Fury and the Power

by Farris, John

  "You seem to be in a gloating mood."

  "Why not? You're losing ground while doing my work for me. Caretaker? Not much."

  "I don't recall losing the Second World War. I do recall the penalty you earned for starting it. Now, how is it I do your work, Trickster?"

  "Insisting on the doctrines of a mythological, obsolete religion. You don't protect souls with that claptrap; you subjugate them. What is a pope but a man with a book, a mitre, and the head of an ass?"

  "An enduring religion. Mythological? No more than the true Eternal Soul is a myth."

  "Religious faith is spiritual ignorance. Credo quia absurdum. Ignorance spawns delusion. The more fiercely the ignorant believe in the unknowable, the more fanatical they become, and, in groups, horrifically mad. My kind of folks, Caretaker."

  "Once it reaches us, the fertilization and evolution of a new soul is slow and arduous. In the beginning of its earthly cycles, each soul requires the sanctuary of a sane system of values so that it may begin to mature. I don't feel that I'm wasting my time in theological pedantry, no matter how many setbacks the Caretakers must endure to graduate a cosmic soul from the earthly plane. Belief in God, through whatever religion inspires it and however 'god' is idealized by the creative unconscious, is essential to the development of metaphysical perception. A liberating force, Mordaunt, achieved only through the steady progress of a soul making its rounds. As for your methods—the more outrageously you behave, the more the souls need us. Oh, you have your Malterran misfits to bend to your whims and promises, but you can't construct anything with them that will last. You will never be strong enough."

  The large crucifix fell from the wall across the bed, missing Leoncaro by inches. He looked at it, then at the still-unresolved, unreliable shape of Mordaunt hovering futilely in front of him.

  "It didn't destroy Him then; it won't bother Him now. Time for you to go."

  "I'll be back," Mordaunt said, "in strength none of you can overcome. You left me with a means to heal myself. And now I will use her."

  "I wouldn't roll those dice if I were you. If she doesn't know about you yet, she soon will. On the earthly plane you're all flash and not enough powder; no match for the gifts of Eden Waring."

  "The beauty of it is, Caretaker, she will use her greatest power against herself. And I walk away the winner. Now when shall we two meet again?" he asked mockingly. "In thunder, lightning, or in reign of blood?"

  "Get lost" Leoncaro said, but he didn't feel as tough as he sounded.

  Chapter 25

  SAN FRANCISCO

  OCTOBER 21

  2:50 P.M. PDT

  On an afternoon when the prevailing winds had gentled and a high-pressure system centered just offshore provided such a mild but radiant atmosphere it was as if all of the Bay Area, with its waters of lapping indigo, its strings of bridges and wharves and towers, had been captured inside a crystal bell...

  On an afternoon when every breath was a tonic, the heart racing and tingling from the pure enchantment of being outdoors...

  On an afternoon of pleasantries and nostalgia at lunch with her best friend Megan, and shopping after...

  On an otherwise agreeable and diverting afternoon, Eden Waring got the pain in her neck.

  She had just taken two steps inside the revolving door of the Mark Hopkins's entrance, shopping bags in both hands and a dress box under one arm, when it hit her, penetrating deep like a red-hot knitting needle. The pain similar to what she had experienced the time she thought she'd broken her neck diving for a loose ball her junior year at Cal Shasta.

  Eden stopped immediately, afraid to take another step. She dropped one of the bags and grasped her neck with her left hand, a fearful bracing.

  The concierge was passing by; he stopped immediately with a concerned smile.

  "Are you all right?"

  "I, uh, must have twisted my neck coming in the door. I was trying not to drop anything." The pain, an isotope beneath her palm, was at its worst for only a few seconds before tempering to a deep ache. Eden found it bearable then to massage with her fingers, turn her head cautiously left-right on its bony pivot.

  The concierge, a silky-looking man with an almost fluorescent pallor, picked up the dropped shopping bag, tucking something filmy back between layers of purple tissue-wrap.

  "I can have your purchases sent to your suite for you. It's Miss Bell, isn't it?"

  "Yes. I'm, uh, my neck is really beginning to feel okay now?"

  "You might want to consult Heinrich in the spa," he suggested. "If you're having a muscle spasm. I get them all the time myself, but Heinrich does wonders in only a few minutes. I'll call for you; to be sure he can see you right away."

  "I don't know what happened. Maybe I didn't stretch enough this morning. I've played basketball most of my life; my body's used to a certain warm-up routine or I cramp easily. Maybe I'll see Heinrich later, but it's very kind of you."

  "Please don't feel shy about calling if there's anything I can do," he said with that tone of unctuous appreciation five-star hotel employees have for the celebrated and the deeply monied.

  Eden took the public elevator to the nineteenth floor. There was no one else with her. She used the small interval to press the index finger of her left hand against the site of the occult third eye on her forehead.

  Okay, what's going on? What's happened to you?

  Nothing specific came to mind. Then she tensed. Black-gloved hands reaching for her. A sensation of being dragged. Bump bump and pavement scraping skin, the fiery bloom of a contusion on her hip.

  Trouble. Wasn't that just like her?

  Eden opened her eyes and felt momentarily displaced, a breath of coldness on her face, as if yesterday had returned. Fog wisping away from the surface of black water. Bubbles where the chain-wrapped body of the assassin had gone down. Open eyes, open mouth, no change of expression at the shocking immersion nor as he swallowed brackish death. Bubbles. Ah, God. She had not blinked or looked away; she was there at her own insistence, standing in the cluttered bow of the trawler with men she didn't know and never wanted to know. Diesel stench and clammy fish rot giving her a sick stomach. Feeling the chill of three A.M., cheekbones near to freezing. No forgiveness in her heart although he had spared Betts. To Eden he was only a sharp blade narrowly missing her own throat. Thus his penalty for failure. The deep salt sleep. It had always been that kind of world and now she had willingly contributed to its avid monstrousness. And gone shopping.

  Refocused, Eden realized that the elevator door probably had been standing open for several seconds. A blond young room service waiter bent over a wheeled table was looking oddly at her, waiting to board.

  "Sorry," Eden told him, with a lame lipless smile. She gathered her things and got out of his way, walked slowly to the key-operated penthouse elevator. The ache in her neck still bearable but not improving. A dud vacancy in the middle of her brain. Where are you, what's happening? She stumbled on the carpet for no reason; it was as flat as the baize on a pool table. Disoriented again, feeling zero g in the pit of her stomach, being lifted, conveyed somewhere—what was that odor, engine oil? And smoke, and, Jesus! Blood—at the speed of a razzle-dazzle carnival thrill ride.

  Come back to me. Now!

  Beside the vestibule doors of the secluded penthouse suite Eden rested her forehead against the wall for half a minute, missing that buzz around her navel that always told her the manifestation of her doppelganger was imminent.

  Here we go again, she thought dispiritedly. What could have happened to her, with Tom and Bertie around?

  She rang the bell. The door was opened by a Blackwelder detective named Vicky Janssen, diminutive but with a collection of advanced degrees in deadly martial art forms, and, undoubtedly, although Eden hadn't asked, she was highly proficient with the .32-caliber Heckler and Koch automatic she carried.

  "Hi, welcome back; how was lunch? Was I right about Kuleto's?"

  "Megan and I had a great time. Thanks, Vicky. Wher
e's Betts?"

  "Getting some rays on the terrace. She has company."

  "Oh. Police again?" Eden frowned. They were required, by the attorneys Vaughn Blackwelder had provided, to make an appointment if they had further questions for Betts about her kidnapping.

  "No, it's Mr. Ruddy. He brought her flowers again today."

  "Oh" Eden said again. "Bless his heart." His presence, instead of the official interrogators they'd endured, was a relief. Or was it?

  Vicky had one of those smiles that served as silent commentary: wry, jaundiced, perplexed. Her response to Eden's expression was cheerful admonition.

  "You know, a different hairstyle; and he certainly could use a little help picking out his clothes, but that's the way these old bachelors are. Here, let me carry your things for you. Looks like you cleaned out most of the boutiques on Union Street?"

  She followed Eden through the living room of the suite, furnished with Chinese antiques and neo-classic pieces, deeply lacquered surfaces reflecting sunlight from the greenery-sheltered, twenty-five-foot terrace. Eden greeted the Filipino nurse on duty, who was on her way to the kitchen. She heard Betts's roguish laughter before she stepped outside, sounds to gladden her heart.

  "There you are," Betts called out. She was on a chaise with a plaid throw tucked in across her lap. Edmund Ruddy faithfully at her side, sipping a Coke; he stood quickly when Eden approached. She favored Ruddy with a polite smile, gesturing for him to take his seat again, then bent to kiss Betts's cheek. Sunlight flashed and receded on the terrace according to the wind-driven flourishes of arborvitae chockablock in planters along the outer wall. Betts still had very little color, Eden noted, except for the healing abrasions on her throat and neck.

  "How's Megan?" Betts asked.

  "Dying to see you. I told her another day or two, Mom, we'll all have dinner someplace nice. Mr. Ruddy, how are you today?"

  He was a man to give considered answers to the most casual questions. "The transmission in the Z3 I seduced myself into buying is acting balky again. I had it to the dealer's only last week. I'm not entirely satisfied with the service I've been getting. When I owned my S-type Jag I must say it never gave me a moment's—"

  Betts silenced him by playfully flicking fingers at his sheepdog bangs; he flinched, then smiled ruefully as if the gesture was an old but familiar signal.

  "Betts always used to complain that I have a tendency to explain too much," he said to Eden. Explaining further, "I guess you'd call it a nervous habit."

  "Relax, relax, please" Eden urged him with a bigger smile, but then she had to ask, "Are the feds still giving you a hard time, Mr. Ruddy?"

  "Ed, please. Not at all. I suppose everything about Betts's… captivity by that psychotic bird was just so bizarre that they've had to conclude we are both telling the truth, and I had nothing whatsoever to do with it."

  "You did have something to do with it," Betts said, her voice lowering to a hoarse growl, "after he dumped me on your doorstep. You acted fast and saved my life, Ed."

  "Well, I've always been good in an emergency, I like to think." He rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. "But why did he—"

  "The feds have found a great deal to interest them," Betts said to Eden, "at the farmhouse near Coldstream Bridge. His theatrical makeup kits and costumes, catalogues of electronic devices, actual explosives—stuff the average citizen can't get his hands on. That should be all they will need, although of course they'd like to know his true identity. A motive, too, which I don't feel obligated to help them with."

  It had been Danny Cheng's idea to check all Bay Area hospitals after Eden's futile search for the remains of the Assassin's knife by the fountain in Ghirardelli Square. Minutes later they were speeding across the Bay bridge to the hospital in Concord where Betts had been received following Edmund Ruddy's call for an ambulance.

  "But he was a complete stranger to you," Ruddy said, anxiety rising in his eyes.

  "That's right," Betts said with a level look at him, reaching up again to fondly muss his hair in another direction. "Complete. Stranger."

  "Well, I'm certain I've never been acquainted with anyone who had such a perverted, diseased mind. That's the part I simply can't understand. How could he have possibly known about me and our relationship while we were at USF?"

  "I've been thinking about that too," Betts said, very serious. "It might well have been someone we were in school with, and just never noticed. Maybe nobody noticed him. A studious loner type. Silently watching us together. Envious. Obsessed. I've had cases like that."

  "Obsessed," Ed repeated dismally. "And he's still at large."

  "They'll catch up to him," Betts promised, with the merest glance at Eden's stony face. "He will have left clues. I doubt that we need to worry. After all, it was his intention to bring us together again after all these years. That was in his note to you, wasn't it, Ed?"

  "More or less. It's just so damned creepy."

  "But in spite of his psychosis, there was a streak of humanity in him, somewhere." Betts looked at the shopping bags Vicky had left on a glass-topped table nearby. "Are those for me?" she asked Eden with a gleam of pleasure in her eyes.

  "Mostly," Eden said, and confessed, "I think I went a little haywire." She flinched at a fresh twinge and put a hand to her neck. Time to get off an E-mail to Bertie. "Megan took me to some fabulous shops."

  "Show me!"

  Ed Ruddy, possibly beginning to feel excluded by the prospect of ecstatic clothes talk, got to his feet again.

  "I think it's about time that I—you see, I've a four o'clock squash date. Long-running rivalry with my insurance agent."

  "Ed," Betts said, sunlight playing over her face so that she batted her eyelashes in a way that seemed coquettish, "I can't thank you enough for the gorgeous flowers. You're being too good to me."

  "Oh, no, no—my pleasure."

  "Did you get a look at that beautiful jade and onyx backgammon table in the library?"

  "No, I missed that."

  "Have a gander on your way out," Betts said, her voice still stuck in a raw lower register. "And tomorrow if you're not too busy we'll find out if your skills have improved during the past twenty-eight years."

  He stood a little straighter, delighted by her challenge. "I wouldn't want to brag, but."

  "Give you every chance to prove yourself, Ed. How about three tomorrow afternoon? We'll have supper after I take you to the cleaners. Room service is excellent here."

  "Or we could call Tommy Toy's," he suggested, his color high; Edmund Ruddy clearly was ravished by her interest in adding impetus to their resurrected friendship.

  "Now you're talking."

  When she and Betts were alone Eden said, hands on hips, "Well, Betts."

  "Don't get smart. And nobody said you have to like him right away."

  "I don't dislike him. Were the two of you really, I mean, back then?"

  "Hot and heavy, sugar. That's the second time you've grabbed your neck. What's wrong?"

  "Muscle spasm. I think. The mattress on my bed is too hard, or something."

  "Did you sleep at all? It must have been after four when I heard you come in."

  "No," Eden said, avoiding Betts's eyes. "I didn't sleep."

  "Too much on your mind?"

  "I suppose."

  "You're not going to tell me why you stayed out most of the night, are you?"

  "Better that you don't know."

  "Oh, God," Betts said, with an invalid's tremulous mouth. "This dodging around and using a phony name like a fugitive, what sort of life do you have now?"

  "Shh, I'm fine."

  "I should have done a better job of protecting you. This mess I got into—"

  "Was never any fault of yours. We won't talk about what happened. What almost happened."

  "I was terrified, every minute of the day and night. Now I can't turn it off, even with the tranqs; get him out of my mind. And when I'm awake, every face I see could be his face."

  "Mom, that e
vil bastard is gone for good." It was a cold surprise to still feel so shockingly vengeful. "For your sake and mine, I had to make completely sure." Betts stirred uneasily. "No, I didn't touch him. There were others who—do that sort of thing. I really can't tell you any more."

  "Those strange friends you've told me about? And that sweet-faced girl with the English butler's name, she couldn't be—"

  "I've trusted all of them with my life. Strange? No more than I am."

  Eden sat on the side of the chaise, her melancholy face giving way to raw anguish, and put her arms around Betts. She took long shuddering breaths.

  "You're safe, Mom. You're safe. Nothing matters to me more."

  Betts stiffened slightly. Her lips touched Eden's wet cheek.

  "You're not leaving again! Oh, but it's too soon."

  "Have to," Eden said, feeling like a skunk in the face of Betts's unhappiness and renewed anxiety.

  Betts took a fresh purchase on Eden, fingers tightening fiercely. "When you first came into the ER—I was half out of it, but I could see right away. You've aged ten years in just a few months."

  "Is that all?" Eden said with a weak smile. Edmund Ruddy's selection of pricey flowers—air-freighted, exotic blooms from Brazilian hothouses—were causing her nose to run. As she had done in childhood, she unthinkingly wiped her nose on the sleeve of the cardigan sweater Betts wore.

  "We'll be able to talk again someday," Betts said, "like we used to talk. Won't we?"

  "Yes, darling." And now she was mothering Betts, which made her feel desperately sad. "I'll be in touch every day," Eden promised, getting up slowly, swallowing until she forced down her sorrow. She reached for a tissue in the box on the low table beside the chaise. Blotted her wet lashes.

  "Betts? Do something for me?"

  "Well, of course."

  "Talk Ed Ruddy out of those tweedy jackets with lapel tabs and leather at the elbows."

  "That's definitely a priority," Betts agreed with a good laugh that her heart didn't feel. The Filipino nurse appeared on the terrace carrying a little tray and several pills in a glass dish, orange juice in a goblet. Betts pounced on her with sudden ferocity. "At least let me have a glass of red wine with those!"