by Brian Hodge
Copeland’s jaw clenched. He had no words, either for the major or for himself.
Debra’s voice drifted to them. “Please, just stop it. I know what you intend to do.”
Martin turned to her. “I’m sorry, Debra. What we’re attempting is absolutely necessary. You must understand that.”
“I do understand. That’s why I’m going with Russ.”
“Debra…”
“If he doesn’t make it to the end, someone will have to finish the job.”
For once, Martin appeared defeated, unable to summon the energy or the will to oppose his daughter. “If you do,” he said, “at the end of the day, in all likelihood, all three of us will be dead.”
Copeland gazed at Debra, suddenly remembering the thrill of her touch, how fervently they had made love. She smiled sadly at him; he made himself turn away.
Martin then gave them both long, searching looks. “Tell me, though. When you were in there, at the Barrows, you didn’t learn anything about Elise, did you?”
Debra’s eyes glimmered. “Levi told me if I cooperated with him, Mom wouldn’t be harmed.” After a long pause, she added, “But he was lying. I know it.”
The older man lowered his head. “Yes. If she were alive, I would know. I’d know it.”
Empathetic grief tugged at Copeland’s heart as Debra’s shoulders slumped. “So would I,” she whispered. “And I don’t. I don’t know it.”
As the silence between them grew longer. Martin nodded to himself, as if coming to grips with his own decision. “It’s time we did this. This new one…it moves faster than the Lumeras did. It will anchor itself quickly.”
“What do we do? How do we begin?” Debra asked.
“First, I’ll have to go to sleep. It won’t take long; once that thing has hold of you, it keeps pulling you back.” He smiled sardonically. “Then I’ll dream a portal for you, like the one that brought you here. Step through it. I know it’s disconcerting, but it won’t harm you. You’ll be back at the point where you left. Then—assuming Amos is still there—you’ll have to make your way inside the house. Get as close to the Zuso Xhan Mat as you can. I don’t know at what point, but as the stones come into proximity, there will be a…reaction.”
“What kind of reaction?” Copeland asked.
“At first, just pressure. You know what it’s like to try to push the like-charged poles of two magnets together? Not unlike that. Beyond that, though, I can’t say. I can only hope the forces destroy each other. They’ve got to.”
“Anything else?”
Martin reached behind him and produced a pistol—an Army-issue Beretta M9—from his belt. He handed it to Copeland. “You may need this to use this against Amos. You can’t afford to let him stand in your way. Beyond that, I don’t know that it’ll do you any good.”
He tucked the gun in his waistband. “Thanks. Well, I guess I’d better get started before I change my mind.”
“We,” Debra corrected him. “You mean we had better get started.”
He gave her a long, wistful look and sighed resignedly. “We.”
Taking a deep breath, Martin lifted the softly pulsing gemstone and placed it in Copeland’s waiting, trembling hand.
The thing felt frigid, and the throbbing light inside it seemed to change its rhythm. Its surface felt slick, as if coated with oil, and he had to grasp it firmly to prevent it slipping from his fingers. With a scowl of distaste, he slipped the stone into his pocket.
“I gather you don’t need to keep this close to you when you’re asleep?”
“Now that I’m attuned to it, I could go to China and it wouldn’t make any difference.”
“China doesn’t sound so bad right now.”
Martin chuckled wryly. Then he turned, took his daughter in his arms, and held her as if he did not intend to let her go. Finally, he whispered something in her ear and released her, his eyes glistening with tears. He appeared so frail and fatigued that Copeland feared he might collapse before he even lay down to dream. But with heartfelt sincerity, he clasped Copeland’s hand and said, “Something tells me that, at the end of it all, we won’t even get to see what we’ve wrought. But good luck, Russ. This is for those we’ve lost.”
“For those we’ve lost,” he said, squeezing the other’s hand.
Martin then turned and shuffled back toward the corner by the painted window. “I’ve got a cot back here. It’ll only take a minute or so for me to start dreaming. I can feel that thing’s hold on me as we speak.”
Debra pressed close to Copeland, watching her father’s retreating figure. When he rounded a corner and disappeared in the darkness, a single, soft sob escaped her lips.
Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he said. “I know I can’t talk you out of this. So I might as well tell you I’m glad you’re with me. I don’t know how I could do this alone.”
She offered him a weak smile. “Scared, are you?”
“A bit.”
“Liar.”
“A lot.”
“I thought so. You know, though…you’ve done okay in my book. You went through your own hell, but you still managed to come for me.”
He squeezed her warmly. “I couldn’t bear the idea of losing you. Not after what we went through together.”
The look she gave him thrilled him so deeply that, for a few blissful moments, he completely forgot his terror. “You know, back at the cabin—just before the Lumeras attacked—I told you I loved you. You didn’t hear me. But looking back, I think you knew it somehow.”
She smiled. “I knew it before then.”
“Like when?”
“Like the night you got here and watched me through your window.”
His jaw went slack and he stared disbelievingly at her. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”
A few feet away from them, a jade-green globe surrounded by whirling, orbiting sparkles winked into existence and hovered a yard or so above the floor. Slowly, it began to drift toward them, gradually expanding like an inflating balloon, soon becoming large enough to swallow them both. From it, they could hear the strains of a dark, distant chorale…ominous, yet alluring.
As the thing began to close over them and Copeland prepared himself for the onslaught of unknown, frigid forces, Debra embraced him and fiercely pressed her lips to his. He lost himself in her kiss, so that when the cold hit him with the force of a tsunami, he neither felt it nor cared about where it might carry his body.
The last thing he heard was Debra’s voice whispering, “I love you too.”
Chapter 23
The second exit from the jade abyss affected Copeland more drastically than the first; this time, the chill didn’t leave his bones for a full minute, and his sparse reserve of energy seemed loath to return. But having emerged right in the middle of his worst nightmare, he quickly summoned the strength to scramble to the shelter of a stand of ordinary-looking pine trees at the edge of the Barrow property, pulling Debra with him. They fell behind a cluster of thick boles on the edge of a small hillock, which offered them a clear view of the Barrow house, a hundred or so yards away. He wasn’t sure he possessed the will to cross that open space, though, for doing so would expose him to eyes of the multitudes of luminous things that sailed ceaselessly across the purple sky, or the titanic black globe, which stood miles and miles above the earth on its dozens of arched, buttress-like legs.
Innumerable rents in the sky continuously hurled bolts of black lightning at the smoking tower, which appeared battered and somehow less substantial than before. The new, globe-like thing must be the equivalent of the Lumera’s onyx structure, he thought, seeking to anchor itself in the waking world until it formed a permanent bridge to the realm of its nightmarish origin. Each occupied its own opposing corner of the sky, and the dark music had given way to peals of low thunder, which rumbled across the landscape like the threatening voices of monstrous, inhuman adversaries, either of which could crush the life from any mere human with the audacity to challenge them.
Copeland peered intently at the Barrow house and soon spied Amos in his upstairs window, listless and despondent, silently watching the clash of astral forces, neither of which involved him any longer. Totally self-absorbed, he probably still did not realize what had happened inside his own house—that his remaining family had been wiped out by the very things he had called down. No sympathy from this quarter, Copeland thought; the old man had had every opportunity to choose differently.
“I’ve got to get across that field,” he said softly, fearing that something alien might detect his voice even above the distant thunder. “And there’s only one way to do it.”
“Yeah. On foot.”
“All right. I want you to stay here and keep an eye on me. If I make it as far as the house, then you come. We can’t afford for both of us to get caught in the open.”
She looked as if she were going to protest, but then thought better of it. “All right. At least that rock of Dad’s protected him from the Lumeras. No reason it shouldn’t protect you, too.”
“No telling what else there is to worry about now.” He threw a glance at the vast, black, planet-like shape that dominated the southern sky. “I wonder what your dad learned about that.”
“When this is all over, hopefully we can ask him.”
He shrugged noncommittally. Then, taking a deep, preparatory breath, he reached into his pocket and withdrew the cold, slick gemstone, radiating pale green, shifting and curdling like a phosphorescent liquid. As he held the object up before him, its inner light coalesced into a small, brilliant orb, like a luminous cat’s eye, which peered curiously back at him, as if committing his features to memory. The force within it—or rather, behind and beyond it—was apparently in contact with Debra’s father, many miles away. What if Martin should wake up and sever the connection? Or, God forbid, he should die? Would Copeland suddenly be rendered vulnerable, his mission useless?
No; the thing had shielded Martin from the Lumera’s attack even when he was awake.
Such speculation was pointless, he reminded himself. He either succeeded or he failed; there was no in-between, and close didn’t count.
“Well,” he said, offering her a look of as much reassurance as he could muster, “I guess I’m off. If I make it all the way, then you come running. Fast as you can.”
She nodded her agreement. “I don’t guess saying ‘be careful’ means much. But be careful.”
“If something happens to me…” He swallowed hard. “Just remember.”
Her voice went weak. “I will.”
He turned toward the house. Took a deep breath. And then his legs were pumping fast and hard, the broad field opening up before him, passing beneath his feet, becoming a gray-green blur, the chorus of dark voices roiling around him. As he ran, he again felt as if gravity had released him, leaving him light as a feather, the ground offering little resistance, reducing his traction. It was no illusion; with every step, he sprang higher into the air, yet his forward momentum steadily diminished. Halfway across the field, the ramshackle house seemed just as far away as when he broke from the trees, and he found himself virtually floating above the earth, working his arms against the air as if he were swimming. Conversely, the gemstone had begun to grow heavier, dragging his right hand earthward, interfering with the rhythm of his stride. The contradictory forces threatened to destabilize him—more mentally than physically, he thought, for the sensation was too alien, too suggestive of the unearthly forces he was springing headlong to meet. It was his mind, not his limbs, resisting acclimation.
Just as Martin had intimated, despite the lightness of his body, it felt like pushing against a powerful, opposing magnetic force.
He tried to divert his mind from his objective, to focus on anything other than the doom that awaited him within the next few minutes. He thought back to his childhood, remembering his mom and dad, how deeply they had loved Lynette and him, how proud Dad had been of his academic achievements at Byston Hill, his ambitions to succeed at a life far away from rural West Virginia. If his folks were around today, what would they think of what he was doing now?
No…turn the mind another way. Not back here.
God, it was hard to focus on anything for more than a moment or two. He realized that the gem, which he now had to support with both hands, had become a fiery green star, blazing so brightly that it could not fail to capture any eye that might glance his way.
Debra was still watching him, sending all her hopes with him. Not just for the two of them, but for her father, and the world they had once known.
What an incredible woman, one he wished he had met long ago, instead of crazy Megan, who would surely be in stitches over his current predicament. Rushing to a cliff just to pitch himself over the edge, all the while hoping he could fly; that’s what she’d be thinking. That he was on a fool’s errand, which could end in nothing less than a fool’s death. How could he even think he might deserve the affection—the love—of a woman like Debra Harrington? Or even the respect and trust of her father?
Jesus, how could the wounds from his old breakup still be so raw? Was this just one of the things his mind needed to hash out before he met his final destiny? Could it be that, deep down, he still believed Megan might have been at least partially right? That, in spite of whatever success he had achieved, he was still an insecure, immature, West Virginia redneck who had, because of his parents’ wherewithal, rather than his own, enjoyed better fortune than the rest of his peers—two of whom had met their end, only a few hours earlier?
STOP IT!
Gravity had increased its hold. Still, the house seemed infinitely distant, miles and miles away, but in the upper window, he glimpsed Amos Barrow—who had no doubt noticed the advancing green flame, which to him could herald nothing less than the approach of death itself. He could not yet make out the old man’s features; just a pale, bloated-looking face highlighted by a dim, electric blue glow.
Yes. He still held the Zuso Xhan Mat.
Suddenly, Copeland’s next step did not send him springing almost helplessly into the air but barely propelled him at all. At the edge of his hearing, something seemed to be mumbling words, almost but not quite intelligible. Not a human voice, but articulate thunder. Weight returned with a vengeance, and now the gem was a boulder, pulling him into the depths of a vast, unearthly drowning pool. Slowly, he became aware of a hot gaze bearing down on him from above. No mistaking its power, the dark intelligence behind it, even if his own eyes had yet to meet it. It bore deliberately down upon him, a scorching sun on the exposed back of desert wanderer, sapping his strength, his resolve. It tried to draw his eyes upward, but he somehow resisted, fearing that meeting so potent a gaze would vaporize him on the spot, ending his mission before he got far enough for Debra to finish it. Instead, he focused solely on the house, on the figure of Amos Barrow, whose features he could now see, peering back at him with a curious expression, as if he were no more significant than a raccoon or a deer that had wandered out of the woods.
Even now, that idiot didn’t realize how precarious his hold on life had become.
Something powerful and fiery, like an arc of electricity, seized his body, gripping his neck and tugging his head back, so that his face could not help but lift to the sky. He clenched his eyes shut, felt the incredible power burning his forehead, his cheeks, burrowing into the knife wounds, which began to throb anew. Then hot, invisible fingers moved to pry open his eyes, and no amount of willpower could fend them off. With a hoarse curse, he stumbled forward, tried to throw himself to the ground, anything to prevent viewing the thing that had singled him out and taken hold of his muscles.
The cat’s eye in the stone had begun to pulse rapidly and brilliantly, and now that dark, ethereal chorus of inhuman voices roared down from the sky, swept over him, and drove into his head through his ears, building to a swirling crescendo that shook his whole body, threatened to scatter it to atoms. He dragged himself a few more steps, his neck on the verge o
f breaking as invisible puppet strings wrenched his head inexorably upward.
Jesus, God.
The vast black globe, no longer supported by spidery legs but floating free, like a marauding, onyx planet, had expanded in the violet sky, dominating its entire southern half, seemingly drifting nearer—on a collision course with the earth. Dizzy and nauseated, he dropped to his knees and remained there, paralyzed, his eyes throbbing as a hideous force threatened to tear them from their sockets. The pressure of the music mounted in his skull, and a pale green halo began to form around the black moon, gradually revealing strange features upon its distant, onyx surface.
No, not upon but behind its surface. The thing seemed to be slowly turning transparent, and now he saw within the globe a wavering, disembodied face, like a jade-colored death mask suspended inside a liquid-filled crystal ball. It was not human face; maybe not a face at all. Just a flat, two-dimensional lozenge shape with wide, circular openings he took to be eyes, completely empty, yet radiating awareness…and recognition.
This was what Major Martin had called down to destroy the Lumeras?
My God, compared to this nightmare, the Lumeras were angels.
The alien tower, tall and spindly, still pierced the northern sky, but it appeared fragile and innocuous compared to this new horror. Overhead, the vast globe slowly began to distort, the lower end elongating, the other swelling, becoming an inverted pear shape—a head outside its depthless, leering face. The empty eyes continued to study him, their hot gaze flaying the skin from his bones, revealing everything inside him down to his heart and soul.
It wondered what he was doing—and why.
Jesus. If the thing determined his true intention, surely it could—and would—obliterate him instantly.
Just don’t let it know. Don’t let it know.
He managed to tear his eyes away long enough to glance at the Barrow house, now tantalizingly close, its back door still gaping wide. If he could escape the searching gaze of the thing in the sky, maybe the pressure would subside, allow him to proceed to the bitter end, all thought of which he desperately blocked from his mind—both for his sanity’s sake and for fear that the extra-dimensional intelligence might somehow pluck his thoughts directly from his brain.
