Leaving his cane behind, he stepped out into the hall—and to his shock discovered he was not alone.
At least a dozen Kickers were awake and wandering around. The one called Ansari, bleary-eyed and unshaven, stopped and stared at him.
“You spend the night in your office? What? Your old lady kick you out?”
What an absurd thought. He’d been married for a while—mostly to sire a son—but had learned he was sterile. No point in being married then.
He noticed that the malice in the man’s smile seemed perfunctory, as if he had something troubling weighing on his mind. He glanced around and saw the same look in the other Kickers’ eyes.
He turned to Ansari. “What are you doing up? Why aren’t you sleeping?”
The uneasy look deepened as he shrugged. “No reason. Just awake.”
“Aw, bullshit,” said a passing Kicker. “He had nightmares just like the rest of us.”
“Shove it, Hagaman.”
Hagaman looked at Ernst. “Check out that face. He had bad dreams too, but Mister Tough Guy ain’t gonna admit it.”
“What kind of dreams?”
Hagaman looked uneasy. “Don’t know. Don’t remember much, just that it was bad. Woke me up, and I got up because I didn’t want to go back to sleep again.”
Could the impending arrival of the Fhinntmanchca be behind the dreams? If so, why hadn’t he had any?
“Pussy,” Ansari said, and walked away.
Hagaman appeared about to go after him, but stopped when he looked over Ernst’s shoulder.
“Hey, it’s the boss. And he don’t look so hot neither.”
Ernst had to agree. Hank Thompson looked haggard and haunted.
“Something’s changed,” Thompson said. “Feel it?”
“No.” But he did feel a charge of excitement from what that might mean. “But everyone else seems to.”
Thompson looked at him. “Do you think . . . ?”
“Let’s find out, shall we?”
They headed down to the basement where they found a number of Kickers lounging around the coffeepot. It smelled wonderful, and a few moments ago Ernst would have craved a cup. But the thought of what they might find on the level below had energized him to the point where caffeine would be superfluous.
Thompson turned to him and spoke in a low voice. “Want me to kick them upstairs?”
Ernst’s first instinct was to have him do just that, but he shook his head instead. No use in piquing the curiosity of the rabble.
“That will only draw attention. Proceed as casually as you can.”
“You want to see casual? I’ll show you casual.”
He filled a Styrofoam cup with coffee and then strolled through the basement’s main room. Ernst followed, watching him nod to his followers and slap one or two on the back. They looked up to him. He’d shown them the Kicker Man symbol and awakened them to a brotherhood they hadn’t known they shared. He was “the boss.”
He unlocked the door to the side room. They entered and locked it behind them. Ernst took the lead then, descending to the subcellar. Light from above lit the stairway, but the space below lay in Stygian darkness. Reaching the floor, Ernst felt along the wall, found the light switch, but hesitated. What would he see when the lights went on?
He flipped the switch and the first thing he saw was the Orsa.
“No! Oh, no!” he said, gasping as he hurried forward. “What has happened?”
“What the fuck?” said Thompson behind him.
The Orsa had changed. It looked . . . deflated. Its sides were sunken, caved in; its ends sagged. Its translucence had faded to a dull gray. When he reached it he touched it, and jerked his hand back.
It felt . . . dead. Or if not dead, moribund.
“Hey, where’s Darryl?” Thompson was saying. “Where the fuck is Darryl?”
Panic gripped Ernst. Was Darryl still inside? All was lost if he was. All the years of planning, the expense, the risks . . . all for nothing.
“Mother?” said a weak voice from somewhere beyond the far end of the Orsa.
Ernst’s heart leaped as he and Thompson hurried around to find Darryl kneeling in a pool of clear fluid.
He looked . . . different.
He still looked like Darryl, but a sick Darryl. His face was white, his eyes sunken into dark recesses; his once shaggy hair was plastered to his scalp and forehead, and his beard looked more scraggly than ever. His blue work shirt and worn jeans were wet and stained and seemed to have shrunken on his frame.
And then, just for an instant he shimmered—like a heat mirage.
“Darryl, you made it!” Thompson said as he placed his coffee cup on the dying, desiccated Orsa. Apparently he’d missed the shimmer. He stepped in front of Ernst and approached the man.
Ernst grabbed his arm. “Don’t get too close.”
“Yeah?” Thompson snatched his arm away. “Why the hell not?”
“Look at him. Look closely.”
“I don’t need to look any closer than I’m looking. He looks like a fucking zombie. What—?”
Darryl shimmered again.
Thompson backed up a quick step. “Oh, shit!”
Ernst realized that Darryl himself wasn’t shimmering, but rather the air around him. Looking closely, Ernst could make out an inch-thick layer of roiling air, outlining him like an aura. It didn’t glow, but seemed rather to writhe as if in agony from contact with him.
“It must be part of the change.”
Thompson looked at him. “Change? What change? He was supposed to be healed.”
“Well, healing involves change, of course. Changing from a diseased state to a—”
“Mother?” Darryl said, looking up at Hank.
“Hey, Darryl. It’s me . . . Hank.”
Darryl gave him a blank stare. “Want mother. Thirsty.”
“Okay.” Thompson grabbed his coffee from atop the Orsa. “Try some of this.”
Ernst gripped his arm again. “Be careful.”
Not that he cared about Thompson per se, but as leader of the Kickers, he was the key to a pool of manpower that might prove useful in the future—perhaps the very near future.
Thompson snarled at him. “Why? What have you done to him? You call this cured? Look at him.”
“Just . . . be careful.” He pointed to the floor in front of Darryl. “Why not simply place it there? If he wants it, he can take it.”
Thompson hesitated, then bent and placed the cup a foot or so in front of him, just outside the puddle. Darryl’s hand trembled violently as he reached for the cup. When his fingers reached it—
—the cup exploded, splattering coffee and shards of Styrofoam in every direction.
“Shit!” Thompson cried, ducking away and almost knocking Ernst over.
Ernst stumbled back, brushing coffee from his white suit. Too late. It was stained. Normally he would be infuriated, but not now. Not at all. This was wonderful.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. He’d succeeded. Darryl was now the Fhinntmanchca.
He glanced at the Orsa. Good thing, too. If it wasn’t dead, it was near dead. They would have no second chance.
Looking more confused than ever, Darryl said, “Thirsty.”
“Then you must drink,” said a fourth voice.
Ernst recognized it immediately. He turned and found himself face-to-face with the One.
5
The knocking startled Jack. No one was supposed to be knocking on his door.
Weezy raised her head and gave him a questioning look from where she was sipping coffee and studying the Compendium. Morning light filled the windows. The air was redolent of microwaving Taylor Ham and cheese.
He stepped to the closet beside the door and pulled the Glock from the top shelf by the katana.
Weezy’s voice held a note of exasperation. “Is that necessary every single time you answer the door?”
“Don’t know,” he told her in his most patient tone. “Can’t kno
w till I see who’s at the door—then I’ll know if it’s necessary.”
Whoever had knocked was either a neighbor or someone who had got past the entrance without buzzing up. He put his eye to the peephole and blinked when he saw a familiar old woman dressed all in black.
“Not necessary,” he told Weezy as he opened the door and allowed Mrs. Clevenger to enter. Her three-legged dog followed.
“Knowing you,” the Lady said, “I thought you would have fewer questions if I looked this way.”
“You thought right,” he said as he replaced the Glock on the closet shelf.
“Your ivy is dying of thirst,” she said as she passed the Shmoo planter.
Jack was sure she hadn’t even glanced that way.
“Good morning,” Weezy said, rising.
“Not so good.” The Lady’s expression was grim. “Something is wrong. Something that doesn’t belong in this world has entered it.”
Jack and Weezy looked at each other and spoke simultaneously.
“The Fhinntmanchca.”
The Lady frowned. “You think so?”
Weezy stared. “You don’t know? But you’re attuned to—”
“I’m a product of this sphere and, yes, I am attuned to it. But as I told you, certain doings involving the Otherness are hidden from me.”
“I had a call from the Oculus. She had another Alarm about it. She says the Fhinntmanchca is here, in the city.”
“But for what purpose?”
“No one knows,” Weezy said. “I’ve been hunting through the Compendium for days now, but—”
The Lady waved a hand. “Don’t expect to see it in black and white. It is something you will have to piece together yourself, for not even Srem knew the purpose of the Fhinntmanchca. No one but the Seven ever knew.”
“The Seven,” Weezy said. “The Compendium mentions them time and again.”
The Lady nodded as she seated herself in the big wingback chair. The dog settled on the floor next to her. The Shmoo planter sat near her elbow.
“Water this now. It suffers.”
Jack raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay.”
As he headed for the kitchen, she said, “The seven mages who championed the Otherness in the First Age. A huge cult grew up around them. They controlled the q’qr hordes. They almost succeeded in bringing this sphere under the domination of the Otherness. The Fhinntmanchca was part of that plan, but none of it ever came to fruition, and by time the First Age came to an end, only one of the Seven remained alive.”
“Let me guess who survived,” Jack called from the kitchen as he filled his coffee cup with water. He fought an urge to imitate the Church Lady. “Could his name begin with R?”
“Yes, the Adversary. Unwilling to share power when the Otherness became ascendant, he killed off his six fellow mages one by one until only he remained.”
“And so the Seven became the One,” Weezy said.
“Yes. But the Otherness was defeated, and then came the cataclysm and the end of the First Age, and all of his intrigue and murderous plotting proved for naught.”
Jack returned to the front room and poured some water into the planter.
“Until now,” Weezy said.
“What do you mean?” The Lady caressed the ivy and its leaves immediately plumped up and deepened in color.
“It seems that somehow, some way via Opus Omega, he has succeeded in creating or summoning the Fhinntmanchca.”
The Lady stiffened and stared at her. “Via Opus Omega? What do you mean?”
Weezy explained her theory about using the Orsa to create the Fhinntmanchca.
The Lady looked concerned. “So if you are right about the Fhinntmanchca being a by-product of Opus Omega, that means the Fhinntmanchca will be used against me.”
“Why is that?”
“Very simple: The purpose of Opus Omega is to destroy me.”
6
The scary guy . . . the guy with the forever eyes . . . the guy Drexler called “the One.” Physically he wasn’t the least bit imposing, even less so than the first time they’d met. Now he seemed almost . . . delicate. But he had an air of authority about him, of hidden power that warned away. Hank had hoped never to see him again, but here he was. And where had he come from? Maybe he’d already been here, standing in the shadows. But how had he got in?
Hank wasn’t about to ask.
Drexler gave a little bow—Hank half expected him to click his heels—and gestured toward Darryl.
“The Fhinntmanchca.”
That word again . . . and they were both looking at Darryl. Was that what this was all about? He’d entered the Orsa as Darryl and emerged as this poor, confused son of a bitch. Hank had a feeling a Fhinntmanchca was more than a poor, confused son of a bitch.
“So I see,” the One said to Drexler. “You’ve done well, Ernst. Very well. I am pleased.”
Drexler seemed to swell inside his stained white suit. He gave another little bow.
“We exist to serve.”
We? Hank thought. Does that mean me too? Like hell.
But he wasn’t about to say that.
The One stepped forward and Darryl said, “Mother?”
“No.” He looked down at him. “I am not your mother. You thirst? Then you must drink.”
He pointed to the near end of the sagging Orsa, to where clear liquid trickled from a half-inch pore at its center. Darryl looked at the trickle, then back to the One.
“For me?”
The One nodded. “For you.”
Hank recoiled as Darryl shuffled over on his knees and began to lap the fluid, swallowing greedily.
“Hey, Darryl, man, get off your knees. You’re a Kicker and—”
Without looking at him, the One raised a hand and Hank stopped. He didn’t want to, but his words dried up.
Drexler said, “He is no longer a Kicker. He has become the Fhinntmanchca and requires nourishment that only the Orsa can provide.”
Okay, Hank thought. Time to ask.
“What’s the Fhinntmanchca? What’s it do?”
“It is the Maker of the Way,” Drexler said.
“Those are just words. What do they mean? How do you ‘make’ a ‘way’?”
The One spoke without taking his eyes off Darryl.
“Cataclysm.”
7
“In theory,” the Lady said, leaning forward in the wingback chair, “when Opus Omega is completed, I will die.”
Weezy felt a pang of dread as she stared at her. She’d known the Lady before as Mrs. Clevenger, simply another of the town’s eccentrics. But now she felt a deep kinship, an intimate connection.
“Why do you say ‘in theory’? Is there doubt?”
“Of course there is doubt. Opus Omega has yet to be completed and may never be completed. So until it becomes fact, it must remain theory.”
Jack leaned on the round oak table. “But those scars on your back . . . don’t they mean that it’s working, that burying those columns damages you?”
“They do.”
“And that hole straight through you—”
“The Florida incident,” she said with a curt nod.
Weezy was confused. “The Florida—?”
“Long story,” Jack said, then turned back to the Lady. “Weren’t you ‘killed’ then?”
“So it appeared. I cannot be harmed by anything of this world, but the creatures that devoured me were from the Other place.”
. . . devoured . . . the Other place . . . what were they talking about? Weezy was dying to know the details.
“How did you come back?”
The Lady shook her head. “That I do not know. It should have been the end of me, but I survived. Perhaps if Opus Omega had progressed far enough along, I would not have come back.”
Jack looked grim. “But the Fhinntmanchca is a product of Opus Omega. It might succeed where the chew wasps failed.”
Chew wasps?
“True,” the Lady said. “That is tr
oublesome.”
“But why attack you at all?” Weezy said.
“As the physical manifestation of the noosphere, I act as a beacon, proclaiming to the multiverse that this is a sentient planet. Should I be extinguished, this sphere will be seen as lifeless. The Ally, already rather neglectful, will lose all interest and turn entirely away.”
“Giving the Otherness carte blanche.”
An idea popped into Weezy’s head. “What about an end run? Why doesn’t it attack the noosphere?”
The Lady shook her head again. “By its very nature, the noosphere cannot be directly attacked. It is the product of all the interactions between the sentient beings on the planet. The only way to weaken it is to damage its population base—a deadly pandemic, a nuclear winter, that sort of thing. But that runs counter to the ends of the Otherness. The lower the population, the less fear and misery to feed on.”
Jack chimed in. “But we know nothing about this Fhinntmanchca. Maybe it can disrupt the noosphere.”
The Lady appeared to consider that. “I don’t see how, but . . .”
“Let’s just say it can,” Weezy said.
“What would be the result?”
“A disrupted noosphere would disrupt me. I would vanish.”
“And the beacon would go out.”
The Lady nodded. “Leaving the Adversary a clear field.”
“That’s got to be it,” Jack said, straightening. “Suck the life out of you by disrupting the noosphere. Looks like someone’s got to disrupt this Fhinntmanchca first.”
“You?” Weezy said, her heart clenching.
He looked at her. “Well, yeah, I guess. Don’t see that there’s much choice. If you can think of someone else, I’ll be happy to step aside.”
“What about Mister Veilleur?” “In case you didn’t notice, Mister V isn’t too agile these days.”
“But you told me Diana said the Fhinntmanchca was dangerous and deadly.”
He pointed to the Lady. “To her, we have to assume so. To us mere mortals . . .” He shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Do you know where it is?” the Lady said as Jack headed for the front closet.
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