And he didn’t know how to stop her. Every violent impulse that normally ran through his body, every sadistic command he would usually delight to give, felt now like the height of lunacy.
He had felt this before, only when tangling with the great saints.
He did understand why the demons feared to kill them directly.
Nevertheless, her death would accomplish everything he needed, and it would do it quickly. He had no choice.
The sense of threat only heightened the reality of that.
“It’s not too late for any of you,” April announced, “but you will cross a line eventually. Don’t go there tonight. Save yourselves while you still can!”
“Be quiet,” Bertoller said. He was shaking, and he hopped off the stone and advanced on her, holding his finger in front of her face. “Be silent.”
He didn’t say the word throbbing behind his demands:
Please.
Please be quiet, now, before you do too much damage.
To his surprise, she obeyed. Except for three last words:
“Not even you.”
He jerked his head to the side, where a tree stood. His men took her and began to chain her to it. She would die, finally, on the flames on the altar. But first she would watch the others killed.
She was horribly unafraid.
He remembered a woman, hundreds of years ago, whom he had starved to death in his less courageous—or desperate—days. She had been like this. The word “courage” was not even enough. She simply lacked any fear. As though she knew something he didn’t.
He had never forgotten her. Teresa, her name was. He had been a younger man then.
Part of him had fallen in love with her.
But choices had to be made, and it was power, not love, that won the day. When the Power, the being at the source of all that fuelled him, demanded her life, he gave it.
That was the day he lost his soul.
He had learned that day that in a human sacrifice, far more was lost than the life of one human being. Forces were loosed that could not be controlled. As his men continued to build up the pyre, he thought briefly of the consequences of centuries of playing with fire.
He wanted to get started.
“Where is he?” he snapped, talking to his second-in-command—the tall, scarred young man who had brought April in. He didn’t know the man’s name. He didn’t care.
“They’re bringing him.”
“Call them. Tell them to speed it up.”
“Surely you don’t want to start now? Shouldn’t you wait till midnight?”
“We’ll do it properly,” he snapped. “Don’t lecture me on my own business.”
Yes, the final sacrifice would have to wait for midnight—it was the hour of greatest power. But there was no reason they could not begin the rituals now. Begin the processes that would steal his attention again, return his mind and his heart to the task at hand.
Just as soon as the last remaining sacrifice arrived.
* * *
Chris didn’t know why he felt it was necessary to leave the town, but he did. So dragging a questioning and confused Andrew behind him, he drove outside of the town, found a barren stretch of ground on top of a ridge with city lights twinkling below, and pulled over.
He got out of the car and stood at the edge of the ridge. Overhead, a thin moon lit the sky with a surprisingly bright light. A planet sparkled beside it, and other stars were beginning to come out, clear and lucid in an atmosphere that felt especially translucent tonight.
He heard a car door shut as Andrew climbed out of the truck, but he stayed back.
Chris cleared his throat.
“All right,” he said. “This is not exactly a surrender. But I will admit one thing, because I have to: I can’t do this without your help.”
Nothing happened. No answer, no movement, no apparition appearing before him.
“I know you’re out there,” Chris continued, “and I know that somehow, you’re influencing things. I know you have eyes everywhere, because at least one of them has been watching me—and is watching me right now, I’m pretty sure, which means you can also hear me. I know you care as much as I do about what’s happening. I know you care that Miranda is in that hideous joke of a man’s hands. And that Reese is in some kind of trouble, and that she’s probably heading to corner the same man. And you know perfectly well that I can’t find them. That I’ve been searching all this time and now I’ve lost the trail and I don’t know where to find anyone or how to help them, and I don’t think I have much time left.”
Still nothing.
Except . . . now he had the unnerving sensation, as undeniable as it was intangible, that someone was listening.
“So, since we are on the same side at least for the moment, I am asking for your help. Please show me where Miranda is, and where Reese is. And help me rescue them.”
The stars continued to shine—brighter, if that was possible. The city lights winked below. The air was dry, cool, and still.
It was, maybe, rude to talk to someone without addressing them.
So he said it.
“Spirit. I need your help.”
He felt it on his skin for a bare instant—heat. Then sudden, searing heat—and in the next moment, a warmth had settled around his heart, constricting, strengthening, and momentarily making him unable to breathe.
In the next moment the child was there. The eerie, silent child who had been watching him. He was standing on the ridge next to Chris.
“You aren’t the Spirit,” Chris said, which was stupid but he couldn’t think of any other greeting.
“I am a Watcher,” the child said.
“Yeah. So I’ve been told. So what have you seen? Can you tell me where to go?”
The child seemed to hesitate. “You can’t do anything,” he said. “The battle is beyond you.”
“But I have to try to fight it,” Chris said. “For love. Do you get that?”
“I can show you one thing,” the child said.
“Then show me. Please.”
The child held up his hand, and Chris saw:
Not what he expected to see. Not Reese, not Miranda, not the old man who had been Clint.
He saw Tyler.
In the city below.
Chapter 15
Chris came out of nowhere and grabbed Tyler in a hug, and then practically threw him against the wall of the nearest building under the streetlights and said, “Where are they?”
“I don’t know where you just came from, but I’m really happy to see you,” Tyler said.
“You too,” Chris said, and despite the shortness of the words, his eyes said he meant it. “I don’t think we have a lot of time. Where are they?”
“I assume you mean Jacob and Reese, and you’re right, we don’t. They’re heading for a cemetery.”
“And you aren’t with them because . . .”
“It’s a long story.” Tyler’s eyes went to the man standing behind Chris, whose expression was somewhere between curiosity and nervous breakdown.
“Andrew Hunter,” Chris said. “He’s Miranda’s father. Julie’s husband.”
“Oh,” Tyler said. “Listen, I’m sorry about what happened to her.”
“What happened to her didn’t,” Chris said. “Well, it did, but she’s alive.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Let’s just say there’s something to all this Spirit stuff.” Chris’s eyes were dangerous. “Do you know where this cemetery is?”
“Yes. I just need a car to get there. I hitchhiked this far.”
“Come on, then,” Chris said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Reese and Jacob left the car a mile from the cemetery and walked the rest of the way, creeping through the darkness closer and closer to the place where Jacob had spent the most haunted, tormented years of his younger life—the years after his wife’s death and the persecution of the Oneness that had left so many dead, wounded, a
nd bereft. It was here, in the midst of the gravestones where he’d believed Bertoller to be buried, that he had experienced his greatest epiphany: that he could not fulfil his calling as Oneness, could make no real difference in the world, could combat the darkness not at all, if he was not willing to bring justice to the true vessels of evil in the world.
To men like Franz Bertoller.
Reese had been here only once before, but as they drew closer, through the dry grass and weeds buzzing with night insects, she felt something of the strange mix of apprehension, memory, and excitement Jacob felt—of all the places Jacob had shown her, of all the arguments he had levelled, it was the one encapsulated here that had most shaken her.
The insects stopped buzzing within a quarter mile of the cemetery. They went on in absolute silence, the only sounds those they made themselves—breathing, rustling in the weeds. Reese could hear her own heartbeat and suspected she could hear Jacob’s also.
A growing pressure in her ears alerted her to the presence of the invisible. Her entourage—the powers she had called upon to bring her this far. Jacob could feel them too. He was pleased they were there.
She didn’t know how she felt about it. Only that this man had to be stopped. Just had to be.
Nothing else would be good enough.
And if David was involved . . .
He could not be allowed to become another Bertoller.
* * *
A motorcycle growling up to the road to the cemetery came, bearing the last sacrifice not a minute early.
Bertoller had spent the last half hour cursing the lateness of their arrival. He badly wanted to get this over with.
When his hired man appeared in the torchlight leading another man, this one with his hands bound and his eyes blindfolded, Bertoller saw April cast him a look of question and deep concern.
As if he would answer her.
But he wanted her to know who this man was, so for effect, he said, “Welcome, David. I’m so glad you could be part of this after all.”
David spat out his response. “Bertoller! You backstabbing son of the devil! You don’t dare kill me!”
“Give me one reason why I would be afraid to do that,” Bertoller said, glad for the diversion the man provided. “Because you’re Oneness? I have spent most of my life battling the Oneness—and you hardly deserve to be lumped in among them. Because . . . hmm. I can’t think of a single other possible reason.”
“We had plans together,” David sputtered. “We were partners.”
“Yes, and the partnership ended when you failed utterly to fulfil your purpose in it.”
“I can still give you access to the Oneness,” David said, his words beginning to falter now. “You still need that. To infect the—”
“I have other access points now. Far more powerful ones. You’ve heard of Reese? Jacob? It turns out they’ve both given into the darkness more fully than I could have hoped.”
“How could you even know . . .”
“The demonic has ears everywhere. My power is not so diminished that I don’t know how to listen.”
“I gave you Reese,” David said. His tone was pathetic now—he had ceased threatening, ceased bargaining; this was nothing more than a plaintive whine.
“Your usefulness is done. Except for what you will provide as fuel for the fire.” Bertoller nodded to the man. “Chain him up with the woman.”
“No!” David said, trying to jerk away from his captor but to no avail. “No! I won’t die alongside her! I won’t be one of them!”
“You cannot help that,” Bertoller said. “The only grip in this universe stronger than that of the demonic is that of the Spirit, I’m sorry to say. And you will never wriggle loose of that grip.”
David was taken across the clearing and bound beside April, whose head was bowed. Bertoller half-expected her to say something—some cloying, sympathetic thing. She didn’t. Not a word.
He found that unnerving but did all in his power not to show that.
He would give anything to know what had happened to her between her first capture on this day and the second. Something had altered her—had altered everything. Something had changed her so deeply that it had taken this entire night out of his hands and made it a wild card.
He didn’t know what was going to happen when he began the sacrifice.
He quickly shut down that train of thought, only momentarily entertaining the idea of torturing her to force her to tell him what had happened.
That too was quickly dismissed.
He had a terrible sense that she would tell him, and the knowledge would make things more unpredictable than they already were.
Forcing his hand steady, he picked up a crooked knife, stood on the gravestone he’d been using as a dais, and said in a tightly controlled voice, “Let all who are not sanctified leave this place.”
The response was most of the men—only four had gone through the necessary rites. Only four wanted power other than money. Only four were willing to face the darkness and invite the demonic fully.
Under normal circumstances, Bertoller would have commended them for doing what he had done many years ago and never regretted.
Tonight, he wasn’t certain their choice would prove to be a good one.
What was happening to him?
The girl, Miranda, was starting to cry again—to whine and blubber. It would feel good to quiet her permanently. Her cries snapped him out of his paralysis. The hour was approaching. The sickle moon was high overhead.
It was time.
* * *
Visions dogged Reese as they drew close enough to the cemetery to see light—torchlight. They tormented her. She saw it over and over again: Jacob being shot. Chris being shot. Tyler sacrificed. David satisfied.
David smiling.
David free.
She saw Jacob shot down, point-blank, Bertoller holding the gun.
She saw a spray of bullets take Chris down.
She saw Miranda . . .
The visions were interrupted by an exodus of men from the cemetery, coming through the grass. One roared by on a motorcycle. Jacob saw them before she did and yanked her aside, the two of them hunkering down in the long weeds and hoping no one would trip over them.
She hoped Tyler was praying.
She wondered when she had lost the ability to pray.
When she had stopped trusting the Spirit to hear, or act, or care at all.
A sound was coming from the cemetery—unsettling, grating. It took her a moment to recognize it.
It was crying.
Hysterics, really.
A young woman or a child.
She closed her eyes and tightened her grip on the hunting knife in her hands.
Miranda.
The men had passed; it did not sound as though anyone else was coming their way. Jacob motioned for her to stay down and rose warily. They were within feet of the iron fence around the cemetery now, and keeping in the shadows of a row of trees, Jacob maneuvered closer.
Reese watched him, watched the dancing shadows, watched the moonlight and listened to Miranda crying.
Her heart beat out urgency: Get in there. Stop him. Save her. Save them.
Kill him.
It’s the only way.
Jacob reappeared beside her—it was amazing how quickly he could move. “It’s a ritual,” he said. “A sacrifice. He’s got . . .”
His voice trailed away.
“Miranda,” Reese finished.
He nodded. But he wasn’t telling her everything.
“And?”
“And others.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know the woman,” Jacob said. “A young woman. Blonde.”
“April,” Reese said, sure of it. She had been their target before. It made sense.
“Remember, Reese,” Jacob said, his voice so quiet it was barely audible, “stay focused. Go for Bertoller. Only Bertoller. No matter what. You take him down, you’ve defeated the worst ev
il our world has known in centuries.”
She nodded and flexed her fingers around the knife again. Even now, surrounded by demons, barely recognizable to herself as Oneness, she hated the thought of killing a man.
Even this man.
Maybe she would pretend he was David, and let her pain and confusion drive the knife home.
Maybe she would simply get revenge.
“No matter what, Reese,” Jacob said again.
“Yes,” she answered, irritated now. “I understand.”
* * *
There was a set order to the ritual.
It was supposed to begin with animal sacrifices, and that was to be followed by the preliminary human sacrifices—the girl and David.
It would culminate in the death of the great saint. And Bertoller and his lackeys would drink in the pleasure of the Power, and his spirit would fill their veins and flood their bodies.
He couldn’t follow the protocol.
He ran through the liturgy, the opening rites, but with every word the pressure grew—a deep inner panic growing by the moment. Either the woman was far stronger, or he was far weaker, than he had understood until now.
Eyes. He could feel eyes everywhere. Watching. Witnessing. Judging.
He was going mad.
The torches flared.
The moon glared down, waxing before his very eyes, growing stronger, rounder, a great eye.
The goats bleated and the girl-child cried.
His lackeys, cloaked in black, were going about the rites as he had taught them to do: going to the animals.
“No!” he shrieked.
He froze. His heart beating in his ears. They turned and queried silently, surprised as he was.
“Leave them,” he said. “Bring the woman.”
One of them dared question him. “But—”
“NOW!”
He wanted to watch them, but he couldn’t. If he did his eyes would fall on April, and he could not look at her.
He turned his back, wrestling, trying to slow his heartbeat, calm his voice, get back into control.
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