by John Farris
The team leader of the Crucis Aurea Flex Force met him halfway.
An old, old religious cult with a benevolent name, with rituals, meaning, purposes unknown to Sherard. He shivered in his sheepskin-lined leather jacket.
“Tom Sherard?” He had an accent. Italian, Tom thought. The team leader glanced at the distinctive, hardy-looking blackthorn cane, as aggressive in appearance as a cudgel, that Tom was leaning on. It was his ID. He had left his other cane, of mopane wood with the gold head of a lion, in Eden Waring’s care, and for her protection while he would be away.
“Yes.”
“A skiing accident?”
“No, I was shot.” More ID. The leader nodded. Sherard motioned behind him. “There’s a freight elevator to a lower theatre level two hundred yards west of here. It’s locked down for the night. Code card. Only the security patrol can operate it. But there’s an outside emergency staircase next to the elevator shaft. That gate is locked also, although it shouldn’t be a problem to you.”
“How many security, please?”
“Unknown.” Sherard gave him a handheld computer. A big forklift was being driven off the helicopter. Followed by a flatbed truck. The nine other paramilitary types hopped aboard the truck, which was driven straight at Sherard and the team leader. He got into the front seat next to the driver and gave directions with one hand. Tom was helped aboard the flatbed by two team members. Nobody spoke. As they headed for the base of the mountain in a jostling rumble in the waning minutes of desert night, a cold night still, the forklift trailed the truck. The team leader studied the floor plans of the theatre and support complex.
Twenty seconds after they reached the outside concrete elevator shaft and accompanying emergency stairs, they had blown the hinges off the steel gate at the foot of the stairs and were storming up to a warehouse beneath the kitchen level.
Tom had problems with steps because of the knee that his wife’s assassin had nearly blown away on a New York street. By the time he made it to the warehouse, two security guards were down and were being cut loose from Taser wires and the intruders had a code card for the freight elevator. Two team members were using paintball guns to blot out the eyes of the security cameras.
The elevator went down to where the forklift was waiting at the edge of the parking lot. The Crucis Aurea team went upstairs to the kitchens, then down a wide tunnel to the lobby. More cameras got the blackout treatment.
Sherard saw it for the first time in the concentrated glare of several flashlights.
Eden Waring’s work: a blister of smoky-veined glass more than four feet high, containing the remains of the were-beast Tom had shot twice from his mountain hide above the now-missing terrace of the theatre.
The team leader made the sign of the cross in the air above the crystal tomb, saying something in Latin, throwing Mordaunt in twice. Sherard wondered if he might be a priest. He was the only one of them who had ventured close to the encapsulated entity.
The forklift arrived. Maneuvered into position, it raised the heavy glob of glass off the travertine floor and they all got out of there.
Elapsed time since the Super Stallion had landed was just under six minutes.
Now they were bearing the were-beast away, to the grave that had been chosen for Grayle/Mordaunt. Deus Inversus. The cloven hoof. Old Slick himself. So many names through millennia that applied to a singular evil.
As they lifted off in the helicopter Tom Sherard kept his eyes on the now-shrouded blister lashed to pad eyes on the floor. It gave off heat in the confines of the Stallion’s belly. It had a brimstone odor. Men with their helmets and face shields removed stared, some in stupefaction tinged with horror. Small crosses clenched in their fists. Others refused to look at the accursed thing.
The core of the blister in which the beast lay had not solidified, according to the thermal imager that monitored what was going on beneath the metallic silvery shroud. On the TI screen, deep heat shimmered spectrally around the blunt, obscene head.
They flew southwest across the bare bones and dry sockets of Mojave, moonlit sand basins and soda flats, toward the port of Long Beach, California.
Tom thinking, If only it stays this easy the rest of the way.
But what did Eden’s power, combined with the Dark Energy of the universe, mean to a relentless and immortal soul?
6:55 A.M.
From the lounge of the spa where he’d had his daily therapeutic massage, Cody Olds looked down on a floodlit half of an outdoor basketball court. A slender girl, five-nine or -ten, wearing blue spandex and a Lakers jersey that hung past her hips was moving side to side on the court, dribbling, bursts of toned speed and quickness, sure-handed with the ball, putting on a show, although she couldn’t have known anyone was watching her.
Left hand, right hand, behind the back, then the crossover dribble and eyeblink-quick she was up, draining left-handed jumpers from fifteen feet or better, waving bye-bye to the basket, hand at a forty-five-degree angle to her outstretched arm like she’d been taught to do at a good basketball camp when she was a kid. Swish-swish. Then varying her routine by not shooting off the dribble, passing instead against a slant-webbed backstop behind the goal with a small square-target painted on it, no-look passes, plenty of zip on the ball. College girl, he guessed, wondering where she played or if she still did.
Cody had played basketball himself, in high school, then two years at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff before a fall down a mountain that killed his horse and left him with a fused backbone and plenty of morning pain. He couldn’t sit a horse for longer than twenty minutes nowadays, and long contemplative trail rides into high country had been one of his abiding pleasures.
No, the girl didn’t play anymore. But still loved the game and was thinking about the Lakers–Spurs exhibition tonight at Thomas and Mack.
Cody wondered where that insight had come from. He even looked around; it was as clear in his mind as if someone had spoken to him. But he was alone in the lounge. Nevertheless, his lightly oiled skin prickled, as if something were slithering up the back of his neck.
He didn’t know the girl. He was sure of that. She wasn’t someone to drift out of a man’s mind once he laid eyes on her.
He continued to watch the workout she was putting herself through. Face agleam with sweat in the floods. Never changing expression.
A show of thoroughbred grace in animals and women just naturally refreshed Cody’s day, brightened his outlook in a way that even a big winning hand at poker didn’t seem to do anymore.
She was a redhead, more of a strawberry roan shade, and wore her hair scrunchied back and off her neck while she worked on her game. Swish. Those long tanned supple legs had a lot of jump in them even though she wore a knee brace. Right knee. Big-time college ball was harder on the ligaments of a woman’s knees than the knees of a male athlete.
Didn’t know who she was, but he felt a powerful urge to become acquainted; that tingle across his shoulders wasn’t just because of his recent massage. He had to get to know her. Intuition again?
But he was standing there in a spa bathrobe behind floor-to-ceiling windows that didn’t open, and she—something about how hard she was working, the grit effort she put into every move, with an undertone of, to give it a name, driving anger, suggested that she wanted to be left alone.
Man trouble? At her age, what else?
She only thinks she wants to be alone.
And where did he get that idea? Cody clenched his shoulder muscles as if warding off a persistent psychic prodding. Maybe his long night of high-stakes poker had overtaxed his brain and nervous system.
Five minutes to shower and towel off, throw on a change of clothes, get himself out there.
Before this filly decided she’d had enough and walked away, becoming unfindable, leaving him with a nagging sense of loss for many a day.
Life seldom announced its critical turning points. Afterward you always knew. But by then all you might have to show for you
r knowledge were regrets.
Cody was not one to sit in a melancholy mood waiting for a spark to appear in yesterday’s ashes. And he didn’t have anything going right now. Which, for a single guy in Vegas, was almost unheard of.
Eden still couldn’t believe he had left in the middle of the night without waking her. Surreptitious moves were not Tom Sherard’s style. He’d left very little in the way of explanation—only that His Holiness had personally asked him to do this thing, oversee the disposition of Mordaunt’s earthly remains. A note from Sherard on her computer was the first thing Eden had seen when she woke up at five o’clock after a night’s sleep that had been more stressful than soothing, like an entrance exam to hell.
Well shit. And she had made love to this man not twenty-four hours ago, holding back nothing of herself—one way of putting it; she felt like a jilted heroine in a Victorian romance. Aside from her very personal feelings okay, what sort of team play was this?
Because Tom had been the one to insist, until Alberta Nkambe’s prognosis turned favorable and they could take her back to Shungwaya for recuperation, that they not split up. Las Vegas was still a dangerous place for them, particularly the helpless Bertie. And there was Eden’s task, which she had yet to begin, of retrieving her wayward doppelganger.
He had left Eden with Simba, the gold lion’s-head walking stick. As if Tom thought that the cane would be of more use to her while he was traveling an unknown distance with an entity she had subdued but still feared. Dreaming through a wretched night of its watchful dormancy in that thick coating of glass, shaped in dreamtime like a flawed eye with a sunken squamous pupil. The damned thing almost never left her thoughts! Tired as she was after a long workout, bent over on the rubberized outdoor basketball court with heaving breasts and tugging with both hands at the hem of her purple jersey, those hot spots of melting chandeliers still swayed in the front of her mind.
Ten thousand years from now none of this is going to matter.
Which was what Eden usually reminded herself when she was at the limits of frustration or deeply funked.
Yes, but. Having become acquainted with Deus Inversus, she couldn’t be so sure of that anymore. Which left her sure of nothing at all.
Her legs, unused to the practice grind, were hurting. So shoot some free throws as part of the cooling-out routine, then walk back to the bungalow. Sauna, shower, the sun would be well up by then. Breakfast on the terrace, a protein shake if she couldn’t get anything else down. Then an hour of computer chat with her mother, Betts, and Eden’s best chum, Megan Pardo in San Fran, and it would be time to visit Bertie. Afterward take Bertie’s father, Joseph, and her brother Kieti to lunch at Bellagio. A big pair of shades, ponytail, and baseball cap; the idea of walking around town didn’t worry her too much, although Tom had said—
“I have two tickets to the game tonight. Courtside.”
Eden flubbed a free throw. Now what? Or who?
The ball bounced back to her from the backstop. She leaned left to snatch it up, finding comfort in the spread of her fingers on the thick black welts of the women’s NBA pro model, holding it chest-high as if it afforded protection from whatever stranger she was about to have a look at. Deep breath, just a casual glance. His voice hadn’t startled her. It had a comfy gruffness. Fatherly sound. Time to quit now, Eden, come in for supper.
Yes, sir. Soon as I hit ten in a row.
He wasn’t the old bird-dog, quail-hunting type she’d expected to see. Youthful lines, someone who kept himself up. Gleaming raven hair brushed straight back from a spacious forehead and curling up toward his ears at the collar line. A Mount Rushmore sort of face, only bronze with flared cheekbones, his skin unlined except for little folds at the corners of a wide amiable mouth. Well trimmed but full mustache, no vanity piercings. A couple of rings on his long fingers looked like tribal jewelry: silver, topaz, turquoise. Six-three, she guessed. An easy, idle, cowboy kind of stance; and yes, that was a somewhat kicked-around old John B. Stetson in his hands.
“You’d be a Laker fan, I’m guessin’.”
Eden didn’t acknowledge his question or his existence until she’d drained the next free throw.
“I’m for whatever team Steve Nash is playing for,” she said, waiting for the ball to carom back to her, not looking around again.
“Kobe’s got that toe problem,” the cowboy said, to keep the conversation going. “Looks like he’s on the DL once the season starts.”
Eden nodded slightly, still not turning around. Eyes narrowing in concentration, she hit her next four. He didn’t say anything else but she knew he hadn’t budged, was still watching, and Eden was thinking that she liked the set of his mouth. She hadn’t had a good look at his eyes. Maybe wasn’t all that interested.
The cowboy said, “I’d never quit until I made my ten. Miss one in a game, twenty in a row at practice.”
Eden nailed her fifth and sixth free throws, took two deep breaths. “What if you missed two in a game?”
“Didn’t often happen. Well, I stayed in the gym all night if I needed to. Until they threw me out.”
“I was like that,” Eden said. Seven, eight. “Sometimes I hid in the locker room, then I’d shoot with the lights out if there was moon enough that night.”
“Where did you play college?”
“Cal State Shasta.” Nine.
“Division One?” He was impressed. “I was at Northern Arizona. Got hurt the spring of my sophomore year. Broke my back.”
Ten.
Eden didn’t want to shoot anymore, but she felt momentarily at peace. With the basketball under one arm she walked to the bench where she had left her towel and sweats. Glancing at the westerner. Not giving him much to read in her glance. The sky had brightened, there were pink bands of cloud overhead. He had dark eyes, angular beneath a slight jut of brow. She made a guess at his age: midthirties.
“How did you break your back?”
“Horse shied on a high trail I ought to have had the sense to avoid. Loose shale, and there was some ice left from winter. Do you ride?”
“No,” Eden said. She pulled on sweatpants and dried her face.
“I’m Cody Olds,” the cowboy said.
Or maybe he was only part cowboy: he wore a good-looking tweed jacket and a cashmere turtleneck with his Wranglers and polished boots. Coca-Cola cowboy, Eden thought, dimly recalling a song from a Clint Eastwood movie.
“Hi.” She hesitated. Then gave him the name on her Kenyan passport, the name she was registered under at Bahìa. “Eve Bell.”
He smiled. “On for the game tonight, Eve?”
Eden smiled back. And shook her head, a minimum of rejection.
“No.”
He didn’t look put out or flustered. She hadn’t knocked the wind out of his sails.
“Then let me make you a gift of my seats. In case there’s a special fella you’d rather be there with.”
Eden tilted her head as if there were some density to this proposition, and blew him off again. But mildly.
“Can’t accept. That is way too generous of you. Cody.”
Saying his name indicated that, marginally, he was still in play, and she waited with a tone of interest to see what this Cody Olds would come up with.
He nodded. Looked thoughtful. “Then why don’t we make the tickets the stakes in a friendly wager.”
Eden began dribbling her basketball, figure eights around and between her spread legs, alternating hands, never looking at the ball. Looking at him.
“For instance?”
“It’s been, I’d say, half a dozen years since I picked up a basketball. So allow me two practice shots, third one will be the money ball.”
“From where?”
“Half court.”
Eden laughed. “You’re hustling me.”
“Ma’am, on my word of honor.”
She liked the way he said things. Word of honor. And he had that depth in his voice so that he didn’t sound incredibly bogus.
“You’ll have me feeling like a thief and a skunk, Cody.”
He rubbed one side of his chin, scraping a little stubble that wasn’t unbecoming. “Suppose you gave me an edge; you know, house vig.”
House vig. So he was your basic degenerate gambler, Eden decided. Bet on anything and everything. What the hell, so far he was doing okay.
“Name it.”
“I swish the ball, you buy us dinner before the game. If I catch iron but no bucket, game only; and I promise I will have you back on your doorstep by ten thirty.”
“Oh, now I’m buying dinner.” But she had begun to respond to that old game-day competitive sparkle. She made it appear as if she were having a tough time deciding. Then went full power with her smile. “Let’s see what you’ve got, Cody.”
Cody Olds took off his tweed jacket and folded it carefully over the back of the bench. Then he removed his boots and boot socks. Did a stretching routine, upper back and shoulders, some deep knee bends. Eden tossed him the ball. Smaller size, ounces lighter than his hands remembered. He bounced it a few times, getting back the feel, then walked to center court, all business now that the wager was set.
It hurt him to jump, she could tell that. The bad back. She was moderately sympathetic. Playing with pain. He couldn’t be that hard up for a date. Wanted to win, prove something to her.
Cody put too much on the ball his first try and he was off form, a little awkward. His shot was high and to the left and just did connect with the backboard. He put his head down and bounced the ball a few more times, looked up, looked around at Eden.
“Okay if I move?” he said.
Eden made a magnanimous “whatever” gesture with both hands.
“I’m better when I move,” he said, sounding like Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid. Then, quicker than Eden had imagined he could be, he dribbled to his left, squared up to the basket, and launched his jumper. Great form. He’d been a player, all right. She sensed as soon as the ball left his hands that it was good.