The Edge of Ruin (36 page)

Weber cut at the ropes securing her wrists. Judging from the swollen red skin around the cords, and her puffy purple fingers, she had been there for a long time. Sam was muttering a running string of curses. Pamela pulled off her jacket and laid it over the girl, shielding her from the men. Sam looked startled and then chagrined.

“Hush. Hush. You’re going to be all right now. What’s your name, honey?” Pamela kept her voice low and soft, the tone you used to soothe a frightened horse. The girl’s sobs died to whimpers as Pamela put her arms around her.

“Jessie.”

“Jessie, is there another woman here? Older than you.”

“The black woman,” the girl said, and her voice shook. “She fought him. He hurt her. Bad. She screamed and screamed. For a long time.” Pamela tightened her grip as the shivering became massive shudders that threatened to pull the girl out of her arms.

“Do you know where she is?” Weber said, and the girl shrank away with a cry. Sam pushed past him and repeated the question.

“In … in the bathroom.”

“Angie! Angie!” Weber yelled and ran through the bathroom door. Then there was silence—for a long, long time.

Everyone moved to the bathroom except Pamela, who kept holding Jessie. There was a cry of disgust from Estevan. He burst back into the bedroom. Joseph had his arm around the young man, who was crying and gagging.

Dread closed in on her. “What?” Pamela whispered.

“Angela’s dead,” Joseph said. “You don’t want to know more than that.”

The other members of the team returned to the bedroom. Weber’s skin was gray, and the effort not to weep gouged lines in his forehead and around his eyes.

Franklin took charge. “We need to get Jessie out of here.”

“She can’t go alone, and we can’t spare anyone to take her,” Jay argued.

“No, we can spare someone. We probably
shouldn’t
, but we can,” came the agent’s response.

Joseph stepped into the huddle. “Send Estevan. He’s just a kid, and he’s terrified.”

“What about Angela?” Weber asked thickly.

“We save the living,” Syd said to him softly. “You know that. If we can, once Richard gets here, we’ll take Angela home, too, but right now Jessie’s got to be our first priority.”

It was quickly arranged. At the kitchen they separated. Estevan, supporting the girl in the circle of an arm, headed off toward the stairs to the basement. The rest of them went down the hall and through the door that separated the private living quarters from the public rooms. In the living room, there were more dirty dishes piled on end tables and the coffee table. Stuffing exploded like dandelion fluff through the ripped and stained blue velvet upholstery on the couches and chairs. The white carpet looked like an experimental painting. Pamela had a feeling that some of the stains were blood, but she didn’t want to ask.

She also didn’t want to ask Sam what she had seen in that bathroom. She didn’t want to know what had been done to Angela. But the not knowing and wondering pricked at her mind, trying to drive her to ask. She pushed the impulse aside.

The backpacks were unlimbered, and they pulled out the gasoline-filled canteens, and began dousing the furniture cushions and the carpet.

“Why haven’t we met anyone?” Joseph asked the room.

“I think everyone’s off planning a reception for us on the main road or at the dell,” Weber said. “I think those birds were carrying a message. Kenntnis said the things around us could be used against us.”

Jay spun, looking at the walls as if expecting them to collapse on top of him. “If it’s a trap, shouldn’t we be getting out of here?”

“And how do we tell Richard we’re bookin’ out on him?” Sam asked.

Syd spoke up. “No, we gotta stick.”

Joseph and Rudi exchanged glances. Rudi nodded, and Joseph said, “We’re not leaving.”

Jay looked to Franklin, who shook his head. For a long moment Jay struggled with himself. The syncopated ticks from old-fashioned spring-wound watches seemed deafening in the silence.

“Well, we better get these cushions against the walls,” Jay said. Sam gave him an approving smile and slapped him hard on the shoulder.

They hurried about, propping the split cushions against the wood walls. Next they splashed gasoline across them, and finally the cigarettes were carefully tucked into the rents in the cushions. Pamela noticed that the cigarettes were no longer burning. She wondered what it was about fire, light, and Old Ones.

“Now what?” Jay asked.

Weber checked his watch. “We wait another five minutes, and then some of us hold down the fort, and the rest of us go toward the gate and raise some hell so Eddie can get a look at this glass thingie.”

R
ICHARD

T
here was a ragged sound to the bike’s engine that I didn’t like, but I could understand. The air was horribly dry, and tainted with stinks that bit at the back of my throat and had my eyes watering.

We were moving so fast that both tires left the ground as we crested a small hill. Eddie gasped and giggled, but for me the euphoria was gone. Only the skeletons of dead trees and one final hill separated the gate from us. We were two guys on a motorbike, and arrayed against us were monsters—

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.
And people
, I added as I spotted the two men hiding in the trees.

One jumped out directly in front of us. I had a split second to decide what to do. It was too close quarters to use the sword, I didn’t have time to dodge him, and if I hit him straight on the bike would go down, and then his buddy would have us.

I wrenched the handlebars hard to the left and hit the brake. The front tire locked, and I felt the muscles in my shoulders and neck spasm as I braced against the hard jerk. I then let the back tire fishtail, spinning us 180 degrees. Eddie’s scream was a high-pitched whistle of terror directly into my ear. The back of the bike slammed into the man and knocked him flat. The second man started running toward us as I fought for control of the bike. We were wobbling, but I gunned the engine anyway, and drove straight at him.

At the last minute I pulled to the right and stabbed hard and fast, catching the man in the chest. There was a moment of breath-stopping terror when our momentum sent us hurtling past while the blade was caught in his ribs. I almost lost my grip, but the sword wrenched loose before the hilt slipped out of my sweat-slicked hand. It still pulled the hell out of my fingers where they twined through the hilt.

As we clawed our way up the final hill, I realized that other than that sentry creature, we hadn’t met anything but humans. I glanced down the length of the glittering blade.
The Old Ones fear it. The barest touch and they die.
Kenntnis’s voice rumbled in memory.

They were afraid to come too close. They were letting humans face me and get hurt.
Die
, my innate honesty forced me to acknowledge. There was a sharp pain at the hinge of my jaw as I gritted my teeth. I wanted something to die other than my own kind. I wanted to kill the creatures that had brought us to this.

We crested the final hill, and suddenly my thoughts about killing monsters seemed like a bully’s bravado. A hot, life-sucking wind swirled in the dell, kicking up errant dust devils that filled the air with a choking grit. It stung the exposed skin on my face and hands. The gate filled the entire cliff face. Mist, like steam from quiescent geysers, trailed from the various glass sculptures that dotted the ground in front of it. Kenntnis’s glass tomb was centered among the other sculptures.

“Holy crap,” Eddie said, and he was looking off to the side of the gate where another, much smaller opening in the gray stones showed space and that burning star. “Why isn’t our atmosphere getting sucked away?”

And now I had another gut-burning problem. If Rhiana’s magic failed, it was most definitely game over. I had to close at least that opening between the multiverses.

But between me and that tear in reality were humans. And others. They were just disturbing shapes that my mind failed to grasp, but they were utterly terrifying. I felt the rim of Eddie’s helmet digging into my shoulder as the young scientist pressed closer to me. I wished I had somebody to hide behind.

The desire to turn the bike and flee back the way we had come was so strong that my arms were shivering. There had to be somebody else who could deal with this shit. But Pamela and Weber and Angela were here.

I had to be here, too.

T
here had been a sharp but short argument about everybody staying at the house as Richard had instructed, or some of them going out to meet Richard and help him get back to the house. Weber and the “help Richard” cadre had won. So they left Jay and Bob at the house to hold the retreat. As best Pamela could follow the discussion, it seemed they thought the bow gave Bob the best chance to keep the crazies at bay.

Weber had been to Grenier’s compound before, so he led the way. A policeman’s nightstick swung in his hand. Rudi, big and powerful and armed with a nightstick and a knife, brought up the rear. Syd had a nightstick and a knife, Sam had a knife in each hand, and Joseph had brass knuckles armoring each hand. They had Pamela tucked in the middle again. She realized they thought she was helpless and useless, and she suddenly resented it. Pamela stole another glance at Sam, looking like a pirate, and decided if she ever got out of here she was going to have somebody teach her how to fight.

A strong, hot, harsh wind was blowing against them. Pamela assumed it was flowing through the gate.
I’m breathing the air of an alien universe
, she thought.

It was hard going, and Pamela wondered how Richard was going to stay upright on the bike. A dark red sand that glittered with mica flakes pushed across the ground like the final eddy of a wave flinging itself high up the beach. But unlike the wave, the sand never retreated. It insinuated itself between the ground and the soles of their boots, making them slip and stumble, and worked its way around the laces until their socks were thick with sweat and grit.

“Okay, don’t go near the sculptures,” Weber said. “Rhiana came out of one of them, so they may be entryways.”

“And don’t walk under anything,” Syd said, and he shuddered.

“Basically, don’t expect the world to remain normal,” Weber concluded.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Pamela asked, and felt suddenly both daring and guilty at the profanity.

“Whatever you can imagine probably won’t be strange enough,” Weber said.

“Greeaaat,” breathed Rudi.

Weber’s head jerked up, and then Pamela heard it, too. It was faint and distant like the buzz of a solitary bee. It was the sound of an engine approaching. They picked up the pace, and soon broke free of the dying trees.

There were a number of people in the clearing. They were dirty, skinny, and wandering about in confusion. Pamela studied the faces of the advancing people. They held every possible vile, frightened, mournful, and violent emotion. And Pamela realized she had seen them before in the carved grotesques adorning the columns of European cathedrals and etched in the walls of Mayan temples. What attention the mob could bring to bear seemed focused on the rapidly approaching motorcycle.

Blood sacrifice, crusade, jihad, pogrom. This is where it leads. Why didn’t we realize that before it was too late?

And then she lifted her eyes to what lay beyond. The gate, and the
things
that hid in the smoke, mist, fog?—it defied her ability to describe. Pamela’s legs lost all strength, and she collapsed under the sheer weight of terror and wrongness. Syd grabbed her under the arm and yanked her back up. His fingers digging into the soft skin of her armpit sent a flare of pain through her body.

The motorcycle was heading down into the dell. Even from here Pamela could see the flare of the sword. It was so bright it threw light onto the roiling mists, and they seemed to recoil from its light. The filthy, blank-faced attackers began moving toward Richard.

“I’m gonna try to get around these guys so I can help out Richard,” Rudi said.

“Good idea, let’s do it,” Sam panted.

And before Weber could respond they went running off to the left, circling around the mob.

Rudi ran between the curving glass mausoleum that entombed Kenntnis and the gate to an alien sun. Sam was right on his heels. Suddenly Rudi’s back arched. The skin on his hands and face reddened and split, and oozed blood and fluid. Sam gave a cry of horror and panic and threw herself backward. She lost her balance and fell hard on her tailbone.

The material of Rudi’s shirt and pants darkened as they soaked up blood from his rupturing flesh. He writhed like a jerked puppet, and his screams echoed across the dell. Joseph started to rush to him only to be tackled by Syd and Weber. Tears were spilling down Pamela’s cheeks. They evaporated in the terrible heat.

Rudi collapsed onto the sand. His face was a ruin. Blood and mucus oozed from his sockets where his eyes had exploded. Weber was cursing. Joseph was crying. Syd was gagging, and Sam was making a keening cry like a hurt rabbit.

Pamela jerked her gaze away from the horror and saw that the mob was converging on Richard. She picked up the nightstick that had dropped from Weber’s nerveless fingers and yelled, “They’re going to try to take down Richard. If that happens we’re
all
dead!” and she went running after the people converging on her brother.

She heard the other’s footfalls behind her. She reached the edge of the crowd. For an instant she hesitated, and then she swung the nightstick. It connected with the back of a man’s head and dropped him in his tracks. Pamela didn’t have time to feel guilty. They had noticed her. She swung again.

R
ICHARD

I
was shouting
no, no, no
as I watched Rudi fall to the ground, and I couldn’t understand why they were out here. They were supposed to wait for me at the house, free Angela and
wait at the house
. If they’d done what I said Rudi wouldn’t … wouldn’t …