Part 13 (1/2)

Only days after she had fled her hometown, Keomany sat in the back seat of the rented Lincoln Navigator and stared out the tinted window at the green hills and valleys that rose and fell on either side of the highway. With every mile they drew closer to Wickham, and with every mile her throat became dryer, her heart sped faster, and the images in her mind became more and more inescapable.

The rotten pumpkin sky. The black, skeletal demons. The unnatural silence on the street, the emptiness of it, as if the whole town had been hollowed.

Keomany closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.

A gentle hand touched her shoulder. ”Are you not feeling all right?”

She opened her eyes again. Father Jack was studying her with genuine concern and she forced herself to smile. ”As well as can be expected, I suppose.”

The priest nodded as though he understood precisely what she felt. It must be something they're trained for It must be something they're trained for, Keomany thought. For though she was sure Father Jack had seen his share of chaos, somehow she doubted he had any idea what she was feeling. The terrible certainty that she would arrive back home and the place would be barren, deserted, nothing but a ghost town. The idea that the h.e.l.lish possession of the town would have ceased and left only the bones of the town where her life had been. She would go to her parents' home and find that they, too, were now only bones.

The night before, she had dreamed precisely that.

”Keomany, when we get there, you don't have to come into the town,” Peter said.

He was behind the wheel, and Nikki in the pa.s.senger seat. Keomany had watched him a lot during the hours they had been on the road-watched both of them, in fact. Peter was an enigma to her. Despite what she knew of his past, what she knew he had once been, he seemed on the surface to be a normal, average, thirtysomething guy. But Keomany had always been able to sense the true nature of things. Perhaps that was part of being an earthwitch, or perhaps it was simply that she was a good judge of character. Either way, she saw beneath the surface when it came to Peter.

Underneath the chamois s.h.i.+rt and the blue jeans, under that almost mundanely handsome exterior, Peter Octavian burned burned. It was not just magick that coursed through him, but fierce pa.s.sion and honor. Keomany found it strange that Octavian kept these things almost hidden, as though the face he wore were a disguise, like Superman receding beneath the persona of an earnest reporter.

Keomany saw him, though, for what he really was and it helped her to understand why they all automatically deferred to him, why Father Jack had handed him the keys to the Navigator, why Nikki so obviously still loved him.

Nikki glanced into the back seat at her and Keomany blinked, realizing she had not responded to what Peter had said.

”You sure you're all right?” Nikki asked.

”No,” Keomany admitted. Her gaze ticked toward Peter. She saw him looking at her in the rearview mirror. ”But I'm not staying behind, either. That's my family in there. My friends. It's my town.”

Peter nodded and said nothing more on the subject. Unlike Father Jack, she had a feeling that his apparent understanding had a depth and truth to it. It helped.

Keomany let her gaze drift out the window again. She saw a little town in a valley off to her right, homes sprawling out from the center of town, where a picturesque white church marked the heart of the community. Another quaint and peaceful New England village, where every day seemed just like the last. And where-as she had learned- anything could happen.

When they pa.s.sed the sign that announced that Wickham was five miles away, she flinched. As those last few miles rolled past, Keomany fished into her pocket book and took out a rubber band, then tied her raven hair back in a tight ponytail.

”Take a right here,” she told Peter.

He followed her directions as she guided them toward Wickham. Since she had left, Keomany had felt only a glimmer of the connection to nature that had been hers the last time she was here. It was still there-a new awareness of the world around her, of the order of things and the health of the land-but not so much that she could wield it. Not so much that she felt able to reach out and touch the soul of the earth itself, the way she had on that day.

Now, though, as she drew closer to home, Keomany felt it growing in her again. She was an earthwitch, and what had happened in Wickham was like a huge wound in the flesh of the world, a scar upon nature. It was as though the wound was hers, and yet at the same time, she felt the earth trying to heal itself, felt that she could tap into that.

It was the most incredible feeling she had ever had, being a part of something. No, of everything No, of everything.

Half a mile outside of town Peter drove the Navigator down a gentle slope from the top of which the village ought to have been visible. There was nothing there but a kind of haze, as though a cloud had dropped to earth and made everything past that point in the road out of focus.

A hundred yards from the barren land that had replaced Wickham-from the bubble of air that s.h.i.+mmered and blurred her vision-Keomany saw a phalanx of police cars and two military Jeeps. The road was blocked. The men and women posted at that roadblock were armed. When the Navigator rumbled toward them, they raised their weapons and trained them on the huge black Lincoln SUV.

”Thank G.o.d it's a rental,” Father Jack said.

n.o.body laughed.

Peter parked the Navigator in the middle of the road and killed the engine. He glanced at Nikki first, then into the back seat.

”Sit tight. I'm going to have a little talk with them.”

He opened the door and stepped down from the driver's seat. Keomany leaned forward to get a better view and she noticed that Father Jack had done the same.

Peter had his hands up as he approached the police and the MPs, but there was something different about him now, as if the warrior that he had hidden away was now revealed. It was in everything about him, the way he walked, the way he held his head, the sheer energy that radiated from him. This was what he had come here for.

This was who he was.

When he reached the first police officer, Peter spread his arms wider and his fingers sketched at the air as though he were conducting an orchestra. One of the MPs shouted in alarm, demanding to know what he was up to. The man barely finished his sentence.

A bright flash of green light burst from Peter's hands, rolling like a wave over those who had been guarding the road. As it struck them, they fell one by one to the ground, unconscious.

”Jesus!” Father Jack hissed.

Nikki glanced back at him, smiling. ”Was that a prayer, Father, or were you taking the Lord's name in vain?”

The priest did not respond. He only stared, just as Keomany did, as Peter turned his back on the men and women he had just rendered inert with a gesture and walked back toward the Navigator. Tapped into nature, Keomany felt as though she could sense the power of the earth itself, even access it a little. But she could not imagine the kind of magick that Octavian had at his disposal. A thousand years in h.e.l.l, and he had brought this back with him.

Peter opened the door and smiled in at them. ”It was just going to take too long to explain,” he said. ”And we're kind of in a rush.”

9.

Peter Octavian took a deep breath of sweet Vermont mountain air. His heart sped with antic.i.p.ation, a kind of adrenaline high filling him. For so long he had been denying himself this rush and now he could not remember why. Something about wanting to live normally now that he was mortal again, wanting to have an ordinary life.

What the h.e.l.l was I thinking? he asked himself now. he asked himself now.

In Venice and Salzburg and New Orleans he had faced horrors unimaginable. He had spent an eternity in h.e.l.l and somehow been reborn on the other side. Nearly every person he had ever loved, human or vampire, had been taken from him to that place after death. He had wanted to live, to be bored, to paint and be human and love and cry. But Peter Octavian had seen the destruction of his home and his family and his loved ones before. For hundreds of years, it had been the pattern of his life. It had been foolish of him to think he could escape that, that he could hide away the truest part of him.

There on the outskirts of Wickham, with the sky so blue above and a ma.s.sive, barren landscape before him, the warrior in him came awake for the first time in a very long while.

”Peter?” Nikki called from inside the Navigator.

He had been standing just inside the open pa.s.senger door. Now he grinned up at her. ”I'm fine.” Peter climbed up into the rented SUV and slammed the door. He glanced over his shoulder at Father Jack and Keomany.

”Jack, the guns?”

The priest turned in his seat and reached into the back of the Navigator for a metal case that he dragged over into his lap. As Nikki and Keomany watched, he opened the case. Peter eyed its contents with satisfaction: a quartet of Heckler and Koch nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistols, gleaming silver, and a dozen replacement clips, already loaded.

”Very nice,” Peter said. ”The Lord provides, huh?”

Father Jack smiled. ”Or the Bishop does. Even if he doesn't know it.” Then the priest glanced up at Nikki, who was leaning over the front seat to get a better look. ”These things have a h.e.l.l of a kick. Most demons are vulnerable to traditional weaponry if you hit something vital, or shoot them enough.” His gaze went to Keomany. ”But all the ammunition is also blessed, just in case.”

”Will that make a difference, really?” Nikki asked.

Peter nodded, watching as Father Jack pulled out the first of the HKs, checking the weapon's action and confirming that it was loaded. ”It's a kind of magick all its own, isn't it?”