by Peter Nealen
Is that how we all end up, eventually? Did there come a time that being so close to the dark things of the Abyss and the Otherworld finally broke us down?
But as soon as the treacherous thought came, I knew from whence it must have appeared. There were many Hunters who died in the line of their vocation, others who lost their minds. But our role models were those who had faced the powers of the Abyss all their lives, often far less heavily armed than we, and ultimately triumphed, through nothing more than sheer faith. If St. John Vianney, the Cure of Ars, could have been terrorized by demonic manifestations not unlike what we’d just faced, night after night, for years, and persevered, who were we to do any less? Despair was a temptation of the Enemy.
“What do we do now?” Frank asked. “It’s three in the morning.”
Though I should have known it was, given that the last manifestation had also occurred at the Witching Hour, those words still sent gooseflesh up my arms. We were at the time of the Abyss’ greatest power in the mortal world. Only a fool feels overly confident under those circumstances.
I looked back at the room we’d just left. “I think we stay up, keep watch, and pray for a while. We’ve got two people here who need more defending than usual. Make that three,” I added, remembering Paul, who had peered fearfully out of his door, then shut it, as we’d broken Trudeau’s door down. At least we knew he was alive, and conscious. In what sort of frame of mind, I didn’t know, and I was about to go check on him when a roar from outside shook the entire house.
Now, Ray’s house is a solid log building. The walls are almost a foot and a half thick, on a stone foundation that Ray had laid himself. It takes a lot to shake that structure. But that blast of noise and hate managed it.
In the next moment, every shutter on every window was rattling, as if something was trying to get in. The door thrummed with a tremendous boom as something slammed against it.
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, oh Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits, who prowl throughout the world, seeking the ruin of souls. Those were the words I spoke in my mind, alongside the Pater Noster and Ave Maria, as we stood in the living room, in a circle, backs to one another and guns out, pointed toward the door and the windows.
As if in response to my prayer, there came a sudden brilliant, actinic flash outside, that stabbed through the cracks in the shutters. As soon as it appeared, the noise and the rattling stopped dead.
“Something really wants to get to us,” Eryn said quietly. She was pressed close to my side. She was scared, but her voice was even. The only sign she gave of her fear was her physical closeness to me. Otherwise, she was perfectly composed.
My wife is kind of awesome.
“Do you think this is same thing that followed Paul from Spokane?” Kolya asked.
“I think it is,” I replied. “Though it seems like it’s getting stronger.”
“I would have thought that you’d have driven it out by now, with Father Ignacio here,” Frank pointed out, a puzzled note in his deep voice.
“We did,” Ray said grimly. “But it came back, and I think I know how.”
“It piggybacked in with Trudeau,” I said flatly. “I thought I saw a shadow moving behind her when Magnus treed her. Now I know for sure.”
“I really have no idea what you’re talking about,” Miller said, his own voice slightly tremulous, “but whatever this is we’re dealing with, it certainly sounds dangerous. But what has it really done, except for shake some stuff and make some noises?”
“That’s the theatrical side of it,” Ray said. He might not have stirred from his house in years, but Ray was a veritable encyclopedia of Witch Hunter knowledge. “It’s meant to unnerve and to demonstrate the demon’s power. To some extent, it really is an attack; there have been cases of actual physical harm done in these situations, either by flying objects, or by unseen agencies.
“But the real attack is inside. These things are to confuse and fuddle, terrify and convince the target that they are utterly outmatched, that they have no chance against the demon.
“And alone,” he continued, “that is an entirely accurate assessment. These things are far smarter and more devious than the smartest and most deceitful human ever born. They are pure intellect, intellect twisted into something darker, more perverted, and more infinitely dangerous than any serial killer you’ve ever heard of.”
He turned to look Miller in the eye. “Tell me you haven’t had some strange thoughts, particularly when that stuff’s been going on.”
Miller looked uncomfortable. “It’s unsettling, sure,” he said. “But that’s kind of hard-wired into the human mind, isn’t it? Just about everybody’s afraid of the dark growing up. Even into adulthood, scary noises in the night can be disturbing. It’s a holdover to the days when we were hiding in caves, with sabertooth tigers prowling around outside.”
“It’s more than that,” Ray rumbled. “Have you ever heard a mountain lion scream in the dark, Special Agent Miller?”
“No, I can’t say that I have. I’m admittedly a bit of a city boy, my time in the Army notwithstanding.”
“I have. So has Jed, here. I’m sure Frank Tall Bear has, too.” Frank nodded solemnly, without taking his black eyes off the windows. “Trust me, as terrifying as it is, there is no mistaking a mountain lion’s scream for what just happened here. With this sort of thing, the fear comes from the realization, deep down, that that thing out there is not part of our natural, material world, and that it is purely, consciously evil. Even the most jaded human mind can recognize it.”
“Well, those who don’t try to cut deals with those things,” I put in.
Miller was thinking about it, but he was having a hard time wrapping his head around it, really coming to terms with the upending of his easy, mechanical, understandable universe. He was trying to understand, which put him ahead of Trudeau, but he was still struggling with it. It happened with most people, the first few times they confront the uncanny. The mind wants some kind of easy, normal explanation, and for more than one reason.
For many people, and I suspected that Trudeau was definitely one of them, the idea of the supernatural is scary for two reasons. The first, the fact that there are sepulchral predators out there, that can neither be seen nor heard until they choose to manifest themselves, ancient and malevolent entities that desire humanity’s utter corruption and destruction, is scary enough. But to many, the idea of the supernatural eventually leads to the idea of God, and to the sinner, He can be even more frightening than the idea of the Devil.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that any of us aren’t sinners. But to many, denying the existence of the supernatural is a shortcut to denying that they have anything to repent or rectify in their own lives. And with what Miller had told me about Trudeau’s history, I expected it went even deeper than that. Because if there is a God, then she might have to face the idea that her parents, as brutally as they might have treated her, were not entirely wrong about everything.
My musings were cut short by the sound of Magnus barking out in the night, his voice echoing with that faint, maddening hint of horns, followed by the crash of gunfire.
Chapter 9
Ray rushed to the window and peered out of the slot in the shutter. I took the next one. Whatever Magnus was, I didn’t think he was immune to bullets.
I was about to unbar the door and head out there to help him when Ray seized my arm in a vise-like grip. “No,” he said. “If Magnus needs us, he’ll let us know. Let him work.”
“Magnus isn’t bulletproof, Ray,” I replied hotly. Then I paused and skewered him with a glance. “Or is he?”
His face closed again. This was getting frustrating. “Just trust me, Jed,” he said. “We don’t want to go out there right now.”
I frowned, studying him, but his face
was a mask. I glanced over at Eryn, who was studying Ray just as quizzically. She thought there was something strange going on here, too. Of course, we’d discussed that more than once before, lying in bed before drifting off to sleep in the evenings. But we were apparently no closer to an explanation than we had been before.
The sounds of combat continued outside. So far, no bullets had hit the house; whoever was shooting out there wasn’t shooting at us, not yet. I searched the darkness of the woodline through the slot in the shutters, but it was close to three thirty, and the moon was down. There was nothing to see.
The shots died away. The unearthly screaming and howling that had accompanied the shooting and Magnus’ barking similarly quieted. For a long moment, everything was silent, except for the pop and crackle of the fire on the hearth. No one said anything. We were all watching and waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The front door swung open.
Now, remember, it had been barred. And it was built of heavy timbers, bolted together with long-tailed, heavy, wrought iron hinges. It shouldn’t have opened unless one of us opened it from inside. But it swung open, and I suddenly couldn’t remember if the bar had been shot home all the way, or if it had been only partially seated. Maybe the shaking earlier had dislodged it.
Four rifle barrels, one shotgun, and one pistol all leveled on the door as it opened onto the dark. But when a broad-shouldered, clean-shaven young man, carrying a body over his shoulder, stepped inside, Ray suddenly barked, “Lower your guns!”
I watched the young man carefully as I complied. He moved easily, as if he was carrying a pillow on his shoulder, even though we could see, as he turned to shut the door behind him, that the man he was carrying had to weigh two hundred fifty pounds if he weighed an ounce.
The door shut and barred, all the way this time, the young man turned and unceremoniously dropped the body on the slate floor in front of him.
That was when I saw that the young man’s eyes were a lambent gold. He was a Fae.
Not only that, but there was something hauntingly familiar about those eyes. I had seen them before. I briefly thought of Fand, the Fae girl whom Ray and Dan had taken me to meet in those very woods behind the house, to try to find out what the thing hunting me had been. She had been at one and the same time ethereal and voluptuous, alluring and terrifyingly dangerous.
But as similar as they were, these weren’t Fand’s eyes. I began to get suspicious, but I held my peace for the moment, until I knew more. But I shot Ray a searching glance, that he utterly ignored.
Everyone else in the room was doing the same, looking from the young man to Ray, who seemed completely unperturbed by the fact that this guy had just waltzed through what should have been a securely locked door.
“The next wave has arrived,” the young man said, pointing to the body on the floor.
At first glance, the man lying on the slate looked like a biker. He was wearing a leather jacket, with extra studs and zippers, black jeans, and low-top black leather boots. He also had a cheap nylon holster on his belt. It was empty.
When we all looked a little nonplused, the young man reached down and turned down the collar of the jacket. “Do you see?” he asked.
I pulled my flashlight out of my pocket. The firelight was too dim there by the door to make out detail. The fact that the golden-eyed young man seemed to have no trouble seeing such details only made his own Otherworldly provenance that much more obvious.
In the brilliant white circle of light, I could see a scar on the side of the man’s neck. It was a glyph. It wasn’t one I’d seen before, but it was still just as nauseating as any other such symbol that I’d ever set eyes on. As physically ugly as they are, that’s not what puts headaches in your head and bile in your throat when you look at them. They are twisted, unclean symbols for awful, unnatural things, and to look at them is to scratch at that part of the back of your brain that recognizes danger and poison before ever seeing or tasting anything.
“It’s a glyph,” I said, straightening. “Not one I’ve seen before.”
“It is a brand,” the young man said. “He is a Renfield.”
That term I’d heard before. Even most people outside of the profession have heard that term. And if that was the second wave, it boded nothing good.
Miller had certainly heard it. “Wait a minute,” he protested. “A Renfield? Like in Dracula?”
The young man turned his golden eyes on the FBI agent. They seemed to glow in the firelight. “Yes,” he replied. “And the vampire is near. I can smell it.”
“How far, Magnus?” Ray asked. Every eye in the room snapped to stare at him so hard that I could almost swear I heard a click.
“Still a day or so away,” the young man said. “Dawn is too close; it is biding its time, hoping its minions, the hobgoblins and the Renfields, can clear out our defenses.”
“Hold it,” Miller demanded. “Back up about ten minutes, here. First of all, y’all are saying that vampires exist, now? And that this kid is Magnus? As in the gigantic dog that ran out of the house just a few hours ago? Or is the dog just named after you?”
The young man with the golden eyes blurred. It was a jarring enough sight that my vision seemed to swim for a second. When it cleared, Magnus the dog was standing over the Renfield, panting.
After about ten seconds of stunned silence, Magnus blurred again, and I had to look away. It was so weird that my eyes were about to cross. When I turned back, he was a tall, broad-shouldered young man with fiery eyes again.
I turned to Ray. “So you’ve got two Fae running around this place?” I asked.
“More than two,” Magnus said. “I am the…sergeant of the guard, you might say. My father’s entire honor guard is stationed here.”
“Your father’s…?”
“There will be time for explanations later,” Ray interrupted brusquely. “What’s the situation outside, Magnus?”
“The hobgoblins are still in the woods, and they have been reinforced,” the young-looking Fae, who was probably centuries old, if not older, said, “The Renfields have been repulsed, for now, but they will be back. They were the newest, and least reliable, of the vampire’s thralls. There is worse on the way. And that is only the lower-order threat.” His voice became hushed. “There is something in the darkness, something that is beyond our power to repel, or even approach. It is stalking around this house like wolves around a flock of sheep.”
“Yeah, we know,” Ray told him. “It’s been inside, too. And I don’t think it’s done.”
“But it will be morning soon,” Frank pointed out. “First light is in something like an hour and a half.”
“You ever been around a demonic manifestation for an hour and a half, Frank?” Ray asked. “That’s an eternity.”
“Get everyone ready,” Father Ignacio said from the hallway. He was supporting a visibly weak and frightened Charlie. “You’re right, Ray. It’s not done. And I think it’s next attack is coming soon.”
“How the…blazes,” Miller caught himself at a sharp glance from Kolya and me, “can you possibly know that?”
“Because the voices in my head are getting worse,” Charlie said. “It’s coming. I just know it.”
“We need to get Trudeau and Paul out here, too,” Father said. “Anyone alone will be its first targets, and those two we already know are susceptible.” As if on cue, Trudeau started shrieking again.
This time, her screams were not abject terror. They were strident and angry. As we neared her door, we heard her screaming, “Stop it! I’m not falling for it! I said STOP IT!” She had apparently found her reload, because three more shots banged on the other side of the door. “STOP IT!”
“She’s just going to make things worse,” Father Ignacio said urgently. “That thing’s going to feed off of her!”
“If one of us breaches that door,” I pointed out, “we’re going to have to shoot her. And that’s going to make matters infinitely worse.” A moment later, Trudeau
was forgotten.
Paul’s door slammed open, and he lurched out, clutching his head. His shadow jumped and writhed, and not necessarily in concert with the flickering of the lantern in Ray’s hand. His eyes were squeezed shut, and while it was hard to see in the dim light, I could have sworn that there was blood dripping from them, like tears.
“He’s here,” he moaned. There was a curious undertone to his voice, as if terror was somehow mixed with ecstasy. “He’s come!” He suddenly threw back his head and screamed.
He was on his tip-toes, his back arched and his mouth gaping wide as he screamed at the ceiling, a long, unending wail that went on and on, continuing for far longer than any human lungs should have been able to keep it up. After a moment, I realized that he wasn’t entirely touching the floor, and the shadows around him were getting thicker.
The wailing died down, like an old fire siren winding down. And then he spoke. Or something did. It didn’t sound like Paul’s voice. And the word it spoke wasn’t English, nor any other human language. It sent a stabbing pain through my skull, and my stomach knotted. He repeated it, and the pain got worse.
Blood was now openly flowing from his ears, his nostrils, and his mouth. He was shouting the unnatural word now, over and over again. I still could not understand it, but I knew what it was.
He was chanting the name of the unholy thing that had been terrorizing us since he had arrived.
I had my gold bead centered on his head, from mere feet away, by the third time he chanted that filthy name. He wouldn’t be the first one I’d had to drop. Once the demon really gets its hooks in, sometimes there’s no turning back. And this looked like he was prepping a pseudo-physical manifestation. There’s really no turning back from that. If he started to warp and change, I was going to have to kill him.