Dark Vengeance Read online

  Sam plugged in. A barrage of static filled his ears.

  “What’s the plan there, Sheriff?” Bentley said.

  “You fly in close. I piss it off. We draw it away.”

  “That’s not much of a plan.”

  “I’m not much of a planner.”

  “Hold on to your ass.”

  The helicopter leapt off the ground and Sam rocked back against the bulkhead. He looped a cargo strap around one arm and faced out the door into the night. The piercing scream of the longarex cut through the soundproofed headset and over the thud of the rotors.

  Bentley nosed the aircraft over and turned left. Sam had his first aerial view of the fairgrounds disaster. The ring of fire was a perfect circle. Inside, small groups of people rushed back and forth in the fairground floodlights. Several bodies lay motionless in the open, in pools of blood. The longarex swept in for another attack and plucked a teenage boy from the ground midstride. The aircraft moved away.

  “We’re going the wrong way!” Sam yelled.

  “I need airspeed. I’m not tangling with that thing at a hover.”

  The helicopter accelerated across the countryside. Bentley threw it into a ninety-degree bank that flattened Sam against the bulkhead. The helicopter rolled out of the turn at over a hundred knots. Ahead, the circle of fire burned like a massive bull’s-eye. The longarex circled for another assault.

  “I’ll come in hot and low,” Bentley said. “Too fast for the flames, I hope. You’ll need to give that monster a tickle with the rifle.”

  Sam pulled the charging handle and loaded the first round. “You’ll need to get us close at this speed.”

  “Piece of cake. I haven’t played chicken in a while, but I used to be pretty good.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  The witches at the Petty place began a low, rhythmic chant.

  “We have to stop this while that thing is gone,” Theresa said.

  “You said there was a ritual?” Laura said to Aileen.

  “Yes, an amplifier. White magic that draws energy from within, not from without. Whatever gifts, whatever strengths a woman has, when joined with two others, can be supercharged.”

  “If we can get it to work,” Theresa said to Laura, “maybe we can turn you from a receiver into a transmitter, get your Triple S to send a message to those kids. Something to snap them out of it.”

  Laura looked over at the coven surrounding Dustin and the pale girl. Three against over a dozen. She had the gun, but one bullet wasn’t going to be much help. Anything was worth a try.

  “What do we do?”

  Aileen closed her eyes and concentrated. “We need a hair from each of us. And something to draw blood.”

  Theresa plucked a long red hair from her head and handed it to Aileen. “Be right back.” She vanished into the darkness.

  Laura handed Aileen a strand of hair. Aileen tied the two to one of hers and created a blonde/black/red triangle. Theresa returned with a sprig of thorny wild blackberry bush.

  “I guarantee this will draw blood,” she said, “from personal experience.”

  “Prick your thumbs,” Aileen said.

  The women passed the blackberry switch and cut the pads of their thumbs. Laura’s attempt dug deep and she jerked at the pain. She dropped the switch and gave the sides of her thumb a squeeze. Bright-red blood oozed out of the cut.

  “Now, thumbs together,” Aileen said.

  The three pressed their thumbs tip to tip. Aileen lassoed their thumbs with the bound strands of hair and pulled the little triangle tight.

  “Now focus on your strongest emotion. That’s the gateway to the power within you.”

  The women pressed their thumbs together tighter. A drop of comingled blood dripped from the center and spattered on the leaf litter.

  “I’ll try to remember the incantation,” Aileen said. “Join us in blood, bind us in spirit. Let the powers of each strengthen us all.”

  Theresa focused on Dustin, her love for him that trumped even her sense of self-preservation, that maternal bond that had wrapped around her spine and become her defining drive from the moment of conception.

  Aileen summoned the massive sense of betrayal and violation: her white magic turned black, her refuge from the world overrun by people bent on doing evil, the two women she offered a helping hand chopping it off instead.

  Laura felt for the children, the innocent victims, used and deceived by the women entrusted with their care, now lost and confused, the life bleeding from them to fuel a monster’s hunt and the witches’ twisted notion of revenge.

  Something ignited deep inside Laura. It lit like a ball of fire, a swirling mass of energy somewhere around her stomach. She caught her breath.

  “Oh my,” Aileen said.

  “Dustin!” Theresa whimpered.

  It wasn’t just her. All three felt something.

  “Now,” Aileen said. “Tell the children. Hurry.”

  Simple, direct, to the point. One command. One imperative. Shouted out in the mental version of her most authoritative “teacher voice”. Laura sent out one word.

  “RUN!”

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  The longarex and the helicopter closed on the fairgrounds from opposite directions. The chopper blew past four bodies hung in a tree like macabre Christmas ornaments. Sam took aim across the rifle’s sights. The handgrip slipped against his sweating palm.

  The wall of fire came up fast. Tendrils shot out at the helicopter, but barely grazed the tail rotor. The longarex dived in from the other side for a head-on collision. Sam held his breath.

  At the last second, Bentley gave the controls the slightest flick. The helicopter rose and snapped a right roll without turning. The longarex flew under the nose and into Sam’s sights.

  He pulled the trigger. A stream of hot lead poured down the longarex’s spine. The beast shuddered under the impact. It screeched and spun away from the fairgrounds. The helicopter blasted through the far side of the fire ring.

  “Tickled it,” Sam said.

  Bentley climbed and banked right. “Where is it?”

  Sam grabbed the edge of the open door and scanned the sky. The longarex was on their tail and closing.

  “Behind us and looking for payback.”

  The helicopter nosed over and accelerated. Countryside flashed by in a blur. The longarex matched the speed and more.

  “Still gaining,” Sam said.

  A shudder rippled through the aircraft. “She’s maxed out at 280,” Bentley said. “Nothing could fly that fast.”

  “Take us west of town,” Sam said. “I have an idea.”

  The longarex gained as the helicopter changed course. Sam stood between the pilot and copilot seats. He pointed down at an electrical substation.

  “Dive on that,” Sam said. “Cross it as low as you can.”

  “I’ll run the landing gear across the wires.”

  “Then climb like hell.”

  The substation came up fast. Treetops slapped against the landing gear as Bentley brought the helicopter in low. Sam pulled the two TASERs from his pockets—40,000 volts a piece ought to make one hell of a short circuit. He aimed them straight down. The longarex shrieked just yards from the tail.

  Sam led the substation’s arrival and fired. Four wires raced out and pinged into transformers. He let the TASERs fly out into space.

  The tail rotor cleared the edge of the substation as the roof exploded in a shower of white-hot sparks and flame. The impact rocked the helicopter on its nose. Bentley struggled for control as he put it into a climb. The longarex disappeared in the fireworks with an agonized squeal.

  Praise Jesus, Sam thought.

  The longarex burst from the inferno, slowed but unscathed. It found the helicopter in the darkness and pursued.

  “Son of a bitch,” Sam said.

  “That’s no cry of victory.”

  Sunlight, Sam thought. Theresa said only sunlight would kill it.

  “Sunlight will fry
this thing,” Sam said.

  “That’s an hour away.”

  “Down here. How high can this fly?”

  “Twenty thousand feet, give or take, but without oxygen and heated suits—”

  “Take her up. We need to meet the dawn.”

  The helicopter’s frame moaned as it began a rapid climb. Bentley gave a few dash gauges a concerned inspection. A warning light flickered and went out.

  The longarex pursued. The gap closed. The horizon fell away, replaced by stars.

  The air rushing in the door turned arctic cold. Sam shivered and his hands turned bright red. The longarex screeched and Sam felt it in his spine.

  Sam came up short of breath as the higher altitude oxygen levels dropped.

  “Breathe deep,” Bentley said, as if reading his mind.

  Sam peered out past the tail rotor. Icy wind blasted against his neck. The longarex looked like it was laboring to keep up speed. Maybe it was the cold, maybe it was the air, maybe it was the distance from the earth where it drew its power. Whatever the reason, the furious creature was having second thoughts.

  The far horizon rippled in a rosy hue.

  “No way in hell,” Sam said. “Not now.”

  He grabbed the assault rifle on the floor. He could barely close his frozen fingers around it, hardly feel the metal and plastic at all. The gun shook in his shivering arms. Damn it. All he needed to do was shoot the tail rotor off about now.

  He laid the gun along the edge of the doorway, pointing back, and pressed his weight against it. The longarex was losing ground. He angled the gun’s barrel down an inch and squeezed the trigger.

  A hail of rounds spit from the barrel and peppered the longarex. Anger flashed in its eyes. Its wings beat faster, and it renewed the chase.

  “Good doggie,” Sam said.

  The helicopter crossed into an artificial sunrise. The yellow bird flashed bright as a phoenix in the premature arrival of a new day.

  The longarex crossed the day/night boundary. Sunlight hit its skin. The tips of its wings flared into flames. Its head reared back in shock and pain. Fire raced across its wings, two blazing sheets racing towards its body. The longarex reared back and, for a second, hung in space. Flames engulfed its body and ran up its neck. The longarex screamed and became a bright-orange blossom in the sky. The fireball evaporated and black ash snowed earthward.

  “Bent,” Sam said. “We did it.”

  No answer. He pulled his frozen body upright. Bentley sagged sideways, passed out against the cockpit door.

  Chapter Sixty

  “Bentley!” Sam shouted into his headset.

  Bentley didn’t move. The altitude must have gotten to him, the low oxygen.

  Sam tried to pull himself up. The rifle slipped from his numb fingers. He grabbed for it, but his reaction time was glacial. It slid out the open door into space.

  “Son of a bitch.” His words were slurred, slow. He felt a little giddy, the last thing in the world he should have felt.

  The altitude was getting to him too. In no time, he’d be out like a light, and this helicopter was going to land itself. Inverted.

  As if his thoughts had convinced it, the helicopter nosed forward a few degrees and slipped right. Sam remembered how Bentley would always ridicule fixed-wing pilots about how planes flew themselves but helicopters had to be flown. No one was doing any flying here.

  He pulled himself up along the back of the copilot’s seat. His head swam, and he was halfway to passing out, throwing up, or both. The helicopter bounced once and Bentley’s head banged against the pilot’s door. His chin rolled down to his chest.

  Sam struggled over the console in a sloppy, infantile crawl. The soles of his shoes flicked switches he hoped were unimportant. He flopped into the copilot’s seat. His leg nudged the cyclic stick in the center of the floor. The helicopter lurched right. He floated a bit out of his seat. Both hands grabbed at the stick. His frozen fingers wouldn’t grip it. He clamped it between his wrists and jerked it to the center.

  The aircraft overcorrected and rolled left. Sam bumped it closer to level.

  His brain was at half speed, like he was about to drift off to sleep. He tried to remember something, anything, about flying a helicopter. God knows, Bentley used to go on about it enough, and he had done this once, a hell of a long time ago.

  He looked at the gauges. He couldn’t focus on the numbers. It was all a blur. There was an emergency procedure. To land. What the hell…

  The collective, he remembered. Power. Altitude. A stick like a parking brake. He lolled his head around in a lazy circle. There it was, to the left of his seat.

  The aircraft shuddered again. Something red and fuzzy lit up on the dashboard. An angry siren wailed in his earphones.

  Up is up, down is down” Bentley had told him. Even an MP can remember that.

  Sam reached over and pushed down on the collective. It didn’t move. The aircraft rolled right again and he jammed his frozen hand on the cyclic to steady it. He pressed the collective down again. It moved an inch.

  He looked right and saw that Bentley’s leg was wedged under the dual collective at the pilot’s seat. Sam reared up and then dropped the weight of his body against the control. The dual control shoved Bentley’s leg out of the way.

  Sam’s stomach jumped up his throat as the aircraft began to fall. A white blur in the dash, he guessed the altimeter, started a rapid counterclockwise spin. His head nodded forward and his eyes closed. He jerked back awake.

  The helicopter nosed over and accelerated the dive. The doors shook in their frames. Behind him something tore from the wall and flew out the side door.

  Sam couldn’t remember what he was supposed to do. There was a landing procedure, but he’d never done it, never even understood it. A way to bleed off airspeed. And at the rate they were going, there was going to be a hell of a lot of bleeding to do.

  The worst kind of bleeding, if Bentley didn’t come to in time.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Laura’s one word message got through.

  The children around the circle snapped awake. Almost as one, they sat straight up. The white mist above them popped out of existence. The witches in the circle spun in all directions as the power of the sabbat vanished.

  “What the hell?” the mayor said.

  The children bolted like an exploding firework, streaming away from the ritual in every direction, crashing into the woods and through the front yard.

  Dustin and the pale girl struggled against their bonds, yelping as they tried to pull their glued hands apart. Tammy and Janice jumped forward and pinned them back against the uprights.

  “Get them back here!” the mayor yelled at the coven.

  The women ran after the scattering children. But the children had a lead, and the bulky, hooded cloaks restricted each witch’s movements. The kids’ small forms were quickly lost in the shadows of the trees.

  Laura, Aileen and Theresa broke their bond. They turned to the remaining witches and their two child captives.

  “Three on three,” Laura said.

  “I’ll take those odds,” Theresa added.

  “Let’s get your boy,” Aileen said.

  The three rushed from the woods. Mayor Maggie ran behind the clasped hands of the two restrained children like it was a castle battlement. Janice and Tammy wrapped an arm around each child’s neck.

  “Dustin!” Theresa yelled.

  “Mom!”

  Tammy yanked her arm tight and choked off his cry.

  The pale girl trembled at the upright, eyes wide and confused.

  Maggie extended both hands across the children’s arms and pointed to the base of the circle around the uprights. She shouted a strange, atonal chant.

  A ring of fire burst to life. The flames soared ten feet in the air. A wave of searing heat blew out across the yard. The women reeled and shielded their faces.

  “Too late,” Maggie said. “It’s all in motion. The longarex will return for
these prizes and you can’t stop it. After that, nothing can.”

  Laura noticed the locket around Maggie’s neck. There was no mistaking it for anything else. It was hers, well, Sarah Hutchington’s, the one Laura had offered up to guide the ghost girls to their mother. Laura seethed with indignation. She pulled the gun from her waistband and aimed it at Maggie through the flickering flames.

  “Laura, no! You’ll hit Dustin!” Theresa cried.

  Emotion had already steamrolled reason. Maggie’s head was in Laura’s front sights. A clean shot. She fired.

  The bullet sailed true at Maggie. It hit the wall of fire with a clank, like it had struck an iron door, and fell to the ground.

  Maggie laughed and smiles broke out on Tammy’s and Janice’s faces. They relaxed their choke holds on the children.

  “Barrier spells are our specialty,” Maggie said. “Nothing gets through the flames. Have a seat. The longarex will be back soon for dessert.”

  Laura threw the empty pistol at the wall of fire in frustration. It bounced on the dirt. She racked her brain for a way through the wall. They could go over, if there was any way to do it.

  Theresa looked at Dustin. Both had tears in their eyes. Aileen stared daggers at her smiling roommates. She stepped over to Laura and turned her back to the witches.

  “Maggie must have what’s called a talisman,” Aileen said. “She’s channeling too much power between the children, the barrier and the longarex. She could never do all that without one.”

  “And if she loses it?”

  “No more barrier. The talisman could be anything, especially something with a supernatural history.”

  Laura gritted her teeth at the insult added to injury. “It’s the locket around her neck.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me on this one.”

  “It’s on the wrong side of the barrier.”

  “Only for us,” Laura said.

  Theresa joined them. “We have to do something!”