The Dark Tower

“And you, boys!” John called back. He stopped and raised his hand in a wave. A bolt of electricity cut across the sky, momentarily lighting his face in brilliant blue and deepest black. “And you!”

“Eddie, we’re going to run into the core of the light,” Roland said. “It’s not a door of the old people but of the Prim—that is magic, do ye ken. It’ll take us to the place we want, if we concentrate hard enough.”

“Where—”

“There’s no time! Jake’s told me where, by touch! Only hold my hand and keep your mind blank! I can take us!”

Eddie wanted to ask him if he was absolutely sure of that, but there was no time. Roland broke into a run. Eddie joined him. They sprinted down the slope and into the light. Eddie felt it breathing over his skin like a million small mouths. Their boots crackled in the deep leaf cover. To his right was the burning tree. He could smell the sap and the sizzle of its cooking bark. Now they closed in on the core of the light. At first Eddie could see Kezar Lake through it and then he felt an enormous force grip him and pull him forward through the cold rain and into that brilliant murmuring glare. For just a moment he glimpsed the shape of a doorway. Then he redoubled his grip on Roland’s hand and closed his eyes. The leaf-littered ground ran out beneath his feet and they were flying.

Chapter VII: Reunion

One

Flaherty stood at the New York/Fedic door, which had been scarred by several gunshots but otherwise stood whole against them, an impassable barrier which the shitting kid had somehow passed. Lamla stood silent beside him, waiting for Flaherty’s rage to exhaust itself. The others also waited, maintaining the same prudent silence.

Finally the blows Flaherty had been raining on the door began to slow. He administered one final overhand smash, and Lamla winced as blood flew from the hume’s knuckles.

“What?” Flaherty asked, catching his grimace. “What? Do you have something to say?”

Lamla cared not at all for the white circles around Flaherty’s eyes and the hard red roses in Flaherty’s cheeks. Least of all for the way Flaherty’s hand had risen to the butt of the Glock automatic hanging beneath his armpit. “No,” he said. “No, sai.”

“Go on, say what’s on your mind, do it please ya,” Flaherty persisted. He tried to smile and produced a gruesome grin instead — the leer of a madman. Quietly, with barely a rustle, the rest pulled back. “Others will have plenty to say; why shouldn’t you start, my cully? I lost him! Be the first to carp, you ugly motherfucker!”

I’m dead, Lamla thought. After a life of service to the King, one unguarded expression in the presence of a man who needs a scapegoat, and I’m dead.

He looked around, verifying that none of the others would step in for him, and then said: “Flaherty, if I’ve offended you in some way I’m sor—”

“Oh, you’ve offended me, sure enough!” Flaherty shrieked, his Boston accent growing thicker as his rage escalated. “I’m sure I’ll pay for tonight’s work, aye, but I think you’ll pay fir—”

There was a kind of gasp in the air around them, as if the corridor itself had inhaled sharply. Flaherty’s hair and Lamla’s fur rippled. Flaherty’s posse of low men and vampires began to turn. Suddenly one of them, a vamp named Albrecht, shrieked and bolted forward, allowing Flaherty a view of two newcomers, men with raindrops still fresh and dark on their jeans and boots and shirts. There was trail-dusty gunna-gar at their feet and revolvers hung at their hips. Flaherty saw the sandalwood grips in the instant before the younger one drew, faster than blue blazes, and understood at once why Albrecht had run. Only one sort of man carried guns that looked like that.

The young one fired a single shot. Albrecht’s blond hair jumped as if flicked by an invisible hand and then he collapsed forward, fading within his clothes as he did so.

“Hile, you bondsmen of the King,” the older one said. He spoke in a purely conversational tone. Flaherty — his hands still bleeding from his extravagant drumming on the door through which the snot-babby had disappeared — could not seem to get the sense of him. It was the one of whom they had been warned, surely it was Roland of Gilead, but how had he gotten here, and on their blindside? How?

Roland’s cold blue eyes surveyed them. “Which of this sorry herd calls himself dinh? Will that one honor us by stepping forward or not? Not?” His eyes surveyed them; his left hand departed the vicinity of his gun and journeyed to the corner of his mouth, where a small sarcastic smile had bloomed. “Not? Too bad. Th’art cowards after all, I’m sorry to see. Thee’d kill a priest and chase a lad but not stand and claim thy day’s work. Th’art cowards and the sons of cow—”