The Gathering Dark

by Christopher Golden

  There was no time. The storm had arrived. Heavy, oily rain had begun to fall and it was as though the clouds were the eyes of the Tatterdemalion, and it was watching them. It was far too late for them to try to save a single life; such a delay might cost thousands, even millions more. It might cost the world.

  Peter squinted his eyes against the wind and the rain. There was a terrible stench in the air and it assaulted his nostrils, causing his eyes to water. His clothes whipped against his body but he set himself against the gale and kept on. The distant report of gunfire thudded dully in the air, a nearly constant sound, as if the bullets were the grinding of some giant engine. Peter had at first thought that perhaps the people of Ronda were fighting back, but the sounds he heard weren’t from the sort of weaponry people had in their homes. He would see soon enough, he supposed, where the shots were coming from.

  Up ahead there was a broad plaza with a monument at its center and beyond that he could see part of the bridge Keomany had told him about, and the rest of the city rising up on the horizon beneath the terrible face of the storm.

  Around the monument was a ring of demons, skeletal Whispers crouched at the base of the stone memorial like gargoyles. He cursed silently the momentary delay they would cost. It would have been so much easier to wait for the Tatterdemalion to come to him, for he was certain the sinister presence had noted him. But he remembered too well what had happened in Wickham and knew that it was possible that the Tatterdemalion might not attack him at all, might simply ignore him and go about its work. They had to bring it to them, force it to pay attention.

  That was where Keomany came in.

  Keomany, he thought, frowning. She had been beside him a moment ago. Now, when he turned around, he saw that she had fallen behind. She was strikingly beautiful, her black hair like curtains of silk around her face, and her eyes glowed a bright gold. Keomany Shaw walked in a cascade of warm, soft earth light that touched her as though Gaea herself had reached down into this hellish dimension and touched her servant with a finger, a shaft of her divine spirit.

  It was the dawn. In Spain, the sun was coming up, and where Keomany walked, she was slitting open a narrow window to the world to which this city belonged. Lit up like that, it was as though Keomany had become a goddess. Behind her she had left a swath of that warm morning light. It was still dim, still early back in the world, but day was breaking. Where she walked, sprigs of green grass grew up from the pavement without any help from Peter’s magick. He had helped Keomany to break through, to connect with the spirit of Gaea, but now that the two were entwined, the power coursing through Keomany had nothing to do with the kind of sorcery Peter wielded.

  Where that filthy rain fell, the light of the other world’s dawn evaporated it. Peter’s clothes and hair were becoming sodden and the slick rain streaked his face, but Keomany was untouched by it. Ever since they had left the bullring, she had kept up with him, but now she had slowed and was staring at the street in front of her. After a moment, Keomany crouched and touched the pavement with outstretched fingers.

  Peter glanced over at the blank face-shells of the Whispers around the monument at the center of the plaza. They were completely still as though they thought he might not notice them. Only the sharp tendrils that hung beneath their skull carapaces were in motion, sensing his presence, perhaps waiting to see what he would do. Or perhaps it was Keomany they were afraid of.

  “What are you up to?” he whispered.

  Beneath his feet the ground began to tremble. Startled, he spun back to look at Keomany, his hands crackling with magickal energy. Even as he turned, he saw the pavement beneath her fingers shatter and fall aside as branches and leaves thrust up from the ground. The sky above split open and light shone down in a widening circle as the tree grew and its branches spread wide.

  An olive tree, fully grown, stood in the midst of the plaza in a pool of Spanish morning light. Keomany stood beneath its branches, so slim and petite in its shadow. She reached up and plucked an olive from its branches and then glanced over at Peter, smiling. Her eyes gleamed even more brightly as she laughed.

  “I found a flaw,” she said. “There are places where the walls between here and home are very thin.”

  With a flip of her silken hair she glanced southward at the towering thunderheads, the roiling, unnatural storm clouds. “It isn’t as all-powerful as it thinks it is.”

  Keomany walked up beside Peter and he could smell the fresh air of home swirling around her, could feel the golden glow of the natural light that bathed her. It felt right and it gave him hope. Despite his exhaustion from transporting them here, he felt stronger now.

  “What do you say we kick some ass?” she asked.

  Peter nodded once. The fingers of his left hand hooked downward, almost clawlike, and then he lashed out with a flick of his wrist and a scythe of green light sliced across the square. His attack cut three of the Whispers in half and threw the other two to the ground, ichor seeping from cracks in their armored forms. The stone monument shattered.

  As if sensing the new strength in them, the power and resolve, the wind blew harder but they forged ahead through the storm. The bridge was ahead, the stones coated with a film of rain that puddled instead of running off the way it should have. An explosion echoed out across the bridge—across the gorge that spread out to either side, the gash that separated the halves of the city—and Peter peered through the filthy rain, wiping the viscous fluid from his eyes.

  Amid the gunfire he had been hearing since they left the bullring, there had been occasional small explosions, like mortar shells. Now he saw the source. On the other side of the bridge, in the intersection at the bottom of the hill that led up into the heights of Ronda, there were military vehicles, including at least two tanks that he could see. More gunfire echoed across the gorge.

  “Peter, look,” Keomany said, pointing.

  Above the bridge they saw her. Allison had become a falcon to search the city from the sky, but now she was falling, plummeting toward the ground and changing as she fell. From bird she became woman. End over end she tumbled, too fast. The only thing he could think of was that she must somehow have been knocked unconscious. He thrust out his hands, palm up, and began to mutter to himself. This was simple magick, but delicate. He had not had much use for gentleness of late and so it took him a fraction of a second, a single inhalation of breath, to steady himself.

  Midway through a spin that would have ended with her head splitting on the stone bridge, Allison turned to mist. Keomany let out a cry of relief and ran ahead, stepping away from the tear she had created in this reality as though leaving the spotlight upon a stage. She had detached from her connection to Gaea, it appeared, at least for the moment. Peter followed her, racing toward the edge of the new city, where they could look down upon the wide gorge and the ancient, arched stone bridge.

  Several feet away, Allison coalesced once more into flesh. Instantly the rain began to plaster her red hair to her skull. Her eyes were wild.

  “You’re all right,” Peter said.

  Allison only nodded, moving quickly to the edge of the bridge to stare down into the Cleft of Ronda.

  “What did you see?” he asked, forced to shout over the storm, which began to roar even louder around them, screaming through the gorge below.

  “Have a look,” she called back, a grim cast to her features.

  Peter pushed through the rain and laid his hands on the stone wall of the bridge. Keomany did the same and together the three of them looked down into the Cleft at the abomination that lay on the dry riverbed, its flesh pulsing. Octavian felt bile burn the back of his throat at the sight of the grotesque thing and the demons that emerged wetly from its abdomen.

  “Brood mother,” he told Keomany.

  Her eyes had lost that golden glow when she had run to Allison’s aid, but now the light gleamed once more in Keomany’s gaze. The rain had beaded upon her face and hair, sliding down her cheeks like syrup tears. Above, a ne
w shaft of daylight burned down through the orange-black sky and christened her anew.

  All of this happened in an eyeblink. Then Allison tore herself away from the sight of the hideous giant in the gorge and turned to Peter again.

  “Here’s the deal. Task Force Victor’s over there with a bunch of British soldiers.”

  “They’re not our priority,” Peter replied gravely. “The Tatterdemalion is. The storm is here, it’s all around us, but the bastard hasn’t come for us yet. Maybe it’s not planning to. We’ve got to get its . . .” He paused and went to look down into the gorge again. And then Peter Octavian smiled. “Attention. We’ve got to get its attention.” “Agreed,” Allison said. “But Kuromaku’s over there too.”

  Peter blinked several times in surprise, trying to make sense of this new information. He frowned and pulled his gaze from the brood mother at the base of the cliffs and bridge and turned to stare at the tanks again.

  Kuromaku. Where the hell did he come from?

  Not that it mattered. Kuromaku was his brother, or as near as any man had ever been. He was also the finest warrior Peter had ever known. Allison was staring at Peter expectantly and he nodded to her.

  “Go get him. Meet us down in the gorge.”

  Keomany’s head snapped around, sparks slipping from her eyes and turning to golden mist. “Down there? What are we going down there for?”

  Peter’s nostrils flared with anger and distaste and he glared up into the storm, the wind howling and the rain pelting his face.

  “The Tatterdemalion’s an arrogant bastard. He thinks we can’t hurt him. We’re going to prove him wrong.”

  Pain seared through Kuromaku’s shoulder and leg where the bullets had struck. The viscous rain smeared his vision and all around him the Whispers moved in. He wiped at his eyes and could see that more and more of the demons were swarming up over the edge of the Cleft. There were too many of them; too many even for the soldiers. He could hear the screams of men and women tearing across the intersection as the Whispers began to slip through the crossfire. The staccato bursts of gunfire slowed. There were still stray bullets that tore the pavement nearby, but very few. The soldiers were too occupied with the swarm around them, or simply had not fallen so far that they would kill an innocent woman to take the life of a vampire.

  Unlike those attacking the soldiers, the Whispers that surrounded Kuromaku and Sophie moved slowly, filled with dark purpose. The circle closed inexorably around them, stalking carefully, as though the demons sensed that Kuromaku had been wounded. They had no nostrils that he could see, but he suspected that somehow they smelled the blood.

  Blood, Kuromaku thought. The irony was too much. I’m bleeding. He could no longer shapeshift, that ability had been taken from him by the chemical carried in the bullets that had struck him. Sophie had made it clear that the commander of these military forces was trying to kill him. There was no sense to it, no logic, but he did not bother to question it. He was a vampire, and the United Nations had a special section of their military that hunted vampires.

  The chemical stabilized his molecules, preventing him from changing. The cruelest irony was that it had been developed by a vampire, a creature named Hannibal, who had used it to slaughter those of his own kind who would not follow him. It had been the U.N. task force that had first put the chemical in ammunition.

  Kuromaku’s gaze ticked around the circle of Whispers that took a step closer, their tongues darting at him, tasting the air, perhaps even tasting his anxiety. They could tear him apart, if the bullets did not get him first.

  But it was not for himself that he was anxious.

  “Stay behind me,” he told Sophie, not daring to sneak a glance at her porcelain features or those perfect blue eyes for fear they would distract him a second too long. She was holding on tightly to him and now he pulled her hands away from his body, ushering her back.

  “I will be moving quickly. You must try to stay close but not interfere, not get in the way.”

  “They’ll kill you,” Sophie said, her voice little more than a rasp above the sound of the wind and rain.

  “They’ll kill us both,” Kuromaku replied, wiping again at his eyes, letting his katana hang by his side as he studied the Whispers intently. “We need to get to cover.”

  “There isn’t any!” she cried. “They’re in all the buildings. They’re . . . the bridge!”

  Kuromaku frowned and glanced at her, then over at the bridge.

  “I didn’t see any demons on the other side,” Sophie said. “Do you think we can—”

  “Perhaps,” he interrupted. “Perhaps.” Slowly he glanced around the circle again and then at last he did meet her gaze, seeing desperation and fierce passion in her eyes. He nodded. “We’re going to run. Stay with me.”

  Kuromaku raised his sword. The pointed tongues of every single Whisper in the circle darted out toward it. At this sign that their prey was going to fight, they hissed, the sound almost lost in the rain and wind, and then they lunged.

  With his free hand, Kuromaku held on to Sophie’s wrist. He slashed the katana out, decapitating one of the Whispers, and the demon fell into the path of two others. They tried to leap over their fallen brother and collided, only to be wounded, their carapaces cracked by Kuromaku’s sword. The others were swarming in, but Kuromaku had opened a hole in the circle.

  He spun, pulling Sophie behind him, keeping her out of the way of his blade. She paused, planted her left foot, and shot the right out in a sideways kick that knocked one of the demons backward into a tangle of scything limbs. Kuromaku swore and pulled her closer behind him. He admired her will to fight in order to survive but there were too many of them and he saw only one chance for them to make it through this.

  A hissing Whisper leaped at him over the corpse of another Kuromaku had killed and he raised his blade. The demon impaled itself on the tip of the sword. Kuromaku stepped forward, thrust the katana deeper, and twisted it, coring out a hole in the Whisper’s chest.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw the hole he had first made in the circle. They were moving in almost too fast for him to move, but he had to go. If they did not flee now, they would never escape. This time when he spun, he did not pull Sophie behind him. Instead, he turned around and reached out to clutch her tight against his chest.

  The hole he had made in the circle was filled by a single Whisper that crouched atop the shattered and bleeding remains of the dead. It raised its talons, tensed to spring.

  Kuromaku pressed forward, pushing Sophie toward the demon’s razor talons ahead of him. She did not scream, only flinched in silence, turning her face away from the Whisper. Its tongue darted toward her, all of its focus on her.

  The vampire ronin punched the tip of his katana through the demon’s face-shell and it fell instantly limp, hanging by its skull on the blade. Kuromaku used the sword to toss the Whisper aside and withdrew his blade with a wet, sucking sound from the wound in its face. The way in front of them was open save the remains of dead Whispers.

  “Run!” he screamed to Sophie, shoving her ahead of him. As she leaped over the demon corpses, he turned and defended her flight, cleaving the nearest Whisper in two with a swipe of his blade that scraped loudly on its armor.

  Then Kuromaku turned and followed Sophie, leaping over the demon remains, nearly slipping in their filthy blood and the greasy rain. The wind pushed at him and the showers from the sky plastered his clothes to his body, making them stiff and heavy. In his heart he felt a loss unlike anything he had felt before, even when he had put his life and humanity behind him and become a vampire.

  He could not fly. He could not mist. He could not change.

  An ember of rage blazed up in his gut, a thirst for revenge . . . for blood. It had been days now since he had drunk and he thought that perhaps this time he would take what he required from the men who had tried to kill him.

  Then he glanced ahead of him and saw Sophie running along the street toward the bridge that spanned the C
left. She had already passed through the intersection. Along the side streets to the left and right the Whispers were overwhelming the soldiers. There seemed more of them than ever but they paid little attention to Sophie, all of their focus on the men and women with guns. Weapons fire still echoed off buildings but only in short bursts now. The tanks fired several times, but wildly, shattering walls and tumbling masonry into the streets.

  It would not be long now before the Whispers overtook them completely. More of them were crawling out of the Cleft to the left of the bridge; no matter how many the soldiers killed, it wouldn’t be enough.

  Kuromaku ran after Sophie, beginning to catch up with her. Whispers crawling up from the Cleft ignored her, passing on the left within forty or fifty feet of her as they ran at the tanks and troop carriers. To the right loomed a massive structure, a centuries-old building that had once been a convent, if Kuromaku’s memory served him.

  On the roof of the convent he saw several dark figures capering in the rain—a handful of Whispers whose focus was not on the soldiers—and he knew that his vengeance would have to wait. The Whispers tracked her movement toward the bridge. First Kuromaku would have to get Sophie to safety. Only then could he indulge his fury at the loss he had suffered.

  The bullet wound in his left shoulder pained him and he smelled the metallic scent of his own blood, but Kuromaku would not let it slow him down. He was grateful than the bullet that had struck his leg had only grazed him, otherwise the Whispers that gave chase would have dragged him down by now. He ignored the pain and pressed on, running faster than any human, catching up quickly to Sophie. Though the storm raged around them, it seemed almost as though they had entered the eye of a hurricane. The wind and rain continued, but the war had opened up a path for them.

  Twenty feet from the bridge Sophie paused to glance back at him, to check on his progress. Kuromaku was nearly on top of her and was forced to pause as well. The Whispers were predators; he had observed them enough to guess their patterns. The moment they paused, Kuromaku turned to look up into the heavy, driving, mucus-rain. Shielding his eyes, he saw three figures darker than the storm leap out from the roof of the convent.