Paradigms Lost (59 page)

“Very good.” Verne gave a sharp-toothed smile. “But you need do no preparations tonight. Let us relax. I can tell you are not entirely recovered from your ordeal.”

“I can go for that,” I said with a grin. At least
this
threat wasn’t going to be ambushing me. I was going to ambush
it
.

CHAPTER 82

Truth and Dare

Nighttime again. This time, I was sleeping in a sleeping bag on the (no longer pellet-covered) living room floor. Well, more accurately, I was
trying
to sleep. I knew the thing would have to try again; whether my main guess was right or not, it could not afford to lose now that it had started. A ghost would have no choice at all, at least not the automated-recording type. A demon . . . from everything Verne had told us about them, they were ruled by pride more than anything else, and my being able to chase it away and then come back would be more than it could bear. And a
thansaelasavi
. . .

The pieces were all there, even if there was hardly a single shred of evidence I could hold in my hand. But in this particular game, emotions were really the key. I now knew the thing did
not
live on fear alone. It had fled when I offered up a dish of the real thing that wasn’t focused on it directly. It had been
scared
by what it saw. Instead of grabbing that image to use it, the creature had been terrified by the Werewolf King.

Fear was what the creature
projected
—maybe because that was a strong emotion easily roused in people who didn’t know what was going on—but the emotions I really kept feeling from it, that were an undertone in everything it sent, were very different. Negative emotions, yes, but ones with a common theme indeed.

Of course, that could be a demonic trap . . . or the undertone of a repeating
ryunihav
. But I didn’t think so.

Not most of the time anyway. Right now, in the silent twilight of the cabin’s main room, I was strongly tempted to beat feet down the mountain and drag Verne back with me.

The thought seemed to trigger the event. My cell phone rang, causing me to jump in the semidarkness. I pulled the little gadget out. “Hello?”

“Jason. I must warn you; after our conversation last night, I have done some considerable thinking, trying to reawaken memories that would be relevant, and one just surfaced—one that I find extremely worrisome.”

Great, just what I need, more worry.
“What is it, Verne?”

“I have mentioned that the Seven Towers protected Atlantaea. It may have occurred to you to wonder, then, how it was that the demons could invade at all.” His voice was sad rather than grim. “There was no simple way through the wards the Towers made, and no power that even Kerlamion wielded could have broken those wards swiftly enough to have prevented a truly massive mobilization of our forces—more than enough to have prevented the near-total victory that he instead achieved.

“As those few of us who survived learned later, they had managed—through what maneuverings we could not determine—to recruit one of our own to their aid; at this point the details are not important. For your purposes tonight you need only know this: first, that he was the one who created the vampires of Elias Klein’s type, and is therefore likely one of the ones behind his appearance and possibly one of those assisting Mr. Carruthers’ group. And secondly, that one of his principal research locations in the old days—his summer home, one might say—was somewhere in this region.”

Now
that
was a very unpleasant thought. “He’s still alive?”

“
Alive
may be an inaccurate term. He is still functioning and active, yes.”

“Damn. I thought you and, I guess, Raiakafan were the only survivors.”

He gave a slight chortle. “Close. Besides myself and my son’s family—who are themselves a puzzle, as you know—there are to my knowledge only three other survivors of Atlantaea itself, with perhaps one other who is not and has not been on Earth since the cataclysm. We will discuss this later. I simply wished to warn you that it is possible that we are dealing with something the
thansaelasavi
summoned, created, or bound. And that would be something very bad indeed.”

I thought about it. How sure was I of what I had been sensing? “I’m guessing that demons or things like them could make me feel things that weren’t true, right? Well, okay, the fear I’m feeling when the thing attacks isn’t true either, but what I mean is could they be letting me sense other feelings that it wasn’t really feeling, to fake me out?”

Verne hesitated a moment; I suppose I hadn’t asked the question as clearly as I would have liked. But after he untangled it, he replied, “Yes . . . yes, they could do so.”

“Then I guess it comes down to whether or not I can trust my instincts. My gut says it’s worth a try. My head’s not so sure.”

Verne sighed. “Only you can make that judgment, my friend. Your instincts have served you well, yet anyone can be misled under the wrong circumstances.”

I stood silently for a few minutes, thinking. The dark sensation of a lurking threat did nothing to encourage me to stay, and there were plenty of reasons I should just bag this one. But . . .

“Okay. I might be stupid, but I’ve never walked out on a job yet. More importantly, I’m pretty good at picking out patterns, and the thing I’m up against
wouldn’t
know this. So I don’t think what I was sensing was fake. I’m staying.”

“I truly expected no other decision, Jason,” Verne said quietly. “I shall be waiting with all my senses out and ready to respond.”

“That does make me feel better. Hopefully, you won’t need to do anything. Bye for now.”

“Good-bye, Jason.”

I put the phone away, took a deep breath, let it out, and lay down again. I tried counting sheep, working out math problems in my head, concentrating on how tired I was. Still that grim, menacing sensation would NOT let me sleep.

Maybe I could force the confrontation. It was worth a shot. The thing must have picked up the language, or at least be able to get the basic sense of what people were saying, if it had such intimate contact with the minds. I stood up.

“All right, I know you’re there. And I know for damn sure you know I’m here.” I made myself relax, leaned casually against one wall. “You lost last night’s matchup. So what are you doing now? Trying to make me
not
go to sleep, because you don’t want to try it again?”

The atmosphere of the room suddenly thickened; it was fear-laden, but with an undertone of fury and desperation. The fear pressed in on me, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as last night; for one thing, I was fully awake and it hadn’t had the chance to worm its way into my dreams tonight.

“Oh, yeah, like
that
is going to work,” I said with a sneer. “Whatever you are, you
know
you don’t have what it takes to scare me for real, not if you don’t catch me when I’m sleeping. And I don’t have to sleep. I can stay up all night and sleep during the day.” I pushed away from the wall. “Or . . . if you want to have another go at me . . . you can stop being so stupidly obvious and go away for a while. I’m not going to sleep while you’re trying to creep me out, but if you take off for the next hour or so, I’ll bet I could manage a nap. Then you go for it. What do you say?”

For the briefest moment, I sensed a new emotion; confusion, followed by a flash of angry agreement mixed with challenge. And then the room seemed to brighten, although there wasn’t a light on anywhere in the cabin. I opened the window a crack and breathed in the calmness of the night air. I even heard crickets starting to chirp near the cabin.

It had taken the dare. Okay, that meant it
probably
wasn’t a
ryunihav
; according to Verne, most of them weren’t that flexible. Definitely didn’t rule out demon—in fact, that last flicker of arrogant confidence pointed more in the demonic direction than anything.

Still, we’d established a form of communication and reached an accord, even if it was only the equivalent of a temporary cease-fire. Good enough, though. I would be able to sleep now and if I lived through the hour or so after that, Dave Plunkett just might get his cabin back.

If I didn’t, well, there were worse places to be buried. I slid into the sleeping bag, closed my eyes, and slowly started drifting off to sleep. I wondered if it would wait for me to go under, or jump the gun . . .

CHAPTER 83

Rage and Loss

Black acid fire raining down on me as I fled through streets filled with werewolves and monsters. I gave a croaking scream and lunged upward, feeling tentacles coiling tighter, dragging me down . . .

No, wait, that was the sleeping bag. I rolled onto my back, started to wiggle out, and suddenly the darkness coalesced into that monstrous bipedal void, grabbing the bag,
lifting
it off the ground. I felt a spurt of genuine, not-generated-from-outside, fear at that; I had never thought it could manage that level of strength.

Possibly it couldn’t yet, not for long, because in that same moment I was dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. I shoved my way out of the bag as it slashed at me. This time it actually drew blood, the rake of almost-invisible talons cutting like thorns of ice, injecting terror with the cuts.

Despite the muzziness of sleep and its hold on my dreams, I found I could act. My body was shaky and uncertain, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to try moving around an obstacle course, but I wasn’t nearly frozen like last night. I glanced around in the gloom, then pulled the goggles around my neck over my eyes.

Ah, there, light without light. Image intensification with a little NIR illumination made the room bright as day for me. Possibly, depending on how the thing itself “saw,” it might be seeing a little light of some kind coming from me, but very little. Damn, damn, damn. Its unexpected maneuver had moved me significantly and it was circling. I had to get it to the right spot before I could act. And if it could sense that, I might never get it there. I had to concentrate on keeping it distracted, off-balance and angry.

“Still . . . can’t quite . . . ring the bell, Mr. Shadow,” I said, trying to keep the quiver from my voice. “I’ve gotten worse cuts from rosebushes. I thought for a minute you might actually have something, but all you managed was to cut up my sleeping bag. That the best you have?”

It gave a soundless snarl and took a step towards me. I pulled out my laser pointer. It began to shrink back, then halted as I tossed the little cylinder away. “I don’t think I need that,” I said. “In fact, you’ve already beaten yourself, don’t you know? Whatever you thought you’d get from people visiting here, it’s pretty much over. Once I leave, no one’s coming. Ever.”

It dissolved, became a black shrieking whirlwind around me with a thousand tiny mouths and eyes, gnashing and mouthing and trying to tear at me but succeeding only in making a few more scratches. I felt desperation echoing from it. “You screwed up. You can’t get what you want from animals, can you? They don’t have enough . . . life force, will, whatever, for you to work on. They run away, they have no real tie to the land. And you’re stuck here. You can’t leave, or you won’t. So you’ve driven away the people who used to come here, and pretty soon no one will come here anymore.” I checked, took two steps back. The whirlwind parted as I was about to touch it, rematerialized as the claw-handed horror. It was bombarding me with fear now, and part of me—the instinctive part—responded, screaming at me to hide or run. But my mind was still in control. My voice might be ready to dry up or crack, but I was still thinking. “You’ve lost it all. You can’t even scare me anymore. It’s
over.
”

The scream in my head was louder, but this time, it was mixed with a wail of despair, confusion and bone-deep sorrow. To my surprise it broke suddenly. I had expected it to continue its assault in desperate denial, hopefully into the trap I’d set. Instead it fled, running from words and thoughts that were too much for it. I gave chase, for this time it hadn’t evaporated into empty gloom, but was fleeing as some sort of almost-defined blackness, flying through the rooms as though searching for something. It screamed as it flew, a keening wail of horror and loneliness and abandonment that kept the gooseflesh crawling on my skin even as I pelted after it in the fastest sprint I could manage.

It burst out into the night, circling the cabin, flitting from the edge of the little stream to the well to the cabin and . . . no, not screaming,
crying
. Crying like an abandoned child for a mother that never came, a child in the middle of a dusty, empty house where no voice ever answered back, where no hands came to pick it up and comfort it, no warmth would return to chase away the fear and let it know everything was all right. Nothing would ever be all right, for there was nothing left in the world that cared, nothing that
could
care, because it had been calling, calling, calling, through ages of mankind, and never had anyone or anything answered.

I felt tears start from my eyes and I stopped chasing, panting and feeling a stitch in my side. “I’m answering. Stop it.”

With the sudden volatility of that crying child, it whipped around, lunged at me with a shriek of hatred and denial. A concussion of force threw me backward. I could sense, somehow, the pain inside the creature, the injury it was doing to itself, but it no longer cared. It would kill itself in its effort to silence me, and maybe then the pain would end. Sharp-edged rocks and sticks swirled around me in a bladed hurricane, cutting my hands and jabbing into my body, as I covered my face to keep from losing my eyes. Another silent cry of forceful rage lifted me from the ground, hurled me into the stream, and tried to push my face into the water. I clawed at the insubstantial hands on my neck, but there was nothing to touch, just disembodied force shoving me underwater.

But for all its ability to produce momentary force, it wasn’t
that
strong. I got my hands under me and
shoved.
It hurt my neck, but I was up on all fours, face out of the water, breathing in fast, frightened gasps. It let go, and I staggered to my feet. I sensed more tearing agony, another terrible self-wounding effort, and heard bone-cracking splintery sounds. With real horror, I saw it had broken thick old pine-branches to jagged-ended spears.