Even the doctor and nurse stopped in shock. They’d heard it, too.
And then Kimberly went completely still, her body going slack on the blood-covered floor, her eyes closing, her mouth falling open. The ends of her hair crackled like live wires . . . and then that, too, subsided.
“We’ve got total arrest,” the doctor said, in a stunned monotone.
And Ezra knew, even as they labored to bring her back, that they would not be able to do so.
After what she’d been through, he suspected that she might have preferred to stay dead, anyway.
THIRTY-THREE
There weren’t many things in Russo’s day that he could look forward to. There were the quick hits of morphine that he gave himself by squeezing the black button that lay on the bed by his scalded hand, right next to the separate red call button. There were the dreams he could drift into, of growing up on the outskirts of Rome, exploring ancient ruins with his boyhood friends. And there were the tender ministrations of a pretty young nurse named Monica.
Today, while changing some of his dressings, she had told him all about a date she’d gone on the night before, and then, while applying the antiseptic unguents, had filled him in on the latest news headlines. He liked to look into her eyes—they were dark and bright, and perhaps because she had already seen so many other burn victims, they held no horror at the sight of him. “Dr. Baptiste tells me you’ll be starting your grafts next week sometime,” she told him now.
“Yes?” Russo mumbled, through his still-blackened lips.
“That’s good,” Monica said, gently lifting his left forearm to swab on fresh salve.
The pain was still immense, and Russo squeezed himself another jolt of the morphine.
Monica, noticing, said, “Sorry. I know this must hurt like crazy.”
Russo would have liked to deny it, but he couldn’t. Monica carefully laid his arm back down and said, “That’s it for today.”
He would have liked her to stay, to have her just sit by his bedside and rattle on about her day, her boyfriends, anything she felt like, but he knew she had other patients to see, other duties to perform.
And the morphine would be taking him away into dreams very soon, anyway. If he was lucky, they’d be the good kind of dreams. If he wasn’t, they’d be nightmares, of crackling flames, of tumbling from great heights into bottomless pits. Unfortunately, there was never any way to tell in advance what kind they’d turn out to be.
“You want this down, right?” Monica said, holding the edge of the plastic oxygen tent.
“Now that I do not have you to look at,” Russo whispered, “yes.”
Monica laughed. “I look better through plastic,” she said, and lowered the hood so that it hovered just short of touching his shoulders and chest. Although it obscured his view, he knew there wasn’t much he’d be missing; how long could he look at the back of the door and the cheap reproduction of a Van Gogh? The cool, fresh air under the tent made it easier for him to breathe, and the soft whirring of the oxygen tank was soothing, like the ebb and flow of waves on the seashore.
In fact, he wasn’t sure just how much time had passed—five minutes? a half hour?—before he heard the door of his room open and close again, and saw through the thick plastic a figure standing silently in front of the Van Gogh. It wasn’t Monica, that was for sure, and it wasn’t Dr. Baptiste either. The figure was tall, and dressed in black.
His breath stopped in his throat.
It was a man, very pale, with blond—no, gleaming gold—hair.
I have come to thank you, Russo heard, though he wasn’t sure if the man had spoken, or if the words had simply been introduced somehow into his head.
Russo stretched out his fingers on the cool bedsheet, searching for the red call button. But it wasn’t there. Monica must have moved it while changing his dressings.
I wish I could repay you.
You can take the pain away, Russo thought, wondering if his words, too, would be received . . . and wondering, at the same time, if this was all nothing more than a particularly vivid morphine dream.
The figure moved closer, and Russo could just make out through the plastic oxygen tent that he was wearing small amber-colored sunglasses, and his long hair was swept like golden wings away from his forehead. He pulled a chair beside the bed and sat down.
Russo’s heart filled with dread. This must be Arius, the fallen angel described by Ezra. The figure of light that had emerged from the block of stone that terrible night.
You know what I am.
Russo’s fingers groped again blindly to call the nurse, but found instead the morphine button. He gave himself another hit. Perhaps, if it was a dream, he only needed to go deeper to escape it.
But am I the only one?
“I hope so,” Russo said, his words muffled under the oxygen tent.
Arius paused, as if wondering how to take this. Then the words Do you remember what I once told you? echoed in Russo’s head.
Arius reached out and touched Russo’s hand, the one that had been searching for the call button. With what felt like a talon, he scraped a strip of the tender, remaining flesh from the back of it. Russo groaned, but that, too, was muffled by the plastic sheet and the constant susurration of the oxygen tank.
Suffering is a gift from God.
Russo’s hand, though twisted into a knot of pain, reached out toward the bedside table. Arius followed its progress, then, when Russo had trouble opening the drawer, obligingly did it for him.
Russo’s fingers, trembling, searched the inside of the drawer, then clutched the wooden crucifix that was kept there. He drew it out and held it up, his scorched arm shaking, toward Arius.
“Do you know . . . what this is?” Russo uttered. “Jesus Christ . . . our savior.”
Arius languidly reached out and took it away. Then let him save you. He started to discard it, but then, as if thinking better of it, slipped it into the pocket of his overcoat instead.
Russo shrank back against his pillows, behind the plastic tent. There was nothing he could think of now, nothing else he could do . . . other than to pray that someone, anyone, might suddenly intrude.
“How many of you,” Arius asked, “are aware of me?”
This time, Russo had definitely heard him speak—the words were in the air, not in his head. And terrified as he was, he found the voice, the voice of this fallen angel, sonorous, almost soothing.
“Not many.”
His head nodded, thoughtfully.
And Russo dared to ask, “But why . . . are you here?” Was it all just an accident, he thought, perhaps the most dreadful ever to befall mankind?
As if he’d read his mind, Arius said, “Everything has its purpose. Perhaps yours was to free me.”
That was an idea almost too awful for Russo to contemplate. The twenty-first-century Judas—was that to be his destiny?
“Mine, perhaps, is to propagate.”
Russo had to think for a second, to understand the word—propagate?—and even then he thought he must have heard it wrong. Under the tent, with the oxygen pump whirring and the blood pounding in his ears, it was difficult to be sure of anything. It was still possible, wasn’t it, that none of this was even happening—that it was all just a new and frightening dream, worse even than the dreams of fire and falling from the sky?
“But how?” Russo mumbled. “You have no friends in this world.”
Arius appeared to consider that, then shrugged it off. “Then I’ll create them.” He leaned closer. “In my own image.”
Russo’s mind reeled. What could he mean? Was he saying what he thought he was?
But I do have one . . . companion, in mind, already, the voice said inside his head again. It was as if this information were so confidential it could not be spoken aloud.
The angel was smiling, but his lips did not move; his teeth shone, like a wolf’s, through the plastic tent. And Russo instantly knew, as if her image had been telegraphed into his head, that
it was Beth he had chosen.
His thoughts raced. What could he do to stop it? How could he warn Carter—and Beth—from this hospital bed? A phone sat on the bedside table, and just as he was wondering how, or even if, he’d ever be able to use it, it rang.
Arius looked at it coolly, then at Russo. Arius picked up the receiver, and without saying anything, lifted the bottom of the plastic sheet and held the phone until Russo was able to lift a trembling hand and hold it himself. Even with the plastic raised just an inch or two, Russo could smell a fresh, verdant air, like a forest after a rain, wafting over him.
“Joe? It’s Carter.”
Russo had expected it to be.
“How are you doing today?”
“Bones,” Russo said, his voice barely audible, “something . . . important is happening here.” How much, he wondered, would Arius allow him to say? And what would he do if Russo tried to blurt out too much?
“What? You’re getting a sponge bath from that cute nurse you like?”
“No,” Russo breathed, “I have . . . a visitor.”
“Is Beth there? I know she was planning to pay you a visit.”
“No, Bones,” Russo said, with as much urgency as he could muster, “it is the one that we talked about,” praying that Carter would catch his drift.
As he apparently did. The silence on the phone line was deafening. Russo could only imagine what was going through Carter’s mind. Did he even believe him? Did he think he was delirious? Or on a morphine trip?
“My God,” Carter said.
He did believe him.
“I’m coming,” Carter added, in low tones. “Can you keep him there? I’m coming right now.”
Arius slipped a hand under the tent, took the receiver away, and then spoke into it. “I must go,” Arius said to Carter.
Russo saw him starting to hang up the phone—was his middle finger shorter than the rest?—and knew then that this might be the last chance he ever had, his only opportunity, to raise the alarm. “Bones, do not let him get near you! Do not let him get near Beth!”
But the phone was already in the cradle.
How much had Carter heard? Had Russo’s ragged voice, muffled by the plastic sheet, even been audible?
Arius slowly rose from the chair. His dark coat made him look like a pillar of black smoke, glowing with a golden light at the top.
Russo couldn’t let him leave; he had to keep him here—if possible, he had to kill him. But how could he do that?
As Arius turned to go, Russo raised his legs—even with the morphine coursing through his veins, the pain was excruciating—and slipped them off the bed. He had no idea if he’d be able to stand on them.
He swept the plastic oxygen tent away from his face and tore the IV tubes from his limbs. Now, for the first time since that terrible night, he could see Arius’s face—its perfect features, carved as if from flawless marble, its sweep of thick, lustrous hair, its unblinking eyes glimmering behind the amber glasses.
Russo took a step toward him, his legs wobbling like a newborn foal’s, his blackened arms reaching out.
Arius stepped back, and Russo staggered toward him. “I won’t let you . . . hurt them,” he said.
Arius smiled benignly and opened his arms. Russo lunged at him, but ended up falling forward into the angel’s embrace.
And I won’t let you suffer.
For a moment Russo felt himself oddly comforted; his body hung in the angel’s arms as if it were as light as a feather, all the pain gone, all the effort of moving and even breathing done with forever. It was like being cradled weightless in a garden bower.
But then he felt something else, a spark igniting inside him, deep in his gut, and the pain was beyond anything he had ever known. The smell of the forest, of glistening leaves and rain-washed earth, was joined by the acrid smell of smoke, of dry kindling catching fire, and to his horror Russo saw smoke in front of his face . . . smoke that was slipping from his own mouth and nose, smoke from a fire he felt consuming his body from within.
Arius stepped away, letting him fall to the floor. A smoke alarm sounded, shrieking repeatedly in the closed room.
Russo lay on the floor, his skin puckering from the fire raging in his veins, and watched as Arius took hold of the doorknob. The sprinklers burst on, showering his contorted limbs with tepid water. His skin sizzled.
Arius stepped outside, closing the door, and Russo, crumpled in a heap, felt flames bubbling and then breaking out from beneath his skin. He tried to recite a prayer, but before he could utter even a word, the fire found the open oxygen tank, still whooshing beside the bed. The whole room exploded in a blazing ball of heat and light . . . and, for Russo, blissful and eternal night.
THIRTY-FOUR
For a few moments, Carter sat immobilized in his chair, the sound of that voice ringing in his ears. I must go. Could that have been the voice of an angel? It had been smooth and deep, with only a slight, strange intonation, the sort of thing you’d notice in someone who’d learned English well, but whose first language was something else entirely.
And what had Russo been shouting just before the line went dead? Carter knew that he’d said not to let Arius get near him, but what was he saying next? Not to let Arius get near Beth? Was that it? And was there some reason, other than the obvious, for the urgent warning?
He grabbed his leather jacket off the back of his lab stool, pulled it on, and then ran for the door. He kicked the door closed behind him, and frantically dialed the hospital on his cell phone as he charged up the stairs to the street level.
“Village Pizza,” a voice said over the commotion of a busy kitchen, and Carter disconnected, stopped on the stairs, and dialed again, more carefully.
This time it went through, but when he asked for the nurses’ station on Russo’s floor, he was put on hold. Should he have just asked for the security office? Should he hang up and call in again?
He pushed open the main door and looked up and down the street for a cab.
Or should he call that police detective and tell him to go straight to St.Vincent’s, right away, if he wanted to catch the guy who’d torched the prostitute? But what kind of warning would he have to give him at the same time? Would he have to tell him to bring his Bible along, or some holy water? Would those things even do him any good if he did?
Would they do anyone any good?
The hospital operator came back on the line, and in a voice that sounded as if she was straining to sound unperturbed, said, “I’m sorry, but that nursing station is unable to take your call at this time. Please call back later.”
Before she could disconnect, Carter blurted out, “But this is an emergency!”
“You’ll have to call back later,” she reiterated, and this time Carter could hear something in her voice, something she wasn’t saying.
And he was terrified of what it might be.
A cab rounded the corner and stopped to let out an elderly woman. Carter bolted toward it, cutting off a couple of students with heavy duffel bags shuffling to the curb.
“Hey, man! We saw him first!” one shouted.
“He’s faculty,” Carter heard the other one say. “Professor Bones.”
“So what?” the first one replied, but Carter was already in, slamming the door shut and telling the cabbie to head for St. Vincent’s. He dialed Ezra’s apartment, and that woman who’d served him lunch—Gertrude, was it?—answered in a hushed voice.
When he identified himself and asked for Ezra, she seemed unsure of what to do.
“It’s extremely important,” Carter said. “I have to talk to him. Right now.”
The cab was still inching its way through the West Village traffic.
Then, finally, Ezra came on.
“I’m on my way to the hospital,” Carter said. “Something might have happened to Russo.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Carter said, not wanting, even now, to think of the awful possibilities. “But he might
have had a visit there. From Arius.”
He could hear Ezra’s intake of breath.
“As soon as I’m done there,” Carter said, “I’m coming to you.”
“Here?”
“You’re going to show me that whole damned scroll of yours, all put together, and we’re going to figure out what we have to do.”
Carter hung up and crammed some bills into the metal receptacle in the Plexiglas partition. “That’s twenty bucks,” Carter said. “Make some time.”
The cabbie reached one hand back, fished out the bills, then stepped on it. He gunned the taxi through three yellow lights and one red, but when he got to the hospital block, the entrance was ominously blocked by three fire trucks and half a dozen police cars, their red lights whirling. Carter knew now that he should expect the worst.
“Let me off across the street.”
The cab swerved across the congested lanes of traffic and stopped in front of the chain-link fence surrounding the condemned surgical supply. Carter got out, then charged like a running back weaving his way downfield through the tangle of police and fire vehicles. Over the squawking radios and walkie-talkies, he could hear snatches of what was going on. He heard “The fire’s contained” and “Maximum damage, sixth floor.” Russo’s floor. He’d heard nothing yet about fatalities.
Both of the side doors were wide open but filled with emergency personnel hurrying in and out. Carter used the revolving door instead, stepping inside and shoving it around.
But the moment he did, the moment he breathed the air in the revolving compartment, he felt as if he’d stumbled into a dense forest after a sudden rain. It was the same scent he’d smelled in his own apartment, the night he’d found Beth sprawled nearly naked on their bed, with the window to the fire escape gaping open.
And then, as quickly as he’d been enveloped in the aroma, he was out of it again—standing in the commotion of the hospital lobby. Several firemen and cops were directing some sort of emergency operation—Carter quickly surmised that it was an evacuation; a nervous bunch of visitors was being ushered out of an elevator and toward the exit doors. A policeman shouted “Hey you!” at Carter. “The hospital’s closed.”
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