“I keep an eye on my girl,” the kid said.
Great, Tyler thought, we’re getting our tips from a stalker. But considering where they were, maybe this kid really was doing his girlfriend a favour by spying on her.
“Okay,” Chris said. He pulled a paper out of his pocket and wrote down his cell number. “Call me when you know they’re going to be here again. Are their meetings long?”
“An hour or two.”
“Okay. I should be able to get here. Just call. You mind if I get your name and number?”
“Yes,” the kid said. “I’ll call you. You don’t call me.”
The limit made sense, and Chris didn’t push it. He handed his number over, moved aside, and said, “Thanks for your help.”
“Yeah, whatever,” the kid said. With one last nervous glance at Tyler, he jogged off, disappearing around the corner of the fence into the industrial park.
“Well,” Chris said. “That was strange.”
“Pretty crazy chance he would be here just when we were,” Tyler agreed.
“No, I mean the way he reacted to you. What do you think that was all about?”
Tyler shrugged. “Maybe I’ve got an aura.”
Chris frowned. “Not the same kind of aura that Wizard guy should have, if he’s really into something demonic.”
Tyler shrugged. “Maybe he can’t tell the difference.”
“Maybe,” Chris said thoughtfully. He growled. “I wish he’d given us his number.”
“He didn’t have any reason to. I just hope he calls.”
Chris took another long look at the warehouse. “Suppose there’s any good reason to stay here? If something really is still going on—I’m just surprised we didn’t see anything inside.”
“I’m not,” Tyler said. His thoughts were a bit tangled, but he tried to unravel them. “The spirit world is invisible, most of the time. Even when the core was here, we didn’t see or feel them right away.”
“Shouldn’t you be able to sense demonic activity?” Chris asked. “You or the Lincoln cell? They thought nothing was going on here anymore.”
“We can sense things, sometimes,” Tyler said. “But maybe not always. Demons can mask. They were working with David for years and they masked it. Blamed it all on Reese, and the Oneness felt something but didn’t know what it was.”
Chris looked disgusted. “I can’t believe any of you fell for that.”
“Hey,” Tyler said. “I wasn’t Oneness back then.” He shook his head. “But I don’t know how it all works. I mean, yeah, I’m . . . spiritually sensitive, if you want to put it that way. Way more now than before. But mostly just to the rest of the Oneness. Anyway, who knows how much is really going on here? Maybe it’s just a bunch of kids fooling around, and that kid freaked himself out. I mean, they were here in the dark, and it’s a big empty warehouse.”
“But he was reacting to you,” Chris pointed out. “Strongly. And he didn’t have any reason to if it was all in his head.”
“True,” Tyler agreed. “But to answer your question, I don’t think we’re going to find anything more by going back in there right now. It’s still just a big empty warehouse as far as we can see.”
“Back to the hunt, then,” Chris said. He yanked open his truck door and eased himself in. Tyler followed suit, more ill at ease than he really wanted to admit. It did bother him that he hadn’t sensed anything in that warehouse when, apparently, some self-proclaimed occult guru could. And it bothered him that the kid had seen them as alike.
You’re bothered by a comparison to someone you’ve never even met, he reminded himself as Chris fired up the truck. Maybe we’ve got it all wrong and “the Wizard” is Oneness.
Unlikely. But Tyler was unsettled to find how much the idea had blurred the lines in his own head.
* * *
By that evening, Chris was growling in frustration. Searching for demons in the city, it seemed, was harder than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack—though Tyler suspected the problem wasn’t that they were rare, but that they were everywhere, so normal they were invisible. Somehow he had expected that he would be able to feel them in the atmosphere. But throughout the day he began to suspect that they were always part of the atmosphere here—that he did not know what the world felt like without them. They were there in fear and discord and depression, and in substance abuse and self-hatred and entropy.
After the warehouse Chris just started looking up children’s homes, and the pair started off in search of the one interested in Nick. At first they tried to be discreet, act undercover; eventually they gave that up and just asked. Had any home sent personnel to the fishing village? Did anyone have an interest in a boy who lived there—a boy named Nick, suspected to be living in an abusive home, or at least a dirt-poor one where life smelled like alcohol and neglect? In his one concession to discretion, Chris pretended to have information about the kid to pass on. Just wanting to help. His helpfulness accomplished nothing; not one of the homes admitted to being the one they were looking for, and Tyler couldn’t sense demons like he’d expected he would be able to.
It was eight-thirty and the sun was going down; they were starving and Chris was frustrated to the point of angry.
Tyler watched the sun sinking over the asphalt and waited for Chris to join him in the truck outside the bank where they’d finally ended up and decided to hang out, in hopes of . . . Tyler didn’t know what. Randomly discovering the hive. He wished they’d gone to Richard’s work and pulled him out of his cubicle and made him come. Richard with his fasting and prayer and voice of authority really had all the perception Tyler apparently lacked.
Chris had just gotten in, turned on the engine, and flicked the headlights on when his cell rang. He scrambled for it.
“Yeah?”
He started nodding and casting Tyler significant looks, saying “Yeah” and “Okay, right” and “We’re coming down.” Then he hung up.
“They’re back at the warehouse,” he said. “You ready to go in?”
Tyler wasn’t.
He wasn’t at all.
But he wasn’t going to admit that.
“Let’s do it,” he said.
Chapter 4
Richard’s uneasiness began before he even left work that evening.
Tyler was on his mind. Tyler and April and Reese. All three tied up together like a badly knotted pile of string. A small-town lawyer who primarily handled estates, Richard sat in his office and stared at paperwork he couldn’t comprehend for the last hour.
At seven-thirty the notary who shared the office left, and Richard clocked himself out and got on his knees and prayed. He wasn’t alone. When Richard prayed he knew the heavens and the ages prayed along with him.
Prayer, as he had once explained to Tyler, was participation in something—it was joining in a continuous song, a continuous work that was humming through the universe all the time.
By eight-thirty he realized what time it was and headed home, so distracted he was sure it wasn’t safe for him to be behind the wheel. But he drove on. He wanted to be with Mary. Enlist her help in whatever he was sensing.
He came through the front door still in a state of distraction. The house was quiet. Lamps lit it warmly, casting shadows and creating hollows in the common room. In the kitchen, Mary and April were sitting at the table with Nick. They each had a mug of hot cocoa in front of them, and they were engrossed in a game of Chinese checkers.
Richard allowed himself a faint smile at the sight, but something was wrong. The sense was only getting stronger now that he was with other Oneness. He considered sending Nick to bed on the spot. Then decided against it.
“Quiet night?” he asked, opening a cupboard. Mary turned and smiled. “Yes,” she said. But her smile vanished at the look on his face.
It wasn’t a quiet night. It wasn’t at all. He was sure of it.
April hadn’t looked up, and she missed the interaction. “Nick’s winning,” she announced.
Reese walked in, and for an instant the relief almost choked him. Good. Good, good that she was here.
She asked him a question. He didn’t hear it. The Spirit was overriding the flesh. There was still something—
“Tyler,” he said.
They turned and looked at him.
“Where’s Tyler?”
“He . . . doesn’t live here,” Reese said slowly. “He’s up at the cottage with Chris.”
Richard shook his head. “He’s not there. I don’t think he’s in the village at all.”
He dropped his earlier hesitation and fixed a gentle but firm gaze on Nick. “Time to get ready for bed,” he said.
Nick drew himself up to protest. Richard didn’t give him time.
“Upstairs,” he said. “Get your teeth brushed and your pajamas on. You can finish your game in the morning.”
The boy’s mouth snapped shut, and he moved.
That voice of authority again.
As soon as he was gone, Richard looked at each of his worried companions in turn.
“We need to pray,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”
* * *
The exterior of the warehouse was as cold and lonely and dark as Tyler had expected it to be. Not a sign of life.
But from the inside, a faint light was shining under the door. And they could hear a low, dissonant sound. Chanting? Music? He wasn’t sure.
This time, he could feel demons.
The kid wasn’t there. Maybe he had spooked and run off after calling. Certainly the sense of something in the air was strong enough to scare. It wasn’t quite like when the core had been here. But in one sense, to Tyler it felt worse. Someone—several someones—were in that warehouse, and they were seeking out the demons and wanting them.
Chris led the way, creeping along the edge of the warehouse wall. He paused near the loading dock door, with the light shining through, and shook his head and kept moving. There was another way in around the back; it was the entrance he’d used when they came to rescue Reese.
Then, they had all been together: Tyler, Chris, Mary, Richard, the twins, and Reese. Reese and the twins were a formidable fighting force; Richard and Mary were another kind of deeper power. They had been hopelessly, hopelessly outnumbered by the core, but somehow they’d come through. Now it was just Tyler, totally inexperienced, and Chris, who wasn’t Oneness, invading . . . something.
At least, to Tyler’s grim satisfaction, he could feel a sword hilt beginning to form in his hand.
The dark got deeper around the back of the warehouse. The lights of the industrial park didn’t reach back here, and they walked in shadow. Chris, ever the natural athlete, moved like a powerful cat. Tyler concentrated on following in his friend’s footsteps and trying not to knock anything over in the dark. Chris moved quickly and soundlessly. They found a fire escape and started up it. It led to a catwalk inside the warehouse. Tyler remembered that. He winced with every too-loud step and hoped that whatever the noise inside was, it was loud enough in the ears of the cultists to drown out the sound of discovery.
The door at the top of the fire escape was open, and Chris pushed through with as little noise as possible and held it open for Tyler, pushing it back with his big arm while he faced into the dark. Tyler stumbled through, and Chris flashed him a glance that meant, “Quiet.”
Below, the warehouse floor was open to their eyes. As they’d seen earlier in the day, it was largely empty. A few pallets with stacked boxes sat in a cluster near the loading dock door, and another row lined the far wall. The smell of dust and old cardboard were heavy in the air. That, and the faint singe of something that might have been sulphur.
Or that might just be my imagination, Tyler thought.
In the centre of the floor a meeting had convened. They were all teenagers. Tyler thought he counted seven girls and three boys. Plus one—somebody older, taller, with broader shoulders, who was commanding the attention of everyone else even though they were all seated in a circle. Even from up here, his presence was arresting.
Much like Richard’s, Tyler thought. And the very idea made him shake inside. He shoved it away.
The Oneness was not like these people.
Chris crouched down on the catwalk, lessening his shadow and the chance that anyone would see him. Tyler bent down beside him. The flickering lights that lit the warehouse came from a circle of candles on the floor. The teens sat in an outer ring around it. They had ceased droning and were listening intently as “the Wizard” spoke. Tyler strained to hear him, but his hushed words were lost in the expanse of space between them.
He ceased speaking, and silence fell.
They started to hum.
Voices that were not theirs joined in. Not teenage. Not human.
Tyler’s skin crawled, and without even the usual warning a sword was resting in his hand; he lurched back out of his crouch into a more steady position on his heels, ready for an attack. He felt something like spider legs crawling over his back and neck and he bit back a yell of surprise and fear.
He didn’t think he had made much noise, even in rocking back on his heels, but when he turned his eyes back to the floor, the Wizard had turned and was staring back at him.
His eyes were not human.
Something was happening on the floor. A candle flame flared up, and the others snuffed out; a girl screamed, and her scream was picked up and echoed by the other girls, and then they were on their feet and stomping on the ground and jumping like they were trying to crush spiders or avoid mice. The screaming turned to hysteria. Tyler heard a clank of metal and turned his head. Chris was gone.
His knuckles were white on his sword hilt, but he couldn’t see where the enemy was or how to fight. The lone candle still burning wasn’t enough to light up more than a fairly small circle on the floor, and although shadows jostled around it, it illuminated no one directly. Tyler had seen demons before—he would never, ever forget encountering the core here—but he could see none now.
So what use was this stupid sword?
And where was Chris?
Frantic, he jumped to his feet and looked both ways. Shadows, just shadows. He ran to the end of the catwalk, reached metal stairs, and started down, bounding as fast as he could without falling headlong in the dark.
When his feet hit concrete, he closed his already white-knuckled hand even more tightly around his sword and charged straight toward the screams and chaos near the candle, pumping both arms and not caring if he ran straight into someone. The sound of something—somethings—scuttling and skittering around the floor met his ears, and something else slithered over his foot. Faint light was coming in from the outside; the front door was open. Shadows were dashing out—teenagers who’d had enough and were running in fear.
Something pushed into his shoulder with a hard, violent shove, and Tyler swung around blindly, throwing a punch that didn’t make contact with anything. But the move had him facing the candle again, and now the Wizard was in the light, and so was Chris.
They were facing each other. Chris had his fists up. Both glared.
In the light, and so much closer up, Tyler could see the Wizard’s features. He was a good-looking college-aged young man, square jawed and sandy blond. The cloak, black and long and like something from the movies, should have looked stupid but didn’t. Tyler couldn’t tell what colour his eyes were.
There were shadows, and besides, they still weren’t human.
The Wizard said—something—quietly, but with a taunt in tone that even Tyler could hear, and Chris reacted instantly by throwing a punch straight at his face. The young man, easily as tall and probably as strong as Chris, moved impossibly fast and caught the punch. He held Chris’s hand in the air for a moment and then started to twist. Chris howled, and his knees buckled. He threw back his head and roared in pain. Tyler grabbed his sword
hilt with both hands and hurled himself at the Wizard. Something caught him and held him in place. Frozen. Stuck.
There was a horrific snap, and Chris let out a sound like a wounded lion and clutched his arm to his chest.
The Wizard looked at Tyler, and his unnatural eyes sparkled. When he spoke, his voice had the faint trace of an accent—European, but Tyler couldn’t place it exactly.
“Can’t fight what you can’t see,” he said, and laughed.
The last candle snuffed out.
Tyler fell forward and landed on his hands and knees beside Chris. He had dropped his sword—fat lot of good it had done him anyway. He reached out for Chris’s shoulder, but his friend lurched away and ground out through clenched teeth, “Don’t let him get away.”
Like there was anything they could to stop it.
Like they’d had the upper hand for a single minute in this whole night.
The warehouse had gone silent and still. Tyler felt his way across the concrete floor to the wall, using slight light from the open door to guide him in the right direction, and finally flipped on a light switch.
They were alone.
* * *
Chris’s arm was broken. Somewhere near the elbow, he thought. He cradled it in the backseat of the truck while Tyler drove for the hospital. They spent only an hour in the Lincoln ER before Chris got taken back for X-rays and then the break was set and given a cast.
Tyler called the village cell house from Chris’s phone and told a strangely subdued Mary that there had been an accident, but they were okay and were on their way home.
Before she got off, Mary said, “You know you can’t hide, Tyler.”
“Whatever,” was all he said, and he hung up. He paced in the waiting room while Chris got bandaged up. Finally got a prescription for pain meds filled. Around midnight they were back in the truck and heading home.
“The kid was there,” Chris said through gritted teeth.
Hive Page 5