“I think the end of the line is down there, doc,” he said.
Staring past him down the corridor, I only nodded.
I could feel it, too.
Just then, the ground shook under our feet.
It rolled hard enough and violently enough that I reached out, grabbing the nearest person to me, who happened to be Manny.
Cowboy came up from behind us both, grabbing hold of one of our arms with each of his hands, and the three of us surfed the shaking and rolling ground together, our knees bending as it continued, until we were half-crouched by the floor.
I saw a few of Joseph’s people stumble and fall.
Black gripped the wall near him as the torches flickered, as sand sifted down around us from cracks in the rock walls. I found myself looking up, gauging the stability of the rock ceiling over our heads. I didn’t see any big cracks form, much less any cave-ins, not even around the rounded edges of the room, but I didn’t feel all that reassured.
Slowly, the rumbling under our feet and around us died down.
I gripped Manny’s arm tighter once it had, helping him back up as Cowboy did the same.
Glancing at Angel, I saw her by the rock wall near Black, her eyes wide.
“I really don’t like this,” she muttered, staring up at the rock ceiling.
I couldn’t help but agree with her.
Black gave me a last glance, then motioned with his head towards the narrow corridor again.
“Come on,” he grunted. “Time to get this over with.”
Exchanging grim looks with Angel, I only exhaled as she fell into step behind Black, her gun gripped in both hands. Dusting off my clothes, one-handed, I began to follow, still gripping my own gun in my other hand. I watched Cowboy as he half-jogged to catch up with Angel, then to get in front of her, probably in part because of the swords he wore, in addition to his gun.
Our group fell silent as we took turns entering the narrow corridor.
Giving a last glance at the mural, I frowned at that narrow, angular face, the black hair, those distinctly seer-like eyes.
Then I turned my back on it, following Manny down the corridor.
THE NEXT ROOM we entered was even larger than the one with the mural.
It was so quiet past that opening in the rock, I didn’t realize at first where we were, or who else was in there with us. My eyes shifted up first, taking in the shockingly high ceiling, the dimensions of which startled me after the low-ceilinged tunnel we’d just left.
Then I saw them, lining the round walls of the domed cave in a half-moon.
The humans directly in front of me and to my right crouched there, or sat directly on the rock, watching us like prey animals making themselves small for a predator.
Face after face looked back at me, most of the eyes dark, staring up at me and Black and the rest of us like they were afraid of us, like we’d come there to kill them.
Then I looked to my left, where Black, Angel and Cowboy stood. Black and Manny shifted positions slightly in front of me, and I saw it.
A narrow crevice shone with a jagged crack of light.
That light was fairly dim now, less bright than the torches flickering from iron brackets around the walls of the round cave. Glowing crystals stood out on the lips of the jagged opening, and I couldn’t help thinking it was like staring down a vaginal canal, like some kind of prehistoric womb lived beyond that fissure in the rock.
Then I saw the bodies lying in piles by the entrance to the opening.
I stared down at them, uncomprehending, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
I was still staring down when the light from those crystals grew suddenly and sharply brighter––blindingly bright, so bright they immediately drew my eyes, even as I threw up a hand in reflex. A shape appeared in that brightness, a human-like shape, only taller than most humans, a dark slash amidst all that gold and white light. A face appeared, the outline of a body.
Then she stepped all the way through.
A woman stood on the rock floor of the cave, staring around in bewilderment.
She had a shockingly pretty face, thick black and orange-dyed hair done in odd, Rastafarian-type braids, Asian features, dark skin, high cheekbones, perfectly formed full lips. Her orange eyes matched the orange in her hair and she wore some kind of strange, dark green clothing that looked almost like a military uniform.
She stepped away from the crevice in the rock, blinking in surprise as she looked around.
She stared at us, first at me, then at Black.
Something about Black startled her, making her flinch.
Her eyes widened as she gaped up at him.
Opening her mouth, she looked about to speak––
When a shot rang out, loud in the confined space of the cave, echoing under the high, curved ceiling. I flinched violently, raising my gun as that stunningly beautiful woman with the braids crumpled, shot right in the face. I heard dismayed shrieks and gasps, saw the circle of humans huddled at the base of those walls flinch and throw up their arms, covering their faces.
I turned, gripping my gun tighter, looking for the source of the shot.
Once I had, my heart leapt to my throat.
Wolf crouched by the rock wall, one knee on the back of someone who was bound with rope by the wrists, lying on his stomach. Wolf gripped a big gun in one hand, and as he lowered it from shooting the seer, he jammed it up against his captive’s head.
I recognized the gun; it was one of the same guns I’d seen strapped to his thigh in a holster earlier that day, when he stood outside the schoolhouse in Manny’s one-street town.
Wolf stared up at me, a half-smile on his face.
I felt him wanting me to look at the face of the man he had pinned with his knee.
I felt him wanting me to know who he had trapped there.
Involuntarily almost, my eyes drifted down. Once they had, I saw pretty much exactly who I should have expected to see.
Charles lay there, gasping, fighting to breathe, tears running down his face. He was staring at me too, his eyes filled with anguish.
Only then did I really understand.
Wolf was killing every seer who walked through that door of light.
“Kill him,” Charles said, gasping, his eyes brightening more. “Kill him, Miri. Let him kill me, I don’t care. Just kill this piece of shit––”
He got cut off when Wolf hit him sharply in the back of the head.
He used the hilt of a knife I hadn’t seen him holding in his other hand, without taking the gun off the back off Charles’ skull.
Charles’ forehead smacked against the rock floor––hard. I heard the thunk and winced, unable to stop myself. Charles didn’t move at first after after the impact. I thought Wolf had knocked him out cold, or worse, but seconds later, Charles tried to lift his head.
He moved groggily, clearly dazed.
He stared up at me, his leaf-green eyes out of focus, blood running down his face.
Kill me, Miri, he whispered in my mind. Kill me, then kill him.
Biting the inside of my cheek, hard enough to taste blood, I didn’t take my gun off Wolf.
I glanced at Black.
He wasn’t looking at me, or at Charles––or even at Wolf. His eyes scanned to the left of where Wolf knelt instead, assessing the other half of the ring of beings crouched beside and behind us against the rock walls.
My eyes followed his, even as my gun remained where it was.
Four large gray wolves clustered to Wolf’s right, growling, pacing in front of a row of vampires on the other side, further from the fissure in the rock than where Wolf crouched. I glanced at the wolves, then at the vampires, who were staring at all of us, some of them drooling as their fangs visibly extended.
Grimacing in revulsion and clenching my jaw, I looked at Black.
He was looking at me now.
He didn’t say anything before his gaze swiveled back to Wolf.
“What do you wa
nt?” he said. “What do you want from me?”
Wolf smiled, his knee digging deeper into Charles back.
“You know what I want,” he said.
“Let’s pretend I don’t,” Black growled. “Let’s pretend not all of us are on the peyote fun-time crazy train and I have no fucking clue what you want from me.”
Wolf’s smile widened.
He looked towards the far opening in the wall, the one we’d walked through, as the last of our group filed through the narrow opening. I glanced behind me to see them staring around at the Navajo townspeople lining the rock walls before, one by one, their eyes found the pile of dead bodies by the fissure in the rock.
I heard a few of the young Navajos in our group gasp as they realized they were dead.
Joseph, Easton, Dog, and Frank stood closer to the front. I watched them stare down at the pile of bodies in open shock, right before Joseph rearranged his hands on his rifle, a harder look coming to his face.
All of us were just standing there when two of the Navajos from Manny’s town came off the wall long enough to drag the woman with orange and black braids off to the side, presumably to make room for the next seer to walk through the crystal-lined door.
My throat tightened when I recognized one of the humans dragging the corpse as Elsie, Manny’s daughter.
The girl helping her must be Manny’s granddaughter.
The thought made me ill.
“What do you think I want, ghost?” Wolf said, belatedly answering Black. “You saw your picture in there, on the wall? You must know what it means.”
“I have no fucking idea what it means,” Black growled, turning from Elsie and her daughter back towards him. “And that fucked up wall art isn’t of me. Just ask my wife.”
Dog let out a half-broken snort, as much nerves as humor.
Wolf’s eyes swiveled to Dog, then back to Black.
“You’re the demon,” Wolf said, his mouth hard.
He dug his knee deeper into Charles’ back, making him writhe on the rock, jamming the barrel of the gun harder against the back of Charles’ skull.
“This one says he’s the dragon. He tells me he is part-dragon, part-ghost. He tells my people this.” Wolf’s voice filled with scorn as he frowned down at Charles. His dark, cold eyes rose, once more meeting Black’s. “But I say it’s you. I think you’re the Dragon. I think these are your people. You brought them here.”
Black stared at him, his gold, flecked eyes glowing in the light coming from the crystal-lined crevice in the rock.
I glanced down at his hands, and saw him gripping the hilts of both swords, so tightly his knuckles were white, his hands red.
“Ghost… dragon,” Black growled, frowning at Wolf. “Make up your mind, psycho.”
He took a step towards him, still gripping the swords.
Wolf jammed the gun he carried harder into the back of Charles’ head.
“Stop,” he commanded.
“Why the fuck should I?” Black took another slow, stalking stride, his arms tensing above where he gripped the swords. “What makes you think I give a shit if you kill him?”
“Do you care if we kill her?” Wolf said.
Black froze, even as he’d been lifting one of his swords.
I froze, too.
I had my gun on Wolf, just like Cowboy, Manny, Easton, and most of our group did now.
For the first time since the seer with the braids was dragged across the floor, I shifted the focus of my gaze, feeling the threat without knowing precisely where it came from.
I turned my head altogether then, looking behind me.
When I did, my heart jackknifed in my chest.
What must have been twenty… maybe thirty… children aged somewhere between seven and seventeen stood and crouched directly behind me. They clustered together in the only segment of wall without torches, and therefore the only segment of wall entirely in shadow.
I’d glanced over there when I first walked in, more out of habit of checking the corners than for any other reason.
I’d seen the kids sitting there at the time, but they hadn’t been holding guns then.
Now, all of them did.
Moreover, all of those guns were aimed at me.
From in front of me, Wolf laughed, making me turn.
In all that time, I hadn’t taken the gun I held off him.
“Go ahead, Dragon,” Wolf jeered. “See if you can kill me before one of them hits her. Even if your people shoot a third of them… half… all but two… those last two will cut a hole in her chest and feed her heart to my vampires after they’ve killed her dead. Once the dead men finish with her, my wolves will take the rest.”
Black lowered the sword he’d raised, slowly, stepping back.
His gold eyes never left those kids and their raised guns. I saw him gauging their faces, the steadiness of their hands. I felt him not liking what he saw, what his mind told him about the likelihood he could keep even one of them from killing me.
Feeling the silence of their minds, I realized the reason we hadn’t felt them aim the guns at me before Wolf pointed it out. The vampires between Wolf and the children were protecting their light, shielding them from me and Black.
I watched Black’s eyes, saw him calculating with some other part of his mind, trying to decide his chances of keeping me alive.
“What the fuck do you want from me?” he growled, still staring at those kids.
Wolf chuckled.
“Give up, Dragon,” he said, his voice still a jeer. “You have lost… surrender to the knights of the New World. Even if you breathe fire, we will kill your princess before you can raise that sword… before I can shoot this fake dragon in the head.”
Black looked at me, breathing harder.
I saw the fear in his eyes, the certainty there, that they would kill me, whether he went after Wolf or not. I saw the knowing there, even as some part of him continued to calculate odds, to try and decide which of the maybe half-dozen things he could do would be least likely to end up with me riddled with bullets.
He looked back at Wolf.
“What do you want?” he said.
That time his voice was flat, stripped of any hint of emotion.
I recognized something I heard in it, however––without knowing how I knew it.
I couldn’t even be sure I’d heard it before, not personally, but I knew it anyway.
Black’s mind had shifted, gone into pure survival mode. I found I comprehended the exact meaning of that change, without knowing precisely how it happened, or what he might do next. I saw the emptiness there, the flatness of his gaze. I saw the predator that lived there, and recognized the nature of the exact switch that had flipped.
I saw the contract killer.
“What do you think I want, Dragon?” Wolf said, scorn in his voice. “I want you to leave. I want you to take your ghosts and go back through that door.”
He motioned towards the fissure in the rock.
“I want you to go home,” Wolf finished, his voice as dead-sounding as Black’s.
Black assessed him emotionlessly.
Then he sheathed his two swords in one smooth movement, sliding them into the twin scabbards with a grace and precision that was unnerving.
He motioned with one free hand.
“What makes you think more of us won’t come?” he said, his voice as empty as before.
Without taking his eyes off Wolf, he gestured towards the bodies on the floor, and I’d never seen one of his gestures look quite so alien. Flicking his fingers at the corpses, he added,
“So you send one of us back… two, three of us maybe.” He nodded towards me and Charles, again flicking his fingers. “What does that do? How many bullets do you have in that gun, cousin? In all of your guns?”
His voice dropped, growing colder, somehow more openly alien.
“How long before others of my kind learn what you’ve done to their leader? Before I come back through that door, a
nd wipe your people off the face of the Earth?”
Wolf smiled, shaking his head.
“Clever dragon, with his fiery, fiery words, his hot breath.” Wolf’s smile widened. “No wonder the white man gives the dragon gold. He is so very, very clever.”
Black’s jaw clenched, pushing out his cheek, but Wolf went on before he could.
“…To kill a dragon, you cut off the head of the snake.” Wolf dug his knee deeper and sharper into Charles’ back. “Everyone knows that. So you go through the door… the door closes. No more ghosts. No more dragons. Your people die out.”
I stared at him, then at Black.
Looking at the door, I spoke without thinking.
“Has anyone gone back through it?” I said, sharp. “Anyone at all?”
Wolf looked at me.
His dark eyes shone coldly, the eyes of a psychopath.
“The door is not for you, sister.” Using his free hand, which still held the long-bladed knife, he pointed towards the door with the silver blade, his eyes cold on me, the gun still jammed against Charles’ head. “He walks through. You stay here.”
“No,” I snapped. “No. If he goes, I go.”
“Miri, no,” Charles gasped, blood dripping down his face. “No, Miriam.”
I looked at Black, gritting my teeth.
Black was staring at me, hesitation in his eyes.
I could already see him thinking about it.
“If he goes, I go,” I repeated, ignoring the look I saw forming on Black’s face, refusing to even engage what I saw there. “…It’s that, or I let them shoot me.”
I said it louder that time, for Black’s benefit as much as Wolf’s.
“If my husband so much as walks towards that door, I let them shoot me,” I repeated, motioning towards the kids with the guns. “I let your kids shoot me… then my husband kills you,” I added coldly to Wolf. “Or one of his friends do.”
From next to me, Manny raised his gun, aiming it higher, at Wolf’s head.
When I glanced at Black that time, he was frowning.
He looked at me, then at Manny, then back at me.
Just then, the ground under our feet rumbled.
Black To Dust_A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery Page 32