The Gathering Dark (36 page)

She drove faster.

In the back seat, Antoinette Lamontagne began to pray in a voice full of despair and desolation.

The street in the Village where Peter had his apartment was so small that he was forced to bump the Navigator up onto the curb, and still the big SUV was going to create a problem if any trucks tried to drive down the road. He was aware of the issue, but could not take the time to care. The clock was ticking. Truth was, the only reason they had come back to Manhattan at all was that the first direct flight from Boston to Seville upon which they could have gotten seats did not depart until quarter to ten that night. Any of the flights with connections—or going to Gibraltar or Malaga, which were also only a couple of hours’ drive from Ronda—would have gotten them there even later. There was a flight out of LaGuardia at 8:25 P.M. That gave them enough time to drive back to Manhattan, pick up a fresh change of clothes for Peter, buy something for Keomany and Nikki to wear, and still get back to LaGuardia with enough time to drop off the rental. They’d arrive in Seville around nine in the morning, rent a car and head south, and be in Ronda before noon.

If Ronda was still there.

The knowledge that it might not be, that all of this rushing around might be for nothing, had Peter on edge. His jaw hurt from grinding his teeth together and his entire body felt electric, alive with a kind of static energy. He wanted to do something, not tomorrow, but now. Tonight.

The lights were on in Jarrod and Suze’s row house but the windows of his own apartment—in their basement—were dark. Peter stepped out quickly, saying nothing to Keomany and Nikki. Without being invited they climbed out after him. He slammed the door of the Navigator, not bothering to lock it, and hurried around the front of the vehicle toward the stairs that led down into his apartment. His keys rattled in his hand as he reached for the door. From down the block he could hear loud music—the grind of funky Amanda Marshall songs half a decade old—issuing from the open door of The Fat Cat along with the laughter of women.

Leave it to New York
, he thought.
Turn on the news and you can see the world’s coming apart at the seams, but this is one city that’s not going to hide and hold its breath.

Nikki and Keomany were carrying their things, including the department store bags from the mall they’d stopped in to buy some fresh clothes while they were passing through Connecticut. Keomany had mentioned that she would have liked to have time to shower again before they got on the plane, but they all knew that was a pipe dream. They’d have just enough time to change and repack their travel bags.

Peter stepped over the copies of
The New York Times
that had accumulated on his doorstep and turned the key in the lock. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. Instantly he felt a prickle of alarm go up the back of his neck. Octavian hissed and gestured for Keomany and Nikki to stay back as he peered into the darkness of his apartment.

Something was there. He sensed it. Something inhuman.

His right hand came up, enveloped in a blue light the color of a robin’s egg. The light splashed strange shapes and shadows upon the walls and he hesitated. This apartment and the things inside it—the books and the art he had collected, not to mention the art he himself had made—were all he had of a normal life.

But Nikki was with him, and Keomany as well, and whatever his hesitation about destroying his belongings, he would not risk their lives for simple things.

Blue light flickered around his hand. Something shifted in the shadows at the back of his apartment, in the little corridor that led to the bedroom.

“Show your face,” he snarled. “And slowly. You don’t want to piss me off right now.”

A susurrus of laughter issued from that back hallway, a rolling sound that seemed to curl like mist along the floor. The shadows resolved themselves into a figure. For a moment he could not make out what it was, but then he realized that it was human. Female.

Allison Vigeant stepped into the blue light, chuckling to herself. “Ooh,” she said. “Tough guy.”

Peter felt a rush of relief go through him. The blue glow around his hand winked out and he reached for the light switch. When he flicked it, floor lamps on either end of his living room blinked into brilliant illumination. Allison stretched a little and yawned.

“Sorry,” she said. “I took a nap while I was waiting for you. It’s been a while since I’ve had any decent sleep.”

With a lopsided grin Peter went to her and pulled her into his arms. He hugged her for several long seconds, during which their crisis seemed to retreat. Then he stepped back and gazed at her, studying her; the black denim jeans and spaghetti-strap tank top, the scuffed black lace-up boots.

“You look great,” he told her, smiling. “Your hair’s different.” He had been in touch with her since New Orleans—since Cody died and she had gone off with the U.N. to become their hound dog—but had not really seen her in a long time.

“Variety,” she replied, pushing a hand through her red hair. “Spice of life. You, on the other hand, have gotten older.”

“It happens to the best of us,” Peter replied automatically.

Allison’s face shut down then, her eyes narrowing and all traces of a smile fading from her lips. “Not to all of us, though,” she said.

Regretfully, Peter nodded. He said nothing, however. Anything that needed to be said on that subject had been covered long ago. Allison had never wanted to become a vampire, a shadow. The decision had been taken from her. She had been forced to enter this life and considered it her curse. Allison was haunted by it.

For a long moment he just stared at her. Then he was shaken from his reverie by motion behind him as Nikki and Keomany moved farther into the apartment and closed the door.

Allison’s gaze went past Peter and she smiled. “Nikki. Hey.”

Peter moved out of the way, and he and Keomany watched as Nikki and Allison met in the middle of the living room. The two women were smiling but they greeted each other awkwardly; a perfunctory embrace and then two steps back to regard one another. Though both had been in New Orleans, they had not had time to grow close, yet they had shared a purpose at one time that had almost killed them both, and so had that much at least in common.

“I didn’t realize you two were back together,” Allison said, her hazel eyes widening with curiosity. She put her hands on her slim hips and glanced back and forth between Peter and Nikki. In that moment she looked for all the world like nothing more than a normal woman. Attractive, yes, but still ordinary.

Then she spotted Keomany, who had put down her things and was sifting through the bags of the clothing she had purchased, pulling out clothes to change into.

“Oh, sorry,” Nikki said. “Allison Vigeant, my friend Keomany Shaw. Keomany, Allison.”

The two women shook hands.

“I read your book,” Keomany said. “Remember you from CNN, too. Sometimes I think you’re the reason the whole world didn’t fall apart when the news about the shadows—vampires and demons and all—first came out.”

Allison seemed stunned by this and for a moment said nothing. Then she simply nodded. “Much appreciated. I only wish I really did have the power to change the world.”

When Nikki next spoke up, her voice rasped with the ominous weight of her words.

“Well,” she said, “someone does.”

There were so many things Peter wanted to say to Allison, to ask her, to find out from her what her life was like now. He wanted to be able to tell her about his loneliness, and how he had retreated from the world, and how it had taken seeing Nikki again to make him realize that he had broken his promise to himself that he would make use of his mortal life. There were only two people left in the entire world that he thought would really understand, and Allison was one of them.

But now wasn’t the time.

“Allison, it’s . . . it’s great to see you. Really,” he told her, rubbing at his tired eyes with the heels of his hands and then running his fingers through his ragged-cut hair. “But something tells me you didn’t come by for coffee, or a nap in my bed.”

The vampire’s face darkened, her expression grim and no longer beautiful. “No. I didn’t. The U.N. knows what you did in Wickham. They sent me to ask if you’d be willing to work with them.”

Peter stared at her a moment, an icy chill clutching at his heart.
The U.N.
, he thought. Then he glanced at Nikki and Keomany.

“Get your things together. We can’t afford to miss our plane.”

They started to do just that, unpacking their dirty clothes from their travel cases and repacking new ones, heading into the bathroom to change their clothes for the plane flight.

“Peter?” Allison asked.

He drew the back of his hand across the several days of beard growth on his chin. Tired, he shook his head.

“The U.N., Allison?” Peter gazed at her, dropping his voice. “There’s a presence out there that’s strip mining this world, doing more damage than anything since the plague. So the U.N. sent you— probably the most significant weapon they have for something like this—to sit around and wait in an apartment you have no idea if I’m even coming back to. And you go? You do what they tell you, just like that? You sit here and wait while you could be saving lives somewhere?”

Her temple throbbed and Peter saw the spark of real anger in her eyes.

“Don’t you talk to me like that,” she snapped. “You don’t have the first clue what my relationship is with the people I work for. Sure, people are dying out there, but so what if I could save fifteen lives or fifteen hundred? We need you because you’re the only person in the world who’s got a chance of stopping this thing entirely. Somebody had to come and find you.”

Peter sighed, shaking his head sadly. “Don’t you think I know what’s going on? Did you think I would just be sitting here watching it unfold on TV?”

“So you’ll help?” Allison asked, grimly serious.

“Fuck the U.N.,” Peter scowled. “That’s just what’s needed here, a bunch of nations arguing over diplomatic solutions or all-out war. They haven’t seen the Tatterdemalion up close, haven’t felt the extent of its power. They haven’t faced these Whisper demons. An ambassador isn’t going to do the job, but neither is straight brute force.”

“So what do you suggest? Where are you going now?” Allison asked, searching Peter’s eyes.

But it was Keomany who answered. She had repacked her bag and was walking toward the hall so that she might change clothes in the bedroom when she stopped and turned to face Allison and Peter.

“We have it on good authority that the next city the Tatterdemalion will try to take is Ronda, in Spain. We’ve got a flight soon,” Keomany said as she turned and went down the corridor. “Nice to meet you.”

Then Peter and Allison were alone. The fan in the bathroom whirred and they could hear the sink running as Nikki washed up in there. Several seconds passed until at last Allison spoke.

“Ronda, huh?”

“You know it?”

“I’ve been there. You’re bringing those two?”

Peter paused, an unfamiliar feeling of nausea beginning to churn in his gut. “They can take care of themselves. Keomany’s an earthwitch. They’re nature worshippers with an affinity for—”

“I know what they are,” Allison interrupted. She was standing only a few inches from him and Peter thought that she had gotten taller since they had last met. Not impossible, given the control shadows had over their molecular structure.

“Then you know she can—”

“What about Nikki?”

Peter blinked, began to respond, and then glanced away. The apartment suddenly seemed too small. He could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall and smell the odors of paint that had been trapped in here since he had gone. This was the life he had built and it felt good to have Nikki here amid it. He dared not leave her behind.

“We’ve talked about it,” he said. “She thinks the safest place for her is with me.”

“And what do you think?”

His throat felt dry. Peter did not respond. Allison reached out and ran her right hand across his cheek.

“Have you forgotten what happened to Meaghan?” she asked quietly. Then she turned his chin so that he had to meet her eyes. The pain of the memories reflected in them seemed infinite. “Have you forgotten what happened to me?”

Peter laid his hand over hers on his face and closed his eyes. He did not like to think about what had happened to Allison, did not want to remember how she had been violated, how she had been raped and mutilated and murdered and then brought back to life as a vampire so her torturer could start all over again. He didn’t want to think about Meaghan, whom he had loved dearly and who had been an example to them all, and who had sacrificed herself willingly.

It took him several moments to realize that the fan in the bathroom was off.

“Don’t let her do this to you,” Nikki said.

Peter spun to see her standing in the corridor just outside the bathroom door, dressed now in a light summer dress, her face shining where she had scrubbed it clean, her blond hair swept back from her eyes.

Allison sighed. “Nikki, don’t take this wrong. I just don’t want to see anything—”

Nikki stormed across the living room until she was face to face with Allison. Her voice cracked when she spoke, and for the first time Peter realized the depth of her fear.

“You don’t want what happened to you to happen to me,” Nikki snapped. “Fine. You’re not alone in that. I’m sorry for what happened to you, Allison, but you can’t blame Peter for that.”

Allison’s eyes widened. “I’m not—”

“You just did,” Nikki said. “You as much as blamed him for Meaghan’s death and for not being there to help you. What else do you want him to think, implying that every time he takes some fragile human woman along with him, she ends up dead or worse? Well, I’m not fucking fragile, goddamn you! I’m not!”

With a slow sigh, Allison took a step back. “That’s not what I’m saying, Nikki.”

Peter felt sick. He knew what his heart was telling him, but he also knew that the voice of his heart was wrong. When Nikki turned to speak to him and she saw his eyes, she must have read his feelings there, for she shook her head crossly.