Cayden and I rebounded off the dashboard, hard. No airbags, which meant nothing cushioned the impact. Shaina flopped around like rag doll, head smacking against the dash, but thankfully held in place by her seatbelt so she didn’t go through the windshield.
“You okay back there?” I shot a look back at Kana, who wiped a thin streamer of blood from her nose.
“I’m fine.”
“Why did you stop?” I practically shouted the words.
“I didn’t,” Cayden replied with a grimace. “The wards on the property won’t let us pass.”
“What? That’s impossible! They only way that would happen is if someone in the car meant harm to anyone on—oh.”
“Yeah, ‘oh.’” Cayden jerked his chin at the back of the truck. “I don’t think either Drift or Shaina have good intentions toward anyone but DuShane about now.”
Or it might be you. The thought popped into my head without volition. Cayden must have seen something in my face.
“Really, Lee? You still think I’ve got something to do with this mess?”
“I don’t—” I stopped. Thought about it. I owed him an honest answer. Except I didn’t have time to parse this out. “I’ll call Sean.” I reached for my bag, then realized I’d left it back at the mansion, cell phone inside. “Shit. I’ll go get him.”
Cayden looked in the driver’s-side mirror. “Run fast.”
Throwing the door open, I leapt out of the cab and took off at a dead run the minute I hit the ground. I didn’t look back to see how close the crazies were—I could hear them, the noise of their howls punctuated by Drift’s roars and the sound of his fists hitting the interior of the truck, followed by a shriek of metal being torn.
I ran faster.
Please let Sean and Seth be home.
When I saw the Xterra in the carport, I nearly sank to my knees in gratitude, but instead pelted across the driveway to the front door, flinging it open so hard it bounced off the inner wall of the entryway with a loud crack. Both Sean and Seth came out of the kitchen, speaking at the same time.
“Lee, is everything okay?”
“What the hell, Lee?”
“We’ve got a truck stuck at the gates,” I got out between breaths, “and Drift is in the back, turning into a full-on evil troll, and we need to get onto the Ranch now.”
To give them credit, they were out the door before me, parsing the implications of Drift turning evil and the spells keeping the truck from driving onto the property. I caught up with the two of them at the gates, just in time to see both their faces when they saw who was driving the truck.
“He’s not coming in.” Seth’s expression was uncompromising.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“Take another look, Seth—” I pointed to the road where, not a hundred yards away, it looked like a scene out of Train to Busan “—and tell me we can discuss this later. Because we don’t have time for this bullshit.”
Seth opened his mouth to argue with me.
“She’s right,” Sean said.
Seth closed his mouth without a word as his father muttered a few unintelligible words and raise his hands. For a moment, phantom wings appeared behind him, shimmering in the late afternoon light. He looked downright angelic.
I could feel it the instant the ward at the gate went down. I could also see it in the reactions from a few goats grazing near the gate. They went from relaxed to alert in seconds, and instantly there was a new, raw tension in the air.
Boom!
The hole in the side of the truck grew larger, and another metallic shriek filled the air as fingers the size of salamis peeled away another swath, creating a hole large enough for Drift to stick his big troll head out.
I’m here to tell you, trolls do not look like Shrek. Sure, they’re green, but they’re not cute. His teeth were the size of Pop Tarts, all yellowed and jagged, viscous bile-colored liquid dribbling down his chin. His eyes yellow, all veined with red. He made the Hulk look like a Care Bear.
“Move it!” I yelled, waving my arms at Cayden. He gunned the engine and hit the gas.
The instant the truck drove over the Ranch’s property line, Drift shrunk back to… well… Drift. No jagged teeth, and the look in his soft brown eyes was confused, not homicidal.
The crazies, however, were still pounding up the road toward the now unprotected gates.
“Sean, can you put the ward back up?”
Seth shot me a look. “What the hell do you think he’s doing?”
“How the hell would I know?” I shot back.
“Try having a little faith.”
The truck roared up to the carport. Sean, Seth, and I stayed behind. My amulet was burning like a solar flare.
I looked around for anything to use as a weapon, but I didn’t even have car keys on me—they were back at the mansion in my bag. I wondered how many of the oncoming psychos I could take on before I died.
“Seriously,” I whispered to Seth. “How long does this take? He took it down in seconds.”
“It’s always easier to destroy something than it is to create it,” Seth replied, managing to sound accurate and self-righteous at the same time.
Whatever.
Fuck.
Still, I tried to cool my jets and just be there to defend our home. The crazies closed in, fifty yards maybe. Close enough for me to recognize some of them. Jake, the irritating PA. Toby Hissong, the actor playing DuShane. So many other cast and crew members from the production.
Eden… She wasn’t with them. Was that a good thing?
I didn’t think I had it in me to hurt any of these people.
Sean, please.
I felt power increase around us as Sean continued in the same powerful and unrecognizable language, voice rising until it was painful to my ears. Suddenly something locked into place, like a gate slamming shut. The crazies slowed down, then stopped as they reached the open gates, frustration on their faces as they realized they couldn’t follow us.
The goats went back to their grazing.
Okay then.
I tried to take a step, up toward the house. My knees buckled and I crumpled to the ground, trying to ignore the throbbing from the wounds in my forearm and face.
“Lee?”
I looked up to see Sean and Seth staring at me in concern. I wiggled my fingers at them.
“Hiya.”
“Come on, hon.”
Reaching down, the two men pulled me gently to my feet, supporting me all the way up to safety.
* * *
Cayden got everyone out of the truck. Drift was sprawled out on the floor of the living room and Shaina lay unconscious on one of the couches. Kana sat across from her, looking impossibly pristine even with a wad of Kleenex held up against her nose.
Cayden looked like he always did—full of confidence.
Half of us looked like we’d survived a war. Me with my arm bandaged, bruises, and bloody furrows on my face and arms. Shaina with blood drying around her nose, which might be broken, a lump on her forehead, bruising already developing around both eyes. She was going to hate me when she woke up. Drift was groggy as hell, his clothing ripped to shreds, but he sat up, and Seth handed him a cold PBR. Which meant he was back to normal.
I turned to Sean. “So it’s the energy in this… this vortex causing all of this, right?”
“The energy comes from the vortex,” Sean said, “but the question is why the balance has shifted so radically. The vortex is, by its nature, neutral.”
Shaina’s eyes were open, just narrow slits between the bruised and swollen tissue, but her gaze was sane. I crouched down next to her, handing her the icepack I’d been holding up to my cheek.
“How you doing?”
She shook her head. “Don’t ask.”
“Do you remember what happened?” A rueful smile crossed her lips. She pointed at the bandaged bite marks on my arm, wincing when she saw my face.
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
“I think it’s safe to say you weren’t yourself, so we’re good. Unless I have to go to the ER, and then you’re paying the bill.”
“Fair enough.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, too.” I sat down on the ottoman in front of the couch. “You remember everything that happened?”
“Yeah.” Nodding, she gingerly held the icepack up to the bridge of her nose. “I could feel something… something pushing at my mind, trying to burrow its way in. Wanting me to do things. Things I’d never thought of doing before. But—” She swallowed. It looked as if it hurt. “Part of me wanted to do them, and the worst of it is, I know that part has always been there. I just… I never knew it, and now I can never forget it.”
“She’s right,” Drift said. “I mean, I’ve always known what I am, and it can take some work to keep my temper under control, but I’ve never gone full-on troll in my life. And yeah, I could feel some sort of goddamn puppet master crawling around inside my head, but still…” He looked up at me. At Sean. “It’s always been inside me.”
“How do you know it was DuShane?” I put the question to both of them, but it was Shaina who answered.
“I could see him,” she said. Her face looked haunted. “See his thoughts and see through his eyes at the same time.” She shook her head as if to clear it, then put a hand up to her temple. “He’s… somehow he tapped into the power of… of whatever you called it—”
“Vortex,” Seth interjected.
“Yeah. He can soak up its energy like a battery, and then use it to… to make people do things.”
“He didn’t seem that strong when I met him.”
We all looked at Cayden.
“What do you mean, ‘when you met him’?” It sounded like an accusation. I didn’t care.
“When I first bought the place, DuShane tried to get into my head. When his Jedi mind tricks didn’t work, he sent some of his rotting puppets after me. That’s when I trapped him back in his tomb and warded the property.”
“You knew he could do this shit, and didn’t bother mentioning it to me when you hired me?” Rage and hurt duked it out inside me. The urge to punch him was getting harder to resist.
“Easy, hon.” Sean put a calming hand on my shoulder. Seth just looked murderous.
“He wasn’t that strong.” Cayden gave an infuriatingly nonchalant shrug. “I didn’t think it worth mentioning.”
“But you knew he was capable of manipulating others, didn’t you?” I wasn’t ready to let this go.
“Not if he couldn’t get out of his tomb. Hence the wards.”
I made an inarticulate noise of disgust and frustration.
“He’s been doing it for decades,” Shaina said. “Scaring some of the people that came to the mansion. Killing others. His favorite was—is—when he can use them, though. He calls them his ‘meat puppets.’”
“I guess it works on supes, too.” Drift looked ashamed. I suspected he thought he should have somehow been stronger, able to resist DuShane’s influence. I wasn’t sure why Kana, Cayden, and I hadn’t been affected, but I didn’t think it was because we were any better than Drift. I’d bet good money Cayden had committed more questionable acts than Drift ever had.
“That’s not the worst of it,” Shaina continued. “When one of his puppets does something violent… something horrible, like rape, murder, arson…” She swallowed again, looking sick to her stomach. “…it feeds DuShane somehow. Makes him stronger. And it’s… it’s like a virus. I’m not sure if it’s transmitted by touch or just proximity, but some of the people who’ve left here passed it on to others.
“This explains so many of the accounts. Even in the research, I didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it. This place is a focal point, a ‘locus,’ they call it. The energy, it’s been building over the years… and when you locked him back up, all it did was make it worse when the wards were removed. Because we thought it was safe to film there—and it wasn’t.”
Cayden’s face was expressionless.
“Jesus,” Drift muttered.
“It gets worse,” she said.
Color me unsurprised.
“Every person who’s susceptible along the way is going to take this crazy shit and spread it further, and the more it spreads, the stronger he’ll become and the more it’ll keep spreading. It… it won’t stop.”
I turned to Cayden. “Can you lock DuShane up again? Put the wards back up?”
He hesitated. Then sat down on the floor, cross-legged, and shut his eyes.
“What—”
“Shhhh.” Sean held up his hand and I shut up.
Cayden sat there for a minute or so, motionless, hands resting lightly on his knees. Then he opened his eyes, shook his head.
“No. He’s too strong. The only way to stop this is to restore the balance of the vortex.”
“What exactly does that mean?” I glared at Cayden. “How do we do that?”
“We need to reboot it,” he replied. “Take the power from DuShane, neutralize it, and then put it back into the vortex.”
“And again I ask—what… exactly… do we need to do?” I growled.
“We need to take down all the wards at the mansion,” Cayden said. “And the protective sigils here, as well.”
“Here?” I cut a glance at Sean, who looked decidedly uncomfortable. It was Seth, however, who replied.
“The power of the vortex needs to cycle freely in order to take it away from DuShane. The wards at the mansion and the protections put up here at the Ranch have maintained a neutral balance for decades.” Seth glared at Cayden. “But shit went sideways when this jackass didn’t pay attention to what was happening right under his nose.”
Cayden didn’t spare a glance for Seth.
“I’ll do whatever needs to be done to fix this.”
“You’ll need to shut it down first,” Sean said quietly. “Which means temporarily taking its power into yourself and drawing it away from DuShane.” He paused, then added, “It could burn your power away permanently. Or kill you.”
“Or he might step in and take up where DuShane left off.” Seth glared at Cayden. “You created this mess, you sonofabitch, so you fix it.”
“It’s too late for that,” Cayden replied. “We have to work together. Are you willing to risk the end of the world just to spite me?”
Seth turned to his father, practically vibrating with outrage.
“You’re not actually going to help him do this, are you?”
“No,” Sean replied. “We are.” Turning to the rest of us, he added, “Please excuse us. My son and I need to call in some reinforcements.” With that, he and Seth went into the kitchen and shut the door.
* * *
Okay, I’m not proud. I eavesdropped. But Sean and Seth had kept yet another secret from me all these years, so I managed to live with the guilt.
Why hadn’t they told me about the vortex? Or that the protective wards or sigils were not just here to protect the Ranch, but in reality had a much greater purpose? The more I thought about it, the angrier it made me.
“I don’t understand why you agreed to this,” Seth said. “Undo the protection of the Ranch, to turn the power of the vortex over to him? Even if we could release the seals—”
What seals?
“You and I can’t release them.”
“Then what are we even talking about—”
“But three of us could.”
“You don’t mean…”
Seth was silent for a moment. “He won’t like it,” he said finally.
He. Who he?
“When have you ever know him to like anything?” Sean said. “Besides, he knows what our job requires of us, of him. Time to bring him into the ring. You and I have been handling this situation on our own long enough, goddamn him.”
“God might, you know,” Seth said after a pause. “He might damn all three of us.”
“He certainly will if we fail. Come on, we’re wasting time we don’t have.”
“Do we even know where he is now?”
“Beersheab maybe. No, some Nabatean ruins in the central Negev, I think. Not that it matters. He’ll come.”
There was another pause, and then…
“Sammu-El, ha’ăzînāh,’āḥînū,” Sean intoned.
Okay, this was new. Something else they’d been keeping from me.
“Samuel, our brother, hear us now,” Seth echoed.
Oh jeez, not him.
“Wə’āḥ ləṣārāh, yiwwālêḏ, wəyāḇōw lānū…”
“For adversity, is a brother born—he will come to us…”
“Sammu-El, tāḇōw lānū…”
“Samuel, will you come?”
“Sammu-El, tāḇōw lānū.”
“Samuel, will you come?”
“Sammu-El, tāḇōw lānū.”
“Samuel, get your ass over here!”
“Peace, you two.” It was a new voice. “I’m here.”
I recognized that voice.
Well, hell.
The kitchen door opened, almost smacking me in the face. I scrambled backward as Seth and Sean came out, followed by a third man, one with the look and muscular build of a mountain man, with long hair and salt-and-pepper beard. He was dressed for desert hiking, in weathered boots, drab brown jeans and shirt.
“Lee.”
“Uncle Sam,” I said flatly.
We stared at each other without love.
* * *
“Okay,” I said, doing my best to ignore Sam’s disapproving stare. “Just to be clear. We have to get back onto DuShane’s property without being noticed by whatever crazies are still up there.” No one said anything. I glared around the room. “Am I getting this right, folks?”
Seth and Cayden nodded at the same time, both looking irritated by their synchronicity.
“That’s about the size of it,” Cayden said.
“So we can’t drive back up the way we came. DuShane will probably have his crazies all over the front gates. We need to find a back entrance.”
Kana cleared her throat. “I believe I can help you with that.”
Cayden looked over at her. “Are you thinking…”
She nodded.
I rolled my eyes, trying to ignore a wave of irrational emotion at the private “we share a secret” look that passed between her and Cayden. I didn’t want to feel anything toward Cayden except anger. Intense, justified anger.
“Maybe let the rest of us in on the secret?”
“I apologize, Lee.” Kana inclined her head in my direction. At least one of them had manners. “There is a series of sandstone caves in the foothills at the base of the mountain. DuShane had a tunnel built from the caves to the subbasement of the mansion.”
“That’s right!” Shaina sat up despite the fact she still looked kinda green. “The smugglers’ tunnel. He used it during Prohibition. The Silver Screamers had heard of it. They weren’t sure where either end of the tunnel actually was, but they were positive it exists.”
“Okay, we know there’s another way onto the property, but we don’t know where it is.” I looked over at Cayden. “Any chance you can find it?”
“Given time, yeah,” he replied, “but I don’t think we have any to spare.”
“Shaina?”
“It’s somewhere at the base of the foothills, near the mansion, but that’s all I know.”
Like where I’d found Jada’s Xterra. The shadowed slit in the sandstone I’d seen before Detective Fitzgerald and the Kolchak Squad had arrived.
“I think I know where the entrance is.”