Piercing the Darkness (75 page)

“Agreed. And I have instructed Khull to preserve Roe’s appearance, just in case she may be seen by someone.”

“Now,” said Goring, “there is that other matter that we discussed
. . .”

“Of course,” said Santinelli, “the whole matter of Khull in particular and Broken Birch in general.”

“Mm,” said Steele, nodding. “I’ve thought about that too. Now that they’re in bed with us, they won’t stop until they control the bed.”

“I’ve consulted with Mr. Evans and Mr. Farnsworth, and they have some of their best people looking into it. If we move carefully, and lay a thoroughly thought-out plan, we could accumulate some damning evidence against Broken Birch while keeping ourselves clean. Evans and Farnsworth are quite sure that the whole lot of them can be arrested for crimes totally unrelated to our enterprise.”

Goring smiled and nodded. “Excellent. I’ve already consulted with my board, and they think such a plan would be feasible. We’ll be able to call in some favors from our corporate and governmental resources, and I’m sure they’ll be most willing to see what we want them to see and to look the other way when it would be . . . worthwhile.”

“Then we must proceed on this without delay,” said Santinelli. “Khull and Broken Birch have finally done their job, but upon delivery of Sally Roe we must erase any association with them.”

Goring added, “Any
memory
of them in
any
circles, if we can help it!”

Santinelli raised his glass. “I’ll drink to that!”

And so they did.

THE VAN HAD
been driving along the winding, climbing, meandering highway for what seemed hours, and Sally finally nodded off, her chin on her chest, sitting between two of the four surly, burly escorts that came with Khull and herself on the plane. The flight had lasted several hours, the driving even longer, and now it was night.

She looked a little better. At least Khull figured she couldn’t escape from a flying jet plane, and, reciting Santinelli’s order to “preserve Roe’s appearance,” untied her and let her use the cramped little washroom to wash the dried, caked blood from her mouth and chin, change from her bloodstained shirt to a clean but sadly wrinkled blouse, and brush out her hair. She looked a little better—for a totally exhausted, manhandled, soon-to-die fugitive.

They were heading into the mountains, through tall forests of pine and fir that became monotonous after a while. Sally slept fitfully, jolting awake every few moments, but only long enough to see more trees going by the window, and then she would nod off again.

Some time later—she didn’t know how much later—she awoke to morning light. The van was slowing down; Khull and his cohorts were looking around, trying to get their bearings. They were entering a village.

Khull, sitting in the front passenger seat, turned around to tell here, “Welcome to Summit.”

Sally rubbed the sleep from her eyes and looked out the windows at a quaint-looking little town surrounded on all sides by snow-covered, sawtoothed peaks and thick, unblemished forests. Out the left window, just above the A-framed roofs of some ski lodges, the morning sun turned a distant waterfall into golden tinsel; out the right window, through a gap in the small inns and storefronts, the mountainside dropped sharply away to a flower-strewn alpine meadow. Patches of snow still remained everywhere, dripping and glistening in the low-angled sunlight.

Why have we come here?
Sally wondered. It hardly seemed the setting for such gruesome business, and people like Khull and his bunch just didn’t fit at all.

But then again, maybe they did. Sally began to notice some of the establishments and institutions in this village; she began to read some of the signs.

Taoist Retreat Center. Valley Tibetan Project and Monastery. Temple of Ananta. Library and Archives of Ancient Wisdom. Native American School of Traditional Medicine. Karma Triyana Dharmachakra. The Temple of Imbetu Agobo. Babaji Ashram. Mother’s Temple Shrine of Shiva. The Children of Diana. Temple to the Divine Universal Mother. The House of Bel. The Sacred and Royal Order of the Nation.

She leaned toward the window. The big escort put his ham-sized palm in her chest and shoved her back. She twisted and looked out the rear windows as the building passed.

The Sacred and Royal Order of the Nation. The little gargoyle snarled at her from the front door of the black stone temple and from the building’s facade. She could just hear it screeching, Welcome to
Summit!

DESTROYER HAD FOLLOWED
the hunting party clear from Chicago, and now, as the van came through the valley and entered the village, he was going to milk this moment for all it was worth. He dropped from the sky, alighted on the roof of the van, and stood there, his sword held high in victory, his wings trailing like banners behind him, his twelve captains forming his honor guard. Driving under the thick mantle of spirits was like entering a dark tunnel under a towering mountain; on every side, and thousands of feet above, demons cheered and waved their swords in a thunderous display of admiration.

Destroyer reveled in his victory and newfound fame. These vile hordes once ignored him, mocked him, cared not to know his name. Now listen to them! Let the
Strongman
listen to them! A better announcement of his arrival could not be asked for.

GUILO TURNED AT
the sound of wings behind him. The captain had arrived.

The cheers of the demons echoing out of the valley could only be for one reason. “They’ve brought her,” Guilo reported.

Both he and Tal stayed low among the trees with their warriors. The swarm of demons below was nothing to tangle with before the right time.

Guilo pointed. “There! That blue van just entering the Summit Institute!”

They could see it only intermittently, as small as a grain of sand, appearing through the thinner parts of the demonic swarm and then disappearing again. It reappeared just long enough for them to watch it turn off the thin, gray ribbon of highway and slip out of sight under the mantle of spirits covering the Summit Institute.

“Well, now she’s alone,” said Tal. “We can’t break through that.”

“What about the fire you were going to start?” Guilo asked. “If ever we needed something to happen, it is now!”

Tal shook his head. “It will be a day late. For now, all we can do is wait for Nathan’s signal and hope it comes soon.”

The semiannual Global Consciousness Conference was getting underway; so the van’s driver had to drive up and down the large, black-topped parking lot several times before he could find an empty parking place. Sally spent that time observing the Summit Institute for Humanistic Studies. It reminded her a lot of the Omega Center, except that it was newer and the architecture more modern. Stone was an abundant building material around here, and so was used in the construction of the offices, lecture halls, walkways, and gardens. True to their religious devotion to Mother Earth, the designers of the campus did not supplant the natural environment, but let the campus merge with it, almost hiding it among the trees, rocks, and hilly terrain.

The hour was still early, so there were no people out walking. How fortunate for Sally’s captors.

Khull turned to Sally, holding up his knife as a reminder. “All they paid me to do is deliver you here. If you get cut up in the parking lot, it’s your fault and not my problem, understand?”

She nodded.

“Let’s get her into Goring’s place.”

An observer standing at a distance would have thought an important dignitary had arrived and was now surrounded by Secret Service agents. Sally was barely visible within the tight cluster of bodies that formed outside the van’s side door and then began moving up the path toward Mr. Goring’s chalet.

Sally made a concerted effort to see around the backs and shoulders of her escorts and study the layout of this place. Right now they were passing through an expansive, meticulously arranged herb garden with sculptured hedges, stone pathways, and eye-pleasing reflection pools. In the middle of a carpet of moss, one lone man sat almost naked in the early-morning cold, eyes shut, legs crossed in the lotus position, totally entranced.

Leaving the herb garden, they rounded a corner, followed a narrow, natural stone stairway with tall evergreen hedges on either side, and then broke out into the open. To the right, the ground dropped away into a natural amphitheater, and beyond the amphitheater, a heart-stopping view of the mountains spread wider and higher than the eye could take in.

In the center of the amphitheater, a sizable group of people stood in
neat, concentric semicircles around a blazing firepit, chanting, droning, and tossing flowers, grain, and fruit into the fire. On a small platform at the head of the circle, gawking down into the fire as if mesmerized by it, seven stone deities received the offerings and worship of these adoring early-risers while a gaunt, white-haired woman in a yellow robe sang a haunting song in Sanskrit.

Sally remembered the song and still knew some of the words, even though she hadn’t heard it in ten years. She couldn’t remember all the names of the seven little deities, but they were secondary gods anyway. This ceremony was to invoke the blessing of the Universal Mother first of all, and secondly to appease these seven dwarfs.

Then she caught a glimpse of some of the faces as they lifted toward the morning sun. No! There was Mrs. Denning from the Omega Center, and two of the Omega faculty! And was that Mr. Blakely, her counselor at Bentmore Teacher’s College? She thought she recognized his face, and then his cracking, squawking chant identified him for sure. Close to the fire, her face washed with red light, was Krystalsong, a witch, scholar, and mother of four from the West Coast; she and Sally had worked together on a holistic preschool program.

Quite a homecoming for us all
, she thought.

ON THE HIGHWAY
to Ashton, the mail truck continued to roll along, right on schedule. The morning mail shipment would be at the Ashton Post Office the moment they opened the doors.