by Tim Waggoner
The passenger-side window’s glass shattered as the van hit the ground. The side of Lori’s head smacked the remains of the window, and she felt sharp pain from the impact, as well as from glass cutting her skin. Canisters of pesticide clanged as they bounced around in the back, striking one another. What would happen if the chemicals were released? Would she and Edgar be poisoned? Could they die?
The van slid along the slick surface of the Nightway for a dozen feet before coming to a stop. The engine died, and the voices on the radio – which were shrieking now – cut off. Lori and Edgar were both belted into their seats, a fact for which Lori was grateful; otherwise Edgar would’ve landed on her. Edgar tried his seat belt release and found it jammed.
“Get us out of here!” he said.
Lori thought he was speaking to her, but then his beetles surged forth from his mouth. Half of them scuttled onto his seat belt and began furiously chewing at the tough fabric. The other half crawled down toward her and began working on her belt. She hadn’t tried her release yet, but as fast as the beetles worked, she knew she’d be free within seconds. While the beetles chewed, Edgar tried to open the driver’s-side door, but he couldn’t get any leverage and was unsuccessful. He hit the window control, and luckily, it still worked. The window went down, and he grabbed hold of the doorframe just as the beetles finished chewing through his seat belt. He dropped some, but his grip held. Grunting with effort, he maneuvered his body around until he was able to pull himself through the open window and out onto the side of the van, which, Lori supposed, now counted as the vehicle’s roof.
The beetles working on her seat belt finished, and then they all took to the air, flying up and out of the open window, presumably to join their master. A second later, Edgar reached down for her.
“Take my hand!”
As Lori contorted herself into a position where she could do as Edgar wanted, light flooded the van’s interior. The Driver had arrived.
Lori popped open the glove box and grabbed hold of the Gravedigger Special. Then she took Edgar’s hand, and the man pulled her up. She used her feet to help propel herself upward, and a few seconds later she was outside, crouching on top of the van next to Edgar, gun held tight. She hadn’t been able to grab hold of the blanket as she exited the vehicle, and she was naked and cold. She hadn’t grabbed her purse either, which meant it – and her phone – were still somewhere in the van. She didn’t remember seeing her purse as she climbed out, and even if she had, retrieving it hadn’t been her first priority. Getting the fuck out of the van had.
The beetles hadn’t re-entered Edgar’s body. Instead they buzzed angrily around his head, as if ready for battle. Lori thought that if she survived this, she might actually grow to like the carnivorous little fuckers.
She saw the car that had pulled up close to them was indeed the Driver’s vehicle. He got out, leaving his engine running and the headlights on, and he walked toward them. He wore his crimson robe – Must be a pain in the ass to drive in, Lori thought – with the hood back. He had on a pair of sunglasses, but he removed them and tucked them into a pocket, revealing the smooth, pulsating patches of flesh that covered his eye sockets.
“Thanks for making it easy for me to catch up,” the Driver said, smiling. He looked at Edgar and his smile widened. “Hello, old friend. I’m surprised to find you in Ms. Palumbo’s company. Helping her was a mistake, you know. You might have thought you’ve been evading us all these years, but we’ve always known where you were. We could’ve reclaimed you whenever we wished. We hoped that giving you a long leash might help you discover what you did to upset the Balance and how to correct it. It appears that hope was in vain, though. Pity.”
Edgar pointed at the Driver and shouted, “Eat him down to the fucking bone!”
The beetles surged toward the Driver in a large black cloud.
The Driver’s smile didn’t falter as the beetles came at him. He then did something Lori hadn’t thought possible – he opened his eyes. The patches of skin stretched tight and split apart, blood running down his cheeks like red tears. The Driver had no eyeballs in his sockets, only twin pools of darkness. The ebon substance blasted forth from the Driver’s head to engulf the beetles, and they disappeared inside it, the buzzing of their wings suddenly muffled, as if the insects still flew, only now they were very far away. The darkness rushed back inside the Driver’s head, curling into his sockets like sentient smoke. When it was back where it belonged, the skin patches resealed, became smooth and unbroken, but the blood that had fallen onto his cheeks remained there.
The beetles were gone.
Edgar stared at the Driver in shocked disbelief.
“You motherfucker!” he shouted.
Before he could react any further, another pair of headlights appeared in the distance. This vehicle, however, had flashing red-and-blue lights on top.
Rauch, Lori thought.
She heard the rumble of a motorcycle engine then, and she turned to look in the other direction and saw a single headlight approaching. Goat-Eyes, she guessed. Who else would it be?
Did the Cabal have a way to contact each other, some kind of telepathy or simply a Nightway version of cell phones? Whichever the case, she felt certain the Driver had informed his fellow mystics of their location, and they were hauling ass here as fast as they could. How many had been traveling the Nightway in search of them? Just these three? More? Would the entire fucking Cabal converge on them in the next few minutes?
Lori thrust the Gravedigger Special toward Edgar, but he didn’t take it, didn’t even seem to notice she was offering it to him. He jumped off the van, clearly intending to confront the Driver, but when he hit the ground, he cried out in pain and his right prosthesis snapped. Lori didn’t know if it broke or became unattached, but either way, Edgar fell onto his side with an oompf.
“Graceful,” the Driver said, amused.
Anger flared bright in Lori, and she raised the Gravedigger Special, pointed it at the Driver, and fired. The weapon roared and bucked in her hand, and she thought for sure that the round had gone wild. But the tooth-bullet struck the Driver on the left shoulder. He staggered backward, letting out a cry of pain that Lori found deeply satisfying.
“Son of a bitch, that hurts!”
A dark stain appeared on the shoulder of the Driver’s robe, and Lori wanted to cheer. Whatever kind of being the Driver was, he bled just like anything else when he was hurt.
She was going to take another shot – hopefully this time she’d get the bastard in the heart – but before she could squeeze the trigger, Rauch came racing toward her in his police cruiser, lights flashing and siren blaring. She realized he intended to hit the van, and she had no choice but to jump. She threw herself into the air and was on the way down when the cruiser slammed into Edgar’s van, sending both vehicles spinning.
She landed on her feet, her bad knee screaming in agony, and then she hit the ground and rolled. She came to a stop lying on her side, her hands empty. She’d lost her grip on the Gravedigger Special when she landed, and she didn’t see the weapon in her immediate vicinity. It was then that she remembered Edgar. He’d been lying on the ground too, in front of the van, when Rauch—
She pushed herself up into a sitting position, ignored the pain blazing in her knee, and frantically searched for Edgar. She feared she’d see his broken body lying near the two wrecked vehicles, but he was on his feet and very much alive. Well, on his foot. His damaged prosthesis hung from his knee at an odd angle, forcing him to hop on his other one.
He was heading for the Driver. The mystic had pressed his left hand to his shoulder wound in an attempt to slow the bleeding, but the dark stain was still spreading. His teeth were gritted, features contorted in pain, and she remembered what Edgar had told her about the Gravedigger Special’s ammunition.
It fires the teeth of people who’ve died horrible, agonizing deaths. Their su
ffering is distilled into the teeth, and it’s released when they hit their target. Few things can withstand a concentrated dose of another being’s pain.
She was glad the fucker was hurting. She’d make him – and the rest of the goddamned Cabal – experience all the pain in the universe if she could.
Rauch, wearing his police uniform, exited the cruiser, seemingly unhurt after ramming his vehicle into the Pest Defense van. Too bad, Lori thought.
The rumble of the motorcycle engine grew louder, and an instant later, Goat-Eyes joined the rest of them. Like the Driver, she wore her Cabal robe, and Lori wondered how she was able to drive her bike without getting the hem’s fabric caught in the back wheel. It seemed to Lori that it would take as much supernatural power as anything else the Cabal did.
Goat-Eyes pulled her motorcycle up to the Driver’s car, parked, and dismounted.
The gang’s all here, Lori thought.
Ignoring the protestations of her knee, she rose to her feet. Whatever was going to happen next, she’d be damned if she’d face it lying down.
She looked around once more for the Gravedigger Special and this time she saw it, gleaming white against the Nightway’s glossy ebon surface, ten feet to her left.
Goat-Eyes had a cord of braided leather wrapped several times around her waist. A handle protruded from the coils, and Goat-Eyes took hold of it and yanked. The cord slipped loose, and when Goat-Eyes flicked her wrist, Lori realized she was holding a whip. It cracked loudly and flames burst to life along its length. Lori had to admit the effect was impressive. Goat-Eyes kept cracking the whip as she approached, and every time she did, the flames burned higher and hotter.
Smiling in triumph, the three Cabal members closed in on Lori and Edgar. Only the Driver was unarmed, but considering what his non-eyes could do, Lori knew he didn’t need any other weapon.
“Come with us willingly, Lori,” the Driver said, hand pressed to his shoulder wound, voice tight as he fought against the agonizing pain caused by the tooth-bullet. “If you do, I promise no harm will come to Edgar. We’ll leave him here without so much as mussing a hair on his head.”
“Of course, there’s no guarantee a predator won’t get him after we depart,” Goat-Eyes said.
“But that’s not our problem,” Rauch said. “Besides, he’s a wily veteran of the Nightway. If anyone can survive its dangers on foot – literally one foot – it’s him.”
“Don’t do it,” Edgar said, wobbling as he continued to try to maintain his balance. “You can’t trust them. They’ll probably kill me as soon as they get you out of here.”
“We wouldn’t do that,” Goat-Eyes protested. “We still have need of you.”
“By need, you mean you want to take him back to the tower and torture him,” Lori said.
Goat-Eyes shrugged. “One person’s torture is another’s bliss. We do what we must to maintain the Balance.”
The trio had continued moving as they spoke, and now they were less than fifteen feet from Lori and Edgar. Lori glanced at the Gravedigger Special again, tried to calculate the odds of her being able to get hold of the gun before the Cabal members could attack. She was no great mathematician, but she figured her chances were piss-poor.
Edgar extended his hands in a warning gesture.
“Stay back! Not all of my bugs are dead. They’ve multiplied since I escaped you, and I still got a fuck-ton inside me. If you so much as take another step closer, I’ll—”
Rauch raised his gun and fired.
Edgar’s head jerked as a bullet pierced his skull and entered his brain. The impact knocked him off balance and he fell to the ground, blood jetting from his wound. He turned to look at Lori one last time, but his eyes were already starting to glaze over, and she didn’t know if he actually saw her. Then he slumped over and fell still, mouth open, no beetles emerging from it.
“You idiot!” the Driver shouted. “He was bluffing – he didn’t have any more beetles inside him!”
“How was I supposed to know?” Rauch said. “He sounded very convincing.”
Goat-Eyes stared at Edgar’s body. The whip fell from her hand, and when it hit the ground, its flames extinguished.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” she said, nearly screaming the words.
Edgar’s sudden death shocked Lori to her core. She hadn’t known the man long or well, but he’d been a friend to her, helping her when she’d most needed it, and without any concern for his own safety. Fury at the Cabal – especially Rauch – overwhelmed her, and while the three mystics argued, she started toward the Gravedigger Special. She tried to run, but her fucking knee wouldn’t allow her to do more than a sort of shuffling hobble. She expected to hear Rauch fire his gun once more, expected to feel a bullet slam into her, but he didn’t. As if from a distance, she heard him arguing with his two companions, and she prayed the three would remain distracted just a few moments more.
Her knee gave out on her before she reached the gun, but as she fell, she stretched out her right arm as far as she could. As she smacked down onto the Nightway’s cold, smooth surface, her hand came down on the Gravedigger Special. She grabbed it, rolled onto her side, aimed at Rauch, and fired.
The tooth-bullet struck Rauch in the throat, and his head jerked backward. Blood jetted from his neck slits, and when the agony contained within the tooth was released into his system, he screamed. More blood gushed from his mouth, and for an instant he looked like some kind of grisly fountain. Then his body went limp and he fell to the ground.
“Fuck you!” Lori shouted in triumph.
The Driver and Goat-Eyes gaped at their companion’s corpse, and Lori wondered if they’d ever seen one of their own die before – or if they’d even believed any of them could die until this very moment.
By her count, the Gravedigger Special had five rounds left, and she intended to use them all. She aimed at the Driver, but before she could pull the trigger, she felt a tremor shudder through the ground beneath her, far stronger than the mild vibration that constantly hummed in the Nightway’s surface. She’d lived in Ohio all her life and had never experienced an earthquake, but she knew that was exactly what was happening now.
The four vehicles – the overturned van, the Driver’s car, Rauch’s cruiser, and Goat-Eyes’ motorcycle – shook and bounced. The motorcycle fell over with a crash, and both Goat-Eyes and the Driver fell too, unable to maintain their balance.
The tremors intensified, and Lori felt the ground actually ripple beneath her, as if the Nightway momentarily became water. She heard cracking sounds like breaking ice, and she watched as fissures – some small, some large – opened in the road’s obsidian surface. She couldn’t stand, couldn’t move. All she could do was hold tight to the Gravedigger Special so she wouldn’t lose it again and let the tremors do with her what they would. She had no idea how long the quake lasted, but eventually the tremors lessened before finally ceasing altogether.
She lay still for several moments, heart pounding, body bruised and aching. Her knee still hurt like hell, but she had more important things to concern her right now. She pushed herself into a sitting position and saw that the tremors had bounced and rolled Edgar’s body, and now he lay face down, arms splayed at awkward angles. His damaged prosthesis had broken entirely off and lay some distance away, while the other was now bent at a forty-five-degree angle. As she gazed upon her friend’s corpse, she became aware of a tickling sensation on the back of her left hand. She looked down and saw a black beetle – one of Edgar’s, she presumed – crawling on her skin. Ordinarily, the sight of such an insect on her body might’ve freaked her out, but she was emotionally numb after everything that had happened in the last several minutes. So instead of shaking her hand to dislodge the beetle, she raised it to her head and tilted it to encourage the insect to crawl off. She felt it scuttle onto her head, where it nestled into her hair and fell still. Maybe
one of Edgar’s friends had escaped being swallowed by the darkness inside the Driver’s head. Or maybe Edgar had had one last beetle inside him after all, and the earthquake had shaken it loose. Either way, a piece of him had survived, and she didn’t intend to leave it behind.
She looked up then, startled to see the Driver standing over her. He still had one hand pressed to his shoulder wound, but he held out his other hand, and without pausing to consider whether it was a good idea, she took it and let him help her to her feet. He winced in pain from the effort but did not cry out. Goat-Eyes walked over to join them. Her face was ashen, as if she was terrified, and the Driver didn’t look much better.
“What the hell was that?” Lori asked.
The Driver spoke first. “Edgar died before he could discover how he upset the Balance and take action to correct his mistake. And now that the Imbalance cannot be rectified by any other means––”
“The Intercessor has decided to step in,” Goat-Eyes finished. Her voice was respectful, almost worshipful, but also suffused with fear.
Lori remembered hearing that word – Intercessor – in the Vermilion Tower.
“Isn’t that your people’s god or something?” she asked.
“The Intercessor is much more than a mere god,” the Driver said. “It is the ultimate keeper of the Balance between worlds. The members of the Cabal act as its agents, but when we are unable to correct an Imbalance ourselves, the Intercessor rouses from its slumber to tend to the task itself.”
“It hasn’t woken for millennia,” Goat-Eyes said. “In all that time, we haven’t failed to fulfill our duties.”
“Until now,” Lori said.
“Yes,” the Driver said.
Lori remembered seeing the Vermilion Tower for the first time, when the Driver had brought her to it. She had been struck by the structure’s spiral, almost organic-looking, shape, and she’d imagined it as the horn of a gigantic beast whose body was almost entirely hidden beneath the ground. She realized then that her imagining had been right. The Vermilion Tower was part of the Intercessor, and the creature was now awake.
