A Gathering Evil

by Michael A. Stackpole

  She searched my face for judgment, but found none. "I had known Rock for a long time and, well, ran into him during a time when I was very vulnerable. We started seeing each other, socially, then a problem came up that he thought I could help Coyote solve. He set up a meeting and that was that."

  I smiled grimly. "That answers a number of questions for me. How long ago did you and Rock stop being lovers?"

  She looked straight ahead at the road. "A year and a half ago. Rock has been jealous ever since, but our worlds seldom intersect, so there is nothing he can do about it." Marit smiled weakly. "I hope you're not mad. Talking about one's past lovers is not a good idea, but Rock acts like an ass fairly often, so I feel better getting this off my chest. You aren't mad, are you?"

  "I don't own you. I did not know you a week ago. How can I be angry about a situation where I did not exist?" I patted her right thigh reassuringly. "If he bothers you, on the other hand, and you are disinclined to deal with it yourself, my services are at your disposal."

  "Ah, gallantry is not dead." She hit the blinker switch and turned off onto Arizona Route 179 to Sedona. "Sedona and the red rock country is very special. It's been two years since I've been there, but it was gorgeous back then. I hope it hasn't changed much."

  Not having been there before, I could not gauge the amount of change, but I agreed that it was very beautiful. The red rock format ions rise up from the canyon floor like mountains that have been transplanted from Mars. Aspens and other verdant vegetation thrived along the Oak Creek and contrasted beautifully with the rich bloodstone color of the land itself. Even if all the supposed power vortices did not exist, Sedona would attract a lot of visitors just because of its beauty.

  Unfortunately the power nexus points did attract a large segment of the population. We rolled on into the town of Sedona and parked in front of the Guest Center. It looked like a perfectly normal geodesic dome except for the UFO mooring mast rising like a spike from it. The sign beside the door had a greeting written in French, English, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Spanish. It also had three sets of bizarre symbols, most of them based on geometry, that I chose to assume were "Welcome" in extraterrestrial languages.

  Marit debated it for a second, but decided to leave the shotgun in the Rover. We entered the building and were immediately assaulted by thick, cloying mesquite incense clouds. The Muzak being played in the background remained frustratingly elusive, fading in and out without any rhyme or reason as nearly as I could tell. The posters on the wall mixed retro-'60s stuff with chamber of commerce shots of the surrounding landscape and had UFOs caught in the act of hovering or air-brushed in after the fact.

  The man behind the counter smiled at us and looked normal until I noticed the tinfoil lining his "See Sedona, I Did" baseball cap. "Greetings. Didn't I know you during our lives in the Court of Elizabeth the Virgin Queen?"

  I returned his smile. "I don't know, friend. We were wondering, for my father, if you could give us some information about retirement communities in the area. He's in his 70s and will be retiring. We want to move him up here and get him out of Phoenix."

  "The City in the Lake." The man scratched at his hat, and I saw his name tag read "Ramses."

  "Is that a retirement community?"

  "No, that's what we call Phoenix up here." Ramses bent down and clacked away on his computer keyboard. He glanced up at the old television he was using as a monitor, hit it once on the side, then squinted at the screen. "Does your father have any group affiliations?"

  I shook my head. "Group affiliations?"

  "Masons? Illuminati? Chief Probitananda White Feather's Church of Searing Illumination?"

  "No, I'm afraid not."

  Ramses hissed as he took a breath and typed on the keyboard again. He hit the return key, then looked up at me. "The search will take a moment, but I would not hold out much hope."

  "Why not?"

  The man smiled a sympathetically as he could. "Most of our group homes up here are run by the various foundations, churches, associations, networks and stellar unions who come to Sedona for the power here. Without an affiliation, I don't think we'll find anything."

  The computer beeped at him and he stared, surprised, at the screen. "By the Goddess!"

  His reaction caught both of our attentions. "Yes?"

  "This is strange—Marie must have entered this one last week." Ramses gave me a broad grin. "You are in luck Mr....don't tell me, I am a psychic..."

  "Caine," I said.

  "Lane, of course. Well, Mr. Lane

  , it appears the Fiddleback Farm may be just what you want."

  "Excuse me, the name is Caine. Now what did you call that place?"

  "Fiddleback Farm. It is a retirement home for executives that opened up about two months ago, but has just gotten into contact with us. Says here, 'We welcome pets.' You drive out of town on Von Falkenberg Road

  about four miles, and you should see it." He circled a location on a placemat road map and handed it to me.

  I nodded. "Thank you, Ramses, you have helped me a great deal."

  "You are most welcome, sir. Any time you and Mrs. McLain want to come back and see us, well, we'll be happy to have you here."

  Marit and I beat a hasty retreat to the Rover. As she opened her door then popped the automatic locks, she shook her head. "You get the feeling this is too easy?"

  "Not if those clouds keep rolling in fast."

  "That's Arizona for you. If you don't like the weather, wait a minute, and it will change."

  On the horizon, but coming in fast, stampeding thunderheads slid across the sky. Yellow lightning flashed from one cloud to another. Below the clouds hung a dirty brown curtain that moved across the landscape, swallowing features of it whole.

  "What is that?"

  "Dust storm. This one will be nasty."

  I pulled out my Serengeti Vermillions and put them on.

  I knew the tinted lenses filtered light in a way that normally helped me see more detail in fog or dust storms, but not so this one. As far as my sight was concerned, it might as well have been a wall.

  "Do we go, or do we wait this out in town?" Marit turned the key in the ignition, and the engine kicked over.

  "You're behind the wheel. It's your call."

  She glanced at the local map, then smiled wolfishly. "We go for it."

  I snapped my seatbelt in place, and we took off down the main road winding its away through Sedona. On the other side of the town we saw the turn off to Von Falkenberg Road

  . Following the map we had been given, we turned off 197 and onto the dirt road that wound its way up through a small canyon. As we drove, a small dust cloud swelled up in our wake, obscuring our view of the town and the storm that tracked us.

  We came around a particularly sharp hairpin curve and darkness descended on us as if we were back in Eclipse. The wind bellowed like a wounded ox and sand hissed as it ripped across the Rover. Gravel and stones clunked and thumped against the car as the dust storm hammered us full on forward. Marit hit the headlights instantly, punching twin light cones through the brown haze, but a sharp crack killed the passenger-side light.

  A huge tumbleweed launched itself through the light and dashed itself to bits on the windshield. Marit yelped, then tugged at the wheel. "I've lost it! The road. It's gone!"

  For one, sickening, agonizing second, the Rover's travel became smooth, as if we were once again on Interstate 17 racing back toward Phoenix. Then gravity pulled the Rover back down to earth, and gave us the ride of our lives.

  Awakening in a dented and broken Range Rover with a raging dust storm clawing at your eyes is not a pleasant experience. Realizing that obnoxious scent you smell is leaking gasoline makes it even less so. Half hanging from my seat belts, with the deflated airbag draped over my knees, I shook my head to clear it, but I only succeeded in making it hurt more.

  I raised my left hand to my forehead, and it came away bloody. I twisted the rearview mirror around and saw a n
asty abrasion on my forehead over my left eye and that I was bleeding from it and my nose. The blood had actually flowed across my forehead toward the right because, with the car on its side, that direction lay toward the center of the earth.

  "Lucky to be alive." I hit the release button on my seatbelt, then crashed to the ground. Both my knees ached from where they had slammed into the dashboard during the crash, and my head started pounding. I shifted around and wormed my way out the narrowed slit that was where the windscreen had been before it blew out. I knew from the condition of the vehicle that we'd rolled down an arroyo, but until I got outside the Rover and got a chance to look at it, I had an optimistic view of the accident.

  Panels and pieces of the vehicle littered the landscape for as far as the dust storm let me see. The hood, some of which still remained in place, had been torn in half like a piece of tissue paper. The aft end of the Rover bent down where the frame had snapped. The passenger compartment had not completely collapsed, but only by the grace of God as the roof showed some deep dents and a couple of jagged puncture wounds.

  Standing there, with the storm winds battering my back, I dimly recalled someone else having been in the vehicle with me. "Marit! MARIT! I shouted in competition with the wind. No driver door! I started scrambling up the hillside we had tumbled down, calling her name and trying to find her amid the dust-milked tears in my eyes.

  As the howling dust storm died, I found her. She had been thrown clear of the wreck and, by some miracle, appeared largely uninjured. She lay on her left side, her face shrouded by her black hair. Kneeling beside her, I rolled her onto her back and brushed the hair from her face. Pressing my fingers to her throat I found a strong pulse and saw she was breathing normally.

  Her left forearm, however, had been seriously broken. Her hand lay flat against the ground while the top of her arm had twisted more toward the sky. The jagged end of a bone poked through her skin and blood formed a bracelet around her arm. It had to be painful, and would be even more so were I to attempt to set it. Shelter. She needs shelter, then I need to get help.

  Even in my state of shock I realized enough to know that I could not carry her to safety. I'd suffered a concussion, as had she. I might be able to walk back to Sedona and get Ramses to send some folks out here to get Marit, but I could never bring her with me. I had to hope she would be all right while I went off, and I took the dust storm's death as a good omen for my chances of success.

  Then the thunderstorm began.

  Even suffering from amnesia, I knew I had never seen a storm like that one before. Black clouds appeared, that from my vantage point were darker and more substantial than Frozen Shade. Multi-tined lightning forks blasted down, their brilliant light momentarily revealing the depth of the cloud cover. Thunder exploded like concussion grenades and ripped through me like bullets.

  The first raindrops hit big and fat and hard. Their warmth surprised me. They felt more like blood than they did water. Like an invasion force, the heavy drops pounded down into the desert, their frequency building swiftly until I felt the blackness had been given the substance necessary to finish the job the crash had started.

  The landscape remained dark and invisible until a dazzling lightning bolt drenched it in silver fire. In that second, with the sensation of blood being poured over me, I saw in the red rocks visual confirmation of what I felt. Wind-whipped rain scourged me as I used my body to shield Marit from the storm's violence.

  All around the ravine in which we crouched, lightning assaulted the ground with no mercy. Bolt after bolt fell in lockstep, their thunder becoming one nearly constant roar in my ears. The light froze sheets of rain in midflight, stopping them for a second, then freeing them to pummel me.

  Almost as quickly and savagely as the front hit us, it pushed on, leaving a light drizzle in its wake. For a moment or two I remained braced for a renewal of the onslaught; I knew the storm was tricking me. I knew the second I tried to stand, it would chop me back down to my knees. We had dared defy it, we had tried to outrun it, and it had taken us down, like a falcon trained for the hunt.

  As the thunder trailed off, and the ringing in my ears began to die, I stood and looked around me. I realized at the fastest rate possible for my befuddled thinking, that I could see things. The tallest rocks standing sentinel around the canyon glowed with a purplish fire. I reached out toward the nearest one and felt no heat from it.

  I pulled my hand back and discovered on each finger a cone of the purple fire. It traveled down my hand and to the elastic wristband of my windbreaker. It circled my arm with a nimbus of fire, yet the only thing I felt was a gentle, playful tickling sort of tingle. It was almost as if the storm, after having abused me, now wanted to make amends.

  A golden glow from behind me cast my shadow long over Marit. I turned and raised my hand to ward off the brightness. A shimmering gold ball with a coppery corona floated six feet from me at the height of my head. It slowly began to circle me, as if watching me and trying to decide exactly what this dripping creature could possibly be.

  Somewhere from the back of my brain came labels for all I was seeing. The purple fire on the rocks and my body was St. Elmo's fire. The sphere was ball lightning, and I knew the atmospheric conditions were perfect for both of them to exist. Intellectually, I understood these things to be naturalistic phenomena, but standing in that arroyo, the lone survivor of the thunderstorm's blitzkrieg, I felt fear in my heart. Whatever these things were, whatever explanations dispassionate scientists might have given them, I knew they were not natural at all.

  The gold ball completed its circuit, then shot straight up into the air to a height of 20 or so feet. As I watched it began a strange metamorphosis. The gold shifted to green as the sphere began to lengthen into an egg-shape. It continued to grow beyond that, into a bluish rod that crackled as it hovered. In the midst of the shift from egg to rod, it shed a number of tiny green spheres that reminded me, in both size and color, of peas.

  These little balls, in numbers too great for me to count, spilled down toward the ground. Before I could move to stop them, they blanketed Marit, sealing her in a glowing green cocoon. As I reached my right hand out to scrape them away, the blue rod swooped in on me, hissing and sparking as it came. I leaped back and smelled the stink of melting plastic as it lanced through the edge of my windbreaker.

  It shot on past me and impaled the Rover's leaking gas tank. The blue light died amid a roiling ball of red-gold fire that sent the flaming wreckage cartwheeling across the canyon floor. It made a run halfway up the far side, then lazily tumbled back down to wallow in a pool of fire.

  The Shockwave hit me hard and knocked me down over Marit. My knees hammered into the ground, renewing the pain caused by their impact with the dashboard in the Rover. I managed to get my hand under me, so I didn't fall full on her, and I felt pressure as a rock punctured the palm of my left hand. As I pulled my hand back I saw the cut in it, but the stigmata gave me no pain.

  Focusing beyond my hand, I saw the green light had vanished. In the flickering light from the burning Rover, Marit's eyes opened, and she turned her head toward me. "Take it easy, Marit. We had an accident. You've been hurt. I'll get you help."

  She frowned and rolled up onto her right elbow. She reached out and grabbed my left wrist with her left hand. "Looks to me, love, like you're the one who is hurt."

  I stared down at her left arm. The compound fracture had been healed. The blood had been washed away. I looked more closely at her arm and couldn't even see a scar from where the wound had been. "Your arm. It was broken."

  Her left hand rose past my eyes and gently probed my forehead wound. "Are you sure? How do you feel?"

  Did I imagine that? "I'm not crazy, Marit. I know what I saw. Your arm was broken, then the gold ball became...." My voice trailed off as I realized how truly mad my story would sound. "We have to get out of here."

  "I agree." She scrambled to her feet and helped me up. A wave of dizziness passed over me, and I st
arted to fall, but she held me up.

  "Thanks."

  "No problem. That knock on your head looks nasty." She guided me around to a rock and eased me down. "You sit here. I can go back into Sedona to get help."

  "No, I'll make it. I will!" I felt weak and confused. My clothes suddenly felt heavy and cold and I started to shiver. In the background I heard the rumble of thunder, but it slowly faded—as did my confidence in the reality of anything I had seen.

  My head jerked up as a bright lightning flash silhouetted two creatures on the edge of the canyon. Their outlines looked all spiky and cruel, like people sculpted from barbed wire. I had a sudden urge to draw my gun and empty the magazine into them, but I couldn't be certain they even existed, much less were as evil as something inside me was telling me they were.

  The question of their reality solved itself quickly enough as they started their horses down a narrow trail. In the firelight I saw they were clad in big, black slickers and wearing cowboy hats. As they came closer I heard the clop of hooves on the ground, the jingle of spurs and the creak of leather. They reached the canyon floor and skirted the fire, backlighting themselves against it as they approached.

  "Howdy, folks," the lead rider greeted us. "'fraid we don't have triple-A out in these parts."

  Marit, despite being rain-soaked and bedraggled, turned on the charm. "Storm took us by surprise."

  "That happens." The man spit to his left, causing me to recognize the bulge in his cheek as a chaw. "We were checking some head when the storm rolled in. We were heading back home when we saw the fire. We decided to check it out."

  The second rider came forward, and I realized she was a woman when she tipped her head back and presented me a soft profile. "We can take you back to the house, get you fixed up, then drive you into town in the truck." She laughed gently, but it sounded unspontaneous enough to put me on my guard. " 'Lessin you're of a mind to stay here while we ride back and call this in to the police."