Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller (55 page)

Big Al had come, like him, too late. The man was running as fast as his legs would take him, but the bullets would surely kill him. Kill him as surely as
he
had killed Lynn and her children.

From fire had Brikker come, too, as he knew he would. And with him, thugs. Strong he knew, how well so; the other he didn’t. But what did it matter.

All that mattered was the now.

His hand trembled, his fingers useless appendages. His mind screamed, and he very nearly lost consciousness. He came out of it, yet only just. He saw Brikker, saw that vile darkness coming for him, and he cried out, drawing his anger and his pain to bear. His mind slipped as his body began to heat up; the temperature inside him spiked and ebbed, spiked and ebbed. His chest heaved, his lungs poised to explode. His every muscle tightened to cold hard knots. He tried to fight it, tried to control it, tried to—

NO.

~ 44

Brikker cowered when the farmhouse exploded. Strong hunkered down, and Christensen hit the dirt as the Earth trembled. Fire and smoke erupted into the sky, roiling in great plumes and swirling arcs. Fiery missiles whipped past the trio in starts and fits, a wave of heat rolling over them. A searing shard of glass struck Strong in the left hand, cutting him deeply, the hulking soldier cursing to a sin. Another explosion rocked the farm, its potency less powerful than the first salvo, but still strong enough to blow out the rear side window of the Chevrolet wagon. Flaming debris nearly skulled Richards, missing him by mere inches, the luckiest of chance; other projectiles sent the farmer from the flatbed scrambling for cover. A breath later, the three from the Valiant looked up in unison, all of them hearing it. There was a rising groan from the conflagration, an otherworldly sound, and suddenly an entire side of the structure collapsed in one plodding motion, the burning beams crumbling, the place caving in on itself. The home—and all souls trapped within—perished.

Brikker’s mind raced. Despite his best denials, he was certain he had seen this before. The explosion; the collapse; all of it. Yet how could that be? There had been no Turn, no black magic, for the cut on Strong … the second explosion … that
sound
… he would have remembered
that
, surely. Would have remembered it all.

What was happening here?

He started to give the order—again the farmer was on the move, hobbling to Richards’ aid—and stopped himself cold.
Kill him
was what he had started to say, yet the phrase was not what he had said before; he was certain of it. What he
had
shouted was but the soldier’s name, with its implicit order to kill.

Dizziness shook him. He felt out of sorts, strangely disjointed from reality, as if he had spent the last few seconds comatose. As if he had simply
missed
them. As if there
had
been a Turn … but not. He could not put a name to it, but if pressed, what he experienced had felt like a “bump” in time, something akin to a skip on a long-playing record. He was not used to entertaining such folly, and yet, the world had changed. He knew that as surely as he knew that the next precious moments would change it forever.

Still
—

Why would Richards Turn but a moment? What purpose could that possibly serve?

Sensing that all was not right in this new timeline—fearing that what had just transpired was but a ruse by Richards, to not control time but to buy it—Brikker nodded only once. There would be no more mistakes. No more missed opportunities. The moment was now, the future for the taking. And he would seize it.

Strong took his cue. The lieutenant bolted after the local, but after a few lengths, aborted the chase and positioned himself for the easy shot. Christensen, several yards behind, did the same.

They fired.

~ 45

Mind and muscle breached the breaking point as Kain Richards sank to depths of agony he could never have imagined. The drum of his heart doubled. Tripled. His body seemed to burn from within, as if it might ignite in spontaneous combustion. He shook; he weakened; he faltered. His hand fell limp at his side, as if dragged down by the weight of the world.

The Turn, for all its magic, all its curse, had finally forsaken him. It held a will all its own, a will chaotic and dangerous. He would trade everything, his last breath, his last heartbeat, for one last kick.

Time and space shifted again, and he nearly collapsed. Struggling, he looked up into the blinding lights, and the agony struck deeper in one massive shock. Electricity surged through him. He bled from the ears; from the mouth; from the heart. He tried, oh how he tried, yet he could not scream. He would die. That great darkness would swallow him.

And yet, when he looked down at Lynn, tears streaming down his face, blood dribbling down hers, somehow, God granting, he summoned the will … and brought his fingers to his temple once more.

~ 46

A sharp cut of glass struck Strong again.

It slit into his face in this latest timeline, and now he was on his knees screaming
.
The shard had lodged itself in his cheek just below his left eye. Blood gushed from the wound. He sliced three fingers trying to remove the glass, sending him into a torrent of obscenities.

Christensen was hit as well, this a new variable for Brikker to ponder. The private was rolling on the ground, trying to put out the flames that were eating his shirt.

The explosion—just the one, despite another “bump” in the way of things—had been far more violent this time round. The farmhouse had collapsed in one swift breath, an awesome and curious sight. Both sides of the place had collapsed in tandem, as if ruled by an unseen force. He could appreciate such magic.

Intriguingly, neither Richards nor the man from the pickup had been threatened by the wealth of flying debris, and in spite of the chaos, he still marveled at the randomness, the way of the Turn. And yet, the Turn (the
sensation
, more aptly, for he was still uncertain such a Richards-induced event had actually occurred) had been fleeting, almost undetectable, even for him. There had been but an instant of nothingness, not the endlessness, the mindlessness, of an eternity spent in that dark abyss as there normally was. There had been no surging heat, no raging electricity, no tear in the delicate fabric of space and time. No powder … no mist.

So …
what was transpiring?

Was Richards losing his ability?

Was the magician succumbing to the magic?

If that were true—and as his mind spun through the possible explanations, discarding all but one—then Time, that old friend, that old menace, was of the essence.

The game must end,
Brikker thought, as Richards, clearly beaten, clearly on the edge of breaking, struggled to raise his hand yet again. How pathetic. All for the love of a woman.

“
KILL HIM NOW,
” he shouted, and when Strong, still howling obscenities, did not react quickly enough, the good Doctor screamed at the faggot to do his bidding. And but a moment later, with Al Hembruff out of breath and out of time, Private Christensen, his shirt finally out, caught the farmer in his sights, and fired.

~ 47

She held no life. Only his heart.

Kain drew her close and cradled her. His hold faltered, and a girlish whimper escaped him as he nearly lost her. Tears bled from his eyes. He kissed her forehead; stroked her fine flowing hair. All around him, hell raged.

He kissed her, tenderly on the lips, and endured a great cold as he felt the last breath of life slip away. He could only tremble.

He looked up. Strong was screaming like a helpless idiot. Brikker shouted the latest order. The other man, Strong’s monkey-mate, was only now getting to his knees and drawing his weapon on Al Hembruff.

It mattered nothing now. The Turn had deserted him. Had tricked him again.

He rocked Lynn against his chest. She was so cold, so distant now.

So distant—

He held her tight and clung to her for dear life. Then, when he could, set the woman he loved to the ground.

And felt his heart break.

Felt the rage seep inside its cracks.

Kain Richards looked up once more … at Brikker.

NO … NOT AGAIN.

NEVER … AGAIN.

~ 48

All it took was a touch … all it took was his rage.

Still, the Turn teased him, its violent energy creeping through his body, building and building, a sleeping tempest waking within. He feared the magic might abandon him, deceive him again. But then his eyes doubled, darkening like the blackest coal, and suddenly it was there, that glimmer of light, that spark in his heart.

The fine country air, once sweet and fresh, succumbed to that pungent stench of burning matches. Sparks of electricity crackled in every direction, tiny fireworks popping in and out of existence; they swam in wispy contrails that were there and gone. Strange sounds, poised at the very boundary of human hearing—those odd chattering teeth—grew faster and sharper. The world compressed in one great wave, as if some unseen force thrust the air downward, downward, the pressure leaping in step with the blistering heat. Time was slowing rapidly, far more rapidly, than he had ever experienced. The raw power of his mind terrified him.

Behind him, incredibly, the farmhouse stood in a frozen state of collapse. Flames that had been rolling and raging only seconds before were but painted strokes describing the catastrophic event, with just an odd flicker here and there; what had been a deafening roar from the conflagration had become a blunt, elongated groan that held no worldly counterpart. The farmer plodded forward like a man in a slow-motion film, yet even at that there seemed to be missing frames; there was no fluidity to his movement, only jerkiness, as if
his
Time was marching to a different drum. Strong struggled to his feet like a cripple, and though nothing more than a slurring of unintelligible sound (it too seemed to skip), his cursing was no longer the reaction from his wound, but from the rabid sting in his eyes. For his part in this play, his cohort had dropped his weapon, the .38 falling comically slowly in those same jerky steps. Like Strong, he too, stood with hands to eyes, unable to tame the burning.

The Turn raged, and Kain rocked from the shock. Never had it surged with such force. Not in the dark days of Texas, nor the darker days of Newark, when his power had held court with gods. Another spike rippled through him, far more violent than the last, and he whipped into convulsions. The charge drained from him all at once, weakening him, sapping his will, but like a volcano erupting without warning, it stormed back with ever more vengeance. And when it did, this strange universe, this dark side of now, became a house of horror.

Brikker stood as a stone freak. Not immune to the magic, he too had raised a hand toward his face, yet even in this arrested state he seemed larger than life. The Teacher. The Torturer. That singular eye delivered its charge, still seeing, still calculating, and for an instant, Kain suffered the grip of that familiar terror snare his throat, the same that had always turned against him: even now he could feel the blades slicing into his skull. As for the good Doctor’s henchmen, the lieutenant stood stock still, frozen in time, while his sidekick, mouth gaping, held bulging eyes cast squarely on the handgun stilled just above the ground.

Al Hembruff—oh, God,
Al
—stood staring, at
him,
just as his daughter had once stared. His jaw had fallen, a cry trying to rise from his throat. The man was a cold statue, adrift in the gulf between Then and Now, those normally calm and trusting eyes betraying the darkest terror: like the others, he
knew.

Electricity swallowed them. It gripped and shocked their bodies. Another spike struck, and in a heartbeat, the Earth stood still; at least, it did in the here and now in this dreadful place, this place that both was, and was not. Not a sound, not a thought could be heard, for the storm raged about them in utter silence, as if in a dream. No life held claim here, not in this plane, and yet, in the next instant, Brikker’s haunting countenance screamed the naked truth:
too late.

The mist emerged as a thin purplish fog, but quickly thickened to an impenetrable haze. Still on his knees, it formed about Kain’s legs, wrapping round as if protecting him. As if its sole existence held but one purpose, as if nothing could hope to breach it. In spite of their condition, the men could see it; of that he was certain. Strong’s partner looked positively insane, and perhaps he was.

The heat exploded. It surged far beyond his limit, beyond belief, and nothing alive was spared its wrath. Healthy grass sickened to an unsightly yellow-brown. Patches of dead grass ignited in small fires that simply froze at birth. Wildflowers, already wilted and dying, suffered a similar fate, and the oak, its arms once lush and green, held but dead brown leaves that erupted in flames that arrested in time. A black bird hovered just beyond the reach of the tree, its wings stilled in a failed escape; its wing tips glowed with the first bursts of fire. The stench in the air choked the men, and if that were not enough, the crushing pressure would surely kill them. Blood began to seep, almost imperceptibly in its flow, from the ears and the nose and the eyes. Their hair stiffened and faded to the color of ash. Their skin turned dark and brittle and cracked. Their fingernails split. Lynn was a ghoul.

As always, from nowhere, that alien white powder emerged. It fell as a gentle snowfall and quickly swelled to a thickness that choked. It coated Lynn like a blanket. It coated the grass; coated the roofs of the outbuildings; coated the men. The stuff burned and blinded, whirling in the maelstrom, untouched, untethered, by Time. That same slickness that had once oiled the strays now oiled them, yet this slime was thicker and darker, the fine talcum clinging to it. The idling engines of the flatbed and the Valiant stalled, and their lights went black; their hoods and their windows turned brilliant white. The Chevy wagon, much closer to the eye of the hurricane that was the drifter, sat buried, as if trapped in a snowstorm.