Any Minute Now (43 page)

She heard his voice, as clearly as if he were still beside her: “
You're a death-dealer.
” What could he mean by…?

And then of course she saw herself, as if from an odd angle, above and almost beyond, killing the failed clinical trial patients, the victims, whatever you chose to call them, one after another, boom! boom! boom! all in a row. Then filling their mouths with stones, watching them slide into the
cenote
headfirst without a care or an iota of remorse.

Preach was right about her. She was a death-dealer. Then it stood to reason he was telling the truth about everything. Ev-ry-thing. Including her coming back to him of her own free will.

With a sudden, violent motion, she swept the bowl and utensils off the table, felt a kind of satisfaction hearing the pottery shatter. And then she wept. It was such a tiny victory—and so terribly petty, meaningless even.

Free will. What a joke! As if she had had free will, manipulated every step of the way by Preach until she lay beneath his thrusting hips, feeling his sperm gush into her depths, burning her insides, turning them black as night, black as death.

Christ, no, she thought, as she pushed herself back from the table and rose. Christ, no. Never. Even hell had to be better than being his creature.

 

50

“While you two have been jawing,” Preach called out, “your nemesis is on his way.”

Hartwell snatched the
Peranomicon
off the porch railing, stashed it away on his person. “What's he talking about?” he said to White.

“I'm talking about Whitman.” Preach strode toward them. “He's on his way here with a load of poppies.”

Hartwell and White exchanged concerned looks.

“How on earth did Whitman, of all people, get his hands on our Przemko poppies?” Trey whispered.

“Obviously St. Vincent's measures failed to deter him,” White said.

“Are either of you really surprised?”

“Is that why Whitman is here?” Hartwell asked. “Because of a bouquet of fucking poppies?”

Preach laughed.

“He's here,” White said, ignoring Preach as best he could, “because Luther abducted one of his people and had Dr. Lindstrom administer the Mobius serum to him.”

Hartwell's eyes widened and his nose twitched like a rabbit scenting its own death. “So he knows everything.”

“Presumably,” White said.

“Definitely,” Preach said.

Preach was watching them from the lawn. He seemed disinclined to join them on the porch, which White took to be an ominous sign. He felt his heart rate skyrocket.

“Seems you'd best prepare yourselves,” Preach said.

“Don't worry,” Hartwell told him. “We've an extensive array of bleeding-edge deterrents at every point around the perimeter. Whitman won't have a chance of getting near us.”

Preach grinned up at him. “I can't help but be fascinated by your stupidity.”

“He's right,” White said. “Whitman's been here before, don't forget. He got to el-Habib and neutralized his protection detail. He escaped an entire gunship and made off with our latest shipment. That means he has Dante and the jet. The entire trade route is compromised.” He headed inside, beckoning Hartwell to follow him. “But I know how to handle him, in the event he gets inside our perimeter.”

“That's the spirit!” Preach called after them, snickering. “Gird your loins for battle! It's Ragnarök, boys! Twilight of the Alchemists!”

*   *   *

For Charlie, the past ceased to exist, or, rather, it was stowed away behind a thick sheet of glass, to be looked at now and again, perhaps as a curiosity, but never again to be touched. The hurt was gone, as was the anguish it had engendered. Sometimes the end—or was it the future?—had a cauterizing effect on what had come before. This, come what may—even if she should die—was such a time.

“You see it?” Whitman said softly in her ear.

“I do.”

“Just to the left of the gate. It looks like a farmer's wooden stile along the stone wall.”

“But it's not,” Charlie said.

“It houses an infrared beam that runs just above the top of the wall. There's a separate beam that crosses the gate, should anyone try to crash through it. Dante gave me the code to open the gate, but he thought he was clever in not telling me about the infrared beam. Break the beam—”

“And an alarm sounds.”

“Break the beam,” Whitman said, “and a hail of bullets shreds you. Nasty.”

“Not a bit of it,” Charlie said opening her backpack, “because I'm gonna take it out.”

They were sitting in the jeep. The sky was low with sullen clouds. The late afternoon smelled of rain, but the clammy air was as still as the skin of a summer pond. Inside the jeep, the cloying scent of the poppies had become overpowering.

“Open the gate,” she said.

Whitman leaned out the open window, punched in the code Dante had given him. The high iron gates yawned soundlessly open. Charlie removed from her backpack a weapon that looked like nothing more than a lightweight plastic toy, the barrel blunt and wide. She attached an oval container to its underside, using a pair of thick gloves.

“Ultra-cold atoms,” she said, “using both lasers and a magnetic trap.” She aimed the weapon at the stile. “Watch what happens.”

She squeezed the trigger and a controlled spray of translucent liquid, gray as a battleship's hide, enveloped the stile. Moments later, it cracked in two, its delicate electronic insides frozen solid.

“Let's roll,” Charlie said, as Whitman crashed the gears.

*   *   *

“He's in,” Preach said. “He's breached your vaunted defenses.”

Hartwell moaned, but White was watching Preach, gauging his expression and the tenor of his words, his mind calculating—always calculating. Preach seemed bubbly, almost elated that Whitman was coming. White tried and failed to understand the source of these emotions.

“Oh, Christ,” Hartwell murmured, almost unconsciously.

“The power of Christ won't save you,” Preach said. “Not here, not now, not ever.”

*   *   *

Flix felt Edmond Dantès's intent before he made a move. How he was able to do this he did not know, nor did he question it. He was up out of his seat and moving as Dantès lunged toward the jet's galley. There was a return of the absolute focus on the enemy Flix had felt in el-Habib's villa, only without the terrible, ripping horror that had held him prisoner in his own head. He was himself, and yet more than himself. He moved with absolute resoluteness, without hesitation or conflict: he had become a weapon.

As Dantès reached for the paring knife on the galley counter, Flix grabbed him from behind. Dantès jammed an elbow hard into his ribs, but Flix barely felt it. Reaching around Dantès's jaw, he grabbed it with one hand, slid his free arm across Dantès's throat, and gave a violent twist. The crack of his victim's cervical vertebrae snapping resounded through the interior, causing the flight attendant to jump.

Flix released the corpse, and it collapsed onto the deck. He turned to the other three: the pilot, navigator, and the attendant, impaling them one by one with his steady gaze.

“Who's next?” he said.

 

51

Lucy stood in the doorway, in shadow. She watched the weather roll in, felt the dampness on her face, the backs of her hands. The fine hairs on her forearms lifted. Her fingers twitched, the thumbs cocked, as if they were grasping Preach's throat. She was aware of White, a mousy-seeming man at his side, and, of course, Preach, but she saw them all as though through a scrim, indistinct and muzzy. It was as if she had finally arrived at a far-off place, a shingle of beach that abutted a vast ocean across which was a promontory inhabited by the others, a bit of land she had once been to, but was now a distant memory. The stir of breeze, fitful before dying, the thick layers of clouds, the coming storm were all more real to her, companions that sang in her ear, speaking in tongues, while the three men babbled on to no effect, as if they were apes failing at human speech.

And then, turning, she became aware of what she should have seen sooner: Preach wasn't among the babbling apes; he was part of the landscape, along with the wind and the clouds and the incoming rain. He inhabited the same place she did, an outside place, where neither shadows nor light could survive. They were beached together.

At the precise moment of her revelation, he turned to face her. His grin was terrifying, though she had promised herself that he would never terrify her again. He began to walk toward her, and she felt her skin scrawl. She wanted to back up, to run, but she was rooted to the spot.

“Ready or not,” he said, “here I come.”

*   *   *

Whitman turned the wheel hard over, just missing the first land mine, but his altered course led him right into the second, and the detonation brought the jeep to its knees. The windshield blew inward. Bleeding from a number of cuts, none of them deep, he and Charlie leapt out of the jeep, ran on foot across the inner perimeter. Inside the circle of land mines, they crouched down, moving crabwise among the trees, using the trunks as cover.

“You okay?” Charlie whispered.

He nodded. “You?”

She grinned at him.

“They'll have more surprises to throw at us.”

Her grin widened as she slapped the side of her backpack. “I have everything in here except a fire-breathing dragon.”

“No, that man over there's got one of those.” Whitman indicated Albin White standing on the porch with a shotgun cradled in his arms. “That shotgun is loaded with incendiary iron pellets, one of which will cause your clothes to burst into flame.”

Charlie knelt. “We've got to get him before he fires that thing.” From her backpack she removed the weapon she had used on the stile, but this time, she dropped a wasp-like missile down its throat. She settled it in her grip, peered through the scope, and squeezed the trigger. The missile hissed through a narrow gap in the trees, struck the porch's underpinning, blew the entire structure to smithereens.

White was thrown off his feet, tumbling through the air. He fell against the shattered balustrade of what had once been the stairs. Preach turned, watching the action unfolding in front of him. For the moment, Lucy was forgotten.

White, clearly stunned, shook his head as if to clear it. Then he rose, trained his altered shotgun at the trees where Whitman and Charlie were hiding.

“Incoming!” Whitman said, just before the blast set the trees around them aflame.

They withdrew, moving quickly to the right of the area of burning trees. White was striding toward them, blood streaming down one side of his face, his clothes blackened and singed. He was about to fire the second barrel into the trees when Billy, the lone Mobius Project subject left alive, emerged from the Well. With hollowed-out eyes, he looked first to Preach, and it was clear, at least to Whitman, that Preach was controlling him. The man nodded, then sprinted toward White with alarming speed.

White became aware of him just in time. He whirled on his heel, fired the second barrel directly into the human missile's chest. The man's torso burst into flame. He took a step backward, then staggered forward, kept coming even while he was burning alive. Reversing the shotgun, White began to club him over the head, again and again, until Whitman, breaking cover, shot White dead.

Billy turned his dead eyes on Whitman. He appeared totally unconcerned that his body was being consumed by flames. Kneeling, Whitman shot him in the throat. The upward trajectory of the bullet shattered the spinal column at the base of the man's neck, instantly severing the preternatural connection Preach had created. The man's eyes turned white as he collapsed. Instants later, the flames consumed him completely.

Whitman turned his attention to Preach then. Behind him, much to Whitman's surprise and consternation, stood a beautiful young woman whose large, dark eyes and aggressive nose he recognized from the photo Flix had shown him in the hospital: Lucy Orteño. Briefly, he wondered what the hell she was doing here at the Well. He was about to voice his confusion to Charlie, but she was off and running toward a small man who had avoided injury in the blast by his proximity to the doorway. It was Trey Hartwell, an adder among the serpents, and Whitman shouted to warn her. Hartwell appeared harmless, but he was probably the most dangerous of the Alchemists. He was certainly the most brilliantly devious.

Without knowing whether Charlie had heard him, he left the trees behind, took off across the severely manicured lawn, toward the spot where Preach stalked Lucy.

*   *   *

Charlie realized that the man she was after had the advantage of knowing the layout of the house whereas she did not. Therefore she paused in the two-story entryway, assessing her immediate surroundings. To her right was a salon, complete with an enormous stone fireplace, flanked by a pair of well-worn oversize leather sofas. She could smell the faint whiff of embedded cigar smoke wafting in the air. To her left was a hallway. She could see the first room off of it, its paneled sliding doors open: a library. Dead ahead was a marble and brass staircase winding up to the second floor.

As soon as she attuned herself to the miniscule noises every house makes, she heard the small scuffle and creak of shoe soles against old wooden floorboards, and, shrugging off her backpack, stowing it in a deeply shadowed nook, she moved off in that direction, down the wood-paneled hall. Past the library, with its dry, almost spicy scent of old books, past a closed door, then into the third room. Every inch of its four walls, even the back of the door, was completely covered with mirrors. Charlie saw her image reflected back on herself from every conceivable angle. She turned, for a moment disoriented and slightly dizzy. Whether it was the mirrors or a reoccurrence of her Takayasu's was impossible to determine, but it was foolish to take chances. She dug in her pocket for the vial of Imuran, but at that moment she spied a moving shadow out of the corner of her eye, and in turning toward it, she lost control of the vial. It bounced off the floorboards, rolling toward a far corner. And as she scrambled after it, Trey Hartwell barreled into her.