Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) (57 page)

“Doesn’t look like the Rasalom I’ve met.”

“I am many things to many people.”

Bill was staring at the handle protruding from Rasalom’s abdomen.

“Is that a knife…?”

The sight of the knife seemed to unsettle Jack. “I’ve just been through this movie.”

As Carol wondered what Jack meant, Rasalom smiled at him and said, “Have much success on your trip to Maui,
Heir
?”

Heir? What was happening here? Jack looked ready to explode as Rasalom turned to Bill and yanked the blade free.

“Please don’t be concerned, Father. I’m a rapid healer.”

“Yeah?” Jack’s face was tight with rage. In a single smooth, swift motion he had his shotgun extended to arm’s length, its muzzle inches from Rasalom’s face. “Heal this.”

The explosion was deafening. Close against her Bill cried out in shock as Carol screamed and turned away, but not before she saw Rasalom’s head disintegrate behind the muzzle flash.

A moment later, Bill’s hushed, awed whisper slipped past the ringing in her ears.

“Look at that!”

Carol turned and saw Rasalom’s headless body lying on the floor. It seemed to be shrinking, deflating. And then she saw why. Loose soil was pouring from the stump of his neck.

“Dirt,” Jack said. “This wasn’t him, just skin filled with dirt.” His eyes were more than a little wild as he gave the remains an angry kick. “Dirtbag.”

Glaeken hobbled through the doorway then.

“What has happened here?”

Carol quickly ran over the events of the past twenty minutes. Glaeken nodded with slow resignation.

“Leave your skin in my closet, he told you?”

Carol felt Bill tighten his grip around her shoulders.

“Why?” Bill said. “What does it mean?”

“More of his games. A diversion while he waits for the Change to be complete. One more thing to confound, confuse, sicken, and terrify us. He probably meant to leave Carol’s skin and his own. A grisly reminder to me that his Change is far along to completion.”

Glaeken went to Rasalom’s remains and lifted the skin by both feet. Jack helped. Together they shook the last of the dirt from within. It felt dry and light, almost like an oversize set of a child’s footed pajamas. Glaeken rolled it up, then tucked it under his arm and started for the door.

“Come upstairs. I want to get rid of this once and for all. Then we have work to do.”

She noticed Jack looking around with a panicked expression.

“Hey! Where’s Kolabati?”

Rasalom’s skin smoked, twisted, browned, blackened, and burned in the fireplace. Carol watched as Glaeken pushed it deeper into the flames with the poker. As the ashes curled and rose through the flue, he turned and surveyed the gathering of his inner circle.

Carol surveyed it as well. The newcomers were Sylvia Nash and her son, huddled against her. Pale, distant, remote in her grief, Sylvia sat quietly in a corner of the huge sofa. Carol’s heart went out to her. Alan was missing. Bill had told her what had happened. She hadn’t got to know that man in the wheelchair, but during their brief contact last Saturday Carol had sensed something fine and strong within him. And now, looking at Sylvia, she could sense a comparable rebellious strength within her. This woman had been battered but refused to bow. Ba stood tall behind her like some preternatural guardian.

Carol leaned against Bill; Nick sat stiff and straight but inattentive on Bill’s far side.

Jack had disappeared, searching for a woman he’d brought back from Hawaii.

“Well,” Glaeken said, jamming his hands into his pockets as he looked at Bill and Nick, “our wanderers have returned. What have you brought back?”

Bill reached into a sack and pulled out a few odd-shaped pieces of rusted metal. He dropped them onto the marble-topped coffee table.

“This is the best I could do.”

Glaeken picked up the pieces, examined them closely, then nodded.

“Amazing. These are from the blade. How—?”

“Nick helped. I’d never have found them without him. But are they … is it enough?”

“These are fine. We need only a sample of the metal. I—”

Jack burst in then, his expression bleak. “She’s gone! Disappeared! I can’t find a trace of her.”

Glaeken stared at him. “But how—?”

“Rasalom’s skin … walking around … I got distracted … shit!”

He tossed a heavy, intricately carved necklace onto the table. It rolled and skidded to a stop in front of Glaeken. He didn’t pick it up to examine it. He seemed to know it was right merely by looking at it.

“The other?”

Jack lowered his gaze. “Where do you think? Kolabati’s got it.”

Carol noticed Glaeken’s complexion fade two or three shades toward white. He seated himself—carefully.

“And she’s gone?”

“I got suckered,” he said. “Twice. Let myself get distracted. But there’s enough here to do your thing, right? I mean, you’ve got the kid, pieces of the old sword, and one of the necklaces. That’s enough, right?”

Glaeken sat motionless for an endless moment, then he shook his head, slowly, painfully.

“No, Jack. I wish it were, but we need the combined power within the pair of necklaces to make this work.”

Jack shot to his feet and began to pace the room. Carol had learned something about him from Glaeken during the past few days, how he made his living working for people who had been let down by everyone else. Now he obviously felt he’d let them all down and his failure was eating him alive.

“I don’t know where she is. She took off into the city. She could be anywhere. She could be dead.”

“It’s all right, Jack,” Glaeken said. “You brought her back.”

“But I didn’t get it done. That’s the bottom line: I didn’t get it
done
!”

“I doubt if anyone else on earth could have returned with even one of the necklaces.”

“All fine and good. But you’re telling me one necklace doesn’t cut it, so the whole trip was a waste of time. That makes Bill’s trip a waste of time. And I took Ba with me, and maybe if he’d stayed home…”

Jack didn’t finish the thought. He stopped and faced the group. His eyes were tortured. It took him a moment to find his voice again.

“I blew it. And because of that, there’s no way out now, for any of us. I’ve let everybody down. I’m sorry.”

He turned and started for the door. Carol tried to think of something to say that would ease his pain, lighten his load, but before she could call out to him, she saw Sylvia reach out and grab his arm as he passed. He stopped and stared down at her. She rose wordlessly, slipped her arms around him, and hugged him.

For a moment Jack stood stiffly, looking baffled, then he lifted his arms and returned the embrace. He closed his eyes as if in pain.

Bill rose to his feet and Carol rose with him.

“It’s okay, Jack,” Bill said. “Really. We know you gave it your best shot. We trust in that. And if that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is. We go on from here as best we can.”

He stepped toward Jack and extended his hand.

Jack eased away from Sylvia and gripped Bill’s hand, then Carol hugged him, then Glaeken offered his own hand.

His throat working, his voice on the verge of crumbling, Jack stepped back and stared at the semicircle that had formed around him.

“You people … you people. Where’d you all come from? Where’ve you been all my life?”

His voice seemed to fail him then. He took a deep breath, held it, then let it out as he turned to Glaeken.

“I’ll keep searching for her, but she knows this city. She’s lived here. If she doesn’t want to be found, then…”

Shaking his head, he turned and walked out the door.

When he was gone, they all stood and stared at each other in silence.

“There’s no hope then?” Carol said.

Glaeken heaved a sigh, slow and heavy, as he shook his head. His eyes were remote, his disappointment palpable.

“If there is, it depends on Kolabati having a change of heart. And that…” He shook his head again.

“That’s it?” she said. “We’ve lost? What do we do now?”

“We do what we’ve always done,” Bill said. “We don’t back down. And we refuse to be anything less than we are.”

Carol looked at him standing tall and defiant. He’d told her what he’d been through in the past five years, and if that hadn’t broken him, she doubted anything could. She realized in a blaze of heat how much she loved Bill Ryan.

Glaeken too seemed to draw strength from him.

“You’re right, of course. We can make Rasalom come for us rather than crumble and fall toward him. That will be a victory of sorts.” He extended his elbow toward Sylvia. “Mrs. Nash, if you’ll allow me, I’ll show you the apartment I’ve been holding for you.”

As they left, Bill turned to Nick.

“Want me to take you back to your room?”

Nick was staring at the flames in the fireplace. To Carol’s surprise, he answered.

“I want to watch the fire. I want to see where all the ashes go.”

Carol dared a quick glance at the fireplace, ready to turn away if Rasalom’s skin was still there. But it wasn’t—at least not recognizably so. Just burning logs.

“They go up the chimney and float away, Nick,” Carol said.

“Not all of them. Some are on the window.”

Carol turned and for the first time noticed the ashes sticking to the picture window. She gasped and clutched Bill’s arm when she saw how they clung in a gray, feathery pattern—the shape of a headless man, spread-eagled against the dying light.

Bill hurried to the wall and touched a button. The drapes slid closed.

“Maybe I’d better walk you home.”

“I can’t go back there.”

The thought of that pile of dirt on the rug, the memory of what he’d planned to do—it sickened her.

“Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Carol looked at him. She didn’t know how else to put this, other than come right out and say it.

“Can’t I stay with you?”

He stared at her for a long moment, then reached out, pulled her close, and kissed her.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for days.” He sighed. “For years. For decades. Forever, I think.”

She looked up at him, into his clear blue eyes.

“It’s time, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Yes. Long past time, I think.”

He took her hand and led her toward his apartment.

The Bunker

“Really, Jack,” Gia said into the shortwave microphone. “We’re okay. Everything’s a mess topside, but we’re fine down here.”

With the coming of daylight, the grinding had stopped. Why, she couldn’t say. Maybe the burrowers returned to the hole, maybe they went dormant during the light time. All Gia knew was that the damned noise had stopped.

But with darkness upon them, she was sure it would start again.

“You don’t sound so sure.”

I’m trying my best, she thought.

She didn’t want to give Jack even a hint about the burrowers. She knew if he thought they were in the slightest danger he’d hop in the first car he could find and rush to them.

And never make it. Jack was as tough and resourceful as they come, but even he couldn’t prevail against the horrors of the night. They’d never see or hear from him again. So she couldn’t let him suspect a thing.

“You’re the one who doesn’t sound good,” she said, deflecting the talk from herself.

“Yeah, well, I came up short on the Maui trip.”

When he’d called earlier to tell her he’d landed safely, he hadn’t mentioned success or failure. Now she heard the full story. Kolabati … that bitch.

“One isn’t enough. I need to find the second.”

“You’re not thinking of going out tonight.”

“I may be crazy, but I’m not insane. Speaking of night, are you sealed in?”

“All three hatches locked up tight.”

But the threat wouldn’t come by way of the hatch. It would come through the walls.

Somehow they had to hold out through tonight.