Attack

by Rachel Starr Thomson

He heard someone else answering but could not make out words. The tone was brave. Valour, like the martyrs of old.

  The response running through David’s own mind was different.

  First, confusion—and, incongruously, curiosity.

  “Who are you?”

  He had expected—he didn’t know what. Demons, in their own forms, emboldened and empowered by the blast. Perhaps the angry, drug-empowered members of a gang or some criminal with revenge on his mind—whoever had bombed the house.

  Not this.

  This young man was something completely different. Possessed, yes—but David had seen that before. This was a level of power and possession in a human form he had never encountered, or even really imagined.

  The way the air felt, the way the earth had become a chain, shackles around his wrists, keeping him down, the sense of being surrounded—it all came from this young man as surely as it did from the demonic powers within him.

  This evil was human.

  Deep within David’s pysche, Mary struggled against what she was seeing.

  It was Clint, in the darkness of that wood.

  Clint, not a day younger than he was now—twenty years later.

  Clint, who David had somehow sought out again and forged an allegiance with. Or perhaps it was the other way around.

  He had been there. He had been part of the attack that changed all their lives. And yet David blamed her, and not Clint, for his suffering.

  She didn’t understand.

  Her own wrestling was distracting her from what was still happening—still playing out in that wood as if it were today, as if it had played out perpetually every day since. As though moments did not pass, time did not pass, but simply became films that never ceased to play on a screen of their own.

  They were talking. More bravado from some of the others. Mocking, cynical laughter, from Clint.

  Then he killed them.

  All except David.

  David he left lying on the ground with his ankle throbbing and his heart shattered.

  He stepped directly in front of him, so that David was staring at his feet, and crouched down. He picked up a handful of dirt and blew it into David’s face.

  “And this is all you are,” he said. “Dust. And I, not you, control dust. In Oneness, you are trying to transcend earth, and you never will. You never can become more than what you are. Handfuls of dirt in the universe, going back to dirt in the end.”

  He turned and walked away, slapping his hands together to clean them of the dirt, and David wept out the grit in his eyes.

  The bodies of his friends lay around the clearing, and he could not see them to avoid them in the moonless forest. When at last he could motivate himself to move again—as much to crawl away from the horror as to try to get anywhere else—he moved inch by inch, desperately hoping not to stumble across a corpse in the dark.

  He couldn’t handle that.

  Clint’s words haunted him.

  Was he truly more than dust?

  Was his daughter more than ashes?

  Whether he was hurt worse than he knew, or whether the dirt blown into his face had effects he did not know about, he found as he crawled and stumbled through the rest of that night that his mind was twisted, exulted, depressed—wrung out—with thoughts that haunted, excited, and fascinated him: madness perhaps, delirium, or the attempt of a mind to escape from grief that was simply too great to carry. He found in himself a fatalism that was attractive: a desire to believe the witchcraft-worker in the woods, that he was only dust. For if he was only dust, if they all were only dust, than all that had happened was painful—but it did not mean much, in the end.

  And death would end the pain.

  There was freedom in the thought.

  A freedom directly opposed to that offered by the Oneness.

  But after all, the freedom of the Oneness was not freedom to escape or freedom to mean little. It was responsibility, terrible, heavy. It was servanthood, a yoke. It was meaning so great it was crushing.

  Or so it felt to David, weary beyond life in the darkness of night, in pain and staggering toward some shelter or hope he could not see.

  He wondered if the others had made it to safety somewhere.

  We did, Mary wanted to tell him. We got away. Maybe you did save us, you and the others, by drawing them off.

  Her own memories tried to filter into the scene. We crossed a lot of miles. Walked until we wanted to die. And then split up, like you did, for the same reason. We, me and Sam and his family found shelter with Douglas and Diane in the fishing village.

  Now, looking back, she almost felt shame at how much more quickly she had found comfort, shelter, and relief. That while David wrestled with the very core of who he was, while he lost the last few shreds of companionship he had left, she was settling into a place she would call home and bringing others into the Oneness, creating a new family even as she was on the cusp of losing the old.

  He didn’t know when he broke out of the woods, only that eventually the sun was coming up over undeveloped rural land, highlighting fields of weeds and scrub. He found a padlocked trailer and tried to break in, but he didn’t have the strength. Crawling into an open space beneath it, he fell asleep.

  Fever.

  What might have been days of fever.

  Mary, both within him and without him, writhed in the throes of the illness herself even as she wanted nothing more than to run to him.

  She hadn’t known what he was going through.

  Truthfully, she hadn’t thought about him.

  She remembered, in those days, an overwhelming sense of sickness, woundedness, and loss. So many of the Oneness had been scattered and were wandering the roads as hunted refugees. By this time the police had come out as against them, and those members who had remained in the city were being detained and questioned, and it was already fairly clear that false charges would win the day. They were still discovering how many had died. Never had chaos seemed so strong and so prevalent, and they all felt it. In fact, the sense was so strong that Mary remembered throwing up intentional blocks: taking steps to close herself off mentally and emotionally.

  She had never done that before or since, but it was too much. They all did it. No one could have functioned, could have saved themselves or anyone else, if they hadn’t.

  And even now, she knew it was irrational to think that she could have or should have done something different.

  But she wished with all her heart that she had.

  That she had stayed sensitive enough to know that someone was lost, was sleeping out under a trailer, equally wracked by fever and by doubt.

  He probably wasn’t the only one, she told herself.

  We all suffered then.

  Now, though, One with David’s soul and experiencing his trials herself, his suffering seemed all that mattered in the world.

  And if she had known where it would lead?

  The damage it would do to him, the damage it would threaten to do to the Oneness?

  She could not parse the timeline. She didn’t know where she was while David was under the trailer on some forsaken piece of land. If she was still fleeing, still hiding, or if she was sitting warmly in Douglas’s living room, telling his wife about the wonders of the Oneness.

  Trying, maybe, to convince herself. Back then, so much was shaking that any chance to grasp surety had to be taken.

  Somewhere far off, torn between her own memories and growing sense of guilt and the fever and madness that were taking their toll on David, she thought she heard a voice she recognized.

  Calling her name.

  Who . . . ?

  A woman?

  * * *

  “Mary!” April shouted again, her back to Mary and David, the demons coming against her in an onslaught more furious than she could have imagined. “Mary, wake up, we need you!”

  She blinked away stinging tears of frustration.

  Her calls were doing no good.

  Diane wa
s already down.

  Chris had disappeared in a swarm he could not fight.

  She could not do this alone.

  They were going to lose.

  Rain lashed the boat even as waves tossed it, and it was all April could do to keep her feet.

  “Mary!” she screamed against the storm and the fight—like the name was a prayer, and an answer to it would save the day somehow.

  Chapter 12

  “It’s ironic that you should be here together,” Clint said, eyeing Richard and Melissa with something like pleasure. “Did he tell you, my dear, what he has done to you?”

  Melissa didn’t take the bait. “Who are you? Why are you in my apartment?”

  “I am not a stranger, if that’s what you’re implying,” Clint said. “I know all about you and your affairs of late. The children come to you—do you know who sends them? Where they come from? They come from me. I send them to you faithfully. It is I who look out for your health and make sure that you are given life. It is I who saw the children’s remarkable gifts and developed them to begin with.”

  Richard could not speak. He did not know what he feared more—that Melissa would believe Clint and side with him, or that Clint would tell her what he, Richard, had done.

  It was fairly clear he planned to.

  And she wouldn’t understand—not the way she was now. Not with her desperation to hang on to life and the hope the children—the possessed children—had given her.

  His fear came out as a threat, aimed at Clint.

  “What are you doing here?” he growled. “Answer the lady.”

  “I’ve come to enlist your help,” he said, pointedly answering Melissa and not even looking at Richard.

  “My help with what?”

  Her tone was shaken, but bold. Richard found himself admiring her all the more.

  “Rescuing the children,” Clint said.

  “Rescuing them? From what?”

  “They are being held hostage.” Now his eyes shifted, pinned Richard like an insect. “By this man and his cohorts.” His voice lowered, playing deliciously off the reaction he saw in her eyes. “Oh, yes. Did he say he’d come to help you? To be your friend? He has come to make sure you die instead of living. He cannot bear that you should live, for it would alter his understanding of the world too terribly, and his understanding is more precious to him than any human being, not least you. Isn’t that right, my friend?”

  “We are not friends,” Richard said.

  It was all he could find to say.

  He wanted to pour out his heart to Melissa—to explain everything, to apologize that he hadn’t told her, to beg her to trust him anyway.

  And to confess that he didn’t really know how to answer Clint’s charge. That was why he hadn’t told her all. Because he was going to ask her to die.

  And he couldn’t stand that.

  “You’re a liar,” he growled.

  Clint was nothing but smug. “Then explain where the children are. And under what conditions.”

  Richard’s mouth hung, and Melissa turned to him. “Richard, please explain what he’s talking about.”

  He heard the underlying plea.

  Please prove that I can trust you.

  Please prove that you are on my side and this man is not.

  He wished he could prove that.

  “They’re in a cottage,” Richard said.

  “With whom?”

  “With some of the Oneness.”

  “Under armed guard.”

  “Only armed with the Spirit sword. We all carry them, all the time. Even she does.”

  “And under what else?” He looked more smug, more pleased, than ever.

  “Under a shield,” Richard admitted.

  Melissa sat down. Her face had gone grey.

  “Better than that,” Clint said. “It’s not as though they’re under a shield to keep their demons depressed, hmmm? When I say ‘demon,’ let us all think of the same thing: not of evil, but of power, of gifts. Mankind has often used the term that way, have they not? To describe the gifts, the sensitivities, the perspectives that sometimes drove them mad in pursuit of artistic vision, purity, love. It is the true sense of the word. You have personified them as something inherently evil only because you need an enemy to fight, and you are afraid of man ever becoming all he should be—free, and not bound by your chains of sameness and responsibility to a mass.”

  “I call them what I call them,” Richard said, “because I’ve seen their eyes, and their wings, and heard their voices, and nearly been killed by them. And my good friends, and my family, have nearly been killed by them.”

  “Because you set yourselves up as their enemies right out of the gate,” Clint said. “What do you expect them to do? Yes, you’ve been attacked by demons. And Melissa has been healed by them.”

  He turned to her, his presence courtly, beseeching. The voice of confident reason and mastery. “The fact is, my dear, the children are only ‘possessed’ by their own higher angels, their own true selves. You’ve seen that for yourself. But what I have tried to train, encourage, and develop, this man has done all in his power to destroy.”

  He turned back to Richard. “Come, now. Explain it. Tell her what exactly you’ve done to the children, and why you’re keeping them under a shield. What you’re afraid is going to happen.”

  He looked at Melissa. Blue eyes looked back at his, pleading.

  “Richard. Please.”

  All the strength wanted to go out of his legs. He wanted to sit down, bury his face in his hands. But Clint was here, and he could not be so weak in the presence of his own enemy.

  No matter how silver-tongued, how beguiling that enemy could be.

  “We freed them,” he said. His voice was threatening to break, to shake, but he wrestled it under control.

  “You what?”

  “Melissa, please, listen to me, and trust me. This man, no matter what he says, is my enemy and yours. He’s the enemy of all Oneness and all that is good and whole in the world. He kidnapped and plotted to kill a number of our own, to burn them alive in a house full of leaking gas—was it your ‘higher angel’ that gave you that idea, Clint? Some of us tried to save them, and Clint used the children to incapacitate me. Their demons—not their ‘power,’ no matter what he says—threatened to kill them if I tried anything, and I couldn’t just let that happen. So they held me helpless, hostage, for a little while. Held both my hands like little kids taking a walk in the park with their daddy. And I figured, if they’d been dealing with the likes of this snake all their lives, likely they needed a daddy. So I just held their hands tight back and loved them through that grip just as hard as I could, and by the time that fight was over, they got past their demons and cried out for freedom of their own accord, and Mary set them free.” He faltered. “Mary. One of our own. A good woman.”

  Melissa looked stricken. He could only imagine what she was feeling—hers was a depth of emotion he could share, but she was walling him off. Probably walling them all off.

  “So yes,” he finished. “Yes, they’re behind a shield. Yes, some of the Oneness are guarding them. It’s for their own protection. Because we figured this guy would come for them, and so would their demons.”

  “That’s not the whole truth,” Clint said.

  He didn’t seem one bit shaken, one bit thrown off, by anything Richard had said.

  Like the truth didn’t matter even the tiniest bit.

  Like he knew the lie would conquer.

  But he knew, now, the ‘truth’ Clint was fishing for.

  And it was true. So he would speak it first, before this man could spin it.

  “We are protecting them from themselves, yes,” Richard said. “The chances are very good that if they do not join the Oneness, they will invite the demons back to take over again.”

  “And then they could heal me again,” Melissa said.

  Her words fell in the room like a sentence. And an accusation. All in one.

>   “Yes,” Richard admitted.

  “And right now, there is no one to heal me. In two days the children won’t be here, and I will start to lose ground again.”

  “That is precisely what will happen,” Clint said. His eyes gleamed. “But I think you do not imagine how fast you will lose that ground.”

  Richard wanted to kill him, then and there. He was threatening her. The bald-faced devil.

  No, worse than the devil.

  The man.

  “That’s why I’m here,” Clint said softly. “I came to collect you so we can go together and collect the children.”

  “Why do you need her?” Richard asked, but Clint ignored him. Melissa didn’t seem to have heard. She took the hand Clint was offering, hesitantly, and took a step toward the door.

  And turned back and looked at Richard, who was still standing in the middle of the open seating area.

  “What about him?” she asked.

  “The clown?” Clint asked lightly. “I think he can wait here for you. Don’t you? He wants to guard you. Let him do the next best thing and guard your home. Alex will help him.”

  She frowned. “He’s a free man.”

  “No,” Clint said gently, “he is not. Because I am not giving him his freedom just now.”

  She stopped and pulled her hand away. “Then I am not going with you.”

  This time, Clint did look surprised.

  Richard was sure his face held the same expression.

  “You brought a friend,” Melissa said. “I want to bring one with me.”

  “I am your friend.”

  “No,” she corrected him. “You are not. I’m not sure what you are, but you’re not my friend . . . not anyone’s friend, I don’t think.”

  “I raised the children in their power.”

  “Then I’m sorry for them,” she said.

  And for a moment, something flashed across Clint’s face that told Richard he knew he might actually lose her—that Melissa was not as securely in his grip as he thought.

  Silently, inwardly, Richard cheered.

  He had not known it until now either.

  For a second confusion flashed across Clint’s face, and then he turned to Alex and barked, “You come with us. Watch him.”