Wolfehaven Read online

  Emmie was ready. She brought her mind to focus and flexed the power that she held poised in the structure of the fragmented rock, a structure that had held together for millennia.

  Where small accumulations of sand and grit packed about pebbles and loose slabs of stone, where small wedges of rock acted as keystones for great masses of rock above, where a mass of stone weighed mightily upon smaller masses, holding them in place, things shifted. Supports moved. Buttresses lost bracing. Cohesion dissolved.

  Like a loose assemblage of disconnected granola bits, the huge mass crumbled and dropped. Although the initial drop was only a matter of six feet or so, the tons of material piling upon the side of the hill quickly dislodged more, and before the cloud of swirling, billowing dust had reached the nearest tree, a thunderous avalanche was roaring down toward the bubbling brook at the bottom. It buried everything in its path beneath ton upon ton of crushing rock.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Sorcery,” breathed the man beside Sherri.

  Even though he had tried to kill her, had seriously wounded her in the attempt, Sherri leaned into him as she gazed down at the destruction at the bottom of the chasm, drawing comfort from the human contact. Even after Emmie and Raven had saved her life and the lives of her children, she could still relate easier to the man beside her than to the two young women who were obviously witches.

  Emmie turned to Raven. “If there are any more kryls, they shouldn’t be able to follow us any further than that pile of rocks. Right?”

  Raven nodded and said, “Should be…if they buy the big lie in the first place. Just remember, they don’t follow an actual trail like markings on the ground. Their glluriks can track through the air if the trail is fresh, if they know where to focus. We’ve been leaving a pretty clear trail for them by levitating Satan as we go. And there is one other thing, too. They always try to recover their dead. If they dig through all that to get their pals, they may notice we aren’t there, too.”

  “Oh, jeez! You mean we just went through all that for nothing? I thought you said —”

  “Now, take it easy. It wasn’t for nothing. Most likely, they won’t dig any deeper than their friends, so they won’t look for a trail beyond the avalanche. They’ll just assume we’re buried deeper. And, even if they do, the ledge we took off from is no longer there. If they did discover a wisp of our aura over there in the rubble, it wouldn’t be anything they could follow.”

  “Really?” The doubts and the fear that had begun to overwhelm Emmie evaporated like fog on a sunny morning. Such was the confidence she had in Raven and the vast store of unearthly knowledge her friend possessed. There was never a time that Emmie doubted Raven’s knowledge; she had been there six years ago when it was bestowed.

  “Really. Now, let’s get moving. We’ve got to get Satan and Sherri to Lila. They could still die.”

  They had been back on the trail for half an hour or so, wending through a forest of old growth redwoods so massive and tall it was easy to forget they were trees. Emmie’s attention had been so focused on the magnificence of the surroundings while keeping Satan on an even keel that she didn’t notice when Sarah came up alongside her. But the trail was plenty wide enough, and she was glad to see the girl’s fear of her had slackened. Sarah kept looking back and forth between Emmie and the dog floating through the air just a few feet ahead, and Emmie thought she had accepted the feat of what apparently was pure magic. But when the girl spoke, Emmie realized just how much she had been mistaken.

  “Are you bad?” Sarah asked.

  Emmie was so taken aback she stumbled over a small branch lying across the trail and almost dropped Satan.

  “Huh? What do you mean? No, I’m not bad.”

  Sarah shook her head and said, “Mommy said I should never do that ‘cause it’s bad. And if I do it, then I’m bad, and everyone will know I’m bad and do bad things to me.”

  “She said you shouldn’t do what?” Emmie asked.

  “You know…that,” Sarah said as she pointed to Satan. “And when you made us all fly. Were we bad when we flew? ‘Cause we didn’t try to do it; you made us.”

  “Wha — you — but —” Emmie finally gave up. Every answer she thought of would have required some knowledge of what had actually happened six years ago in order for Sarah to understand what she was talking about. And, apparently, neither Sarah nor Sherri had the knowledge. From the way Sherri and the man carrying her kept looking at her and Satan, they probably expected her to sprout horns and a forked tail at any second. But, then she recalled how Sarah had elaborated the question she had asked. She had said that Sherri had warned her to not “do that because it’s bad.” To not levitate? Did that mean…?

  “Can you make things float in the air, too?”

  “No! No, I can’t! It’s bad. Mommy said I mustn’t do it, not ever. The Prophet says only the devil’s people can do it, and they’re all bad.”

  Emmie glanced back to see if Sherri and her would-be assassin were listening in on the conversation. Sherri wore a frown across her forehead that scrunched up her eyes, as though she was steeling herself for what she was afraid her daughter might say but was unable to tell Sarah to not say what she feared lest that reveal what she didn’t want revealed. Or, maybe Emmie was reading something into it that just wasn’t there. The man carrying Sherri glared at her and Sarah.

  Emmie refused to guess why he was glaring, just that he must hate everyone in the group. What she didn’t know, and would like to find out, was why. Why were he and his companion trying to kill Sherri and her children?

  And what prophet had declared that Emmie and Raven as well as some of her friends as being among the devil’s people? That sounded an awful lot like a man they had warred with way back in the beginning, six years ago. But that man must surely be dead by now. He was probably killed back then; they just never found his body. Maybe Sarah’s Prophet was just someone in the bible that someone has gone and misinterpreted. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time something like that had happened.

  “Who is this Prophet you mentioned?” Emmie made her question light, as non-confrontational as she could manage. “Is he in the bible?”

  “No,” Sarah answered with eyes widened and turned toward her. “He lives back in town. He tells everyone about the bible and about when they do things they shouldn’t do, and he tells us how we’ll go to…a bad place instead of heaven if we’re bad.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “And he’s scary.”

  Raven had apparently overheard the conversation, because she had dropped back to walk beside Satan, turning every few steps to look back at Sarah and Emmie. She said, “Now, doesn’t that sound like old Reverend Ned Morgan to you? As I recall, he was gonna rid the world of evil, especially us descendents of Grandpa Cain.”

  Before Emmie could respond, Raven had stopped dead in the middle of the trail and gazed back at Sherri and the man with her. When Emmie looked back at them, they had stopped, too.

  The man said, “The Prophet Morgan is our ordained leader. It was he that banished Satan’s demons six years ago when they would have destroyed God’s realm upon Earth.”

  Raven glared at him for a moment before asking Sherri, “Is your Prophet Morgan about six feet six, thin but strong, as I remember, and probably about sixty-something? Comes from Petaluma?” She glanced down at the baby in her arms whose skin was almost as dark as her own, and added, “And he’s got a hate on for us blacks that just won’t quit? Is that him?”

  Sherri looked at her son and back at Raven. She looked at Emmie, again at her son, and back at Raven. “He said my son is dark because of the curse of Cain, and because I had done something to bring the displeasure of the Lord.”

  The man carrying her set her feet on the ground and stood again, pushing his chest out in proud defiance. “The Prophet made clear to her that her transgression would be forgiven if she did as he commanded. But she refused. She defied him. She thought she could escape his wrath by running away, but the Prophet’s wr
ath has no boundaries.”

  “So, he sent you and the other man to kill her? To kill her and her children?”

  “The children are proof of her sin. The older one makes a game of flaunting our Lord’s commandments, making it look like the play of an innocent child.”

  Sherri started to respond, but instead buried her face in her hands.

  Emmie responded. “And you are absolutely certain that Sarah is not an innocent child? What is she…four, five?”

  “I am certain because the Prophet said it is so. He has declared her and the dark one to be abominations, tainted by the Evil One. If their mother had obeyed, she would have been spared. But she defied the Prophet, thwarting his will. Now her life is forfeit, as well.”

  Raven took half a step towards him and said, “Oh, is it, now? Seems to me the Prophet’s will has been thoroughly thwarted, and there’s not a whole hell of a lot he or you can do about it.”

  “He has pronounced judgment. She is condemned. Even if I am prevented from fulfilling my duty, others will follow in my footsteps. The Prophet has spoken, and his will shall be done.”

  Emmie exchanged looks of bewilderment with Raven. After a moment she asked, “Sherri, what was it that ole’ Reverend Prophet Morgan commanded you to do?”

  Sherri sucked in a gulp of air past the sob in her throat before answering. “He said the children must be destroyed, and if I would do the slaying, myself, I would be returned to his good graces.”

  “He what?!” Raven’s voice shook as her head thrust forward and her eyes widened, stunned by disbelief. Livid, she continued, “He actually expected you to kill your own children? Just because he said so? And you —!” She jabbed her finger at the man standing beside Sherri so hard he actually flinched backward half a step. “What kind of man are you, that you would chase her across the land to kill her and her children? One of them —” she held Sherri’s son shoulder high for a moment before nestling him back against her breast. “One of them a mere babe in arms, just weeks old. What possible evil could this baby be guilty of? Not that a five-year-old girl could be any more evil than her brother. What kind of twisted society has that old bastard put together?”

  The man stammered for a moment before saying, “We are righteous, God-fearing men and women. We know what is right and wrong, and we know how to rid ourselves of evil.”

  “Well, wait a minute, now.” A thought occurred to Emmie, a discrepancy she couldn’t reconcile. “If Morgan won’t tolerate blacks in your group, what about the baby’s father? Is your husband black?”

  “Oh, no,” Sherri said, shaking her head to adamantly deny the possibility that she would have willingly mated with a black man. “My husband is white. He’s Sarah’s father. The baby’s father was a man who raped me early last year. He and another man, both strangers, came through our area. I ran into them when I was gleaning away from the village. They both raped me, but the baby is black.”

  “Sure, that’s what she claims,” said the man beside her. “But no one else saw any strangers. We looked for them right after she came home and made her claim. The Prophet says she consorted with a demon, and that’s why we couldn’t find him; he’d gone back to his master in Hell.”

  “No! No, it’s true. Oh, why won’t anyone believe me?” She pulled Sarah into her embrace and sobbed into the girl’s tangled mop of hair.

  Raven knelt beside her and laid a hand softly on her shoulder. “I believe you. And so does Emmie. I’m pretty sure Sarah believes you, and I’ll bet Satan believes you; he’s just not sayin’ so. I can just about guarantee the folks back at our village will believe you. Looks to me like the only one around here that doesn’t believe you is this fool that shot you. And since he has already shown the level of his intelligence by defending that wacko Morgan…well, do you really care what he believes?”

  Twenty minutes later, they stepped out of the trees and onto pavement, a narrow, two lane road winding out of sight to left and right. They went left. Walking was much easier on the smooth and level roadway, and soon they passed a parking lot and a sign identifying the area behind them as the Armstrong Woods.

  Before long, wilderness changed to civilization, albeit a destroyed one as occasional gutted houses became groups of ruins, then neighborhoods of ash beds with crumbling towers of bricks or stones, the still up-right remains of chimneys. They passed more houses and then stores until they reached River Road near the east end of the ruins of Guerneville. They turned right and followed the north bank of the Russian River wending its way to the rugged Northern California coast fifteen miles to the west. They trod past gutted buildings and black spikes that had once been trees. Across the river, more devastation greeted them, both upstream and down. The popular, riverside resort town had been hit hard, at least as hard as many much larger places. Stepping past the last of that blackened world and once again entering one green with growing things was like being reborn.

  They continued westbound and soon left the dead ashes of Guerneville behind. On their right, heavily wooded, low mountains were all but shielded from view by the forest starting at the road’s edge. On their left, the river, typically from thirty to forty feet below road-level, and the forested mountains beyond were frequently in view through screens of trees that often opened to offer grand views of the narrow valley the river had carved out over the ages.

  CHAPTER 8

  As he often did, Jason Wolfe stood on his balcony and gazed out over the village nestled on the north bank of the river and toward the far side of the river canyon. Just beyond the meandering waterway, a dense, oak forest grew down to hang over the south bank around and above willows growing in low areas too wet for oaks. Beyond, thickly growing redwoods and oaks intermingled to fill canyons and hillsides at lower levels. Towering cedar and redwood forests blanketed higher elevations of the low mountains and created saw-toothed ridgelines. Here and there, small groves of the giants huddled along the river itself, especially on the north bank. From his site on high ground between the road and more forest-covered mountains rising just beyond the last house, he took quiet pleasure in absorbing the serene view of the place they had called home for the past six years.

  The entire string of small, mostly unincorporated communities on both banks of the river had been pretty much destroyed during the invasion that wasn’t an invasion. Though none were large, bigger ones were wiped out, erased, and a lot of the other, smaller places, even collections of just a few homes not shielded from view well enough by surrounding trees, had suffered much, as well, many gutted.

  Jason and his band of refugees, survivors of fierce fighting with other survivors in their hometown of Petaluma thirty miles south and inland, had made the trek from one end of River Road to the other. On both banks, from what had been Healdsburg in the east, to what was left of the town of Jenner, where the winding river flowed into the Pacific, a distance of about thirty miles, they found little but devastation.

  Drained from their ordeal and eager to end their travels, they chose a place on the river’s north bank about halfway between the two destroyed towns. It was where a canyon opened out from the mountains to the north like a bay. Situated among tall redwoods that had shielded them from searching eyes in the sky, enough of the houses still stood even if some had to be repaired. And, so, they had established a new home and named it Wolfehaven, one name among another five that were nominated by secret ballot but was the only one receiving nearly unanimous acceptance. It wasn’t long after settling in that about a quarter of a mile up the canyon behind them someone discovered a lovely glen with a small, hot-spring fed swimming pond, just the thing for weary travelers.

  It had been a wise decision back at the beginning to listen to Ed and Elaine Silver and old Marcos Garibaldi, three of the five original residents of the area who had survived the alien attacks. They were welcoming, and they pointed out that other than them and a few other permanent residents of the area, many of the homes were getaways for absentee owners who showed up on summer weekend
s, and then locked up their houses until the next holiday and returned to the city, so it was unlikely anyone would be showing up to demand their house back. They were also quick to point out the problem of high water during wet winters, and they recommended occupying only those unburned houses that were high enough above the normal river level to avoid the thirty and forty foot crests that sometimes occurred after heavy winter storms over the river’s watershed.

  Just beyond the south edge of the road at the upstream end of the village, where the road skirted the bank on the lip of a granite overhang, the land dropped off in a steep cliff to the river thirty feet below. Once past the house-sized granite outcropping at the base of a hill too rocky to excavate, the road swerved north. The land off the west edge sloped away to a tilted plain ending at a narrow beach from which a floating pier now extended a third of the way across the river, which, in that area, was about fifty yards across. After the road veered away from the river, it looped left and snaked through the upper part of the village before turning back south to continue along the north bank on its way to the sea just a few miles farther west. The lower levels of the plain within the loop of the road, just four or five feet above the river, formed a flood plain in wet years. The periodic floods prevented most trees, other than a few willows, from establishing themselves there so it was a popular space for gatherings, either for celebrations or just disseminating information. Although not central, everyone referred to the relatively open area as the Village Center. Several houses had been built there, but only a few had escaped the lasers of the invaders and were usable. But, as Ed Silver had pointed out, most had been flooded out more than once and rebuilt, but there were no more insurance companies or contractors to rebuild the next time it happened. Most now remained vacant.