The Gathering Dark

by Christopher Golden

  The horror’s eyes glowed a rotten orange that seemed all too familiar. It glared at them, took several cautious steps backward, and its massive stinger went rigid, aimed directly at Peter.

  The mage had seen the face of the Hellgod only behind a cotton mask and outlined in ash and dust, but there was no mistaking it. The Tatterdemalion spoke then, its impossibly wide mouth opening, protruding lower jaw grinding against the upper. Its words were in a demon-tongue Peter could not even begin to decipher. But one word was familiar.

  His own name. “Octavian.”

  It was horrible, this thing. But Peter was confused by its surroundings. What was this world, this doorless, windowless chamber? This was the Hellgod’s home dimension, he was certain of it. But there had to be far more to this reality, more creatures, more demons, even hellish cities . . . an entire universe. Yet the Tatterdemalion was confined here.

  And then he understood.

  “It’s a prison,” he said, the words echoing off the glassy walls.

  “Yes,” Keomany whispered in response. “In a world of dark magick and evil, it’s so monstrous that they have to keep it caged here.”

  The Hellgod hissed, a hydraulic sound not unlike the voice of the Whispers, and it began to move slowly in at them, stinger twitching as it drew closer. This thing had been unable to exert its power over its own reality, unable to torment this world with its magick, and so it had turned its attention elsewhere, explored other dimensions, and found one that it saw as easy prey.

  “No,” Peter said, the one word bouncing all around the cavern. “The fighting’s over. You’re done.”

  He felt drained already, as though he had burned up the magick within him like fuel. But it was still there, traces of it, echoes of it. The mage reached out one final time and grabbed Keomany’s wrist. He held up his free hand and tendrils of magickal energy exploded from his fingers once more, weaving a new sphere, a new cage for the demon. The magick was blood red now and it felt to Peter as though it were his own blood, leeching out of him as he grabbed the Hellgod, paralyzed it there in that sphere. Its stinger was the only thing still moving, and it struck at its new, smaller prison again and again, and with each blow Peter winced in pain.

  Scarlet light gleamed off the smooth glass cavern.

  Peter closed his eyes. With Keomany to guide him he felt backward along the same umbilical they had used to arrive here. His sorcery twined with it, caressed the spirit of Gaea.

  The mage stepped back into Ronda with Keomany at his side. The storm had begun to subside but the sky was still orange, the rain still thick and oily. He heard a voice call “Holy shit!” as he dragged the Hellgod through into the realm it had created.

  But Peter did not stop there. The shaft of sunlight from their dimension, that Spanish morning light, bathed him and Keomany both. But that was not enough.

  The next portal was easy to form. It was as though he slipped his fingers into a space between that sunlight and the darkness of the storm and opened up a door. He led Keomany through. He heard the rushing of the Guadalevin River. The earthwitch gasped and she shuddered as she moved into the full presence of her goddess again at last.

  The slit in reality remained open behind them and Peter could smell the stink of that Hell blowing through it on the wind from another dimension. They stood at the bottom of the Cleft of Ronda. The river rushed nearby. Above them, however, there was no city. No bridge. And no sign that there had ever been a settlement on that plateau.

  The mage glanced around and could see the shimmering barrier that surrounded Ronda and all of the other cities the Tatterdemalion had stolen, but this time they were on the inside of the dimensional rift. The Spanish morning light—probably verging on toward afternoon now—still shone above and the breeze still blew in from the mountains carrying the scent of the countryside upon it, but anyone outside the barrier would have seen it as a blank spot upon the world. It was as though where the city ought to have been, reality was out of focus.

  Peter had no idea how the Hellgod had accomplished it. It came from a dimension unknown to this world’s sorcerers and its magick was a total mystery.

  But the thing he thought of as the Tatterdemalion was here, now. The place it had wanted to destroy, and yet had wanted to avoid entering at all costs. If it had the power to take cities away upon a whim, it could have left its prison and come to Earth at any time. With its magicks and its ferociousness it might have conquered.

  So why had it not?

  There was only one reason that made any sense to Peter. That it could not. It could not wield the storm here, could not send its demon spawn Whispers out in the sun; its magicks had limited power here.

  With a grunt of final effort, Peter dragged the blood red sphere through the tear in reality and into that null field in the Cleft of Ronda, a geography that had been reconstructed in that alternate dimension by the magicks of the Hellgod.

  Octavian fell to his knees, too weak to stand a moment longer. Barely able to kneel. The Hellgod was freed as the sphere dissipated, his magick exhausted.

  Keomany looked radiant in the sunshine. Her silken hair blew across her face, her expression one of grief, of mourning for her lost parents, and yet of resolution as well.

  The Hellgod hissed once more, its carapace steaming in the sunlight but not burning. It raised its stinger and charged at Peter, muttering in its demon-tongue.

  A fresh wind kicked up across the rocks and the rushing river, and it seemed to emanate from Keomany herself. She raised her hands and the ground shook, knocking the Hellgod off its many feet. Before it could right itself, branches shot from among the rocks, impaling it.

  At the top of the gorge, the ravaged city of Ronda began to fade back into reality. Peter and Keomany found themselves in the midst of another battle, as their friends materialized around them. Allison was protecting Sophie and Nikki from the Whispers, which were incinerated almost instantly by the warm sunshine of that spring day.

  The Tatterdemalion thrashed and cried out as more and more shoots of green and wood punched through its carapace from below and then shot out through cracks in its armor above. It was a demon, a monster, but its fear of this place had always been that here its magicks could not protect it. Here, it was only flesh.

  A small grove of olive trees grew up to maturity within the space of seconds, and tore the Hellgod apart.

  It was the last thing Peter Octavian saw before surrendering at last to the shadows of unconsciousness.

  Epilogue

  “So the priest, Devlin, he was dead, right?”

  The late afternoon sunshine cast long shadows out across the North Platte River. It was the last day of May and the spring air still held a hint of the past winter, a bit of a chill that slipped across the Nebraska countryside when evening was coming on.

  Allison Vigeant sat on the grassy bank of the river with her knees pulled up under her chin, remembering another river. She shivered, but it was not from the chill.

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “That part of the report was true, at least. I didn’t . . . I mean, I only knew him for a little while, and it was in the middle of all that, the shit hitting the fan, everything. He had a lot of courage. Peter says he was a nice guy, as well. Quiet. Funny.”

  Carl Melnick sat beside her on the grass. He looked very out of place there, uncomfortable in his khaki pants and brown suede shoes and a button-down shirt. The aging newsman’s salt-and-pepper hair seemed to have thinned somewhat in the weeks since she had last seen him. But she suspected that the whole world felt a little older these days. The official death toll was just shy of eight hundred thousand and it would have been much higher if they had not reclaimed the lost cities when they had. Paris and New York had been brought back only hours after they had disappeared. Another day and . . . Allison did not like to think about that. It was a catastrophe of previously unimaginable proportions.

  She shook her head, a bitter chuckle issuing from her lips.

  “What?” Carl
asked.

  “Nothing. Just sad, really. Seems like Devlin was a good guy. A hero, if you go in for the word. We could use a lot more like him. Dealing with what happened.”

  Melnick cleared his throat and narrowed his gaze, studying her though she averted her eyes. “Dealing with what else might happen. Bad enough when you told the world there really were such things as demons and vampires among us. Now they’ve gotta get used to the idea that there are things as powerful as this somewhere out there, on the other side of some black hole or something. Stephen fucking Hawking meets The Exorcist. Just what the world needed to know.”

  “At least this time I wasn’t the one to have to tell them.” Allison glanced up at Melnick and smiled before returning her attention to the gentle rush of the river. It soothed her. “The world will get by. Humans are a pretty resilient species. And I have it on good authority that the earth itself is healthier than ever.”

  Her old friend raised an eyebrow. “You said something like that before. What’s that mean, exactly?”

  She had not told him about Keomany Shaw. Now Allison just returned the upraised eyebrow. “Let’s just say there’s more than one kind of magick, Carl.”

  Melnick raised both his hands; the skin on them was wrinkled and dry. “All right. Be mysterious. Just don’t expect me to trust you again. You promised me you’d give me the story.”

  Allison did not turn her focus away from the river. “I did. I told you what happened.”

  “You told me part of what happened.”

  With a long sigh she nodded and turned to him. “What more do you want to know?”

  “Kuromaku. The other one like . . . the other vampire,” Melnick said tentatively. “What happened to him. Reports from the site didn’t say anything about you, but they didn’t mention him either. It’s like the U.N. wants to pretend vampires don’t exist anymore.”

  “We still exist. We’re just not public enemy number one anymore.”

  Melnick nodded in understanding.

  Allison brushed the hair away from her face and went on. “Kuromaku should’ve died. Even a shadow can’t sustain that kind of damage and survive. Without being able to heal himself . . .”

  “Should’ve died. But he didn’t. How did you save him? You said Henning shot him with the coagulant.”

  She flinched and shot him a dark look. “You know I hate that word. It doesn’t do anything to the blood.”

  “Sorry. But it’s not supposed to exist, so there’s no name for it. The online vampire fanatics call it that.”

  Allison waved his apology away. “Never mind. You’re right, though. Kuromaku’d been shot. He couldn’t shift anymore.” She pressed her lips together in hesitation and then at last forged on. “There’s a cure. A way to reverse it. Pretty simple, actually. He was lying there on the rocks near the priest. Both of them were badly burned but Kuromaku isn’t human. He was still alive but he wouldn’t have lasted long.”

  Allison lifted up her left arm and glanced at the smooth, perfect flesh of her wrist. Not a trace of cut or scar. “I cut myself open and I bled onto him. Into his mouth and on the places where he was burned the worst.”

  The news producer hissed air in through his teeth. “That reversed it? Your blood? It started the process going again in him?”

  Allison nodded. “The blood of another vampire. He healed himself after that.”

  For a long time the two of them just sat there. The shadows grew longer and the eastern sky began to darken. It would be dusk soon. All across the world, nightfall had abruptly taken on a menace far more profound than it had held in centuries.

  “So where is he now?”

  They had been talking about Kuromaku, but Allison knew that it was not the Japanese vampire that Carl was asking about. Most of the world believed the press—that the U.N. and the Church of the Resurrection had joined together to combat the evil that had infected the globe, losing some of their best and brightest along the way, yet triumphing in the end. But though the truth could not be confirmed, word had spread of the actions of Peter Octavian, Kuromaku, and Allison herself. It was Peter whom Carl was inquiring about.

  Allison gave him an apologetic shrug. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  “I know. But I have to ask. It’s in my nature.”

  “And it’s your job.”

  Carl’s expression changed, a kind of cloud passing over his features. “I’m not going to run with any of this, you know,” he told her. “You owed me the truth, Allison, but I can keep it to myself. I’ve done it plenty of times before, believe it or not. You might be surprised by the things I know.”

  She gazed at him a long moment before nodding. “I might. But then again, I might not.”

  Allison stood and brushed the grass from the seat of her blue jeans. “Go ahead and tell the story. As much as you want to. It isn’t just your nature, Carl. It’s in your blood. Don’t forget, once upon a time it was in mine, too. Until something else got in there that I can’t get out.”

  Huffing, out of shape, Carl also rose. Allison embraced him briefly and then stepped back, toward the river. Past him she could see the Range Rover he had rented at the airport. He had come all this way just to see her, had not even asked her what inspired her to meet with him in North Platte, Nebraska, what the hell she wanted to visit this place for at all. It occurred to her that he was a veteran newsman, and that he likely knew exactly what had drawn her here, knew not only that it had once been home to a man she loved, now long dead, but that this was the last place they had been happy.

  The last place she had ever been happy.

  “What will you do now?” he asked.

  Allison slid her arms around herself and shivered, wondering if the onset of dusk was making it colder, or if it was just her.

  “There’s still work to do. There are so few vampires left they barely seem worth tracking, but if Octavian’s right, all the recent breaches into our world set loose things a lot worse than a couple of ancient vampires hiding out in a cave.”

  Carl cleared his throat again. When Allison glanced over, this time it was he who would not meet her gaze.

  “What?” she asked.

  Her old friend looked up. “While they were busy retreating, running for their lives, some of the guys from Task Force Victor saw you kill Commander Henning. They’ll be hunting you.”

  Allison nodded. “It was only a matter of time. If it wasn’t this, it would’ve been something else.”

  With that she changed. Red hair became brown, thick and curly. Hazel eyes turned truly green. Her nose was thinner and there was a splash of freckles across her cheeks.

  “Oh, shit,” Carl Melnick gasped, eyes wide. It was the only time Allison had ever seen him truly astonished. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “Use your head,” Allison chided him. “Haven’t you ever wondered? We hang on to our old faces the way we hang on to everything else we cherish from the past. It helps us remember who we are. But that doesn’t mean we can’t let go when the time comes. We can be anything we want to be.”

  Carl was still staring as she changed once more, her body shifting shape completely, becoming the falcon, a form that had become almost more comfortable for her than her human one. Allison spread her wings and with a cry she flew away from the grassy bank, high above the water.

  Flying.

  It felt extraordinary to her still.

  Allison flew toward the setting sun, chasing the day.

  It was early in the morning on the first of June when Keomany at last turned along Orchard Hill Road and started on the final leg of her journey. She had told Cat and Tori to expect her the night before, but had ended up spending the night in Montpelier instead. She had had some paperwork to clear up regarding her parents’ estate, but she had put it behind her now.

  As she drove up the hill among the corn stalks and at last came in sight of Summerfields Orchard, she was overwhelmed with emotion. Here, somehow, was the homecoming she had expecte
d to feel in her brief return to the ravaged remains of Wickham, but had not. The moment she saw the apple trees and the big barn and the sign for Summerfields, a burden was lifted from her that she had not even realized she was still carrying.

  Suddenly the music on the radio sounded sharper. The light coming through her windshield was brighter. When she breathed in the fresh air that streamed through her open window, she felt her eyes brimming with tears but could not discern within her own heart if they were born of grief or joy.

  Keomany parked in the lot outside the barn. Summerfields was open for business, she was happy to see. There were five other cars in the lot—not a huge number, but far better than she had expected after the changes the world had undergone in the past weeks. Before she got out of the car, she wiped at the moist corners of her eyes and caught sight of her face in the rearview mirror. For just a moment she was certain that she saw a golden glint of light there, and then she blinked and it was gone.

  The power that Gaea had lent her was gone, but Keomany still felt that connection to the goddess, to the earth. It was a connection that she knew Peter and the others wanted her to use to aid them in their work, and Keomany was willing, but not just yet.

  Not yet.

  First she needed to rest, to find herself in the embrace of friends, to share with people who loved her all that had happened, all she had felt. She had to know if there was a home for her, somewhere.

  When she stepped out of the car, she heard a cry of joy. Keomany glanced up and saw Tori Osborne rushing down from the open door of the barn, the beads in her tightly braided hair clacking together. Behind her, more slowly but with the same grin spread across her face, came the Amazonian Cat Hein.

  Keomany laughed. It felt extraordinary. It felt like a blessing.

  It would be complicated for her to stay here, given what she had once felt for Tori and that the two women were a couple; married, even, thanks to Vermont law. But they had asked, and Keomany hadn’t had the strength to say no. She was so happy now that she had not. And who knew? At the Bealtienne festival she’d spent a giddy, athletic night with No Last Name Zach. He was obviously a friend of theirs, another earthwitch. Maybe Keomany would meet him again; maybe this time she’d find out his last name.