Warrior (The Word and the Void)

by Terry Brooks

  She hesitated, and then rose. “I think I’ll take the children and walk down the block to that Shell station and call from there.”

  He was out of his chair like a shot, moving quickly to stand in front of her. “I can’t let you do that, Mrs. McCall. It’s getting dark already. There’s a storm coming on. It’s not safe out there for you and your children. Best to remain here. Just be patient.”

  This was enough to convince her. This man – whoever he was – wasn’t the regular dispatcher, and there was no limousine coming. Not unless she was reading this all wrong, and she was pretty sure she wasn’t.

  There she sat, a woman with a ten-year-old daughter and a year-old son, trapped. Who was this man sitting behind the desk? Who was it that was coming for her? She knew so little. Jack should have told her what this was about. He should have trusted her enough to give her more information. She was suddenly furious with him for putting her in this situation, and at the same time terrified of what was going to happen to all of them.

  She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. If she panicked now, she was lost. She had to remain calm. What can I do? How can I get out of here? Beside her, Mila was reading a book. Jack, Jr. was sleeping in his carrier. Occupied, both of them. There was no good way to warn them – no way to prepare them.

  Tears leaked from her eyes. She could not hold them back.

  She reached into her purse, fumbling for a tissue to stop the flow. Her fingers brushed against a small metal cylinder, and with a shock she remembered. She was carrying a container of pepper spray Jack had given her years ago for protection against a worst-case scenario. She’d never used it – never even looked at it once she’d stuffed it in there. Her fingers closed over its smooth metal length, and she flipped off the trigger guard and fitted her index finger in place.

  A sharp wave of relief flooded through her. Maybe she would be able to get her family out of this mess after all.

  She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly to calm herself. She would have only one chance. Then the so-called dispatcher would be all over her. Did the spray even work by now? Was there a ‘use by’ date? She didn’t know. But this was her only chance, and she would have to take it. She took a quick look at her target. He was back to studying his computer screen. Slowly, she bent down to her daughter.

  “Mila,” she whispered, and waited for her daughter to look up at her. “Listen carefully. I’m going to hand Jackie to you. I want you to hold tight to him, no matter what. When I walk over to the desk, stand up and move towards the door. Slowly.”

  Her daughter peered up at her in confusion.

  She swallowed hard. “I need you to be very brave, Mila. The man behind the desk is a bad man. We have to leave here right now. We have to run down the block to the gas station and call daddy. All of us – you, me, and Jackie – we have to run as fast as we can. We can’t stop or look back. Okay?”

  Her daughter was staring, but her face was composed. Brave little Mila. “Mom, what’s wrong . . .?”

  “No questions!” The words were an admonishment that sounded harsher than she had intended. Anne reached down at once and stroked her daughter’s cheek. “Honey, I need you to be a big girl. Can you do that for me?”

  Mila nodded slowly. The look in her child’s eyes broke Anne’s heart, but she fought down her dismay and simply lifted Jackie out of his carrier and handed him to her daughter. Then, she stood up, holding her purse in front of her with both hands, and walked over to the dispatcher desk.

  The man behind it looked up. “Mrs. McCall, you need to sit down and wait for . . .”

  “What I need,” she interrupted him, leaning forward, one hand inside her purse, gripping her pepper spray, “is for you to sit right where you are while the children and I walk out that door. Am I clear?”

  The man stared at her for a second and then started to get to his feet. There was no mistaking the angry look that crossed his features. “I’ve had enough of you,” he hissed.

  She yanked the pepper spray out of the purse, pointed the nozzle at his face and pulled the trigger. A burst of white liquid flew out, coating him from forehead to chin. Filling his exposed eyes. Flying into his mouth as it opened in shock. He howled with pain, stumbling away from her, hands coming up too late to protect him. Abruptly, he lost his balance, lurched into his chair, and went over backwards.

  By then, Anne was moving towards the door, shouting to her daughter. “Run, Mila. Fast as you can!”

  She had time for one quick glance behind her. The man she had sprayed was rolling around on the floor, thrashing wildly, his face all red and swollen – as if a thousand wasps had stung him – his eyes squeezed shut. She hoped she hadn’t blinded him, but it was his own fault if she had. She caught her daughter at the door, took Jackie in her arms, and together they went out of the building and into the night.

  * * * * *

  Further down the road, the lights of the Shell station blazed against the darkness. A single car was parked next to the building; no one was gassing up at the pumps. There was only one attendant inside the building to help them. He would have to be enough. Anne was running hard, aware of Mila running right next to her, small legs churning. In truth, within seconds it became apparent that her daughter was in much better shape to make this escape than she was. Even carrying Jackie, she would have thought herself better able to flee a madman. But already she was tiring, legs aching, muscles tightening. Perhaps the stress and the urgency had worked to compromise . . .

  “Mrs. McCall!” a ragged voice called out to her from behind.

  She glanced back. The fake dispatcher had emerged from the building and was lurching after her. His face was a reddish ruin, his body all twisted and alien. But his eyes gleamed a deep red, reflecting in the streetlights like an animal’s as they caught the glare.

  “I’m coming for you!” he shouted. “Oh, yes, Mrs. McCall. I’m coming for you and your children!”

  “Keep running,” she said to Mila, who was already scurrying ahead even faster than before.

  They reached the gas station and burst through the door. The attendant, a skinny young man of maybe twenty, was sitting behind the counter reading a magazine. He looked up in bewilderment and pointed towards the bathrooms.

  “No, no!” Anne shouted. “Lock the door!”

  The attendant gave her a goofy look. “What? I can’t do that. We’re open.”

  She rushed up to him, Mila clinging to her legs. Jackie was awake now and starting to cry. “There’s a madman out there,” she gasped in frustration. “Chasing us. He’s not someone you want in here. Lock the doors!”

  But the attendant shook his head. “Can’t do that. Why don’t you just use the restroom and go on to wherever it is you’re going . . .”

  “Call the police! Let me call them!” She realized in horror that she had left her cell phone behind on the fake dispatcher’s desk. “Please do something, don’t just . . .”

  The door burst open, and a nightmare apparition barely recognizable as the fake dispatcher stumbled into the room. The young attendant realized at once that he had made a mistake and compounded it by making another. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a gun, pointing it at the intruder.

  “Get out of here!” he screamed in warning. “If you don’t, I’ll shoot! I mean it!”

  Maybe he did, maybe not. Whatever the case, the creature he confronted did not give him a chance to do anything more than stand there – frozen in place by its terrible eyes as they fixed on him. Anne shrank back, clutching her son and pulling Mila behind her. Grinning, the creature lurched to the counter, reached across, snatched the attendant by the neck and yanked him right over the counter and onto the floor. The gun fell from the attendant’s hands and skidded away as his assailant fell on him. He screamed once as he thrashed in an unsuccessful effort to free himself, and there was a terrifying sound of something snapping.

  Anne was already moving back to the gas station door, dragging Mila with her. The creature
rose and made a futile attempt to stop her. But he was too slow, hampered by the effects of the pepper spray. In a flurry of arms and legs, she was out the door with her children and running once more.

  The thing they were fleeing – she no longer thought of it as a man or even as human – came after them. But there was something else coming, too. A series of shadowy forms had appeared – faceless and amorphous – closing in from either side. She screamed as she saw them, and Mila screamed with her.

  Behind her, the limo dispatcher howled like a wolf at hunt.

  * * * * *

  The man in the black frock coat arrived at the limousine station to pick up Jack McCall’s wife and children as planned, but the office was empty. No sign of McCall’s family or the dispatcher. The demon sniffed the air for clues; its sense of smell was exceptional. A quick survey revealed the presence of pepper spray. Used on its minion, no doubt, to facilitate an escape. The demon smiled. Mrs. McCall was resourceful. She had discovered the truth, and now a chase was underway. Not that it would change anything. Its demon servant would follow her to the ends of the earth if need be, and it would take a good deal more than a woman and two small children to stop it. In the end, it would run them down and secure them. Human still, if barely, it would still do what it had been ordered to do. That was the nature of demon-kind. Once gone over, there was no going back. Any return to ever a semblance of humanity was not permitted.

  The demon glanced down and noticed the cell phone lying on the desktop. It picked it up, turned it on, bypassed the security code and opened it. Ah, look at that; it belonged to Mrs. McCall. She had left it behind, no doubt in the flurry of activity required for her to escape. She must be regretting losing it about now, the demon thought, amused. She must be on the verge of panicking.

  Smiling to itself, it went to the contacts list and called her husband.

  Chapter 12

  She’s right here with me.

  The demon’s words were a knife through Jack’s heart. They were an affirmation of the worst possible outcome he could have envisioned.

  He could not accept it. He could not bear for it to be true.

  “You don’t have her,” he said at once. “You’re lying.”

  “She’s safe for the moment, Jack,” the demon whispered. “She and your children are quite comfortable. I will make sure nothing happens to any of them if you agree to come to me.”

  Jack went cold clear through. How could this have happened? Anne, Mila and Jack, Jr. – in the hands of this monster. Intercepted on their way to safety. He felt a shudder pass through him and knew instinctively that what the demon was saying was true.

  “I want them released,” he said tightly, his words tinged with barely controlled rage.

  “You shall have them back, Knight of the Word. But not until you come to me and lay your staff at my feet and promise never to trouble me again. You will renounce the Word and its acolytes and the Word’s power over you. You will renounce your pledge and swear never again to take up your black staff. Then, and only then, shall I grant you your wish. Then, you can walk away with your family.”

  Jack squeezed his eyes shut against the choice he was being asked to make and turned off the cell, jamming it into his pocket. “The demon has my family,” he said to the tatterdemalion, unable to look her in the face. “It has them and . . .

  “Saying doesn’t make it so.” Ineke looked at him appraisingly. “What did I tell you about demons?”

  He paused. “That they lie. That they will say anything to try to break you down.” He shook his head slowly. “But I don’t think it’s lying. Not about this. I have to do something to save . . .”

  “You know what it wants,” the tatterdemalion hissed roughly, interrupting. “But what do you want?”

  “My family back again, safe.”

  “What will you do to make that happen?”

  “Go to them. Rescue them.”

  “And if you can’t?

  “Die trying.”

  “Very noble. And very admirable. But your dying will help no one but the Void. Stop a moment and think this through. What will happen if you do as the demon asks of you? Do you think he will release your family? Do you think he will let you go – let all of you just walk away and never bother with you again?

  Jack hesitated and then shook his head slowly. “Probably not.”

  “Probably not?” Ineke scrunched up her young face, pale features growing even more translucent. “Definitely not! It will make you its creature, subvert you so that you will be obligated to obey its every wish. It will use your family as playthings for its personal amusement. It will use you however it wishes, but in the end it will destroy you. It will humiliate and degrade you until you are reduced to nothing. And then it will kill you, along with your wife and children. I am not positing this, Jack. I am telling you what will happen. Because that’s what demons do. A bargain with a demon is a bargain for your soul.”

  He shook his head. “I want this never to have happened.”

  She moved close. “Too late for that. You came here to find the demon and destroy it. Either commit to doing so or flee now, while you still can. You will not survive this encounter otherwise – not in any form you would recognize. And I, for one, do not care to risk myself for a failed Knight of the Word.”

  “But you would otherwise?”

  “It was why I was sent to you.”

  “But what can you do? You are hardly even there. I can see right through you. You seem as if you might disappear entirely at any moment. How can you help me?”

  She stiffened at the rebuke. “What do you know of me? What do you know of tatterdemalions at all, for that matter? I can help you in more ways than you can imagine. Not in a battle with a demon, admittedly. But in other ways. What do you intend to do about the demon? Will you submit to it? Or will you see it destroyed?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. What you are saying about the demon is probably true. I know what it is. I know I can’t trust it. But what about Anne and the children? What if I have to watch them die in front of me because of my insistence on keeping my word to the Lady? My life would be over, no matter if I destroyed the demon afterwards or not.”

  “What if you if you destroy the demon and by doing so save them?”

  “I can’t know that it will happen that way! I would be risking their lives as well as my own!”

  “What life will you have if you submit to it and are betrayed? What life will you have knowing you lost everything – your dignity included – for no reason at all? What will your family think of you if you do not stand against this creature? They will never see you the same way again, even if you survive the encounter. They will see you as a coward and a failure. Rest assured, the demon will make sure of it.”

  The little tatterdemalion was right, of course. Everything she was telling him was right. He would be less than half a man if he faltered and submitted to the demon’s demands. He would be stripped of everything that mattered to him, and he would have done it to himself.

  She paused. “What will those of us who serve the Lady and have committed our lives to the Word think of you? What will be your legacy to us?”

  He laughed, bitter and filled with self-loathing. “Better to have died trying than to live in shame for not having tried at all – is that what you’re saying, Ineke?”

  “If the shoe fits.” She moved away from him, deliberately distancing herself. “Now, what’s it to be? Time is fleeting, Jack McCall.”

  He knew there really wasn’t any choice unless he was prepared to abandon all of his principles and all of his moral strength because his fear for his family demanded it. He didn’t think he could do that, no matter the consequences. His fear was one thing; that was a weakness with which he could live. But to give into it completely – to surrender everything he had always believed to be true about himself and cast off any semblance of moral responsibility – that was another thing altogether.

  “All right,�
�� he said quietly. “I’ll face the demon and do what I must to put an end to it. Maybe I can rescue Anne and the children while I’m at it.” He shook his head at the impossibility of it all. “Will you still help me?”

  She turned away. “If I can, yes. Of course, I will help you. Beginning right now. Our path into the Winston house is known to me. I have looked it over in the form of one of my familiars – a tiny flying creature – so that I would be ready for this. Come, now. Stay close to me.”

  They moved off the crest of the hill and walked down into the trees at the park’s southern boundary where it bordered on the lawns of the houses. Among those was the old Winston house – a timeworn brick-and-board three story that had once housed a shipping magnate and his family. There were lights in most of the other residences, although not as many as he would have liked. The Winston house, however, was a dark and silent specter in their midst.

  He slowed, suddenly wary. Ineke seemed to know what he was thinking. “There will be Void creatures waiting for you. The demon itself would never come alone to kill a Knight of the Word. But its minions will try to stop you from ever reaching it. I will find you a way in, but some of them will be waiting for you. You must be ready.”

  He thought about what that might entail, but there was no way of being certain. How many would be waiting? What forms would they take? How dangerous would they be? The questions buzzed in his head, angry wasps searching for a way out. He gave them the moments it took to reach the edge of the back lawn of their destination and then roughly shoved them aside.

  Then he noticed the shadows moving. All across the yard, dark forms were sliding across the lawn – hundreds of them, formless and featureless, although vaguely human-shaped, prowling through the night. Jack froze, staring in shock. “Are those what you were talking about?” he asked Ineke in a hushed voice, pointing. “Those shadows?”

  She shook her head. “Those are something else. Feeders. They belong to no one, and serve only themselves. They gather in response to the coming confrontation, drawn by the prospect of the magic that will be wielded. They are devourers of that magic and its leavings. Pay them no heed. They can only harm you if you let them.”