Avenging Fury

by John Farris

  “They’re accustomed to sonic booms in the area,” Hector said, “because of proximity to military airfields. But dazzling bursts of light from all corners of a clear sky, a display for which there is no rational explanation? That’s another matter.”

  “So you want me to do both?”

  Hector nodded.

  “Okay. How?”

  Hector said, “The talisman you wear is the key to the Dark Energy of the Universe. The sky is clear, the day calm. You don’t feel it yet. But concentrate on how you disposed of Mordaunt the first time.”

  Eden had gooseflesh, and rubbed her bare forearms.

  “I remember how the effort knocked me for a loop.”

  “But you will have learned from that experience how to apply your powers without exhausting yourself or your passions.”

  “I guess so. Once I’ve done this—maybe I’m good for twenty minutes or so—what next?”

  “The answer to your question lies within the depths of a pair of crystal skulls, once we get our hands on them.”

  “Gwen had one. I didn’t know there were two.”

  “Unfortunately, yes. But the skulls can be used for our purpose as well as theirs.”

  “If we had them,” Bertie said.

  “I think Hector wants me to make a deal,” Eden said.

  Hector beamed. “What a Caretaker you would have made. Not that you’re doing badly so far.”

  9:02 A.M.

  A little before nine, Tom Sherard suddenly got up off the table in the emergency-wing cubicle where he’d lain, apparently comatose, for more than three hours. He disconnected himself from an IV drip and the finger clip that monitored vital signs and walked out. He glanced at the nurses’ station down the hall, then went the other way, through a pair of automatic doors into the small waiting room. A TV was on. Remote newscast. A legend on the screen read RECORDED EARLIER. The picture showed flashes of brilliant light above a scrubby mountain range. There were no clouds to account for the violent electrical phenomena.

  He watched for a few moments, then went outside, looked around to get his bearings, then walked to a parking lot where a chauffeur was sleeping behind the wheel of a limousine.

  Sherard knocked on the tinted glass, waking the man. He got into the back of the limo and gave directions.

  When the limousine pulled out of the lot, it was followed, not closely, by a dark blue Crown Vic.

  9:24 A.M.

  Harlee Nations’s cell phone played musically on the pillow next to her. She groped for it and focused on the caller ID. Flicka’s number. Which meant—Harlee felt a touch of ice at the back of her neck, a pleasurable jolt to the spine.

  “I hope you’re not a late sleeper,” Eden said.

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost nine thirty.”

  “I was hoping for another hour or two.” Harlee yawned. “I assume you’re still with Flicka. Tell me she’s okay.”

  “She’ll be happier when she’s not peeing blood. Meantime we’ve done some talking. Whatever became of that red crystal skull you and your pal Devon were playing with a few days ago?”

  Harlee was silent for several seconds. “Don’t have it,” she said at last.

  “But you know where it is.”

  “What if?”

  “I want it.”

  “Like I’ll just hand it over to you. A—a sacred object. Priceless.”

  “Sacred to Mordaunt, you mean? To the Dark Cause?”

  “I don’t know that much about it. Truth. I’m afraid of it, though. Some things in the universe you don’t trifle with. But you don’t seem to have learned that.”

  “If you want to go on enjoying semi-immortality, or whatever you call it, you can’t depend on Mordaunt anymore. You’ve got about twelve hours left, Harlee. Right now I’m the only one who can save your neck. And Flicka’s.”

  Harlee laughed.

  “We’ll meet at two this afternoon. Bring the crystal skull. When I have it, I’ll guarantee you safe passage out of Las Vegas before we put the whole place into lockdown for a thousand years. Nobody else can make you an offer like that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Turn on your TV. Any channel. I’ll be back in touch.”

  Cody had been talking on his own cell phone while he drove east on Sunset Road toward the Galleria mall in Henderson.

  “Tom Sherard is at Bahìa. He went into the bungalow a few minutes ago and hasn’t come out.”

  Eden only nodded, looking preoccupied.

  Five minutes later they pulled into the parking lot at the Galleria.

  “There’s the Channel Ten mobile unit,” Eden said. “Pull up behind it.”

  “What’s the newsgal’s name?”

  “Lana something.”

  Eden got out of Cody’s RV with Simba in one hand. Channel Ten’s roving vid journalist, wearing full makeup, came over to her with her crew.

  “Hi,” Eden said. “I’m Eden Waring.”

  “Lana Briscoe. Changed your hairstyle, but I recognize you from file tape.”

  “Are we on the air, Lana?”

  “Make it worth my while and we will be.”

  “Worth your while. Okay, how’s this? The electrical disturbances that began this morning at approximately eight twenty-four and lasted for nineteen minutes are only a prelude of what’s in store for Las Vegas. By tonight the disturbances will have become major storms that will knock out all power in the metropolitan area. I’m talking about everything going dark, not just the megaresort glitz. Remember the old movie The Day the Earth Stood Still? It’s almost here. But it won’t last for a day. It will last for centuries.”

  “Jesus . . . you expect people to believe that?”

  “Why don’t you run the file tape you have on the DC-10 that crashed during my graduation exercises on the twenty-eight of May at 2110 hours? And ask as many of the people as you please who were not in the stadium and missed incineration by a matter of seconds what they believe.”

  “But—how—what’s causing these violent storms?”

  “Gee, I couldn’t answer that one, Lana. I’m just reporting what’s in my dreams. If you don’t think they’re newsworthy after what went on this morning—” Eden shrugged and turned back to the waiting RV.

  “No, hey, hold on!”

  “You have five more minutes of my time, Lana.”

  When Eden had returned to the RV and they were rolling again, Hector said to Roberto, “It is time for Level Two of the evacuation plan.”

  “Yes, Don Hector.” Roberto went to work with his laptop computer.

  Cody said, “What’s Level Two?”

  “Mobilize state and local police. National Guard on standby alert. By the way, we have, I think, about ten minutes before they will find and attempt to suppress us.” Roberto sighed. “Meanwhile, all of southern Nevada and not just Area 51 has become a no-fly zone.” Schematics blipped on and off the laptop screen. “Except for authorized aircraft. All vehicles will be diverted from Hoover Dam at 95 south. All interstate traffic will be turned away at state lines. Hotel security has been notified and the casinos are closing. Did I mention that we have become persons of great interest to every law-enforcement agency on the planet?”

  “They probably think it’s just some kid hacking away in his bedroom,” Bertie said.

  Eden’s own cell phone played “I Walk the Line.” She didn’t recognize the originating number.

  “This is Eden.”

  “Would you like Tom Sherard back unharmed?” Mordaunt said in the voice most recognizable to Eden, that of the late Lincoln Grayle.

  “Define unharmed, you evil son of a bitch,” Eden said.

  “Rather woozy, and with the gestures of childhood, for a few days.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I know what you’re trying to do. But you’re out of your depth. Stop this panic attack on a city I happen to love.”

  “I’m sure you do. You can have it, all of it. You and your
Fetchlings and that whole Malterran crowd. I’ll bet you outnumber the cockroaches by now. You can have Gwen too, you deserve each other.”

  As soon as she’d spoken, she wished she hadn’t.

  “Oh? Gwen is back? That’s interesting. Where is she?”

  “How would I know. You took her from me, remember?”

  “I detect some anxiety in your voice.”

  “You’re the one who has something to worry about.”

  “You can—and you have—caused me difficulties. I suppose I’ll just have to relocate. Join the exodus out of town.”

  “All by yourself?”

  Cody said quietly, as they approached Las Vegas Boulevard South on Sunset, “We’ve picked up an escort.”

  Eden looked out at flashing lights keeping pace with them.

  “Slow down but keep moving until there’s a good place to pull over,” Hector advised.

  Eden said to Mordaunt, “I don’t believe you’re willing to settle for half a soul. Because without your better half, we’re stronger than you can hope to be. And we will find you.”

  “I’ll look forward to that. Another time, then. For now I think I should go home and pack.”

  Eden put her cell phone away and laid her head back against the seat rest.

  “Eden?” Bertie said, sounding frightened.

  Eden looked at the police cars on three sides of the RV, saw a helicopter hovering above the boulevard a hundred yards south as Cody turned carefully at the intersection. All other traffic was being held up.

  “Mordaunt claims he’ll give us Tom if we ease up on him and his crew and his whole damn playground. Whatever we decide, I don’t see how we can win. Right now Mordaunt is probably on his way to his old haunt, the Magician’s house, which is on a mountain somewhere around here.”

  “Charleston mountain,” Cody said.

  “How long would it take him to make the drive from Bahìa?”

  “About half an hour—more, if midtown is clogged with traffic. Which it will be.”

  “Hector—what do you think?”

  “Much depends on what, or who, Mordaunt may find when he reaches the house.”

  Eden nodded. “I think so too. That’s probably where he was keeping Gwen, the place she’d come back to.” Eden rubbed her forehead. “Okay, then Mordaunt can’t be allowed to get to the house.”

  “They’re advising me to pull over,” Cody said. He had his motor home geared down to a sedate fifteen miles per hour, and all exterior lights flashing.

  Eden took another look at the helicopter.

  “Stop right here,” she said to Cody, and swiveled around to Hector.

  “You couldn’t simply—”

  Hector shook his head. “We are forbidden to take lives, Eden. Mordaunt’s protection from the power of a Caretaker always has been the human persona he possesses.”

  Eden nodded tautly as Cody stopped the RV in the middle of the boulevard. Police immediately closed in. A special weapons team had arrived.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  “Bertie and I need to talk,” Eden said.

  In the stateroom at the rear of the motor home the two girls sat side by side on the bed, holding hands.

  “What are you going to do?” Bertie asked.

  “Play dirty, I guess.”

  “Can you save Tom?”

  “I don’t know. I think somehow I have to trick Mordaunt into leaving his body, assuming—one of those shapes he’s famous for.”

  “Together we could—”

  Eden squeezed one of Bertie’s hands, finding it cold and lifeless. She smiled.

  “You can’t go, Bertie.”

  Tears stood out in Bertie’s eyes. She lowered her head.

  Eden kissed her cheek and stood. She seemed nerveless.

  “Fun’s about to start,” she said. “You don’t want to miss it.”

  9:57 A.M.

  When Eden and Hector in his hospital maintenance coveralls stepped down from the motor home all they saw were uniforms, most of them partly hidden behind a phalanx of police cruisers. More cops arriving as they looked around. Eden was carrying Simba, her lion’s-head walking stick.

  The helicopter was in the street fifty yards south of them, rotors idling. Eden shielded her eyes with one hand, looking at it.

  A bullhorn voice told Eden to put Simba down (“the weapon,” as it was described) and ordered her and Hector to kneel, hands laced on their heads.

  Eden spoke up: “I’d like to talk to whoever is in charge here!”

  Two officers closest to Eden and Hector had Tasers out. They wore full riot gear. They closed slowly in a pincher maneuver.

  The bullhorn voice repeated its demand.

  “What do you think?” Eden asked Hector.

  “An exercise in kinematics might be in order.”

  “Kinematics, right. I don’t know what you’re talking about, Holiness. I mean, Hector.”

  “We don’t want anyone to be seriously hurt. Velocity, caro, not brute force.”

  One of the encroaching cops fired his Taser at Eden, who hadn’t been paying close attention to him. But Simba jumped from the ground and batted the barbs away, causing a crackling flash on contact. The gold lion’s head turned on the walking stick and Simba glared at the other cop, jaws open.

  Eden said to the cop who was backing away, “He won’t hurt you. Now if you’re not in charge, get me someone who is, okay?” She resumed her conversation with Hector: “Why don’t you show me what you mean by cinematics.”

  “Kinematics. I’d much rather observe what you’ve learned in so short a time.”

  “Hector—”

  “Por Dios! Just pull the rug from under them. Before they become even more aggressive.”

  Eden looked at a TV news helicopter circling widely a couple of hundred feet above them, then down at a stretch of tarmac between them and the massed cruisers. She nodded, having gotten Hector’s meaning, and touched the talisman between her breasts. Her eyes closed. Her lower lip was folded between her teeth. The bones of her face seemed to stand out beneath the skin, which took on a blue-tinged glow like gas flame.

  A ripple began in the asphalt a few feet in front of Eden, mounted swiftly into a wave. It bowled over the cops nearest them, continued on, crested at about three feet beneath the wheels of the parked cruisers and a SWAT van, which rose and fell back haphazardly as the asphalt wave rolled on to the other side of the boulevard.

  Eden, breathing hard, sweat beading on her face, said, “Was that good enough?”

  “They may not be convinced. Perhaps we need a hostage, should they decide to open fire on us.”

  “Okay.” Eden took a couple of deep breaths. “Simba!”

  The walking stick flew like a javelin with jaws to one of the nearby cops as he was getting to his feet. Simba seized him by his outer vest near the back of the neck and lifted him, kicking helplessly, ten feet into the air.

  While Simba was bringing the cop to them, Eden focused on one of the empty cruisers and began methodically to compact it, like a barroom show-off folding a beer can. The cruiser made loud buckling and crunching noises as the engine fell out of it. Eden’s half-lidded eyes as she concentrated on this feat were like violent electrical storms beneath her blood-suffused brow. The talisman on her breast was incandescent.

  When the squared-off cruiser was a third of its original size Eden gave up the effort and brought the suspended cop within a few feet of her raised face, upending him in the air. He made desperate swimming motions with his hands, but Simba’s grip was strong.

  “Take off your face shield,” Eden said to the cop.

  He pulled off the helmet and shield and dropped it. He was a young guy, probably not much older than Eden. He was losing his hair and making an effort not to lose his nerve.

  “Hi, I’m Eden. This is Hector. What’s your name, Officer?”

  “Lew . . . Welling,” he said in a strangled voice.

  “I know this is awkward for you, Lew, but
you’ll be okay. Can you tell me how many seats that Metro copter over there has?”

  “Uh . . . four, I think. Plus pilot.”

  “Get on your radio and tell everyone that Hector and I are going to borrow the copter because we need to be someplace else in a hurry. I said borrow, not steal. It will be returned. Oh, and tell whoever may be concerned that we’re taking you with us. In case your snipers get antsy and try to put a couple of rounds through our heads. Because—now listen to this carefully, Lew—if I die, there is no way to prevent Simba—that’s my walking stick, I have this knee injury from sports—no way to prevent Simba from wiping out everyone in the vicinity. Beginning with Officer Lew Welling. Also, if the helo tries to take off before we get there, I’ll be very angry. You saw what happened to the cruiser.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That was nothing compared to what I can do if I really put my mind to it, because I have all the Dark Energy of the Universe at my disposal. But this is no Xbox game. Is there anything I’ve said about potential consequences that you don’t fully understand, Lew?”

  He didn’t understand “Dark Energy,” but this didn’t seem to be the time or place.

  “No . . . ma’am.”

  “Pass it on.” Eden turned to the RV and called to Cody. He appeared in the doorway, looking with a wide disbelieving grin from Eden to the unhappy suspended cop.

  “Cody, you can drive on to the ranch now with Bertie.”

  He shook his head. “Leave you? No.”

  “Yes. I’ll meet you there . . . I don’t know, when I can.”

  “What are you doin’ to yourself? You look beat all to—”

  “I’m good,” Eden said, but her eyes leaked tears. “Really, Cody. Please get out of here while they’re distracted.”

  “Eden—”

  “Promise,” she insisted. “And trust me, Cody. Nothing, nobody, not all the evil this world can come up with, is going to keep me from you for very long. Besides,” she added, with a rueful wrinkle of a smile, “don’t I deserve a vacation?”

  Cody glanced at Hector for help.

  “Why does this have to be her fight?”

  “Because she is the Avatar. And she has the unique power to finish what Mordaunt has started.”