Triskellion 3: The Gathering (18 page)

“Thank you for your kindness to me tonight,” he said. “I come here to testify. I come here to tell you more about the day that you know is coming, and I come here to tell you the
truth
…”

Crane did not like what the boy was saying. He edged forward and clicked his fingers at the lighting gallery, instructing them to put a spotlight on him. It quickly appeared, but the boy’s light burned twice as brightly.

“The truth…” Gabriel repeated.

“Amen to that,” Crane said, putting an arm round the boy’s shoulder. “We all know the truth… That’s why we’re here today, Brothers and Sisters, and I’d like to thank this young man for coming up here today and testifying. Amen.”

“Amen!” the Triple Wheelers shouted.

Crane seized his chance to try and usher the boy from the stage, but Gabriel was not finished. He threw Crane’s arm off his shoulder.

“Leave me alone,” he said.

Crane nodded to his bodyguards in the wings. The men came forward and began to crowd around Gabriel, trying to edge him off the stage.

“Leave me alone,” Gabriel said again, and threw his arms back.

The men screamed and fell to the floor as if they had been electrified. Gabriel’s eyes burned with a new zeal and he strode back to the front of the stage. “I’ll tell you the
truth
,” he said. “What you have seen today are not miracles. What you have seen are party tricks, performed by a charlatan.” He pointed at Ezekiel Crane. “By a fake.”

The audience began to shout, “No! No!” and Crane nodded in desperate agreement with them.

“This man will lead you to disaster!” Gabriel said. “He does not know what he is dealing with.”

Crane strode across the front of the stage, and the Triple Wheelers began jeering at this boy who dared to say these things about their leader. They stamped the floor and yelled until the theatre was full of a noise like thunder.

Suddenly, Gabriel’s voice boomed out, high above the noise. “If you want a miracle, I’ll
show
you a miracle.”

He clenched his fists and the spotlight on him glowed brighter still. High in the upper balconies of the theatre, bulbs began to pop and fizz, showering sparks into the air. They went out one by one until the only light came from the spotlight over Gabriel.

Gabriel walked over to where the open coffin stood. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth together, summoning up all the strength he had. A light went on over the coffin, giving it an eerie glow.

The audience fell completely silent.

Then there was a sound.

A noise came from the coffin. A low groan like a wounded animal. Then a movement: a white hand raising itself, trembling, into the air.

Triple Wheelers threw their hands over their faces while gasping and crying out.

Ezekiel Crane drew back in horror as the dead man’s body hauled itself up from the silk-lined casket.

The body was dressed in a black tuxedo; the head pok-ing out above it was bald and white. Stray wisps of hair caught the spotlight, and the eyelids opened to reveal empty sockets where the eyes inside had shrivelled and gone. Pink embalming fluid ran from the man’s nostrils and down over his jacket.

People in the audience screamed as the corpse twisted itself up and out of the coffin. Its legs hung over the edge briefly and then its whole body flopped to the floor. Gabriel stood near by, waving his hands over the body, like a puppeteer. The corpse staggered to its feet and raised its head. A stream of viscous liquid poured from its mouth and across the stage. It let out a horrifying cry of pain then fell, its legs and arms racked with twitches and spasms before it became completely still.

“
That
is a miracle,” Gabriel said.

With a movement of his hand, he trained a spotlight on to Ezekiel Crane, who stood cowering with shock near the wings.

“What is my name?” Gabriel said.

Crane said nothing.

“What is my name?”

Crane blinked slowly. The silence was broken by a tremendous clap of thunder which sounded as if it would split the theatre in two. Doors flew open in the auditorium and wind howled through, blowing pamphlets and books into the air. There was another thunderclap and the lights flashed and fizzed as rain and sparks started pouring down from the roof.

Gabriel stood his ground in the spotlight and stared at Ezekiel Crane. “What is my name?”

Crane wiped the rain from his eyes and looked across at the golden-haired boy. “Is it Baal?” he asked nervously. “Is it Asteroth?”

“Is that what you think?” Gabriel said, recognizing the names of fallen angels. “Is that what you think I am?”

“I think you are worse than a fallen angel,” Crane said. “I think you—”

Suddenly the remaining lights exploded above their heads, showering the audience and themselves with shards of splintered glass, and the theatre went black.

Rachel was suddenly aware that Gabriel was standing over her bed. She opened an eye. He was soaking wet and covered in blood and broken glass. Adam sat bolt upright in the other bed, a terrified expression on his face.

“What happened?” he bleated. “I had a terrible dream.”

“So did I,” Rachel said. “The dead body…”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “And that preacher.”

Rachel jumped out of bed and sat Gabriel down. She brushed away the splinters of glass from his chest and shoulders and then grabbed a towel and began to dry his hair.

“I’m afraid it wasn’t a dream,” Gabriel said.

Rachel dabbed at the spots of blood on his face with the corner of the towel. “Who is he?” she asked.

“He’s that freaky preacher we saw on TV,” Adam said.

“That’s not what I mean.” Rachel stared at Gabriel, waiting for an answer. “You know him, don’t you?”

“He’s an old enemy,” Gabriel said. “Someone we need to stay well away from. For a while, at least.”

“Why do I get the impression you’re not being completely honest with us?” Rachel asked. She leaned her face close to his. “Why do I
always
have that impression?”

Gabriel almost smiled. “It’s good to be suspicious. You just have to make sure you’re suspecting the right people.”

“So what do we do now?” Adam asked. He was thinking about the carnage they had left in their wake in Cincinnati and now in St Louis. “I thought we weren’t supposed to be drawing attention to ourselves.”

“Pack your stuff,” Gabriel said. “We need to get back on the road.”

T
he night they had spent in Indianapolis had left Laura and Kate feeling tired, tense and irritable.

Having made contact with the twins, neither had slept well. Their minds had been racing with thoughts and possibilities. They both needed to rest, but equally, both wanted to be up and on the road early, excited by the knowledge that Rachel and Adam were somewhere ahead of them.

Two hours out of Indianapolis Laura felt her eyes begin to droop. She swerved and narrowly missed an oncoming truck, the jolt of adrenalin suddenly bringing her attention back to the road in front of her. She looked over at Kate, who was sound asleep, her head resting against the car window. Laura saw a diner up ahead and knew that she would have to stop.

She pulled into the forecourt of the Moonshine Diner, where two cars and a camper van were already parked. Laura killed the engine. Kate stirred and opened a bleary eye.

“Where are we?”

“About two hours out of Indianapolis,” Laura said. “I need coffee.”

They got out of the car, taking their backpacks with them, along with the police scanner Kate had bought in New York. Laura felt it was a good idea to stay vigilant, but Kate seemed almost oblivious to the fact that she was wanted for murder on another continent. Her desire to catch up with her children was clearly of more concern to her than her own freedom.

The diner was bright and cheerful. They sat in a booth with shiny red plastic seats, its table laden with bottles of ketchup and sachets of every other condiment known to man. Laura smiled at the family in the next booth: a mother, father and two lively kids – a boy and a girl. They looked relaxed and happy, and their casual clothes suggested that they were on holiday.

“They look like they’re having a great time,” Kate said, sitting down.

“Lucky them,” Laura said.

“It’s a dim and distant memory.” Kate smiled sadly, thinking back to a time when her family had looked like that.

A pretty, middle-aged waitress came to the table with her pad open and ready. A badge on her white overalls announced that her name was Estelle. “How you guys doing?”

Kate and Laura nodded, said that they were good, even though they weren’t.

“What can I get you?”

Laura ordered coffee and scrambled eggs. Kate asked for a blueberry muffin.

They didn’t talk much while they waited for their order. Kate flicked through the pages of a local paper and Laura plugged an earpiece into the scanner, which was crackling quietly in her pocket, and adjusted it to the local frequency.

Their food arrived, but just as Laura was about to eat her eggs, she saw a Harley-Davidson roar on to the forecourt. A large policeman dismounted and headed for the diner. He pushed open the door, took off his helmet and sunglasses and unzipped his leather jacket to reveal a big belly that stretched at the buttons of his shirt. Then he stomped over to the counter and sat at the same stool he obviously used most days of the week.

“How you doin’, Scotty?” the waitress asked.

The policeman took a toothpick from the counter and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. “All the better for seeing you, Estelle.”

Estelle smiled and asked him if he wanted the usual –which he did.

Laura watched Kate pick at her muffin, keeping one eye on the cop at the bar and one ear on the police messages that were coming through every few minutes on the scanner. She was about to say something when information she recognized cut through the interference and crackle:

“…Interstate 70, blue Ford rental, licence plate…”

Laura looked out of the window and across at their car; she listened again as the number of their licence plate was reeled off by the police controller on the scanner.

They were in trouble.

“Any agents in the vicinity? … Scotty, you out there?”

At the counter, Scotty sighed and reluctantly answered the call on his radio. “Yep, check you. I’m here.” He filled his mouth with hash browns and a swig of coffee.

“Repeat: blue Ford rental, licence plate…”

Scotty swallowed the mouthful. “Nope, not seen nothing.” He winked at Estelle, who poured him more coffee. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”

Laura stuffed the earpiece into her pocket and leaned over to Kate. “We need to go,” she said.

“What’s the matter?”

“We need to go
now.
”

Hearing the urgency in Laura’s voice, Kate grabbed her bag and got up from her seat. Laura threw a twenty on the table, and the two of them hurried out of the door.

Estelle came round the counter and walked towards their table, one eye on the fleeing couple, the other on the bill Laura had left behind.

“Everything OK over there?” the cop asked, seeing her puzzled expression.

The waitress shrugged. “They seemed in a bit of a hurry, is all.”

The boy at the next table watched through the window as the two women hurried across the car park and climbed into his family’s camper van.

“Dad…”

The family looked on, horrified, as their vehicle reversed and then drove off the forecourt, before speeding away west along I-70.

“Hey, that’s our van!” the father shouted, rushing towards the door.

Officer Scott McAndrew levered himself from his stool just in time to see the cloud of dust raised by the stolen camper van and to register the licence plate of the blue Ford that was still parked in front of the diner.

Laura drove as fast as she could without drawing attention to herself, then slowed and turned off into a side road in an effort to shake off anyone who might be following. The camper van cruised along a tree-lined residential street, past rows of almost identical houses in a variety of colours. Freshly washed family sedans were parked in most of the neatly kept front drives.

“The suburbs,” Laura said.

Kate looked out of the window. She barely noticed the smartly dressed young couple standing on the doorstep of a pastel-pink house set back from the road…