Devil Creek

by Mertz, Stephen

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  After the killing of Ben Saunders, the man called Domino had strode over to Mike, grabbed hold of the tape used to bind Mike’s wrists behind his back, and with one wild tug, he yanked Mike off his feet and carried him in that manner to Ben’s police cruiser, expending no more effort than if he was transporting a bag of leaves.

  Mike rocked back and forth with Domino’s long strides, holding his head up to keep it from being banged against the ground. He was feeling damn woozy. That jackass stunt, passing out drunk that afternoon, and then getting KO’d at Del Muskie’s cabin, had his head feeling like a pillow stuffed with too many feathers. Any hope of redeeming himself for his foolishness and stupidity this day appeared hopeless.

  Lovechio had stood by the cruiser with the back door held open, and Domino tossed Mike into the car as if he were tossing that sack of leaves. Domino seemed to be imbued with some sort of supernatural strength. He seemed taller than he had been. With his black clothes from neck to feet, his pale white face, decorated with Ben’s blood in tribal war markings, looked more than ever like some feral, disembodied presence against the pulsating red sky.

  Domino drove the rest of the way to the construction site at a speed that had the cruiser fishtailing.

  Despite this, Mike managed a sitting position rather than being bounced about upon the floor. He did not expect to survive this night, and for one moment he was struck by fear that he deserved whatever he got. There was Ben, killed coming to his aid. And Robin and Paul. My God, on the day when Jeff Lovechio returned, bringing trauma into the lives of Robin and Paul, the two people Mike cared about more than anyone else in the world, on this day when they had tried repeatedly to reach him, he had been too goddamn busy with his own inner demons of the past to be bothered with a little thing like doing his duty as a husband and father figure. He was ashamed.

  He didn’t know who the blonde woman in the Altima was, but she was not Carol. He thought, Forgive me, Robin. Forgive me, Paul.

  When the police car rounded the bend, the sight of the blazing inferno had taken his breath away, almost literally, given the way the towering wall of advancing flame was sucking at oxygen from the very air he was breathing.

  Lovechio had gasped at the sight.

  Only Domino registered no reaction. His radiating aura of savage brutality filled the car’s interior like something tangible. Mike’s eyes had met Domino’s momentarily in the rearview mirror. Domino’s eyes reflected the wildfire.

  Lovechio had turned around in his front seat, the white flesh beneath his crewcut a pink patina that reflected the firelight. He kept sending wary glances at the hulk in black hunched over the steering wheel but his sneer said that nothing could distract him from savoring this moment.

  “Comfortable back there, newspaper boy?”

  Mike said, “Jeff, what the hell are you doing? I didn’t come into Robin’s life until after you were divorced.”

  Lovechio’s sneer grew wider. “You think I give a shit about that? Didn’t you notice this morning when you were up here with that hick police chief? I must’ve kept it under wraps pretty good, huh? Well guess what, punk? I’m one crazy son of a bitch.”

  “You won’t get away with killing a police officer.”

  “Not unless folks think you did it.”

  “Me? Why would I kill Ben?”

  “The hick tried to arrest you.”

  “Arrest me for what?”

  “Why, for Muskie’s murder, of course. And you will be nailed for that one, buddy boy, because you got sloppy after you did it and left your wallet behind when you fled the scene.”

  “Jeff, please try to think this through. Paul is your son. Robin used to love you.”

  “Yeah. That’s why they’re still alive. Anyway, I feel more like taking down a man.”

  Mike couldn’t help the sneer that curved his lips. “Especially a man with his hands tied behind his back and with the odds at two to one.”

  Lovechio said, “The hell with you. You’re going to die slow, and you can hate my ass while you’re frying. But nobody touches my woman.”

  He mouthed a curse under his breath and jabbed a short, quick punch at Mike’s jaw.

  Mike saw it coming and tilted his head slightly a split second before the punch came at him. What should have been a stiff pop flush to his jaw only delivered a glancing blow, but in the flurry of movement in the semi-darkness, Jeff didn’t seem to notice. Mike reacted as if he’d been brained across the forehead with a shovel. He flung himself into a corner of the backseat and fell sideways, resting lengthwise across the seat.

  Lovechio snickered. He said, “Pussy.”

  The cruiser jolted to a stop.

  Mike groaned. That was real enough. He was in a world of pain. But he did add some extra volume to it, to make sure Lovechio heard him. There was nothing to lose now by playing possum. Every heartbeat was carrying him closer to his fate at the hands of these two, and if he had any hope whatsoever, it lay in the element of surprise. Let them think he was unconscious or close to it. He must watch for a chance, even the slightest hint of a chance, and then he would go for broke,

  The back car door of the police car was flung open and Domino extracted him with the same savage force with which he’d been thrown in. This time, the demon in black threw him across his shoulder, and this time, Mike felt like a sack of flour. He did his best to remain loose-limbed, as an unconscious man would be. Somehow, he got the idea that Domino didn’t care one way or the other. Domino toted him up the wide stone steps of the entranceway, and Lovechio scurried to keep up.

  The lodge was of pine with a deck and many wings, none of them fully completed, extending from this main section like spokes of a wheel. A cement mixer and stacks of lumber and assorted small machinery, including a backhoe, surrounded the entrance. A pair of wide oak doors had already been installed.

  Flame was beginning to jump from the last of the line of condos, to ignite the end of the wing closest to the onrushing fire.

  Domino drew back a foot and, without interrupting forward momentum, delivered a kick that sent the doors flying open.

  The interior was partially finished. There were stacks of lumber in here also, and drywalling equipment. The walls needed paint. The floors were bare and there was no furniture. But what was intended to be the front registration desk had been installed. A chandelier hung suspended just beneath the high, vaulted ceiling of thick oak beams, and three tall, wide windows, meant to provide a view of the natural splendor of the mountainous surroundings for newly arrived checkins, instead provided a close-up view of the advancing wall of fire. Its flickering illumination poured in through the windows to fill this big room with garish reds and shadowy blacks.

  Domino pitched Mike to the floor so forcefully that he had to bite his lip so hard to keep from making a sound that he tasted the coppery taste of his own blood. He remained on his side, in a fetal ball, unmoving, squinting to watch these two.

  It could only be his vantage point, but from where he’d landed, the side of his face plastered to the floor, Domino looked like he had grown yet again.

  Domino—or Ataka, as he was calling himself—raised both clenched fists and bellowed a roar of defiance that mingled with the thunder of the inferno.

  Lovechio cast a fretful glance out the tall windows at the advancing flames. He stood next to Domino/Ataka. Sweat made his face shiny and the gash on his forehead looked like a cancerous sore. But it seemed that nothing could erase the sneer from his face.

  “So long, you punkass hick,” he said to what he thought was an unconscious man, and he kicked Mike. “Hey, wake up, sucker. I want to see the fear in your eyes one last time.”

  Mike thought, This is it. This would be his one chance. If he could drive Jeff into Domino and then propel himself over to Jeff and get at the gun he was bound to be wearing… . There was no way in hell he could pull that off, but he wasn’t about to hand his life to these creeps on a platter.

 
; He kept his legs together at the knees and kicked out, catching Lovechio sharply behind the knees. Lovechio gave a startled yelp and fell against Domino. The man in black brushed him aside. Domino hoisted Mike in the air and flung him against the registration desk. Mike collided with the oblong counter and more pain rocked his body. He tasted blood again, this time because his face smacked the floor so hard.

  Lovechio regained his footing, casting another wary glance of concern at Domino for the way he’d been brushed aside, but also glancing out the window at where flames were gobbling in toward this wing of the structure. The heat was sweltering.

  Lovechio said to Mike, “You’re a tough son of a bitch, I’ll give you that. But you’re about to become one dead son of a bitch. Come on, Domino, let’s get the hell out of here.” And he turned to leave.

  “Ataka stays to fight,” intoned the supernatural voice that emanated from Domino The special-effects voice seemed to have grown proportionately with his physical stature, and boomed about the vaulted ceilings, even louder than the thunder of the fire.

  Lovechio’s eyes bulged. “What?” He waved both arms frantically at the fire that now seemed to be licking at the glass of the windows. “Can’t you see what’s happening? We’ll be roasted if we don’t get out!”

  “It ends here,” Ataka boomed. “It is the moment of truth.”

  Lovechio drew away from him. “Maybe it ends here for you, but I got what I wanted and maybe I was a fool for wanting it because I sure didn’t think I’d be risking my life against a goddamn forest fire. His words and face trembled with fear and a rising panic. “I’m getting the hell off this mountain.” He pivoted toward the main entrance behind them, and held that position.

  Mike saw what Jeff was seeing.

  Robin stood in the doorway, her eyes wide saucers of shock and disbelief at what she was seeing, the back of her hand drawn up to her open mouth.

  Paul stood in front of her. Mike blinked several times at what he saw, afraid that the sweat dripping into his eyes or having gotten knocked around so much had blurred his vision. But no, it was Paul … and yet it wasn’t Paul, much like Domino had somehow morphed while retaining most of his physical characteristics. Paul looked bigger, stronger.

  He said, “Ataka,” in that same booming, sepulchral voice used by the man in black.

  Ataka said, “Gray Wolf.”

  And the crackling of the flames was dwarfed as each bellowed a war cry from another world, and began advancing on the other.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The insane jumble of images that assaulted Robin’s eyes, mind and senses as she stood in the entranceway was a living nightmare.

  Her son—Gray Wolf!—stalking inexorably toward the demon in black who was approaching him.

  And Mike, rising from the floor, struggling to gain his footing, his wrists bound behind him.

  The tall windows at first looked like bright red stained glass, but it was fire. There came an ominous creaking sound. The walls below the high vaulted ceiling undulated, buckling inward under pressure from the fire. Hell could not have been hotter than it was here.

  And there was Jeff! A man she had once loved. A man she had slept with. Paul’s biological father. A cheating, lying, cruel bastard who she had never expected to see again after her escape from Chicago. But the horror, shock and fear in his face mirrored her own at the sight of Domino and Paul approaching each other across the spacious lobby.

  “Jeff!” she cried. “My God, what have you done! What are you doing?”

  His eyes swung to her. Insanity twisted his features. “You bitch! It’s your fault, what’s happening. I wanted to make you suffer! You bitch!”

  Her attention was tugged back to Ataka and Gray Wolf.

  It was as if the two were taking measure of each other, neither in a hurry to thrust himself into combat but each approaching this fight with a building ferocity.

  “Paul, stop this,” she shouted at her son, and to Jeff, “Who is he?” She waved her knife in Domino’s direction. “Make him stop, Jeff. Do you want him to kill Paul?”

  And just like that, something went out of Jeff when he heard those words, like air escaping from an inflatable figure. His arms dropped to his sides and the insanity in his features gave way to something else.

  He said, “No. No, I don’t want that. I never wanted you or Paul to be hurt.” Then, as if a different, sadder person were speaking through him, he said, “In my own way, I loved you, Robin. I guess I still do. I never got over you.” He viewed against the escalating confrontation between Paul and Domino. “And I love our son.” He wasn’t shouting but somehow she heard him through the roar of the blaze outside the windows.

  Ataka and Gray Wolf were less than ten feet apart now, circling, their eyes burning embers like clashing lasers, and their feral growling carried through too.

  She indicated Ataka and shouted, “Whoever he is, Jeff, for the love of God, stop him!”

  He said, in that different voice that was still his own, “You’re right. What have I done?” And he rushed to stand between Ataka and Gray Wolf. He shouted at the man in black, “Domino, what the hell have you become? Leave my son alone!”

  Jeff was in the process of bringing up his fists when Domino/Ataka lifted him off his feet, hoisted him high in the air and then flung him to the floor without releasing his grip of Jeff’s throat. Jeff’s eyes were bulging. Ataka pinned him down with one knee.

  Gray Wolf lunged at Ataka with an otherworldly, bellowing war whoop.

  Without altering his position atop Jeff, Domino’s free leg shot out backwards, a pile-drive kick that flung Paul into a nearby wall as if he had been kicked with superhuman strength, hard enough to send him to the floor, though he quickly rose, shaking his head to clear it.

  Jeff had time for one brief scream before Ataka’s bellow of blood lust filled the air, and with one savage rip he tore Jeff’s head off his shoulders. Ataka stood, triumphantly holding high the severed head. Jeff had not lost his terrified expression.

  Ataka bellowed, “To the gods of fire!”

  Jeff’s headless corpse jolted upon the floor with spasms, and the neck cavity geysered blood.

  Ataka tossed away the human head and started to turn again toward Paul, but Robin flew into him in a leap, her knife going for Ataka’s heart. She would give her life before this hideous creation could harm Paul. But Ataka swept her aside casually and she went down, rolling away to avoid the spreading pool of Jeff’s blood.

  She was functioning on pure adrenaline and reflex now and nothing but. She hadn’t released the knife, and she stood as Paul/Gray Wolf sprung at Ataka, taking down the man in black. In the fiery shadows, they became a madly wrestling tangle and she held back for fear of accidentally stabbing her son. She became aware of Mike shouting her name over and over again through the din of the fire and the struggling beings thrashing about upon the floor, but finally she awakened to something other than her immediate concern for protecting her son. She whirled about.

  Mike was there with his back to her, gesturing madly with the tape-lashed wrists behind his back.

  “Robin, cut me free! Hurry!”

  She steadied his arms with one hand and, with the knife, sawed through the tape, which was like cutting butter with a hot knife, the blade was so sharp.

  Then Mike was darting around her. Passing her, he snatched the knife handle from her hand and rushed the struggling pair upon the floor.

  Paul was on his back. The man in black, the human beast in war paint, was again howling his blood fever madness, sliding his hands around Paul’s throat despite the boy’s fierce resistance.

  Mike launched himself into a pile drive at Ataka, which sent Domino tumbling off Paul, and as a follow-through, Mike plunged the knife into Domino’s back.

  Paul scrambled to his feet and tottered, his expression shaken and woozy. But he no longer conveyed to her a sense of the supernatural, of incredible power and strength. He looked like a confused, battered fourteen-year-ol
d boy.

  Robin ran to him and embraced him. “Oh, Paul! Paulie, baby, are you okay?”

  His dazed voice asked, “Mom … what’s going on? Am I … dreaming?”

  No, thank God, it was not Gray Wolf’s voice!

  Domino/Ataka howled with the knife handle protruding from his back. He flung Mike away from him and got to his feet, bellowing another war cry, louder than before, as if a knife, plunged to the hilt by a man who knew from experience how to inflict a fatal wound, was but an irritant. The war cry became a menacing growl, and Ataka advanced toward Mike in his unhurried, inexorable stride, dismissing Robin.

  There was a grinding, crunching sound from above and portions of the flaming roof collapsed into a pyramid of fire in the center of the lobby, the fire spreading across the floor to the walls. The windows seemed to be bending inward under pressure from outside.

  Domino advanced, blocking Mike from the entranceway as if the lodge was not burning around them.

  Mike held his position and assumed a combat posture.

  He shouted at Robin, “Get out! Take Paul and get out!”

  “Mike, no! What about you?” Panic and despair were mounting within her.

  “Just go! Save yourselves!”

  She knew that he was right. Paul was her child. She must get him to safety.

  Paul glanced up at her, vacant-eyed, holding onto her the way he had when he was a little boy, like the day he hadn’t wanted to leave her for his first day at school.

  Feeling something die within her, she shielded Paul with both arms from the spreading flames; she began angling them away from Mike, negotiating the flames, darting toward the entranceway.

  Another groaning sound from high above. Flaming debris fell upon the registration desk, which ignited—spontaneous combustion.

  Ataka charged Mike.

  Mike sidestepped, and another step took him to a pile of lumber, as yet untouched by the flames. He took firm hold of a two-by-four and came around with dazzling speed, the piece of lumber coming around like a singing bat aimed at Domino’s head.