Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition)

by Gail Roughton

  “You goddamn drunk! Get off the fuckin’ road!”

  Paul reached over and grabbed the wheel to straighten up, issuing furious orders.

  “Take your foot off the gas! Brake, damn it! Now, pull over. Right now. Right now! Pull over!”

  Dennis concentrated. Foot off the gas. Don’t slam the brakes. Easy. Brake easy. Pull over. The car shuddered to a stop on the right hand median.

  Paul leaned over and cut the ignition. Dennis gave a half-sob and leaned his head forward on the top of the steering wheel.

  “That voice,” he managed to say. “I know that voice.”

  “I got her!” The shout was loud and victorious in the small interior. “Yo’ new woman! I got her! Whut you goan do about it, white man!”

  “But it’s me you want, Cain! Where are you? Me and you! Right now! Wherever you say! You don’t want her!”

  “I gots her, I do got you, white doctor! Damn do-gooder Devlin, always stickin’ yo’ nose in my business! I knows you! Ain’t no way to make you hurt lik’ you suffer knowin’ she sufferin’! An’ she sufferin’, sho’ ‘nuff! Jest lik’ I did. Dat night. ‘Member whut you did to me, white doctor? I does! An’ I ain’t leaving nuttin’ out! Follow me, white man! Iff’n you dare!”

  Raucous, mocking laughter filled the car. Dennis clapped his hands over his ears. He’d go insane if he had to listen to that laughter another second. And then the laughter, too, died away into the dark, leaving no sound except the slow tick of the car’s cooling engine.

  Paul reached up and grabbed Dennis’ wrist, jerking the protective hands away from the boy’s ear.

  “Stay here! You hear me? Don’t you move this car an inch!”

  Dennis tried to protest and bit his tongue hard as his mouth snapped shut. Paul was gone. Just gone. The door hadn’t opened. He was certain of it.

  He leaned his head against the steering wheel. He moaned and struck his forehead, over and over, against the padded leather.

  * * *

  Johnny Bishop, frustrated and furious, damned all law enforcement protocol to hell and back. He’d butted heads with three police officers while taking Lori home. True to Dennis’s observation, they’d refused to consider taking a report.

  “We’re sorry, sir, but we can’t take a missing person’s report on the basis of two or three hours. Maybe she had car trouble. Did you call all her friends?”

  Now, heading back to the house, he dialed the Assistant DA assigned to Justin Dinardo’s case home number. Ted Dorry’s cavalier attitude didn’t help Johnny’s temper a damn bit.

  “Johnny, calm down! Ria’s a big girl, she probably went shopping or something and lost track of time in the Christmas crowds.”

  “Ted, goddamn it, she was having a dinner party tonight!”

  “Maybe you got the date mixed up and it wasn’t tonight.”

  “There was a goddamn ham baking in the fuckin’ oven, Ted! She did not lose track of time and I don’t have the wrong date! And she damn sure didn’t grind the gears in that Mustang when she pulled out of the drive! Somebody else was driving that car!”

  “Johnny, now listen—”

  “No, you listen! Justin Dinardo—”

  “Skipped bail. Nobody’s seen or heard from him since. He’s long gone, Johnny. Long gone.”

  “Bullshit! Now you get somebody off their asses and get them out lookin’!”

  “And where the hell you suggest we look?”

  “Did you even try to find him when he skipped town? Did anybody even check the places he might have gone?”

  “Johnny, that’s damned insulting!”

  “He was small time! You got a big backlog of cases! I wanta know if y’all just put out an APB and forgot about him or whether there might be any notes somewhere about where he could be!”

  Several seconds of silence ensued. Finally, Ted spoke again.

  “Okay,” he said with a sigh. “You’re right. On ninety-nine percent of cases like this, we do just put out an APB. We just don’t have the manpower to do much else.”

  “Ted, goddamn it, nobody’s pointing any fingers! I know your caseload. I just thought maybe—”

  “But this time, since Ria was so insistent that Justin might be, well, abnormal, and since Dennis was the informant and his family’s sort of, well, you know—”

  “His daddy’s a bigshot surgeon with a big bank account and friends in high places. So you checked a little harder.”

  “Johnny, that’s not fair!”

  “No, just accurate. I’m not yellin’ at you, Ted, I know you can’t help it, but it sucks anyway. So you got any ideas?”

  “Not off the top of my head. But since it’s Ria and since you’re so worried, I tell you what. I’ll go back down to the office and pull the file—no, wait a minute. I brought a stack home to go through before we throw them completely into pending. Let me check there first. I’ll call you back.”

  “Got my cell number?”

  “There’s this thing called Caller ID now, Johnny. Records numbers. Surprised you haven’t heard about it,” Ted said, and hung up.

  Damn. Johnny hated being one-upped. He pulled back in the yard to check the apartment in case anybody’d come back. His phone rang.

  “Ted?”

  “Johnny, I had the file at home. The Dinardos and the Billings have a cabin at Sinclair they own jointly. Do you know it?”

  “Shit! Sure they do! Right down from Dr. Knight’s! Only been to the Billings’ place once or twice but I been to Dr. Knight’s a lot.”

  “We had it checked out every couple of weeks right after Justin disappeared but when he didn’t turn up anywhere we gave up.”

  “Okay, so how fast can you get somebody up there?”

  “Johnny, are you totally crazy? Okay, scratch that, forget I even said it, of course you are. She’s not even officially missing!”

  “I hope to hell that soothes your conscience when a couple of deer hunters stumble over her body in the woods! But I guess it won’t be an official body, so that’s all right!”

  “I don’t have anything to connect Justin with this and even if I did, there’s no reason to think he’d do anything like that!”

  “Sweet Jesus, Ted! Nobody hides out for weeks and then abducts somebody for nothing! You think he’s just going to let her go after he gets his jollies?”

  “Wellll—”

  “Do this unofficially. Surely to God, there’s some way you can get somebody up there!”

  “In the morning, maybe.”

  “In the morning!”

  “Johnny, I can’t mount a manhunt on what we’ve got! Now, I tell you what—”

  “No, I’ll tell you what! Get somebody up there as soon as you can if you don’t hear back from me by morning. And if I call you before then and say I need help, you better by God get me some!”

  “You can’t just go chargin’ up there yourself!”

  “Watch me!”

  Johnny hit end call, regretting you couldn’t slam down a cell phone like a landline. He wanted to hurt Ted Dorry’s ears. He headed for the house to grab his pistol from his nightstand drawer and dialed the number Dennis left him.

  Damn it! “Hi, this is Cindy! You know how this thing works!” Shit! Dumb-ass kid gave him the wrong number! He charged up the steps to the apartment doors, both left standing wide open, and heard the insistent ringing of Ria’s house phone. He almost didn’t stop to answer, but just maybe it was Ria. Or somebody that knew something.

  He raced inside and grabbed the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Johnny?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Charlie Knight. You got secretarial duty?”

  Johnny danced impatiently, shifting from one foot to the other. “Well, I was closest to the phone.”

  “Let me speak to Ria or Paul, please. Whoever’s handy.”

  “Well,” Johnny hemmed and hawed. This was Ria’s father. Should he tell him? Did he have the right not to tell him?

  “Johnny,
do you mind?”

  “Well, they can’t come to the phone right now.”

  “Neither one of ‘em? They havin’ an orgy while company’s over?”

  “They’re not here right now.”

  “Then pardon my French, son, but what the hell you doin’ in her apartment if nobody’s home?”

  “Dr. Knight, the thing is, we’re not sure where Ria is.”

  “Say again?”

  Johnny decided to come clean.

  “The lake house? And you’re charging off by yourself?”

  “No choice. Ted won’t call the Sheriff’s Office up there and Paul left with Dennis to see if he could come up with anything! And they gave me the wrong damn cell number! I don’t know where the hell they are!” Johnny exclaimed in exasperation.

  “Bet I do. Smart kid, Dennis. He’ll hit on the lake house. They’re probably almost there already. You stay put by the phone. I’m goin’ up.”

  “I am not going to stay put by the fuckin’ phone!” Johnny shouted.

  On the other end of the line, Charlie Knight grimaced. He’d watched Johnny grow up. Hell, he and Ria’d practically lived interchangeably in each other’s houses. And Johnny wasn’t about to stay put by the fucking phone. He’d charge up to the lake house and interfere with—what?

  Dr. Knight thanked God for police procedure. He could just see a bunch of deputies surrounding the lake house where Justin Dinardo might have a gun pointed at his daughter’s temple, just as he could see Paul, materializing silently behind him. But Johnny was going no matter what, and he’d best not charge in alone. Especially if Paul was either there or on the way.

  “Then meet me. Park at the barbecue place outside of Gray and I’ll meet you there. Ought to hit about the same time. You probably couldn’t find the road, anyway.”

  “I’ve spent lots of time at your place.”

  “Different road to get to that cabin, further down. Meet me. I’m leavin’ now. And Johnny, you goddamned well better wait on me! You got that?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Just hurry!”

  * * *

  Paul soared over the nightscape, straining every sense to catch a lingering scent, an echoing sound.

  Nothing. Goddamn it, there was nothing.

  He’d spread too wide, too quick. He’d never done this before, never rushed forward in such furious haste without knowing exactly where he was going. His disincorporated molecules streamed too far apart. He concentrated, trying to bring the invisible particles of his being back together.

  Too far. He’d spread too far.

  He fought to correct his mistake, a pilot guiding a private airplane with frozen controls.

  * * *

  Cain strode furiously back and forth across the braided rug, much like he’d paced furiously across a cleared circle, waiting for a group of followers who’d never come. Where the fuck was he? Ought to be here by now.

  “Damn!” He muttered under his breath. “Wouldn’t turn tail and run. Know he wouldn’t. So where the fuck do he be?”

  Justin’s whining voice broke his concentration.

  “You said she was mine,” he protested. “And you said I’d be the first. The first you took and made like you.”

  Cain crossed to the boy and grabbed him by the throat with his enormous hand. The pressure caused the boy’s eyes to bulge forward. Cain saw traces of red as tiny capillaries burst.

  “Shut up!” he roared, shaking the boy. “Shut up, fool! You do whut I say! You gets whut I say you gets!”

  The smell hit his nostrils. The rich, heavy scent of pumping blood.

  He was too close to the boy. Too close. During his assault on Ria, he’d almost given in completely to the overpowering blood lust commanding him to feast fully, to drain her completely. He’d had the barest taste of the ultimate orgasm, so powerful it had shaken his entire giant frame. Waves of sensation he knew would culminate in a brilliant burst unlike anything else he’d ever experienced. And he wanted to experience it again. Fully. Completely. From its beginnings through the end.

  He stared at Justin’s neck. His mouth gaped open and the points of his gleaming incisors glinted in the firelight. Cain had never been fussy about his sex partner, seven years in that Louisiana prison camp had taken care of that. A hole was a hole. Anyway, this type of orgasm was an asexual act. The gender of his partner didn’t matter.

  His furious tone modulated to a soft caress.

  “But den, I did promise, didn’t I?”

  * * *

  “Dennis.”

  Paul grabbed the back of the boy’s neck, stopping his forehead from making further contact with the padding of the steering wheel.

  Dennis shuddered at the sudden touch, his body jerking. He snapped his neck to the right and stared at Paul. In his wild, wide eyes, Paul caught the memory of Sadie’s eyes, immediately before her retreat into the dark of catatonia.

  “Dennis, it’s me. It’s all right.”

  Paul spoke softly, wondering why in the name of God humans always assured each other everything was all right when it was clear things were going to hell in a hand basket.

  “Listen, Dennis, we don’t have much time. You’ve got to get a grip on yourself.”

  “You—you disappeared! That voice, it came out of nowhere and then you just—and now you’re back and—”

  “Dennis! Listen, we have to move. I can’t find him by myself. You’d better let me drive.”

  Paul reached for the door handle. Wouldn’t do to dematerialize again, Dennis would go berserk. Besides, he was pretty shook himself after surging forward out of control and almost spreading himself into eternity forever. He hadn’t known that could happen but then he’d never cast out in such a state of desperation with no certain destination in mind.

  He thanked God for the nights he and Ria had ridden the back roads while she laughed and scolded and called him names for grinding the gears of her prized Mustang classic.

  He came around to the driver’s side and opened the door. Dennis collected himself enough to scramble over the console into the passenger seat.

  Paul sat down and inspected the diagram on the gearshift.

  “Why bother to drive? You sure don’t need a car to travel.”

  “I can’t hit an exact spot if I don’t know exactly where I’m going. And I don’t have time for trial and error.”

  He cranked up and shifted, not smoothly. The gears protested. The grind sounded as though Paul wasn’t real familiar with manual transmissions.

  “You know how to drive a stick?”

  “Yes. I learned how to drive on the Mustang.”

  Dennis didn’t register the significance of that statement at first. Then he did.

  “Ria’s Mustang? You mean, that’s the car you learned to drive on, not just learned to drive a stick?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jesus,” Dennis muttered. But then someone who could appear and disappear at will wouldn’t have a lot of need for cars.

  “This is a new car,” he said. “Its gears are a lot closer together than the Mustang’s, don’t have much play.”

  “Thanks, I’ll remember.”

  Paul pulled back onto the highway and increased his speed, shifting up without further incident. He risked a glance at Dennis. The boy’s face was white and pinched. He still stared fixedly forward but he’d managed to have a conversation about the car’s controls. Paul supposed that showed a continued grip on reality.

  “Shift again.”

  “What?”

  “The Mustang’s a three speed. This one’s a five. Shift.”

  Paul complied as Dennis spoke again.

  “That voice is the same one I heard this summer. That night.”

  “I know.”

  “It—he—you called him something.”

  “Cain.”

  “He called you ‘white man’.” Dennis supplied the emphasis. “Like it was a dirty word, worse than motherfucker. And he called you something else, too. ‘White doctor.’ ‘Do-gooder Dev
lin.’”

  “Yes.”

  “Your name’s Paul Everett. You’re a writer.”

  “No.”

  “Then what the hell are you? Who are you, really? Who is he?”

  On-coming headlights approached. Paul’s foot moved over the floorboard as though searching for something. Of course. The dimmer switch. He’d only driven the Mustang.

  “Pull the blinker handle toward you,” Dennis said. “Don’t flick it up or down, just pull it toward you. Cars haven’t had the dimmer on the floorboard in years.”

  Paul complied and the lights dimmed.

  “Ah,” he said. “Much more efficient. I wonder if I could talk Ria into a new car.” His tone was light. Anything to break the boy’s single-minded pursuit for explanation. He didn’t know how much more Dennis could handle.

  “Answer me! Please, please, answer me!”

  Paul searched for words and in the end, found nothing better than the ones used to introduce him to this world of endless dark.

  “Dennis, this world as we know it, it’s ringed with worlds on worlds. And some of them are bright and beautiful and some of them are nightmares beyond imagination. And sometimes, people of great power can cross the boundaries between the worlds. And that power, by itself, it’s neither good nor evil. The people who possess it are. And if that person is evil, they can break the barriers and things cross over into this world that weren’t meant to be here.”

  “And Cain, he’s from one of the dark worlds?”

  “No. He’s part of this world but he possessed great power, the power to break the barriers. One night, he broke through them and something crossed over. Something that—changed me.”

  “Into what?”

  “Dennis, there really isn’t a word that exactly describes me. There’s a word that comes close but it’ll scare you if I use it.”

  “There was a stake,” Dennis said. “I told you. A stake stuck in his rib cage, just resting there between his ribs. It was a skeleton, man, just a skeleton, had to have been there for years and years and years.”