Wolfehaven Read online

  Higher up, especially north of the road, towering redwoods grew singularly and in small copses among the homes. While a few of the refugees that had followed Jason from Petaluma had taken chances in mostly undamaged and unoccupied houses around the Village Center, most, like Jason, moved into preexisting houses on the higher, north side of the road.

  Erin came out from the bedroom at his back and stood beside him for a moment. “It looks like they’re about ready down there. How long are you going to wait?”

  He looked out at the activity beyond the near bank, about a third of the way across the river. At the end of the floating pier, a pair of small, matching barges squatted against the steady current, held in place by heavy chains attached to pylons driven into the river bed. A swaying foot-bridge connected the nearest one to the pier. A lattice of braces at the bows and sterns tied the barges rigidly together with the current flowing down the space separating them, converting them to one, large, oddly shaped vessel. A tripod stood in the middle of each barge in opposing positions, one on either side of the five-foot gap between the barges. A wire ran from the top of the closest tripod to the pier, along the pier to a pole on the bank and from there to an old electrical power pole higher up where it tied into what was left of the local power grid. The men on the barges and the pier moved about slowly, picking up items and placing them back down, actions of men eager to finish a job but forced to wait.

  Jason looked over at another group of workers on the near riverbank that killed time in pretty much the same way as those on the river. In their midst a huge, wooden wheel fifteen feet high and three feet thick stood upright.

  “I don’t really want to risk it without her. Emmie’s not the strongest power here, but she is one of the steadiest. It could be a real bear without her controlling influence. Not only could someone get hurt or killed, but all of the work up to now could be for nothing.”

  Erin moved against him, hugging his arm. She said, “You’re not worried, are you? They haven’t really been gone all that long. They know what the schedule for the wheel is.”

  He glanced east and west on the road and shook his head. “They weren’t expecting everything to be ready today. I told them before they took off that it would probably be tomorrow morning.”

  “And they know the trip upriver is only a couple of days off, too. I’m sure they wouldn’t miss that.”

  “They couldn’t. Without Emmie, a lot of people wouldn’t be able to make it.” He shook his head again, smiled down at her and said, “Naw, I’m not worried. It’s only been a couple of days. She and Raven are pretty much able to take care of themselves. And with Satan along, I don’t think there’s much they couldn’t handle.”

  He draped an arm around her waist and rested his hand on her hip. She laid her head over onto his shoulder.

  “Charlie and his posse came back a little while ago,” Jason said. “They searched the area of the pond trail to about half a mile beyond the pond. Didn’t see a sign of anyone. Not strangers, anyway. When they swung over to the east and came out on the river road, they ran into Jerry McDaniel and Jackie Johnson. They told Charlie they saw two men in the distance at least an hour before, heading east. Charlie didn’t try to pursue because they had too much of a lead, and they could have turned off anywhere. How’s Tina?”

  Erin shook her head. “They were pretty rough with her. She had some tearing, but I think Lila can fix her, already has for most of it. It would be better if Lila were older. It has to be difficult and confusing for her, the poor dear, trying to repair tissue that she doesn’t really understand the use of. Can you imagine Emmie being exposed to those kinds of demands back when it all started? Emmie was twelve at the time, wasn’t she? About Lila’s age now?

  “Yeah. Seems like a lot longer ago than six years, doesn’t it? But, you’re right. Lila is having to grow up a lot faster than anyone else. I can’t imagine what it must be like for her. At least Rachel is there to help and advise her on cases like this.”

  “And poor Uncle Joe,” Erin said. “By the time he got Tina to Lila, he almost needed her services, himself, he was shaking so hard. But I’m not sure if it was because of Tina’s injuries, or the fact that the men had gotten away. I think if he could have gotten his hands on them…well, I don’t know what he would have done. Nothing like what you’d expect from him, though.”

  “Oh, don’t make Joe out to be just an old softy. Remember what he did on the steps to the old high school when they killed Raven’s brother? Watching him swinging that post and chain makes it easier to believe Samson actually did take on an entire army with no more than the jawbone of an ass.”

  “I do the best I can to forget those days, thank you.”

  “Yeah, I know. If they —”

  Erin had suddenly stiffened beside him with a shift in her attention. He followed her gaze out to the approach from the east, and he saw them. At first it was pure relief that washed over him, regardless of what he professed to Erin about his confidence in his daughter. But then he noted how they were traveling: Satan led the way lying on his side and suspended three or four feet above the pavement; a strange man carried a strange woman; a small girl walked between Raven, who appeared to be carrying a small baby, and Emmie, who was walking right behind Satan and waving her arms to catch the attention of anyone in the village.

  He waved back but wasted no time in shouted questions that would probably have to be repeated at least once, and shouted answers that would have to be further explained anyway. When he and Erin reached the road, they were joined by several others who had also seen and heard the returning pair.

  After a brief series of hugs and pats on the back, Raven held up her hands to silence the flurry of questions. “Satan’s hurt pretty bad. And so is Sherri, here. Let us get them to Lila, and then we’ll tell you what happened.”

  “Yeah,” Emmie added, “and someone keep an eye on this guy.” She hooked a thumb towards the man carrying Sherri. “He was sent out to kill Sherri and her kids by our old friend, Ned Morgan.”

  “Damn! Is that old fraud still causing trouble?” Charlie Dickerson was an old acquaintance of Morgan back in Petaluma where he operated heavy equipment and Morgan was a plumber during the week and a fire and brimstone belching, lay preacher on Sunday. Pushing forty-five, Charlie carried himself like the United States Marine he insisted he always would be, discharged or not. “Even if he lived through the cleanup we did back in town before we left, I woulda thought by now he’d be withered up to just an old lump of rotten wood by his own meanness. What’s he up to now?”

  Emmie just shook her head and said, “Like Raven said, after we get Satan and Sherri tended to. But, why don’t you make sure this one doesn’t escape or make more trouble. Can you tie him up or lock him up or something? Maybe nail him to a tree?”

  Dagar stepped forward with Charlie. Small and thin and with a face like a dried up prune, he was already in retirement from the U. S. Postal Service even before the kryls came and changed the world. However, as small and frail as he seemed, his knowledge and skill with medieval weaponry had been a deciding factor in getting his fellow villagers to their present situation. “We don’t really have any place that’ll lock up. Haven’t needed one before now. Why don’t we just keep him with us while we listen to what’s happened? We can always tie him up afterwards.” Then, to the man who relinquished the burden of carrying Sherri to Charlie’s large buddy, Billy Ray, “What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Don Hughes,” the prisoner said.

  “Okay, Don. Stay with us, do what you’re told, and maybe we won’t have to confine you. Okay?”

  Lila’s home was close enough that the two patients were in her care within a couple of minutes. And ten minutes later, they both emerged, walking on their own feet. Although Satan appeared to accept the whole thing as normal, Sherri wore a look of confusion, bewilderment, and disbelief. Her slim figure, no longer obscured in the wrapping of a shapeless, ankle-length dress, strode forward in donated
but well-fitting pants and a shirt. With her long, blond tresses freshly brushed and draped over her shoulders and down her back, she looked like a different person — but not to her daughter.

  “Mommy!” Sarah called out as she ran to her mother. Throwing her arms about Sherri’s neck and squealing with glee as Sherri lifted her high up before lowering her into a tight hug and smothered her with kisses. “Are you all better, now? Does it still hurt?”

  Sherri set the girl back on the ground and turned to Emmie, who waited nearby with Raven and Satan. Then she looked back at the house she had just come from and the girl standing between two women, a blond about Raven’s age and one maybe ten years older, all smiling and watching the gathering from the porch.

  “She’s only a child,” Sherri said just barely above a whisper. “She laid her hands on me and I was healed. I have truly witnessed a miracle.”

  “I know the feeling,” Raven responded, waving and smiling to Lila, Rachel, and Lila’s adopted mom. “I think I was the first one she ever used her ability on, not counting Ronald. But he wasn’t a human, and it didn’t stop him from dying, anyway. But, yeah, I know how you feel. It’s not really a miracle, though. Just more human magic.”

  “Sorcery! That’s what it is. The Prophet was right when he warned that the Evil One’s minions would offer great temptations.”

  Emmie turned to face the prisoner. “The Prophet is a loud-mouthed phony. Lila’s ability is the same as mine and Raven’s. She’s just able to do more with it. It comes from the same place,” she added, tapping her head, “and it ain’t from the devil. Anyway, tell me why it was evil for me to have saved all of our lives back there at the canyon?” She peered into Sherri’s eyes and asked, “What was evil about me stopping those last two arrows before they hit you? Was it evil for me to carry a badly injured dog out of the bushes and along the trail because he couldn’t walk? If I hadn’t, he’d still be lying back there in the woods, probably dead. Is it evil to help an injured animal?”

  Sherri could only stammer, “But, you...what if...how...”

  Her would-be assassin had no such problem. “It was sorcery, every bit of it. No righteous person can wield such power. The Prophet says —”

  “Why? Because your prophet can’t do it?” Thomas Woodall, a.k.a. The Judge, stepped forward and confronted the prisoner. He was even older than Dagar, but he was taller than everyone else present including Uncle Joe. Tall and straight as one of the stately redwoods, he normally spoke with a soft timbre, but it could be instantly increased to a mighty roar if the dignity of his courtroom was assailed, for he had been an actual superior court judge back in the other world. “Is that what his problem is? He can’t do it, and since he believes he is righteous, well, then it must be that only the unrighteous can do it, ergo, the power comes from the devil. Is that his reasoning?”

  Hughes opened his mouth but closed it again without saying anything. After a moment, he said, “I remember you. You used to be a judge in Petaluma, didn’t you?”

  “Um hmm. That’s me. Do I know you?”

  “No. I just remember you. You were always reasonable, from what I hear. How’d you get mixed up with these...these sorcerers and witches?”

  The Judge peered into the man’s eyes for a moment before slowly shaking his head. “One requirement about being reasonable, you know, is to listen to all the evidence before making up your mind. I think you’ve got a lot of evidence to examine and to ponder before you go making such charges. Of course, unless you do so with an open mind, you’ll have a hard time coming to a reasonable decision. You might want to give it a day or two. And you really should work on setting aside your biases.”

  Jason stepped forward and said, “I’m afraid the education of our guests is going to have to wait for a bit. The waterwheel is ready to install. And now that Emmie is back, we ought to get it done before another day is gone.”

  Dagar tapped Hughes on the elbow and, with a nod of his head, motioned the direction he wished for Hughes to move. “And that might be an excellent example of how we use our new abilities. Why don’t you folks come and watch?”

  CHAPTER 9

  As she walked down toward the river’s edge, Sherri kept rubbing her hand over her back and her leg where the arrows had struck, still in awe that there was no pain. The memory of pain was still fresh enough that she could feel the searing burn of the barbed head as it tore through her flesh, the aching throb that followed, an ache so intense it seemed to have a life of its own, jarring her back to its priority every time she tried to force her mind onto other matters, even the life and welfare of her children.

  But, now, after visiting the child they called Lila, it was over. The wounds were healed as though they had occurred at some distant time in her past so long ago that even the scars had disappeared. Could such a thing be without the intervention of either God or Satan? And the Prophet says that God no longer intercedes in human affairs, other than what He does through His chosen vessels, such as the Prophet. Therefore, according to the Prophet, any present-day miracles are from the other side. Anyone able to perform miraculous things can only do it through the power of the Evil One. How could it be otherwise?

  Sherri followed the others and stopped with the group near the entrance to a floating pier that went out to the double barge with the opposing tripods. Sarah clung to her skirt, and Daryl swiveled his tiny head from the security of his nest in her arms, fascinated by the activity around them.

  Off to her right, Don Hughes accompanied Charlie who maintained his control over the bigger man with a tug of his elbow or a nod of his head in the direction for the prisoner to go. Charlie seemed to have no doubt that his control over Don was absolute, even though he made no overt threats. Of course, it probably didn’t hurt that another man, named Billie Ray, accompanied them and who was almost as big as Charlie and Don combined.

  Sherri watched Emmie join a young black man, whom Raven had greeted earlier with a kiss and a hug as she took a squirming toddler from his arms. When they turned to accompany a pretty Hispanic lady and three other people along with Lila to a section of the pier whose width had been doubled about halfway out to the end, she felt a growing sense of anticipation among the crowd. A very large black man came from the barge to meet Emmie’s group, and after a couple of minutes of hurried conversation with much nodding of heads, he turned and made his way back onto the barge. Emmie and her companions remained at the halfway point. When the large black man reached the barge, he waved his arm in signal.

  Sherri turned with the others standing on the riverbank to look upstream. There, just a few feet from where they were gathered, another smaller group circled a large, open-spoke wheel — what looked to her like an old-fashioned paddlewheel like she had seen in books, with wide, evenly spaced planks, each a foot high and three feet wide, around the circumference. The massive thing rested upright in a cradle of beams and pipes lashed together with rope.

  Sherri had no idea what was happening. What kind of installation was to take place? Perhaps some sort of rite or ceremony of promotion. It couldn’t be just a waterwheel. Of what possible use could that be? It would be a huge expenditure of energy just for aesthetic purposes. The wheel had a complicated looking mechanism inside near the hub. She could see no reason for it, and accepted that it was for some arcane purpose that she might never know. They had called it a waterwheel, but what did that mean? Were they going to let it roll out into the river where it would sink to the bottom where it might cause swirls and eddies and maybe catch enough silt to eventually become buried? For what purpose? Maybe they were going to rig some kind of water source that would pour a constant stream over the wheel resting on the bank. But, why? She had just about decided it was something to do with whatever religious rites they conducted, rites that would, of course, be totally incomprehensible to her. Not knowing what to expect next, she let her eyes flit from one place to another, and she just happened to be looking at the wheel when it lifted.

  It was slow an
d deliberate. The wheel had to weigh a ton or more, so inertia, alone, was enough to prevent any sudden movements. It rose to about two feet above the cradle and floated out over the water at least two feet above the surface.

  Sherri glanced at the people around her, expecting to see expressions of awe, disbelief, panic, even denial. But what she saw was a man smiling and nodding, with a surety in his gaze as he followed the wheel’s progress that he expected nothing less. A woman watched the wheel only peripherally as she continued to whisper scoldings into the ear of a squirming three-year old. Most of the people reacted pretty much the same as Jason and Erin, who stood nearby with arms about each other, watching in knowing anticipation that it was going exactly as planned.

  When she looked back out across the water, she saw Emmie and the others gathered with her were hard focused on the wheel. She recalled watching Emmie’s concentration when they all floated across the canyon. They all wore similar expressions.

  The wheel continued across the water on a collision course with the barge. As it passed Emmie’s group, the men on the barge began to move about, some moving items from one spot to another, others climbing ladders to the tops of the tripods, and the rest repositioning themselves to better receive their...what? What was it that they were receiving? The wheel, obviously, but for what possible reason? Was this some newly devised satanic ritual? Was it a sacrifice to some pagan river god? Was the wheel an altar on which screaming victims would be sacrificed? She reached down and drew Sarah closer.

  As the wheel drew close to the barge, it rose to clear the sides, and continued to rise until its hub was four or five feet above the tops of the tripods. Then, one man on each tripod scrambled about for a bit, reaching for tools and gathering wires or lines of some kind. Like a high priest patiently waiting for the opportunity to anoint his new alter with the first flow of the blood of his first sacrifice, the big black man stood near the edge of the barge with his arm raised and gave arcane signals toward Emmie’s group. The wheel began to descend.