The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  With a start, Talitha spun around fully expecting to see someone behind her, but there was nothing but endless desert. Still, she stared about, feeling as if there was someone right there. "It's all in your head!" This she hissed at herself in anger. Saying the words helped. "It's all in your head," she repeated and took off in a low sprint heading further out to the west of the house. It was all in her head, for now. But too soon that wouldn't be the case. The other Talitha was coming and this one, the one who used to be so sweet was doing all she could to hold her back, again, for now.

  The far west side of the house was taken up by a large pantry, a laundry room, and the three-car garage. Talitha had to scramble slowly along the slope of a hill eighty yards from the house to keep it in view, but it paid off as she saw a face framed in one of the glass panes of the garage door. It was a man's face and though she saw him clearly, she was invisible to him as she moved on to the back of the house stealthy as a cat. Here was the length of the T, it held the four bedrooms and at the first angle, she saw another two men peering from windows. Two more men were situated in a couple of different rooms facing out of the next angle, this held a wide deck that sat with a scattering of furniture upon it.

  A long few minutes went by as Talitha paused to see if anyone else would show themselves and when they didn't, she dashed off for where she had left her brother. She didn't get far; unexpectedly she came upon a new scent and a large grouping of unsullied tracks. In a flash, Talitha was down on her knees sniffing at the ground. Katie had come by here, but she wasn't alone. Amy and seven or eight men had trouped along with her, heading in a northeast direction.

  A long time Talitha considered where they went and why. As she did, standing staring out along the tracks, her pretty face turned into a harsh mask of anger. Amy had her sister! What a waste of a fine virgin! Useless moronic Amy was going to call the demon and knowing her, she would just screw it up. Talitha fumed in silence and had even began to sprint down the trail of footprints when another shooting star zipped by low in the horizon.

  "Oh God." Talitha stopped in a daze and her hand went to her head. "It's too soon damn it." She couldn't make the change just yet. Instead, she tore off, flashing across the desert in a dead sprint crossing the half-mile of broken land in a minute and a half.

  "Will!" her call had her brother scurrying from the second car and in a moment she was surrounded by men, Father Vogel among them. She gave them the layout of the house as well as the dispersion of Amy's thugs and the entire time she kept her eyes down, not daring to look into Will's or the priest's faces.

  "How old was Katie's trail, could you tell?" her brother asked.

  "A half an hour at least but likely closer to an hour. They could be four miles away by now."

  And I'm the only one who has any chance of getting there before it's too late, before Amy goes and fucks this up. What I wouldn't give to have Katie for myself. I would force Ba'al to set me up in hell right. I would make the Void my kingdom!

  The thought staggered her and she forced her face into a mask that she hoped would convey some sort of neutral look instead of the intense shame that she felt.

  "An hour's a long time. Maybe Zeke and I should go with Talitha and..." Will began, but Abraham cut him off.

  "No. We can't afford to split up. The layout of the home and the disposition of the bad guys, makes me worried. They'll have overlapping fields of fire no matter what direction we take. Either we all go after Amy or we all attack the house, but we don't divide our forces in the face of a superior force. That's just basic."

  "I say, while we take on the guys at the house, the girl goes alone after Amy and gets a rundown on that sitch and then reports back. She wouldn't be any good otherwise, it's not like we're gonna give her a gun or anything," Jake offered.

  This was exactly what Talitha wanted and it brought a thrill running down her back that she couldn't seem to stop.

  Will had his eyes down to the compacted dun-colored dirt. "Fine. That's the plan then. Talitha get going and hurry back." Talitha couldn't stop her eager feet, they started off even before Will finished speaking. He grabbed her and brought her around. "Look, if the demon isn't there, do what you can to take out Amy. Can I trust you with a gun?"

  She pictured shooting her brother in the eye and watching with a smile as his brains exploded out the back of his head. Her face turned a dead pale that was visible despite the night and somehow, she was able to shake her head, no.

  "I understand, I think," he paused seeming unsure of himself. "Tal, it's going to be ok. You aren't going to the Void again. I won't let it happen. Do you hear me? Stay Talitha. Stay yourself. Don't change to the other girl, please." She nodded, but looked terribly unconvincing, which caused Will to have second thoughts. "Maybe you should..."

  "No, I can't stay. If I waste any more time, Katie is doomed for sure. You take care of those bad guys and don't worry about me, I'm in control." The words were a shock to her own ears. They had come from her mouth, but she hadn't spoken them. And now it was Talitha that felt as if she was peering over someone else's shoulder. No! It's too early. She tried to scream this, but nothing left her lips.

  Will nodded at the stranger and the stranger smiled in return, playing her part to perfection. A second later, she was racing off across the desert, sniffing the air. Talitha struggled to get control of her body back, but it was in vain and when the stranger stooped and found a round smooth rock that fit the palm of her hand so nicely. Talitha's thoughts began to dissipate beneath an avalanche of hate and malice. It felt as if she were drowning in a black evil and slowly she was being sucked under.

  Chapter 19

  Katie

  For ages Katie laid there behind the couch with her hands stuffed in her ears, waiting for the horrible screams of her mother to creep through the cracks of her fingers, however, other than a few slaps, Amy and her thugs had left her alone. Eventually, Katie became bored and tried to listen in on the conversation of the Mexican thugs. Every ten minutes or so, the leader of the gang came around to check on Diablo and the man sitting in the family room. Pedro would usually give just a short pep talk but the thugs were nervous about Amy and the sword.

  "Can you get that thing away from me?" Diablo asked in Spanish.

  Pedro snorted, "I'm not touching it, and if you do, the White-witch will have your balls."

  Were they talking about the sword? Was it still sitting up against the wall around the corner from her? Katie didn't like it there either—it gave her the creeps thinking it was so close.

  The thug in her room asked, "How much longer we gotta stay?"

  "We'll leave soon...I hope," Pedro replied. "When the witch finds the girl we take off."

  The girl...they meant her! Was Amy using spells to find her? The very idea made Katie want to up and make a mad, stupid dash for the family room door. Only, that was impossible.

  The thug in his chair sat eight feet from her, and wouldn't budge, not even to use the bathroom. She had to get out of there—the couch would not hide her from spells. When Pedro left again, Katie, moving with the stealth of a mouse, inched out from behind the couch and peeked into the living room and saw the top of a man's head in the chair just in front of her. Another man could be just seen standing in the deepening shadows of the kitchen.

  Inwardly she cursed. Escape this way was even less likely than trying to rush past the man in the family room. She was just about to turn away when she felt the cold. It came from just to her left and turning, she saw the dread hell blade. The metal of it was black and burnt looking. Unwholesome. It repulsed her, she leaned away from it, and unknowingly her face contorted and turned pale. She wanted to creep back away from it, but a part of her realized that despite its ugly appearance, the thing was an actual weapon. One that was feared by the Mexicans as well as by Amy.

  Reaching out her slim arm, she gently grabbed the sword and came very close to gasping. It was horrible. Worse than she could have imagined. It drained her arm of warmth an
d life. Her stomach began to churn and she wanted very badly to vomit. The blade was poison. It was death. Even so, she brought it around the corner with a cringing face and Katie's hand was near about frozen to the hilt. It hurt bad to hold, and it made her breath hitch in her throat. Very quickly, her entire body was trembling. She half slid, half-crawled back to the scant safety of her hiding place behind the couch. Once there, she set the sword down as gently as she could, so as not to make any noise and only then did she rub her hands together. Yet still she shivered. The broken hell blade had such a vicious cold to it that being so close sucked away her warmth and she began to fear that if she didn't do something, she would freeze to death.

  She pushed it further under the couch, but that barely helped. In desperation, Katie slithered backwards to get as far from it as possible and saw to her delight, one of her sweatshirts she had tossed behind the couch only the day before. This she wrapped around the sword as best as she was able. It was a horror to touch, but once the cloth was between her and it the cold decreased rapidly.

  Katie then laid back and went limp with relief. Going for the sword felt like the right thing to do, but it had also been terrifying and exhausting. Her hand still stung, except for where there was a numb swath that ran across her palm. She rubbed at it some more and worried that somehow the sword had tasted her and now knew her. It was a chilling thought and she scooted the sword bundled in the blue sweatshirt further from her.

  A commotion from the other room reached her ears. There was a murmuring and then an odd sounding series of grunts.

  Amy Harris walked into the family-room a second later. "Anything out there moving?" Although she was already snugged down into the shadows, Katie tried to borrow further under the couch. If it had been possible, she would have crawled beneath it completely, but as it was, with the room hung with growing darkness, she was quite invisible where she was. Now all she had to do was keep her teeth from chattering so loudly. In her fright, they clicked together going a hundred miles an hour, but she couldn't seem to control them, nor could she control her hands and arms and chest which shook as if an earthquake was going on within her.

  Only when Amy left, breezing out of the room, did the young girl sag back onto the floor in relief. The relief lasted only a few minutes and then Amy screeched.

  "Where's my sword?"

  Suddenly the entire house seemed alive and people began running towards the living room. Katie didn't know what to do with herself. They would search the house for sure and it would only be a moment before they thought to look behind the couch. Grabbing the wrapped sword, she slithered to the far end of the couch and raised herself up just the tiniest amount. The man who had been sitting in the family room, stood in the doorway, he seemed very nervous, with wide eyes and hands that kept up a constant motion as if he didn't know exactly what to do with them.

  Amy was screaming at her men, but Katie barely heard, she was too busy focusing on the door. It was just too far away to make a break for it with the man right there. Therefore she slunk down again, grabbed the sword and crawled across the far side of the room and came up behind the second couch and moved to the end nearest to the door. Now all she needed was two seconds and she could be out the door, booking like mad out into the Sonoran. She even knew where she'd go. There was a small trail that led...

  "Diablo, let Mrs. Jern see your knife."

  Katie's heart stopped, and try as she might, she couldn't breathe. It was as if her entire chest had seized up.

  There was a grunt from the living room and then her mother's voice rang out, "Sure let's see that stupid knife, but don't get too close Amy. He's the one who has the sword."

  "No. The beech es...lying. She es lying." Diablo sounded as if he couldn't make up his mind whether to be angry or afraid.

  "Right. Why would I lie? What would I get out of it?" Gayle replied with a quivering voice. "He stuck it in the back of his pants and went out front. He doesn't look too smart to me; it's probably just in one of the cars." Katie realized her mother must have seen her grab the sword and was trying to get their attention focused away from the back door. Katie readied herself to make a run for it.

  There was silence for a moment and then Amy said, "The real question is, why would you tell me the truth? Which I really doubt that you just did."

  "Only because...I...I," Gayle was clearly trying to find a good lie and Amy wasn't in the mood to mess around.

  "Diablo take off one her fingers. I don't care which."

  "Good! Come on Diablo you stupid jerk!" Gayle screamed at him in a fear-warped fury. "Do what you want. I know which one of your men took..." She began to scream. Tears ran down Katie's face but her mind was hard like a rock. She wouldn't waste what her mother was doing for her, she would run. Only she couldn't. As she peeked, she saw that the man who had been in the doorway had turned slightly away from the scene in the living room and was partially canted toward her.

  Her mother's screams seemed to tear at her vocal cords but she was still able to wail, "It was Pedro! It was Pedro. He said he would free me!"

  "Stop!" Amy shouted. Gayle's scream subsided into a blubbering and soulful weeping.

  "She's lying. It wasn't me."

  "It had to be one of you idiots! Pedro, give me your gun."

  "But..."

  "Now! You...Jin put your gun on the ground, Diablo, you too. Step over there and face the window." Katie cursed to herself again. They would be able to see her easily if she ran.

  "One of you three took my sword. You were the only ones on this side of the house. Now did anyone see one of these three leave se?" There was silence. "So that means the sword is still in the house and that means I'm going to find..."

  Katie ran.

  If she had to guess, she figured they would start their search in the family room and work their way down the house and that meant she was out of time. Noiselessly, she dashed to the door, yanked back on the knob and tore out of the house. Without looking back, she sprinted across the deck and just then, a huge sharp sound that seemed more like an explosion than a gunshot erupted behind her and glass flew around her speeding feet. A second one followed the first but then there was only screaming as she hurtled the deck's three foot railing.

  Cries of "Run!" from her mother were intermingled with Amy shouting for the men not to shoot. The family room door crashed open a second later and the desert air was disturbed by the sound of heavy steps tromping across redwood boards.

  Into the last of the evening light, Katie sprinted for all she was worth. Her legs pumped like mad and sandy dirt kicked up behind as she ran fast than she had ever in her life. At first she could hear them behind her gaining...gaining, but then after a few hundred yards, the sound of their feet drifter further and further back. A glance back showed there were four of them, running in a ragged line with their heads bent down low. They wouldn't be able to keep going much longer. But then neither could she. Her breath came in huge gasps and her feet started to weigh her down. No longer was she springing over the gullies with the athleticism of an antelope, instead she was down to a plodding jog.

  Yet she was still faster than the out of shape bullies chasing her. With her lead over the men growing, she decided to alter her plans somewhat. Originally, she had meant to hide in the desert and loop far out before coming back to one of the homes a few miles away, where she would call the police. But now, with her huge lead, she saw she could make it to one of her closer neighbors.

  At the next low rise she came across, Katie broke from her northeast route and turned sharp to the right and set off with all her dwindling strength for the road that looked like nothing more than a black stripe across the tired landscape. Past it, lights twinkled in the gathering dark. They looked closer than they actually were and five minutes of stumbling up and down ravines seemed to bring them no closer. The good news was that the four men who had been dogging her, had either given up, or had kept going in the direction that she had originally been taking.

&nb
sp; The bad news was that as she neared the road, sucking wind and holding her hand over a stitch in her side, a black continental came idling up slowly. It was one of the two that had been in her driveway. Katie ducked down behind the nearest bush and watched as a man carrying a long gun hopped out. The road sat further down on a gentle slope and it had been a bit of a blessing for weary Katie to jog down it, but now the slope became a curse. The man with the gun was a few hundred feet off to her right, which at first seemed a good thing, but as he started up the slope, he decided against going straight up it, instead he walked slowly in a diagonal. He would pass very close to where she hid.

  With little choice, she turned and started up the slope again; her legs were heavy as stone and just as stiff. It was one thing to go for an easy early morning jog and quite another to sprint for your life in this hard land. Ducking from shrub to shrub and running along the floor of the little ravines was slow work and each time she turned to see where the man with the rifle was, he seemed no further away. Though with the dark it was hard to tell. She wished she could find a cave or at least a large bush to hide beneath, but the desert was painfully barren with only the many folds and gullies giving her any cover.

  The slope eventually ran out and there before her was the harsh rugged Sonoran. It had been her playground for years and she was just about to dash forward to lose herself among the hills and fissures of the broken landscape when a movement thirty feet in front of her caught her eye. A shadow moved among the low scraggling bushes: it was one of Amy's thugs and he moved with care to be quiet. Katie ducked down quick and watched as he kept going, oblivious of the girl so close to him. She could barely wait a minute after he passed to get moving again—there was the sound of someone scrambling up the slope in her rear.

  The minute of rest helped and she was able to jog away to her right, once again heading northeast. Yet very quickly, she became tired again and took to plodding along. This was strange for her and at first she chalked it up to the fact that she had begun her get away with a full on sprint, however that had been practically twenty minutes prior. She should have recovered from that, not fully since she was still moving but more than she had.