Reprisal

by Wilson, F. Paul

  The doorman called up shortly thereafter to announce that Mrs. Treece had arrived. A knock on the door came a few minutes later and Veilleur opened it.

  She was older, of course, much older, her hair white and shorter, her face thinner, lined, but it was her.

  “Carol!” Bill said as soon as his throat unlocked. “Carol Stevens!”

  The woman stared at him in shock, without the slightest hint of recognition in her eyes.

  “No—no one’s called me that for—”

  “Carol, it’s me! Bill Ryan!”

  And then she knew him. He could see it in the widening of her eyes as the old memories reconciled with the changed man before her. Her lips quivered and she looked as if she was going to cry. She opened her arms and rushed toward him.

  “Bill! Oh, my God! It really is you!”

  And then his arms were around her, crushing her to him as he swung her off the floor. He heard her sobbing against his neck and felt his own eyes fill with tears.

  Finally he let her down but still she clung to him.

  “Oh, God, Bill, I thought you were dead!”

  “In a way, I was.” Carol … so good to hold her … like being brought back to life. “But not anymore.”

  The last time he’d seen her had been when she’d boarded that plane with her father-in-law, Jonah Stevens. That had been right after the other horrors—Jim’s violent death, the bizarre murders in the Hanley mansion, the crazy talk about her unborn child being the Antichrist.

  Her child! Carol had been pregnant the last time he’d seen her.

  And suddenly a slow chill began to crawl through him. Veilleur had said the woman coming this morning might be able to answer Bill’s questions about what had happened to Danny and what was happening to Lisl. Carol’s child …

  Rafe?

  He stepped back and looked at her, then at Veilleur, then back to Carol.

  “Are you … is she … Rafe’s mother?”

  “Who’s Rafe?” she said.

  Mr. Veilleur said, “I believe we’ve found your son, Mrs. Treece.”

  “Jimmy?” Her fingers dug into Bill’s arms. “You’ve found Jimmy?”

  Jimmy. She’d named the boy after her late husband, Bill’s old friend Jim Stevens.

  Bill described Rafe to her and she shook her head.

  “That doesn’t sound like him.”

  “He may have changed his appearance,” Veilleur said. “He can do that to a degree.”

  She fished in her purse and came up with a wrinkled photo. She handed it to Bill. His knees weakened as he stared down at a slim, handsome teenage boy who didn’t look much like Rafe. But then again, change a few features …

  “What’s he done?”

  Bill could barely stand, let alone speak. Still clutching the photo, he stepped back and found a seat. Rafe was Carol’s son? But Veilleur had said Rafe was some sort of evil immortal … the Adversary.

  “Someone had better explain this to me.”

  Veilleur closed the nurse in the bedroom with his wife, then the four of them seated themselves in the living room. Carol was introduced to Renny. Bill noticed that the detective looked as confused as Bill felt.

  “Last night I told you both about the Adversary,” Veilleur said. He took out a piece of paper and wrote a word, then passed it around the table. “This is his real name. Read it but do not speak it.”

  “Why not?” Carol said.

  “Because he will hear it. And he will come.”

  Bill looked at the sheet.

  R-A-S-A-L-O-M

  What a strange name … but there it was: Sara Lom … Losmara …

  Veilleur said, “He was killed—or at least appeared to have been killed—in 1941 at a place called the Keep in a small pass through the Transylvanian Alps.”

  “Who killed him?” Renny said.

  Bill supposed it was a natural question for a cop to ask.

  “I did. The power I had served for so long released me then and so I assumed it was over at last. Apparently I was wrong. Over the past few decades I have pieced together the following sequence of events. It seems that at the time of the Adversary’s death, Doctor Roderick Hanley was successfully growing a clone of himself here in New York. For some reason, perhaps due to something unique about a clone, the Adversary was able to move into the body of the child who would eventually grow up to be James Stevens.”

  The name hit Bill like a punch.

  “Then it’s true?” Bill said, looking at Carol. “All those stories about Jim being a clone were true?”

  Carol nodded. “Yes. All true.”

  “But the Adversary could not control the clone’s body,” Veilleur said. “He could use the body as a vessel for his life force and nothing else. He was trapped, an impotent passenger in Jim Stevens’s body—until Jim fathered a child. When that happened, he moved into the new life the instant it was conceived within Carol.”

  “All that Antichrist talk!” Bill said, remembering Jim’s violent death and the pursuit of Carol by the Chosen.

  Carol shrugged helplessly, almost apologetically. “But I never really believed all the things my Aunt Grace and those awful people with her said about my baby. So I fled with Jonah to Arkansas where Jimmy was born. He was a perfectly normal infant during the first few months, but it wasn’t long before I began to suspect there was something wrong with him, something … malignant about him. I blamed my feelings on all the horrors I’d gone through while I was carrying him, all the terrible things that had been said about him, about him being the Antichrist and all that. But after a while I realized that Jimmy was not a normal child. Physically, he grew and developed at a normal rate, but mentally he was unlike any child who has ever lived.”

  She paused and Bill noticed that she shuddered.

  “How?” he said.

  Staring at the corner of the ceiling as she spoke, she gave a brief summary of fifteen years spent with a child who was never really a child, who had never needed a parent.

  “Finally, at age fifteen, he walked out on me. After he was gone, I distributed the balance of the fortune to various charities—I wanted no part of it—and came back to New York. I met a man, we got married, it didn’t work out. Mr. Veilleur contacted me a few years ago. We’ve been meeting and talking about Jimmy. I don’t know if I believe him about Jimmy being this Ra—this Adversary he talks about, but I don’t know if I disbelieve him either. It explains so many of the terrible things that have happened since he was conceived.” She looked at Renny, then at Bill. “But what’s he done to you?”

  Bill told Carol about Sara and what she did to Danny; he told her about Rafe and how he was twisting Lisl, and what they had done to Ev.

  “But Mr. Veilleur doesn’t think they were his real targets. He thinks Rafe or whoever he is has really been out to hurt me. Is that possible?”

  Carol nodded. “He hates you.”

  Bill was struck speechless for a moment.

  “Me? What did I ever do to him?”

  “You almost killed him.”

  As Bill listened in awe, she went on to remind him of her botched attempt to seduce him that afternoon in the Hanley mansion, of how the seduction had ended when she’d started to miscarry the child she hadn’t known she was carrying.

  “He almost died then,” she said, “and he blames you, Bill.”

  “Me? But I had nothing—”

  “You had everything to do with it,” Veilleur said. “Mrs. Treece has told me of the incident. It’s plain to me that the Adversary influenced her from within her womb, causing her uncharacteristic behavior. But it was your refusal to yield to her, to hold to your vows—it didn’t matter whether or not the god to whom you made those vows existed, it was your determination to continue on the course you had chosen for your life, toward what you believed was right that caused the near miscarriage.” He shook his head in dismay. “And it was a complete miscarriage of fate that you got her to the hospital in time to save her child. For it is that child w
ho has come back to ruin your life.”

  Bill’s mind rebelled against what he was hearing.

  “He did that to Danny because I refused her? And now he’s after Lisl for the same reason?”

  “I believe he also set fire to your parents’ house,” Veilleur said. “It was no accident that they died on the same date as your friend Jim Stevens. He was sending you a message. You have been the target all along, Father Ryan. You hurt him and he does not forgive.”

  “But they were innocent!”

  “But so useful. Think: you’d already taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. He could not ruin you financially or slaughter your wife and children, so he chose another route of attack.”

  “Why didn’t he just kill me?”

  “Too quick. No sustenance from that. Physical pain gives him only a fraction of what he derives from psychic pain, from fear, hatred, self-doubt. His purpose appears to have been to destroy you from within. To do that he stripped you of your support system—your family, your friends, your freedom, your religious order, your god, your very identity. He wants you to doubt yourself, to question the worth of your life, the usefulness of continuing it. He destroyed everything that gave meaning to your life, that made you who you are, expecting you to turn against your values and wallow in doubt and misery and self-pity. And then, hopefully, to commit the ultimate act of despair: suicide. He almost succeeded, but you refused to give up. So now he’s returned to finish the job.”

  Bill sat there numb, in shock.

  “But why is he wasting his time with me? If he’s so powerful, if he’s out to change the world into some awful place, why expend so much effort on me?”

  “First of all, he never forgives. He’s immortal, he’s thousands of years old, but he’s still human, and has human foibles. One of his is pettiness. He cannot let go of a slight. Plus, it gives him great pleasure. And in a hellish way it’s a testimony to you that he felt it necessary to level such a devastating assault against you. He must respect your strength of character. He may even fear you. But the real reason he’s taken the time to shatter your life is that he’s afraid to reveal himself just yet. He’s been biding his time, accumulating power while he looks for a way to bring his guiding force—we call it the Otherness—to power.”

  “He was afraid of a red-haired man when he was growing up,” Carol said. “But we never saw him. Who was that?”

  Veilleur sighed. “Me.”

  They all stared at the old man. Finally Renny said what was on Bill’s mind.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “Not as I am today,” Veilleur said quickly, “but as I used to be. I am the red-haired man the Adversary fears—or rather I was. He still thinks I am a vigorous, younger man, brimming with all the power of the Ally, waiting for him to show himself so that I can bring the full weight of that force to bear on him.”

  “So,” Bill said. “You were the last to oppose him? Who before you?”

  “No one.”

  “But you said this has been going on for ages.”

  Veilleur nodded.

  “Then you’re…” Bill couldn’t grasp it, didn’t want to try right now. “But then who represents this Ally now?”

  Veilleur’s expression was bleak.

  “No one. Someone waits in the wings, but the mantle has not yet fallen to him. When the Adversary appeared to be dead, the battle appeared to be won, so the Ally receded. And I began to age—not as quickly as everyone else, but the years have taken their toll. The Ally keeps watch, but only out of the corner of its eye, so to speak. The Adversary is trying to trick it by making this realm appear devoid of sentient life, and thus undesirable. If he succeeds, the Ally will turn its attention elsewhere, and that will be catastrophic because, at the moment, this world has no defender.”

  Suddenly Bill was afraid—for the world, but especially for Lisl.

  “I’ve got to go back,” he said, rising to his feet.

  “Bill, you can’t be serious!” Carol said.

  Bill felt his fear swell into waves of murderous rage, roaring through him like a storm surge.

  “He killed my parents, mutilated Danny Gordon, and God knows what else. I’m not sitting pat up here while he does whatever he pleases with the people I left behind.”

  Renny was on his feet too.

  “I’ll go with you. I’ve got some unfinished business with this bozo myself.”

  “I want to come too,” Carol said. “Maybe I can talk some sense into him.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “No,” she said, her lips trembling. “But I feel I’ve got to try.”

  “I believe I’ll come too,” Mr. Veilleur said.

  “Are you up to it?”

  Bill felt the full intensity of his blue-eyed gaze.

  “He has other plans in the works that bode ill for the world. We need a way to frustrate him, slow him down. I have this feeling that you’re a man who can do it. It will be a small victory, but I’d like to see it, and perhaps I can guide you along the way. I’ll have to stay in the background, of course. Under no circumstances must he know about me. Understood?” One after another, he stared at each of them. “If he sees me like this he will know he’s free to make this world—quite literally—a living hell.”

  As Mr. Veilleur went to give the nurse instructions as to the care of his wife during his absence, Bill began calling the airlines to check out the flight schedules. He was possessed by a dreadful rising urgency to get back to Pendleton.

  THIRTY

  North Carolina

  1

  Ev … gone.

  They’d removed what was left of him from the front of the truck, put him on a stretcher, and roared off to the nearest hospital. Lisl vaguely remembered being guided to the back seat of a State Police cruiser which then followed the wailing ambulance.

  Before the ride and after, while sitting in the waiting area of the hospital emergency room, she answered countless questions; but now she could remember neither the questions nor her answers. She only remembered that ER doctor coming out and saying what everybody already knew: Everett Sanders was DOA.

  She’d prepared herself for the news and so was able to maintain a calm front when it came. They wanted to hold her for observation, saying she looked as if she was in shock, but Lisl adamantly insisted she was okay. Finally they took her back to the truck stop and her car. She drove away and got as far as the next rest area; she pulled in, stopped in a deserted corner of the parking lot, and went to pieces.

  Finally, when she could cry no more, when her sob-racked chest and abdomen could take no more, Lisl sat and stared blindly through the windshield. She kept her eyes open as much as possible because every time she closed them she saw the sad, defeated, accusing look on Ev’s face the instant before the truck slammed into him.

  Never in her life, not even in the depths she’d plunged to after her divorce from Brian, had she felt so utterly miserable, so completely worthless.

  All my fault.

  No … not all her fault. Rafe’s too. Rafe had played a major role in Ev’s death. That didn’t exculpate her one bit, Lisl knew, but Rafe more than deserved to share her guilt. He’d erased Ev’s computer files, perhaps the final shove that had sent Ev on that fatal walk onto the interstate. Rafe should know that he’d contributed to a man’s death.

  Lisl reached for the ignition key. Her limbs felt weak, leaden, as if they belonged to someone else. She had to concentrate on every movement. She got the car started and headed back to Pendleton.

  The sun was unreasonably bright, glaring in her eyes as she drove. Traffic was light but she stayed to the right, not trusting her exhausted reflexes at the higher speeds. The sun had disappeared behind a low hanging sheet of cloud by the time she reached Pendleton and the Parkview complex. She pulled up to Rafe’s condo and didn’t hesitate. She went straight to his front door and pounded on its glossy metal surface. Silence inside. She pulled out her key and unlocked the door.


  “Rafe?” She stepped inside. “Rafe?”

  She stopped on the threshold of the living room and stared in shock.

  The room was empty. Stripped. The furniture, the paintings, even the rugs—gone.

  What’s going on?

  “Rafe!”

  She hurried from room to room, the clack of her shoes on the hardwood floors echoing through the emptiness. Each was the same. All traces of Rafe’s presence had been stripped away.

  Except in the kitchen.

  Something sat on the counter. Lisl hurried over and found a test tube. She picked it up and sniffed its open end—a trace of the mild odor of ethanol. She knew this tube. The last time she had seen it she had just emptied its contents into Ev’s orange juice.

  Weak, numb, feeling lost and very much alone, Lisl turned in a slow circle and stared at the condo’s empty rooms.

  Gone. Rafe had packed up and vanished. No good-bye, no note of explanation. Just gone. Not even a snide, nasty note, telling her that she hadn’t lived up to his standards. She would have preferred that to nothing. She now knew what his standards were and she wanted no part of them.

  But the test tube transfixed her. To take everything else and leave only that was calculated cruelty. Brilliant cruelty. Hard evidence of what she had done, a reminder that she had made possible everything that had happened.

  She stared down at it, then closed her eyes.

  Ev’s face stared back at her from the inner surface of her lids.

  With a cry she gripped the cowry slung from her neck and pulled, breaking the gold chain. She flung the necklace across the room and fled Rafe’s apartment.

  She drove to Will’s place but it was just as she’d left it in the early hours of the morning—empty. At least his furniture was still here, but where was Will? It didn’t look as if he’d been back since her visit.

  An awful thought struck her: Was he in on this too?

  No, that was too crazy, too paranoid. Indeed, Rafe had something weird going on in his head, but Will wasn’t part of it, she was sure. But where was he?