Darkness Reigns

by Joseph Nassise

  With bellies full of food and their thirst sated for the moment at least, Cade suggested that they get some rest and Gabrielle agreed. The storm had brought cold temperatures with it, cold enough that they could see their breath when they exhaled, so they climbed into the rear bench seat and lay down holding each other for warmth.

  Cade was nearly asleep when he felt Gabbi's hand on the side of his face and heard her whisper his name. Her voice was full of the same need that suddenly pulled at his own soul and as he bent his lips to meet her own, he had to hold himself back for fear of being too rough and hurting her.

  They kissed, softly at first and then with more urgency, as if aware that every moment they had between them was a moment stolen from the misery of the world at large and that they needed to make the most of them while they were free to do so. Clothing seemed to slip away as if of its own accord, the heat of their skin pressed together was a sharp contrast to the cold on the other side of the blankets.

  They made love in the back of that beat-up old Blazer, the rain pounding out a rhythm on the roof above while the wind howled on all sides. They barely noticed, wrapped up as they were in each other and their need to reconnect in a fashion that was old as the world around them.

  Afterwards, they slept, curled in each other's arms, and for the first time in a very long while, the world seemed whole once more.

  9

  Gabrielle woke the next morning to the sound of a revving engine and crunching metal. She sat up quickly, nearly banging her head on the roof of the Blazer as it lurched backward at that exact moment before throwing her against the seat in front of her.

  "Sorry 'bout that," Cade said, as he looked back from the driver's seat. "Tornadoes wedged us in there pretty good. Had to get us unstuck."

  She waved his apology off – no harm, no foul – and then watched as his gaze drifted downward and a grin crossed his usually taciturn face. It was only then that she realized that she hadn't gotten dressed after their activity the night before and the blanket she'd been wrapped up in had fallen to her waist when she'd sat up.

  The old Gabrielle would have snatched the blanket and covered herself up, but that woman hadn't seen or experienced the things she had. A little nudity was the least of her concerns. She good-naturedly gave Cade the finger for ogling her, then set about getting dressed. When she was finished, she joined her husband, who had gotten out of the truck to access the damage.

  "A few more dents and one less mirror," he said, pointing at the empty post on the driver's door, "but otherwise, I think we're okay."

  Gabrielle nodded. That was good news, at least. She gave voice to the question that had been plaguing her thoughts since the night before. "You ever see twisters this far north?"

  Cade frowned, looking out across the road where the windstorms had left a swath of destruction in their wake. "One every decade or so, maybe. And those are usually small, isolated storms. F1s or F2s on the Fujita scale. Those monsters last night? Never seen anything like them."

  Could it have been unstable weather patterns that drove people from the area? she wondered. The idea seemed a bit extreme, but then again so did everything else they'd encountered since returning from the Beyond. If storms like the one they'd experienced last night were the norm now, she'd think about packing up and getting the hell out of Dodge, too.

  Cade must have been up for a while, for there was a fire going and, when she wandered over to it, she found a can of corned beef hash keeping warm amongst the outer coals.

  "When you're done eating, we'll get back on the road. Shouldn't take long to reach the commandery once we do," he said.

  Gabrielle didn't need to be told twice. She was famished and set into the hash with gusto, pleased that they weren't repeating last night's cold meal regardless of how filling it had been.

  By the time she was finished, Cade was pacing back and forth, clearly ready to get underway. Gabrielle didn't blame him; she wanted answers as much as he did. They dumped their trash in the ashes and then buried the lot with earth taken from the roots of a tree unearthed by the storm. When they were finished Cade scattered some loose leaves over the top, adding another layer of camouflage, meager though it might be. Gabrielle knew it wouldn't through the shadow demons off their trail, but it would at least hide the fact that they'd been there to any humans who might stumble along in their wake.

  With nothing more to do, they climbed into the Blazer and set off once more.

  The day was sunny, with a handful of clouds, and it was hard to imagine that just a few hours before it had seemed like the sky was about to fall down on them. Despite the front end looking like it had been caught in a vice, the truck ran just as well as it had before. Cade drove at a quicker pace than yesterday; to Gabrielle, he no longer seemed interested in anything around them, but was focused instead on reaching Ravensgate as quickly as possible and hopefully discovering what had happened to the Templars since she had set out on her quest to find him.

  She had a sneaking suspicion they weren't going to like the answers, whatever they might be.

  They'd only been on the road about fifteen minutes when they came around the corner and found the onramp for the highway.

  Or rather, the tangled mass of cars that blocked the onramp.

  Cade pulled the truck to a stop, then put it in park and got out to take a closer look. Gabrielle followed suit.

  "Wherever they were going, they were certainly trying to get there in a hurry," she said, after a moment spent studying the wreckage.

  The ramp, as well as the shoulder on either side, was filled with vehicles packed in bumper to bumper, as if the entire population of the town they'd just left behind had all tried to evacuate at the exact same moment. From the damage to same of the vehicles, it was clear a few of the larger ones had tried to use their size and mass to force their way through the jam, creating even more of a mess. Cars were even piled up on top of each other at the top of the ramp.

  They weren't evacuating, she thought, staring at the destruction in front of her. They were fleeing.

  But fleeing what?

  Gabrielle moved between the first few vehicles, looking in through the windows, trying to get a better sense of what might have caused such panic. Her imagination conjured up horrific scenes with the bodies of the dead still strapped in behind the wheel of each car, mouths open in silent screams but the reality of the situation was far more benign.

  Every one of the vehicles she peered into was empty.

  And not just of human remains, but of anything else that might be useful in any fashion, it seemed. Aside from odd bits of trash here and there, the interiors of the vehicles had been picked clean.

  "Gabrielle!"

  She pulled her head out of the car she's been looking in and turned around, searching for Cade but not seeing him.

  "Up here!" he cried.

  He had climbed the embankment to the highway above while she was exploring and was now standing on the roof of a car that was one of many lining the edge of the road. He waved for her to join him.

  Extricating herself from the maze of wreckage, she climbed the grassy slope, slipped over the guardrail, and clawed her way up onto the roof beside him to see what had attracted his attention.

  To her surprise, and Cade's as well apparently, a path had been cleared down the very center of the highway, wide enough for an eighteen-wheeler to pass comfortably down the middle of the road. Not even the bumper of a single vehicle jutted so much as an inch into that make-shift lane. The outer lanes on either side of the interstate were a tangled mass of wreckage, vehicles of all makes and models jammed into and piled atop one another, even worse than the ramp she'd just left behind, but the center of the road had been cleared as far as she could see in either direction. It was if some massive piece of machinery had slowly made down the middle of the interstate, pushing everything in its path to one side or the other.

  Cade was exuberant at the sight.

  "First decent piece of luck we'
ve had so far," he said, a wide smile on his face. "Clearly there's someone besides us still around. All we need to do is head in one direction or the other and we're sure to run into someone who can tell us what happened around here!"

  Gabrielle, however, wasn't so sure. This looked more like a scene out of The Walking Dead than the yellow brick road and she wasn't certain that she wanted to meet whatever it was waiting for them at the far end. Of course, there was also the practical matter of getting the Blazer up to the interstate. It would take hours, if not days, to clear a way through all the wreckage on the on-ramp and said as much to Cade.

  He waved her objection aside. "You're right, which is why we're not going to do it that way. Instead, we'll use the winch to pull a couple of these vehicles down the embankment. Then we'll just drive through the gap and voila, we're on our way!"

  It turned out to be a little more work than Cade had first imagined, the hardest part being figuring out how line up the winch so that they could pull the wrecks out of the way without them tumbling down the embankment and into the Blazer, but after a bit of trial and error they got everything working properly and an hour later had an opening they thought would be wide enough. Cade gunned the engine of the Blazer a few times and then stomped on the accelerator, shooting up the embankment and right through the gap with at least a few inches to spare on either side.

  Moments later, they were on their way to Ravensgate once more.

  They'd been driving for about a half hour, Gabrielle staring out the window at the cars lining the side of the road, imagining that they'd been pushed there by the hand of a passing giant, when Cade slammed on the brakes and brought the Blazer to a screeching halt. If Gabrielle hadn't been wearing her seatbelt she would have been thrown through the windshield, and she shouted a surprised "What the hell?!" at Cade when she got her heart rate back under control.

  But Cade didn't hear her, or, at least, didn't seem to, for he was starting out the windshield at something in the distance.

  Gabrielle was about to ask what he was looking at so earnestly when he turned to her suddenly, eyes wide, and said, "Out of the truck! Quickly!"

  The urgency in his voice was so apparent that she found herself obeying his command without even asking why. Releasing her seatbelt, she opened the door and stepped out, coming around the front of the truck and looking ahead of them, trying to see whatever it was that had caused him such apprehension.

  "Come on," Cade called, already moving to the side of the road.

  She hesitated, looking to the stash of supplies they had in the back of the truck. All of their food and water was in there, along with the blankets and tools...

  Cade rushed to her side, grabbed her arm, and pulled her back in the direction he'd been heading just seconds before.

  "Forget about that stuff! We don't have time!"

  Normally she would have resisted his efforts, demanded to know what the heck was going on and why he was so uptight all of a sudden, but the tone of his voice stopped her protests stillborn in her throat.

  She knew a command voice when she heard one.

  Trusting that he had her best interests at heart was easy; he'd gone to hell and back to save her. She followed him across the road to the tangle of wrecks lining the other side, where Cade clambered up and over the nearest vehicle rather than taking the precious few seconds needed to find a clear path through them. Gabrielle followed suit and then chased him down the embankment on the other side until they reached the bottom. An open field of tall, yellowed grass stretched out ahead of them for a couple of hundred yards before it met a thick set of trees on the far side.

  Cade headed out across the grass, making for the trees as fast as he could without looking back.

  Gabrielle hurried after him.

  The grass seemed to push and pull at them as they charged through it, threatening to knock them off their feet as it slowed them down. Gabbi let Cade blaze a trail and did her best to follow in his footsteps; she just hoped the track they were leaving behind them wouldn't be too visible to whatever it was they were running away from.

  Sweat was pouring down her face by the time they reached the trees. Cade found a tree trunk wide enough to hide both of them and hurried over to it.

  He gestured at ground beside it. "Lie down on your stomach. Quickly!"

  Gabrielle slid into place and Cade quickly began to grab handfuls of leaves and dirt from the ground beside her, covering her up with them as best he could.

  She started to ask, "What are...," but Cade silenced her with a finger over his lips and a quick shake of his head. When he was finished burying her, he threw himself to the ground beside her and rapidly did the same for himself. Anyone walking along beside them would probably see them without issue, but the debris served to break up their outlines and would make them much harder to see from the field they'd just crossed and all but invisible from the road.

  Cade was still for a moment and then he pointed out toward the highway and the vehicle they'd just left behind.

  Looking that way, Gabrielle could make out the white top of their Blazer above the wrecks of the vehicles lining the side of the road. But that was all; she didn't see anything threatening or even unusual around it.

  She glanced back at Cade, a quizzical look in her eyes, and in reply he pointed farther down the road in the direction they'd been headed.

  What the heck is he...

  Then she saw them.

  Just black dots against the sky at first, but very quickly those dots grew larger until they revealed themselves to be humanoid creatures with massive bat-like wings sprouting from the middle of their backs, wings that beat the air with a steady rhythm and the sound of thick sheets of canvas flapping in a heavy wind. Gabrielle couldn't make out their features from this far away, but she didn't need to in order to know what they were facing. She'd encountered their like before; she knew that even if her eyesight could reach that far, she wouldn't have seen anything but their blank visages staring back at her. Their faces were like clay models with just the hint of human features, unfinished sculptures waiting for the hand of the master potter to give them form and individuality.

  They were known as nightgaunts, or at least that was what Riley had called them when the two of them had faced a pair of the creatures on the night Gabrielle had regained her memory. The battle had been close; the creatures' savage strength and speed, combined with their vicious natures, had nearly been enough to overcome the Templar captain and his ally. Only the fact that both Riley and Gabrielle had been well-armed had kept the attack from being a slaughter.

  With just their swords between them, Gabrielle knew they'd have a tough time facing the creatures it if came to a head-on confrontation.

  Two of the nightgaunts circled the vehicle she and Cade had abandoned like vultures above a still warm carcass on the desert floor, while the third made ever-widening spirals outward from the same starting point, searching the area on either side of the highway.

  "Steady," Cade whispered, while it was still close to the roadway. "We'll be all right; just stay still."

  After a few passes on both sides of the road, the lone nightgaunt turned its attention solely to their side of the highway.

  Gabrielle watched with bated breath as the creature swooped low over the grassy field several times and then headed toward the trees on the far side where they were hiding.

  Had it seen their path through the high grass? she wondered. Did it know where they were?

  The creature swooped low over the grass once more, then flared its wings and came in for a landing less than twenty feet from where they were hiding.

  Gabrielle didn't dare mover her head, lest she call attention to herself, but she could see the creature out of the corner of her eye. It was standing there, partially hunched over, its great bat-like wings moving up and down slightly in the morning air. A terrible sense of wrongness came off it and the lizard side of her brain was practically screaming at her to get away from the thing as quic
kly as possible but she knew if she moved now she, and Cade, were done for so she bit down with all her force and ordered herself not to so much as flinch, never mind get up and run.

  The creature stalked forward on its powerful legs, coming closer and moving more squarely into her field of view as it did so. She watched as it thrust its face forward, like a dog seeking a scent, and she wondered anew how it could see anything through that featureless expanse.

  As if hearing her thoughts, the nightgaunt slowly turned and looked in her direction. It took a step forward, then two more, its head moving from side to side as it peered into the shadows beneath the trees.

  Beside her, she felt Cade stiffen, as if he were preparing to jump up and attack. If the creature came any closer, she had no doubt that's exactly what he would do.

  And more than likely die in the process.

  Just when she thought things were going to come to a head, a shrill cry filled the air. The nightgaunt in front of them stopped and turned, looking back toward its companions. The cry sounded again and with it the creature took to the air, returning to the others.

  Gabrielle let out a heavy sigh, but her relief didn't last long.

  The trio of nightgaunts circled the Blazer a few more times and then, one by one, they tipped their wings and swooped down for a closer look, the claws on the ends of their feet scraping against the roof of the vehicle each time they passed overhead.

  Then, with a suddenness that nearly made her gasp in surprise, one of the nightgaunts folded its wings and rushed downward, slamming its feet into the roof of the vehicle with incredible force, like a falcon breaking the back of its prey. When it rose into the air once more, Gabrielle could see that the driver's side of the Blazer's cab had been crushed downward half a foot.

  The other nightgaunts followed suit and in just a few moments the Blazer's had been reduced to an undriveable wreck by the repeat pounding. Clearly they weren't going to be using that vehicle again. And along with their transportation went the food, water, and various supplies they'd managed to gather earlier the day before.