Bitter Waters (31 page)

“Maybe we should delay the Cleansing,” Ice suggested as Io and others worked quickly unloading the truck.

“No, the time draws near. We must do it, or risk losing everything. The signs are clear.”

Ice glanced upward at the night sky. “If I take someone with me who knows the back roads, I can get out of the state unseen. Should I steal a truck, or wait for morning and rent one?”

“Rent it with another fake ID. We need to be as invisible as possible.”

Ice looked at Ukiah and his eyes were full of jealousy. “He's dangerous. Let me take him out and lose him with the truck.”

“I said no,” Core said.

“You're dosed up with Bliss and not thinking straight.”

“My dear lieutenant, I'm thinking perfectly straight.” Core kissed Ice lightly on the cheek, leaving the glitter of Blissfire. “We need another infusion of money. Even with Socket's allowance and the money we've gotten by selling Bliss, we've tapped ourselves dry. Bennett will pay to get his son back.” He lowered his voice so that Ukiah could barely hear him over the chiming of the drug. “Or better yet, the boy might know account numbers and pin codes, or perhaps even inherit
everything if Bennett is killed. If we can break his will, everything that is his will be ours.”

Ice's whisper went husky as the Blissfire affected him. “Do we have the time to brainwash him? Will it even work on him? He's not the whining little discontented wimps we've molded before. I don't think a few days of exhaustion, starvation, and hot sex is going to make him a willing tool.”

“He's young and inexperienced,” Core whispered. “It will work, given time.”

“The puppy probably will not survive the ritual.”

Ukiah controlled a growl; he could only save Kittanning if he was alive.

“He doesn't know what the puppy is.” Core kissed Ice's other cheek and the Blissfire marked him like invisible war paint.

“Does he?” Ice whispered fiercely. “Why did he attack us on the turnpike? He came straight on like a stinger missile.”

“Something must have led him to you.”

“There was nothing.”

“There was something.” Core kissed Ice, a full silencing French kiss. Ice melted into Core's hold. “You just can't see it. If he found it, then others can. We have to move quickly.”

“Yes, master,” Ice whispered.

Core smiled at him. “Take the founts to the rendezvous, my dear, dear lieutenant, and come back as quickly as you can. I need you here beside me.”

A shuffling of feet announced the arrival of the Lu-Ae. One could tell that the Ae was stolen technology; they had a sleek beauty that the Ontongard never grasped. It was as if the Ontongard, despite their host bodies, continued to see on too small a scale to understand visual beauty. Once stolen, of course, the Ontongard failed to see any reason to change the design.

In ways,
fount
was a good name for the Ae. On three of the sides were the upraised horns for raw materials, readily adaptable for field use. In the front, an obvious spout poured out the biological poison in concentrated form.

The cultists had draped Lu-ae with a white altar cloth, trimmed with gold and embroidered with crucifixes. They
brought it to the truck in a solemn procession and spread out sheets of silk to rest it on. Despite the ceremony of its arrival, it was quickly packed onto the truck and the gate once again lowered and padlocked.

The truck pulled away. Core dipped his hand into his pocket and drew it out glittering. “Come.” Core drew a line down Ukiah's forehead, nose, and then traced Ukiah's lips. “There's much to do.”

 

The Temple's refuge was an estate that made Max's mansion look modest. The cobblestone driveway circled a fountain, and beyond it sprawled an imposing limestone manor built on the lines and scale of a cathedral. Core led Ukiah through a facade gate, and into a deeply vaulted loggia facing a garden courtyard. Hash followed behind, apparently to guard against Ukiah trying to bolt.

The loggia was a kicked-beehive of activity. Cultists carried packed moving boxes out of various doors connected to the loggia. They glanced at Ukiah with interest but continued to work quickly, building a mountain of stacked boxes under the stone vaults.

“What is this place?”

“We call it Eden Court.” Core turned them left and took them down a short flight of stone steps to a beautifully carved wooden door. “Parity's family owns it. The same architect that built the Westin William Penn Hotel and the old Mason Lodge in Oakland designed Eden. The man understood God.”

Beyond the door, they stepped into a three-story great stair hall, the ceiling arched panels of carved wood, the walls dressed limestone, the tall windows all stained-glass, and the marble floors covered with oriental rugs. It felt more like a church than a home.

“And Parity's family doesn't mind you living here?” Ukiah asked.

“Parity is an only child, and his parents are in Europe. They think he's safely attending Harvard.”

“So they don't know he's chopping up demons and burning them?”

Core tutted as he guided Ukiah down another flight of
steps and into a stunning living room with bay windows at either end, nearly twenty by sixty feet in area. “When I was growing up, I asked God to let me live here. I thought it would be the next best thing to living in a church. Then one day, I opened the newspaper and saw that God was sending Parity to Boston so I could initiate him.”

Core paused in the living room. The original furniture had been pushed against the wall and the oriental rugs rolled up to reveal a random-plank oak floor. A nest of computers, thick with power cords and network cables, set up on a large round table dominated the room. While the floors and window gleamed from a recent cleaning, every surface was cluttered with belongings. Obscure electronics jostled with crucifixes and guns for space on a sofa table. A coffee table was littered with satellite photos, Bibles, and ammo.

The cultist Io was there, dissembling the computer equipment to be packed into waiting original boxes.

“Io,” Core called him away from the computers. “Go tell Ping to finish with Parity and move to the master bedroom. We're initiating the Wolf Boy.”

Io hurried away, and Core pushed Ukiah down onto a stool. “Sit. Stay.”

Hash took up a position behind Ukiah, out of sight but not out of mind, making sure he stayed.

“So Socket talked.” Core went to hunt through objects stacked on the mantel of a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace carved like a mausoleum. “She's a worrisome child. So willing, one forgets she's never been fully broken, yet so strong that breaking her might kill her.” Core found a pair of pruning shears and examined their blades. “I've let the issue ride because of her money, but maybe the time has come that the benefit outweighs the risk.”

“I don't know what you plan to do with Du-ae, but you can't fight demons with it.”

“Leave that to experts; I have been fighting demons for years. I've touched their stolen instruments of holy destruction, and tasted the angelic fruit of bliss. I've spied upon demons working their evil; I've captured them and killed them.”

Ukiah eyed the shears in Core's hand as the cult leader walked toward him. “What are you going to do with those?”

“Afraid?” Core pressed them to Ukiah's cheek. “Fear is good.” Core circled behind him. “I want to see how badly you're hurt.” Core snipped through the wire binding Ukiah's wrist.

The sudden release shot agony through Ukiah, making him whimper.

“You were smart to wear leather.” Core moved around Ukiah, snipping through the leather of Ukiah's jacket and peeling it back, exposing hypersensitive skin. “You abraded down to nearly skin. Ah, yes, it looks like you've cracked your clavicle, that's your collarbone, in the middle third. Looks to be nothing serious.”

The Invisible Red was fracturing Ukiah's awareness. Some part of him stayed focused on Core and the monologue he carried on as he cut away the clothing. Most of him was only sentient of the cold metal pressing to his skin, the sharp snip as the blades came together, and the heat of Core's body as Core circled him.

Core's deep rich voice washed all around him, like warm dark water. “As a child, pure of sin, I walked in God's light and knew the comfort of his love. And then I left my home, and lost my way, until I was in prison, crouched on all fours, being raped like a mongrel bitch in heat. I thought God had abandoned me but Adam made me see that I had abandoned Him. God had shown me the path He wanted me to walk, and I had refused it.”

Io came into the room quietly and whispered to Core that Ping was waiting. Core nodded, and sent him off for first-aid supplies. Only the tiniest part of Ukiah's awareness took note of Io and trembled; what initiation did Core and Ping have planned?

Core continued, drowning Ukiah with his voice. “I know as a child I believed so strongly that it seemed to weave into every fiber of my being. The sky was heaven. The thunder was angels bowling in the rain. And sunshine was His love, bright and warming. But there's always something chiseling away at your faith. A little here, a little there, until it's all
gone. I had lost the last of it the year after I graduated from high school, and the world became cold, clinical, and sterile.”

Core finished cutting off Ukiah's jacket and tossed the remains to one side, and paused a moment to examine Ukiah's hands and arms for damage. Blissfire still clung to Core's fingers, and each touch, skin to skin, spread more into Ukiah's system. Core's eyes widened with desire, and his voice went husky as he spilled out his heart.

“I felt so lost and alone, and then I saw this movie, and there was this one little thing in it, right at the end. If you look into the eyes of someone who is dying, it said, you'll see the face of God reflected in their eyes.” Core held up a hand, fingers separated by a hair width of space. “Such a little thing, and yet it was as if all the heavens shouted to me. Yes, if I saw God's face, all that faith would return, and I would be the center of His love.”

Couldn't Core see the flaw in his own logic? Nothing changed but Core's own belief. If God's love was controlled by Core's belief, then Core controlled God.

“So I became an EMT; what better way to see into the eyes of the dying?” Core pulled off Ukiah's boots and socks with calm detachment to his words. “I waited months for someone to die, and then I let God's will be done instead of checking his hand. I let nature run its course, instead of stepping in, other than praying for their souls. What is this mortal life compared to eternal salvation?”

In other words, he let them die. A tiny spark of horror was born in Ukiah. Adam might have been a monster, but someone made him that way; Core was a monster from the start. Sooner or later he probably would have been stopped, the death rate climbing too high to be ignored, but how many people had he killed?

Core picked up the pruning shears and started to cut off Ukiah's ruined leather riding pants. He continued his story, the deaths glossed over, deemed unimportant. “And then one day it happened. I saw my first fallen angel. After a bad ice storm, we were called to help with a multiple car accident on four twenty-two, around nine at night. A truck had lost its load of steel piping, and one of the pipes had been flung through a
windshield and pierced a man through the heart. Amazingly, he was still alive, and struggling to remove the pipe from his chest. It was a huge risk, since I should have immobilized the pipe and let the emergency doctors remove it, but all I needed to say was that he pulled it free before I could stop him. It was dark, the police were directing traffic, and the rescue workers were busy with other drivers.”

Io returned with the first-aid supplies: professional-looking gear boxes. Finding an arm sling in the boxes, Core slid it over Ukiah's head.

“So I leaned into the car, pulled the pipe free, eased him out onto the ground, and pretended to stanch his bleeding as I stared into his eyes, waiting for him to die. He spoke in the language of angels, which is beautiful and strange, as he bled to death. He closed his eyes at the very end, and I pried them back open. As with all the others, there was no sign of God. Heavyhearted, I moved on to the next car. That driver was pinned, all her ribs broken and her teeth smashed out by the steering wheel, and she was unconscious. She would live, though, and there was nothing I could do to change that short of cutting her throat, so I stood up and looked back at the first driver . . . and he was getting up. There was still a hole in his coat, front and back. He walked away, and just as he got to the edge of the light, he looked back, and his eyes gleamed with the unholy power.”

Core shook two pills out of a medicine bottle and handed them to Ukiah. Ukiah stared at the pills in his hand, trying to focus on them. They were simple over-the-counter pain relievers, ibuprofen mixed with inactive material for bulk and stamped into a pill. His hand, though, barely seemed part of his body.

Realizing Ukiah's problem, Core laughed, and took back the pills. He produced a bottle of drinking water and opened it. Popping the pills into his own mouth, and taking a mouthful of water, he leaned forward, pressed his mouth to Ukiah's lips, and forced water and pills into Ukiah's mouth.