CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Alex didn't give me time to wallow. She dragged me to my feet, her grip like iron. "Move. It's coming."
We left the alley, moving fast through the backstreets. The air was changing. The distant, constant soundtrack of the city—the sirens, the far-off shouts, the hum of a world trying to cope—was fading. It wasn't a gradual thing. It was like a blanket was being thrown over the world, one block at a time.
We turned a corner onto a main road. Half the street was normal. People were still huddled in doorways, cars were abandoned. Then, fifty yards ahead, was the line.
Beyond that line, the streetlights were dead. Not broken, just dark, as if the power had never been invented. The air over there looked… thick. The sounds from that part of the street didn't reach us. It was a wall of silence, and it was moving. Slowly, steadily, like a tide of black water, it was swallowing the street, building by building.
It was hunting. It was following the tether I had created.
"Faster," Alex said, her voice low and tight.
We started to run. My side screamed in protest, a hot, wet tear of pain. I ignored it. The silence was at our backs, and it was faster than we were.
We passed a woman trying to start her car. The engine wouldn't turn over. She was pounding on the steering wheel, her mouth open in a scream we couldn't hear because the silence had already taken her. As we watched, the color seemed to drain from her skin, leaving it a pale, sickly gray. She slumped over the wheel, motionless. Not dead. Empty.
The Archon wasn't just killing. It was consuming. It was drinking the life, the sound, the very energy from the world and leaving a husk behind.
A block from St. Jude's, the silence was so close I could feel it. It was a pressure in my ears, a cold that went deeper than the skin. The street in front of the church was chaos. People who had fled the sanctuary were now trying to get in, pounding on the great wooden doors, screaming soundlessly as the quiet tide licked at their heels.
Alex didn't hesitate. She fired a single shot from her pistol into the air. The report was shockingly loud in the dying world. The crowd flinched, turning to us.
"Open these doors!" she roared, her voice cutting through their panic. "Now!"
A man near the front, his face white with terror, fumbled with a set of keys. The huge lock clicked. The doors swung inward, and the crowd surged inside, a frantic river of fear.
Alex shoved me forward. "Get in. Find the altar. Prepare."
"What about the Carters?" I yelled over the noise.
"I'll get them. Just be ready!"
I stumbled into the vast, dark space of St. Jude's. The air inside was cold and smelled of old incense and dust. The only light came from the stained-glass windows, casting colored shadows on the stone floor. Hundreds of people were crammed into the pews and aisles, their terrified whispers echoing in the cavernous space.
I pushed through them, heading for the front. The silence was outside the doors now. I could feel it pressing against the wood, a patient, hungry thing.
I reached the altar rail and turned around. The great doors were shut, barred from the inside by a heavy wooden beam. For a moment, there was quiet. The only sound was the ragged breathing of the survivors.
Then, a new sound started.
It was a scratch. A soft, slow, dragging scratch on the other side of the door. Like a single fingernail being drawn down the wood. It was a small sound, but in the absolute quiet of the church, it was deafening.
Scratch… scratch… scratch…
Everyone froze. A child started to cry, and its mother clamped a hand over its mouth, her eyes wide with terror.
The scratching stopped.
A different sound began. A faint, high-pitched humming that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was the sound of the Archon's presence, the sound of the static in my head made real. The great metal handles on the doors began to frost over.
Then, a voice. It was small, and sweet, and it slithered under the door and through the cracks, wrapping around the heart of everyone who heard it.
"Leo…"
It was Lily's voice. But it was wrong. It was a mockery of a child's call, a lure made of stolen sound.
"Come out and play, Leo…"
A sob broke from the crowd. I saw Mark Carter stand up from a pew near the middle, pulling Sarah and Leo close. His face was a mask of pure, uncomprehending horror. He looked around, as if trying to find the source of the voice calling his son.
The door handles jiggled. Gently. Almost playfully.
Thump.
A single, heavy impact shook the doors. The wooden beam holding them shut groaned.
THUMP.
Another one. A crack appeared in the solid oak, splintering upwards from the center.
The people in the back pews began to scramble away, pressing towards the altar, towards me. They were trapping themselves. There was no back door.
THUMP.
The crack widened. A sliver of that dead, silent darkness from outside pierced the church. Through the crack, I saw a single, pale eye peering in. It was Lily's eye, but it was filled with that endless, hungry black.
The beam snapped in two with a sound like a gunshot.
The great doors of St. Jude's blew inward, splintering off their hinges and crashing onto the stone floor. And there, framed in the doorway, surrounded by a halo of absolute silence and cold, stood my daughter.
The Archon had found its new prey. The church was the trap. And we were all inside.