The Gathering Dark

by Christopher Golden

  Teeth gritted tightly together, Kuromaku threw open Sophie’s door and slid in behind the wheel, roughly forcing her into the passenger’s seat. Silently, he put the car in gear and hit the accelerator. The tires kicked up dust from the road. He did not have to look at Sophie to know that she was staring at him in horror.

  “Do something,” Sophie whispered, so low that her words were barely audible over the engine. There was a crack in her voice. But then she said the words again and her voice was louder, angrier.

  “Do something, damn you! You can save them, Kuromaku. What good is it, being what you are, if you don’t try to save them?”

  He seethed, his nostrils flaring. Nausea churned in his gut and he forced himself not to look at either side of the road, not to bear witness to whatever atrocities they were leaving behind with every rotation of the tires.

  “Kuromaku!” Sophie shouted in despair.

  “Stop!” he snapped back, glancing momentarily at her before returning his attention to the road. Up ahead there were two buildings that had begun to burn.

  “Think a moment,” he instructed her. “This is a war, Sophie, I am sorry, chérie, but it is true. We are behind enemy lines. That’s what this has all been about . . . getting back to our allies, our comrades, so that we can launch a counterattack.”

  “But you can—”

  “Yes, yes, I’m a vampire. All the things I can do,” he said, jerking the wheel to the right, ignoring the steeples of houses of worship higher on the hill to his left. They offered no sanctuary; he knew that now. They would be defiled just like the rest of this city.

  “But I can’t save anyone in this damned place and still protect you. I couldn’t keep Henri’s father from a savage death and it’s only through luck that the boy and his mother are still alive.”

  Henri sobbed even louder in the back seat. Antoinette said nothing, but she reached out from her huddled terror and pulled her son closer to her, both of them swaying with the rocking of the car as Kuromaku weaved around a few vehicles that had been abandoned.

  “The object is to get the three of you out of here alive, and then to return with enough force to wipe out the demons and destroy whatever evil is responsible for this. Every death we leave behind will haunt me, Sophie,” he said, glancing at her, trying to make her understand the pain in his heart, “but how many more will die if this is not stopped? I cannot stop it alone. For now, the Whispers are ignoring us. They’re caught up in their bloodlust, taking the easier targets. But—”

  From the back seat came the voice of Antoinette Lamontagne; every word seemed as though it had been scarred into existence.

  “They are not ignoring us anymore,” the woman said. Then, in French, she added, “When Sophie stopped the car . . .”

  No more words were necessary. Kuromaku shot a look over his shoulder just in time to see the sharp edges of a demon’s carapace running from the sidewalk toward the car. One of them landed on the roof and its tendril-tongue punched a hole through the metal, shattering the dome of the interior light. Kuromaku turned in silence, his foot pressing more heavily upon the accelerator. Through the windshield he saw Whispers coming out of buildings and two of them leaping off the roof of a three-story structure on the left.

  “If we die now,” Kuromaku told Sophie, without turning toward her, “it’s for nothing.”

  Sophie whispered something to him in French, words of quiet endearment that seemed wildly inappropriate at that moment. And yet Kuromaku found that they gave him strength and determination and he hunched over the steering wheel further.

  The Volkswagen crested the hill and started down. Through the mass of Whispers that now swarmed the car, he could see that the road curved slightly and then there was a broad gorge with a bridge across it.

  They were not going to get there.

  A Whisper leaped onto the hood of the car and its ebony talons slashed down and splintered the windshield. The glass spider-webbed but did not shatter.

  “Take the wheel again!” Kuromaku shouted.

  “Go!” Sophie snapped without hesitation.

  The moment he saw that her hand was on the wheel, he transfigured himself, shifting his body mass to mist. He could feel the moisture of himself on her as she moved into the driver’s seat and then he slipped out the window. As mist Kuromaku enveloped the Whisper on the hood of the car and then with a thought he transformed again, bursting into a cloud of fire that engulfed the Whisper completely.

  Once more he took human form, katana in hand, and the blade began to sing, hacking at the demons that crowded in around the car. A crush of Whispers pushed in, some of them being driven down beneath the car, broken by its weight. But there were too many for Kuromaku to slaughter himself, and as the car careened wildly, others leaped onto it, punching talons through the metal to hang on, shattering windows and grabbing hold of the frames, trying to reach inside to tear at Antoinette and her boy.

  Sophie cried out as her arm was slashed, but she kept both hands on the wheel as they thundered toward the bridge. From what Kuromaku had seen, there were many of them on this side, but none of the Whispers on the other side of the gorge.

  Then, in the midst of hacking a Whisper in two, shattering its carapace with his blade, he glanced back the way they had come. In the distance, the Spanish town silhouetted against it, there hung a massive storm front, dark, orange-tinted clouds rolling in, a hurricane spawned in Hell itself. For just a single instant it seemed to him that there was a face in the storm, slitted red eyes and a gaping, grinning mouth.

  The wind whipped up even harder—enough so that it tore several Whispers away from the car and nearly knocked Kuromaku off as well—and an acid rain began to fall that burned his flesh where it touched him.

  Up ahead a road intersected with the one they were on.

  On either side of that road, Kuromaku saw something that stunned him even more than the cruel hint of a face in the oncoming storm. To the left and right there were tanks, and trucks, and soldiers in body armor and helmets. Human soldiers.

  The Whispers saw them as well and must have sensed them as a new threat, for many of the demons turned away from the Volkswagen and began a new onslaught against the military vehicles.

  The soldiers opened fire.

  Allison soared, wings outstretched, but this time there was no joy in flight. Peter had told her about the Tatterdemalion, about the dark power that lurked within the oncoming storm, and she felt a cold dread deep within her. This hellish place was unlike anything in her experience. Despite the monstrous thing that she was and the horrors that she had seen, the way the sky bent at the far horizons frightened her. They had been displaced, pulled into a twisted landscape, away from the world she knew. Allison Vigeant was afraid.

  It pissed her off.

  The oncoming storm whipped against her as though it hoped to keep the falcon back, but Allison stretched out her wings and kept her talons pulled up beneath her and she flew directly toward the tower of thunderclouds that was marching across Ronda from the south. It felt to her as though it was not merely the wind and the heaviness of the air bearing down on her, but the gaze of some ancient and terrible god.

  Across the Cleft of Ronda—on the other side of the bridge that connected the new city to the old—Allison saw something that made her lose a wingbeat. Tanks. And not merely tanks, but other military vehicles as well, some carrying British markings, others those of the United Nations.

  No fucking way, she thought. Task Force Victor.

  Most of the soldiers on the other side of the gorge had their faces covered and from this height and distance she could not make out the features of the few who did not, but she knew it was Task Force Victor. Allison had figured that without Octavian, they wouldn’t have been able to get through the barrier into this demon world, but somehow they had managed. It made her wonder if there was more here than mere chance, if the creature responsible for all of this was simply playing with them all. Task Force Victor might just be m
ore victims brought into this particular Hell to play the role of the damned.

  For a moment, the tiniest sliver of guilt went through her. She had been sent to collect Peter, after all, to bring him back so that he could work with Task Force Victor. But Octavian wanted to take a more direct approach, and Allison preferred it as well. Henning and his lackeys could rot here, for all she cared. She wasn’t here for them.

  Welcome to the party, boys, she thought.

  Her wings beat against the gale as the winds whipped even harder at her. The sky darkened, orange firmament charring black as though the embers of a fire hung above. The towering thunderclouds spread and seemed to breathe as they rolled on toward her and she dipped her beak and flew lower, over the Cleft of Ronda, headed for a better look at the military forces arrayed on the ground below.

  Gunfire ripped the sky. The soldiers were in the midst of combat. Whispers had moved in from all around them, slipping along the streets and emerging from the shattered doors and windows of once-beautiful buildings half a millennium old or more. Then, amidst the chaos, Allison saw a single figure spinning like a dervish—changing, misting, taking flesh once more—and she was stunned. A shadow, a vampire, warring against the Whispers with a gleaming sword. And she knew him, recognized him by his blade and the body language of his combat style.

  Ku romaku.

  It felt to her in that moment as though some greater power were at work here. Not merely the evil of the demon in the storm, but something beyond the storm, beyond this world entirely. Kuromaku would be an invaluable ally.

  If he survived the next several minutes.

  Allison knew that she had to go to his aid, but not without first alerting Peter to his old friend’s presence. She also wanted a closer look at the Whispers. Where were they all coming from?

  Rain had begun to fall from the sky, pelting the falcon. It beaded up on Allison’s wings, thick and greasy, her feathers sticking together. The rain drove her down. She would have to land. To change. The bridge over the Cleft was just below her.

  And then she saw them. Below the ramparts, Whispers scuttled spiderlike up the cliff face, scaling the craggy wall of the gorge. Allison dipped her right wing and soared in a half-circle, coming back around even as her feathers became too heavy. Far, far below, at the base of the Cleft, the Guadalevin River was dry now, having been cut off from its source. There on the riverbed, partially obscured by the trees that grew on either side of the cleft, she saw something else.

  The beast was gigantic, a huge black, pulsing monstrosity. It was on its side, dozens of small legs beneath it, and curled up like some horrid insectoid fetus. If it had not been folded in upon itself in such a way, Allison estimated it would have been as long as fifty feet. And from that place at its middle, which it seemed to have twisted round to protect, Whispers crawled.

  They slid wetly from the demon’s midsection, climbed out of the pouch made by its position on the ground, and stood shakily. After a moment, each of the things would get its bearings and they would begin to scramble across the dry riverbed toward the cliff and to climb toward the top of the gorge.

  Newborns, Allison thought.

  It’s their mother.

  A moment later the greasy, heavy rain at last became too much for her and she tucked her wings against her falcon’s body and swooped toward the bridge below. Peter and Keomany would be waiting for her on the north side. The storm was rushing in, the Tatterdemalion was coming, but Allison could not think about that at the moment, nor about Kuromaku’s plight. Her mind was seared, branded with the image of that demonic matriarch giving birth to one monster after another, an endless supply.

  Kuromaku was going to be overwhelmed. Task Force Victor and the other soldiers didn’t have a prayer.

  Those thoughts were followed immediately by the realization that unless she, Peter, and Keomany could destroy the beast down inside the Cleft of Ronda, neither did they.

  Only when Sophie tasted the copper tang of blood in her mouth did she realize that she had bitten her lip. She sucked on the wound, swallowed her blood, and blew out air in short breaths as though she could dispel her fear that way. Her hands gripped the steering wheel and unconsciously she began to brake.

  “Stop!” Kuromaku shouted.

  She could barely hear him over the howling wind and the sound of gunfire, but Sophie made the word out well enough to slow the car to a standstill. The engine rumbled. In the back seat, Henri Lamontagne began to sob loudly once again but Antoinette was silent save for the sound of her thumping her head over and over against the door. It was as though insanity was being carried to them on the storm or falling with the fat, hissing raindrops, and soon they would all be infected.

  The Whispers had turned their attention to the soldiers now, and so the street around the car was clear when Kuromaku leaped down from the roof and bent to her window. His hair was slick with oily rain and the wind buffeted him. Silhouetted in the orange light he looked almost like a monster himself, save for those gentle eyes. He reached out to stroke the tips of his fingers across her cheeks and nodded once.

  “Hurry!” he told her. “I don’t know where they came from, but those soldiers are human. Take the boy and his mother. Drive straight through the demons if you have to.”

  Sophie hesitated, wanting very much to refuse, to stay with him, but she knew better. What could she do, after all, in the face of such evil? Yet without anyone to look after, to protect, Kuromaku could do a great deal. Though she understood, it pained her to know that he must be relieved to be free of her.

  “I’ll go,” she said.

  The ronin vampire gave her a curt, respectful bow. Sophie took a breath and looked out through the windshield again. The Volkswagen was pointed down a hill, a hundred and fifty yards from the bridge that crossed the gorge ahead. It had taken her a bit, but she had realized now what city they were in. It was Ronda, in Spain, a place she had not visited since her father had taken her there when she was no more than ten.

  Whispers had spread across the road, blocking the bridge. As she watched, she saw more of them scrambling up over the edge of the gorge, climbing out of the Cleft of Ronda to join the others. That’s where they were coming from, then. Somewhere down inside the Cleft.

  Sophie turned to share this observation with Kuromaku, trying to block out the sobbing of Henri Lamontagne and the thump of his mother’s skull on the door. But Kuromaku was no longer beside the car. She scanned ahead and saw that he had run in advance of the car. Striding swiftly, the undead warrior advanced upon the mass of demons that were even now attacking the foot soldiers who surrounded the military vehicles. Kuromaku seemed not to notice the weapons fire that cut down demons and tore into pavement around him.

  Teeth gritted, Sophie accelerated. Her lip was still bleeding, a tiny drop sliding down her chin, but she ignored it. The car rocked in the heavy gale and she kept her hands tight on the wheel. Her eyes stung and she didn’t know if it was the wind or if she was crying. She did not want to know.

  “Quiet!” a voice shouted. “Be quiet!”

  It sounded like her own voice.

  The Volkswagen raced down the hill. Soldiers on top of a tank were waving wildly, trying to turn her away. The gun turret was aimed almost directly at her but Sophie did not even slow down. Whispers were ripped apart by gunfire only feet ahead of the car and then several bullets punctured the hood of the Volkswagen. Her chest hurt and she could not breathe and she crouched down slightly behind the wheel, expecting to be shot at any moment.

  But she could not stop now. The Whispers were after her again. She had gotten too close now and drawn their attention and Henri Lamontagne had at last stopped sobbing when one of them thumped down on the roof. Gunfire tore it off the car, chunks of its armored form tumbling onto the trunk lid as they raced onward. The windshield wipers were on but the rain was thick as mucus now and smeared across the glass.

  Sophie aimed the car at a phalanx of soldiers ahead. Beyond them was a large truck
that must have been their transport vehicle and she wondered if she and Antoinette and Henri would be safe inside that truck. Some of the soldiers were still trying to wave her off but others were now beckoning to her, hurrying her on.

  Not that she needed the invitation.

  Sophie hit the brakes, the tires sliding on the sticky-slick ground. The Volkswagen slewed to the left and for a terrible instant she thought that she would sideswipe the soldiers, imagined the car sliding over them, crushing them, and just continuing on until it tumbled into the Cleft of Ronda.

  The car shuddered to a halt and she bit her lip again, sending a jolt of pain through her, a fresh gush of blood into her throat and down her chin. Sophie popped the door open, staring wide-eyed at the soldiers in their helmets and dark face masks.

  “Help us!” she called in English, and then in French.

  A dozen weapons came to bear upon her and her heart seemed to freeze as the mouths of those guns gaped darkly at her. She knew she was going to die.

  From amid the soldiers came the strangest man, a thin pale figure with close-shorn red hair and glasses. He wore the garb of a priest and he shoved two of the soldiers aside to force his way through.

  “Get down!” the priest screamed at her.

  Confused, fear still making her head spin, Sophie turned in time to see two Whispers reaching for her and a third with its hand shoved in through the rear window of the Volkswagen, dragging a weeping Antoinette out of the car by her hair. One of them lunged for her, grabbed her by the arms, its talons tearing her skin. Even with the viscous rain and the orange light she could see her reflection in that featureless shell that covered its head. The sharp tendril that jutted from beneath its face-shell darted toward her eyes.