What was he saying? Matt focused on his lips.
“…got the old man cornered! Come on! Come on! Any longer an’ it’ll be too late!”
And then Matt was running after Walton to help Kingman. He couldn’t have said why. In the back of his head was a faint, calm voice saying, What the hell do you care about Charles Kingman? If these skinhead idiots want to butcher each other, let them.
And yet, Walton had saved his life. And also, the weird logic of the battlefield dictated that he aid those on his side and fight those who were not. It made no sense, but he did it anyway. It didn’t seem to him that he had a choice. He didn’t even think about it. He just ran after Walton to help the mad, murderous racist Charles Kingman.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Kingman needed a lot of help. He was cornered in a part of the yard that sloped down toward a still-standing section of the electric fence. There he stood on a small pile of two-byfours, blinded by the headlamps of the huge RAHOWA ATV that was circling him. Turning slowly, he screamed his defiance at Alastair, who crouched behind the ATV wheel while another militiaman stood behind him.
Kingman had a gun but no bullets. He seemed unaware of this and punctuated his rant with frequent trigger pulls, which unleashed nothing worse than an anemic click-click-click.
The guy behind Alastair was armed, too—with the same crossbow that had incinerated Kingman’s four scouts earlier. But he had ammo as well. He had a quiver full of pitch-dipped bolts and what looked to be a vintage Zippo lighter. While Alastair circled Kingman, the archer behind him fitted a bolt, lit it, and let it fly.
The flaming bolt whooshed within six inches of Kingman’s face, making him fall backward in surprise. It skidded off the top of an oil drum, ricocheted over the fence, and vanished into the darkness. The archer and Alastair both whooped with laughter.
Matt glanced around, hoping for backup. There was none. The house was engulfed in crackling flames and was beginning to lean dangerously. Shadows darted here and there, but they were no one Matt knew. From the other side of the house, he heard a familiar roar. He couldn’t see any sign of Arkady or Roma.
They were on their own.
“Follow me!”
Matt followed Walton to a row of oil drums close to the action. Before Matt could stop him, Walton yelled over the top, “Back off, Alastair—or I’ll blow your head off!”
“Don’t tell him—just do it,” Matt hissed.
“Can’t,” Walton whispered back. “Out of ammo.”
“Oh, fuck.”
Predictably, Alastair and the archer had turned at the sound of Walton’s ultimatum. Predictably, the archer slid another bolt into his crossbow, touched the tip to his lighter, and turned it their way.
“Get down!” Walton said. “Get down behind the oil drum.”
“Walton,” Matt said, gritting his teeth, “just think of what you just said.”
A beat. Then: “Oh shit.”
“Right.” Matt looked over the top of the drum just in time to see the archer line up his eye with the crossbow sight. “Run!” And he bolted to the side at the same time that the archer pulled the trigger.
Fwick.
Matt wasn’t looking at the drum when it exploded, so he had no idea what happened to Walton. Had the kid jumped away in time? Or had he been cooked in the oily burst of heat that lit up the night and sent Matt sprawling into the mud?
Matt didn’t know, and at this rate, it was possible he would never find out. All he had time to think about was how fast the huge ATV with the steel rhino horns shot forward as soon as the oil drum blew, sweeping around the far side (probably to finish off Walton) before heading for him.
By then, of course, he was up and running. He made for the only high ground in sight: the heap of two-by-fours on which Kingman was standing.
He made it to the top, panting, just as the ATV rounded the drums and turned the glare of its headlamps onto him. Squinting into the light, he could see the archer, in silhouette, pulling another bolt from his quiver.
“Well, by God, it’s Matthew Cahill!” Kingman slapped his shoulder like they’d just run into each other at a charity golf outing. “Good to see you! What a night! Isn’t it glorious, Matt! And to think that we lived to see it come!”
“‘It’?” Matt said, not understanding. “What’s ‘it’?”
“Why, the RAHOWA, of course! The final standoff between the chosen and the forsaken, the enlightened and the ignorant, the good and the evil! The RAHOWA, Matt—it’s finally arrived!”
Matt’s mind blanked at the sheer incomprehensibility of the statement, and he was saved from responding by a soft but audible fwick.
Kingman jerked backward with a grunt. He looked stupidly at the flaming bolt sticking out of his left shoulder. Then his gaping mouth closed and his eyes narrowed. He turned toward Matt and said—with an astonishingly steady voice—”Do you know what makes a man a success in this world, Matt?”
Smelling the hair-singeing funk of scorched flesh, Matt said no.
“The will to power.” Slowly, Kingman wrapped his right hand around the flaming bolt. “I had it, Matt. Remember that.” And with the sound of tearing muscle, he ripped the bolt out of his body. Held it aloft. Waved it at the ATV.
“You’ll have to do better than that, you clueless bastard! You’re no son of mine! You’re no—”
Fwick. WHACK.
Suddenly, a flaming bolt was jutting out of Kingman’s forehead like a unicorn horn. He jerked backward, eyes rolling back into his skull. His jaw fell open, and he collapsed onto his back, still clutching the first fiery bolt.
Alastair gunned the ATV. “Hold on!” he yelled to his archer, who gripped the back of his seat. “Cahill? This here’s for what you done to our brother in arms. Prepare to meet your maker!” And the ATV shot forward.
Matt’s first impulse was to run—but he stifled it. Because he’d grown up in the country. He knew ATVs. He knew that this oversized job was a Kawasaki Brute Force and had its tank in the back and a clearance of about fifteen inches… more than enough room for what he intended to do. But he couldn’t do it standing on a pile of two-by-fours. On a pile of two-by-fours he’d just get mowed down.
But on the muddy ground? That was a whole different story.
Matt charged the ATV.
As it roared closer, he cleared the woodpile. Gripping his ax in both hands, he took a final look at the gleaming row of steel horns, eyes, fangs, RAHOWA—and then he extended his right leg and fell back on his left, like a batter sliding into home.
It worked. The mud was slick, and he slid smoothly under the ATV as it shot harmlessly above him. As it passed, he thrust upward with the ax with all his strength and heard the blade bite into the undercarriage with a chink.
Unable to stop in time, the ATV crashed up and over the woodpile where Matt had been standing only moments before, then made a furious U-turn.
Matt followed it, running back onto the woodpile, looking for the traces of the ATV’s passing. He found it: a thin spray of wetness darkening the pine two-by-fours, from where he’d chopped its tank.
“Lock ‘n’ load,” Alastair bellowed, his great white head crevassed with hellish fissures. Behind him, the archer slid another bolt into his crossbow and lit it.
Matt reached down and tried to pull the flaming arrow from Kingman’s hand. Amazingly, even in death, his grip was too fierce to pry it free.
“Comin’ for you this time, Cahill,” Alastair yelled, gunning the ATV forward. “Gonna burn your ass alive!”
“Wanna bet?” Matt put his foot on Kingman’s face, grabbed the flaming arrow jutting out of his head, and ripped it free. Then he threw himself to his knees and jammed the fiery bolt into the gas-streaked wood.
The result was immediate.
A hot blue flame flared to life and shot forward, following the spray of the leaking tank down the woodpile and into the mud. The fiery ribbon flashed past the approaching ATV, gaining speed. The archer craned his neck around
to watch it sweep behind them, following their tracks in a tight U-turn, and then hungrily rush after the leaking tank, snaking across the mud, getting closer, closer…
The archer dropped his crossbow and slapped Alastair furiously on the shoulder, gesturing behind them. Baldy took one look and then surged, panic-stricken, to his feet. They both crouched to jump free of the vehicle at the very second that the blue ribbon of flame reached the leaking tank.
KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
There were actually two explosions: a smaller and a larger. When the smaller hit, Matt saw the four big ATV wheels shoot off in opposite directions, saw the hood levitate twenty feet in the air, saw the seat eject as if from a nose-diving F-14. He saw a black-and-red ball of fire that consumed vehicle and drivers alike, and then surged outward in every direction in a second explosion, twice as loud as the first—one that seemed to wipe out the compound, the slope it sat on, the woods that surrounded it, and the stars that glared at it from above. One that blew Matt backward in an inescapable wave of heat and light, followed by a surging tide of darkness.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
His dreams were scattered, overlapping, inchoate. And they melted, as the song goes, like cake in the rain.
Matt blinked. Large wet drops were splashing on his forehead, his cheekbones, his chin. Cool water pooled in his ears and the hollow of his neck. It was not unpleasant.
Breathing in the campfire smell of charred wood, he turned his head stiffly to see the smoldering ruin that had been the compound. Part of it had fallen. Part of it hadn’t. All of it had burned. Some of it was still burning, and glowing orange lines of fire squiggled slowly like worms through the blackened, smoking beams of what had once been a decent little lodge.
There were other smells, less pleasant. Like a cookout where the cook left the meat unattended.
Matt painfully got to his feet. He didn’t ever remember being this sore. Shuffled a few steps forward and nearly tripped over his own ax. His back ached so badly that it took about two minutes to pick it up. When he was done, he began a slow, halting circuit of the house.
It was still dark, though the eastern tree line was lined in gray and the faintest rim of pink. By the light of the crescent moon and the smoldering house, Matt began counting bodies. By the time he’d circled the compound, he was up to thirty-two, give or take a few partials here and there. He didn’t find any sign of Roma, Walton, or Arcady, or the big bear that had been Jasha. He would have assumed that he’d dreamed that part, if not for the state of some of the bodies he passed.
But he did find his bike, and he did find his bag. Not wanting to attract attention, he rolled the bike over the downed fence and quietly walked it through the woods, avoiding the pathway he’d come up on.
Big drops fell from the pine boughs, slowly soaking his hair and clothes. He didn’t mind. Burned out, Matt welcomed the rain’s cool touch and the light mist that it pulled from the earth as he passed between the red-barked trunks.
Christ. What a fiasco.
So many dead…And for what? What had he learned? Only that Charles Kingman, buried alive (as Matt had been), and haunted afterward (as Matt was), had tried to fend off the murderous temptations of his shadow-self by willfully descending into a paranoid, arrogant fantasy of superiority and hate, which spread like a contagion fed by poverty, ignorance, and pseudoscience, culminating finally in the ritual holocaust that he had originally sought to avoid.
So: had Matt actually accomplished anything here tonight?
He doubted it. But maybe there was a lesson here somewhere. Now that he saw to what insane depths Kingman’s pride had taken him, he would remember that his search for a cure—his hunt for a way to forever purge himself of Mr. Dark’s hateful presence—could never come at the expense of another, no matter how tempting the idea might be. That path was a one-way ticket to the hell he’d just stumbled out of, and having visited it once, Matt vowed never to return.
Lightheaded, Matt paused to catch his breath, to let his sore body rest a moment. He pressed his singed brow against a pine trunk and welcomed the clean, wet, rough rasp of the bark.
Matt breathed in. Froze.
Suddenly, the air smelled, tasted different. Along with the wet-pine scent, he inhaled the strong odor of wet fur.
Instantly knew he was not alone.
The hairs on his neck prickling, Matt slowly turned around.
There, between two large tree trunks, silhouetted against the dawn light, was the black hulk of a gigantic bear. It crouched silently on all fours, watching him intently. Standing at its side, equally still, was the cleaver-clutching shadow of a short man with dreads. Astride the shaggy beast was a third and final shadow: slim, with flowing hair that fell over her shoulders, down to her waist.
How was it that, shadowed and featureless as all three were, their eyes glowed gold and green?
Was it just a trick of the light?
“Matthew.” Roma’s voice, low and assured.
Matt swallowed. His heart pounded in his chest, but not with fear, exactly. It took him a moment to identify the emotion that threatened to overwhelm him. But then it fell into place. It was awe he felt. Awe for the three of them. For her especially.
“Matthew?”
He licked his chapped lips. How to address her? She had told him her name was Roma. But clearly there was more to her than met the eye. Much more.
“Who…are you?” he said.
She shifted slightly, so that the dawn light illuminated half of her face. “I am myself. I am the Bride of the Bear.” She ran a hand across Jasha’s rugged coat.
“Uh-huh.” Digested that. “But how did he…did you two…ah…” Overwhelmed, he couldn’t formulate a coherent thought. He knew he knew nothing. He knew he needed to know everything. But where to begin?
“Matthew.”
“Yes?”
“You have not, I think, been to Kamchatka?”
“No.”
“Right.” She nodded, and he thought he could detect on her full lips a smile, both sad and strange. “So trust me? You would not understand.”
He opened his mouth, and closed it. “Okay.”
She held out her hand. “Approach me,” she said.
He did. And as he did, he felt a weird emotion that was halfway between exhilaration and terror. Each step took him closer, until he was even with the great bear’s head, looking up at her. The smell of wet fur was overwhelming. It mingled with the scent of black earth, of pine needles, of wet fern—and of her naked body. As he got closer, he could see that the dress she had been wearing had burned off. Her long hair covered her full breasts, and Jasha’s shaggy crest covered what lay beneath her belly. But it could not cover the scent of her. A green scent.
Roma’s outstretched hand stroked the line of his jaw. “Thank you, Matthew, for saving me.”
“Sure. Sure, it was nothing.”
“It was not nothing to me.” She leaned down slowly and pressed her full lips to his brow. Kissed him, softly.
The Kodiak let out a low warning growl that made Matt’s stomach flip.
Roma slowly pulled away. Whispered, “Good luck on your journey, Matthew.”
At the first touch of her lips, all soreness had drained from his body. At her blessing, a rejuvenating energy had flooded every limb. And yet, he needed more than that. Much more.
“Roma?”
“Yes?”
“I…” He swallowed nervously. “I need more than luck. I need information. And I think…I think that you could help me, if you wanted to.”
Dawn light shafted through the trees, illuminating the sheen of her black hair, the swell of one breast, the way her right hand buried itself in her husband’s black mane.
“It is dawn, Matthew. Our kind must go. You understand.”
“No, actually. No, I don’t.”
“But you will.”
Slowly, Jasha backed up, pressing past a series of wet boughs that fell between Matt and them as they edged back int
o the darkness.
“Please!” Matt took a step forward, his desperation rising. “I’m haunted, too, like Kingman was! I don’t want to make the same mistakes! How can I fight Mr. Dark? Give me something. Anything.”
Jasha and Roma had already vanished into the encompassing darkness. But the short, dreadlocked clown hesitated beneath an uplifted bough. Turned back toward Matt.
“His weakness, bitch? Is…ah…how do you say? Wagering.”
Matt cocked his head, confused. “I’m sorry?”
“He likes to gamble, bitch. To bet.”
Matt’s mind raced. “Who does?”
Arkady gave a skeletal grin, equal parts menace and mischief. “Who do you think, bitch? Who do you think?”
And he, too, disappeared in the darkness, leaving Matt standing in the glade to watch the rising sun slowly banish every shadow.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
At the foot of the hill, Matt found the road, and it felt good to hear his wheels crackle the gravel and begin putting distance between himself and Kingman’s smoking compound.
A few miles along, Matt swerved carefully around something that he at first thought was a dead snake, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a soggy, discarded black-and-red armband. A hundred yards farther on he passed a badge embroidered with a white fist, with strands of stitching trailing from it like hair on a corpse. He half expected a brass ring with a big fake garnet to be next, and so he wasn’t disappointed when one appeared, glittering in the mud where it’d been thrown.
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