none (17 page)

It wasn't long before he could hear the sound of the ocean and smell the tang of the salt air. Aaron creptfrom the wooded area and down a sandy embankment to a lonely stretch of road ending in a high,chain-link fence. He could just about make out the shape of the factory beyond it.

A light approached from the opposite direction, and Aaron ducked for cover, watching the road frombehind a sprawling patch of wild-flowers and tall grass. The Ford pickup truck slowed as it approachedthe fence, and Aaron watched the driver slowly climb out. With a key from his pocket, he unlocked apadlock and chain, pushing open the fence to allow the vehicle entrance. Though it was dark, Aaroncould see that the back of the truck was filled with people: young and old; men, women, andchildren—some even dressed in their pajamas and bathrobes. With a chilling resonance, his questionsabout the townsfolk became horribly clear.

The driver locked the chain again after driving through, then continued on toward the factory. Itsheadlights illuminated the parking area, and Aaron noticed that the lot was nearly full.

Must be the night shift,he thought as he emerged from hiding, hugged the shadows, and squeezed himselfbetween the gates and onto the property. Using the parked cars as cover, Aaron made his way closer tothe factory. Some cars had been parked at the front of the sprawling building, their lights on and pointedtoward the structure for illumination. He ducked lower as a police patrol car slowly came around thecorner. Peeking out over the hood of a powder blue Volvo, Aaron saw that the car was driven by Chief Dexter, and waited until the policeman had driven around the building before attempting to get any closer.

Aaron watched the group that had been in the back of the pickup stiffly walk from the parking lottoward the factory. A small town with a secret, mysterious disappearances, the locals acting strangely; if

he wasn't currently living it, he'd think he had become trapped in a bad sci-fi movie. They entered the building through a large, rust-stained metal door, and Aaron could hear the staccato rattle of what could only be a jackhammer.

He didn't want to chance being noticed, so he avoided the main entrance and sought another, lessobvious way into the factory. Hestayed close to the building's side, the shadows thrown by the rundownstructure serving well to hide him. He was exceptionally cautious of Chief Dexter's patrol, remainingperfectly still in the darkness and holding his breath whenever the squad car passed.

He found what seemed to be an old emergency exit and tried to open it. No good; it was locked fromthe other side. "Damnit," he hissed. He looked around for something he could use to force the door, butthere was nothing. Besides, he didn't want to attract any attention. He needed to get inside.
C'mon, Aaron. Think.

And then it dawned on him. It was a wild idea, but the more he thought about it, the more he wasconvinced that it just might work. Aaron closed his eyes and thought of a weapon—a weapon of fire. Itwas a different experience than the other times that he had summoned a fiery blade; he was not beingattacked in any way, so he wondered if it would even work. The blade of light, brought forth from hisrecent nightmare, immediately surged into his head, as if eager to be used yet again, but he deemed it toolarge and unwieldy for the more delicate task he had in mind. Aaron pictured a dagger with a long, thinblade, and he opened his eyes to see it begin to form in his hand.

"Would you look at that," he whispered as the knife took shape. Maybe he wasn't such a lost cause after all, he mused as he brought theglowing manifestation of his power to the door and ran the orange blade between the jamb and the door itself. There was the slightest bit of resistance as the knife dissolved the locking mechanism, the pungent aroma of melting metal wafting up into the air on tufts of oily smoke.

He gave the door a sharp tug, and it opened enough for him to slip inside. It was cool, damp, andcompletely void of light. Aaron wished the tool of fire away and turned on the flashlight he had stuck inhis back pocket. He was in a cinderblock hallway that appeared to be used for storage; every piece ofold equipment, desks, chairs, and just general crap were piled inside. Silently, he scrambled over thepiles of junk, heading for a doorway on the other side, listening intently for sounds of activity outside.

Aaron got to the other side and proceeded down a shorter hallway. The sounds of machinery werelouder now; the whine of gas-powered generators, the roar of heavy machinery, the
beep-beep-beep
 
ofvehicles backing up. He quickened his pace, then stopped in the shadows of another doorway, staring inawe. If this had once been a factory, a place where people had come to work, to makethings—sailboats, in fact—it certainly wasn't anymore. Inside the factory, in the middle of the sprawlingstructure, was an enormous hole.

Aaron skulked closer, using piles of dirt androck that had been stacked in huge mounds around the digas cover, and peered over the lip of the hole. The citizens of Blithe were working deep inside, using allkinds of construction equipment to make the opening even bigger. He actually recognized people fromthe town: the Mainiac with his dirty Red Sox cap, and an older woman who had been in the veterinarian'soffice with a sick parakeet. The people down below moved around like ants, using picks, shovels, andjackhammers, chopping and digging in areas too small for the bigger machinery, while others carted awaywheelbarrows loaded with the rubble of their labors.

This is way too much,he thought. He wanted nothing more than to find Gabriel and Camael and get thehell outta Dodge, but he couldn't do that; he couldn't leave Katie, and he couldn't leave the town in thethrall of Leviathan—whatever the heck that was. He wished his mentor was there; he could have a used

a little guidance from the angel warrior.

He recalled something that Katie had mentioned about underground caves and tunnels beneath thefactory and wondered if they were the reason for this frantic activity. As if compelled, he movedcautiously closer, descending some makeshift stairs that took him deeper into the hole. There were lightsstrung along the walls, about every five feet or so, and the shadows cast by the workers, as they tirelesslytoiled, were eerily disturbing—the distorted versions of themselves upon the tunnel wall more a reflectionof the twisted horrors that lived inside them.

At the foot of the stairs he found an entrance to a tunnel, whose edges were not jagged and rough likethose hewn with the tools and machines. Flashlight in hand, and making sure that he was not beingwatched, Aaron darted through the opening and began a descent farther beneath the earth. The walls ofthe winding passage were strangely smooth, as if polished—maybe by the flow of the ocean at one time,he  thought as he placed his hand against the cool rock. It still felt wet, cold, as if the sea had left theessence of itself behind. There was a downward pitch to the tunnel floor, and Aaron nervously wonderedhow many feet beneath the surface he had traveled. This thought was quickly discarded when the angrysound of something squealing wafted up from the passage ahead.

It was an animal frantically calling for help, and Aaron slowly, carefully, made his way down the decliningpassageway. He came to a sudden, sharp bend and warily peered around it. The tunnel split, one pathveering off to the left, winding down even farther into the darkness, the other ending in a chamber fromwhere he was sure the sounds of distress had come. The animal's squeals of protest became even morefrantic and Aaron was drawn closer to its plight.

He cautiously peeked into the chamber and found a makeshift veterinary office. A table, probably fromthe factory's cafeteria, had been set up as an examination table in the center of the room, and a man, hisclothing caked with dirt, was in the process of pulling a large cat from one of many pet carriers stackedaround the cave. The carriers held all manner of four-legged creatures—cats, dogs, rabbits—and Aaronchecked them all for a sign of Gabriel. But his best friend was not among those imprisoned.

The filthy man had the yowling, long-haired cat by the scruff of its neck and brought it to the table. Theother animals had begun to yelp and whine, knowing something bad was about to happen. The manstrapped the squirming feline to the table and began to examine it, roughly checking its ears, eyes, andthen inside its hissing mouth.
Could this be the missing Kevin Wessell?
 
Aaron wondered as the man leftthe cat and moved out of his line of vision.

A strange mewling cry, the likes of which Aaron had never heard before, filled the cave. The manreturned to the examination table, his arms full, and Aaron had to blink twice before his mind could adjustto what he saw. It was one of the . . .
things
 
that Katie had shown him in the basement freezer—only thisone was alive, cradled gently in the man's arms. The animals in the chamber howled and clawed at thewalls oftheir cages. The cat thrashed against its restraints and spat as the man set the abomination downnext to it. The twisted animal looked as though it might have, at one time, been a dog—a terrier of somekind, maybe—but now it was horribly more than that.

The man had begun to pet the awful beast, his filth-encrusted hand stroking the beast repeatedly fromthe top of its misshapen head to the patch of bare, pink flesh in the small of its back. His attention to theanimal was growing rougher, more frantic, when Aaron noticed the bulbous growth forming within thebarren swath of skin.

The cacophony of animal wails was almost deafening, and Aaron wanted to look away. The poor beastsknew what was about to happen, and it brought them to the brink of madness. The angelic nature

residing within him suddenly began to stir; it, too, sensed the potential for danger here, and was

attempting to assert itself.

The swollen mass on the creature's back had more than doubled in size and was pulsing with a life all itsown. The monstrous animal panted with exertion as the tumor continued to grow, and the man looked onwith a dull expression of disinterest, as if he saw things like this every day.

Suddenly the flesh of the beast's back exploded with a faint pop, and a geyser of fluidshot into the air. What Aaron saw next chilled him to the bone. As the fluid drained from the ruptured growth, somethingemerged from the hollow of the wound. It was spiderlike, crablike. He'd never seen anything quite like it,but was certain that this was what had been lurking in the back of Mrs. Provost's throat. It was black andglistening, the chitinous shell that covered its body catching the light of the Coleman lanterns placedaround the cavern. The creature crawled from the open wound of the animal's back and scrambled ontothe tabletop.

The caged animals barked, howled, and screeched in protest as the spidery thing approached therestrained feline. Aaron could understand their intensifying terror, but had to ignore their frantic cries, forthere was nothing he could do. The cat didn't have a chance. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, hewatched the multilimbed life-form throw itself at the cat's face and force its way into the panickedanimal's mouth, disappearing down its throat. The cat thrashed and coughed, but in a matter of secondsthe panic halted, and the cat relaxed, lying perfectly still, its large, bushy tail languidly waving in the air. Hecould have sworn he heard it purring.

His mind raced as he wrestled with what he should do, but the decision was put on hold when he heardthe sound of his name being whispered.

"Aaron,"the voice hissed in the tunnel behind him, and he backed away from the cavern and turned the

corner to see Katie coming closer. His finger immediately went to his lips, urging her to be silent.

She smiled at him strangely, and he felt the hair at the back of his neck suddenly stand on end. Something wasn't right, and he found the sword of light suddenly in his hands—just as her throat bulgedand a spray of the grapelike objects spewed from her open mouth. He swatted them away and watchedwith unease as Katie recoiled violently from the blade's light. The idea of one of those spidery thingscrawling inside her mouth made him feel sick to his stomach, but he stood his ground, sword aloft,waiting for the next attack.

There was movement in the tunnel behind her, and the people of Blithe moved through in a wave,pushing past Katie to get at him. The angelic essence inside him roared to be free, but he could notunleash that kind of power against these people—they weren't responsible for their actions.

Aaron waved the blade in front of them, hoping to drive them back, hoping to buy himself enough timeto flee deeper into the tunnel system—but there were too many, and they were much too fast. Thecitizens of Blithe were upon him. He had no room to maneuver, no room to block the spiny objects thaterupted from theirmouths. And the power that resided at his core bellowed its frustration as a rain ofprojectiles pierced his flesh, clinging to his cheek, his neck, and the backs of his hands—and the numbingeffects of the toxin began to course through his blood.

"I will not hurt them," he said stubbornly to the angry power, and the residents of Blithe swarmed upon

him, bringing him down to the tunnel floor.

And the power that was his birthright resigned itself to its fate, and allowed the darkness of

unconsciousness to enfold them in its welcoming embrace.

chapter ten

The tide rolled in with a soothing rumble, rushing up to greet him, flowing around his bare legs like eagerlapdogs excited to make his acquaintance. Aaron gazed out over the vast expanse of theAtlantic Ocean ,watching the seabirds ride the gentle breeze, and felt a peace that he had not known in quite some time.