A Kiss Before Doomsday

by Laurence MacNaughton

  She had only one more chance to find Greyson. She had to make it count.

  Summoning up her last reserves of magic, she directed her energy equally through each crystal around the circle. She deliberately went slowly, building the energy inside the crystal as she went along, trusting her feelings for Greyson to guide her.

  Her first thought of him was from the very end, after he had been overtaken by evil. In her mind’s eye, she caught a glimpse of his fiery demon eyes glaring back at her. Immediately, she pushed that image away. The Four Horsemen were gone now. That wasn’t the Greyson she was looking for.

  She was searching for the man he really was. The one who had trusted her, embraced her, helped her find her inner sorceress and become who she really was.

  She could see him looking at her. She remembered his steel-rimmed sunglasses shining in the sun as they cruised through the New Mexico desert together. She could see the red desert sand and green bushes sliding behind him. See the stubble along his jaw as he turned a warm smile her way.

  Was he gone forever? Was he still alive?

  Where could he be?

  Close. The knowledge burned through her, icy and yet scorching hot, as clearly as if she had heard the sound of his voice. She drew in a sharp breath, fighting for air.

  Her magical energy, accumulated inside the crystals, suddenly burst into the center of the copper circle and swirled around the candle. She could feel the crackling heat as the candle flared to life.

  She opened her eyes to see the candle engulfed in a multicolored ball of flame. Almost instantly, it burned itself out with a soft pop, leaving behind a bubbling puddle of wax where the candle had once stood. A curl of rainbow smoke streaked away like a living thing, cutting through the mountain wind. Dru knew by now that there was no point in chasing after something that moved so fast. She just focused on the direction.

  This time, instead of pointing directly up the mountain, the trail of smoke angled to the right, over rocks and dead grass, up toward a pine-covered ridge.

  “Whoa,” Rane said as the smoke shot past her and faded away. She took a few steps after it, but something caught her attention and she knelt down on the ground.

  Dru swayed, overwhelmed and dizzy. Was that Greyson’s voice in her mind? Or, like Rane had hinted, did Dru want to find him so badly that she was somehow imagining it?

  “The candle’s ruined,” Dru said with a horrible sinking feeling. She picked at the quickly cooling wax, trying to peel it off the top of the boulder. “That’s it. I can’t cast the spell again without it.” Reluctantly, she packed away her crystals and folded up the copper circle.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Rane said from where she knelt in the grass, studying something on the ground. “We’re not alone up here.”

  Carefully, Dru approached her, not sure what she was looking at.

  Rane pointed out a flattened purple wildflower and a curved depression in the dry dirt. “That’s a footprint. Leather-soled boot.”

  “Could it be Greyson?”

  “No. A smaller person.”

  “You mean, like . . . ?” Dru held her hand out at waist height.

  “Not a munchkin. I mean more like your size. This is too small to be Greyson.” Rane stood up and scanned their surroundings, bristling with sudden ferocity, nostrils flared, fists clenched. “Somebody else is up here with us. Maybe a bunch of somebodies.”

  Dru looked over both shoulders, suddenly wary of the surrounding piles of sharp boulders and the crooked pine trees with their huge, gnarled roots. Until now, she hadn’t really felt like they were in danger. Hadn’t felt threatened. But the footprint changed that.

  “Are you sure? How old is it? Maybe it’s from some hiker.”

  “Shh.” Rane stooped and picked up a chunk of granite. With a harsh grinding sound, her entire body transformed into mottled brown rock. When she stayed motionless, she blended perfectly into the mountainside. “Stay here,” she grunted. “Stay quiet.”

  Nearly silently, Rane stalked forward, like a hunting animal, following the direction of the vanished smoke.

  Feeling vulnerable, Dru turned in a slow circle, watching every shadow and rock around her with wide eyes. Someone was out there. She could practically feel eyes on her. It made her skin crawl.

  She turned back to watch Rane’s progress. But Rane was gone.

  Dru stood frozen, afraid to stand out in the open, afraid to run and hide.

  The pine-scented wind reminded her of Titus’s cologne. Where did he fit into all of this? Did he have anything to do with Greyson’s disappearance, or was she just desperately reaching for connections that didn’t exist?

  The wind whispered through the trees as if shushing her. She felt as if the mountain was trying to lull her into lowering her defenses. Somewhere in the shadows, a twig snapped, and Dru had visions of the mountainside coming alive with all manner of creatures swarming out from behind the tree trunks.

  But nothing moved.

  She fished through her bag until her fingers closed on the familiar length of her dagger-shaped spectrolite crystal. She pulled it out, holding the polished smoky-gray stone like a short knife. Its surface shimmered in the last rays of sunlight with iridescent layers of purple, blue, green, orange, and gold.

  Powered by raw fear, Dru dredged up her final reserves of magical energy, with every intention of powering up the protective crystal to defend herself. But she had no idea whether she had enough strength left to do that, or how long the enchantment would protect her.

  If she was going to be attacked, she had to wait until the last possible moment. She would only have one shot with this crystal.

  For what seemed like eons, Dru stood stock-still, nerves taut. Her legs ached and trembled. Any moment, she was sure, something was going to come charging out of the shadows at her, with steely eyes and snapping jaws.

  “We’re good.” Rane’s voice suddenly broke the silence, making Dru jump. Rane came marching downhill from a different direction, changing into human form as she went. With obvious disappointment, she jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Whoever it was, they headed over the ridge and down the far slope. Long gone by now.”

  That was when Dru saw the long strand of web strung between two trees easily ten yards apart. It shimmered in the dying sunlight.

  “Stop!” Dru held up one palm.

  Rane instantly halted, but the sudden stop set loose a handful of small rocks that tumbled and clattered downhill. They sailed past the web, but Dru couldn’t tell whether or not they touched it.

  Rane’s head swiveled left and right. “What?”

  “Spiderweb. But probably not from any spider. Let me have a look.” Dru stuffed the shimmering spectrolite blade back into her pocket and dug in her bag until she found her frosty cube of ulexite. With some difficulty, she clambered uphill, closer to Rane’s dusty military boots. Then Dru knelt and pressed the ulexite to her forehead.

  Powering up the crystal used up the last dregs of Dru’s power, leaving her dizzy with exhaustion. Her vision swam as the ulexite altered everything she saw. The colors of the rocks and trees faded, while the shadows around her deepened, tinged midnight blue.

  Three ghostly strands of web stretched tightly from tree to tree, running just above the seeds of the dry grass that sprouted from between the rocks. In her crystal-enhanced vision, the web glowed softly, as if illuminated by moonlight.

  The strands continued at an angle uphill, past wind-scoured rocks and scrubby underbrush, until they vanished over the top of a nearby ridge. “I don’t know if it’s a tripwire, or if one of those things just wandered by and snagged some of its web by accident,” Dru said. “Either way, the webs lead that direction.” Dru pointed, somewhat blindly. While using the ulexite, she wasn’t good at sensing motion.

  “You think there’s undead up there? I was just up there,” Rane said flatly, somehow complaining and sounding worried at the same time. “All right, keep that crystal going. Don’t turn it off yet.”
>
  “Why? What are you doing?”

  “You have to spot it for me.” Rocks clattered as Rane inched closer. “Where is it?”

  Dru clumsily pointed out the length of the web. Rane carefully stepped over it and climbed down beside her. She loomed up in Dru’s crystal-distorted vision, looking eerily pale. Her face was half obscured by sharp shadows that didn’t really exist. A flicker passed back and forth between them that Dru guessed was Rane waving a hand.

  “Dude, can you see me?”

  “Yes,” Dru said, exasperated. “But not very well. I have to take this crystal down.” She could already feel a throbbing headache creeping up the back of her skull. “I’m too tired to keep it going.”

  “Come on. Follow the trail. Lead the way.”

  Dru took a few halting steps and immediately stumbled on an unseen rock. Rane caught her arm before she fell.

  “What are you doing?” Rane demanded. “Watch your step.”

  “I can’t see anything!” Dru said.

  “Hello, aren’t you using a seeing crystal?”

  “It doesn’t work that way!” Dru’s head pounded. “I have to stop. Right now. I’m totally exhausted.”

  “No, wait, wait. You have to track down these webs.” Rane’s head went blurry as she turned to look in all directions. “I need you to spot this.”

  “I’m not tripping and falling down this mountain.” Dru pointed. “The webs go up that way, then they disappear over the ridge.”

  Rane blew out a frustrated breath. “Fine. Let’s piggyback.”

  “What? No! No piggyback.”

  “Total piggyback. It’s the only way.” Rane bent and backed into her, and before Dru could resist, she was suddenly lifted up on Rane’s strong back.

  With her free hand, Dru hung on for dear life. “Oh, my God. We’re piggybacking on a mountaintop. We’re going to die.” Any moment, she was sure she would slip off and plummet to her death.

  “We’re not going to die,” Rane said, striding uphill. “Just follow the web, and if anything moves, yell. We’re running out of daylight.”

  Dru gulped. “The webs go straight ahead.” As they swayed side to side with every step, she rested her chin on top of Rane’s head. “I hate it when you carry me. You do know that?”

  “Yeah. Makes it more fun.”

  They followed the shimmering trail of web up over the top of the ridge. Beyond, a valley opened up below them, half-hidden in the shadow of the setting sun, now a burning smudge behind the relentless cloud cover.

  A gleam of light far below them caught Dru’s eye. Something metallic shone in the last rays of sunlight, as the ragged shadows of the mountain peaks climbed up from the depths, swallowing everything.

  Dru squinted against her pounding headache. She could just barely make out the brown curve of a dry double-track dirt road. The road, tinted purple in her crystal vision, snaked around the side of the ridge before making a tight switchback into a grove of aspen trees. Their shiny leaves shone like water ripples in the breeze.

  And there, in the shadow at the elbow of the road, sat a hunchbacked black car with long chrome-tipped fins. Dru stared at it for several seconds before she figured out what it was.

  “A hearse?” she said, making Rane look over her shoulder in surprise.

  Rane turned her head to follow Dru’s gaze. “Seriously? The hell is he doing here?”

  “Who?”

  “Salem.” Rane shifted Dru’s weight. “Damn, I thought those footprints looked familiar.”

  “What’s he doing here?” A worried feeling unsettled Dru, tinged with anger. “Did he lie to me? Do you think Greyson is with him?”

  The wind carried up a distant burble of engine noise, and the hearse’s sharp taillights glowed red. Slowly, the black car eased out from beneath the aspen trees and descended into the deepening shadows.

  “The smoke pointed this way, and now Salem is leaving. This can’t be a coincidence.” Squinting, Dru followed the lines of the double-track road as they snaked back and forth down the side of the mountain, then curved around through the pass and disappeared. “We need to head him off at the pass.”

  “What are you, the Lone Ranger? We’ll never catch up to him.”

  “I’m serious. Set me down.” Still holding the ulexite crystal to her forehead, Dru slid down Rane’s back and awkwardly found her footing.

  With her free hand, she pointed, tracing the course of the road. “Look. There’s nowhere else for him to go. When he gets down to the bottom, he has to go around through the pass. That’s the only way off this side of the mountain. If we can get back to Opal in time, we can head back to the fork and catch him as he comes through.”

  Below them, Salem’s hearse steadily rolled toward the bottom of the valley, and the gravel-rattling sound of its tires slowly faded from the mountainside.

  “Even if we do catch him, then what?” Rane asked.

  To Dru, the answer was obvious. “Then we follow him. Find out what exactly he’s up to and why he really has undead skeletons in his apartment. And then we make him tell us where to find Greyson.”

  Even through the crystal distortion, Dru could see the uncertain look on Rane’s face. “Are you sure the webs lead down to his hearse?”

  “No. The webs end right here.” Dru turned around to point out where the shimmering lines of web came to an abrupt end at the top of the ridge, among a jumble of car-sized boulders.

  A swarm of web-wrapped undead was already crawling up from between the rocks. Skeletal jaws yawned open, stretching their speckled wrapping wide enough to reveal sharp stained teeth. Their shrouded bony arms ended in blackened claws.

  Dru sucked in a breath and lowered the ulexite crystal.

  Her vision swam, filling with glittering sparks as she stuffed the ulexite in her bag and pulled out the sharp spectrolite crystal. It was her only defense.

  Beside her, she heard more than saw Rane scoop up a dead tree trunk and swing it like a baseball bat. Bones crunched. A creature screeched.

  She focused on the knife-like crystal in her hand, willing it to burst into a colorful glow. But the gray spectrolite stayed dark. It wouldn’t protect her now.

  She had no magical strength left.

  “Rane!” Cold fear poured through Dru’s veins. She staggered in the direction of Opal’s car, stumbling on loose rocks as the undead closed in on her. “Help!”

  A powerful grip seized her arm, but it wasn’t the cold bones of the undead. It was Rane, now turned to stone and looking madder than hell.

  Rane bared her teeth. “Run!”

  17

  THE WAY BACK

  Streamers of webbing zipped past them, smacking into trees and rocks. Dru tripped and stumbled down the mountainside. Trying to run full speed down a steep slope of dry underbrush and loose rocks was tricky enough, but the lengthening shadows from the setting sun made every step even more treacherous.

  Rane held tight to her hand and half steadied, half dragged her down the endless slope. The fear of death cut through Dru’s exhaustion and pushed her onward. Together, they charged past thickets of grasping bushes, through stinging clusters of slippery, dry grass, and over rough-edged boulders that threatened to take a bite out of her feet.

  Dru wasn’t sure which would kill them first: the mountain, or the hissing horde of undead following them.

  With every pounding heartbeat, Dru expected to see more of the creatures rise up in front of them, cutting off their escape. Every rock, every tree was a potential hiding place.

  Eventually, the sounds of pursuit faded behind them. Dru nearly shouted in relief when she finally spotted the dusty, amethyst-colored expanse of Opal’s car waiting at the side of the gravel road. The unmistakable beats of Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine thudded through the twilight air.

  Opal let out a little squeak of surprise when Dru ran full tilt into the side of the car and scrambled inside. Rane got in the back and slammed the door.

  A quick look
back over Dru’s shoulder revealed no sign of the undead. Yet. She was too panicked and winded to explain the danger. Instead, she just pointed down the road. “Go!”

  “Told you you’d come running,” Opal said. “This is not my first field trip.”

  Dru gulped air. “Drive!”

  “Never listen to me.” Opal started the car and sped down the road, spewing gravel behind them. “What happened up there?”

  “Undead,” Dru said. “Lots of them.”

  “I could’ve taken them,” Rane said. At Dru’s disbelieving look, she added, “What? We only came back here so we could catch Salem.”

  “Salem?” Opal said his name with the disgust most people reserved for particularly awkward infections. Wide-eyed, she kept watch up the side of the mountain. “If he’s here, that’s no coincidence, mark my words. That man is up to no good. He knows something he’s not telling us.”

  “You think?” Rane said, turning human again. “That’s why I’m going to make him tell us.”

  “Slow down, slow down.” Dru waved a hand at Opal, as if that would help. “The pass is just up ahead. And watch out for creatures. That ridge was crawling with them.”

  They crept up the gravel curve, getting closer to the gap between two ridges where the old double-track joined the road in an angled T-intersection.

  In the back seat, Rane leaned forward. “When he comes out, how do you know which way he’ll go? He could head right toward us.”

  “Fifty-fifty chance,” Dru said. “And if he does, we’ve got this direction blocked. He’ll have to talk to us. If he turns the other way, we’ll see where he goes. Opal, stop right here in the shadow.”

  As the sun sank, the entire curve of the road was smothered by shadow. Around the bend, the last rays of light were barely visible, shining down through the narrow pass that had probably once been a mule trail, back in the days of Colorado’s silver rush.