EDITOR'S NOTE: Look for a new chapter from Lee Thomas's DAMAGE every Wednesday and Saturday. All previous chapters are archived for a limited time only.

34

Frank stood by the door of the apartment, waiting for Rebecca to fight her way into a puffy blue jacket, while Lisa finished a note to Doug. In his pocket, Frank carried Doug's map. Finished securing herself in the jacket, Rebecca flipped the hood up over her head and said, "Ready."

Rebecca, unaware of the severity of the situation, was seeing all of their actions as a great adventure, but Lisa was having a tough time of it, Frank could see. Not only did she have to carry resentment and anger about Doug, but now she was also saddled with concern, and none of those emotions would let the other show through untarnished.

"Come on," he said and clapped his hands together. The apartment was a bad place to be, and Doug said that if he was gone for over an hour, he wanted Frank to take Lisa and Rebecca to the cops, show the police the map, and then just sit at the station, surrounded by armed men, until Doug returned.

"What if we drive past each other in the storm?" Lisa asked.

"He knows where to find us," Frank reminded her. "Now, let's go."


#

Another board creaked under the man's step.

"You're trespassing," Riggs said evenly as he took a second step through the gloomy dining room toward Doug. "By law, I have the right to kill you."

Doug backed away and found himself next to the stack of notebooks on the desk where Sissy's apparition had so recently reclined. For every second he watched Riggs's approach, the cold knot of fear in his chest tightened, but he knew he could not outrun the man. The knowledge was as solid as the books under his hand and the floor beneath his feet.

"Lost in the storm?" Riggs asked. He reached up and grasped the bottom hem of the white patch covering his eye. "A lot of people are lost these days. It's all so confusing now. Technology and morality are diametrically opposed. With progress comes degeneration, and even the most intelligent of men get lost. Let me show you the way."

Riggs lifted the patch to reveal the crater beneath. Dark tendrils of living smoke writhed and knotted like worms nesting in the hole. Doug's stomach clench so violently that he thought he might vomit. He spun away from the man and sprinted for the door.

Before he reached the threshold, he felt the proximity of Riggs at his back and Doug veered left, hitting the wall in time to see Riggs, carried by his own momentum, vanish through the open door. Doug turned for the stairs and raced upward.

In the master suite, he slammed the door even as he heard Riggs returning to the house, his footsteps like castanets on the tile below. Then Riggs was on the stairs. Doug quickly locked the door and ran for the far side of the room. The edge of an area rug caught his foot, and he stumbled. His hip collided with the heavy oaken chest of drawers along the west wall. Throwing a hand out to stabilize himself, his palm slid over the smooth wooden surface, and he careened toward the window.

Doug closed his eyes, waiting for the shattering of glass and the roar of wind as he plummeted over the casing and into the storm beyond.

Instead, he fell to a carpeted floor.

He was no longer in Riggs's bedroom.

Somehow, Doug had tripped on a rug in a house far out in the South Forty, and landed on the carpet covering the upstairs hallway of his own house on Route Eleven.


#


"Are we going to see Daddy?" Rebecca asked from the back seat.

"Yes," Lisa said.

That was a lie, Frank thought. But it was easier than the truth.

They were in Lisa's SUV stopped at the intersection on the end of Frank's block, and he tried to make out shapes in the rain, squinting and craning his neck to make sure they didn't get rammed if he pulled onto the main drive.

"Can you see anything?" he asked.

"Just pull out slow," Lisa said.

The car hit them a moment later. Frank had not released the brake, but a long silver shape sped out of the storm, headlights flashed visible for a second and then went out when the car slammed into the front of the SUV. Airbags exploded across the dash, and the quickly inflated fabric abraded Frank's face. The seatbelt bit into his already wounded shoulder, and he cried a curse. Next to him and behind him, Lisa and Rebecca screamed.

"Fuck," Frank repeated, jabbing at the mechanism to release the seat belt. He turned to Lisa, who wore a terrified expression. "Are you okay?" She nodded and then both struggled against the bags to turn and check on Rebecca who had settled into a strong, sobbing cry.

"She's okay," Lisa said, reaching into the back to soothe her daughter's fear.

"Well, you see to her," Frank said, "I'm going to see to this asshole."

He threw open the door and stepped into the downpour, pulling his jacket up over his head to cover himself from the worst of the storm. At the front of the car, he saw the extensive damage to Lisa's bumper and grill, and he also saw that he recognized the car that had hit them.

Frank ran around the back of the SUV and up to the driver's side of the Mercedes sedan to find Clay Marshall staring through the window at him. A long gash leaked blood down his brow, but what concerned Frank was not the man's wounding but his expression.

Clay shouted at him, his mouth working like a desperate mime, his eyes wide with fear. He pointed his finger at the glass in panicked jabs. Frank couldn't hear even a fraction of Clay's muffled words through the storm.

"Open your window," he yelled.

The window slid down, enough room for a finger to slip through, and Clay screamed, "Get back in your car."

Frank opened his mouth to call back. Before he could reply, a wet body slammed hard into his shoulder and a sharp pain flared at his neck.


#

Doug stumbled down the stairs of his house. His head reeled with the impossibility of his transportation. He'd felt no shift in his body and had experienced no moments of blackout. The only thing he remembered about the experience was the sensation of falling, and the walls of Rigg's bedroom blurring with the speed of his descent. He'd hit the floor of his house, relieved to be away from the white-haired predator at his heels, but his relief was followed by a disorientation that made him slow, perhaps overly cautious with the stairs.

He needed to move faster, but fear leaded his steps. He couldn't trust the simple movements of his body. What if the next step he took threw him out of the house and into a freefall a hundred feet above the earth, or put him back in Rigg's house, face to face with the brutal sorcerer?

Doug pushed himself faster, despite the fear. If he was able to make this leap, it stood to reason that Riggs could perform the same trick, and although the location changed, he would still be alone in a remote house with a killer.

The police hadn't made it through the storm; he knew because the place was dark, and Tyke Marshall's body remained propped against the living room wall. Doug turned away from the grotesque sculpture and ran for the kitchen. Footsteps sounded above his head.

"You were the one Trisha told me about," Riggs called.

In the kitchen, Doug went to the block of knives on the counter and yanked the butcher's knife from its slot.

"She said you were absolutely empty and cold," Riggs continued, now at the top of the stairs. "Not a selfless thought in your head." His words fell in time with the sound of his feet stepping casually down the stairs. "And now, I sense you're trying to be heroic." On the last word of the sentence, Riggs's booted foot clicked on tile. "I can't help but think she has something to do with this."

Doug backed to the wall, felt it hard against his back. He held the knife in front of him, and reached for the kitchen door, turned the lock, grasped the knob and pulled. The door didn't move. He jerked on the handle, struggling with the obstinate door, turned to find the source of its hindrance. Lisa had secured a board over the broken window. In her haste, she'd nailed the door to the jamb.

Ansen Riggs strolled into the kitchen, his presence filling the room like a cloud of smoke. Light played off of the hide of his jacket, but the rest of the man seemed to absorb the room's illumination; it poured into his face and his hands in streams. "Regardless of Trisha's indiscretions, I can't help but wonder what you intended to do? Do you think this can all be stopped? I mean, you must realize the amount of thought I've put into this, the planning?"

Doug did know the extent of Riggs's research and the years he'd spent practicing, refining and focusing his power. He didn't need much time with the man's notebooks to see the particular path Riggs had chosen for himself. Riggs spilled his heart and mind onto those pages, and every third paragraph was about a woman named Barbara: his wife.

In the aftermath of her death, Riggs had turned away from his faith, denounced all denominations with equal loathing. His disdain and sorrow had set him on the path to discovering if any religion, any faith at all, might prove true, and this path led him to the earliest religions - faiths of magic and dark gods. For over a decade, Riggs had cross-referenced and distilled the knowledge from every school of spirituality until he had what he believed to be the first religion, the origin of all faith. This primal faith was built and maintained by violence and sorcery.

And Riggs had made it his own.

Riggs had approached this magic as he would any facet of science, testing and refining, until he was certain the power he believed to be true was proven to be true. Then he charted his circle, finding those places that would create a circumference of influence around the city, so that he could wield his power within a controlled environment and call upon a long forgotten deity.

He had suffered loss and pain, and had sought something that he could believe in. Now, he wanted to force the rest of the world to believe in it too.

"And when it's done," Doug said, "you won't even exist."

"Of course I will," Riggs said. "The gods are nothing more than energy, emotion. We personify them to make them palatable. I lose nothing and gain all that He brings. And together we expose the other gods as fraud."

Riggs appeared inches from Doug's face, standing chest to chest with him. Doug swung with the knife, felt his knuckles hit Riggs's leather-clad ribs. He ground the handle against the jacket, hoping to widen the wound. But there was no wound.

Flecks of glittering dust rolled up in two narrow streams beside the face of Ansen Riggs. The man winked his remaining eye and stepped back. Doug lifted the useless handle of the knife, now void of its lethal point. The streams of metal dust filled the air for a moment and then dove for Doug's face. Before they hit the bridge of his nose, before they peppered his cheeks, the dust stopped as if hitting a wall and then fell to the ground like silver salt.

This was not what Riggs had expected; Doug could see it in the twist of his expression. The man looked at him quizzically and took another step back. Riggs reached out and grasped Doug's jacket at the lapels. With the ease of fluffing a pillow, he pulled Doug to his chest and explored his face, searching for answers.

"I don't know your magic," Riggs said in frustration. He jerked Doug even closer. "Let's try this the old fashioned way."

He threw Doug backward like discarding a bit of clothing. Doug flew fifteen feet through the air before landing hard on a springy plank floor. Once the initial shock passed, he stared up at a ceiling of exposed beams. The room in which he'd landed, wherever that might be, was silent and smelled of hay.


#


Get back in your car.

Clay's cry stunned Frank with its command, and the dread carving the edge of each syllable. Before he could react with word or action, a heavy body hit Frank's side and pain flared at his collar. He dropped to the low pool on the street, his head hitting the concrete with a sharp crack. Drenched fur filled his nostrils with the smell of old, wet dog, and Frank groaned as another blossom of pain erupted on his thigh and a third on his arm. Growls and the sound of his clothes ripping joined the storm's chaotic choir. Car horns blared, but he couldn't see anything.

He struggled against the lithe bodies scrabbling over him and the teeth working into his skin. He struck out and one of the dogs yelped. When he opened his eyes, the pelting rain was all but blinding.

The pack of dogs moved all around him.

Another jaw clamped on his ankle and began to shake him in an attempt to rip off a mouthful of skin. He kicked high in the air and the teeth tore loose, taking a chunk of his leg with them.

Frank bellowed in agony, swinging his arms and his legs, connecting with the hard, hairy bodies, sending them away only to have them return, all teeth and muscle. He managed to sit up and clear his eyes just as a big stray with a gray muzzle leapt over his head onto the hood of Lisa's car.

Climbing to his feet, stumbling, Frank fell against the passenger door of the SUV. He yanked the handle but found it locked. In the back with her daughter, Lisa looked up. Terror and confusion played on her face. It took her painful seconds to realize what was happening. Once she understood, she dove through the opening between the seats to reach the door's locking mechanism.

Feeling exposed with his back to the prowling pack, Frank turned to defend himself against another strike.

A dozen dogs of all sizes and colors, crouched in a semi-circle only a few feet from him. Their black eyes looked from him to the windows of the vehicle at his back. Anticipation flourished in those eyes, and Frank saw something insidious in their patience.

They're waiting, he thought. They want to get in the car.

Once he opened the door, they would attack. Lisa and Rebecca would be trapped in the back seat and easily mauled. Even if they managed to escape the SUV, where could they run?

The lock clicked behind him, but Frank did not turn to open the door. His defiance riled the pack, made them bark and growl, teeth exposed to gnash and chomp their disgust with him. And then, knowing their greater victory was being denied them, the dogs sprang at Frank.

He fell into the rising tide of water on the street.

Clay threw open the door of his Mercedes. A wet growl filled Frank's ears before a Dalmatian clamped its jaws to his shoulder. Frank's head grew so light that he thought he would pass out, and maybe he did for a moment, but when he came to he was still sitting upright.

Shots fired, he knew that. Clay had a gun and was taking aim at the pack. The lawyer dropped a Doberman with one shot and then a Retriever. But Frank didn't have the strength to sit up any longer. He crashed backward onto the concrete, and stared up at the madness of weather, its shades of gray spiraling toward an angry sea of black.

Then the muzzle of the Dalmatian pushed into his line of sight as the dog positioned itself over Frank's exposed neck. Its dappled coat was gray and filthy. Rain coursed over its black lips and pooled in the open mouth before spilling a steady stream on Frank's face.

He kept his eyes open despite the beating rain, because he wanted to see. Even a few more moments of sight, of life, meant something, and he fought for it.

The Dalmatian growled, pulled back and lunged for his throat.

#

Lee Thomas's novel DAMAGE, originally published as a Limited Edition by Sarob Press, will be serialized in its entirety--and with the addition of 6,000 words--on Fear Zone. Please visit the author at http://www.leethomasauthor