The Complete Adversary Cycle: The Keep, the Tomb, the Touch, Reborn, Reprisal, Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack)

by F. Paul Wilson

Glaeken stood in the dark on the rim of the Sheep Meadow hole and gazed into the abyss.

  Somewhere down there, Rasalom waited. Glaeken could feel him, sense him, smell his stink. He would not be hard to find.

  But he had to hurry. A rude, insistent urgency crowded against his back, nudging him forward. In spite of it, he turned and stared back at the cone of brilliance that pinned his apartment house like a prop on a stage, at the worm of light that had trailed him from the cone. Because of it, the night things had avoided him on his trek to this spot. They’d been clustered along the edge here but had slithered away at his approach.

  He wished they hadn’t—wished something had challenged him, blocked his path. He hungered to hurt something—to slash, cut, maim, crush under his heel, destroy.

  I was free! he thought. Free!

  And now he was caught again, trapped once more in the service of—what? The power he’d served had no name, had never presented a physical manifestation. It simply was there—and it wanted him here.

  The rage seething and boiling within him was beyond anything he had experienced in all his countless years. A living thing, like a berserk warrior, wild, deranged, psychotic, slavering for an object—anyone, anything on which to vent the steam of its pent-up fury. His whole body trembled as the beast within howled to be let loose.

  Save it. Save it for Rasalom.

  He was sure he’d need it then. All of it.

  He turned back to the pit and swung the weapon. Damn the Ally, but it felt good to feel good, to have his muscles and joints so strong and lithe, to be able to fling his arms freely in all directions, to twist and bend without stiffness and stabs of pain.

  And the weapon—he hated to admit how right it felt in his grasp as a deeper part of him remembered and responded to the heavy feel of the hilt tight against his palms and fingers. The warrior in him smelled blood.

  He sensed movement behind him and whirled. Had one of the creatures dared—?

  No. A lone figure approached, trotting toward him. He had a strange-looking shotgun strapped across his back, an assault rifle in his hands, and a pair of pistols stuck in his belt.

  Jack.

  “Take your back?” he said as he stopped before him.

  Glaeken’s bitterness eased at the words, balmed by the man’s casual courage.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Jack—you’re the Heir. You should be back with the others.”

  He held back from telling him that he was a liability here—that Rasalom might find a way to use Jack against him.

  Jack shook his head. “You’re not the only one with a score to settle.”

  Yes … the Connells … Weezy and Eddie. Especially Weezy. Glaeken had loved her too.

  “I understand, but I’m the only one who can do the settling.” He pointed to Jack’s weapons. “Bullets are useless here.” He hefted the sword. “This is the only thing that can put an end to Rasalom.”

  Or maybe not. Maybe he’s too powerful now even for the sword.

  “You’ll help me best by waiting with the others. All my dangers lay straight ahead. It’s not my back I’m worried about—it’s you.”

  “All right. You go ahead. But I’m not going back. I’m waiting right here—just in case.”

  “Just in case what?”

  “You never know.”

  Glaeken had no more time to waste. He nodded to Jack, slipped the weapon through the back of his belt, and lowered himself over the edge to begin his descent.

  WFPW-FM

  JO: Awright, man. We’ve had confirmation. A few other good people have CB’d in to tell us that yes, there is some heavy light coming out of the sky on Central Park West up near the Sheep Meadow.

  FREDDY: Yeah, and if you remember, that’s near where the first of those nasty bug holes opened up. We don’t know if there’s a connection so you might want to be careful, but the folks who’ve contacted us say they’re going to try to get over to it and check it out.

  JO: We’ll keep you informed. As long as we’ve got juice from the generator, we’ll be here. So keep us on.

  Carol pointed into the dark blob that was Central Park. The thread of light that wove through the blackness there had not lengthened in the past few minutes.

  “Glaeken must have stopped moving,” she said. “Do you think something’s wrong?”

  “I don’t think we’ll see it move any farther,” Bill said. “It looks like it’s reached the hole. He’s probably out of sight now, moving down.”

  “I hope the light’s still following him. And where’s Jack?”

  No one had an answer.

  Carol glanced down at the sidewalks below in time to see a battered car skid to a halt against the curb. It was covered—smothered—with night things, but they slipped away when the car penetrated the edge of the light. The door flew open and a half dozen people—a man, two women, and three kids—tumbled out. They began to run for the door of the building but slowed to a stop as they realized they were no longer being pursued. They looked up at the light, spread their arms, laughed, and began to hug each other.

  Another car flew out of the darkness and bounded over the curb before it came to a stop. Another group of people jumped out. The first greeted them with cheers and they all embraced.

  “I don’t know if I like this,” Bill said.

  Carol looked at him. “They’re coming to the light.”

  “That could be trouble. Think we ought to get downstairs, Ba?”

  The big Asian stood behind Sylvia and Jeffy. He shook his head.

  “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” Carol said. “I mean, I think we should share the light.”

  Bill nodded. “I do too. As long as that’s all they want.”

  Carol looked down again. More people had reached the light, some apparently on foot from neighboring buildings. She noticed something.

  “Bill? Remember when we first looked down? Wasn’t the light just to the edge of the sidewalk?”

  Bill shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t notice.”

  Carol stared down at the rim of shadow that encircled the building. It now reached a good yard beyond the curb on the asphalt of the street.

  A hundred or so feet down the western wall, Glaeken found the mouth of the lateral passage—a dozen feet across and the only break in the smooth granite surface. He swung inward and landed on his feet. He pulled the weapon free and started walking. He needed no signpost to tell him that Rasalom lay ahead.

  The light followed, filling the tunnel in his wake, stretching his shadow far ahead, sending dark things scuttling and slithering and fluttering out of the way.

  He pushed on, not running, but moving swiftly with quick, long strides. The sense of urgency clung to his back, propelling him forward. He swung the blade back and forth, splashing the air with bright arcs of light, then waded through them.

  But as he progressed deeper and farther along the tunnel, he noticed a dimming of the light. He turned and looked back along his path. Back there the light looked as thick and bright as before, but down here it seemed attenuated, diluted, tainted …

  It could only mean he was nearing his goal, the heart of the darkness.

  Not much farther on, the light loosened its embrace and pulled free; it hung back, abandoning him to penetrate the beckoning blackness of the tunnel ahead alone.

  Glaeken kept moving, slower now, stepping more carefully. Only the blade was glowing now, and that faintly, struggling against the thickening blackness that devoured its light. Soon its light failed too. Glaeken stood in a featureless black limbo, cold, silent, expectant. Darkness complete, victorious.

  And then, as he knew it would, came the voice, the loathed voice, speaking into his mind.

  “Welcome, Glaeken. Welcome to a place where your light cannot go. My place. A place of no light. Remind you of anywhere from the past?”

  Glaeken refused to reply.

  “Keep walking, Glaeken. I won’t stop you. There’s light of sorts ahead.
A different light, the kind I choose to allow here. No traps or tricks, I promise. I want you here. I’ve been waiting for you. The Change is almost complete. I want you to marvel at my new form. I want you to be the first to see me. I want to be the very last thing you see.”

  Glaeken felt his palms dampen. He was in another country now, where Rasalom made all the rules. Tightening his grip on the hilt, he stepped forward into the black.

  WFPW-FM

  JO: Okay. We’ve had somebody CB us from right inside the beam of light over on Central Park West and they say it’s the real thing. Bright, warm, and the bugs won’t go near it. Nobody knows how long it’ll last, but it’s there now and these folks think it might be there to stay.

  FREDDY: So look, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna make this loop and set it going, then we’re outta here. We’re heading there ourselves. We’ll have a message on the tape, then we’ll follow it with a Travelin’ Wilburys song, and the whole deal will play over and over.

  JO: And here’s the message: Get to the light. Get over to Central Park West any way you can and get into the light. Get moving and good luck. And while you’re on the move, here’s some appropriate traveling music. See you there, man.

 

  Dim light ahead, oozing around the next bend in the passage.

  Unhealthy light. A sickly, wan, greasy glow, clinging to the tunnel walls like grime, casting no shadows. No hope dwelt in that light, no succor from the night, merely a confirmation of the dark’s superiority.

  As Glaeken moved toward the feeble glow, the air grew colder; an acrid odor stung his nostrils. He rounded the bend and stopped.

  In the center of a huge granite cavern, a hundred feet across, Rasalom’s new form hung suspended over a softly glowing abyss. Four gleaming ebony pillars reached from the corners of the chamber, arching across the chasm to fuse over its center. A huge sac, bulging, pendulous, nearly the size of a small warehouse, hung suspended from that central fusion. Glaeken could make out no details of the shape floating within its inky amnion. He didn’t need to see Rasalom to know it was he, undergoing the final stage of his transformation.

  “Welcome to my womb, Glaeken.”

  Glaeken did not reply. Instead, he leapt upon the nearest support where it sprang from the wall and strode along its upper surface toward the center where Rasalom hung.

  “Glaeken, wait! Stop!” Rasalom’s voice took on a panicky edge in his head. “What are you doing?”

  Glaeken kept moving toward the center, the weapon raised before him.

  “There’s no need for this, Glaeken! I’m so close! You’ll ruin everything!”

  Glaeken slowed, alerted by the anxious tone. This was the Adversary’s time, and Rasalom’s natural arrogance must have ballooned to gargantuan proportions by now. Glaeken could count on any sign of uncertainty being a sham, a lure to draw him closer, not put him off.

  He’d cautiously progressed to within a dozen feet of the sac when the surface of the support suddenly softened and erupted in hundreds of fine tendrils that wrapped around his ankles, snaring them, encasing them in a squirming mass, then recrystallized to rocklike hardness. He pulled and strained but his feet were locked down. He chopped with the blade but remained trapped like a fly on a pest strip.

  He stared down at the sac hanging within spitting distance below. A huge eye rolled against the inner surface of the membrane and stopped to stare back at him.

  “That is quite far enough.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.”

  He shifted his grip on the hilt and raised the weapon over his shoulder like a spear, its point directed at the eye. Rasalom’s voice screamed in his brain.

  “No! Glaeken, wait! I can help you!”

  That didn’t sound feigned. Was Rasalom vulnerable while not fully reshaped?

  “No deals, Rasalom.”

  He reared back to hurl the weapon.

  “I can make her whole again!”

  Glaeken hesitated. He couldn’t help it.

  “Whole again? Who?”

  “Your woman. That Hungarian Jewess who stole your heart. I can give her back her mind—and make her young again.”

  “No. You can’t. Not even the Dat-tay-vao—”

  “I’m far more powerful than that puny elemental. This is my world now. When I complete the Change I can do whatever I wish. I will be making the rules here, Glaeken. All the rules. And if I say the woman called Magda shall be thirty again and sound of mind and body forever—forever—then so it shall be.”

  Magda … alert, young, healthy, sane … the vision of the two of them together as they used to be …

  He shook it off.

  “No. Not in this world.”

  “It doesn’t have to be this world. You can have your own corner of the globe, your own island, your own archipelago. All to yourselves. You can even take some of your friends. The sun will shine there forever. You can live on in idyllic splendor.”

  “While the rest of the world…?”

  “Is mine. All you have to do is acknowledge me as master of this sphere and drop your weapon into the abyss. After that I shall see to all your comforts.”

  For a heartbeat he half considered it—and the realization rocked Glaeken.

  Did he want Magda back that much? And Magda—she’d never forgive him. He’d have to live on with her abhorrence, her loathing.

  He tightened his grip on the weapon.

  “No deals.”

  Putting all his arm and as much of his foot-locked body as he could behind it, Glaeken hurled the weapon at the sac. The huge eye ducked away as Rasalom’s voice screamed in his mind.

  “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

  The point of the blade pierced the membrane, penetrated about a foot, then stopped, quivering. Rasalom’s voice became a howl of pain as inky fluid spurted out around the blade, coating it, congealing around it, sealing the wound and encasing the weapon until the entire blade and all but the pommel of the hilt were mired in a hardening tarry mass.

  And then Rasalom’s howl of pain segued into a peal of laughter. The single huge eye once again pressed against the inner surface of the membrane and regarded him coldly.

  “Ah, Glaeken. Noble to the end. Just as well, I suppose. You probably knew you’d never see the tropical idyll I promised. But did you truly think you could hurt me? Here in the heart of my domain, in the seat of my power? Your arrogance is insufferable. It is too late to harm me, Glaeken—too late for a long time.”

  Glaeken tried once more to pull his feet free but they would not budge. He took a deep breath and stood quietly, waiting, listening to the hated voice in his mind.

  “You knew it was too late, Glaeken. You must have known all along. Yet knowing it was useless, still you took up the weapon and came to me instead of waiting for me to come to you. I don’t understand that. Can you explain your madness, your arrogance? We have some time. Speak.”

  “If the answer is not apparent to you, no amount of talking will make you understand. Where do we go from here?”

  “We wait. I’m almost ready. At the undawn I will be complete. When I emerge from my chrysalis I shall leave you here and move to the surface where I shall deal with your little circle of allies. And as I gut them I shall let you see it all through my eyes. And as for your wife, I shall keep my promise to you: I will restore her youth and her mind before her end—after all, we wouldn’t want her to die without knowing exactly what is happening. When all that is done, I’ll return for you. And then the fun shall truly begin.”

  Glaeken said nothing. No use in asking for mercy for himself or the others when none was to be had. So he closed his eyes and willed his insides to stone to inure them from the sick dread coiling through him.

  He’d failed.

  “And while we wait, I believe I’ll close that tiny wound in my perfect night. Too many people are taking undue pleasure in it. Imagine their fear and dismay when it starts to fade and they realize that they ar
e naked prey to all the night things encircling them. Yes, I like that idea. I should have thought of the pinhole myself. Allow a little cone of light through here and there about the world, let the locals run to it like moths to a flame, let it shine long enough to lift hopes, and then douse it. Thank you, Glaeken. You’ve given me a new game.”

  “Look at them all,” Carol said. “Must be thousands down there.”

  She’d returned with the others to the living room of Glaeken’s apartment and now she gazed down through the broken windows at the crowd below, listening to the noise floating up as each new arrival was greeted with cheers and hugs. A good sound, the noise of people breaking from unrelenting fear.

  “It’s the radio,” Bill said. “The only station still on air in town is playing a message sending everybody here.”

  Suddenly it went quiet below.

  “What happened?” Carol’s heart thudded with alarm and she clutched his arm. “I think the light just dimmed. Tell me I’m wrong, Bill. Tell me I’m wrong!”

  Bill glanced at her, then back out the windows.

  “No … I’m afraid you’re right. Look—it just dimmed a little more!”

  “It’s Glaeken’s fault,” said a familiar voice.

  They all turned. Nick was still sitting on the couch where they’d left him, still facing the dead fireplace.

  “Glaeken has lost. Rasalom is ascendant.”

  “Glaeken is … dead?” Sylvia said, stepping forward, hovering over Nick.

  Carol was surprised at her concern. She’d thought Sylvia blamed Glaeken for Jeffy’s condition.

  “Not yet,” Nick said. “But soon. We’ll die. Then he’ll die. Slowly.”

  Carol heard a new sound well up from the crowd outside—murmurs of fear, wails of panic. She turned back to the window and had the sudden impression that their cries of despair seemed to chase the light. She watched with growing dread as it faded from midday glare to twilight glow.