Sinner (37 page)

A perimeter had already been established around the valley with seventeen carefully placed teams dug in and armed. Only two of these teams were responsible for the roads. The rest had taken up positions that protected any traffic in or out, on foot or by horse. They had enough rifles trained on Paradise to make the president pucker right up, no doubt about that.

“Yes, of course, give time for negotiations, we've all heard that,” she said. “But we all also know that Johnny's not going to negotiate. Not without some juice.”

“We'll force him to negotiate!”

The National Guard were being led on the ground by a Ranger battalion flown in from Fort Carson and commanded by a Colonel Eric Abernathy.

Kinnard took a call from the colonel, something about rules of engagement, civil response, and logistical support. Darcy eased over to Billy and took his arm, guiding him away from Kinnard.

“Is it really necessary to go through all these motions?” she whispered quickly. “I can change them all!”

“You don't know that.We can't change Johnny!”

“No? Maybe not, but his bringing all these people will work with him, I'm convinced of it.”

“If you think you can change their minds—”

“I can! Drop me in the middle of that crowd down there and I'll show you.”

“And if you can't? You expect them to revolt against their beloved Johnny?”

She was appalled by his lack of confidence in her.

“Did I or did I not convince the whole of Congress to revolt against their beloved Constitution?”

“Half of them already wanted to change it. I'm just saying”—he faced the town far below, scowling with bitterness—“Johnny wants a fight, and I swear, I'm going to give him his fight. And this time it won't just be with words.”

“So you're just going to give up on me?” she demanded.

“I'm going to save you!” he cried. And she knew then that he was starting to lose it. His whole past had caught up to him in the last week, and he was starting to set reason aside to protect himself from it.

As are you, Darcy.

She ripped off her glasses. “Take off your glasses.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now!” she screamed.

Kinnard spun around, ear still plastered to the phone, but he meant nothing to her now. She stepped forward and plucked Billy's glasses from his face.

Bore into his eyes with her own.

“You love me, Billy, but if you think you can save me you're not thinking straight. I'm here to save
you
.What have you ever done to save me? It's not in your blood—accept it. You've always been an impetuous gambler, willing to throw yourself to the wolves for the chance to be crowned the wolf slayer. This time we will do things my way, you hear me? You're not taking me down with you again!”

Billy's face wrinkled with pain. She knew she'd been far too harsh, pushing him to the point where he might resent her words and obey her out of pure obligation.

But she was honestly afraid for him.He was beginning to lose himself in this whole affair.

“I want you to make them take me down there now, set me in the middle of the town down there”—she shoved a finger down toward the valley—“and let me deliver this ultimatum of yours in person.”

Kinnard took a step toward them. “Are you two—”

“Shut up, Kinnard!” she snapped.

Billy's eyes leaked trails of tears. He looked both terrified and bitter at once, and Darcy felt a tinge of regret.

“Sorry to put it like that, Billy.” She shoved her glasses back on. “I'm just a bit out of whack myself.”

Billy spun to Kinnard. “Tell them we're going down.”

“I'm not sure that's really a good idea.”

Darcy drilled him with a glare. “Do you want an earful as well?”

“Just thinking of your safety.”

“Johnny isn't going to guillotine us, you idiot. We're going to guillo-tine him!” she said. “It's time he learned what the stakes are.”

THERE WERE only a couple hundred people milling about the center of town when the old Apache settled onto the church lawn and barely waited for Darcy and Billy to tumble out before screwing back into the sky.

She stood next to him beneath the pulsating air, long hair flying every which direction, calf-length black dress buffeted about, arms limp by her sides. She scanned the eyes that watched her from the perimeter.

“Take your glasses off and tell me what they're thinking,” she instructed.

He did so, but must have gotten nothing, because he stepped closer to a group loitering by Smither's Barbeque. Used to be Smither's Saloon, if she remembered right.

Darcy followed by his side. “Anything?”

“They're wondering who we are. Some fear. Mostly curiosity.”

“Who has the fear?”

“The one in the white shirt.”

Darcy strode toward a woman in her forties, dressed in jeans and a white, sleeveless blouse and tennis shoes. No sunglasses, that was good. Hardly any of them wore sunglasses.

She plucked her own from her face. “You there in the white blouse, what's your name?”

The woman blinked, already aware of some subtle change in her own disposition. Darcy bore into her with her eyes and clearly annunciated each word.

“What is your name?”

“Holly.”

“You're afraid, aren't you, Holly?”

Tears sprang to the woman's eyes, but she didn't respond.

“Fact is, you're all afraid,” Darcy said, running her eyes over the group. “You're so afraid, that I think you'll demand to be taken out of here, to safety.”

The woman in the white blouse had frozen, though confusion batted at her eyes.

Darcy had done this enough to know that her power was at its great-est when she exerted the full force of her own passion into each word. And at the moment, her passion was fueled by the frustration of Johnny having compelled her halfway across the United States not once, but twice now because he wanted men in clerical collars to be able to point their fingers at the world.

She ground her molars and looked into each of their eyes. “The National Guard is preparing to invade this valley. People will die. Innocent lives will be lost. But you've forced their hand, and so now you may die.”

“No.”

“Oh yes, Holly. Yes,
yes
.” She'd exaggerated for effect, and Holly responded.

The woman was trembling head to foot, as were five others, hands to their mouths, shaking without being able to fully comprehend where the extreme emotion was coming from. Without realizing it, they were facing more than the simple fear of the National Guard.

“They're coming for you,” Darcy said. “You're all terrified for good reason, and you're going to demand that Johnny take you out of here.” She offered them a gentle smile and stopped ten feet from them. “Aren't you?”

“Leave?” one of them asked. A thin brunette.

“Yes, leave this valley.”

“No,” said Holly. She was crying earnestly now.“No, you don't understand, we can't leave.”

Darcy blinked. “Oh? But you
will
leave!”

“No.”

“Yes, yes, you
will
leave.”

A moment of silent stalemate.

“No!” the woman screamed. “No, you can't make me leave. I will
not
be silenced! I will
not
deny the love of my Christ! Take my head, take my home, take my husband, but you will not take my heart!”

Darcy was too stunned to reply. The woman was resisting her? Her mind scrambled for better reasoning. Surely she could find and act on the morsel of doubt in this woman's mind. That sliver of fear. That spot that resented God, even.

“You've betrayed Christ before,” she said.

“Yes!” The woman's hands flew to her face and she wept into them bitterly. “Yes! And I can't betray him again. Never!”

She was being defied? For the first time since Darcy had understood her gift, she feared that it might fail her. But she couldn't let that happen.

“You'll all leave!” she screamed at the women. “You're all whores who have no understanding of how dangerous your own betrayal really is, and you're terrified to stand here one more moment.”

Holly began to wail through her hands, and the moment her volume rose, the rest of them began to weep with her.

“Run. Out! Get out of this valley. Don't be stupid, you hear me? Don't you dare be fools for the sake of a Christ you can't even see!”

She might have pulled the plug from their resolve. But instead of running from the town, screaming about their own foolishness, they fell to the ground, writhing in sobs, praying—
praying!
—begging to be forgiven.

“Have mercy on us sinners, Son of David! Have mercy on us sinners, Jesus Christ!”

She realized too late that she'd pushed them toward their beliefs, not away. Watching these women, she wasn't sure she
could
push them from their faith.

Darcy became aware of a murmur mixed with soft cries behind her. She spun, half expecting to see Johnny standing there. But it wasn't Johnny. Another five hundred at least had gathered and were watching the women on the ground, crying with them, some kneeling, some with their faces in their hands, some just staring with wet eyes.

The sight sliced through her chest like a white-hot blade. She didn't dare speak. Billy was beside her, eyes wide, truly afraid.

“Call the chopper,” she managed. “Get us out of here.”

“Darcy!”

There was no mistaking the sound of Johnny's voice. She turned back to Smither's Barbeque, where Holly and the others were now sobbing softly, and saw Johnny standing to the right of the building.

“I have something to show you.”

“No,” Billy shouted, but his voice sounded like a hoarse whisper.

“Take one look, Billy,” Johnny challenged. “If you don't like what you see, then leave.”

Billy thrust out his right arm and pointed at Johnny.“You have twenty-four hours from sunset today to surrender yourself before we use force.” His fiery eyes scanned the crowd.“All of you, twenty-four hours, and then this game of yours comes to an end. You've been warned!”

“Then we have some time, Billy,” Johnny said calmly. “Or would you prefer the camera told the world”—he indicated a newsman who was filming them—“that Billy and Darcy have forgotten how to negotiate?”

Darcy felt heat sting her face.

“We have to go with him,” she said softly to Billy. “We're on.
Live
.”

“He's . . . he's . . .” Billy voice was laced with panic. “He's manipulating—”

“We have to give negotiation its due course.” She turned and looked into his eyes. “I love you, Billy. I will be with you all the way.We're stronger than Johnny. You can do this. You can set aside your fear of Black and the memories that haunt you, because I am with you.”

His face melted like snow under the heat of each word.

Darcy took his hand, at the risk of appearing juvenile in the camera's eye, and strode toward Johnny.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

THE SUN had sunk below the surrounding cliffs by the time Johnny's chopper settled into the old canyon above Paradise. Billy and Darcy had dutifully climbed aboard the helicopter behind the old theater. The flight to the upper canyon that had once housed the hidden monastery took seven wordless minutes.

It occurred to her that they had Johnny in their grasp. They could force the pilot to fly them to the staging plateau, where several hundred armed National Guardsmen awaited a command from the Special Forces within their indirect command.

But a single glance told her that Johnny was ahead of her. The pilot wore a helmet with a dark visor that shielded his eyes from the sun and, more importantly, from her. The helmet had been fixed to a strap that ran under his arms. There was no way they could get it off without brute force.

The chopper settled on the sand long enough for them to step out before being snatched back into the sky by blades that bit hard into the air.

“Follow me,” Johnny said, heading up the canyon.

Darcy let her eyes follow the sheer rock walls on either side as silence replaced the chopper's whine. The white sand was littered with chunks of granite that had tumbled from the cliffs. The center of the canyon reminded her of a huge bowling lane strewn with broken balls. Larger boulders, taller than she, stood along the canyon walls.

“I don't like this,”Billy said.“We shouldn't have gone down to the town in the first place, and we shouldn't have come up here.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes you have to take the bull by the horns,” she said.

He walked forward, face set. They followed Johnny up the canyon ten paces behind.

Around the bend.

The cliff on their left had been brought down in a landside and now covered the whole section of canyon that had once housed the monastery. A small cabin sat at the base of the slide.

Darcy was staring at her childhood, and the memories she'd worked so hard to bury now exploded to the surface.

Monks hurrying up and down the halls, gathering the children for dinner.

Classes with the others in an expansive library, learning of virtue, always virtue.

The dungeons that Billy had led her into. The worms. The Books of History from which all three had gotten their powers. All there, beneath the pile of boulders that had obliterated it.

“Doesn't look so bad,” Billy said, stepping closer.

Johnny turned around and faced them, dark glasses in place. “Not so bad, Billy.”He spread his arms wide. “The birthplace of unique evil never looked so innocuous.”

“What evil? I see rocks and sand and a cabin. Your finger pointing won't change the fact that you have three thousand people trapped in a valley, facing their deaths.” He flipped open his phone.