Supernatural: Night Terror (30 page)

Lou stood mesmerized as the tornado swirled and pounded its way through the restaurant on a collision course with his parking lot. The funnel cloud expanded, so wide he could no longer see the telltale shape without looking up and then that was insufficient as it bore down on him. Belatedly, he realized he should seek cover. His business was housed in a split-level building, with the offices in back, up a few steps. No basement in which to seek shelter. His best bet was an interior office or closet with no windows.

The roar became so loud he couldn’t think straight.

As he watched in horror, the white-striped blue Mini Cooper at the corner of the lot lifted upward and flipped back toward the front windows. He ducked a second before it crashed through the plate-glass window and demolished a desk.

If he thought the roar of the tornado was loud before, nothing prepared him for the terrific noise that assailed his ears. The swirling winds reached into the building and whipped papers and mugs and desk planners into the maelstrom.

He backed away, his jaw dropping as a red Mustang blew past the window, its bumper scraping along the asphalt before it rammed a silver Kia Sportage. One after another, the cars on his lot flipped over, rolled past, or soared overhead. Fierce winds buffeted him through the gap in the window and almost swept him off his feet several times.

He clenched his jaw so tight his teeth began to ache.

When a black Toyota Corolla rolled through the broken window and smashed into the Mini Cooper, Lou scrambled backward, feeling his body become buoyant in the air, as if he had no more substance than a paper bag. In seconds the tornado would sweep him up into the vortex and hurl him into the night. He clawed his way along the wall, crawled up the steps to the upper level and pried open the door to the storage closet in the middle of the building. He squeezed into the small room and the door slammed shut behind him so hard it rattled against its hinges.

Squatting on the floor, hands wrapped around his knees, Lou Santulli prayed softly, almost incoherently, a rambling jumble of sibilant words. If only he’d skipped the online poker and driven home at the start of the storm. If only he’d waited until morning to tidy the office...

More thunderous crashes and jarring bangs shook the walls of the building. The light in the closet winked out, plunging him in darkness. The roaring filled his ears, became his world. As the walls around him creaked and groaned, he fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone, to call his wife, to apologize for avoiding her, to tell her he still loved her, despite all the pointless bickering.

The phone display seemed unnaturally bright in the closet, revealing the shelves of notepads, folders and cleaning supplies—and the blood dripping from his forehead. He must have been struck by debris and, in his panic, hadn’t even noticed. Unfortunately, the cell phone had no signal. He held down the speed dial key for home to no effect, pressed disconnect, speed-dialed again, pressed disconnect, speed-dialed...

Something massive burst through the closet wall.

Before his brain could register what the object was, it struck the front of his head with the force of a sledgehammer, pulping his eyes, smashing the bone and cartilage of his nose into his brain and crushing his skull—

In the second or two before his cell phone shattered against an exposed two-by-four, a woman’s voice spoke through its tiny speaker, “Hello? Lou...?”

Roman Messerly woke up with someone shaking his shoulder.

“Dude, wake up!”

“What...?”

“You gotta go to work, man!”

Roman sat up and looked around the basement room. He was sprawled on a sofa facing a wide flat-screen TV. A game controller fell from his lap and clunked on the floor. Took him a few seconds to remember he’d stopped at his friend’s house to pass some time before his shift. In Gavin’s man cave.

“Gavin, weren’t we...?”

“Dude, you fell asleep in the middle of Halo,” Gavin said. “Ever hear of an energy drink? What’s up with you? Forget your multivitamins? You look like shit, man.”

“Trouble sleeping lately.”

“I left for a Coke, but we lost power down here, so I figured I’d let you sleep until you had to leave—which is
now
, dude.”

“Thanks, man, don’t want to be late.”

Roman pushed himself up from the sofa. Lately, he’d been wiped out. Kept thinking he was on the verge of a nasty virus, but so far exhaustion was his only symptom. As he lumbered up the stairs and through the front door, he fought another jaw-cracking yawn and ran into a torrential downpour.

His old black-and-tan Subaru Outback seemed a mile away. By the time he ran to the curb and fumbled his key into the lock, he was thoroughly soaked. As he started the engine, water dripping off his face and hands, he thought about putting in for a week’s vacation. He’d sleep for five of the seven days. Make that six. He’d save the seventh for a day trip somewhere.

Pulling away from the curb, he felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him and he became hypnotized by the fierce metronome of the windshield wipers on their highest setting. For a moment, he thought his vision had dimmed, but darkness had come inside the car and swelled around him. The dashboard lights faded away and a raspy woman’s voice seemed to whisper in his ear.

“Not done with you yet.”

When the engine died and the Outback’s momentum carried it down the side of the road, along a grassy embankment, Roman was already unconscious, his breathing labored.

“That’s a freakin’ tornado,” Dean said moments after Sam climbed into the Impala, dripping wet.

Biting her nails nervously, Lucy Quinn leaned forward from the backseat.

“This is totally crazy,” she whispered.

“Crazy’s coming,” Dean said. “But it hasn’t reached the station yet.”

“I had it, Dean,” Sam said, furious with himself. “Close enough to hurt it. Just not bad enough.”

“We’ll gank it, Sam,” Dean said with more confidence than he felt.

Through the frenetic slashing arc of the wipers clearing the windshield in split-second intervals, they watched the massive funnel cloud—a wedge of darkness against the evening sky—churn its way across the western edge of town.

Dean drove west along Welker, proceeding with caution because he had no plan once he reached the tornado. Like catching a tiger by the tail. As if to confirm the foolhardy nature of his direction of travel, every other car on the road was racing in the opposite direction. They were a mile away from the tornado when it ripped the roof off a house and flung it into the night like a kite with a severed string.

“Plus side,” Dean said grimly, “don’t see any flying cows.”

When they were within a half-mile, the funnel cloud swept across the parking lot of a gas station, veering toward the pumps. One of the supports holding a canopy over the gas station lot buckled and the roof toppled over, metal screeching and scraping along the asphalt, trailing sparks.

Two blocks away, Dean jammed the brake pedal, skidding to a stop on the slick road.

The explosion blossomed in front of them and the concussive blast rocked the Impala’s suspension. Bits of glass and flaming metal debris pelted the ground around them. A charred piece of a gas pump housing plunked the hood of the Impala and ricocheted across two lanes of traffic before slamming into a curb.

“Dean, it’s gone,” Sam said.

At first, Dean thought his brother was referring to the gas station explosion which, unlike the exploding phantom Charger, had definitely not vanished. Flames continued to burn, smoke continued to billow into the night, and wreckage continued to clink and clatter around them. The gas station was real, not a living nightmare. Its destruction was a reality. But then, Dean noticed the absence of the fierce wind that had buffeted the Impala as they had approached the tornado. Looking left and right, and then leaning out the window for a better view, he confirmed that the twister was gone.

“Small favors,” he mumbled.

Dean made a looping turn on the empty road and headed east, back toward C.J.’s Diner, but they had traveled less than a mile when the Impala trembled slightly. A moment later, it rocked to the right and shimmied. Thinking the car had taken some damage, Dean pulled to the side of the road for a quick inspection.

The moment he stepped out of the car, the ground trembled. Along the street, parked cars began to wail as their theft alarms were triggered. Windows in a nearby building cracked and shattered. In the spread of the Impala’s headlights on the asphalt, Dean saw cracks forming.

“Great, tornadoes and now an earthquake,” he muttered

He jumped back in the car, shifted into drive and sped toward the diner.

“Dean! Look out!” Sam yelled.

He saw it in time, a fissure opening diagonally across Welker Street, spreading wide enough to accommodate a car tire and break an axle. He swerved away from the worst of it, but felt the Impala lurch over a gap when he gunned the engine.

A Colorado State Patrol cruiser coming from the opposite direction wasn’t as fortunate. As the fissure continued to widen, the front wheels of the speeding cruiser dropped into the gap and the front bumper smashed into the opposite edge. The vehicle tilted forward, slipping into the abyss. The doors of the cruiser swung open and two uniformed troopers jumped out and scrambled away from the car a second before it lurched down into the crack. Only the trunk remained above ground.

Dean slowed, waiting to see if the men needed help, but another State Patrol cruiser, which had been following the first, managed to stop before plowing into the lead car. The two stranded troopers scurried back to the second car and climbed into the back.

At the end of Roman Messerly’s life, when he had no more left to give her, a spasm wracked his body so violently his collarbone shattered. When the nocnitsa released her grip on his forehead, the husk of his body fell forward, dangling against the support of the shoulder strap. He had worried about potential tragedies and emergencies his whole life, despite actions and training he’d taken to prepare himself to face them. He’d never have to worry about them again, but she’d made his fears a reality and, in his own way, Roman had left his mark on the town.

The nocnitsa shed her substance and spiraled up into the night air, potent with energy she’d culled from her first victims. With her glowing red eyes she gazed upon the town and the spreading chaos and roared with pleasure, a sound like shrill wind whistling through confined spaces. She could feel the town as a whole, from edge to edge, a busy little hive of fear and uncertainty, doubt and grief. For a few moments, before flying down to her next victim, she rippled outward, a flash of darkness that would infect every mind within miles. Those awake would feel a cold chill race up their spine and experience an unexplained feeling of dread, while those asleep... ah, those asleep spoke her natural language, and she spoke to them, deep in their minds, summoning the deepest darkness to the place where it could live...

Kurt Machalek had collected hearts in mason jars because hearts were totems. They imparted mystical powers to the one who claimed them. But for that power to pass to him, he’d had to seize them from living sacrifices. His socalled victims never understood their higher purpose in his apotheosis, so he explained it to them in detail before carving the still-beating organ from their chests. To become invulnerable and immortal, he’d needed to collect a dozen hearts. Unfortunately, the FBI caught him after his seventh acquisition and took the hearts from him. Unenlightened, they didn’t understand. As a result, when he escaped from his solitary cell, he would have to begin his collection all over again. He’d lost his accumulated mystical powers when they captured him and removed his totems. Locked away in his cell in the supermax wing of Falls Federal, he slept and dreamed of the day when he could restore his mystical energies. Once he got his dozen, he would show them true power.

In his dreams he saw his victims again, every one of them, and he would smile at the fond memories of those early acquisitions. They would scream as the power left their bodies, propelled into their hearts for him to capture. By the time they were still, their power was his to wield and it electrified him with his growing potential.

While he would have preferred to dream and fantasize about future sacrifices to his glorification, he had no control over his subconscious. Not that it mattered. Reliving his socalled crimes was a pleasurable experience, a brief mental vacation. He never had nightmares because he feared nobody and nothing...

But suddenly, his dream became troubling. He’d been toiling over his fourth victim—a young soccer mom who begged him to let her go, saying she wouldn’t tell if he just let her go—when he noticed people standing around him in a circle. That was wrong. Each sacrifice demanded his complete focus to channel the heart energy at the moment of death. He never allowed witnesses to his sacred rite. But for some reason, while he could sense people closing around him in a tightening circle, he couldn’t see them. He plunged the bowie knife into the soccer mom’s chest, delighting in the brief scream of primal power as he sliced his way to the pulsing heart and—