The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  Where was Talitha? He could go no further without her. It would be the height of folly to step through his front door too early, as Amy's thugs would likely shoot him at the first sound of a commotion in the back of the house. Yet at the same time, to hang out on the front porch for too long might clue them in that he was only acting as a decoy.

  "Amy! I have your spells," his voice was clear and strong. "I'll shred them up if Lisa isn't out here in ten seconds."

  Silence greeted this. Will stood there and ten seconds went by quickly, "Amy!"

  Still nothing. Not from Amy, or her thugs and worse not from Talitha. Had she been neutralized by some sort of spell? His front door was a thick heavy wood that he had painted a bright white. It was unblemished and he kicked it three times as a way of knocking, marring the paint.

  "Amy, stop your hiding." Another twenty seconds ticked by.

  He was now out of options. Stepping to the side of the front door, he reached out and tested the knob. It turned easily beneath his hand and he pushed the door open.

  "I'll tear the spells," he cautioned as he stepped just across the threshold of the doorway and scanned the room. Had he not been in such danger, he might have smiled. Two young men of Hispanic dissent were making a childlike attempt at hiding behind his furniture. One crouched behind the long sofa, ten feet in front of him and the other was further back, squatting behind a large high backed chair that Lisa had picked up at Ethan Allen.

  As expected, they both held guns in their hands. Yet what wasn't expected was that both of them sprang up at nearly the same instant and leveled their guns in his direction. For the briefest part of a second Will felt as if he were at a surprise party, but then a brilliant light seemed to erupt from the barrel of the gun being held by the man who had been hiding behind the sofa.

  The light was followed by the magnified sound of a gun being discharged and this was followed by the sharp sound of a loud crack inches from his left ear. They were shooting at him! Just before light blazed from their pistols a second time, Will realized he was framed as a perfect target in the doorway. At this range, they could hardly miss.

  Chapter 13

  Talitha

  To the average person, the forest in that fading afternoon sun would've been considered quiet, sleepy even. Save for a few birds and a late season fly buzzing past, very few people would have noticed any of the abundant wildlife going about their dangerous lives in the serene way that God had laid out for them.

  As she passed, squirrels dodged to the far side of trees. Mice scampered beneath fallen branches. An orange tabby hunkered lower, blending with the gold leaves about her perfectly. A buck in the rut sniffing out a doe tensed and prepared to spring away. Talitha saw and heard and smelled all of this.

  She felt wonderful. For the first time in eight long years, she felt wonderful. The air was perfectly crisp and she breathed in all the smells as if she was at a feast. The sweet odor of decaying and fermenting apples, the wet leaves molding below the layer of dry ones, a far way wood stove burning and an even more distant scent of a final barbeque. This last made her hungry.

  Normally she didn't allow the feeling of hunger, it was a waste. But that wouldn't be for too much longer. The other Talitha liked the feeling. It drove her. She gave into all her urges no matter how primitive or animalistic. Still she wasn't in control yet. Talitha pushed away all thought of her and ran.

  The earthen floor beneath the orchard was clear compared to the forest and she was able to pick up speed, stretching out her legs to their maximum. Already her feet were black from the rich soil and she smiled at them, feeling a touch childish. This would be allowed. She had never had much of a childhood, her mind had matured far too quickly and now it was a regret.

  She had never regretted her abbreviated childhood before; she'd been too busy exploring her books, searching for knowledge and understanding. But there, flying along beneath the boughs of the apple trees, she wished she had played more and laughed more and lived more.

  Soon, very soon she would lose that opportunity forever. The Void beckoned her. Really, it beckoned the other Talitha, who wanted it badly and wouldn't be put off forever.

  Ahead, a ramshackle fence six feet high barred her way. She cleared it with ease, soaring over it, propelled by the great strength hidden in her slim legs. It felt a little like she was flying and though she was sprinting close to world record speed, her breathing was easy. Her heart rate at ninety beats a minute was triple its resting average yet she could've gone faster.

  Off to her right on a low branch, an apple hung forgotten by all. It was very red and perfect. Impulsively she ran to it. She wasn't heedless of her mission, Will's jeep still idled by the bridge, even from a mile away she could hear it plain. She had time. The apple was sweeter than expected and very juicy. Feeling a childish need to be a child again, she let juice run down her chin and slurped at her apple. She giggled.

  The jeep began to move. With a last sigh, she spun and pegged the apple core at a tree and watched with approval, as the remains seemed to disintegrate. It gave her an idea and she snatched up a fallen apple and sent the worm eaten piece of fruit zipping through the air at the same tree. Her aim was perfect and it struck dead center, exploding outward. The action struck a very satisfactory note within her and she laughed, wishing she had never grown up. Wishing. Wishing on a lot of things. Mostly wishing that time could stand still for her.

  Will's jeep moved ever closer.

  She took off again, speeding parallel to the road, leaping another fence, scattering a gaggle of blue jays. It was with difficulty that she refrained from chasing them and instead increased her speed, knowing she had to get past the yellow house and then double back. A few hundred yards later, she slipped across the road and blended in with the foliage on the other side.

  Now she slowed, ghosting along in the thickest cover she could find. Her run had been easy and carefree; she could feel her breath running in and out, her blood working through the pipes of her arties. It was all good.

  The wind, a gentle forty-seven degree breeze that playfully lifted her light summer dress began to bring to her the scent of strange men. At one time, there had been seven men, all Mexican in the house, but now there were only four. A part of her felt disappointed at this and she sighed.

  That disappointment was just another symptom that her eight-year vacation was coming to an end. She wouldn't be Talitha much longer. On the plane she had lied to her brother and had overheard their entire conversation. Father Vogel had been right on so many counts, but he was missing facts. Facts that her brother had routinely ignored. Talitha was going to hell and not because of anything that her evil side had done, but what she had done. Knowingly done.

  Her soul was stained with the screams of people she had tortured and as soon as the evil Talitha, this new one, this one that wasn't really a separate entity, but only just another personality, when she found out...well, it would be all over at that point. And she would find out.

  Just as she was getting her evil twin's horrible memories, it stood to reason that when the other Talitha was in control, she would be getting access to her secret memories as well. And this was where Vogel had it wrong. The good side of her wasn't completely good or pure. Not even close. There were horrors in her that she had buried deep and when they came out, the evil Talitha would destroy her with them.

  Perhaps this was the way it was meant to be she reasoned, slipping around one of the last trees on the edge of her brother's finely manicured lawn. Perhaps she should just allow it to happen and be done. She was doomed to the Void either way, perhaps she should go, not kicking and screaming, but go there as a conqueror. That was how Ba'al Fie-ere had gone and after all, they were essentially the same being.

  The demon was in truth her real twin. This evil personality that battled for control of her body was simply the remains of the fiend. For a second, Talitha wondered what would happen if she did go into the Void fully evil, as an almost exact match to the d
emon. It would be interesting.

  Her reverie was cut short. The crunching sound of gravel beneath the jeeps tires announced that her brother had arrived. It was time for action and Talitha peered into the dark windows of the house. A man, Mexican, aged nineteen to twenty-three stood just to the side of a window on a second floor. He was nervous and constantly licked his lips. He was an asshole.

  Her reaction to the man at first surprised her. "What?" she said aloud. The thought seemed so unlike her, but then she felt familiar anger brewing in her and she knew that it would consume her, devouring everything she thought she was if she didn't do anything about it, but this time she didn't fight it.

  2

  For a second Talitha was unsure of herself. She had no clue as to what time it was or even what day. She felt as if she had been drunk or perhaps drugged. In her mind, she could picture odd flashes of strangers. A priest, a bishop, a big haired waitress that she had wanted to kill. There was even a snotty stewardess, who looked down her nose at her. It was all so strange.

  Her last real clear memory had been standing over that cop Milner back in the factory. She had hoped to kill him too, but just then, out in the cool of autumn Maine, she couldn't remember if she had. Bringing her hands up to her tall slim nose, she took in their scent.

  "Mother fucker!" she hissed. There was no blood on her hands. This was Will's fault, she knew it—only she didn't know exactly how she knew it or exactly how he had stopped her.

  Though there hadn't been blood, there was the scent of apple on her fingers, it made her feel strange and reminiscent, lifting her head, she took in the air through her nostrils and ignored the extraneous markers of the orchard and the wildlife about her. Now, she knew where she was.

  This was Will's Little House on the Prairie home, where he liked to pretend he was mister goody-two-shoes Charles Ingalls. Will was such an asshole. Only an asshole would paint his home yellow. Only an ass... the thought stopped abruptly. There had been another asshole she remembered, a very recent one.

  Her eyes scanned the windows and saw there was some sort of Spanish boy...no a Mexican peeking from the corner of one them on the second floor. She breathed in, catching the scent of three other Mexicans in the house.

  "Bean eatin mother fuckers," she whispered savagely. Her anger over her brother was momentarily forgotten as she took in the smell of their guns. They thought they were so tough sporting their little pistols...

  A jeep's horn rang out for the space of three seconds. The sound focused her in a hurry and she cocked an ear. The jeep's door shut loudly and the scent of her brother grew. He was heading for the house. He was walking into a trap! The idea brought a smile to her full lips and she chuckled, but then she wondered what in the hell she was doing outside his home, hiding in the trees. Was he expecting the other Talitha to come rescue him? Or perhaps to attack from the rear?

  "But..." But what happened to the other Talitha? This was very vague in her mind. There had been a confrontation with Ba'al Zubel, this she recalled and she had been named. That was very clear to her. She had named herself Ba'al Fie-ere, Denier of Ba'al, but now she was standing out in a forest. What the hell had happened? Everything was such a hodgepodge of images and memories.

  Around the front of the house, heavy footsteps sounded on the porch. They went up the stairs and then paused. Will must have used that damned second sight of his and saw the attack coming, she thought.

  "What a cheater," she murmured to herself.

  "Amy! I have your spells," Will's voice was clear and strong. "I'll shred them up if Lisa isn't out here in ten seconds."

  Spells? Amy? Talitha sniffed at the cool air once more. The scent of Lisa was obvious and strong, but she ignored those markers and concentrated on the fainter ones. There had been another woman at the house and three other Mexicans, but they were long gone, hours gone judging by the faintness of their odor. The scent of the woman was unfamiliar, but the only Amy that she knew of was Amy Harris. Interesting.

  "Amy!" Will called angrily. There was a few seconds of silence and then he hammered, or maybe kicked at the door. Again, interesting. He must know that he was about to be attacked, was he really expecting them to answer the door?

  "Amy, stop your hiding," came the cry from the front of the house.

  Talitha's mind suddenly pounced on an unsettling idea. If Will knew he was about to be attacked that meant that he was probably carrying a gun as well. And if that was true, those Mexicans wouldn't stand a chance, ergo, Will would remain in possession of whatever spells that he had been mentioning. Probably the ones that Luke had in his possession beneath the church. It would also mean that since he had a gun and spells, she would be in a weak position relative to him, something she hated more than anything.

  On the ground, a foot from her was a smooth rock the size of an egg, she hefted. It would do nicely. Her brother was going to be in hell of a rude surprise.

  "I'll tear the spells." This was the last thing she heard from him before she took off at a dead sprint for the back door. The man in the upper floor window had disappeared at some point in the last thirty seconds and she crossed the lawn in moments, unseen.

  Just then, gunfire erupted from in the house, but that had been expected and she didn't slow a whit. When she was twelve feet from the door she leapt, sailing through the air with her left foot back and chambered. She struck the door with that left foot and sent it blasting inwards, not knowing or caring whether it had been locked or not. Her momentum carried her into the kitchen where the man that she had seen in the window of the second floor was just rushing in from a separate hallway to her left.

  Before he could even think to bring his gun up, Talitha hurled the egg-sized rock across the room directly into the man's forehead. In between the sound of gunshots that came loud to her ears from the living room, she was able to hear a wonderful thock sound. The rock shattered the man's skull and like a tennis ball off a wall, it bounced right back to her. She was out of the room before he hit the floor.

  Down the hall, she flew towards the sound of guns. There were two guns firing in sporadic manner as if the men who wielded them were unsure exactly what they were shooting at. They were clearly amateurs.

  In the living room, she discovered two men both with their backs to her. The one closest stood in a half crouch. A roundhouse to his throat not only crushed his larynx but also drove it into his cervical vertebrae. In a second, he was dead twice over. With her momentum carrying her, she spun, deftly catching up the dead man's pistol with her left hand. At the culmination of the spin she torqued her body much like a pitcher in baseball and hurled the stone faster than the eye could follow at the second man.

  Talitha could have fired the gun with her left hand without losing any of her inhuman aim, but the rock was just so much more fun.

  "Oh poo!" she pouted with a small stamp of her muddy foot. Her rock had imbedded itself in the back of the man's head. She'd been hoping for another lucky bounce. After all, there was another man coming down the stairs. He thought he was being sneaky.

  Talitha took two silent loping steps and then slid across the smooth hardwood floors on her knees. It was something a child might do, but no child had ever worn such an evil gleeful smile. She zipped toward the stairs with only a whisper from her dress, and as she passed them, her angle was perfect and her aim exceptional, she fired twice, shattering both of the man's kneecaps. With a girlish scream, he crumpled, losing his gun, but managing to cling to the railing. She ignored him and his pathetic whimpering. He would keep for now.

  "Oh Willy J!" she called out with a happy sing-song. It turned out that he hadn't been armed after all. Otherwise, she was sure he would've killed the two idiots that had been firing at him. Their aim had been atrocious, she counted five bullet holes scattered about the doorframe and the wall to its right.

  Feeling a pleasant contented warmth, she went onto the porch, expecting him to be cowering there, but he wasn't in sight. "Olly-olly in-come free!" She tilted
her head, listening, cancelling out the sobbing of the Mexican crawling away up the stairs, cancelling the wind and the flicking leaves. Will's heartbeat was a drum to the girl. He was to the right of the porch around the corner, breathing loudly as if he had just run a sprint.

  "Is this going to be hide and seek, Will?"

  "No. Where's Amy? Is she dead?" he stepped from around the corner of the wraparound porch gripping a sheaf of old yellowed looking paper in his left hand. He had a nervous look in his eyes—she liked that.

  "She's long gone; she hasn't been here for hours. But it was sure nice of her to leave these toys for me to play with." She sniffed at the gun—the man who had owned it was a chronic masturbator. Quickly, she pulled it from her face and looked at it in disgust.

  Will blinked, clearly bewildered. "She's gone? What about Lisa? Is she here?" He didn't wait for an answer but started to walk around his sister giving her a very wide birth.

  Talitha forgot about the gun in her hand and stepped to her left a few feet, coming to stand in the doorway, essentially blocking his path. "Hold on now, we were talking. Are those the incantations that Luke used?" Will nodded and held them out to her.

  "Take them please, I need to see Lisa," he said with a good amount of pleading in his voice. She didn't take the papers, but only smiled at him.

  "Sometimes you're just perfect. You use just the right amount of begging to make a girl feel good about herself. I'm sure Lisa's fine...wait." Talitha paused sniffing again, "She hasn't had the baby yet? When...when was it that we took on Luke? How long has it been?"

  Will face contorted into puzzlement. "That was last night."

  "Last night?" It felt as if it had been months ago. She remembered so many things happening since the fight with Luke. They had met with Lisa at church only a few weeks ago and had gone out to lunch with her. And she had worked on an algorithm for the software she was developing and she was certain that she had shown it to Will...