The Gathering Dark

by Christopher Golden

  Nikki smiled and the priest felt warmed by it in a way the whiskey had been unable to accomplish. He realized then where he knew the name from. She had been involved with Octavian during the New Orleans business, some kind of performer now, he thought.

  “Jack,” Nikki said, “Peter tells me you’re an expert on the crazy stuff. Something terrible’s happened in a town called Wickham, in Vermont. Keomany’s hometown, actually. We could use your input.”

  Father Jack listened, his gaze ticking toward the anxious-looking Asian woman and then back to Nikki. But Octavian seemed to haunt the office, drifting around, studying the books and the paintings and the plants in a way that unmistakably marked him. He had been a detective once. For years. Father Jack saw now that he still had that eye.

  “I’d be happy to help in any—”

  Octavian stopped at the filing cabinet. Father Jack stopped speaking, surprised to see the mage bend and open the bottom drawer, removing the jar and holding it up so the light passed through, illuminating the Cythraul. The sorcerer gave the priest a look that Father Jack could not read.

  “What was this filed under?” Octavian asked.

  “P,” Father Jack answered instantly. “For pain in my ass.”

  The mage smiled. “We’ll get to Keomany’s story in a moment, Jack. Meanwhile, why don’t you tell us what’s got you so skittish.”

  Octavian glanced at the broken glass on the floor, then at the bottle of Crown Royal on the desk, and Father Jack nodded. This was what he had been about to call Octavian about anyway. Bishop Gagnon would not approve, but he was past the point of caring. With a heavy sigh, Father Jack moved to the desk and leaned on it. He had no chairs for his guests and so would not take the single seat in the office.

  “Hidalgo,” he said.

  The mage frowned. “I restored that manuscript for you. The Okulam should have been no problem at all.”

  “They weren’t,” Father Jack replied. “I translated the last of that and phoned it in. Our people in Texas scoured the town of Okulam in just under two hours.”

  Nikki Wydra shook her head as though his words weighed heavily upon her. “Why do I hear a ‘but’ coming?”

  The priest nodded. “But. As of yesterday morning, Hidalgo was gone.”

  The other woman, Keomany, uttered a tiny gasp and looked stricken by his words. Her elegant features went slack.

  “What do you mean gone?” she asked, the first time she had spoken since her arrival.

  “Gone,” Father Jack replied. “Or possibly not. Something is still there, that much is certain. Father Tratov reported that witnesses claimed the sky changed color, that it went dark, turned—”

  “Orange,” Keomany whispered. “Orange like rotten pumpkins.”

  The priest stared at her, his mind racing as he realized the connection between this woman and Hidalgo. Slowly he nodded. “Orange. That’s right. But then the sky was blue again and the town seemed to have disappeared. Only at the edge of Hidalgo, there’s some kind of . . . membrane. It’s invisible, but it can be pierced. Father Tratov sent two of his deacons through it. He reported the orange light seeping out when the membrane was torn.”

  “And they never came out,” Octavian said.

  Father Jack looked at him gravely. “Not yet. And then after they’d gone through, it hardened. Maybe it takes a while. Whatever the process, it’s impenetrable now.”

  The mage gazed at him. “And you think the town is still there, on the other side of that membrane?”

  “Don’t you?” Father Jack asked.

  He saw the way Octavian’s eyes ticked toward Keomany, as if measuring his response against her needs. At length, the mage nodded slowly.

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “It was the same in Wickham,” Keomany said.

  Father Jack listened as she told her story. It echoed what had happened in Hidalgo, and the dread in him began to grow even larger. This was no longer an isolated incident. It was no longer just a tiny village on the Tex-Mex border. It was a town in Vermont. And who knew how many others.

  “What’s going on?” Nikki asked aloud, though Father Jack doubted her question was meant for any of them.

  Octavian had begun to pace. Father Jack watched him, his own mind working on the problem, trying to find some reason behind it. He and the mage had spoken at their first meeting about the growth in the number of events in which demons had appeared upon the earth plane. The frequency had been increasing radically, particularly in the last year.

  Mulling it over, he looked at Keomany, who was watching Octavian even as Nikki laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  “You didn’t say how you escaped,” the priest said.

  The woman glanced at the ground. “I . . . just lucky, I guess. Timing. I got out right before it was all closed off. I . . .”

  And she said no more. Father Jack sensed there was a part of the story Keomany Shaw had not shared with them, but he chose not to push her on it. Not yet. If, at some point, it seemed some missing facet might be the key to what was happening, he would insist. For now, he let it lie.

  “Peter? Any thoughts?”

  Octavian looked at him. “You’ve considered that the Okulam had to have slipped onto this plane somehow? That there had to be a crack?”

  “A breach, yes, it’s only logical,” Father Jack agreed. “My guess would be that whatever’s happening in Hidalgo came through the same breach, that it leaked somehow.”

  “But that would mean there had to be some kind of breach like that in Wickham, too,” Keomany said, shaking her head. “My family’s lived there for decades. I grew up there. I lived away for a few years, but I’ve been back awhile now. I don’t remember anything freakish. No demons.”

  Silence descended upon the office for a moment as they all glanced at each other. One by one, each of them focused on Keomany. Father Jack gazed at her with deep sympathy. But there was really only one way to know.

  “Oh, shit,” Keomany said, as her eyes lit up with understanding. “We have to go back, don’t we?”

  Octavian set the Cythraul jar down on top of the filing cabinet. The thing leered disgustingly at him but the mage ignored it. He walked to Father Jack and held out his hand. The priest did not hesitate. Nothing in his life, nothing in his research, had prepared him for this. With his resources and Octavian’s memories and magick, an alliance was the only reasonable course of action.

  After they had shaken hands, the mage turned to the two women. He reached out to gently touch Nikki’s shoulder, but his gaze was on Keomany. To her credit, she did not look away.

  “Not just back,” Octavian said firmly, face to face with Keomany. “Back isn’t enough. We have to go in.”

  8

  At dusk in Venice the setting sun cast a reddish-golden hue across the domes and spires and arches of the city and onto the cobblestones of the broad piazzas. Despite the filth of the canal waters and the grime in its back alleys, for those few precious moments each day Venice became a fairy tale kingdom, a wondrous place where anything was possible, if just for a moment. In its narrow alleys, which had long since been cast into darkness by the angle of the sun as it slid west, the shadows only deepened and those things that now seemed possible were far more sinister.

  Allison Vigeant feared nothing from those shadows, those darkly ominous alleyways, and yet this night—her first visit to Venice since the Jihad—she remained in the Piazza San Marco, where the laughter of tourists created a kind of veil that separated her from the rest of the city. The Basilica di San Marco stood glorious guard over the piazza at one end, four golden lions crouched like sentinels upon its roof, the last rays of the sun glinting from the ferocious statues.

  It was possible a day might come when she would feel comfortable here, in this city once known for its serenity. But Allison could not imagine it. She sat on the patio of a pleasant trattoria that catered to the tourists and served gelato out a window so that people might eat it while wandering the cobblest
ones. A five-piece band played Italian music and American standards at the edge of the roped-in patio, and people stopped to listen briefly before wandering on.

  Allison sat on the uncomfortable metal patio chair and sipped a perfect bianco. Out in the piazza the golden light continued to bleed from the air and a deep blue replaced it, all of these extraordinary colors that slipped by each day almost unnoticed. The pigeons that swarmed the piazza in search of sympathetic humans to feed them— and often perched atop the heads and arms and shoulders of such people—fluttered in formation up from the cobblestones to the eaves and ledges where they had made their nests. There had been children in the piazza with their parents, families, and older couples. Yet now, as nightfall came on, there seemed only young lovers and small troops of traveling students.

  Venice changed with the onset of night.

  The music from the band seemed to increase in volume, as did the laughter from the patio and the clinking of wineglasses within the restaurant. Across the piazza, even the lapping of waves that spilled onto the cobblestones from the Grand Canal seemed louder as well. And yet everything else grew silent.

  Allison shivered and tipped her wineglass to her lips once more. The wine was so dry it left her even more parched than she had been, and she realized she ought to have ordered something else. Her gaze rested upon a gondola all the way on the other side of the piazza. A pair of dark-haired women were holding hands and speaking with one of the gondoliers, perhaps haggling over a price for his services. Seeing the women together made her think of old friends she had lost, and a kind of melancholy swept through her. Still, it was a welcome relief from the anxiety she had been feeling . . . about Venice, about everything.

  “You look troubled, babe. I hate to see lines on that pretty face.”

  The voice seemed to drift to her out of the gathering dark, and yet out of her past as well. A smile spread across Allison’s face as she turned and looked up at Carl Melnick. It had been a decade since she had seen the man, and though the years showed on him, Allison thought they had improved his appearance. Carl had always had a rather ordinary face, but now there was a thickness to it, and contemplative lines around his blue eyes, and his hair had gone a salt-and-pepper gray that lent him a certain dignity.

  “Hey,” she said, voice barely a whisper as she stood to embrace him. Carl had been a news producer for CNN during the time Allison had been a reporter there, and they had been quite friendly as associates, but not really outside the office. Allison was surprised at the intensity of the pleasure she felt at seeing him.

  “Allie-cat,” Carl said, holding her close. “It’s really wonderful to see you. I’m so glad you called me.”

  The embrace grew suddenly awkward and Allison took a step back from him. For a moment they just looked at each other and then she laughed brightly and motioned for him to have a seat, then slid back into her chair.

  “You look great, Carl,” she told him.

  “Flatterer,” he replied. “One of us is getting old, and it isn’t you.”

  Allison winced and looked away from him.

  “Sorry,” Carl said quickly. “I wasn’t . . . I mean, I guess I didn’t think that would be a sore point for you.”

  “I didn’t choose to be what I am, Carl. Somebody took that decision away from me. There are benefits, I’m not going to lie. But for the most part, it’s a terrible existence. Fucking miserable, if you want the truth.”

  The news producer laughed, eyes sparkling, and waved the waiter over. “Who says I want the truth?” He ordered a beer and then turned his attention back to Allison, but now all the humor was gone from his face.

  “We all thought you were dead, Allie. After New Orleans, that’s what the news said. I found out a little over a year ago that you were still alive, but I kept it to myself because, well, it’s a secret, isn’t it?”

  Carl reached across the table and laid his hand over hers. Allison had to force herself not to flinch, not because she wanted to pull away from the warmth and comfort the man was offering her, but because no one had bothered to do such a thing for a very long time. The intimacy of that touch, there on the patio of that trattoria in Piazza San Marco, was almost too much for her.

  Grief sharp as needles jabbed her heart. She had thought it would be a pleasure to see Carl, a bit of nostalgia and companionship, and that was partially true. But the pleasure was overshadowed by the pain it brought her to be reminded of the life she had once led, the dreams she had pursued.

  “You’re alive,” Carl said, his eyes so earnest. “I can’t tell you how glad I am of that.”

  Allison held his hand between hers. “Thank you,” she said. “I wish I could feel as good about it as you do. It helps, though, seeing you here. For a long time I’ve felt cut off from the world. It’s nice to feel connected again, even just for a couple of hours.”

  Carl smiled and Allison leaned back, letting go of his hand. What she had said was true, but it was not all of the truth. Her old friend had been kidding her before—who says I want the truth?—but she was certain there was some truth to the sentiment as well. Her pain she would try to keep to herself.

  With a tiny sigh, she forced herself to smile and found that it did not feel as false as she had expected. Carl wore a green linen suit with beige sneakers and a shirt open at the neck. He looked more like a Florida retiree than one of the best connected newsmen in the world.

  When Allison glanced up to meet his gaze again, she found that he had been taking her measure even as she took his.

  “You do look amazing,” he told her. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you in a dress before.”

  Allison self-consciously smoothed the wrinkles in the yellow sun-dress she had put on that morning. The strappy heels she wore matched the color of the dress exactly. Her sunglasses were propped up on top of her flaming red hair. It was so rare that she had opportunity to dress in a lighthearted, feminine manner, that she relished it.

  “I’m not sure I have, either.”

  Carl laughed. The waitress brought his beer and poured it for him. When she walked away, he took a long draught from it and then wiped his lips politely with a cloth napkin.

  Abruptly the pleasantries of their reunion evaporated. Though Allison had no doubt that Carl was genuine in his feelings, that he was as glad to see her as she was to see him, both of them knew that there was business to conduct, news to be shared, a crisis brewing.

  He leaned closer to her, over the table, and his blue eyes seemed to have dimmed to a steely gray, as though dusk had fallen over them as surely as it had over Venice.

  “What do you know?” he asked.

  Allison nodded to confirm that they had moved on. For a moment she was uncertain how to begin. The man had come all the way from London, where he was now working, and she should at least be able to explain herself. She removed her glasses from her forehead and set them on the table, shaking out her hair. Neither of them had bothered to look at the menu, but dinner was forgotten.

  “Whispers travel fast,” she said.

  His eyes narrowed. The band had been playing Italian tunes pretty steadily, but now they kicked into “Fly Me to the Moon.” Allison loved that song, but Carl had not seemed even to notice the music or much else about their surroundings from the moment he had sat down. She could smell garlic frying inside the restaurant, the scent wafting out the door.

  “What does that mean, exactly?” he asked.

  “I was hoping you could tell me. I can’t give you details—you don’t have the clearance—but I was on an op and a vampire said that to me. ‘Whispers travel fast.’ Something about them just getting started. And he rattled off the list of locations that I gave you before.”

  Carl nodded, reached into his jacket, and pulled out a pad of paper. He riffed through a few pages and came to the one he wanted, then read from it.

  “Derby, England. Tracy, California. Groznik, Uzbekistan. Hidalgo, Texas.”

  He glanced up at her from beneath salt-a
nd-pepper eyebrows and Allison nodded.

  “And you’ve got nothing?” Carl asked.

  Allison lifted her wineglass and sipped from it. As she set it down, she glanced around her at nearby tables to see if they were being overheard. With the music, it would be difficult for anyone to hear them unless they raised their voices. A quick survey of the piazza did not reveal any suspicious observers. Not that Allison expected anyone. She was simply trained by her profession to be paranoid.

  The waitress returned. Allison almost sent her away, but Carl asked very politely if he might order for both of them. He did so, in Italian, asking that they both be served a local fish selection without bothering to check the menu. The waitress nodded and went off.

  “I don’t trust Henning,” she said.

  Carl blinked. “He’s the CO of Task Force Victor?”

  She nodded. “No reason not to trust him, save that he doesn’t trust me. I talked to some other people at the U.N., people I’ve known since Jimenez was still in charge of the Task Force. Something happened in Derby and Groznik, that’s certain, but everyone got skittish when I asked about it. Either they knew and weren’t telling, or they knew something was up and that it wasn’t healthy to be too curious.”

  Carl smiled. “But you didn’t give up,” he said, taking another draught of beer.

  “No. I didn’t. We keep records of all supernatural events worldwide. I did some checking on that list. Got nothing on Hidalgo or Groznik, but Derby and Tracy, California, both got hits. Two years ago, a massive sinkhole opened up on the grounds of a thirteenth-century priory in Derby that had been converted into a hotel. Whatever came out of it had wings and hooves, and witnesses described it as ‘like something out of an old Hammer film.’ That’s the British for you.”

  Carl had tipped his beer glass back again but now he froze and looked at her. “Pretty much all of the breaches I know of—all the demons that’ve been recorded as coming through to this plane—don’t look a damn thing like pop culture devils.”

  “This one did. It was also apparently huge, given that it tore down half the priory and ate nearly all of the guests before the local military destroyed it and a U.N. special ops team was called to seal the hole. Thing is, I didn’t know a damn thing about it at the time. Guess they figure each team is on a need-to-know basis. Or at least, this particular team member is.”