The Dark Ones (37 page)

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Authors: Anthony Izzo

BOOK: The Dark Ones
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He reached Sara. He was aware of Engel thudding his way down to them. It didn’t matter. They might be doomed to die.
The girl stared glassily at the ceiling. A trickle of blood ran down the side of her face. Her arms and legs were splayed at her side. It made Frank want to weep, but he knew it would only give Engel reason to mock him. Jenny didn’t feel that same reluctance. Fat tears dribbled down her cheeks and she wiped them away with her sleeve. More came.
From behind him, Engel said, “Put down the stone. You knew I couldn’t let her live, didn’t you?”
“I’ll put down the stone,” Frank said, and placed it on Sara’s chest. “I’ll put it right here for safekeeping.”
“Come now. You waste my time.”
Outside the cast house the group of demons that had been circling over the mill waited for them, perhaps three dozen in all. They surrounded Frank and Jenny and then two of them came forward and forced their hands behind their backs so no beams could be cast.
They shoved Frank along, Jenny at his side, until they reached the guard shack. Then one of them kicked in the door to the shed and Mike came out, helping Milo along. Debbie and Laura were last.
The demons parted as Engel stepped through. He looked paler than ever, his skin almost translucent. “Death awaits.”
“Where is Sara?” Laura asked.
“I threw her from the catwalk,” Engel said. “The sound her body made when hitting the ground was most delightful.”
Frank looked at Laura. Very slowly, she closed her eyes and bowed her head. Then, as they were led away, he heard Laura begin to sob.
Laura saw darkness. Her nose ran and she could taste the salt of her own tears. There would be no need for a dinner of sleeping pills and vodka, after all. She cursed herself for letting Sara come here. They could have run and hid. Thousands of buildings in the city to hide out in, but she had followed Sara here, and now the girl was gone. Again.
They were led into a long, narrow mill building, and as they reached its end, she saw something against the wall, initially taking it for trash, but as she was pushed closer by her captor she saw it was a man. Curled up on his side, arms tied to a beam with thick rope.
Dad.
He was shirtless, and so thin she could count the vertebrae poking from his back. She was shoved to the ground and landed next to him. The others were given shoves and now sat on the concrete next to Laura.
Dad opened his eyes. She could see an array of cuts and bruises on his face. More bruises and lacerations covered his bare torso, from chest to waist. His breathing came in shallow gasps.
She felt her throat tighten up. He had been a kind and good man. Always taking time to put together her dollhouses as a girl. To teach her to ride a bike and get back on even though she had fallen and skinned her knees dozens of times and wanted no part of the bike. And the pregnancy. He didn’t yell, didn’t lecture, only took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead, telling her it was a blessing in disguise. Now the tears came. She couldn’t bear to see him like this.
He opened his eyes and said, “Laura.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Lost track of time. I came to fight him. He won,” Dad said with a weak chuckle.
She moved closer, straining to examine his wounds in the dark. They were mostly lacerations and bruises. A few were infected, but it didn’t appear he had been stabbed with one of their weapons.
“Did you find Sara?”
Her throat felt like it was closing on her. “We did.”
“Where is she?”
A cold numbness seemed to seep through her limbs. “Engel killed her.”
“Then it was meant to be,” he said. “I’m sorry, Laura. I’ve caused you terrible pain.”
“How?”
“I should have sent you both to safety all those years ago.”
“How—how could you?”
Now she felt the tears come and she balled up her fists and tried hard to clamp down on her lower lip, but it trembled, and she put a hand over her mouth, letting out a choked sob. All these years, wondering where her baby went. The sleepless nights, the what-ifs. What if I hadn’t left her? What if I had turned around faster? How could he do this to her? “Do you realize what you put me through?”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I only meant to protect her.”
“Yeah, and it did a lot of good, didn’t it? Why didn’t you send us both away? Warn me, too. We could’ve stayed together!”
“You never would have believed me,” he said, opening his eyes.
“You didn’t even try. You just, just ... took her.”
“To save her,” he said.
“How did you do it? Did you plan it? Did it cause you any guilt at all?”
He let out a tremendous sigh. “A group of Guardians from Routersville helped me. They tailed you to the pumpkin farm that day. Watched your every move, waited for you. When you went to get snacks from that table, they closed in around you. Another one of them grabbed the baby.”
“Did you know her at all? Tell me you didn’t get to see her, at least tell me that. If you got to be her grandfather—”
“Laura, I made a horrible mistake.”
“Yeah,” she said. “You did.”
“I’m the worst father in the world.”
“Really not the time for self-pity, trust me.”
She couldn’t look at him anymore. For the moment he wasn’t her father, but a pathetic, miserable man who had destroyed her life in the name of what he thought was a good cause. She wiped the tears from her face. Then she turned her back on him and waited for what would probably be the end.
CHAPTER 31
Down in the Cobblestone district, flames crackled within the HSBC arena, and the windows that overlooked the lobby had blown out. The buffalo above the entrance had melted into a twisted lump. Outside the arena, it was worse. Piles of bodies, bodies in cars, bodies in the river, bodies impaled on spears and stakes. The cobblestones were slicked with blood.
 
 
On Chippewa, the college students that had gone out to the bar scene looking to hoist Guinness and drink Sex on the Beach were left hanging out of broken bar windows. Some still sat at pub tables, faces in pools of beer and spilled booze. At the Alligator, the rich-sweet smell of decay had begun to overpower the spilled beer and soaked-in odor of deep-fried wings and chicken fingers.
 
 
At Channel 7, the six o’clock news anchor, a petite brunette by the name of Mary Ford, had stayed on the air. If anyone had been watching, they would have seen the pale monster barge into the studio, and heard her frenzied screams as she was beaten to death with a spiked club.
 
 
At the Albright-Knox Gallery, when the first attack hit, a local artist named Phillip Russeau felt he had made it. There had been a reception with cheese and wine, his friends coming and marveling at his paintings. He was another Modigliani, they told him. Now, Phillip Russeau huddled in a darkened corridor of the art gallery, praying to Jesus and all the saints that the things didn’t find him the way they had his friends. Their severed limbs now decorated the grass outside the Albright-Knox.
 
 
The Dark Ones moved across the city in hordes. Those that had remained in homes were dragged outside. In the Valley, whole families had been flayed, their skinless corpses left to hang from porches like meat in a butcher shop. In Niagara Square, a row of severed, eyeless heads lined the traffic circle, their mouths opened in permanent screams. On the Buffalo River, where grain had once been king and the long-abandoned silos and grain elevators stood watch, bloated corpses floated, turning the river red.
And the Dark Ones waited. Waited for the master to command them. Next would be another city, and another.
 
 
Laura huddled next to Debbie. On the other side of Debbie, Milo lay unconscious, which may have been a mercy. Frank and Jenny were farther down, both sitting, a demon holding their arms up and behind their heads. Only Mike remained standing, hands on hips, defiant. He seemed to be daring the winged creatures that guarded them to make a move.
Now, she heard footsteps, and in the darkness she saw Engel’s pale face. He removed his coat, revealing a hairless, muscular torso. “Which of you will be first? Hmmm?”
“Try me,” Mike said, and lunged at him. Engel put an arm up, grabbed Mike’s wrist, and twisted. The bone gave with a horrific crack. Mike went to his knees, letting out a scream. Engel’s eyes grew wide. He twisted the wrist farther. Mike screamed again. Engel kicked him in the gut, but still held the broken wrist.
“Stop it!” Laura said.
The winged creatures surrounded Mike and Engel. One of them raised up its hand and a curved knife seemed to morph out of the darkness.
“Let’s see what he looks like under that skin,” Engel said.
Laura closed her eyes, stuck her fingers in her ears. She tried to block out the horror that was to come. She only hoped that when it was her turn, she would pass out. Mike let out a scream, a real lung buster that reverberated through the mill. Even with her fingers plugging her ears, it penetrated.
She had to do something. She got up and charged, grabbing one of the demons by its leathery wing and pulling. It turned around and backhanded her, catching her in the lip and sending her to the ground. The salty taste of blood filled her mouth.
She looked at Debbie, who had turned away. Soft sobs escaped her.
“Let him go!” Laura said.
From inside the circle, Engel said, “Would you take his place? Your turn will come soon enough.”
She scrambled to her feet again, intent on stopping the torture, but one of the winged beasts turned. It had an extra eye in its forehead and a pair of horns that curled down around its face. It grabbed her in a bear hug and squeezed.
“Do not kill her, just hold her there.”
If it wasn’t trying to kill her, it disguised it well. Her ribs were pressed inward and she gasped for breath. Mike screamed some more. She smelled the thing’s swampy breath and began to gag. It really was the end. She closed her eyes.
Despite that, there was Light. Coming through her lids, bright Light, the kind that if she looked into it would force her to shut her eyes. She opened them.
There was Light. Coming in the mill door in brilliant white streaks. The demons began to back away. Engel let out a groan of disgust.
She heard the voice but didn’t believe it, “Let them go.”
 
 
Sara remembered the final
thud-crack
she had heard after Engel threw her off the catwalk. There had been a sharp pain in her back, and she looked up and saw him looking down at her. Then things had gone dark.
She couldn’t recall how long they had stayed that way, for part of the time had been erased. Then there had been the Light, dim yellow going to hot white, in front of her eyes, and then she felt warm, and it spread through her like oil through an engine. She opened her eyes and saw the catwalks and pipes. At first she couldn’t move her limbs and had a horrific moment where she thought she had lived but was paralyzed. Then she could move her arms and legs. Soon after that, she sat up, and saw the Everlight fall from her chest.
Taking the stone with her, she left the cast house and wandered across the lot. She had heard the screams coming from the long narrow mill building and she took off running, the Light glowing in her palm with feverish intensity. She reached the mill door and found there was a neat halo of Light around her body, like an aura.
She went inside and saw the others. That was when she screamed to let them go.
Two winged demons immediately took flight. Without even thinking, she raised her arms and two beams the thickness of telephone poles erupted from her fingertips. They blasted the demons, reducing them to so much blackened flesh. The other winged ones came, and she cut them down, leaving Engel.
With a snarl, he charged at her, palms facing her, and something thick and black came at her with terrifying speed, but she put up her hands and a disk of light shielded her, sending his volley ricocheting to the side. It was enough to knock her off balance, and as she stumbled he whipped past her and ran from the mill.
She gave chase, hearing Laura yell, “Sara!” She kept going until she was outside. Engel waited, shirtless, hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“How is this possible?”
“Magic.”
“You’ll die anyway,” he said, and raised his arms. A broadsword with a jagged blade materialized in his hands.
He began to move in. “Come back to me, my children! Now!”
Sara heard footsteps from behind, at the mill door. She took a quick glance and saw Laura in the doorway. “Sara.”
“I can beat him,” she said.
Now she saw fingers of mist, like funnel clouds in reverse, rising from the ground and traveling up into the mist that covered the city. When they joined with the larger mist, it twisted into a cone and shot down, heading toward the steel plant.
She’d been watching the spectacle of the mist and saw Engel at the last second, sword raised over his head. She moved aside as he swung it in a murderous arc and it struck the ground, spitting up concrete chips. She’d been lucky that time.
They circled one another. Stone in hand, she fired a beam, but he blocked it with the sword. They continued to circle, and this time she fired low, but he jumped over the beam. Now she heard something behind her, familiar strangled voices. A quick glance showed a small army of Dark Ones approaching. They stretched out along the fence, perhaps twenty deep, for as far as she could see.
“You see, you can’t win.”
From behind her, she heard another voice. “Finish him! You’re strong.” It was Reverend Frank. The Asian woman stood next to him. They didn’t move to help, which told her this was her fight alone.
The Dark Ones grew closer. Engel charged again, swinging in a horizontal arc. Sara blocked it with a beam. His sword deflected upward.
One of these times he isn’t going to miss.
He came back with a chopping blow, and again she blocked it, the light creating a shower of sparks. She immediately thrust upward, catching him in the shoulder, and he whirled around, shrieking. His back to her, she fired again, hitting him in the lower back. He fell to his knees and she moved in, eyeing the back of his neck, hoping to decapitate.
As she moved in, he remained on his knees, but when she raised her arm to deliver the blast, he spun around, faster than she thought possible, and thrust the sword up and through her middle. He let go of the hilt. She staggered backward. From the mill door, someone gasped.
She looked down and saw the sword jutting from her belly. It was heavy and nearly toppled her.
But there was no pain, and no blood, only a sense of
heaviness
. She gripped the blade, which felt sharp enough to slice paper, but her hands didn’t bleed. She slowly removed it from her midsection and it fell to the ground with a clatter. The wound closed, her torn skin mending itself.
Engel looked dumbfounded.
She was aware of his army closing in around her.
Engel rose to his feet. “You little bitch.”
Before he could conjure another weapon, she fired a beam. He attempted to block it, a circle of solid darkness forming around his arm, but her shot got past him. This one hit him in the chest and blew him backward. He lay on the ground, skin smoldering.
She fired again, and he twitched. He got to his hands and knees. She blasted him again, and again he fell to the ground.
Now, the Dark Ones around her had stopped. She looked at some of them and for the first time saw looks of fear in their eyes.
Good. You’ve caused enough of it yourself
.
Engel crawled, skin blackened in places, wisps of smoke rising from him. The air took on a burnt smell.
“Crawl like a snake, that’s it!” she said, and ripped another blast. It caught him in the side of the head, opening up his skull. Thick black glop poured out. He raised his head one final time and screamed, a wail of anguish so terrible it made Sara shudder. Then he lowered his head and was still.
The Dark Ones began to wail. She saw them begin to burn up, bodies hissing, black smoke rising from them. Some fell to their knees. Others thrust spears into their own bellies, throats, and eyes. They were dissolving right before her.
Engel’s body did the same, seeming to spontaneously combust, the skin bubbling and cracking, then turning charcoal black.
In a matter of minutes, all that remained on the ground were piles of ash, and after the last one had succumbed, a fierce wind blew, whipping through Sara’s hair. It seemed to gather up the ashes, blowing them across the lot, then rising higher and higher, taking the remains to the sky, where they were scattered like snowflakes.
 
 
Laura ran to Sara. Above her, the ashes of the creatures were scattered until they were seen no more. She reached Sara and hugged her. The girl was crying, as was Laura. “You were dead.”
“I thought so, too.”
Reverend Frank had joined them.
“How?” Laura asked him, wiping tears.
“The stone has the power to resurrect the strongest Guardians. I tried it on a Guardian named McGivens in Routersville, but it didn’t work. Sanborn—the one who originally slew Engel—was resurrected as well.”
Sara said, “Dave never told us that.”
“Charles and I were the only ones who knew. We didn’t want him to fear for Sara’s life any more than he already did.”
Laura gave the girl another squeeze. “Let’s check on the others.”
 
 
In the mill, Milo was sitting up, shirt off, his pale saggy breasts resting on his belly. “Look at this!”
There was no evidence of the rot caused by the weapons. He put his shirt back on and got to his feet. “Jesus, I actually feel good.”
Laura went to check on Mike. He was not so lucky. Engel and the others had torn off his shirt. Strips of flesh had been cut from his chest. They had tried to skin him and did a pretty good job on his chest. He was unconscious but breathing.
“He’ll need medical care.”
Frank came running inside. “There’s an army convoy on 5. I’ll go flag them down.”
Help was on the way.

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