“Untie her?” the voice inside responded, disappointed. “We thought you’d fancy a turn first.”
A new sense of rage flooded past Lucas’s fear and physical pain. He shoved the lawyer into the room as roughly as he could—which, it turned out, was hard enough to make him stumble to the floor—and then he stood in the open doorway, his gun pointed instinctively toward the voice. For about two precious seconds, because the men had been surprised, Lucas had a chance to survey the nearly dark bedroom. Alexis was bound to a chair, not to the bed, as he’d imagined. The Englishman, the interrogator, was sitting on a chair with his back facing Lucas, and the Irishman was lying on the bed. Lucas saw guns shining within their reach, one on the floor and one on the nightstand, but the men were awkwardly positioned. Both of them had to know Lucas could shoot them if they moved.
“You on the bed—sit up right now. Keep your hands in front of you, or I’ll shoot you both.” Lucas didn’t know if it was years of television cop shows or only an inborn knack, but he knew exactly what he wanted: he wanted to be able to see the men, and he wanted them clear of their guns. Lucas could only see the Englishman’s lockjaw profile, but the Irishman’s face had transformed from mirth to murder. His glare alone was chilling. There was nothing imposing about his wiry build, but he’d drawn in his shoulders as he sat up with almost springlike precision, as if he could leap at Lucas across the room. “You brought this plonker in here?” the Irishman muttered to the lawyer, who was cowering in a corner, safely out of firing range.
“Shut up,” Lucas said, nearly lurching forward in his anger. Instinctively, he aimed at the man sitting in the chair before Alex. He was the one in charge. “That gun on the floor, you kick it over here. Do it right now.”
Without a sound or any emotion, the Englishman raised his hands above his shoulders and carefully angled his foot toward the black, slim-barreled gun on the floor. He kicked it so precisely that it spun and slid within a yard of Lucas’s feet.
Finally, Lucas chanced a longer gaze at Alexis. Her dark skin gleamed with perspiration, and he saw that her shirt was damp and ripped, revealing her bare arms and shoulders. She was staring at him with openmouthed anguish, murmuring to herself as she shook her head. Finally, with mounting horror, he noticed the marks over her arms, shoulders, and face. For the first time, he also noticed the over-flowing ashtrays on the floor, the scent of burning in the room. My God—
“Untie her,” Lucas said, feeling his stomach plummet with nausea. “Hurry up!”
“You, mate, are a dead man,” the Irishman said, pointing toward Lucas with unnerving certainty. His beard-stubbled face was grinning.
“Quiet,” the Englishman said, not raising his voice, and the other man obediently fell silent. Purposefully keeping his hands in Lucas’s clear vision, the Englishman leaned over and yanked on the knots binding Alexis’s wrists to the chair’s wooden armrests. Alexis’s chest began heaving nervously as he leaned over her. She was making incoherent sounds, lost in a daze.
“Didn’t you hear me say to hurry?” Lucas said. Oh, God, oh, Jesus, his legs were wavering beneath his weight, and his left hand was punishing him more with each heartbeat. Even when Alexis was free, he couldn’t hope to outrun any of these men, not in his condition. He would have to shoot all of them. The lawyer, too. He should have done it already, as soon as he walked into this room, but he hadn’t wanted anyone to overhear the gunshots. And they deserved it, goddammit. He hadn’t asked for any of this. He’d just wanted to help his son.
“No, no, no!” Alexis screamed suddenly, snapping to alertness, as if she’d guessed his plans and was pleading with him to show these men mercy. Lucas looked at her, puzzled and riveted by the terror in her face. Too late, he realized that her wide-eyed stare was directed behind him.
“Night-night, Doctor,” he heard the white-haired American’s voice say close to his ear, and he felt something cold and solid bump the back of his head, a polite tap. His thoughts were suspended, except one that bled through, the memory of Jared’s playful voice. Grandma’s really piss—
Just as he had feared, the gunshot pealed through every corner of the house.
Lucas Shepard was the only one who didn’t hear it.
52
3:36 P.M.
“. . . water levels already rising as Beatrice moves in, and this storm surge is what we’ve been warning you about all afternoon. Based on the reports from Bimini, this is critical. This storm is moving faster than it should be, and you need to understand this is a first. I don’t say this to panic you, but that’s why we didn’t have the preparation time, folks. So, uhm . . . if you’re in a coastal area or a flood zone and you were unable to evacuate, move to a high floor immediately. At the very least, go to a room without windows. But do not go outside. We’re already seeing gusts over a hundred miles per hour right now, so it’s dangerous to walk in that wind. Now, some of you, I know, have heard lower floors sustain less wind damage, so you’re nervous about . . .”
Through the closed bathroom door, Jessica could hear the newscaster on the living room radio. She couldn’t remember the man’s name, but she’d heard his voice on Miami’s airwaves since she was a girl, through the 1980 riots, through Hurricane Andrew, through her own troubles in 1997, and he was usually a comforting, sensitive presence. Today, his voice was slightly high-pitched, only a notch below the panic level. Full of fear.
Jessica felt kindred to him.
With the flashlight standing up in the sink to give her light, Jessica gazed at herself in the bathroom mirror. She had a light-colored hand towel pressed to her nose, and she watched it soak with blood. She was angry at herself now. She shouldn’t have let it chase her away like that, leaving Fana in there. The nosebleed had been a flirting kind of warning, a game.
But no matter what, she had to go back. Her child was there.
The Shadows are courting her. They know who she is. They seek to live through her.
Khaldun had been right. She’d tried to shut away his warnings about entities that wanted to work through her child, but the evidence was waiting for her in that tiny bedroom. The evidence might well be all around her, in the guise of this awful storm. How could she have doubted it, after what Fana had done to Moses? The evidence had always been there.
The newscasters had been telling her, too, all along. How the storm had shifted so suddenly. How it was moving so quickly, with unprecedented speed. How it struck with such malice. And it was coming toward them—toward Fana—brazenly bearing her daughter’s given name. Why hadn’t she realized the truth behind what was happening before?
God had tried to show her. She should have seen it.
“Please help me do this, Lord,” Jessica said, offering up a prayer to her eerily lighted reflection in the mirror. “Please let me reach her. Please help me put a stop to this . . . this . . .” Evil was the only word that fit, but Jessica hated to utter it aloud. Because this particular evil was hiding behind her daughter’s face. Her sweet, precious baby. Bee-Bee.
Jessica suddenly recalled Bee-Bee’s toothless smile on the day she was born, and the room took on a tilt. She was swooning. She clutched at the sink’s edge to steady herself, fighting for balance. No, she told herself fiercely. There was no time for that. There was no time for anything except what she needed to do. She felt a new, sudden certainty that her entire life had been leading her only to here. To this.
Her heart was a pounding fist inside her rib cage, but Jessica decided that her heart’s beating represented strength, not weakness. She should have died four years ago, along with Kira, but she had not. She had awakened from death itself. She had the blood of Jesus in her veins, however ill-gotten it might be. She had healed children with her blood. She had brought her blood to the world in a way no one before her had. That, too, had been her destiny.
Satan was waiting for her down the hall, or something very close. Jessica wished she had a Bible to take into Fana’s room with her the way a priest might during an exorcism
, but she knew she didn’t need a book for strength. A book was only pages and words, but God was in her heart. In her veins. She was meant to go to her daughter. She was meant to offer herself to whatever had taken Fana, to stand in its way however she could. That was all.
The simplicity of that knowledge made the tension melt from Jessica’s limbs, very much the way it had when she’d surrendered to David’s arms before he left to find Alexis, although she’d never had reason to be more frightened than at this moment. She’d thought nothing could compare to losing Kira, but she’d been wrong—now she could lose Kira and Bee-Bee. Kaleb had scared her at the Life Colony, but his threat had been meek and meaningless compared to the new threat waiting.
But she would face it. And that was all.
“I’m ready for you,” she said, speaking to her reflection again. “You don’t scare me.”
And no part of her was telling a lie.
• • •
Jessica returned to the bedroom expecting to see Fana still lying there, waiting for her.
But Fana was gone. Instead, at the center of the bed, there was a mound of bees.
Jessica’s mind foundered, leaving only her impossibly slow breathing and her heartbeats, which had overpowered her ears. She might have spent a year standing there, staring. Somehow, though, her instincts clawed to the surface as she gazed at the terrible mound on the bed: This was Fana, she realized, fighting her body’s urge to faint.
Fana was entirely draped in bees. The large winged insects covered her like a garment as she sat at the center of the bed, her legs swinging gently over the edge. The swarm crawling over Fana was so dense that Jessica could not see a trace of her daughter’s skin or hair. Even her face was covered. But Fana, still humming, did not move to swat the bees away.
Of course not, Jessica remembered. No, this was not Fana. This thing wanted the bees there.
While her insides recoiled, on tottery legs, Jessica closed the door behind her and quietly locked it. She didn’t want her mother or Daddy Gaines to stumble in here, or they would get hurt. This was for her to face alone.
The air in the room was warmer and more humid than when she’d left, like a swampland. The darkened window had fogged over. Jessica hardly needed her flashlight this time because, impossibly, the room was filled with a diffuse, red-tinged light. And the stink, which had been bad before, was almost unbearable now, tickling deep into her throat toward her gag reflex. She had to swallow hard to fight the feeling. She no longer felt that she was in Miami, or anywhere familiar. She had no idea where she was.
Slowly, Fana raised her hands to her face and swept them across her eyes, parting the coat of bees until her eyes were revealed, the way someone might brush away bangs. Her exposed eyes were ringed, raccoonlike, by the brown skin of her face.
“You’re beginning to irritate me now, Mom-my,” Fana said.
The word Mom-my had been spoken in a teasing, singsong voice. Despite herself, Jessica felt pins pricking up and down her spine when she heard her daughter’s voice parroted at her.
“Then you should go,” Jessica said, not pausing. “Give me my daughter back.”
“Your daughter?” the voice said, and this time it was thick with buzzing, less like Fana’s. “You waited nine months. We waited eons. You want to put ribbons in her hair, read her bedtime stories, and let her play with dolls. Isn’t that sweet? We have grander plans than that, you stupid woman. Can you see how laughable you are? You are a glorious joke. Isn’t she, Kira?”
“Yes, she is,” a child’s voice said behind her.
Jessica didn’t want to turn around—she knew the thing on the bed hoped she would—but she couldn’t help herself; the motions of her head suddenly felt utterly independent of her will. She turned, and Kira was there standing two feet behind her. She was wearing the jeans, plain white T-shirt, and neon orange sneakers she’d been wearing the day she died. The sight of Kira dressed that way resurrected fresh, awful memories; in that instant, Jessica felt herself dragged unwillingly back into the most terrible day she’d believed she could ever know.
“Your biggest problem, Mommy, is you can’t make up your mind,” Kira said, wagging her finger up at her. She gazed at Jessica earnestly with those familiar, shining eyes, but her expression was too mocking, too cocksure, to resemble her daughter’s. “You waited too long to take me away. You didn’t keep me safe. And now you did it all over again, didn’t you? You didn’t keep Bee-Bee safe. And now Sarah’s dead, and your sister, too, because of you. You knew bad things would happen at the clinic, but you waited too late.” Kira sighed heavily, her shoulders slumping. “There’s no such thing as heaven, you know. Heaven is a lie. All dead people do is remember what was stolen from them.”
“That’s not true,” Jessica said, momentarily confused about whether she should address the Fana-thing or this mirage that looked like Kira. Her head whipped between them.
“Did you really think there’s a heaven?” Kira said, smiling with amazement. “Oh, no, you didn’t, Mommy. You wanted to believe in it, but after I died—after you let me die—you realized you don’t believe in it at all. It’s just a fairy tale, isn’t it? You made a big mistake.”
Jessica felt her psyche trying to close itself up tight, to a pinprick. She glanced at the door behind Kira and realized she could leave. She could cover her ears and flee. But instead, feeling as if she could scream from the mental effort alone, she pulled herself free of her doubts. She stared the Kira-thing dead in the eye.
“I loved this little girl,” she said, suppressing the urge to stroke her beautiful child’s hair, which was tied into shiny, puffy pigtails Jessica could remember braiding as if she had fixed them that very morning. “I know I’ve made mistakes. I’ve doubted. But I also know she’s safe. You can dig around in my unconscious all you want, but I know. So fuck you.”
Kira’s face contorted suddenly, from cockiness to absolute childlike hurt. Yes, this was Kira! The girl’s bottom lip trembled, and tears glistened in her eyes. As a reflex, painful tears came to Jessica’s eyes, too. Suddenly, gazing at her daughter’s pitiable face, she could not find her breath. A pain hit her chest so hard, she nearly staggered.
“Nice try,” Jessica said, with all her strength. “Yes, you can hurt me. Good for you.”
The Fana-thing on the bed cackled. “What is it about mothers and their children’s tears?”
Mercifully, Kira was suddenly gone. Nothing remained in front of Jessica but the door, which was as inviting as ever. Again, she nearly gagged on the stench. Her instincts roared for her to leave. But instead, Jessica turned back to the Fana-thing, which was still wearing its bees, staring out at her from the two holes for its eyes. Jessica began to walk toward it in steps that were only slightly unsteady. Then, standing so close that she could see the scurrying, flitting individual bees, Jessica kneeled on the floor before her daughter’s form.
“Oh, now she’s feeling brave,” it taunted her.
“Fana,” Jessica said, ignoring the thing as she gazed into her daughter’s eyes. “I know you’re in there, sweetheart. I heard you calling me. Mommy is here. You hear me? Mommy is right here. Don’t be afraid. I know you can come back to me.”
“Fana is a tad occupied at the moment,” the Fana-thing said. When it spoke, bees crawled in and out of its mouth, and Jessica smelled a deeper stench on its breath. “There’s a cruise ship stalled off the Florida coast, and it’s just begging for her attention. The captain planned to outrun us, but we knew better. Do you suppose those ships flip right over? Two thousand people on board! Or two thousand souls, as they say. Appropriate, don’t you think?”
For the first time, Jessica noticed that perspiration was dripping into her eyes, nearly blinding her. She raised her hands, which weren’t trembling nearly as much as she’d expected. Carefully, she slid her hands to Fana’s cheeks, feeling the fuzzy, squirming mass of insects underneath her palms. She pressed harder, crushing some of them. Her hands were immediately covered wi
th the bees, their myriad spindly legs scuttling across her skin. But she was touching Fana’s warm skin. Her face.
The stinging began right away, a shower of radiating pain across her hands. Jessica’s nose had also begun bleeding again, she noticed. Fat drops of blood were spattering to the sheet between Fana’s bee-covered legs in a growing stream.
Jessica’s hands twitched involuntarily beneath the stinging, but she held on to her daughter’s face, staring into her eyes. The brown eyes were cold and unrelenting, but she believed Fana might be somewhere in those eyes. They were all that was left of her.
Jessica blinked away tears of pain. “You see, Fana? I’m not afraid. You listen to my voice and come back to me. Mommy is right here. Mommy is waiting for you. And everything will be all right. Mommy’s not mad about the storm. I know it’s not your fault. Just come back to me, Fana. Please—come back.”
Thunder railed outside the window, and Jessica heard a tree branch thwack angrily against the shutter. The storm was here. It was probably too late to stop it now.
But Jessica had to try.
53
Star Island
3:40 P.M.
Storms have their own music, Dawit realized.
He had encountered them the world over; in India, in the Red Sea, in Japan. He had seen entire villages destroyed by typhoons, flattened and flooded, while livestock and master alike drowned in the surging seas. And although a storm spawning thirty-foot waves had been responsible for his horrible drowning incident at sea with Mahmoud, the majesty of storms had always intrigued Dawit. He could feel his immortality in today’s storm, a euphoria matched before today only by his earliest acceptance of the Life Gift; during those times, he had thrust himself into skirmishes and impossible battles with mortals simply for the wonderment he felt each time he awakened. He closed his eyes, permitting himself to be washed by the pelting sheets of rain that shrouded the luxurious properties around him in a white haze. He laughed, enjoying the sensation as the winds tried to knock him from his feet. He marveled at both the storm’s power and his own.
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