From Black Rooms (35 page)

Thrusting Calvin away from him, Evan gaped,

uncomprehending, at the handle of the switchblade that protruded from his slashed abdomen. Natalie barely had time to wonder where Calvin had gotten the knife

before Evan began to heave, as if unable to vomit some poison he'd swal owed.

The fit subsided a bit, and Evan drew himself up to his ful height, turned his violet gaze upon Natalie.

"Kiddo?"

She got to her feet. "Dad?"

He stil held the gun, arm quavering. "Run." That was al her father was able to say, but Natalie got the message. Wade had managed to inhabit Evan, but could not control such a powerful Violet for long. As proof, the next halting words to come from Evan's mouth were the multiplication tables--his protective mantra. "...two...t-times three...is s-six... Natalie went for the dead corporal's gun, while Calvin hurried to undo the buckled cuffs on his arm and legs.

"t
wo times four is eight, two times five is ten--"
Evan grabbed the switchblade and yanked it from his midsection with a shudder. A line of red spittle trickled from his lips as he let the knife fal to the floor. Natalie got the corporal's .45, but when she spun around to shoot, Evan already had the 9mm aimed at Calvin, who'd failed to unbuckle the cuff on his left foot.

"
TWO TIMES SIX IS TWELVE! TWO TIMES

SEVEN IS--"

The bang wrenched Natalie's heart. But it was Evan's violet eye that exploded from its socket. As his body col apsed, Natalie saw that Serena had dragged herself over to her .45, which she held, quivering, in her bruised left hand.

"Good thing that bul et didn't go to waste," she said, lowering the gun.

He's dead, Natalie thought with both relief and
trepidation. Ten years ago, she had chosen not to kil Evan Markham because she knew he could and would

come back to plague her. This time, she had no choice.

"Say your protective mantras, everyone," she advised the others, and commenced her own.

Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of mine
enemies, she recited in her mind as she went to release
Amalfia from her chair.

The girl's face glistened with tears and mucus, and she vacil ated between self-pity and self-loathing. "It hurt," she sniveled. "I didn't know it was going to hurt so much. And why didn't my mantra work?"

"The first time is always hard." Once she'd unfastened the cuffs, Natalie peeled the electrodes off the teen's scalp as gently yet as quickly as she could. "You get used to it with practice."

"And how could I let myself trust that psycho?" Amalfia covered her violet eyes with her unbound

hands. "God, I'm nothing but a poser."

"No, Amanda, you're the real thing now. That's the problem." Natalie laid a hand on the girl's bare scalp, pitying her. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

"Uh...we may have a little problem with that," she heard Calvin say from behind her.

Natalie turned to see that, through a superhuman

mastery of mind over pain, Serena had risen to her feet and lurched to the door, where she braced herself against the wal , her right arm folded across her wounded chest like a broken wing. Her left hand held out the .45, pointed at them.

"I can't let you leave," she croaked.

32

Eliminating the Unworthy

UNCONSCIOUSNESS, SERENA COULD NOT lift

her eyelids more than halfway, but the eyes beneath them stil burned with a fanatic determination. Her left hand had started to swel since Evan had stepped on it, but it did not lower the gun it held.

Natalie could not believe that the old friend who'd saved her life more than once would now end it.

"Serena...what are you doing?"

"Only God can grant us our gifts, Nat. You know that." Serena threw disparaging glances at Calvin and

Amalfia. "Promised Uncle Simon I'd eliminate the unworthy."

"Unworthy?" Natalie darted an accusing finger at the room's exit. "What...you let Carl Pancrit just walk out of here, but you're gonna 'eliminate' a scared teenager and a struggling artist?"

"I didn't let Pancrit walk," Serena said. "That wasn't tear gas coming out of the grenade. It was dust from the Ash Field. It was supposed to be a test for Calvin--trial by fire, and al that."

Alarmed, Calvin waited for someone to explain.

"Natalie, what is she talking about?"

She stared at Serena and started to quake, for she knew what the Ash Field did to even the strongest Violets.

"That's not a test--it's murder. You planned to kil him al along, yet you pretended to help him. Why?"

"To find this place. I needed to see Project Persephone for myself...so I could destroy it."

"And what about me and Cal ie?" Natalie crossed the room to kneel beside her daughter. "Are you going to kil us, too?"

"No one can know this thing ever existed." Serena drew a deep breath, her face cramped by a pain more intense than that caused by her splintered shoulder and pierced breast. "Sorry, Nat."

Her finger tightened on the trigger, but the shots didn't come. If they had been Corps Security stooges, she would have snuffed them al by then.

"Serena?" Cal ie looked up at her godmother with liquid, uncomprehending eyes. "Did we do something wrong?"

Serena's face rippled with warring loyalties, her finger frozen on the trigger of the quivering gun. Then she dropped her head and let the arm that held the .45 fal to her side. With capitulation came total exhaustion, and she slid down the wal into a sitting position,

shuddering as the sobs that shook her rib cage squeezed her wounds.

"Aw, hel . With any luck, I'l be dead before Simon can give me grief." She gave a woeful laugh. "Not that that'l stop him."

Natalie inched toward her friend and crouched beside her. "Thank you." She gingerly lifted the .45 out of Serena's slack hand and set it aside. "I owe you. Again."

Serena couldn't even lift her brow from her knees; she merely pivoted a half-peeled eye toward Natalie. "Then you can do me a favor."

Natalie nodded. "We'l get you out of here--"

"No. Forget about me. I want you to get back in that lab." With agonizing slowness, she unzipped her leather jacket and opened its left flap for Natalie to see the lining. "Wherever you see something that might have those genetic doohickeys in it, stick one of these on it." Duct-taped to the coat's lining were more than a dozen smal , crude bricks of a gray claylike substance, each of which bore a numbered label and had a black oblong electronic device attached to one end. Natalie did not need to be a demolitions expert to recognize them as plastic explosives.

When she acted skittish about touching the stuff, Serena chuckled. "Don't be shy. C-4 don't bite." She coughed, and the phlegm in her mouth lined the teeth of her smile with red.

Natalie gently tore the bomb packages free from

Serena's jacket. "Okay, but how do I get back in the lab? Pancrit had a security card."

Serena shifted her eyes toward the dead corporal. "She probably has one."

"You need a thumbprint--"

"She has one of those, too. There's a knife over there." She indicated the switchblade that Evan had dropped beside Calvin's chair.

Natalie whitened with disgust, but fetched the knife. She then hunched over the soldier's corpse and

searched her pockets and was almost disappointed when she found the security card.

"Don't look, Cal ie." Repeating the Twenty-third Psalm faster and faster in her mind, Natalie sawed at the flesh between the thumb and index finger of the corporal's right hand.

He restoreth my soul; He leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness for His name's sake...

She could feel the numbness in her extremities as the touchstones of cooling skin and congealing blood

funneled the quantum energy of the soldier's spirit into her, but the mantra kept the soul from gaining

ascendance.

Calvin came up beside her when she'd final y torn the digit free from the hand. "Need some help?"

"No. I won't be gone long. Stay here and watch them."
In case Serena changes her mind, she wanted to add,
but from the look Calvin gave her, Natalie knew that he was already thinking the same thing.

She draped the explosive devices, which were stil joined by the strips of duct tape, over her left forearm, stuck the switchblade under the waistband of her jeans, and cupped the severed thumb and security card in her right hand. Wanting to dispense with this chore as quickly as possible, she dashed out of the examination room and down to the door at the end of the corridor. As much as she would have loved to hurl the thumb away once she'd pressed it on the security door's touchpad, Natalie shoved it and the security card in her pocket in case she needed them to get out of the facility. Once she'd gained access to the lab, she used the bloody switchblade to slice off the bombs one by one, taping one to each of Carl Pancrit's computers, thermal cyclers, gene sequencers, and centrifuges.

...T
hy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me...

Never ceasing to repeat her mantra, she placed the explosives and ran back to Serena's side in the

examination room. "They're al set. How do we detonate 'em?"

Serena blinked, as groggy as if she'd awakened from a nap. She snaked her left hand into the inside pocket of her jacket that lay over her heart. "Good thing they only shot my right half."

She pul ed out her PDA and set it on the floor beside her. Squinting to focus, she steadied her palsied hand and touched the stylus to the screen to page through several menus. Two rows of white numbered boxes

appeared on the display. As Serena scraped the stylus over them, the boxes turned black.

From down the hal came a fusil ade of sequential blasts, like the finale of a fireworks display. Fire alarms rang throughout the complex, and the noise actual y drowned out Amalfia's continuous wailing.

Serena shut her eyes and grinned. "Sweet music to my ears...

She slumped sideways.

"S
erena." Natalie palpated her friend's neck. The pulse
barely registered. She turned to Calvin. "Can you carry her?"

He gave her an incredulous look. "Carry her? She was going to kil us!"

"But she didn't."

Calvin put up his hands. "Al right. Anything to get us out of this place." He squatted, hooked one of Serena's slack arms around his neck, and thrust his arms under her back and thighs like the tines of a forklift, raising her from the floor with a grunt.

"By the way...how did you and Serena get here? Did you bring a car?"

He snorted. "Serena? A car? You know better than that."

Natalie sighed. "Never mind. I've got another idea." Calvin groaned under Serena's dead weight. "If I only come out of this with a hernia, I'l be ecstatic," he groused as he lurched into the corridor.

Natalie herded Cal ie and Amalfia out of the

examination room ahead of her, then frisked Block's corpse until she located his car keys. A mumble from behind her reminded her that Tackle was only

unconscious, so she snatched up Serena's .45 for

protection before fol owing the others to the front entrance. The smoke of burning plastic in the laboratory had already pol uted the foyer with an acrid mist, and Natalie took huge gulps of the fresh desert air when they exited the facility into the night outside.

Having passed through the final security door, she rid herself of the severed thumb. Serena's latest rented motorcycle--a red Kawasaki--stil sat out front, but Carl Pancrit's BMW was gone. They needed a vehicle that would carry them al , so Natalie went to

commandeer the Hummer with Block's keys.

Compared to the Volvo, it felt like steering a tank, but she didn't care about its maneuverability, only its mobility.

Calvin rested on his knees with Serena in his lap until Natalie pul ed up. After he hoisted Serena into the rear of the vehicle, he took the front passenger seat, while Amalfia and Cal ie piled into the back.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days
of my life, Natalie thought as she gunned the engine and
set them rumbling down the road through the

moonscape of white dunes. And I wil dwel in the
house of the Lord forever.

Whenever she glanced over at Calvin, she could see his lips moving as he, too, kept repeating his mantra. From the backseat, she heard Cal ie murmur, "Now I lay me
down to sleep...

Only Amalfia was silent.

Final y, she let out a plaintive whimper. "Please, Deathdreamer, leave me alone."

Natalie stomped on the Hummer's brake, and the

momentum of the huge vehicle caused it to skid for several yards along the gravel lane, nearly dragging them over the side of a dune. Twisting around to look at the seat behind her, Natalie saw that Amalfia had gripped Cal ie in a headlock, choking off the child's mantra.

"Hey, Boo." The teen grinned wickedly in the ominous light from the dashboard. "I know Amanda isn't exactly made of muscle, but you think I can stil snap your kid's neck?"

By reflex, Natalie grabbed and aimed the .45, which she'd stuck barrel-down into the vehicle's cup holder.

"Go ahead, Boo," Evan said with Amalfia's voice.

"Blow this idiot kid away. Better than letting your daughter die, right?"

Natalie angled the gun upward but kept it ready.

"Amanda? I know you can hear me. You don't have to let him control you."

Evan laughed. "You're talking to her like she's one of us."

He had a point. How could Natalie imbue Amalfia with the mental discipline she needed to reclaim control of her body?

Answer: the same way Natalie had first learned to force out an unwanted soul. The Alphabet Mantra. Even kids who weren't Violets had practiced the alphabet

countless times during their life, concentrating on it until it became a part of them.

"Listen to me, Amanda. Sing the Alphabet Song." She cleared her throat to wipe the fear from her voice and sang. "A-B-C-D-E-F-G..."

Calvin got the drift and joined in. "H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O
P..."
Evan laughed again, but then his grin became a