Attack

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  He nailed Richard with his glare. “Come, then. I do not object to you seeing us get the children back—to you seeing how eagerly they come back, how much we do not even have to fight. Not like you are fighting for so many of yours, hmmm?”

  “We would not have to fight for any of ours if you had not attacked us,” Richard said.

  Clint laughed. “So you say. But it is not I who am at the root of all your troubles. It is David. One of your own. He sought me out, asked for my help.” He inclined his head in a mock bow. “I am only a servant.”

  Like everything the man said, the words felt a lie. Richard wanted to call them out, debunk them, expose them for the bald fabrication, the horrific twisting, they were.

  But he couldn’t, because this time Clint was right.

  Speaking truth.

  As almost impossible as that seemed.

  Clint narrowed his eyes as he looked at Alex and Richard, from one to the other several times. He held his arm out to Melissa again, and she took it, but with her head held higher and her air more clearly watchful.

  “You will come,” Clint said to Richard. “Like she says. Come and see us get the children back. But if it should occur to you to try to stop me, or to attack our progress, I want you to stop and think about who else might be under my control just now.”

  Melissa did not react.

  Somehow, he had cloaked his words so she could not hear them.

  Falling in step behind them, Richard did all he could to send a subverbal message. Be careful.

  And to his surprise, one came back: as clear as a word from the Spirit itself.

  I will.

  * * *

  It was not David at the heart of the darkness threatening the Oneness.

  Found under the trailer by a land surveyor days after he had collapsed there, a nearly dead David was airlifted from the remote location to a hospital in Lincoln, where Oneness found him and quickly took responsibility for his life. Once a regimen of IVs and pills had made him strong enough, they moved him to a safe house.

  It took him a long time to want to do anything more than sleep. He lived in a half-coma, staying there intentionally because when he came out, he had to face all that had happened and all that had been thought, every alternative truth that had been entertained in his fearful and grieving and fever-destroyed mind.

  And still there in the secret place of his soul, reliving it all, Mary struggled to patch together her own thoughts.

  This was the chief: it wasn’t him.

  All this time, all this effort, all this recrimination, and it wasn’t him after all.

  They had gone after the wrong man.

  Nor, as David had insisted, was she the real cause.

  It had been Clint all the time.

  Or, at least, the man who now went by that name.

  Undoubtedly, many of David’s actions had been evil. His intents had been evil. He had powered the core in the warehouse; he had exiled Reese; he had shot the hermit and gathered the hive. He was as given over to his bitterness and hate as any man had ever been, and in his own way was as far gone as the possessed man who pretended to be in his employ but was all the time directing every piece of the game according to his own master strategy.

  David refused to wake up for nearly two years.

  Something far away was calling for her, screaming for her. She was needed. Desperately needed. She tried to get back, but the lethargy, the coma of David’s memories held her away from the voices calling.

  On the yacht deck, David opened his eyes and smiled grimly.

  He could not move.

  He would not release himself that much, because to do so would be to release Mary as well.

  And he was not ready to do that yet.

  His hope, that he could draw her into his soul deeply enough to hold her captive there, was working.

  The demons were swarming over the deck in nearly fully tangible form, stumping around like grasshoppers, like spiders, like horrors out of a children’s fairy book of the old, Grimm kind.

  Chris and Diane lay unconscious or dead on the deck.

  April was still standing, only because the demons thought it enjoyable to toy with her.

  David wanted to call out to them and tell them to stop it, because it could backfire to leave any one of them standing. He had seen that in too many encounters with them. To be one was to be One, with the strength of all, though they were likely not aware of that to any full extent.

  He was glad the boy, Tyler, was not here. Somewhere he had discovered the truth of Oneness enough to escape paralysis. Better that he not be here to pass that understanding on.

  He wished he had the strength to talk, that he could pull out of his soul sleep completely enough to address April.

  So, he would tell her, we get to kill you after all. What is this, the third time? You would think your friends would take a hint and protect you better. That they would get some idea of how important, how key, you are to everything. But they don’t. They just treat you like another common foot soldier, because that is how the Oneness is. No one better than another, no matter how naturally superior; no one allowed to rise above the mud.

  That was why the Oneness would lose. Because they insisted on denying the truth about each other and about themselves.

  Unexpectedly, he felt a twinge of conscience. His own journey had begun in the anger, grief, and doubt birthed through the cruel and unjust deaths of people like April.

  His own daughter would have been just about her age.

  He had come a long, long way.

  But he closed his eyes again and refused to think any more about that.

  * * *

  “The parking garage is down,” Richard said when Alex hit an elevator button going up.

  “We’re not taking the car,” Clint answered.

  “I have a perfectly good one waiting down there.”

  Clint ignored him.

  Melissa offered Richard a halfhearted smile, meant to be encouraging, he thought. He was at least encouraged that she wasn’t treating him like the enemy, even if she wasn’t sure yet where she stood on everything she’d just learned.

  The elevator took them up to a service floor just above the penthouse, one they weren’t supposed to be able to access without a special key, but the doors opened seemingly at Clint’s whim. From there they climbed a ladder to access the roof.

  The city of Mark spread out below them and rose around them, lines of traffic, lights, glass and steel. The air was cooler up here instead of hotter: heat rose, but only heated its environs where it was trapped. Way up here, some thirty stories above street level, it dissipated into cooler, thinner air.

  Clint strode to the parapet at the front of the building and stood atop it as though he would leap. Richard’s heart went still for a moment at the thought that Clint was actually going to require them to jump and expect him to take care of them somehow.

  He did not actually doubt that the man could do it.

  He was just fairly sure Clint would conveniently forget to take care of him.

  Clint spread out his arms, facing them, exultant master of space and air and time. “Come away with me, then,” he said.

  “I’m not going to jump,” Richard said.

  “Of course you’re not.” Fool, said his tone. “The way I travel requires no such theatrics. Only mastery. And thankfully for you, I have all the mastery any of us need.”

  Even as he spoke, the ground seemed to rush out from beneath Richard’s feet. They were airborne—perhaps. He felt as though he could see the surface of the earth rushing beneath him, a blur: the steel and concrete of the city whisking past, the browns and greens of the countryside, the farm fields; the sweep of mountains, yellow and pine; the sea. He felt no wind, no sense of movement, only a profound displacement—as though if he tried to put his feet down somewhere he would fall forever, never able to recover his location in the world.

  It stopped.

  They were on a patch o
f wooded ground, tall pines on every side. Richard retched, only mildly comforted by the knowledge that Melissa and Alex were doing the same thing.

  Clint sounded amused. “It takes only a little getting used to.”

  Alex said something mouthy, but Richard was still too sick to catch the words.

  “You know,” Clint said, “the sad thing is that you could do this too. Especially a man like you, a man of prayer and in tune with the Spirit. There is a great deal you are capable of that you have never even asked to explore. You are content to stay low, common, like the rest of your kind. But you are a man of far greater power and ability than even you have any idea. That is why you cannot defeat me. Because for all your vaunted talk of transcendence, and for all that I believe in nothing but myself and the dust, I have far more faith than you.”

  Clint stopped and arrested Richard with his eyes, ignoring the fact that Richard was still recovering from being sick. When he spoke, Richard knew he was cloaking again—that no one else could hear him.

  “Mark my words,” he said. “I have just said to you the truest thing I will ever say to you. I do not know why I said it. But I loathe the idea that any word I speak should be wasted.”

  Richard felt shaken.

  Finished being ill, and with Clint no longer speaking to him, he took a moment to feel his feet solidly under him and become more aware of his surroundings. The smell of pine sap was strong in the air, but it didn’t cover up the scent of salt, nor the distant sound of waves. The ground sloped sharply away to the west. Chances were they were near the cliffs.

  And near the hermit’s cottage.

  Yes, this was Tempter’s Mountain.

  A crashing in the trees alerted Richard to someone or something coming. He raised his head with a sinking feeling.

  The feeling was not amiss. The crashing revealed itself, with a stumble into the clearing, as Jordan.

  “Well done,” Clint said with a smile. “You have escaped the shield.”

  The boy didn’t seem to notice the rest of them at first. “I think they’re chasing me,” he said. “Help me get my powers back!”

  Then his eyes transferred to Melissa and widened, and from her to Richard—he ignored Alex completely.

  “You!” he said.

  “Yes, it’s me,” Richard said. “Think about what you’re doing. Remember how you felt before we set you free. This is not a game, Jordan. You were a prisoner. You’re going to go back to being a prisoner.”

  “You were powerful,” Clint said. “And you want it back. You’ve had time to experience the ‘freedom’ these people promise you. Don’t let them treat you like a stupid child.”

  “Jordan,” Melissa said quietly, “I still need your help.”

  Richard closed his eyes.

  That was the end of it.

  And he couldn’t—he couldn’t watch the transformation.

  He could feel the creatures as they gathered in the air, invisible presences all around, eager—hungry. He knew with his eyes closed that Jordan was thrilling to the presence, both excited and afraid, and that Clint was standing with his hands on the boy’s shoulders, encouraging him to open himself up.

  It wouldn’t take much. Possession was always easier the second time.

  Richard was vaguely aware of Alex at his elbow, guarding him, he supposed.

  He wasn’t sure why they felt that was necessary.

  And then he heard a shout.

  “Richard!”

  The shout was happy, relieved. He knew the voice, young and optimistic: Tony had found them.

  “Richard, stop them!”

  He opened his eyes. Tony was still a ways away, running full-tilt toward the clearing, zigzagging down a path that was clearer than the way Jordan had come. His sword was in his hand and he had every intention of throwing himself at Clint or the demons or Alex and fighting until they killed him or he won.

  His youthful brashness, his total zeal, was the stinging rebuke Richard needed in that moment.

  Of course. Of course he was here to fight. Of course he could not just let this happen.

  He wasn’t sure how Clint had managed to convince him otherwise.

  His own sword was in his hand in an instant, and he sprang forward to drive it into Clint.

  The warlock waved his hand, and Richard felt air like a wrecking ball in his stomach, throwing him bodily backwards six feet into a tree. The wind knocked out of him, he struggled to stay fully conscious and keep hold of his sword. Empowered by the demonized, embodied evil that was Clint, the demons started to gather physical form. Thunder boomed, shaking the trees, and a wind started to blow in the tops of the pines. Tony arrived, met by Alex with his hands spread and some sort of net forming between them. Richard’s eyes riveted on Clint, and he did not watch the scuffle between the younger men.

  Clint laughed as the storm wind blew in his clothes and his hair. “You feel that? That is my power stirring. My higher angel. I am dust, and I control dust. I control clouds and rain. I am electricity, and I am thunder. What is your Spirit to compare to me?”

  He took a step closer, the shadows of the boys in combat darting around behind him. “The storm is already fierce out on the water, where you sent David and your pathetic cell. You and yours are dead as I speak. You have failed in everything.”

  He stopped only three feet from Richard and let his voice drop. “This is the end for you, my friend.”

  “We are not friends,” Richard answered.

  And summoning all of his strength, he pushed himself off the tree and straight into Clint, driving his sword deep in the man’s chest.

  Clint stared down in momentary surprise at the place where Richard’s blade pierced. Then he began to laugh. It seemed that the blow had no effect, that it did not even stir the demons within this man.

  Richard clung desperately to the hilt and tried to push the sword deeper, but he was stopped by some power he could not begin to grasp.

  Clint moved his hand again, a motion like brushing off dust, and Richard flew back once more, skin ripping from his hands as he tried to hang onto the sword. The blade disintegrated. He landed on his back in the hard dirt and pine needles.

  Tony was still fighting. Alex, it seemed from his combat style, had learned witchcraft from Clint and was eager to use it, but Tony was so fast, so determined, and so bull-like in his style that Alex hardly had the time for the strategic kind of fight he needed. He was just barely fending the teenager off.

  Richard’s hands stung.

  His eyes stung.

  He saw Clint advancing on him and told himself it was over for him, but where was she?

  Melissa—where was she?

  Gone. Gone with the boy.

  To do only God knew what.

  * * *

  Mary tried to get up, to get out of David’s past and get back to the future where she was sure someone was calling for her, needing her badly, but she couldn’t do it.

  The link was too strong.

  And David, she thought, might be keeping it that way deliberately.

  When he came out of his self-chosen coma, a still-young man with still-fresh losses and pain, Mary was surprised to the point of tears to discover that he was not yet a villain.

  Quite the contrary.

  The young David woke from his two-year sleep with new hope and new zeal. Looking over what had happened, he determined to know two things: that the Oneness was good and that what he had seen was evil. And knowing that, there was only one choice to make.

  His belief, and his drive to act on that belief, were infectious. He became, for the first time in his life, a man of prayer. He sought of the Spirit and connected deeply with the river of personality, purpose, and majesty that it was. He found himself in the Oneness, gloried in it. It lifted him above his losses. Life meant something, something more than it had before the massacre.

  His joy impacted Mary, pulling her into it, summoning her to believe with all she was in all the Oneness was, in all the Spiri
t was, in all they believed to be true. Summoning her to know it to be true. Summoning her to act.

  She was at home in this version of David, and more than at home. She was lifted, elevated, made her finer, fuller self. This man could have led a cell in great things. He could have delved as deep as Richard in the things of the Spirit. He could have changed his world.

  He had changed his world. But not in the way he now promised to do.

  What happened, she found herself whispering, but the whisper was swept off, carried away, buried by the strength of his passion.

  She forgot herself in him.

  One—and only One.

  There were no longer two.

  David spent his days with the cell that had rescued him from the hospital. They had all suffered loss, and they grieved together, forming bonds deeper than they had ever known. And David, best and brightest of them, began to form a plan.

  It began in prayer. He doubted at first, but over the course of days he became certain that the idea came from the Spirit itself. It was birthed in prayer, after all. And driven by his desire to do right, and to bring the Oneness to the victory they were certainly headed for—the victory promised by the enormity of their defeat in the massacre, a rising again made certain by the distance of their fall.

  The conviction that his idea was right, that it was born of the Spirit, did not come immediately. At first he resisted it.

  Because it meant going to find the man he had encountered in the woods, and seeing to it that he died or was converted.

  Oneness did not take vengeance.

  Not normally.

  But this time the man was more than just a man. This time he was at the centre of something—something big, much bigger than the massacre. If he was not stopped, worse than those dark days would follow.

  More children like his daughter would die.

  The demons would triumph.

  Little by little, through thought and strategizing and more prayer, the plan came together. He put in the necessary work. Researched, discovered the man’s name and his likely whereabouts. Tracked his habits, his movements. Learned how to find him and most important, how to catch him unawares. In the process he learned more than he had ever wanted to know about the depths of human depravity: the massacre had been the man’s first strike against the Oneness, but not—by far—his first crime against humanity.