YESHEB STANDS IN FRONT OF THE CHALET TURNING SLOWLY around, three hundred and sixty degrees. The cold wind drives the water dripping from tree limbs at him, horizontal rain, like tiny pieces of shrapnel from a grenade. He sways, unsteady on his feet. Loss of blood, lack of oxygen, pain and exhaustion are taking their toll. He understands that he can only drive this injured body so far, that even the fuel of his rage will not propel him forward if there is not enough blood in his body for his heart to pump. He steps inside the chalet to get out of the wind and to bind up half a dozen bleeding wounds.
The one on his forearm is the worst, the only one that is life threatening. The dog tore out a chunk of tissue the size of an egg there and the dish towels and napkins he shoved into the wound are soaked. He stares at it for a moment and makes a decision. He sits down on the bench of a battered picnic table and his dagger makes short work of a bloody dish towel, cutting off a foot-long strip that he wraps around his arm above his elbow. He finds a stick on the floor and uses it to make the strip into a tourniquet. Twists it tight. That will stop the flow of blood, keep him from bleeding out. But unless he gets rapid medical attention, he will likely lose his left arm. He doesn’t care. He only needs one arm, one hand to destroy the woman and the boy—to cut and stab and slice them. He can picture it in his head, imagines every wound, every scream. Ah, the delicious screams! He can picture nothing beyond it, though. On the other side of ripping the two of them apart lies absolute, infinite darkness. He will not need his arm there, either.
Yesheb traces the three entwined G’s carved into the tabletop with his finger as he counts slowly to three hundred again. To rest, to regain his strength and to be certain the tourniquet holds.
When he hits three hundred he looks at the wound. It is no longer bleeding, nor are the puncture wounds below it on his hand. He stands and imagines he feels strength he didn’t have before. Renewed passion for the tasks ahead. For the screams. Then he steps out into the howling wind and his eyes peel away the gathering gloom. He can see like an owl, details in the trees and the rocks and he can smell the faint scent of fear clinging to the ground where she passed, the way a bloodhound can smell one scent among a thousand on a busy sidewalk. He inhales deeply, fills his lungs with it, and follows where it leads him.
PEDRO REACHED THE rocks that formed the back wall of the valley on the right side below the bristlecone pine forest. It would be quite a climb to the top of them and he was losing light, hard to see in the gray shadows. Did she really come here? Did the stalker follow—?
There on the side of a rock at his feet where the rain had not washed it away. Something dark. He wiped it onto his finger and brought it up to his nose. It was blood. Someone passed here who was bleeding. He felt his gut yank into a knot.
Ty? Gabriella? Did the stalker shoot them? No way to tell. The bloody kitchen made only one thing clear. At least one of the combatants in that blood bath was P.D. Paw prints in the blood, scratches on the floor. So it made sense that it was the stalker who was bleeding. But still … He started up the incline and saw other drips of blood in rock crevices or diluted in puddles. Someone was badly injured. Pedro had no doubt that he would come upon whoever it was, or their dead body, soon. If it was the stalker, the man would be as dangerous as a wounded bear. Pedro would not hesitate to shoot him on sight.
“WHAT DID YOU say?”
“It was me. I did it.” Ty grabbed her hand, looked into her eyes with such anguish. “But it was an accident. I swear, I didn’t mean to.”
Gabriella’s head began to spin.
“What are you talking about?”
Ty took a deep, trembling breath.
“I was there. The night when you were fighting. I was on the bottom step of the stairs watching.”
Gabriella couldn’t stifle a gasp. What a horrible thing for a seven-yearold to see!
“I was so scared for you, Mom. Daddy was so much bigger than you are and he was drunk, yelling so loud I put my hands up over my ears so I couldn’t hear but I still could.” Ty paused. “Then he … hit you.”
The scene was blurred in Gabriella’s memory. The doctor said that was normal with people who’d had concussions. She’d been unconscious for two days, which as it turned out was a good thing, since she was spared at least some of the agony of her burns, the part where doctors cleaned the acid out of the wound and removed the destroyed tissue.
“And I couldn’t let him do that, hurt you like that. I jumped up and ran at him. Slammed into him … like to tackle him, I guess. I don’t know. I just threw myself at him.”
He paused. Drew a breath.
“I didn’t know what he was holding in his hand.” Ty began to cry then, sob. His words were strangled, but Gabriella heard them. Understood them. And understood a world of other things that happened later, things that made no sense at the time. “When I hit him from behind, it knocked him off balance, and the jar in his hand … he dropped it on the floor. You were lying there and what was in the jar, the acid, it splashed in your face.”
Gabriella started to cry, too. “Oh, Ty. You poor baby.”
“Daddy was so drunk, he didn’t even know. He stumbled and fell down on one knee, got some of the acid on his hand and he started yelling, hollering. It scared me to death. I thought he was mad at me, that he was going to kill me. I turned around and ran as hard as I could back to my room and hid under the bed.”
Smokey had actually managed to dial 911—for the burns on his hand, not for Gabriella. When the EMTs arrived, they found her on the floor. After Smokey sobered up, he couldn’t remember a thing, had been in a total blackout, pleaded guilty to assault and went to prison. He was killed there, knifed by another inmate in a fight over a package of cigarettes on Christmas Eve.
Ty stopped crying, but tears still streamed down his cheeks. “I didn’t tell because I wanted Daddy to go to prison—for being so mean and for hitting you. And because I was afraid I’d get in trouble. And I was afraid … that you’d hate me.”
She grabbed him and crushed him to her chest. “I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. I love you!”
“I burned your face, Mommy.” He hadn’t called her Mommy in years. “I got Daddy killed!”
“No you didn’t!” She held him out away from her so she could look directly down into his tear-slathered face. “Now you listen to me, Tyrone Griffith Carmichael. What happened was an accident. You were only seven years old.”
Pedro’s words rang in her mind then.
“… you’d forgive him and you’d want him to forgive himself.”
“But … the bad man. He’s—”
“Don’t you worry about the bad man. He can’t hurt us here. We’re safe.”
“Actually, that’s not entirely true, Gabriella.”
The voice came from above them. A voice as cold as a polar ocean. It seemed to take a long time for Gabriella to lift her head and look, but, she already knew what she would see, who she would see. Knew he’d have a gun in his hand, pointed at her. Even knew he’d be smiling that ugly, crooked smile.
YESHEB STANDS TRIUMPHANT. The storm in this world has passed over the peak, the sky is clearing, the rising moon lights the shadowed mountainside brighter than the setting sun. The storm in the other realm is over, too. He feels no pain. He is complete, whole again. The force of his own will has healed his injuries! No longer is his life blood pouring out of him from a dozen gory wounds inflicted by vicious teeth and savage claws. His whole body is flawless, without blemish. Even his severed ear has grown back.
But far more important than the healing of his body is the healing of his mind. The scales have dropped away, the gauzy curtain raised. He sees with absolute clarity now, understands that this—all of this—has been a gauntlet he had to run to cleanse his body, mind and soul. It has been a test—that he is about to pass!
When The Voice spoke in his head as he ran—staggered—through the ugly forest of stubby, mangled trees, he had dropped to his knees in terror, surprise and wonder.
It is almost over.
The hole inside him was filled again with the presence of The Voice. And with its power. He felt it surge through him like an electric current as the other voices spoke to him. They were all there—the sultry woman’s voice urged him to get up, to go on. Voices in Italian and Arabic directed him down the path. The child’s voice from his boyhood revealed where his prey was hiding.
And they all speak in harmony now as he stands triumphant. They chant in concert, “Kill them! Kill them!”
That was the plan all along, the will of The Voice! She is a false prophetess; the words in her book are heresy designed to deceive and subvert the powers of darkness. She is an agent from the light. He saw it clearly when he passed through the ugly trees into the clearing—a golden radiance shown out like a beacon from the pile of boulders, led him to where she cowers in terror in a hole like a cornered rabbit. She must be eliminated and he has been chosen for the task.
But he also knows what The Voice does not know. Once he has completed the task, he will become The Voice. It was foretold before the laying of the foundation of the world. When he tastes the blood of the false prophetess, Yesheb Al Tobbanoft will become more than The Beast of Babylon. He will become the most powerful force in the universe.
He looks down into their faces, throws his head back and laughs out loud, a full, roaring, glorious laugh that echoes the maelstrom of the storm rumbling on the other side of the mountain peak.
“You will die in agony. Slowly. I will make you scream.” He tosses his gun aside and withdraws the dagger from its sheath. “You will beg me for death.”
He crouches to leap into the branches of the tree to break his fall. It is perfect. His prey will have nowhere to run.
GABRIELLA STARED AT the apparition above her, a character out of a slasher horror movie. Yesheb was drenched in his own blood. His clothes were torn, his left arm dangled useless at his side, most of his right ear had been ripped off. But the maniacal twisting of his perfect features into a mask of hatred and evil was the most horrifying sight of all—one last, apocalyptic celebration of madness.
He lifted his dagger and cried out that he would make her beg for death.
“I’m not afraid of you anymore, Yesheb,” she said and only became aware of the truth of the words as she spoke them. “You can’t hurt me here.”
She suddenly understood that he had been feeding off her fear like a maggot off rotting meat. He needed her to be afraid.
“You’re not The Beast of Babylon. You’re a pathetic psychopath with delusions of grandeur. Now, get off this mountain and leave me and my family alone!”
Yesheb stood with his dagger raised, a quizzical look on his face. He seemed to shrink before her eyes, out of the grandiose proportions her terror had granted him, down, down into reality—a mortally injured man who’d be dead inside half an hour. Oh, he was still as dangerous as a pit viper. But he couldn’t touch her or Ty. They were safe here.
“You’ll be sorry you ever—” he began.
“No, you’re the one who’s about to be sorry.”
Rage washed anew over his face and he crouched to jump into the opening.
“Leave now, Yesheb. I’m warning you.”
Where did that come from?
He tensed to spring, but an instant before he leapt down on them a flame appeared on the end of Yesheb’s dagger. Bright blue, shimmering into violet, the tiny blaze danced on the point of the dagger like the flame on the end of a cigarette lighter. Slowly the flame spread. Up his arm to his head. Down his body to his feet. She clutched Ty tight against her and started in fascination at the bloody horror lit in blue-violet flame. Tiny sparks appeared, popped in the air all around him, and she could hear a humming, crackling sound.
St. Elmo’s fire!
YESHEB FEELS THE power of the universe flow through his body, a force of such incredible strength that it sparks and pops off him in flickering blue fire. He is the Anointed One! All the elements in time and space bow to him and obey his will. He controls the sun and moon, stars and constellations. The earth rotates at his pleasure; life exists by his divine design.
He is invincible!
THE FULL MOON rising as the sun set left the shadowed mountainside awash in an odd half-light, neither day nor night, that made it hard for Pedro to see. He had followed the trail of blood in the growing dusk until he reached a slight rise that looked down on a conical pile of boulders. Light glowed out a crack between the boulders. From a small fire? But there was no smoke. A lantern, then.
A dark shadow hulked above the light. When the shadow leaned over the opening, the light illuminated it like the face of a man looking out of the darkness into a campfire. Except the golden glow was steady, not flickering.
The shadow was a man, the stalker. Gabriella and Ty, one or both of them, must be hidden down between the boulders. Pedro saw the stalker toss something away, then he drew a knife, a long thin knife, a dagger, and held it above his head.
In a single, fluid motion, Pedro lifted the rifle and fit the stock tight against his shoulder. A hundred yards; he could make the shot. Through the telescopic sight, he could see the man clearly and knew whose blood had been smeared all over the kitchen floor in the cabin and dripped on the trail to lead him here. An image from a movie flashed into his mind—Carrie, covered in blood, her face distorted in rage and evil intent. That was the man in his gun sight. Any second, he would leap into the crevice. Pedro didn’t hesitate. He fit the crosshairs on the center of the man’s chest.
Then a light appeared on the tip of the man’s dagger, a blue-violet flame. It spread slowly over him until it outlined his whole body. Pedro lifted his head, looked out over the sight to be sure it wasn’t a reflection of some kind on the glass. The man’s body was bathed in blue flame.
St. Elmo’s fire!
Pedro returned his eye to the sight, breathed in slowly and held it. Then he squeezed the trigger to send a bullet hurtling across the clearing into the heart of the figure outlined in blue flame.
The rifle recoiled, kicked Pedro’s shoulder like a mule and knocked him backwards. His hat flew off his head and the gun flew out of his hands, its barrel puffed out in the middle like a golf ball had been stuffed down it. Pedro landed on his back, the wind knocked out of him.
What in the …?
The barrel was jammed! When he fell climbing up the mountain and dropped the rifle, something must have gotten stuck in the barrel. He was lucky it hadn’t exploded like a hand grenade in his face.
He staggered to his feet and began to run toward the boulder pile. Weaponless now, he would rip the stalker apart with his bare hands! But he knew he would be too late. In seconds, the stalker would leap into the crevice. Gabriella would be dead before Pedro could save her.
A sob exploded out of his chest as he ran.
“No!” he cried.
God, please, don’t let—
A flash of white ripped the world open, so bright it wiped out every image in an explosion of light.
Crack!
Boom!
A mighty fist of sound and pressure and hot wind hammered Pedro backward into a bristlecone pine, jammed broken limbs into his back and arms, slashed a jagged cut across the side of his face. He couldn’t hear. A roar like a pounding surf filled his head. He couldn’t see, just bright spots of brilliance, sparkling explosions of white.
He gasped in air that smelled like cordite and ozone, slid down out of the branches of the gnarled tree to the ground, shook his head.
Lightning!
From the storm on the other side of the mountain!
Pedro staggered to his feet again and stumbled toward the pile of boulders. He still could see fiery rings of light, flashbulbs popped all around him and he could hear the rumbling surf pounding in his ears.
Rocks on the side of the pile of boulders made a natural staircase leading to the top. When he stepped on the bottom one and looked up, he saw it. It was clear even with his distorted vision. A huge slab of rock above the boulders—that looked like a diving board over a swimming pool—was moving, beginning to tilt slightly downward. Rocks and boulders on the far end of it were sliding away.
WHITE LIGHT.
A mighty roar.
Then Pedro’s face.
It was like there had been no time between them. But it also seemed like an eternity had passed between the brilliance of the sun above her and the face that looked down at her. A face lit by a golden glow from below.
Pedro! He was alive! She wanted to laugh and cry and sing and—.
Pedro’s lips moved. He was saying something, but she couldn’t hear it, could hear nothing at all, in fact, but a buzz like a million bees had built a hive in her head. And his face … his cheek was bleeding.
“… get out now …”
The voice seemed to come from a great distance, sounded hollow.
“Rock slide …” The words were muffled.
Ty leapt up out of her lap.
“Mom get up!” He yanked on her arm. “The overhang … it’s falling!”
For some reason, that didn’t surprise Gabriella. Though she felt a sense of urgency, a need to hurry, she still was unafraid.
“… get you out of there!” Pedro called.
Out of here? She looked around. She had not given a nanosecond of thought to how she would get out of The Cleft once she’d gotten into it. There was no way to climb out; the roof hung out over the walls. The hole was too far above their heads to jump up and grab hold of the rock where she’d slid in.
“… your jacket. Take off your jacket,” Pedro yelled.
She slipped out of her nylon rain jacket because he told her to, but she had no idea why.
Ty understood, though. He yanked off his own jacket and began to tie the arm of his jacket to the arm of hers. She looked up and Pedro was leaned into the opening from the waist, dangling his jacket above them. It was too high for her to reach.
“Hold me up, Mom, on your shoulders.”
Gabriella crouched down. Ty climbed up on her shoulders and she staggered to her feet, swaying from his weight. She couldn’t look up with him there, but in a moment, he jumped down and a nylon-jacket rope hung from the hole above.
Pedro pulled it out of the hole—must have been securing the knots Ty had tied—then dropped it back down into the opening. Gabriella lifted Ty up high enough for him to grab the rope and Pedro quickly hauled him to the top.
Gabriella could hear it now, the crunch of rocks grinding together.
She grabbed the jacket-rope when Pedro tossed it down to her, held on tight and rose agonizingly slowly to the edge of the hole. Ty reached out as soon as she was close and caught the collar of her shirt and pulled. Her hands connected with the rock. She held on and started to climb up. Then Pedro gripped her arm and yanked her up over the edge in one motion.
“Run!” he yelled.
She didn’t look up.
There was something black, charred, lying beside the opening. She recognized the smell. But she didn’t look at that either.
She leapt down the rock steps, with Ty in front of her and Pedro behind. She heard a rumbling sound, rocks peppered her back, a roar rose up with a cloud of dust and she kept running.
Pedro grabbed her arm to pull her along faster, dragged Ty almost off his feet. It all happened so fast.
She had no memory of actually crossing the clearing. Her next clear awareness was of Pedro knocking her and Ty to the ground and covering them with his body. She couldn’t see, but she could feel the avalanche chew up the world behind her.
She smelled dust. Pedro lifted himself up off her and rolled over onto his back, panting. Dirt and little pieces of rock were still raining out of the sky. She sat up. Ty sat up beside her and she noticed the rims of his glasses were bent. The two of them turned around together and stared at the cloud of dirt in the moonlight, watched as the dust settled out of the air above the massive pile of boulders that lay in a heap on the other side of the clearing. A pile of boulders that had shattered The Cleft and buried the body of Yesheb Al Tobbanoft. And a single, perfect Jesus tree.
Then Pedro was kneeling in front of her. He cupped her face in his hands, gently brushed her hair back from her forehead. Tears glistened in his eyes. When he spoke, the roar in her ears muffled the sound. She could hear the thick Spanish accent, though, and she didn’t need words to know what he was saying. She reached out to him, tried to wipe the blood off his cheek, but he folded her into his arms before she had a chance and held her against his chest. She closed her eyes but could still see star bursts of colored light behind her eyelids. Then she felt something warm and wet slide across her cheek and her eyes popped open. P.D.! Ty must have called him. The dog’s tail was wagging so fast it was a blur and Ty was hugging the ball of fur almost as tight as Pedro was hugging her.