The rogue snarled. “You don’t have to be hateful. They were his soldiers.”
“Soldiers?”
“For the war with God, you idiot.”
Malachi was now thoroughly confused. “What war with God?”
“The Healer. He’s the Great Deceiver. That’s why he was able to cure those people.” The vampire waved his grubby hand at the crowd down the street.
“Great Deceiver. You mean like the Antichrist?”
“Didn’t I say?”
Malachi didn’t like this ill-tempered scourge of a vampire, but he seemed to know more than the Natural at the bakery. “What makes you think he’s the Antichrist?”
“Everyone knows. Everyone of us. Those idiots out there don’t know. They think he’s a saint. A savior. The Second Coming. They would follow him anywhere. If they could find him.”
“Where’d he go?”
“I have no idea. I’m not one of his.”
“Not one of his soldiers?”
“Do I look like a soldier?”
Malachi admitted this creature didn’t look good enough to live, much less able to fight a battle. He was an argumentative cuss at that.
“Have you been inside the apartment house?” Malachi would keep trying.
“No. This was my territory before the Healer came. Now he’s gone, I’m taking it back.”
Malachi knew he was waiting for darkfall, too. They waited in silence, watching the sky, two very different Predators on separate missions.
As the sun waned and the street began to empty, the vampire slipped away without even a word of goodbye. He took his smell of decay with him. He was a poor and starving vampire, a rogue, and an indiscriminate killer.
Malachi waited a few minutes longer, until full dark, before he left the doorway as a shroud of mist.
For the past two hours all he could think about was what his companion had said about Jacques being the Antichrist. It was ludicrous. There wasn’t any God, they all knew that. Why would anyone take up the old story from religious prophecy and decide Jacques was part of a great plan for the earth?
Sure, it was a mystery why people were being healed by him, but there had been healers before, some real, some fraudulent. That didn’t mean anything.
Vampires, being supernatural creatures, were sometimes more superstitious than they ever had been as humans. Malachi guessed one of them was playing a joke on Jacques by spreading such a bald-faced lying rumor. Or Jacques himself was the instigator for his own nefarious reasons.
The very apartment where Jacques had lived came into focus as Malachi appeared in the silent darkness of the interior. It stank of vampires. Above and below and on each side of this apartment, vampires had made their lairs, surrounding Jacques. Malachi could smell their bedding and the old stench of dried blood. Some of them had not been very meticulous about cleaning up after their kills.
In the bedroom that had belonged to Jacques, Malachi stood staring at first the unmade bed. He could tell from the scent there that the linen hadn’t been changed in weeks. His nose crinkled. There was nothing more offensive than an unwashed human. He turned away and saw the open closet door, the overturned plastic carton, the noose hanging still from a wooden rod.
Suicide? Jacques had tried to kill himself?
Malachi’s fists clenched. He wished he’d done it. He wished the man was hanging there now, face turned black with bloating. His hate was so near the surface that for an instant he could almost envision the murderer’s body swaying from the noose.
But he was not.
He was alive. Gone from here. Not to come back.
He had a battalion of soldier Predators who thought him some kind of god or avenger. Poor, stupid, deluded creatures! They would follow anyone if they had sunk so low as to make Jacques their commander.
There was no such thing as the goddamn devil!
Soft whispering at his back made Malachi whirl around. He had heard something. Something…
Again, behind him, the whispering.
He whirled again. “Who’s there? Come out, you cowards!”
The whispering ceased, but Malachi felt the presence of many creatures he could not see. It was as if the air had filled with intelligence, the way it felt when someone was in a room with him.
“I don’t believe in the devil,” he said to the room.
“I don’t believe in God.”
“I don’t believe in this bullshit!”
The whispering, like wind through leafy trees, started up at his back. Malachi knew it would do no good to turn and to stare. Nothing was there, or at least nothing he was going to be able to see or to probe with his mind.
The vampire society in London was studying parallel dimensions. Other universes. Maybe this apartment building was a portal into one of them. The whispers could be leaking into this dimension from one of them.
Better that explanation than that his defiance had called up demons who could not be seen.
He went through the apartment and tried to pick up psychic clues to Jacques’ whereabouts, but nothing came to him. He lay in the crumpled covers of the bed. He pressed his face into the pillows. He put his lips onto a glass where the last person to press his lips there had been Jacques. He touched the swinging rope in the closet, his hand circling inside the edge of the noose. He sat in the chairs, touched the furniture, even drew his hand along the walls and the window sills and the drapes, but all he could pick up were fleeting images of mundane human activity. The drinking of water from a glass. The hanging of a neck, but not to the death. The sleeping in a bed. The drawing of a drape and the closing of a window.
He finally gave up and searched the other apartments, the lairs. In one he found a Koran. In another he found a Bible. In another he found a rosary with a silver crucifix attached. It seemed to him this cadre of vampires was unusually interested in religion. No wonder they were spreading rumors of an Antichrist.
Just as the society in London were scientists exploring other dimensions, this group had turned toward blind faith. You could never tell what a vampire might become when he carried with him all the old prejudices and beliefs from his life as a man.
Searching further, Malachi found old clothes stained with the blood of the vampires’ victims. He found a few empty blood bags covered with flies.
But he did not find any clue to where they all had gone.
Stumped, he left the building through the back entrance, passing through the wood, and stood in the darkness far from the line of policemen who still guarded the place. He looked up into the night sky, wondering.
Where could he go now? How was he to find his wife’s killer?
If he sailed into the sky and straight to the moon, would he forget it?
But he could not sail to the moon, he knew that. Even if he could, he would not turn his back on his sworn duty to avenge his wife’s death.
Some way, somehow, he’d still find Jacques. Whatever game he was playing, it was probably dangerous to mankind and needed a stop put to it. Malachi would be doing the world a favor.
But where?
Sighing, he knew he would have to follow the trail of the man’s sensation-making news as he crossed the world. Wherever he went, his vampire soldiers would make sure people would know Jacques, their savior, was at hand.
Malachi would study the newspapers, watch the data blanket news displayed on the sides of buildings, and sooner or later he’d see word of the miracle worker.
Chapter 31
Jacques opened his eyes on a new land. It was arid and mountainous, somewhere in the Middle East he guessed. Yemen? Jordan? Israel?
“Where are we?”
Corgi had let him go and stood next to him on a mountaintop staring down at a city in the valley. “We’re at the center of what is going to be a maelstrom.”
Jacques shivered. He felt it, too. This place was doomed. Though the city now lay below him in brilliant morning light, peaceful and quiet, he could feel a rumbling beneath the surface
of this land.
“An earthquake?” he asked.
“A nuclear reactor,” Corgi said, pointing far to the left.
Then Jacques saw it. A giant reactor at the far edge of the city. It spewed white billows of smoke. Just the sight of it made Jacques hunch his shoulders and shrink. It held such power, such unleashed destruction. Though it provided the city with energy, it was an unholy thing, squat and ugly on the landscape. France had depended on nuclear reactors for supplying their nation with energy for many decades, even before the oil gave out, but the sight of one of them never failed to give Jacques the willies.
“It’s going to blow,” Jacques said, knowing that was the truth.
“Oh yes. There’s a meltdown. Right about…” He pointed at the reactor. “…now.”
The rumble Jacques had only sensed suddenly became real. The mountain shook and he swayed, throwing out his arms to stay upright. His chill turned to a solid cold that invaded his bones. He had wanted to die, but not this way.
“Get me out of here,” he told the soldier vampire.
Corgi placed a hand on his arm to steady him. They both watched the reactor and saw a massive crack run up the side from bottom to top. To see it at this distance, it must have been a foot wide. The white smoke belching from the smoke stack ceased all of a sudden and the last puff of smoke lifted away like a racing cloud.
“It’s going to blow,” Corgi said. “Stay right here.”
“But…”
Corgi turned to him. “You can’t be harmed. The radiation won’t hurt either of us. Let’s go into the city.”
It didn’t seem Jacques had a choice. He was taken again by the vampire and the world swirled away and disappeared. The next thing Jacques knew he was standing on a street and people were streaming from the buildings and houses. Their faces were turned toward the city’s edge, where the reactor stood. A blossom of red fire and irradiated air rose from the reactor like a mushroom cloud. Screams filled Jacques’ ears. “Oh my god,” he whispered. He had seen photographs of the victims at Hiroshima. Skin flayed from bones. Shadows of people permanently impressed on stone walls.
He fully expected to die in the next few seconds at the epicenter of a nuclear explosion.
Corgi said into his ear, “It’s spewing radiation. It won’t ignite and explode. Right now these people are dying but they don’t yet know it. Only you can save them.”
Jacques jerked away. This couldn’t be happening. He didn’t want to stop plagues and heal the sick and save the victims of a nuclear disaster. What kind of crazy hallucinatory world had he been dropped into? Why couldn’t he escape it?
Thousands thronged the streets, pointing and screaming, running away. It was Rome all over again, but the emotion was higher pitched; it was so palpable that it was like sharp glass scraping against the skin.
Jacques stood in the midst of them, battered about, knocked around and thrown against one and then another. All the while Corgi kept hold of his arm, keeping him on his feet.
Within an hour the street had emptied. Sirens wailed and emergency vehicles zoomed past. Jacques stood under the shade of an umbrella at a café table, the vampire at his side.
“What’s going to happen now?” he asked. The reactor had shut down, but not before spewing its deadly poison in all directions for hundreds of miles. The evacuation was still going on. None of the people of this nameless desert city should survive.
“You’re going out to the evacuation site tomorrow. You’ll save them. You’ll save the entire city.”
“I don’t want to be a part of this.”
Corgi smiled. “You have no option. This is how it goes for you. There will be disasters you will make right. Plagues you stop in its tracks. Weapons of destruction you will disable. And all the world will know and love you.”
“I opt out.”
“You tried that. It can’t be done.”
“I’ll try again.”
~*~
He had lost his journal. When Corgi took him from the apartment in Rome, it had been left behind. He expected the authorities would find it secreted in his things and make it public. Would people believe it? That he had wrestled an angel, spoken with ghosts, and dealt with vampires? Would they believe he’d been chosen as the Antichrist and refused it?
They would only believe what they wanted to believe. As he strolled to the covered truck and was lifted onto the tail gate by the vampire, he knew it was ridiculous to keep a journal now. The world was cataloging and noting down his every miracle. What he thought about it—how he kept trying to refuse his role in it—wasn’t something they cared to hear. He was their Messiah. He had been sent to save them. They were as much of the plot as was he. It was a choreographed dance and the partners were in lockstep.
He stood above the crowd and put out his arms. People turned to look at him and a ripple ran through the hundreds of milling, frightened people until they all were looking his way. Silence followed a great sound of sighing relief, just as if they knew he had come to make them live again whole and unblemished.
It was the second day after the nuclear mishap and the refugees knew their fate. Why try to eat when they’d only throw it up? Why flee when it was too late? Why beg for medicine or help when nothing was going to save them now?
It was a subdued and despondent gathering that turned its face to the swarthy Frenchman standing on the tailgate of a khaki-covered truck.
Jacques didn’t know what to say or how he was supposed to act, so he just opened his mouth and let whatever came to mind come out.
“I was told you’re going to be all right. I’m here to bring you the best news you’re ever going to hear. The radiation sickness will disappear. You won’t die, not now or later from cancer. The effects of the meltdown won’t be felt by a single one of you. The whole city has been spared.”
His voice carried and his words were repeated back through the ranks of spectators until it reached everyone. Jacques glanced at Corgi who stood, as always, nearby. What am I supposed to do now?
The vampire leaned his face up and Jacques bent from the waist to hear him. Corgi whispered, “Tell them to raise their hands for a blessing. They’ll be immediately healed and safe again.”
Jacques straightened. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t say things like that. He didn’t want to be this thing. This person. This Messenger of Deceit.
Corgi watched him and saw he wasn’t going to tell them to raise their hands to heaven. He leaped on the back of the truck, muscling Jacques aside. He shouted, “This is your Angel sent from heaven! Raise your hands in praise and you will be healed! None of you will die! This is our Miracle Maker, trust in him and him alone!”
A roar came up from the crowd as faces were lifted and arms shot into the sky.
Jacques felt his mouth twist and his stomach lurch. If they only knew it was a sham. A dirty trick. Yes, they’d live now, they wouldn’t die the horrible death of radiation sickness, but they would one day die anyway while believing a lie, while following a thief whose master was after their souls.
There had to be a Lucifer to have thrust this awful mission on his unwilling shoulders. He didn’t even know how it was supposed to end. He was indeed saving the lives of countless victims of first a plague and now a nuclear meltdown, but for what reason? He didn’t understand any of it. He was not a student of Christian prophecy. He only knew he was now surely an abomination.
Being amoral was one thing. Being an instrument of worldwide disinformation and the catalyst for the coming of Armageddon was something else again. He hadn’t bargained for it. He wished for a way out of it. He wanted his life back, wanted to disentangle it from the clutches of whatever evil was at hand.
Most of all, he couldn’t see to the finish line. He was like a man in a marathon who was so far back in the hundreds of runners that he didn’t know if he could ever make it. He didn’t even know where the finish line was! Was it years away? Was he destined to lead this masquerade for the rest of his natura
l life?
He hopped down from the truck and strode away. People clung to him, touching his clothes, his hair, and his hands. Corgi kept them at bay finally with a chilling look that penetrated and frightened off the worshipers.
Jacques walked right away from the refugee camp and into the wilderness of the desert. Corgi followed.
Jacques gestured with his hands, his voice harsh. “I simply won’t be a part of this. I don’t know the grand design, but whatever it is, I just refuse to keep doing this. I don’t care if they die, don’t you understand? I don’t want them to follow me and trust in me and make me their savior. It’s insane.”
“We have another place to go,” Corgi said, failing to remark on Jacques’ complaints.
“I won’t go. I will not go, do you understand me?”
Oh, he was furious now. He had been confused, suicidal, and maneuvered into his latest display of trickery, but fury drove him now. “I’ll lie down in this sand and not get up.” He halted, turned, and glared at the vampire.
Corgi said nothing.
“I’ll…I’ll tell them the truth. That I’m the goddamned Antichrist. I’m the trickster, the one sent to deceive them and lead them to war with God. If there is a God. Is there a God?”
Corgi sighed.
Thinking he was making headway, Jacques continued, “You can’t make me do anything. I don’t fear death, you know that. You have nothing to threaten me with.”
Corgi lowered his head. He said softly, “I’m afraid you are wrong, Jacques. You will do as you are told.”
“By whom? By you? I think not!”
Jacques felt the sweat running down his face and between his shoulders on his back. He was worked up, all right, and he felt furious enough to fight any and all comers. Let the vampire try to take him somewhere else, to some other disaster he could help avert. Let him just try.
The air seemed to shift and change. It began to shimmer all around them. The desert and the city beyond danced about as if caught in a heat wave.
Jacques caught his breath. Was he suffering a heat stroke? Was he imagining things?
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