“There’ll be other chances.”
“Not like this one.”
She gestured toward the backseat. “We have him.”
“Yeah, there’s that-assuming the kid is crucial to his plans. If not… then, as Abe would say, we’ve got bupkes.”
She reached out and patted his arm. “You can salvage this.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, really. I have faith in you.”
“Swell.”
He didn’t tell her that he hadn’t a clue as to how to accomplish that.
He’d turned into Nuckateague and sensed Weezy pulling into herself as they neared the house. Dune Drive was quiet as, well, a tomb-and would be sort of functioning as one for a while. As he approached the mansion and the O’Donnell house he couldn’t find a clue that all hell had broken loose here less than an hour ago.
She’d insisted on seeing Dawn’s body. He’d warned her it was bloody and she’d suffered an ugly death, but she’d insisted. And when he’d pulled the sheet down, she lost it.
She’d recovered somewhat now, but was keeping up the how-can-we-leave-her-there-like-that? litany. The most rational woman he’d ever known had surrendered all her critical faculties.
“You’re not thinking, Weez. Where can you take her?”
“I don’t know, but we can’t just-”
He raised his hands. “Please. Stop. You’re talking about driving around with a dead body in your car. Not just dead- murdered. So you can’t take her to a funeral home or even an ER without winding up being asked a lot of questions you do not want to answer.”
“But-”
“Think of it as cold storage.”
“But rats… mice…”
He realized he had to give her something.
“Okay, here’s what I can do: Before I clear out, I’m going to wipe this place down-everything we might have touched. After I’m gone I’ll call the East Hampton police and report bodies in the O’Donnell garage on Dune Drive. I’ll even give them Dawn’s name so she can be buried with her mother.”
Weezy thought about this for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. I guess that’s the best we can do. It means she won’t be out there for long. I’ll help you wipe down and-”
“No. You take the baby and head for the city.”
“The baby?”
“Well, yeah. You’ve just become his unofficial guardian.”
“But I don’t know the first thing about babies.” Her hand shot up as Jack opened his mouth. “And please, no Butterfly McQueen references.”
How had she guessed? Was he that predictable?
“You mean there’s something you don’t know?”
“I never found babies very interesting.”
“Better start reading up on them because you just became Aunt Weezy.”
Her expression reflected mild panic. “This is serious, Jack. I’ve never had contact with children, especially babies, and this is no ordinary baby.”
“That’s for sure.”
“I mean, what does he eat? Formula? Cereal? Were they feeding him Jell-O or jelly or something?”
“What?”
“He’s got red smears on his face.”
“Oh, um…” He decided not to burden her with that detail. “I have no idea what Gilda was feeding him.”
“Jack, what’ll I do?”
“You’re the smartest person I know. You’ll figure it out.”
Weezy looked ready to cry again. Jack couldn’t help it. To do what he needed to do, he needed her and the baby gone.
They packed up Dawn’s things and Weezy’s things, and within half an hour she and the baby were on their way, leaving Jack at the door staring across the empty yard at the equally empty mansion on the far side of the street.
Dawn had deep-sixed his original plan. Had to be another way to salvage this opportunity. He’d have to improvise.
Jack hated to improvise.
11
After wiping down the O’Donnell place as best he could, he went to the garage and opened his trunk. He stared at all the ordnance he’d acquired and might never get a chance to use.
The octol and the copper cones-what good were shaped charges now? The double-whammy roadside IEDs were out. Even if Rasalom decided to return to the mansion on his own, Jack would have no idea how he was arriving. If he rented a car, Jack wouldn’t know what it looked like. He couldn’t simply incinerate the first car that passed between the charges. And if he took a taxi, he’d have somebody driving-Jack had had no qualms about Georges, but he wasn’t about to kill an innocent cabbie.
He grabbed the golf bag and checked inside: the M-79 nestled among the clubs. Easy enough to use. He leaned that against the wall and pulled out one of the two carpet-clad Stingers. He unwrapped and inspected it. The missile and its launcher ran about five feet long and weighed north of thirty pounds. Not exactly a concealable weapon. He’d never fired one, but Abe had included instructions. He’d have to read up on the procedure if he was going to use it.
A big if.
He leaned the Stinger next to the golf bag and stared at the makings for his shaped charges. He’d had big plans for those-taking out Rasalom before he made it to the house. Now, if he showed up at all, Jack would have to try to take him down on his own turf.
He stepped out the side door and stared at the mansion. Launch a grenade and missile attack on the place once he was inside and reduce it to rubble? A possibility.
But first Jack had to get him out here. How to do that? How to explain Georges’s no-show at the airport without arousing suspicion? Couldn’t send a stand-in driver-he’d never go for that. Had to be a way.
Jack made a mental list of the elements he had to work with-all the people and things that involved Rasalom’s life in Nuckateague: Gilda, Georges, the baby, the car, the house. Some combination of those might provide the key.
First thing he needed was a plausible reason for Georges not to show up at JFK… and for both him and Gilda to be incommunicado. And he needed a way to get that information to Rasalom.
Did Rasalom carry a cell phone? Well, why not? Glaeken carried one, no good reason Rasalom wouldn’t.
He ducked back into the garage and made a beeline for Georges. He’d left the guy’s phone with his corpse. Yep, there it was. Jack flipped it open, found the address book, and began going through it. He tried “Osala,” “Boss,” even “Rasalom,” but no luck. He did find “One.” A New York City code. Pretty good chance that was it. But just to be sure…
He had to roll Gilda over to check her pockets. He’d placed her facedown to hide her gory front from Weezy. He’d found only one knife, and he doubted that Dawn had stabbed herself, so the most logical scenario was that Gilda had found the baby gone, grabbed a knife, and run over here to stop Dawn. Dawn had somehow disarmed her and given her a dose of her own medicine. Many doses.
He shook his head at the butchery. Dawn had continued stabbing long after Gilda was gone. Weezy wouldn’t want to believe that her Dawn was capable of that.
He found Gilda’s cell in a pocket of her coat. He searched for “One” first this time but came up blank. No luck either with “Osala,” “Boss,” or “Rasalom.” While searching he noticed a number of texts from “Kris” and a reply to each. So, the murderous old broad liked to exchange texts with her equally murderous son. How sweet. The family that kills together, what?-chills together?-heads for the hills together?-stomps anthills together? He wondered if they discussed their favorite blades for cutting off eyelids.
Gilda didn’t seem to have many names in her address book so he went through them one by one. He stopped when he reached “Master.” That number matched the one in Georges’s.
Got it.
A phone number for Rasalom… how weird that seemed.
But then he remembered Glaeken’s warning of a few weeks ago: Rasalom was human. He had a few enhancements that weren’t standard equipment in the off-the-rack members of the species, but he wasn’t a god-not eve
n a demigod. Another thing he wasn’t was telepathic, so he had to resort to prosaic methods to stay in contact with his minions.
The number glowed on the displays of the two phones. Great.
Now what?
An idea, barely formed, began to tickle his brain. He didn’t jump on it. That might scare it away. Better to leave it alone and let it develop on its own.
He’d need some luck-the good kind. Plenty of bad luck today… he was due for some good. Yeah, with a little luck and a lot of fancy footwork, there might, just might be a way.
12
A man who was something more than a man, who was known as the One to many and as Rasalom to a few, who had numerous names, the most important known only to him, strode through the airport toward the baggage area.
The solid floor of the terminal felt good beneath his feet. Such a relief to tread solid ground again-ground that would soon be his. He was not one for anxiety, yet he’d experienced a few moments of concern during the flight, especially when the plane had dipped and yawed in the rough weather toward the end. The pilot had mentioned something about an East Coast storm. He could survive far more trauma than any of his fellow passengers, but he had limits.
How ironic, after all the dangers he’d survived across the millennia of his life, to die in a plane crash when he stood on the brink of his ultimate victory.
He had been to China where he stood atop Minya Konka. The planet’s largest nexus point is located there. He had stood naked within it, his feet resting upon a buried pillar, communing with the Otherness, preparing for the Change.
For the time was near… close, so close he could taste it. So could the Otherness. It hovered, poised to reenter this world, slavering to engulf this reality.
It knew of his plan and approved. No more surrogates, no more underlings doing his bidding. He would handle this entirely on his own, because he could act freely now, without fear of retribution from Glaeken.
Glaeken… He shook his head with chagrin. He had spent the entire time since his last rebirth looking over his shoulder, wondering when Glaeken would strike. The man had fooled Rasalom before, lulled him into believing he had wearied of his role in the Conflict and retired from the field of battle. Rasalom had let down his guard and, as a result, had spent half a millennium languishing in a stone prison in a remote pass in the Transylvanian Alps.
And when he’d thought he’d found a way free, Glaeken had shown up and slain him with that cursed sword.
But now the sword was gone, as was its hilt, and Glaeken had been stripped of his immortality-aging since he’d slain Rasalom at the keep. He was now an impotent, doddering old man who could do nothing to stop the Change. He had his Heir working for him, but the Heir was no Glaeken. He carried not an iota of his predecessor’s experience or cunning. He was no threat. After the Change, Rasalom would tear him into tiny screaming pieces, and make Glaeken watch. And then he would move onto his wife, and take even longer with her.
How different things would be now had Rasalom known all this upon his rebirth. All that wasted time…
But now he was poised to end this battle. All the pieces were in play. He merely had to wait for the proper alignment, and that wouldn’t be long.
He drank in the emotions oozing from the cattle around him. Normally an airport did little to ease his hunger. Too many of the cattle were headed for vacations, filled with pleasant anticipation about their destination-rest, relaxation, fun activities, good food, good drink, good sex. Occasionally he’d come across one in a near panic about flying, and that was a pleasing hors d’oeuvre, but he rarely found enough of them to qualify as even a snack.
This evening was different. The air was redolent of anxiety over the weather and the safety of flying and whether or not their precious flight would be canceled. And even better: the crushing disappointment of those whose flights had already been canceled-especially the children. The young ones’ emotions were so intense. Their joy was like a knife in his heart, but their anger, sadness, fear blended into a splendidly potent cocktail.
But the emotions here, now, were nothing compared to what the Change would precipitate. Grief and fear would reign at first, but would devolve into hate and rage and violence as resources became scarce and the cattle gouged and maimed and killed for scraps of food and sips of water.
He looked at the passing faces and smiled. Yes, after the Change these average humans will engage daily in actions they presently consider unthinkable. The fragile mental constructs the herds call civilization will crumble, their rational veneers will flake away to reveal the beast lurking just below the surface.
Fear… fear was the gateway to debasement-of others, of the self-and debasement was ambrosia, the piece de resistance. Fear was the key to everything that empowered the Otherness and, consequently, Rasalom.
Fear will rule as their mortal world is transformed, as the very rules of nature shift and twist into tortured parodies of everything they once relied upon. Their sun will go out, and in the ensuing nightworld, every shadow will hide the threat of agony, the very air will scorch their skin and scald their eyes, and they’ll pray that every searing breath will be their last. But it will not. They’ll live on and on, and the Otherness will feed and feed.
As will I.
For he would undergo his own Change-into a new form adapted to the new Earth… the Other Earth.
When the Change was ready to begin, he would return to the summit of Minya Konka to be imbued with the seeds of his own Change.
All that stood between him and that day was the Lady.
But she would not be standing too much longer.
He arrived at the baggage area but saw no sign of Georges. Had the snow slowed him? No excuse. He should have left earlier.
He pulled out his phone. He’d shut it down during the flight and hadn’t yet turned it back on. The display lit with the date and local time, plus a little envelope at the bottom. A message? As wonderful as these little devices were-how different the First Age wars might have turned out had these been available-he felt they had too many options. He did not like text messages, and apparently he had one.
He toiled through the menu and discovered he had two, both sent while he was in flight. And both from Gilda. He knew she frequently texted her son. Perhaps she thought a text was the best way to leave a message while he was in the air.
He opened the first:
The child is ill. We must take him to hospital.
He frowned. Ill? He did not like the sound of that. The child had become integral to his plans-delicate plans, easily thrown off. It wouldn’t do for it to become seriously ill. But hadn’t that doctor, that surgeon who had excised his tentacles-Heinze, wasn’t it? Hadn’t he been out to the house just yesterday and pronounced him in excellent health?
Good thing the tentacles were gone. Dr. Landsman, who had delivered the child, had lobbied for the amputations, saying that if the child ever needed inpatient care, the tentacles would cause a tremendous stir-headlines in the tabloids, reporters, medical specialists, geneticists, TV camera crews. A circus.
He now was glad he had listened.
He glanced at the message again. No mention of which hospital. Perhaps in the second message. He noted it was sent almost three hours after the first.
He opened it:
He is very sick. They are admitting him. My phone does not work in hospital. Georges will fill you in when he picks you up.
… very sick… not good at all. This could ruin everything.
Still no mention of which hospital. Had they taken him someplace in the Hamptons or to the city? Probably the latter. Dr. Heinze would most likely want to be involved in his care.
He tried calling Gilda but her voice mail came on immediately. Had she turned off her phone or was the hospital jamming it? He’d heard that some hospitals did that. Well, he would have to depend on Georges.
Speaking of whom, where was he?
He speed-dialed Georges’s number but was shifted to hi
s voice mail immediately too. Was he still at the hospital with Gilda? That was no excuse.
He turned and saw his bag riding the carousel. He refused to walk over and pick it up. That was Georges’s job.
And Georges had better have a very good reason for not being here.
13
Dark had fallen extra early due to the storm. Jack debated turning on the mansion’s lights. Would Rasalom be more comfortable entering a lighted house? Most definitely. Jack had done his best to leave everything looking as close as possible to the way he had found itexactly was not an option. Would the lights increase the chances of Rasalom picking up telltale signs of his handiwork? Certainly, but only incrementally.
He decided in favor of lights, but only a few, judiciously chosen.
He made his final walk-through. Everything looked good. Had this been the original plan, and had he had time, he would have photographed every area before starting work, to make sure he’d returned it to its original condition. This was why he hated to improvise.
His phone rang. He checked the display: Weezy.
“Everything okay?”
“Well, no. The roads are bad and getting worse, but I made it.”
“Then what-?”
“This baby. I don’t know what to do with him. How much-?” A screech in the background. “Oh, God. He’s awake. I gotta go.”
The call ended. He closed his phone and checked the display: 6:35. He pulled out Georges’s and Gilda’s phones. He’d turned both off after sending the text messages. Now he turned on Gilda’s for a quick look at the call history. Two missed calls in the past half hour, both from “Master.” He powered hers down again and turned on Georges’s. Four calls from “One.” He resisted the impulse to listen to Rasalom’s voice mails, which he assumed would ascend in irritation and anger as they progressed. Didn’t want to risk Rasalom getting through. So he turned off that phone as well.
The Dark at the End rj-15 Page 19