Ian was blinded by the wind but could tell by the feeling in his gut that he was falling. Then he was on the ground, the air crashing from his lungs. The snow had cushioned the impact, but he was still left crawling on his knees, gasping for air. Looking up, he couldn’t see anything but churning chaos. His head cleared, and the power returned. He was on his feet and running again. He hadn’t been able to save his brother, but he would die before letting anything happen to Heather and his friends. And with that realization came another one—the end. He knew what it might have to be in order to protect the ones he loved from…himself. But first, there was a more immediate threat that faced them. He would worry about the proper ending later.
Thirty-one
Still on her knees and trying to wrestle her mind out of the cave the glancing kiss of death had confined her to, she looked up to see that Marcus was gone.
Where…
She looked around and, of course, could see nothing but flake-filled emptiness suffocating her. He had been standing right there when the driver threw the knife…and that was mere
seconds
ago. Wasn’t it? How then could they both have vanished in the time it took for her to fall down? She realized that she was no longer in the bizarre tunnel that had formed around the three of them. The cold was back, and the wind.
She heard something through the howling gusts, a noise that set itself apart from the blizzard. A man’s voice, screaming. Looking in the direction she thought the cry was originating, she was surprised to see a form trudging through the snow, coming from her right. It was Ian, and he was running headlong toward nothing, cutting across her path and running straight past her.
“Ian!” she screamed out. She wondered if it was a good idea to attract his attention. The ring had changed him. Like it had changed her. She called out for him again.
He didn’t hear her. He kept running, a battle cry aimed at the wind.
Then he disappeared, blinked right out of sight.
Ashley stood, staring dumbly through the swirling snow. She took a step forward, reaching out with frozen fingers toward a suspicion that surely couldn’t be.
Ian appeared again, flying upward into the sky. The darkness enveloped his body, hugging him to itself before releasing him back to the earth. He fell, screaming a different sort of scream now, and struck the ground in front of her.
“Ian!” She thought he might be dead, but he crawled to his knees and stumbled back to his feet. Still not seeing her, he charged the same spot of nothing…and again disappeared.
Ashley walked forward and crossed through the veil, finding herself back inside the strange tunnel and standing next to Marcus again. Ian was on the ground, wrestling the Dark Man.
Marcus turned his head and put a hand on her shoulder. “You should go. Run. Get out of here.”
She looked up into his eyes. In some strange way, they seemed more knowing than she’d ever seen them, as if he knew how this was all going to play out or had some secret plan.
“Go!” he shouted again.
With one last glimpse at the struggle unfolding on the ground, she turned to run and came face to face with Heather.
A long, red knife was clutched in her shaking hand.
“Heather!”
Cold purpose shone from her sister’s eyes as she said, “Go. Run.” Then she stepped past Ashley and went to the scuffle raging between the driver and the man she loved.
Ashley reached out to stop her, but Heather was already beyond her grasp, the knife in her hand poised for attack.
Marcus just stood there watching, the ring resting docilely in his hand.
“Stop her!” Ashley cried out to him.
Marcus lifted a hand, motioning for her to run like he’d told her to, but there was no way Ashley was leaving. Not until she knew that this evil thing was incapable of dragging her body into an eternity of savage abuse.
****
Heather wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing, only that it had to be done. She’d stumbled across the bloody knife while following Ian’s footprints in the snow, and after picking it up, she followed the remaining prints into some sort of vacuum that was forming a tunnel straight through the storm. That’s where she found Ashley and Marcus. They were standing there watching Ian fight the Dark Man. Clutching the knife as hard as her numb hand would allow, she told Ashley to run, and went to help her lover, to put an end to this creature that had been tormenting them. If anything, perhaps her action would allow for her little sister to escape.
Ian was on his back and bleeding from his nose, disoriented. The Dark Man stood, his back turned toward Heather. He lifted his heavy boot and was about to stomp on Ian’s neck when Heather thrust the knife into his back, pushing it until its hilt was pressed against his overcoat.
The man roared, and the tunnel of clear weather collapsed, plunging them back into the fury of the storm.
For a moment, Heather was blinded by the fierceness of the snow and didn’t know if she’d killed the demon or not. She realized that the knife was no longer in her hand as the dark wind battered her and anesthetized any sense of the world around her. She was lost and alone, scared.
She was just about to call out for Ian, for Ashley or even Marcus, when a sharp pain exploded in her stomach. She screamed out in agony, doubling over. The pain was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. A freezing, leathery hand closed over her throat, cutting short her cries of misery. She felt something warm press against her ear, felt it moving, hot breath stroking her skin.
“You didn’t want it anyway, right?” a voice whispered.
The pain in her stomach intensified, climbing to another, impossible level. She threw her arms and her legs in protest, shaking violently against the work of the man’s blade. Oddly enough, her first thought was that of her unborn child,
Ian’s
child, and was overcome with an emotion she’d never known before. It filled her veins with an insanity-like craze, a wild, violent thrashing sparked from a need to defend her unborn. She fought back against the monster, her hands concentrating on the gloved grip crushing her throat.
“I am the Crest of Dragons,” the voice hissed in her ear. “You are just a godless bitch.”
The rage slipped away from her, and her eyes popped in surprise as she felt parts of her begin to glide out of her open stomach. Her hands left the iron fingers, instead fumbling through the slippery eels squirming out of her. But try as she may, ignoring her closed esophagus, she just couldn’t keep the wiggling things inside.
That’s when she knew she was going to die.
Her anger and pain gave place to sadness and loss, the sudden realization that there would be no life with Ian, no children mimicking their peculiar traits, no more Christmases with Ashley, her brother, and their parents, no more teaching bright children… It was all over, spilling out onto the frozen ground at her feet, stolen by this maniac that had been granted leave from the most deranged of nightmares. And she didn’t even know why.
“Please…” she muttered indiscernibly, her voice pleading even as her vertebrae cracked and popped.
The Dark Man thought she was begging him. “No,” he said before clamping his teeth on her ear and ripping it off with a jerk of his head. He chewed it, blood running down his chin.
She barely felt anything more than a tug against her head, and then she was falling, released from his grip. She collapsed to the ground, grimly resolved to her fate, and began looking for Ian…for Ashley. She wanted to see their faces one last time before…before whatever was to come.
The thought stabbed her with another sort of fear.
Then she was gone, flying through the snow, dragged by some unseen force and away from the two people she loved most.
“I’m sorry…” She meant it for Ian, and maybe even for God, there wasn’t time to figure it out.
Ridiculously enough, the last thing that went through her head was that damn cat, Snowy, and how its guts had been spread all over the road.
She saw a bright light…and then darkness.
****
The last thing that Ian saw before the blizzard came sweeping over him was the Dark Man’s boot poised to crash down on his neck. Reflexively, not knowing if the monster was still there or not, he rolled onto his stomach and began crawling. When nothing came out of the darkness to strike him, he tried to figure out what might have happened, why he wasn’t being pummeled to death. He got to his feet and stumbled against the wind, peering over the crook of his arm and into the direction he’d just crawled from.
He heard the horrid scream, and his heart plunged into his stomach where it was eaten by the acid of realization.
The scream belonged to Heather. She’d followed him. Had saved him.
He started running, but then the scream abruptly died, and he knew he was too late. Tears welled in his eyes, guilt and anger burning them from the other side. He’d been cruel to her, had actually
hurt
her.
“No!” he shouted in protest.
It couldn’t end like this. He loved her and of course forgave her for everything,
anything
. He
needed
her! He ran harder, blind with rage and hopelessness.
There he was, the Dark Man, walking straight toward him…dragging something.
Oh my god.
Ian stopped running, the sight before him, even though half-concealed by churning static, was clear enough to make him bend over and vomit all over himself. He cried out and collapsed to his knees.
Heather was gone, her open body being pulled through the snow by her own unraveled intestines. The ground behind her was red, and her face was fixed in a sorrowful, pleading expression of pain and regret. She’d been calling for him, he knew, and the thought of it made him puke some more.
A further understanding came. Their unborn child…
It was too much. He couldn’t breathe. His body spiraled away from him, his mind splintering into isolated fractions of—
“I believe this belongs to you,” a voice said.
Ian looked up in time to see Heather’s body flying through the air. It hit the ground mere feet in front of him and rolled, entrails wrapping themselves around her like baby pythons. Her body came to a rest against his knees, in his puke. He stared into her blue eyes, and the look he received in return would forever haunt him.
Suddenly, that new part of him began to stir. It seemed to come from nowhere, so completely opposed to his natural feelings. He wanted to give up, to die, to just blink out of existence all together. But this force inside him wanted something else entirely. As it stretched itself out across the metaphysical makeup of who he was, it became a force unable to be controlled. It grabbed him and stood him on his feet. It dried his tears and set his jaw with a hatred so severe, the power of it was almost unbearable.
The Dark Man came closer. “I will end you, and then I will take what is mine from your friend.”
That’s when something caught Ian’s attention—a light piercing the storm, getting bigger, brighter.
The driver turned, too.
****
That the whore was able to use his own knife against him haunts him now. How could that possibly have happened? Instead of warning him, his comrades had just sat there, hovering idly above, watching. Perhaps he will punish them for their lack of commitment to his wellbeing…to his coming kingdom.
Killing the girl and her unborn child brings him some small pleasure, but he wants more. He wants the ring. Now. If angels are indeed here, they are limited in their power, or otherwise they would have prevented him from gutting the woman as he had. He pulls her by the slippery ropes still attached to something inside her and seeks out the corpse’s lover. The man had attacked him, and now he will suffer and die in the most miserable state possible—knowing that his fiancée and unborn had gone first.
There he is. Running toward him. A smile spreads his lips and makes him conscious of cartilage stuck in his teeth. He spits the piece of ear from his mouth. It’s the first time he’s ever chewed an ear off a beautiful woman’s head, and he supposes that it was her beauty that even made him do it. There was satisfaction in marring her perfect face before ending her life. He should’ve gone for her nose, though. That would’ve been a more meaningful gesture.
He speaks to the man and then tosses the body of the woman before him. Jonathan watches, amused, as the spirit of the man breaks like exploding glass.
But then he sees something else rising within the grieving man and, after spending many years becoming familiar with it, knows what it is. Perhaps the fight won’t be such an afterthought after all. He grins wickedly. Then spots the light.
Turning toward it, he knows.
They’ve come.
His old brethren have been sent in to tidy up a situation gone horribly awry. There was once a time when he would have laid down his life for the men coming at him now, riding snowmobiles and dressed in snow fatigues. But that was a long time ago, when they had first embraced him as their own flesh and blood…before he was made caretaker and guardian of the ring. Before he’d disobeyed the first rule of his position by sliding Solomon’s ring onto his finger. The men he will now brutally kill had put great time and effort into his training, into navigating him through the world of Occult politics and the secret arts that guided them. It doesn’t matter, though. They are here to kill him now just as they had come to kill him before. And like then, they will not succeed.
Two of the vehicles race past him and continue on toward the highway, but three others converge on his location, their second passengers firing silenced rounds at him.
****
A bullet tore through Marcus’ left bicep, but he was so cold that it actually took a few moments for him to realize it, for its flame to start licking up and down his arm. When he looked down, startled by the burn, he was shocked to see blood spurting down over his jacket. He knew it was a gunshot wound, and he looked around, trying to understand where it had come from. Had the troops from the interstate come after them, shooting at them from behind?