Free A Gathering of Crows by Brian Keene Page B

barrel.
    Donny struggled with his instincts. Part of him wanted to rush to Brandon and aid the boy, even though he knew it was probably too late. Another part of him wanted to charge the boy’s killer and beat him to a pulp. He knew how unrealistic this was. Both men had displayed uncanny—if not inhuman— strength and speed. He doubted his fists would do much good against such a foe. It would be smarter to take advantage of this momentary distraction and get Marsha out of here before the strangers turned their combined attention back to them. Weeping, he turned and ran.
    Even after all Donny had seen and experienced overseas, abandoning Brandon and the next-door neighbor was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
    Marsha was behind the wheel of his truck. The driver’s-side door hung open, and Donny saw that she was repeatedly turning the key with one hand and smacking the steering wheel with the other.
    “It won’t start,” she cried.
    “Come on. Move, damn it.”
    Taking her hand, he pulled her from the cab and led her across a front yard and between two houses. He heard somebody shout inside one of the homes, but he didn’t stop. He guided Marsha through a backyard and onto the next street, and tried to figure out what to do next.
    All around them, Brinkley Springs continued to scream.
    Levi heard the first scream as he darted out the front door. He ignored it, focusing instead on the task at hand. Whatever was happening, whoever was screaming, he wouldn’t be able to help them without first obtaining his tools. The Lord had put him here. That much was certain. Earlier, Brinkley Springs had seemed like nothing more than a good place to stop for the night. He had planned on leaving early the next morning, just after breakfast. Levi had been traveling to the Edgar Cayce Association for Research and Enlightenment headquarters in Virginia Beach. While their library was renowned as one of the largest collections of metaphysical studies and occult reference works in the world, there was a second collection—one not open to the general public—that Levi needed access to. Among the library’s invaluable tomes was an eighteenth-century German copy of King Solomon’s Clavicula Salomonis , which Levi needed to make a copy of for himself. His stop in Brinkley Springs had been intended as nothing more than a brief respite from the long and arduous journey. Both he and Dee had needed the rest. But there would be no rest tonight. No rest for the wicked, and no rest for God’s warriors, either. He’d been placed here on purpose, because only he could combat the threat that the town now faced. This was what he did. This was his calling, his birthright and, quite often, his curse.
    Back home in Marietta, Levi’s neighbors thought that the nice Amish man who lived in the small one-story house next door was a woodworker—and they were partially right. Half of the two-car garage at the rear of his property had been converted into a wood shop (the other half was a stable for Dee). During the week, he spent his time in the wood shop making various goods—coat and spoon racks, chairs, tables, dressers, plaques, lawn ornaments and other knickknacks. Each Saturday, he’d load the items into the back of his buggy and haul them to the local antiques market. It was an honest, decent living and paid for his rent, groceries, utilities and feed for Dee and his dog, Crowley.
    But what his neighbors didn’t know was that Levi also had another, more secret vocation. He worked powwow, as had his father and his father before him. Usually, he was sought out for medical treatments. His patients were mostly drawn from three groups: the elderly (who remembered the old ways), the poor (who didn’t have health insurance or couldn’t afford to see a doctor or go to the hospital), and people who’d forsaken the mainstream medical establishment in search of a more holistic approach. Patients came to Levi seeking treatments for a wide