by Lis Wiehl
ACCLAIM FOR WAKING HOURS
“. . . an exciting faith-based series that skillfully blends romantic tension, gripping supernatural suspense, and a brutal crime.”
—LIBRARY JOURNAL, STARRED REVIEW OF WAKING HOURS
“Wiehl’s latest is a truly creepy story with supernatural undertones that seems eerily real.”
—ROMANTIC TIMES REVIEW OF WAKING HOURS
“. . . a truly chilling predator and some great snappy, funny dialogue will keep readers engaged.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW OF WAKING HOURS
“This smart, spooky, high-stakes mystery engaged my mind and my spirit. Tommy and Dani’s battle against the seen and unseen forces rising in East Salem has only just begun, but I’m fully invested in their journey.”
—ERIN HEALY, AUTHOR OF THE PROMISES SHE KEEPS AND THE BAKER’S WIFE
“A strong debut full of suspense, romance and supernatural mystery. A fine start to the series.”
—ANDREW KLAVAN, BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF TRUE CRIME AND THE HOMELANDERS SERIES
“One word describes Waking Hours by Wiehl and Nelson—WOW! A gut-wrenching ride of supernatural suspense that left me breathless and wanting more. The book was a reminder that the battle between God and Satan is not over. Highly recommended!”
—COLLEEN COBLE, BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF LONESTAR ANGEL AND THE ROCK HARBOR SERIES
“A gripping plot, intriguing characters, supernatural underpinnings, and a splash of romance make Waking Hours a fast-paced and thoroughly enjoyable read. I want the next book in the series now!”
—JAMES L. RUBART, AWARDWINNING AUTHOR OF ROOMS
ACCLAIM FOR LIS WIEHL’S
TRIPLE THREAT SERIES
“Only a brilliant lawyer, prosecutor, and journalist like Lis Wiehl could put together a mystery this thrilling! The incredible characters and nonstop twists will leave you mesmerized. Open [Face of Betrayal] and find a comfortable seat because you won’t want to put it down!”
—E. D. HILL, FOX NEWS ANCHOR
“Three smart women crack the big cases! Makes perfect sense to me. [Face of Betrayal] blew me away!”
—JEANINE PIRRO, FORMER DA; HOST OF THE CW’S DAYTIME COURT TELEVISION REALITY SHOW JUDGE JEANINE PIRRO
“Who killed loudmouth radio guy Jim Fate? The game is afoot! Hand of Fate is a fun thriller, taking you inside the media world and the justice system—scary places to be!”
—BILL O’REILLY, FOX TV AND RADIO ANCHOR
“As a television crime writer and producer, I expect novels to deliver pulsepounding tales with major twists. Hand of Fate delivers big time.”
—PAM VEASEY, WRITER AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER OF CSI: NY
“Book three in the wonderful Triple Threat series is a fast-paced thriller full of twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the end. What makes these books stand out for me is my ability to identify so easily with Allison, Nic and Cassidy. I truly care about what happens to each of them, and the challenges they face this time are heart-wrenching and realistic. I highly recommend!”
—DEBORAH SINCLAIRE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB AND THE STEPHEN KING LIBRARY
“Beautiful, successful and charismatic on the outside but underneath a twisted killer. She’s brilliant and crazy and comes racing at the reader with knives and a smile. The most chilling villain you’ll meet . . . because she could live next door to you.”
—DR. DALE ARCHER, CLINICAL PSYCHIATRIST, REGARDING HEART OF ICE
DARKNESS
RISING
DARKNESS
RISING
THE EAST SALEM TRILOGY
BOOK TWO
LIS WIEHL
WITH PETE NELSON
© 2012 by Lis Wiehl
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Page design by Mandi Cofer.
Thomas Nelson, Inc., books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ ThomasNelson.com.
Scripture quotations are taken from the KING JAMES VERSION of the Bible as well as the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.
Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-40168-786-1 (IE)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wiehl, Lis W.
Darkness rising / Lis Wiehl with Pete Nelson.
p. cm. -- (The East Salem trilogy ; bk. 2)
ISBN 978-1-59554-943-3
1. Paranormal fiction. 2. Murder--Fiction. 3. Forensic psychiatrists--Fiction. 4. High school students--Fiction. 5. Faith--Fiction. I. Nelson, Peter, 1953- II. Title.
PS3623.I382D37 2012
813’.6--dc23
2012022633
Printed in the United States of America
12 13 14 15 16 17 QG 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my loving mom, Inga Wiehl. And for
Dani and Jacob, from your loving mom.
Contents
Acknowledgments
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38.
39.
About the Authors
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Conceiving of and writing a book takes a leap of faith. Thank you to all the readers of the East Salem novels who have taken that leap of faith with me. I am humbled and inspired.
Thank you, O’Reilly, from Wiehl. And Roger Ailes, who took a chance on hiring a certain legal analyst. And Dianne Brandi, whose judgment is infallible.
Thank you to Pete’s lovely wife, Jen, and son, Jack, for all their patience. And to Bob Roe, for his keen eye and pen.
Thank you to the amazing team at Thomas Nelson, including Daisy Hutton, senior vice president and publisher (a true visionary); Ami McConnell, senior acquisitions editor (and compatriot); L.B. Norton (so appreciate your work and sense of humor); Amanda Bostic, acquisitions editor (“brilliant” should be added to her title); Natalie Hanemann, senior editor; Becky Monds, associate editor (and a stellar human being); Jodi Hughes, editorial assistant. In marketing, thank you, Eric Mullett, marketing director; Ashley Schneider, marketing specialist; Ruthie Dean, publicity coordinator; Katie Bond, publicity manager (and one of the finest people I know); and Kristen Vasgaard, packaging manager (who is a creative genius). Your spirit and enthusiasm is wonderfully infectious. And a special thank-you to
the awe-inspiring Allen Arnold, my friend always.
Thank you to our book agents, Todd Shuster and Lane Zachary of the Zachary, Shuster, and Harmsworth Literary Agency. We couldn’t have done this without you!
All of the mistakes are ours. All the credit is theirs. Thank you!
1.
Abbie Gardener could remember sitting on the back of a very broad, gray, docile plow horse named Bob. She loved Bob.
“You are a very special girl,” her father had told her, but she knew fathers always told their little girls they were special.
“Why?” she said.
“Because Jesus loves you. Do you believe Jesus loves you?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Did you say your prayers last night?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Did you say your prayers this morning?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“That’s a very good girl. You must say your prayers every morning and every evening before bed, and the Lord will protect you and keep you safe.”
And she had done so for many, many years. But lately she couldn’t remember if she’d prayed or not. It troubled her greatly. She was often certain that she had, but the next minute she wasn’t sure, and two minutes after that she’d forgotten what it was she was trying to remember.
Bob pulled a plow. He was a good horse. I used to feed him green apples.
She suddenly realized where she was. She was not a little girl. She was very old. She was in the same town where she’d lived her whole life. East Salem, New York. But she was not in her home. She was not on her farm. She was in a nursing home.
Why am I here?
It was dark outside. The clock on the bed stand had jumped ahead again. Beside the clock there was a small paper cup with two pills in it and a glass of water. She’d promised the girl in the blue jacket she’d take the pills before she went to bed, but she hadn’t.
Because it was coming.
It was coming soon, she knew, because it knew she couldn’t fight it any longer.
She went to the window in her nightgown and looked out. She looked at the floodlight in the parking lot and saw that it was raining.
“Of all the gifts in God’s domain, I think the most sublime is rain,” she sang. She could only remember the hymns she’d learned as a little girl. There were so many more, she knew, but she couldn’t remember them. Only fragments. “A mighty fortress is our God . . .” She suddenly realized that she needed to lock the windows.
She tried to find the button to call the girl in the blue jacket to tell her she must lock the windows. Where was the button? Was it a blue jacket? Was it green?
She wanted to lock the door, but there wasn’t a lock to lock.
The bracelet on her ankle itched. She wanted to take it off. If she didn’t remove the bracelet, the thing that was coming would use it to find her.
Bob pulled a plow. He was a good horse.
She went to the window. It was still raining.
“When God first saw the world in pain, I think he wept and called it rain . . .”
She thought she saw something moving on the lawn, in the shadows just beyond the light in the parking lot. Had she said her prayers tonight? Perhaps she should say them again, just to be safe.
“Our Father, who art in heaven . . .”
How did it go? Why couldn’t she remember?
“Our Father, who art in heaven . . . ”
“Our Father . . . ”
“It will come for you one day,” her father had told her. But it wasn’t her father. It was another man. The banker? “You have been chosen. You have been given gifts, and you will fight and be strong, but you will live to be very old and too weak to fight, and then one day . . .”
She looked out the window and saw a shape in the rain, or rather a hole in the night where rain was supposed to be. It moved slowly, deliberately, wending its way toward her.
Where was the button to call the girl?
But when she checked, the windows were already locked. Good.
It drew closer.
She looked around the room for anything she might use to defend herself. The chair was too heavy for her to lift. Her umbrella was one of those short, collapsible ones, not the long kind with a sharp point that might have been useful. She would fight it even though she could not win.
She moved behind the bed.
The thing was outside her window now. She saw it rise up, translucent at first, or made from darkness, absorbing light. She could see through it to the parking lot beyond.
Then it came through the window.
She could smell it before she could see it, a stench like rotten eggs, fetid and metallic—she could taste it at the back of her throat, harsh and revolting.
The entity began to take solid form, drawing molecules from the air and the walls and the floor. She saw its heart first, black and horned, sprouting arteries and veins like vines, wrapping around stone-gray bones. As it grew, it gradually stood upright, the vertebrae of its long neck like a string of black beads. “You’ll know it by the form it takes,” the man had told her. “In the olden times, brave men fought it and called it a dragon, but it’s a demon by any name or shape.”
Scales great and small covered its skin. Unsightly blisters spread across the underbelly. The room turned cold. A month ago they’d killed the girl. Abbie had tried to warn the girl, but she was too old.
“What a friend we have in Jesus,” the old woman sang. “All our sins and griefs to bear . . .”
Fully formed now, the thing tossed the bed aside and stepped toward her. The room was dark. It looked like some kind of animal, but nothing she’d ever seen before.
“What a privilege to carry . . . ,” she sang, louder now.
“WHERE IS IT? WHERE’S THE BOOK?” it said, commanding her not with sounds her ears could hear but with words that impaled her thoughts. A month ago they’d killed the girl because they knew her father was the one. The next. The girl, Julie, had tried to find him, and they killed her. Then they burned down the girl’s house to kill her mother and sister. Had they killed her father too? If so, the book was the only hope left, the only thing standing in their way. Abbie tried to remember where she’d hidden it, then laughed, because she couldn’t remember. What better hiding place was there than one the hider couldn’t find?
“Get thee behind me,” she answered.
“WHERE’S THE BOOK?”
“Is this the book you mean?” she shouted as she grabbed the Bible from the shelf next to the bed and held it up like a shield.
The beast cried out and slapped the Holy Book from her hand, sending it sailing across the room. It stepped closer, reached out, and pressed a bony finger to her lips. She struggled, lashed out at it, but couldn’t back away. She felt all the air inside her being sucked out. As the air left her lungs, the air outside her body pressed in. She was being crushed beneath an invisible weight.
The demon lifted its finger from her lips, and she could breathe again, gasping.
“WHERE IS THE BOOK?”
She looked at him defiantly and spat in his face.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” she said. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside—”
The beast again pressed its finger against her lips, and the air rushed out of her. She was unable to breathe, her vision dimming. Slowly, life left her body as the room and the sky and the world pressed down on her. She heard her bones cracking but she felt no pain, no fear, and she was able to finish the psalm silently, reciting the words in her head as she died: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever . . .
Then darkness.
Then light . . .
2.
“Into the lions’ den,” Dani said.
“Danielle and the lions,” Tommy said. “That has a ring to it. Hopefully we’ll get the same kind of help he had.”
“Hopefully we won’t need
it,” Dani said.
“We’re here.”
Tommy put the Jaguar in neutral, handed his keys to the parking valet, a boy who didn’t look old enough to drive, walked around the front of the car, and opened the door for Dani. Couples waiting to enter had gathered on the patio outside the art museum, men in tuxedos and cashmere overcoats, women accessorized in pearls and gold and diamond chandelier earrings.
The last time Dani Harris, a forensic psychiatrist, and Tommy Gunderson, her “assistant,” had visited St. Adrian’s Academy for Boys, it had been to question a boy they’d suspected of murdering a girl named Julie Leonard at a place called Bull’s Rock Hill. Dani’s employer, Ralston-Foley Behavioral Consulting, had been hired to consult with the district attorney’s office. Although the DA had officially closed the case, as far as Dani and Tommy were concerned, it wasn’t over. And though Dani was technically on leave of absence to deal with any post-traumatic stress disorders she might be experiencing, she knew there was no time to waste.
“Ready when you are,” Tommy said. In his pocket he had a device he’d purchased on the Internet, an electronic bug in the form of a coil of wire with what looked like a small black transformer on one end and a USB jack on the other. It could be plugged into a free USB port in the back of any computer, where its presence would go unnoticed, hidden in plain sight in the nest of wires and cords most people had connecting their peripheral devices. Once programmed and in place, it would use the Internet to transfer all the host-computer’s hard drive and keystroke data to a second monitoring computer, in this case, Tommy’s. They’d come to plant the bug or die trying, though dying wasn’t part of the plan, exactly.