Dark Heart (32 page)

“I just don’t think—”

“That is correct. You are not thinking clearly. You assume that you could stop the earl of Sterling as you stopped his henchman, Omar, from killing Tina. Need I remind you that if Omar had spent a little more time on you, you would be dead? There is nothing you can do to stop Justin. If you stand in his path, he will cut you down and think nothing of it. And your resistance might be the one thing he needs to work himself into a rage. And then how would you have served his future victim?”

“The Dragons could take Sandra into the fold,” the younger man pointed out.

“Would you have them take her as Justin wishes to take her? Would you tell her, ‘Join us if you wish to live. You have no choice’? I turn your question back upon you. How would that differ from what Justin is doing?”

“At least she would be alive.”

“So Justin thinks, also. You are both correct. But neither of you are right. They both must make very important decisions. They cannot make those decisions if we do it for them. What must be will be.”

The younger man paused for a long time. He struggled with himself, but finally his face became calmer, more placid. He let out a long, slow breath.

“Yes, Grandfather.”

“We must trust,” the older man said.

“We must trust,” the younger echoed.

T
he cathedral had three entrances, the great double doors in the center, and two smaller, steel-bound wooden doors on either side. Statues of the apostles flanked the center doors. The pointed arch was a recess three feet thick, carved into delicate filigree which sloped down to the entranceway. Above the arch was a scene of Jesus weighing souls, with Mary to his right and Peter to his left. It was an impressive edifice, even to a man who had watched Gothic cathedrals being built, as Justin had witnessed the construction of parts of Westminster Abbey and other great churches.

Below those scenes was a representation of Christ at the time of Armageddon. Souls floated free, rising from their tombs. Radiant angels with beautiful wings carried the devout up toward Jesus.

But farther down, a more insidious scene took place. At the bottom of the frieze, the souls of the wicked reached imploringly for heaven, crying out in pitiful, silent shrieks of terror as long-horned demons with maniacal grins gripped their legs and dragged them down to where the flames leapt high. Within those flames, every atrocity imaginable was occurring. A huge devil, by far the largest figure of the scene, held a man in seven tentacles. The devil was ripping the man’s head off. A naked woman ran through the flames, tears sliding down her face. Three snakes sank their fangs into her flesh, one at each breast and one at her genitals. Another man was being stuffed headfirst into a tub of flames by three small demons. His legs kicked fiercely.

Justin turned his gaze from the scene. If he should die—actually die—worse awaited him. Eternal torment. Yet wasn’t that how he might describe his current existence?

Justin reached the right-hand door and opened it. The pain had stopped, for now. He was approaching his victim. In the eyes of the Dragon, Justin was no longer resisting his edict.

The cathedral was all but empty. Only two people—Sandra and Kalzar—sat in the pews. Benny was there somewhere, hidden in the shadows.

At the sound of the door opening, Kalzar, close to the entrance, turned around. As always, he was impeccably dressed in a gray, pin-striped three-piece suit. Kalzar saw him and grinned. For a moment Justin’s rage almost slipped out of control. His hands longed to strangle the smile from that smug face, to push those glinting eyes back into his skull until they burst. But now was not the time. Soon enough there would be a more appropriate moment. Justin would wait.

Kalzar stood up, smoothed his lapels. Justin did not even spare him a glance as Kalzar walked by, nodding in approval. He opened the door and left the cathedral.

Justin saw Benny out of the corner of his vision, standing in the shadows of the nave. Justin beckoned the newly made disciple to his side with a slight motion of his head.

Benny walked to him without a sound. Already he had slipped into a disciple’s powers as if he had been born to wield them. Justin placed a silent hand on Benny’s shoulder. He nodded toward the door. Benny shot him a questioning glance.

“Follow Kalzar. Keep your eyes on him if you can. I wish to know where he goes.”

Benny smiled. “It will be a pleasure. What about Sandra?”

“Give me this moment alone with her,” Justin whispered. “I must dissipate her fears. She will be one of us soon. It will be all right.”

Benny nodded and followed Kalzar.

Justin began the long walk down the center aisle. Sandra was sitting in the same pew as when they had first talked here. Perhaps she always sat there. He allowed himself to wonder how often she came, how often she sat in that pew. The questions took his mind off the Dragon’s singing desire for her death. Every cell of his body ached with the Dragon’s need to destroy her.

He carefully chose a pew three back from hers and sat down. The pain returned with a vengeance as he halted. He gripped the back of the pew. The wood creaked under his tightening hands.

Sandra had not moved since she’d heard the door open. Her back was straight, and she gripped the seat in front of her just as Justin did.

“Is it you, Justin, really?” she asked, her voice drifting up into the ceiling. “And will it? Really?”

“What?” Justin asked, quietly, trying to conceal the struggle within himself.

“Will it really be all right? Or did you just tell Benny that to get him to leave?”

A pain like hundreds of small burning blades opened the flesh on Justin’s back. He gasped. “That depends upon you.”

She turned around. Her tear-stained gaze was hurt, angry, betrayed. “Join you or die, is that it?”

A spear of fire slammed into Justin’s guts, twisting. He let out a tight breath and tried to keep his arms from shaking. The wood of the seat in front of him cracked.

He nodded. He could not speak now. The pain was too intense.

A tear ran down a well-traveled track on Sandra’s cheeks. “Why did you have to drag Benny into this? Couldn’t you have just let it be between the two of us?”

Fire encircled Justin’s heart. The burn spread throughout his chest, choking him. He paused until he could speak. “Benjamin…he wanted this,” Justin managed. “It is all he has wanted for a long time now. You know it’s true.”

“No,” she said. “The Benny I saw back at the apartment was some mutated version of
my
Benny! What did you do to him?”

“He chose his path, Sandra. You should choose it, too. You are just afraid.”

Sandra laughed, a hollow sound. “Of course, I’m terrified. Look at what it’s done to you. Look at what you’ve become. The same thing will happen to Benny, and you brought him to it!”

Justin felt the pain of his fingernails being plucked out, one at a time. The hairs on his head, as well, one by one. His jaw was shaking when he opened his mouth to speak. He closed it with a snap, marshaled his strength, and spoke slowly. He could hear the pain in his voice, though. If Sandra were listening, he was sure she could hear it now, too.

“What I do is painful, and not necessarily just. I do not deny it. It is a heavy burden to bear, but a necessary one for all of mankind.”

Sandra gripped her seat with white knuckles. “So killing that kid? Killing McKenzie? Those murders served the good of mankind? I don’t buy it. It’s not necessary! It could never be necessary!”

“I did not kill McKenzie.”

“What difference does it make?” She turned to face him. The cathedral thrummed, echoing with her ire. “It’s all the same! People die at your hands—Madrone, Baxter, Zack. What justifies that? Nothing could!”

“Wait….” The pain intensified. “Let me….” Helet out a small breath. “…Let me tell you something, a story, before you make your decision.”

“Forget it.” She started to leave, but Justin cut her off. “Please,” he begged, and for the first time, she noticed his pain. She finally realized the price he was paying to let her live. She was silent, watching, wary. She sat back down, prepared to listen.

“Long ago, near the turn of this century, I was ordered to the Russian countryside to kill a young girl.”

Sandra seemed about to say something, but Justin motioned her to be silent.

“I did not want to do it,” he continued. “She was the wife of a poor revolutionary named Iosif Dzhugashvili. Iosif supported his small family by doing odd jobs and by keeping the farm. In his spare time, he wrote for a tiny underground Bolshevik newspaper under the name of Joseph Stalin. I did not want to kill Yekaterina. She was a wonderful woman. I do not believe I have ever seen such devotion between a couple. They were in love, despite the danger that was always a part of their lives. She had recently given birth to a son, Yakov. She was wild, spirited, and she bolstered her husband’s convictions when he despaired. He lived in constant fear of the day when men would appear at his door and arrest him for treason.

“If he was the mind that helped lead to revolution, she was the backbone that kept him straight. And she was also his weakness. If she had asked him to give up his writing for her, he would have done it in an instant. But she would never ask him to give up his dreams and convictions. She was brave, and she believed that since they were right, they would be invincible.

“I struggled for days, hidden in their barn, trying to resist my call to be the reaper of this beautiful life. You…,” he gasped as new agonies roared through him, “…cannot imagine the pain of resisting my master. I could only resist for three days, and then I murdered her. I made it look as if her dismemberment was carried out by czarist aristocrats. I lingered long enough to see her husband find the body. Young Iosif’s heart broke before my eyes.

“From that moment forward, nothing else mattered to Iosif but his work. He threw himself into it. Before long he was discovered, arrested, and sent to Siberia. Later he escaped and returned to the struggle where he caught Lenin’s eye. By then Lenin did not see an intellectual, in love with words and ideas, dedicated to a higher purpose. Lenin saw a man of action who wanted to fight and to kill.

“I watched these events from a distance, watched as Stalin climbed to power. The millions of deaths he inflicted on his enemies, his own people, even those he called his friends, were torture to me. For I knew that I had begun it all with a single act of violence. I was appalled at the way Stalin turned his old friends against one another, the way he exiled Trotsky and later had him killed, the way he seized complete power when Lenin died. He was the worst tyrant I had ever seen. He drove peasants off their land, starved his people to death, killed anyone who opposed him. I could not believe that I had made such a man. I could not believe it…

“Until I saw a man who was worse.

“I detached myself from my master after Yekaterina’s death. I avoided him, I hid from him. I could not believe in him any longer, not after what he’d made me do.

“But when I walked through the frozen streets of Stalingrad after the Russians captured the ‘indestructible’ German Sixth Army, turning the tide on Nazi Germany forever, I knew that the Dragon’s long view had out-reached me again. Whatever Stalin was, he was not Hitler.

“Stalin was a cruel and bloody leader, completely ruthless. It took a man like Stalin to defeat Hitler.

“That day I reconciled with my master. He saw the understanding within me, and he bestowed a new gift upon me. In those frozen streets, I first assumed my dragonling form, with all the strength and power that accompanies it. That day I became an Elder disciple. I flew across the countryside, viewing the carnage. Millions died in the six-month battle for Stalingrad, but it was not the Dragon’s fault. He was trying to guide them away from war. As he puts it, monsters that destroy need monsters to combat them. That is his philosophy. You cannot stop a sword’s blow without steel of equal quality. As harsh as the Dragon’s methods may seem sometimes, he is our only hope of reaching past this bloody nature of ours. He is our only hope of reaching true civilization….”

When Justin finished his story and looked up, he realized that Sandra was sitting next to him. Her eyes were red rimmed, full of sorrow, wet with tears. The back of the pew in front of him had disintegrated under his clenched hands.

Her light touch trailed across his tensed jaw. He jumped at her touch, delicate as it was.

“Join me…,” he said in a hoarse voice.

“I was you,” she whispered. “I was just like you. Look at what you endure for him.” She never wavered in her gaze. “My dragon’s name was Chuck, and every time he struck me, I told myself that he didn’t mean it. Every time I stared in the mirror for hours at a time, watching the bruises darken on my face, I told myself that he really loved me. He was just frustrated, and needed me to help him get past this tough time in his life. I needed to help him achieve his dreams. I told myself he hit me because I had to learn. I believed it for so long. But Justin…” She paused long enough to draw a deep breath. Both her hands reached up to touch his face. “He lied.”

“What?” He peered through the agony, focusing on her face, concentrating on her words. “No….” Heshook his head.

“Yes. Don’t you see?” she urged. “We believe their lies because we want to. We make them our own and call them truths. Because we let our fear have us. Because we won’t face the devil we don’t know, as opposed to the devil we do. And we hate ourselves for it.”

“No….” Justin’s memories pulled at him, and the Dragon’s pain threatened to rip him apart. Gwendolyne’s face hovered in his memory, pleading for her life. “No, it’s not like that…she was just afraid. She was…she couldn’t face…it was what she wanted. I didn’t…I didn’t force her. She was just afraid. It wasn’t me. It was the plague, not me…the plague that killed her. She didn’t choose in time, and….”

Sandra’s hands came away from Justin’s face. He opened his eyes, which he’d closed in a desperate bid to block the pain. He looked up into Sandra’s eyes.

She had risen and was backing away from him. Her face was a mask of terrible surprise, as if she were seeing him for the first time.

“I’ve been a fool,” she said.

“Sandra.” His voice was the dragonling’s voice. Dear God, he was changing…he resisted the change with everything in him. He concentrated on making his voice sound human. “Don’t back away. Please don’t leave me. She left me alone. All alone….”

“You killed her,” Sandra said, staring at him with terrified eyes. “You said she died of the plague, but you lied. You lied to yourself. You lied to me. All of it…lies. You killed her, didn’t you?”

“Sandra! I…no…I couldn’t have…”

“You did. You’re lying. You lie about everything. The ends justify the means. That applies to everything for you, doesn’t it? You’ve lived it so long, you’ve lost touch with everything else, haven’t you?”

There was a wet crackling deep in Justin’s bones. Skin crinkled and hardened, becoming scales. The scales flowed down his arm like a disease.

“Sandra, please!” Justin’s voice was an animal howl buried in a man’s words. He clutched his scaled arm to his side. “Join me. Quickly!” He held out a hand to her. His fingers were slowly disappearing, curling and hardening into thick, scaled talons. His thumb twisted around his hand, opposite the hooked claws.