Funerary Rites

by Roseveare

The dead are walking in Haven again, variously a hindrance and a help. But the ghost in Audrey's head is called Mara and is steeped in ill intent. [AU post season 3; follows Comfortably Numb, Ghost Town and Clockwork.]

4. Part 3

PART 3

Nathan's phone rang as they were stumbling through the motions of preparing breakfast, Audrey bleary because of disturbed dreams, Nathan through being periodically awoken by his headphones on their cycle, and Duke because when neither of them slept, how the hell was he supposed to sleep?

Nathan grabbed for the phone with that set look on his face like he knew what was coming and lifted it to his ear. After a few curt one-word questions and acknowledgements, he lowered it and looked up at the both of them again. "Laverne says, 'The dead Reverend's preaching about the Rapture in the park.'"

Duke had seen a lot of pissed off faces on Nathan, but this one was so done with everything it was kind of beautiful in its silent thunder.

Audrey was walking into the galley with her hair piled on top of her head in a stack. Nathan looked at her and said, "We need to go."

Duke pulled a frown. "Breakfast on the hoof, then."

He worked on stuffing the sausages and eggs that he'd been cooking between slices of bread, and finished just in time to put one in Nathan's hand and one in Audrey's as they were leaving.

"Any contact last night?" he asked Audrey from the back of Nathan's Bronco.

"I don't know. It's all a bit hazy." She leaned over the back of the passenger seat, her eyes still bleary and also worried. "I don't remember any nightmares about Mara, and they're... memorable. Maybe she's just not talking to me out of spite, now she knows I want to communicate. Or maybe she's gone and I'll never get anything out of her now."

Duke said, "We're okay if she's gone and can't hurt you again."

"Haven will manage," Nathan supported.

Audrey just gave them both that sour face that said, Why don't you understand? and took on the whole of responsibility for Troubles and Barn as if they were hers alone to bear and it was actively her fault if she couldn't do it.

In Duke's book, any time before 9AM was too early in the morning for organised religion. They were pulling up to the park now, where the grass slope led up to the bandstand. It was clear there was a disturbance of some kind. People were milling about and a big police truck was parked askew halfway up the slope.

There was a mist in the air off the sea, starting to dissipate from the brightness of the sun, but still hazing the landscape right now. It had the effect of making the whole scene unreal and the world seem unnaturally white and light. Further up the slope toward the bandstand, the figures were more like smoky silhouettes. Duke, Nathan and Audrey abandoned Nathan's Bronco next to the police truck, and as they made their own weary pilgrimage up the grass slope to the makeshift podium, Duke could pick out the figure of Reverend Driscoll, hands spread, standing on the structure's raised steps. The brightness of the sky glowed behind him through its open sides.

Duke heard him before he saw him, though that much was almost always a given.

"...On the other side we will be met by those of the Faithful who have gone before us, but I have come back from that paradise to save YOU, who remain, and salvage the souls of this damned town..."

Garland Wuornos stood apart from the other listeners with his hands stuffed in his pockets and disgust on his face, with Stan and some other cop beside him - what? Duke didn't know the name of every cop in HPD. He didn't.

On second thought, it might be Jim.

Nathan, tense with frustration and fear, opened with. "Why is he still up there talking?"

Garland shuffled but mustered an accusatory glower right back. "You can try arrest him if you feel like that. Didn't work too well when I tried."

"What the-?" Nathan screwed his eyes against the haze, and his face went even stonier. Duke followed his example, searching. There was something about how the people were standing, closer to the Rev. Like they were maintaining a perimeter - watchful, wary, bulges of weapons beneath their clothes.

"I do not bring condemnation!" Rev had got louder, and Duke saw his eyes travel over the crowd he'd gathered, lapping the attention up, and come to land right on Nathan with the usual tune. "If the cursed repent, then they too may be saved!"

Unfortunately, a bunch of other eyes followed the Rev's, and a murmur lit up among some of the people present. Not even his own core nutters, because the isolated murmurs that Duke caught weren't about Nathan being Troubled... Sexual depravity and unholy practices, and blah, blah, blah. Some people in town were oblivious to the Troubles, though Duke had no idea how they managed it, but that didn't mean they were oblivious to Nathan's bisexuality, or his relationship with Duke, or his relationship with Audrey. And what conclusion were they supposed to draw about the Rev's meaning, clearly, when he came out with lines like that?

Nathan's face went pink and Garland looked baffled. Audrey said, angrily, "We need to stop this crap right now."

"The Troubled," Nathan said, startling Duke as his voice raised, shaky and gruff but also loud enough to counter the Rev, "don't need to repent for sins that aren't theirs! Reverend, this is an unlicensed public gathering. I need this to disperse, as a matter of public safety!" He waded forward into the crowd. "Come on! Break this up, people! Go home!"

Hands jostled at him, pulling and pushing, but Nathan was good at being an immovable object when he wanted to be.

"He's got better at this," Garland muttered, next to Duke.

Still, Nathan's immovability might not actually be helping him. There was starting to be a different murmur gathering around him, as people realised how thoroughly he ignored their shoves and scratches, like maybe the unnaturalness of that was impacting on them now. And just because a bunch of angry people couldn't do so much to move Nathan didn't mean he could budge them back.

"The will of the people," Driscoll said, "does not always respect public ordinance. When we gather for the End of Days, would not the rules of our old order naturally fall away from us?"

"I'm asking you to take this back to the Good Shepherd Church, Reverend!" Nathan shouted, annoyance animating his form in counter to its usual stiffness.

An excitable, agitated burr rose among the crowd. Duke caught the words 'miracle' and 'resurrection'. Of course you didn't order around miracles based upon mundane points of law... unless you were Nathan Wuornos, and Duke sunk his face into his palm.

"And we will," the Rev responded with a light in his eyes that knew he'd won. "When I have gathered my flock to me."

"...kind of dumbass looks at anything happening in this town and calls it a miracle?" Garland growled under his breath. Duke thought the old man had never made a fairer point. Garland raised his voice to weigh in, too. "You call this a miracle? Then, here! I'm a miracle too! Come on, now, people, this is horseshit. Look at me, take a good look. I've been dead longer than he has, and I sure as hell ain't no holy man. This is no miracle, this is Haven. I know for a fact at least half of you got the sense to know what that means."

"'Lost at sea', wasn't it, Wuornos?" one of the Rev's staunch supporters called over. Duke recognised him as one of the ones who'd been charged after that day with Kyle Hopkins. Fuck, they were letting them out already. "Guess they were mistaken about that. Nice try."

"We saw his body," said another. "We saw it bleed out."

"You people know... that this is a goddamn Trouble!" Duke yelled across at them, so angry the words tried to stick in his throat. He wished he hadn't, for the attention that drew, though the Rev just smirked at him and moved on.

"You need to-" Someone in the crowd gave Nathan a hard enough shove to drop him to one knee. Audrey moved to draw her gun, but Garland was there, yanking her arm down.

"We can't control it. Can't control it any more with that. These are still just citizens of this town. He's got folks listening who were never dumb enough to listen before. Hell, now he's standing up there large as life and back from the dead, who can blame them?"

"Nathan-" Audrey started.

"Hey, now, people, let the Chief up." The Rev's fake benevolence beat Duke to the punch, as he moved forward with Stan at his side. He caught one of Nathan's hands as it reached out of the crush and pulled him out of the sea of legs. Stan got his other arm as he rose. "He is just a man with a job. A man who doesn't yet know the old order is at its end. Those who want to be saved will come to me and the Lord... Those who cling to what's left will be left behind. We should feel compassion for their ignorance."

Nathan shot a dark look over his shoulder but didn't even bother trying to muster a comeback to that. He was taking his own weight again by the time they got back to Garland and Audrey. "We can't do anything here," he said, the words like an explosion. "We can't move these people. They're not going to listen. We need to find Ray, wherever they've got him. Best thing we can do is make this short-lived."

"I hear you," Garland said.

"That nurse made him appear before," Duke said. "She's got him somewhere, her and some other Rev cronies."

"Her name's Mandy Cartwright," Audrey corrected. "Amanda Cartwright."

"We'll go." Garland gripped Nathan's elbow. "Already established there ain't shit either of us can do here." He looked at Audrey. "That solution. It's the last resort. We don't got enough officers to establish crowd control over this many heads, not if we brought in every serving member of HPD. So don't you jump to use it, but..."

Audrey nodded. "Someone needs to stay here and keep an eye on this. Fine. Leave me Stan. I can use HPD's friendliest face, if things get wild." She cast a strained, wry grin at the uniformed officer.

"Check." Garland curled a finger at Jim and turned his back. Nathan cast a last flat glance over Duke and Audrey, handed the keys of the Bronco to Audrey, and followed his dad.

Duke looked between his two lovers and their current company and made an executive decision to huddle closer to Audrey.

"What are we looking at?" he murmured to her, under his breath, the swell of the Rev's gathering flock fucking frightening to behold. "He's talking about the end of days, right? Is this like some crazy - tell me we're not looking at the Rev leading Haven's version of some sort of cult mass suicide?"

Audrey shuddered. "I really hope not, but I'm pretty sure that's why Garland just asked me to stay."

---

"You gonna tell me when Driscoll started thinking with his ass?" Garland asked, as he skewed the police truck down the grass back to the road, honking stray bystanders from his route.

Nathan raised an eyebrow and quirked something of a smile from the passenger seat. "Thought he'd always done that."

"Yeah. Well, you know what I mean. I knew if he ever sobered up long enough he'd be a problem. Who the hell got him on the wagon?"

Nathan sighed. "Think it started when he found out his wife wasn't dead." He gave a run-down of everything that had happened with Driscoll in the spring and early summer. Didn't have to cover the last time the bastard had come back from the dead, at least. Garland had been there for that.

"Turn here," said Jim in the back, who'd been on the radio to Laverne to check Amanda Cartwright's address.

"Oh, yeah, and what was that crap about unholy sexual practices, Nathan?" Garland asked as he spun the wheel, inducing enough of a spin in the contents of their stomachs that even Nathan got a sense of the nausea, on some level, and Jim made a discomforted noise from the back. "Sure doesn't sound much like you."

Nathan groaned. There were too many people in town who knew about his personal life for him to keep this quiet. Maybe getting it out there quickly while they were in the middle of something else, so his dad didn't have time to dwell on it, was actually the way to go. "Duke and Audrey," he mumbled, mostly into his knuckles. "They mean Duke and Audrey."

Garland's eyes went wide and Nathan and Jim both yelped as he nearly put the car through someone's fence.

"Jesus Christ!" Jim howled. "Just 'cause you got a reprieve from the Grim Reaper, don't you get all casual about it on our behalf!"

"I told you to leave that woman a-goddamn-lone," Garland growled.

"Yeah?" Nathan shot back shakily, his heart pounding loud enough he could hear it, and that little to do with the near miss. "Well, it was too late. By weeks. Months. Too late with both of them."

"Crocker," Garland picked up, just when Nathan was thinking he'd dodged that one. "You've got to be fucking kidding me. You know about his blood-"

"I was there right with you, I saw it! And yeah, that was a problem for a while. But we're good, it's good, and I'm not ending it because the respectable people of Haven don't like it! Not when the same respectable people of Haven are perfectly down with kidnapping and murder!" His voice had risen to a shrillness that made him wince.

They were pulling up outside a small, pink and white painted house with a picket fence. There was no car in the drive. Garland was momentarily distracted screwing up his face at the sight of the house before he turned to ask Jim accusingly, "You knew about this?" Jim shrugged and looked hedgy, HPD Chiefs either side of him and his loyalties seriously torn.

"It's not relevant-" Nathan started.

"Like shit it's not relevant! You don't think you were a hard enough sell to this town when everyone who didn't have their head up their ass just knew you were Troubled?"

"Oh, fuck you," Nathan snarled. "If I'm already damned for something I didn't choose, might as well be damned for something I did." He slammed the truck door and stalked ahead to the pink-painted porch to hammer on it for entry to the too-cute house.

Inside was silent. They shelved their argument for the five minutes it took to force entry and search the place thoroughly, speaking no words except for curt instruction and information. Garland tossed an address book to Jim as they got back into the truck. "You start calling her relatives, find out if they know where she is."

"That's an invasion of - we don't have-"

"I don't give a flyin' fuck. Driscoll's fixing to take this town up in flames with the promise of resurrection and eternal life. There were off-duty cops in his goddamn crowd. If it brings down any heat, you can say it was on my instruction."

"Chief!" Jim choked under the roar of the engine as they pulled out again. "You're dead."

"Sure. Won't be around for it to be a problem for me."

Jim stuttered and Nathan didn't have enough sympathy or any particular argument to muster to help him out. Especially when Garland moved on with, "So, you go on Nathan. You were telling me how you chose your 'relationship' over your duty to this town."

"My relationship has saved this town," Nathan snapped. "Simple fact. There was a Trouble - the world was completely different. Nobody even knew what Haven was. Even Audrey's memory was- Only constant we had in that world was that Audrey and Duke and I... were in love. And on some level, we still knew that."

Garland gave a long, disgusted snort.

"I don't even care what you think!" Nathan half yelled, then did a double-take. "Where are we going?"

"Check a couple homes of the ringleaders of that crowd."

"We should check the church." Even as Nathan said it, the certainty came over him. "Wait. Dad... dad. It's the Church. It's where Driscoll's going next. Promised me it, smiling. He's telling people they'll see their loved ones returned to them. He plans to use Ray."

"Don't be ridiculous," Garland scoffed. "He's not keeping the guy he kidnapped in full view in a public church building."

"He needs Ray there," Nathan insisted. "He doesn't know the music works if..." He lowered his voice to a hiss and partially uncovered the MP3 player in his jacket pocket. "Drop me off there if you want to search somewhere else, but I'm telling you that's where he'll be." He reached for his phone to call and warn Audrey.

"Right, right, right..." Garland grumped. "Man, you've got uppity since I left."

Nathan glared, grit his teeth and tried not to clench his hands into fists. "This was what you wanted."

Jim coughed an uneasy interruption from the back. "Cartwright's sister says she's off doing the Lord's work... and told me to go fuck myself."

Garland waggled his head and smirked. "The Lord's benevolence in Haven."

---

"When they move to the church, this is only going to escalate... Everyone in that crowd finds a dead loved one beside them..."

Audrey sighed and shut her eyes, Nathan's voice washing over her. They did not need this. "You need to get Ray out before the Rev tries to move people over there." Even more people had gathered in the park as the news spread. Only one resurrection so far, and even the people who didn't believe were at least interested. "I don't think there's any way to control this crowd. I'll let you know if they start moving. And be careful. If he is out in full view, they'll have him well guarded."

She put her phone away. Duke had heard and fixed her with a very concerned look.

"There isn't room for this many people in the Good Shepherd Church," Stan said. She had to wonder what he was making of all this. She'd never had the conversation with him about whether he knew of the Troubles, but he was taking a dead man preaching relatively in his stride, and hadn't questioned the assertion that was a problem and not remotely religiously meaningful.

"Even less room for double the numbers when Ray starts playing, though I doubt the Rev and his people have even thought of that."

"Maybe because even the overtly knowledgeable about the Troubles are a little bit in love with the idea that it's true," Duke said, shaking his head. "That maybe they are all going to be uplifted. Seriously, at least some of these people know what this town is like. You'd think that in Haven, if anywhere, people would've learned to steer clear of anything weird."

"Well, you're still here," Audrey offered with a smile, mustering it for him with some effort. "Hopefully Nathan and Garland can get Ray out in time, everyone gets bored with the Rev's ranting and goes home." She felt useless, standing on the slope listening to the Rev's burning words while surrounded by so many of his sheep. Hellfire, damnation, and the disintegration of the Earth with those let behind, and didn't Driscoll's plan's always figure on someone being ostracized by the Almighty. HPD had no way to control this many people. She didn't. She ought to be with Nathan and Garland... "What the hell?"

A familiar dark head attached to a very familiar uniform moved past among the milling people and she dived in to grab Tatum's hand and pull him back. "Hey!" she snapped, perhaps more sharply than was really warranted. "You're a cop. Do not tell me you're joining the Rev's zombie brigade?"

"Aw, hi, Audrey," he said, unfazed. "My mom's up there, and my aunt. How crazy is all of this, huh? You think it's really happening?"

"Tater-" Audrey lowered her voice to a hiss. "You know about the Troubles. Your aunt was rescued from a tree again last week by Nathan. You tell me you know what this is!"

"Just because there are Troubles doesn't mean there aren't other things too."

"Tater!" she snapped. "Do not tell me you think Driscoll is God's chosen mouthpiece?"

His face screwed up and he looked reassuringly more dubious. "Well, frankly I'd rather have gone with the old Chie- Hey, I'm not on duty, I just got off duty. I'm allowed to be here! Everyone else is."

"Okay, okay..." She backed off and held up her hands with a weary sigh. "But you know this is working its way up to a situation. You'll help me if things go sideways?"

"You're not gonna make me do anything my mom won't forgive me for?" he ventured dubiously, looking back toward the rapturous Rev.

Some movement was happening over there. She hadn't been listening so much to the words the Rev was saying, but he wasn't talking anymore. Stan jostled her elbow as they were pushed closer together, and then she looked around and realised maybe something was happening back here, too. "Where's Duke?"

They both looked again while the crowd pushed, trying to move them on. The babble of the people had risen. The church, she caught, amid the voices. It's happening at the church!

"No," she snapped. "It's too soon. Nathan needs more time." Duke wasn't in sight, and he had too much sense of self-preservation to just wander off in all this. She grabbed Stan's arm hard so they weren't separated in the push of the people around them. "You were watching Duke. Where did he go?"

"I didn't know I was supposed to be watching Crocker!" Stan protested. "What do you think he's done this-?" He let out an oof as a clump of people ploughed into him from the back, and ended up grabbing onto Audrey harder for balance.

"Disappeared, Stan. He's disappeared! And in this company, that makes me very concerned." The crowd were pushing them in a particular direction, and they could break out now or get towed along. Audrey scrambled for her phone, choosing another tactic.

Duke wasn't answering, but if he was somewhere in all this, it might be because he couldn't hear to answer. She could stay here and look for him, or...

"Stan, I think someone's... someone's taken Duke, or something's happened to him. I need to go with the crowd, to the church. Can you stay here and look for him? Call in back-up if you can, if there's anyone still left to call in."

Stan opened his mouth to respond with what was surely an affirmative, but she already couldn't hear him. She'd let go and the crush of people was towing them apart. She turned and started to push to try and get ahead of the flow. There were too many people here, and she intended to be in the Good Shepherd Church, when the action went down.

She was raising her phone to her ear again, calling Nathan... She thought it was picked up, but she could barely hear herself think with all the noise around her. "Nathan! They're coming!" she yelled, hearing no reply, hoping for the best. "I hope you have this in hand, because they're coming, now!"

---

They left Jim with the car to fetch and coordinate back-up if they weren't straight out again, and forced a side door, Garland jerrying an old lock. The faint reverberating sound of the church's organ being played filtered through, although the notes were slurred and clumsy, the tune... eccentric.

"That's him." Garland was a crotchety old curmudgeon but he could admit he was wrong in the face of evidence. He let out a fierce curse and Nathan shot him a warning look, since they were trying to sneak in. Fact was, most of the Rev's crowd were going to recognise him. They probably had flashcards with his face on - Haven's most Troubled, watch out.

"You can tell? I mean, other than by the fact it's by... is that by Marvin Gaye?"

"Not up to explainin' it, but take my word."

Nathan wasn't willing to pin any hopes on tired and forced playing having anything less than Ray's full effect.

Crossing the threshold took them into a narrow corridor. The loose ends of papers on a notice board ruffled as they walked past. Garland had drawn the gun he'd taken to carrying as if he were still a full officer. Nathan felt vaguely disrespectful drawing his weapon in a church, but copied him nonetheless.

The music echoed louder until they reached the small door near the back of the nave that led from the smaller, untidier, practical rooms of the church's more earthly functions into its public worship area. Garland reached out to touch their side of the door, but paused and looked back to Nathan and waited until a nod passed between them. He swung open the door and held there while Nathan went in first, gun levelled, aware of the door swinging closed and Garland's heavy footsteps following after him.

In quick succession he took in Ray and Lily at the organ to the side of the chancel, the red-haired nurse sitting in the front of the pews with her shoulders tight and her hands clasped, and two of the Rev's kind of thugs - the well-dressed kind with expressions of superiority - hanging by the steps down onto the crossing between the chancel and the nave. The latter were armed, but they weren't flaunting it. Ray's leg was in plaster, they were in their house of worship, and they were also expecting the company of far too many people.

They were also extremely distracted, one by the presence of an old woman gazing around the church with a vague interest, the other by a young child that clung to his leg. The latter man looked particularly shaken.

"Hands up," Nathan said, vaguely pointing his weapon, staring with some unsettlement at the child and averting his aim further. Ray stopped playing with a clunk.

"Thank goodness-" Lily started.

"Don't stop," said Mandy Cartwright, standing up in the pew. "The faithful are on their way. They need to experience this, this gift-"

"Gifts extorted by threats and kidnapping." Garland nodded sarcastically, approaching the men one at a time to divest them of their weapons. "You people always were good at that sort."

Nathan didn't know if it was only because the organ playing had stopped that he could now hear the rest of the noise gathering. Since they'd approached the church from the back, they hadn't been able to gage how close the crowds were at the front. In his pocket, his phone started to ring. He exchanged a look with Garland and took it out.

Parker... He couldn't work out much of what she was saying, but it wasn't like he didn't know the meat of it. He took it away from his ear while the noise on the other side was still in full flow and snapped it shut to shove it blindly in his jacket again. "We need to get Ray out the back now."

He cast a sour look across the little gathering of the Rev's people and crossed to the man on the organ stool, hooking an arm under his shoulder. Garland growled agreement and went to take his other side. Lily gathered up the mouth pipes and a bundle of clothing - jackets, hospital gown. Ray was dressed mostly in blankets, but had a loose, long shirt on his upper body, and probably looked almost normal from the public end of the church if he was sitting down, almost hidden at the church organ anyway.

The Rev's men were wary of the guns, but Cartwright was up on her feet and moving like she didn't care.

"Get back," Nathan warned sharply.

The threat only made her laugh. Nathan couldn't justify shooting as she closed in at a run. Then she was pulling at Ray. "You can't take him! He was sent to us. Sent to do the Lord's work!"

"I don't do work for any God of yours," Ray groaned, weak but defiant, trying to shove her off, to get his good leg under him to help them heft him. Even so, Garland had to take his hands off Ray to shove Cartwright away. Lily clutched onto Ray, helping Nathan keep him upright, but Ray was no lightweight and she wasn't strong enough to help move him. They struggled just to stay wavering in place.

"You get back over there and sit down," Garland ordered. "You think I won't shoot you if you're unarmed and stupid? I reckon better that than the public order nightmare 'bout to come through that door."

Nathan wasn't honestly sure if he was bluffing or not: just because he never had shot an unarmed woman didn't mean he wouldn't, with the stakes so high and no accountability. Nathan cursed and hauled Ray's weight himself. It was true that he couldn't judge heavy loads well, couldn't easily brace himself, couldn't tell what was too much for his body to bear. But they had to get Ray and his Trouble out and away from the oncoming crowd. He could hear Garland swearing and grunting with effort as he tried to fend off the shrill objections of Mandy Cartwright. He was still trying to position himself to hold back the two men with his gun while he kept her at bay, but the men seemed to be increasingly amused in place of daunted by the situation.

A crack sounded as Garland punched Cartwright in the jaw and she gave a little hiccup of shock and - Nathan risked a look over his shoulder - stumbled and fell on her ass on the floor.

"Hey, now," one of the men objected.

"You 'hey, now'. I didn't shoot her." Garland waved his gun with the distinct emphasis that he still might.

And the doors of the church swung wide.

The Rev came in on the head of the tide, but the people were pouring behind him, around him, starting with a gallery of faces both familiar and decidedly unwanted. They left a respectful or, perhaps, fearful circle of space around the resurrected man.

"Goddamn it, Nathan, go!" Garland barked, and Nathan and Lily surged forward, somehow, Ray carried between them. But they didn't make it to the door, caught up before they got there by the men who had entered the church with the Rev. With so many of the public pouring in behind them, more with each passing second, there was no way anyone from either side could risk a shot. Which left it, unfortunately, a matter of numbers.

The Rev looked Nathan's way, black eyes gleaming, chin squaring, and a smile crossing his severe features as he fixed eyes upon each Police Chief in turn. Then, either not hearing or not acknowledging Nathan's outraged shout, he deliberately turned away, back to his flock.

Nathan was fast overwhelmed, Ray and Lily torn from him, the gun twisted from his hand, arms pulled behind him where he lost track of them altogether. The Rev's own faithful - most of them he knew of old, and there was never much point trying to reason with them. Garland had also been overwhelmed, was being pushed and harried towards him, similarly in the centre of a knot of core followers. The general public coming in the main doors now wouldn't have a clear view of what was going on. Surrounded by the close press of bodies he couldn't feel, Nathan raised his voice, yelling first for Audrey, then just trying to yell a warning to anyone that could hear not to listen to the Rev. His voice was shredded and lost in the volume of the crowd.

Ray and Lily were dragged away from them and back toward the organ at the side of the chancel, out of his sight. Nathan and Garland were pushed out through the small door into the back rooms of the church again. A half dozen of the Rev's hardline followers clustered around them, hands yanking on clothes and under arms. Garland cussed them vigorously as he tried to fight.

The door slammed shut behind them.

---

Duke got the express route to the Good Shepherd Church, in the back of someone's car with his mouth and eyes covered and his hands tied. After he kicked out at them when they tried to unload him at the other end, he got his ankles tied, too, and got dragged the rest of the way by someone who wasn't too worried which parts of him were dragging on the ground or what else he hit on the way.

Hey! - Ow! - Thought I was your best damn hope?! he thought wildly, having only his internal monologue to keep him company through the uncomfortable journey, other than the bruises. He could only voice unintelligible grunts through the gag.

He could hear the sounds of the crowds like they were no more than a hundred yards away, he'd felt the vehicle travelling uphill the last short stretch after turning and slowing, and he was being dragged uphill over grass, now, so he damned well knew where he was going.

Inside descended, the wind cutting out, the outside chill replaced by the chill of the interior of a large public building with no adequate heating. He heard Nathan yelling, "Duke! What are you doing with him? You let him go-!" before Nathan's furious voice was cut off in a whoop for air like someone had just driven a fist into his gut.

"-Nathan!-" Duke's attempt to shout came out a roar of wordless noise behind the gag, and he was dragged on, leaving Nathan's wheezing breaths behind him.

"Don't you do it, son!" That was Garland, sounding a long way off, his voice travelling through the press of people and the length of a corridor to get to Duke. "Don't you kill for them!"

"Shut up!" someone else said, followed by a smack and Garland swearing.

"-You should have more goddamn respect for the dead-!"

Duke was shoved out into a bigger room; could feel the change in the way the sound hit the air, the space around him. Hard floorboards hit his knees as he was shoved forward and down, unable to save himself from bruises with his hands tied. Someone caught him by the shoulders - and a fucking handful of hair - and dragged him across the floorboards until he was caught and stopped and held. The blindfold was pulled off. He discovered himself to be surrounded by knees in the corner next to the big church organ.

"Duke!" Ray was perched on the seat behind the organ, Lily mostly holding him up.

"Mf!" Duke said. "Mmf-MF!" Don't play!

Dick Eddington owned the knees directly in front of Duke's nose. Dickless Eddington... just great. They hadn't been able to charge the guy last time, but everyone still knew he'd been in on the kidnappings.

"Don't worry," Dick said. "We know you're not going to help us deliver the Lord's justice to Haven. The Reverend says you're our ticket to get back the man who will, though."

Well, that did explain the thought processes behind his abduction. Another man, also vaguely familiar, pulled the gag from Duke's mouth.

"You're so fucking stupid I don't even know how you remember to breathe-" The slap in the face was probably predictable, but Duke had too much to say to care. "You're not going to get Simon Crocker out of me. Do you even know how this Trouble works?"

A grunt but no slap this time. The Rev had started droning in the background, drawing everyone's attention.

"Do you even care that, yet again, you're making use of another Trouble to fight the fucking Troubles that you swear in the same breath are the devil's work?"

That carried. Hastily, someone behind Duke cut his arms and legs free, so apparently they didn't want that to draw too much attention here. He wavered upright. Lily clung to his arm, supporting him as much as she was Ray for a moment.

"Mr Crocker." Now he could see above the majority of the heads in the crowd. The Rev was turning to look at him. The chancel was packed out with Rev-groupies, behind Driscoll's preaching back. There wasn't a whole lot of room for them elsewhere. The bodies filling the rest of the church, the pews and the aisles and every space in between, Duke had to assume were the more gullible or curious of the rest of Haven's population.

"Duke!" One voice was picked out of the crowd by his ears that would know her anywhere, but Duke didn't want to draw attention to Audrey by acknowledging it.

The Rev was speaking anyway. "It seems you're the chosen again, Mr Crocker. We have chosen you, specifically, to receive the blessings we bring to Haven today."

"You won't get Simon," Duke said, distinctly. "No matter how many times you try. You're wasting your time."

He supposed it wasn't actually wildly unreasonable that the Rev should fail to believe him.

"I am going to bring you," the Rev said to the hall, "a miracle! Bear witness to how the Lord God supports our cause. And then we shall finally start the good work to cleanse this town of the evil... the corruption..." He turned to cast a grimly faced order back at Ray and Lily. "Play."

"No!" Lily said, at the same time as a second female voice from the crowd yelled, "No!"

Duke did know her anywhere. Audrey. Audrey revealing herself to them. Audrey who'd shot the fucking Rev dead in the first place, and a good chunk of the people between her and Duke in this place knew that.

She was pushing to the front, a much brighter figure than the seeming dull surround, almost glowing... No, almost burning, as if something flickered wild and hot within her. Duke vision swam oddly, and suddenly he was afraid. There was heat in her face and the lines around her eyes were tight. She looked pained. He thought of the headaches; of Mara.

She looked fragile and alone out there. But still she raised her voice to address the Rev, the crowd and Ray. "You can't play in here! There are too many people already! Multiply each person here in this crush by two and think what happens!"

A murmur went up, different in tone than before, although for most of the crowd it was characterised by confusion.

The Rev apparently wasn't so far gone as all that, because he saw the logic and started nodding and pointing to some of his men. Duke caught the words "crowd control" before he turned back to the crowd and announced, "Some of you must witness from outside, but there will, I promise, be a chance for you all. Fling open the door and the windows..."

Audrey was wavering in the centre of the aisle, the same sort of circle of space around her that people had left for the Rev. But Audrey wasn't back from the dead. She was just on fire from within, and Duke could see it now, the way a heavy, unfamiliar something was piercing out through her eyes.

"Officer Parker," the Rev drawled. "Thank you, sincerely. It could have been such a regrettable incident."

Audrey had saved his ass and potentially prevented a loss of life that would have lost everyone from his cause. Duke grit his teeth and hated the man with a passion.

The Rev's people asserted space into the inside of the church, easing out some of the packed numbers, keeping the doors and windows wide but standing guard upon them. They broke the glass in the lower parts of any windows that didn't open, so the sound could carry to the perimeter. There was a buzz of high excitement among the faithful. It was being picked up to some degree by the rest of the folks, though their own burr was still more curiosity and confusion.

The Rev was about to get a lot more followers, and Duke didn't like to think where his madness would lead him next, as he turned back to Ray and with that gleam in his eyes again ordered, "Play."

"I told you, I-" A Rev follower stuck a gun in Lily's face and Ray swallowed hard.

"Ray, don't do it!" Lily hissed.

"Don't do it, man," Duke echoed; got elbowed in the gut by Dickless Eddington just as he'd been starting to get his balance back. "They're not going to shoot her in the middle of a church. In the middle of all this."

Dick drew a knife instead, its flick sounding louder than it should among all the furore. He made a move to carve Lily's face. "It's for a greater cause, Crocker."

"I-I don't know what it'll do to her," Ray said, panic in his voice as he struck a chord blindly, a bum note clunking within it. "I don't understand everything about what I'm bringing back!"

Duke blinked at that, and then Ray's fingers found the notes and his music soared. Wasn't traditional church music - he injected that much rebellion. The soul sounds of Otis Redding filled the church.

"Hey, I thought we had a deal, lover." That was Evi, at Duke's elbow. She drew in a sharp breath as she took in the scene around them. Duke wasn't sure if she took a step closer or got shoved there because of there suddenly being a whole lot more people around them.

"What're you doing with that knife?" There was sharp criticism in the old-woman voice that rapped out and a terrified yelp from Dick.

Other voices were rising. Not panic - not quite that, mostly not - but certainly confusion. Despite the dramatic lead-in from Driscoll, no-one had been ready for this. Duke thought back to all the conflicting feelings of seeing Evi again, to Nathan and Garland, and thought... everyone was distracted, but everyone was feeling different things. Complicated things. Maybe this wasn't going to be the situation the Rev had envisaged. It wasn't going to be all faces turned up to worship the miracles of the Lord, because they should have at least a dozen old family arguments breaking out already.

"You-" Duke had forgotten, in the moment, about what else failed to be as-anticipated. The Rev seized Duke's collar, yanking him around. His glare moved past Duke onto Evi and widened, as perhaps he remembered now that he'd seen Evi in the hospital room, before. "Where is he? Where's your father?"

Evi slapped the Rev hard across the face. "You killed me, you bastard. You think I've forgotten that?"

"Hah-!" Duke choked helpless laughter. "Oh, boy. You really expected - You can use this Trouble all you want, but it will not help you control the Crocker curse. Because there is no way in hell I am ever going to do your dirty work, and I defy you to find a single being on the Earth who loved Simon Crocker alone and above anyone else they'd ever lost, enough to bring him back."

"Oh, honey, that's sweet," Evi said.

"Evi - Evi, run," Duke urged. "Take Lily."

"I can't leave-" Lily tried to cling to Ray, but Evi pulled her away. The thing was, everyone was distracted. Even the Rev's minions had their lost loved ones hanging over them now, and where the main emotion coming through wasn't criticism or disapproval, they were far more interested in the reunion than any schemes. The Rev, a lone figure amid it all, was looking around in annoyance.

Evi and Lily didn't get far. Duke had lost track of Audrey as Ray's Trouble impacted on the crowd. Now, above the tumultuous voices of people talking to their dead, he now heard Evi's startled cry of, "Blondie?!" and alarmed, struggled forward through the crush of people.

Audrey was kneeling at the head of the aisle, but not in prayer - more like pain, her shoulders arched, her hands clawed and braced on the floor. Her head was down and her body shook. Evi's hand was on her shoulder, but she seemed to have no awareness of it.

"She is feeling the Wrath of God for her sins," the Rev said, next to Duke's ear, half-deafening him with the way he made his voice boom and carry. Duke realised the one spot where space had been available to move toward had been the circle of space around the Rev.

"Fuck you," Duke said, "she's sick. She's having some sort of seizure-" Shoving the Rev away to try and get to her was a step too far for the faithful, even as preoccupied as they were, and Dick woke up and, despite the critical presence of the harping old woman, grabbed Duke by the arms again and dragged him back. Another man helped: he had at his shoulder an older man with a nose like a beak and a disturbing demeanour of approval. "Audrey!" Duke yelled, fighting to go to her. What was wrong? Was it the headaches? Or had someone in the crowd struck her? She hadn't many friends here... "Audrey!"

The men hauled him back. The Rev made efforts to reassert himself upon the situation. "As promised, the faithful will be rewarded! And the sinner will be punished!" His jabbing finger zeroed in on Audrey's tortured form.

Fuck, thought Duke wildly. Nathan, where the hell did they take you? Someone, anyone, do something... Now, before he gets back control of this...

---

Nathan had been dragged down into the cramped back office full of books, papers and coffee pots and tied to a chair, with Garland back-to-back behind him in another chair. The Reverend's faithful hadn't lingered much longer than it took to secure them there - even the man meant to remain and guard them had ducked out to see what was going on and hadn't come back. These people weren't an army, held together by any sort of fixed discipline.

"Even when you think you've seen everything, people always find a new level of dumb," Garland snarled, jostling both their bound bodies as he struggled in his chair. "Guess that could be taken as reassuring."

"Once Ray plays, people are going to be even more distracted," Nathan said with difficulty, stretching to get a line of sight on the ropes that secured him, wincing as he heard his joints crunch and tugging his arms anyway, trying to establish from his sense of movement how the limbs that couldn't feel were twisted and held. "They'll be thinking about what they got back, not what they're doing."

Garland grunted, and was briefly, oddly silent. "That's what I am? A distraction?"

"I didn't say-" Leaning forward, if he went the other way, didn't give him a view of his feet. He wondered if he could tip the chair and force the ropes that were tying his ankles off over the ends of each chair leg in turn. If he could, would that help him to free the rest of him? He had a feeling his upper body was tied to Garland as well as the chair.

Garland's snort at his abbreviated protest said everything needed to deliver his opinion without a word of coherent speech.

Frustrated, Nathan said, "You're helping us, because I asked you to. The Barn..."

"Did you ask or did I decide? Because suddenly my memory seems hazy on exactly how that went."

"Dad..." He couldn't rock the chair; he thought it was wedged right up against Garland's, too much weight against it to easily move.

"This is your time, not mine. Maybe it wasn't up to me to be sticking my nose in."

"Dad..." A flurry of thoughts went through Nathan's head. He could protest that he didn't want the job, never had, and he wanted Garland back - and he did: the old man was frustrating as hell to live with, and never short of a critical word, but Nathan wanted him back. Just like he didn't want this job, but maybe he needed to keep this job, the best option for everyone's sake - Duke and Audrey's not the least. He'd kind of got used to it now, anyway, even if he wasn't ready to fight Garland for it.

He was ready to fight Haven for it. Ridiculously tied to a chair, with Garland huffing in the same fix at his back, he realised that he'd all but given up on keeping the role in recent weeks. He'd been treading water waiting for the inevitable fall. Hadn't expected it to be his dead father who took it away from him, but then again, it was Haven, so that was on him for short-sightedness.

He'd been facing the public's disappointment for his failure to bring the town through the Troubles... not his fault, any more than it was Audrey's fault that she'd been injured... as well as facing the inevitable and rising scandal associated with his private life.

He wasn't being ousted for who he chose to love. He was ready to fight this town for the right to lead it.

"I'm just saying," he grit, at any rate not prepared to deliver the words that would wound his father, "we need to get out of these ropes."

"Hunh." A moment later, Nathan heard the soft sounds of a head being shaken right behind his ear; the movement of hair and fabric and bristle that made the particular shape of that sound. "You're still numb." Garland's voice was low and restrained as he stated the obvious as though it was somehow significant. "Hard enough to untie knots when you can see them."

"Yes, so I can use your help, and no, my Trouble didn't magically disappear when everyone else's failed to." Maybe that was unfair. Garland hadn't meant the dig at his Trouble as criticism or slight, just that his mentioning it recalled every time it had been meant that way.

"Yeah? Well, 'scuse me for wondering if that had changed, since you're boning Crocker... He ain't immune, is he?"

"...Dad!" Nathan exploded.

"I got no problem beyond the 'Crocker' part, son. You find a nice, respectable fellow out there, then who, what and where you stick-"

"Don't finish that," Nathan growled.

"-Whatever. I'd say better him than Parker, 'cept you decided to do both. Damn it, Nathan!"

Nathan jerked his body almost involuntarily, tossing his head back and hearing his heels crack on the floor as he did. The chair rocked at last but he heard another, duller crack and Garland let fly with a wilder curse than usual. "That's how we're playin' now, is it?"

"I didn't mean to-" He wasn't sure if it was the fact of the unintended collision or the dizzying effect of the crack to the head that put him off balance. "You don't approve of my life, or who I choose to share it with. I'm not going to apologise for that. I still plan to be Chief of Police in this town." Silence from Garland. "Things are different now, but that's not my doing. Audrey was hurt. We don't know if that's... It seems like that's why. Either way, she's here for good this time, same as the Troubles. You said she's important. Well, a big part of what's keeping her together in all this is the support she has from me and from Duke."

Garland's snort was softer than usual. Guilty, something told Nathan. "When I found out, I figured... No, was afraid it was something you'd done. You got yourself in too deep."

Nathan drew a breath that shuddered in his lungs. "I did get in too deep. That might not be a bad thing any more. But the Barn was not me."

He heard the minor shifting movements as Garland nodded, and kept nodding for a long and weary interval. "Shouldn't have stuck around this long because I didn't trust you. Shouldn't have lied. Then again-" Nathan heard teeth grinding. "Could see it clear as day between you and her. Didn't understand Crocker, didn't even come close to anticipating any sort of a... three-way... But Parker I got loud and clear. You could also have explained up front."

"Audrey's injury, too," Nathan admitted with a sigh. "I should have told you. But... I didn't want people blaming her. She's already blaming herself, I just wanted - the whole subject - wanted it off the table."

Only it wasn't working, and he couldn't deny it much longer. Audrey being the broken component meant there was no wider solution to the Troubles. Even the one she'd refused to use, refused to even discuss, probably relied upon her original being intact, if the Barn hadn't come. Nobody was going to persuade her to kill anyone when it likely wouldn't even work.

"Her head, huh?" Garland asked stiffly.

"Abernathy reckons the original is dead. Dying."

"Never did know who and what she was. Just she'd turn up when the Troubles were underway, never seemed to recognise anyone who'd been 'round the last time, always claimed to be someone different."

Nathan craned to look over his shoulder, wishing he could see his father's face. "You didn't trust her, either?" he demanded.

"Well... it seemed suspicious," Garland shot back gruffly. "You tell me it ain't. All this time, she was so close associated with the damn Troubles, it'd be a fool's move to assume she wasn't connected-"

"You said she was important! She does so much for this town!"

Garland said with a dark edge, "We don't know why."

"...I don't believe you."

"You're having sex with two goddamn people," Garland grumped. "The two most important damn people in the story of this town, no less, the ones you should be watching out for. Don't you tell me you don't believe my actions. I can't even credit that. You-" He swallowed the rest of wherever that had been going.

The silence that resulted after that was probably because neither of them could think of anything left to say. Nathan resumed trying to work at the ropes, suspecting he was only making them tighter and damaging his hands.

"You happy?" asked Garland, seeming out of nowhere.

"...What?"

"Simple question. You happy with them? Rented out the house, Vince said. That mean that's where you're living now? With them?"

"With... whichever one of them," Nathan explained reluctantly, caught off-balance by this sudden turn. "They've still got their own places."

"Man's got to have space of his own," Garland critiqued.

"I've an office," Nathan grit. He hadn't been spending any time at the house before he gave it up. "And I'm fine. Okay?"

"Okay, okay..." Nathan could see the face his father was pulling in his mind's eye, even if not in reality. "Hey, Nathan, your ears are better'n mine. Can you hear that music from here?"

"No," Nathan said slowly. How long had it been? A lot had happened, hard to keep track of time like this...

"I ain't having much luck with these ropes. I'm thinking... thinking I can push myself out of here if I try, though, if you get my meaning," Garland said. "Even if it ain't been as long as usual, you know? So long as that fellow's not still tinkering away." The chairs lurched. "You and me, they used the same rope for at least some of it. Might be if I'm not here, you could slip free."

"Dad..." Nathan said warningly. He couldn't feel. Even if the ropes did gain more slack, there was no guarantee he'd be able to get out of this. Garland surely had more chance of getting free than he did.

"...Yeah. Reckon I'm gonna give that a try. You know, don't you, minute you get back in that guy's range, all he has to do is play one note and you got back-up."

"Dad," Nathan tried, the protest coming out nervous and high. "I don't think-"

He was talking to air.

Since there was no longer anyone, especially not his father, around to hear them, he let loose a string of curses worthy of Garland Wuornos. Having no other option now, he set about the task of extricating himself from the ropes with a will, trying to utilize the slack Garland had left him.

---

There was a woman hanging in the air in front of her, head sagged, body limp and stretched with all the posture of death, her old fashioned dress flapping. As Audrey continued to stare up at the apparition, she registered dimly that the woman didn't hang from the ceiling of the church. Even if her head and body had all the appearance of being strung on the end of a rope, she was suspended from nothing. Her feet were level with Audrey's face, where she'd been driven to her knees by the sudden spike of agony through her head.

The people around her seemed to have sped up, all gabbling voices she could barely discern. But as she looked at them, seeing in double, triple time, she realised no-one else was paying any attention to the hanging woman.

Only her.

There wasn't a Trouble affecting everyone else. This was her head.

Audrey edged forward so she could look up at the slumped face of the hanging woman...

It was her own.

Of course it was.

"No. You're not real," Audrey said. "You can't be here." She wasn't sleeping, she was awake. But unless people had gotten really good at ignoring Haven's crap, no-one else could see this. They were looking at her or the Rev.

The head of her corpse jerked up. "Of course I'm not real. You took that privilege! Stop looking up my skirt!"

Audrey jolted back as the woman's feet snapped on the floor. A lot of horrible things her alter had done to her in dreams leaped uppermost in her thoughts. What kind of threat did she represent now, in something that wasn't wholly a dream, but couldn't be normal conscious thought-space either?

She was breathing too fast, the sweat gathering on her skin, and could hear her heartbeat pounding, unmistakeable physical reactions. How much of this was only hallucination? Someone in the crowd jostled her arm. She only shook him off but he reacted as though she'd done far worse, and the rest of the crowd reacted like she was on fire, suddenly clearing a wide circle around her. There were more stares upon her now than on the Rev.

"What are you doing?" she demanded of Mara. "Stop it!"

The people around her didn't react to her words. They were blurred, undefined and moving out of sync with her perceptions. They fell away as Mara stepped in close, reached up and sealed her hands around Audrey's throat.

This could not be happening. This was a woman who only existed inside Audrey's head.

In her dreams, she'd always been so... restricted, when it came to fighting her. Mara controlled the landscape, the choices, as though there was only so much Audrey could do to raise hand against her original. The others, especially Lucy, had helped, but she didn't think they were there anymore now.

"If I'm to die," Mara said, "I don't see why I should let you carry on using what's mine."

For a flickering instant, Audrey was aware of experiencing double-vision. Even as she flailed at her throat, trying to loosen Mara's grip, she was aware that her body was not doing that. There were words, bitter and shrill ones that she was not speaking, being shrieked from her tongue, and the people around reacted to them as though she'd said something terrible. A rustle of panic went through the crowd, then someone threw something.

"What is... happening?" she choked, and blinked back into focus on Mara's face so close to hers.

Mara looked like a ghoul, eyes like pits, their underneaths blackened, her skin paper white and thinly stretched over bone. Her hair hung lank. Her fingers on Audrey's throat seemed like talons. Audrey pushed her own fingers into Mara's wrists and the skin and bone seemed to give beneath her touch, horribly, but Mara's grip didn't loosen and Audrey didn't gain anything.

"Not quite a stoning-" the object at her feet was a hymn book, compact but heavy "-but we'll get there. I'll make them kill you if I can't! I remember witch burnings!"

"Stop it!" Audrey threw her off, somehow, and they both fell on the floor. Something bounced off the back of her neck, hard enough to break through the hallucination and actually hurt. Her hands clutched the floor tiles, dually. She blinked, realising she was seeing both her own hands and Mara's claws as if they were her own hands.

"I'm not you!" She pulled up Duke and Nathan's words, bolstering her self. She had been without memory at all for days, but she had still been herself. She had that. Duke and Nathan's presence in her life made a bright path through her memory. Mara rounded on her on all fours and hissed like a cat.

Mara was bleeding, mystery wounds gouged out of her skin that had not been there before.

Audrey faltered "Wait... wait." Had she done that? Her effort to fight back? Her reassertion of her own identity? But... "I don't want you dead! I don't want to do things this way! Please stop. If we stop fighting, can I help you to survive?"

Mara blinked and scowled, taken aback but far from willing to back off. "You can't, and I won't let you live! Bad enough you took my body on loan. You're not keeping it! I'll send us both down to hell first!"

"I need to know the things you know," Audrey said, her eyes swimming and focus difficult. Things were happening in the real world. She was aware of people very close. "Why do I have your body? Who are you?" She thought that she could break out of the hallucination now, if she tried. But this could be the last of Mara. She didn't want to miss the only chance she might get. "And the Troubles! Please, tell me about the Troubles? Duke thinks you had something to do with causing them." Her voice collapsed to a whisper, asking the question she did not truly want to hear answered.

"You think?!" Mara seemed all teeth. "Sure, why not? Why shouldn't your men know that they're curling up at night with the one who cursed them? I made the Troubles. I'd make more, if I could! I'm far more than some faded, whining reflection who fixes them!"

Audrey's breath stuck in her throat. The picture fractured again. Someone else was standing over her with a gun drawn, wearing a blue HPD uniform. Mara's skin was sagging and peeling off in shreds, her body fragmenting with everything else.

"No, no, no!" raged Mara, flinging the pieces at Audrey like the missiles that were still occasionally coming in the real world. "You... cannot... be allowed to live. I won't let you!"

She threw a severed foot, hard, almost knocking Audrey down again.

Then she turned, sitting back with the pieces that were left of her and laughing. "It doesn't matter! You're a shell, a nothing! You couldn't live without me! There's not enough there!"

The declaration caused a violent chill to steal over her, but Audrey said forcefully, "I had no memory in Malcove's world. Not yours. Not Audrey Parker's. That means I don't need either of you to be whoever I've become."

Bolstering herself was the death knell for Mara. Audrey watched her collapse into disparate threads that shrivelled and waned and disappeared, off into the cracks in the floor, into the crowd between people's feet, and some of them, coiling up into Audrey herself.

---

"What's wrong with her?" Ray asked, his eyes wild and wide with pain and shock and honestly Duke figured probably any number of things in the middle of this crap. The guy had a broken leg, and who knew if the Rev's people had bothered to keep up his pain meds? He'd just lost his wife, even if she was still there, standing beside him.

This was all going to hell so fast. Audrey was losing it, and since they'd hidden it from the town at large, these people didn't know she was sick.

Evi picked up another thrown object and this time threw it back, bouncing it off the head of hopefully the person who'd thrown it. "Fuck you! This is not the 17th Century!"

Duke wanted to go to her, but Tater was there, melting out of the confusion, putting his body between the two women and the crowd and trying to pacify the masses, even if he didn't know what was going on. Duke had serious doubts as to whether pouring a Crocker onto the situation would have any better effect than using oil to try and douse a fire.

"The devil has her!" the Rev announced. "You have already witnessed today what the almighty can do for those who have faith! Now witness how the faithless suffer from the presence of the devil inside them!"

That just made that thing wearing Audrey laugh and laugh. She pushed up, shoving Tatum and Evi aside, and yelled, "Wrong! You stupid little town, I am not the devil, I am your creator! I am your GOD!"

...Well, that was oil on the flames, for sure.

The screams and rage of the crowds blended into an amorphous buzz of resentment. 'Audrey' went for Tatum, hands clawing for his gun. Duke wasn't sure what she was trying to achieve with that but he was pretty glad Evi managed to restrain her, pinning her arms from behind.

'Audrey' laughed and sneered insults at the crowd like she was actually trying to make them rush in and tear her limb from limb.

The Rev's people were a bunch of ...revved-up nutters, but even they weren't that sort of frenzied mad, not yet. Duke didn't even think it was more than half a dozen people who'd been throwing stuff.

"She's sick!" Evi yelled. "Don't you people have eyes?"

"'God' spat on this town!" 'Audrey' shrieked. "You know what 'God' gave you to salve your miseries? She gave you me! I made you... I made all... all the little Troubles..." Her pointing hand hovered on the air. She looked drunk. Duke's heart was beating wildly at those words on her lips. He'd said it - guessed it - but he didn't think he'd been completely convinced, until now.

That other, ancient presence, the original template that lurked inside Audrey's head? Was the being who had made the Troubles in the first place. What did that make Audrey? Penance, punishment, jailer?

"She has a head injury!" Duke yelled, raising his voice loud as he could to be heard over the crowd, and if he could drown out whatever 'Audrey' was ranting, so much the better. He'd muddy the situation by liberal use of the truth. "She's hallucinating! Ask her neurologist in Bangor!"

"Duke, Duke, Duke," 'Audrey' said, licking her fingers. There was blood on them from somewhere. "So full of crap."

Then she... collapsed, thank fuck, and Evi caught her. She struggled up a moment later, holding her head, looking like Audrey, sort of, but looking afraid in a way he'd seldom seen Audrey look, as she gazed around at all the people staring at her in their horror and rage.

"Audrey!" Duke yelled. Her body language had changed completely. It was her again, of that he had no doubt. But the other had left her in a situation that needed dealing with. She raised her head and looked at him, and her eyes misted with affection and her expression collapsed into cautious relief, but she didn't leap to action. Perhaps, in the circumstances, a leap to action was asking too much.

"You heard her!" Reverend Driscoll yelled, melodramatic old buzzard. "Only evil itself would make such claims. She is condemned by her own tongue-" Like hell the old goat didn't hold it against her that she'd pulled the trigger, Duke thought grimly. Audrey's enemies were circling for the kill, and the Rev would do it if he could, if the enemy inside her head had failed. Even if he hadn't understood what had just happened, Driscoll could see as clear as Duke could that she was back to herself now.

In the distraction, Duke forced his aching limbs to move, shoved the intervening bodies out of the way and made it to the front and centre once more. "He is a liar!" he yelled, pointing at the Rev. "He was a drunk and a bigot, and the police shot him because he was about to cut the throat of a young girl - who, by the way, he also tried to declare was evil! So for the love of everything you believe in, do not listen to him!"

"From the mouths of criminals..." the Rev sneered.

A hymn book bounced off Duke's chin.

"You people, please!" Tater yelled, stuttering in the public forum, surrounded by what looked like a cluster of disapproving family both dead and alive. "Duke's a good guy. He helps us out all the time."

Duke's brain blanked a bit at that, which didn't really help. And really, Tater pitching in was great, but this needed a voice of authority, someone to match the Rev. Needed Garland, or... or Nathan.

Duke shook himself, feeling like a traitor for thinking of the senior Wuornos first.

Still, the facts remained. These people weren't stupid, nor unthinking, weren't a mob yet. So they'd had a bunch of dead loved ones returned to them? They lived in Haven. At least a decent percentage should have some inkling not to take miracles at face value. Even the ones that didn't should have absorbed something by osmosis after all the crap they'd been through, the re-written realities and time re-sets and Halloween freakshow evenings, even if they'd forgotten the events themselves. Should know not to hail Reverend Driscoll as a holy agent bringing wonders down to the Earth.

"I need you people to calm down..." Tatum was trying, both his palms extended. Evi had planted herself as a wall on the other side of Audrey, but her eyes were afraid. Mass religion and a police presence, Duke guessed: those did tend to be the things that had always fazed her most.

Audrey was pulling it together. She struggled to rise and hold her own weight. The crowd moved like water, reacting to her movements. They backed off with a collective gasp as she lurched on her feet and staggered one way...

"Audrey! Are you okay?!" Duke yelled, before the Rev could speak again.

"I think-"

The Rev started to speak and Duke drove an elbow into his stomach. He tried to do it surreptitiously, but he should've just gone for maximum force because it got him dragged off and laid into by the nearest three Rev supporters, and then by another few who were so outraged they waded in specially to add their displeasure.

"Let him go!" Audrey ordered, and used her dubious influence over the crowd to try and get near. She was still very unsteady - Duke caught glimpses of her, reeling, but when she met up with the core supporters toward the front of the church they stood firm. They knew who'd fired that fatal bullet, while the more general public at the back were only riled and edgy and afraid. She'd certainly been acting possessed. The blows that were still landing faded out in his focus on her as the world swam surreally. "Listen to me, please! You know who I am! Marion, Chet, Diane, Landon... I can see you all there! I'm sorry if I scared you, but you know me! I fix Troubles, and this... is a Trouble. Don't let this man masquerade as a miracle. He'll tell you the Troubles are evil... but he never hesitates to use them when they help him!"

"We know who you are!" one of the faithful snapped, accusing, covering for the wheezing Rev. "Now we know what you are and what you did! Condemned from your own mouth!"

The Rev's supporters picked it up and started to work with it, a murmur at first rising almost like a chant. Duke held his torso and wondered if he'd cracked ribs, but at least with the new distraction people had stopped hitting him. He struggled to stay upright as their hands abandoned him. "She is Audrey Parker!" he yelled hoarsely. "She helps the Troubled!" He gave in to his unsteadiness, lurching against the two men between himself and the Rev, and managed to knock one of them down without even trying. The other clung to his shoulder. He lurched another step anyway, dragging the guy, yelling at the Reverend as he was starting to straighten up and open his poison lips again. "What the hell did you do with Nathan?!"

The Rev frowned at him.

The doors of the church burst open and Duke jerked his head up for the new arrivals in crazy hope.

...Guns were the first thing he saw. Rough leather jackets and scuffed, heavy duty outdoor wear. Also the guns, like a truckload of them. Also the prominently displayed tattoos.

Vince Teagues was at the head of the group, in the centre of the aisle, visible above the press of the crowd, taller than almost anyone else in the church.

"...Fuck," Duke said.

Okay, there were probably a few different ways this could go. But on balance, he was pretty sure things had just got worse.

---

"Vince!" Audrey was not sure if what propelled her exclamation was relief or horror. There was, oddly, a new sense of warmth and familiarity in her for the looming old man. Sarah, she thought... Sarah... Lucy? She had known him through three lifetimes, and he would defend her.

...Maybe a few pieces of her past selves had made it through to her after all.

Maybe his defending her wasn't the best thing to throw at this situation right now. Two opposing sides in a confined space, geared up for war...

"Are these people giving you trouble?" Vince asked, with steel in his eyes and danger in his voice.

"No... no, Vince," Audrey said, not as sharp as she'd like, much closer to begging than she liked, and her voice sounded weak to her own ears. She felt like she'd fought a great battle already. "We're not doing it like this. Not with the guns."

"From where I'm sitting," Vince muttered, "I see one murderous old drunk who should have stayed in the ground. Seems to me a fine idea to put him back there."

At Vince's side, Jordan McKee let out a sharp laugh and levelled her gun at the Rev. "Volunteering."

"No!" Audrey said again, at the same time as Duke's voice rose, aghast: "Jesus Christ, Vince - Jordan! - do not shoot him! You don't give him that kind of martyrdom."

It had been bad enough when the Rev was shot by the police in the line of duty as a consequence of threatening the life of a child. They did not need his followers ignited by his vastly more public death, gunned down without such ignominity and, on the face of it, debatable provocation by a known, Troubled member of the Guard.

They were trying to avoid all-out war in Haven.

"You don't bring those weapons into the house of God," the Rev said, and that was pretty rich considering his well-armed (if more subtly-armed) followers, but he was smiling. "Behold, those among you who are truly Godly. The Lord has seen fit to bring them to our door, that they should be unmasked to you. Behold the army of the Cursed. Behold their leaders..."

"So help me, I will kill you again," Jordan said.

"Repent your sins and pray, and you may yet be salvaged."

"Fuck you-" The only reason Jordan didn't shoot was because Vince reached down and put his hand on the gun. Audrey was unutterably relieved that Vince had enough sense.

"We will fix this Trouble and he will be gone," Audrey said, her teeth grit, but her words sounded a thready gasp in the large, packed space.

"That woman," the Rev said, "is the cause of all our woes." His eyes were dark and hateful. "For all I know, her death might even be what ends them. Instead of a token sacrifice each generation, one sacrifice, permanent, now."

"Sir, I call that incitement to murder in front of multiple witnesses," Tater said, "and I'm placing you under arrest."

It was a gallant effort and in some world it might've worked. In this one, the only thing that happened was his arrayed family exploded in noisy, scandalised criticism and the Rev's people moved to pack themselves so densely Tatum couldn't get near him.

"I won't let you kill her," Vince growled, his presence suddenly all the more huge inside the church.

"But is he right?" Jordan demanded, her voice harsh and needy and - far more encompassing the sentiments of the rest of the Guard behind her than Vince's stance, as their voices rose in echo.

"If you kill her," Duke rasped, "you won't have anyone who can fight the Troubles." He almost got the last word out before the Rev's people dragged him down again. Audrey looked his way with concern, but she couldn't do anything. They wouldn't dare harm him seriously, she told herself bitterly. His bloodline was far too valuable to them.

"What if we no longer have Troubles?" Jordan cried, and there was something so plaintive about it, for a cry to solicit murder.

Audrey was left stunned and uncertain by the murderous turn of the conversation. "I don't - I don't think that my death will help you," she said, feeling as though somehow she was speaking out of turn. After what she'd just found out... how could she plead for her life? If she'd really done those things, did she deserve to live...? What if it worked? Yet... the Barn had not come. No. No. She clung fiercely to the denial. "It will just leave you with no front line of defence. I'm the only one immune..."

"And no-one," Nathan's voice rang out, harder and louder than she'd ever heard it, "is killing anyone in my town."

---

Well, this was daunting.

He'd made himself wait outside the door for long enough to get a sense of what was happening, with the Rev's people and the Guard and their very alarming topic of conversation; still, when he'd burst in, Nathan hadn't expected to see his lovers in quite such straits. Duke was in the rough grasp of several of the Reverend's supporters. Audrey was surrounded by a crowd of regular Haven folk that was nonetheless giving off the most ominous vibe.

He wasn't armed, and it wouldn't have done him any good if he was. The only threat he had that might work was his badge, and he held it out like a talisman. It had been his father's before him.

He opened his mouth after the first bold declaration and no words came. He could see Ray at the organ, but his hands weren't on the keys. Nathan wondered how long it had been since he'd last played; if it was better not to extend the remaining time they had the Rev to deal with or to have Garland back... "All he has to do is play one note and you've got back-up."

He'd never been any good at public speaking.

His vision filled up with the sea of faces turned his way. Vince and the Reverend had far more natural authority about them, but even Jordan McKee had more charisma to work a crowd. She was staring at him with the rest, and hers were the lips starting to move first.

Hers had been the voice calling for Audrey's death.

"No-one's killing anyone," Nathan said again, trying to pitch his voice to the back of the room, the way that the self-help recordings that Duke and Audrey would never, ever know about advised. "I'm the Chief of Police in this town. Bad enough we've spent the last few centuries condoning the sacrifice of her identity to put a band-aid on the Troubles. Now that doesn't work anymore, we're starting a new era, and we're not going to do it with bloodshed."

"Nathan Wuornos," the Rev intoned in his booming, disapproving voice, but there was a note in there, too, of almost amusement.

"You have lost your right to speak for the living," Nathan snapped, urgency producing something from his lips to counter the inevitable bite of the Rev's poison tongue. "People, your dead are here. They're here for an hour, two hours at most. I want you to disperse and make the most of that. Say your goodbyes, talk over your unfinished business, and make peace. I want this church cleared in an orderly fashion, starting from the back. Vince-" He took a step, and gestured to Vince with his hand.

The old man gave a gulp, curly head angling, and caught Nathan's eye. Nathan's eye was pretty much begging him for his support but hopefully not being too obvious about it for the rest of the people present.

After a tense moment, Vince nodded and herded his people forward, clearing the doorway and moving on up the aisle. Nathan wasn't charmed by the Guard guns, but he'd rather have someone here with the physical means to go up against the hardcore Rev supporters if it came to talk about burning the curses out of the Troubled again, or murdering Audrey.

"Tatum," he said, swallowing hard. "Help keep them orderly, heading out. Tell anyone still outside that this gathering is dispersing and they should disperse too. There should be other officers out there to help."

Tatum nodded and acknowledged, "Chief!"

It was the weirdest feeling. Nathan had never had this. He knew he didn't have this. Command. Charisma. Garland... Garland had had it, but not this much. Not like - like he had these people under the spell of his word, the spell of the badge still thrust forward in his hand. But now it was almost like he could feel a presence within him, heavy but benign, strong and intent.

Garland had promised, when he'd disappeared, that he'd have Nathan's back.

They'd been thinking about the use of Ray's Trouble for that, but-

Unbelievably, people were leaving. The regular folks; not the Guard, not the Rev's faithful, but people were leaving. Hand in hand with their dead... or a hand over their shoulder... or half locked in embrace as they stumbled. Leaving like it was natural to follow Nathan's word when he gave such orders.

Audrey and Duke were gawping like fish, and okay, Nathan was the first to admit that this epic command of people was not a skill he had, but even so, that was irksome of them. The Rev was staring, too, looking pretty put out, and Nathan wasn't sure how he'd held his tongue through that. Vince was squinting at Nathan with a weird intensity.

Nathan was terrified that it was going to end any moment; the effect some kind of illusion that would crash and burn. Yet it held as the public cleared the church, until he was left with was the Rev and the core of his faithful, the Guard, Evi, Lily and Ray McBreen, and Duke and Audrey.

Duke opened his mouth, but then stopped and held himself as though he did not dare say anything.

Nathan said, with a forceful layer of threat to the men holding Duke, "Let him go."

"You don't command my people, Garland," the Rev spat.

The bottom dropped out of Nathan's stomach - freefall, vertigo, it could only be a psychosomatic sensation. He drew in a harsh breath. The right words - he needed the right words - "It's not just him, Driscoll."

The Rev's mouth dropped open, and Nathan realised then that the other man had actually misspoken; called him Garland in error, and now was checking himself and everything that the mistake and Nathan's response brought with it.

Nathan eyed the Rev's men and said tightly, "He doesn't have to live in this town. You do. At least two of you already got records in the last incident. You really want to do serious time?"

The men unhanded Duke and stepped back.

Driscoll snorted. "This is ridiculous. This young upstart is no sort of Chief of anything, and he's one of Them besides-"

"Can it," Nathan said, and this time he could all but hear the other voice layered over his own. Chills ran across the surface of his unfeeling skin.

"We are taking Ray McBreen back to the hospital," Nathan said. "Vince, could a few of your people... he has a broken leg."

"It's his Trouble that started all this," Audrey put in, her voice hushed as if she thought talking might disperse the spell, too. "He's one of you."

Vince nodded. "We'll get this, Nathan." He gestured sharply. He was maybe the only one here who wasn't looking puzzled by this, now. But as his men were lifting Ray out of the church, Lily following them with her head constantly turning back, Vince leaned into Nathan and said, "Does this mean... Garland's not coming back?"

Nathan shook his head - not now! - but realised it had been taken as an answer to the question as Vince nodded, and said, "Goodbye, old friend," and clutched Nathan's shoulder, just for a moment.

Vince stood back, shook himself, and looked around, traces of the bumbling old man filtering back in. "So, what are, um, just what exactly are we doing here?"

"We have-" Nathan started, then turned to Duke and Audrey. "How long since he played?"

Audrey looked mystified, but Duke said, "About forty, fifty minutes."

"For just over an hour," Nathan said, "we're all going to sit here and watch each other, until this old vulture disappears for good." Nathan couldn't feel headaches, but a twitch at the edge of his eyes and an odd floating quality to his attempts to focus his vision suggested his head was pounding.

Garland's presence had left him with Vince's gesture, and he held himself tightly on-edge, trying not to lose that thread of command and persuasion that had already been spun out around the folks inside the church... for what was one of the most tense hours of his whole damn life.