There were the feeders to be concerned about, too. The feeders were the dark things that drove humans to madness and then consumed them, creatures of the mind and soul that lived mostly in the imagination until venal behavior made them real. The feeders devoured the dark emotions of the humans they preyed upon and were sustained and given life by. Few could see them. Few had any reason to. They appeared as shadows at the corner of the eye or small movements in a hazy distance. The demons stirred them into the human population as they would a poison. If they could infect a few, the poison might spread to the many. History had proved that this was so.
The feeders would delight in a slaughter of innocents, of children who could barely understand what was wanted of them by the men John Ross would confront. He could not search out these men; he had no way to do so. Nor could he trace the demon. Demons were changelings and hid themselves with false identities. He must wait for the men and the demons who manipulated them to reveal themselves, which meant that he must be waiting at the place he expected them to strike.
So he went to San Sobel Preparatory Academy to speak with the headmaster. He did not tell the headmaster of his dream, or of the demon, or of the men the demon would send, or of the horror that waited barely a week away. There was no point in doing that because he had no way to convince the headmaster he was not insane. He told the headmaster instead that he was the parent of a child who would be eligible for admission to the academy in the fall and that he would like some information on the school. He apologized for his appearance—he was wearing jeans and a blue denim shirt under his corduroy jacket with the patches on the elbows and a pair of worn walking shoes—but he was a nature writer on assignment, and he was taking half a day off to make this visit. The headmaster took note of his odd walking staff and his limp, and his clear blue eyes and warm smile gave evidence of the fact that he was both sympathetic and understanding of his visitor’s needs.
He talked to John Ross of the school’s history and of its mission. He gave Ross materials to read. Finally, he took Ross on a tour of the buildings—which was what Ross had been waiting for. They passed down the shadowed corridors from one classroom to the next and at last to the auditorium where the tragedy of the dream would occur. Ross lingered, asking questions so that he would have time to study the room, to memorize its layout, its entries and exits and hiding places. A quick study was all it took. When he was satisfied, he thanked the headmaster for his time and consideration and left.
He found out later in the day that a boy named Aaron Pilkington attended the academy, that he was enrolled in the third grade, and that his parents had been made enormously wealthy through his father’s work with microchips.
That night, he devised a plan. It was not complicated. He had learned that by keeping his plans simple, his chances of successfully implementing them improved. There were small lives at stake, and he did not want to expose them to any greater risk than necessary.
It seemed to him, thinking the matter through in his motel room that night, that he had everything under control.
He waited patiently for the days to pass. On the morning of April 1, he arrived at the school just before sunrise. He had visited the school late in the afternoon of the day before and left a wedge of paper in the lock of one of the classroom windows at the back of the main building so the lock would not close all the way. He slipped through the window in the darkness, listening for the movement of other people as he did so. But the maintenance staff didn’t arrive for another half hour, and he was alone. He worked his way down the hallway to the auditorium, found one of the storage rooms where the play props were kept at the rear and side of the stage, and concealed himself inside.
Then he waited.
He did not know when the attack would come, but he did know that until the moment of his intervention, history would repeat itself and the events of the dream would transpire exactly as related by Teddy’s mother. It was up to him to choose just when he would try to alter the outcome.
He crouched in the darkness of his hiding place and listened to the sounds of the school about him as the day began. The storage room had sufficient space that he was able to change positions and move around so his leg didn’t stiffen up. He had brought food. Time slipped away. No one came to the auditorium. Nothing unusual occurred.
Then the doors burst open, and Ross could hear the screams and cries of children, the pleas of several women, and the angry, rough voices of men fill the room. Ross waited patiently, the storage door cracked open just far enough that he could see what was happening. A hooded figure bounded onto the stage between the half-closed curtains, glanced around hurriedly, and began barking orders. A second figure joined him The women and children filed hurriedly into the front rows of the theater in response to the men’s directions.
Still Ross waited.
One of the men had a cell phone. It rang, and he began talking into it, growing increasingly angry. He jumped down off the stage, screaming obscenities into the mouthpiece. Ross slipped out of the storage room, the black staff gleaming with the magic’s light. He moved slowly, steadily through the shadows, closing on the lone man who stood at the front of the stage. The man held a handgun, but he was looking at his captives. Ross could see a third man now, one standing at the far side of the room, looking out the door into the hallway.
Ross came up to the man standing on the stage and leveled him with a single blow of the staff. He caught a glimpse of the other two, the one on the phone still yelling and screaming with his back turned, the other wheeling in surprise as he caught sight of Ross. The children’s eyes went wide as Ross appeared, and with a sweep of his staff Ross threw a heavy blanket of magic over the children, a weighted net that forced them to lower their heads and shield their eyes. The man at the door was swinging his AK-47 around to fire as Ross hit him with a bolt of bright magic and knocked him senseless.
The third man dropped the phone, still screaming, and brought up a second AK-47. But Ross was waiting for him as well, and again the magic lanced from the staff. A burst from the man’s weapon sprayed the ceiling harmlessly as he went down in a heap.
Ross scanned the room swiftly for other kidnappers. There were none. Just the three. The children and their teacher and two other women were still crouched in their seats, weighted down by the magic. Ross lifted it away, setting them free. No one was hurt. Everything was all right …
Then he saw the feeders, dozens of them, oozing through cracks in the windows and doors, sliding out of corners and alcoves, dark shadows gathering to feast, sensing something that was hidden from him.
Ross wheeled about in desperation, searching everywhere at once, his heart pounding, his mind racing …
And police burst through the doors and windows, shattering wood and glass. Someone was yelling, Throw down your weapons! Now, now, now! The women and children were screaming anew, scrambling out of their seats in terror, and someone was yelling, He’s got a gun! Shoot him, shoot him, Ross was trying to tell them, No, no, it’s all right, it’s okay now! But no one was listening, and everything was chaotic and out of control, and the feeders were leaping about in a frenzy, climbing over everything, and there were weapons firing everywhere, catching the kidnapper who was just coming to his knees in front of the stage, still too stunned to know what was happening, lifting him in a red spatter and dropping him back again in a crumpled heap, and small bodies were being struck by the bullets as well, hammered sideways and sent flying as screams of fear turned to shrieks of pain, and still the voice was yelling, He’s got a gun, he’s got a gun! Even though Ross still couldn’t see any gun, couldn’t understand what the voice was yelling about, the police kept firing, over and over and over into the children …
He read about it in the newspapers in the days that followed. Fourteen children were killed. Two of the kidnappers died. There was considerable debate over who fired the shots, but informed speculation had it that several of the children had been caught in a crossfire.
&nbs
p; There was only brief mention of Ross. In the confusion that followed the shooting, Ross had backed away into the shadows and slipped out through the rear of the auditorium into a crowd of parents and bystanders and disappeared before anyone could stop him. The teacher who had been held hostage told of a mysterious man who had helped free them, but the police insisted that the man was one of the kidnappers and that the teacher was mistaken about what she had seen. Descriptions of what he looked like varied dramatically, and after a time the search to find him waned and died.
But John Ross was left devastated. How had this terrible thing happened? What had gone wrong? He had done exactly as he intended to do. The men had been subdued. The danger was past. And still the children had died, the police misreading the situation, hearing screams over the kidnapper’s dropped cell phone, hearing the AK-47 go off, bursting in with weapons ready, firing impulsively, foolishly …
Fourteen children dead. Ross couldn’t accept it. He could tell himself rationally that it wasn’t his fault. He could explain away everything that had happened, could argue persuasively and passionately to himself that he had done everything he could, but it still didn’t help. Fourteen children were dead.
One of them, he discovered, was a blond, blue-eyed little boy named Teddy.
He saw all of their pictures in magazines, and he read their stories in papers for weeks afterward. The horror of what had happened enveloped and consumed him. It haunted his sleep and destroyed his peace of mind. He could not function. He sat paralyzed in motel rooms in small towns far away from San Sobel, trying to regain his sense of purpose. He had experienced failures before, but nothing with consequences that were so dramatic and so personal. He had thought he could handle anything, but he wasn’t prepared for this. Fourteen lives were on his conscience, and he could hardly bear it. He cried often, and he ached deep inside. He replayed the events over and over in his mind, trying to decide what it was he had done wrong.
It was weeks before he realized his mistake. He had assumed that the demon who sought to inspire the killings had relied on the kidnappers alone. But it was the police who had killed the children. Someone had yelled at them to shoot, had prompted them to fire, had put them on edge. It took only one additional man, one further intent, one other weapon. The demon had seduced one of the police officers as well. Ross had missed it. He hadn’t even thought of it.
After a time, he began to question everything he was doing in his service to the Word. What was the point of it all if so many small lives could be lost so easily? He was a poor choice to serve as a Knight of the Word if he couldn’t do any better than this. And what sort of supreme being would permit such a thing to happen in the first place? Was this the best the Word could do? Was it necessary for those fourteen children to die? Was that the message? John Ross began to wonder, then to grow certain, that the difference between the Word and the Void was small indeed. It was all so pointless, so ridiculous. He began to doubt and then to despair. He was servant to a master who lacked compassion and reason, whose poor efforts seemed unable to accomplish anything of worth. John Ross looked back over the past twelve years and was appalled. Where was the proof that anything he had done had served a purpose? What sort of battle was it he fought? Time after time he had stood against the forces of the Void, and what was there to show for it?
There was a limit to what he could endure, he decided finally. There was a limit to what he could demand of himself. He was broken by what had happened in San Sobel, and he could not put himself back together again. He no longer cared who he was or what he had pledged himself to do. He was finished with everything.
Let someone else take up the Word’s cause.
Let someone else carry the burden of all those lives.
Let someone else, because he was done.
Chapter 5
Ariel paused, and Nest found that she couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “You mean he quit?” she demanded incredulously. “He just quit?”
The tatterdemalion seemed to consider. “He no longer thinks of himself as a Knight of the Word, so he has stopped acting like one. But he can never quit. The choice isn’t his to make.”
Her words carried a dark implication that Nest did not miss. “What do you mean?”
Ariel’s childlike face seemed to shimmer in the midday sun as she shifted her stance slightly. It was the first time she had moved, and it almost caused her to disappear.
“Only the Lady can create a Knight of the Word, and only the Lady can set one free.” Ariel’s voice was so soft that Nest could barely hear her. “John Ross is bound to his charge. When he took up the staff that gives him his power, he bound himself forever. He cannot free himself of the staff or of the charge. Even if he no longer thinks of himself as a Knight of the Word, he remains one.”
Nest shook her head in confusion. “But he isn’t doing anything to be a Knight of the Word. He’s given it all up, you said. So what difference does it make whether or not he really is a Knight of the Word? If he’s not only stopped thinking of himself as a Knight, but he’s stopped functioning as one, he might as well be a bricklayer.”
Ariel nodded. “This is what John Ross believes, as well. This is why he is in so much danger.”
Nest hesitated. How much of this did she really want to know? The Lady hadn’t sent Ariel just to bring her up to date on what was happening to John Ross. The Lady wanted something from her, and where Ross was concerned, she wasn’t at all sure it would be something she wanted to give. She hadn’t seen or heard from Ross in five years, and they hadn’t parted under the best of circumstances. John Ross had come to Hopewell to accomplish one of two things—to help thwart her father’s intentions for her or to make certain she would never carry them out. He had seen her future, and while he would not describe it to her, he made it clear that it was dark and horrific. So she would live to change it or she would die. That was his mission in coming to Hopewell. He had admitted it at the end, just before he left. She had never quite gotten over it. This was a man she had grown to like and respect and trust. This was a man she had believed for a short time to be her father—a man she would have liked to have had for a father.
And he had come to kill her if he couldn’t save her. The truth was shattering. He was not a demon, as her real father had been, but he was close enough that she was still unable to come to terms with how she felt about him.
“The difficulty for John Ross is that he cannot stop being a Knight of the Word just because he chooses to,” Ariel said suddenly.
She had moved to within six feet of Nest. Nest hadn’t seen her do that, preoccupied with her thoughts of Ross. The tatterdemalion was close enough that Nest could see the shadowy things that moved inside her semitransparent form like scraps of stray paper stirred by the wind. Pick had told her that tatterdemalions were made up mostly of dead children’s memories and dreams, and that they were born fully grown and did not age afterward but lived only a short time. All of them took on the aspects of the children who had formed them, becoming something of the children themselves while never achieving real substance. Magic shaped and bound them for the time they existed, and when the magic could no longer hold them together, the children’s memories and dreams simply scattered into the wind and the tatterdemalion was gone.
“But the magic John Ross was given binds him forever,” Ariel said. “He cannot disown it, even if he chooses not to use it. It is a part of him. It marks him. He cannot be anything other than what he is, even if he pretends otherwise. Those who serve the Word will always know him. More importantly, those who serve the Void will know him as well.”
“Oh, oh,” muttered Pick, sitting up a little straighter.
“He is in great danger,” Ariel repeated. “Neither the Word nor the Void will accept that he is no longer a Knight. Both seek to bind him to their cause, each in a different way. The Word has already tried reason and persuasion and has failed. The Void will try another approach. A Knight who has lost his faith is susceptible to the
Void’s treachery and deceit. The Void will seek to turn John Ross through subterfuge. He will have begun to do so already. John Ross will not know that it is happening. He will not see the truth of things until it is too late. It does not happen all at once; it does not happen in a recognizable way. It will begin with a single misstep. But once that first step is taken, the second becomes much easier. The path is a familiar one. Knights have been lost to the Void before.”
Nest brushed at a few stray strands of hair that had blown into her eyes. Clouds were moving in from the west. She had read that rain was expected later in the day. “Does he know this will happen?” she asked sharply, almost accusatorily. She was suddenly angry. “How many years of his life has he given to the Word? Doesn’t he at least deserve a warning?”
Ariel’s body shimmered, and her eyes blinked slowly, flower petals opening to the sun. “He has been warned. But the warning was ignored. John Ross no longer trusts us. He no longer listens. He believes himself free to do as he chooses. He is a prisoner of his self-deception.”
Nest thought about John Ross, picturing him in her mind. She saw a lean, rawboned, careworn man with haunted eyes and a rootless existence. But she saw a fiercely determined man as well, hardened of purpose and principle, a man who would not be easily swayed. She could not imagine how the Void would turn him. She remembered the strength of his commitment; he would die before he would betray it.