The Brotherhood of the Wheel (48 page)

“You both threaten his superiority here,” she said. “The house with the chain-link fence called to you. It needs you to heal it, the same way the house on the hill needs Ava. The houses have been waiting for someone to come to undo what the Master of the Hunt did so long ago.”

“The wells,” Ava said. “The wells in the basements. Chasseur sealed them in some kind of ritual sacrifice when he burned the houses and murdered the old occupants.”

“Yes, dear,” Agnes said. “Correct.”

“Are there CliffsNotes for this?” Heck said. “Because I'm lost here.”

Max gasped and jumped to her feet. “Yes, yes, of course, yes!”

“Oh, that explains it,” Heck said. “Thanks for clearing that up for me, Doc.”

Max shook her head, and her great mane of dark hair flew back and forth. “Four Houses! Of course, Four Houses … One, two, three, and then the fourth, three plus one … in opposition—the many versus singular … Yes! The tetragrammaton—the four-letter name of God! Don't you see?”

Jimmie frowned. Heck grinned and looked to Lovina, who seemed confused as well.

“Um, Dr. Leher,” Carl said. “I'm afraid I don't…”

Max was pacing around the table now, with the fervor of a child playing musical chairs, waiting for the music to stop. She pointed to Ava. “Maiden,” she said, then she pointed to Lovina. “Mother.”

“I beg your pardon,” Lovina said, raising an eyebrow.

Max went on, pointing to Agnes. “Crone,” she said.

Agnes nodded. “Yes,” she said. “You're getting it, Professor.”

“Wait, that's the Triple Goddess thing you were talking about,” Jimmie said. “You said that had something to do with the universe being all messed up.”

Max eagerly pointed to Jimmie, then to her own nose, nodding. “Exactly, yes, yes!” Max said. “Four is a powerful number in numerology. It is a number of renewal, of clearing a system—of rebooting it, if you will! If this town and those dwellings are, in fact, conduits for primal powers, then Chasseur has unbalanced everything by tampering here!”

“Hold it,” Lovina said. “Are you trying to say that those old, burned-down houses are linked to the fundamental forces of the universe, and to me, Ava, and Agnes? Seriously?”

Max sat down as abruptly as she had stood. She grabbed a biscuit from the napkin in front of her and began to pull the bread apart layer by layer. “The universe operates on multiple levels, multiple scales,” she said, holding up part of the biscuit and then popping it into her mouth. She kept talking around the food. “All at the same time. Like the old saying ‘as above so below.' At some point in time, this space became a place of power; it attracted individuals that the power could work through, that mirrored its purpose, like water seeking the cracks in stone.”

“So there's some kind of cosmic war taking place in this little town in Kansas?” Heck said. “If this is, like, fundamental forces of nature, how can teeny, tiny little human beings upset shit so badly? How would the universe not have been screwed up a long time ago if it was that easy?”

“In the truck headed here,” Max said, “we reasoned that the Master of the Hunt had sacrificed one of his first victims on the highway near here, tapping into the Road and all that ley-line energy it was channeling. If he dedicated that to his patron, to the Horned Man, then all that additional power would have tipped the balance even further and upset the interaction between the forces more. The Horned Man is ascendant; the Triple Goddess is diminished.”

“It's not a war, Heck,” Agnes said. “Nature is not good or evil. We put those names on it. These powers simply are, like water or wind. The Horned Man is part of the natural cycle. He has his place in the making and unmaking of things. His image, that of Cernunnos, was taken by the early Christians to embody their concept of evil—Lucifer—but that is simply us, putting faces on what we can't fully understand. We dress these powers up in human forms, attribute to them human motives. We can no more comprehend them than bacteria can comprehend us. Chasseur is insane, and he's tapped into true power. The Horned Man is the essence of predation, of negation, the mercilessness, the rutting of life, of nature.”

“Sounds like a perfect fit for a serial killer,” Heck said.

“He's a narcissistic fiend,” Agnes said. “Chasseur has no clue, and less care, what he's wrecking.”

“What, exactly, is he wrecking?” Ava asked. “The world, the planets, the galaxies—they're all still spinning along okay, it seems. He's been at this for decades.”

“You tell me,” Max said. “The forces of creation, moderation, and stability have been lessened on every level from the quantum to the macro, and the fury of nature—the unchecked, uncaring, unreasoning force that seeks dominance over all systems, over all life—is riding high. Sound familiar to you?”

“Point taken,” Ava said. “It does seem like the world has gotten crueler, nature more brutal. But if Chasseur already did all this and things are already screwed up, all out of balance, then what's he doing now?”

“He sent Mark Stolar,” Jimmie said, “to give to George Norse, the paranormal-TV-show guy, a video of him hunting a girl in the woods back in the nineties to air on his show tonight. Cecil Dann messaged me that the video had the shadow hounds in it and, apparently, a glimpse of the Horned Man, too.”

“Like in the Internet videos Shawn Ruth and Karen Collie and their friends saw,” Lovina said.

“Sounds like it,” Jimmie said, sipping his iced tea. “I think it might be the whole video that the kids had seen parts of on various paranormal websites.” Again, Jimmie had a weird feeling something was very important, and he wished he could reach out and grab whatever it was. That video … something he had heard recently … something about watching, looking … seeing? Seeing, yes.

He looked to Max. “Max, you said people who saw the Wild Hunt … bad things happened to them, right?”

“Yes,” Max said. “It was bad luck to see the Hunt. Those who did see it disappeared, or—”

“Or died,” Heck said, the realization coming to him, too.

“Oh, no,” Lovina said. “No, no … that video … Norse's show. Millions of people, all over the world watch that show.…”

“And will see that video,” Jimmie said. “They'll see the Wild Hunt.”

“Yes,” Agnes said. “And the Hunt will come for them, claim them—every single last one of them, men, women, and children. Especially the children. That's his endgame.”

“Aw, shit!” Heck said, rising, even as his voice did. “No fucking way, no! That son of a bitch! I'll suck his fucking eyes out! We've got to call Dann, have him stop that fucking video!”

“Mind your language, squire,” Jimmie said. “Got children in here. Don't need to get them all riled up. We can't call Cecil or anyone else; I wish we could. Remember where we are? This place don't exist.”

“Tonight's April 30th,” Max said. “Beltane. As the Pagan, Chasseur always murdered, always sacrificed, on Wiccan holy days, like tonight. He's about to perform the largest sacrificial rite in human history. That much energy, that much death, focused in his belief,” Max said. “It sends everything crashing down.”

“Define ‘everything,'” Ava said.

“Imagine the universe tearing itself apart,” Max said. “The imbalance would become too great for the system to right itself: the serpent eating its own tail, devouring itself—the death throes of creation.”

“We've got to stop him,” Barb said. “There's no one else, and no more time.”

“What's the plan, chief?” Heck asked Jimmie.

Jimmie rubbed his face. Everyone at the table was looking at him, waiting for what came out of his mouth next. It occurred to him that he had been up for almost three days straight now. His mortgage was past due, his ribs and his back ached from the beating he took in the Atlanta hotel room. He was going to miss his window to pick up the load that his family desperately needed him to deliver. And the universe was teetering on the brink of collapse. He sighed. It all seemed too big, too much. He thought of Layla and the kids, and he pushed the exhaustion, the doubt, and the fear away.

“I ain't got one, yet,” Jimmie said. “But I'm damn sure we can improvise.”

 

TWENTY-TWO

“10-18”

They walked out of Buddy's just before 7
P.M
. The final brilliant struggle of sunlight was above the line of the horizon, and the sky had deepened to a gunmetal blue. The light was dying, and soon the shadows would come to feed upon it.

Everyone had wanted to get moving sooner—they had less than an hour before Norse's show went on the air, in the network studio in New York. However, there were parts of the plan that had to be hashed out, and the protection of the innocents remaining at Buddy's had to be organized.

Heck, Jimmie, Ava, Lovina, Max, Barb, Agnes, and Carl stood outside the roadhouse. Each was carrying weapons and bags of gear, and each was lost in thought. They all looked up at the darkening sky. “Everyone good?” Jimmie asked the group. “Everybody knows what they have to do, know our timetable?” The party nodded, gave a thumbs-up, or muttered in the affirmative.

“I know we're all scared,” Jimmie said. “This all seems so damn big, so important, and we're all so … not. I want you to think of someone on the other side of the world, someone you love or care for, someone who might be watching that show tonight. Think of them and do what you need to do. That's all I got for you. Let's move like we got a purpose, people.”

The party scattered.

Heck walked over to Jimmie. “I ain't scared,” he said, lighting up a Lucky Strike. “I'm looking forward to it.”

“Yeah,” Jimmie said. “I kind of thought you might be. That's why I'm sending you to do the job. You have the best chance of pulling it off, and you'll have the best time doing it.”

“When you met me, you got pissed because I cut loose, all Ted Nugent
Double Live Gonzo
, in that restaurant full of psychos, remember?” Heck said.

“Yeah, I do,” Jimmie said, as he slid some chaw into his cheek. “Right now, I need you to go a little
Double Live Gonzo
on these sumbitches.”

“I can do that,” Heck said. “I'm real good at it. Second nature.”

The men nodded to each other and then went their separate ways. Jimmie paused and turned. “Just bring your ass back,” he said. “I ain't done squiring you yet.” The biker raised a hand as he walked toward his motorcycle, now sitting beside Jimmie's battered semi. “I'll bring it back, boss,” Heck said without turning around. “My ass is my best feature.”

*   *   *

Lovina was huddled with Ava and Agnes near the semi, going over a few final details. Max hovered near the circle of the three, silently. Lovina sensed her and turned to look at her. She walked over to her. “You okay?” Lovina asked.

Max nodded, her lips pursed. “I am,” she said. “I … wanted to … wish you good luck.”

“You did?” Lovina's eyes were bright as she spoke, stepping a little closer to Max, who for all the world reminded her of a deer—skittish, gentle, almost too gentle for this world. “You stay close to Jimmie; he'll look after you. And don't get hurt. I hear you nearly died getting here. I don't want you doing that again, you hear me?”

“I do,” Max said. “I don't want you getting hurt, either.”

“I promise I won't, if you do the same,” Lovina said.

Max laughed. “Deal,” she said, and extended her hand. “Shake on it.” The handshake held; neither wanted to break it, the sensation of warm skin on warm skin, the power that moved from their fingertips to their arms and passed between them in their eyes. Max's red lips parted in a nearly audible gasp. Lovina's eyes held Max's, almost losing herself in them. Max felt as if her body were made of helium, and her stomach made of lead.

“Gotta go now,” Max said. “Um, world to save, and um, things.”

Lovina nodded, and the sphinxlike smile returned to her lips.

“Me, too,” she said. “I'll see you on the other side of this. Remember your promise.”

They walked away from each other. Neither looked back out of fear, a fear very different from any that could be summoned by serial killers, murderous shadows, or horned gods.

*   *   *

“Well,” Ava said to Agnes, “I guess this is it.” Ava looked up the high hill and the winding stone drive to the old burned husk of a house that called to her. “I shouldn't be the one here,” she said. “It should have been Alana. I'm … I'm not a good person, Agnes. I'm not even sure, most times, what kind of person I really am. I react—I don't think, I'm selfish, and superficial. I'm not the person for this. The person for this died in that field the first night we came here.”

Agnes took her by the shoulders. “Dear, none of us knows who we are and what we can do until the world forces us to. You've shown me all I need to know about you. If you can't trust yourself, then please, trust me. You will do well, Ava. Very well. Goodbye for now, dear, and thank you for all you've already done.” The two women parted, Agnes toward Jimmie's rig. Ava remained, alone now in the gathering dusk. She sighed, wiped her eyes, gathered her pack, and began walking toward the Maiden's house up on the hill.

“We'll hold down the fort,” Carl said to Jimmie as the trucker helped Agnes up into the cab of his idling rig. “We're all as ready as we can be. Those shadow bastards and BEKs won't know what hit them.”

“Good luck, guys!” Barb called out, as they drove away. “Go kick their butts!”

In the rig, Jimmie set the clock on his mounted laptop to give him a countdown till showtime. The clock said 7:21:00. Jimmie hit the start button, and the countdown began. He pushed Play on the digital player. Neil Young's “Rockin' in the Free world” tore its way out of the cab's speaker. Jimmie looked back at his own eyes in the reflection of the driver's-side window—gut check. Less than forty minutes to save the world, to save Layla, and Peyton, and his baby—to save his world. He jammed the rig into gear, felt it snarl.