And its counterparts that had been hounding her . . .
Or faithfully answering her call.
However you wanted to look at it.
She started to shake her head, almost violently, and called the sword back to her hand, stepping forward menacingly.
“Get away from me,” she said.
“We are not on Bertoller’s side,” it said.
“Get away!”
It obliged, moving back suddenly and beginning to disperse into thin wisps of smoke. “We are power, and drawn to power. It doesn’t matter what you ask of us. We make no judgments.”
As it disappeared, escaping the slash of her sword, it said, “You need only call.”
* * *
Tyler caught his breath as he slowed to a jog. Jacob hadn’t waited for him and somehow managed to cross more ground in a few strides than Tyler could manage at a run. Why he was trying so hard to rejoin a man who had smashed him in the face, he wasn’t really sure.
Jacob had finally slowed down, standing in the hollow between two sand dunes. He turned to face Tyler.
“If you come with me, you stay out of my way. And you do not interfere. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” Tyler said. “But what—”
“I am this close—this close—to avenging my wife, and a woman under my care, and countless—countless—others. Do you understand? I won’t be stopped this time. I won’t be delayed. I’m not going to be too late to cut Bertoller off from the source of his power because you separated me from my greatest weapon and dropped us in the middle of nowhere.”
Tyler drew himself up short. “I dropped us? We fell. I didn’t—”
“It was your arrogance that got us here,” Jacob said. “You played with powers you don’t understand and have no ability to control. Argue with that if you want.”
He turned and began stalking away again. Tyler followed. “Wait. Did you call Reese a weapon?”
“Reese is a weapon. I don’t expect you to see that.”
“She’s just a girl.”
“She’s a woman with an extraordinary gift and the capacity to become more powerful than you can dream. The demons have been offering themselves to her—giving themselves to her control. I have sought their power for twenty years, and they have never done that for me. She only needs to let go of her fears and her misguided beliefs about the Oneness. She does that, and she will become a force for good such as this world has rarely seen.”
“By becoming a killer?” Tyler asked. “By killing Bertoller?”
“Bertoller must die.”
“Bertoller is a man.”
Jacob just cast a look over his shoulder that said Tyler was a worm, and stupider than a worm.
“What kind of game do you have around here?” he asked abruptly.
“What?”
“Game. Hunting animals.”
“Deer,” Tyler said. “And, uh, geese . . .”
“You still have that knife I gave you?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you kill with it?”
“Not a deer or a goose. I’m a fisherman.”
Jacob sighed. “Fine. Stay here. Gather wood for a fire. A big one.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Call for help.”
“With a fire? We’re going to make smoke signals?”
Jacob glared at him scathingly. “I would like to believe you’re not as ignorant as you pretend.”
“I would like to believe you’re not talking about calling the kind of help you’re talking about calling.”
“Just build the fire.”
“Are you going to sacrifice something?”
“You’re lucky I’m not going to sacrifice you.”
Tyler looked around as though searching for help, but there wasn’t much he could do. It couldn’t really hurt to build a fire, could it? Jacob was already climbing the dune, off in search of something to kill—Good luck on that in the middle of the day, Tyler thought—and Tyler heaved a sigh and started to search for flammable scrub or driftwood.
He offered a prayer for Reese as he worked. He could still see her falling, hear her calling his name. What had happened back there?
And where was she?
“Be okay, Reese,” he muttered as he began to fill his arms with driftwood. “Just be okay. We’ll find you soon.”
He paused.
“Please, remember that you aren’t alone.”
* * *
Bertoller watched as his men spread along the beach far below. Two others, armed thugs, bodyguards, stood at a respectful distance.
One of them carried a cell phone. It rang.
He waited as the thug grunted his way through the phone call and hung up.
“They’ve got the brat,” he said. “And someone else. Young guy who won’t give his name.”
“Description?” Bertoller said.
“Early twenties, big. Red hair.”
“Sawyer,” Bertoller said. “That’s good. If nothing else, he’s a bargaining chip.”
The phone rang again—this time the thug expressed surprise. When he hung up, he said, “They found the car Reese and Jacob were driving.”
“Just the car?”
“It was empty, on the side of the road in the mountains. No sign of them—not a footprint, not nothing.”
Bertoller considered that. It wasn’t a good sign. And he was not happy to have lost them. Still, chances were they were heading for Lincoln—if word of Julie’s death had reached them, it was guaranteed.
“They’ll show up eventually.”
The thug sounded nervous. “No word yet on the other woman.”
Bertoller cursed in automatic response—not to the report, which was expected, but to the reminder. That Julie was alive somewhere, as the demons already gathered to him assured him was true, was his sharpest reminder that all was not yet under his control.
But the Power would win. No matter how many murder victims came back to life and walked away.
He, the man whose name for some centuries had been Franz Bertoller, and before that names he could hardly remember, would not allow it to go any other way. He needed no reminder that the stakes were high—for him, deathly high. That for the first time in his history, he had been so thoroughly cut down that if he did not come back, if this tiny cell with its cluster of great powers that did not know themselves were able to strike at him again, he might lose entirely.
He might die.
He had spent his whole life serving the darkness, the chaos, the forces of entropy, corruption, and decay, but he would not surrender himself to those forces just yet.
He scanned the beach below for some sign of April, but it was too far, and wherever she was, she was hidden. Their ignorance of themselves had served him well thus far. April’s mural was an alarm signal not only because it displayed what she was to him, but because it displayed it to herself as well. If she acted on what she saw herself to be, he would not be able to stand against her.
And she wasn’t the only one. Richard. Reese. Melissa. Even the boy, Tyler.
He intended to kill them all before they could step out of their ignorance and into the fulness of their identities. Unless, of course, they turned—as David had, and Jacob, and nearly others. That had been his greatest dream. Turn the Oneness on itself, infiltrate and infect its ranks, turn it into a giant hive crawling with the powers of evil. Make the Oneness the ultimate destroyers of the universe they were holding together.
He had to admit now that he’d been overreaching.
But to kill a handful of great saints before they knew what they were? That, he could do. And doing so would empower him, make him stronger than he had been perhaps ever before.
He remembered great saints of the past, some he had killed and more he had kept his distance from, but he had never seen so many in one place.
From the beach below, a howl rose. Shouts carried the message up to him. The beast had found a trail.
No
t the girl, not yet, but at least they could follow her now.
They were far from a village and farther from a real road. She wouldn’t reach help or disappear anytime soon.
It could only be a matter of time before they found her.
Chapter 12
Chris stared hard at their captors as they drove, watching them for some moment of weakness or inattention. Two sat in the front seat, two more were in the back with Chris, who sat with Miranda on his lap, which was all the room there was for her. He desperately hoped they’d be pulled over for a traffic violation.
Moments ago, one of the thugs had used a cell phone to call someone and report on their capture. It was clear from his wording that they’d expected to find Miranda and that they hadn’t expected to find him.
“Come on,” he said, ignoring the men next to him and talking to the ones up front—who he figured had seniority, or they would be the ones crammed into the backseat. “Where are you taking us? Who are you working for?”
“Can it,” one of them said. “We don’t answer to you.”
“Who do you answer to?”
They ignored him. He knew he should consider himself lucky—they hadn’t shot him dead on the farm ground, and they hadn’t beat him up or otherwise made life miserable. But he had a very bad feeling about where things were going from here.
“Are you working for that creep Bertoller?”
Nothing, but he thought he saw a slight expression on one of their faces—just a twinge of satisfaction coupled with annoyance—that told him the answer was yes.
Richard had told him about the final conflict with Clint, the young man who had transformed before their eyes into a very old, very evil one—a man who hadn’t been able to be pinned with Clint’s crimes. It wasn’t hard to figure he was behind the murder of Julie and now this kidnapping.
What was hard was knowing what to do next. If he’d been alone, he might have made a break for it already—just opened the car door and rolled. He was in as good a shape as any one of these goons and bet he was better at navigating the woods and countryside. But Miranda complicated things. He couldn’t take her with him—the thought was ludicrous, given her penchant for hysterics—and he couldn’t leave her behind.
Of course, chances were Reese would come and find them as she sought out Julie’s “killers,” so staying with these guys wouldn’t mess up his plans to find her. But the thought of being collateral for the bad guys when she showed up was unacceptable.
And it was a bit galling to think of her rescuing him when he had been trying so hard to help her.
That was all assuming that Bertoller kept them alive long enough for Reese to find.
No guarantees, he figured.
So he really had to do something, and do it fast.
Inwardly he kicked himself for the giant blank his brain was drawing. Even as the car headed into a more populated area and other traffic began to fill the road, he couldn’t think of any way out. He could try to signal to someone, but in such tight quarters, the goons would notice. Without any better ideas, he wedged one hand up against the window where his body and Miranda’s blocked it from view and tried to wave down another car, but the only motions he could make without drawing attention were so small that he doubted any other driver on the road would notice it either.
When Miranda first announced that she needed the bathroom, he wanted to kiss her.
She was brilliant. Or, he realized, just really, really naive. And self-focused.
It wasn’t a ploy—she really had to go. And she kept up a litany of complaints, to the silence of their captors, until finally the driver burst out, “Fine! We’ll stop! But no monkey business, you understand me? You’ll go and come right back, and if you take a step to run away, we will run you down. You understand me?”
“Yes,” she said, trembling, and he pulled over. Chris and Miranda both spilled out the side of the car at once, so tightly wedged in that it was almost impossible to get one out without the other.
To Chris’s overwhelming joy, the opposite door swung open and the two goons from the backseat started to climb out on the other side—apparently wanting to breathe the air and stretch as badly as he did. As they were climbing out, Miranda ventured forward to a handy bush, the driver said something to direct her, and for a moment, all eyes were on her.
Chris ran.
He hadn’t even exactly been planning it; it just happened. His legs churned and his heart raced, and he was off, running straight for the woods only fifty yards away. Shouts and bullets followed him, the shots pinging off the dirt on either side but missing. He heard a long, loud wail—Miranda, not happy to be abandoned.
“I’ll be back, kid,” he said through gritted teeth as he vaulted a ditch and landed in the cover of the trees. The jump knocked him off balance for a moment, and he scrambled back to his feet and just kept running. Branches pulled at his shirt and whipped his face; he kept going. Eyes forward. Legs running. His whole body straining deeper into the wooded darkness, farther from his pursuers.
He heard feet pounding the ground behind him and grunts as the men vaulted the ditch. Branches snapped and cracked, but the goons were wearing suits, and the branches were snagging in their jackets and slowing them down worse than they were doing for Chris—or so he assumed from the cursing and the distance of their voices. He didn’t look back.
His ears told him only two of the men had chased him; the other two must still be at the car with Miranda. He kept on straight ahead until he could tell they were almost on him, and then, picking a tiny clearing, he stopped on a dime, turned, and grabbed one man by the scruff of his neck, using his own momentum to throw him off his feet and straight forward. The man’s head collided with a tree trunk, and he was down. Chris had already met the other one with an uppercut to the jaw. The thug brought his gun up, but they were at close quarters, and Chris managed to grab his arm, twist, and force him to drop the gun. Chris ducked, grabbed the gun, and shot the man in the leg. The other seemed to be out cold.
“You should tell your boss to call goon school and get them to send out a couple of new students,” Chris said. “You two are an embarrassment.” He mopped sweat from his forehead with his T-shirt, noting that blood came away from it. Danged tree branches. For good measure, he shot the unconscious man behind the knee.
The second man was holding his leg and seething with rage, his eyes almost black with it.
“You better hope you get a week off for that,” Chris said, nodding at him. “Otherwise I’ll likely be seeing you soon. Doubt you’ll like it.”
Gun in hand, he turned and stalked back into the woods.
* * *
When she couldn’t swim anymore, April returned to the beach and ran. She could sense the beast gaining on her. She could feel its spiritual presence—a dark, pulsating blot—although waves crashing and her own heart pounding in her ears blocked out the sounds of pursuit.
She wasn’t going to escape this way. She knew that.
So she stopped running. Just quit, and let herself drop onto the sandy beach and sit among the sharp-edged grass and wait. A comparison from her childhood suggested itself to her: hiding in the closet, waiting for the rage she could hear throughout the house to find her, knowing it most likely would. Knowing the futility of trying to run.
But this didn’t feel like that, somehow.
The voice she had heard in the dark place beneath the waves had gripped her heart too firmly, and she felt safe in that grip. As though this time, she was not the child, but the adult waiting for a child to rage out its own temper until it dropped in exhaustion.
Somehow, it felt right to stop and wait for it. Like this was not only the only thing she could do, but the best thing.
She had rounded a cliff bend and could hear the monster gaining, about to burst upon her. Her sword formed in her hand, and she regarded it wryly—only weeks ago, she had led a quiet life as part of a village cell where nothing ever happened. Practicing the art of painting
had not given her much ability in warfare. And for all that her painting seemed to be a gift of staggering meaning and magnitude, she couldn’t see any way to turn it against the beast about to burst around the corner.
It did so a moment later and paused as if confused as to her whereabouts—for one moment she thought it might rush past without seeing her.
No such luck.
Yellow eyes focused in on her and narrowed. This was not—exactly—a demon. Demonically driven, yes, but the creature was something else, lacking a demon’s purpose or intelligence. Her blood ran cold when she realized it might just tear her apart before any of her other pursuers arrived.
“Spirit, save me,” she said, moving into a crouch with her sword held defensively before her. She had no idea what she was doing, but she knew there were fighter instincts in there somewhere—hopefully they would kick in with enough force to make some difference.
The beast let out a roar and charged forward. April sprang up and dodged the charge, managing to whirl around and deal the animal a whack with her blade before it realized it had missed her. The blow bounced off its thick hide, and she wondered if she’d just made it mad.
“Come on,” she said, crouching low to make herself a tense, ready-to-spring target. The ocean waves washed up on the shore behind her, lapping at her feet. “Get this over with.”
To her surprise, the beast stalked from side to side but didn’t attack. It eyed her sword warily—perhaps aware that it was capable of doing more damage than she’d demonstrated.
Or maybe, she thought, it was afraid of the water.
Inspired by that thought, she backed further into the waves, wading out to her knees. She was at a disadvantage here—if she tried to move quickly she’d probably just be knocked over by the pull of the water—but the beast wasn’t coming any closer.
“If you only knew,” she said, “how little threat I actually am.”
“Thankfully,” another voice said, “we do know that.”
Renegade Page 12