At least, he knew now that he’d made the right choice to isolate Beth emotionally. Cold comfort but comfort just the same. He’d told himself time and again that keeping her at a distance was for her own protection. And in many ways, that was still true. When the creatures had first come into his life, one of them had looked like his fiancée, Sarah. He saw the blood dripping from its mouth, smearing its face—a face that belonged to Sarah.
He’d believed the old fables then, the stock stories about vampires. And when he saw Sarah—the real Sarah—she’d lost her life to the point of a ragged stake that he himself drove through her heart. Shame shut down his mind. Even thirteen years later, the memory of what he’d done—and what he’d thought he’d done at the time—hung on Jack like an anchor chain.
He had told himself many lies over the years, but the one that rang the most hollow was that he didn’t care about Beth. Deep in the tunnels beneath New Harbor, when the creature that almost took his life had come, it had come as Beth. And part of the reason he’d chosen to set himself out as bait for the creature they’d just taken down was that he didn’t know if he’d be able to kill it if it came to him as her this time, too. He couldn’t face killing the woman he loved, however secretly, however platonically. Not again. Not even if it was just an illusion.
Jack shook the thought and returned his attention to the images. By the look of things, he didn’t have much time. He’d be dead before the year was out. Probably well before that. He deleted the X-rays with a click. He slipped back through the AC shaft and replaced the unit. Then he padded into the night like the ghost he would soon become. Perhaps a skilled-enough surgeon could remove the malignancy, but a trip to the hospital was as good as one to the gallows for Jack Jackson. The Division would arrive within hours to claim their prize. Better that the cancer take him—and take from the Division what they so desperately wanted.
He’d just about made it back to the truck when he felt a soft buzz in his pocket and pulled out his disposable cell phone. On the screen was a text from Beth.
Camp broken. Have new lead. New Jersey. Tell u more when u get back.
Jack patted his pocket, feeling the vial there. Tomorrow morning, they’d be on the road. Tomorrow he could think about finding a way to prepare Beth for what was to come. Time enough for that when the sun crested over the horizon. But not tonight.
Tonight Jack had a date with the venom.
Five
NEW HARBOR, CONNECTICUT
Thorne checked her watch. One minute to midnight. If Agent Ross demanded she be prompt, she would be prompt, to the second. From where she stood, she could still see the guarded silver tent, hiding whatever it was that had drawn them all here.
She took a moment to straighten out her suit, making sure the lines were plumb, then mounted the first fold-down step. She raised her fist to knock, but before she could land a single rap on the aluminum door, a voice called from within. “Enter.”
She was greeted by a room elegant in its austerity. Most Division mobile living quarters, her own included, had the same efficiently comfortable look found in upscale chain hotels. But here the walls were not the standard pebbled vinyl but opaque rice paper stretched over slim frames. The floor wasn’t made up of thin linoleum tiles but was a single expanse of woven sisal over bamboo laminate. The air smelled faintly of bergamot and nutmeg. Music wafted from someplace unseen. She recognized it as one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, although this version was so heavily synthesized as to turn the composer’s already mathematically perfect arpeggios into something robotic.
She hovered in the doorway, not yet ready to set foot inside. The man who could only be Agent Ross sat on the floor. His back was to her, both stocking feet tucked neatly under him like a samurai. His midnight-blue slacks were immaculately pressed, and the crisp cotton of his simple white shirt gleamed in the room’s light. His hair, a tight mat of flecked curls that looked as if it had been carved from onyx, was clipped to fresh-from-the barber perfection. What she could see of his skin, a thin band separating the stark white line of his collar from the equally straight razor cut of his square-back hairline, was the color of burnished teak. Before him was a massive slab of blond wood. It was a foot thick and sitting on four squat pedestals that looked like inverted mushrooms.
“I believe I said you could enter.”
Thorne stepped inside. Ross raised a hand, two fingers extended in the universal signal for pay attention. “Shoes, please.”
Ross’s own spit-shined Oxfords had been set unlaced to the left of the door. They faced toes outward at a perfect right angle to the wall. She hastily slipped off her pumps and set them down as neatly as haste allowed. Then she shuffled to the other side of the small chamber.
Ross did not lift his gaze to meet her. Instead, he continued to stare intently at the wood slab in front of him. Thorne shifted slightly. Unease gnawed at her as she hovered over her superior.
Ross reached into a small wooden bowl beside him. He drew a small black stone from it. The stone was riverbank-smooth, and he held it lightly between his fore and middle fingers. After a moment’s reflection, he placed the stone on the table. A strangely satisfying clack echoed softly as the stone connected with the wood. More stones littered the surface of the table, some dusty black, others pearl white.
“Join me.”
Thorne settled on the floor, doing her best to imitate Ross’s serene Buddha-like pose and failing. Almost instantly, Thorne could feel her calves beginning to cramp up.
“Do you play Go, Agent Thorne?” Ross’s voice was a sonorous baritone that resonated in the narrow confines of the RV, simultaneously demanding answer and awed silence.
Thorne opted for the latter.
Ross finally turned his gaze on her, and she instantly wished he hadn’t. His murky hazel eyes seemed bottomless, and they bored through her in a way that went well beyond simple probing. It was a gaze that drilled to the core of a person. “Well?”
“Go?”
Ross gestured to the table. “The game.”
Agent Thorne shook herself back to sense. She’d come prepared for a variation on the standard this is my ship, and on my ship . . . that she always got on the first day of any detail. She hadn’t expected an investigation into her hobbies. “I don’t. Play Go, that is.”
“Don’t? Or don’t yet?” Ross gave her no chance to answer. “You are familiar with the game?”
Thorne had heard of it. Even though, until this moment, she’d never seen what the game board actually looked like. “Isn’t it like Japanese chess?”
By way of answer, Ross simply reached into one of the wooden bowls and brought out another stone. “Chess? Please . . . don’t insult me.”
Agent Thorne bristled. She replayed the exchange in her mind, trying to figure out how she might have offended him. “I’m sorry, I—”
Agent Ross lifted his hand again, and she fell silent. “Unlike other AICs you may have worked under, you will learn that I do not require apologies for ignorance. All I ask for is a willingness to go beyond your limitations. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sir?” His voice had a ring of suppressed disappointment to it. “I see that you haven’t shed your Southern-bred politeness along with your accent. But let’s save the honorifics for those who still labor under the delusion that they are important.” He reached for another stone, again with that same odd grip. “You will refer to me as Ross. Agent Ross if you must.”
“Yes, s—yes, Agent Ross.” Lamb hadn’t been joking about Ross’s head games. She told her ego to ride it out. The sooner he was through, the sooner she’d get an explanation about what the Division was doing in New Harbor and what was under the silver tent.
“You weren’t in the military.”
“No, I was not.” It wasn’t a question, but Thorne answered it anyway. Ross had read her file, no doubt. Had requested her personally for this assignment. A man as thorough as Ross was reported to be would know tha
t Thorne came from a political dynasty, not a military one.
“Chess players often compare that game to warfare,” Ross continued. “Chess is played on a battle board. Each piece has a role that is strictly defined. Life is not like that.” He paused and gestured to the latticework of stones. His open palm was a dry lake of checked lines. Although the man himself could be no more than fifty, his hands, like his eyes, were old beyond measure.
“Go is different. Go is about life. The struggle of opposing forces to retain territory and remain alive. It is played on open ground. There are no fixed moves. Go is fluid. Go is like politics. Or perhaps the other way around. In Go,” he continued, “there are no preset patterns. No pieces that mindlessly adhere to their positions in the hierarchy. Go is played with nothing but black stones.” He picked a few out of one bowl and plinked them back one at a time as he continued. “And white stones.”
As Ross let the stones clatter back into the bowl, Thorne did her best to keep from drawing any conclusions about what those colors might mean to Ross.
“I wonder . . .” Ross added. “Does your father play chess?”
“My father plays golf.” In truth, she couldn’t remember the senior senator from North Carolina playing any board game with her or her siblings other than the occasional distracted round of Monopoly. Other than golf, games outside the Senate chamber just weren’t Prichard Thorne’s style.
“Yes,” Ross said. “I hear he is quite the golfer. There were no golf courses where I grew up, Agent Thorne. We made do with what we had.” He placed another stone on the board. “I could teach you how to play Go, if you’d like.”
“Is it a required part of this detail?”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
Thorne could tell by his tone that this was just another test. “I’m game.” And she was, if this was what it took for Ross to open up.
“Outstanding,” Ross said, already sweeping the stones into their respective bowls with a practiced grace that was almost balletic.
“Who goes first?”
“Black.”
With the barest wash of a smile, Ross pushed the bowl full of white stones toward her.
“I thought you said black went first.”
“It does. But the custom is to offer white to the challenger. It is a sign of respect, assuming that you would be the superior player and in no need of an advantage.”
“May I defer?”
“If you like.” Ross handed her the bowl of black stones.
Thorne took it and waited. “What are the rules?”
“You will learn. And, I hope, see their beauty. Someone once said that the rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they most certainly play Go.”
“And is that what’s under the silver tent, Agent Ross? The one with the round-the-clock guards? The one that this whole compound seems set up to protect? Is that what you found there? E.T.?”
Ross picked up a black stone. “I’m afraid that what we found will be much harder to explain.”
“Try me.”
“We will. We will try you, Agent Thorne. Have no doubt about that. But not tonight. Dr. Kander is not quite ready to share his prize.”
Thorne’s heart knocked against her breastbone. She hadn’t been told that the Division’s premier researcher was also in New Harbor. She’d never met Dr. Kander, but he was reported to be as amoral in his methods as he was brilliant—and fiercely territorial. “Care to fill me in on what this prize might be, at least?”
Ross’s lips curled almost imperceptibly into the bemused smile of a man with no need to appease anyone. “You’ll just have to see it with your own eyes . . . such as is possible.” And with that, Ross made the first move.
Six
PLEASANTVILLE, NEW JERSEY
Another screwdriver?” the bartender asked.
Randi scowled a what the fuck do you think? scowl and tapped the bar without so much as a please or thank you. What was she doing here sucking back overpriced, watered-down drinks? Cash wasn’t exactly raining from on high these days. Her cocktailing gig didn’t pay what it used to. Not with all the new girls, half of whom looked as if they’d been in kindergarten when she’d wiggled into her first skintight mini. Sluts. Fuck them, too.
She checked her phone. Nothing. Fuck. Nick had better not blow her off, not after the night she’d given him last Friday. And he’d better have the fucking coke on him.
Randi took a deep breath, reminding herself that she didn’t need the coke to have a good time. She didn’t even need it to write, not really, even if that was her excuse for wanting it. The coke helped her write, that was for sure. The words just wouldn’t stick on the page sometimes. They were in there in her head, written across her tormented soul in letters of flame, as she’d once scribbled into her as-yet-unpublished memoir—and that was a zinger she was triple-check-plus-plus proud of, fuck you very much. But writing in flame was a lot easier than writing with plain old ink, and the coke . . . well, the coke was the glue. The coke made the words stick.
Maybe I should just call somebody else. She knew plenty of lowlifes who’d show up in ten minutes with all the powder she had cash for. But Nick was the only one who’d dole it out for a quick blow job. She felt a twinge of slithering shame at that thought and did her best to squash it flat. Nick was handsome enough, charming enough, she told herself. It wasn’t like it was a chore or anything to suck him off or let him finger her. She’d done the same and more just for kicks with guys who’d pretended not to know her the next night. Why not get a little bit back in the deal?
“Eight bucks,” the bartender said, setting down her drink.
Randi fished her wallet out of her purse. Inside, next to a yellowing business card from that literary agent who still hadn’t returned a single fucking e-mail, sat her last ten dollars. As she pulled it out, a tiny plastic bag half-filled with white powder came with it.
Jesus Christ! Jesus fucking Christ nailed to a wagon wheel and rolling down Main Street! This wasn’t happening. How did she miss that? How could it have just sat there waiting all this time? She slid the ten spot to the bartender. “Keep the change.” Then she reached over to the bar caddy, snagged a soda straw, and headed to the ladies’ room.
Moments later, Randi was in the last stall. She’d already dumped the packet’s contents onto the freshly wiped toilet top, when a voice popped into her head. Don’t do that cocaine here in this dirty old bathroom, her shoulder angel said. You should take that home and use it to write. It’s the glue, remember? It’s the glue that makes the words of your heart stick to the page like fairy dust.
Randi stopped, credit card in hand, and looked at the tiny pile of coke. Not much, three rails tops. That wasn’t a lot of glue, no matter what that angel said. And what was an angel doing advising moderate coke usage anyway? Maybe if she did just these few bumps now, it would get her through till Nick showed up. Then she could score for real. She tucked into the first line and knew at once she’d made the right choice.
• • •
Ten minutes later, she was back at the bar. And she wanted more coke. Where the fuck was Nick? And then she remembered. He had put one of those stupid “friend finder” apps on his phone. Fucking narcissist. Always has to be the center of attention. Shit, why didn’t she think of that earlier? The coke must have cleared up her mind. All she had to do was punch up the map. And she did.
Fuck! Nick wasn’t across town. He wasn’t even across the damn street. He was in the fucking parking lot behind this very bar. She followed the blinking icon on her phone through the swinging saloon-style doors and out into the night air.
As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she spotted Nick. He was leaning up against the far fence, his head thrown back in ecstasy. Randi could just make out the faint outline of a kneeling figure bobbing up and down at the level of Nick’s crotch.
“What the fuck!” She vomited the words in a hot stream as s
he stomped across the gravel parking lot. That’s why he hadn’t shown up. He apparently had better things to do tonight with his dick—and his coke.
Randi balled her fists, ready to slam them right down on the crown of that skank’s head. Leave a nice bite mark on the shaft of Nick’s pride and joy as a reminder not to fuck with her. She circled around and got a look at just who was kneeling before Nick.
She froze. It wasn’t some bar skank after all. It was a man. His body was rock-star wiry. His clothes matched, tight jeans in wrought-iron gray and a loose shirt of silk the deep amethyst of a dusky desert sky. She couldn’t see his face, but his hair was long and black and lush. His powerful hands gripped Nick’s thighs, taking him deep, taking him all the way. And as she took that final step, his bobbing slowed to a stop.
He turned to her.
And suddenly, the air echoed with primal, inarticulate screams that Randi didn’t realize were coming from herself. Nick’s dick was in the man’s mouth. That much she’d expected in some hazy, colorless fashion. What she didn’t expect was that it would be ripped off at the root and hanging on a maw of needle teeth like a dead snake.
Gore dripped from the man’s thick thatch of razor stubble. Blood gushed from Nick’s ruined crotch in hot spurts. The man released his grip, and Nick’s stiff body dropped like a felled pine.
Randi turned. She heard a quick snap that might have been her stiletto heel or might have been her ankle, and she ran. She made it three steps before she stumbled, grating knees and palms against the gravel. She tried to rise, but something landed on her back—something heavy and human-shaped. It was him. He was pinning her to the ground.
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