The demons recoiled from their searing light, but the child stayed, averting his gaze ever so slightly.
“I’ve done no such thing,” Billy said. “Please,” he asked her, motioning for her to turn the illumination away. “If you wouldn’t mind, it makes it difficult to speak.”
Theo lowered her arms.
“I want that information,” she stated.
“And I will give it to you willingly,” Billy said. His face had blistered where her light had touched him. “If you will do something for me—forus.”
She shook her head. “No.”
The force of the child’s gaze was like being punched.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed,” Billy said. “But it is your choice.”
He turned and started to leave, the demons parting to let him pass.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked. “I didn’t say you could leave.”
He stopped but didn’t turn. “If you must know, I’m returning to my little pocket of shadow nestled nicely inside what remains of your soul.”
“You’re going nowhere without telling me what I need to know,” Theo said.
Billy turned.
“I could tell you everything, but it would do you little good,” he said.
She didn’t quite understand but said nothing, not wanting to show any weakness.
“You need me to comply—for us to comply,” he said, motioning with tiny hands to the demonic gathering about him.
“We could give you the knowledge . . . the talent to traverse the veil,” Billy explained. “To open a door normally closed to one such as you.”
She glowered at the demon wearing the form of her dead friend.
“I could force you,” she said, her hands clenched into trembling fists. The sigils glowed all the hotter in her frustration.
“You could try,” Billy said. “But I’d be willing to bet that you would have nothing for your troubles when it was all said and done.”
“I could try,” Theo stressed.
“And for that you would be commended,” Billy said. “Even though it would be useless.”
They stood like that for a while, neither wanting to budge, but then she thought about the children who could very well be still among the living, and the fate that awaited them if the disciple was to finish his chores.
“What is it you want?” she asked.
Billy almost smiled but seemed to know better.
“We ask for only one thing,” he said.
“What?”
“Permission.”
“Permission for what?”
And Billy’s smile grew wider, and wider still, and she listened to what the demon wanted, and what only she could grant them.
And the answer she gave was— Yes.. . .
John knelt beside his wife.
He watched her carefully for signs, paying extra-close attention to the markings on her flesh. They had been flowing—realigning—quite heavily for a moment, but now appeared to be calming.
“What’s wrong with her now?” Agent Isabel wanted to know.
“Hey,” John called, leaning in to the woman he loved, placing a comforting hand upon her back.
Her eyes were closed, and she appeared as though she might be asleep.
“Maybe we should get her inside,” Isabel suggested, coming to assist him.
“Give it a sec,” John said, watching his wife.
“Those kids don’t have a second, John,” Isabel answered sharply.
His wife’s eyes opened.
“No, they don’t,” she said, rising to her feet.
“What’s up?” John asked her.
“Are you two ready?” his wife asked them, moving to a more open area alongside the house.
John looked at Agent Isabel.
“Ready for what?” she asked.
“I’ve got our answer,” she said, and John noticed the pained expression on her normally beautiful features. “The solution to the problem.”
“What did you do, Theo?” he asked, concerned.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, shaking her head. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” Isabel said. “Yeah, we’re ready.”
John wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be ready for, but he guessed that now was probably as good a time as any, especially with the lives of children at risk.
Theo wasn’t waiting any longer, standing there, her posture sort of crouched. It looked as though she were getting ready to jump—to leap from the tallest cliff into oblivion.
And in a strange kind of way, she was.
He knew where she had been moments ago, the darkness inside her so tempting with its twisted power. She had gone back to the well for further answers, and appeared to have found what they were looking for.
But at what cost?
“Come closer,” Theo summoned them, her eyes focused on an area of open air directly in front of her.
He could see that her body was trembling, and yes, the sigils were on the move, flowing and swirling in an attempt to keep up with the dark power that was attempting to manifest.
She let out a horrible, pained moan, and he wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms, to comfort her, and lend her some of his own strength to endure whatever the task was that she was attempting.
“All right, you twisted fucks,” Theo snarled.
Agent Isabel looked at John, but he knew that his wife wasn’t talking to them, instead she was addressing those that infested her soul, those that had somehow provided an answer to the problems now confronting them. And again he considered the high cost of such knowledge.
“Give me what you promised,” Theo demanded, and then emitted a low, thrumming growl, as what—who—she was speaking to finally responded.
Her arms shot out before her as if beckoning for some invisible offering. John winced, and held back his need to go to her when the sounds of cracking bone and morphing flesh again filled the air.
Theo’s arms grew incredibly long, and John was reminded of the front limbs of a praying mantis. Her hands expanded, doubling in size as each finger grew longer, her fingernails turning to claws, the tips becoming crystalline and razor sharp.
“Jesus Christ, John,” he heard Agent Isabel say beside him as she watched the latest transformation before them.
He didn’t respond, unable to find the words. Tears streamed down from his wife’s eyes, and he was compelled to stop whatever it was that she was doing, but he couldn’t. She had done this for them . . . for the missing children . . . and he couldn’t allow what she had sacrificed to be for naught.
Long black spines had erupted from her back, sparks of electricity arcing from their ends to dance in the air above her head. It was this power that she seemed to require, reaching up behind her with obscenely long arms to pull the threads of crackling energy from the air. And in her monstrously altered hands, begin to manipulate this strange power.
To begin to create something.
The crystalline claws at the ends of each elongated finger teased the bluish energy, stretching and kneading the humming substance, and then adding to it from the source leaking from the spines on her back.
John was reminded of a spider as it wove with its silken strands, making a web—or imprisoning its prey. He watched in a combination of horror and wonder at what his wife was creating. At first he couldn’t quite understand what it was, but as the shape grew, he saw that the crackling strands of unearthly energy were being knitted together to form a kind of hole.
A passage from this reality to another.
The doorway hung within the air, humming and crackling like an impending summer storm.
“I don’t understand,” Agent Isabel said again as she stared at the pulsating circle of darkness as it floated there weightlessly.
“There’s very little to understand,” Theo said, her worlds garbled because her mouth was now filled with far too many teeth. “We need to get to where the disciple is
performing the final ritual . . . where he has taken the children. This will bring us there.”
As Theo spoke she continued to weave, her long, spindly arms moving in the air as if she were conducting some silent orchestra.
The opening in time and space grew steadily larger, and soon was emitting a mournful, moaning sound. Theo moved back from the passage, a corona of cracking energy surrounding an iris of absolute black.
“It’s done,” she said, admiring her demonic craftsmanship with a tilt of her head.
“Yeah,” Agent Isabel said warily. “Now what are we supposed to do?”
John walked close, feeling the pull of the hole in reality. “We go through,” he said.
“I don’t know if I can do that,” the FBI special agent said, stepping back.
“Do you want to stop this guy . . . save those kids if possible?” John asked her.
She remained silent, but her eyes said everything.
Theo darted in front of him, pushing him out of the way as she plunged her mantis-like arms into the blackness of the passage.
“I’ll go first,” she said, drawing her body toward the center, and finally she was gone, passing into the eye to the other side.
“Are you coming?” John asked, about to follow his wife. “I hope that you are, because I don’t have a gun or any weapons.”
Agent Isabel hesitated, coming forward but stopping. She was scared, and he didn’t blame her. Feeling the pull of the passage before him, John held out his hand to her.
“C’mon,” he said.
He still wasn’t sure how she was going to react, but she quickly came forward and took hold of his hand in a bone-breaking grip. And without further hesitation, they dove into the center of the opening, which would supposedly take them another plane of reality.
Together.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Hello, class,” the Teacher said as he walked across the front of the room, the student on his shoulder thrashing, but only weakly.
The Teacher could feel their stares on him, those whom he had been teaching the ways of the dark lord these past weeks. He could feel their respect, but he could also feel their fear.
And fear was what it was all about, for fear would restore the great Damakus to his full glory.
The two fleshy bubbles continued to hover around him like balloons dragged along by a toy vendor at holiday parade.
There should have been more, he thought. This was yet another gift bestowed upon him by his dark master. The ability to remove the life force of a living thing had been a lost art form for countless millennia, a gift presented to only the most holy and worthy of disciples.
But there should have been more. He had failed in the harvest. Somehow the authorities had anticipated his coming after the first two parents were claimed, denying him—denying Damakus—his harvest.
He dropped the squirming child on the floor in front of his desk. From his pants pocket the Teacher found the key and opened the manacle ring to accept the student’s ankle once again.
“Your foot,” the Teacher said, motioning with his fingers for the child to obey.
The student glared at him defiantly, pushing himself back across the floor.
“Don’t test me, boy,” the Teacher growled, and reached out, grabbing hold of the student’s foot, yanking him closer.
But before he could get the manacle around the boy’s ankle, the Teacher sensed that something was amiss. He released the student and stood, looking around the classroom. The two bubbles of life force had drifted away from him and were now hovering above the heads of the students still chained to their seats.
The female student who had given up her teeth stared at the pulsating globules, reaching a tiny, filthy finger up to it as it undulated above her head.
“Don’t you dare touch that!” the Teacher bellowed.
The child looked at him then, fear in her eyes, but quickly turned her attention back to the hovering sphere.
“Pretty,” she squeaked, her index finger going up toward the weightless bubble.
The Teacher threw himself toward the child, but he wasn’t quite quick enough, as the child’s index finger made contact with one of the sphere’s fleshy surfaces, pressing upon it until— There was a flash of energy, an explosion of warm light that temporarily chased away the darkness of the classroom.
The light repelled him, burning the Teacher’s pale, bullet-riddled flesh as he stumbled backward. He blinked repeatedly, attempting to wash away writhing blots of brilliant color that now obscured his vision.
“You insolent brat!” he raged.
The little girl looked at him with different eyes now, eyes that had been filled with fear and misery now overflowing with something else entirely.
Hope.
The other children watched yearningly, the soul spheres now drifting toward them.
The Teacher had to stop this. He grabbed the girl and pulled her in close. He opened his mouth wide and inhaled, first drawing the filthy scent of the female student into his lungs, followed by the energies she had stolen. She tried to hold on to her prize, but his strength was too great, and he took the soul stuff into his own body.
The fear in the room was once more palpable, the awful emotion driving the spheres of life energies away as if carried by a strong gust of wind. The Teacher called them back to him, and they had no choice but to obey, orbiting around his head.
“There must be order here,” the Teacher proclaimed. He then regurgitated from inside him that which had been stolen, blowing the precious life energies like smoke, back into the fleshy spheres of containment.
But his satisfaction was short-lived as he remembered there was still another unruly student to deal with. He looked around to find that the boy had crawled down the aisle to the incubation tank, where his master grew.
“And where do you think you’re going?” the Teacher asked, striding down the aisle.
The student looked at him defiantly, and the Teacher could see that he meant their master harm as he grabbed hold of the tank’s edge, attempting to pull it over.
“You test me, boy,” the Teacher said, reaching for the student as he struggled to tip the tank but was not strong enough.
The infant Damakus acted, two barbed tentacles shooting out from the tank to wrap hungrily around the fleshy globes that still hovered near the Teacher’s head. The muscular limbs squeezed until the bubbles popped, the crackling white energy within eagerly absorbed by the boneless appendages.
“O dark lord,” the Teacher said in a powerful voice. “Let this meager offering satisfy your needs. The life forces of two who loved, and nurtured, filled with the horror and fear of terrible loss. Energies— souls—tainted with the sweet, sweet tang of angst. Sustenance to spur the growth of your return.”
The Teacher smiled. He hoped that the offering, and the sadness of the children that now permeated the room, would be enough to satisfy his master.
But his hope was short-lived, for he sensed a sudden intrusion to his safe haven, his place of teaching, and the land that it inhabited. This was his world given to him by his master so he could carry out Damakus’ bidding unhindered.
“How can this be?” he muttered beneath his breath. He grabbed the student by the back of his pajama top, hauling him down the aisle to his seat, where he was properly shackled, then stormed from the classroom.
Drawn toward the source of the disturbance.
John Fogg dragged Agent Brenna Isabel from the shifting clouds of white, the two of them collapsing to a patch of lawn.
They were both trembling, their teeth chattering in reaction to the extreme cold that they experienced while traveling from their world to—
Here.
“Well, that’s something I wouldn’t care to do again,” John said, rubbing his hands furiously up and down his arms in an attempt to get some of the warmth back.
Agent Isabel lay curled into a tight ball, her body shaking on the ground.
“C’mon,” J
ohn said, attempting to haul her up. “That’s it. You’ve got to move around—get the blood circulating again.”
“Oh. My. God,” Agent Isabel said, each word forced from her mouth. She was still trembling uncontrollably, and John had no choice but to help her get warm.
“You’ve got to move,” he told her again, rubbing his hands up down her arms, and back. “Come on now.”
He didn’t mind the action, for it helped him with his own circulation, and he actually started to feel somewhat normal again.
“What . . . what did we just do?” she asked. Her lips were a purplish blue, and there were even some touches of frost at the tips of her auburn hair. John hugged her closer, rubbing at her arms vigorously.
“We’ve gone to another place,” John said, still rubbing but now looking around. The cold mist was thick and blowing about, but he was now able to see the structure that seemed to appear before him.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. The building was small, run-down, and painted a god-awful shade of red. It was like something he’d seen a million times in books on early Americana. The little red schoolhouse in all its quaint glory.
“Of course there’s a schoolhouse,” John muttered beneath his breath. “Where else could he teach them about Damakus?”
Agent Isabel’s shaking had calmed down, and she suddenly pulled away from him, uncomfortable with his familiarity toward her.
“Thanks,” she said, stiffly moving away. “Where is your wife?”
“I don’t know,” he said, looking around. He was tempted to call out her name, but something told him that maybe that wouldn’t be wise.
Agent Isabel turned to the wall of fog behind her, sticking her hand inside. She gasped, pulling it back, a look of shock on her face.
“It’s so cold,” she said, shoving her fingers beneath her armpit to warm them.
“The cold of nothing,” John said, looking to the curtain of shifting white. “It appears our disciple has been given a special place to perform his duties.”
At first John wasn’t sure that he’d actually heard it, glancing quickly over to Agent Isabel to see if she’d noticed. She had stopped and was listening as well, looking toward the schoolhouse.