Slowly, walking resolutely toward them, came the young people of Harmony Village. Kettering turned in a slow circle, saw them coming now from all sides.
They were strangely silent as they came. No talking, no laughter. No smiles on the faces. Their eyes were fixed unblinkingly on Kettering and Charity Moline.
"Hello," Kettering said, directing his greeting to anyone.
There was no response.
Charity clutched his arm. He tightened his grip on the stone figure of Anubis.
The circle of silent youths moved closer.
"What's going on?" Charity whispered.
Kettering shook his head. His eyes ranged over the advancing villagers. He calculated his chances if they meant to attack. About twenty-five of them were visible now, with more coming out from between the rustic buildings. The odds were not encouraging.
The S&W Centennial was snugly holstered on his hip, but judging from the resolute expressions around him, the pistol would get little respect. Kettering never seriously considered using it. Against today's enemy a gun would be impotent.
Then, as though responding to a signal, the young people halted their advance. They formed a rough circle around Kettering and Charity, about twenty yards away from them. Kettering tensed. He recognized the muscular blonde, Bolo, among the silent watchers. And Hillary, the thin girl, minus the friendly smile. And his son.
"Trevor!" he called.
No response from the boy. He stood at his place in the circle, dressed in a navy-blue sweatshirt, jeans, and running shoes, and looked back at his father with no sign of recognition.
Kettering took a step toward him.
Charity stayed him with a hand on his arm. "Don't," she said.
He looked at her quickly.
"I don't think it would be wise," she said.
He turned back toward his son and at the silent, menacing figures that surrounded them. He nodded.
There was movement in one section of the circle as the young villagers parted to open a passageway through their ranks. While Kettering and Charity watched, Zoara Sol came through the gap and floated toward them. Behind her, their faces impassive as those of the young people in the circle, came Enzo DuLac and Gabrielle Wister.
"What the hell ..." Kettering muttered. But his eyes were pulled back to the woman.
Zoara Sol wore a white tunic with a gold-braided belt that looked vaguely Grecian. The smoky pale hair floated freely about her finely-boned faced. The silvery eyes were locked on Kettering.
As she came closer everything else dimmed for Kettering into a blurred background. The buildings, the trees, the sky above, the silent young people, DuLac and Gabrielle, even Charity Moline at his side faded, faded away to shadows.
Waves of power seemed to radiate from the woman walking toward him. He felt the strength flow from his own limbs and drain into the earth at his feet. His knees shook, and for a moment he thought he might fall.
He pulled in deep lungfuls of mountain air, straightened his back, and faced Zoara Sol as she came on.
She stopped six feet away from Kettering and smiled. Again his knees wobbled, but he braced himself.
"Hello, Brian Kettering," she said, ignoring Charity. "I knew you'd come back."
"Do you know why I'm here?"
"I know. And you are making a mistake. There is still time for you to change your mind."
"No, there is no more time." The scene wavered and shifted in Kettering's vision as he remembered the long-ago confrontation he had witnessed as a child. The words that were spoken then by his father came back to him now. "You are finished here."
"Don't be foolish," said Zoara Sol. "You can't hurt me."
"I can destroy you," he said. "I have the weapon."
He raised the figure of Anubis and thrust it toward the woman, surprised at how heavy it had become.
"That is your weapon?" she said.
"It is. And I know how to use it."
Standing behind her, Dulac and Gabrielle Wister exchanged a smile.
"Do you?" Her tone was mocking. The silver eyes danced.
"As surely as my father did," he said.
"You are a fool, Brian Kettering. The power here lies with me and my friends."
For the first time he looked directly at the two people standing behind her. "Your friends? They were under your control all the time? When they corrupted my son and my wife?"
"Corrupted? I don't think so. We only tapped what was already there in your boy and your woman. We allowed them to be themselves. It is not a matter of corruption. Our power comes from the nature of men and women."
Kettering clutched the Anubis. "This is the power," he said.
"That toy? Absurd." She field out a hand. "Give it to me."
He looked down at her outstretched palm. How easy it would be to lower his arm now and lay the heavy statuette in her hand. Let her have it. Shrug off the terrible weight he was carrying. He wanted to obey. He wanted to give her the Anubis. Give her anything she wanted.
But he held onto it, raised it high over his head.
"Be damned!" he said. The words were ripped from his throat without conscious effort. "In the name of the Christian God and all the honorable gods in all the religions of the world since time began, I consign you now and forever to the fires of Hell!"
The Anubis pulsed in his hand. The stone of the figurine grew warm with an energy within itself.
Zoara Sol took a step toward him. She smiled, the even, white teeth glistening against pale pink lips. The silver eyes shone.
The words! he cried in his mind, God, give me the words!
And they came. Up from deep in his chest, through his larynx, out over his tongue and between his teeth, strange, foreign words in no language he had ever heard. He spoke them in a ringing voice. All movement around him ceased. When he had spoken the entire incantation, he watched, exhausted, for Zoara Sol to drop.
Zoara Sol laughed. "Poor Brian. Now you know the truth. Your wondrous weapon is useless. You have lost. Now you must pay the price. You should have accepted the chance I offered you."
She reached out and touched him on the forehead. As though a huge weight had come down on him, Kettering dropped to his knees. He was powerless to rise.
"Give it to me now," said Zoara Sol. She reached down for the Anubis.
Kettering felt he did not have the strength to keep it from her. His mind turned over sluggishly, like an engine whose batteries were almost dead. He closed his eyes, opened them to see a figure, dimly outlined, standing back of Zoara Sol and her lieutenants and inside the silent circle. The figure wavered and shifted like smoke, finally coalescing into a recognizable form. Rev. Harlan Kettering. His father.
Get up, Brian. The words were clear in the mountain air, yet no one but he heard them.
"I can't."
You can. You have the strength, if you will use it.
Kettering crouched like an animal at bay. His eyes flicked from the statuette to Zoara Sol to the image of his father.
"It didn't work for me," he said so softly that not even those nearest to him heard.
The fault was yours. Run now. Save yourself. Try again. You can win.
He concentrated, forcing his body to obey his mind. Clutching the Anubis like life itself, he rose slowly to his feet.
"Give it to me," Zoara Sol demanded, but there was a hesitation in her voice that had not been there before. Kettering took heart. Behind the woman the shade of his father raised a hand for his attention.
Go, Brian! They have the advantage now, but you will grow stronger. Believe and you will win. Now ... run!
He looked to Charity, who regarded him without comprehension. No time to explain.
Run! His father's voice thundered like the clap of doom. To leave Charity there was a heartbreaking choice. But he knew that if he stayed, they would both surely die. And fleeing together they would have no chance. His one hope was to make himself the prime target by carrying away the Anubis.
Wit
h the statuette clasped to his breast like life itself, Brian wheeled and ran. He headed for the segment of the circle where the slim Hillary stood. The boys on either side of her were thin, ethereal types.
Kettering hit the three of them like a fullback going into the line. They proved more solid than they looked, and Kettering was bounced back on his initial charge. But the three were knocked off balance, and as they righted themselves, Kettering hit them again. This time Hillary and one of the boys went down. Before the circle could close in and others could move to help, he was through their ranks, plunging across the clearing, past the rustic buildings, toward the sheltering trees.
He heard the shouts behind him and the thud of running feet as they started after him. Keeping the Anubis close and the vision of his father in his mind, Kettering sprinted for the forest, the adrenaline pumping as it always did in a foot chase with a suspect.
This time he was the quarry, and the pursuers were younger than he. Kettering kept his body in reasonable shape, but the years, the bourbon, the cigarettes had taken their toll. The pounding feet closed in. If the chase was prolonged, he was going to lose.
His legs ached and the breath blasted from his lungs as he crossed the clearing, which seemed now so much wider than when he had walked in. A painful stitch grabbed his side and he stumbled momentarily. It was enough to let the pursuers gain several yards.
With his free hand Kettering dug at the hip holster. The knurled grip of the revolver was security in his hand. A .38 might be useless against a demon from hell, but it could speak a language these mind-blown kids could understand. If they were going to catch him, he would give them something to think about.
He had the gun in his hand when he saw the movement ahead and slightly to his left. Just at the edge of the clearing where the trees began stood the faint, wavering image of his father. Beckoning. Kettering veered in that direction. He hit the forest and plunged through the outer thicket as the voices behind grew loud in his ears.
His father vanished and the trees closed in around him like a friendly army. He ran on without slackening his speed, dodging the tree trunks, ripping through brush, stumbling, recovering, juking and swerving like a running back in a broken field.
Overhead the branches closed out the sun. Shadows chilled the sweat that had soaked his shirt and poplin jacket. Kettering ran on. Behind him the sounds grew fainter, the voices more ragged and confused. He was no experienced woodsman, but thank God neither were they.
The trees grew more closely together, the brush thickened and rose in many places as high as a man. Kettering's heart pounded like an air hammer. The rushing blood roared in his ears. He knew he could not go much farther.
Ahead, shrouded in shadows, a thickly packed growth of blackthorn, the leaves a solid mass of green. Grasping the statuette, Kettering covered his face with crossed arms and dove into the thicket. Thorns ripped cruelly at the exposed flesh of his hands and wrists, tore at his clothing as he hit the ground.
He lay unmoving, allowing his hammering heart to slow. His breathing gradually subsided. He listened. Insects buzzed. A stream splashed gently not far away. And from the distance, isolated voices, angry, frustrated. Small sounds, disconnected. No running feet. He had lost them.
For now.
Chapter 34
Kettering lay deep in the blackthorn thicket, curled into as small a package as he could manage. He held the Anubis clutched tightly to his chest and listened to the sounds in the woods.
They were out here hunting him. He heard shouted questions and orders, and several times someone came close enough for him to make out individual footsteps. They seemed to know he was still in the immediate area. So far no one had ventured into the forbidding blackthorn.
He concentrated fiercely to plan his next move. The failure of the Anubis to destroy Zoara Sol had shaken him. He would have chucked the damn thing, lightening his burden, except for the vision of his father. The fault was yours. His fault? How? What had he done wrong? The alien words he spoke had flowed as though of their own volition. He could not change them if he wanted to. Had he not done everything exactly as his father had in confronting the monstrous pizza man?
Kettering had not forgotten that his father's victory thirty-seven years before had cost the Reverend Kettering his life. When you're a cop, you have to live with a certain fatalism. When your number's up ... That kind of thing. It helped, however, to know the cards were not stacked against you. With his physical strength neutralized and the Centennial useless, he was left with a three-thousand-year-old statuette that seemed to be malfunctioning. Not real good odds.
And there was more to worry about than his own predicament. What might be happening to Charity Moline? Should he have stayed? Cowboyed it on the spot? No, that would have been foolish.
And he could not forget his son was there too. The thought was painful. Kettering had seen Trevor's face as he stood in the silent circle with the others, his eyes as empty as theirs. The boy was already lost. But Charity was still out there somewhere, in dire danger because of him. Even if it were possible, there was no way he was leaving here without her.
He shivered with the cold. The light was changing. Kettering peered up through the tangle of brush and saw that the sun was lowering toward the western mountains. Somehow, hours had passed since he dived into the blackthorn.
The words of Dr. Valerian Landrud. Darkness is the friend of evil.
Slowly, painfully, he began to crawl out of the thicket. He could smell a wood fire now, and far off through the deepening gloom he saw its glow. Just to his right the splash and gurgle of the creek covered the sounds as he extricated himself from the thicket.
His plan was vague, but he knew he must act. The longer he delayed, me more likely he was to be caught. And the greater the danger to Charity. He had failed to put Zoara Sol down with the Anubis, but she was still the key. Somehow he had to take her to break her power over the others. He would figure out how to do it when he got there. The first task was to slip back into the village without being caught by the hunters whose flashlights bobbed now among the darkening trees.
"Here he is!"
The shout froze Kettering for an instant. Then he whirled to see Enzo DuLac, grinning in a half crouch, stabbing at him with a forefinger.
"I found him!"
Kettering's muscles were stiff from lying cramped for so long in the blackthorn, and DuLac almost got away before he could grab the little man.
"Don't you hurt me!" DuLac cried, the triumph in his eyes giving way to fear.
Without letting go of the Anubis, Kettering lifted the little man off the ground with no great effort and raised him above his head. DuLac's scream died barely out of his mouth as Kettering hurled him like a sack of garbage against the trunk of a Douglas fir. He bounced to the ground and lay without moving.
DuLac's shouts had attracted the others, and Kettering could hear them converging on him. As he turned, a biting pain lanced his shoulder and shot down his left arm. Instinctively he ducked, spun, and backed away in a single motion.
Gabrielle Wister faced him. She wore a black turtleneck sweater and black jeans that clung to her narrow ass and slim legs. Her eyes glittered with hatred. In her upraised hand was a hunting knife. The six-inch blade was stained dark with his blood.
Part of his mind noted that he was lucky Gabrielle was no knife fighter. If she had come at him low, she could have sliced through vital organs and put him down for good. As it was, the shoulder wound was painful but probably not fatal. But he had only one good arm now, and she still had the knife.
Kettering hugged the Anubis with his weakened left arm and snatched the S&W Centennial from his hip with the right.
"Hold it right there!" he ordered.
He might as well have spoken to the setting sun. Gabrielle's lips peeled back from her teeth in an animal snarl and she lunged.
Kettering fired. The bullet caught Gabrielle in the throat. Reflex muscle action kept her driving on past him as bl
ood sprayed from her mouth. Five yards beyond him she dropped to her knees, twisted her upper body, and glared at him with unspeakable loathing. Then she died.
They were coming fast now. The cries and the gunshot had pinpointed his location. With blood soaking the left sleeve of his jacket and his arm going numb, Kettering scrambled down the bank toward the creek.
He splashed through the shallow icy water several yards downstream to a spot where the bank on the opposite side was gradual enough for easy climbing. As he started up, something slammed into his wounded shoulder. Kettering gasped in pain. The Anubis slipped from his grasp and splashed into the creek. He turned to see Enzo DuLac drawing back a heavy branch for another swing at him.
Kettering dropped to his hands and knees in the water. The tree branch swung over his head with a heavy whoosh. His injured left arm collapsed under him and he went face first into the creek.
With his left hand numb, Kettering scrabbled around on the creek bottom with his right, searching for the statuette. Only when he found it and his fingers closed around the figurine did he realize he had lost his gun.
No time to worry about it. He sprang upright as DuLac coiled for another swing. With a short, vicious backhand slash he cracked the granite figurine against the side of the little man's skull. Something broke, and it was not the statuette. Enzo DuLac dropped like a broken doll, his face submerged in the creek. Bubbles streamed from the little man's nose. Kettering tucked the Anubis under his throbbing left arm and turned away.
The delay was too much. As Kettering started up the far bank of the creek, he looked up and saw four young villagers standing shoulder to shoulder, blocking his path. He whirled to see more of them on the other side. Silently, unhurriedly, they moved in on him, forming a box.
Too many of them, and not enough left of him. Kettering sagged. No one spoke. A tall girl pointed back toward the village. Kettering nodded silently and began to walk.
Gary Brandner Page 25
