The Widening Gyre Read online

  But she had. She was a fighter.

  Both girls were completely healthy, which was a blessing.

  Peyton had much to be thankful for, considering how the babies came to be in the first place. She could remember none of it, drawing a blank from the time she first saw the man in her house to when she woke in the hospital three days later. But she was told what had happened, eventually. They had to, once Peyton started missing her periods and discovered she was pregnant.

  Knowing she’d been raped sickened Peyton at first. They’d learned his name was Vic Davol, the same man who’d killed Mitch and Jenna Bannock all those years ago. He was dead and gone now, and would never threaten them again. Justine still wore the scar on her temple from the bullet, and was extremely lucky. And she’d been correct about Rick being mad at her for trying to be a hero. But he got over it, because she had trained him well. Justine also got an invite for Rick’s next Bahamian fishing trip. A permanent ticket, according to Justine.

  Peyton’s two beautiful baby girls were the product of a horrid crime, but never once had she considered terminating the pregnancy. She believed that some good had to come out of all the evil that had nearly ended her life. And as it turned out, she and Zach had been doubly blessed.

  Zach had never left her side. Justine and Rick allowed him to move into their house, and he drove back and forth to Omaha to finish his semester. He proposed to Peyton shortly before the girls were born. They were wed during a simple courthouse ceremony on the day the girls turned six months old. Peyton and Zach had known each other for only a little over a year at that point, but there was never any question in either of their minds that they were meant to be together for the rest of their days. And they were meant to raise these two children. Together.

  Peyton loved Zach, but she knew he hadn’t told her everything about the night in the barn, and neither had Detective Taggart. Peyton wasn’t sure if they were trying to protect her from some other horrible event in the barn, or if she was only imagining that they were sharing some sort of unspoken secret. One day, maybe, she’d learn what they felt was too terrible to tell her. She knew she should resent not being told the entire truth . . . but in her heart, she knew it didn’t matter.

  During the quiet times in the house, Peyton could almost feel the spirit of Jenna Bannock lingering close by. She’d shared her life with the soul of the woman for most of her life, and knew that it was Jenna’s strength that had carried her through her toughest moments.

  Zach, not surprisingly, felt much the same way. Mitch Bannock had tried to get through to him so many times over the years, and luckily he did when it counted. Every now and then, Zach would glimpse another person in the mirror out of the corner of his eye—there for a second, then gone. Mitch was still close by, too. Watching over them.

  It was, after all, their house first.

  Their presence was comforting in a way, but also a reminder of the horrible things that can happen to innocent people in the blink of an eye, when evil decides to take a stroll among the sheep.

  Peyton and Zach were constantly on guard, watching, listening for the whispers in the night. They were Chosen, tasked to fulfill a promise that had died with Mitch and Jenna Bannock on a cold, marble floor more than two decades prior.

  They both knew exactly who Mitch and Jenna had been; they had been the salvation, the key to preventing the onset of an encroaching, interminable darkness.

  The End of Days.

  It was Zach and Peyton’s responsibility now.

  Peyton had been a confused teenage girl at one point, but no longer. Now she was a lioness, scarred and toughened by the ugliness the world had to offer, a mother who would protect her two children at all costs. With Zach by her side, no one would harm her—or her girls—ever again.

  Because the center must hold.

  EPILOGUE

  Twin Creek, Nebraska

  Almost Six Years Since the Night in the Barn

  “. . . happy birthday, dear Rylee and Lydia, happy birthday to you!”

  Zach smiled as he watched his two little girls try to blow out their candles. “Hold on! You have to make a wish first!”

  The twins, in that unspoken language that only those who have shared the womb with a sibling can understand, gazed into each other’s eyes. It never ceased to amaze Zach how much communication went on between the girls that neither he nor Peyton were ever aware of. Sometimes their kids held whole conversations with a series of glances, maybe a grin or two, or a simple look in their eyes. That skill of theirs would definitely make life interesting when they got a little older, like teenagers . . . but Zach refused to think about those years right now. He wished they would stay this age forever, like most dads do. Even though they weren’t his biologically, they were his daughters, and he was their daddy.

  Rylee and Lydia, five years old today, turned toward their cake in unison—as they did most things—took a breath, and blew all ten candles out, five white and five pink.

  “Hooray!” Peyton said, pulling the candles from the cake and dropping them into a water glass.

  “Can we open presents now?” the girls said, in stereo.

  Rick leaned over to Zach. “Do you ever get used to that?”

  Zach laughed. “I don’t think I ever will, to be honest.”

  “Wait until they both say, ‘Daddy, can we have the car keys?’”

  “I’ve still got a few years before that happens,” Zach said.

  “It’s going to be here sooner than you think,” Justine said, patting him on the back.

  “Girls, I think your daddy has a surprise for you in the backyard,” Peyton said. “Come on, let’s go look.” She took the girls’ hands and led them to the back door. Justine followed.

  “So how long did it take you to put them together?” Rick asked.

  “Four hours each,” Zach said, shaking his head. “Peyton timed me after I told her I’d have it done in an hour. Chinese instructions translated to English aren’t very clear.”

  “Come on,” Rick said, “they’re not going to wait, and you’re going to miss it.” Both men headed out the back door.

  It was a warm day for April in Nebraska, and the first scent of spring was in the air. Peyton had the girls standing on the porch with their hands over their eyes. “No peeking until Daddy says it’s okay to look,” Peyton said. She motioned Zach over.

  “All right, Lydia,” Zach said, “before you look, I need to know your favorite color.”

  “Pink, Daddy.”

  “I knew that. And Rylee, your favorite color is . . . doo-doo brown, right?”

  “No, silly, it’s white! That’s yucky!”

  “Uh-oh. Wait, are you peeking, Riley?”

  “No, Daddy. Can I look?”

  “Lydia, are you peeking?”

  “Daddy! We want to look!”

  Both girls said the last four words in unison.

  “On the count of three, you can look. Lydia, your present is pink, and Riley, yours is doo-doo brown, but we can take it back.”

  “Daddy!” they both said.

  “Zach, quit torturing your kids,” Peyton said, smiling and shaking her head.

  “Okay, okay. Rylee, yours is white, promise. Ready? One, two . . . what comes after two?”

  “Three!” Again, in stereo.

  “Oh yeah. One, two, three!”

  Both girls dropped their hands and ran toward their new bikes, sitting beside each other in the middle of the yard. One white, one pink, each with training wheels. Zach winced at the girls’ high-pitched squeals.

  Zach put his arm around Peyton. “So are you going to teach them how to ride?”

  “That’s your job, mister.”

  “I put the darned things together, didn’t I?”

  “They’re not going to fall apart, right?”

  Zach feigned a shocked look. “Really, that little faith in me?”

  “I have a lot of faith in you, Zach Regan, that’s why you’re going to teach them how to r
ide.”

  “Daddy, can we ride now?”

  “How about we have some cake and ice cream first?” he said.

  It was a happy day. Zach woke each morning grateful for the blessings he’d been given. He was definitely a lucky man. He bore a heavy weight on his shoulders, though. Both he and Peyton. They were both well aware that the fate of the world rested in the shining, bright eyes of two little girls discovering the joys of a first bicycle.

  And he and Peyton had to protect them. The evil that had nearly taken both of their lives from them was still out there, and they would always have to watch for it, be ready for it to make another appearance.

  It would, someday. It had to.

  But it was moments like this that made his life worth living. Seeing his girls so happy, and seeing a smile on Peyton’s face.

  It was a happy day.

  It was also their last day together as a family.

  *

  Peyton kissed Lydia first. “Good night, Lids. Sweet dreams. And happy birthday.”

  “Good night, Mommy,” Lydia said, snuggling into her covers.

  “Sweet dreams to you, too, Rylee Bear,” Peyton said, kissing her forehead. “Did you have a good birthday?”

  “We did. Thank you, Mommy.” We, she noticed. Always we.

  “Hey! What about me?” Zach said.

  “Thank you for the bikes, Daddy,” both girls said.

  “You are both welcome. No falling down okay, or your mom will be very, very angry. With me. Good night, Princess One,” he said, leaning over to kiss Lydia on the forehead.

  “G’night, Daddy.”

  “And good night to you too, Princess Two.” He kissed Rylee on the cheek.

  “Good night, Daddy. Love you.”

  “Love you too.” Peyton followed him out of the room, and he leaned in and flicked off the light switch. “Happy birthday, my sweet girls. Sweet dreams.” He closed the door.

  *

  At two in the morning, Lydia rose from bed. She silently padded to the door, and grasped the door handle.

  “Please don’t go.” It was Rylee, sitting up in bed.

  Lydia turned to her sister. “I have to go,” she said. “It’s time.”

  They both sounded much older than their five years.

  “You don’t have to,” Rylee said. “You can stay here. They love you.”

  “I don’t belong here, Rylee,” Lydia said. “You know this has to happen.”

  “But I don’t want you to go. I love you too.”

  Lydia didn’t respond right away. She stared at her sister through the darkness, hand on the door handle.

  “I want to grow up with my sister,” Rylee said. “I want to ride bikes with you.”

  Lydia opened the door. “It has to be this way, Rylee. You know that.”

  Rylee nodded, and a tear dropped from her eye. “I’ll miss you, and I’ll never forget you. Don’t ever forget me, okay?”

  Lydia paused, then opened the bedroom door. “We’ll see each other again,” she whispered. “One day.” She quietly shut the door behind her.

  There was a man waiting for her in the front yard.

  *

  The driver was parked away from the streetlight, the interior of the idling car completely dark. He’d been waiting for this moment to arrive for the past five years, and now it was here.

  A man dressed in black with a child in his arms approached the car. He opened the front passenger side door, and placed the child in the seat.

  “This is the correct child?” the driver asked.

  “It is, my lord,” the man whispered. “I looked, as I was instructed.”

  The driver leaned over, grasped the child’s face in his hands, and gently pulled back one of child’s eyelids with his thumb. He didn’t need any light to see what he was looking for. It was the child. “Your work here is done,” he said. The man gently shut the car door and disappeared into the darkness.

  The Traveler’s strength was greatly diminished now, but beside him sat the one thing that could bring the world back into his sphere.

  He felt no affection for the child, only purpose. She would be his to wield as he saw fit. Soon, he would deliver her to a family chosen to raise this special child, a fine, upstanding family, one with means, the ability to falsify adoption records with no questions asked, and positioned on the precipice of far-reaching political power.

  They would take her into their home, raise her, and prepare her for things to come.

  “They treated you well?” he asked the child.

  She turned toward him, and smiled. “I’m ready to go with you now, Daddy.”

  The Traveler took one last look at the house. There was a small girl looking at them from an upstairs window, a weaker child than this one, with blue eyes and thin blonde hair.

  The birth of the second child was an unwelcome complication, a masterful trick by the one with whom he grappled. The rules of the game prevented him from harming the other child, or its stinking parents. But no matter.

  He looked at the girl beside him, and she was looking at her sister in the window, too. She looked away, then the Traveler put the car in gear and drove away into the night.

  There were more battles to come in his eternal war. This child would, someday, fight those battles, this little girl named Lydia who carried his own special mark in the corner of her left eye, appearing at the start of the fifth year, visible only to those who knew where to look.

  The mark of the Beast.

  ###

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  If you’ve made it this far, I want to thank you for taking a few hours out of your valuable time to take a walk within the pages of The Widening Gyre! I hope you enjoyed the journey.

  To me this book represents just that…a journey.

  One of the most common questions a writer receives is, “When did you start writing?” For me, I started writing my first novel back in April of 2001 while I was on a 1-year remote assignment for the Air Force in Alaska. It took me a few years to finish the draft manuscript—if I remember correctly, it was a whopping 700 printed pages, and packed full of “new writer” mistakes (like a writing a first novel that’s 700 pages long! Hah!). Over the years, I edited, rewrote, edited, rewrote, and edited again, hacking away and massaging the story to try and get it where it wanted to be…and over the course of my efforts, I received over a hundred rejections from both agents and publishers. I put it away, worked on other things, but always came back to this particular story. I wanted to tell it, and I wanted you to read it.

  But it wasn’t ready. Not even close.

  Until now.

  This is that first book. Sixteen and a half years after I tapped-out the very first opening line, this is that book. To put it in perspective (for me at least), my kids were 3, 7 and 12 when those first words went on the screen…and now they’re all grown up and in their 20s. Sheesh.

  Is it the same story as that original messy 700-page whopper? Not even close. Hitting the delete key on over half of the manuscript that I’d been working on for well over a decade was painful, but it allowed me to take the story exactly where I always wanted to take it. When I typed the last sentence on the new manuscript, I sat back in my chair and thought, “It’s finally there.” Journey complete.

  I hope you liked it.

  Bringing a book out of the synaptic shadows of the mind and into the hands of readers like you is definitely a team effort, and for me that starts with my wife, Nessa, who spent countless hours over the past 16 years reading different versions of this book. Poor girl. I really don’t know how she kept herself from putting a pillow on my face at night so she wouldn’t have to hear me say, “Hey, can you look at this part one more time?” (for the 50th time, of course). Thanks for not murdering me, Ness. I appreciate it.

  A big thank you goes to my agent Mark Gottlieb and the Digital Media and Publishing team at Trident Media Group, especially Alicia Granstein and Nicole Robson, who helped make this book a reality. You
guys are awesome to work with.

  Thanks to my cover artist, Nuno Moreira of NMDesign, who took my rough ideas for a cover and produced a design that really knocked my socks off—he managed to capture the essence of the story in a single image, and even though I’m a little biased, I think it’s awesome.

  My sincere apologies to my copyeditor, Phyllis DeBlanche, who had to suffer through my troublesome habit of totally ignoring all grammar rules, as well as my tendency to spell words using my own “Hearing Impaired Phonics” version of the English language. Yes, I should’ve paid more attenshuntion in skule school, I no know. (< see?)

  And finally, thanks to you, my reader, for allowing me to tell you a story.

  Here’s the deal…if you liked The Widening Gyre, and you want the storyline with Lydia and Rylee to continue, let me know! If you’ve read my flash-fiction story Lydia (part of Scattered Bones, my collection of short stories) you have an idea of where I want to take the story. I’ll write the next book with Lydia and Rylee, but only if you want to read it. Ping me through my website, Facebook or Twitter, and let me know!

  As always, if you bring the popcorn, I’ll bring the pages…

  Chuck Grossart

  Bellevue, Nebraska

  2017

  p.s. Don’t forget the butter topping. I love that stuff. *burp*

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chuck Grossart is the author of the #1 US Kindle bestseller The Gemini Effect, which won the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror, and the 2016 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. He lives outside of Omaha, Nebraska, with his very patient, understanding wife and a few too many dogs.

  CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR

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  www.ChuckGrossart.com

  OTHER BOOKS BY CHUCK GROSSART

  The Argus Deceit

  The Phoenix Descent

  The Gemini Effect

  Vetust Vex

  Splits

  Scattered Bones