up when I first moved in, you would never even have found the place. You would have been unable to see it at all."

"You have stalkers?" the priest asked, eyebrows raised.

"Used to. But humanity does its best to forget what upsets it, doesn't it, Father? People still have to be reminded that the Holocaust happened, and that was barely three-quarters of a century ago. The world is trying to forget about vampires, and there are so few of us- excuse me, of them-remaining that it's easy for conspiracy theorists to start talking about ma.s.s hallucinations and genetic experimentation and supersoldiers and all that sort of c.r.a.p. Kind of amusing, actually. The point is, if you meant me any harm, you wouldn't be sitting on my sofa drinking tea.

"You'd be dead."

Father Jack gave an uncertain chuckle. "And pleasant a prospect as that is-"

"It brings us to why you're here."

The priest nodded.

"You're here because you want me to help you with a spell to do some demonic pest control in Hidalgo, Texas."

The man had been reaching up to push his sliding gla.s.ses higher on the bridge of his nose and now he paused as if frozen and stared at Peter, his cheeks the color of his hair.

"I didn't tell you it was Hidalgo."

"No, you didn't. You also didn't tell me that as a priest in service to Bishop Gagnon, your primary responsibility is to attempt to recreate the contents of The Gospel of Shadows The Gospel of Shadows to try to rein in the demons and other supernatural creatures that have been running around without their leashes on ever since the Roman Church lost its war with the vampires and could no longer control them." to try to rein in the demons and other supernatural creatures that have been running around without their leashes on ever since the Roman Church lost its war with the vampires and could no longer control them."

The priest's mouth dropped open. "How . . . how can you know this?"

Peter stood up, careful not to kick over his teacup. He walked over to the door and pulled it open, then glanced back at Father Jack. "I'm a mage, my friend. At a guess, I'd say as powerful a sorcerer as ever walked the earth. Well, save one.

"You can go now. Thanks for dropping by."

Obviously confused, the priest stood up and slowly strode toward Peter, shaking his head, mouth working but without words coming out of it, as each response he considered was a.n.a.lyzed and then jettisoned.

"You're welcome. For the tea, I mean."

That stopped the priest. He had been about to step through the door but now he stopped, only feet away from Peter, and glared at him with real anger s.h.i.+ning in his eyes for the first time.

"You're really just going to let all those people in Hidalgo die? Those demons will keep spreading if they're left unchecked. It could be an epidemic unlike anything we've seen."

"Nuke the town," Peter replied.

"You're joking."

A ripple of guilt went through him, and at last Peter relented. "Maybe a little," he confessed. "I'm sorry, Father. But I cannot help you. Not in good conscience. You see, I was once part of a group of beings who numbered a great many monsters among them. So was your Bishop Gagnon, so he should understand. I just reminded you what happened the last time a religious organization came into the kind of sorcerous power The Gospel of Shadows The Gospel of Shadows represented. You really think I'm going to help you start that all over again?" represented. You really think I'm going to help you start that all over again?"

Again Father Jack opened his mouth, and again no words came out. The priest had no response to that. He turned and walked out of the apartment and started up the brick steps toward the street.

On the second step he paused and turned.

Peter stood inside the door watching him. He had waited, for he sensed that the priest was not quite through with him yet.

"I suppose I understand. At least partially," Father Jack allowed.

"That's all I ask," Peter replied. "Did you bring that French ma.n.u.script?"

The priest's face brightened and he reached inside his black jacket and withdrew a sheaf of faded parchment from an inner pocket. At the bottom it was scorched, portions of it burned away.

Peter nodded once and whispered words in a h.e.l.lish language. The air around the parchment seemed to shudder and warp like heat rising over blacktop on a hot summer day, and when it subsided, the pages of that arcane French ma.n.u.script were whole again.

Father Jack stared at the pages in his hand and a slow smile crept across his face. He looked up at Peter gratefully.

"Tell the Bishop you figured it out for yourself," the mage told him. "I wouldn't want to spoil my reputation."

3.

On the drive back up to Wickham, Keomany kept her window down and the radio turned up loud, her silken black hair blowing across her face almost constantly. At times it obscured her vision but she only laughed and plucked it away from her eyes, and whenever she heard Nikki Wydra's song on the radio, she cranked it up even louder. It was played so often that she figured by the time she got home she'd know all the words.

The road hummed beneath her tires and the little Kia seemed almost to float along without her help. Keomany was tired, but it was the sweet blissful sort of tired that was so wonderfully rare. The Bealtienne festival had been all she had hoped for, and more. Two nights and one full day of harmony and partying, of practical idealism, of dedication to the everyday magick in nature and in humanity. Keomany had run into a handful of people she had known from similar festivals in New York, but she had also met a lot of new faces, made new friends. She'd gotten on particularly well with Ellen Cortes, a crafts shop owner from Connecticut.

Then there was Zach. Tall, broad-shouldered, well-muscled Zach with the sparkling blue eyes who had given a fascinating lecture on the significance of Great Trees, Standing Stones, and Stone Circles the previous morning and then talked his way into Keomany's room that night.

Now, with the wind blowing across her face and the sun s.h.i.+ning warm upon her through the winds.h.i.+eld, she s.h.i.+vered with the delicious thrill of remembering the feel of his hands on her, the things he had done with his tongue, and the goodbye kiss they had shared this morning. She did not even remember if she had gotten his last name, but she had his phone number. Keomany wasn't sure if she would call Zach or not, but even if she never did, she knew she would get a s.h.i.+ver every time she thought of him and of the Bealtienne festival.

A tiny smile played at the edges of her lips that she had not summoned but neither could she banish it, a fact that only made her smile more broadly and chuckle to herself.

With a sigh she settled more deeply into the driver's seat of the Kia, the sun and her memories of the night before making her warm and tired in that satisfied, sleepy way. The wind whipping across her face and the loud radio were meant to keep her from closing her eyes behind the wheel, but it still took a lot of self-control for her to shake off that contented feeling and stay awake.

Just get home in one piece, she thought.

Home. The word echoed in her mind along with the thrum of her tires on the highway. Once upon a time it would have ruined her mood to be headed back to Wickham, but things had changed. Much as she wished there could be a Bealtienne festival every weekend instead of once a year, she looked forward to tending the flowers at her place, and to getting back to work at her shoppe. Keomany had every confidence in Paul and Jillian, but opening Sweet Somethings had been her dream, and it meant the world to her to take care of the shoppe, to stand behind the counter and serve her customers. The beautiful thing about her business was that her customers were always happy. It was unlike almost any other job in that way. Homemade fudge and hand-dipped chocolates were magical products to sell. There might be those who wished the prices were lower, but n.o.body ever complained about what they had bought.

An ancient Madonna song recorded the year Keomany was born came on the radio. She began to sing along but her voice dropped off. A blue Dodge pickup was just to her left and she could hear the same song coming through its open window. A battered BMW sailed past her going much too fast.

Her eyelids grew heavier, her whole body warm.

Madonna sang along to the sound of her tires humming against pavement and then the music was gone as Keomany's eyes closed and her chin began to dip and finally her head canted forward. It was the sensation of falling that snapped her eyes open, rocked her back in the seat. There was an instant of knowing knowing, where she understood that she had fallen asleep at the wheel, and her hands gripped the steering wheel so hard they hurt. Her entire body was rigid in that slice of time.

Then she saw the Dodge pickup looming too large in her peripheral vision. Her rearview mirror was a whisper away from the Dodge and the driver laid on the horn. It seemed too loud through her open window, blaring like an air raid siren, and she cut the wheel hard to the right.

Too hard.

All on instinct.

The little Kia had drifted from the middle into the fast lane, and now it darted back across the highway too far, sailing all the way to the breakdown lane. If there had been another car in the slow lane- or a lunatic like the one in that battered BMW . . .

Keomany couldn't think about it. She hit the brakes and let the Kia roll onto the soft shoulder, tires kicking up gravel. Her legs were weak and they hurt from the sudden rictus of her muscles and her hands were shaking as she put the car in park. Her chest rose in ragged gasps as she laid her forehead upon the steering wheel.

A tractor-trailer thundered by and the Kia shuddered as though it might be tugged along in the truck's backwash.

"Oh my G.o.d," Keomany whispered as she glanced up over the top of the steering wheel and out the winds.h.i.+eld. Just ahead of her on the soft shoulder was a green sign showing the distance to Montpelier and Montreal. Another half-dozen feet and she would have torn right through the steel struts that held up the sign.

"Holy s.h.i.+t."

She got out of the car and stood back to stare at it. Blinking in amazement, she walked a circuit of the Kia and marveled at the little car as though it were the most extraordinary vehicle ever built. Not a scratch on it. Or on her.

"Holy s.h.i.+t," she said again, out loud this time, and it occurred to her how sadly ineloquent trauma had made her.

The thought made her laugh. It was a little crazy, that sound, but she shook her head and then slid back behind the wheel of the car and continued to let the strained giggle roll out of her because she needed to.

Just for fun she said "Holy s.h.i.+t" a third time and then laughed some more. Keomany sighed and ratcheted around to look backward along the highway and she waited several minutes until there wasn't a car in sight before she pulled out.

She kept to the slow lane for almost twenty minutes, and when she at last moved back into the middle, she shuddered. Her skin was tingling all over the way it had when she was a little girl and had done something naughty and then gotten away with it.

This was like that. It made her feel lucky and somehow brand new.

A short time later Nikki Wydra's song came on for the third time and Keomany laughed and sat up straight and sang along at the top of her lungs.

But she kept her eyes on the road.

And she didn't feel tired anymore. Not at all.

Despite the giddiness she'd felt after nearly dying, by the time Keomany drove past the fire station and into Wickham late that afternoon, all the benevolent energy she had built up at the Bealtienne festival-and in bed with No Last Name Zach-had completely dissipated. She was relieved to be home but there was a kind of bitterness in it as well, for she felt very keenly that something had been robbed from her, that the exuberance she had been feeling had not merely been tainted, but stolen.

It had soured her disposition, and she had never liked to feel sour.

Still, as she drove through town, she tried to force herself to cheer up at least a little. She was fine, after all. p.i.s.sed at herself more than anything. It was foolish to let the incident ruin what had been an otherwise perfectly pleasant break.

So intent was she upon her mood that though she noticed how deserted the sidewalks were on the normally busy Currier Street, it failed to register as anything particularly remarkable.

Keomany parked the Kia across the street from Sweet Somethings and climbed out of the car. She paused and took a deep breath to center herself, to touch the earth with her mind and speak to nature with her heart.

And she recoiled.

"What the h.e.l.l?" she muttered and she stared around as though she had just woken up. Something had seemed off ever since she had fallen asleep behind the wheel, but that was just her nerves. This . . . this was something else.

Eyes narrowed, she glanced back at her car. The window was open. If it was just a smell, she ought to have caught the odor before she got out. But it was more than that, much more, and it had simply not affected her until she had left the car and exposed herself to Currier Street.

With a shudder of dread, she started toward her shoppe. But everything seemed off kilter, soiled in some way, as though the air itself had grown thick and damp with rot. Halfway across the street she froze, with no thought at all given to the possibility of being struck by a car.

What did she have to fear? There were no cars moving on Currier Street.

Damp with rot? What had made her think that? What had made her think that?

Yet whatever had formed the image in her mind, she could not shake the thought now. The air did indeed have an unpleasant taint to it, not merely when she inhaled it, but when she touched touched it in the way that those of her faith could. Paul Leroux might tease her about being an earth G.o.ddess-and that was fine because G.o.ddess she most certainly was not-but she did have a connection to the magick in nature. "What the h.e.l.l is going on around here?" she asked aloud. it in the way that those of her faith could. Paul Leroux might tease her about being an earth G.o.ddess-and that was fine because G.o.ddess she most certainly was not-but she did have a connection to the magick in nature. "What the h.e.l.l is going on around here?" she asked aloud.

This was not simply the bad feeling left over from her near-collision. The town seemed deserted, the air had a strange texture to it, like the sky pregnant with moisture just before a storm, and yet this was different still from that. There was a copper tang in the air that she scented in her nostrils and tasted upon her tongue and a wild thought cantered across her mind, that at any moment the sky would begin to bleed.

The late afternoon light had changed just in the few minutes since she had driven into Wickham. Now it was not golden but coa.r.s.e orange, the color of rotten pumpkins.

Keomany began to shake her head. Somebody else might have chalked it up as simply odd and brushed it off. A person who could not feel what she felt in the earth and in the air might have tried to go about their business. But this was not right.

Keomany Shaw was an earthwitch, and no f.u.c.king way was she spending another minute on this street.

Earthwitch, she thought with a laugh. You're not even that strong in it. You're not even that strong in it. There had been dozens at the Bealtienne festival with more sensitivity to the earth than she had, with real ability to read ley lines and to call upon their power, to influence the weather, to uncover the secrets of the world. There had been dozens at the Bealtienne festival with more sensitivity to the earth than she had, with real ability to read ley lines and to call upon their power, to influence the weather, to uncover the secrets of the world.

But if she could feel what had happened here this strongly, she had a feeling those others might have been crippled by it.

Her throat was dry and it hurt when she swallowed as though she was already getting sick from whatever dark poison filled the air. She turned to walk back toward her car.

Something moved.

Just out of the corner of her eye.

A chill raced through her and her skin p.r.i.c.kled with gooseflesh as she turned to try to pursue it, the only thing she had seen moving since she drove into town. Down along the street between two parked cars. It might have been a dog running low but she knew that was not it. Her single glimpse of it was burned on her retina, a flash of blackness darker than shadow. She could feel the malice emanating from it.

But it was gone.

"Get in the G.o.dd.a.m.n car, Keomany," she muttered to herself.