For A Few Souls More (Heaven's Gate Book 3) (24 page)

“The trees!” he shouted, “be careful of...” there was another crashing sound and Daniel vanished to be replaced by a solid trunk and the wet patter of blood.

Kane stared at the newly appeared tree as the procession fled in panic. In the bark of its trunk he could see Daniel’s face, the skin dripping, loose and peppered with needles. “The trees,” the face said, a trail of sap dribbling from the corner of its uneven mouth.

Behind Kane, the forest was filled with the sound of more tree bombs being set off, the panicked procession having left the trail, running blindly into the forest and into mortal danger.

“The trail,” he shouted, “stick to the trail.”

But nobody heard him above the sound of screaming and the creak of branches.

7.

J
ONES HEARD THE
screaming as he entered the forest. It didn’t delay him, the Dominion of Circles wouldn’t be the place it was if not for the sound of death and agony.

His heightened sense of his place within the forest soon showed him its secret as he became aware of the trees multiplying around him. What was barely discernible to someone with normal sight, distracted by all the other sights, was clear to him. He stuck to the trail, riding fast, the sound of screaming getting louder and louder.

8.

P
REACHER TURNED AT
the sound of chaos on the trail behind him and he lost his footing as the horse yanked at the reins, the leather slipping from his grips.

“Get back here, damn you!” he shouted as it jumped over him and ran at a pace he hadn’t thought it still capable of after being so mistreated. It was running back the way they had come, either wanting to leave the forest or drawn by the sound of others, he couldn’t tell which.

“Fucking thing,” he cursed, reaching for his gun. He’d have it dead at his feet before he let it run wild again.

Then a tree sprouted only a foot or two away from him, disrupting his aim, the bullet firing wild into the forest as his ride cleared a bend in the trail and vanished from his sight.

He sat there for a moment, wondering whether to go on alone or give pursuit. The idea of continuing along the trail without protection didn’t please him, nor did the notion of travelling on foot for the foreseeable future. His legs were short and Jones was on his trail. “Damn it,” he cursed, keeping his gun in his hand and moving as quickly as he could back along the trail.

9.

A
RNO’S PEOPLE WERE
in complete chaos, the neat procession lost as its members had run in all directions, uncertain of where the danger was coming from. Many of them found themselves prey to the tree bombs, their bodies extinguished by the brute force of the wood and the sharp piercing needles, their souls torn from their bodies to make the slow journey back to the Fundament.

Arno and Veronica, being at the front, had stuck to the trail, Arno shouting at his fleeing followers, trying to get them to stand their ground until they could discover what was attacking them.

Kane, some distance further behind, was trying to do the same.

As plentiful as the tree bombs were, many managed to avoid them, mainly because they had been triggered by others running ahead. The chaos lasted a minute or so, each new eruption furthering it as the crowds kept shifting direction, pushed back by the sight and sound of another of their friends dying in front of them.

Eventually what was left of the group, no more than a hundred souls or so, gathered once more on the trail, the danger now understood.

Arno looked ahead on the trail and saw something running towards them, a man... no, as she drew closer he could tell it was a woman, despite her beard and the leather straps that bound her painfully thin body. There was a bridle in her mouth and she gagged on it as she ran towards them, her eyes wild, her gait unsteady.

“It’s alright!” he said, holding his hands out to her. “If you stay on the trail I think you’re safe.”

She fought him as he grabbed at her. “Help me!” he said to Veronica, grimacing at the sight of the woman, her body little more than bones, her skin covered in mud and faeces. “She’s running wild, if she strays off the path she may get caught by one of the trees.”

Veronica took the woman’s arm, both of them trying to calm her down as she sobbed and roared against the bridle between her teeth.

“Get it out of her mouth,” said Veronica, “she’s choking.”

Arno tore at the straps that held the bridle in place, finally freeing it from the woman’s mouth. She gave a roar of animal anger and then a shout that was even more disturbing for its clarity. “Don’t touch me!” she screamed. “Don’t you dare touch me!”

Kane became aware of the sound of hooves behind him and just managed to avoid Henry Jones as he galloped past. “Careful!” he called after him, “the trees can kill.”

But Jones didn’t hear him. Nor the sound of the other members of the procession as they moved to avoid him. There was only one thing that existed in his world and it lay just a few short yards ahead. He might so easily have missed her, she was thinner and her scent was mixed with the dirt that covered her, but that scream, the sound of her voice. Harmonium Jones, his wife, even now under attack no doubt by the man they called Preacher.

“We were just trying to help,” Arno insisted, letting go of Harmonium.

A figure appeared by the side of the road, unnoticed by either of them. One minute the edge of the forest was empty and then a man was standing there, moving towards them. A tree reared up next to him and he fell to one side.

Then a gunshot rang out and Arno saw a small red hole appear in Veronica’s forehead. She stumbled back, her eyes rolling upwards.

“No!” Arno cried, reaching out towards her even as the sound of a second shot bounced between the branches of the forest. He felt nothing, just a sudden blindness as he toppled on top of her.

“Not them!” cried the man who had appeared at the edge of the forest. “You stupid bloody idiot. It wasn’t them.” With a sob, the man vanished once more, returning to the room where he had been watching these events unfold.

“Harmonium,” said Jones, jumping from his rakh. “I’m here honey, it’s me, I’ve got you.”

He gathered her in his arms, pressing his face against her matted, dirty beard and whispering his love into her ears. “You’re safe now,” he said, “I killed those sons of bitches. You’re coming with me.”

She was like a deadweight in his arms, the shock and misery of her last few months suddenly overwhelming her. He carried her to his rakh, placed her across its back and mounted the saddle.

The rest of the procession were gathering around him now, staring past him at the dead bodies of Arno and Veronica.

“Get out of my way,” he said, his gun extended towards them, “or I’ll kill every last one of you.”

They didn’t need to be told twice, parting as he rode back the way he had come.

“Who was that?” one of them asked as Kane finally caught up, shoving his way through the crowd and coming to a halt by the bodies of Arno and Veronica.

Dead, he thought, looking down at them. As simple as that. Now the group, what was left of it, was his.

He looked up to see a tiny man walking towards them, his eyes nervously looking past Kane to the trail beyond.

“Has he gone?” the small man asked, scarcely able to believe he had come this close to Henry Jones, the husband of the woman he had so badly misused, and lived.

“And who are you, demon?” asked Kane.

“Demon?” the small man asked. “Me? I may not look much but I’m as mortal as you are.”

Kane stared at him. He supposed it was possible, he hardly looked normal anymore, after all.

“Has he gone?” the small man asked again, peering around Kane’s stomach like a child hiding behind its mother’s skirts. “The man’s a monster.”

Kane didn’t need telling on that score. As much as it might suit his plans, the rider had gunned down Arno and Veronica without a moment’s hesitation.

“His name’s Henry Jones,” the small man said. “He’s taking over the Dominion and I for one don’t intend to hang around long enough to feel the results.”

“Where are you heading?” Kane asked.

“Place called Wormwood,” the small man said. “It’s a gateway to the mortal world. Figured it was the safest place to go considering.”

“You know where it is?”

“Sure, it ain’t far, couple of days at most. Why, you want to come?”

“You’ll show us the way.” It wasn’t a question, Kane wasn’t about to hand over control of the group, not now that he finally had it.

“Sure,” the small man said, “no problem. Happy to help.”

“What’s your name?” Kane asked.

The small man nearly said ‘Preacher’ but stopped himself. He had left a few graves behind him on the trail that could be linked to that name. Perhaps it was better to let it fall by the wayside and go back to the name he had always used, back before a bullet in the head had sent him to the Dominion and a new life. “It’s been so long since I’ve used it,” he said, extending his hand and shaking Kane’s, “but I’m glad to make your acquaintance. You can call me Obeisance Hicks.”

10.

A
BOVE THE DEPLETED
crowd, turning and twisting in the air like smoke on the breeze, the shades of Arno and Veronica intertwined.

“She was right,” Arno said, his words almost as intangible as his body. “She always said my charitable nature would be the death of me.”

“You can only die once,” Veronica replied, “isn’t that what we thought?”

“This doesn’t feel like dying,” Arno admitted, though he became aware of something, some force, pulling at him as he rose ever higher on the wind. “It feels like changing.”

“I can’t hold you,” Veronica cried, “my fingers... my body... I’m nothing.”

“No,” Arno replied, “you’ll never be that.”

And they dispersed, on towards the Fundament.

WHAT AM I DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE REVOLUTION?

(An excerpt from the book by Patrick Irish)

A
ND SO, TWO
lessons were learned. Firstly, that casual, heartless pleasure I had taken in watching the stories unfold beneath me, as if they were nothing but fictions, was gone. It should never have been there in the first place. Arno and Veronica were dead, their souls moved on to the Fundament to be reborn in some other body, some other life. Even though they would exist again they wouldn’t do so together, they wouldn’t remember the people they had once been. There was no more Arno and no more Veronica, they would be fresh starts, ignorant of the love they’d known before. And for what? What purpose had their death served?

As a writer—and yes, I’m bringing this back to fiction even after having cursed myself for doing that in the first place, because it is the only frame of reference I truly understand—I had always condemned others for filling their stories with needless deaths. Characters expunged purely to make the reader feel miserable or sad seemed to me to be the laziest of actions. When you held the lives of your world in your hands then didn’t it give you the freedom to make them mean something? I am not saying that any worthwhile drama can be wrought without a little misery, but why kill just for the sake of it? What are you trying to achieve? Can you not manipulate your reader more cleverly than simply slaughtering those you’ve created? Justify all you do in the name of telling your story.

But of course the real world doesn’t subscribe to such dictates. Just as nobody is ever really able to call the story of life finished until death itself draws the line, people come and go pointlessly. They are not important. We are all the main characters in our own lives, but sometimes we have to accept that we do not have a starring role. Our narratives are blunt, boring and brief.

I had become distracted from the real questions I should have been asking, drawn into the tale of Henry Jones and the noble mission of Arno and Veronica. But they were not where the main action lay. That was in the town of Wormwood, the focal point of everything, the trigger that was soon to be pulled. No more viewing purely for the pleasure of it, from now on I would simply follow the threads of that town until their inevitable, catastrophic end.

But what of the second lesson? I had finally found my way into the world I was viewing. I had fallen through the floor of the Observation Lounge and onto the side of the road, narrowly avoiding death from one of the tree bombs. I had been there, for all the good it had done. I had cast no influence, I had been no more than a sobbing witness, but I had proven that it was possible. And if that were the case, could I really be nothing more than a spectator as the visions continued?

I wondered on that as I returned my attention to Wormwood.

CHAPTER NINE