The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  She went to the Dojo three times a week strictly for two reasons. The first was for heavy bag work, where she perfected her skills and tried to increase her speed and striking power. The second and more important reason that she went was for sparring, which was simply in essence, mock combat between two individuals. Because she frequently disregarded the 'mock' part of the combat, she wasn't allowed to spar with any of the other girls anymore. This was fine with her. At five feet eight inches and one hundred and thirty pounds, she was even too much for many of the boys to handle.

  "I can't believe you let Adam sweat all over you every week," Megan whispered. "Gross, gross and more gross!"

  Katie gave a little fake embarrassed shrug. "I suppose you're right, but he doesn't really have any friends and I don't want to mean."

  "I say you need to start being mean."

  The bus jerked away from the curb and Katie cast her eyes out of the window as she always did. The next stop was hers and the bus would pull up just about seventy yards from her driveway. Out of an ingrained vigilance, Katie kept her eyes out as her street approached.

  "Cindy saw you running this morning. Isn't it way too early to get ready for track season?" Megan asked. Though the brunette was slim, it wasn't due to any exercise and she seemed to dislike that her best friend spent so much time at it.

  "No, I only have five months to get ready," Katie had meant for this to be a bit of a joke, but her words fell flat out of her mouth. They were pulling up to her stop and instead of seeing her driveway empty as always, there were two long cars parked outside of her house and her attention was riveted on them. A man in black leaned up against the nearer of the two. He glanced up toward the bus and as he did, his hand went to his mouth, stayed for a second, and came back down to his side.

  "Megan, can I get off at your stop?" Katie whispered with some urgency, slumping down in her seat. The man was smoking! Her mother would never have allowed that within five hundred yards of her home, not with the way her father had been feeling lately. There was something wrong. This time she was sure of it.

  "Sure, why..."

  "Mr. Jenkins? I'm getting off at Megan's stop, if you don't mind." Mr. Jenkins shrugged indifferently and pulled away even before he had a chance to stop.

  "What's going on Katie?" Megan asked, eyeing her as if hoping for something juicy.

  "Uh...uh, it's my grandmother," Katie lied. "She would freak out if...uh, she saw me dressed in sweats. She likes me in dresses and high heels."

  "I can't say as I blame her, if I had your figure, I'd never wear sweats." Megan blew out in exasperation. "I can't wait till my boobs start to grow."

  Now it was Katie's turn to be exasperated. The two of them had this conversation a dozen times already and she really wanted to focus instead on what she was going to do about whoever was at her house. It's probably nothing, she told herself. Aloud she said vaguely to Megan, "You only just turned fourteen. They'll come in, don't worry. Just look at your sister."

  "How can I not? She parades around the house naked, showing them off."

  Two minutes later, the bus began slowing down again and Katie motioned for her friend to get up, only she wouldn't and Katie, feeling deepening anxiety, stepped over her. "Sorry, I'll call you."

  She was the first off and without ceremony she began jogging back the way the bus had come, her big freshman backpack smacking into her every second step. The land this close to the Sonoran desert was rugged and lonely and seemed comprised solely of dried out gullies, nasty choking scrub brush, and windswept hills. As soon as Katie crested the first of these hills, she tugged her backpack off, unzipped an inner pocket, and pulled out the four-inch jack knife she kept hidden in a nest of tampons.

  She stashed the bag under a thick stand of scrub and took off in a loping run, thankful that Megan's bus stop was basically all uphill from her own. First, she ran along the lee side of the hill for about a quarter of a mile away from the road until she saw a good spot to head toward her house. Even from a mile away, the house was visible and obvious. It was the only one on this side of the road and looked like a lonely fort in the middle of Indian country.

  As she closed on it, the land flattened somewhat and at moments the house was visible and at others, such as when she ran down into one of the many gullies and fissures torturing the landscape, it couldn't be seen at all. At about a hundred yards she slowed and began to use as much cover as nature could provide. A steep fissure ran to within twenty yards of the deck in their back yard and she used it to get as close as possible.

  When she could go no further, she slowly peeked her head up, using an arrayed cactus as cover. There was a man, Hispanic by the look of him, framed in the glass of her family room window. For a moment, he stared out into the desert and then turned away. Katie had never seen him before. Her anxiety reached a new deeper level within her, seeming to sit smack dab in the middle of her chest.

  She didn't know what to do. It was very possible that this man and the other one she'd seen had every right to be at her house. They could be friends of her parents. Or contractors of some sort, it wouldn't be the first time. But then again it wouldn't be the first time that she had over reacted and freaked out for nothing. Once she'd called the cops on a plumber. And another time she had been exactly two seconds away from getting caught snooping through the truck owned by their landscapers. They had hired someone new. Someone, who in her mind, had skin a little too light to be a proper landscaper.

  To Katie, he had a sallow tint to him and that had been enough to brand him as gypsy. She hated and feared gypsies with a passion. But in that circumstance, the man was just getting over a case of jaundice and it turned out to be nothing. Yet as always, it was better safe than sorry. Only she had been sorry so many times that lately she had begun to worry that her obsession had turned into paranoia. Not the silly teen paranoia which was all about self-aggrandizement and the egocentric: everything is about me attitude. No, she worried about her actual mental state.

  There were just so many more people in high-school and she had begun to see gypsies at every turn. By her second week, Katie had started keeping a list and rated every person in the school based on their threat level. Janitors, teachers, the football coach, all were on the list. Every kid that was new to her went into her book, but then she began to add old acquaintances from middle school. Kids that she thought she knew, but who now began to look different to her.

  Even her best friend Megan was on the list and was rated as a two. After all, there was a chance that she could be coerced or blackmailed. But blackmailed into doing what? Whenever Katie could step back away from her obsession, she could see that it was unhealthy and getting worse, but she couldn't seem to stop herself.

  It was a compulsion. The raven-haired girl on the bus, who had been rated as a six, would be unknowingly subject to a rather personal investigation. Discreet inquiries would be made as to where she lived, where she came from, who her family and friends were, and what her parents did for a living. Her knowledge of Spanish would be tested by Katie, who was fast becoming fluent. The rating of six wouldn't drop unless all the questions had been answered in a thorough and complete manner and then, if the girl was lucky, the rating would go to a four.

  The men at the house, who had done nothing as far as Katie knew, had already subconsciously been rated as nines. It was a scary rating. Scary for Katie. Her mind was on the edge of paranoia and she knew, but pretended that she didn't, that if one of them made a false or sudden move while she was too close, she could very well bury her knife in his belly.

  She looked down at the knife. The blade was out and shining at her. She folded it closed, not knowing when she had opened it.

  "It's probably nothing," she whispered. Not for a second did she believe it and wouldn't until the men broke out saws and hammers and began building a cabinet or some such, and even then there would be doubts in her mind.

  It was an obsession. And the obsession ran all the way down into her toes, s
o that as the man turned away from the window, Katie darted forward without even thinking. She sprinted for her house keeping her eyes locked on the man's back ready to dive to the ground if he so much as twitched in her direction. Her feet were quick and light, guided by her peripheral vision and she was at the deck in seconds, crouching low at first and then crawling along so that she was hidden by the patio furniture.

  Her mind began exploring realistic sounding excuses as to why she was there just in case her mother came out, but then voices came to her from one of the open living room windows. She crawled closer.

  A woman's voice came out with startling clarity, "Ugh! That's horrible. You killed my mother with that?"

  Katie froze. The voice was known to her, but she couldn't place it just yet, especially since what had just been said was so bizarre and unexpected.

  "I didn't, but I would have. Your mom was a sadistic evil person and she deserved everything that she got." That was her father and he sounded...strong. Even angry. To hear him like that, so much like his old self, settled the flame of fear that had been whisking about her insides. Whatever was going on, Katie knew that her father would take care of it.

  "Gag them both."

  The fear that had just been subsiding erupted again inside of her and now it was much greater. She had to know what was going on and she decided to poke her head up to see, but just then a different man went and stood by the glass door that led from the deck to the kitchen. The deck was a large square that took up the inner angle where two of the wings of the house came together. There were two doors that opened on to it, one to the kitchen and the other to the family room and she was trapped between the two, hidden only by a wicker couch and a barbeque grill.

  She hunkered back down and began to tremble from head to toe. The realization struck her hard—her father wasn't suddenly going to take care of things like she thought.

  The woman spoke again, "Close your eyes, Gayle. You don't want to see this." There was a pause and Katie's heart stopped beating. What didn't she want to see? What was going on?

  "Have it your way then," the woman added.

  A strange muffled roared, followed a second later by a woman's scream split the air. It went on and on and Katie began to whimper, tears dripping down her face. All her Taekwondo training was forgotten, as were her lists, her vigilance, and hyperawareness. She was no longer anything that she thought she had been. Gone was the woman on a mission who had prepared herself for the next attack on her family. In her place was a fourteen-year-old girl who above all wanted to run away.

  Sobbing came now. It was her mother crying out in wretched misery. The sound was of the deepest grief and Katie knew what it meant, her father was dead. Now she began to cry in earnest as well, complete with great slobbery tears and a hitching chest, but she was afraid of being heard and in desperation she clamped her hand over her wet mouth. In a minute, she was able to control herself to a degree, but her mother wouldn't stop crying and it was a pain that went right to Katie's soul. So Katie took her hands from her mouth and covered her ears and closed her eyes.

  There was nothing about this she wished to hear or to see. Mumbling got past her fingers yet still she cringed defying the brutishness of the world, letting her tears drain down her face in silence. But then the phone rang and its shrill noise penetrated into her awareness.

  Hope flared at the sound and she removed her hands from her ears and waited. Everything seemed to wait; the house, the wind, even the insects enjoying the heat stopped what they were doing. Nature itself paused to hear who had called.

  It was her brother, Willy J. In that brief phone call, he explained everything and now Katie knew who the woman was. It was Amy Harris and she was here for the sword. Katie's immature mind reeled, but then her mom started screaming about revenge, and about Talitha being a monster and Will's powers.

  It seemed to light a fire under the people in the house but it didn't help Katie at all. Her mom was going to die, just as her father had and Katie would have no one. She would be alone, just as the desert.

  Because of the awful screams, Katie guessed that Amy Harris had used the sword on her father and it wasn't something she wanted to hear a second time. She loved her mother dearly, however she feared anew for her sanity. If she heard her mother die in the same way as her father, she figured her mind would simply cave in on itself.

  She had no choice but to make a run for it.

  With slow, slow movements, she poked her head up, only to drop back down again. There was another man in the kitchen. A second later, there was a small thump almost above her—one of the Hispanics that she had seen earlier leaned against the window. Fortunately he was looking out at the tired view and not down.

  She froze in place. For a very long time, over an hour, she laid there with the man above her. For some reason they hadn't killed her mother, which was a relief, however it was only a slight one since the men above her seemed to be settling in and Katie realized she would have a long wait beneath the wicker couch. Because of the angles of the windows, she felt relatively safe there, yet she knew that if anyone were to actually come out onto the deck she'd be in big trouble.

  As she lay uncomfortably, she pondered all of what had happened and what she'd heard and guessed that the sword wasn't exactly what Amy had thought it would be. It was Amy's scream that had mingled with her father's—clearly it had hurt her in some way. Katie's reaction? She grinned with barred wolf teeth.

  But if they weren't going to kill her mom, what were they waiting for? It seemed odd that they were hanging around, since they had the sword. It made no sense. Unless they were waiting for Willy J and Talitha. They'd be fools if they were. In the early days after the demon had come, Katie had seen what her sister could do. She had somehow grown cruel and monstrously strong. Talitha threw men twice her size around with ease and broke bones as if she were snapping twigs. Only Willy J seemed able to control her.

  He could see into the future now. He could see all her punches coming and he was fast. Nobody seemed quicker. And he was big. So if they were waiting for her brother and sister, they were only waiting around to get their butts kicked.

  Unless they had help coming. A thousand goose bumps tented upwards on Katie's skin. Perhaps they were going to bring the demon back. The girl feared the demon more than anything, more than any gypsy-witch, that was certain. The demon was in her every nightmare. It was the reason beneath her paranoia. And if they were going to bring the demon back, that meant they weren't waiting for Willy J or Talitha, hey were waiting for a virgin. They were waiting for her—Katie Jern

  A movement in the kitchen caught her attention and she saw that for once no one stood looking out. Quickly she turned to see if there was anyone above her staring out of the living room window and that too seemed clear. To be on the safe side she rose and peeked into the room. There was a thuggish looking Mexican in the love seat, idling playing with a long knife, and on the couch her mom bound at the wrist and ankles lay across the dead body of her father. Tears sprang again to Katie's eyes, but she blinked them back.

  Now was not the time to cry. Now was the time to be strong, as strong as she could be. Amy and her foul gang were waiting on a helpless, innocent, little girl and if Katie wanted to save her mother she would have to be anything but helpless, or innocent for that matter.

  She made to duck back down, only at that moment, she saw the sword. It lay as if forgotten against the wall next to doorway of the family room.

  How very strange that it was just sitting there. The thug who sat in the love seat turned slightly and gave it a queer look. He acted as if the sword would jump up and stab him on its own. Katie realized that the man was definitely afraid of it and since no one else had picked it up, she guessed that they all were. A smirk enveloped her face at their cowardice. Her brother wasn't afraid. He had possessed that blade for something close to four years and yet he didn't shy away from it.

  Their fear of the thing gave her a touch of courage and
Katie began slithering backwards beneath the couch. Her plan was to crawl away and then call the police from their nearest neighbor, the Tremens, who lived just about a half mile away on the other side of the road. But unfortunately, just as she came abreast of the family room door someone strode into the kitchen. It was Amy Harris.

  The newfound courage in Katie turned into a fire of hatred, burning her insides. Amy's back was to her and just then, Katie could have wormed her way off the porch and fled, but she didn't. Eight years ago, her father hadn't run away, nor had her mother. They had saved her.

  "Pedro!" Amy called.

  At this, there was a general movement toward the kitchen by all of the men and Katie saw that the family room was left unguarded. Without hesitation, she reached up a sly hand and pulled the door open toward her and slipped in. She crawled low so as not to be seen by the group in the kitchen and went to the three-foot wall that separated the living room from the family room.

  "Are the cops coming?" one of the men, likely Pedro, asked. His tone bordered on insulting.

  The words seemed very loud to Katie and they stopped her just as she was about to take a glimpse over the wall. Now there was a pause and this time she rose her head up the slightest amount and looked. The kitchen was crowded about with a number of men, and it was a bit of shock to the young girl to see that one of them carried a gun stuffed down the back of his waistband. This was something she hadn't noticed before and it sent a sour shiver running in her guts.

  The look on Amy Harris' face also gave her a turn. She wore a smile of nasty contentment, as if there was pain in the offing and that she would be on the giving end.

  The smile seemed to bother the man Katie thought of as Pedro as well. "I only asked cause we need to think about, ya know, gettin outta here."