She turned to the audience. “Ladies and Gentleman, the Wall of Jericho.” With a sweep of her arms and a theatrical spin like that of an ice skater, she summoned forth the horns of Gabriel as told in the Book of Joshua. The back of the showroom thundered as trumpeter after trumpeter marched down the aisles until they were twenty deep on both sides of the showroom. The rows of trumpeters faced one another. With a flurry of dramatics, a single trumpeter at the front of the line, raised his horn to his lips and blew a soft single note. The other trumpeters raised their instruments to their mouths in unison, and with a collective intake of breath, blew into the mouthpieces of the horns. They perfectly matched the soft single note coming from the first trumpet.
Shylaine danced about the stage. The trumpets grew more and more intense. The single note emanated now with fervor. Louder. Then louder still. Shylaine pointed first to the row of trumpeters on her left. They turned to face the stage. Then she pointed to the trumpeters on her right, and they too faced the stage. She raised her hands above her and the trumpeters blasted out the single note in an intensely, almost hypnotic and malignant blare. Audience members covered their ears at the deafening sound. A child in the back of the house cried. The theater shook with the sound. It penetrated the seats and vibrated up along the spines of the audience. Then, when it seemed the sound could crescendo no more, a timpani pounded out a counter rhythm and with strobes of light flashing, the Wall of Jericho exploded. Debris fell onto the stage. Several people in the front rows ducked as bits and pieces of rock and dust washed over them.
Then silence.
Dust settled and the fog began to dissipate. The trumpeters dropped the instruments to their sides and stood at attention.
From the audience a shout echoed, “Mother?” and broke the eerie silence.
Out of the thinning fog, shapes began to appear.
Shylain returned the shout, “Collin?” followed by her screams, “No. No. It can’t be?”
And then a cacophony of shouts of joy, mixed with cries of terror and screams of disbelief as the long dead, the forgotten and the feared, materialized alongside the audience. The dead and the living, coming together. A voice bellowed from above, “In the twinkling of an eye, as the last trumpet sounds, the dead will be raised, and we will be changed.” Judgement’s voice morphed into laughter.
All around the theater, the dead were appearing, taking form out of the fog, filling the aisles and rows.
Shylaine turned, running from the stage to come face to face with the burnt, smoldering, and swollen face of the young man. “Collin?” Her voice quivered with fear and disbelief. His flesh was falling from his face, revealing the muscle and bone under it, his jawbone visible.
Collin raised his skinless arms, beckoning the woman to come nearer. “Mother. Mother?”
Shylaine screamed in terror.
“Why did you leave me, Mother? Why would you leave me?” Collin took a step closer to Shylaine.
She backed away from him and hit another body that had corporealized behind her. She turned. It was all she could do to keep from collapsing. “RJ?” she whispered and turned from RJ to her son, and back.
Shylaine screamed.
RJ’s shredded body attempted to reach out a hand. The hand hung limp, dangling from the end of the wrist, held only by a tendon. RJ opened his mouth to speak. No words came forth, only gurgling water poured from his lips.
The sounds of cries, screams, shouts and begging that had filled the showroom slowly faded, becoming muffled, suffocated and choked, as the dead started to take their toll on the living.
Collin and RJ moved in a syncopated step toward Shylaine. They came together and embraced her.
At once she began to burn... and drown.
The last sound Shylaine heard was a voice that was so near, she could feel the heat of his words on her ear. “It is not only the final performance of Jericho... it is also your final performance.”
The last sensation Shylaine felt was her son’s embrace burning the skin on her back, and her husband’s kiss, filling her lungs with water.
Then the last words from Judgment, “The Father, the Son and the Spirit. Judgment is upon us.”
22
the world
jaime rush
Upright: Assured success, route, voyage, emigration, flight, change of place
Reversed: Inertia, fixity, stagnation, permanence
Lucas Vanderwyck’s eyes snapped open in the darkness of the bedroom. Remaining still, he listened for a sound, watched for a shifting shadow. His heart pounded, and his pulse throbbed in his throat, a flashback to the days when he and Amy had perpetually lived in danger. But that was over now. The Offspring, the group of psychically enhanced humans to whom they belonged, had vanquished their otherworldly enemies. So possibly an everyday average intruder. Funny that a thief with a gun would be a simple threat after all they’d encountered. Then again, most thieves couldn’t mind control or turn a person into mush.
Several minutes passed without incident. Just a dream then. But something felt off. Wrong. He laid his hand on his wife’s belly, feeling protective of “Smudge” growing inside her. They’d only had their first ultrasound, and the little guy—or girl—was only that so far: a smudge on the screen.
Lucas slid out of bed and padded down the hall to check on their firstborn. Francesca slept in her crib, washed in the glow of the monkey night light. He dove into her dreams, floating through the ethers and then to the blue water of the pool. He smiled. She was reliving her first swim.
He pulled out and wandered the house. For months, he and the group of people who’d become his family had been hunted by a subversive government agency. They had stayed alive by the skin of their teeth—and the psychic powers they inherited from a parent involved in a classified project gone awry, along with a little alien DNA.
They’d gone through hell, but now they were back, safe in their ordinary lives.
Amy screamed, “Noooo!”
Lucas raced to their room and found her writhing and gasping in bed. He knelt beside her and brushed her brown hair from her face. “It’s only a dream, babe. Wake up.” Echoes from that hell still whispered in their nightmares. He gently shook her. “Amy.”
She slapped her hands over her stomach. “Nooo! Don’t you dare!” Her body thrashed violently, no longer in the safe paralysis of REM sleep. A frisson of alarm skittered down his spine. That was how he’d assassinated bad people in their dreams.
Lucas dove in to see what kind of monster she was fighting. And stop the nightmare. He could change it, using his dreamweaving ability.
The black veil lifted, and he took in his surroundings: a dark wood, gloomy and filled with leering eyes behind bushes. No Amy. The sounds of a struggle floated through a dense fog. Amy’s scream shot him into a run. It’s only a dream. She’s not in danger.
He slammed into a tree, hidden by the same fog that had dampened his shirt. He muttered an expletive and kept running. “Amy!”
“Lucas! Help me! He’s—”
Her words were cut off with an oof.
Lucas rammed into a branch, feeling the rough bark tear into his skin. He kept running in the direction of the noise, straining to hear Amy as she tried to scream during what was clearly an altercation. Feet scrambled on earth, flesh smacked against flesh.
He burst into a foggy clearing, barely able to make out Amy kicking a man. “Amy!”
She turned toward him, and her shoulders drooped in relief. “Lucas!”
The distraction gave her assailant the chance to slip behind her. Before Lucas could move closer, the man had his arms clamped around her chest, pinning her tight. His head was hidden by hers, only revealing brown, wavy hair.
“It’s only a dream,” Lucas said. “Wake up.”
“I don’t think it is!”
“Of course it is. It’s—” His words died in his throat.
The man leaned to the left, revealing his face. Revealing... Lucas’s face. His brain spun
in confusion. How could he be attacking his wife in her dreams?
Unless…
“Sayre?” he uttered, feeling foolish at even saying his twin’s name.
The leering smile that had haunted him from the time he’d discovered the son of a bitch existed, spread across the man’s face. “Fancy seein’ you here, bro. But ya know, you’re interrupting a tender moment.”
Amy fought to wriggle free. “Bastard!” She lifted her foot and stomped down, but Sayre moved his foot just in time.
“Amy, this is a dream. He can’t really be here. He’s—”
“Dead.” Sayre drew the word into two syllables with his cocky Southern accent. “Courtesy of that psycho pittin’ me against your buddy. Burned to ash. Ashes to ashes and all that.”
“Which means you’re not here.” Time to change the dreamscape to one he and Amy had visited many times: the pyramids in Egypt.
Except nothing changed. Lucas tried again, imagining a wide beach. A hilltop. Hell, anything but this grim, gloomy forest.
Nothing.
Fear squeezed his chest. “How can you be here?”
“My soul ain’t dead. I’m stuck in some purgatory like place. The other day I thought, maybe I’ll see if my soul can still go into dreams. Guess I brought my world into Amy’s dream; I can’t change it either.”
Lucas could barely wrap his head around it. Sayre, still tormenting them. He possessed the same psychic skills as Lucas, and he would kill Amy just for the fun of it.
“Let her go. It’s me you’re after. Me you hate. She has nothing to do with this.”
“You think I hate you because you were raised by our father while I was adopted out to the couple who testified against me in court? Nah, it’s all good. It made me the incredible person I am—or was. And now I’m gonna be a proud papa.”
That’s when Lucas saw that Sayre’s hand was splayed over Amy’s stomach. She screamed and clawed at him as that hand sank into her.
Lucas lunged forward, reaching them just as Sayre disappeared. He caught Amy before she dropped to the ground. “It’s just a nightmare. Sayre’s dead. He’s just screwing with us from beyond the grave.”
She shook her head, crying. “No, it’s real. I feel it.”
Suddenly they were back in their bed. She sat up with a gasp, her hand on her stomach, her eyes wide as they met his. “You were there, right?”
Her last hope that it wasn’t a run-of-the-mill nightmare. He was sorry to nod.
“He took our baby!” she wailed, scrambling out of bed.
“I think he’s just messing with us.” He followed her into the bathroom.
She crouched in front of the cabinet and dug around inside. “I thought I had another pregnancy test in here.”
“I’ll go to the store and buy one.” Just to comfort her because of course Sayre couldn’t take their unborn child. That was impossible. He had simply found a way to torment them until he moved on to hell.
Except they’d experienced things far beyond possible . . .
“Get five!” she said.
He kissed her on the nose. “I’ll be right back.”
Lucas found her curled up in the rocking chair staring at their baby girl when he returned.
Amy took the bag he held up and disappeared into the bathroom. She remerged a few minutes later, her face leeched of all color but her freckles. “It’s negative!” She thrust the stick toward him.
Of course she’d read it wrong, expecting the worst. He took it and studied the tiny window. Only one line. Not pregnant. Something buzzed deep in his own belly. “It’s defective,” he finally said when he could form words.
She went back into the bathroom, then came out with three more sticks, all with the same result. “I saved the other one to take tomorrow, but…” She gasped in grief. “Even if I miscarried, I’d still have the hormones floating around. But they’re gone too! He took our baby!”
Lucas pulled her close, reality settling in like thorns sinking deeper into his flesh. Somehow Sayre had stolen their baby. The how may never be answered. None of them would fully know the impact that having the essence of a being from a parallel dimension would have on their bodies. Their souls.
Why was the question that haunted him. What did his deranged twin want with their unborn child?
“I’ll find him.”
She stepped back, both hope and hopelessness on her tear-streaked face. “How? He’s not able to dream because he’s not in a body.”
“He probably came through me, through my dreams and then my psychic connection to you. If he can get to me, I can get to him.”
Amy nodded, holding on to the lifeline he’d just given her. “I need to come too. I need to be connected to you, because Smudge must come right back to me.” She rubbed her belly, now flat again.
“You know how dangerous Sayre is. And remember how he liked you. We don’t know what he can do now. What if he... grabs your soul?”
I love my little visits. And your girlfriend, she’s cute. The memory of Sayre’s taunt still punched Lucas in the gut.
Amy stretched up to plant her hands on his shoulders. “You do know me, right? I will go with you. I could fight him in the dreamscape, and with me there, it’ll be two against one.”
Lucas nodded. “I do know you. Brave. Capable. Add in your mother-bear anger, and we can’t fail.” He hoped.
She smiled, relief seeping out in a sigh. “Thank you for not fighting me on this. Let’s go back to sleep right now. We’ll—” She glanced at the baby’s room. “We can’t leave Francesca here by herself.”
“No. We don’t know how long we’ll be.” Or if we’ll come back. No need to share that possibility. They were dealing with another world here. Another reality. “We’ll ask Eric and Fonda to come over.” Eric was like a brother to him, and his wife had grown to be a sister.
“If something were to happen to us, Eric might be able to help.”
“Like how, setting fire to Sayre’s soul?” But no, Eric could do more than pyrokinesis. “He could find us. Maybe. He’s only used his remote viewing ability in the physical world.”
“Well, Fonda could astral project, if that doesn’t work.”
Lucas rang up Eric, who answered with a gruff, “I hate middle-of-the-night calls. Please do not tell me there are more uber-humans from parallel dimensions hunting us.”
“No, just the ghost of my psycho-twin.” He filled in Eric, who cussed with every revelation.
“We’re on our way.”
Amy brewed herbal tea designed to make them sleepy. “‘Cause I can’t even imagine sleeping right now, I’m so keyed up.” She scrubbed her fingers through her crazy hair.
They’d downed a whole mug each when the doorbell rang. Eric opened the door and gestured for Fonda, a small gal with white-blond hair, to enter first. She rushed over to Amy and hugged her. “I’m so sorry this is happening to you. You two just don’t get a break, do you?”
Eric’s big frame filled the door opening. His eyes went to Lucas, then Amy, his half-sister. He didn’t have to speak the words; he felt the same.
“Thanks for coming,” Lucas said, accepting a consoling hug from Eric. “I’d like you to be our lookout.”
“And watch Francesca,” Amy added. “She should stay asleep for another few hours, but you never know.”
“We’re her godparents,” Fonda said. “She’s in good hands.”
“How long do I give you before I try to do a locate? Or shake you out of it?” Eric asked.
“Give us until dawn.”
“Or if you stop breathing,” Eric added somberly. “Go on. I’ll be right here.”
Amy didn’t look any more sleepy than Lucas felt, but they settled together on the bed. Eric sat in the lounge chair by the bay window, and Fonda snuggled up in front of him.
“Be careful,” she said, worry etched on her delicate features. “Don’t let him trap your souls anywhere.”
“I don’t think this works like astral projection.
Or like what happened to you,” Amy said.
Fonda was clearly reliving her own terror when their enemy had trapped her essence in a special jar. “But you don’t know for sure.”
“We’ll be careful,” Lucas promised. He knew Amy would throw herself in danger to save their child. She’d done no less trying to save him. He would have to be the logical one.
He linked hands with hers, creating the physical connection that would allow her to accompany him. He met her gaze. “Ready?”
She nodded, worrying her lower lip with her teeth.
It took time for him to calm his mind and anger. He counted backward from a hundred and forward again. Finally he slipped into hypnogogic sleep, and then REM.
Thick fog surrounded him, clinging like cold, dead fingers. He’d reached Sayre’s world. He felt Amy’s hand wrapped tightly in his but couldn’t see her through this damned fog.
The fog faded by degrees, revealing Amy standing stiffly at his side, ready for anything.
“We don’t even know what to look for,” she whispered. “A smudge? He’s only the size of peanut.”
The fog cleared more, and Lucas had to stare hard to take in what he was seeing—acres of peanut fields, for as far as the eye could see.
Never Fear - The Tarot: Do You Really Want To Know? Page 42