“Murder, I think,” Richard said. “The place reeked of it . . . or something like it.”
“A serial killer?” Mary asked. “There were so many.”
“I don’t know.”
Chris leaned forward from the backseat. “What are you talking about?”
“For a demonic core to grow to that size—and what we saw was just the tip of what was there, invisible—it needs a base in human evil. Something happened in that warehouse, or is still happening there, that gives them the ability to cluster in such numbers and also to take physical form like they did. Normally demons need to borrow bodies.”
“I couldn’t tell if they were physical, exactly,” Chris said. “They looked so indistinct.”
“That was as solid as they get on their own,” Richard told him.
“So is that what you mean by a hive?” Chris asked. “A place where they can gather in large numbers?”
“No,” Richard said grimly, “unfortunately, there is much more to it than that. What you saw was a core—a gathering of demons working together, feeding off the same energy source, united to some degree in purpose. The hive is not merely the core itself, but what they are doing with the power they’re accessing.”
“Which is . . .?”
“Possessing.” Mary answered the question when Richard remained silent. “The demon that attacked in your house possessed a bat. But demons are strongest when they overtake people—when they have access to human intelligence, ingenuity, strength, and relationships. A hive is a network of human beings possessed and controlled by the demonic. They will work closely together and form a sort of community—it’s a demonic mirror image of, and mockery of, the Oneness.”
Chris sat back. “I can’t imagine.”
“You don’t want to.” Richard spoke again. “The Oneness is the ideal for mankind. Interconnectedness, gifts working in conjunction, an organic body—yet every one separate, unique, individual. Free. The strength of the Oneness is love, and love can only exist where freedom exists. A hive is different. It amalgamates—flattens its members into clones of each other. Its strength is not love, but repression. Sameness.”
Mary wasn’t sure why she said what she said next. “Your father—Douglas—was afraid of the Oneness because he thought we operated like a hive does. Yet the love he saw in us compelled him. I don’t think he knew how to reconcile it with the ideas he already had about what it meant to be one of us.”
“Did he ever do it? Become one of you?”
Mary looked down at her hands. “I’m not sure. I hope so.”
“Because it means you’ll see him again.”
“Because it would mean we all will.”
“Even me?”
Mary turned around. The young man’s eyes were challenging her directly, a flare of independent thought demanding to be answered. Despite herself, she smiled at the sight of him—so exactly like Douglas, with his hand resting on Reese’s head, stroking her hair and streaking his fingers with blood.
“This is what you want, you know,” she said softly. “You’ve always wanted it. To save the world. To protect it. To be who you were born to be.”
Did his hand shake? “I don’t want to lose myself.”
“We are not a hive.”
“I don’t know that.”
She ducked her gaze from the desperation in his expression. “Then wait,” she said. “Wait until you do know it. But don’t wait too long. Others have waited too long.”
When she glanced up again, he was staring out the window.
Richard checked his rearview mirror, his view of the road partially blocked by three young heads. The street was clear, the image of an industrial road on a weekend when the world was in bed or going to the bar. Sluggishly oblivious to all that was going on in higher realms around it. Sometimes, very rarely, he envied that kind of ignorance.
Now was not one of those times. What exactly the recovery of Reese meant he was not sure, but one element of it meant restoration, truth’s triumph, and the healing of a splintered heart, and he was grateful with everything he was to have a part in that. He also knew, with the certainty born of prayer, that Reese was no exile. She was Oneness to the depths; always had been. Her willingness to die for the cause was only further proof of that.
But far from providing answers, that just furthered the mystery of what exactly had happened in this city—and what it had to do with the village, with April, with what all else this plan entailed.
Bombing up the road to a main artery of the city and then out to the freeway, Richard kept his eyes fixed ahead and let his heart reach out, up, wide and deep in prayer. It was harder now to concentrate than it had been when he chatted with Tyler in the backseat, but more important too. He nodded slightly to himself when the insight came; at least he knew where to go.
“How much longer, Richard?” Mary asked quietly. “She’s not doing well.”
“Not far,” he said. “I know where we’re going.”
“Tell me?”
“Tempter’s Mountain.”
“Ah. Are you sure?”
“Sure as sure.”
Richard kept right through a highway split that took them completely out of Lincoln and turned them back toward the ridge that ran up the coast, back toward home. Their destination was a thirty-minute drive north of the village, the highest point of the ridge and lonely as any place along the bay.
“What’s on Tempter’s Mountain?” Chris asked. “You people got another cell up there?”
“Yes,” Mary said, “in a manner of speaking.”
“Can’t be a very big one. Hardly anybody lives up there.”
“It isn’t,” Mary said. “It’s smaller than ours, as a matter of fact.”
“And seldom visited,” Richard added. He checked the rearview again. There were fewer cars on this freeway; less to watch; and that was putting him on edge in its own way. Solitary places could be the safest in the world. Or the most dangerous.
“And we are going there because . . .”
“Because that’s what the Spirit is leading me to do,” Richard said.
“Just you? Shouldn’t you both have to agree on this? And those twins in the back?”
“Living in the Oneness is as much about trust as it is about agreement,” Mary said. “We don’t all need to come to an agreement, just to trust that the one who says he’s hearing or seeing really is.”
Chris fell silent again, and Richard flicked his eyes over to Mary’s. She looked worried—concerned, Richard thought, not so much for Reese as for the questioning young man. They had some kind of story, Mary and the Sawyers. One day soon he figured she’d tell it.
A sudden loud thump on the roof of the truck caused Richard to jerk the steering wheel and then turn his eyes to the rearview again, pulling the truck back under control as he did. Tony was gesturing wildly for him to pull over.
“Trouble,” Richard said.
In moments they were on the side of the freeway. No other vehicle was in sight. Richard jumped out and ran to the bed, followed by Chris.
“Up there!” Tony shouted, jumping out of the truck bed and landing in the gravel next to Richard. He pointed energetically at the sky. Dark clouds were gathering directly overhead, swirling in a distinctly unnatural way. There was no wind.
“Dear Lord,” Richard said.
“What is it?” Chris asked urgently.
Richard shook his head slowly, eyes riveted to the swirling darkness. He could make out the edges of wings and claws in the swaths of cloud. “Chris, Tyler, get in the truck. Mary!”
Mary jumped out of the passenger’s seat and looked at the sky. She put her hands together, and a long, black sword appeared between them. “Keep your eyes up,” she instructed Tony and Angelica, who likewise took a defensive stance with swords in their hands.
Chris and Tyler hesitated.
“Boys, get in that truck,” Richard said. “You can’t fight this fight. Best way you can help us is to get yours
elves out of harm’s way.”
The friends looked at each other, both uncertain. A smell was growing in the air, and a sound—a high-pitched, far-off sound growing in intensity.
“Get in the truck,” Chris mumbled. He took his own advice, practically pushing Tyler in ahead of him.
Richard’s eyes fixated on the cloud. “Ready . . . keep your eyes up and your hands steady . . .”
The first attack came shrieking out of the sky, eyes glistening, bearing long curved swords. They were coming down in demon form, the same indistinct and yet very real bodies that had attacked Reese in the warehouse. Whatever power was energizing the core, it was strong to give them this power so far from their base.
Tony yelled and jumped to give his sword more power coming down as the onslaught hit. Beside him, Angelica slashed the head off the first assailant to reach her. The two largest slammed into Mary and Richard, but both drove their swords deep into the creatures’ chests, not even bothering to parry their swords. The demons were armed but attacked more like a pack of animals than like men: strength, teeth, speed, force. The Oneness dispatched the first wave quickly, but more were pouring down out of the cloud.
Inside the truck, the view had gone dark. Outside they could hear shrieking and what sounded like a gale wind; the truck rocked and shook with the force of it. Tyler and Chris had both crawled into the back bench and crouched on the floorboards, their heads ducked so they couldn’t be seen easily from outside. They faced one another, questions in both their eyes.
A scream from outside. It might have been a woman. Chris’s eyes flicked up. Something roared. A demon? Or Richard?
On the bench, Reese groaned and moved her head a little. Chris was immediately on the alert. “Hey, you waking up?” he asked softly. His question drew Tyler’s attention.
Something slammed into the hood, and the truck rocked violently. Chris looked forward, but it was too dark to see—as though the truck had been plunged into a heavy fog.
“Listen, Reese,” Tyler said, his voice urgent and just loud enough to be heard over the chaos, “I’ve got a message for you, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to get a chance to deliver it. Patrick came to me . . . I guess you know who that is. And Richard already told you this, but I’m supposed to tell you too. You’re not an exile. He said you were wrong about that. He said things aren’t what they look like, and this is the kind of darkness that requires patience.”
Tyler looked up anxiously as the noise grew once more and the truck lurched as though something huge had been hurled against it. Chris was tense, as though it was all he could do to stay here where he’d been sent and not throw himself out into the battle.
“Patience,” Tyler repeated. “For the dark.”
Reese opened her eyes and seemed to scrutinize him for a moment. Her hand moved, and Tyler took it and squeezed it tightly. She managed a smile, but it was through tears, and the expression in her eyes was agonized.
“Thank you,” she choked.
“Are we going to get out of here?” Tyler asked.
“I . . . don’t know.”
Chris started to rise. “That’s it. I can’t . . .”
Before he could finish his sentence, everything went silent.
A moment later the dark dissipated, vanishing like fog. The door behind Chris opened. Richard stood there, battered but definitely standing.
Chris turned himself around, half-standing. Richard saw the expression on his face. “It’s all right,” he hurried to say. “We’re all fine. Just checking on you three.”
“Better than ever,” Tyler said, motioning down at Reese. Her eyes were closed again, but she looked a little less like she was lingering on death’s door.
“Glad to see it.”
“You’re all okay?” Chris asked. He exited the truck. Mary, Angelica, and Tony were all on their feet, dusting themselves off, sporting bruises, scratches, and blood but not looking too much worse for wear. Mary smiled at him. “We’re fine.”
Chris looked up at the sky. The menacing clouds were gone entirely, replaced by the low sky of approaching evening. Tony slapped Chris’s shoulder on his way back to the truck bed. “It was just a scrape,” he said. “We’ve seen worse!”
Angelica winked as she followed her brother. “Only a little worse.”
Bewildered, Chris looked again at Mary. “How was that not a lot worse than it was?”
“We’re trained,” she said, “and experienced, all of us. Those two troublemakers only look like children. They’ve been on fighting missions since they were in diapers. And the core was overextending itself. This is a long way from their base . . . they would have been better off possessing other bodies, but there’s not much of use around here.”
“This life is war,” Richard explained. “Oneness don’t have the luxury of overlooking that. We’re always ready.”
“Why attack you and not people like us?” Chris asked.
“They do attack you,” Mary said. “In terrible ways. That’s why we’re here. To throw the fight back in their own faces. They won’t attack you like that because it wouldn’t help them to tip their hand.” She laid a hand on his arm. Her knuckles were bloody. “We could always use another soldier.”
Gently and respectfully, Chris removed her hand from his arm. He said nothing. But she understood, and he knew it.
He hoisted himself into the truck bed. “Tyler’s turn to ride inside,” he said.
* * *
The road up Tempter’s Mountain was a dirt turnoff from the two-lane highway that had eventually taken the place of the freeway. It would be easily missed by anyone not looking for it. As it was, Richard drove past it and had to turn around, preferring not to slam on the brakes or make a hard turn with Reese in the back and his other passengers nursing their own minor wounds. Once on the road, he started the crawl up the steep hillside toward the peak.
“Haven’t been here in forty years,” he said.
Tyler leaned over the seat. “Where are we going?”
“A cell,” Mary answered.
“In this wilderness? How many people live up here?”
Richard put the truck into third gear as the embankment grew even steeper. “Just one,” he said.
They crawled around a corner, and a drop-off on their left revealed a breathtaking panorama of the bay and the ocean beyond. The blue sky, glistening clean and bright, stretched above forever, and a half-moon floated in the blue air.
“Good thing I’m not afraid of heights,” Tyler said.
“What are you afraid of, Tyler?” Mary asked.
Tyler’s voice softened. “Don’t really make small talk, do you?”
“Not particularly, no.”
He kept his eyes fixed on the water and the moon. “Lack, maybe. I think I’m afraid of not having enough.” He paused. “That I’ve never had enough. That I’ll never have what I really need . . . what I’m looking for.”
“And what is that?” Mary asked.
“I don’t know for sure.”
The road took another sharp bend, this time putting the bay behind them and plunging the truck into a tangle of twisted trees and scrub bushes that looked like they’d been waging a battle to take over the road. Someone had patiently cut them back, leaving a path wide enough for the truck to drive through without a scratch. The ground levelled, and ahead of them appeared a small house set against another embankment, overshadowed by two huge old pines and landscaped with little more than sandy dirt and rocks. But it was kept neatly enough.
Richard put the truck in park and turned off the ignition.
“Well?” Mary asked.
“The trees are taller. Other than that it looks exactly the same.”
She opened her door first. “I wonder whether we’re expected.”
Richard followed her out, pausing to tell Tyler, “Stay put.” He rested his hand on the edge of the truck bed. “You three had best stay here until we make sure we’re not too much of an intrusion.”
&n
bsp; Dirt and gravel crunched under their feet as Richard and Mary made their way to the front door. He knocked, and they waited.
The door swung open, and an ancient, cavernous face looked up at them from a body that was nearly ninety years old and under five feet tall. Yet the eyes were bright and the welcome real.
“More company, eh?” the old hermit croaked.
Richard smiled. “Do you remember me?”
“Sure I do.” The hermit tapped his temple. “I don’t forget. You’re . . . Robert.”
“Richard.”
“Richard, of course. And you I don’t know.”
“Mary.”
“Welcome, welcome. You got more out in that truck?”
Tony’s head was peering up over the cab, and the hermit waved at him.
“If we’re not too much of an imposition,” Richard said.
“Not at all.” The hermit stepped back and swung his door all the way open. He gestured broadly for the others to come in and watched as the twins and Chris piled out of the bed. Tyler jumped out of the backseat, and Chris climbed halfway in. He emerged a moment later carrying Reese. The twins nodded to the hermit as they entered, and he clapped each of their arms like they were long lost grandchildren. Tyler followed, joining the twins in the narrow entryway that led to a living room tinier than the one at the boys’ cottage.
Chris approached the doorstep, and the hermit’s eyes fell on Reese. Suddenly his posture went rigid, and his face grew dark. He looked up at Richard, his eyes accusing and intense.
“What are you doing? Why have you brought this here?”
Richard and Mary exchanged a confused look, and Richard searched for words.
The hermit cut him off. “Can’t you feel what’s in front of your face, man? This girl is an exile!”
Chapter 11
Chris stopped, refusing to take another step. It wasn’t clear that the hermit would have allowed him entrance anyway, as long as Reese was in his arms. Richard interposed himself between them.
“Respectfully, sir, she isn’t,” he said.
The hermit turned blazing eyes on the younger man. “Do you think your senses are sharper than mine? I’ve been honing them for seventy years!”
“Up here?” Richard shot back. “I’d think being alone so long might dull things.”
“Richard,” Mary said sharply, laying her hand on his arm. He bowed his head. “I’m sorry. That was out of line. But sir, this girl isn’t an exile. We thought so too, but . . .”