Warrior (The Word and the Void) Read online

  He had no idea where he was supposed to go, how long to wait or what to expect. So, he went to his favorite bench, his resting place for when he needed to sit and think. No one was there, and he was able to claim the bench for himself as the last of the light was leached from the sky and the world about him turned dark.

  He gripped his black staff tightly and waited.

  Waited some more.

  Come on, come on!

  But nothing happened, and no one appeared. The darkness deepened, the park emptied of occupants, and his thoughts drifted.

  He thought about Anne and the kids, wondering if they were at her aunt’s yet, wondering if his wife might have called. But she would have called him on his cell, which he carried in his pocket; he could feel it pressing against his thigh. There was no reason he wouldn’t have felt it vibrate, had she rung him. But he worried anyway. His family was everything, and he could not help thinking of what it would mean if anything happened to them.

  “The demon counts on that, you know,” a familiar voice said.

  Soft, whispery and feminine – the voice from his dream. He didn’t look for the speaker. It was too dark to see much by now anyway. “I suppose it does,” he replied. “Hard for me to pretend I don’t care, though.”

  He caught a flicker of light out of the corner of his eye, and then a creature of small size and little substance was standing in front of him. She was no bigger than a human child, but was something else entirely. Her face was chalk white save for her rosebud mouth and eyes wreathed in dark circles. Her hair was wispy and oddly colorless, framing her haunted features and trailing from her bare limbs. She wore diaphanous clothing from which small bits of light emanated, floating through the fabric as if through water, living embodiments of something Jack could only guess at.

  “You’re Ineke, aren’t you?” he asked. He took a further moment to study her. “Are you a fairy creature?”

  “I am a tatterdemalion,” she answered, moving closer. “The Lady has sent me to you as a gift. I am to be your guide and, for the time I am allotted, a voice of reason should your darker nature surface. Which I fully expect it will.”

  Ineke. The name in his dream. He glanced down again at her clothing, at the things moving within its rippling surface, fascinated. She seemed to be little more than an image projected on the night air.

  Her eyes flicked down to where he was looking. “I am made of the memories and dreams of human children that have died young and been forgotten. Bits and scraps of their lives are all that are left behind of them, and magic shapes and binds them to me until I am no more. Then they will scatter to seek new forms in which to reside and provide nourishment. But I am them, and they me, until then.”

  She glanced down at herself. “You see what remains of them and how they have become me.” She paused, looking up at him again. “Your own life is not so different, Jack McCall. You are in your heart and in your essence the sum of your memories and dreams. Do you not feel it is so?”

  He did. “Where are you to guide me?” he asked.

  “To the demon’s lair, but more importantly, to yourself. To a better understanding of how you must prepare for the confrontation awaiting you – for the challenge you face, and the fears and doubts you harbor that will hinder your efforts to withstand the power of a creature of the Void. You will be tested, you know.”

  “Did you send me a dream this afternoon?” he asked, and quickly described it. He could not seem to help himself. “Did you tell me that the demon has my family?”

  She regarded him solemnly. “I sent no dreams. I lack such power. Dreams are the province of the Lady.”

  “Would she have sent me such a dream?”

  “You are a Knight of the Word. Your dreams tell you of the future you will face if you fail in the present. Perhaps you are testing yourself. Have you fears and doubts you cannot manage?”

  He frowned. “None, if my family is safe.” He hesitated. “Wait.”

  He pulled out his cell phone, checked it and waited. It rang through to Anne’s answering service, and he left a hurried message for her to call him back.

  He put the cell away. “I can’t be sure. If I knew, maybe . . . .”

  “What is true is that however well you prepare yourself, you can never be sure of anything where demons are concerned. You must know it will not let you escape so easily. It will find a way it believes it can break you, and you will not necessarily see it coming. The nature of your challenge requires that you be ready, which means you must be true to your oath as a Knight of the Word and not betray the trust of the Lady or the code by which you have lived.”

  He thought it over. “All right. I see what you mean. I will welcome whatever help you can provide. Starting now.”

  Her taut, parchment white face brightened. “I am at your service, Jack McCall. But we don’t have much time.”

  “Because?”

  She gave him a troubled look. “Because it probably already knows what you’ve done with your family.”

  Jack felt his chest constrict. “How could it know something like that? I only made the decision yesterday evening.”

  “Well.” Ineke looked perplexed. “It’s a demon. Demons find things out whether you want them to or not.”

  “Then Anne is in danger? And Mila and Jack, Jr.?”

  “It would be best if you acted quickly to help protect them.”

  “How do I do this?” He spat it out, suddenly frantic. “How do I help them?”

  “Confront the demon. Put an end to it.”

  “Now? Right now?”

  “Now would best. Are you ready to do it?”

  Jack felt as if his world was collapsing around him. This was not supposed to have happened. He was supposed to have made Anne and the children safe by sending them away. Apparently, he had guessed wrong. As a result, his choices of what to do about the demon, and how soon to act against it, were reduced to one.

  “Where is it?” he asked wearily.

  Ineke turned away. “I will show you.”

  * * * * *

  They walked together through Lincoln Park, traveling south under an umbrella of hardwood limbs and in the shadow of towering conifers. The park had turned dark, the sky bright with moon and stars. No clouds lingered to disturb the firmament’s majesty, the air had gone warmer, and the winds had died away almost completely. There was a hush to the park, a quietness that left the faint sounds of cars and voices and doors slamming the only indicators of life beyond the park’s boundaries. And even these seemed to belong to another time and place, momentary interruptions in the otherwise deep stillness.

  “Where are we going?” Jack asked. He thought he already knew, but he didn’t want to speak the words. He was aware of his hands clasping his staff too tightly, and he forced himself to loosen his grip and breathe deeply to relieve the pressure in his chest. If anything were to happen to Anne or the children, he didn’t know what he would do. The possibility haunted him, as had the cancer he had been diagnosed with all those years ago. It left him emptied of every consideration but finding a way to protect them from the demon’s threat.

  Ineke’s small face glanced up at him. “It’s not far.”

  The demon was a monster. It possessed no moral center and no conscience. It served the Void, and by doing so had abandoned both long ago. It did what it was told to do and never questioned the reasons. It commanded tremendous power, magic that might have no recognizable boundaries, no limits, and no control. Jack had sensed all this in his conversation with the Lady, all without being told – a sort of understanding that went with his agreement to serve as a Knight of the Word.

  But the reality was overwhelmingly different. It was one thing to sense a possibility in the abstract and another entirely to encounter it as reality. He had thought he could overcome any challenge he might face, having overcome a dragon and a cancer. But both seemed long ago now and far away, and the immediacy of the threat from this frock-coated demon was both devastating an
d inevitable in a way he had not anticipated.

  Suddenly he was something he had not been since he was a boy.

  He was afraid.

  “How can I defeat this demon?” he asked Ineke after long moments of silence.

  She pursed her lips. “It will lie and attempt to deceive you. It will use whatever you fear most against you. It will seek to break you down before it attacks you, and then it will use its magic to smash apart your defenses and destroy you.” She paused. “You must not allow it. You must resist.”

  “With my staff?”

  “The staff will help. It serves as sword and shield, and it can give you the means to destroy your demon enemy. But it is your courage and strength of will that will aid you most.”

  She slowed and stopped. They were just within the fringe of the trees at the north end of the park. Ahead, from beyond a rise they were approaching, he could see the roofs and lighted windows of the neighborhood homes bordering Beach Drive. He caught himself as he realized he was standing in front of the hill on which he had stood in his dream when he had viewed the demon’s haven.

  “The old Winston house,” he murmured. Just as he had feared. Just as shown to him in his dream of earlier that afternoon. He wondered at once if Anne was inside.

  “The demon waits for you,” Ineke murmured back. Had he spoken the words aloud without realizing it? “It may have friends who will aid it. Creatures of the Void, come over from the darkness to give it an edge in its battle. They will try to distract you. They will try to turn you from your efforts to reach their leader. Do not let them do so; cast them away from you.”

  “Cast them away?” What was the tatterdemalion talking about?

  “See them for what they are. Demons and demon-kind disguise themselves to hide the truth of what they are and pretend at being what they are not. Remember this. Protect yourself from the lies and deceits that cloak them all.”

  He shook his head. “How can I do this? All by myself, how can I survive what’s coming?”

  She reached up and brushed his cheek with her small white fingers. “The Lady chose you because she saw in you something she has not seen in others. The demon you face is a killer of Knights of the Word. It is a hunter of our champions, and it has slain many. Did it not tell you this itself?”

  It had, Jack remembered, there at SeaTac Airport, that first time it had appeared before him and revealed itself. He understood now. “This is what she was waiting for,” he whispered. “For this assassin to come seeking me so that, where others had failed, I might succeed. She thinks I can do what all those other Knights of the Word could not. But what if she is wrong?”

  Ineke shook her head slowly, her feathery white hair a whiff of smoke against the night. She paused for a long time, her eyes boring into him, her features composed. “Do not ask yourself that question, Jack McCall. Do not even think it, or you are lost.”

  Jack stared in hopeless understanding. Ask it, and you have already lost, the tatterdemalion was telling him. Ask it, and you were ceding ground you could not afford to relinquish. Put aside your doubts and fears. Trust in who and what you are and in the magic you wield.

  His cell vibrated against his thigh and he pulled it from his pocket, glancing at the ID. Anne! He triggered the talk button at once. “Anne?”

  “She’s right here with me, Jack,” the demon said. “But she’s not taking any calls. Care to leave a message?”

  Jack went cold clear through.

  Chapter 11

  The demon had known right away what Jack McCall would do, able to read his thinking as easily as if it were its own. McCall would attempt to spirit his family to safety – to put them beyond reach – while he fulfilled his obligations as a Knight of the Word. He had sworn an oath, and he was the sort of man who felt that such oaths should be kept. With his family out of the way and presumably hidden from his adversary, he would stand against the demon in battle.

  A futile effort, of course. He would end up just as dead as the others. He would end his life begging for mercy. But it was the gesture that counted to such men as McCall. It was the carrying out of his duty – his adherence to the promise he had made, strengthened by the knowledge that he had acted with honor – that mattered above all else. With his family protected, he would not waver, though it cost him his life.

  The logical course of action was to not give him the satisfaction of knowing his beloved family was safe, but to make sure they were not.

  It was easy enough to take the steps necessary to make that happen. An intercept on his phones – cell and home – to monitor his calls. A late-night visit to the limousine service to arrange for a look at the assignments, followed by a further visit to the driver’s home to arrange for him to be replaced. Then nothing more to do but to wait for McCall to deliver his wife and children to the limo service where he would confidently place them in the hands of his enemy to be spirited away.

  But even demons can misjudge.

  Anne McCall was not some simpering, easily frightened victim who would fall apart at the first sign of trouble. Long before she had met Jack, she had been a strong, determined young woman who had excelled at all levels in both academics and sports.

  In college, she had been attacked, beaten and violated, and had spent two years afterwards recovering from the trauma. Therapy and an intense determination to find a way back had allowed her to heal. Even the failure of the authorities to identify and catch the perpetrators had not stopped her. Even spending the entire first year of her recovery not speaking had not deterred her. She was unwilling to concede anything to her fear and loathing. She refused to allow one experience – no matter how traumatizing – to define the rest of her life.

  She was young when she had attained her PhD in park management and forestry. She was on a fast track to a leadership position when Jack had met her, and afterwards when she had been offered the job in Seattle as an Assistant Director of Parks and Recreation for half the city.

  She had overcome a series of difficulties with those who sought to stop her from reaching her goals, and a few that might have derailed her entirely had she allowed them to do so. She had dealt with men and women who disliked her – some intensely – just because she was successful and personable. Some viewed her as an obstacle or potential rival that needed to be eliminated or discredited.

  Such was the world in which we all live, but she was never one to think of herself as a victim.

  Now she was a wife who wondered what her husband was keeping from her, and what danger it was she faced because of it. Whatever the answer, she had gone into protective mode – a mother hard bent on keeping her children safe. Because she understood that whatever risk Jack was running might well impact her own safety and that of her son and daughter, she quickly fell into a mindset that caused her to be both wary and suspicious of everything about her.

  So when she had been sitting in the limousine office for almost five hours and the driver assigned to transport them to Portland had not arrived, she began to suspect that something was wrong.

  “Excuse me?” she said to the man behind the dispatcher’s desk. “What’s happened to our driver?”

  He glanced up from his computer and then down again. “Delayed. He’ll be here soon.”

  She stared at him, decidedly uneasy. His abrupt manner, his failure to provide her with any real information about why she was still sitting there with her children when they should already be on the road, and his insistence on staring at the same three sheets of paper for the entire time she had been there, were evidence enough of his intentions.

  “Why was he delayed?” she pressed.

  The man looked up again, held her gaze and shrugged. “Something about a family problem. He shouldn’t be long.”

  I don’t believe that, she thought. He hasn’t taken a call for the last hour. This is a large service with several dozen cars. So no one is checking in? No other customers are looking for service?

  None of it felt right. She pulled
out her cell phone and called Jack. No answer. No, wait. She glanced at the phone. No service! In this office, where communications were essential? She was suddenly certain that whatever Jack was protecting his family from was going to appear on the doorstep of the very soon, and it was not likely to take the shape of the driver they were expecting. It was a debatable, perhaps entirely irrational conclusion, but she was also quite certain that if she stayed around to find out more, she was going to regret it. Whatever else she did, she had to bundle up the children and get out of there, now.

  But how could she manage any sort of flight with a small girl and a baby? If she could get her hands on a car . . . No, she hadn’t the first idea of how to do that. A taxi? No, she would be stopped from leaving.

  Wouldn’t she?

  “Excuse me,” she said to the man behind the desk. “Can I use your phone to make a call?”

  The man shook his head. “Business calls only.”

  “But I want to call my husband.”

  He pointed. “You have a cell phone in your hand. Use it.”

  “It doesn’t work.”

  He rose and walked over to her. His expressionless, dead eyes were fixed on her. “Let me have a look.”

  She gave it to him, and he fiddled with it for a few minutes. “Hmmm.” He walked back to his desk, sat down, fiddled some more and then set it down in front of him. “Seems to be broken. What’s your husband’s number? I’ll make the call for you. We can forget regulations just this once.”

  She nodded her acquiescence, thinking they should already have his number in their records, but not saying so. He punched in the number on his phone, listened for a few minutes, then spoke a few words she couldn’t hear into the receiver and hung up. “It went straight to voice mail.”